It was another edition of The Hindu Young World Quiz, and the Coimbatore winning team breezed into the finals beating their nearest rival by a margin of over 80 points in a not-so-keenly contested competition here on Tuesday.
The written preliminary of the regional finals in Coimbatore saw 344 teams of 688 students from over 100 schools from the city, Tirupur, The Nilgiris, Udumalpet and Pollachi set to compete with each other to make it to the final 12 of the regional round of the 14 edition of the quiz.
Two teams from GKD Matriculation Higher Secondary School, another two from PSBB Millennium School, and one each from Bharatiya Vidya Mandir and Vidhya Niketan Public School made up the six teams to fight it out in the final leg of the quiz, which is a Newspaper in Education (NIE) initiative of The Hindu .
The audience, comprising school students, were present in large numbers at the Sarojini Nataraj Auditorium at Shree Baldevdas Kikani Vidya Mandir High School to cheer their schoolmates and also answer audience questions to bag attractive goodies as prizes. The contestants were taken through several rounds of invigorating quizzing by quiz master V.V. Ramanan.
The questions were grouped under five headings – Plain Vanilla that had questions from all over the world, Bharatiyam that had questions on India, Topsy Turvy, Click – the photo clues, and Son-Et-Lumiere – the audio visual clues.
But the quizzing was not only for those on stage. The eager audience had lot of opportunity to answer too.
For the question, according to the Bible, who was the first human born and first human to die on earth, the common answer that came from the contestants was just ‘Adam’. But the correct answer came from a student in the audience – Cain was the first human to be born (to Adam and Eve) and the first human to die was Abel, Cain’s brother.
The quiz master explained that Adam was “not born but made”.
To the question as to who wrote ‘Vaishnavo Jana to’, there were answers that varied from poet Vaali to Mahatma Gandhi. The correct answer was Narsinh Mehta. Apsara, Purnima, Zerlina and Cirus were not names of dance forms, dancers or constellations, but names of Indian nuclear reactors. Questions ranged from movies, music, comic characters to scientific concepts, history, geography, and general knowledge.
With Mr. Ramanan there was never a single dull moment as he kept the contestants and audience hooked to the pace of the posers.
The winning team ‘Not Just a Spectator’ from GKD School maintained the lead from the start till the end.
Prizes
Team members S. Bragadeeswaran and A.S. Hari Krishna, both Standard IX students, walked away with a purse of Rs. 10,000 from The Hindu, bicycles from Firefox, and a whole lot of goodies. Chief guest R. Rajaram, director of Sri Eshwar College of Engineering, gave away the prizes.
The other teams too received purses and a host of goodies. All participants received a goodies bag filled with biscuits, chips, notebook, pen, savouries, and much more, from the sponsors.
The winning team had been into quizzing since when they were in Standard III.
“We are an active quizzing group of 15 students who take turns in pairing up and participating in quizzes. We are also members of the Coimbatore Quiz Circle. We are looking forward to winning at the grand finals,” said the regional finalists who would compete with 15 other regional team finalists at the grand finale to be held on December 5 in Bangalore.
The presenting sponsor of the event was Britannia Milk Bikis Future Minds, and the associate sponsor was Firefox.
Gift partners were Success Note Books, Reynolds, and Encyclopedia Britannica. The energy partner was Gold Winner, while the beverage sponsor was Dabur Real Fruit Juice.
Regional sponsor of the event was Sri Eshwar College of Engineering, gifts sponsors were Banaanaa Slice, Zimson Watch World, Kaarams, Milka wonder cake, Savithri Photo House and Nuts bay. The event was managed by I ads and Events.
