Quizzing in the Garden City

MANDIRA MODDIE

Records are meant to be broken. And that is exactly what happened in Bangalore at the regional finals of the Hindu Young World Quiz Competition conducted on October 20, by letsQuiz.com. A record 375 teams participated in the preliminary round of the competition, breaking the existing record of 345 teams at Madurai few weeks ago. Of these, six teams made it to the regional finals.

While the answer sheets of the preliminary round were being corrected, Mr. Ramkumar of letsquiz.com kept the audience busy with some quizzing and guessing for their prizes: Torches from Eveready, cash prizes sponsored by Nutrine confectionary and Young World caps. He even gave the job of handing out caps to one of the audience, Abhinav, who wanted to take over from the quizmaster. A surprise awaiting the audience were well known quizzers Movin Miranda and Wing Commander Mulky who also walked off with some audience prizes. The prize for the most innovative team name went to "Quiz Curry".

The audience was also kept entertained by seven- year-old Karun Krishna, a talented magician who has performed with P.C. Sorcar.

National College, Jayanagar, emerged winners. Of the four teams sent by the college, two made it to the finals, while two narrowly missed the cut off. They did not turn away disappointed though, as they were awarded a special prize each: dinner for three at the Taj West End and the Taj Residency respectively.

The other four teams that made it to the finals were MES College (Harish Bharadwaj and M. N. Aditya), Carmel High School (Sreevatsa R. and Guruprasad S.), SBM Jain College (Amith Tejaswi and Vivek Subramanian) and Christ College (Bharat B.R. and Arun Nayar).

A quick look at the rounds conducted by Quizmaster V.V. Ramanan: Headlines, Plain Vanilla, Gallery, Browsing around Bangalore, Multimedia Masala, Topsy Turvy and Stop Press.

Though Christ College was leading initially, they were overtaken by National College Jayanagar, comprising winners, Akhil K.R. and Sharat Kowligi , followed by runners-up Adnan Raja and Arjun Sharma, also of National College, Jayanagar.

The big prize: Hercules bicycles fromTI cycles, Rs. 4000 in cash, Nike tote bags fromEveready, as well as what all the finalists got: trophies, Eveready Power banks, Computer course gift certificates fromFourthR, T shirts fromletsQuiz.com, Dishnet internet access kits, Gift hampers from Brittannia, CD ROMS from Edurite technology and book vouchers from Prism books. The prizes were given away by cricketer Sunil Joshi.

The national sponsors Eveready (title sponsors), Nutrine Honeyfab, Hecules cycles, Fourth R, Dishnet DSL, Coke, and regional sponsors Brittania, Titan, Prism books and Edurite technology certainly helped to make the day a memorable one for the 750 students who attended the Young World Quiz. The event left Bangalore awaiting the next year's quiz with anticipation. As for Akhil and Sharat, next stop: Chennai, for the All India finals.

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