Landmark Open Chennai 2007

The Chennai leg of the Landmark 2007 was conducted by Dr. Naveen Jayakumar at the Music Academy on 15Aug07. The turnout was huge and the auditorium was jam-packed, to witness the landmark quizzing event of the year. Please also check the following links for other reports:
Wenkey
Inquizition
Hindu

The prelims on the first listen, I mean while writing the answers, seemed to be pretty decent. But in retrospect, only the first 30 questions or so seem to pass muster. Hindsight is 30/40! :-) There was an unnatural bias towards Harry Potter in the set of Qs (3+ out of 40; am complaining even though we got all of them), many were arbitrarily worded (avarahonam) or dead giveaways (one Q was even a repeat from the Odyssey event) and hence non-competitive; it was all in all an uneven spread. The cut-off was way too high, 30+/40, I have reason to believe, and would have been OK only if the quality/standard was uniform throughout.

Personal. Participated as the Borobodur Orangutans - Sreeram, Prasanth & me. DNQ. Usual story! :-( Managed to predict quite a few questions in the prelims and still did not qualify! Also ended up with a bout of Chennai-belly... Was a bad outing, all round.

The final round was not so great either. Not much substance (nothing to note!) and hence I left early. Usually I stay till the end, if only because I have traveled all the way to participate. The questions were rather stale, many seemed to have been left-overs from the 2006 quizzing season! Most of the current-affairs questions were based on early, mid 2006 stuff.

There was a high level of arbitness felt in some of the Qs (possibly because of the staleness factor) mentioned above. One of the teams even resorted to answering "Michael Jackson" based answers for all Qs that came to them - just because of a monstrously horrendous and banal connection question. And the answer to one of the questions which captured everyone's imagination, dendronautics was answered incorrectly and still given points. The team had answered something to the effect of "tree climbing" when the answer was morel like "study of vegetation according to height"!

The questions in the quizzer of the year round also was of non-uniform standard. Some of the participants had it real easy while some had it real tough. Of course, luck is a factor and also, this is a subjective opinion, but this was the general impression left behind.

In my opinion, it was a disappointing show, a let-down compared to the Odyssey Open in January 2007 held at the same venue.

QED from Chennai, the crowd-favourites won again, as other reports tell me. Some fun team names as well, "Cheque De", "Eternal Moonshine Of The Spotless Behind", "Munnabhai and the Jacky Sparrows" etc

The organizers could have made (and should in future make) better use of the computer during the registration stages in order to minimize the chaos that prevailed just before the prelims. Online registration/seating reservations for outstation teams would have been really cool.

Trivia Bytes
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(prelims, thanx to prasanth for jogging my memory)
01. Wolf in Norse mythology. Harry Potter - Fenrir (cracked with Norse not HP cue!)
02. Movie clip --> Harry Potter and Dolores Umbridge
03. Visual Of - The Deathly Hallows
04. Kalashnikov most famous model - 1947
05. Philippines national flower - Jasmine
06. Avarohanam -> Avatar (abstrusely worded)
07. Origin of rivers - Manasarovar
08. Dalai Lama Nobel Prize - Gandhi
09. Only Non-Indian Bharat Ratnas - Nelson Mandela, Khan Abdul Gafar Khan
10. 1991 book - Generation X
11. Etymology. Asterix cue . - Font
12. Only bulletproofable car in India - Ambassador
13. Countries with Square flags - Vatican, Switzerland
14. Visual. Pale Blue Dot.
15. Predicted by Mendeleev - Technetium
16. Ekta Kapoor. Non 'K' film - Shootout at Lokhanwala
17. Question that has to be answered in Parliament - Starred question (This was a nice one)
18. Rearview mirror (Odyssey repeat)
19. Magnetic North Pole, GPS (Have disagreement about this one)
20. Named after son of Vayu - Maruti
21. Student body with certification -
22. AR Rahman song used for - Taj promotion (Predicted Q!)
23. Visual of stained glass in study - Venn diagram (another beauty)
24. Robinson Crusoe Island (Has become a chestnut!)
25. Types of webs

(Please check the other links for a better version of the questions)