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Never a dull moment

A quizzing extravaganza that was thrilling till the end

BRAIN POWER The winners Jayakanthan, Samanth and Swaminathan

Landmark Quiz 2006 proceeded along predictable lines. The Music Academy auditorium was filled to capacity and overflowing. The Derek O Brien brand of humour once again did wonders for Chennai's annual quizzing extravaganza. And as always, the event went beyond quizzing.

The quiz master from Kolkata was greatly impressed with the team QED (Samanth Subramanian, Swaminathan and Jayakanthan). He did not hide his astonishment when the three cracked questions that his team could get hold of only after several months of sustained searching. After a string of brilliant answers, he told QED, "Don't rile my research team like this; it upsets them so much."

Actually, QED came into their own only in the later stages of the finals. At the end of round three, when just two teams stayed behind to battle it out — Chennai's QED was way ahead of Bangalore's Immaculate Misconception (130-83).

The former's performance was marked by acuity as well as erudition. Sample this: `What is the rationale behind the dash in "Spider-Man"? QED: "Writer Stan Lee put it there to mark the do-gooder as "dashingly different" from other superheroes." They seemed to be giving just a logical answer, but it fetched them all of ten points.

It was sheer brilliance when they slammed this one: "A piece measuring one square foot should weigh 205 grams only. What am I referring to?" The answer was "The cloth out of which the Indian flag is made." This QED answer came after some wild guessing from other teams — cricket turf, Astroturf and Lacoste Crocodile logo.

However, until well into the finals, most of the six teams seemed well within the reach of the title, which meant there was tension and thrill in the air. The teams had jazzy names — Standard & Very Poor (two of the three were in shorts and when Derek asked the reason for this attire, they said, "Father is very poor"), Namitha Bachao Andolan, Three Musketeers (a rare adaptation of Alexander Dumas' magnum opus, because one of the them was a lady), Know Brainers (appeared conservative in a fray full of highly imaginative names) and No Questions Asked — and by turns displayed their ability to come up with creative (read way-off-the-mark) answers and all this, combined with some unusual posers, made for a fun-filled evening.

Two questions touched a chord — one was about an eight-piece band that is etched in history. Wallace Hartley's eight-member band soothed the frayed nerves of the passengers of RMS Titanic, when the liner was sinking. They played till the very end, and their last song is supposed to have been "Nearer, My God, to Thee." The other showed a Spenser Platt image of what remained of the World Trade Centre after the 9/11 attack on the international symbol of commerce.

Between questions, dated images that hold a special significance for the nation were flashed on a screen. The audience roared in delight when the screen displayed Kapil Dev and his Devils celebrating the 1983 Prudential World Cup victory. Aamir Khan and his pastoral team were received in a similar fashion when an image from the film came up for year 2001.

Audience participation made for a lot of fun. When senior citizen Ganesh came on stage to receive the prize (which most of the time was a copy of "Sacred Games" by Vikram Chandra, who was present at the venue to launch the second Penguin-Landmark Quiz Book by Derek O Brien, Gautam Padmanabhan and Navin Jayakumar), he had a grievance to share ("I had many more right answers to give, but you were not looking in this direction"). Derek's answer brought the house down ("Uncle, you are sitting on the right side and I am from Kolkata and so must be naturally inclined towards the Left"). By his own admission, Ganesh's day was made, so was his son Swaminathan's. One of the QED three, he won the Landmark Quizzer of the Year award.

PRINCE FREDERICK

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