If you've read the story about AutoQuiz V1, you know how only a bunch of first semester students beat an entire gamut of engineers 2-3 year senior to them. And, if you've read the story about Concurso, you also remember the losing team left infuriated by a loss to boys two years younger than them. 

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So, after taking a 1 year gap, ITM University just a fortnight after MITS's Concurso, decided to organize AutoQuiz V2 as part of their Tech Fest. It was March 2015. The memories of AutoQuiz V1 were still fresh with the organizers at ITM University. They welcomed us quite gracefully, I must say. The entire event this time was larger, better and much fulfilling on every scale and dimension. The Quiz was spread across two days, the reason being the mind-boggling turn up of participants from all over the city. On First day, we only had a series of written rounds, which included a Question based Elimination round followed by a Logo identification round. We crossed both of them and reached Top 20 which were to duel for the Winning trophy the next day. 

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This time, it was all four of us as a team. We reached the venue and waited for the event to begin. When the Organizers arrived, they introduced the teams and to our surprise, the team that scored the highest on day 1 was the one we had defeated in Concurso. When they arrived, I could see their pain and desperation in their menacing look whenever our glances overlapped 😎 But, our focus was on the game. 

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Giving credit where it's due, the folks @ ITM had really upped their quiz experience by several notches. There were multiple rounds with varying themes and level of difficulty.  They even added a high risk - high reward round where you had to gamble a certain number of points even before the question is asked. You can imagine how thrilling it would have been, that my heartbeat is racing while I pen this down.

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So, right from the start the team from MITS was on it. They were fierce and determined to take it home this time. After the first two rounds, they were on 100 points, and we were fourth in the order, with only 30 points. And, now starts the time for Comeback kings to up their game. The third round was very unconventional, but exciting at the same time. In this round, each team was displayed a set of 3 images, which would serve as clues to reach the desired answer. The rules said that, even before the clues are displayed on the screen, the team has to gamble a number of points which would double if the answer is right, and if the answer goes wrong, the same points will be deducted from the existing score.

 

Now since the team from MITS was in a commanding position, they underestimated this opportunity and played it safe. They only put 20 points on the table, and they luckily got it right, now their score had reached 120 points. When our chance arrived, we also put 20 points out of 30, to get the clues on the screen. We did it right, and now our score read 50 points. So, by the end of third round, we were 70 points behind the leader, and were fourth in the order. Top 4 teams qualified for the final round. 

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The Final round was equally quirky and thrilling in terms of rules as well as the experience. By now, the 70 point deficit made us clear that it would be a Herculean task to win this Quiz, unless the top team screws it up for themselves, and that's exactly what happened. They became so self-obsessed and overconfident, that they threw their own winning chances out of the Window. The unconventional rules just made it worse. The rules of the final round were such that - There were 6 topics written on 6 cards. The team with the highest score will be given the chance to go first. The quirky bit about the rules was that, one could opt to change the topic by decreasing 10 points from the score. And once the topic has been selected, it will be removed from the set. So ultimately, the choices will keep on decreasing and the last team will get only 2 cards to choose from. Also, attempting a question from the selected topic was mandatory with +15 for a right answer, or else skipping a question or giving a wrong answer had the same penalty, i.e., 10 points. (Yeah, it was that tough!)

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The MITS team started drawing the cards, and discarding the topics that were coming. They changed 3 topics, and when they realized that they had thrown away thirty points just in draws, they stopped, and decided to go with whichever topic that would come in the final draw. The topic was - Transportation System. But, to add to their dismay, they knew none of the questions from the topic, as the questions included everything but Automobile systems. Now their score read 30 points. Who knew about such a turnaround!

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By the time our chance came, we were left with only 2 cards to choose from. On our first draw, the topic came as Automotive Plants. We did have some knowledge of key Automobile Plants, but we were not confident enough to go with it. On discussion among ourselves, we decided to gamble 10 points for the last topic and it came out to be Mixed Pool - a set of questions from all dimensions of the Automotive Industry. It struck a ray of hope in my heart. And you know what, we got 5 correct out of 6 questions. Our final score read 105 points. We had Won, Again! Celebrations followed, and it just created another wholesome experience for us to cherish.

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Attaching some photos of the final round below to let you have an Idea of how tense the moment was, but we endured that too! ✌