Quizzing

Quizzing – the only thing that can keep me away from work, sleep and food. That’s the extent to which I love the game.

Before I jump onto the details of quizzing, let me ask you a question, a very common quizzing question –

STA SOL NE MOEARE (Stand, Sun, move not). On whose tomb will you find this?

Try to answer the question. If you don’t know the answer, take a minute and try to work it out. The answer is not someone you have not heard of. In fact, his name is known universally. I would encourage you to read through the post till the end, where I reveal the answer.

During the late 1700s, a person named James Daly made a bet that he could introduce a word into the language within twenty-four hours. He then went out and hired a bunch of street urchins to write the word on walls around the city. Within a day, the word became well known and had acquired a meaning. Everyone thought it meant “some sort of test”, as they didn’t know the actual meaning of the word. The word was ‘Quiz’.

From the 1700s to the 21^st millennium, quizzing has taken every possible form, from harmless competitive corridor-quizzing at school and college to the extremely cutthroat quizzes with huge money at stake on primetime television. I am however not here to discuss about the transition of quizzing or the economics of it (although I might do a post on this in the future), but on the nature of quizzing I have gone through.

It all started in 1993. A bunch of us were selected from school to participate in the inter-city quizzing tournament called ‘Chaitanya Gold Spot Awards’. At that time, quizzing to me meant reading up ‘Manorama’, ‘Upkar’s GK’ and learning capitals, currencies, sobriquets et al., by rote. My team won the second prize across the entire city, and in no small measure sparked my interest in quizzing. Winning at a young age is so crucial – I don’t even know if I ever would have stepped into a quiz contest again if we were just yet another losing team among the other 190 teams.

Sunday afternoons at 12:00 meant a whole lot more after winning the quiz. This was when the Bournvita Quiz Contest (BQC), hosted by Derek O’ Brien was telecast on Zee TV. I was hooked – watching some of the best minds battle it out at a national level. The standard of questions were far higher than the finals of the quiz we had just won. We began preparing in right earnest towards cracking the BQC. In 1996, we entered the qualifiers of BQC, but then lost to a much better team. However, I and another team member were winning quizzes on regional channels – Vijayam manade (ETV), Jayam Vijayam (or something like that) (Gemini TV). One team I was a part of also won the Geo map quiz at a state and national level (I think we came in National 10^th).

Lest you think this is sounding more like a resume than a blog post, there is a certain reason I elucidated the above results. As you would have noticed by now, success had gone into my head. I was winning quizzes – pretty easily in fact and I thought, it was time to move on.

I was dead wrong.

My Engineering brought in an entity called K-circle in my life. Inspired by one of my seniors who used to be a regular at this quiz club, I attended it one Friday. That night, while I walked back to my house, I realized that I had known nothing. I was among men, so to quote a Hollywood movie. Deep down, I felt humiliated and some what humbled. I knew this competition was definitely fierce and knowledgeable and brilliant. At some level, I wanted to be the best among them.

A question for example went something like this -

On 7 Jan 2004 , Toyota Canada announced the name of a new car, calling it “the new wave of bold style.” This Special Edition Celica is a high-performance car, and is available in two colours – red and thundercloud. The original name was dumped when the car was released in January 2005. It is now called the Celica Sports Package. What was the dropped name?

I didn’t have a clue. When the answer came in, I almost kicked myself for not knowing it. And there began my journey in the wonderful world of logical quizzing. Quiz after quiz, I improved. I felt increasingly better. And in due course, I met some fantastic quizzers whom I still admire today. They are much better quizzers, both in terms of knowledge as well as the logical thought process, and can beat me any day and on any subject.

Which brings me to the core of the quizzing transition that I went through. Logical thought process. During school days, it was learn by rote. But once I was in the real world of quizzing, I realized that rote learning didn’t take me far. In fact, that proved to be a hindrance because I used to box my thought process with that rote knowledge. K-circle and subsequently my MBA school pushed me to think logically, connect different pieces of knowledge and come up with an answer. I have no qualms to admit that my thought process is shaped by my quizzing career than anything else. It helps me connect different dots together very quickly to come up with a good answer in time, rather than wait for the best answer, which may never come.

Logical thought process, hence, would tell us, that Stand, Sun, move not will correspond to some astronomer, especially an astronomer who first spoke about the Sun being the center of the universe. Copernicus, Galileo etc were some of the astronomers that come to mind. With a little more knowledge, Copernicus came before Galileo and hence the answer would be Copernicus – the one to formulate the heliocentric cosmology, displacing the Earth from the center of the universe and putting the Sun in its place. And hence the epitaph, Stand, Sun, move not.

And answer to the second question? Well, an international disaster – a natural calamity. Toyota Canada had planned to call it ‘Tsunami’. Did you kick yourself too? Welcome to our world

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