A 10 day Study Tour to Australia for the National Winner along with their Institute Head plus a Rs. One lakh grant for the winning institute from the N.R.Rane Trust. A 2 day Goa cruise for the First Runners-up and bikes, laptops and i-pods for the other winners. The effect was similar to a new SRK blockbuster pulling crowds at a movie hall.
From the West. To the rest of India.
The IQ had begun its quizzing run at Pune in 2006, with great success following suit. The city’s ‘lucky charm’ quite naturally made it the Starting Point for IQ 2007 as well.
And boy, was it the right decision! IQ 2007 came calling and Pune answered with cheer, in unison. The city witnessed participation on a wider scale with colleges that stayed away from the quiz in 2006 also coming in. The Armed Forces Medical College was one such institute. Any trepidation of whether the IQ would be able to pull off a second run was blasted away by Pune’s overwhelming response. From here on, the quiz organizers – IMS, got the conviction and courage to take the quiz across the country with full-hearted confidence. Confidence, in fact, would play a bigger role than envisaged in keeping the Quiz on track for the rest of its schedule. Here’s why. The Quiz could only be held on weekends. And you had 4 weekends to cover 24 cities. This meant the Quiz would be entering multiple cities on the same day for the rest of its schedule. In fact, some days saw the Quiz running simultaneously in as many as 4 cities at the same time. What would give any professional event management team sleepless nights, IMS teams carried out perfectly well without any major glitches. What’s the secret? Common sense, quick thinking and that attribute we talked about earlier, confidence.
House-full everywhere
The auditoriums were just not big enough to hold participants in any city.
Here are glimpses of what ensued in a few cities. In Nagpur, the hall capacity was 600 whereas the students numbered to 800 plus. As a result, the Qualifiers were held both inside the auditorium and outside. In Bhubhaneswar, not one but two halls, adjacently located, were eventually used to hold the qualifiers. Also, since one hall had a screen while the other hadn’t, visual-based questions were dropped from the Quiz format. In Lucknow, one hall witnessed two Qualifiers, back to back, to accommodate all the entrants. Students took the Qualifiers in the aisles, on the steps, outside the auditoriums, and in some cases, even on the streets. And surprisingly, no one complained. Though the venues lacked on space, not one quiz enthusiast was sent back. In all, the IQ 2007 saw over 6000 teams participating, across India. That’s over 18,000 students battling it out to be crowned India’s Smartest 3.
The Art of Quizzing
A quiz is only as good as its Quizmaster. IQ 2007 deployed 8 quizmasters with the Grand Master being none other than Charanpreet. A huge hit with quiz takers in IQ 2006, Charanpreet scaled up the intensity and interest quotient of questions in IQ 2007.
So how does a Quizmaster choose his questions? The quick-witted, IIT-Kanpur and Iowa University MBA Alumnus had this to say “I choose my questions from every genre of life. There is a trick however, in the manner you choose your questions. If your questions are such that no one has ever heard of them, then you have a dead quiz on your hands. The beauty of IQ is, the answers to a lot of the questions are somewhere at the back of your head. The response I aimed to generate at the quiz was “Damn! I knew that. Think, Think!”
Grand Finale. Grand Locale.
Everything about a good sequel has to score over the predecessor. Everything including the ending. And the climax of IQ 2007 couldn’t have been any grander. The 24 teams making it through the 24 City Finals were invited to Mumbai to get on board India’s premium luxury cruise liner – the Superstar Libra for the Semi-finals and Finals. The closing stages of IQ 2007 took place over a 2 day cruise along the Mumbai-Goa corridor.
There were 3 Semi-finals, each witnessing fast and furious action between 8 teams to propel 2 entrants into the Finals. Many a time, spectators end up getting disappointed with a much awaited cricket or tennis final. With the IQ 2007 Grand Finale, there was no such possibility in the remotest sense. These were the 6 smartest student teams in the country and their wide knowledge and quick responses didn’t afford anyone the time to loosen their nerves. The result was a nail-bitingly intense tie break. St. Stephens – Delhi and IIT – Madras tied at 100. NIT – Calicut at 95. Symbiosis Law College – Pune and IIT – Mumbai tied at 90. And NIT Trichy chasing the rest at 40. Incidentally, the IIT – Mumbai team had the same 3 students who won the first IMS Quotient in 2006. They were however, pipped to the post this year by St. Stephens – Delhi. That makes Arka Banerjee, Justin Thomas and Gautam Das the Smartest 3 Collegians in India.
So was IQ 2007 just a quiz?
The answer to this question is best articulated by IMS’ Head of Marketing – John Gabriel “The IMS Quotient is more than just a hunt for the Smartest Collegian Trio. A successful student is a well-rounded individual, one whose learning goes beyond academics. The IQ provides students with the motivation to pursue, if I may coin the term, ‘extra-academic’ learning and also the platform to exhibit and celebrate this learning”. The IMS Quotient was a sincere endeavour from IMS to help nurture the passion for knowledge seeking in students across India. The road to fully achieving this vision will see many more IQs coming along the way.