The Landmark Quiz 2008

Every year, the quizzers of Chennai (and a few guys from Bangalore, Hyderabad and elsewhere) gather at the Colosseum of quizzing on the 15th of August, to take part in the Landmark quiz, the most prestigious quiz in the city.As usual, it was me, Mario and N.Dinesh. ND came up with a cool team name(which i wont put up here for reasons personal :P) after several hours of brow creasing thought, hoping to fetch us the best team name :) . And as usual, Mario came by bicycle, wearing his cap,only this time, he was wearing full pants :) and not shorts. We found our seats and were sittin with another team from college, listening to some nice Eric Johnson and Eric Clapton tracks. This was also the first quiz where all 3 of us brought pens with us :|.

At 330, the man of the hour, Dr.Navin Jayakumar stepped on to the stage to kick off the landmark prelims. The landmark quiz had several novelties this year. One was the concept of an all India final, after regionals were held in Bangalore Pune, and there in Chennai, and this was to follow right on the heels of the Chennai regionals. Another big thing was the fact that the quiz was going to be aired on CNBC TV. After a few words about the sponsors, Dr.Navin started off with the prelims. There were some anticipated questions, like the "Maximum Khel Ratnas for which sport"(the answer being shooting), some Independance day trivia, a question on the late Field Marshall Sam Manekshaw, The Kungfu Panda question, and yeah Kuselan. The last question was a video , where we had to identify the child artist(Imraan Khan). This one, we wrote the answer even before the question was put up,due to 2 reasons - 1.Instinct and 2. We didn't have too many options to debate about :)

Overall, the questions were very good, interesting to everyone in the audi. There was one question- geometrical term for an egg shaped curve, for which, after some high funda thought, we answered- lemniscate, while the actual answer was given by a 6 year old, who said Oval. Big bulb :) . But then, we achieved a personal best of 22 on 40. The qualifying teams were announced and there were no surprises as the usual suspects took to the stage.

Round 1 comprised of 15 questions of the infinite bounce format, starting off aptly with a question on Tamil Thai Vaazhthu. The questions,as ever, were extremely interesting and the quizzers onstage were equal to the high funda stuff that was being asked. This round was followed by a round of Buzzer questions, were teams had mixed fortunes. Then came round 3 - infinite bounce again, where a question on Sagging jeans incited some creative answers from the participants and the audience. Round 4 was the one on one which would determine the Quizzer of the day. Arul Mani (4) of Metaquizzics, Thejaswi Udupa(3)- the guy who cracks the daily questions on qfi's blog regularly,Sriram(2), Samanth(3) - know him well,one of the best quizzers around, Rajagopal(5), Vinod (2) - the mensa dude and Alagar Swami(4) battled for the title, but it went to Ravi who got 6 questions right, to claim the crown.

With that round, the landmark quiz,Chennai edition drew to a close, with QED (Samanth,Ramana and JK) finishing first and "Singh may be King, But Iyer is Higher" (Vinod Ganesh, Ram Kumar and Krishnamurthi) finishing 2nd. Since this year's edition was going to be aired on TV, it was shorter than usual, and the usual Long connects, multi level connects and floaters were missing. The quality was great, all the same.

After a short break, the National final commenced, with the winners and runners from the Pune and Bangalore editions,joining the Chennai champions. The Bangalore winners- Quizzing Gouramis (Gopal, Swami and Sumo) were actually from Chennai :). Again,round 1 was infinite bounce, the questions of higher standards. There was a question on the change in color of the yolk of the egg when boiled, one of my favorites and the last question-asking contestants to connect 2 videos (The Tara rum pum pum song and a clip from Khabi Khushi Khabi Ghum) and an audio - Polly wolly doodle (of which Dr.Navin did a replay, showing off his singing skills as well :) ) was brilliantly cracked by the Chennai runners- Singh May be King. The next round was an innovative one, where teams had to choose from topics, and as the question s read and another team goes for the buzzer, the team whose question it was, had to make an attempt, failing which the team hitting the buzzer would get a chance. A bit complicated, yes, but made things interesting.
Then came another set of infinite bounce with a very nice question about Goldilocks zones(nice funda) and Rene Higuita's Scorpion kick. The "watch the birdie" question was the pick of the lot.At the end of this round, QED, backed by the home crowd were on 90 and so too were the Quizzing Gouramis, as the teams went into the buzzer round.

In the last round, QED went for with,no holds barred, but had mixed fortunes, as they finished on 85 and Quizzing Gouramis won the quiz with 95. Singh Maybe King came 3rd. It was a great quiz, thanks to the wonderful research team and Dr.Navin's amazing on-stage presence. He is indeed my favorite quizmaster.

Overall, it was a fantastic experience. I also managed to do something useful- i noted down all the questions asked (atleast the answers). If any of you, who missed the quiz, want the prelims, mail me at pdeepak88@yahoo.co.in and i ll send it to you.

Until next time............