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Quid Quiz?

OK, so now it’s official.

IIM Indore has its quiz-fest (named ‘Nihilanth’) on 4th and 5th October. I am supposed to conduct the Music, Movies and Entertainment quiz. Well, the press releases and online promos don’t mention my name, and I wasn’t taking things ( like preparing questions, or deciding on the format of the quiz) too seriously. Yesterday, I got the two-way air tickets delivered to my office, so now things are serious.

Frankly speaking, I am scared. I have too few questions, and people like Siddharth Basu (yes, him.) and Arul Mani and Gautam Ghosh are doing the other quizzes. The usual nightmares, of stammering on stage, or somebody pouncing up and saying ( worst-case scenario: some other QM doing this) – “No man, your funda is all wrong.”, or the deadliest of them all, me forgetting the answer to my own question. Yes, that has happened to me once, I was on stage goggling like a water-deficient fish for about 7 seconds, trying to figure out whether the answer given by the team is the correct answer or not. Trust me, when you are onstage, everyone can hear you think. (this one occasion had a happy ending, though. I just pretended, like all “good” quizmasters do, that Team C’s answer was a wrong one, and sauntered over to Team D, my mind working wildly all the time. By then, inspiration struck, I realised that the previous team had answered right, so I whirled around, and said “TEN POINTS for Team C!!!” real loud, and also managed to ask “Was that a guess, or did you know the answer?” Team C was, of course, too relieved to answer. ) This generally happens because the paranoid me does not write down the anwers along with the questions, just to ensure that there isn’t a chance of anyone coming upon the Q&A and…..

Hmm. So couple of things I am really concerned about –

  • The anti-plagiarist in me says, no quiznet repeats. The practical guy says, how on earth do I check if my questions have not appeared in quiznet before?
  • I don’t have enough visual questions, as in video clips/pictures. Asked for permission to use the CDG scanner, and that’s done. I just have to coordinate my sources, that’s all.
  • I think I won’t have to worry about audio questions. One hour with my mp3s should be enough. Memo: get rid of id3 tags. Should I save as mp3s or write the tracks as an audio cd? Or both?
  • Got to keep the questions short, so that I don’t ramble onstage. I think this will be tough. Keeping questions short, I mean, not not rambling. Stop rambling, dumkopf.
  • And I have to make sure my questions are based on “reliable” sources. *Cookup* is a word that’s very unsparingly used among quizzers.

Hey, I just realised that cartoons by Charles Addams are very hard to come by on the Web. Not only that, his books, or rather, collected editions of his ‘toons for The New Yorker magazine sell for quite high prices on eBay. Which makes me quite happy, because I have five of his books, in the paperback Dell editions of the 50’s and 60’s. The biggest tragedy happens to be the fact that the Charles Addams Estate donated his entire body of work to the New Yorker magazine after the artist’s death. Tchah! That lowers my chances of ever buying Addams original art.

Vice City Update: Tommy Vercetti now owns a large mansion facing the Ocean. The Vercetti estate, formerly the Diaz Estate generates a daily income of five thousand dollars through various (ahem) sources. Rampages passed: 11 out of 35. Hee hee hee ho ho ho ha ha.

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28 thoughts on “Quid Quiz?

  1. On the same plane as Siddharth Basu!!! Hail beatzo!! (birdonthewire reminds himself to bow whenever/wherever he catches beatzo next)

    Good luck dude, nothing quite like conducting quizzes. I got as far as doing a few in k-circle and at college, but preparing for one was too damn time consuming, and I stopped volunteering! :-)

    • Heh heh. I hope I get to take a picture with la Basu. At least to show my crotchetty relatives who would complain about my neglecting studies and saying stuff like – ‘quizzing will get u nowhere.’

    • Anonymous says:

      since he is being modest for once…i will tell the story.

      this guy had been the resident m&m (music and movies) guru at the college. and a few years ago at the quiz fest we had, he had had, as usual, a powerful entertainment quiz.

      his fame, i presume, has since spread far and wide.

      btw, for those who came in late, he has also been the lone wolf at saarang (IIT Madras’s fest)

  2. Here’s to the last known functional assembly of the quiz club at RECW!! Way to go, and let me know if you need any “help” :P (as if I could help you make a better M’n M quiz :))

    • Hey, that’s kinda unfair, because Uddu’s still going string, rumour is that he saves his salary and makes a living out of his quiz earnings. :-)

      Help! I need visuals!

  3. Anonymous says:

    Great work :)

    Great work, beatzo. As one who participated in the quiz, made it to the finals, and then lost on stage in almost all quizzes, I must say that of all the four, AM, GG, SB and you, yours was the best quiz. This is spoken from a die-hard quizzer’s perspective of course who judges a QM solely by his questions and not by his histrionics, innuendoes or seemingly-playful insults.

    Hope to run into you again in the future.

    Gaurav

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