IT'S THAT TIME OF THE YEAR AGAIN

Somebody with a microphone echoed that ‘today is august 15, the Independence Day and if it is august 15 it is the landmark quiz’ this I thought was one of the most apt statements of the evening along with all the other good things

August 15 has always been a bright and good memory in my life at least I could say that confidently for the past four years, the day had me attending one of the greatest quizzes in the country-The Landmark Open quiz this time brought to us by Sony Play station.

And the best place such an event can happen is the Music Academy, Madras.

Quizzing as we all know (or those who are closely associated with it might) has actively existed amidst all other things and open quizzes are a major draw in the city and this time was no exception. Personally for me Quizzing has been that outlet which has given me something serious to work about and contributing to the fun part as well. It’s not as if you feel bad after losing a quiz, in a quiz that never matters although you would want to with that entire prize at stake. Participation itself is a major achievement and a good memory which I will treasure and narrate to my children or to those of my neighbor (in the case of me not getting married). You always learn something from a quiz, or to put in better terms you, are a quiz older than the previous one, each contributing towards what people have always believed: in knowing.

My humble opinion being that this is one of the best activities to have invented by that brain of man- making knowing interesting, philosophy apart the afternoon saw us taking a forty question prelims (no I wouldn’t tell you our score, but one of the best prelims in recent times) compiled by the beloved quiz-master Dr. Navin Jaykumar and Gautam Padmanabhan. These people have been doing the quiz for the past fifteen years which is an achievement onto itself.

Eight behemoth teams made it to the city finals (we had a national finals this year!!!) competing against each other for the top two spot as questions ranged from geography to IT all engaging in their own way brought to us by Dr. Navin in the best of his wit, QED (V.V.Ramanan,Samanth,Jayakanthan) the city favorites and super quizzers clinched the city title while the team Singh may be king but Iyer is higher(yes, this one them the best team name prize, a first of it’s kind in landmark history) made up by Vinod Ganesh, Ramkumar and Krishnamurthy came second after a series of great and seriously funny answers. The city finals also saw teams from Bangalore take part.

This year Landmark (the city’s most visited and loved bookstore) decided to take the already successful Landmark Open Quiz national, so they call up the other state finalists to have one of the most (searching for words, but settles for excited) exciting finals ever put together, the winners from Pune and Banagalore joined the top two from Chennai, QED took the earlier lead but were closely followed by the team comprising of S.P.Rajan, Swami and Gopal who were the Bangalore winners.

It would be a great gesture if I could put up the questions but this is not a quiz blog and I chose not to.

The winners weren’t decided until the last round as QED battled to gain glory but only to come second after some (again searching for words, settle for brilliance) brilliant answers by Swami which made the national winners. Singh may be king…came a good third. Overall a great evening and much was learnt, I hope Landmark Open Quiz continues forever and kudos to the winners. Thank you Landmark for yet another (searching for words yet again, part of brain suggest that I read a good dictionary for adjectives) great day.

Satyeki