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.