Odyssey Open 2007, Chennai - Prelims

Here are the Q&A of the elimination round of the open quiz organized by Odyssey in Chennai on 26 January 2007. The QM was Diwakar Pingle. The set of questions for the prelims were very good indeed. The questions were relevant, trivial, informative, useful, endearing, done with a personal touch, all at the same time!

The venue was packed, both floors of it plus a mini hall(!), with participants. Yeah, like a tin of sardines! All hell broke loose just before the prelims stage, with the organizers not having a clue as to how to handle the mad rush of people. Thankfully, things calmed down and things improved by the time the on-stage round began.

The cut-off was around 24, I guess from my friend Sreeram, who had made it to the final rounds. The final round was a trivia-fest; it was Triwiali, with crackers and sparklers of questions. I will try to put up some of the questions here soon. Frankly, there is just too much stuff! A problem of plenty... The quiz lasted for more than 3 hours!

The quiz was won by Swami, VV Ramanan and teammate, who came back strongly from behind to trump the Bangalore teams. It was truly an inspired effort from them and the adrenaline could be smelled from far!

PRELIMS
--------------
1. Rabindranath sang this for the first time @ 1896 session of Congress. Published in Bangabandhu.
- Vande mataram
2. Peoples Action Party hasn't lost a single election since independence from Britain - Singapore
3. Which laboratory crosses an international boundary? - CERN
4. Visual - Rajapalayam dog
5. Video - Film dedicated to? - Steve Irwin (Ice Age 2??)
6. Audio: Bappi Lahiri singing
7. Mix of jazz, blues and gospel ==> Rock&Roll - R&B
8. Jan 25th. Scotland night. Ode To A ____ - Haggis
9. Retired in 1962. All records overhauled by Gavaskar ==> Sachin - Polly Umrigar
X. Visual - UNESCO World Heritage Site
Y. Audio - Theme song of ICC World Cup 2007
Z. Visual - cover of white mughal, william dalrymple - Bahadur Shah Zafar
A. Anand most winningest streak - Corus (Wijk Aan Zee)
B. Finnair recently launched Helsinki-Delhi. Brand ambassador - Santa Claus
C. Purandara mudra etc Thyagaraja mudra what? - Thyagaraja
D. Visual - Red shirt unveiling his own statue - James Brown
E. Audio - Raaga - Punnaraya varal
F. Recent Indian word added to OED Gujarati "without servitude" - Bindaas
G. Examples of - pangrams
H. Who visited which dictator, inspiring reforms - Friedman visited Pinochet
I. Remove two letters from country to get capital, add the same two letters to get capital - Brazil, Tunisia
J. Jefferson popularized. In Europe, was initially used for decorative purposes - Tomato, Potato
K. Visiting quiz in Delhi. Shocked to see people not knowing "mother of Rama" - Kausalya, Amar Chitra Katha Origin, Anant Pai
L. ___, ___, arub etc - Lakh, Crore
M. Original name changed after visiting ruler gave something near canal - Nehru, Orig name: Kaul
N. Story about small letters being more used. What terms? - Upper case, Lower case
O. Australian coat of arms - Kangaroo, Emu
P. Swahili word, Makonde word - Chikangunya, Dengue
Q. Like Moses, river parted for Indian myth - Krishna and Vasudeva
R. Visual: free running game - Parkour
S. (local) cookery book trivia - Samaithu Paar
T. (local) visual - mascot of Harlem Globetrotters (had recently visited Chennai)
U. Why ships' breadth 32.3m ? - Width of locks of Panama canal
(guessed Suez)
V. Duke of ___ story. Replace Amsterdam with ours! - York (New York name origin)

PERSONAL
--------------
I teamed up with a couple of guys from Chennai, Karthik Narayan and his friend Anand. All we actually had going for us was our team name, which I thought was pretty good: The 3 MUST GET BEERS! A play on The Three Musketeers, to make it bleedingly obvious! We made 17 points, I guess, which was definitely not good enough in an open quiz of this scale. Plainly put, I failed to qualify.

But the final round was worth the trip (I had come on the Shatabdi from Bangalore n the morning) just for the infotainment value. It was also good to meet up with some old friends like Sreeram and to make some new friends. All in all, I must say it was an enriching experience.

There was an impoverishing experience also though, in the morning. I got fleeced by an auto-rickshaw driver who dropped me off at the Museum instead of Music Academy (the venue), where I had asked to be dropped. It always happens to me in Chennai!