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Friday, October 12, 2007

Quiz Review

General Quiz: Indira Gandhi Institute of Technology, Friday 12th Oct '07

My Opinion: Two thumbs down.

Chances are, that any quiz with an entry fee (Rs 20 per head), is going to suck, but this one exceeded all expectations. The preliminary round consisted of 50 multiple choice questions of the kind usually only seen at Miranda House. Some gems include - "How many stars are there in the EU flag?", "What are the two crown dependencies of the UK?", "What is the minimum number of moves required to win a game of chess?".

To be fair, not all the questions were this bad, there were also some run of the mill trivia questions, like - "Which is the only vowel not found on the top row of a standard type keyboard?", "Which king built the shore temples at Mahabalipuram?", "In what year did Hitler become the chancellor of Germany?".

The real shocker was the stage round, conducted by Mr. X (forgot his name) from IMS (the sponsors of the quiz). I think it is fair to say, and I have seen my fair share of MBA coaching-centre-employed-nincompoop-turned-quiz masters (Corp Quiz, Innovision '06 anyone?), that he ranks right up there with the best of them. He spoke in an extremely slow and deliberated manner, with what may most kindly be described as a fake accent.

As is characteristic of such quizzes, the "Learning Experience" (his words, not mine), started off with a lengthy discussion of the rules, according to which if a team didn't know the answer, they could 'choose' to pass the question on, but if the next team could not answer either, they could not pass, as this 'privilege' belonged only to the team whose question it originally was. After a 10 minute discussion on the absurdity of this rule, it was finally changed to a normal pass/direct scheme.

The quiz itself consisted of several rounds: catechize (pr. CATechhise) the current affairs round, a management concepts round, a sports round, a visual identification round, and finally a rapid fire round.

Throughout, our able QM interspersed questions with his lively banter, which was usually directed at the audience (consisting primarily of the 4 teams that didn't make it on stage). He also enlivened the proceedings with several unique witticisms (eg. after a deadlock in a tie breaker he unleashed this masterpiece - "It seems we have a tie within a tie, I hope you have all worn several ties today.") and useful nuggets (eg. after correctly identifying the co-awardee of the 2006 Nobel peace prize alongside Mohamed Yunus, as Grameen Bank, we were told of the 'connection' between the two of them). Any questions regarding the authenticity of the sometimes dubious answers (eg. that The Thyroid gland is just another name for the Adam's apple), were quickly dismissed, since the questions had been "Thoroughly researched from several Resources".

The rapid fire round did not disappoint either. Questions such as, "When is world population day?", "when is world disabled day?", helped keep everyone motivated and in the game.

The prizes for both first and second place were - a Manorama year book, and two IMS booklets on how to succeed with various aspects of MBA admissions. A terrible prize for any quiz, but even worse, considering they netted about 4K from the 200 odd teams that registered for the quiz.

All in all, a bad quiz, made far worse by the registration fee.

7 comments:

Unknown said...

In the end............who was the winner ???

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
rider of rohan said...

I think IGIT quizzes have created a name for themselves. Last year, the fee was Rs 10 with 50 mind-numbing MCQs like "Give the dimensions of a football goalpost", "Number of stars in the universe" and many more. In the end, a very disappointing evening, be it the quiz, or the girls.

Worst 10 bucks spent ever! (number of stars my ass!)

rider of rohan said...

The quizzes at IGIT and the "chair" incident(ask deba or jaideep) force me to say that barring a few exceptions, girls and quizzing dont mix that well.

No offence anupriya!

Jaideep Jagannathan said...

ah... the chair incident (Q: The name for a group of devotional singers in a church, my answer: a Choir, her answer: a Chair).

Something equally brilliant happened at Miranda House last year - Q: For what sport is the America's Cup held? ans: Yaawght(yatch pronounced correctly), their answer: wrong, it is yeahch (you guessed it, yatch spelled incorrectly).

@rishabh the gr8: we came second, a team from an engineering college from sonepat came first (and deservedly at that, they totally outshadied us).

Sharat said...

Hey nice work with the review.

I think more quiz reviews will do the blog well. Perhaps someone from IGIT chances upon the blog, though the chances arent too high.

prez said...

thank god i missed, at least the LHMC
one wasnt this bad,but even they had theyir "animal" round.sharat might eleborate..

Friday, October 12, 2007

Quiz Review

General Quiz: Indira Gandhi Institute of Technology, Friday 12th Oct '07

My Opinion: Two thumbs down.

Chances are, that any quiz with an entry fee (Rs 20 per head), is going to suck, but this one exceeded all expectations. The preliminary round consisted of 50 multiple choice questions of the kind usually only seen at Miranda House. Some gems include - "How many stars are there in the EU flag?", "What are the two crown dependencies of the UK?", "What is the minimum number of moves required to win a game of chess?".

To be fair, not all the questions were this bad, there were also some run of the mill trivia questions, like - "Which is the only vowel not found on the top row of a standard type keyboard?", "Which king built the shore temples at Mahabalipuram?", "In what year did Hitler become the chancellor of Germany?".

The real shocker was the stage round, conducted by Mr. X (forgot his name) from IMS (the sponsors of the quiz). I think it is fair to say, and I have seen my fair share of MBA coaching-centre-employed-nincompoop-turned-quiz masters (Corp Quiz, Innovision '06 anyone?), that he ranks right up there with the best of them. He spoke in an extremely slow and deliberated manner, with what may most kindly be described as a fake accent.

As is characteristic of such quizzes, the "Learning Experience" (his words, not mine), started off with a lengthy discussion of the rules, according to which if a team didn't know the answer, they could 'choose' to pass the question on, but if the next team could not answer either, they could not pass, as this 'privilege' belonged only to the team whose question it originally was. After a 10 minute discussion on the absurdity of this rule, it was finally changed to a normal pass/direct scheme.

The quiz itself consisted of several rounds: catechize (pr. CATechhise) the current affairs round, a management concepts round, a sports round, a visual identification round, and finally a rapid fire round.

Throughout, our able QM interspersed questions with his lively banter, which was usually directed at the audience (consisting primarily of the 4 teams that didn't make it on stage). He also enlivened the proceedings with several unique witticisms (eg. after a deadlock in a tie breaker he unleashed this masterpiece - "It seems we have a tie within a tie, I hope you have all worn several ties today.") and useful nuggets (eg. after correctly identifying the co-awardee of the 2006 Nobel peace prize alongside Mohamed Yunus, as Grameen Bank, we were told of the 'connection' between the two of them). Any questions regarding the authenticity of the sometimes dubious answers (eg. that The Thyroid gland is just another name for the Adam's apple), were quickly dismissed, since the questions had been "Thoroughly researched from several Resources".

The rapid fire round did not disappoint either. Questions such as, "When is world population day?", "when is world disabled day?", helped keep everyone motivated and in the game.

The prizes for both first and second place were - a Manorama year book, and two IMS booklets on how to succeed with various aspects of MBA admissions. A terrible prize for any quiz, but even worse, considering they netted about 4K from the 200 odd teams that registered for the quiz.

All in all, a bad quiz, made far worse by the registration fee.

7 comments:

Unknown said...

In the end............who was the winner ???

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
rider of rohan said...

I think IGIT quizzes have created a name for themselves. Last year, the fee was Rs 10 with 50 mind-numbing MCQs like "Give the dimensions of a football goalpost", "Number of stars in the universe" and many more. In the end, a very disappointing evening, be it the quiz, or the girls.

Worst 10 bucks spent ever! (number of stars my ass!)

rider of rohan said...

The quizzes at IGIT and the "chair" incident(ask deba or jaideep) force me to say that barring a few exceptions, girls and quizzing dont mix that well.

No offence anupriya!

Jaideep Jagannathan said...

ah... the chair incident (Q: The name for a group of devotional singers in a church, my answer: a Choir, her answer: a Chair).

Something equally brilliant happened at Miranda House last year - Q: For what sport is the America's Cup held? ans: Yaawght(yatch pronounced correctly), their answer: wrong, it is yeahch (you guessed it, yatch spelled incorrectly).

@rishabh the gr8: we came second, a team from an engineering college from sonepat came first (and deservedly at that, they totally outshadied us).

Sharat said...

Hey nice work with the review.

I think more quiz reviews will do the blog well. Perhaps someone from IGIT chances upon the blog, though the chances arent too high.

prez said...

thank god i missed, at least the LHMC
one wasnt this bad,but even they had theyir "animal" round.sharat might eleborate..