Arindam Ganguly, OP
Bhubaneswar: The finals of Mettle Meet 2023 witnessed not only stiff competition and a fierce battle of wits but also edge of the seat excitement, Sunday.
In a nail biting finish, AIIMS, Bhubaneswar bagged the crown in the contest after achieving first runners up and second runners up status in 2017 and 2019 respectively in the Senior category.
DAV Public School, CDA, Cuttack emerged victorious in the Junior category.
The entire event was packed with drama and suspense with teams edging past each other at times while being overtaken the next moment.
AIIMS Bhubaneswar who were leading till the fourth round, won the title by answering the last question of the evening and clinched the title, leaving VIMSAR Burla in second position and IIT Bhubaneswar in third.
DAV-CDA, Cuttack, on the other hand, emerged winners in the Junior category by defeating their closest rival Loyola School by a slender margin. Loyola put up a tough fight but failed short despite the wining team failing to get a single point in the last round.
Compared to day 1, the finale saw intense battle among the 16 finalist – eight each from the Junior and Senior groups. Altogether 69 teams from school and colleges across the state participated in the competition.
On the final day, Adyasha Satpathy, Chief Executive, OrissaPOST, encouraged all participants and lauded their performance. She said both the prelims and finals were exciting and all the teams, which participated in the event, deserved to win. “In my eyes, all are winners,” she said.
Tathagata Satpathy, Editor, OrissaPOST, said the newspaper’s initiative to revive the spirit of quizzing in Odisha has already created a buzz across the state. “Quizzes of this kind help raise the ability of participants to think and grow. In Mettle Meet everyone is a winner and nobody is a loser,” he said.
Quizmaster Ajay Poonia said the standard in the competition is quite high in both the finals. “Both the finals saw winners edge past their rivals by one or two points,” he said.
The event was watched live by many on social media platforms of the newspaper’s digital ventures.
The winners got Rs1,00,000 as prize money and first and second runners up got Rs50,000 and Rs25,000 respectively in both the Senior and Junior categories.
Kaustuv Kumar Sahu of DAV-CDA said: “At the end we can say we were very lucky. If Loyola would have answered the last question correctly we would have been second. Mettle Meet is an exciting quiz contest and is was a great effort of OrissaPOST to resume it again after a gap of three years due to Covid-19.”
Bighnesh Das of AIIMS Bhubaneswar said: “We finally became champions of Mettle Meet. We will party now after working hard for the competition and winning it in such a tough contest. OrissaPost Mettle Meet is a great platform for quiz talents.”
PNN
