Quiz Competition on NPW: Part 2

I would like to describe the events we had undergone stepwise as per the rounds that were held.

Written Test- 1st 20 minutes

This was the 1st stage as was described in my previous blog. All the teams had 20 minutes to answer the 20 questions. I suppose we were pretty unsure of answers to 6 of the 20 questions. The results were to be announced later on and was uninformed to us. We expected the results to be announced as soon as we would the seminar hall, where the future events were proposed to be held. Following the written exam, we followed upstairs to the seminar hall of the college.

Next one and half hours

Meanwhile, while we were awaiting the next event of oral preliminary elimination round, we were too enjoying witnessing the quiz for diploma students of pharmacy. They were at their finals and we used to guess the answers to the questions asked to them (from the audience and used to murmur the answers sometimes; actually the murmur was made quite loud to the players of the quiz, intentionally by all of us!)... We were 20 teams in the quiz and only 8 teams were to be selected for the semi-finals based on the combined scores of written test and oral preliminary rounds. Finally, we got our chance to get on the stage and play the quiz against other teams. Well, I dont remember all the questions asked to us, but would surely lay down the questions I know over here. 10 points were granted to each of the teams on right answer and no negative markings were given. Well, the questions asked are:

1) Varicella virus is responsible for causing ?

The answer didnt click in our minds and left the question. The answer was chicken pox...

2) The vomitting is triggered by which part of human body?

I answered it as medulla oblongata...The answer was correct and we were granted 10 points... The audience cheered our success with applause (infact, they just had the work of clapping at all the team's correct answers!)...

3) If the income-tax rises with increase in income, then it is called as?

My teammate spontaneously answered "I dont know"... Perhaps, he did it right because I had thought of answering 'price rise'! (haha)... The answer was progressive income tax...

4) The indicator paper used in limit test of arsenic?

I confused this with the reagent used in guignard test in cyanogenetic glycosides and answered cobalt nitrate... The actual answer was mercuric chloride...

At last, we were having just 10 points and others had 10, 20, 30 points and like that...We were terribly distressed...
We thought we would be disqualified right in this round...But we still hoped for the written test, since the score combined in both would be the determining factor for success rather than the mere oral preliminary round.

Nextly, we were asked to have our lunch arranged by the college and the next session was planned to start 1 hour later... We couldn't have my lunch properly because of the poor performance in the oral preliminary round...

Time of result declaration

All the teams gathered quickly after the lunch near the seminar hall... The hall was opened and a madam came in after 10 minutes, took out a paper and held it in her hand. Then, she ordered for arrangement of stage for the semi-finals and we were literally hanged up with tension for that span of 20 minutes. It was not less than a realistic TV show where you are just a second away from getting a successful heart attack on hearing the results. She then gave a peep at the result sheet and our heart stopped beating for a moment. She looked at us and was just away form saying the names of the successful teams when she suddenly looked at the stage and ordered something new to the person arranging the get up on the stage. I held my hands on my head with tension. Then, within a moment she announced the marks obtained by all the teams...

The marks in descending order is as follows:

57, 51, 47, 45, 44, 37,31, 25, 24, 23, 21 and so on... Just guess, they put so much thrill in the show that they announced the marks of every college in non-order manner...We could just draw up a rough idea of our success from the manner she announced the marks... Then she announced the 8 sucessful semi-finalists... And we were announced as the 8th semi-finalists with the score of 25... Vishal started shouting 'fluke, fluke, fluke...' as we went on to the stage for the semi-finals!

The events that we experienced in the semi-finals was really unexpected... I would like to share these experience in semi-finals in my next blog...