Every Independence Day, apart from remembering freedom fighters and hoisting the tricolour, Chennai follows one more ritual — hosting one of India’s largest open quizzes, the Landmark Quiz!
The Landmark Quiz 2012 was held at Music Academy in the city on Wednesday. The Chennai edition saw over 500 teams participating and eight teams were selected for the national finals. People who couldn’t make it for the quiz enjoyed the live streaming on the Landmark website.
This year’s edition had some really tough questions and some easy ones making it an enjoyable evening for avid quizzers and non-quizzers. Questions on current affairs, music and general trivia kept the audience on their toes guessing the answers. As expected the Olympics fever continued on stage with few questions on the game. For example, did you know that British athletes at the London Olympics in 1948 were the only group of people, apart from miners and dock workers, who were given additional coupons for food when rationing still existed in that country?
Dr Navin Jayakumar who has hosted almost all the editions of the quiz till date revealed the ‘surprise element’ as promised earlier to the audience. The surprise came in the form of popular quizzer Vinod Ganesh who was the new quiz master for the regional round. The entire crowd was taken by surprise. The prelims and the national finals were hosted by Navin.
Bangalore-based team ‘Royal Bungle Tagore’ won the Chennai edition followed by ‘Obama Sathyabama’ and ‘Mama Machan Maplai’ while P S Senior Secondary School won the best school team award and IIT Madras bagged the best college team prize. Many teams came up with witty team names and the one called ‘Ba Ba Ramdev, Have You Any Food?’ won the prize for the best team name.
The national finals saw a tough competition among eight teams: two from Chennai and Bangalore and one team each from Delhi, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Pune.
The Hyderabad team ‘Na gun ki license ledu, mee life ki insurance ledu’ comprising Chennai-based quizzers Ravi Mundoli, R Jayakanthan and Anil Kumar K won the quiz followed by ‘QED’ comprising Samanth Subramanian, Swaminathan Ganesh and V V Ramanan. ‘Nawabs of Mahabs’ with Gopal Kidao, Rajiv Rai and Vibhendu Tiwari came third after breaking a tie.