On November 16, the annual Swiss Quiz Championships took place at Café Hueber in Bern. At 10.30 a.m., 31 quiz participants gathered to take part in five different competitions:
• Single quiz (special ranking for the U30 category)
• Doubles quiz
• Knockout quiz
• Buzzer quiz
• Jeopardy quiz
Medals were also awarded for the league's best annual performance according to the Tour de Quiz rankings.
The long day began with the buzzer quiz qualifiers for the top 16, with some early surprises such as Charlie Sarbach, who finished second last year but was knocked out in the preliminary round this time. The buzzer quiz qualification was followed by the doubles quiz, in which 50 questions had to be answered in a time frame of 30 minutes. The duo Marcel Zumstein and Prakhar Gupta were able to defend their title, while Philipp Rohrer & Renate Schär took silver and Norwin Amiet & Markus Walser bronze.
The next event was the Knock Out Quiz Top 16 qualification. Two quizzers are assigned to each other and then play against each other, with the winner progressing to the next round. There were a few surprises here too: Markus Walser, last year's bronze medal winner, was eliminated from the competition early.
After the lunch break, the buzzer quarter-finals and the knock-out qualification for the top 4 took place. Perhaps the most exciting moment of the quiz so far was the buzzer quiz round between Paul Ratcliffe, Markus Walser, Lili Ninova and Patrick Kreis. After Paul's early qualification (3 points required), Markus, Lili and Patrick were tied for second place with 2 points. The next correct answer would decide the outcome. Lili's knowledge of the Cyrillic script helped her to correctly decipher the name of Germany in Ukrainian and progress to the next round.
This was followed by the main event of the day, the singles quiz. Last year's winner Marcel Zumstein confidently defended his title with 52 points, followed by Prakhar Gupta and Norwin Amiet, who took second and third place respectively. Charlie Sarbach defended their title in the under-30 category. Dimitrije Spasic and Giorgi Shalamberidze won the silver and bronze medals respectively.
Awards were also presented for the first Tour de Quiz annual championship of the SQV League: Prakhar Gupta won, followed by Marcel Zumstein and Rajan Thambehalli in 2nd and 3rd place respectively.
The singles and Tour de Quiz prize-giving ceremony was followed by the buzzer semi-finals, in which Marcel Zumstein and Andi Stolz (from Innsbruck, Austria) qualified for the final and Prakhar Gupta and Paul Ratcliffe for the bronze medal match.
Next on the agenda was the SQV Jeopardy semi-final, a new event introduced this year. Based on the well-known Jeopardy format, 24 people took part in the online qualifiers, 12 of whom made it to the semi-finals. After a number of exciting and entertaining rounds and some changes in the ranking after the final Jeopardy, Prahkar Gupta, Paul Ratcliffe, Markus Walser, Philipp Rohrer, Renate Schär and Marcel Zumstein qualified for the final.
The knockout final then took place, for which last year's winner (Rajan Thambehalli), the runnerup (Marcel Zumstein), Kay Wacker and Girish Chandrasekhar had qualified for. Girish was the first to be eliminated after 6 questions, while Marcel, Rajan and Kay fought to the end. After many exciting and tough questions, Marcel won the final, while Rajan secured the silver medal with a one-point lead over Kay.
This was followed by the buzzer round for 3rd place and the final. Prakhar Gupta won the bronze medal against Paul Ratcliffe. The final between Marcel and Andi was exciting until the very end: Marcel won the buzzer quiz 4:3 and reclaimed the buzzer championship after coming fourth in 2023.
Last event of the day was the Jeopardy final. After exciting and entertaining categories such as “Doodle the movie” or “15 seconds of one-hit wonder fame”, the final round followed. Although Prakhar did not know the correct answer “pigs in space”, the lead he had gained in the main round was enough for him to win thanks to smart tactics of wagering very little. Paul and Markus won the gold and silver medals respectively. We would like to thank all the participants and organizers for what we consider to be a great success event.
We would like to thank all participants and organizers for what we consider to be a very successful event and hope for an equally successful repeat next year. We were particularly pleased to see some new faces and some friends from across the border (Claudia Lösch and Andreas Stolz from Austria), some of whom were even very successful. It would be great if we could continue to expand our quiz community in this way. Hence our request: Everyone advertise vigorously. We would also be delighted if we could welcome one or two of you to the regular quizzes in Zurich, Bern and Lucerne from time to time. Finally, a big thank you to the quiz authors:
• Double quiz: Rajan Thambehalli
• Buzzer quiz: Marcel Zumstein, Markus Klein, Prakhar Gupta, Paul Ratcliffe
• Knock Out Quiz: Prakhar Gupta
• Individual quiz: Markus Klein
• Jeopardy quiz: Markus Klein
And of course to our hosts, the team from Café Hueber.
コメント