The 11th edition of The Bhawanipur presents 2023 Kolkata International Quiz Festival, in association with The Telegraph, was a mindstimulating event held at Kolkata Rowing Club, last month. The Kolkata Quiz Festival (KQF), the brainchild of two quiz fanatics, Aanton Mookherjee and Samrat Sengupta, was renamed as Kolkata International Quiz Festival because of an increase in the number of international quizzers willing to attend this mega event in the City of Joy. The aim of this effort was to establish Kolkata as the ‘quizzing capital of India’. This year’s KIQF saw enthusiastic participants from outside the city taking part in the week-long festival.
The festival had interesting segments for the quizzers, like pop culture and fandom, history and heritage, food, fashion and lifestyle, India, FIFA World Cup and more. The quiz festival also had a round of audio and visual questions. After the end of each round, there was a bonus question for the audience, which gave them a chance to participate in the festival. The grand finale of the competition comprised the three main rounds — Bronze, Silver and Gold. The winner of each round was given trophies and a goodie bag. The Grand KIQF winners were awarded cash prizes. Snapshots:
Glimpses from the final day of KIQF
Winners of the Grand KIQF round, (l-r) Arijit Sen, Samanway Banerjee, Abhinav Dasgupta, Rajiv Rai, Vibhendu Tiwari and Kunal Malhothra. They won the three rounds of Bronze, Silver and Gold consecutively and received Rs 6,000 for the Bronze round, Rs 8,000 for the Silver round and Rs 10,000 for the Gold round. “We are so delighted to win all the grand rounds. We did not hope that we will reach the Gold round right after winning the Bronze round. But here we are qualifying every round and winning them,” said Kunal.
Quizmaster of the Pop Culture and Fandom quiz, Abhinav Dhar (extreme left) handed over the prize to winners (l-r) Annway Ghosh, Samyo Sengupta and Sourja Sengupta. “It was a great quiz. We had an amazing time at KIQF and that’s what makes us keep coming back every year,” said the team.
Winners of the food, fashion and lifestyle quiz, (l-r) Partha Sarathi Ghatak, Sounak Chakrabarti, Pritwish Datta, Sachin Deshpande and Debanjan Bose. “It was a fun quiz and we had a lot of fun sitting together as a team because we came from different parts of the country. It’s always great participating in KIQF,” said Partha
Sports quiz winners (l-r) Nikhil Sarkar, Auritro Chowdhury, Samanway Banerjee and Titash Banerjee. “This is our fifth or sixth time participating in KIQF and it’s been a great journey. Our team was strong and we feel amazing at winning the sports quiz. We had great fun,” said the team.
Winners of the travel quiz, (l-r) Navin Jayakumar, Rajeev Bhattacharjee, Anustup Datta, Anil Vaswani and Thejaswi Udupa. “It is probably a great thing about travelling places and experiencing different things. This actually helped us in winning the travel quiz, which was really great,” said Navin.
The Vikram Joshi Memorial award was handed over to (l-r) Rajiv Rai, Thejasvi Udupa and Arul Mani for quizzer of the year. “We feel so happy about winning this award. We accept this on behalf of Vikram. He will always be remembered at KIQF,” said Rajiv. This special award was in honour of Vikram Joshi, who passed away a few years back. He used to be a regular at KIQF. He also won the World Quizzing Championship and was one of the most prolific quizzers in the country
Winners of the OTT movies and web series quiz, (l-r) Arnab Banerjee, Abir Bhattacharya, Debanjan Bose, Nikhil Sarkar, Piyush Kedia and Bodhisattva Basu. “We enjoyed the quiz thoroughly. We as a team contributed a lot to the quiz, which was a really fun thing to do together. We are very glad that we defeated the legendary outstation team,” said the team members
Winners of the FIFA World Cup quiz, (l-r) Venkatesh Srinivasan, Ranjeet Soman, Brajendu Bhaskar, Kinshuk Biswas and Nikhil Sarkar. The winners received a copy of the FIFA World Cup as a trophy. “It’s a good thing that KIQF did a full-scale football world cup quiz. We think that this can happen only in Kolkata as it’s famous for its love for football. It feels great to win this round,” said Venkatesh.
Atri Bhattacharya, the quizmaster of the Grand KIQF. “First of all, I would like to mention that Aanton and Samrat should be awarded for what they are doing for KIQF for 11 years straight. It is incredible. More power to them and I hope this becomes bigger,” said Bhattacharya.
Joy Bhattacharjya, CEO of Prime Volleyball League, analyst on Cricbuzz, director general of the Federation of Indian Fantasy Sports (FIFS) and a quiz columnist, was the quizmaster of the Grand KIQF rounds. “Being here is absolutely fantastic. The quality of the teams and the audience is amazing. Today, Vimla Jagganath, who was a fantastic quizzer during the 80s and 90s, was present here. The fact that everyone came here to acknowledge her is what makes Kolkata so special as a city. A citythat remembers its people and celebrates them and also which makes this quizzing festival so special,” said Bhattacharjya.
Co-founders Aanton Mookherjee (left), an advertising communication specialist, and Samrat Sengupta, a marketing professional, have been organising the quiz festival successfully for the past 11 years. “We introduced the concept of festival quizzing to the world. After we did it, all the other cities,districts, schools and colleges started doing this. We keep the door open, providing a platform where people from outside the city and also the country come and ask their questions and do their own research. It is great to see quiz teams coming from all across the country like Pune, Bombay, Bangalore and Chennai. KIQF is something that is added to the annual calendar of CRC and is a special event,” said the duo.