Exun Clan, the technology club of Delhi Public School, RK Puram hosted the 26th iteration of its international technology symposium, Exun 2021-22. This was held during the Exun Week from January 14 to 21, 2022. Every year, STEM enthusiasts from India and beyond arrive at the symposium in order to test their mettle by battling it out with their skills and come together to have some of the most memorable and impactful experiences of their lives which aren’t only deeply engaging but also enable everyone involved to celebrate the essence of technology along the way.

In the opening speech exun.co/opening, the principal Ms. Padma Srinvasan, wished all the participants “Very Happy Makar Sankranti” and welcomed all the participants. She further conveyed, “In the summer of 1992, an idea surfaced in the halls of Delhi Public R.K. Puram and that idea has over the years evolved into one of the foremost high school clubs of our country, Exun Clan. ‘Exun’ is short for Experts Unlimited, and that is what the club embodies: young technology enthusiasts excelling in diverse fields of technology, from research, development, and programming to tech quizzing, debating and design. Members of the club are winning inter- school, national, and international competitions on a regular basis. They also have an alumni network of 350+ individuals at companies and universities around the world, Exun is well connected to the contemporary technology landscape. This is the 26th iteration of the annual symposium hosted by the Exun Clan, with over 25 events ranging from Web Development and Design to Girls In Tech and Locus. The competitive programming event, which was hosted on CodeChef, had over 12,000 participants with over 60,000 submissions this year.  Exun Clan’s flagship event of the year,  Sudocrypt 11.0 was held from January 10th-11th, is the annual international cryptic hunt where we had more than 1500 participants from various parts of the world.”. At the end, she wished all the participants “Happy Programming” and “Happy Quizzing”.

The Exun symposium had significant international participation for the 2nd year and impressive national participation for the 4th year in a row. Exun 2021-22 was held by the tech enthusiasts of Exun Clan under the supervision of the Computer Science Department of the school. The event was powered by Athena Education and sponsored by CodeChef and Plaksha University. It was held in collaboration with Women Who Code Delhi, Girl Code It, and the New Delhi Space Society. A prominent feature of Exun Week this year were the various Exun Talks and the newly introduced Locus Event. 

Exun Talks are a series of interactive webinars and talks conducted by experienced alumni and professionals, from a wide range of topics. The highlights of this year’s Talks series were the experienced alumni of Exun and Delhi Public School R.K. Puram, such as Shashwat Goel, Aditya Sengupta, Prateek Swain, Dev Shaurya Singhal and Ankit Wadhwa as well as field experts like Monojit Choudhary, Jim Plaxco, and Ayush Mahajan. Exun talks were an enriching learning experience for all the viewers. To watch this year’s (and last year’s) talks, be sure to use the following link: exun.co/talks. You can have access to interesting Talks on topics from Natural Language Processing to how to start a bank today (Fintech), Effective Altruism, how a Martian economy would work, and more!

Locus, the most diverse event of Exun 2021-22, was introduced for the very first time this year. In this event, students from participating schools completed a variety of mini-tasks, in a myriad of fields. These tasks contributed to a Locus points tally, and the school with the highest accumulated points was crowned as Locus Champions. Delhi Public School, Vasant Kunj were the Locus Champions at Exun 2021-22.

This year, with 15,000+ participants from 45+ schools and international participation in all events from over 15 countries, Exun 2021-22 raised the bar even higher. Exun Clan along with the Gaming Club — DomainSquare+; Robotics Club — RoboKnights; and Cubing Club — CubXL organized 25 different IT events, along with signature events including an Online Cryptic Hunt — SudoCrypt, a computational linguistics challenge — Turing Test, Competitive Programming, quizzes and crosswords, SpaceTech, Junior and Open Girls in Tech event, and the Build event, with its Designathon, Hackathon, and Unreality subevents. 

With many thousands of participants and exciting new game mechanics, Exun’s flagship event Sudocrypt v11.0 was held from 10th January to 11th January 2022. The 11th version of Sudocrypt — an annual international Cryptic Hunt X CTF event, received over 50,000 attempts by over 1500+ unique visitors from 15+ countries across the globe. 

On the occasion of the 26th edition of the Exun event, Exun Clan also released the 16th issue of its Annual Magazine — “UnderScore”, available at exun.co/_. This has been the most refined magazine published by Exun Clan. 

The members of Exun Clan developed and released an Exun 2021-2022 app designed to deliver notifications regarding the event, prompt releases, deadlines and many more features. Over the course of Exun weeks, 2000+ notifications were delivered through the app and 500+ users downloaded it. The app was available on both Google Play Store and Apple App Store. The app was made by Kavin Desi Valli and Navya Garg.

EXUN WEEK: Schedule

Before the Exun Week started, the Competitive Programming, SpaceTech, and Group Discussion prelims as well as Sudocrypt were held.

On the first day, Friday the 14th, Exun 2021-2022 was inaugurated in the opening ceremony by the school’s Principal. The Principal, in her welcome address, expressed her admiration for the club and the rapid advances its members have made in the IT field. Furthermore, she articulated on the significance of technology and how she herself cannot do without it. Towards the end of her speech, she congratulated the entire Computer Science Department, calling them the backbone of the school, and praised Exun for being one of the most seasoned clubs. The prelims for Open Quiz and pitching round of Make-a-thon were also held on the same day.  

On Saturday the 15th, tasks for the DS+ Gaming Prelims event were also held. The Junior Quiz and Crossword prelims and Lockout quarter finals took place as well. We also had our “Why Language Understanding is the Hardest Piece of the AI Puzzle?” Talk by Mr. Monojit Chaudhary on this day.


A screenshot from the “Why Language Understanding is the Hardest Piece of the AI Puzzle?” talk by Monojit Chaudary. 

On Sunday the 16th, DS+ Gaming Prelims event was continued and the Lockout event wrapped up with the semi-finals and finals. Group Discussion Semi Finals and the Surprise event were also held. At the end, we also started the wonderful Junior Girls in Tech workshop, held by WomenWhoCode Delhi members and moderated members of Exun. The SpaceTech Finals prompt was released on this day.


A screenshot from the Group Discussion event Semi-Finals

Monday the 17th started with the Cubing Prelims and the Girls in Tech workshop hosted by Girl Code It and managed by Exun members. Surpriseevent and Junior Girl in Tech workshop continued. The day ended with the Turing Test event’s Finals, to great success and prominent international participation. We also had our “Effective Altruism: Why, What and How” talk by Exun alumnus and President ‘19, Shashwat Goel, on the same day. 

We started Tuesday the 18th with our amazing “How Not to Design a Martian Economy.” Exun Talk by Mr. Jim Plaxco, an experienced software engineer and prominent space exploration advocate. Cubing event and DS+ Gaming wrapped up with its final and the Day 2 of Girls in Tech’s workshop took place. Junior Girls in Tech prelims started. The Group Discussion and Surprise event finished with a bang. The day ended with our “Effective Real-World Scientific Computing” Exun Talk by Exun & UC Berkeley alumnus Aditya Sengupta.

Wednesday began with Junior Quiz finals and Girls in Tech prelims. Hackathon finals and Make-a-thon round-2 pitching also took place. The day ended with the Challenge Programming event. The “The Impact of Cloud Computing” Exun Talk by Ayush Mahajan happened on this day.


A screenshot from the Junior Quiz Finals

Thursday started with Open Crossword and Build-Designathon finals. The day continued with the SpaceTech Semi-Finals. We had the fantastic “How to build a bank for today” Exun Talk by Exun & Princeton alumnus and Swadesh founder Mr. Prateek Swain. Innovation-Infinitum Viva and Unreality Finals also took place. We finished the day with an exciting SpaceTech Finals round and its judging. The “The Evolving Landscape of Blockchain and NFTs” Exun Talk by Ankit Wadhwa happened on this day.

The day started with Open Quiz Finals and ended with the mesmerizing closing ceremony. The Exun Intro Video 2021-22 was played. There were also heartfelt addresses by Mukesh Kumar, the teacher incharge, and the club leaders.

A gallery of photos from the Exun 2021-22 Closing Ceremony (from left to right):-
Top: our teacher in-charge and mentor, Mukesh Kumar and Alumni Prateek Swain and Shashwat Goel.
Middle: Presidents Ashvin Verma and Somesh Kar, and Director Angad Singh.
Bottom: Director Pulkit Garg.
Full video available at Exun 2021-22 Closing Ceremony. 

EVENTS

Group Discussion was conducted in three rounds. A preliminary round had participants express their views on the internet meme culture while also making memes of their own. This was followed by semi-finals, where two groups of seven participants each had to compete among themselves by discussing symptom checking technologies and how the ability to differentiate between AI and humans would decrease due to the advent of metaverse. For the finals, participants were divided into two groups, Vanguard Inc. and Amnesty International where they had to discuss if Google should restart Project Dragonfly. Mr. Sameer Chadha, Mr. Areeb Nabi and Mrs. Amadika Mahapatra, alumni of DPS RK Puram and Exun Clan, were the judges for the event. Shireen Rajora and Vinayak Dhawan were instrumental in the organization of the event.

Our signature event Build at Exun 2021-22 featured three separate sub-events, the Designathon, Hackathon, and Unreality (Game, 2D/3D & Audio Design). There was a huge room to showcase ability and create something meaningful, no matter what the creative interests and skills participants held! 

Our flagship Cryptic Hunt x CTF event, Sudocrypt v11.0 was held from 00:00:01 on 10th January to 23:59:59 on 11th January 2022. The event featured exciting levels with a completely new and revamped format. The event theme was revealed by the release of an exciting mythical trailer. The 11th version of Sudocrypt received over 50,000 attempts by over 1500+ unique visitors from over 15 countries from across the globe. Over 150 notifications were delivered over the duration of the event to keep participants updated about the release of hints and announcements. The event was held with the assistance of Mr. Aaryak Garg, an alumnus of DPS RK Puram and Exun Clan. This event was made possible by the collective efforts of Tanmay Arora, Bhuvnesh Nagpal, Shashwat Mundra, Ishir Bhardwaj, Somesh Kar, Kavin Desi Valli and Angad Singh.

Our theme revolved around gamer girl Pushpagandha Kar (aka PushpaGG) and the chocolate factory which was now hers to run. Build was held during the Exun Week, after which the qualified teams had a chance to showcase their creations in a pitch to our esteemed judges. For Designathon, we had Exun ‘16 alumnus Mr. Anirudh Goyal, Exun ‘14 alumnus & Microsoft UX researcher Mr. Gyan Lakhwani, and Microsoft UX researcher Ms. Sabhyata Jain; for Hackathon, we had Achal Varma, an alumnus of Exun ‘12, and Kabir Goel, an alumnus of Exun ‘20; for Unreality, we had Mr. Aravind Ashok, an alumnus of Exun ‘20 and Bhavya Khandelwal, an alumnus of Exun ‘19. It was held through the efforts of Somesh Kar, Angad Singh, Kavin Desi Valli, Sneha Chandra, Aarshia Gupta, Adi Mathur, Shreyansh Agarwal, Pulkit Garg, Damini Rana, Aryaman Chandra, and Ashvin Verma.

ExML was our signature cross-disciplinary Machine Learning event where there was a rich variety of unusual and enthralling machine learning paradigms to learn about and use. 

The prelims for ExML 2021-22 were divided into 2 tasks, both of which test problem solving and machine learning prowess! The deadline for this round was the 13th of January 12:00 PM IST. All qualifiers then headed to the final round. The cumulative points over tasks were used for ranking the participants. The contest was held on the popular machine learning & data science platform Kaggle. During judging, there was an emphasis on data science quality, tangible results, and data ethics. We had Mr. Sagnik Anupam, an Exun ‘20 alumnus Sagnik Anupam, as our judge. The event was led by the efforts of Shubhankar Gupta, Bhuvnesh Nagpal, Shaurya Srivastava, Yash Jha, Advitya Singhal, Neil Sindwani, and Mannat Kaur.

For our signature SpaceTech event, Exun Clan collaborated with the New Delhi Space Society, the New Delhi Chapter of the internationally prominent space advocacy organization National Space Society (USA) to give students the opportunity to explore the realms of space and it’s concurrence with technology. The theme for this year’s SpaceTech event was the exploration of Jupiter’s moon, Europa. For the prelims, participants had to devise innovative methods to create a tunnel digger and ice excavator to create space for the habitat. The event culminated with 7 semi-finalist teams designing a thermal management system for the habitat inside Europa’s surface, and 4 teams qualifying to the finals, all of whom received prizes, including an international independent team. We also awarded a special award to an all-girls team which we noticed performed extremely well and decided must be awarded. Our esteemed judges for this year’s SpaceTech Event were Mr. Antonio Fowl Stark, Asia-Pacific Coordinator for the Space Generation Advisory Council and longtime space advocacy promoter amongst high schoolers, International Space University-affiliated Mr. Anderson Wilder and Parmesh Saini, with experience in space technologies and systems, as well as Exun ‘20 and NDSS alumnus Mr. Shiv Sethi. This event was led by Sneha Pandey, Shireen Rajora, Ashvin Verma, Rudraneel Sinha, and Aryaman Chandra, and made possible by the well-appreciated efforts and inputs of Tanmay Arora, Aaahana Mehrotra, Mannat Kaur, and Ananya Mangla.

SpaceTech 2021-22 Finals Pitch
SpaceTech 2021-22 Semi-Finals Pitch

Our signature Competitive Programming event saw the participants face a plethora of problems based on logic, algorithms and data structures. They were evaluated on the basis of the time they took to solve the problems. The online round saw more than 11,000 participants, including 350+ international participants. The event was hosted as a rated contest on CodeChef, a prominent competitive programming website. The CodeChef team, notably Mr. Nishant Shah and Mr. Arjun Arul, assisted us throughout the process by giving suggestions on and testing our problems. The event was led wonderfully by Vishesh Saraswat with assistance from Sarthak Mangla, and efforts by Aujasvit Datta, Harshikaa Agrawal, Vedant Singh, and Neil Sindwani were well-appreciated.

The Lockout event featured 8 nail-biting contests between the qualifiers. The event was conducted as a knockout style tournament, and the contestants were seeded by their prelims performance. The Competitive Programming event served as the preliminary round for this event, with the top 8 participants from India qualifying. This event was made possible by the collective efforts of Vishesh Saraswat, Sarthak Mangla, Aujasvit Datta, Vedant Singh, Harshikaa Agrawal, Neil Sindwani, Shaurya Srivastava, and Darsh Sikka. 

The signature Challenge Programming event featured 5 tasks for the participants to attempt in 3 hours. Each task consisted of its own twist: only one submission was allowed for task 2 and points in task 4 were based on the number of correct submissions in distinct programming languages. Task 3 consisted of creating a program to play the popular board game, Battleship, and points were distributed based on their program’s performance against other participants. The Competitive Programming event served as the preliminary round for this event, with the top 16 participants from India qualifying. This event was made possible by the collective efforts of Vishesh Saraswat, Sarthak Mangla, Neil Sindwani, Aujasvit Datta, and Vedant Singh.

The Gaming event, organized by DomainSquare+ focussed on the abilities of gamers to adapt to different situations as they were presented with games like Diablotical, Smash Karts and Roark’s Attack on Titan. The event was organized by Aryan Daga, Kunwar, Naunidh and other members of DomainSquare+. 

The signature Turing Test evaluated participants’ abilities by putting them through a series of problems based on several computational linguistics paradigms. We received prominent international participation and winners, and appreciation from notable international experts. The event was made possible thanks to the efforts of Vedant Singh, Sarthak Mangla, Shashwat Mundra, Harshikaa Agrawal, Neil Sindwani, and Aaahana Mehrotra.

In the Open Quiz, the preliminary round was conducted on Zoom, with an online finals where they were required to answer a number of exciting questions on a varied topics ranging from computers and technology to gaming to recent events in the world of IT. The quiz was played through a unique grid based system with the “Infinite Pounce and Bounce” in play throughout the event. 

This year, we added a Junior Quiz event to encourage rising quizzers from the tech circuit and beyond. The event featured a similar format with the prelims and finals being held live on Zoom. The quizzes were conducted by experienced and prolific quizmasters Mr. Udit Malik, an Exun ‘19 and DPS RKP alumni, and Mr. Pranava Dhar, an alumnus of DPS Noida. Both the quiz events were conducted and moderated by Pratyush Vempati, Sneha Chandra, Tanmay Arora, Angad Singh, Shashwat Mundra, Ashvin Verma, and Vinayak Pachnanda.

In the Crossword event, the preliminary round was held on Forms, while the finals were held live on Zoom, with clues involving humorous puns relating to the field of technology. The event had a nail-biting finish and the intuitive and witty clues received appreciation from participants. The event was conducted with the assistance of Mr. Sumay Mishra, an Exun ‘19 and DPS RKP alumni, along with Mr. Udit Malik, an Exun ‘19 and DPS RKP alumni, and Mr. Pranava Dhar, an alumnus of DPS Noida. The event was made possible by the efforts of Aarush Semwal, Tanmay Arora, Sneha Chandra, Angad Singh, Shashwat Mundra, Ashvin Verma, and Vinayak Pachnanda.

We also held our signature Locus event for the first time ever as part of Exun 2021-22. We had all-around fun & interesting tasks, functioning similar to online CTFs, in a myriad of disciplines and having many interdisciplinary tasks as well, such as our hybrid 2D & 3D logo design task. There were a total of 26 tasks, from disciplines all over the technology spectrum which were both a learning experience for many who did not have prerequisite knowledge of the tasks, and also a way to explore the vast fields of technology in a simple manner. We had a number of innovative and new tasks, which could be attempted by a participant of beginner to intermediate skill. Locus tasks went beyond the scope of traditional tech events, having unique ones such as the Motion Design abstract arts tasks, and the Crossword Picture-themed questions. We also collaborated with partner clubs RoboKnights and Domain Square+ to create tasks, and added to this was a sponsor task on Liberal Arts by Athena Education, in which we saw a huge number of participants. The event was loved by the participants and the positive feedback received was immense. The administration of this massive event and tasks was handled spectacularly by Kanishka Verma and Pratyush Vempati. Tanmay Arora, Kavin Desi Valli, and Angad Singh helped in the making of the Locus website. Garv Jain, Manan Jindal and Adi Mathur helped splendidly in the managing of tasks and handling queries.


The website for the Locus event.

Cubing Event, the first day started with war of speed with three solves by each and the average of the three was taken for shortlisting them for final. A total of 30, 10 from 2×2, 10 from 3×3 and 10 from Pyraminx were selected for finals. The winners differed by just 0.02 seconds for the closest fight for the cubing title ever in the history of Exun. The events were conducted by Aaditya Kakkar, Shashwat Shankar, Sannidhya Rai and other club members.

We held our signature Girls in Tech and Junior Girls in Tech events with an aim to increase female representation in Tech fields and provide girls with a platform to showcase their talent as part of Exun 2021-22. In collaboration with the not-for-profit organization ‘Women Who Code, Delhi’, Exun 2021-22 featured two interactive workshops and a unique Junior Girls in Tech event. The theme for this year was creating Graphic User Interfaces, wherein a standard GUI library for Python; Tkinter was used.  The event consisted of two initial interactive workshops to familiarize the participants with the required pre-requisites after which, the preliminary round had participants submit responses to coding challenges whereas the finals required them to make interactive programs on social-welfare and resource-planning based prompts. 

We also had a collaboration with Girl Code It, an international NPO, for our Girls in Tech event. The theme for this year was front-end web development.  The event consisted of two initial interactive workshops to familiarize the participants with the required pre-requisites after which, the preliminary round had participants participate in a live quiz, whereas the finals required them to make an interactive redesign of common websites. These events were made possible by the collective efforts of Shireen Rajora, Sneha Pandey, Aarshia Gupta, Sneha Chandra, Kanishka Verma, Garv Jain, Shaurya Pratap, Kavin Desi Valli, Shreya Nirvan, Aadibhav Prasad, Aanya Yaduvanshi, Ananya Mangla, Aaahana Mehrotra, Pearl Dhingra, and Ashvin Verma.

Screenshots from the Junior Girls in Tech Workshop. 

Screenshots of the Junior Girls in Tech Workshop & Live Quiz

The Surprise Event this year consisted of three rounds. The first round was an amalgamation of various mini-tasks ranging from meme-making to crosswords, to technical fields like hardware and cryptic hunts to creative fields like design and audio. The semifinal round featured a tribute game relay which included games like Tetris, Google Feud and Wikirace. The final round involved the much-loved Exun’s version of the Game of Life. This game led the participant on a journey as a new entrant to the school and Exun in class 9 and completing various tasks and challenges with the aim of becoming the future president of the club. The event was judged by Mr. Aaryak Garg and Mr. Aravind Ashok, alumni of DPS RK Puram and Exun Clan. The event was conducted with the best efforts of Aadibhav Prasad, Aarush Semwal, Pratyush Vempati, Bhuvnesh Nagpal, Tanmay Arora, Aryan Daga, Somesh Kar, Ishir Bhardwaj, and Shashwat Mundra.


A screenshot of the Semi-Finals of the Surprise Event

To increase the level of excitement and thrill of participating in an “online hardware” event, our Hardware event aimed for a new angle of approach through a unique team-based task format.  Students had to compete against other schools in a PC building simulator that had a dynamic pricing system that reflected the situation from real life, which was hosted online. Participants also had to participate in 2 other tasks, including Docker / Podman review which was certainly unique and hashing to reveal codes that related to Exun, for example; the phrase ‘We not I’. The event was judged by Mr. Aditya Singh, an Exun ‘20 and DPS RKP alumni. The event was possible thanks to the efforts of Hitaarth Soni, Saksham Raheja, Kavin Desi Valli and the Hardware Department.

Make-a-Thon, BISCUITS and Innovatio-Infinitum were hosted by RoboKnights. Make-a-Thon was, an event based on  designing and simulating innovative systems with the application of robotics and engineering, was held on a customized simulator prepared in house by Adi Mathur . BISCUITS-Build and Simulate Circuits- a 2 day circuit hunt event saw overwhelming participation. A Lego-based simulation event was also held on Virtual Robotics Toolkit for students in 6th-10th, It was judged by Ahaan Birla. The BISCUITS was judged by Danish Bansal and Pranshu Malik, former Presidents of Roboknights, whereas the Make-a-Thon was judged by Aniansh Raj, Danish Bansal and Pranshu Malik, former Presidents of RoboKnights. The events were made possible thanks to the efforts of Rian Borah and Yash Sinha,  Gaurav Jain, Shashwat Raj, Advitya Singhal, Kshitij Gupta, Adi Mathur, Anubhav C.,Yashas Gogna, Tanishq Gogia, Jasnoor Kaur, Swarnika Bhardwaj etc.

The Computer Science Department- Mr. Mukesh Kumar, Ms. Hema Jain, Ms. Sangeeta Rana, Mr. Mohitendra Dey, Ms. Shalini Harisukh, Ms. Sarika Kaushal, Ms. Anjana Virmani, Ms. Nandini Dasgupta, Mr. Shekhar Sharma and Mr. Ajithkumar K.G- as a team efficiently organized this grand event along with the support of the Technology Team composed of Mr. Thomas C.A., Mr. Diny Mathew, Mr. K.V. Joseph, Mr. Shankar Giri assisted by Mr. Ram Kumar and Mr. Ramjas.

The student team was led by Somesh Kar, Shashwat Mundra, Ashvin Verma, Sarthak Mangla, Angad Singh, Pearl Dhingra, Aryaman Chandra, Pulkit Garg, Ishir Bhardwaj, Rudraneel Sinha, Vir Malhotra, Damini Rana, Shireen Rajora, Kavin Desi Valli, Tanmay Arora, Sneha Chandra, Vishesh Saraswat, Vinayak Dhawan, Aarshia Gupta, Bhuvnesh Nagpal, Garv Jain, Sneha Pandey, Pratyush Vempati, Kanishka Verma, Aadibhav Prasad, Saksham Raheja, Shreyansh Jha, and Hitaarth Soni. The extraordinary efforts made by members and adhocs alike were truly what made the event possible and were greatly appreciated by everyone. We also appreciate the advice and support of our alumni, those who came as judges, gave Exun Talks, Ananay Arora, and everyone else who contributed to the success of this event in any way, including by participating.

We thank you with all our hearts for being a part of Exun 2021-22, and hope to see you again!

The Overall Trophies were given to the following schools:

• First: DELHI PUBLIC SCHOOL, VASANT KUNJ

• Second: DELHI PUBLIC SCHOOL, DWARKA

• Third: DELHI PUBLIC SCHOOL, NOIDA

The SudoCrypt results are as follows:

The individual results of the events are updated on https://lnexun.com/.