Friday quiz: Nandan Nilekani didn't need search engines. Why should you?

He is the Infosys cofounder, bureaucrat and politician. And for nearly the last one year Nandan Nilekani has also occupied a quizmaster’s hot seat on his Twitter account. His weekly #fridayquiz is a visual question. Nilekani puts up photos of places, monuments, food and restaurants with him in the foreground. His followers have to identify the location or subject of the photo. But there is one strict rule : #can’tgooglethis.
"I started doing the quiz a little while after my Twitter handle went up. I thought it would be an interesting way to connect with my followers," Nilekani wrote in an email response to ETPanache. "I was an avid quizzer in college, and would travel to intercollegiate festivals to compete. So the idea of a ‘picture’ quiz seemed like an interesting twist." (No surprise that Nilekani met his wife Rohini at a quiz competition.)

The pictures tend to be of lesser-known local delicacies or places with few hints. "Because the hive mind that is Twitter is incredibly knowledgeable," Nilekani says.

Nilekani’s account sees the most activity on Fridays. There are times when people get the answer in less than a minute, and sometimes not at all. “It feels like quite an accomplishment when nobody gets the right answer, and even then a few people come very close,” says Nilekani.

He says the hardest quizzes get a lot of guesses. "One of my favourites — a tough one which had a lot of responses — was the photo of Nagraj Idli, a small stall near Karnataka Stores which is famous for his pillow-soft idlis." In future, we’ll see him sticking to picture format, but he will experiment with the theme. "There are a few interesting twists coming up," he says. For now, we bring to you the best of his quiz questions. But again, you #can’t google this:

1. Aug 15: Independence Day special, This is on India’s border, a picture in tribute to those great soldiers who guard our country's borders. This is river Shyok, on the way to Tyakshi & Turtuk villages in Nubra Valley.

2. March 6: Hobbiton, Matamata, New Zealand

3. Aug 1: A small stall near Karnataka Stores, famous for its Nagraj Idli.

4. July 4: Name this football and tell me which World Cup it was used.

Answer: 1970 Telstar used in Mexico.

5. Feb 13: KTea, a special tea from Kalladka, NH75.

6. March 27: Mamallapuram lighthouse.

7. March 20: Shettihalli Church in Hassan.

8. Oct 24: Lavasa, Pune

9. Jan 23: Twist in the story, identify the object to know the place.

Answer: This is one of several panels that makes the whole dome of ‘Matrimandir’.

10. Nov 7: No one got this one right. This is Alamparai Fort located on the southern outskirts of Chennai.