Smartacus 2022: The Hindustan Times National Interschool Quiz

The record-creating success of ClassAct 2022, the Hindustan Times Republic Day Quiz, gave HT School the impetus to take their passion for quizzing to the next level. With the aim of offering a wider community of students an opportunity to engage in team quizzing, it has launched Smartacus 2022, The Hindustan Times National Interschool Quiz. This national-level interschool quizzing event will allow students to not only represent their teams and schools, but also their states. “Smartacus 2022 has me all excited. I’m looking forward to quizzing with a whole bunch of avid quizzers,” says Avinash Mudaliar, one of the quizmasters.

Dr. Navin Jayakumar, who will also host this quiz, is equally enthusiastic. “I am eager to meet India’s best brains in Smartacus 2022. It’s more a love for bubbling students with an appetite for knowledge, I suppose. I would encourage kids to look beyond what is presented to them, like newspaper headlines and school textbooks. Look, think, learn and grow,” says Dr. Jayakumar.

Registration for Smartacus 2022 is free and available at https://htschool.hindustantimes.com/smartacus. It began on July 7, 2022 and will continue till August 8, 2022. The icing on the cake is the prize! There are ₹4 lakh+ worth prizes up for grabs. The winning school will also be awarded an enviable trophy. All contestants will be rewarded with digital certificates of participation.

Smartacus 2022: An overview

This is a pan-India online quizzing event for Indian students of grades 5 to 12. Children studying in Indian schools overseas are also eligible to participate. Just like its predecessor ClassAct 2022, Smartacus 2022 will also test the general knowledge of budding quizzers spread across the country. The topics covered will be: History, geography, sports, language and literature, science, arts and entertainment as well as culture and lifestyle. In order to ensure uniform representation from all States and Union Territories, Smartacus 2022 has been divided into four zones: North, South, East and West. This online quiz will be hosted by two of India’s most distinguished quizmasters, Dr. Navin Jayakumar and Avinash Mudaliar. Dr. Jayakumar is the founding member of The Quiz Foundation of India and is also the quizmaster for well-known national-level quizzes, such as the Landmark Quiz, the Murugappa Madras Quotient School Quiz and the Rotary Galaxy Science and Technology Quiz to name a few. He also hosted the world’s largest online school quiz, ClassAct 2022, The Hindustan Times Republic Day Quiz. Mr. Mudaliar has conducted 1000+ quizzes in the last 20 years and has won over 800 major quizzes. He hosted Under the Peepal Tree (UTPT), Asia’s largest quiz festival, and co-hosted the world’s largest online school quiz, ClassAct 2022, The Hindustan Times Republic Day Quiz. He was the Quizmaster for the Times Mak Moto Quiz, the Ernst and Young Knowledge Quiz, and the Power of Ideas Print Quiz conducted by Economic Times, to name a few.

How will Smartacus 2022 work?

This national-level interschool quizzing competition will be conducted over five rounds: Selection, Prelims, Semi-finals, Finals and Quizzer of the Year.

The one-hour-long Selection round, scheduled for 15th August, will be for individuals and any Indian student from the above-mentioned grades can compete. It will comprise of 50 questions including multiple-choice and type-in formats. This round will be conducted asynchronously on the Quizizz Platform.

After the Selection round, 16 top-performing schools from each zone will be invited to participate in the Preliminary round based on the scores of their individual participants.

The invited schools will create a team of 5 to compete in the Preliminary round, which will follow a knockout format.

Out of the 64 schools battling it out in the Preliminary round, four (one from each zone) will make it to the Semi-finals. The Finale will see top two schools from the previous round vying for the champion’s trophy. It will be conducted in two rounds with 22 questions in each. The Finale will be followed by the Quizzer of the Year contest in which 20 students from the 4 Semi-finalist teams will compete for the most coveted award for quizzers. The Quizzer of the Year contest will take place asynchronously on the Quizizz Platform.