IIT Madras gets a Nihilanth Hat-trick!

The 2016 edition of Nihilanth – the inter IIT-IIM quiz was held in the campus of the Indian Institute of Management – Indore. The three day quizzing extravaganza that brought in 257 participants from 20 premier institutes of engineering, technology and management into one euphoric and competitive platform began on the 15 of January and concluded on the 17. IIT Madras were declared the champions on the final day with a superlative performance across all the seven quizzes that were organized.

Nihilanth began as a tradition since the year 2003 as a quiz festival with a rolling format, being held every year in a different institute. It was a matter of great pride to the institute IIM-Indore because the very first edition of the contest was held there as well and the opportunity to host it again had finally come, full circle after 13 years.

The festival began with an opening ceremony on the 15 and proceeded to the first event, The General Quiz was written and hosted by Vikram Joshi, the winner of the 2014 World Quizzing Championship. The quiz featured questions from diverse fields like religion, politics, sports, art, entertainment and popular trivia. Following a written preliminary round from which the top eight teams were selected for the finals, the team comprising of Prakhar Gupta, Prateek Vijayavargia & Sandeep Albert Mathias from IIT Bombay emerged as the clear winners with IIT Madras bagging both second and third places. Later, in the evening, Bangalore-based stand-up comic Kenneth Sebastian brought in some comic relief after some intense quizzing and kept the audience in splits with his quick wit and repartee.

This set the stage for the next event, the Sports Quiz that was conducted by Major Chandrakant Nair, whose cryptic questions baffled and challenged the participants to not only apply their knowledge but also their lateral thinking faculties. The quiz, sponsored by Essentially Sports saw a domination from IIT Madras as 5 teams from the college made it to the final eight. IIT Madras came first for the event with a clear lead.

Later, on the 16, quizmaster Mr. Sachin Ravi – the national winner of The Tata Crucible Campus Quiz took to the stage with his Business Quiz. The team from the home college, IIM-Indore comprising Avijeet Boparai, Mahendra Mohan Das and Jaladhi Surati succeeded in chalking up the first victory for the IIMs. Post lunch, Mr. Navin Rajaram – a member of the Karnataka Quizzing Association as well as the host of The Texas Instruments Sci-Tech quiz, kick started his Science and Technology quiz. IIT Madras continued its winning streak by securing both the winners and the runner-up positions in the quiz.

The much awaited MELA quiz was the next event with its entertaining quizmaster Venkatesh Srinivasan, who presented an array of questions about movies, television shows, music, art literature and general entertainment. The quiz was replete with audio visual clues that grasped the audience’s attention as well as the participants and kept them glued to their seats. The quiz was won by the team from IIT Madras again.

The events on the 17, the third and final day unfolded, beginning with The India Quiz, conducted by Mr. J Ramanand, which was won by IIT-Madras. The last quiz, the Lone-Wolf began at 11 a.m. hosted by Mr. Suraj Menon. This event was, as the title suggests, the only event with individual participation, as opposed to the other quizzes that required participation in teams of three. The event had questions across domains with one single winner. The victor was Anand Iyer from IIT Madras.

To sum up, Nihilanth 2016 concluded with IIT Madras chalking up the highest number of victories, closely followed by IIT Bombay. This was the third time that Nihilanth was won by IIT Madras. Overall, the event was a grand success and the battle for quizzing among the IIT’s and the IIM’s would live on to see another day in another venue.