The Da Vinci Code, HSE Style: the Results
On December 5, 2014, the winners of the Cultural Marathon, an intellectual quest for HSE students, were honoured at a ceremony at HSE.
The marathon was organized by MIEM students’ trade union committee with the support of the HSE Student Initiative Centre. A total of 42 teams registered for the marathon, and 19 of them got through to the finals. On the weekend of November 29 and 30, 2014, the teams of HSE students, graduates, and lyceum students visited Moscow museums in search of answers to a challenging quiz, including questions such as, ‘What stands on four dogs?’ (the answer is ‘the Tsar’s throne from the Dormition Cathedral in the Historical Museum). A team of international HSE students (led by Cristina Baraganescu), who received an English-language copy of the task list, also participated in the contest.
The participants visited such museums as the Museum of Heroes of Soviet Union and Russia, the Garden Ring Museum, Museum of Water, Sakharov Museum, Esenin Museum, Paustovsky Museum, Museum of History of Jews in Russia, Gorky Museum, State Historical Museum, as well as four virtual museums: Sapsan, Sweden Museum, National Museum of Korea, and Museum of Spain. In each museum they had to find answers to the quiz tasks (6 to 25 questions, depending on the number of halls and the contents of the expositions).
Correct answers brought the participants a certain number of points: from 5 points for the easiest to 30 for the hardest questions. The maximum possible score was 2095.
The top places were distributed as follows: Annoying Oranges team took the first place with 1410 points, Mathew and Co were the second with 1350, and Trumps were the third with 1335.
Went Crazy team got a special prize for the best selfie in a museum, and Point of View team got a special prize for a video about their participation in the quest.
Most participants chose the Jewish Museum as the most interesting location of the quest, where they had to find out where Greek Street was and what company manufactured the pocket first-aid kit. The most difficult tasks about museums themselves (the list of museums was also initially encrypted by the organizers) were the questions about the virtual museums of Korea, Spain, and Sweden.
The next quest is planned for the first half of 2015.
Maria Glazyrina, 4th-year student at the Faculty of Law, intern at the HSE News Service