They came, wondered and won!

The TATA Crucible Quiz's Chennai leg was a jump board to an international contest.

Participants of the TATA Crucible 2012: The Campus Quiz. Photo: Special Arrangement

The TATA Crucible 2012: The Campus Quiz, is one of the biggest quizzes of its kind in India and as the name suggests, this mercurial quiz, heats the game up to epic proportions. The Chennai leg of this year's edition witnessed a fascinating battle of wits last weekend.

Winning chance

After a fierce encounter, it was the team from IIT-Madras (IIT-M) comprising Shivraj Singh Negi and Vishnu M.J. that prevailed over the team from Sri Venkateshwara College of Engineering (SVCE) comprising Tejdeep and Varshashri.

The winners will march into the national finale in Mumbai on April 8 where they will go on to challenge the regional winners from across 23 other cities.

The national winners and runners-up will take on the winners and runners-up of the UK and Singapore in a mega international finale for the coveted title of International Champions. The quiz was hosted by virtuoso quiz master Giri Balasubramaniam a.k.a. Pick-brain who through his distinctive and quirky style brought the best out of the contestants and kept the audience captivated with the high-voltage action on stage.

The quiz came up with an innovative format where the set of answers of the two preliminary rounds were identical but the questions for these consistent answers were different. Six teams clashed in the final round of the Chennai leg, of which the top four teams were selected from the prelims while the remaining two teams, ironically being IIT-M and SVCE had to make it via the wildcard rounds.

Edged out

The final round initially saw IIT-M gaining a mammoth lead over the others and seal the quiz until SVCE came up with a final flourish to edge out the other teams and finish second best.

The chief guest, K. Ananth Krishnan, Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, Tata Consultancy Services, who is also an ardent quizzer felicitated the winners and runners-up with a cash prize of Rs. 75,000 and Rs. 35,000 respectively. The audience too were quizzed over the course of the event and got a chance to bag a few goodies.

“Pick-brain” Giri Balasubramaniam said that Tata Crucible Campus Quiz to him was “The Wimbledon of Indian Quizzes” besides expressing his joy regarding the burgeoning passion for quizzes among the young generation of Chennai.

Bhargav is a III Year B.Tech Civil Engineering student at SRM University.