The IITM Open Quiz is officially back! After a hiatus of around two and a half years, the quiz was held by the IITM Quiz Club on January 16, 2011, at the Students’ Activity Centre (SAC) in IIT Madras.
A good round of publicity and outreach meant that the turnout was more than 1000 participants, several of them from far across the country. The prelims started on time in the afternoon to a half-filled SAC. The 40 questions ranged in difficulty from easy, for the school kids who had turned up in good number, to challenging ones, for the seasoned quizzers who made it.
The finals featured the top eight teams from the prelims with one team from the institute. Starting at around four in the evening, several exciting rounds of quizzing ensued. Interspersed in between the usual infinite bounce rounds were buzzer rounds, connect questions and a special differential scoring round in the end. With two teams, Quiz Erat Demonstratum (QED, rather) and No Enthu Da (or NED), tied for the top spot after the last question, the system of ‘sudden death’ was employed leading to a nail biting finish. NED, deservedly, were crowned the champions of IITM Open Quiz 2011. A surprisingly huge audience supported the teams till the very end of the quiz. Prizes worth over Rs. 1 lakh were up for grabs! The teams that placed first, second and third won Rs.25,000, Rs.20,000 and Rs.15,000 respectively. All finalists received prizes too as also the best school, college, corporate and family teams, from Prof. Govardhan, the Dean (Students) of IIT Madras.
The questions were, at times, pretty esoteric and the quizmaster was blundering, but the quiz as a whole received positive reviews from the participants and the audience. The quiz was presented by IIT Madras and Lasersoft in association with Fruit Shop, iloveread.in, Percept Printing Solutions and Indian Express.
