By Nitish WagleEven for all my interest in quizzing, I would've always thought that travelling all the way to Margao just to attend a quiz a being hosted by a 14-year old kiddo was taking it a bit too far. But then, like the most of us, I have realised long gone that when it comes to quizzing, Julian is much like an ant lifting weight - deceptively tiny. So I decided to forgo a shot at 'prizes worth over1.5 lacs' on offer at WizBiz in favour of Julian's quiz (and Tita's pizza), and a decision well made it turned out to be.
The crowd at the venue was quite healthy by Margao standards. A lot of new faces were to be seen, most of them college students who had apparently only recently come to know that a quiz club existed in Goa.
The quiz format was as simple as it could be - infinite bounce, clockwise before the break, anti-clockwise after. This has come to be the regular format in Margao which makes for a much-welcome change from all the crazy formats being used at the Panjim monthlies. This one was all about straight forward quizzing - no A to Zs, no obscure LVCs and certainly no item numbers.
The quiz had very few pictures and no audio-visuals. Julian got the average level of questions perfectly right with only a couple of 'sitters' in the whole quiz and less than 5 questions going unanswered. Despite the usual 'we always get a tough question' complaints by one of the teams, I would say the consistency was spot on as well. With no Annie or Rajiv in the audience, Doc took the role of a circuit breaker, answering most questions before others could finish reading them. This was particularly frustrating for my team before the break as Doc's team sat before us, but it also made for mypersonal 'moment of the day' when a question that appeared to be about medicine left Doc bamboozled by his own inability to answer it only for it to be snatched by us on the pass.
The high workable quotient of most questions meant there was constant jubilation in different camps when a smart guess proved to be the right answer. I would rate this as the 'happiest' quiz I've seen at SEQC so far with hardly any frustrated souls in the audience. Most people (including me) were enjoying it too much to even keep count of the scores which turned out to be pretty close in the end, I think.
It was probably the shortest quiz in SEQC's history too, with only 49 questions and a runtime ofwell under 2 hours, very thoughtful of Julian given the early closing time ofwatering holes these days. Also very thoughtful was the unannounced last question of the quiz whose answer happened to be 'Thank You', now that's a bit too smart for a 14-year old!! (I bet he is one of those Benjamin Button types. We shall find out in a couple of years I guess.)
All in all, the quiz was a highly enjoyable experience for everyone in the room. A guy in my team, who was at his first SEQC quiz had an almost constant smile on his face and kept saying"wow, this is amazing man!" after every few questions. I guess that is what quizzing should be all about.
Judging by the response of most newcomers, the Margao monthly may well soon have to go the 6-team way. I also hope the baccha party in Panjim takes a cue from Julian and we get to see younger and slimmer QMs at Panjim monthlies. I see no reason why our young comrades can't at least pool their questions and set a quiz together. Going by this week's experience it would have all makings of a blockbuster. Also, though this fact seems to have been lost on our political parties, I strongly believe that youth attracts youth and that young QMs will be a big attraction and an inspiration for other youngsters to be regular SEQCians. That is the only way we can grow as a family and turn into an important vote-bank by the next elections :-)
Scores:1st: Amit Naik, Sushrut Chafadkar, Priya Viegas, Neves Soares, Nathan Moniz, Dr. V. R. Muralidharan - 130
2nd: Ashwin Mysore, Jaiprakash Hegde, Rohit Viegas, Sunil Sardessai, Sanjay Parab, Tarun Mascarenhas, Dr. Terrence D'Costa - 110
3rd: Sahil H. Ramchandani, Omeel Mankar, Nitish Wagle, Sairaj Phaldessai, Ravi Carvalho, Kiril Vaz, Rahul Mascarenhas, Lynn Barreto Miranda - 100
4th: Harsh Hegde, Deepa Vedantham, Nikhil Makwana, Tarushka Moniz, Rahul Prabhudesai, Abhijeet Virgincar, Kalpana Satarkar - 60
The next quiz in Margao will be held on the 31st of March, to be hosted byRajiv D'Silva.
