There was a time when a quiz was more than just a competition.
It was something families watched together on television. It was something school friends argued about after class. It was something cousins challenged each other with on Sunday afternoons: “Wait, I know this one!”
For many Indians who grew up in the 90s and early 2000s, quizzing was part of popular culture.
Shows such as the Bournvita Quiz Contest became household favourites. What started in 1972 as a school-oriented quiz eventually moved to radio and then television in the 1990s. The programme became one of the longest-running knowledge game shows on Indian television and, for many viewers, became a memorable part of growing up. Its long-time quizmaster Derek O’Brien also became one of the most recognisable faces of Indian quizzing.
He was part of a wider tradition shaped by prominent quizmasters such as Siddhartha Basu, whose Quiz Time became a landmark television quiz show in the 1980s. Over the years, programmes such as Mastermind India, University Challenge India and, later, Kaun Banega Crorepati helped take quizzing beyond schools and clubs and into homes across the country. Together, these shows and quizmasters played an important role in making quizzes a familiar and enduring part of Indian popular culture.
Today, dedicated quiz shows are far less visible in mainstream television than they once were. That does not necessarily mean curiosity has disappeared. In fact, walk into the right auditorium, and you might discover the opposite.
We saw exactly that at the Barefoot Sports Quiz Festival 2026.
A Weekend Where Sports Trivia Took Centre Stage
On 29 and 30 August 2026, the Barefoot Sports Quiz Festival 2026 brought sports enthusiasts together at the India Islamic Cultural Centre (IICC), Lodhi Road, New Delhi.
For two days, the venue became a meeting place for people who don’t simply watch sport; they remember it.
The kind of people who remember the score, the year, the player, the venue, the unusual statistic and, sometimes, the story behind the story.
And that is perhaps what makes a dedicated sports quiz so enjoyable.
You don’t need to be a professional athlete to participate. You simply need curiosity, memory, and a willingness to discover that there is always one more sports fact you didn’t know.
For us at Blue Pencil, the weekend offered another perspective too: an opportunity to see our sports books meet readers face-to-face.
Is India’s Quizzing Culture Disappearing?
It certainly feels less visible than it once was.
For an earlier generation, quizzing was woven into everyday popular culture. School competitions, inter-school tournaments, quiz clubs and television programmes gave young people regular opportunities to test what they knew, compete with others and, perhaps most importantly, develop the habit of being curious. Well-known quizmasters became familiar faces, and quiz shows gave general knowledge a place in family conversations and school life.
That culture has not necessarily disappeared, but the spaces that once made it highly visible have changed. Quizzing today is more fragmented, spread across schools, colleges, specialist competitions, online communities, pub quizzes and digital platforms. For someone who is not actively looking for it, it can therefore seem as though quizzing has faded from public life, even when a vibrant quiz community continues to exist.
Today, the mainstream television landscape looks different.
Quiz and knowledge-based formats still exist across India, and quiz communities continue to organise competitions, but the regular household visibility once enjoyed by shows such as Bournvita Quiz Contest has diminished.
That is why events like Barefoot Sports Quiz Festival matter.
They remind us that quizzing does not have to depend on television.
It can live in auditoriums, in colleges, in quiz societies. And it can live in books. And, most importantly, it can live wherever people are still excited by the words:
“Here’s the question!”
Barefoot: A Quiz Festival Built on Passion
Barefoot’s story itself is a fascinating example of how a small idea can become a long-running community tradition.
According to Aniket Mishra, the idea for the sports quiz festival came together in January 2012. The first edition was organised as the Sports Journal Quiz Festival 2012, before the event was renamed the Barefoot Quiz Festival. Mishra has written about how the festival continued because there was a genuine community of people who enjoyed travelling, competing and being quizzed on subjects they loved.
That history is important.
Because Barefoot isn’t simply another event on a calendar.
It represents more than a decade of sustained interest in sports quizzing.
Earlier editions of the Barefoot festival have featured multiple sports themes, including women in sports, Indian sports, football, cricket, and open sports quizzes. The Indian Express, for example, covered a previous Barefoot edition as a multi-theme sports quiz festival featuring these formats.
And the 2026 edition continued that spirit.
The Faces Behind Barefoot 2026
A good quiz is only as good as the questions, and the people asking them.
The 2026 festival brought together an impressive line-up of quizmasters and sports-knowledge enthusiasts, including names such as:
Somnath Chanda
Known for hosting sports and specialist quizzes, including the Women in Sports Quiz.
Aakriti Mehrotra
Part of the Barefoot quiz ecosystem and among the recognisable faces associated with the festival.
Titash Banerjea
Hosted the Cricket Quiz, bringing deep sports knowledge and the kind of detail that makes cricket trivia particularly addictive.
Sumantra Sarathi Datta
One of the quizmasters associated with the India in Sports Quiz.
Alongside them were other experienced quizmasters including Nikhil Sarkar, Deepanjan Deb, Prithwish Datta and Preetham Upadhaya.
The result was a weekend that wasn’t simply about asking questions.
It was about asking better questions.
What Was On the Quiz Schedule?
The flagship quizzes across the August 29–30 programme included:
Women in Sports Quiz
Hosted by Somnath Chanda, exploring the stories, personalities and moments surrounding women in sport.
India in Sports Quiz
Hosted by Sumantra Sarathi Datta and Nikhil Sarkar, taking participants through India’s rich sporting history.
Football Quiz
Hosted by Deepanjan Deb, dedicated to the world’s most followed sport.
Cricket Quiz
Hosted by Titash Banerjea, for those who know their cricket well, or think they do.
The Sports Quiz
An open sports quiz hosted by Prithwish Datta, bringing together broader sporting knowledge.
Solo Sports Quiz
Hosted by Preetham Upadhaya, with a focus on individual disciplines such as running and swimming.
The diversity of topics was one of the best things about the festival.
You could walk into the event confident about cricket and walk out having discovered that your knowledge of athletics, football history or an obscure sporting moment needed some serious revision.
And that is precisely what makes quizzing fun.
Blue Pencil at Barefoot Sports Quiz Festival 2026
While the quizzes were happening in the auditorium, Blue Pencil Publishers had its own little corner of the action.
We set up a small book stall featuring a selection of our sports titles.
For us, this wasn’t simply about putting books on a table.
It was about putting sports memories on a table.
Our stall featured five sports-focused titles that are aimed squarely at readers who enjoy cricket, football, tournaments, trivia, and the stories behind iconic sporting moments.
Five Sports Books We Took to the Festival
The IPL Quiz Book
Written by Arinjay Ghosh and Aniket Mishra, this revised and updated edition combines questions, stories, and memories from the IPL era, turning tournament history into an interactive trivia experience.
The Ultimate T20 World Cup Quiz Book
Another title by Arinjay Ghosh and Aniket Mishra, this book takes readers through the drama, unpredictability and unforgettable moments of ten editions of the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup.
Lionel At Last: The 2022 World Cup
Written by Kamalendu Mishra, this book combines World Cup trivia with personal anecdotes and memories surrounding Lionel Messi and Argentina’s 2022 triumph.
Know Thy Dhoni
Written by Aniket Mishra, this Amazon bestseller brings together more than 400 questions and stories around MS Dhoni, covering his career, achievements and lesser-known moments.
The IPL Quiz Book — Revised & Updated Till IPL 2023
Our stall also featured the revised IPL edition, designed for readers who want to test themselves while revisiting memorable moments from the tournament.
At their heart, all these books have something in common:
They make sports fandom interactive.
You’re not just reading about a tournament.
You’re challenging yourself to remember it.
More Than a Book Stall
One of the most rewarding parts of the weekend was seeing people stop at the Blue Pencil stall.
Some came because they were already familiar with the books.
Some came after attending a quiz.
Some picked up a book because a particular player, tournament or sport caught their attention.
Some simply started browsing.
And quite a few stayed.
We had visitors asking questions about the books, flipping through pages, discussing sports memories and, importantly, buying titles from the stall.
That interaction is something online publishing can never fully replace.
A website can tell you what a book is about.
A reader standing in front of you can tell you why the book matters to them.
“I Remember That Moment…”
Perhaps our favourite conversations were the ones that started with a book cover and ended somewhere completely unexpected.
A person would pick up a cricket title, see a familiar player, and suddenly start talking about a match from years ago.
Someone else would see a World Cup book and remember where they watched the final.
Someone would open a quiz book and immediately challenge a friend standing beside them:
“Come on, answer this.”
And suddenly the book wasn’t a book anymore.
It was a conversation starter.
It was a memory trigger.
It was a mini quiz.
That, in many ways, is the beauty of sports publishing.
Meeting Arinjay Ghosh
The weekend also gave us the opportunity to meet Arinjay Ghosh, one of the authors behind several of the books we were showcasing.
Meeting an author whose work you’re representing creates a different connection with the books.
We had the chance to interact with Arinjay, learn more about him, and spend some time discussing his work.
Beyond the author connection, what stood out was simply how warm, approachable, and fun he was to interact with.
It was one of those meetings that adds a human layer to what can otherwise feel like a very transactional publishing process.
And of course, standing beside the books and meeting one of the people who helped create them made the entire stall experience even more memorable.
We also acknowledge Aniket Mishra, whose work sits at the intersection of sports publishing and the Barefoot quizzing ecosystem. His own account of the festival’s beginnings in 2012 offers a particularly personal view of why Barefoot has continued for so many years.
What We Heard From Visitors
Perhaps the most valuable part of the weekend wasn’t the number of books on the table.
It was the number of stories people brought with them.
Visitors shared what brought them to the quiz.
They spoke about their love for cricket and football.
Some talked about attending similar quizzes in the past.
Others told us which player or tournament they followed most closely.
And some simply admitted that they had come to test whether they really knew as much about sport as they believed.
Those conversations gave us something publishers often struggle to obtain from dashboards and reports:
Our First Time Running a Book Stall
For us personally, this was a new experience.
I was there along with Ravindra Kumar, representing Blue Pencil at the stall.
And while setting up a book display may sound simple, managing a live stall over two days is a completely different experience.
You have to think about:
- how books are displayed
- how people move around the stall
- how to start conversations
- how to understand what someone is looking for
- how to answer questions
- how to manage purchases
- how to keep the stall organised
- and how to remain energetic throughout the day
For me, this was the first time I had managed an entire stall and directly handled customers and visitors in this way.
It was exciting.
It was sometimes unpredictable.
And it was a tremendous learning experience.
What I Took Away From Barefoot 2026
1. People still love discovering things
The interest at the event was a good reminder that curiosity hasn’t disappeared.
People still enjoy learning obscure facts.
They still enjoy being challenged.
And they still enjoy proving a friend wrong over a sports statistic.
2. Books can create conversations
A sports quiz book isn’t passive reading material.
It can become a discussion, a challenge, a memory and even a competition between friends.
3. Direct customer interaction teaches differently
Speaking with readers in person tells you things that analytics simply cannot.
It reveals what attracts attention, what creates hesitation and what actually makes someone pick up a book.
4. Experiences outside your usual role matter
Going from digital/content work to physically managing a book stall was outside my usual routine.
And that’s exactly why it was useful.
Sometimes the best learning comes from doing something you haven’t done before.
Why Barefoot Matters
At a time when entertainment is increasingly fast, short, and algorithm-driven, there is something refreshing about people sitting together in a room and thinking.
No endless scrolling.
No autoplay.
No recommendation algorithm deciding the next question.
Just a room full of people, a question on a screen, and the pressure of a few seconds of silence.
That’s still exciting.
And perhaps that is the strongest case for the continuing relevance of quiz culture.
The format has changed.
The platforms have changed.
But the basic human pleasure hasn’t:
Knowing something. Learning something. And discovering that there is still more to know.
Barefoot Sports Quiz Festival 2026 was a wonderful reminder of that.
For Blue Pencil Publishers, it was an opportunity to showcase books we care about, speak directly with readers, hear their experiences, and learn from the other side of the publishing table.
For me personally, it was two memorable days of sports, books, conversations, customers, learning—and a lot of unexpected trivia.
And honestly?
After spending two days around quizzers, I came away with one clear conclusion:
