I'm doing a quiz

Subrat and I are doing an Only Connect adaptation for the Karnataka Quiz Association this Sunday. Turn up if you can!

After a gap of a decade, I’m doing a quiz for KQA. In this one, Subrat and I will be doing our own adaptation of BBC’s Only Connect, tweaking the rules and format to support a multi-team format (as opposed to only two in the TV show).

The important stuff, such as date, time and venue first:

And as you can see here, it is “direct finals”, which means everyone gets to participate in the finals. In other words, there are no annoying written prelims that you need to get past to participate in the real “oral” quiz.

Only Connect

Only Connect is a British quiz show on BBC, that has already completed nineteen seasons. I had no clue about its existence until one December afternoon in 2022, when I had lunch with Subrat. We were talking about hiring, and he was talking about how he likes to test for someone’s lateral thinking skills by giving them only connect questions.

When I asked him what that is, he pointed me to the show and sent me a sample of questions that he had concocted. I tried watching one or two episodes on YouTube, but quickly lost interest and parked it.

Sometime in August or September 2023, my interest got rekindled, and I started working through the Only Connect archives on BBC.

I was completely hooked. I was spending an unhealthy amount of time watching Only Connect archives. And then Subrat mentioned that he was part of an Only Connect-like online quizzing league, and a spot on his team had opened up. I jumped.

We didn’t do particularly well, but it was rather enjoyable playing Only Connect online. My addiction to watching the archives on YouTube continued. I started up. I had another baby. I took a break from online quizzing. But still, when I’m home, I can’t have lunch without watching half an episode of Only Connect (or the YouTube uploads of Connections Online Quiz League).

And then I got the idea that we can adapt Only Connect for a local offline quiz, for the Karnataka Quiz Association. The association was receptive to the idea. Subrat immediately agreed to be my co-quizmaster for this. And so this is happening.

The challenge, however, is how do you adapt a TV quiz show to a format involving multiple teams? Putting it another way, and paraphrasing the quizmasters of the 2003 edition of the Saarang Lone Wolf Quiz final, how do you take a quiz show and convert it into a quiz?

How we will “implement” Only Connect

Subrat’s first question when I proposed that we do an only connect adaptation for KQA was “how will you do the prelims?”. We debated whether to have a round of written prelims at all - on the one hand, when you have a new format, you want to give the maximum number of people an opportunity to play the “real thing”. On the other hand, doing a quiz meant for two teams across a large number of teams can be challenging.

In any case, we decided to do away with the prelims. So all are welcome for the finals!

So how will the quiz go? If you watch any episode of Only Connect (or COQL), you will notice that there are four rounds -

1. What connects these four things?

2. What comes fourth in this sequence?

3. The Connecting Wall (sixteen groups that need to be sorted into four groups of four)

4. Missing vowels (the “category” is given, and the clues are given with vowels missing and consonants squished up. Teams need to buzz to give the correct name / phrase)

We quickly ruled out the missing vowels round - with a large number of teams, it becomes unwieldy to have a buzzer; and unless there is time pressure, missing vowels is pointless.

That leaves us the first three rounds.

What connects?

In the TV show / COQL, one team gets a question “direct”. Four clues are given, and the team has to guess what the connection is. If they get it right on the first clue, they get 5 points. They can ask for subsequent clues by shouting “next”, and get 3, 2, 1 points respectively for every additional clue shown. They have 45 seconds in total to guess the connection, and if they fail to get it, the question gets turned over to the other team for 1 point.

In a KQA-like format, we cannot have direct-pass. Which means every question is “direct” to every team. Which also means teams can’t be given control on when the next clue is shown. And “fastest fingers first” can be unwieldy. So this is how we will do it.

Here is how this will work.

• Each clue will remain on screen for exactly 30 seconds 

• During this time, teams have the option to Pounce (answer in writing), with 5 points on the 1st clue, 3 on the 2nd and 2 on the 3rd, and 1 on the 4th are available, if the answers are correct. There are no negative points in case the answer is wrong. However, the team loses the opportunity to take further part in the question 

• Answers will be in writing. Each time will be given post-its of four different colours. Given the paucity of time, to pounce, they need to write the answer (and team number) and hand it over either to the quizmaster or a volunteer by the time the 30 seconds for the clue are up, 

  • It is the duty of the volunteer or quizmaster to collect the post-it of the correct colour for the question (we will have a visual cue on the slide for this) 

  • All post-its collected for a question will be placed together, to be evaluated by the quizmasters at the end of the question 

Questions don’t “pass”. So effectively you can think of this as a written round with “pounce”, with a timer. We will possibly have 10 or 12 such questions (the quiz is yet to be finalised).

The questions will come up on screen. Watch out for wordplays. Read carefully. The quizmasters will not be reading out the words on the screen. There can be visuals. For this edition, we are not doing audios or videos. We are not going to say if the connections are exhaustive, or exhausting.

What comes fourth in the sequence?

The second round is similar to the first, except that only three clues will come up on screen, for 5, 3 and 2 points respectively. These three clues form an ordered sequence and the job of the participants is to write what comes next.

For example, the first three clues might be

1. Nehru

2. Nanda

3. Shastri

You might recognise these as the last names of India’s first three Prime Ministers (including caretakers). The answer I would expect is “Nanda” (who was caretaker PM once again after the death of Lal Bahadur Shastri). We don’t expect you to tell us what the connection is. All we need is what comes fourth.

We are adapting this round similarly to the previous one. Clues come up on screen and stay for 30 seconds each (only 3 clues per question). Participants need to write the answer on the correct coloured post-it and hand over to the QMs or volunteers when the corresponding clue is on screen. 10-12 questions. As is evident from the example above, sequences may not be exhaustive.

Connecting Wall

This will be trickier compared to what you see on TV or in COQL. For starters, we need to do this using pen and paper. The cool technology that tells you whether a group you found is right or not will not be available, making an already tricky round trickier.

In any case, we will project a set of 16 clues on screen. They can form four sets of four. Participants need to take a plain paper and write down these four groups. Now, there can be “red herrings” - clues that can seemingly fall under multiple groups. However, there is only one correct answer (with four coherent groups).

We will do this round in two stages. The 16 clues are put up on screen and will stay there for 5 minutes. Participating teams need to write on plain paper what they think the groups are. At the end of the 5 minutes, these papers will get collected.

Then the 4 groups will be shown on screen, and participants now need to write down what connects each group. They can take a minute for this.

Their papers will get collected again and evaluated. For every group of 4 you correctly identify, you get one point. For every connection you get, you get one point. If you get all four groups and all four connections exactly right, you get 2 bonus points.

We will have either 2 or 3 such rounds.

Putting it all together

In some ways, this is a “finals only” quiz where all the answers are in writing. We are leveraging the long-standing practice of the “pounce” (where you pretty much give the answer before the question is fully completed) and some old-school low tech to open up Only Connect to a large number of participating teams.

And like all KQA quizzes, we are having teams of four rather than three. Which means one extra person to be able to detect patterns. And once extra person to create confusion.

I think, and hope, this will be fun. If you are in Bangalore on Sunday morning, do turn up. We’ve prepared plenty of wicked stuff for you!