Yesterday was a thoroughly enjoyable affair. It started off with me getting up late and arriving late for my own quiz. So late in fact that Sneha, Yasho, Harish and a few participants were already there, not to mention the ever-reliable Ramanand. The only solace I had was the fact that Gadre arrived after me.
Both me and Gadre had been looking forward to this quiz since ages. We had been setting questions for it last September I guess, even before we started working on Chakravyuh. What had started off then as a general college quiz eventually become a sports open quiz. Not that we mind, since it gave both of us a genuine excuse to surf all our favourite sporting sites. The most surprising thing about the creation of the quiz was that we were never found slacking. Everything was done on schedule and the questions were ready well before schedule. I guess this shows that when you really love something a lot, you don't need extra encouragement to do a good job. This reaffirmed the notion that setting quizzes is a lot more fun that just attending them, something I learned when we were working on Chakravyuh. It is also the best way to increase your knowledge and thus become a better quizzer. Hopefully I'll learn from all this and start conducting quizzes regularly at the BC.
Coming back to the quizzing sunday. The elims turned out to be very easy, maybe a bit easier than we thought. Strangely, all the top-scoring teams missed out on the sitters that we had put in to make the quiz more junta-friendly (namely Zidane & Hamilton). All the good teams qualified for the finals with the only surprise being the non-qualification of Rohit & Rohit, considering the fact that they were school quiz champs and all. Sports quizzes have always been places where college students met open teams on an equal footing. Even that proved to be true as three of the six finalists turned out to be college teams.
The finals followed, starting with 'Nutmegged' which was Gadre's quiz. The questions were really good and I guess well liked by the participants as well as there were very few 'Aw come on!'s during the quiz. The surprise package turned out to be the team of Yash Marathe & Keyur as they took an early lead beating other experienced teams. After that were the fake trailers and then my feature which modesty forbids me from commenting on (actually, screw modesty, I think it was good). A few of my questions went unanswered. Believe me, as a quizmaster, no feeling can match the feeling you get when one of your questions goes unanswered and then, like a magician, when you finally reveal the answer you get lots of applause along with Ooohs and Aaahs from the audience. I shall forever cherish these moments!
The early leaders, Yash & Keyur ended up winning the quiz comfortably beating the likes of Harish, Samrat & Anand (who gave some amazing answers). The best thing was that all the BCQC folks loudly clapped for these young guys and greatly encouraged them throughout the quiz. The BCQC folks always encourage newbies a lot and this quiz was no different. Lets hope we hear more of them in the future, especially Yash.
Then came Aleatory - the afternoon quiz conducted by Salil & Anna. My partner for the quiz was BCQC's new signing for this season - Venkat. I must say that I really underestimated Venkat's quizzing abilities, he seemed to be too funny a guy to be really good at serious quizzing. In fact, before we started I didn't even expect to qualify. But as soon as the elims began, we were on a roll. No question seemed to be too hard for us and the few we couldn't answer directly, we got by good old detective work (and I mean working out from the clues). So from being possible non-qualifiers, we actually ended up topping the elims! And that meant beating teams like Samrat & Meghshyam, Anand & Vibhendu, Aditya & Niranjan & Sumant & Rishi. Anand congratulated me on stage after topping the elims and that felt really great! However, like all good things our time had to end. We had an average finals and ended up finishing 4th, with Venkat giving a few great answers. But I must say I thoroughly enjoyed my first BCQC Open finals since last May. It was definitely worth the wait though.
So this means I've made a good start to the quizzing season. Let's hope it continues in the Cricinfo Cricket Quiz & the AFMC Sports Quiz. And yes, before I end, a special mention - Thank You Sneha for coming to the quiz. It meant a lot to me. And I know that you were very bored but thanks for staying awake throughout. Love you lots!
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