What is it that you would be having if you ate apple-pie ala mode, or what was the first element to be named after a political controversy? Would you have ever thought that it could be ice cream or the element Polonium, named after Poland? – questions like these marked the five hours of intense quizzing at the 19th edition of Landmark Quiz 2010, organised here on Sunday.
More than 590 teams from the city alone participated in the event. The regional finals of the Chennai leg were followed by the national finals, where the top two teams from Pune, Bangalore, Mumbai and Chennai competed.
“Chennai has a lot of people with various intellectual pursuits, so the response to quizzes here is always better,” said Himanshu Chakrawarti, COO, Landmark. “It's very important to ask questions that reverberate” said Quizmaster Navin Jayakumar, adding that the experience was an opportunity to address raging current issues. Chennai, he says, is possibly the best place to conduct quizzes given the tremendous support received every year from an “erudite crowd”.
The preliminary round had a written test of 40 questions. The regional round had eight teams from the city competing for the top two positions.
Questions like the animal most vulnerable global warming or the origin of the term ‘Cyberspace' kept the audience and the participants at their wit's end. Equally catchy were the names the teams had coined. ‘Obama Satyabama' and ‘We are like this only' were some of them.
The Chennai team, ‘No money equals hockey and no tooney equals jockey' got the Best Team Name.
After an exciting battle where answers had to be given in 20 seconds and a buzzer round, Team ‘Haseena ka Paseena' from Mumbai comprising Joshi, Pradeep Ramanathan and Mukund Sridhar won the Landmark Quiz 10. Teams from Bangalore and Mumbai came second and third respectively.
