The first quiz of the fest, Overhead Transmission (OHT)—hosted by Major Chandrakant Nair in the Auditorium—set a high bar for APOGEE quizzes to come. A team comprising of Ramjas College’s Ashish Singh, Campus Law Centre’s Jayant Verma, and National Law University, Jodhpur’s Sanjay Krishna won the quiz. They were closely followed by a BITSian team of Vishal Rangarajan (BoB 2016), Mustansir Mama (BoB 2017) and Samksha Bhardwaj.
Due to heavy traffic in Delhi, Major Nair reached the campus at 1.30 AM, delaying the quiz by close to 2 hours. This led to India Quiz, also hosted by Major Nair, being postponed to 11 AM on Day 1.
25 teams took part in the preliminary round which consisted of 25 questions, the last five worth double the points. The round was well-balanced with participants made to work out questions rather than rely on memory. For instance, teams had to work out that Modi wearing a white bandhgala with a blue pocket was a reference to the Israeli flag. Eight teams qualified for the finals, which comprised of four rounds – two written rounds of five questions each and a couple of infinite bounce/pounce rounds of 16 questions. The written rounds were loosely themed, one based on “words in geometry” and the other on “words that mean big”.
The quiz ended by 5.45 AM by which time the audience had thinned out to a handful of people. Drawing applause from the audience on multiple occasions, Major Nair showed his skill in making quality quiz questions. Overall, OHT proved to be a superb start to the quizzing marathon that is to follow.