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Sweeping success for Sanmar quizzers
Excerpts from a report in the fortnightly Madras Musings (July 16-31, 1999)
Yashwant Saran, who posts quizzes on Quiz Net - an e-group on the Internet - led the Chemplast Sanmar team to a Mahindra Resorts holiday when they posted an easy seven-point victory over The Hindu at FACT ’99, a quiz recently held at IIT. The margin of victory was surprising considering that V V Ramanan, one of the best quizzers in Chennai, was one of the Sundaram, members of The Hindu team.
Red-capped Saran answered several tough questions which left the other teams stumped. One of these was a question in the audio round. A piece of classical music composed by Tchaikovsky was played and the question was: Which romantic couple was the subject of the music? Without a moment’s hesitation, Saran answered “Romeo and Juliet” (of course!). Quizmaster Indrajeet Gupta of Bangalore was certain Saran’s “powers” came from his cap, which was the butt of several comments from the audience.
The six three-person corporate teams that made it to the final - Chemplast Sanmar, The Hindu, Mobil Peeves, Future Software, Pricewater House Coopers and Mudra - had to get through a preliminary round and a tough semi-final. Forty teams took the written preliminary round and 12 teams qualified for the two-round semi-finals.
The winning team: S M Yashwant Saran and Ramkumar Shankar.

The visual and audio rounds of the final turned out to be a cinch, with the participants answering questions even before they could be asked. Saran was one of them. When a picture of the founder of the world-famous fast-food joint, Macdonald’s was displayed, Saran named the person correctly even as the quizmaster turned to ask his question. Quizmaster Gupta faltered only for a second, before smartly changing the question to ‘Who was the photographer?’ Chemplast Sanmar soon discovered that Gupta was pulling their leg and they got their points.

In the audio round, the teams were asked who the guitarist for A R Rehman’s ‘Dil Se’ was. The answer turned out to be Guy Pratt, Pink Floyd’s guitarist. The three ‘straight’ rounds, following the audio round, were a shade tougher. A couple of the questions left the participants baffled and Quizmaster Gupta had to turn to the audience for a response. One answer highlighted the arrogance of ‘Microsoft’ who had labelled their competitors ‘NOISE’. The full form turned out to be “Netscape, Oracle, IBM, Sun and Everyone else”.
The quiz was organised by CRY for its programme, ‘Free A Child Today’. The registration fee of Rs. 3000 a team was earmarked to provide education and healthcare to children.
Archana S Ram