CMU Quizzing

2011-12 Quiz #17: Feb 17th

2012-02-16T17:34:00.000-05:00

Quizmasters : Siddharth and Suyash
Time : 6:30pm
Date : Friday, February the 17th 2012
Venue : Wean Hall 5409

2011-12 Quiz #16: Feb 10th

2012-02-09T15:35:00.001-05:00

Quizmasters : Vinod and Supreeth
Time : 6:30pm
Date : Friday, February the 10th 2012
Venue : Wean Hall 5415

2011-12 Quiz #15: Feb 3rd

2012-02-02T18:17:00.000-05:00

Quizmasters : Amay
Time : 6:30pm
Date : Friday, February the 3rd 2012
Venue : Wean Hall 5415

2011-12 Quiz #14: Jan 27th

2012-01-26T22:08:00.000-05:00

Quizmasters : Bargav and Amay
Time : 6:30pm
Date : Friday, January the 27th 2012
Venue : Wean Hall 5409

2011-12 Quiz #13: Jan 20th

2012-01-19T22:27:00.001-05:00

Quizmasters : Ajit and Rohan B
Time : 6:30pm
Date : Friday, January the 20th 2012
Venue : Wean Hall 5409 or thereabouts

2011-12 Quiz #12: Dec 9th

2011-12-09T13:36:00.001-05:00

Quizmasters : Sudarshan and Varun
Time : 6:30pm
Venue : Wean Hall 5421

2011-12 Quiz #11: Dec 2nd

2011-12-01T15:56:00.000-05:00

Quizdada : Apurva
Time : 6:30pm
Venue : Wean Hall 5409

2011-12 Quiz #10: Nov 18th

2011-11-17T18:01:00.002-05:00

Quizmasters : Nishtha and Chitra
Time : 6:30pm
Venue : Wean Hall 5415

2011-12 Quiz #9: Nov 11th

2011-11-10T19:23:00.000-05:00

Quizmaster : Keshav
Time : 6:00pm
Venue : Wean Hall 5415

*Note early start time*

2011-12 Quiz #8: Nov 4th

2011-11-04T15:04:00.002-04:00

Quizmaster : Prashant and Rohan
Time : 6:30pm
Venue : Wean Hall 5409

2011-12 Quiz #7: Oct 28th

2011-10-27T18:55:00.002-04:00

Quizmaster : Ashwati
Time : 6:30pm
Venue : Wean Hall 5409

2011-12 Quiz #6: Oct 21th

2011-10-19T16:24:00.001-04:00

Quizmasters: Sandhya and Karthik
Time : 6:30pm
Venue : Wean Hall 5409

2011-12 Quiz #5: Oct 14th

2011-10-14T15:58:00.000-04:00

Quizmasters: Aranya and Supreeth
Time : 6:30pm
Venue : Wean Hall 5409

2011-12 Quiz #4: Oct 7th

2011-10-06T17:47:00.000-04:00

Quizmasters: Arvind and Sandeep
Time : 6:30pm
Venue : Wean Hall 5409

2011-12 Quiz#3: Sept 30th

2011-09-28T16:13:00.000-04:00

Quizmasters: Samrat and Satyajith
Time : 6:30pm
Venue : Wean Hall 5409

2011-12 Quiz#2: Sept 23rd

2011-09-21T18:58:00.003-04:00

Quizmasters: Utsav and Uday
Time : 6:30pm
Venue : Wean Hall 5409

2011-q23: April 22nd at 6.30pm

2011-04-18T21:15:00.000-04:00

By, Uday
At, 6.30pm on April 22nd
In, Wean 5409 (or 5403 or 5302)

2011-q22: April 15th at 6.30pm

2011-04-13T18:09:00.000-04:00

By, BT's bunch
At, 6.30pm on April 15th
In, Wean 5409 (or 5403 or 5302)

2011-q22: April 8th at 6.30pm

2011-04-05T15:34:00.001-04:00

By, Arvind and Aranya
At, 6.30pm on April 8th
In, Wean 5409 (or 5403 or 5302)

2011-q21: April 1st at 6.30pm

2011-03-28T15:30:00.000-04:00

By, Sandhya and Kartik
At, 6.30pm on April 1st
In, Wean 5409 (or 5403 or 5302)

2011-q21: March 25th at 6.30pm (CANCELLED)

2011-03-23T18:04:00.005-04:00

By, Nishtha
At, 6.30pm on March 25th
In, Wean 5409 (or 5403 or 5302)

Cancelled

2011-q20: March 4th at 6.30pm

2011-03-02T17:35:00.001-05:00

By, Pranjal and Aditya
At, 6.30pm on March 4th
In, Wean 5409 (or 5403 or 5302)

2011-q19: Feb 25th at 6.30pm

2011-02-21T15:24:00.001-05:00

By, Chitra and Sandeep
At, 6.30pm on Feb 25th
In, Wean 5409 (or 5403 or 5302)

2011-q18: Feb 18th at 6.30pm

2011-02-21T15:23:00.000-05:00

By, Rohan and Sudarshan
At, 6.30pm on Feb 18th
In, Wean 5409 (or 5403 or 5302)

2011-q17: Feb 11th at 6.30pm

2011-02-07T17:10:00.000-05:00

By, Utsav
At, 6.30pm on Feb 11th
In, Wean 5409 (or 5403 or 5302)

2011-q16: Feb 4th at 6.30pm

2011-01-31T10:23:00.003-05:00

By, Harsha and Suyash
At, 6.30pm on Feb 4th
In, Wean 5409 (or 5403 or 5302)

2011-q15: Jan 28th at 6.30pm

2011-01-24T21:33:00.000-05:00

By, Keshav
At, 6.30pm on Jan 28th
In, Wean 5409 (or 5403 or 5302)

2011-q14: Jan 21st at 6.30pm

2011-01-17T13:09:00.001-05:00

By, Satya
At, 6.30pm on Jan 21st
In, Wean 5409 (or 5403 or 5302)

2010-q13: Dec 10th at 6.30pm

2010-12-07T18:21:00.000-05:00

By, Varun
At, 6.30pm on Dec 10th
In, Wean 5409 (or 5403 or 5302)

2010-q12: Dec 3rd at 6.30pm

2010-11-29T19:34:00.000-05:00

By, Janani
At, 6.30pm on Dec 3rd
In, Wean 5409 (or 5403 or 5302)

2010-q11: Nov 19th at 6.30pm

2010-11-15T15:04:00.001-05:00

By, Ravi and Ajit
At, 6.30pm on Nov 19th
In, Wean 5409 (or 5403 or 5302)

2010-q10: Nov 12th at 6.30pm

2010-11-08T14:30:00.002-05:00

By, Sandhya and Karthik
At, 6.30pm on Nov 12th
In, Wean 5409 (or 5403 or 5302)

2010-q9: Nov 5th at 6.30pm

2010-11-01T15:45:00.000-04:00

By, Harsha and Suyash
At, 6.30pm on Nov 5th
In, Wean 5409 (or 5403 or 5302)

2010-q8: Oct 29th at 6.30pm

2010-10-26T12:22:00.000-04:00

By, Ravi and Ajit
At, 6.30pm on Oct 29th
In, Wean 5409 (or 5403 or 5302)

2010-q7: Oct 22 at 6.30pm

2010-10-20T16:02:00.001-04:00

By, Ashwati
At, 6.30pm on Oct 22nd
In, Wean 5409 (or 5403 or 5302)

2010-q6: Oct 15 at 6.30pm

2010-10-12T14:26:00.001-04:00

By, Supreeth
At, 6.30pm on Oct 15th
In, Wean 5409 (or 5403 or 5302)

2010-q5: Oct 8 at 6.30pm

2010-10-04T15:49:00.000-04:00

By, Michael
At, 6.30pm on Oct 8th
In, Wean 5409 (or 5403 or 5302)

2010-q4: Oct 1 at 6.30pm

2010-09-28T17:58:00.000-04:00

By, Barath
At, 6.30pm on Oct 1st
In, Wean 5409 (or 5403 or 5302)

2010-q3: Sep 24 at 6.30pm

2010-09-21T11:52:00.001-04:00

By, Samrat
At, 6.30pm on Sep 24th
In, Wean 5409 (or 5403 or 5302)

2010-q2: Sep 17 at 6.30pm

2010-09-13T19:10:00.001-04:00

By, Apurva
At, 6.30pm on Sep 10th
In, Wean 5409

2010-q1: Sep 10 at 6.30pm

2010-09-08T23:18:00.004-04:00

By, Swapnil
At, 6.30pm on Sep 10th
In, Wean 5409

The (working) title of the quiz is "The Keypad" and is based on a format different from earlier quizzes. Rules include jumping and dumping a question and some (simple) loopbacks :-)

Season 2010-11

2010-08-07T16:36:00.004-04:00

Football, both American and non-American, kick-off is in a week, CMU/Pitt classes start in two weeks, summer ends in three weeks and quizzing starts in four weeks!

The (tentative) schedule for the 2010-'11 season is shown in the sidebar -- seems like we may have yet another packed year of trivia ahead of us!

Feel free to barter dates to whatever is more convenient (or send me an email), and if I have missed your name, please email me about when you want to conduct a quiz.

Let the google-ing and wikipedia-ing begin :-)

World Quizzing Championship 2010

2010-05-31T13:18:00.010-04:00

When? June 5, 2010 at noon
Where? Carnegie Mellon University, Hamburg Hall, Room No. 1000

Please register with pittsburgh.quizzing -AT- gmail.com

=== additional info follows ===

2010 WORLD QUIZZING CHAMPIONSHIPS

On Saturday, June 5th 2010, game show contestants, trivia players, and other know-it-alls will gather at locations across the USA to test their wits against others across the globe during the World Quizzing Championships. The two-hour written test taken by individuals will cover popular and academic trivia in the areas of culture, entertainment, history, lifestyle, media, sport, science, and world topics. Questions included in the quiz are written by representatives in Belgium, Estonia, India, USA and the UK, with help from Australia, Finland, the Netherlands, and Norway. Additional countries that will be participating in the quiz include Bangladesh, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Germany, Hungary, Latvia, Liberia, Lithuania, Malaysia, Morocco, the Philippines, Russia, Serbia, Sri Lanka, and Switzerland.

What sort of questions will the competitors face, or more to the point, what won’t be asked? This is the antithesis of a bar trivia night, it is instead a global quiz for a global audience. Don’t expect questions about TV soap operas, local politics or other regional events. Do expect questions about mythology, the Olympic Games, Disney films, the Solar System, wildlife, and Nobel Laureates; in short, expect questions for which participants from Boston, Berlin,
Beijing, or Buenos Aries might possibly know the answers. Sample questions, and more information can be found at www.wqc2010.com

BACKGROUND

Each competitor faces the same questions (translated into their mother tongue in many cases) on the same day worldwide. There are 240 questions in eight categories, and two hours in which to answer them (divided into one hour halves with a break in between). At the end of the allotted time, the papers are marked and each quizzers' top seven category scores will be added together to find the winner. The categories [and general content areas] are a combination of academic and popular culture topics including:

CULTURE: [Architecture, Fine Arts, Philosophy, Museums, Religion, Mythology]
ENTERTAINMENT: [Music (Classical, Blues, Film Score, Jazz, Rock, World), Ballet, Musicals and Operas, Radio, Television]
HISTORY: [(<450AD),(450-1492),(1492-1900),(1900-date), Current Affairs, Explorations, Famous People, Civilizations]
LIFESTYLE: [Costume, Design, Fashion, Food & Drink, Handicrafts, Health & Fitness, Human Body, New Age Beliefs, Products & Brands, Tourism]
MEDIA: [Movies [(1900-1980), (1980-2000)], (recent), Literature [(<1900),(1900-1980),(recent)], Poetry, Drama, Comics, Language]
SCIENCE: [Chemistry, Mathematics, Physics, Social Sciences, Fauna, Flora]
SPORT: [Track and Field, Team Sports, Motor Sports, Winter Sports, Games, Hobbies & Pastimes, Records]
WORLD: [Geography, Cities, Space, Technology, Transport, Inventions]

This is the 7th year the event has been held. The website with information about venues for this year can be found at http://www.wqc2010.com. History of the event can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Quizzing_Championships

Quiz on Friday May 14th @ 6.30pm

2010-05-12T17:50:00.002-04:00

By -- Vyas
At -- 6.30pm on Friday May 14th, 2010
In -- Wean 5409

Quiz on Friday May 7 @ 6.30pm

2010-05-12T17:50:00.001-04:00

By -- Siddharth
At -- 6.30pm on Friday May 7, 2010
In -- Wean 5409

Quiz on Friday Apr 30 @ 6.30pm

2010-04-25T16:06:00.000-04:00

By -- Harsha
At -- 6.30pm on Friday April 30, 2010
In -- Wean 5409

Quiz on Friday Apr 23 @ 6.30pm

2010-04-22T00:58:00.000-04:00

By -- Vas
At -- 6.30pm on Friday April 23, 2010
In -- Wean 5409

Quiz on Friday Apr 16 @ 6.30pm

2010-04-16T09:04:00.000-04:00

By -- Ravi and Aditya
At -- 6.30pm on Friday April 16, 2010
In -- Wean 5409

Quiz on Friday Apr 9 @ 6.30pm

2010-04-06T18:11:00.001-04:00

By -- Varun
At -- 6.30pm on Friday April 9 , 2010
In -- Wean 5409

Quiz on Friday Apr 2 @ 6.30pm

2010-03-28T21:38:00.002-04:00

By -- ~~Varun~~ Keshav
At -- 6.30pm on Friday April 2 , 2010
In -- Wean 5409

Quiz on Friday Mar 26 @ 6.30pm

2010-03-21T18:05:00.000-04:00

By -- Apurva
At -- 6.30pm on Friday Mar 26, 2010
In -- Wean 5409

Quiz on Friday Mar 19 @ 6.15pm

2010-03-14T17:13:00.002-04:00

By -- Aranya and Janani
At -- 6.15pm on Friday Mar 19, 2010
In -- Wean 5409

Quiz on Friday Mar 12 @ 6.30pm

2010-03-09T23:48:00.001-05:00

By -- Pranjal and Nishtha
At -- 6.30pm on Friday Mar 12, 2010
In -- Wean 5409

Quiz on Friday Mar 5 @ 6.30pm

2010-03-02T23:24:00.000-05:00

By -- Satya
At -- 6.30pm on Friday Mar 5, 2010
In -- Wean 5409

Quiz Quizzles on Friday Feb 26 @ 6.30pm 5.30pm

2010-02-23T14:15:00.004-05:00

By -- Satya
At -- 5.30pm on Friday Feb 26, 2010
In -- Wean 5409

Quiz on Friday Feb 19 @ 6.30pm

2010-02-18T23:44:00.001-05:00

By -- Supreeth
At -- 6.30pm on Friday Feb 19, 2010
In -- Wean 5409

Quiz on Friday Feb 12 @ 6.30pm

2010-02-08T23:13:00.001-05:00

By -- Sudharshan and Utsav
At -- 6.30pm on Friday Feb 12, 2010
In -- Wean 5409

Quiz on Friday Feb 5 @ 6.30pm

2010-02-03T19:10:00.000-05:00

By -- Suyash and Swapnil
At -- 6.30pm on Friday Feb 5, 2010
In -- Wean 5409

No quiz on Friday Jan 29th

2010-01-25T17:18:00.004-05:00

We don't have any volunteer to conduct a quiz this week.

One way to have a quiz would be to have N volunteers get 5-6 question each. If you can do that, please reply to this blog entry.

UPDATE: Contributing to the above medley is not the same as conducting a quiz :-)

Quiz 15: Friday Jan 22 @ 6.30pm

2010-01-18T22:08:00.001-05:00

By -- Ashwati
At -- 6.30pm on Friday Jan 22, 2010
In -- Wean 5409

Quiz 14: Friday Jan 15 @ 6.30pm

2010-01-10T22:17:00.001-05:00

By -- Ajit and Uday
At -- 6.30pm on Friday Jan 15, 2010
In -- Wean 5409

Watch out for new-ish stuff by two new folks with newer questions in the newest quiz of this decade!

Upload Quizzes

2009-12-27T00:05:00.002-05:00

We can see the old quizzes at www.dropbox.com
The details can be found on the group web page at http://groups.google.com/group/cmu-quizzing
Upload old quizzes there so that the questions aren't repeated.
It could also be a good source to make questions for other quizzes you host ;)

And yes for members who graduate you can cure yourself from the FeRS "Friday Evening Restlessness Syndrome".

Quiz 13: Friday Dec 11 @ 6pm

2009-12-11T15:05:00.001-05:00

By -- Siddharth and Vivek
At -- 6pm on Friday Dec 11, 2009
In -- Wean 5409

Quiz 12: Friday Dec 4 @ 6pm

2009-11-30T12:59:00.005-05:00

By -- Janani and Sandhya
At -- 6pm on Friday Dec 4, 2009
In -- Wean 5409

Watch out for a possible dearth of cricket trivia, geek facts, CMU-specific funda, comics and history of Medieval Europe :-)

Quiz 11: Friday Nov 20 @ 6pm

2009-11-17T14:48:00.001-05:00

By -- Ravi and Aditya
At -- 6pm on Friday Nov 20, 2009
In -- Wean 5409

Watch out for WWF (the one that does wrestling, not the animal savers), cricket, greek/latin stuff and geek-ish fundas.

Quiz 10: Friday Nov 13 @ 6pm

2009-11-08T14:16:00.003-05:00

By -- Harsha and Gaurav
At -- 6pm on Friday Nov 13, 2009
In -- Wean 5409

Watch out for some esoteric sci-tech, history, neo-age culture, and some cool "only Harsha can crack it" stuff ;-)

Quiz 9: Friday Nov 6 @ 6pm

2009-11-02T11:05:00.002-05:00

By -- Vas
At -- 6pm on Friday Nov 6, 2009
In -- Wean 5409

What to watch out for? I think anything's possible with Vas ;-)

Quiz 8: Friday Oct 30 @ 6pm 5pm

2009-10-26T13:33:00.005-04:00

By -- Satya and Supreeth
At -- ~~6pm~~ 5pm on Friday Oct 30, 2009
In -- Wean 5409

Watch out for movies, literature, sports (the usual suspects --- tennis/soccer/F1)!

Quiz 7: Friday Oct 23 @ 6pm

2009-10-18T20:29:00.003-04:00

By -- Keshav
At -- 6pm on Friday Oct 23, 2009
In -- Wean 5409

Watch out for pictionary on Hollywood, cricket, comics (Asterix/TinTin) but don't bother about Bollywood or NFL :-)

Quiz 6: Friday Oct 16 @ 11.59pm

2009-10-12T10:59:00.007-04:00

By -- Swapnil
At -- 11.59pm on Friday Oct 16, 2009 (midnight quiz)
In -- Wean 5409

Watch out for questions in 26 'different' categories, and brush up on rudimentary game theory to enhance your chance of winning while diminishing others' chance of winning:-)

Quiz 5: Friday Oct 9 @ 5.30pm

2009-10-05T14:38:00.006-04:00

By -- Nishtha and Pranjal
At -- 5.30pm on Friday Oct 9, 2009
In -- Wean 5409

Watch out for a (customary) question on The Beattles, and then the rest on some pot-smoking hippie rock groups, TV/movies mixed with of lots of geekdom questions and assorted bollywood facts!

ps. Last chance to win free passes for the IGSA diwali event.

Quiz 4: Sunday Oct 4 @ 4pm

2009-09-29T00:57:00.004-04:00

By -- Varun and Deepak
At -- 4pm on Sunday Oct 4, 2009
In -- Wean 5409

Watch out for an interesting mix: literature, film and music trivia, followed by some more "recent" entertainment, socca' and F1 trivia!

ps. Like last week, there are prizes for the winning team.

Quiz 3: Friday Sep 25 @ 6.15pm

2009-09-22T11:12:00.004-04:00

By -- Suyash Shringarpure
At -- 6.15pm on Friday Sep 25, 2009
In -- Wean 5409

Watch out for TV-related trivia, classic literature (QM says, "Mills-and-Boons and Jeffrey Archer is not literature") and some soccer trivia -- when in doubt answer ManU :-)

Quiz 2: Friday Sep 18 @ 6.15pm

2009-09-15T12:28:00.007-04:00

By -- Vyas Sekar
At -- 6.15pm on Friday Sep 18, 2009
In -- Wean 5409

Watch out for long excerpts (Ctrl-C Ctrl-V) from Wikipedia, Biblical myth, and some geekdom trivia. (Brush up on XKCD and Seinfeld, but don't even bother about Bollywood film/music ;-))

Report (Updated on 9/22):

Vyas conducted the second quiz of the season. And keeping with his tradition, he opened the quiz by (accidentally?) giving out the answer to a question. The quiz had a bit of medical bias (not surprising given the upcoming House season premiere, I guess ;-)) camouflaged as etymology and visuals.

The quiz had a high answer rate, with most questions being answered in one or two tries. The post wouldn't be complete without mentioning that the final scores had a very uniform looking "Bell curve", which is no surprise given the quiz master's fetish for statistics :-)

Scores/standings: TBA (really soon)

Quiz 1: Friday Sep 11 @ 6.30pm

2009-09-08T22:57:00.014-04:00

By -- Apurva Samudra
At -- 6.30pm on Friday Sep 11, 2009
In -- Wean 5409

Watch out for some entertaining "pictionary", mostly "fun-oriented" trivia, and of course, a customary question on "9/11" :-)

Report (updated on 9/12):

First quiz had a record turn out -- 35 people showed up! I am guessing the quiz-master was the crowd puller, and he set a high bar for the future quiz masters ;-)

Apurva made a 42-question quiz with the usual mix of entertainment, etymology, cricket, bizzare stuff, and a score-boosting round. Although the quiz did not have a "customary" 9-11 question, it did have a question with answers like the "T-word" and bunch of flight mishaps -- alright, I am just making up a connection to the date of quiz :-)

Overall, the quiz was very entertaining (no one walked out ;-)) with a very few unanswered questions. Looking forward to Vyas's quiz on Friday!

Scores/standings: TBA

Quiz Club 2.0

2009-08-03T13:54:00.010-04:00

Announcing the second season …

Date: Friday, September 11
Time/Place: TBD

Please volunteer to conduct quizzes (calender on the right side), and consider doing a full/half quiz.

Feel free to spread the word among the new/incoming students. Looking forward to another great season.

ps. Post comments on any new things that we should try, anything that should not be repeated from the last season, or other general feedback!

Summer, so far such a bummer ...

2009-06-01T17:36:00.004-04:00

Two questions:

1) Any enthusiasm for a medley of quizzes *this* Thursday @ 6.30pm? Reply if you can come and if you can get 7 questions (more people, more questions, more fun).

2) The bigger question, why not do the same once or twice a month? I am sure a few summer quizzes are possible before the next season begins in September.

Any takers?

Season One -- An Epilogue

2009-05-10T16:12:00.009-04:00

A long, successful season -- with 17 weeks of quizzing -- came to an end on the wee hours of Friday night (or Saturday early morning, if you wish :-). Here are some of my thoughts on the first season.

I think we will continue to have another great season next semester. We had a very enthusiastic turn-out -- almost all quizzes had six teams with atleast 3-4 people each -- which is a really impressive turnout for a quiz club in grad school! A lot of people made their debuts as a quiz master, by setting either a half-quiz or a full-quiz. But that number can easily increase, perhaps by having a bigger season with more people doing a full-quiz :-)

And, at the risk of sounding like an (IGSA?) propaganda minister, the numbers above are only half of the number of people who showed up for atleast a couple of quizzes. Seems like there are lot of enthusiasts out there who find it hard to come on a regular basis. If you know why, please comment and let's do something about it.

In general, please comment on anything to make this more fun, like more novel and quirky formats (yes, you all know my fetish for rather complex, convulated creations), more theme-based quizzes (or not), more food/drinks (with a way to procure them :-)) or anything else.

And for those who care, the final season standings are available at
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pad8OkPTEUANT0-QEnI_oTA

The top ten finishers, based on the sum of best 13 (of 17) scores, are Swapnil (103 pts), Keshav (89 pts), Vyas (70 pts), Varun and Nishtha (58 pts), Deepak (58 pts), Gaurav (57 pts), Apurva (56 pts), Pranav and Suyash(55 pts).

Thanks to everyone who participated!

Quiz report - a "three-in-one" report

2009-05-10T15:50:00.005-04:00

The last three quizzes of the season were organized by Ayan, Chirantan, Srinivas and Siddharth.
And collectively all three quizzes had a great contrast of questions -- Chirantan's questions leaned more on the business and politics side, Ayan did a short sports quiz (which was trimmed down to suit the everyone, especially the sports non-enthusiasts), Srinivas's pot-pourri quiz seems to have started a new trend (that targeted teams -- or, one particular team ;-) -- that deny clues) and Siddharth's season-ender had a good set of arts and architecture questions, which were clearly missing from most quizzes.

Quiz 15 Teams (and standings)

Suyash, Swapnil, Vikram (second place)
Pranav, Srinivas, Vinay
Keshav, Pranjal, Ravi
Nishtha, Samir, Vyas (first place)
Apurva, Ayshwarya, Gaurav
Deepak, Satya, VarunAg (third place)

Quiz 16 teams (and standings)

Gaurav, Swapnil, VarunAg, VarunG (second place)
Aranya, Pranav, Satya, Utsav
Amar, Deepak, Keshav, Rohan (third place)
Ayshwarya, Pranjal, Siddharth, Vyas
Apurva, Kannan, Varun + 1 (first place)
Nishtha, Ravi, Suyash, Vinay

Quiz 17 Teams (and standings):

Apurva, Nishtha, Vikram (third place)
Samir, Srinivas, Vyas
Pranjal, Varun, Vinay
Deepak, Gaurav, Suyash
Keshav, Satya, Varsha (second place)
Pranav, Swapnil, VarunG (first place)

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

Season Finale - Friday May 8th @ 6.00pm in Wean 5409

2009-05-02T10:26:00.004-04:00

Quiz 17 of Season 1 ...

By -- Siddharth
At -- ~~6pm~~ 9pm
In -- Wean Hall 5409 on CMU campus

Quiz 16 - Friday May 1st @ 6.30pm in Wean 5409

2009-04-29T12:56:00.001-04:00

Quiz 16 of Season 1 ...

By -- ~~Siddharth~~ Srinivas
At -- 6.30pm
In -- Wean Hall 5409 on CMU campus

Quiz 15 - Friday April 24th @ 6pm in Wean 5409

2009-04-19T15:00:00.001-04:00

Quiz 15 of Season 1 ...

By -- Chirantan/Ayan
At -- 6pm
In -- Wean Hall 5409 on CMU campus

Quiz 14 report -- the new "Darwin Answer" award

2009-04-18T16:12:00.012-04:00

Pradipta came out of his (Jordan-esque?) retirement to conduct the 14th quiz of the season. It was long affair of 50 questions that had no bells and whistles, such as long connects and theme questions. QM did a good job of keeping the questions short and simple that helped keep up a good quizzing pace. Of course, there was an occasional "give me the funda" question, and the QM encouraged preposterous "fundas" for these questions by instituting the "Darwin Answer" award for the most ludicrous funda. Team 1, Team 2 and Team 5 all had a notorious history of coming up with such answers and they put on a great fight for the coveted award, but the game was all over when Team 2's VarunAg hit an home run with a serious-but-ridiculous answer that turned the last French WW-II veteran into an Indian citizen rooted in the bowels of Madhya Pradesh :-) To sum up, the QM, under the influence of Scottish beverages, had nice and easy questions that kept the quiz a very close affair, with no clear winners until the last question.

Teams (and standings):

Ayan, Nishtha, Samir, Vyas (second place)
Ravi, Srinivas, Swapnil, VarunAg (first place)
Chirantan, Keshav, Suyash, Vikram (third place)
Aranya, Gaurav, Pranav, Satya
Apurva, Deepak,Shiva + 2
Siddharth, Utsav, Varun, Vinay

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

Quiz 14 - Friday April 17th @ 6pm in Wean 5409

2009-04-13T12:00:00.001-04:00

Quiz 14 of Season 1 ...

By -- Pradipta
At -- 6pm
In -- Wean Hall 5409 on CMU campus

Quiz 13 -- midnight thinking (like a legend)

2009-04-12T18:17:00.007-04:00

Yet another successful, well-attended midnight quiz with five rounds of questions (two regular rounds interleaved between three written rounds).
The quiz was conducted by the legendary Apurva Samudra of the "I need 3 out of the 4 items for any points, i repeat: 3 out of 4 are needed even if you guess the connect properly" fame.
Surprisingly, Apurva made a quiz where the rule of thumb was NOT "think entertainment", but just "think" -- perhaps a first for Apurva, despite his legendary quizzing experience in the foothills of the Himalayas ;)

If I could extend the rule of thumb, I would say it was "think simple". Most questions were simple in the sense that the answer was either the first/obvious guess or the simplest thing that you could workout (trait of a legend!). Unforturtunately, some teams often went down the complicated path, most notably on the Thums-Up and SETI @ home question.
Lots of sledging and begging (for half points) by the participants made for a lively quiz -- yet another mark of a quizzing legend :-)

Teams (and standings):

Ankit, Rohan, Srinivas, Varun (third place)
Deepak, Pranav, Shantanu, Siddharth
Emil, Suyash, Swapnil, Varun (first place)
Harsha, Pranjal, Sameer, Satya
Gaurav, Shiva, VarunAg, Vyas (second place)
Keshav, Nishtha, Rahul, Vinay

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

Quiz 13 - Friday April 10th @ 11.59pm in Wean 5409

2009-04-08T13:14:00.000-04:00

Quiz 13 of Season 1 ...

By -- Apurva
At -- 11.59pm (midnight start)
In -- Wean Hall 5409 on CMU campus

Quiz 12 report

2009-04-08T13:12:00.006-04:00

It took dozen quizzes before a QM earned bonus points for a "regular" quiz -- Suyash's debut(?) quiz was just a perfect mix of easy and hard ones. The QM lived up to the pre-game rumors about his expertise -- girls galore -- with questions that impressed the women quizzers (and the men too :-)) The quiz was a pleasant surprise for people who had a bit too much of "tech trivia" over the last few weeks. Many questions had a touch of language and literature. The hard ones were really well-researched questions, which often went unanswered unless a hint was offered by the QM; my favorite one was the "directed graph" of languages depicting the use of the phrases like "it's all greek to me" -- very impressive way to frame an etymology question. While these hard questions were rarely answered without a clue, most teams earned points on the easy direct ones like FulhamFC and units of measurements.
Overall, Suyash did a great job at controlling the quiz -- he managed time at second-level granularity ("you have 25 seconds to answer") and he put a limit on long diatribes ("you can give me a answer in at most 5 words") :-)

Teams (and standings)

Aditya/Pranav/Ravi
Deepak/Emil/Satya/Shreyas (second place)
Harsha/Swapnil/Vikram
Ankit/Chirantan/Nishtha/Varun (third place)
Ayshwarya/Gaurav/Keshav/Rohan
Apurva/Kannan/Pranjal/Vyas (first place)

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

Quiz 12 - Friday April 3rd @ 6pm in Wean 5409

2009-03-30T17:59:00.001-04:00

Quiz 12 of Season 1 ...

By -- Suyash
At -- 6pm
In -- Wean Hall 5409 on CMU campus

Quiz 11 report

2009-03-29T18:40:00.003-04:00

This week's quiz, conducted by Shantanu, was another high scoring affair. There were questions on some new topics such as erotica, feminism, and political controversies. It was great to see a quiz that had very succinct and not-so-convulated questions; for instance, einstein's last words, 3-time winner of Nobel prizes and monica lewinsky's much-maligned blue dress were nice short questions that didn't force the participants to read N paragraphs of Wikipedia text -- that was really comfortable! However, such questions were fairly dry in the sense that you had to "guess" the answer and it was hard to actually work out the answer. Questions like these (example, Godfather's auditions and oldest cities, after the clue) boil down to who gets lucky with the right guess (and then your position in the quiz). Overall, the questions were well-researched and some of them got long, diatribes that were far from the real answer :-)

Teams (and standings):

Swapnil/Vinay/Vikram
Murali/Suyash +1
Keshav/Nishtha/Siddharth (third place)
Deepak/Gaurav/Vyas (first place)
Apurva/Pranav/Pranjal (second place)
Satya/Varun/VarunAg

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

Quiz 11 - Friday March 27th @ 6.45pm in Wean 5409

2009-03-23T13:40:00.000-04:00

Quiz 11 of Season 1 ...

By -- Shantanu
At -- 6.45pm
In -- Wean Hall 5409 on CMU campus

Quiz 10 report - two QMs and their forte

2009-03-21T16:47:00.010-04:00

Nishtha and Pranjal conducted the tenth quiz of the season; the first half was peppered with a good variety of questions including music, literature (the QMs forte), and some "pop culture". The long connect was nice, but it left the QM devastated that it wasn't well answered, and even worse, answered by the most unlikely team, which might have led other teams on the wrong track. The QM came up with unique way to avoid cacophonous clarifications: just keep the images so small that everyone is occupied with staring and glaring at the tiny images ;-) Although most answers could be worked out, the QM was generously awarding points even if they were remotely close to the answer :-)

Second part of the quiz had a completely different theme, and a very specific one: computer science. Questions like Akamai (with pic of its founder), a stats paper, among other things made up some real hard core CS stuff ;-). Unfortunately, that left a lot of non-techie crowd in tatters, which opened up the quiz for the "someone-gets-it-once-we-run-out-of-guesses" answering mode with only a few teams involved. Some non-CS questions were really good (but not very "workoutable"), such as the Depression era picture and Primanti Bros. Overall, it was very well-prepared quiz (downloading 12 "popular" youtube videos -- kudos for the effort) and the QM did a great job of controlling the vociferous crowd by doing nothing but patiently waiting for the crowd to shut up, pretty neat :-)

And, both QMs were awesome about keeping this a quiz, and not turning it into a pictionary :-)

UPDATE: There was tie-breaker for the first place, which took ages to finish. First question, no one follows NHL/NFL/MLB/NBA -- both teams missed. Second question, Murali's team got close, before they jumbled up the Xs and Ys. Third question, Keshav blurted out an answer, which if he had penciled, would have won the quiz. Finally, the rockets of Goddard blasted Murali's team to the highest pedestal.

Quiz Teams (and standings):

Ali/Harsha/Kannan/Satya
Shantanu/Shiva/Swapnil/VarunAg
Prananv/Siddharth/Suyash/Utsav
Gaurav/Ravi/Varun + 1 (third place)
Aditya/Murali/Srinivas/Vyas (first place)
Ankit/Deepak/Keshav/Vinay (second place)

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

Next week's quiz will be organized by Shantanu.

Quiz 10 - Friday March 20th @ 6pm in Wean 5409

2009-03-18T20:02:00.000-04:00

Quiz 10 of Season 1 ...

By -- Nishtha and Pranjal
At -- 6pm
In -- Wean Hall 5409 on CMU campus

Quiz 9 report - groups of geeks guessing about gadgets, games and gump

2009-03-14T16:03:00.009-04:00

This week's quiz was co-organized by Murali and Apurva, but the questions were made separately, without any synchronization. The first half had a strong "geeky" appeal, with quesions about "games" (sudoku, pacman, Jeopardy) and "gadgets" (VCR, cars, planes, browsers); the second half had fair number of questions on "groups" of people (like award winners, the vague "popular Twitter users", Madoff victims, most ducks in cricket).

The quiz was very entertaining and high-scoring; more than 75% answer rate because the QMs wanted teams to work out answers. However, it seemed that the working out part made some of questions look like auctions, i.e. teams start "guessing" on the right track, until someone eventually gets it right after all choices are exhausted. The second half of the quiz was raucous; on more than one occasion the (patient) QM had to explain questions 3-4 times. Perhaps, too much excitement (when teams yell "yes, I know it" and start sledging) or may be the questions were really hard to understand (which was not the case, in my opinion)??

On the lighter side, the QMs suppressed creative-but-preposterous answers to connects and had a very useful "introduction to pictionary connects" for a naive participant :-)

Quiz teams (and standings)

Apurva/Kannan/Murali/Shantanu
Pranjal/Suyash/Swapnil (second place)
Keshav/Nishtha/VarunAg (first place)
Aditya/Deepak/Pranav
Harsha/Ravi/Satya (third place)
Emil/Gaurav/Varun

League standings will be UPDATED SOON at http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pad8OkPTEUANT0-QEnI_oTA

Next week we have another "half-n-half" quiz by Nishtha and Pranjal.

Quiz 9 - Friday March 13th @ 6pm in Wean 5409

2009-03-12T13:33:00.000-04:00

Quiz 9 of Season 1 ...

By -- Apurva and Murali
At -- 6pm
In -- Wean Hall 5409 on CMU campus

Quiz 8 report -- midnight (mega) madness

2009-03-09T08:14:00.004-04:00

At last, Keshav rolled out his "mega" quiz; and despite the midnight kick-off, there was no dearth of enthusiasts, both to participate and to cheer the QM. To read more about the quiz -- the QMs perspective -- follow the previous entry at http://cmu-quizzing.blogspot.com/2009/03/quiz-8-stats.html

Quiz teams (and standings):

Ankit/Gaurav/Harsha/Swapnil (first place)
Apurva/Deepak/Jugal
Aranya/Varun/Vinay +2 (third place)
Karthik/Nishtha/Pranav/Siddharth
Suyash/Srinivas/Venkat
Murali/Satya +2 (second place)
Pranjal/Shantanu/Ronak

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

No quiz this week (unless there is yet-another-email-deluge :-)); next meeting on March 20th for Nishtha and Pranjal's quiz.

Quiz 8 Stats

2009-03-08T12:37:00.002-04:00

Stats are as follows

Overall 23 Questions went unanswered out of the 56 (including the long connects) making the percentage of answered questions - 58.93%. Just enough to secure the bonus point (which Swapnil has been good enough to award me).

Total points secured by all teams was 67 (including 3 for 3 teams getting 1 pt each the first long connect) or 64 if the connects are neglected. So 64 out of a possible 108 again gives 59.26. Intentionally leaving out key facts from all questions paid off I guess, otherwise most would have been knocked out of the park.

Best answers of the quiz (in my opinion)

2)Swapnil's team had some great answers (obviously since they won) - best among them SARS, Fevicol,The Abandoned WI-Eng Test, Touchpad and endianness

2)Though the couldn't nail down the full connect (which was doozie) I thought Varun's team getting on to the Bodyline angle in that Bradman connect was top notch and one of the best answers in the quiz since it is really difficult to see Hugo Weaving and jump to Bodyline instead of going for Matrix, LOTR, V for Vendetta etc. Their Trainspotting, Lonely Planet and Foot in the Mouth Prize answers were well worked too.

3)Murali and Satya's team answered some nice ones such as Reverse the Curse, Here be dragons,Terminator and Skynet and 20 Questions and were clinical in that all answers were complete and seldom left anything to do for the quiz master except award them the 2 points and move on to the next question.

4)Apurva's team were unlucky in that they had some good answers but their ideas were used by other teams to get some points. They got on to Yoda which was an awesome answer and the also figured that the question on the abandoned test pertained to cricket which was difficult and their idea was used by Swapnil's team to get the eventual answer. But the best answer was Super Mario which was the fastest answers to a connect in season 1, cracker to get that one in under a sec.

Other good answers were Hushpuppies, Rubik's cube and Hail Mary by Srinivas' team, VISA by Pranav's team and abracadabra and J.K.Rowling (I forget who answered that one).

All in all glad the quiz went of nicely, though it might have screwed up some people's beauty sleep and look forward to Swapnil's report and the next quiz in 2 weeks.

Keshav

PS I have posted both this quiz (quiz 8) and my earlier quiz (quiz 2) as pdfs on the group.

She's Done and She's Big

2009-03-04T01:52:00.002-05:00

Folks

The Midnight quiz is officially done now and since Swapnil stated in his mail that it could contain any number of questions and since some of us wanted a marathon, I was tempted into adding 12 questions bringing the total to 54, including 16 connects (of which 2 are long connects). Overall it looks very balanced, if a tad skewed in favor of entertainment and etymology.

That should be enough to keep going well into the night, subject to abrupt termination in case anyone feels sleepy though I sincerely hope that no one does.

Keshav

Quiz 8 - Friday March 6th @ midnight in Wean 5409

2009-03-03T16:59:00.001-05:00

Quiz 8 of Season 1 ...

By -- Keshav
At -- 11.59pm (yes, we are starting at midnight!)
In -- Wean Hall 5409 on CMU campus

Quiz 7 report -- chawannis, athannis and barahannas

2009-03-02T14:11:00.012-05:00

The first co-organized quiz of the season saw Gaurav and Harsha come up with a very contrasting set of questions: a good mix of some highly esoteric ones followed by the much enjoyed populist questions -- everyone had something that they like :-) Considering that both of them were making their debut as a QM, they withstood an unruly and bullyish mob yelling "some points, please". They also repeated the answer to every question, an important quality which is often overlooked by many QMs. The only inconsistency stemmed from their decisions to award partial points (on "connects"). For instance, Pranav's team were a bit unlucky to not get enough points for the "social networking connect", but they were lucky to get points for "tom, dick and harry" connect (without connecting it to anything). Considering the geeky background of the QMs, they often awarded "quarter" and "three-quarters" of a point to partially answered connects; we will soon have fractions like 'Pi' and 'e' :-)

The quiz had many well-researched questions (such as, the Google map of "Pakistan's Siachen training camp", Mendeleev's dissertation, Denver's beer consumption, the impossible "228" connect) and one completely outlandish answer to the last question about a visual that depicted the age of consent across the planet ;-)

Quiz teams (and standings):

Pranav/Siddharth/VarunAg/Vyas
Apurva/Deepak/Swapnil (first place)
Keshav/Satya/Vinay/Vivek (second place)
Ayan/Kannan/Murali/Nishtha
Aditya/Ravi/Shantanu/Varun/ (third place)
Emil/Pranjal/Srinivas/Suyash

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

PS. The title of the blog consists of three Hindi words which mean "quarter" of a rupee, "half" a rupee and "three quarters" of a rupee, respectively.

PPS. Next week's quiz by Keshav.

Quiz 7 - Saturday Feb 28th @ 2.45pm in Wean 5409 (or 5310)

2009-02-24T13:07:00.001-05:00

Quiz 7 of Season 1 ...

By -- Gaurav and Harsha
At -- 2.45pm
In -- Wean Hall 5409 (or 5310) on CMU campus