An Affair to Remember

A review of the Goa Open Quiz held on 18th December 2010.
The second edition of the Goa Open Quiz promised to be much a bigger and better affair than the first, and it was. Firstly, an eleventh hour crowdsourcing drive had managed to round up considerably attractive prizes in cash and kind, and secondly, a few outstation teams, well-known names in the quizzing world, had confirmed their participation. 25-odd teams lined up for the prelims, which was a nice mixture of toughies and workable ones with the odd sitter thrown in.

The prelims saw the four outstation teams - all from Bombay - make their way into the final, where they were joined by two teams of the more local variety.
The content in the final was set a couple of notches higher, and there wasn't much separating the top 3 or four teams after the first couple of rounds. But once Kartik Bose FC (Annanya Deb & Srinath TB) got into the swing of things there was no stopping them, and midway through the quiz they began to pull away from the rest of the pack. A few nice cracks and bonuses pocketed meant that the other teams were left to fight for second place, a battle eventually won by Banker & Shoe-Banker (Abhinav Dasgupta and Shubhankar Gokhale) with a couple of fine answers right when it counted. The other two Bombay teams - Vikram aur Vetaal (Vikram Joshi and Vibhendu Tiwari) and By the Boat Club (Meghashyam Shirodkar and Anand Shivshankar) finished third and fourth to round up a productive evening for the visitors, while the two Goa teams - Lumbar Puncture (Adish Talwadker and Anant Lawande) and Over-the-Hill Brothers (Rajiv D'Silva and Harshvardhan Bhatkuly) played good hosts by bringing up the rear.

Nandini Sahay, Director of The International Centre Goa, gave away the prizes, the top 3 finishers taking away a booty of Rs. 16,000/, Rs. 10,000/- and Rs. 6,000/- respectively. The audience was not left wanting, and a few nice answers from the audience were suitably rewarded. All in all, a memorable evening.