By Aravindabharathi R
As usual, LitSoc Buzzer quiz 2012 was a three-in-a-team event, and was held at PhLT. The preliminary round was scheduled to begin at 6.30 P.M. on September 22, 2012. The quiz began after a slight delay due to a projector malfunction. Although no IPs were put up on hostel notice-boards prior to the event, there was a good turnout, which can be attributed in part to its double entendre-filled tagline, ‘Finger your way to glory’.
Following the LitSoc tradition of not following some traditions, this year’s quiz had an untimed preliminary round. Consisting of thirty questions on topics ranging from the etymology of the word ‘aficionado’ to The Dark Knight Rises, it kept most of the participants on their toes. When asked about the change in format, one of the coordinators, Aravindabharathi R, said, “We wanted to have more questions which could be worked out and fewer ones which just tested participants’ memories. An un-timed preliminary round also allowed us to have longer questions and those based on visuals. For instance, one of the questions was to identify a video of Leon Theremin playing his own instrument.”
The top eight teams from the prelims qualified to the final round. The top score was 26, and was secured by the team which eventually won the quiz. The minimum qualifying score was 15.5. Since there were two teams with the same score, the quizmasters used sudden death to promote one of those teams (Kavya Srinivasan, Evelyn A, and Jessica B.) to the finals. A small altercation arose when the other team (consisting of Anand Rao, Preshant Shekar, and A. Barath) protested quoting the slide with the rules of the quiz, which stated that ties will be resolved by starred questions and then by sudden death. The quizmasters then claimed that they had starred zero questions and since the tie could not be resolved using those, they could use sudden death. After a shouting match with Anand, they decided to resolve it with a set of five tie-breaker questions on the buzzer.
The tie-breaker questions were hurriedly arranged for and read out of Aravind’s mobile phone. This round was won by Anand Rao, Preshant Shekar and A. Barath. The first round of the finals consisted of ten questions on the buzzer, with 15 points awarded for every correct answer and a penalty of ten points for every incorrect one. It was followed by a theme round on Amul advertisements, in which teams had to figure out what events a particular Amul advertisement was referencing. This was converted into a written round after teams found some of the questions too easy and began pressing the buzzer even before the questions appeared on screen.
The second theme round was a buzzer battle. Each team had to pick a topic and a team whom they would challenge. Three questions would then be asked, which only the challengers and the challenged would be allowed to buzz for. If the challengers had a higher score, they would win the challenge and were awarded 20 points extra. A loss for the challengers would mean a penalty of 10 points for them and a reward of 20 points for the other team. The topics were presented to the teams with intentionally confusing and obfuscated theme names, and most teams were surprised to find out what their chosen topic really was.
The quiz finally ended with another set of ten questions, with the same scoring pattern as in the first round. Although 7 of the 8 teams in the finals were made up of the same faces one sees in every quiz in the institute, it was good to see one freshie team battle it out, continuing the culture of quizzing in the institute.
Click the following links to find the questions asked during the quiz :
Results :
1st place
Jayadev Bhaskaran – Mandak
Swaroop I R – Tapti
Akshay Rangamani – Alak
2nd place
Achuth Vasudevan – Narmad
Aju Basil James – Tapti
Gauthaman Manoj – Tapti
3rd place
Prateek Vijayavargia – Tambi
Sahil Mathur – Tambi
Sandeep Menon – Tambi
4th place
Arun Ashokan Nair – Narmad
Arjun Bhagoji – Alak
Athreya – Day Scholar
5th place
Rushabh Menon – Tambi
N Chandrashekhar Ramanujan – Tambi
S Siddharth – Tapti
6th place
Kavin Aadithiyan C – Tambi
Ranjith Francis Joseph – Pampa
Jerin Mathew – Tapti
7th place
Swarun Krishna – Saras
P.K Adithya – Narmad
8th place
Anand Rao – Alak
Preshant Sekar – Tapti
A Barath – Tapti
