There is one particular road safety rule followed all over the world, but not in Estonia — wearing seatbelts. During the winter months, vehicles have to travel on roads with 22-cm-thick ice and wearing seatbelts is a strict ‘no’ because sometimes, passengers may have to make a sudden exit from their cars.
This was just one of the many interesting bits of trivia thrown up at the annual Landmark Quiz that saw some of the best quizzers in the country battling it out for attractive prizes.
The not-to-be-missed calendar event was first held in 1988 and became an annual feature from 1992. This year too, many veteran quizzers turned up at the event.
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One of the quirky aspects every year is the funny team names that the quizzers come up with, and this year was no different with regulars such as ‘Mama, machan, maapillai (MMM)’ joined by ‘Jigarthanda, answer pannuda’ and many others. More than 300 teams took part in the preliminary round and eight teams participated in the regional finals. Vinod Ganesh flew down from London to be the quizmaster for the regional finals.
Defending champions ‘Aardvarks’ led all the way, finishing with 92 points. ‘Swami and Friends’, a popular city team, came second scoring 82 points and the two teams made it to the national finals that were conducted by veteran quizmaster Navin Jayakumar.
In the national finals, ‘QED’ – an immensely popular team comprising Samanth Subramanian, Swaminathan and Jayakanthan — emerged winners, while ‘Swami and Friends’ composed of Bhargava, Alagarswami and Krishnamurthi and ‘Nexus Baggage’ with Navin Rajaram, Varun Rajiv and Venkatesh Srinivasan were first and second runners-up respectively.
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Aryapriya Ganguly, who teaches sociology and human resource management at a business school in New Delhi and his ‘Aardvarks’ team mates Avinash Mudaliar and Rahul Kottalgi, both employed in SaReGaMa, Mumbai, said the quality of quizzing in Chennai was exemplary.
“We all have very tough jobs during the day and whatever little free time we get, we devote to quizzing,” said Mr. Ganguly.
“I have been visiting the event without fail for more than 10 years and the quality of quizzing has improved every year. The level of competition and audience participation is what I like most,” said 71-year-old P.B. Padmanabhan, an audience member.
The team ‘Kai poche, vada poche,’ comprising S. Hariharan and Siddharth Pillai from Chettinad Vidyashram and Vishnu Aravind from PSBB, K.K. Nagar won the first place in the competition for juniors.