Brain Kick: The Football Quiz by Goalden Times

An account of Goalden Times’ first offline event by our staff reporter

Goalden Times, our own voluntary non-profit online magazine which is free for all to read and has contributions by writers from Italy, Trinidad, England and Senegal apart from the group of home-grown writers, organised their first live event Brain Kick – a football quiz -in Kolkata,India on June 3, 2012. The event turned out to be a great success with over 150 people gathering at the YMCA (Chowringhee Branch).

Participants looking focussed at the screen for the prelim questions

The quiz was a three-member team affair and 26 teams had registered for it. These teams undertook a rigorous written preliminary round which covered a wide variety of questions on the game ranging from standard football fundamentals to facts of cinema and literature on the game. Eight teams made it to the final with the scores ranging from 13.5 to 20.5 out of 30. A question in the prelims was a visual of a pea pod which had to be connected to a current active footballer with a single word. Answer was Chicharito, the nickname of Javier Hernandez which means little pea. The teams had very imaginative names like Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Invictus and3-Idiots.

The finals had 74 questions – 10 written and 64 others, a mix of visual and video questions. The best sports quizzers of the city had turned up and they cracked the trickiest of questions, much to the amazement of the audience and the quizmasters. Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (DRS) were running away with the quiz in the first half but Quiz Lovers of Kolkata caught up with them and took the lead in the second half. However, DRS prevailed and won the quiz quite comfortably in the end. 3-Idiots and Invictus tied for the third position but the former won it on the tie-break. The winning team was made up of three persons from different walks of life- a senior civil servant, a software engineer and a student.

The winners with the guest of honour and the quiz masters

A typical question from the final: Which team did India beat to qualify for the 1950 World Cup finals where they did not play eventually? Answer was ‘nobody’ as Burma, Philippines and Indonesia, the opponents in the group, had all withdrawn as theywere ravaged by war. The questions set by Kinshuk Biswas and Indranath Mukherjee of team Goalden Times covered all aspects of the game including Indian football.

Famous Indian footballer of yesteryears,Surajit Sengupta was the guest of honour at the event.While giving away the prizes to the top three teams,Sengupta said he was very impressed with the standard of questions and the quizzing. He wished that there could be more such events in the city to promote the game. We shall try to make it an annual event in the city and perhaps take it to other cities as well.

To commemorate our first live event, Goalden Times launched its own football jerseys. In case you’d like to own one of our jerseys do get in touch with us. Your encouragement and support will help us keep going and bring you more interesting football stories.