Lamakaan

'MindSweep 2.0 - Quiz

Quiz

3.0 hrs

December 09, 2012 10:30 am Sunday

MindSweep, our international solo championship, is intended as a vehicle for the things that are distinctive about the quizzing that happens in some (if not all) Indian cities.

The setters (Navin Rajaram, Kiran Vijayakumar and Arul Mani) have enjoyed taking (and bulbing at) the World Quizzing Championships, perhaps because Indian quizzing is a wee bit different from its international cousin. MindSweep is our attempt at sharing the things we enjoy about quizzing with an international audience.

So, what the devil is distinctive about Indian quizzing? A privileging of good guesswork over memory; the triumph of generalists over specialists; bombing a syllabus, rather than using one; the pleasure of parsing, or unknotting, or sometimes being pythoned by a carefully coiled question; a festive relationship with the English language; and the strange appetite for knowing joy and defeat in one instant–a mystical state known as AJM, or Goddamn-it-I-was-that-close.

After the first edition of MindSweep in Jan 2012, several embittered souls sent in their punning suggestions (not all of them were polite) for what we should actually have called the quiz. We laughed, and carried on. The first edition of a quiz, like a first kiss, must elicit some reaction, some `hubbub, babel, shindy, hullabaloo, stramash, charivari, and total contempt of repose,' or what's a contemptibly long zindagi for?

In MindSweep 2.0, the taker will meet ten sets of questions (200 in all) over two one-hour sessions–this means two installments of five sets of questions, interrupted by a short 30-minute break for answers, corrections, and worship of the bladder.

MindSweep 2.0: The Topics

 The Arts: Painting, Sculpture, Photography, Design, Architecture, Installation Art, Dance, Theatre
Science and Tech: Concepts in the Sciences, History and Philosophy of Science, History of Technology, The Environment, Astronomy, Medicine, Inter-disciplinary work, Popular Science Writing
Literature: Poetry, Literary Fiction, Non-Fiction, Drama, Genre Fiction, Graphic Novels, Critics, Literary History, Translation
Social Sciences: History, Anthropology, Cultural Studies/Social History, History of Ideas, Economics,The Philosophers
Business: Brands, Fashion, Business History, Advertising
Sports and Leisure: Sporting History, Games, Television, Gaming, Sports-Writing, Sports-Coverage, Hobbies–Collecting, Gardening, Fan-communities, The Internet
Cinema: Hollywood, National Cinemas, World Cinema, Film Genres, Film-Technology, Film-language, Cinema &amp; Society, Film-writing
Music: Instruments, Performers, Genre Music, World Music, Tech Innovations, Music-magazines, Music industry, Music-journalism
Food &amp; Drink: From all over the world
Travel: Places, Peoples, Languages, Landmarks, Journeys, Voyages, Means of Transport

Organizer

Karnataka Quiz Association

The Karnataka Quiz Association (KQA for short) was founded in 1983 by eight quiz enthusiasts with the objective of putting the game on an organized basis and regulating and coordinating quizzing activity in Bangalore and other centres in Karnataka. In the first year of functioning it had only 14 activities. Presently, it has over 100 programmes in a year. Organized quizzing is done at seven different levels – Open (irrespective of age), Inter-Collegiate, Inter-Junior College, Inter-High School, Inter-Middle School, Inter-Lower Primary (IV Std) and Inter-Lower Primary (III Std). Apart from general quizzes, we do quizzes on specialized subject like Science, Movies, Music, Literature and so on. Most of the programmes are team events but we do conduct a few singles events in three different categories to identify individual talent.