Thoughts on Framing a Quiz Question

A good quiz question should meet a large number of the following characteristics

• Long enough to provide sufficient details / clues. And short enough to enable a quick grasp of what's being asked.
• High probability that the participants can work out or guess the answer, based on the data available and other facts that they are likely to know. Once revealed, the subject of the answer should be known to many.
• Relevance. Provide new information that is interesting. Questions should provoke thought. It should not be merely a test of instant recall for answers. Though, audience should be able to recall Q&A after the event.
• On revealing the answer, the reaction of the crowd should be - 'That's nice to know', or 'Oh! Interesting, I didn't know that', or 'I should have guessed that'. It should not lead one to think - 'Who's / What's that?', or 'Ok, So what?', or 'Who cares'
• Should bring out the erudition / intelligence of the quizzers, rather than the QM's. Of course no harm in the question setter showing off knowledge or creativity, but it should not be through throwing multiple bouncers at the teams.
• Clarity. Should not lead to multiple possible answers. At times, in order to not give away the answer, the setter may have to keep it a bit vague. However on the answer being revealed, it should be immediately acceptable as the only possible answer that meets all criteria set in the question.
• Difficulty. Answerable by at least 10% of the crowd. Not known to > 80% of the participants.
• Veracity. No cooked up facts to make it interesting.
• Its ok to an extent, and perhaps unavoidable, to repeat / copy some questions from other quizzes. Especially if the participants are relative newcomers to quizzing, and are not likely to have seen the questions before. But with Kopimism having a large number of adherents among quizzers, its unlikely that no one has seen the same question before. So even if a question is being repeated, try and frame it differently. Or bring out some other aspect of the topic. Or build on previously asked questions on the theme.

A good 'set of questions' would fulfil a number of the foll:

• Wide & Diverse range of topics. Though sticking within the theme of the quiz. e.g. A sports quiz would have all questions on sports. But it should not end up with half of them on cricket.
• High on originality of questions. i.e, Keep repeated / copied questions to a minimum
• Taken from multiple sources. Especially if questions are being lifted L,S & B. A team should not be able to ace the quiz, merely because they've gone through the year's KQA Mahaquizzer. Or because they subscribe to the Time magazine. Or have read the last week's newspapers.
• Does not lead to a fastest finger competition. Especially if buzzers are involved.
• Should be difficult to 'prepare' for. Be unpredictable
• At the end of the quiz, all participants should feel that they have learnt some new stuff.
• 75-90% of questions answered by participants.

Bird Watching

Seems the majority of the traffic to this blog is from those searching for 'quiz questions'. So will oblige and put up a few. This is from a round I’d asked at an informal gathering at Muscat, sometime back. Round title is ‘Bird Watching’.

1. Which Omani company’s name translates to “Seagull”?

2. Who was given a Guard of Honour by both the teams, India (led by Azhar) and England (led by Nasser Hussain) at his 66th and last test match at Lords in 1996?

3. Which famous name is the author of the book, 'Birds of the West Indies'? The cover also has the following text, "A field guide to all the birds of the Carribean Islands, with 94 color illustrations by Don R Ecklebury and 186 line drawings by Earl R Poole".

4. Darby Shaw, a Tulane University Law student wrote an essay speculating on the motives behind the assassination of two supreme court judges. And then got into all sorts of trouble for it. What was her write-up called?

5. Which NBA star of the 80s was also called the “Great White Hope”?

6. The National Anxiety Center is a sceptical organization whose purpose is to debunk scare stories promoted by environmental and consumer organizations such as 'global warming' and ozone depletion. It announces an annual ____ ____ award. The trophy is a rubber ______. Named after which fable character? (Hint: Char shared a fear with Vitalstatistix)

7. This Omani conglomerate’s name translates to “Peacock”. Which?

8. The Mad Hatter asks Alice this riddle, which is never answered in the story. Many answers were suggested much later. The most popular answer is, “Poe wrote on both." What’s the question?

9. Complete this nursery rhyme. "Vintery, mintery, cutery, corn, Apple seed and apple thorn; Wire, briar, limber lock Three geese in a flock. One flew east, And one flew west, ____________________________________"

10. Complete this famous line from a more famous book. "I'd rather you shot at tin cans in the back yard, but I know you'll go after birds. Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit ‘em, but remember it's a sin _________________.”

Notes: Questions 3, 9 & 10 are chestnuts. 1 & 7 provide the local flavour. While all are easy, 5 should be a sitter for anyone who follows sports. WRT framing, am particularly happy with the way #4 turned out. Also #8. Will put the answers in the comments, in a couple of days.

ISM Inter-house quiz 2011

Had the pleasure of conducting the inter-house quiz at Indian School Muscat for the 4th year running. Some takeaways:

• Green house won. It was Yellow the last 3 years.
• Some good answers by all teams. The difference between the 1st and last teams was quite small compared to previous years.
• My fav question was on the link between Geococcyx Californianus & Canis Latrans. Was easily cracked.
• Best answered question was the one relating to Sarah Burton. Answered by the only girl in the audience. Unfortunately there was none on stage.
• A couple of the teams this year were a bit more tuned to entertainment questions.
• Q related to Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds' song O Children went unanswered but drew the most oohs & aahs
• Was held on a Thursday. Since school has shifted to a 5 day week, not much audience.

Times of Oman Open Quiz 2010

The 14th edition of the Times of Oman Open Quiz unfolded on Friday 23rd April 2010, following the prelims on 20th. Departing from the practice of the past few years, this time the quiz was set much later in April than usual. And the gap between the prelims & finals was widened to 2 days. So the finals ended up being on a Friday rather than Thursday. Various inconveniences included the weather being much warmer, and the following day being a school day for the bulk of the audience. Suspect both these changes were dictated by the IPL schedule. 20th & 23rd were the only dates without T20 matches clashing.

Nevertheless the show was a fantastic success with Pickbrain proving the ever effective anchor, and the fluctuating fortunes of the teams right up to the end, keeping everyone on the edge. In the end we managed to finish winners for a 4th consecutive time, nudging 'Questionable Characters' to 2nd for a 2nd consecutive year. 'Quizzically Challenged', on stage for the 1st time, put in an assured performance, ending 3rd. The two school teams in the finals - Sri Lankan & ISG were both very impressive. Both lost out on a top 3 position mainly due to the negatives accumulated.
 

QMs typically fall at one of two extremes on scales of entertainment value and learning quotient. The entertainers - those who pander to the audience, asking populist questions, that half the audience can easily answer. They are also more likely to use buzzer rounds, and introduce great variance in points per answer.  They can talk a dime to the dozen, and ensure that there is not a moment's silence the entire evening. Most of the big name QMs would fall into this category. At the other end are the quizzer QMs. They are typically quizzers 1st, and quizmasters next. Questions would tend to be filled with layers of detail and obscure fact and would normally fly over the heads of most of the audience. And usually, over most of the participants as well. But one comes back from such an event having learned a lot more.

Pickbrain, amazingly, has managed to combine both ends, more successfully than anyone I've seen. While he is a fantastic entertainer that can keep crowds of ~5000 captivated, he also manages to ask quite a few mind provoking questions. It is not at all easy to do this. While I'd personally prefer that he makes the questions even tougher, I also realize that if he makes it any less topical or more difficult, he'd start to lose both the audience and some participants.

In addition to getting the mix right, it also helps that he is extremely down to earth, is very approachable, has a good sense of humour, knows a bit about the questions he asks and is comfortable with himself. He tries to put the focus on the teams rather than himself, and projects even the easiest of answers as works of genius. Moreover he is quite open to suggestions, from both the teams and the crowd. Case in point - he lengthened this edition of the finals after getting feedback that last time's was too short. The no. of questions went up from 30 to 42. Main reason for shortening was to include the school pre-finals before the open.

The prelims were, as has been the norm with the TOO open, quite high scoring. The cut-off was 21 on tie-breaker with the top score being 24/26. There were probably half a dozen teams on 20, and perhaps the same number on 19. The disadvantage of having an easy prelims is you can't afford to make  many mistakes. The difference between the top team, and ones that did not make it can be as low as 3 points. Many good team thus end missing the finals due to this low margin for error. 'Jet Set Go' were among the notable victims this year. The flip side is that many teams go back feeling they missed by just a whisker, there were many easy questions where they nearly wrote the correct answer, and resolve to come back the next year more prepared. A stronger prelim would discourage many teams from attempting again. I'd personally prefer a low scoring prelim with clear daylight between the qualifiers and also-rans.

23rd evening started with the school pre-finals. 3 teams stood out. Sri Lankan School were very impressive , ending up winners. ISG team showed last year's results were not fluke, and that they have improved further. ISM All Over Again flattered to deceive - all over again:( And Indian School School Sohar & ABA also chipped in with a few decent answers.

The finals started off in a bad way for us. The 1st question of the quiz was to us, and we were as baffled as most of the audience. To add salt, the question was answered by one of the school  teams, ISG. After 14 (33%) of the questions were asked we were yet to open account. One of my friends later remarked to me that he was feeling very embarrassed for us at that stage. And thought it was all over for us. Our thoughts at that moment were 'Lets try to not finish last.' We finally managed to score off the last 2 questions of the 2nd round.

The scores read out at the end of the 2nd & 4th rounds both showed 'Questionable Characters' with comfortable leads. This was not a big surprise, as they were expected (at least by me) to win this year. A very strong team with all members pulling their weight. They were particularly impressive in the 4th round at the end of which they had a 26 point lead over us. By then our position had improved enough for us to change our aim from avoiding wooden spoon, to going for silver.

This was not a foregone result, since all teams were delivering punches, and showing that they were not there to make the numbers. The 2 school teams - Sri Lankan & ISG - showed they were not at all intimidated  by the occasion. Both were done in by their suicidal affinity for the buzzer. ISG more so.

The turnaround for us came in the 5th and penultimate round - the link round. Or 'Lateral Thinking' round, as Giri likes to call it. We managed to score enough to come within a point of the leaders. We scored on the 1st question of the last round and took the lead. Then ISG took over. They literally monopolized the buzzer for the next few questions, effectively keeping all other teams stuck to their respective scores. They cam within a point of 3rd place. Their earlier accumulation of negatives proved to be their undoing.

Coverage Photos - by Gopi & from the Times.

in the Times of Oman

Mostly Clueless, again
Never a dull moment
Lapping it up

Will there be a new winner?

Quizzing - The Whys & Hows

Link Heavy post. Largely derived from the Boat Club QC notes.

How

Niranjan on How to set a quiz or sweet scorn soup for the quizzical soul. And on setting a quiz. And a few tips more.  

Ramanand continuing on the passing format. Explaining Direct & Pass. And Infinite Rebounds. And some update on Infinite Rebounds.And on why we have so many chestnuts in quizzes.

Abhishek provides a checklist for organizing quizzes. 

The Pune gang on making quizzes popular.

Hirak suggests the inclusion of the Pounce & Bounce.  

Dhoomketu on What is a good question?

Pour Quoi

Amit Varma on the joys of quizzing, and why it is not just a trivial pursuit.

Tadatmya Vaishnav in defence of quizzing. In 2 parts. Part 1 at the bottom of the link.

For the insatiated only
Abhishek on the Centaurian system.

Anantha explains College Bowls in the US in 2 parts

2 quizzes - Quizpot & ISM Senior Open

Had conducted the quizpot senior quiz on Nov 5th. An event completely overshadowed by Mamata Shankar's dance, the same night at Al Bustan. The quiz went of pretty well. ISM dominated the show with a 1-2 finish. One of the teams was far ahead of the rest of the pack. The remaining teams were more or less clustered together on the final scores.

The encouraging aspect was, some of the teams' willingness to take a shot at every question asked. This treating of the "Pass" as a cardinal sin, augurs well for the future. A lot of questions, which the quizpot team felt could not be answered, were in fact easily cracked. And some which were not seen as too tough, did actually pass on to the audience. An example was the failure to identify the famous nickname for Amitabh Bachchan.

The only disappointment for the night was the thin audience. Of course, quizpot cannot compete with Ravi Shankar's niece.



The ISM students held their in-house senior open quiz on Nov 11th.  Had the privilege of watching the 1st half. The quiz conducted by the veteran quizzers - Pranav, Lakshay, Sidharth, Sabarinath - were the names I caught. A very good quiz with quite high standards, in both questions asked and the teams. Even the adults would have found some of the questions difficult to crack. The Guy Ritchie question, is one that I think would have flown over most teams.

The most pleasing aspect was the use of Infinite Bounce. This is something I've tried to introduce to the adult quizzing circles - many times and all unsuccessfully. For one, the setters refuse to see the drawbacks of the direct-and-pass system. Second, they say the Infinite Bounce is too complicated to understand. So, was really happy to see the conductors adopt this.

ISM Inter-house quiz 2009

Q: Id the 2 historical characters caricatured in the pic above.

Had the pleasure of conducting the Indian School Muscat's inter-house quiz for a second time. The event has four teams participating, one from each house. Four members per team, one from each class - IX to XII.

Still haven't managed to get the balance of questions right. Like the previous year it turned out to be a bit too tough for the teams, and way above the head for the audience. Had set an internal target of get  at least 85% of questions to be answered on stage. In the end it turned out to be 80%.

Some expected bouncers were the questions on - U.S. Consulate on Ho Chi Minh Street & Foucault's Pendulum. In some cases, the intention was merely to expose the minds to a few new vistas. Umberto Eco is a much more enriching read than Dan Brown any day.

However the teams bravely attempted all. Very few "Pass" uttered. This was much more comforting than seeing a wall of blank faces. Overall they did well. Three of the four, were in contention right up to the last quarter. Some very good guesswork by all the houses caught the audience by surprise. Yellow house ended up winners, retaining their position from 08. However at the end, only 1 question separated them from the runners-up. Houses Blue & Green too had put up a spirited challenge.

The quiz, being close to Teacher's day, had a link round on famous people who were once teachers. As feared, the connection was not easy to make until the last question, on Dr S. Radhakrishnan, was asked. The problem - it was easy to find celebrities who were once teachers, but not those who were generally known to have been teachers. Another interesting observation when setting: a lot of these celebrities were English Teachers once. Not sure what to make of that. Either English teachers have a lot of potential (prime candidates for a future career as novelist for instance) or that anyone can become an English teacher!?

Surprisingly the teams on stage were not very clued in on media & entertainment. Some or all, missed out on Billy Crystal, Avatar, Sting & David Caruso aka Horatio Caine! A team guessed Michael Jackson for the CSI star's impersonation question! "Every Breath You Take" is 80s, but  everyone  must have heard Sting? Got guesses from Bryan Adams to Elton John. The teams were also not at all familiar with the 50s rock stars, even though some anniversary celebrations were being widely covered in the media.

Some of these passed ones in the entertainment area were remarkably answered by the audience - class IX students. And, as in the 08, the scorer's table came up with a few answers. Guess this has partly to do with the way teams are selected. The selections are done in-house. Possibly the elimination questions are very academic in nature. Hence those with their noses in their books tend to do better. And the ones hanging outside Shatti Plaza tend to miss out. Plus the quota of one member per academic year per team also pushes out some promising talent. Might be better to just have the 4 best from each house represent them. Surely they don't have quotas for other events such as football or basketball?

Tried one other innovation as well. The Pounce, an idea picked from Hirak. Gave two 'Pounce' cards to each team. This was well received, though not all used it wisely. The Pounce basically enabled teams to answer sitter out of turn. The idea was, if a team felt any question was way too easy, and they were too far in the queue to get a shot at it, they could 'Pounce' on it. All teams were pretty enthusiastic about this, and almost all cards were used up by the midway stage. Towards the end, with 3 teams very much in the race, all were regretting that they had not reserved their wild-cards till then. Some of the Pounce cards were wasted on questions that ended up with the teams pouncing anyway. And in a few cases, they ended up giving the wrong answers.

My favourite question for the day was the caricature at the top of this post. Didn't think it was too tough, but went unanswered.

The better half tells me that, even though not a quizzer herself, after seeing many quizzes that I've set, she's able to guess a few answers easily. Says I always seem to set something on Richard Feynman, P G Wodehouse, Calcutta and Calvin & Hobbes. Just as Pickbrain tends to ask on Red Cross, Nobel Prize  and the Pope.  And once the participants cue in on that, they'll start cracking the questions easily.

Of course, once the quizzers figure that, I'll move on to Dawkins, Mostly Harmless & Seinfeld.

India Quiz Oman – A Retelling

So we make it to the finals of a quiz, which has editions all over the GCC. Patronized by the Indian Ambassador. Some heavy duty sponsors’ backing, including the Resident Manager. The acoustics are terrible, and you can hardly make out what the QC is saying. Apart from that everything seemed ok. Then it’s time for our 1^st direct question for 10 points, and we’re all anticipation. The QC says this is a visual question. We hope to be able to identify the person / thing about to be shown.

Up comes a picture of the Taj Mahal. You think “Surely, he won’t ask us to identify that!” Then he says “That is, of course, the Taj Mahal.” A sigh of relief. Ok, so the question is going to be something better. He turns to the audience and continues “Built for…., built by…., architect…., number of labourers….., years taken……, fusion of ….. styles……” We were straining to catch his words amidst all the echo, thinking there may be some hidden hints to the eventual answer. Five minutes into his verbage, I wonder to myself, “He’s read out the entire Wikipedia entry on the topic. What could be left to ask?” And then he finally turns to us. “The question is this.”

Dramatic silence.

“What is the height of the Taj Mahal?”

!@#$%^%&*~

In this quizzing desert that is Oman, with just one huge oasis in the form of the Times of Oman Open Quiz, any mention of a quiz is manna from heaven. Or was; until we tasted the spectacular India Quiz conducted by Kannu Baker of Vision Tomorrow.

Surprising, but for a company that claims to be in the fields of event management, advertising & public relations, the publicity was virtually non-existent. Most of the regular quizzers did not know of the event at all. What seemed to have brought in a bit of a crowd, was the circulars sent out to the Indian schools. Moreover the timing wasn’t really great with some of the schools having already closed for the summer. Meaning, a lot of expats had left for India.

On to the actual quiz. The prelims were on expected lines. Many of the questions seemed to have been taken directly from either school text-books, or the Manorama Year-book. Purely fact-based, with little room for working out. You either knew or didn’t know the answer. E.g. which is the longest canal in India? On the banks of which river does the Kaziranga lie? Given this, it is surprising that the school teams did not do well.

There were a few rank bad questions such as, “Which article in the constitution states that there shall be a President?”

Who cares?

Really?

Anyway this did not give any cue on what we were to face in the finals. The prelims were followed by a few dances by students of Kalamandalam and Indian School Muscat. This was a rather nice fill-in. At least better than random members of the audience being cajoled by the compere into killing us with their versions of Rafi & Lata. It gave the kids probably their 1st chance to display their talent before an audience.

Funnily one of the dances had to be repeated as the TV cameraman deemed the lighting was not sufficient. Yes, the whole show was being filmed by a crew from Asianet. Reminded of a wedding in Kerala, where the videographer asked the groom to untie & tie the Thali once again, as he had not properly filmed it.

To start the finals, our QC called the chief, cheifer & chiefest guests, the main, mainer & mainest sponsors, plus a few others on to the stage. Then the finalists were called one at a time, asked to pick a lot for position on stage, desks A-F, and have this read out by a different VIP for each team. There being more VIPs than teams, not all of them had the honour of reading out a letter of the alphabet.

The finals were a very short affair. Only the torture made it appear to last hours. 24 questions in all grouped into 3 rounds to the 6 teams. Of these only 6 could be passed in case of a wrong answer. The other 18 could only be attempted by the team to which it was posed. Pretty poor structure.

And soon we came to the Taj Mahal question. Seeing the ‘deer in headlights’ look on our face, the QC goes on, “I can give you options, but it will be for 5 points only.”

We ask for options. He says, "Is it a) 260 feet or b) 230 feet?"

Now I had worked through a lot of MCQ while training for CAT, and had a fair success rate, even when I didn't know the answer. But nothing had prepared me for this hair splitting. We randomly guessed 260. He says, “No, answer is 230 feet.” (Or that was what we heard. Looking it up later, it seems the options were 216 & 213.)

A bit later, it was déjà vu. Only this time Dr Sunil Malani & Pranav Laxman were at the receiving end. A picture of the Qutub Minar was shown, 5 minute description given, and then its height was asked. The hapless looks on their faces had all the other teams in splits. Resigned, they went through the motions.

“Please give options.”

“Tweedledee or Tweedledum?”

“Tweedledee”

“No, Tweedledum” Gotcha look on face.

“Ok.” How much more do we suffer this?

The QC had a curious way of asking questions. He would read out a lot of random unrelated facts about the key person or monument. Then ask a question that may not be connected to anything that he has said earlier, other than it being about the same subject, broadly speaking. Take this question posed to the audience. He asks one of the teams on stage,

“Swami Vivekananda was born on January 12, correct?”

The team not being sure of this, but having no reason to dispute, replies, “Ok”

And then to another team, “And this day is celebrated as National Youth Day in India, am I right?”

“I guess so.”

“This day was also Makara Sankaranti, agree?”

“Fine.” Where is this question going?

“Good.” Now turning to the audience, “He also gave a very famous speech at Chicago, at the Parliament of World’s religions.” Then went on to give the highlights of the speech. (Or maybe even the whole speech. Couldn’t hear properly, but it took a long time.) Now the question is, “Where in Chicago did he give this speech? In other words, where in town was the parliament of world’s religions held?”

The audience, being intimately familiar with Chicago, unsuccessfully tried blurting out all the famous landmarks of the town. “Temple”, “Church”, “Parliament”, “Hotel”, “Airport”, “Railway Station”, “River-side”, “Beach”, “New York”, “Footpath”, “America”, “Japan”, “Obama’s house”……

The QC finally had to give the answer himself.

At various times, different teams interrupted him to tell him that they could not hear the question. After the 3^rd or 4^th such interruption, he told the team, “The question is not meant for you anyway.” That shut us all up, tight and proper. The audience had a good laugh at this.

Round 2 of the quiz brought out more bewilderment. The format as explained was, “You’ll get 4 clues to a person’s identity. If you answer after the 1^st clue, you get 15 points. 10 points if you answer after the 2^nd. 5 after the 3^rd. After the 4^th clue you don’t get any points.”

3 Teams, including us, were yet to open scores after 1^st 12 questions. So we’re strategizing, “Let’s try and crack it at the 1^st clue and get back into the reckoning. And out comes clue #1.

“He was a freedom fighter.”

And we wait for him to go on. No response. That’s it? Resignedly ask for 2^nd clue.

“Good. He won the Padma Vibhushan award.”

Great! That narrows it down to some 200 people. “3^rd clue please”

“Was leader of opposition in 1993.”

Only one possible answer to that! At least we opened our account, even if it was only 5 points.

Then came the last round. Four pictures would be shown, and the teams would have to pick the odd one out – for 10 points. The 1^st team gets pics of the a- Tirupati temple, b- Meenakshi temple, c- Charminar & d- Mecca Masjid. Team answers, “C-Charminar is the odd one, because the other three are places of worship.”

“The answer is wrong. It is b! The other 3 are in Andhra Pradesh, and b is in Tamil Nadu.”

Team 1 is too dazed to respond.

2^nd team gets 4 pics of various dances. Going by the 1^st answer, they guess “a. Since the other three dances are South Indian in origin, and a is from North.”

“The answer is wrong. It is c, since c is folk dance, and the other 3 are classical.”

Team 2 is beyond caring now.

3^rd team gets 4 pics, again of monuments. They guess d, since other three are Mughal architecture.

“The answer is wrong. It is c since the other 3 are in Delhi”

“But our answer is correct as well”, argue Team 3. They then describe each of the monuments shown and who built it.

“All right then. I’ll give you 10 points.”

Team 3 is jubilant. They too have got off the 0 mark, in their last chance.

Teams 1 & 2 wake up now. “But in that case, our answers were correct too”, they chorus. They both start explaining their answers in detail, and ask why it cannot be considered correct. The QC reverts and cancels the 10 points that he had just awarded to Team 3. Poor fellows.

The remaining questions were on similar lines. Indian culture seemed to be restricted to dance and buildings. Only the answers got funnier.

“3 photos are in colour, and the odd one out is in B&W.”

“3 photos are taken from outside the building, the odd one out is taken from inside.”

“3 dancers are female. The odd one out is male.”

And finally the results were announced. Hemant Mainkar and his son, Gautam were the only team that seemed to be somewhat in sync with the QC through out the show. Even otherwise, they were deserving winners of the quiz.

Just when we thought that we could finally escape, the QC says, “We have one more dance coming up.” And leaves the stage, with the participants still sitting there. And then the dancers come on, and perform: with the quiz participants seated right behind them on stage. For the 1^st time in our lives, we probably saw a dance from the rear angle.

At last, came the prize distribution. The chief, chiefer & chiefest guests, and the main, mainer & mainest sponsors were all called to stage and send back to their seats in sequence after giving away prizes and a trophy carrying pictures of Mahatma Gandhi & the Quiz Conductor, to each of the teams in order of their final position. We, Sangeetha Sridhar & self, finished somewhere in middle 4. Not certain where, but we only scored 5; so can’t have been too far from bottom.

The show concluded (Finally!) with a photo-session with all the guests of honour, sponsors and participants.

I wouldn’t say the day was a total waste of time. Did learn some new things. For instance, I don’t think I’ll ever forget the height of the Taj Mahal. Who knows, maybe it will be the tie-breaker in some other oasis. Just because one of them turned out to be a mirage, does not mean we’ll stop searching.

India Quiz Oman - Observer Report

A friend, seeing the report in the Oman Observer, called up to ask how the quiz went. He was bemused hearing my response, saying the article painted a completely different picture.

Reading through the article, I could only reply that it matched the actual event in quality. The reporter has simultaneously assaulted the English language and facts, without the least bother. I would normally have expected the organizers to have submitted a write-up for the newspapers to publish, so that the journalists don’t need to do their job. This doesn’t seem to have happened in this case, leaving our writer to cook something up on his own.

Here’s the article

THE Oman edition of the spectacular show of Federal Bank India Quiz held at Al Falaj Hotel Le Grand hall on Thursday with a fully packed audience under the patronage of the Indian Ambassador to the Sultanate of Oman, Anil Wadhwa, was indeed a grand success. Ibrahim Saif al Hamdani, Editor-in-Chief of Oman Daily Observer was the Guest of Honour.

The Quiz Master and the Director of the show, Kannu Baker did a brain brushing style of presentation by hurling questions that impart knowledge of the uniqueness of India by inducing a spirit of patriotism in quizzing. The gala event of India Quiz with cultural synthesis show was a thrilling experience to one and all and also a new initiative in quizzing while bringing forth the unknown facts and the rich culture and heritage of India was well accepted by the audience.

There were six teams comprising two members that were selected for the final round of India Quiz after a bottleneck elimination round. Sunil Makhani and Pranav Laxman were the winners of the show from more than hundred teams from various states of India who just gave it a try in their selection round. “Which section of the Indian Constitution stipulates that there should be a President for the country?”, “Which state in India has the longest coastal area?”, “Who was the Arab traveller who helped Vasco-da-Gama to reach Kozhikode, a district in the south Indian state of Kerala?” participants of various age groups, professional acumen and varied IQ levels remained spellbound as the grandmaster threw arrows of questions one after the other. Some of them raised clues and guesses and some bright ones made it through.

More than 60 per cent of teams were working class from various professions, and 40 per cent teams represented various schools from grade XI and above and it was a unique show with mix of people. The questions were comparatively of very high standard with uniqueness in covering the entire segments of India. “It is something innovative in spreading India’s rich culture and heritage among Gulf expatriates and I wish all success to Kannu Baker and his team for organising such a wonderful new initiatives and keep the spirit of organising more shows like this in the future”, Anil Wadhwa said.

It’s a part of the whole GCC Quiz show by the Vision Tomorrow Communications, a Corporate Event Management Company in association with Federal Bank as the brand sponsor, of which Bahrain show would take place in the second week of June and the quizzers in Saudi Arabia will have their attempt in the week following. In Oman, UAE Exchange, SRK Group and LuLu were the support sponsors. New India Assurance Company and Teejan Furnishing were the Country sponsor of this Oman Edition of India quiz.

What’s Brain Brushing? Bottleneck elimination? Not only has he got the winners' names wrong, he's also got wrong names of the wrong winners.

Comparatively high standard questions??? Cause no one could answer anything? To put the record straight, I was forced to narrate my version of the circus.

Update: The Oman Tribune dated June 1 also carries a report on the quiz. Same error on winners. Otherwise different write-up. Seems the organizers did give out some release to the newspapers, each of which chose to edit it differently. Could not find the link to this though.

We done it again!

Third time in a row.

And the prizes seem to be getting better as well. On top of the HP notebook, we get 25 riyals to splurge at Borders! Samsonite bags from our in-house sponsor. Besides a few handfuls of other stuff.



And this was 2008

On the Ramadan quiz in the Thursday Magazine

A letter written to the Thursday magazine, Times of Oman. Did not elicit any response or acknowledgment though.

Sir / Madam,

Thank You – Thursday Magazine – for running a sequence of quizzes during Ramadhan. It was quite an enjoyable pastime figuring out answers to these. The Times of Oman group has always been at the forefront when it comes to promoting quizzing in Oman, and this series only adds to that.

There were however, a few questions to which the answers provided are incorrect; and a few others where the questions were poorly framed, leading to the answers provided either being incomplete or being only one of the many possible answers. I have no issues with the results (list of winners) of your series. I do, however, have concern with the answers.

Here are some, which I believe, fall in either of the categories mentioned.

Quiz1. Q6. Name of material brought back from the moon? The answer provided is Armkalite. This is clearly incorrect. There is no such thing as Armkalite. The correct answer to this is merely 'Moon Rock'¹. A search of the term Armkalite in Google returns only 4 entries. I assume that the quiz setter would have copied this question from one of these sources. Any responder getting the same answer would have happened to chance on the same source.

The term seems to have been a mix up of the word 'Armalcolite'² (returns 6730 entries in Google search as against the 4 for Armkalite). Armalcolite is a mineral that was first discovered on the moon, and later found on earth as well. This has been named after the three astronauts – ARMstrong, ALdrin & COLlins. The correct answer to your question, as it is framed, is Moon Rock, and not even Armalcolite.

Quiz3. Q10. Cortex & Medulla are parts of which organ? Answer provided is Kidney. A medical practitioner would be able to explain better, but from my understanding of etymology, the cortex and medulla are parts of many organs. The 'cortex' is used to refer to the outermost layer of many organs, and is derived from Latin meaning shell³. Medulla⁴ similarly refers to the middle of something. Hence while the answer 'Kidney' is correct, it can also be the brain, adrenal gland, ovaries etc.

Quiz3. Q6. Sandwich is named after which British title? Answer given is 'Earl'. The sandwich is not named after the generic title of Earl, but after the 'Earl of Sandwich'⁵. Or more specifically, the 4^th Earl of Sandwich, John Montagu⁶.

Quiz3. Q8. What is the name of the school in the Harry Potter books? Nothing incorrect with the answer. I am sure all respondents would have given the same as yours – Hogwarts. However the question has been poorly framed. There are a few other schools mentioned in the Harry Potter books. E.g. Smeltings, where Dudley goes, & the St Brutus centre for incurably criminal boys.

Quiz4. Q7. Who invented the rocking chair? Answer given is Benjamin Franklin. This is an urban legend. Rocking chairs have been around long before Franklin⁷.

Quiz4. Q8. Poem written to celebrate a wedding called? Answer given is Epithalamium. This could be right going by some sources. However by strict definition, an epithalamium⁸ (or epithalamion) is a poem written to honour the bride and groom. A poem written to celebrate a wedding per se is a prothalamion⁹.

Quiz2. Q4. What relation to me is my father-in-law's only daughter's mother-in-law? Answer given is 'Mother'. This is correct if 'me' in the question is a male, but not so in the case of a female respondent.

Quiz4. Q4. Name the country with the highest per capita chocolate consumption. Answer given is Switzerland. This answer is probably right. However, I have seen many conflicting data on this, some proclaiming Switzerland as having the highest per capita consumption (including an article in Times of Oman dt 30 Oct 08), while others attribute this honour to Ireland, Denmark and Belgium. Do you have any authoritative source on this?

My understanding is that while Switzerland has the highest per capita sales of chocolate, it need not necessarily have the same position in consumption. A large portion of chocolates sold in Switzerland are to tourists who take them out of the country¹¹. Hence it is not consumed in Switzerland. And no clear studies exist that accurately measure consumption.

People have various pet peeves. One of mine is, folks(particularly quiz setters) getting facts wrong. I too have erred many times when setting questions. And the professionals too are not immune to this. E.g., Pickbrain, arguably the most popular quiz conductor in Oman today, has twice in the past three years asked the question, "What is Nintendo's successor to the GameCube called?" The answer given was "Revolution." This may have been correct prior to 2006. But this name was changed prior to launch, and today the correct answer to this question is "Wii".¹⁰

The public tends to believe everything they read in print, be it news journals or books. They are not so gullible to other sources of information, such as the internet, television or hearsay from friends and acquaintances. I have had the occasional experience where, when I have challenged someone over some statement, they claim what they say is true because they have read so in the newspaper. Hence, I feel, it is even more important for the print media to get their facts right; to maintain their credibility.

I do not have any desire of having this published, and hence have not troubled to fit within any specified word limit. My main intention is to address the quiz setter (again appreciate his/her efforts). If my observations are incorrect, could they please respond to me with authoritative sources? If not, would you please care to publish a corrigendum?

Thanks

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_rock

2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armalcolite

3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cortex

4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medulla

5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earl_of_Sandwich

6. http://whatscookingamerica.net/History/SandwichHistory.htm

7. http://www.designboom.com/eng/education/rocking/origin.html

8. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/epithalamium

9. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/prothalamion

10. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wii

11. http://www.chocosuisse.ch/page/3_1_factsandfigures-en.htm