(Top) Students participate in the TCS IT Wiz-2011 at Pal Heights in Bhubaneswar. Anirban Kundu and Shubham Agarwal of Loyola School, Jamshedpur, wins the contest. Pictures by Ashwinee Pati

Bhubaneswar, Sept. 6: Did you know that the act of registering a popular internet address with the intent of profiting from its goodwill and then selling it off to its rightful owner at an inflated price is called cyber squatting? Or that IT giant Apple won rights to sell digital Beatles’ music last year?

Such fascinating questions were posed to participants at the Bhubaneswar edition of the TCS IT Wiz-2011. The competition, which was open to students from Classes VIII to XII, received an overwhelming response. More than 529 teams from around 40 schools across the state battled it out for the top spot. The team from Loyola School, Jamshedpur, emerged regional winner with 65 points. This is the first time in 13 years that a non-Orissa school team has won the Bhubaneswar edition of the quiz, organisers said.

Champions Anirban Kundu and Shubham Agarwal, both students of Class X, were the youngest among the finalists. The confident duo seemed to have all the answers on their fingertips and pressed ahead with a comfortable lead. At the last level of the final round, they kept their hands off the buzzer to allow the other teams to score points.

With this win, Anirban and Shubham stormed into the national finals, which is scheduled to be held in Chennai on December 10. Besides winning a trophy, they also received fancy cell phones and digital cameras. “We are thrilled. It is always nice to win a hyped competition such as this. We had been following the news everyday and used to read IT journals and also went through questions asked in other IT quizzes,” one of them said. While Shubham said he aspires to become a chartered accountant, Anirban added: “Initially, I wanted to become an actor. Now my aim is to achieve something so big that Google will put up my name on its doodle.”

Quizmaster Giri Balasubramanium, who is popularly known as Pickbrain, kept the audience entertained by hurling questions at them. Correct answers were followed by thunderous applause and gifts.

The team from DAV Public School Unit-VIII, Bhubaneswar and Ispat English Medium School, Rourkela, finished in second and third places respectively. The other teams that made it to the finals were all from Bhubaneswar — Kendriya Vidyalaya Unit-IX, DAV Public School (Pokhariput) and BJB (Junior) College. These teams received prizes ranging from travel bags, portable speakers and headphones to backpacks, pen drives and T-shirts.

Here, the quiz started with a common set of 20 questions in oral, visual and audio-visual formats. The finals comprised five levels, including crossword puzzle, rapid-fire buzzer and multiple clues-with-a-link rounds.