Perhaps the phrase “Dream Debut” was coined for such occasions is the feeling one had as they left The Taj at Cochin after witnessing a fascinating afternoon of quizzing.

It was the first time Crucible was being held for the campuses in Gods Own Country and the stakes were of a magnitude that one has never witnessed before. Pickbrain the man at the helm though is not a new face to this region and teams sure knew what to expect from him.

The prelim was more tricky than tough as it had a few mines that could trap teams and force errors. Once the evaluation was done, everyone waited in anticipation for the wild cards to come on stage and from there on to the final six of the Cochin edition.

The final line up had three teams from Cochin and three outstation teams from Trissur, Coimbatore and Trivandrum.

• PSGIM Coimbatore (Nigil Varghese and Premchand)
• SCMS Cochin (Dinnath and Sandeep Nair)
• CUSAT College of Engg, Cochin. (Sibi and Nikhil)
• College of Engg, Trivandrum (Vivek and Vishnu Balakrishnan)
• GEC Trissur (Arun and Sreejith)
• Albertian Inst of Mgmt Cochin (Aravindan and Sarath Menon)

The final saw most teams score in the early rounds. As it moved into the mid phase the PSGIM team started emerging from the clutter with some truly brilliant answers. Then came the buzzers and COE Trivandrum managed to pull two back and get into the lead. PSGIM promptly responded with a right answer and got back into the lead to make the quiz as tantalizingly poised as one would wish,

Pickbrain aptly thundered, “The quiz is far from over” as if he knew what was in store as he led the teams into the final round. Each question that came added to the tensions of the battle and with one question remaining PSGIM were in the lead by 5 points. It was a do or die for COE who went for the final question and were not sure they if they were right. Pickbrain after an extended pause (that got everyone to the edge of their seats) declared “College of Engg, Trivandrum are into the national final” and the silence was replaced with an appreciative applause from one and all.

The guest of Honour Mr.Swaminathan from Tata Tea gave away the prizes.

Results

• Winner: College of Engg, Trivandrum (Vivek and Vishnu Balakrishnan)
• Runner Up: PSGIM Coimbatore (Nigil Varghese and Premchand)