Loyola School stole the show at the 17th edition of The Hindu Young World quiz at Hotel Uday Samudra, Kovalam, on Saturday.
The team of Anuvind P. and Athul Suresh from the school won in the senior (classes 7 to 9) category with 151 points. Their schoolmates S. Vishwa Kalyan Reddy and Adithya Kishor bagged the first position in the junior (classes 4 to 6) category.
Balagovind and Rahul Biju from Loyola bagged 102 points to emerge the runner-up in the senior group.
The preliminaries were the first to be held in each category. As many as 148 teams took part in the preliminaries for the junior category, and 125 in the senior. Of these, six teams each were selected for the finals in the respective category.
The junior finals kicked off with quiz master V.V. Ramanan asking the audience which letter in the Greek alphabet corresponded to Z in English. It was then over to the first question for the first team – the present name of Southern Rhodesia, and so on.
The second round was a visual round, at the end of which Saraswathi Vidyalaya was leading by 5 points. The multimedia round followed, in which audio-visual questions were asked.
Round 4 was again a question-and-answer affair, but by its end the leaderboard had changed again. In the shoot-out round, questions were asked on the buzzer. At the end, the Loyola team won with a comfortable margin of 10 points. The team from Christ Nagar school, comprising Pranav Deepak and Avneeth H., was second.
But there was a tie for the third place between the all-girls team of MGM Model School and that of Saraswathi Vidyalaya. It took three questions for the MGM team, consisting of Aparna A.P. and Vrinda P., to make the third spot its own.
Points linked to picture
In the senior finals, questions were asked in a grid format to unveil a picture that fetched them additional points. The quiz master showed the picture an eminent Malayali who was first of the 51 people to have won a coveted honour. The answer was G. Sankara Kurup who won the Jnanpith. Every now and then, a team would hazard a guess about the picture hidden by the grid that they knew to be popular Bollywood actor and collected points for the right answer. Very early, it became a contest between the two Loyola teams for the top spot. Questions regularly reached the audience when the finalists failed to answer.
Soon, Anuvind and Athul had built up a solid lead on their schoolmates to race to the top spot. Twins Prajna R. Nair and Jyotsna R. Nair from L’ecole Chempaka came third.
DCP (Law and Order) Arul R.B. Krishna who was the chief guest and an avid quizzer himself was present during the senior finals. Giving away prizes to the winners, he praised the participants for their good show. The quiz, he said, was a great opportunity for students to improve their knowledge.
Anuvind and Athul said they were glad to be back in the top spot after a year’s gap, having won the finals of the 15th edition. “It is overwhelming.”
There was no special preparation for the quiz, other than reading up a few books, they said.
Vishwa Kalyan and Adithya, both class 6 students, were happy at their win, especially as they didn’t fare well in the quiz last year. “Last year, we did everything we could, but this year we didn’t do much. We were surprised that we won though we made many mistakes,” they added.
Prizes for audience too
Apart from prizes for winners and certificates for participants, there are prizes for members of the audience too for instant answers.
The quiz was presented by Kokuyo Camlin mechanical pencils. In a message to the event, Saumitra Prasad, Chief Marketing Officer, Kokuyo Camlin, said Kokuyo Camlin had joined hands with The Hindu to organise this year’s edition of The Hindu Young World quiz with the idea of environment protection.
The national gift sponsor was BSA Ladybird and Hercules. The event was supported by LIC of India.
The regional partner was Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd., Kerala. The gift sponsor was Style Plus.
The venue and snack partner was Hotel Uday Samudra, Kovalam.
