The 31st of March took on a very different meaning this year at the Dalhousie Institute. The date mostly associated with the ending of the financial year, ended a comparatively Dry Quizzing Spell in style, as the DI in association with Church of Christ the King and The Telegraph hosted the 52nd edition of  The Edie Hyde Memorial Open Quiz.

This quiz, started in 1967 with the pioneer of quizzing – Neil O’Brien. Greatly influenced by the quizzes he had witnessed in England the previous year he decided on conducting The Eddie Hyde Memorial Open Quiz with his cousin Errol O’Brien in memory of the first President of Church Of Christ The King Club, Eddie Hyde. What started with 4 teams and hardly forty members in the audience had 28 teams participating this year with a far greater number in the audience.

The evening started with avid quizzers coming in from all walks of life to get their names embossed on the shield and to be a part of the history associated with it! A quiz of this magnitude is not to be missed especially when a few individuals have been around since its very inception. A preliminary round consisting of 30 questions was conducted first after which eight qualifying teams made it to the business end of the competition. All teams settled in to take on the two dynamic quiz masters Atri Bhattacharya and Abhijit Banerjee. While some commented on the questions being too difficult others praised the variety and depth of each question. With questions ranging from History to politics to current affairs and food the audience too had enough variety to choose from.  One definitely needed more than their thinking caps to get past Atri and Abhijit –the dynamic duo!

A couple of hours later we had 3 clear winners - 2nd Runners-up – Inmaniacs , 1st Runners-up – QLOK and literally, taking the others by storm, was Hammer and Tongs – Anil Vaswani, Kingshuk Biswas, Soumyadip Chowdhury and Samanway Banerjee, who made a clean sweep with 90 points!

Fr. Vincent Lobo of Church of Christ the King, Jayajit Biswas, President of Dalhousie Institute and Errol O’Brien, owing to his long standing association with the quiz, presented the winners with true DI style traditional hampers housing a range from tea and coffee to peanut butter and jelly spread! The icing on the cake was the re-appearance of the original shield dating back to 1967! All polished and shining, it was definitely the most coveted prize of all.

Mementos were presented to Ms Grace Chiramal , from the very first quiz, Mrs Glynis Vincent Secretary of Church of Christ The King and Fr Vincent Lobo, Parish Priest. Votes of thanks to the Quiz Masters, accompanied by mementos, and to the supporting crew and the DI brought down the curtain on an enjoyable evening.

To revive a quiz of this magnitude, last held in 1997, took a lot of hard work on the part of Church Of Christ the King, Dalhousie Institute and the Quiz Masters. With Derek O’Brien and Associates at the helm of things we know that the commitment to host this quiz for the next five years will be honoured!

[Picture Credits:  Peter Hyrapiet, Shubham Poddar, Tanya Robinson]