Thirty-five children, 7 teams, inspired audience and our brilliant Quiz Master, Barry Antunis, brought back quizzing to the DI - with a bang. Quizzing has been an integral part of the DI and on 7 October 2023, after a COVID-imposed hiatus of 4 years it was back – and the wait was well worth it.
An incredibly captivating quiz called Kids Plus Quiz was designed and run by our very own Barry Antunis. Why Kids Plus you ask? Read on.
The competitors, all our DI kids aged between 7 to 18 years, surprised the audience with their vast knowledge. The audience had a hearty laugh at some of the near misses as well. All in all, it was a thoroughly engaging evening that had everyone calling for more.
The organising team cleverly divided the participants into 7 teams of varying ages to ensure that all teams had at least one of the younger participants. The younger participants held their own and gave answers to some questions most unexpectedly drawing appreciative applause all round.
Each team chose an interesting name for themselves – Masterminds, The Wikipedias, IDC (I Don’t Care), ET’s (Extraordinary Thinkers), The Quizzards, Passcode and of course Google. Each team was allocated a mentor by the self-proclaimed ‘Tormentor’ Barry. The mentors were responsible to guide their teams without giving out answers. Our very knowledgeable mentors were Vikash, Srimati, Anirban (Bappa-da), Leslie, Debjani, Christabel and Shaheen, most of whom have represented the club in quizzes. Mentors were as excited as the teams!
Eight thoroughly engaging and thought-provoking rounds had been planned by Barry, with tech support given by Lorenzo. While 6 rounds didn’t have any negative marking, 2 rounds did. The rules were simple, 10 points awarded for correct answers – whether direct or pass.
Get set, ready … go!
Round 1
The quiz started with the first round ‘India’. From Mark Twain to Munshi Prem Chand, a journey to the moon and back with our very own Rakesh Sharma – all in the very exciting round 1. Participants were encouraged to make educated guesses, in the true spirit of quizzing. Guessing the other name of ‘Shri Harminder Sahib’ had invoked guesses from Swami Vivekananda to Baba Ramdev. The correct answer of ‘The Golden Temple’ drew many sighs at the near miss on the most obvious answer.
By the end of round 1, all teams except Google had started building their tally.
Round 2
This pictorial round required our enthusiastic participants to identify the link between two pictures shown on the screen. We were impressed by how well informed our DI kids were. An important lesson was learnt in quizzing in this round – never give away clues to other teams, as Devaansh Duggal, an avid quizzer himself, from Team Quizzards tried guessing the other climber after correctly guessing Edmund Hillary. The answer was none other than Tenzing Norgay – the man who scaled Mt Everest.
It was the flowery question of identifying the names of the 2 innocuous flowers shown, that had everyone flummoxed. After several incorrect guesses, it was a lady from the audience that correctly identified the flowers – Magnolia and Chrysanthemum.
By the end of round 2 we had some leading teams and team Google had opened their account.
Round 3
Interesting videos required the participants to put on their thinking hats as they guessed why the video clipping were famous. Our DI kids rose to the challenge and were spot on in their guesses. Another quizzing pearl of wisdom shared by our quizmaster – In quizzing, go for the obvious.
From identifying the first ever video on You Tube by Javed Karim, to the refuelling done mid-air, our kids demonstrated how quickly they had picked up the suggestions by Barry. Little Eli scored 10 points for his team and was awarded ‘Man of the Match’ by Barry, when he correctly identified the Base Jumping done very recently from ‘The 42’.
Masterminds, Wikipedia and The Quizzards were now leading the points tally.
Round 4
This round was different – it had negative marking, so teams were required to really be sure before answering. The teams were required to find the common link between a series of pictures shown one at a time. While teams could score up to 50 points with correct answers, they stood to lose up to 25 points for the wrong ones.
This round turned the scores around, especially for team Google as they picked up their scores and gave team Quizzards stiff competition.
Round 5
The Brain Teasers round had everyone, including the audience on the edge of their seats as they tried guessing the clues that tickled the brain and were just slightly so evasive. Riddles, visual clues, all gave our brains a much-needed round of exercise as participants and audience vied to guess the correct answers. From the timepiece with most moving parts, to the object with slender waist and tender voice, most sighed as the correct answers were revealed – it had been obvious but elusive.
The Quizzards remained the top scoring team, with Google just 5 points behind. Wikipedia and IDC competed closely with each other.
Round 6
Our ears focussed on the Audio round and teams tried to identify the tracks played. Little Sierra scored for her team as she correctly guessed the tune of the ever-favourite ‘Oh my darling Clementine’.
The first team to score a century was Google, closely followed by The Quizzards and IDC.
Round 7
Finding the correct link between two apparently unrelated pictures, was the challenge this round posed. Two logos were displayed, the teams came up with close guesses such as airline logis, but the correct answer was the new and old logos of Indian Airlines. Ishanvi Maitra correctly guessed the connection between Howrah Bridge and Nandan – both are named after Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore. This budding quizzer answered several questions correctly.
We had 3 teams touching 3-digit scores with The Quizzards leading with 125 and IDC and Google trailing close at 100 points each.
Round 8
The grand finale was a buzzer round where no buzzers were heard. With WhatsApp being the new buzzer – innovation was the name of the game. The teams were asked to use their mentor’s phone to buzz with messages. This was a negative marking round with +10 and -10 points for correct and incorrect answers – giving the perfect nail-biting finish to this phenomenal session of quizzing. From correctly guessing the shape of a rainbow, to the monument behind a 500 rupee note, each question was captivating and had the participants and audience on the edge of their seats.
The final scores had The Quizzards scoring 155 and IDC and Google tying at 100 points.
This led us to the tie-breaker round, where 4 questions were asked to have team Google to emerge as the 2nd place winners.
Souvik Guha, legendary quizzer and quizmaster, was present to encourage our DI kids.
Jayajit Biswas, President, Dalhousie Institute came up and gave away the prizes. He encouraged ‘talented young minds’ of DI and remarked how ‘DI nurtured young talent’. Special prizes were given to our youngest quizzers – Diya, Parth, Eli, Aashi, Ashwin, Devyansh S and Devyansh K - who supported their teams well. The top 3 winning teams – The Quizzards, Google and IDC received their prizes, generously sponsored by Bisk Farm, Keventers and the DI.
All the girls who participated received some special gifts from ‘Radical’ to encourage participation.
The traditional cake cutting by the winning team followed after which all participants were invited to have a much-needed round of refreshments, of delicious sandwiches, cupcakes, chips and Maaza after their incredible performance in the quiz.
A special vote of thanks to all the organising committee members, the tech support team, the mentors and to our phenomenal Quizmaster Barry Antunis.
This evening had been a truly memorable evening and we all had so much to take away – the participants had been a part of such an enriching experience, the audience who were called upon to answer audience questions and to cheer and learn from the masters, and for the DI – in revisiting the Quizzing tradition at DI.
We, members look forward to more such enriching sessions.
Participant Speak:
Devaansh Duggal: I am part of the winning team of the DI Kids Plus Quiz. It was very fun quiz with audio, video questions and even a buzzer round. It was a very fun quiz to attend, and I am happy that I won. All teams gave good competition, and it was a great tournament overall.
Shree Kanjilal Roy: In this quiz I learnt many new things. I didn’t know that a rainbow was a circle. I also learnt how a hyena’s laughter sounds like, and many more other things. It was a really nice experience for me, and I learnt so many things with all my friends around. It was more of learning with friends and fun.
Ari Rafael D’Souza: When I heard of the quiz I was thinking first if it is a competition. I was so hooked up about this quiz and I spent hours learning about facts that never ever came in the quiz but still some of the facts I learnt came and those were the plus points that we got. In the beginning we were the lowest (scoring) team and after the video round we were the top (scoring) team. And we were so happy. We were the first team to get a century point and sadly The Quizzards overtook us and went to 155. But the tie-breaker between team Google and Team IDC – we were both stuck at 100 and 3 questions were asked, it was in the last question that we got correct and that’s why I am super happy about this quiz.
