Funniest answer during the quiz

my favourite..which band formed during the 90's debuted with an album cover featuring Malcom Brownes photo of a budhist monk burning himself alive in saigon?
ans: err...oh yeah 'the BEATLES!!'

Quiz 3 -- "the watergate" of this season -- report

Very controversial (but entertaining) quiz -- accusations of (random) question cleansing, insider trading of questions and blatant attempts to sabotage "Team One" are still rife. Apurva, the QM, set himself an ambitious goal of 90% answerable questions -- while he fell short of that goal, he still managed an astronomical 80-85% answer rate. "Team One" and "Team Six" pretty much dominated the quiz, going neck to neck until the last few questions. Then came the QMs favorite "it's not a quiz, it's pictionary" long connect which skewed the standings in the end.

Quiz Teams (and standings):

Nishtha/Swapnil/Suyash (third place): Simply put, they were the victims of all the QMs (improper) actions. They were not awarded partial points or clarification attempts ("www" for cyperspace). A question that they answered correctly ("hobbit") was canceled -- a new process called "question cleansing" -- by the QMs whim, or may be he succumbed to the pressure from other teams (a k a "Team Six" :-)). If this had not been done, this team would have finished second. Moreover, just before the last long connect the QM decides to eject the team's president. Someone needs to call the human rights activists!

Ayan/Gaurav/Pranav/Srinivas: Suffered from another random "question cleansing" act ("mnemonics"). They had a couple of answers that could have gone either way; unfortunately, they chose wrong alternatives :-(

Abhay/Ayshwarya/Deepak/VarunAg: Team that was flustered right from the outset (for some well-known reasons :-)), but they never stopped giving some good answers.

Hetu/Pranjal/Varun/Vikram (second place): Beneficiaries of all the atrocities on "Team One". While they trailed all the way, they did well in the skewed "it's not a quiz, it's pictionary" long connect to force, and then win, the tie-breaker for second place.

Harsha/Murali/VarunG: Quick start off the blocks with some great answers (like "open source Cola") but then they took their foot off the gas.

Keshav/Shantanu/Vinay (first place): Gave some "great answers" to questions without reading the slides. It is rare (or, impossible) to see a question answered in a few milliseconds after the slide goes up. I will suppress the other incidents that also point to alleged, but inadvertent, "insider trading" :-)

League standings available at http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pad8OkPTEUANT0-QEnI_oTA


Need to rethink ban "question cleansing" and rethink the scoring system for long connects.

Update: For those who didn't get it, please note the sarcasm in this post (and most reports). Kurt Vonnegut, esp. Slaughter House Five, would be a good place to begin :-)

February Quiz Schedule

The line-up for next month ...

Feb 6th: Vyas
Feb 13th: no quiz (by popular demand, i think??)
Feb 20th: Varun
Feb 27th: Gaurav and Harsha

Folks, volunteer for March (or you will be drafted :-))

Friday Quiz

Quiz by Apurva

Friday 30th Jan

6 pm Wean Hall 5403

The countdown begins...


Here is a pre Q1

X is manufactured by Schuberth. It was tested by an Army Tank. It has a country’s flag on the back side of it. On the top of X, there was a blue circle with asteroids, but in 2002 it was replaced by a red patch. It cost around 15 thousand Euros. On a special day it had around ninety special word groups written on it. It was made up of special carbon fiber.

Pre Q2

Ioannis Anastasakis July 24, 1933 has been a regular cast member of the soap opera “Days of our Lives” since 1985 as Victor Kiriakis. He has also made guest appearances on The Gilmore Girls and in “My big fat greek wedding”
Joey Tribbiani is a fictional character who plays Dr. Drake Reymore on “Days of our Lives”.
Connect them with another connection.


PreQ3
Identify

@@@@@@@@|:-)


Dont google plz. :)

Quiz 3 - Friday Jan 30th @ 6.15pm in Wean 5403

Quiz 3 of Season 1 ...

By -- Gaurav and Harsha Apurva
At -- 6.15pm
In -- Wean Hall 5403 (CMU campus)

Quiz 2 -- report

Kudos for a voluminous quiz! There was no dearth of questions in Keshav's quiz -- 42 questions (no DNA funda) excluding tie-breakers, which were a good thing to have until the last question. The last question -- a long connect on Slumdog Millionaire -- broke the tie for the second and third place. Overall, (a whopping?) three-fourths 70% of the questions were answered. In hindsight, that was not such a big surprise because of the QMs addiction to "new-age" fiction such as comics, TV, films :-)

Quiz Teams (and standings):

Srinivas/Swapnil/Varun (second place): Last long connect them got them a second place. Other than "tom" "katie" and "scientology", they didn't have preposterous answers :-)

Apurva/Shantanu/VarunA: A vociferous team which took a while to get off the blocks and were unlucky to lose a bunch of sitters due to rookie "answer blurting" and team positioning.

Ayan/Deepak/VarunG (and one more):

Gaurav/Harsha/Murali (third place): This week's top seed got them off to a blazing start, they were leading for almost two-thirds of the quiz, but a middle order collapse let other teams catch up with them.

Ayshwarya/Pranav/Vyas (and one more) (first place): Converted a slow start with some steady answers -- got lucky with a QM's favorite +4 question. But it didn't matter in the end, some good answers ("rolling stones gather moss" and "Augusta masters") and last-minute guesses (music questions) saw them through.

Nishtha/Pranjal/Vinay/Vikram: Gave some nice guesses, but were incorrect. Nice answer to the "tipu sultan" question -- they just went ballistic in answering that rocket question, ironic huh :-)

League Standings (after Quiz 2) are now in a Google spreadsheet at http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pad8OkPTEUANT0-QEnI_oTA

Next week, Gaurav and Harsha are co-organizing the quiz.

Ps. Loved the "CCA" question, brilliant find, Keshav!

A couple of sites to get your daily quizzing fix:

From the KQA:

kqaquizzes.livejournal.com

From the QFI:

qfichennai.wordpress.com

Peace Out.

-Varun

Quiz 2 - Friday Jan 23rd @ 6.15pm in Wean 5403

Quiz 2 of Season 1 ...

By -- Keshav

At -- 6.15pm

In -- Wean Hall 5403 (CMU campus)

Open to all.

Quiz 1 -- Report

First quiz of the season had both easy questions and creative answers. 70% of the questions were answered, so the QM doesn't get any bonus points -- given the QM's reputation for hard quizzes, I am sure he wouldn't mind this one ;-) In fact, no one dominated, the teams were only 1-2 right answers apart! 

Quiz Teams (and standings):

Gaurav/Murali/Vyas -- Diatribes, hyperbolic false claims and a team controlled by a tyrant, who gets points for the biggest flop answer of the quiz -- Google searches ;-)

Harsha/Keshav/Pranav (first) -- Handled the "pressure" well to move into a lead towards the end. Got lucky with a few easy ones that they hit out of the park.

Deepak/Shantanu/Varun (second) -- Saved by the round reversals; they got couple of key answers that let them inch ahead until the last few questions. 

Apurva/Ayan/Ayshwarya -- Only team to take a shot at the long connect, which probably cost them a top-three finish. Kudos for that, but then you should stop harassing the QM :)

Nishtha/Pranjal/Satya (third) -- Last minute heroics got them a top three finish. I liked the last answer when they started the Deep Throat connect into some crazy carnal stuff -- awesome :D

League Standings (after Quiz 1):

=============

#1 -- Harsha, Keshav, Pranav (10 pts)

#2 -- Deepak, Shantanu, Varun (7 pts)

#3 -- Nishtha, Pranjal, Satya (4 pts)

#4 -- Swapnil (2 pts)

#5 -- Apurva, Ayan, Ayshwarya, Gaurav, Murali, Vyas (1 pt)

Available at http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pad8OkPTEUANT0-QEnI_oTA

We will meet again next week for Keshav's full quiz. 

Quiz 1 - Friday Jan 16th @ 6.15pm in Wean 5403

Quiz 1 of Season 1 ...

By -- Swapnil Patil

At -- 6.15pm

In -- Wean Hall 5403 (CMU campus)

Open to all.

League System

Starting with the first quiz of this season, we will experiment with a "league" system that is aimed at randomizing team formations to have more balanced teams. In a nutshell, we will maintain a points table for all the quizzes in the season and every week teams will be formed such that the top-2N league leaders (called seeds) are in N different teams and the rest of the team is formed by random picks.

To bootstrap the system, last semester's volunteers will be the seeds for the first week. We should have 10-12 seeds who will be spread out into different teams. Rest of the participants join the teams randomly. After the quiz, the top three teams will get 10, 7 and 4 points respectively (i.e., each member in the team will get 10, 7 and 4 points each). All the other participants get 1 point each.

For their effort, the quizmaster also gets points determined by the number of questions in the quiz and number of questions answered in the quiz. 

If the session is organized by a single quizmaster (30+ questions), the individual gets 2 points. If 40%-60% quiz questions are answered, the quiz master gets an additional bonus point. Anything outside that range is either too hard or too easy, both detrimental to the "fun factor" (the range is subject to debate, please comment if you have a good, simple heuristic :-))

If the session is organized by two individuals, they share the points (i.e., they get 1 point each and 0.5 bonus points, if applicable).

At the end of the season (say, last week of June 2008), we will use the top 75% scores of each participant for final standings. This way, we can accommodate for cases when people have to miss a quizzing session for other engagements. The winner gets attractive prizes, including the title of "league commissioner" (tbd) for next season.

I will volunteer to maintain and publish the league statistics (though, co-conspirators are welcome).

There are lots of ways to make it more complicated and fun. So please comment :-)

for Spring 2009

We will meet every week on Friday evenings -- 6.15 pm . Please be there on time as we will need to make teams on the fly and get started by 6.30 pm.

If some Fridays are not good for most people, we can reschedule to Saturday or Sunday or just cancel it for that week.

Meeting Day/Time for Spring 2009

Last semester, we met on Friday evenings. Unfortunately, almost all our meetings were held at the same time as other events on campus like the AB films and IGSA events. And, I think that will always be the case ...

What is the best time to meet in Spring 2009?
- Sunday afternoon (2pm onwards)
- Friday evenings (6.30pm onwards)
- or, any other time

Please comment if you have any strong timing contraints.

2008: Season Zero

Season Zero of the quiz club was fun -- we had good participation and lot of people volunteered to get questions.

One thing that we learnt from Season Zero was that the teams were often skewed, i.e. teams were formed based on "who knows whom" and that resulted in a power-law distribution of scores. To avoid this and ensure randomized team formation, we should have semester-long "league" system.

Season 1 (Spring 2009) of the quiz club should have a better structure to form balanced teams every week. In the next few posts, I will elaborate on the "league" system that we can kick start soon!

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