Decoding "Crucible Quizmaster" PICKBRAIN: Giri Balasubramanium

With TATA Crucible Quiz and TCS IT Wiz right around the corner, we thought we’d let you in on some tricks to gather a few points in TATA quizzes. Being a participant of several Pickbrain quizzes ourselves (not just Crucible), we have tried to take an educated guess at the type of questions you may face. Here are some tips that may come in handy:

•Keep it simple: 

We quizzers expect to face well-molded questions with answers that always require thinking out of the box. But often the answer is staring you right at your face and you hesitate to say it because it’s such a no-brainer and you feel it is not complex enough to feature on a National Quiz, that’s where the quiz master tricks you. Pickbrain is guilty of doing that to participants, after robbing you of your points with reverse psychology, he is often heard condoning(with a big grin) ‘simple thinking.’ Go for a simple answer if your gut instinct tells you to, don’t double guess your answers as sometimes the answer is simpler than you expect it to be.

Eg: What is Visual Audio Intelligent Organizer? (from TCS IT Wiz Prelims)

Ans: VAIO (simply abbreviate the words above)

•TATA question: 

It is only logical to get a TATA question in a TATA quiz. Make sure you know all newly appointed CEOs and MDs of TATA subsidiaries. The question will often be straightforward, they might show you the picture of the current TCS CEO and ask his name. Or it might even be on the history of a TATA subsidiary. Look for a list of CEOs, books are written by them, major contributions, etc. In short, dig up possible questions on TATA.

Eg: If the first CEO of TCS was F.C. Kohli, who was the second? (TCS IT Wiz Regional finals)

Ans: Subramaniam Ramadorai

•Logically Workable Questions: 

As the name of the subtopic suggests, sometimes you can easily work out the answer by connecting the dots. Like in the example given below: CMC was the answer, which expands to Computer Maintenance Corporation. Pretty workable answer if you know about CMC and connect it with the question, the keyword was 'maintenance' and you had to think of a subsidiary operating in that field.

Eg: Many years ago when IBM left India, they left all their computers with a company in India to maintain them. Which TCS subsidiary now, started thus? ( TCS IT Wiz Regional Finals)

Ans: CMC (Computer Maintenance Corporation)

•Listen/Look carefully: 

Listen to the quizmaster carefully. The quizzes are designed to make it workable. If no one is able to answer the questions then what’s the point? The quizmaster will drop hints to help you work out the answers. 

What I mean is, NOT everything is on the screen, some hints need to be heard. The simple rule of quizzing.

•Look around you: 

My teammate had a Motorola phone, it played a certain video upon restarting. That same video was played in Regional finals and we had to identify the brand. Sure enough, the answer was Motorola. We knew the answer only because we had a Motorola phone, we did not come across it during preparation. What does that tell you? Don’t underestimate any piece of knowledge, it’s all around you, and everything counts!

This was a simple attempt at decoding Pickbrain's quizzes. Remember that there are no strict boundaries to a quiz question, it can be based on anything in the galaxy. But there are certain rituals in certain quizzes that fetch you easy points (like the TATA related questions). Certain tips that we enlisted above are true for all kinds of quizzes, as your quizzers know. Look up previous editions' videos on youtube, look up quiz related stuff on Twitter, dig up stuff online, keep up with the latest events. This blog was to help you with your preparation, do follow our advice but that doesn’t guarantee success. Always expect the unexpected & never rule out anything.