Another Landmark Quiz and another bummer. While I have visited the quiz since my 10th grade, never made the cut: the closest we came was during 3rd year of college when we fell short by 1 point, that too when we were at the peak of our quizzing powers. We registered for the 18th edition of the landmark quiz (which apparently will be telecast) as a corporate team and called ourselves the "Quizzards of the Quizditch". Not sure about the total number of teams who sat for the prelims, but the Music Academy hall was full and additionally few folks were on the waiting list.
Dr.Naveen Jayakumar, who apparently is one of the top 10 eye surgeons, along with his even more quiz wise mom and another associate, set the questions for the show. The crowd, as usual had celebrities (read as the ever popular quizzer Kasturi), grandparents and their grandchildren, serious quiz veterans, and people like me - who just hoped to qualify. The prelims consisted of 40 questions, and we ended up scoring a mediocre 21, while we could have worked out easily another 6 questions, if only we had been quizzing regularly. Well, the cutoffs were way too high with the least being somewhere around 33 and the top score was a cool 37.
There were prizes for best team names from school, college and corporate respectively. Some of the whacky ones included:
H1 Anyone, H1N1 Someone, Pigs fly Swine Flu, Born to Rule-Forced to School, Dhakkan Chargers, Mama Machaan Maapillai, No Enthu Da
Incidentally, the regional winners from respective regions didn’t consist of the native folks, instead was made up of predominantly Chennaites who probably migrated to those regions for few days solely for quizzing. The top two teams from Pune, Bangalore and Mumbai joined ones from Chennai finals, and it promised to be a mouth watering affair. After a 10 minute break, the finals started with the traditional team QED lagging behind in the first few rounds. The quiz format was pretty simple - with 20 Qs split into two rounds, two buzzer rounds and one final round of 5 questions. At the end of all, two teams were tied for the top spot and three were tied for the 2nd runners-up spot. After 3 sudden death Qs, QED were crowned champions (consisting of the ever consistent VV Ramanan) while "No Enthu Da" took the second spot with Jayakanthan's team taking the 3rd spot. The winners got gift vouchers in addition to a trophy and PS2 set. Vijay Amritraj, who was accompanied by his parents, graced the occasion and was impromptu with some wisecracks. All in all a wakeup call for the likes of me, who aspire to do well year after year: dead but not buried yet.
Below are some of the prelim Qs:
1. The background female voice in the National Anthem - D.K. Pattamal
2. What does M stand for in MR Radha and M Vasanthakumar - Madras
3. The two females from India who passed away recently and were voted by Vogue as top 10 beautiful women in the world years back - Gayatri Devi and Leela Naidu
4. The element which was found by french astronomer Pierre Janssen in 1868 to exist outside earth before it was spotted on earth, and had its existence was determined in the tobacco fields in Guntur ( Something to do with liquid ) - Helium
5. The two marks usually found as footnotes in books/articles - Asterix and Obelisk
6. In FedEx word, where can you find the hidden arrow - between E and X
7. What are a bunch of bananas called - A hand of bananas
8. Where would you find the poster: What does it take to find love - a) money b) luck c) smarts d) destiny - Slumdog Millionaire
9. The answer was swine flu, don’t remember the Q
10. A dish traditionally made from Thamiraiparani River water made famous by a marwari family around 300 years ago in their shop Lakshmi Vilas - Thirunelveli Halwa
11. Which animated habitant of the bikini bottom and belonging to the spongiferes species was recently added to the Madam Tussaud's Wax Museum in NY - SpongeBob Squarepants
12. While travelling by train, at which place did Gandhi stop and was inspired to don his famous dhoti after seeing the local peasants? - Madurai
13. Other than Cricket and Tennis, in which other sport Hawk Eye technology is used? - Snooker
14. Which state accounts for 48% of the area of Pakistan and is the largest? - Balochistan
15. Who pioneered the first rath yatra - NT Ramarao
16. These two personalities were at the Systems Research Institute in Pune, while one won the Magsaysay award this year, the other had an equally profound effect on the corporate world. Who were they? - Deep Joshi and Narayanamurthy
17. Maya Kulkarni stepped in to play the tambura to accompany these two musicians in 1969 to perform in front of a couple hundred thousand of fans. Who were the musicians - Pt Ravi Shankar and Ustad Allah Rakha at the Woodstock festival
18. In HG Wells, war of the worlds, what did the Martians die of? - Common Cold
19. Who or what was part of the initial Apple Computer Corp's logo? - Isaac Newton
20. This organization got its name because the members used to meet in the offices of each other in turns - Rotary Club
21. French Open in Europe refers to the Golf Tournament instituted in 1906. By what other name is the famous tennis tournament referred - Roland Garros
22. Who or what inspired the name Yensid Retlaw for the sorcerer in the story Fantasia - Walter Disney
23. In Mahabharata, one character sought the art of warfare from a character, who had given away all his fortunes and hence decided to teach art of warfare instead. Who were the two characters? - Parashuram imparted the knowledge to Dronacharya
24. What term was coined by the Finns to refer to the weapon used by them against the Russians? - Molotov Cocktail
25. Which fictional character's death was announced in the NY times editorial in 1976? - Hercule Poirot
26. Which Kannada's poet's statue is being inaugurated in Chennai? - Saravjna
27. The decline of vulture population is a cause of worry for which community in India? - Parsee, coz they leave the dead bodies to be eaten by vultures, since they don’t bury or burn the bodies
28. Traditionally vessels are named based on the meaning of words. Which vessel gets its name from the Sanskrit version of "leaf" - Pathiram (from Patram)
29. Visual from Angels and Demons. Link with a road in Chennai - Pantheon Road, and the visual showed the Pantheon which is the temple of all gods in Greek mythology
30. Visual of Kat Kaif dressed as whom in a lakme fashion week - As Barbie
31. Visual of a game whose name is after a very popular quiz show - Mastermind
32. Visual of a building (clue a white fence), which famous American writer - Mark Twain (white picket fence in Tow Sawyer)
33. Clip of Nagesh in a movie, what is the title role - Server Sundaram
34. Visual of a personality in three different movies: Spiderman, Hulk and? - Stan Lee
35. Clip of inauguration of a building? - Hotel Atlantis in Al Jumeirah in Dubai. 7 times of Beijing Olympics fireworks used for this inauguration, which was visible from space
36. A soundtrack which was inspired by a original composition in an 1936 English movie by the maker who composed the music as well - Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times
37. Soundtrack of a movie which was to be released today - Vikram in Kanthasamy
