Mahaquizzer 2009 – Results
Anustup Datta of Bangalore scored 90 points and is thus declared Mahaquizzer 2009. He beats last year’s runner-up Shouvik Guha of Kolkata by one point.
Jayashree Jayakar Mohanka of Kolkata made 74 points–the highest score by a woman-quizzer this year. For the first time since we began Mahaquizzer, we do not have a woman quizzer among the top 10.
The highest score in the College category was achieved by Shoubhadra Chakraborty from Kolkata with a score of 58. Anshuman Pal topped the school category with 40 points.
To view the Mahaquizzer 2009 rankings ( top 100 only), please use the link: mahaquizzer-2009-rankings1
The city-wise list of winners is given below.
Bangalore
Open Anustup Datta 90
Ladies Debashree Mitra 71
College Jayendran Srinivasan 52
School Atith Kuduvalli 19
Chennai
Open Swaminathan G 83
Ladies Saranya Jaikumar 65
College Aravind Vijaya Sarathy 44
School P.K. Adithya 35
Delhi
Open Adittya Mubayi 88
Ladies Anushree Kishore 07
College Bhavya Khanna 45
School Parth Singh 23
Guwahati
College & Open Amrit Chetia 37
Ladies Pranami Tamuli 15
School Padmini Baruah 14
Hyderabad
Open Krishnamurthi J. 61
Ladies J.K. Lakshmi 53
College Vivek Krishnan 41
School Syed Murtuza Hashmi 15
Mumbai
Open Mukund Sridhar 84
Ladies Hanisha Vaswani 29
College Abhik Ghosh 55
School Priyadarshan Babu 1
Mysore
College & Open Pavan R 26
Ladies Prema D’Silva 16
School Haridev C 10 (tied)
School Anarghya K Chandar 10 (tied)
Panaji
Open Aniruddha Sen Gupta 78
Ladies Venita Coelho 34
College Adish Talwadker 29
School Ashray Adappa 10
Pune
Open Amit Garde 65
Ladies Suparna Bhattacharya 12
College Yash Marathe 51
School Sanket S. Bhilare 15
Thrissur
Open Shamanth Rao 53
Ladies Ranjana Ninan 29
College Hrishi Varma 42
School Abhijeet Balakrishnan 21
Trivandrum
Open Manoj Kumar T.K. 57
Ladies Indu V.S. 26
College Manu Sudhakar 57
School Sridhar J. 22
Kolkata
Open Shouvik Guha 89
Ladies Jayashree Jayakar Mohanka 74
College Shoubhadra Chakraborty 58
School Anshuman Pal 40
Singapore
Open Dibyojyoti Haldar 47
Some of the winners haven’t collected their prizes. Please mail arul.mani@gmail.com at the earliest if you are one of them.
This edition of Mahaquizzer has been unusual in that the winner was decided by adjudication. Anustup Datta and Shouvik Guha had both been given scores of 89 in the first round of corrections, while Adittya Mubayi had made 88. After adjudication, Anustup moved up by one point to emerge the winner.
At one of the venues, participants began writing the quiz on a lawn after all personnel responsible for getting the allotted room open proved untraceable. We received a complaint suggesting that some participants had taken advantage of this situation to augment their scores in the time-honoured Indian tradition known as ‘copying’.
On careful investigation, we found that the majority of the participants had in fact refrained from funny business and had given the quiz their best shot –we commend them for this display of sporting spirit in the face of considerable inconvenience. We also found definite evidence that five contestants had collaborated with each other. We will name no names, but two decisions have been taken. Their scores have been removed from our rankings. These individuals have also been blacklisted –they are barred from taking part in future editions of the contest.
The adjudicators spent an entire evening convulsed with laughter over the ‘heard mentality’ of those unfortunate gentlemen. ‘Rain Tree’ became ‘Brain Tree’, and an answer that began life as the Indian Postal Service had become Indian Coastal Service by the time it trickled down to the last of its beneficiaries. Thirty-four such instances were found in common among these papers.
We move on to pleasanter things. Every year, Chris Jones leads a bunch of doughty British quizzers into battle with the Mahaquizzer question paper. As always, they gave a good account of themselves. We reproduce their scores below:
- UK Pat Gibson 92
- UK Nick Mills 73
- UK Mark Kerr 70
- UK Chris Quinn 69
- UK Chris Jones 64
- UK Nic Paul 57
- UK Rob Hannah 56
- UK Alan Gibbs 49
- UK Ebb Saxton 45
A bunch of quizzers in Liberia took the quiz on Chris Jones’
recommendation. They did reasonably well, and have promised ‘the
Kanataka chaps ‘ a Liberia-themed quiz in revenge. We await their pleasure.
- Liberia Phil Tarpeh Dixon 49
- Liberia Jamel Dugbeh 10
- Liberia Sam Sumo 09
Some quizzing alumni from India found the time to sit for the quiz off-line. Their scores:
- USA (N.Y.) Vikram Rajan 48
- USA (N.Y.) Anantha Subramanian 35
To access this year’s Mahaquizzer question-paper and the answer-key, please follow this link:
