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Muck in the Delhi quizzing scene

These days I get to hear about more incidents of rigging happening in school quizzes in Delhi. And it’s a really sad situation. Some of the best quizzes which were there (like the Agnel Talent Fest Quiz) are either no longer being held because of sponsorship issues, or their standards have declined drastically (like so many computer symposium quizzes – and I’m talking about ones like Dynamix). It seems that more of these quizzes are being leaked by the organizers to favor either the host school, or some friend they have in other schools. What these people don’t see is how it hurts their own reputation, the reputation of their quiz and their school.

Take for example the Tagore International School (Vasant Vihar) Commties Quiz 2008 held today. Prateek Vijayavargia was telling me how it was rigged to such an extent that his team’s correct answers were marked wrong (it was shown to them) and still the organizers refused to mend their error. All of this just to ensure that the host school made it to the final round. They manipulated to the extent of increasing the host school’s scores to make them qualify.

Events don’t earn respect by giving Lenovo laptops as prizes or Domino’s Pizza for lunch – they earn it by having a fair competition of all teams with high standards. At Code Wars 2007 for instance we went to great lengths to ensure that a tight lid was kept on all information. Even when our members were participating and I made the papers for some events, utmost care was taken to see that nothing leaked out. And these days we have events where the organizers are actually leaking out things to other schools too! This sort of malfeasance hurts everyone.

BTW, Prateek’s put up a few posts on some recent quizzes he’s gone to. You might want to check them out for some quiz papers.

PS (off topic) – ln (2π)…LMAO!!!

PPS – Prashanth wanted me to add here that he was not involved in Dynamix 2008, but he was involved in Dynamix 2007.

39 replies on “Muck in the Delhi quizzing scene”

Chirag: Sure. Will try that, but it doesn’t seem likely. Not too likely.

Ankur: Very tough? Okay so how about programming?

Prateek: Yeah. Thanks. =D
COQ is damn good. I like their questions. And the entire open quiz thing is pretty great too. We need to have more such events with that “open” format. Damn.

@Espera: Programming’s fine I guess, but I don’t make the paper. I don’t look at the questions themselves, I just insert irritating stories in each question to distract people from the main task. Muhahahaha. (It works, most of the time.) St Columba’s is able to hold it because they’ve a large audi. VK (nor RKP) don’t. VK just has this small Nazi-era gas chamber which they attempt to pass off as an audi.

@ Espera – COQ is definitely good, but most of their Prelims and Semis qns are copied from blogs and Yahoo! quiz groups…which is sad.
If ur interested to go for Open Quizzes, then there are many on the College Quizzing Circuit….U cud also try Kutub Quizzers.

@Ankur – Even Modern School VV, Army Public School (Raina Auditorium) and NEPS 😉 for that matter has large audis but they dont have open quizzes. So I believe its not the auditorium problem here.
Nazi-Era Gas Chamber?? Not a bad title..

@espera, ankur and prateek
Being from Columba’s, i know what ticks in the Columban Open each year.
1. Audi is huge.
2. Lots of volunteers for every small activity (from correcting the answers to handling the long queues of quizzers outside the audi)
3. graduating quizzers make prelims and quarters, national level Quiz Masters from Quizcraft(ex-columbans) make semis and finals.
4. Lots of team participate because its open and then it creates a butterfly effect, in a sense that even more people come to participate in the ‘open’ quiz : Word gets around very quickly….thanks to all avid quizzers like you…
5. Cash awards for all semi-finalists, finalists, and top 3 teams!!!

@Prateek: I was talking about the specific case of DPS VK – we can’t hold open quizzes because of our infrastructure constraints.

@Chirag: COQ’s amazing. Too bad most of the DPS VK teams were disqualified this year, or we might have got more places in the top few. 😉

Ankur: Thanks for those links!! Where the hell did you get the H2G2 game from!? Man. My highest in that so far has been 33 points. The first time, I accepted Ford’s towel and promptly died. But no, don’t tell me how to do it, I’ll figure out the game myself. The biggest hitch I’ve been facing is getting a Babel Fish. I tried the Techathlon and the Surprise Events. I liked Techathlon, couldn’t do the Da Vinci problem though. Anyway, thanks again.

Prateek: Would they allow school students to participate in the college quizzing circuits? And how exactly do I find out about the events?

Chirag: Frankly, I think only list item 1 sets your event apart from the rest. I mean, if the other schools wanted to hold an open quiz, only 1 would be a problem. But then, they COULD divide it all into batches, or limit members of teams to 2 :S

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