— Photo: R. Ashok

Tough fight: S. Rajasekaran, R. Ranjiv and Sunil Chandrasekhar receiving the winning trophy from Eduwin Devaprakash, Manager Operations, IMS Learning Resources, at the city level ‘IMS Quotient 2008’ in Tiruchi on Sunday.

TIRUCHI: True to its catch-line, the ‘biggest hunt for smart collegians,’ the ‘IMS quotient 2008’ handpicked the smarter lot in the city with a whole set of posers here on Sunday.

Over a hundred teams from 11 engineering colleges and 20 arts and science colleges took part in the city finals of the all-India quiz event hosted by IMS Learning Resources.

Written prelims, christened as ‘Elimination Round,’ did go for a massive short-listing of the teams.

Hundred and five teams were reduced to six in the finals.

National Institute of Technology-Tiruchi (NIT-T) dominated the finals, with five teams representing the college, and the sole one from SASTRA Deemed University.

Geeks had no problem in taking questions on literature, history or current affairs. Science, for obvious reasons, remained the easiest for all the teams.

They were tested on a bit of Hindustani Music and Bollywood Movies. Few north-Indian participants spread over the teams managed to shot back answers for those posers.

Four rounds– two general rounds, ‘who am I’ round and the nail-biting buzzer round– comprised the finals.

Anand Sharma, Regional Manager, IMS, Bangalore, donned the role of quizmaster pelting interesting trivia from diverse fields.

Negative scoring in the buzzer round cost the teams high, as it dragged down the soaring scores of finalists.

The winners

Leading by sheer numbers in all the rounds put together, the trio of Sunil Chandrasekhar (final year, Mechanical Engineering), R. Ranjiv (final year, Civil Engineering) and his classmate S. Rajasekaran, from NIT-T won the regional finals. They would be taking part in the semi-finals to be held in Goa.

The runner-ups

The team comprising Raguvansh Ramaswamy, Surakshith M.S. and Seshadri Krishna from SASTRA finished a close second.

Students from Tiruchi, Thanjavur, Pudukottai and Madurai districts took part.