Quizzes: questionable activity or a quest for answers?

It’s an addiction. Children, teens, young adults, adults. Male, female, cisgender, non-gender, whatever. Everyone can get addicted to it. Because this activity has nothing to do with age, sex, appearance, or socio-economic backgrounds. Success in this activity depends entirely on your ability to recall random information instantly, and the “pre-ability” to absorb and store arbitrary factoids in a dark(ish) recess of your mind.

This addiction is called a Quiz. A four-letter word, which like all four-letter words, promises infinite possibilities. It binds together people from varied backgrounds, walks of life (yes, that’s Knopfler – a quiz question for newbies) and food preferences. All united by the urge to pit their grey cells against a Being – the Quiz Master.

The origins of the activity, and the word itself, are hazy. Surprisingly for the subject matter, no one really knows how the word “quiz” came about, what was the first quiz question (I would have thought “To Be Or Not To Be”, that would be the question), who won the first ever quiz, and so on. One would have imagined that this primordial question would have been answered by the myriad quizzards dotted about the planet. But alas, ‘tis not to be. Theories abound, but no irrefutable sources (the bedrock of any quiz) are available. The mystery is huge, and to delve into the various theories would be the equivalent of several Christie novels. Of course, along the way you might learn the name of the first actor to play Hercule Poirot on television.

Quizzing is a hugely popular British Question. It seems to be most prevalent in the Mother Country and her many ex-colonies. In India (Jewel Of The Crowd, sorry Crown), quizzing is a particularly raucous and heated activity in the eastern and southern parts, though the western part does hold its own! Kolkata especially is a hotbed of questionable activities, with children being taught to read and absorb varied bits of trivia as soon as they can say “Ilish”. The north seems to be stuck on “Who invented Chicken Tikka Masala?” (Disclaimer: this is my perception and is not backed by verifiable facts).

The Brooklyn Eagle Quiz on Current Events (a quiz on an American radio channel started in 1923) is widely considered to be the first ever “quiz show”. This has degenerated into macabre, dystopian shows such as the Spelling Bee (in which young students, usually of South Asian origin, are asked to spell words like Appoggiatura and Smaragdine) and “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?" (where answers are exchanged for…money!)

The acme of quizzing as an activity for pure intellectual satisfaction, with no lucre involved, is no doubt Mastermind, aired on the BBC. With its classic line “I’ve started, so I will finish” (inspired no doubt by Nelson just after the first shot at Waterloo), the show is capable of reducing the most erudite contestants to sweaty, blubbery, blobs of unanswered questions. The mother country also has another quiz variable – the Pub Quiz. Burns and Shorter had no idea how wildly successful their idea would become as a marketing strategy when they launched it in 1976. More on this in a later post.

But what is it about quizzing that fascinates people so much? There is no single answer. But to me, quizzing is a lot like life itself. Lots of questions. You know the answers to some questions, you get the answers to some questions from others, and you leave at the end with several questions unanswered.

College is a collage

 

“College” is not just a building with classrooms and gowned and capped scholars kicking down the cobble stones (yes, Paul, it’s your line). It is a stage of life that some fortunate children pass through. “Fortunate children” because not every child can do the college phase for various reasons. I exclude those who voluntarily drop out because they found a way of making a billion. Dollars.

A college is a pastiche of myriad stimuli. It is an institution of higher learning, it is a hub of culture, the source of information on the first shave, and gives the first taste of a freedom that does not exist in school. Even in today’s woke culture where kids go back to school with designer clothes, mobile phones that look like a space shuttle controller, and machine guns.

My college was down the road from my school. The environment was familiar, as was the trudge. It was supposedly one of the better bastions of academe for both the sciences and the liberal arts. We were of course part of the liberal, longhaired set. No complex equations or test tubes for us (that freedom I mentioned above…). The sylvan neighbourhood contained the usual confused mix of communities, and merchants catering to said communities.

My first day in college was unnerving, to put it mildly. I was trained in the navigation of complex & large human gatherings (aka crowds) thanks to my school, but nothing had prepared me for the intricate social conundrum that I – a plump, moon-faced, bespectacled lad - faced. To begin with I was in civvies – no uniforms in college. The outfit I had chosen was a hand-me-down pair of trousers and a shirt that looked like it had escaped from a 70s Bollywood movie – pointy collar and all. Most difficult for someone used to a uniform.

The classroom was a sea of female shapes, and I wondered if the college was actually an all-girls institution, and someone had pulled one on me. However, I stiffened the sinews, shot the cuffs, and entered as nonchalantly as I could. The female faces turned as one to stare at this blot who had dared sully their temple.

I walked rather stiffly to the last row and sat on one of the benches that looked like a refugee from some not-so-fussy prison. The professor (“teachers” in school morph into “professors” in college) – again a lady – marched into the room and I could sense the bonhomie between the female faces and the lady professor. A sisterhood against the male blot on the back bench. The professor took attendance (guess it was too early to withdraw all school habits). At the end of the exercise, I realised with a feeling of horror that I was the only male in the class.  A rock in a sea of one hundred and five mermaids. I would have called it quits right then if it wasn’t for a few familiar faces in the merry throng before me (more on that later). And I noticed a few sympathetic glances sent my way.

The day finally ended, and I trudged back home, prey to nameless fears about the future.

I will not get into the details of the next five years in this hallowed establishment of learning and literacy (acronymically speaking). Suffice to say that it shaped me, presented experiences that smoothened out the rough edges in my make-up, and helped me build friendships that have lasted to this day. I learned the exotic tribal art of “bunking”, a community activity that promotes camaraderie, leadership, and deep philosophy. Incidentally, the tribal leader who introduced me to bunking dropped out after two years and became a monk. Giving "bunking" a whole new, transcendental meaning.

I also learned how to manage the multiple social riddles that a hapless teen faces when thrown into the deep end without a ring. I learned the importance of managing freedom with responsibility, and the need to find someone to foot the bill for a restaurant sandwich.

And most importantly, I learnt the difference between a school and a college. In school, one absorbs knowledge. In college, one absorbs life.