With the best of Punjab descending at Saturnalia, the annual cultural fest of Thapar University, Patiala, the standard was a little beyond my expectation. Well the quiz began on time, one of QryptiQ’s firsts in the year 2011. There were 20Qs in the prelims including four tie-breaker questions. After about 5-odd questions I saw a few restless teams. Here’s the conversation that followed-
Me: What’s wrong there at the back?
Participant: Sir we don’t have a pen.
Me: So you’ve come without a pen for the quiz?
Participant: Yes sir this is Punjabian di Spirit. [Thumping chest followed by a hearty laughter]
Me: Allright, somebody please lend him a pen. Also I hope you haven’t forgotten your brain.
Participant: No sir that’s in my pocket.
Me: Instead of a pen?
Participant: Yes sir that is Punjabian di Spirit. [Thumping chest followed by a hearty laughter- just a bbbbbrrrrrr oyyyeeee was missing;)]
So that’s how we started the day; a warning of things to come. The finals began on a slow note as a lot of questions were passed to the audience. All teams got their act together and were on the scoreboard by the third round. Now the highlight of the quiz came in the last round. Here’s how the scorecard read before the last round-
Team A-12, Team B- 10, Team C- 0, Team D- 4, Team E- 26 Team F- 20. Also note Team C [Arithmetic Progression] and Team E [Hyper Intelligent shades of Blue] were from the same college [Thapar] while Team F[Tukke Maar Khan] was from Chitkara.
In the final round there were three questions with 18 points at stake. All questions on the buzzer. Chitkara got two answers back to back for six each. Score card after the penultimate question- Team E- 26 Team F-32. For the third question F was smart enough to adopt the strategy of going for the buzzers since they had nothing to lose[They told me later on]. I started the final question- This technology was founded by the French scientist Nicholas Bion.. *Buzzer* Much to everybody’s surprise it was Team C, yes Team C and Not Team E or Team F. Team E was shocked and so were the others, the only difference being the latter could afford laughing at Team C’s sudden burst of enthusiasm. Well that wasn’t all, Team C did not know the answer, not even a wrong one, they just passed and the only explanation they could come up with ‘I don’t know why I got excited and pressed the buzzer’
What followed is anybody’s guess.
Final Scores- Team F- 32, Team E- 28[they cracked the third question with a 2 pointer], Team A-12
Review for the General Quiz later.
I am too tired and tied up to write another review so I’ll just quickly finish it up in a few lines. The general quiz Feeling Quizzy was equally enjoyable if not less. The quiz had a lot more teams participating and a lot of them came without pens[There was a lot of drama because of this but all in good humour]. The team that led from the front carried on with the momentum right through till the end, finishing their day on a high after that eventful last round of the Business Quiz. Since this quiz was slightly low scoring [not because of the lack of answers but because of the negatives collected after a few positives] one round made a lot of difference for the second placed team.
Final Scores: Team D[Hyper Intelligent shades of Blue]- 31, Team E[The Penless Wonders*]- 24, Team F[FFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUU**]- 15
*Read through the review again to figure out what it means
**I don’t know what it means