Being Quizzical

Recently, i had been to a quiz event which has now become the most wanted annual event for corporate firms across india. Led by the renowned 'Pickbrain Giri', Tata Crucible Business Quiz has even surpassed the much older Brand Equity Quiz. around 380 teams participated in the event and 6 teams went to the final which had a nail biting finish between Yahoo! (the defending champions of Bangalore) and ITC.

After coming back from the event, i was wondering what makes a better quiz... How do we ask a good question which enthralls the audiences... my beloved friend Srini who partners with me for our team 'Exquizitives', sent me a mail which answered my query perfectly.

What is a good quiz?

A good quiz has a set of questions of which not even a single one goes unanswered. In addition, the questions should be answered by different teams and the quiz should not be monopolized by one single team.

To do this, the quiz master must have a prior knowledge of the target audience. The questions must also cover a wide range of topics. But still, the QM can have a signature set of questions (though it means that the quiz could be skewed towards people specializing in the signature).

A quiz initiates a journey of quest for knowledge. When one walks out of the room or hall after the quiz, one must definitely know much more than when entering the room. The quiz must make the quizzers go back to their systems and google or wiki or whatever. It must initiate a thrilling journey of discovery. One fact will lead to another and when it all the clicking and turning (of books) is done, the quizzer should be smarter and brighter and enriched.

What is a good quiz question?

There are different kind of questions. One kind is the “You know it or you don’t”. Other is the “let me guess” kind.

But the best kind of question that involves connecting the dots and logical reasoning. The question should send the quizzer thinking on different facets of the topic and sometimes even unrelated or weird facet. And the question should produce a “WOW” movement when you hit on the conclusion.

Seems like to give a huge applause when a QM get a good question like this. But every quiz should also have questions of other kind to achieve balance.

And when it comes to ours…

Quizzes needs to be spread across different fields with a skew towards “let me guess’ kinds. And we love Quizzers who replies to the same.

Beijing Olympics and Munnabhai's Babuji

Just after any big sporting event, the biggest past-time for all Indians is to debateing about our achievements. How an island country like Jamaica has performed far better than us in Beijing Olympics, how corrupt are our sports authorities, why we Indians lack the killer instinct, what should be done to improve the situation, so and so forth.

However, none of us ever discuss how much sporting culture we individuals have. How many of us have played a game of cricket, or badminton or atleast chess or carrom recently! do we have a membership at any of the sports clubs... do our children take sports as seriously as studies... or do we let them do that!

Let me narrate yet another tragic story of Indian sports

In 2005, renowned actor and Union Minister for Sports and Youth Affairs, Sunil Dutt passed away after a heart attack at his home in Mumbai. The whole nation paid tribute to this noble soul who was not only an eminent actor, but also a social activist admired by even his bitter rivals. Though he has been MP from Mumbai for five times, he became a union minister for the first time in this UPA govt. As a sports minister, Dutt not only had time to hear the plight of sports persons, he also made a concerted effort to improve the standard of Indian athletes.

But his death seems to be a bigger tragedy for some athletes in particular. Two weeks before his death, the Ministry for Sports and Youth Affairs sent an open invitation to all current national and international champions to personally meet the minister to present their training needs and get financial assistance. This Champions Promotion Initiative was supposed to be held on 26th May 2005 in New Delhi, but tragically Dutt passed way just one day before.

In reel life, Munnabhai didn’t finish his MBBS as per Babuji’s wishes, but in real life champions did live upto expectations, but Babuji couldn’t!