Fantastic article. I too was a quizzer during school and college in Bangalore and while I was good enough to represent them, I wasn't good enough to come close to winning. And yet, when I was in Oxford for a year, I went religiously to the weekly pub quiz, which was exactly like Samanth describes it, even though he's describing the US and not the UK.
Btw, did anyone see Brahman Naman. I saw the first half of the movie but was put off by a few things (such as the lack of the default B'lore English pronunciation of the time and misogyny). Should I finish it? On Fri, Aug 26, 2016 at 3:12 PM, Thaths <tha...@gmail.com> wrote: > Quizzing is a common trait among Silklisters. Here is a piece by fellow > Silklister Samanth on the differences between Indian quizzing and its > American and European cousins. > > I have found the second-hand nature of the knowledge being rewarded in > Indian quizzing circles to be strange. Take Samanth's illustrative sample > in the article below. Why the users of Indian Telephones and Telegraph > were rewarded > for knowing the name of the font used by AT&T to print telephone > directories never made much sense to me. Many of the quizzers would have > never touched an AT&T telephone, let alone thumbed through a telephone > directory published by Ma Bell. > > Perhaps there is a bit of aspiration involved in knowing the facts to these > questions: I'd like to lead a life where AT&T telephones and directories > are commonplace in my life. > > Thaths > > PS: I also have to disagree with Samanth's grouping of American and > European quizzing into one bucket. I have found British quizzing (as > exemplified by pub quizzes) to be on par with Indian quizzing in terms of > its inventive questions. > > http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/blink/cover/an-organic-model- > of-knowledge/article8849921.ece > > An organic model of knowledgeSAMANTH SUBRAMANIAN > COMMENT > <http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/blink/cover/an-organic-model- > of-knowledge/article8849921.ece#comments> > (1) · PRINT > <http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/blink/cover/an-organic-model- > of-knowledge/article8849921.ece?css=print> > · T+ > <http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/blink/cover/an-organic-model- > of-knowledge/article8849921.ece#> > > inShare > <http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/blink/cover/an-organic-model- > of-knowledge/article8849921.ece#> > 9 > <http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/blink/cover/an-organic-model- > of-knowledge/article8849921.ece#> > [image: Drained of colour: John F Kennedy was a fascinating and colourful > man, by all accounts. And yet, an American quiz could only summon up the > most uninspiring facts about him.] > The Hindu ArchivesDrained of colour: John F Kennedy was a fascinating and > colourful man, by all accounts. And yet, an American quiz could only summon > up the most uninspiring facts about him. > > India, despite having a dry and uninventive education system, has a much > more creative and enjoyable quizzing culture than the US > > A month into my undergraduate degree, when I was still somewhat unmoored in > my strange new habitat — a small, white college town in the middle of an > enormous US state — I discovered the university’s Quiz Bowl Club. The club > convened at 8 pm every Monday and Thursday, in a classroom reserved for the > purpose. You brought along dinner — your sandwich or your $2 slice of pizza > — and made an evening of it. The first time I went, I was immediately at > home. Here were my people, the geeks and the social misfits and the > inordinately curious, the lovers of bad puns and obscure allusions, the > devotees of minutiae. I felt like a Jew of the Diaspora who had finally > made aliyah. > > Within the first 15 minutes, I realised how different American quizzing > was. Here, a question was simply an absence of a fact, a sheaf of data > points that ended in a bald query for information. “This politician, from a > prominent New England family, served in World War II and became a Senator > in 1952. He participated in the first televised presidential debate in > 1960, appearing opposite Richard Nixon. For 10 points, name America’s only > Roman Catholic president.” The questions might have been drawn from > textbooks. Indeed, I often had to recall the physics or chemistry lessons > I’d crunched into my head by rote only the previous year, when I was > finishing school in Chennai. What was going on? I wondered. Why was > American quizzing — and even European quizzing, as I later found — such a > dust-dry, uninventive affair, so different from quizzing in India? > > The paradox still intrigues me. In India, it is the education that is dry > and uninventive, a dense and endless parade of facts that must be memorised > and redelivered during examinations. Recall is everything. Yet our quizzing > has evolved, over the last couple of decades, to be playful, and rich and > creative. No Indian quizmaster (outside, I will cheekily say, of Kolkata) > will set questions that rely purely upon recall. (What is the capital of > Ghana? Who founded Nike?) Instead, each question is a miniature puzzle, to > be approached and unlocked in myriad ways. Even the best quizzers do not > know cold most of the correct answers they give; instead, they work these > answers out, applying knowledge but also logic, teamwork and instinct. > Clues are scattered, like breadcrumbs, all over a question, just enough to > lead you home but insufficient to give the game away altogether. There is > often some sly wordplay. Quizzes routinely feature audio, visuals and > video; the Son of Lumiere movie quiz, conducted every year by the Karnataka > Quiz Association and including nearly 120 minutes of expertly clipped video > embedded into a PowerPoint deck, is arguably the most slickly produced quiz > on Earth. > > An illustration of an Indian quiz question: The font Bell Centennial was > commissioned in the late 1970s, with the objective of fitting more > characters into a line without loss of legibility, reducing the need for > abbreviations and two-line entries. It replaced an earlier font, which was > plagued by the problem of spreading ink, made worse by the quality of the > paper. Where would we have seen Bell Centennial in the 1980s and 1990s, and > increasingly less since then? Now, a graphic designer might well know the > name of the font, but it takes much less specialised wisdom to recall that > AT&T was once part of the Bell phone network, or to think about where we > might encounter crunched text on poor paper, or to recognise that phone > directories are much rarer than they were a few decades ago. The Bell > Centennial, we may deduce with logic and a tiny spark of inspiration, was > the default font in the telephone book. > > In a way, quizzing in India is a minor triumph of intellectual culture, a > small but stubborn efflorescence in a largely arid landscape. It is not > difficult to suppose that quizzing evolved in this manner as a clear > rejection of the banality of rote learning that schools and universities > require. Quizzing was steered in this direction by, and now regularly > absorbs, people hungering for a different, more capacious form of learning. > The best quizzes reward lateral and imaginative thinking; they treat, with > noble seriousness, pursuits that India considers frivolous: movies, or > science fiction, or heavy metal; they like to ask “how” or “why”, rather > than “what” or “when”; they encourage wide and eccentric reading, reading > that is its own joy. Not coincidentally, these are all attributes that have > been stripped right out of our system of education. > > I like to believe that Indian quizzing has somehow found its way to a truly > organic model of knowledge. Recall is artificial, almost mechanical, in its > dredging-out of half-forgotten items of information. How much more natural > it feels to connect disparate facts from disparate fields, to rely on a > combination of intuition and memory, and to be part of a team’s cooperative > thinking. And how much more exciting! Few people, I suspect, walk out of > our country’s board exams — or, for that matter, out of the average > European quiz — burning with the desire to go right back home and hit the > books. A good Indian quiz, though, inspires and invigorates. It leaves us > humming with anticipation — about new things to read or watch or listen to, > unfamiliar subjects to learn, and fresh waters to explore. > -- H R Venkatesh Founder-Editor, NetaData <http://www.netadata.in> Tow-Knight Fellow 2016, New York Co-organiser, Hacks/Hackers New Delhi Ph: +91 9811824503 Twitter: @hrvenkatesh Subscribe to my weekly newsletter <http://netadata.us13.list-manage1.com/subscribe?u=a4e98017c06ba7d53051d9510&id=fc06d2b1bf> NetaGiri!
