City boys crowned junior world quiz champions

NEW DELHI: Which French soup is derived from a rich flavoured stock? Which erstwhile separatist organisation takes its name from the phrase meaning "our affair"? 64 is a magazine dealing with which sport? Sounds tough, eh? But two Delhi boys not only answered these but many questions to win the first-ever Junior World Quizzing Championships.
Gourav Jena (18), a first-year student of College of Business Studies, DU, and Aatmik Gupta (15) a Class X student of Modern School, Barakhamba Road, secured the first and second positions respectively in the solo written quiz beating 154 young minds from Belgium, Malaysia, USA and India.
"It was fun writing the paper, but I didn't know that I would score the highest in the world," said Jena who scored 77 out of 105 to win the top spot. He is originally from Bhubaneswar, but came to Delhi last year when he joined Delhi University.
The son of an IITian, Jena was introduced to quizzing in school. "My father was interested in quizzing. So he took me to the quiz instructor in my school and asked him to mentor me. That really helped. I won many quizzes in school, including national ones like the CBSE Heritage India Quiz," Jena said.
When it comes to quiz themes, Jena said his strong area is general topics and India-very different from Aatmik who scored 73/105 to finish second. "I'm more outward-looking. So my strong area is definitely world culture. India isn't my area of strength," the 15-year-old said.
He's been quite active in the Delhi quizzing circuit and said his school has an active quiz club for the last five years that really shaped his interest in the game. "I'm also a debater and have won many prizes. I believe being a quizzer gives me an edge over s in this," Gupta said while talking about his interests.
Dr Anurakshat Gupta, the Asia director of International Quizzing Association-the world body that organised this competition as well as the World Quizzing Championships-explained the success of the boys. "Americans and Europeans get into quizzing more seriously at a later age. In Europe, the average starting age is 30. Indians and Belgians start younger, and that explains why the boys did so well. But they need to sustain in the long run. Many give up because of commitmentswork and family take up most of their time," Gupta said.
Dr Suby Bhattacharya, the India champion and world number 20 in World Quizzing Championship 2015, said it's a proud moment. "We have come a long way in quizzing in India.This particular quiz and s like it is an attempt to give a universally-accepted structure to the sport that has regional variations across the country. Quiz should be recognised as a mind sport like chess and bridge," said Bhattacharya, an Army doctor and co-founder of Kutub Quizzers, a Delhi-based club.