But as it turned out, this did nothing to detract from the quality of the quiz! A record attendance for a quiz in IIM Calcutta, a figure approaching three digits took part in an exciting opening round where some sitters were interspersed with some which caused pencils to be chewed and brows to be furrowed. As the students pondered over questions ranging from Narakasura to Pegasus, from Bruno to Calvin and from Puskas to Sharapova, the quiz master kept an eye on the chocolates which inevitably brighten up such quizzing occasions.

8 teams were chosen in the final, with the cut off score being 13 out of a maximum of 24. With only one 2nd year student allowed in a team, teams comprising of regular quizzers C. Ram Shankar, Abhishek Nagraj, Ankit Kapoor etc. took the centre stage, not to mention teams consisting the 2 Club Presidents for the year, Atul Nath and Sreekanth Reddy. But what was heartening and encouraging was to see full throttled performances from teams made up only of PGP1s, a good sign for the future of quizzing in the college.

The finals were held in a festive atmosphere, with some teams showing extreme enthusiasm in answering even other teams’ questions! Starting with a Long Visual Connect on Olympics destinations and ending with a long visual connect on liquor brands, the quiz straddled areas like football, technology, current affairs, mythology etc. The Quiz Master was liberal in distributing the chocolates for good answers, though the unfortunate scorer did not get one this time due to his sometime erratic scoring. (Just about 200 people kept scores to verify so it didn’t turn out to be an issue at all…)

A 2 member team comprising of 2nd year student Abhishek Nagraj (the Darth Lord behind JokaTimes)and 1st year student graduating from NIT Trichy, Sunil Chandrashekar, finished first. Sreekanth Reddy, Amrutanshu Mishra and Nishanth came second. Ankit Kapoor’s team (popular for unspecified reasons as Captain), with Saagar Sinha and Anand came third.

JokaTimes caught up with the quizmaster and asked for his reaction to the enthusiastic response. The Quizmaster thoroughly enjoyed the event and promised to come back again to the campus for more quizzes. The winning team was busy splitting their (imaginary) spoils but your JT reporter managed to catch them partying (see attached pic).

JokaTimes congratulates the winners and hopes to be able to replicate reporting of last season’s numerous successes in Quiz competitions in the outside world, again, this season as well. The signs are surely in the right direction!

For JokaTimes,

Sriram

It was bigger and better than ever before – the grand finale of the 5th Edition of the Tata Crucible Campus Quiz held on 5th April 2009 at the Taj Mahal Palace & Tower, Mumbai was a dazzling event. The first-ever International Final of the Tata Crucible Campus Quiz saw the Winners and Runners-Up from the UK Tata Crucible (London School of Business & Oxford University) and theSingapore Tata Crucible (Singapore Management University & Singapore Institute of Management) compete fiercely with the Winners, IIM-Calcutta, and Runners-Up, MICA-Ahmedabad from the India National Final (which preceded the International Final).

At the closely fought International Final, the intense atmosphere in the crystal room was broken by a loud cheer for Mr. Shobhit Bhatnagar andMr. C Ram Shankar of IIM-C as they edged out Ms. Aditi Nargundkar and Mr. Gaurav Banerjee of MICA-Ahmedabad on the very last question, to emerge victorious.

The Guest of Honor for the evening, Mr. R. Gopalakrishnan, Executive Director, Tata Sons, awarded the international winners with a high-end laptop each along with a holiday package of 4 days and 3 nights to Maldives along with other goodies. Felicitating the international winners, Mr. R. Gopalakrishnan stated, “The concept of Tata Crucible was aimed at giving the young minds in India a platform to showcase their talent and I am happy that Tata Crucible Campus Quiz has been supremely successful in doing so.”

From Cool Avenues: http://www.coolavenues.com/bschools/090401/iimc-tata-1.php

The pleasure of connecting obscure and unrelated people, the frustration of not figuring out the obvious reference in the question, the satisfaction of cracking a good question by picking up the clues, the thrill of beating the buzzer and the silent but fervent prayers in the heart that competing teams miss a question for which you know the answer. These are some of the emotions a quizzer takes pleasure in going through. But quizzers are one of the most misunderstood bunches of people. One has to be a quizzer to understand the passion associated with it. For all the IIMCians who are bitten by the quizzing bug, IcQc (or IIM Calcutta Quiz Club) takes precedence over everything else.

The club has a unique style of conducting meetings (maybe “arbit bakar sessions on drinks” is more appropriate term) in which literally anything under the sun is discussed upon. The regular, general as well as silo, quizzes conducted by members turn out to be much more competitive than expected and are eagerly looked forward to. But the biggest of all tasks is conducting the open and inter college quizzes by the club. The high standard of quizzes conducted by them is renowned in the quizzing circles within Calcutta as well as outside. As the members proudly proclaim on their T-shirts- “Perestroika and Glasnost… All fun at first sight… But in the end… We are always right”

In the past one year members of the club have done exceedingly well in prestigious tournaments like BT Acumen, ET Citi Grandmasters, NTPC Electron Quiz and Nihilanth(inter IIT-IIM quiz tournament). IIMCians are currently defending champions of both BT Acumen and ET Citi Grandmasters. Apart from these the prizes won in other inter college quizzes are innumerable. But the members believe that these are just perks. For a true quizzer, quizzing is a reward in itself!!!

Apart from IIM C, the finalists from eastern zone are from eminent b-schools like , IIFT, XLRI and XIMB. The event will comprise of Debate, Quiz and a Bourse game.

The Indian Institute of Management Calcutta (IIMC) wrested the top spot in the B-School quizzing arena, by winning the Acumen 2008 National Quiz.

Represented by Ram Shankar and Shobhit Bhatnagar, the IIMC team, winners of the East Zone finals, met their counterparts from SIBM Pune, IBS Bangalore and IIM Lucknow in the final showdown that was hosted on Saturday, December 13 at the Taj Palace in Delhi.

Initially scheduled to be on November 29 at the Taj Mahal in Mumbai, the event was postponed and relocated after the terrorist attacks at that hotel.

Acumen has been a highly reputed annual quiz show since its inception. This year’s edition was hosted by Harsha Bhogle, who also hosted the four zonal finals at Bangalore, Delhi, Kolkata and Mumbai.

The Eastern zonal finals, hosted at the IIM Calcutta campus, saw participation from leading business schools in this region such as IIMC, IIT Kharagpur, IIFT Kolkata and Praxis Business School, Kolkata. A hard-fought battle saw IIMC coming out on top.

IIM C won the finals with ease, winning the quiz with 130 points as against 50 points obtained by the first runner-up. “A lot has got to do with the culture out there. Each of the colleges we faced in the East Zone finals was a potential national champion.” says Ram, a first year student in IIMC’s post graduate management programme.

IIMC has a dynamic and enthusiastic quiz club (called ICQC – IIM C Quiz Club), well-respected by its peers in and around the city. Its members have won various awards over the last few years, on all levels of quizzing. “The quizzing culture at IIM Calcutta is one of the best in the country. The regular quizzing sessions by ICQC help keep our interest alive, even in highly competitive academic environments such as this” says Shobhit, who is also in the first year of the PG management programme.

Acumen is a Business Today quiz event, and sponsored by the Aditya Birla Group.