FORCE Fest 2006 was held at Apeejay School, Sheikh Sarai on 28-29 November 2006. Short story – we came Overall Runners Up! And, since this is my blog, I gotta mention we came runners up in the quiz too.
Now the long story, for fans of my incredibly long posts. This was an event that was make-or-break for the Code Warriors team, since the school administration had made it clear that we weren’t going to have Code Wars if we didn’t win something. Apparently, Exun 06 wasn’t enough for them! Force was an event where we had to participate in all events for an overall position, so we had a hard time hunting down members for all, but we finally stitched together one, hastily albeit because we’d mixed up its timings with certain other events going on right now.
Day 1 saw my regular quizzing partner Prannoy unable to turn up since his mom didn’t allow him to. I had to go with this talented youngster we have in CW called Vivek, who although is in class 8, really IS a good quizzer, at least in the tech domain. The quiz and the crossword were on at the same time, so we like most other teams, had to hop from one to the next.
First there was the quiz, in a computer lab with PCs from the era when dinosaurs ruled the earth. The prelims looked more as if they were some sort of subjective-type exam to some cheap computer course, rather than a quiz paper of a school that has produced ace quizzers like Ankit Sud and Dhruv Chopra. It was easy though, and we wrapped it up pretty quickly, to rush off to a primary lab for the crossword, where the highly intelligent organisers thought that we all could comfortably sit on chairs for nursery class students (it was their primary lab).
Crossword prelims really left me bored, the worst of its kind with nothing cryptic at all (those ones are really fun to figure out, and I like that). It was all straight forward, that to sucky 3-4 letter ones that flit around like bugs. We came first in this though, but it really sucked.
The crossword finals were held the same day (after a one hour delay), and it was TOTALLY mismanaged. Initially the organisers said that there were going to be four rounds, but even after clues were remaining they suddenly cut it shot three, effectively ruining our strategy of not going in for the bigger words (we were waiting for confirmations to our hunches as the letters filled in), and we had all those figured out. Organisers, in the first round, had made all the clues visible (technically that is, projection was bad and blurred), rather than the regular blind method. Suddenly some bright kid then had the idea in the second round to shift the crossword app window to hide the clues. The crossword finals seemed rigged, with KR Mangalam World School coming first by a huge margin, while others were far behind. Finals were pathetic too, with no cryptic clues, either you knew it, or didn’t, and there were some ambiguous ones too. KRM, a school which knew nothing at Exun, WarP or any other event suddenly knew what Fios (a Verizon service nobody else in the quizzing circle has heard of, and believe me, the people I’m talking about are no fools), .env, cron etc were. Even the seating was suspect, since rather than making us pick chits to decide, they did it randomly. I still have neck pain though, due to the organisers who made us sit incredibly close to a giant screen, that I had to strain my neck to unimaginable angles.
To our horror, the story repeated itself in almost every other event, where far more deserving schools, and here I’m even ready to accept ones other than DPS VK, didn’t get positions, while KRM did. Fortunately, from sources, we found out some rigging was going on, and an SMS as proof from a KRM guy to back it up.
Day 2 started off with the quiz finals, which were equally stupid. I certainly didn’t expect such a pathetic quiz, and I was looking forward to Ankit Sud conducting it, but I guess couldn’t come due to exams. Really stupid things, like MCD website, company headquarters with logo visible, kid-stuff questions like the three-finger salute, and a rotten scoring system where only one point was given per correct answer in the acronym round (when all others had 10 points, it doesn’t make sense to have one-pointers). It was all on luck, that DPS Mathura Road got most of the passes, sitting right next to a weak team Ramjas, and a freaked out (at the stupid questions) MIS. It was a close finish in a quiz that was so dumb. DPS RKP were totally fooling around in both the crossword and the quizzes, with Manas making funny noises and regularly (almost) insulting the organisers. ROFL at his funny noises and comments still.
I guess KRM and / or Force members got scared after the news circulated around, and I guess day 2 was pretty fair, with the best teams winning events. CW team bagged a few others too.
However, we NEEDED the overall to convince the school for Code Wars, and in a historic event, DPS Vasant Kunj, Mathura Road, and RK Puram got to together, with Mothers International to complain about unfair judging in events, and we told their computer HoD. We went to the extent of applauding and cheering each other while the individual prizes were being distributed, something that generally does not happen. Gotta mention though, winners got pen drives.
Then came the time for the overall winners, and we waited anxiously as to what the school had decided. Force showed that they would stand up for truth, and the overall position went to deserving winners MIS, with DPS VK getting the Overall Runners Up trophy.
A thanks all branches of DPS, and MIS for supporting us. Congrats to MIS too, for performing so well everywhere despite having very few members. Looking forward to an Ankit Sud quiz next year (he’s promised me). And do look at the overall trophy we got. I think that clinches Code Wars for us. That, plus the CD-RW that the school will be getting from this event, and I think that now there should be NO reason for the school to turn us down. After all, we won overall at Exun, and did pretty well at WarP too.
40 replies on “FORCE Fest 2006”
ok i wne to school today , and let me tell you AFAIK i am convinced no cheating was involved , except maybe the topic being leaked out to someone.
Please end this non-purposeful discussion !
I may point out to Billo that nowhere in the post have I stated that it was Ramjas RKP, I simply said Ramjas. 😛
As for web design, each and every team, and even a particular FORCE member said that KRM site was bad and did not deserve to win.
Also, speaking of Dhruv, I believe he mentioned that KRM’s principal was initially with Apeejay, and left three years ago with the best teachers and therefore ‘there may have been bias’. That’s a quote he gave on this event.
All this talk of an edited SMS with changed wordings is bullshit, and I’m sure no FORCE member would’ve been mad enough to say such a thing. For one, you may even want to speak to DPS MR, and DPS RKP guys who’d seen the SMS, it was a different one we were referring to. Plus, there was a FORCE member whom I quote ‘the crossword paper may have been leaked unintentionally’.
I believe that this fruitless discussion must end, and I’d also like to end with the fact that no edited message was shown.
BTW, has anyone noticed that this KRM IT Clan Pres, Saurabh, is somehow associated with DreamSkulls, that’s the link which opens when you click to see his Blogger profile.
For the uninitiated, I may point out that DreamSkulls was the sponsor for FORCE Fest 06. Now THAT is something which speaks for itself – we all know that it’s a tradition for companies never to allow their employees or even their relatives to participate in events sponsored by them. The fact itself makes the whole thing highly suspicious, that the sponsors themselves are participating via KRM. I’d say that’s a bit fishy, and unfair if they end up winning.
There! I just saw DreamSkulls site, and Saurabh is the one of the founding members, along with Rohan Ghosh, current FORCE president (I remember him from that day). This clearly shows a link, and the fact that the event may have been compromised at the highest level. And the sponsor himself is participating, and winning an event, which is totally suspicious.
I’d say apart from our SMS, the Code Warriors have conclusively established that the event may have been compromised, if not, then ethics demanded that sponsors themselves should not participate.
The KRM had gone to WarP and Exun too, where they could hardly answer anything. Sudden enlightenment at FORCE Fest? 😛
Quizzard Says :
I believe he mentioned that KRM’s principal was initially with Apeejay, and left three years ago with the best teachers and therefore ‘there may have been bias’.
You’re proving nothing but how desperate you are by trying to justify your loss’s. Our teachers taught Appejay before therefore we don’t deserve to win?
All this talk of an edited SMS with changed wordings is bullshit,
If there’s any way for you to prove, go ahead. We’ll stick with what we’ve said.
I believe that this fruitless discussion must end
With you flying all around with your false accusations all over the web, no. You’ve made it fruitless, we’re simply correcting our stance here.
BTW, has anyone noticed that this KRM IT Clan Pres, Saurabh, is somehow associated with DreamSkulls, that’s the link which opens when you click to see his Blogger profile.
Yeah, so? You’ve found the missing chain link to the biggest mystery ever? I see you’re good friends with some of the guys of the Exun clan, and others as well, but does that prove anything?
The KRM had gone to WarP and Exun too, where they could hardly answer anything. Sudden enlightenment at FORCE Fest? 😛
You’re clearly dodging your way out here, did you even read our posts above?
Looks like you’ll rant on anything you don’t end up winning in. If you’re so good and so damn sure you’re better than any student in KRM, what stopped you from coming second to us? Or now did Force Fest authorities leaked the paper to every school but yours? We had a pretty close win, one wrong answer and we would’ve had a draw leading to another round.
And the fact you prefered Manas’s cheap attempts at trying to be funny sort of strips you off whatever crediblity you once preserved. Please go ahead, solve this mystery further, maybe Apeejay has now invested a good share in KRM and even funded its foundations, its all just waiting for you to find it, though I could go on and state how 9/10 schools that won at WARP was a DPS school being hosted by a DPS school, but I won’t, because unlike you here, we actually have sporting spririt and don’t go on an endless whining trip whenever we lose. And please keep it up, its getting rather funny now.
I would point out here that you’re wrong when you say WarP and Exun were dominated by DPS in 90% of events – if you’ve seen the scoreboard, then other schools too have won equally, and they deserved those wins.
You’ve evaded the issue that the sponsor himself participated in the event. Don’t you believe that ethics demand that someone sponsoring something not take part in it?
Anyway, this hotshot pres of your, I visited his DreamSkulls. Apparently, this guy who can create websites for international companies ‘forgot’ to upload pages at certain places which are still linked to his home computer’s filesystem, under (I guess his mom) Shubhra Dargar’s account. Do tell him that if he wants to convince people he can win a Web D Event, then he should make proper sites, and something which has less of grammatical and spelling errors. 😛
Funny to see you trying to defend your position in vain. Give me a straightforward answer as to how any sponsor thinks it’s ethically correct to participate in his own event, and win it (doubtfully), and then claim that everything was unbiased.