Prajavani Quiz: Vidyodaya students win regional round

After a neck-to-neck fight, the team from Vidyodaya Public School, Udupi, bagged the first prize in the regional round of Prajavani Quiz Championship 2018 while the grand champions of the previous year's quiz Championship, Sharada Vidyalaya emerged as the runners-up.

The fourth season of Prajavani Quiz Championship, organised by Prajavani, a subsidiary of The Printers (Mysore) Private Ltd, in association with Deeksha and other organisations at the Sudheendra Auditorium of Canara High School, Dongarakeri, Mangaluru on Thursday, had created a lot of buzz among the student fraternity.

Vidyodaya Public school team exhibited a zealous and sportive performance, powered by confidence and a great presence of mind.

Though Sharada Vidyalaya, gave a tough competition, Vidyodaya team's calculative risk-taking and reasoning skills paved their way to the grand finale.

The team will represent Mangaluru region in the grand finale on January 24 to be held in Bengaluru.

SDM English Medium School, Ujire, came third while Vivekananda English Medium School, Puttur, Siddhivinayaka Residential School, Kundapur, and Rotary English Medium School, Moodbidri, stood in the fourth, fifth and sixth places respectively.

240 participants

A total of 240 participants, comprising 120 teams from 40 schools in Dakshina Kannada and Udupi districts (three teams from each school and two participants in each team) took part in the prelims round (written test), out of which six top scoring teams made it to the Mangaluru regional finals.

The six teams were: Rotary English Medium School, Moodbidri (Dhiraj and Chinmay), Vivekananda English Medium School, Puttur (Rakesh and Shashank), SDM English Medium School, Ujire (Krishna Tejaswi and Girish Krishna), Vidyodaya Public School, Udupi (Dhiren Bhandary and Chandan Prakash), Siddhivinayaka Residential School, Hattiyangadi, Kundapur (Ashwith Shetty and Sriram Gowda) and Sharada Vidyalaya (Pradyumna Upadhye and Pannaga Bhat).

Teams from Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya, Lourdes Central School and St Theresa School were awarded with consolation prizes, who missed an entry to the final round with a very narrow margin.

Brain teasers

There were five rounds with queries including video questions and photo puzzles were, chosen from various spheres. The participants were asked to recognise the voting unit used by parliament members in the parliament. A student among the audience gave the correct answer as none from the participating teams had it correct.

One of the tricky questions was regarding the logo of the new app released by Kotak Mahindra. The Vidyodaya team, which was able to crack the question, and explained that the symbol 811 stood for the date of demonetization - November 8.

A wonderful logical reasoning was exhibited by the participants in solving the picture connection puzzles.

One of the tricky questions was the one which showed BCCI logo and bullets as the clues.

The answer was former cricketer and present coach of Indian cricket team Ravi Shastry, who is nicknamed as 'bullet'. In another question, pictures of Sanchi Stupa, Red Fort, Hampi's historic stone chariot and Mangalyan were the clues which are the prominent features of the newly released currency notes.

Several questions in the quiz were related to Mangaluru or the persons from Mangaluru origin, such as the question on Sarang 107.8 FM run by St Aloysius College, Pabbas ice cream parlour which was named after the pet name of its Founder Prabhakar Kamath. Based on the word and pictorial clues, the participants were told to recognise Saxophonist Kadri Gopalnath, Syndicate Bank and the local delicacy 'Patrode'.

Quiz master Raghav Chakravarthi threw several questions to the audience as well. Those, who answered the questions correctly, were given prizes.

Buzzer rounds were very crucial. Some teams took the risk of answering before the completion of the clue, and had to pay fine in the form of negative marks.

The quiz competition was given an initiation with students lighting the lamp.

Deputy Director of Public Instruction Y Shivaramaiah, who was the chief guest, gave away the prizes to the winners.

The winners and runners-up took home Rs 6,000 cash prize along with a trophy and medals, the runners-up were awarded with Rs 4,000 cash prize, a trophy and medals.

The third prize winners received a cash prize of Rs 2,000 along with the medal, and a trophy.

Certificates were awarded to all the participants.

Winners' speak

Speaking to DH, Dhiren Bhandary from the winning team, said even though all teams were equally capable in the final round, their team was quite fast on buzzers.

He said that he reads Deccan Herald on a regular basis and added that sports page is his favourite.

Final scores

The scores of the teams at the end of the fifth and the final round, in the decreasing order are as follows:

Vidyodaya Public School, Udupi: 85. Sharada Vidyalaya, Mangaluru: 55.

SDM English Medium School, Ujire: 30. Vivekananda English Medium School, Puttur: 15.

Siddhivinayaka Residential School, Kundapur: 10. Rotary English Medium School, Moodbidri : -5.

DH News Service