Questions

1. Where was MGR born?
2. What was the original name of New York?
3. Which Tamil comedian's original name was Gundu Rao?

The above 3 are questions, from recent segments of Thanga Vettai, for which I did not know the answers before. How about you guys?

I've written before about Thanga Vettai's improvements in several aspects and the episodes screened the last few weeks have convinced me that the improvements were not just temporary aberrations. The quiz show is definitely maintaining its improved standards and has made me look forward to it for reasons other than just seeing Ramya Krishnan :-)

There is nice variety in the format the questions are posed in the different rounds. I especially like the segment where the kids have to answer questions on selected topics and if they don't know the answer, they can ask the elder for a clue (the clues themselves are scrambled and so the elder has to know the answer to figure out the clue that applies to that question). The 'memory round' and the last round, where someone has to compose a question (from pieces hidden in random boxes) in the allotted time before figuring out the answer, is fun too. Now if they could just take out the segment where Ramya describes her saree and her jewellery in great detail, we would have a really nice quiz program on our hands.

There are still some dumbos, like the girl doing her B.E, who said an inch is 2.54 decimeters (keep in mind that this was a multiple choice question with the other choices being 2.54 mm, 2.54cm and 2.54 meters). But on the whole, the program's a lot smarter than before and my general knowledge improves atleast a little bit at the end of it.