2011 has seen IIM Calcutta hosting arguably the most prestigious quizzing tournament in India, Nihilanth – the pan IIT – IIM quizfest. Referred to as the “Woodstock of Indian Quizzing” by Kolkata quizzer Sounak Chakravarti, this battle of the brains started off in 2003 and since then has been the holy grail of Indian Quizzing.

After much off the scene action, drama and debate, IIM Calcutta won the bid to be the proud hosts of Nihilanth 2011. 8 institutes participated in all- IITs B, G, Kgp and R; and IIMs A, B, C and L, thus making it a well-represented Nihilanth.

Before we get pitch-side to the action, let us introduce you to the basic rules of Nihilanth.

Rule 1: The winner of each quiz gets 10 points, second place gets 8, and so on for the top five spots. The total at the end of six quizzes decides who wins Nihilanth.

Rule 2: Not more than two teams from the same institute shall be allowed to participate in the final round of any quiz, unless the quiz master decides to be gracious enough to allow them as an extra team in the final.

Rule 3: The quizmaster is GOD. Apart from having the routine powers of Omniscience and the like, the quizmaster gets to decide how many teams feature in the final round of any quiz, and also has the insanely controversial power of overwriting any of the above rules.

Nihilanth 2011 would see its fair share of controversies, short tempers and glitches. But hopefully, what will be remembered when the tale is recounted to grand-children would be the high quality of the quizzes, the lauded efforts of the quiz-masters and the brilliant cracks that the fest saw. The best part was perhaps that almost all the participating institutes managed to find a place on the leader-board, contributing to the competition and high standards that this iconic fest has led us to expect.

The three, quoting a certain sitcom celebrity, “legendary” days of quzzing started off with the Sports Quiz, conducted by IIMC 2009 alumnus Kaushik Saha. Having first graduated from IIT Kgp, Kaushik has been a three time Nihilanth participant. From the start of the prelims, he looked like a man on a mission. A mission to conquer every single sport and game known or not known to man through the course of the quiz. And the clueless participants would agree with me when I claim that he did succeed to a great extent. Anyhow, after a thrilling bout of quizzing, IIMA came out as the eventual winners, with IITB also getting on the leaderboard with a well-deserved second place finish; and the home team of Sunil, Kamath and Gairik keeping IIMC in the running with a hard fought third place.

Suffice to say, the tone of the competition of the next three days had already been set. After narrowly beating IIMC, IIMA took hold of the top spot on the leader-board, with the home team nipping at their heels, just a few points behind.

But the night was still young and the participants were eager for more action. Shamanth Rao, IITM-IIMK graduate, conducted what is perhaps the most prestigious of all quizzes – the Lone Wolf Quiz for the third Nihilanth running. Canine imagery notwithstanding, the Lone Wolf is the ultimate test of claws, howls, and brain cells.

Getting into his groove, and striking fear into the hearts of the rival pack, P. Srikant, alumnus of the 2002 PGDM Batch, current FP student and ICQC’s star quizzer, blasted all opposition out of the way. Jaws were dropped, Eyebrows scaled hitherto unheard of heights. IIMA managed a distant 2nd, while Harsh Ketkar (Ketu, for the uninitiated), QC Presi and 2010 Nihilanth Lone Wolf Champion came third, making it an IIMA-IIMC game all the way.

Saturday morning dawned, fresh and bright. But for the 60 engineers and managers in waiting, assembled from all over the country, this was no day for rest. The long day started with the Biztech Quiz, hosted by Vijay Anand Menon, alumnus of the 2008 batch. The IIM Calcutta Quiz Club had the unique honour of witnessing a quiz conducted by the alum who gave us our name (earlier we went by the name of “Kweej Club”).

Featuring elite engineering alums turned managers, the teams from the various IIMs were pleasantly embarrassed by the young team from IIT Kharagpur, who led the quiz from start to finish, to gain a few good points. IIMA, much to the chagrin of the home crowd, managed to pip IIMC on the last question to finish an impressive second, and in the process, enforce a 2 point lead on the Nihilanth leaderboard.

At the half way stage, then, it was IIMA with an ever so slender lead.

Infusing the event with Kolkata’s distinguished brand of quizzing was the India Quiz, conducted by local quizzer Sounak Chakravarti. Over the 3 hours of nerve-wracking competition and awe-inspiring cracks, the quiz seemed poised to fall anyway, between the four IIMC and IIMA teams in the fray. The leaderboard status quo, however, remained intact, with IIMA taking 1st and 4th position, and IIMC coming in 2nd and 3rd. IIT Roorkee led the IITs at the 5th place.

Rounding off the night was Satyajit Chetri, conducting the Media, Arts, Literature & Entertainment (or – MELA) quiz. It should be mentioned here that Satya, aka Beatzo, has become an inseparable part of Nihilanth, having hosted a quiz in each edition. He is also credited to have invented the MELA quiz. The MELA quiz is usually the most popular amongst all events, attracting a diverse crowd of rockers, bookworms and cinephiles. Right off the bat, the IIT Kgp contingent sailed ahead of the competition, leaving the other teams to jostle for mere seconds. The quiz was definitely the most challenging quiz of Nihilanth, with teams struggling to name arcane bands, remember long forgotten books and identify the latest hits from Nigerian Cinema (okay, just kidding!). IIT Kgp asserted its dominance and won the quiz by a massive margin. The IIMs A and C pulled in at a distant 2nd and 3rd – and so – you guessed it – keeping the leaderboard status quo unchanged.

Finally, came the big daddy of quizzing – the General Quiz. Conducted by J. Ramanand, winner of Mastermind India and an alumnus of College of Engineering, Pune and IIT Bombay. This battle was to decide the war, and some battle it was. The points standing to start this quiz was – IIMA 54 points to IIMC’s 52.

With the last round remaining, the standings were thus: IIMC with a miniscule lead over IIMA, with the other IIMA team coming third and IIMC – fourth. With these scores, the last round began. A pulse-o-meter would perhaps have predicted imminent heart attacks in not just the contestants, but the onlooking junta as well. Thunderous was the applause every time somebody cracked a question, and all teams apart from IIMC and IIMA appeared to melt into the shadows. Nihilanth was poised on a knife’s edge with five questions to go. And as they say, cometh the hour, cometh the man. As though equipped with a version of Thor’s hammer imbued with Krishna’s Chakra, P. Srikant came into his own. With lightning answers slicing the opposition into infinite slices, almost single handedly, the knight in rusty armor managed to delight the cheering home support out of their distress, allowing IIMC to finish a clear 1st. However, whilst this clash of the titans ended favorably for the hosts, the war was to be decided by the battle for third. With four questions to go, IIMA was in the 3rd place, with a 1 point lead over the team of Sunil, Kamath and Nilay. With two remaining, the teams were level. And then came the moment that none of the home supporters in the jam-packed room will forget in a hurry- Sunil cracked a question that was left unanswered by all the other teams, leading to a massive victory of epic proportions for IIMC, by the slenderest of margins possible.

And with this, IIMC became not only the only institute to host Nihilanth twice, but also the first one to win it twice. Quizzing is no easy feat. But then, we are Icy Queasy.

A list of the results then:

Sports Quiz – Kaushik Saha

1st – IIMA, 2nd – IITB, 3rd – IIMC

Lone Wolf Quiz – Shamanth Rao

1st – IIMC, 2nd – IIMA, 3rd – IIMC

Biztech Quiz – Vijay Anand Menon

1st – IIT Kgp, 2nd – IIMA, 3rd – IIMC

India Quiz – Sounak Chakravarti

1st – IIMA, 2nd – IIMC, 3rd – IIMC

MELA Quiz -Satyajit Chetri

1st – IIT Kgp, 2nd – IIMA, 3rd – IIMC

General Quiz -J. Ramanand

1st – IIMC, 2nd – IIMA, 3rd – IIMC

Final Positions

1st – IIMC, 2nd – IIMA, 3rd – IIT Kgp

-  Saurabh Mittal and Nilay Puntambekar

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.