Mulky Memorial Open 2007

The second edition of the quiz held in memory of KQA's founder and longtime President, Wing Commander G.R. Mulky, who passed away in February 2006, was conducted by the newly-christened Das brothers (Dibyendu and Vinay) at the Canara Union hall yesterday.

The quiz was more fact-based and direct than most. The quiz was themed on India – every question had an India connection. All this added up to being a refreshing change for the quizzing populace. This does not mean, however, that there was a shortage of banal (and sometimes boring) trivia here either. (Please note that arcana is also an anagram of “canara”, the venue!) All in all, it was good fun and enjoyable, although the spread was not exactly delectable.

Almost all the teams found the going mostly tough both in the prelims (the cut-off was just 12/32) and in the final round. The end-scores of all the teams were between 50 and 100 (I think). The quiz was won by Thejaswi Udupa and team. A highlight was someone in the audience shouting Beatles’ Sgt. Peppers for one Q! :-)

The trivia-bites section of this report is somewhat sparse and especially error-filled because many questions had only anecdotal and contextual relevance and meaning, but also because the answers were not projected on-screen. (This is true even of the Unmaad 07 quiz) QMs have a moral (make that legal!) obligation to inform also. ;-)

PERSONAL

I teamed up with Prashanth, Lloyd and Sai for this one. The team-name we chose was….PASS! We managed to qualify this time…eighth and tied for seventh place with 54 points. It was a good team effort even though we were mostly, justifying our name, passing! Creative guesses include Ninyankodi while destructive guesses were “The Das Brothers band” and Shivalingam for crocodile.

I had a minor row with the QMs about a question in the prelims to which we had answered “Big Brother” instead of “Big Boss” even though the connection could have logically been worked out both ways. But as always the QM’s decision prevailed and because of that we only just about managed to scrape through.

PRELIMS

1. Audio (song) – Brett Lee w/Asha Bhosle
2. On Saraswati temple in South India – in news – site of proposed IIT
3. Ravindra Jain, if he could see, wished to see – KJ Yesudas
4. Visual – woman – maker of Ravana effigies
5. Dakshina Kashi, Kumbh Mela organised – T.Narsipur
6. Left at her peak in 1966 to London to study medicine – Rita Faria
7. Ferry across the river ______-- - Zuari
8. Climb films. Indian animator – Bhim Sen (drew boos!)
9. Description of struggle of actor. Extra in Hema Malini debut – Naseeruddin Shah
10. Book cover blanked out – Upamanyu Chatterji, Weight-Loss
11. Cadres ANSAR(under 30), IKHWAN(over 30) – SIMI
12. Princely state 1891 – British restored to same status. MK Priyambada premier – Manipur
13. Visual. Painting features – Vaikkom Muhammad Bashir
14. “A Dangerous Game Is About to begin” tagline. Launched a game also with audio CD, guiding robbers in bank robbery – Aankhein
15. Set up in 1935, Hilton-Young commission. First private, then state-owned – RBI
16. Racquet-sport couple – Chetan Baboor and Jwala Khubta
17. List of nonsensical, fun invention – Prof Shonku (Satyajit Ray character)
18. Tenth day of Muharram – Ashura (Hail Prashanth!)
19. Visual. Common. Dilip Kumar, Morarji Desai – Nishaan-e-Imtiaz
20. Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay compete in Madras Provincial seat. First woman to do so. Where from? – Mangalore
21. Sanctuary mentioned by Kipling – Kanha National Park
22. ___’s Odoru Maharaj, Dancing Maharaja key in Indo-Japanese relations. Manmohan Singh address to Diet – Rajni Kant
23. Mahesh L Kunshwar - famous playwright, Holi (drew jovial booing)
24. Visual. Coach of Sriram Singh, finalist 800m in 76 Montreal Olympics – Illyas Bapwar
25. Route description. Guessable. World heritage site. Have to visit by day and return - Valley Of Flowers
26. Bangalore landmark. Lease ran out. Modified from 6000 to 6 lac per month – Windsor Manor
27. First work in Hindi, about king – Prithviraja Raso
28. Sport banned in Tamil Nadu – Jallikattu (Lloyd)
29. Sanjeev Bhaskar (CanNot Recall Question)
30. CNRQ
31. Video. Syriana starting sequence.
32. Movie clip. Bemisal

FINALS

Plain vanilla visuals (written)
1. Sarla Devi
2. CNRQ
3. Nimbus chief
4. Some CEO
5. CNRQ
6. CNRQ

Theme Guess: Scams
Urea (Uric cycle shown with formulae!), St.Kitts map, Bicycles, Sugar (looked like diamonds) and so on
(Pretty Creative)

Infinite Bounds

Only comet named after Indian. Wilson - ______ effect –
Harbhajan Singh & other sportspersons – DSPs in Punjab Police
Hussein-_____ correspondence – Macmahon
One less than a crore. Place – Punalkodi
Margadarshi. Modern-day Carnatic kutcheri format – Araikudy Ramanujam Iyengar
“Hole In The Wall” – computers for all
Robert Pirsig – came to BHU for Eastern Philosophy, Metaphysics of quality
Connect – Coru, Anand, band – British Steel (Missed Judas Priest band!)
Agarkar, fish-dishes – Bombay Duck (Missed declared sitter. So pressure :-) also because there were two dishes)
Hindu Kush = Slayer of Indians
Al Beruni – crater on the moon named after 10^th century Indian chronicler

Stage 2
Socotra – Dioskoriorou
Only four kinds listed. One believed extinct now - River dolphin
Yanam
Ghatam player – Sukanya Ramagopal
Manifestation of Egyptian god “Rock worms” – Crocodile
Saif in Arabic etc. English use same word as locals for this- Talwar
Fast fast slow slow – Foxtrot (we answered cha cha cha)

Theme: Classes of Indian Navy vessels (We cracked this, though we thought it was Indian navy ships. We vaguified well enough! ;-)