Analysis: Season 1, Game-week 8

-Paul Pop

We wrapped up the last game-week in the first week of December. The last game-week featured some of most brain-wracking topics and questions. We Broke Bad this week, and decided to go out with a Big Bang, with some help from Mr. Robot - featuring three very popular television series. Binge-worthy content sure do have a good amount of chemistry, math and technology (respectively) in them. In the weeks past, we have showcased the wonders of scientific inventions and innovation. However, we felt that there is a need to also warn of the misuse of science and technology, and a cautious approach to promoting results of scientific studies. The quads on the ‘Utopic Dystopic mega-projects in deserts’, and ‘Unreplicated social science studies’, did exactly this. Going on this theme of critical thinking, we also featured a quad on the ridiculous ‘Ancient Aliens’ conspiracy ‘theory’.

The final game-week featured a quad on ‘Sterilisation-focused veterinary practices’ by Anupriya Dalmia, which featured two answers which were there in the mission statement on our website (so those who had read it thoroughly had an advantage). It also featured a quad on ‘Integrated Engineering Concepts’ which was a potpourri of subjects Manick V had taken from his textbooks from his college days. This certainly brought out a lot of good and bad memories in the ex-engineering students participating. The funniest moment perhaps is when one player correctly answered a question from this quad, only because they had failed in the specific course, and therefore put more effort in learning it during their college days. That L in college turned into a nice W in our quiz league.

And that quad on David Quammen’s non-fiction was not random. It was specifically made with an ambitious aim in mind - to get Quammen to read the grand finals (one of my favourite authors). I took my shot and send an email request to Quammen and surprisingly the very busy man responded! Not some boilerplate response either (see what I did there?), but a thoughtful email detailing how he liked the idea of this quiz league and is in support of our cause too! I was not even expecting a response and that response was really heartwarming, but unfortunately due to his busy schedule, he was not able to join us. Maybe next time I will write to Elizabeth Kolbert. The loss is just the time needed to draft an email, the potential gain is getting one of the best science communicators to host our grand finals.

While I don’t usually discuss every single quad in a game-week analysis, since I have already mentioned nine, why not talk about the other three too? So, we had a quad on ‘Geography of major tectonic plates’ which needed quite a bit of geography knowledge to figure out. My favourite question being the one about Cocos plate - surprisingly a lot of people didn’t know that the most naturally widespread fruit plant on Earth is coconut. Speaking of favourites, my favourite quad was my own - any quad with birds is likely to be my favourite by default. Baya Weaver seemed to have thrown a lot of people off. Seeing their nests occupying an entire tree in the foothills of Himalayas threw me off too (but for a different reason - it was just stunning).

While the announcements of the Nobel Prize for 2023 took place during this season, we did not want to go overboard with many quads from there. So, we restricted it to two - once on week 7 and one during the final game-week. Unfortunately, I made a mistake in not providing an alternate answer for one of the questions in this quad (The Nobel Prize in Physics 2023). While both the question and answer were error-free, not having added the alternate answer, we were forced to retract/cancel that question altogether (a first for the league), as several players had given the alternate answer, and some 9 games had already finished by the time Sandeep Hari brought this to our attention (I must praise his skill in sighting errors).

The question was (just first part): “Anne L’Huillier et al, in 1987, were able to produce and demonstrate what (9; plural) using a infrared laser beam transmitted through a noble gas?”

While I am very careful with double-checking the facts, I made some questions from the ‘popular science background’ document from the Nobel Prize website itself, without any secondary verification, assuming it to be error free (after all, they are some of the most prestigious awards in sciences). In the attempt to water down the science, the committee (or however wrote this article), continuously used the word ‘overtones’ (the answer) throughout the article. This term is interchangeable with ‘harmonics’ (the alternate answer, which also happens to be 9 letters and in plural form), in the context of the question. However, this alternate term is shown nowhere in the document. And in the document detailing ‘Scientific background’, they never use the word ‘overtones’ and only ‘harmonics’. So, whoever is reading these two documents is left with the misconception that these are different things being talked about.

Anne L’Huillier herself used the word ‘harmonics’ in the papers she wrote. So, I don’t see the need to even use the word ‘overtones’ in the popular science document. It was clearly a bad attempt at popular science communication. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences needs to vet their press releases better. I will not apologize for this, as I had trusted the documents not to be misleading. However, I will apologize for not play-testing this question with the physicist on our team, who would have immediately caught this hindsight.

While it was not answered by a lot, ‘harmonics’ was answered by a number of people, and one among them was Vikram Rajan (known to many other players as ‘CR’). While a lot of you may have already have to come to know of this, he had unfortunately passed away shortly after our first season ended. One night, during the last game-week, he had called me and given me a great amount of feedback regarding our sets this season. I am thankful for his honest feedback, given that he is a prolific quizzer.

While we are awarding no one points for the question on overtones/harmonics, we are making an exception for CR, and posthumously awarding him a point in his memory. Rest well, fellow quizzer and scientist (he did his PhD in some subject in Physics if my memory serves me right).

Described as ‘brutal’ by CR, the last game-week’s set was undoubtedly the hardest of the season (for a reason). But we might consider dialing back the difficulty of the final set a tiny bit for the next season. Last week’s most hardest question - the HiQ question, with the answer as ‘Feline viral rhinotracheitis/FVR’ was cracked by no one. But it was not the only answer to not be cracked this week. The question with ‘Pollen’ as the answer (in the ‘Ancient Aliens') quad was also not cracked by anyone, bringing the total number of unanswered questions in the first season of EMU quiz league to 3.

‘Telosa’ - the utopic dystopic mega-project “in the monument of human arrogance” Phoenix (Arizona), and the ‘Pumapunku/Puma Punku’ were the second hardest questions in the set, with only one correct answer each. The former was answered by Subrat M and the latter by Pavan Nagaraj. The third hardest question with only three correct answers was the one with ‘Overbird’ as the answer. Jayakanthan R, Padmanav Baruah, and Dibyo Haldar got them right. Congrats to these 5 people who answered the toughest questions in the set.

There was a record low of only one most answered question (i.e. answered in every one of the 29 games that happened), which is 6 less than last game-week. That means that only ~0.02% of the questions in the set were answered in every single game without fail. The average number of unanswered questions per game went up from 14.04 in GW7 to 20.11 (once again, a record high).

In terms of quads, the toughest quad was ‘Bird homes (nests)', with a 7.21% answer rate, the hardest quad in the entire season, a 9.12% decrease from last week's toughest quad (corrects/opportunities). The only quads withe answer rate less than 10% were from this final game-week. The most answered quad was ‘David Quammen’s non-fiction’, with a answer rate of 32.36%, a 7.73% decrease from the easiest quad of GW7.

GW8’s maximum score was 15, scored by Maitrey Deshpande, Sanat Pai Raikar, and John Liu. While that is the lowest maximum score for any week, it is impressive given the final game-week was really tough, and these players have been popping up in some of the analyses throughout the season, for scores, musketeers, quad leaders and other stats.

GW8, had a little bit biology and movies/TV bias with 3 quads each (with those themes as primary or secondary themes), and a teensy bit Engineering & Technology bias with two quads each. Barring this, it was a well-balanced set given the lack of excessive representation of any one theme.

Musketeers are those who crack all the questions in a quad. Musketeers will be rare since only one question per quad is direct to a person. We congratulate all the players who cracked the musketeers. In game-week eight, we had two musketeers:

5Q) ‘The Nobel Prize in Physics 2023’ - Sarah Trevarthen (note that it was 3/3 since one question was cancelled/retracted)

12Q) ‘Bird homes (nests)’ - Padmanav Baruah (unsurprising as he is also a fellow ornithologist and a great wildlife quizzer who had come first in a butterfly quiz I had hosted)

Themewise (T) and quad (Q, primary quad relating to a theme) leaders for game-week 4:

1) Physical Geography - ‘Geography of major tectonic plates’ (max = 2/4 (50%)) - Pat Gibson, Jayakanthan R, Seoan Webb, Rajagopal, Achyuth Sanjay, Subrat M, Maitrey Deshpande, Shankha Ghosh Dastidar, Amit De, Sanat Pai Raikar, Dibyo Haldar, Gautham Mahadevan, Santonab Chakraborty, Abel Gilsing, and Carlo J Aiello

2) History and Literature - ‘David Quammen’s non-fiction’ (max = 3/4 (75%)) - Narayani

3T) Biology (max = 7/12 (58.33%)) - Padmanav Baruah

3Q) ‘Sterilisation-focused veterinary practices’ (max = 3/4 (75%)) - Ian Bayley, Dakshayini Suresh, Archana Ranganathan, and Aninthitha Nath

4) Chemistry - ‘Chemistry in Breaking Bad’ (max = 3/4 (75%)) - Akshay Gurumoorthi, Sanat Pai Raikar, Ishaan Nejeeb, and Ronak Gupta

5T) Physics (max = 3/3 (100%)) - Sarah Trevarthen

6T) Engineering & Technology (max = 4/8 (50%)) - Aditya Gangrade, John Liu, Ronak Gupta, and Rishav Dewan

6Q) ‘Integrated Engineering Concepts’ (max = 3/4 (75%)) - Aditya Gangrade & Ronak Gupta

7) Mathematics - ‘Math in The Big Bang Theory (max = 3/4 (75%)) - Nikhil Sonde, Ujjwal Deb, John Liu, Hari Parameswaran, Rishav Dewan, and Nayan

8T) Movies & TV (max = 6/12 (50%)) - Samanth Subramanian, Rajagopal, Sanat Pai Raikar, John Liu, Ronak Gupta, Hari Parameswaran, and Rishav Dewan

8Q) ‘Mr. Robot’ (max = 3/4 (75%)) - Rajagopal

9) Music, Art and Architecture - ‘Utopic Dystopic mega-projects in deserts’ (max = 3/4 (75%)) - Maitrey Deshpande & Saransh Mohapatra

10) Mythbusting - ‘Ancient aliens’ (max = 2/4 (50%)) - Samanth Subramanian, Aditi, and Chandrakala Geddapu

11) Social Science & Psychology - ‘Unreplicated social science studies’ (max = 3/4 (75%)) - Seoan Webb

12T) Home & Hobbies (max = 4/4 (100%)) - Padmanav Baruah