There was this general quiz held at Siri Fort in Delhi a few days back which had (apart from my team) ones from NSIT, St Stephen’s, et al. In the audio visual round a lot of considerably tough-to-get questions related to classic rock / old Bollywood / music before 60s was asked. Yet, when a Coldplay track was played (a simple “Identify the band”) the question was passed by 7-8 teams before it came to ours and we answered it.

This bias is so strong that I actually had to take up listening ‘old stuff’ – just for quizzing. That really shouldn’t be happening. The sad bit is that because of this self-selective bias only the ones who stick to ‘certain covered topics’ ever progress in quizzing at a higher level.

Precisely. This year, at the weekend BCQC sessions, we’ve tried to have several theme quizzes with an aim to making these subjects available to those who would otherwise never bothered about them. The highlight was a Medicine quiz last week, which is an area I have never really heard more than 5 qns in over 10 years. The quiz was both interesting and informative, and I’d enjoy such quizzes more than the nth repeat of a Asterix/Mile Sur Mera long connect.

Apart from that I suppose having thematic quizzes also helps, if conducted right.

Personally, I would love if people wouldn’t look at Tech and Biz quizzes with such contempt. True, I a not a specialist in either of these domains, but I would love to attend more quizzes where the spread of questions includes all the domains.

Obviously, this doesn’t mean that Entertainment isn’t still my first love.

Among my circle, we try to get around this “syllabus” problem by trying to encourage more people to set quizzes and indulge in their own interests. Get your friends to set quizzes and learn about their interests. Quiz circles can be watchful for ‘incest’. Best you can do is to increase your own sphere of interests.