IQL – General Quiz

The highly awaited lit event, the IQL Gen Quiz was held with much aplomb on Tuesday,
the 18th. The rains played spoil sport yet again, leading to the change in venue from the
OAT to the SAC yoga room. The turnout was fairly decent. Quizmaster Ashwin Krishnan
ensured a healthy mix of all genres and made it, as he put it, a Very General Quiz. The
eliminations consisted of 30 questions, all fairly workout-able. 6 senior teams made it to the
finals, amongst which 2 freshie teams were divided to make the teams of 4 each. The finals
consisted of dry rounds, a long visual connect, a choose-your-topic round and a challenge
round, which didn’t go quite as expected. The quiz was highly entertaining, but with
hardly any audience to enjoy it. The evening also saw a lot of heated arguments amongst
participants, vying for the top spot. The final results were as follows:

1. Mukund , Surinderjeet, Mayur, Harshveer.
2. Kislay, Meghna, Mukul, Pranay.
3. Uttapam(Paddy), Shanbhag, Pulklit, Chirag.
4.Vinit, Priyank, Rushabh, Abhie.
5. Antariksh, Ritika, Baheti, Aditya Dongre.
6. Aviral, Raghavan, Dempo, Advait.

-Vinit Atal

Open Potpourri

Open Potpourri report:

The much awaited Open potpourri event took place on 13th October, Wednesday in H2 mess. Set
and conducted by Mukund and Baheti, the event was a success- lots of fun and entertainment all
round. Around 100 people(30-40 teams) turned up for the competition.

First were the elims, consisting of a few rebuses, Dumb-C’s, Pictos and Manhunts. 6 teams made it
to the finals, with one freshies (bandi) team making it through as well. The finals were split into 7
rounds. Most notable were the Coco Bongo round, involving drumming cartoon theme songs to the
rest of your teammates, and the Matchstick Picto round, which all teams cracked. The second last round was the chain reaction round where one member dumb-C’d the event to the second person,
and then further cluing by picto or tinto to the third member. The final round which settled it all was the speed acting dumb charades round which was cracked by the sophie team who won by a very very narrow margin of 2 points.
All in all, an awesome event, cracked by Rushabh, Sankalp and Priyank in first place, Kislay, Eeshan and Ishan in second and followed by Meghna, Vinit and Ritika in third.

IQL Sports Quiz

IQL Sports

The newly launched Institute Quizzing league kicked off with the Sports Quiz on Monday, 11th
September. An awesome elims and good finals, set and conducted by Ishan Srivastava. Due to
weather constraints, the event which was originally to be held in OAT, got shifted to the Yoga room,
but no complaints from participants. Around 40 teams turned up.

The 30 question elims were followed by 6 rounds in the finals. Six non-freshie teams made it
through. Two freshies teams were taken and split up among the senior teams. The finals had many
interesting rounds with challenge funda and long connects were there. In a very surprising turn,
with points changing with every round, 2 teams- Mukund, Anvay, Meghna and Ranjit as well as
Ashwin Raghavan, Surinderjeet, Omkar Nene and Aditya Bhandati were tied for first place. Paddy(Uttapam), Harsh, Animesh, and Sudarshan came 3rd.

All members of the winning teams get points added to their individual tallies, so a ranking will be
obtained. Let’s hope the enthusiasm continues in the quizzes ahead!

The points tally has been put up here –
http://donquizote.wordpress.com/478-2/

Spy Games

Spy Games Report

For the first time, Literati conducted Spy Games on 7th October, Thursday at Som Well. The event, which saw a large turnout of about fifty teams, was set and conducted by Antariksh Bothale and Mukund Madhav.

The elimination rounds made all participants scratch their heads as they tried cracking codes, uncovering hidden messages and figuring out language translations. 8 teams went to the finals.

a. Interrogation, which had a tinto type format, except answers could be lies as well!
b. A code based round in which one member from each team had to convey personalities and places to his team using code words, secret actions or anything which wouldn’t let the other teams figure it out.

The finals had to be cut short because of security pains, and a Mafia-type World War round, and a Shoot Osama round could not take place.

All in all, a fun event which was cracked by sophies Tejas Naphade, Gurbaksh and Akshay Agarwal who won magnifying glasses (:P) as prizes. The convener team of Paddy, Meghna and RUshabh came second, and the infi old fourthie/fifthie team of Rahul Gaur, Nikhil Vij, and Satpreet Singh Arora came third.

Word Games Workshop

WORDGAMES WORKSHOP

The word games workshop, which was held on Monday, the 27th in the H1 mess, was a huge success and saw a large participation, including a lot of seniors. Word games have always been a very dynamic, interesting and challenging genre of Literary Arts and have always been enjoyed in the institute. The workshop was conducted by Eeshan Malhotra and Meghna Sreenivasan and was very interactive, with the ever- enthusiastic freshmen zestfully responding for the chocolates at stake. A major part of the evening was dedicated to Cryptic Crosswords and the rest to games like Boggle, Snatch, Kangaroo and Joey, Ditloids, amongst others. The workshop was highly enjoyable and will surely help draw lots of Literati members into Word games in the years to come. The workshop will be followed by an informal Cryptics-solving session in the SAC library on the coming Wednesday.

-Vinit Atal

Nobel Quiz Mumbai

The much hyped Nobel Quiz was conducted today by the Swedish Embassy in L.T today. With an all expenses paid trip to Sweden at stake for winning the national finals and Swedish internships for making it there, the hype was completely justified. The elims contained questions on Sweden, and the Nobel prizes. Conspicuous by their absence were questions on Physics, Chemistry and Economics, which was slightly disappointing to the people who had prepared those particular topics.

IITB performed exceedingly well as was expected. 5 out of the 6 finalists of the Mumbai edition were home teams, including a freshie team. Rahul Gaur, Ashwin Krishnan and Ashwin Raghavan won the quiz and will now go to the nationals. The relatively unknown team of Animesh, Anish and Nikhil came second, proving that a bit of preparation was enough to do well at the quiz. Rounding up the top three was the team of Abhishek Padmanabhan, Abhishek Muli and Gururaj Saileshwar.
Best of Luck to the winners and may IITB dominate the nationals also.

Hindi Creative Writing GC Report

The Hindi Creative Writing GC this year took place on 21st September in the main building classrooms. It saw about 70 entries in all. The judge this time is Mrs. Anita Kumar, a faculty with Mumbai University. The problem statement, Bollywood inspired, was as follows:

हिंदी रचनात्मक लेखन

शब्द सीमा: १००० शब्द

विषय: १. जो जीता वही सिकंदर

२. शीशा

३. हीरो नंबर १

४. अग्निपथ

५. तेरे बिन लादेन

६. मैं खिलाडी तू अनाडी

७. I hate love stories

अपने व्याख्यान, कहानी या कविता में निम्न लिखित किन्ही ५ उक्तियों का प्रयोग कीजिए

१. हम जहां खड़े हो जाते हैं, लाइन वही से शुरू हो जाती है

२. हम सब तो रंगमंच की कटपुतलियाँ हैं

३. कितने आदमी थे?

४. मेरे पास माँ है

५. भाई, टेंशन नहीं लेने का भाई.

६. मुझसे दोस्ती करोगे?

७. मैं और मेरी तन्हाई….

८. ये बच्चों के खेलने की चीज़ नहीं है

९. तक्लिया

१०. आल इज वेल

One very popular move introduced in this GC was chai for all the participants. All in all, good participation and enthusiasm was shown. Keep it up!

-Meghna Sreenivasan

Mahindra AQ Event Report

The Mahindra Auto Quotient (AQ), a quiz based on automobiles was conducted on 7th September. The event, sponsored and conducted by the Mahindra Group, saw participation from over 50 teams from various engineering colleges across Mumbai. This was the zonal competition, the winners of which go to the Nationals. The National winners get an all expenses paid trip to the Geneva Auto Show. 4 teams made it to the zonal finals. Although no IIT team qualified for the finals, the organizers were generous in giving Tshirts and bags as audience prizes. Every IITian present went home with a gift (Seriously.) Some even got more than the finalists. Overall it was a lucrative event.

– Rushabh Shah

Freshizza Treasure Hunt

The first event of Freshizza, the treasure hunt took place tonight. More than 500 people (126 teams of 4) participated, and at least 80 teams finished. There were a few glitches, including a cow eating some of the clues at a location, but it was largely mistake-free. Having participated/been involvement in conduction of the treasure hunt for the last 3 years, I think I can safely say that this was perhaps the one with the least mistakes. Full credit to Ishan Shrivastava and his team of coordinators (Jay, Namit, Rahil, Priyank, Vivek, Gurbaksh, Paddy, Vinit, Meghna, Rushabh) for setting the event, and to all the sophies who conducted it, especially those of you who came last moment to bail us out.

I apologize to the teams which had to wait at a location for one reason or the other, but then again, the point of a Treasure Hunt is not to win, but to have fun with your friends, and explore the campus. I’m sure lots of you discovered places that you hadn’t been to, in the course of searching for locations, and I hope all of you had fun. Still, results need to be declared, and after factoring in time bonuses, and clue penalties the final results are –

1. Shuvam, Abhishek, Saurabh, Vijay – H3
2. Hardik, Abhishek, Anuj, Varshul- H4
3. Pravesh, Rahul, Tanmay, Raghav – H4
4. Shravan, Lalit, Atul, Souradip – H4 (These guys apparently did the whole treasure hunt on foot!)
5. Nishikant, Raaz, Dinesh, Nitish – H4
6. Soorya, Upasana, Meryl, Gowri – H10
7. Suhas, Manoj, Sudhakar, Chaitanya – Hostel unknown
8. Sachin, Uday, Utkarsh, Anil – H4
9. Ram, Animesh, Ashraq, Pawan – H4
10. Girraj, Giriraj, Anuj(?), Navdeep – H3

Again, if a mix-up on our part cost you, we are very sorry. But as I said, the point of the treasure hunt was to have fun, and I hope you had tons. If not, do come for the Lit events tomorrow. You will definitely have some there :).

Cheers,

Mukund

Popular Linguistics – I: Phonetics

The first Popular Linguistics Session on Saturday, the 28th of August, went off very well. It was conducted
by our very own expert, Antariksh Bothale, with several helpful additions by Harish Ramdas. About 15
people turned up for the session, which was held in the SAC library, and lasted from 6.15 to 8.15 p.m.

This session dealt with phonetics, starting from the very basics. The discussion covered how sounds
are produced (not in the larynx, FYI), the types of vowel and consonant sounds in English and Hindi in
some detail, as well as interesting and exotic sounds in other languages. All in all, a reasonably thorough
overview of phonetics and a lot of fun!

-Meghna Sreenivasan