Code Wars 2008 is firmly on schedule now - on 21st November 2008. It was earlier supposed to happen on 14th (Google search still gives the old date)…but due to a few circumstances and popular demand it was thought it would be best to shift it back). That would make for one hectic week, with WarP (DPS Mathura Road’s), CORE (DPS Dwarka’), our event Code Wars, and DPS MUN happening back to back (and soon followed by Exun). Seems like DPS Society schools are hogging all the space this month!

It was a difficult decision to distill Code Wars 2008 down to one day, but it was done to retain the standard of the event. The economic recession did hit us badly with almost all companies cutting down on their advertisement budget. Thankfully, Renew Information Systems and NIIT pitched…and we had an event. The interest shown to support the event by MapMyIndia - started by Code Warrior alumnus Rohan Verma - at a stage when the CW team was in dire straits gave us confidence to go ahead with this. Continuing with tradition, Code Wars 2008 is an open invite event, i.e., in case your school hasn’t got an invite through postal mail yet, then you can download the invite and rules and come for the event anyway (the downloaded versions are equally valid). Remember to register your school online - it’s mandatory.

By cutting it down to a one-day event, we decided to raise the difficulty level across all events. That should keep the excitement up. (Or maybe we’ll just have teams sobbing they couldn’t answer anything.) I’ll be conducting the quiz and crossword and I can vouch this for my events at least. I’m sure a lot of people who’d be coming read my blog so this is my message to them: you still have about a week left. Start preparing. Broaden your horizons and read up stuff like crazy. If you don’t, you won’t know what hit you in the quiz / crossword. Similar to last year, I’ve tried to incorporate knowledge of multiple fields (beyond tech / computers), so be prepped to think outside the box. To make life easier for everyone I’ve decided NOT to include any acronyms (’mini Ankit Sud’ from DPS Dwarka will be dejected). It pains me when I see kids frantically flipping pages through Babel minutes before an event. Range of topics covered? Everything (except for a slightly less focus on tech, more of trivia; although you may say that there might be a slight bias in covering more of stuff. I. like.) Crossword will be a ‘monster’ crossword with a LOT of clues.

Code Wars 2008 has also had some format changes. Since every event can’t be fitted into a one-day fest, it was decided that we’d hold web designing and digital imaging online. Details are there on the Code Warriors website. I sure look forward to some creative entries!

There’s a funny anecdote here regarding a company which was approached for sponsorship for Code Wars 2008. This kind of stuff is not something I’d discuss generally, but the kind of hypocrisy displayed was so astonishing that I feel I must share it. Among the companies the current CW members approached was Virgin Mobile; their corporate office is in Vasant Square Mall, darn close to our school. So our guys met this woman who was in their marketing department about Virgin Mobile sponsoring us. I gave them the idea about approaching them since it makes perfect sense for Virgin to sponsor us - after all, their brand is targetting the youth segment and an event like Code Wars would give them valuable exposure without Virgin having to pump in a lot of money (unlike college events). Seems like DPS RKP had approached them too because at first she mixed up VK and RKP. Anyway, she heard the team out and in the end she said they won’t sponsor us because

…DPS schools have a slightly shady reputation when it comes to cellphones…

I mean, really? That was ages ago. And this is a lecture on propriety coming from a company which releases ads like the hospital nurse one. I don’t object to the ad which was good, but I do find it ironic that someone from Virgin Mobile’s marketing department said this. More ironic when you consider that Richard Branson owns the company. Maybe this Virgin Mobile lady wasn’t there at the launch of Virgin Mobile (this video, BTW, was put up by Virgin Mobile India’s own marketing department). Talking of ‘reputation’, Airtel has sponsored Code Wars - twice - in the past. Admittedly a company with much greater reputation. CW’s sponsor list has had Microsoft, Intel, Lenovo et al - a veritable who’s who of top tech companies. Virgin Mobile India must be kidding to throw away the marketing opportunity we gave them on those grounds.

See you at Code Wars 2008. soBIG.g. It’s on.

A lot of people coming to my over the past few days seem to be interested in the Jack Kilby Science Quiz 2006 Archive (and related Sample Questions). Many of them have been clamoring for the 2007 archives. I couldn’t get a full archive, but thanks to Prateek Vijayavargia we could patch together a sampling of questions from the Delhi round. Click here to download the Jack Kilby Science and Technology Quiz 2007 Delhi round archive (PDF, ~950 KB). Hopefully, this should give participants an idea about the quiz. Best of luck for all of you who made it to the national finals this year.

Another quizzing-related news today: DPS VK Quiz Club’s team of Saurabh Chaudhary, Tushar Krishnan, and Aishwarya Gulati won the Japan Quiz! Conducted by Quizcraft, the Japan Quiz is organized by the Japanese Embassy in Delhi. The winners get to go to Japan for a trip next year. This is one-up from our performance last year, when our team were the runners-up. It’s simply great to see that the foundations of the club which were laid down two years back has finally matured. DPS VK sure is on a winning spree!

The Limca Book of Records Quiz is generally conducted by Quizcraft, but this year the account has been picked up by Derek O’Brien & Associates. Expect a suckier quiz, coming soon at a school near you this December. Meanwhile, you can go through the Limca Book of Records Quiz 2005 Archive (ZIP, ~680 KB). Had been lying around with me for a long time; thanks to Prateek Vijayavargia for compiling this. I didn’t include the questions for the visual round because I thought they’d be self-evident. The quiz was good, except for the bits where they harp on Coca Cola (Coke owns the Limca brand) - but you can’t blame Adittya Mubayi because that was probably part of the contract.

The reason why Derek O’Brien’s Times of India Fun-da-Mental Quiz won’t be held this year is because TOI spent their whole event-related budget on conducting an Olympics Quiz (sponsored by Samsung); a quiz in which Prateek Vijayavargia’s team were the national second runner-up (AND the Delhi champions!), losing out closely on the last question of the quiz (on the buzzer). Surprisingly, even though Quizcraft researched the quiz, their own quizmasters didn’t conduct it. After winning, his school asked him to conduct a similar quiz for its own students - so that’s the quiz file I’m uploading today. (Again, this one had been lying with me for quite a while). Download the NEPS Olympics Quiz 2008 presentation (PDF, ~700 KB). My verdict on the quiz that while it’s obviously not up to the level which was asked in the real thing, still, for an intra-school quiz it’s quite good (plus the fact that the participants were from classes 6-10) - and has a few nice visual questions which are worth looking at.

PS - There were quite a few bloopers in this post, which I’ve now corrected. Sorry Prateek, for getting them wrong. For the prelim papers of the same quiz you can read Prateek’s post here. And for his account of the Times of India NIE Olympics Quest 2008, click here.