Ashok Kumar Injunction. Scrofula. Sugarpova. Angry Imran… Some of the new words/terms you would have learnt about had you been at Brahma 12, organised by the Quiz Club of Coimbatore Institute of Technology on Sunday.
The first refers to ex parte injunctions ordered against unknown persons; the second, also called King’s evil, is a tuberculosis infection of the lymph nodes in the neck; Sugarpova is the luxury range of candies by tennis player Maria Sharapova; and Angry Imran is a game inspired by Angry Birds.
It was student power all the way at the seventh edition of the event, held for school and college students. There was generous prize money to be won — Rs. 10,000 for schools and Rs. 30,000 for colleges. Over 150 teams signed up for the event and six of them made it to the school finals and seven to the college finals.
Brain teasers
The college finals saw some great questions that had people racking their grey cells. Did you know what mode of education John Holt proposed for school children? Unschooling. What is special about the Italian village of Falciano del Massico? It abolished death and made it illegal to die! Meet zozulica, which was a huge hit during Euro 2012 after the noisy vuvuzela was banned. And, did you know about The Black Statue of Liberty?
The connect question round was a beauty. Seven questions, each from various genres that came together so beautifully. Angry Birds, Pride, Sloth… three of the seven keywords. The answer: Seven Deadly Sins.
Sadly, thanks to a faulty sound system and some on-stage glitches, it was not all hunky dory on stage. The teams argued with the quiz master, there were some errors in tabulating marks…Considering the kind of effort they put into framing the questions, the students should have worked harder on presentation. If not for anything else, but for the fact that Brahma comes with a hoary past.
The school quiz winners were: I Prize: D. Tharunya and Arnav Chandrasekhar of Vidhya Niketan MHSS; II Prize: S. Adhithyan of G.K.D MHSS and G.S. Antovid of Infant Jesus MHSS; III Prize: C.S. Amna and Anusha bhansali of Vidhya Niketan MHSS.
The college quiz winners were: I Prize: V. Srikanth and Vikram Shah of N.L.S.I.U, Bangalore (Rs. 8,000); II Prize: Sudharshan Karthik and R. Pranav of Sastra University (Rs. 5,000) and III Prize: J. Visaka Simhan and M. Niranjan of Sastra University (Rs. 3,000). There were audience prizes too.
Title talk
On Saturday evening, at the II Coimbatore Book Fair organised by Shine Events, M. Rangarjan conducted a literature-based quiz. The questions were drawn from Tamil and English fiction and non-fiction. Sixty teams signed up for the quiz and the finals was a tightly-fought one.
Name a book written on the situation in tea estates in the early part of the 20th Century? Red Tea by P.H. Daniel. It is said that Bala’s next, Paradesi , is based on the book. What does the book, Idliaaga Irungal speak about? Emotional Quotient. Who wrote the book, Please Indha Puthagathai Vaangatheenga ? Neeya Naana Gopinath. And finally, the debate over which bird prompted the setting up of the Guinness Book of World Records? Golden Plover.
The first prize (Rs. 3,000) went to Senthil Kumar and Anjan Srihari; the second (Rs. 2,000) to Yogesh Pai and Vishnu and the third (Rs. 1,000) to Parthiban, a student of commerce, and Ramesh, who works in an automobile workshop, who teamed up at the venue. The audience walked away with prizes worth Rs. 5,000. All were gift vouchers that could be exchanged for books at the exhibition.