IQ '14

Nishka Uberoi | Copy Editor

"Quizzing is not a job, it’s an art."

Navi Mumbai: By now everyone in SIES GST must be recognizing Vivek Venkatram and Pramit Kumar as the awesome-est quiz masters ever (even in their extremely sleep deprived state). And at Techopedia ’14, our national level quiz, participants too, got a taste of being in a GST quiz hosted by these two. So, the IEEE student chapter of SIES GST organized Techopedia for the third time, but this year, it was a national level event with three competitions- Squabble (battle of words), IQ (battle of minds) and Hack-in-the-Box (battle of, well it’s a hacking competition, not really a battle per se).

Coming to the quiz, there isn’t enough I can say about our favourite quiz masters, who made the quiz one of the most successful events, mostly with their wit and might I add, a strange sense of charm. Not the kind which makes the girls go weak in the knees, but one that inspires you to think more, to question everything, to explore all that is possible, and I don’t think they even know it. The finesse and professionalism with which the quiz was conducted made every audience member jealous of the finalists. And no, they haven’t paid me anything to write all this, although I think they should.

The finalists were selected after an online round which was conducted on 13^th September, 2014. The smooth interface of the online quiz was due to the highly commendable job of Chaitanya Ramji and Emmanuel Kolengadden. The teams which cleared this online quiz went on to a pen and paper quiz conducted at SIESCOMS auditorium, where they had to answer questions related to technology, science, current affairs and even Breaking Bad. The top six teams qualified for the final showdown.

The IQ finals required the finalists to select their favourite operating systems out of Android, Windows, Chrome, Macintosh, UNIX and Linux as their team name. Each team had the luxury of using JOKER, which is a lifeline that doubles the points earned by the team in a particular round. The five rounds of the quiz saw a lot of hits and misses and the teams squirming for ALMOST telling the right answers but backing out thinking it was stupid or maybe the too easy. As if the twists regarding the points and rules of the rounds were not enough, the JOKER kept changing the dynamics of the game constantly. Nearly all the teams utilized their JOKER by the third round since only the top four teams would move ahead from that point. The winning team, Android, did not use the JOKER, yet they were always ahead. A few twists did imply the balance leaning towards team Linux emerging as victors, however, they came second.

The winning team comprised of the students of Mithibai Law College which won the grand prize of ₹20,000, and the first runners up were from our very own SIES GST who won ₹15,000. The entire event was conducted on the last day of Cognition i.e. 17^th September, 2014.

With the success of Cognition ’14 and Techopedia ’14, come the hopes and responsibilities of making the future installments of these events better and bigger.