Their hearts would have skipped a beat when they pressed the buzzer in a flash only to deliver the wrong answer stripping them of ten valuable points in the crucial final round.
Tense moments
However, Arshad Muhammed and George M. Thottan of Rajagiri Public School, Kalamassery, were not left to rue that mistake as they emerged winners in the Kochi regional final of the 12th edition of The Hindu Young World Quiz by the slimmest of margin.
Navneeth Krishna and Kevin Abraham Cherian of Gregorian Public School, who were clipping at the heels of the eventual winners till the last minute would have had the opportunity to go through to the grand finale in Thiruvananthapuram, had they been able to come up with the right answer where the duo from Rajagiri faltered.
However, none of the six regional finalists had the right answer to the question as to which dynasty set up the Khajuraho Temples and it took a knowledgeable student from among the audience to name the Chandela Rajputs.
Arshad and George heaved a sigh of relief as the final score line showed 104 points against their name, just one more than the Gregorian team.
As the quiz master V.V. Ramanan said, Navneeth and Kevin did lose but were not defeated. Karthik Ganapathy and Vasudev Chakravarti of Bhavan's Adarsha Vidyalaya emerged the second runners-up.
Abhilash Panda and Aparna Sanjay of Bhavan's Vidya Mandir, Girinagar; Suman Mahesh and Aditya P. Patil of Bhavan's Adarsha Vidyalaya; and Aswathi K. Babu and Swathi C.S. of Little Hearts School, North Paravur; took in the next three positions.
The quiz was designed in a unique way with a picture of a living Indian personality, in this case Salman Khan, remaining hidden behind a grid of numbers and getting unravelled grid-by-grid as the participating teams successfully answered the questions attached to their choice of numbers.
The teams had the opportunity to gain bagful of points at one go by risking a guess about the personality at any point of time before getting a clear view of him. But that entailed a risk of suffering an equally huge chunk of negative points.
The winners and the first and second runners-up walked away with cash awards of Rs. 15,000, Rs. 12,000 and Rs. 10,000 respectively. The winners of the fourth, fifth, and sixth positions received cash awards of Rs. 2,000 each.
Sponsors
Velammal Educational Trust is the title sponsor of the event while Extramarks Education Pvt. Ltd. and Indian Overseas Bank are the associate sponsors.
The national sponsors are Black Thunder, Gold Winner, Amway, Vizag Steel Plant, Maggi Noodles, Wilco Picture Library, Firefox Bikes, Reynolds, Funfills, Success Notebooks, Cricket Caricatures.com and Penguin Books. Tata Nano is the car sponsor and Real Fruit Juice the beverage sponsor.
Club Mahindra Holidays, Kerala State Cashew Development Corporation and Talent City are the regional sponsors. I Ads and Events are the event managers of the show.
