Clash of the junior titans

A report on the SEQC Mastermind Junior semi-finals

The quest for SEQC's Mastermind Junior moved one step closer to its goal, as the semi-finals threw up the four contenders who will battle it out in the final. As with the first-round matches, the contests were exciting, if a little more clear-cut in their results.

In the first semi, 'The Chronicles of Narnia' served Julian well, allowing him to build up a sizeable lead in the specialised subject round. There wasn't much to choose between Shubham and Jatan, though, at this stage. Answering questions about the 'ICC World Cup 2011', Shubham notched up 13, while Jatan was just a point behind with the tough subject of 'The Life and Career of Niccolo Paganini'. In the general knowledge round, though, Jatan lost a bit of steam, and Shubham easily overhauled him to join Julian in the finals.

In the second contest, Tarun, who had taken the place of Anand as a result of the latter's unavailability, surged ahead, using his knowledge of the Tintin comics to rack up 16 points to Kunal's 14 from questions about the band Nirvana. Akshay's score of 8 points from his specialised subject of 'The History of Goa under Portuguese Rule' virtually ruled him out of contention, which was confirmed when he scored just 5 in his GK round. Tarun and Kunal were already through, so it was only a matter of pride as to which one came out on top. Scoring an impressive 16 points in the GK round, Kunal opened up a significant gap over his younger competitor, and sounded a warning to Julian that perhaps the final is not going to be a cakewalk for him.

On December 18, after what will hopefully be a sizzling Sports Quiz, Julian, Kunal, Tarun and Shubham will battle it for top spot. Should make for a scintillating evening on the whole.

SEQC December

Yogesh Pai, of the Tirupur Tughlaq dynasty that holds sway over Coimbatore, logged on to a travel portal sometime back and booked a Quiz, a Flight and a Hotel in Goa, in that order (I am told there are hefty discounts if one books all three together). The net result of all that is that this weekend, we will for the first time have a guest quizzer donning the quizmaster's hat. Some measure of SEQC's ill repute can be judged by the fact the Yogesh at first set out to put together a raunchy, adults-only quiz, but he then thought better of it when he learnt of the unseemly amount of women and children that throng our quizzes. So NO sex, but still expect a good one.
And to sweeten the deal, Aniruddha Sen Gupta will re-run the quiz that he did at BITS a while back, so those of you who weren't there, be there.

Waves Quiz Re-Run

Date: 4th December 2011
Time: 3.00 pm
QM: Aniruddha Sen Gupta
Flavour: General
Venue: Zuari Hall, The International Centre Goa, Dona Paula
Participation: Open to all, entry free


SEQC December

Date: 4th December 2011
Time: 5.00 pm
QM: Yogesh Pai
Flavour: General
Venue: Zuari Hall, The International Centre Goa, Dona Paula
Participation: Open to all, entry free

SEQCm November - Results

QMs: Lynn Barretto Miranda & Sanjay Parab

1st: Andy Carvalho, Ira Almeida, Nathan Moniz, Paul Gatward, Pravin Ghadia, Rajiv D'Silva - 120
2nd: Aniruddha Sen Gupta, Eulalia D'Mello, Harsh Hegde, Kanchan Gatward, Leander Paes, Nitish Wagle - 110
3rd: Abhijeet Virginkar, Aditya Mallya, Akshay Mysore, Ameya Mardolkar, Chandrashekhar Rao, Sahil Ramchandani - 100
4th: Allan D'Mello, Anjali Sen Gupta, Ansuya Gadhia, Ashwin Mysore, Nathan Hook, V. R. Muralidharan, Zibane Paes - 50

The next Margao monthly will be held on the 14th of January 2012, to be hosted by Dr. V. R. Muralidharan.

SEQC Mastermind Junior - Semi final results

Semi 1:
1st: Julian D'Costa - 32 (The Chronicles of Narnia Novels - 20, GK - 12)
2nd: Shubham Tiwari - 21 (The ICC World Cup 2011 - 13, GK - 8)
3rd: Jatan Rodrigues - 16 (The Life and Career of Niccolo Paganini - 12, GK - 4)

Semi 2:
1st: Kunal Naik - 30 (Nirvana, the Band - 14, GK - 16)
2nd: Tarun Mascarenhas - 23 (The Tintin Comics - 16, GK - 7)
3rd: Akshay Rege - 13 (The History of Goa under Portuguese Rule - 8, GK - 5)

The top two in each semi final go through to the final, which will be held on the 18th of December.

SEQCm November

Date: 26th November 2011
Time: 5.00 pm
QM: Lynn Barretto Miranda
Flavour: General
Venue: Urban Health Centre, opp Hospicio Hospital, Margao
Participation: Open to all, entry free

BiG Q 2011 questions and answers

The question paper for the BiG Q 2011 has been uploaded to Google Docs. Click here to access the question paper. Click here to access the question papers with the answers included.

Navy Week Quiz

Organized by: Naval Aircraft Servicing Development Organization & Funky Heads Event Management Co.
Flavour: General
QM: Rajiv D'Silva
Participation: Open to students of Std. XI & XII, in teams of 3. Only one team per institution.
Stage 1: Written preliminaries and Semi-Finals, 16th November 2011, 9.30 am, Naval Aviation Museum, Dabolim.
Stage 2: Finals, 23rd November 2011, 10.00 am, Rajhans Auditorium, Dabolim.
Attractive prizes for the participants and the audience. For more details, call Kaustubh on 9765328710.

ThanQ for BiG Q

Though this was on the question paper that we handed out, we at SEQC would like to also publicly acknowledge the various people instrumental in making the BiG Q 2011 a successful event.

Our grateful thanks to Arun Hiregange and Movin Miranda, who set this quiz. Also to Redact Media for sponsoring the prizes for BiGQ 2011. SEQC also thanks the venue administrators for allowing us the use of their facilities free of cost.

The successful execution of this event would not have been possible without the help of Rajiv and Tallulah D’Silva, Mahesh Prabhu, Ameya Mardolkar, Ira Almeida and Anjali Sen Gupta.

Finally, thank you to all the participants for giving it their best.

Mastermind Junior Semis

Date: 13th November 2011
Time: 5.00 pm.
QM: Rajiv D'Silva
Format: Classic Mastermind
Venue: Zuari Hall, International Centre Goa, Dona Paula
Semi-Finalists: Akshay Rege, Jatan Rodrigues, Julian D'Costa, Kunal Naik, Shubham Tiwari, Tarun Mascarenhas.

SEQC November Results

QM: Aniruddha Sen Gupta

1st: Amit Naik, Anil Rodrigues, Arun B., Atharv Joshi, Conrad Fernandes, Leroy Veloso, Paola Mambro, M. S. Raghunandan - 117
2nd: Anand P. S., Kanchan Gatward, Pranab Mukhopadhyay, Rajiv D'Silva, Sanchita Rodrigues, Shaunak Sardessai, S. M. Govekar, Sunil Sardessai, Suvrat Bhobe, Urjita Bhobe - 110
3rd: Achintya Bhobe, Ajachi Chakrabarti, Ira Almeida, Jatan Rodrigues, Kunal Naik, Malcolm Gurjao, Paul Gatward, Nikhil Shirsat, Sadhika Buddhaseth, Shakuntala Buddhaseth, Shubham Neurekar - 107
4th: Agastya Keni, Ana Vaz, Analia Pinto, Andy Carvalho, Brijesh, Christy George, Jonathan Vaz, Julian D'Costa, Ralsten Gonsalves, Sabulal P. C., Shashank, Tanmay Naik - 78
5th: [Akshay Mysore, Akshay Rege, Anjali Sen Gupta, Mahesh Prabhu, Noella Fernandes, Pravas Ravi, Soham Gaunekar, Taran Mukherjee, Vikram D'Silva] & [Ameya Mardolkar, Dominick Da Costa, Juan Vaz, Julio Vaz, Julian Fernandes, Karen Almeida, Parind Phadte, Shaswat Salgaonkar, Shubham Tiwari, Varun Srikanth] - 75

The next monthly in Panjim will be held on the 4th of December, to be hosted by Yogesh Pai.

The BiG Q 2011 -- Top 20 and other scores

The top 20 scores for BiG Q 2011 are listed below. The entries in blue signify participants in the Schools category. For the scores of all participants across the four Goa venues, click here.

The BiG Q 2011 by Numbers

The turnout for the BiG Q 2011 was rather disappointing -- just 72 participants this time, compared to more than 120 last year. The competition, however, was as keen as ever.

As per the provisional scores, the top score across Goa was that of Rajiv D'Silva, who had 62. The next best was Ajachi Chakrabarti, whose provisional tally was 57. But during the verification process, I found that Ajachi's paper had been poorly marked. By the time I had corrected it for myself, Ajachi's score had risen to tie with Rajiv's!

Contemplating the prospect of joint winners for the event, I reached for Rajiv's paper. The marking of his paper, it initially seemed, had been perfect, but I noticed one correct answer left unmarked -- and, by the margin of the froth on a glass of beer, Rajiv came out on top, to be deservedly crowned Best-in-Goa Quizzer. Ajachi wins the Best Open Quizzer (BOQ) title from Vasco.

Though the fight for the top spot was as even as it could be, a more remarkable performance was that of Julian D'Costa. This little Boy Quizzard of ours -- a student of Class VIII -- notched up a score of 55 to top the Margao centre!

In Panjim, too, Shashwat Salgaocar, a Class XI student, took the title of BOQ (as Rajiv, the BiG Q, is not eligible for a second award), pipping out the favoured Adish Talwadker by a point. Shashwat, too, benefitted from the checking of the scores, climbing from a provisional total of 39 to a final score of 46.

In both Panjim and Margao, following the norm that no one person will be eligible for two prizes, the Best School Quizzer (BSQ) prizes will go to the second best among the school category participants -- Vilas Pavithran in Margao (with a score of 34) and Kunal Naik (33) in Panjim. Anand P.S. wins the Vasco BSQ title with 25 points.

Among the venues, Ponda was disappointing, with a turnout of just four participants. Anirudh Shirsat scored 33 to be named the BOQ for Ponda, but there were no takers at all for the BSQ prize. That prize we will hand out to the highest-scoring unrecognised school participant across all the locations, which happens to be Akshay Rege (26) from the Panjim venue.

As there are other quiz clubs that have decided to conduct the BiG Q at their venues, we will not be putting up the questions and answers on our blog till about the middle of November. As a courtesy to those clubs, please refrain from giving away any of the questions and answers on public forums until then. I have a lot of funny answers to reveal, but will refrain from doing so till the other cities are done with their BiG Q events.

SEQCm October - Results

QM: Abhijeet Virginkar

1st: Akshay Rege, Nitish Wagle, Remedios Fernandes, Sanjay Parab, Lynn Barretto Miranda - 170
2nd: Nathan Moniz, Aditya Mallya, Sairaj Prabhudesai, Kiril Vaz, Ira Almeida - 90
3rd: [Sahil Ramchandhani, Andy Carvalho, Pravas Ravi, V. R. Muralidharan] & [R Kumar, Anirudh G, Anirudh Shirsat, Paula Mambro, Julian D'Costa] - 80

The next Margao quiz will be held on the 26th of November, to be QMed by Lynn Barretto Miranda.