ClassAct 2023 – The Hindustan Times Republic Day Quiz: Top tips from the quizmasters

New Delhi: HT School, a one stop destination for young quizzing enthusiasts commenced its quizzing journey last year with ClassAct 2022, The Hindustan Times Republic Day Quiz which created a record-setting success. In fact, it made all the way to the Asia Book of Records and India Book of Records for ‘Maximum Participation in an Online School Quiz’. This propelled the second edition of the mega quizzing event ClassAct 2023 – The Hindustan Times Republic Day Quiz. It kicked off with the Prelims round held on 26th January from, the day India commemorated its 74th Republic Day. What’s impressive is that this time the number of participants was 21,540 as against last year’s 19,625 – a great feat in itself.

Following the resounding success of the Prelims round of this online Pan India quiz that is meant for all school students of grades 1 to 12, participants are now gearing up for the much- awaited Grand Finale that will be conducted on 5th February from 10am to 12pm by two of the India’s reputed quizmasters, Dr. Navin Jayakumar and Avinash Mudaliar.

The Prelims of ClassAct 2023-The Hindustan Times Republic Day Quiz was conducted asynchronously, while the Grand Finale will be conducted over Zoom and live streamed on HT School’s official YouTube channel. All contestants will receive participation certificates while the finalists will stand a chance to win exciting Amazon gift vouchers worth INR 1.25 lakh. The winners will be selected purely on the basis of their performance, where both speed and accuracy will be taken into consideration.

The quizmaster duo has shared their pearls of wisdom with the participants as they gear up for the Grand Finale of ClassAct 2023 – The Hindustan Times Republic Day Quiz.

Cool tips from Dr. Navin Jayakumar

Dr. Navin Jayakumar is an ophthalmologist by profession and has recently been elected as the President of Indian Neuro-Ophthalmologist Society. A quizmaster by passion, he is the founding member of The Quiz Foundation of India. Dr. Jayakumar has been the quizmaster for famous national-level quizzes, such as the Landmark Quiz, the Murugappa Madras Quotient School Quiz and the Rotary Galaxy Science and Technology Quiz among others. Here are his suggestions.

Read, record, recall: The reputed quizmaster Neil O’Brien (considered as the Father of Indian Quizzing) described this trio of acts as his method of becoming a successful quizzer. I’ll add one more step to these: REVISE. It comes right after RECORD. So, this is how one should go about it: READ a lot and read widely, RECORD the interesting facts that you read in a notebook, REVISE what you wrote before a quiz and finally RECALL the fact during a quiz!

Invest time in lateral thinking: Make connections between seemingly unconnected facts. For example, certain plant seeds and Velcro. If one reads about plant burrs (little seeds with hooks that can attach to your clothes to help the seed find a new home), one may soon discover that it was the inspiration behind the invention of Velcro!

Be a part of quiz clubs: Quiz clubs, be it at school or outside, are a great way not just to improve one’s quizzing knowledge but also to make friends. For instance, the Quiz Foundation of India in Chennai to which I belong, meets on alternate Sundays when one member will set a quiz and the others form teams to answer. If there is no quiz club around you, start one!

Focus on practice: Try out the innumerable online quizzes available, watch quiz contest recordings on YouTube, and take part in every quiz competition that you hear about. For seasoned quizzers, one would recommend joining an online quiz league. Remember to always play fair and not use Google for answers. Similarly, stay true to your passion for quizzing and do not use an accomplice to feed you answers while taking part in an online quiz game. Quizzing is  sport and any sport requires sportsmanship and fair play!

Try being a quizmaster: One of the best ways to excel in a subject is to prepare questions on it for a quiz. Quizmasters have to dive deep into a subject and explore all its ramifications to make a good set of questions and then try their hands at conducting quizzes.

Smart suggestions from Mr. Avinash Mudaliar

Mr. Avinash Mudaliar is a distinguished quizmaster with years of quiz hosting experience. He has been the quizmaster for the Power of Ideas Print Quiz, Airtel Quiz-o-Mania, Airtel's techQ, and  the NTPC Electron Quiz to name a few. He has also hosted quizzes for major corporates and prestigious institutions. Previously, he has also co-hosted the ClassAct 2022: The Hindustan Times Republic Day Quiz and Smartacus 2022: The Hindustan Times National Interschool Quiz with Dr. Jayakumar. Here are his top tips.

Train hard, fight easy: Read, read, and then read some more. Get into the habit of intensive daily reading while gleaning through knowledge and the happenings around the world. Sooner or later, everything lands up as a quiz question! Even if it doesn't, you still know a little bit more than you did the previous day.

If it's a good day, make it a great one: Some days you will unearth a rare nugget of information or a precious new fact that most people are unaware of. Don't remain satisfied with that discovery. Try and learn five or ten other related things about what you discovered. In quizzing, like in cricket, it is always the ‘extras’ that matter in the end!

Interact with other quizzers: Be a part of an active quiz community, group, club, or society that meets regularly and quizzes together with gusto. It is only by interacting with like- minded knowledge hunters that your own skills will develop, grow, and become sharper.

Remember, those who quiz together, grow together.

Practise making quiz questions: Quite often, the best way to become a better quizzer is to get into the habit of making quiz questions of your own. Be it your class in school, or your circle of friends and family, develop the habit of converting what you know into interesting quiz questions that you can ask. The very act of stepping into the quizmaster's shoes helps you understand the myriad ways in which a simple fact can become a tantalising quiz question!

Focus on match practice: Get into the habit of participating in as many quizzes as you can, at as many levels as you can, and as often as you can. All the reading and knowledge- gathering in the world is useless as a quizzer unless you test your mettle in the heat of battle by crossing swords with ot.her quiz-loving buffs like yourself. Only when you come up against a variety of quiz-mastering styles and a variety of quizzing oppositions that you truly realise how good (or not-so-good!) you really are. And remember, it does not matter whether you win or lose. If you win, you remember those answers only once. But if you lose once because of a bad answer or two, you will never forget those facts till the end of time!