The winning ways............

I am back once again. “Miracle drug” as U2 sang, I wrote this post. Really it was a miracle drug for me teaming up with Shsahi shekar , Ravi and Ankit. We really pulled rabbit out of the hat at Mysore open quiz organised by the greatest quiz master of India , arguably the best, Mr.Arul Mani at Mysore Infy. This post about the victory that I tasted in recent quizzing days of mine.

2 weeks back I had a torrid time at my company, literally I had blasted people for not organizing a quiz properly. I had literally said, the quiz which they are organizing is not “Professional”, and truly it was not a “Quiz” just …. Sorry I don’t want to talk more.

Ankit, VVCE student ad Aravind had organized a quiz (Open quiz) as part of their IEEE fest. I and achar had been there as I was invited to participate, truly speaking we knew that we will win the prize. As achar had to go to Bangalore that day, I told him,” if we win the prize, u will get ur bus charge”. Sandeep also had told the same thing so we went there with only 7 team turning up as it was a Sunday, we easily managed to make it into the finals. The final was as usual bit “OK” by achar’s standards, we started shakily as usual (my mantra: slow and steady wins the prize”). So we began cautiously and then manged t increase our lead, the answer which achar gave to crack stage 3 won the prize for us, it was bit closer victory for us , but it doesn’t matter ,we needed some cash prize, just kidding. This victory was the first with achar as we had royally got screwed in the finals of “Star of Mysore quiz” in 2003.

Then I was busy with my wok and meanwhile I had got mail from Arul mani that “Mysore Open quiz “will be held at Infy on May 11, 2008. I wanted to pair with achar as I badly wanted to make it to the finals of the quiz to tell my company people that the way I meant in the mail was the way I do. As achar said that he was unsure with which team will he be pairing with, but he suggested teaming up with Shsahi shekar, I have mentioned about this Linux genius in my previous post. I said I will wait and asked ankit if he can make it, he agreed. But meanwhile Sandesh, manoj, rajkiran and KP also wanted to make it to the quiz. They said to join with them, but I was sure that if I team up with them and go to Arul’s quiz then I would royally get screwed up in the prelims.

I finally approached Sandeep friend Bharth with whom he had won the SDM quiz, but again that guy delayed his decision to make t to the quiz. So finally the judgment day had come, I said to ankit that he can come with me to the quiz. We also decided to add karthik rao, VVCE mech junior to the team. So we had 3 in team and I finally registered. But the worst was yet to come. Karthik dropped out on Saturday as he had to go for work n Sunday, these IT companies say that we will work only 5 days but again ask people to work on weekends also. This made me clueless, my dream was sinking. But there was a light at the end of the tunnel. Ankit said he will try to find any one good quizzer so that we can be a formidable team, but all efforts went in vain. So the finale arrived, this day was the day where MANUTD and Chelsea were battling for the premiership championship. There was another battle going on at MG audi at infy between 90+ teams for the prize of Mysore open quiz. As usual I went with Sandeep to the venue, as he was the main organizer for Infy he helped me in avoiding the queue. We waited for Arul to come as he was supposed to receive him at the entrance. As we were waiting shashi and his brother, ravi came to the venue, I had met shashi long time ago. Just started to chat and he said can he join any team, I said that they can join our team as me and ankit were the only members present so the “Royal Local” team was ready. As Sandeep asked me to help him out in the registration counter as Arul arrived to the venue bit late I went there, meanwhile all three occupied a place at MG audi. I went with Sandeep to the venue after some time. Hari shenoy (the Crows team captain, famously got this name @ landmark quiz) and his team were next to us. As Arul introduced KQA to Mysore public after Sandeep gave out instructions the crowd started to murmur. It was not new for the KQA regulars. Then came the Q’s from Arul , the simple one from a lot, KC reddy was the first to occupy this seat and currently it’s vacant. What is this? The answer was simple the CM post of Karnataka. Or team was off to a cracker, and then came the Q’s on Moser bear, the Eurovision contest (which I liked the most and I cracked with ease). As the quiz went on local flavor was more, Ravi was good in that, we were able to crack some good Q’s easily. The Q’s were tricky and as the Q’s started to flow, I knew that some good teams would loose out as they did in the landmark quiz (it happened to our team there where we lost out to some rubbish decisions). The 35 Q’s rolled out in 40 odd mins and we answered all the Q’s (of course all would have done that). Then the answers were announced from Arul. We were doing well until 15 Q where we had 11 correct. Then serially 3 went wrong, then I remembered the landmark quiz where 4 answers in a row were wrong which cost us the place at the finals. This time around I thought we might not make it there, but luckily we had cracked some good Q’s which helped us to score 22. After answers were out, I walked around the stage, to checkout what was the cutoff; luckily I heard that it was 21. I was still not sure; I asked achar abt his score. He said they had royally screwed as they managed only 16. Then hari was telling sashi that he had cracked 21. As Arul was sorting out the finalists I saw our team’s paper. I was very much happy that I at last made it to the KQA finals.

As we were the last team to make it to the finals, I was sure that we will be the last in finals. The other teams to make it to finals were, Udupa’s team from Bangalore , Kunal’s ( JCE’s wonder Kid) team , 2 teams from infy and other team of Bangalore. We were the only local team in the finals. The quiz started with Arul asking 5 Q’s and we had to write the answers on paper and we scored ‘0’ in the first round. Ankit was shocked, he wanted us to start scoring, I said wait this is KQA quiz, we have to just guess and we cant be amongst top 5 we wanted to make it to finals and that’s what we have achieved, then in round tow the score started with Ravi cracking one Q , then there was no looking back. The score was increasing linearly. The crack in the round 4 was the one which put us into 3rd place. In this round we were not able to crack only one Q on Charlie Chaplin that would have fetched us 20 extra points, but nothing to loose we scored 15. Then the next round was a theme round were we were able to crack 1 by then team 4 cracked the theme. We were still cool. The final round was the derailer round where we got a Q from Arul about tech which was answered by Ravi. The Google fetched us 10 points and we were pretty sure that we had secured 3rd place. I felt happy after all the incidents that happened the previous week. The topic we gave the team 4 which were in 2nd place was the Myth ,there was an argument over the team but I stuck to my decision as team 4 were the closest to us and Aruls Q on myth would be too tough to answer. Any how Udupas team cracked it, but it sealed the fate of our rivals to secure 2nd place. Finally we had made it! A prize in KQA quiz. That’s was icing on the cake. Udupas team won the quiz convincingly with a huge margin of over 120 + points no team were able to match their quiz quotient, kudos to them.

All happened over a Sunday afternoon, it was just like fulham pulling out $35 million with a goal and Man united winning the premier championships. I felt like ganguly when India won the lords finals with 320 run chase. If our company people would have been in the audience (of course people, who shouted at me it’s a straight ……) they would have known why this guy was shouting and writing mails for nothing to gain. To all people who don’t no head and tail of quizzing, here’s how the quiz is organized in a professional way. No controversies, no shouting, no objections from any team. I would rather be the last team to loose out in the prelims in such a wonderful and “Real “quiz. I am not writing these statements to condemn people. When you say “biggest quiz” just make sure that you handle it very sensitively or involve people who do regular quizzing.


Kudos to Arul and his KQA team for organizing the “Mysore Open Quiz”. Thanks once again to Sandeep and his Infy team who had given such a wonderful venue to conduct the quiz and taking care of my transport. People who made this event possible hats off to you.

To my team mates, Shashi, Ravi and Ankit you were simply best in the quiz. Nothing much to say. Looking forward to attend more quizzes with you in future. Ok that ends here ….