Vidyasagar Rajan Memorial Quiz 2007

This was an intercollegiate quiz that was conducted on 13 January,2007. Arul Mani was the QM. IIM Bangalore ended up winning the contest, mostly on the strength of written rounds.

The standard of the questions was a tad too high for the teams to tackle. Most of the questions in the finals were unanswered by the teams or the audience. It was way over the top of the head, the quizzing equivalent of bowling bouncers at tailenders, who should be made to play the ball and get out! It was Infinite Bounce, well and truly!

To the QM's credit though, the standards of the prelims was also similar. The cut-off I think was very low indeed! But these questions would have been better played out in one of the KQA Opens, I would say. The Themed rounds and Stage-2s were toned down to appropriate levels of tough, even then there were still not too many takers!

It being an intercollegiate affair, I had gone just to watch the quiz... though nowadays usually it turns out that way in any case, even if I go to participate! ;-) I was the only pure spectator, the rest of the audience (there were only about 3 others) were members from teams that hadn't qualified. It is a shame that more of the teams didn't stay back and watch the quiz. Read Living To Fight Another Day for reasons why to do so. To address this issue, the QM had special audience rounds as well; he had even planned it as dividing the audience into teams! :-(

TRIVIA TIDBITS
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*Humulus lupulus - Hops, used in beer
*Grand Prix Internation ==> Golden Palm
*Losing finalist at Wimbledon in '54,'56,'70,'74 - Ken Rosewall
*Movie Poster - Garrincha
*Bio - PVR=Priya Village Roadshow
*Shona language, independence in 1980, name-change - Zimbabwe
*Logo, sort of like a spade cavity in a disc - World Heritage Site
*RayBan sold to Italian company in 1999
*Story - L'Oreal
*Brain Contrast Map - London taxidrivers
*Visual, one died recently - Hanna and Barbera
*Audio - You're Pitiful James Blunt parody
*Cartoon. Superman Is It Kryptonite? - Zidane headbutt
*Amelie movie
*Turkenbashi, Miyazo
*Audience Stage 2 - AR Rahman songs
*HarleQuin Great Dane - when a Great Dane has spots
*Unknown author piece extract, identify - My Pet Goat
*Yours Mine and Ours, last film she made - Lucille Ball
*Imegaphone album cover - Anagram of Imogen Heap, the artist
*"Don't let no one beat you no more" - Kosovo
*Philip Pullman's Dark Material Trilogy
*Two audios - Written by Founder of Arlantic Records passed away
*Vir Sanghvi Anthology
*"Flight Of The Brickbats"
*Sting's new album - Songs From The Labyrinth
*Arthur Okun calculate index using unemployment and inflation. Used by Republicans to eject Carter - Misery Index
*Sesame Street character Oscar Grouch ==> inspiration for Artemis Fowl character
*Last appearance in Woman called Golda, Oscars for Gaslight(44) and Anastasia(56) - Ingrid Bergman
*Sea-side structure built all over England for Napoleon attacks - opening sequence of Ulysses
*Viggo Mortensen portraying character created by - (forgot)
*Elly awards shaped like an elephant
*Haruki Murakami - Kafka On The Beach photo
*Once known as Asia Minor. Name comes from Greek for "east" - Anatolia
*Beer, River, City- Amstel
*Road to Wellville about - Kellogg
*Tree-dwelling nymphs, alternative name for King Cobra - Hamadryad
*Waistcoat, African capital, corporal equivalent rank in Israeli Defence - Rabat
*Curse of Capistrano first story - Zorro
*Kazakhstan, Borat
*Statue shown, Ulan Bator = Red Hero
*Eaters Of The Dead - version of Beowulf
*Gulf of Mexico = Sea Of Cortes
*Peter Benchley was speechwriter