‘Accuracy, spontaneity bedrock of quizzing’

Giri Balasubramanium says the skill requires months of preparation

Questions ranging from pictorial puzzles to lesser-known football facts were answered at the national finale of TCS IT Wiz 2019, a pan-India inter-school IT quiz competition.

The quiz, which saw participation from over 11,000 Class VIII to XII students from 850 schools, was won by Harshvardhan Shetty and Udbhav Saxena of Hyderabad Public School. The duo won gift vouchers worth ₹1.5 lakh, gold medals and certificates.

The TCS IT quiz, which has been conducted for over 21 years now, saw two semi-final rounds with six teams participating in each. Of these, three teams each made it to both the finals, which saw five rounds — data scientist round, data analyst round, TCS round, the Tech Patriot round and the block the chain round.

The quizmaster for the day was Giri Balasubramanium, popularly known as Pickbrain. “I think accuracy and spontaneity, coupled with proper knowledge are the bedrock of quizzing. I have been a quizmaster for long and I know there is a preparedness both the quizzers and the quizmasters have to undergo. I still mentally prepare for a quiz months before and these days schools even have coaching classes for quizzes.”

The future is going to be an amalgam of technology, and the young minds who would create it. It is time we consider basic knowledge about IT wholesome to general knowledge, Mr. Balasubramanium said.

The overjoyed winners said, “I believe it doesn’t take any fixed amount of time to be quiz-ready. What is needed is to make curiosity a habit. Personally, we are curious about technology and we want to be product designers or IT professionals. We have made a web application where we found out every Wikipedia page that talks about a certain technology has a connection with multiple other Wikipedia pages concerning different fields and one can easily connect and learn more.”

The runners up for the quiz were Arnav Shukla and Palash Mukherjee from Bhavan’s BP Vidya Mandir, Nagpur. They took home vouchers worth ₹1 lakh, a coveted trophy and silver medals. Arnav, a Class XII student, said it took him months of rigorous research while Palash, a Class XI student, said he had put in conscious efforts for years to appear in the quiz.

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