The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Battle royal in <I>The Hindu Business Line</I> corporate quiz

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Apr 17, 2006

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Battle royal in The Hindu Business Line corporate quiz

R. Sujatha

37 teams took part in 30-question written elimination round

WINNER TAKES IT ALL: Rajen Prabhu and Rajiv Rai of Citibank, Chennai, have a word with quizmaster Bharat Epur at The Hindu Business Line Corporate Quiz held on Sunday. — PHOTO: K.V. Srinivasan

CHENNAI: The heat was palpable even in the air-conditioned Taj Connemara's Ball Room, where bankers, engineers and management executives engaged in a battle royal for prizes worth Rs. 1.2 million.

The Hindu Business Line Corporate Quiz, held here on Sunday and organised by the Rotary Club of Madras, saw participants from across the country. Thirty-seven teams took part in a 30-question written elimination round, and six finalists were selected. In the tough finals, the winner scored 50 points, and the audience, perhaps, won as many points as the winning team.

While quizmaster Bharat Epur asked the questions, the contestants sometimes engaged the audience with imaginative answers, eliciting laughter. But the quiz, which comprised six rounds, was exciting with the contestants struggling to identify the Indian Prime Minister's wife and making up answers following a lead from a guessing team.

After the first round, winners and two runners up participated in the Intex's special round, which also included a DVD player for each candidate from the team that correctly answered three questions about the company. Sify, Chennai, set the tone, winning the DVD players.

The second round was about anagrams, which included this question: Grabbing headlines and poaching people (6,6). The anagram for the name was: hmm! Abuse a kin. Did you say Mukesh Ambani? But there were easy ones such as Tabs, Signatures and Loops with Last Viruses as anagram for Levi Strauss.

The audience had its share of questions, besides answering what the teams could not. The gallery round was about identifying pictures of well-known people or their voice. The multimedia `masala' was about connecting two apparently unconnected events/objects. The most difficult one was connecting Rang De Basanti with a pink flower and the logo of the Oxford University.

The fifth round was about India, which included questions such as what variety of mango is used in Frooty juice? The answer is Totapuri. In the buzzer round, the clincher, the teams lost points simply by pressing the buzzer before the question was asked.

Winners Rajen Prabhu and Rajiv Rai of Citibank, Chennai, picked up prizes worth Rs. 3.36 lakh, including a return trip to Los Angeles, courtesy Air India.

An array of sponsors collectively provided holiday trips to Europe (first runner up) and other destinations within India to other contestants. They also received laptops, personal computers, gift vouchers, home theatres and holidays.

The participants were from the Chennai branches of Sify, Cognizant and Citibank. Sun Microsystem of Bangalore and Vizag Steel from Vishakapatnam, besides Deloitte, Hyderabad, were the other contestants.

Rotary Club of Madras and Business Line conducted the quiz.

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