If you thought that the present generation may not be keeping its date with history, you could be wrong.
Twelve students from six city schools proved their mettle at the finals of the Cycle Heritage Quiz-2013 organised by Cycle Pure Agarbathies, in the city recently.
With TV personality Gopinath making the competition lively as the quiz master, the students had to go through six rounds, each having six questions, with different sets of rules. The questions revolved around epics, mythology, festivals, tradition and others and were in the form of words, visuals and audio.
Six teams from PS Senior Secondary School, Chinmaya Vidyalaya-Taylors Road, Chinmaya Vidyalaya-Virugambakkam, DAV Senior School,Chettinad Hari Shri Vidyalaya and Jawahar Vidyalaya battled it out.
While some questions like ‘which company made the first steam bus and car?’ received ‘hesitant’ answers, for the other ones, quite a few participants were ready with the answer even before the quizmaster could shoot out the question.
Even a supposed-to-be tough question asking participants to identify a person — the only clue being ‘one of the greatest military geniuses in Indian history’ — elicited quick answers.
The audience, mostly students studying from class 8 to 10, were on the edge of their seats as the participating teams posed a tough challenge to one another, keeping everyone guessing about the winner till the end.
A round with the ‘rolling of the dice’ for more points, three rounds of visual, audio-visual and puzzles, and the final challenge round, sealed their fate.
Vidhan Bhaiya and Vishnu Kamath from Chinmaya Vidyalaya, Taylors Road, were one of the lowest scorers at the end of the second round and were on the verge of losing the battle.
However, the ‘Brahma Astra’ option came in handy, giving them double points for a correct answer in the subsequent rounds with which the duo finally topped with 108 points.
The question on the waterway built to connect North Madras with the rest of the city, for which the answer was Buckingham Canal, was one the two challenges, the two class 10 boys successfully faced and that ensured their victory in the last round.
Arjun Arvind and Sankrith from PS Senior School came second, while Harish Uadava and Chiranjeevi from Chettinad Hari Shree Vidyalaya bagged the third place.
Jannavi Murthy, Managing Partner, NR Group, gave away the prizes.
“We prepared for a week by reading books. It was both luck and knowledge that helped us win,” said Vishnu, who won the competition along with Vidhan and took home laptops as prizes.