Nearly 14 years after attending his first Landmark Quiz in Chennai in 2003, Ramesh Natarajan, a city-based marketing manager, said that it was like a dream come true to have been part of a team that qualified for the finals of the quiz on Wednesday, August 15.
“Over the years, this is one quiz that hasn’t lost its audience — thanks to the interesting questions and the fact that the audience is constantly kept engaged even during the final rounds,” he said.
Landmark Quiz turned 25 on Wednesday, and saw people across age groups enthusiastically participating once again in the preliminary rounds as well as stay back to watch the top 8 teams battle it out in the finals. Stating that around 250 teams participated in the open quiz and 200 teams as part of the school quiz round, Ophthalmologist and quiz master Navin Jayakumar said that over the years, the number of participants continued to hold up.
“We’ve made sure that the quiz is not only interesting and challenging, but that the audience is able to relate to the questions and learn something as well,” says the quiz master, who has hosted every edition of the quiz since its inception, with the exception of two years in between.
“The quiz continues to have the most diverse audience through the years. Even on Wednesday, there were families, students and corporates who had teamed up,” said S. Chandrasekar, a developer from Chennai, who has been attending the quizzes from 2004, when he was in school. “The questions always deal with such a variety of topics that we always come back with a list of books to read or films to watch and the quiz on Wednesday was no different,” he added.
Even as the quiz expanded and hosted editions in other cities over the years, the Chennai edition of the quiz remained special for several participants who have been making trips to attend the event. Ajay Parasuraman, whose team had qualified for the finals on Wednesday said that he had been attending the quizzes in Chennai for the last ten years — from the time he was a student in Goa.
“We come together as a community of sorts. In Chennai, the level of preparation among the participants too is high and it is challenging and fun,” said the consultant from Bengaluru. He recalled the time when there wasn’t a separate quiz for students and nearly 400 to 500 teams came together to participate in a massive preliminary round.
The Landmark Quiz has managed to keep its date with August 15 for every edition so far with the exception of 2017 when the quiz was held in December. “For many of us quizzers from Chennai, August 15 has become synonymous with the quiz. From the first edition of the quiz that I attended as a student to the recent editions, the event has become an emotion of sorts for us,” said actor Kasturi Shankar, who has been a finalist many times.
“The event has, over the years, played an integral part in projecting quizzing as a fashionable pursuit. It has changed the outlook that people have had about quizzing and shown them that it can be extremely creative and enjoyable while being challenging and competitive,” she added.
'CIDs from Kerala' comprising Chandrakant Nair, Praveen V.R., Hrishikesh Varma won the Landmark Quiz 2018 in Chennai and the team QED comprising Swaminathan G, Jayakanthan R and Manu Sudhakar were placed second.
The team from Mumbai, 'Travelling Pillsburys' comprising Rajiv Rai, Vibhendu Tiwari, and Sumant Srivatsan were placed third.
The Landmark Juniors quiz, which celebrated it's fifth edition had Chief Quizmaster, Venkatesh Srinivasan hosting it. The team from PSBB, K.K. Nagar comprising Nikhil Kowshik, Nithin Karthik Balaji and Manav Tathacharya bagged the first place.
The team from Vidya Mandir with Aditya Chandrashekar, R Rahul and Ashutosh Bharadwaj were the runners up and the third place was bagged by the Mixed school team from Bengaluru with Aaditya Kannan, Prajwal V. and Varun J.
