Prateek went last week for this Cricket Quiz held at FICCI Auditorium, organized by Cradle Sports. That in itself isn’t the subject matter, the quizmaster of the event is. It was to be conducted by…[dramatic pause]…Parnab Mukherjee. No, not the defence minister. OK, that didn’t have much of an effect on most readers, did it? Didn’t when I first heard of it, either. To put it in DNA’s words, Parnab Mukherjee would be the ‘bee’s knees and wasp’s nipples’ of Indian quizzing. Or as somebody else put it, he’s the best worst quizmaster in India. The unique thing about him is that he never carries cue cards / any sheet of paper on stage when conducting a quiz. What makes him even more unique is that he makes up BOTH the questions and their answers most of the time. He’s also known as Peter Pan because he claims that his age is 28 years, for the past few years in a row. Boy, talk about mid-life crisis. Also, he (claims to have) studied under John Nash. Do check out this last link, even if you haven’t been sweet enough to click on the links before that. (The comments section, in all the links, are pretty interesting.) Even Lord Samit Basu has spoken about that guy. It’s interesting to note then, on how this guy ends up conducting so many quizzes at IITs and IIMs. Makes me wonder about what the F organizers think when going in for this guy to conduct a quiz.
Shucks. They had to make it a cricket quiz. I’d have happily attended at least at least one Pr0n-n00b quiz, just for the experience (they had an open quiz edition before conducting the school quiz edition the next day). Prateek’s team came second in the quiz, even with the weird questions (kudos to him!). What I was excited about was the fact that NDTV MetroNation was to show it today.
Show, they did. Edit, they didn’t. NDTV telecast an event with the takes which were done by the show anchor when shooting. Evidently, they also believed that a quiz show must consist of montages of people giving answers on stage with cheesy music playing in the background, so viewers didn’t get to see the Great Man in action. NDTV MetroNation hardly has anything worth watching and by NOT showing the event properly they just made a lot of people miss out on a valuable life experience.
That pic of him in this post, BTW, is an old one. My mom walked into the room when I was watching the quiz on MetroNation, looked at him for some time, and then…
Hmm. Looks a lot like you.
Oh, and in other (quizzing) news, DPS VK’s team won the Mod Quiz held at Modern School, Vasant Vihar today. As usual, Mod School’s event organizers seem to think that making inadequate arrangements for teams (so that some teams had to stand while giving the prelims) is a sign of their success rather than their mismanagement. The quiz was conducted by Gurinder Bedi and was a looong 14 round quiz. St Columba’s came second. So there, congratulations to the DPS VK Quiz Club!
24 replies on “Pr0n-n00b’s Quiz”
last time around, the quiz was dominated by amity and dps rkp…even then they ad around 10 schools..with gurinder person as teh quizmaster… its quite sad that the defending champs are not invited..this is damn rare!
Ankur, i was browsing thru the older editions of the times of india and read that u hosted the inter dps quiz which dps vk won. Could u share the questions with us ? Ur gonna be d nxt pickbrain or somebody… Or u might be d first ankur!
@agrim : Ankur’s already posted the quiz https://ankurb.net/2008/09/07/inter-dps-contemporary-india-quiz-2008/
Thanks ankur for making such a comprehensive blog!!!
ps. congrats prateek
Chirag
In Ankur’s quiz there it says there was no concept of six in the time of Lagaan and it was “six and out” if you hit it out of the boundary.
What is the source for this ? My understanding is that till 1910 (& till about 1902 or so in Australia), you had to hit the ball out of the ground for six. A hit into the crowd fetched just four.
Never heard of six and out in first class cricket.
Good quiz, so don’t take these as negative feedbacks.
Re the question about Aslam Sher Khan being the only Olympian turned MP, Jaipal Singh (http://www.planetfieldhockey.com/PFH/Item-View-5770-64 ) captained Indian hockey team in 1928, then turned to politics, and was one of the early propounders of Jharkhand. As per http://www.jharkhandnews.org/loksabha.pdf, he was MP from some place called Khunti in the first four Lok Sabhas.
@ Agrim – All the qns of the quiz have already been posted! Yes, and it was weird and rare not to invite the defending champs! Yes even I read abt the Inter-DPS Quiz in the Student edition Times NIE!
@ Chirag – Thanks!
@ Lord Labak Das – Both points raised have been valid, Though I am not sure abt the Lagaan fact, the one on Jaipal singh is correct! Will have to check the “six and out” one.
@Agrim: Hope you got the link now. Do gimme your feedback on it!
@Chirag: Thanks! 🙂
@Lord Labak Das: Thanks! Glad that you liked the quiz. 🙂
The bit about Lagaan was an editorial page article by Gulu Ezekiel. It was a whole article on Lagaan and why the last scene couldn’t have happened. He wrote it soon after the release of Lagaan, and I remember finding it pretty amusing at that time. That’s how I remembered it. Then, I went to the HT site to look that article up (when I made the quiz, I generally want to check up my sources), I found that accessing older archives of their ePaper version requires paid access. Their normal search feature sucks, couldn’t locate that article. However, I still included it because I remembered the article’s premise of ‘six and out’.
The second one, Aslam Sher Khan, I was a bit iffy about including it too. If I remember correctly, I think I came across this question through some link on the sportsquiz Yahoo! Group, or some quiz book. (I don’t remember which one of the two.) I searched up this info when I was doing research for the inter-DPS quiz, and could track down the fact about him being a Parliamentarian. So I guess it was incorrect on my part to assume that the other bit of info – of him being the ONLY Parliamentarian – was correct too. I’ll add an erratum notice on that quiz page. Thanks for pointing this (the Jaipal Singh fact) out! 🙂
@Lord Labak Das: Thankfully, the Aslam Sher Khan question was a backup question, and didn’t affect the outcome of the quiz.
The fact about Aslam Sher Khan being the only Olympian to be an MP is an often-repeated mistake in Online Quizzes and maybe quiz books. Did the question say hockey? Because if did not say hockey, then I think even Jyotirmoyee Sikdar and some other Olympians have been Members of Parliament.
BTW, Gulu Ezekiel won the Cradle Sports Open Cricket Quiz! His knowledge in cricket, is quite brilliant…