“This Marvel Universe character first appeared in the movies, then in comic books before becoming a lead in a television series. The character is played by the same actor in the movies and the series. However, he/she is no more in the Marvel Cinematic Universe movie time-line. Who’s the character?”
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About 50 young quiz participants, many clad in superhero T-shirts, wrack their brains over the question projected on a wall. Some of them hastily scribble the answer on a piece of paper, while furrowed brows mark other faces. A long pause follows before Arun PT, the quiz master of the day, moves on to the next question.
Kozhikode-based Q Factory’s open quiz on Marvel Quiz: Avenger’s Edition in the city recently proved a golden occasion for comics fans to get together in the run-up to the release of the next movie in the series. If the “informal” quiz catered to pop culture enthusiasts, the knowledge-services firm’s customised, theme-based ones are also used for awareness campaigns and corporate orientation programmes.
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“Irrespective of the topic, our aim is to present a quiz in the most interesting way. Quiz formats have evolved over time and today, they do not just test your memory or grasp of facts alone,” says Snehaj Srinivas, one of the directors of Q Factory. With the thrust on “lateral thinking”, Q Factory moves away from a traditional “choose-the-option” format and make the sessions more sophisticated with an “audio-visual” presentation. An “infotainment” approach, he says, makes quizzes both entertaining and challenging.
Founded in 2000 by a bunch of friends passionate about quizzing, it initially organised quiz sessions under the banner ‘Dreams’. It was later renamed Quiz Kerala while functioning as a “society” before being officially registered as Q Factory to take up corporate quizzes as well. It’s social outreach programmes are by way of customised quizzes for government departments for mobilisation programmes and awareness campaigns.
“For instance, we conduct quizzes in schools, colleges and rehabilitation centres for the Health Department to find out how much youngsters are aware of common health issues plaguing the State. It comes across as an intellectually stimulating way to assess what they do and give them pointers on what they can do,” says Snehaj.
Projects for the Police Department include quizzes for Student Police Cadets. However, with the general elections around the corner, poll-based quizzes are the flavour of the season. “Sometimes, the topics may not really be one that generates curiosity. For example, a theme such as disaster management is usually full of dry facts and statistics. But that’s the challenge and we attempt to find parallels in pop culture to pique the interest in our questions,” he adds. For general quizzes, a large number of questions are first pooled in, which is distilled to draw up an optimum questionnaire to suit the particular event.
Working behind the scenes is a core research team of about 15 members, all quiz aficionados. But to ensure specialisation on a broad spectrum of topics, Q Factory’s flexible resource pool casts its net wide, roping in associated experts and some former and serving civil servants to conduct events when required.
Aravind Raghunathan, another Q Factory director, points out that its quiz formats and scoring methods are in line with guidelines laid out by the London-based International Quizzing Association (IQA). “Our modern format attempts to avoid the ‘luck factor’. Also, consistency of the difficulty level is maintained as much as possible so as not to make questions lopsided to any set of participants,” says Aravind, who takes quizzes on general and business-related topics.
He underscores how nurturing an interest in quizzing during formative years can have a positive impact on studies and competitive exams. “The formats more or less coincide. And it’s obvious that quizzing improves a student’s brain power and knowledge base. Also, parents never seem to object to their wards getting into quizzing, unlike some other extra curricular activities,” Aravind says with a laugh.
Amal Damodharan, a student of medicine in Palakkad who used to attend Quiz Kerala’s sessions in school, attests as much. “I used to attend a lot of quizzes conducted by the Health Department. The experience definitely helped in my preparation for entrance exams too, thanks to the similarity in formats,” he says.
Since 2006, Q Factory has been conducting its annual quiz festival, Reverberate, in Kozhikode that has attained IQA’s recognition for being “the biggest quiz festival in the world in terms of number of quizzes.” Last year, Reverberate organised spot quizzes under 26 categories.
By the way, if you are still scratching your head over the question at the beginning, the answer is Agent Phil Coulson.