If you knew R.K. Laxman had a fascination for crows and that Shaadi.com recently launched a game titled ‘Angry Brides', and were able to identify U. Sagayam (the Madurai collector) and Microsoft's font ‘Ransom Note', you might have got on stage for the finals of Quiz Trac 2012.
The 11th edition of this popular quiz, organised by the Rotaract Club of PSG College of Arts and Science at the college's GRD Auditorium, was hosted by M. Rangarajan.
The open quiz started an hour behind schedule due to a delay in Quiz Trac Junior 2012 held earlier in the day. Many school and college students, corporates and families took part in the prelims — a written round comprising 30 questions. Among the interesting posers was: Who was granted a patent in March 1921 for a type of diving suit, which allowed the diver to remove the suit quickly after being submerged? Magician and escape artist Harry Houdini!
Eight teams qualified for the finals, after answers for the preliminary round were discussed and gift hampers, distributed to an eager audience, mostly comprising kids. The participants on stage had five rounds and a diverse range of questions to deal with, before one of the teams was declared the winner.
Some of the questions were simple — To whom did the Russians pay tribute by calling their space station programme ‘Salyut'? Yuri Gagarin.
Some were based on current affairs. If you knew the profile of prominent personalities who passed away last year, you might have answered this question right — Whose first and last political cartoon was that of Morarji Desai's? This artist did not want to hurt the sentiments of anyone; hence, he became a social cartoonist. The answer: Mario Miranda.
Some questions were abstract, but that did not deter the finalists from making interesting guesses that sometimes worked in their favour.
The team from Chennai knew why World Sousveillance Day was celebrated on December 24. (Wikipedia defines sousveillance as the act of recording an activity by a participant.) Some questions drew laughs both on and off stage. China, which has been successful in conserving the Giant Panda, employs a technique apart from artificial insemination to increase the population of this species. Pat came the reply from Arjun and Kartik from PSG College of Technology — ‘The pandas are made to watch panda pornography'.
Only a few questions went unanswered. For instance, the one on Photographers Give Back (PGB) Award.
Connecting the dots
There was a theme round too, but it was a member of the audience who deciphered the theme. Connect Lithium's atomic number, Sridevi's first film, Thomas Jefferson, Sri Lankan cricketer Mahinda Wijesinghe's contribution to modern cricket and Dhanush, and you'll get the answer — ‘Three'.
Even before the last few questions in the buzzer round were posed, it was known that Jayakanthan and Ramkumar from Chennai were going to walk away with the first prize.
The second prize was bagged by Pranav from SASTRA University and Gautham from Anna University, Coimbatore. Anjan Srihari and Natarajan Krishnaswamy from Amrita University came third.
Prizes were also awarded to the best college team, corporate team, and family and girls teams.
Did you know?
Ecofont is the type of font that uses dots cut out on characters in order to save printing ink
Santa Claus was removed from Forbes’ list of richest fictional characters because many children still believe that Santa is ‘real’
Bheeshma, while on his deathbed, composed the Vishnu Sahasranamam as an advice to Yudhishtra
The world’s first package tour dates back to 1841, when Thomas Cook took a group of people on a journey from Leicester to Loughborough
