The zeal was palpable at the regional finals of the TCS IT Wiz, the inter-school IT quiz event conducted by the Tata Consultancy Services here on Tuesday.
That the stage was set afire by the dynamic quiz master and his 12 participants is understandable. But off the dais were previous champions, ready to grab the questions that were tossed across, and answer them spot on.
At least two champions, one among them international, sat among the audience and kept up the tempo by tackling the riddles that were too difficult for the participants.
Quiz master Giri Balasubramaniam recalled them fondly and awarded gifts.
Caution instead of aggression proved to be the key to victory for the team from Gitanjali Senior School, Begumpet which played safe after the first two rounds. Its two members — Siddharth B. Rao and Yash Baldawa, the youngest of the lot — allowed other teams to lose by scoring negative in the buzzer rounds, themselves sitting pretty on their formidable score from first two legs.
Earlier, 1,204 children from Class VIII to XII of over 100 schools participated in the preliminary rounds while the animation-driven finals contained five rounds. In the tie-breaker that ensued for the runner-up position, the team from the FIITJEE, Narayanguda comprising Anirudh Ponnala and Tushant Mittal trounced their immediate rivals Aneesh Kallapur and Syeda Asma Hashmi from Sri Chaitanya, Narayanguda.
Both winners received an iPad each, while the runners-up won Tablets.
The winning team will represent the city in the Mega Finals to be held at Delhi, and compete with 13 other finalists for the title ‘Smart Tech Wizard 2013’.
Six regional finalists were Arjun Suhas Kallapur and R.V.Srikara Prasad from HPS (B), Krishna Dayanidhi and L.Sai Sugan from DPS, Nacharam and Akash P. and Rishi Tanna from P. Obul Reddy Public School. They received prizes ranging from gym bags, headphones, pen drives, Notebook speakers and T-shirts.
Prizes were also given to the lucky dip winners and winners of the Twitter Contest organised during the quiz. Regional Passport Officer K.S. Srikar Reddy was the chief guest and distributed prizes along with vice-president and regional head of TCS Hyderabad V. Rajanna.
