Date:04/07/2005 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2005/07/04/stories/2005070413670200.htm

Karnataka - Bangalore

Bangalorean wins quiz

Staff Reporter

WINNERS: (From left) Debashree Mitra, category winner, Bangalore; Anustup Dutta, runner-up; Jayakanthan, quizmaster; Arul Mani, all-India winner; and Vijaya Raghavan, category winner, Bangalore; with their trophies.

BANGALORE: Arul Mani, an avid quizzer from Bangalore, emerged the all-India winner of the World Quizzing Championship 2005 held at the Yavanika State Youth Centre here on Sunday. Mani grabbed 144 points to beat the competition and come up tops.

The quiz was conducted by Anurakshat Gupta and Rahul Kapoor of Kapoor's Workshop on Effective Communications, partners of the Indian Chapter of the International Quizzing Association.

World Quizzing Championship-2005 is the brainchild of the International Quizzing Association, U.K. It was held simultaneously across the U.K., Belgium, Netherlands, Ireland, Switzerland, Norway, Finland, Canada, Malaysia, Singapore, Estonia and India. The Indian competition was held in Bangalore and Kolkata.

The contestants had to answer 240 questions in 90 minutes. The questions ranged from entertainment to media, sports to lifestyle, culture to history and from world events to the sciences.

Shouvik Guha from Kolkata was the all-India runner-up with 112 points. The scores from other countries will be compared to find the eventual world quizzing champion. The results will be hosted on the website www.internationalquizzing.com

Representatives of the International Quizzing Association say that their aim "is to elevate quiz to a status similar to those of chess and bridge." To achieve this, the association was set up by QUIZZING.co.uk

In the years to come, the World Quizzing Championship is bound to grow in stature. "We are delighted with our success. Having six nations taking part in the first year is quite an achievement. In addition to this, because of our work in the U.K. with QUIZZING.co.uk, we know all of the best quizzers in the land, and can guarantee that we can get hoards of excellent quality quizzers to take part. At the association, we have the skills, expertise and contacts to make the World Quizzing Championships a phenomenal success," they say.