Reviews of CBSE Heritage India Quiz 2015

The CBSE Heritage India Quiz is a GIANT quiz that involves thousands (no exaggeration here) of emails, calls, letters, people and, of course, questions and answers 🙂 An event that has 47 quizzes spread over 30 cities should maintain a distinct local flavour and thus a team of 6 Quizmasters work together to get the job done. “Why not just 1?” is a question I am asked often and here’s the (anti-climactic) answer ‘to prevent machine-ization of the human brain making the whole event a dull affair’. I’ll elaborate, if you’re doing 47 quizzes in 3 months, there is no chance that you can customize your material (I don’t mean questions here) to suit the local taste and flavour. Jokes that don’t work, lack of variation in formats and bad pronunciation of vernacular terms are some of the many problem that one faces. To be honest, though I idolize Jimmy Lennon Jr., I have had my Louis Oosthuizen* moments too many times. But, I digress. Following are reviews of the city and regional finals from the Quizmasters pen .doc. (The behind the scenes review of the semis and national final will follow after the episodes are screened on HistoryTV18. You can watch the videos of 2014 edition here)

AJAY POONIA I hosted 21 quizzes including 6 regional finals. Most of my quizzes were in North India except Mumbai and Bhubaneswar. Both cities I went to for the first time to host HIQ. While most cities offered stiff competition, Lucknow (Army Public School, Nehru Road) and Bhubaneswar (DAV, Chandrashekharpur) offered phenomenally one sided competitions. The score of these winners being more than the sum of the others. Phew!

Some other general observations- A fairly lesser known town viz-a-viz the other centers in HIQ, Saharanpur, like last year, featured extremely well prepared 25 odd teams that gave each other a good fight. Delhi is a city that offers some of the best teams and that’s because at every stage the teams face at least 50 teams. So, by the time teams reach the semis and the final, they’re well oiled and thoroughly groomed by the level of competition. It was the first time Dehradun was included as a center for HIQ and it turned out to be a fairly good decision as some of the reputed schools of this ‘Eton of the East’ participated to make it a thoroughly exciting affair, with a team of Army Public School, Birpur boys tiptoeing ahead of Welham Boys on the last question. Jaipur had a minor confusion on the last question when MSMSV pressed the buzzer but had a fairly loud private discussion for a wrong answer but when they did actually answer they got it correctly and then qualified for the regional final. And lastly, while the quiz fraternity discusses ‘why are there not enough female quizzers in the country?‘, one of the two teams that qualified from Delhi was an all girls team. Could this be because of the diversity in the content that gave a fair chance to all? But more on gender balance in quizzing in another post. *Louis Oosthuizen is pronounced as Loo-ie Oo-est-hayzen
VINAY MUDALIAR

The CBSE heritage Quiz, is one Quiz I look forward to every year. The main reason being the wonderful topic which is covered in this Quiz. I conducted the Chennai City Rounds and the Regional Finals. The Chennai City Rounds was overwhelming. The Quiz was scheduled after the sad Chennai floods. This Quiz was special for the students of Chennai and its neighbouring cities. A huge turnout and among the biggest for this Quiz. It was a privilege to conduct this Quiz for them. The quality of teams, and knowledge of the audience were brilliant. It was a close battle in the finals, where the runner up of last year finally won it this year. Perseverance was the key, which made them win it. The school teachers and principal were very cooperative and it was a delight in conducting in that school. Then came the Regional Finals at Bangalore. This Quiz was for the winners of the respective cities of this zone. Wonderful arrangements were done by the school. A great battle in the finals saw Chennai thrashing the finals, with Bangalore coming in second. The wonderful feedback of my Quiz by the students and teachers were truly humbling.
SNEHAJ SRINIVAS

Kerala witnessed quite a good round of quizzing this year at the CBSE Heritage India Quiz. Unlike last year, when only one city round was held at Kochi, we conducted a city round at Calicut as well. It was interesting to note that a good number of participants took part at both cities – around 30 schools from Calicut and 40 from Kochi. We were pleased to see that all the teams displayed a good knowledge of the things we quizzed them on, including the traditions, culture and monuments of India including the Northeastern states. The competition was high throughout every stage, right from the Calicut city round through the Kochi city round to the Kerala zonal finals and the participants really showed their mental agility throughout the whole event. All in all, we had a really good experience conducting the quiz and we, as well as all the participants who took part, look forward to future editions of this quiz in Kerala.