Sunday, February 27, 2011

Twenty Paces - Final Results



Quarterfinals:
Anant Lawande beat Valmiki Naik (7 to 4)
Aniruddha Sen Gupta beat Leroy Veloso (8 to -1)
Adish Talwadker beat Anurag Panicker (5 to 1)
Paul Gatward beat Anjali Sen Gupta (5 to 4)

Semifinals:
Adish Talwadker beat Anant Lawande (6 to 3)
Aniruddha Sen Gupta beat Paul Gatward (10 to 1)

Final:
Aniruddha Sen Gupta beat Adish Talwadker (8 to -1)

Thus endeth what was by all accounts a hugely enjoyable tournament. To nobody's surprise, Annie was the Last Quizzer Standing. Here's a picture of him doing the standing.

Thursday, February 24, 2011

More on the Women's Day quizzes


Following some feedback, there's been a relaxation of the one-female-per-team rule: in the Schools edition, if yours is a boys-only school, you have the choice of participating as an all-boys team, or of adding on a female student from a different school.

The original posting about the Women's Day quizzes, in case you haven't seen that, is here. The rule has been amended on that post as well.

SEQCm February Quiz

Date: 26th February, 2011
Time: 5.00 pm
Flavour: General
QM: Dr V.R.Muralidharan
Venue: Urban Health Centre, Margao. opp Hospicio Hospital
Participation: Open to all

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Environment Quiz

Date: February 25, 2011
Time: 2 pm
QM: Annie Sen Gupta
Flavour: Environment
Venue: Holy Cross School, Bastora
Who can participate: This is a closed event, specifically for students of Holy Cross Schools around India, to mark the 75th anniversary of the first such school.

Friday, February 18, 2011

Tata Crucible Campus - Goa Results



Its been a while since one witnessed so much drama at a quiz. The BITS team of Anand Shankar & Varun M. came back from the brink of elimination to win their maiden TC title, putting up a virtuoso quizzing as well as dramatic performance that was thoroughly entertaining if you were in the audience. Every emotion known to man, and then some, were on show that evening. Throw your mind back to Sushmita Sen's memorable display of pure exhiliration when she won the Miss Universe crown in God-knows-when. Then imagine that she had burst into tears during the Swimsuit round, jumped up and down when she made the first cut, flopped dejectedly on stage during the evening gown round and then gone on to credit Miss USA for her victory, and you will then begin to get a rough idea of the kind of evening Anand Shankar had. Just for that, he deserves every smacker of the 75k he and his teammate won.

Ist: Anand Shankar & Varun M. (BITS, Zuarinagar)
2nd: Adish Talwadker & Anant Lawande (GMC, Bambolim)
3rd: Ajay Parasuraman & Sunil Thomas (BITS, Zuarinagar)
4th: Pankaj & Shoiab (BIM, Belgaum)
5th: Jaspreet & Puneet (GIM, Sanquelim)
6th: Servesh & Samved (GIM, Sanquelim)

Thursday, February 17, 2011

WizBiz 2011

Date: 26th February 2011
Time: 5.30 pm
QM: Avinash Mudaliar
Flavour: Business
Venue: Goa Institute of Management Campus, Sanquelim
Who can participate: Corporates, in teams of two. There is an entry fee of Rs 1000 (1200 for spot registrations)
Prizes: Rs 50k for the winners, 30k for the runners-up, 15k for third place.
More details at the official site.

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Twenty Paces - The Final Leg

Sunday Evening Quiz Club & The International Centre - Goa
Present
Date: 20th February, 2011
Time: 6.30 pm
Flavour: General
QM: Rajiv D'Silva
Venue: Divli Lawns, The International Centre-Goa, Dona Paula
Quarterfinal Line-Up:
Aniruddha Sen Gupta vs Leroy Veloso
Anjali Sen Gupta vs Paul Gatward
Anant Lawande vs Valmiki Naik
Adish Talwadker vs Anurag Panicker

The Quarterfinals will be followed immediately by the semis and the final. Be there to find out who the Last Quizzer Standing is.

Saturday, February 12, 2011

Quizzes on Women's Day



This Women's Day -- March 8, 2011 -- the Centre for Women’s Studies, Goa University is planning a different kind of celebration -- quizzes with a special focus on women.

The 'Yin-side Out' Women's Day quizzes will be conducted at two levels. The morning session will see a quiz for schools, and the afternoon will feature an open quiz. Both the quizzes will be for teams of three, with one condition -- at least one member of each team will need to be female. The Women's Day quizzes will be set and conducted by Annie Sen Gupta.

The Schools quiz is for students of any class, from I to XII. The Open edition is open to all, from the youngest school student to the sprightliest senior citizen. In each edition, prelims will be held to select six teams that will qualify for the onstage finals.

There will be prizes for winning teams, as well as for members of the audience. Lunch will be provided to participants. Entry to both quizzes is free.

Event: Women's Day Quizzes
Date: March 8, 2011
Venue: Seminar Hall, Social Sciences Faculty, Goa University
Timing: Schools edition: 9.30am – 1.00pm; Open edition: 2.00pm – 5.30pm
QM: Annie Sen Gupta
Flavour: General, but with a focus on women
Participation: Teams of three, with one female participant
Schools edition: Students of the same school, Classes I to XII. [UPDATE] For boys-only schools, teams can have two boys from the boys' school and a female participant from a different school, or three boys from the same school.
Open edition: Any three people, as long as one of them is female. Schools edition participants can try for the Open edition as well.
Prizes:
Schools edition: Trophies for top three teams, certificates for all participants
Open edition: Cash prizes for top three teams, plus audience prizes

Pre-registration is essential for participation. To register your team, e-mail shaila@unigoa.ac.in, mentioning your names and a contact phone number, or call 6519294 between 10.30am – 12.00noon on any day.

Thursday, February 10, 2011

SEQC Feb 2011 monthly questions and answers

Here's the Powerpoint file of the Feb 2011 monthly quiz:

Sajan Venniyoor teaches the band to play

A review of the Feb 2011 monthly by Ajachi Chakrabarti

My friends think I'm odd. I ask them why. They can come up with nothing better than the number of noses I have. I begin to think that they're odd. But I digress. One of the reasons my friends think I'm odd is that my idea of unwinding after a particularly stressful Quark is to go to Panjim for a quiz. A SEQC Quiz, I counter, leading to the inevitable giggles from my 21-year-old audience who really should know better.

But again, I digress. A quiz must be reviewed. The February Monthly of 2011 was conducted, with great aplomb, by SEQC's lean, mean, fighting machine, Annie Sengupta. A petition is doing the rounds to call him Onibaba, but it finds few takers outside (or, for that matter, inside) the Bong community, and fans of 1960s Japanese horror movies. Everybody was warned beforehand that the quiz would be long, so we brought overnight bags and provisions befitting a small army.

The quiz, itself, was an excellent one, with workable questions that left many a bearded quizzer tearing out his hair once the answer was revealed. Divided into ten subjects, teams got to choose one, from which six questions would be asked, following the now standard Infinite Bounce system. Now, I'm not a big fan of subject based quizzes, but Annie compensated by making even the questions within the sets diverse. There was also a theme round that mostly flew over the cuckoo's nest, with no team cracking it. And there were a few sitters, and a couple of contentious decisions, but this reviewer only complains because he didn't get them.

Unlike recent quizzes, which have mostly been close affairs, this one saw one team running away with it near the end. And it was "Secret Santa" Sajan Venniyoor - who'd come down from Delhi - who drove his team, with some stunning answers, to a comfortable victory, winning back some of the goodies that he had generously (and anonymously) donated to SEQC in the past.

A quiz like that is a tough act to follow, but this reviewer will try his best to do so next month. And keeping with Goa's quizzing revolution, there's much more before that. Quizzing will flow through the barrel of a gun as Twenty Paces comes to a climax on 20th February, and the Madgaonkars will host their second monthly on the 26th. Be there, or be square.

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Tata Crucible Campus - Goa


Date: 16th February 2011
Time: 2.30 pm
QM: Giri 'Pickbrain' Balasubramanium
Flavour: Business
Venue: Cardium Auditorium, National Institute of Oceanography, Dona Paula
Who can participate: College students, in teams of two
Prizes: Rs 75,000 for the winners, 35,000 for the runners-up
More details at the official site.

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

SEQC February Results

QM: Aniruddha Sen Gupta

1st: Ajay Parasuraman, Akshay Rege, Anil Rodrigues, Eeshan Vernekar, Sajan Venniyoor, Vinitha Panicker - 140
2nd: Anurag Panicker, Pranab Mukhopadhyay, Sachin Chatte, Shishir Shankhwalker, Taran Mukherjee, Varun M. - 106
3rd: Akash Kulkarni, Ameya Mardolkar, Amita Kanekar, Anjali Sen Gupta, Deeptesh Karmalkar, Neelay Thaly - 99
4th: Blessie James, Lianne Noronha, Nitish Fatarpekar, Paola Mambro, Prajakt Kamat, Rajiv D'Silva - 95
5th: [Ajachi Chakrabarti, Anagha Panicker, Jatan Rodrigues, Leroy Veloso, Mahesh Prabhu, Shaswat Salgaonkar, Soham Gaunekar] & [Adish Talwadker, Harshvardhan Bhatkuly, Kunal Naik, Nivedita Prabhu Rajesh Panicker, Shubham Tiwari] - 75

The next monthly quiz will be held on the 6th of March, to be hosted by Ajachi Chakrabarti.

Friday, February 4, 2011

Nestle-Rotary Midtown School Quiz

Date: 5th February 2011
Time: 2 pm
QM: Wilson Vaz
Flavour: General
Venue: Maquinez Palace, Old GMC Complex, Panaji
Participation: Open to students of class 7-9, in teams of two.

Thursday, February 3, 2011

January Quizzes - Content

Here are slideshows of two recent SEQC quizzes. The first is half of the January Quiz, conducted by Atharv Joshi. The second is the SEQCm quiz, conducted by Abhijeet Virginkar.



AstroQuiz 2011

Date: 5th February 2011
Time: 9.30 am. Registration opens at 9.00 am.
QM: Raj Kunkolienkar & Atharv Joshi
Flavour: Astronomy
Venue: Siddharth Bandodkar Hall, above Axis Bank, near Mahalaxmi Temple, Panaji
Participation: Open to students of class 8-10, in teams of three.

Contact Raj on +919673374334 for more details.

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

A few of my favourite SEQC things

Moving to Goa was always going to be a life-transforming step. That was clear to Anjali and me when we made our plan to shift here from Delhi in 2006. But despite that, there have been so many surprises, almost all of them pleasant.

The biggest one, without a doubt, has been SEQC. In the 20 years that I had been in Delhi -- I went there to work straight out of college -- quizzing had more or less passed out of my life. There was the occasional opportunity, but I would perhaps have been to five or six serious quizzes in all my years there, and conducted not even half as many.

So then, to see this pleasurable aspect of my life resurrected in Goa wasn't something I'd dreamt would happen. Not only have the last two-plus years -- SEQC was born in Rajiv's house in June 2008 -- given me ample exciting quizzing moments, they've also placed me bang in the middle of something of a mini quizzing revolution here. Suddenly, everyone seems to want to do some quizzing -- for their school, for their company, for themselves. And it's the offshoots of this transformation that are so particularly satisfying.

Take the last couple of months. Several things have happened with SEQC or on its fringes that exemplify what I'm trying to say.

Twenty Paces: The format Rajiv worked out for Twenty Paces has been a really exciting one. It's a one-on-one knockout quiz entirely on the buzzer, with a Wimbledon-style draw that pares 32 quizzers down to 16, then 8 and so on till there's only one champion left standing. I doubt this format has been tried anywhere before. And it's lived up to its expectations, with all manners of upsets, sudden-death deciders, and the works. Most of the match-ups have been full of the excitement of a T20 cricket match, with twists and turns in fortunes till the very end. We still have the quarter-finals, semis and finals to go -- all of them to be held at the International Centre Goa on February 20. Something to really look forward to, for anyone interested in watching a humdinger of a contest.

For those who remain in the hunt, of course, the anticipation is filled with a mixture of excitement and nervousness. I'm now a seasoned veteran, and I'm usually quite relaxed when faced with a QM. But let me tell you, there was a long-forgotten disquiet in my stomach when I sat down opposite Shashwat and waited for Rajiv to start with our set of questions, during the previous round of matches.

The Goa Open: Despite some initial sluggishness, we managed to put together enough in prize money for the Goa Open to be seriously attractive to outstation quizzers, and I have a feeling it's going to become a coveted event for quizzers from all over India in the coming years. It certainly has the potential to put Goa firmly on the quizzing map.

The January 2011 monthly: The first quiz of the New Year gave me the biggest kick, as it was conducted by Raj Kunkolienkar, a student of Class XI, and Atharva Joshi, of Class VIII. And they pulled off an excellent quiz, with great questions and some complicated experiments with the format. The fact that they were willing to try new things, on their first attempt at setting an open quiz, talks of the confidence and panache they bring to the table.

The MusiQuiz: Sachin's musical extravaganza, beset though it was by technical glitches, was one hell of a quiz. It was enjoyable for everyone, revelatory in many parts, and closely-fought throughout by all the teams on stage. Looks like we have another SEQC annual feature on our hands.

SEQCm: The SEQC Margao Jan 2011 monthly was the cherry on the icing that the last couple of months have ladled onto the SEQC cake. The D'Costa family -- Terrence, Ira and Julian -- Abhijeet Virginkar and Dr Muralidharan (and perhaps others whose roles I am not aware of) took the most significant step in SEQC's history since our inception, by starting a Margao chapter. The inaugural quiz, conducted by Abhijeet, was excellent. The turnout of 30-plus is substantial for an inaugural event of this kind. SEQC itself started with 14-15 people and now sees about 50-60 participants for every monthly. Margao, it would seem, could overhaul that number within its first few months.

ICG: Our partnership with the International Centre Goa has worked out really well. Quizzes that are held here have an extra touch of class to them. We keep hearing that people are reluctant to come all the way there, but attendance at quizzes at the Centre have never been disappointing. The place is great, the arrangements are top-notch and we get it all for free, which is in consonance with the club's non-commercial nature. All in all, quite the win-win scenario.

As with the Indian cricket team, SEQC has managed to develop significant bench strength. That is perhaps the greatest source of satisfaction for those of us who've been part of its growth over the past couple of years. Here's to SEQC -- the most happening quiz club in the country.