Quiz Time

I had an excellent talent for participating in and winning the quizzes. I was good at historical dates, geography, science, math and current affairs. I had all the trivia on my tips, and the answers came out to me as bullets when the question came out of the quiz master. All my friends in school and college competed to have me in their team as I would be the winner. My friends always wondered how I kept in touch with tiny details and remembered the precise dates.

A sample question: Name three capital cities on the river banks, with the river’s name starting with ‘T’?

Bang! The answer would come out in an instant.

Another one: Name the twin capital cities located on the river banks?

It was easy.

In yet another quiz competition, there was a question: On whose life the book “The Lust for Life” was based?

I answered the question, and my team won the event.

I participated in a quiz last week after thirty years. This online quiz had participants from all over India, with boys and girls half my age, and the quizmaster was also young, maybe in her late 20s. We were five teams with three members in a random selection. The quiz master provided a few minutes for introductions.

The team quiz had twenty questions with occasional direct questions for the participants apart from team questions. The questions varied from the history, current affairs, the social media world and the advertising space, and the teams had five minutes to discuss and present the potential answers before providing the solution. There was no negative marking.

After a few questions, I realised that I was a misfit. I did not know the answer to a single question, while the others responded quickly and happily. I was agitated, and I could not articulate my thoughts. I turned off my video to avoid presenting my discomfort to the others. Observing the process and understanding the critical success factors was the only exercise I could do. My observations are as below:

1. Speed and Dexterity: All the youngsters were responding at a phenomenal pace. Though my team knew a couple of answers, the competition was ahead of us in hitting the keys.
2. Preparedness: I realised that most participants were ready for the quiz beforehand. They were jumping even before the last word came out of the quiz master. They had answers at their fingertips. I got a sense that some of these kids participated in quiz events regularly.
3. Exposure: The participants were very social media savvy and answered questions that appeared on Twitter an hour before the start of the quiz event.
4. Killer instinct: The participants were anxious to go for the ‘kill.’ They were ready with answers even before the complete question came out of the quiz master.
5. Contextualising: The youngsters could contextualise and provide answers quickly. They could relate two or three parts presented in a question and articulate the near correct answer. In the end, they provided the right answers.

My team ended at the bottom of the list with zero contribution from me. Though I was out of place, I enjoyed the event thoroughly. Things have changed a lot in the quizzing space, like everywhere else.