Thursday, June 28, 2007

All the Gods are rejoicing

And who can blame them? This Sunday the BQC meets again for a ritual round of quizzing. As the heavens celebrate -- and hopefully refrain from releasing monsoon tears of happiness -- we shall ask questions and answer them and show off our abundant knowledge and problem-solving skills. Will you be there?

Details of the quiz:

Time: 3pm, Sunday, July 1
Quizmaster: Dhoomketu
Venue: Pinstorm, Ground Floor, Swati House (Next to Kotak Bank on Linking Road), North Avenue, Santa Cruz West. (Detailed directions here.)

This is our first quiz after the BQC has gone official, and we've instituted a membership fee and suchlike -- details are here. If you're a newcomer, though, you can check out a couple of quizzes before needing to pay up, so don't let that stop you. Much fun always comes.

Ah, and also, here are the league standings as of now. Ashwan, watch out!

Monday, June 18, 2007

The BQC gets official

The Bombay Quiz Club began because a bunch of us wanted to get together and quiz once in a while. We were frustrated by the predominance of business quizzes in Mumbai, and wanted to start something that would enable quizzers to meet regularly for general quizzing. (See Dhoomketu's early post on this for more.)

As the months went by, we grew, and evolved. We began a journey from a handful to a horde, and our needs as a group changed. We needed more space to meet, and eventually found a stable venue in Pinstorm. And as time goes by, we might have to move beyond this as well. It is natural to now want to spread the kind of quizzing we do into schools and colleges, and to think of conducting big open quizzes once in a while.

All this takes money, and sponsors don't give money to individuals. For the BQC to have a bank account and function in a professional manner, we need to be incorporated as a club. And therefore, before our last quiz began, that is just what we discussed.

Many of the early stalwarts who founded the original BQC with me have since disappeared from the scene, so it was decided that we'd incorporate the club with Mahesh Murthy and me listed as founding members. Both of us opted out from taking a post on the executive board for different reasons, and elections were held to fill those positions. The BQC office bearers are:

President: Rajiv Rai
Secretary: Arvind Krishnaswamy
Treasurer: Sumant Srivathsan

The quizzing has been great fun, and now there'll be much more of it. Things are on the up.

Sunday, June 17, 2007

Pinstorm at the BQC

Pinstorm isn't just where BQC quizzes are held, they also provide some of its star quizzers. Mahesh Murthy, their big boss, took part in his second BQC quiz this season a few hours ago, and notched up his second win. In the process his teammate and Pinstorm colleague, Ashwan Lewis, shot to the top of the BQC League standings. At this rate, the Pinstorm boys will own this place in more ways than one!

Arvind Krishnaswamy and Tanmay Sharma conducted the quiz, in which 31 quizzers, spread across eight teams, took part. Mahesh's team, in which he was accompanied by Ashwan, Anand Sivasankar and Aravinda Talluri, dominated from start to finish, and won by a massive margin. The results are below, and then the standings:

1st with 29 points
Mahesh Murthy
Anand Sivasankar
Ashwan Lewis
Aravinda Talluri

2nd with 20 points
Rajiv Rai
Amit Varma
Ameya Samant

3rd with 19 points
Rishi Iyengar
Sumant Srivathsan
Ajay Ravindran
Pranav Kukreja

4th-5th with 16 points
AP Alagarsamy
Govind Grewal
Nandan Krishnaswamy
C Ram Shankar

Avinash Mudaliar
Raghu Gopalan
Kedar Sastry
Ajith Prabhakar

The other teams
Amit Pandeya
Vibhendu Tiwari
Sireesh Rao
Praveen Mohan

Dhananjay Shettigar
Francis Rodrigues
Devang Ghia
Sushant Raut

Nirad Inamdar
Hanisha Vaswani
Nrupal Chaudhary
Shambhu Shankar

And here come the standings, after four quizzes this season:

BQC Season Two Standings (as of June 17, 2007)

24 points
Ashwan Lewis (from 3 quizzes)

20 points
Mahesh Murthy (2)

17 points
Rajiv Rai (2)
Anand Sivasankar (3)
Prasann Potdar (3)

14 points
Amit Varma (2)

11 points
Dhananjay Shettigar (4)

10 points
AP Alagarsamy (3)
Amit Pandeya (4)
Kartik Srivatsa (1)
Tanmay Sharma (2)
Ajith Prabhakar (2)
Avinash Mudaliar (2)
Aravinda Talluri (1)

8 points
Vibhendu Tiwari (3)
Govind Grewal (3)

7 points
Meghashyam Shirodkar (1)
Pradeep Ramarathnam (2)
Ameya Samant (3)
Akshay Mahajan (1)

4 points
Sumant Srivathsan (1)
Rishi Iyengar (2)
Samrat Sengupta (1)
Francis Rodrigues (2)
Hanisha Vaswani (3)
Ajay Ravindran (1)
Padma Sinha (2)
Sushant Raut (3)
Pranav Kukreja (1)

The next quiz is on July 1. More details will be put up on this blog shortly, watch this space.

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Rajiv Rai stars again

A fair number of quizzers from Mumbai, many of them members of the BQC, took part recently in the Mahaquizzer and the World Quizzing Championships. Ashwan Lewis organised both of them most ably, with Landmark and Pinstorm being the respective venues. So how did we do?

Rajiv Rai topped in Mumbai for both quizzes. The Mahaquizzer results are here: Samanth Subramanian of Chennai won with 71 while Rajiv's score was 64. Twelve people from Mumbai finished in the top 100.

The WQC results are here, but the Mumbai results haven't been incorporated yet in their spreadsheet -- not that any of us were in contention. Arul Mani of the KQA came first in India and 10th in the world with 150. (The score for a contestant's best seven sections out of a total of eight of 30 questions each is taken.) The Mumbai results are below:

Mumbai round of the WQC, 2007 (80+ scores)

103 -- Rajiv Rai
94 -- Harikrishnan Menon
86 -- Arvind Krishnaswamy
84 -- Rishi Iyengar
81 -- S Balakrishnan
80 -- Govind Grewal

Section winners (out of 30)

Entertainment: 14 -- Rishi Iyengar, 12 -- Amit Varma, Govind Grewal, S Balakrishnan

Sports: 15 -- Rajiv Rai, 12 -- Anand Sivasankar, Arvind Krishnaswamy

Culture: 16 -- S Balakrishnan, 13 -- Harikrishnan Menon

Science: 16 -- Rajiv Rai, 15 -- Harikrishnan Menon

Lifestyle: 16 -- Samrat Sengupta, 15 -- Arvind Krishnaswamy

Media: 17 -- Amit Varma, 16 -- Arvind Krishnaswamy

World: 14 -- Rajiv Rai, 13 -- Harikrishnan Menon

History: 20 -- Rajiv Rai, 16 -- Govind Grewal, Harikrishnan Menon, Rishi Iyengar

So that's that. While we're at it, don't forget that the next BQC quiz is at 3pm on June 17 at the Pinstorm office. Directions here.

Sunday, June 03, 2007

The Pandeya and Potdar show

The immensely strong team of Amit Pandeya, Prasann Potdar, Tanmay Sharma and Kartik Srivatsa stormed to a convincing win in the Ameya Samant quiz a few hours ago. BQC quizzes are often accused of not having enough Indian questions, and Ameya made up for it with a quiz containing more than 80 questions, and largely themed around India.

It must regretfully be stated that there were no questions about Himesh Reshammiya, but it was cantankerous fun otherwise. Francis Rodrigues contributed another 20+ questions, after which Dhananjay Shettigar changed from participant to quizmaster and asked 20 cricket questions. The team placed fifth shot up to second place by cracking seven-and-a-half of those, and those three gentlemen are now rather fond of Mr Shettigar. Not to mention cricket.

But the day belonged to the Pandeya gang. Pandeya combined a steely demeanour right out of Sergio Leone with a ruthlessness to put Godzilla to shame, and chewed up questions like Pac-Man on steroids. His team combined superbly ("the boys played well"), and their win put Prasann Potdar on top of the BQC standings. Alagarsamy who? Rajiv what? The BQC has a new leader, gentlemen!

The results are below, followed by the standings.

1st with 55 points
Amit Pandeya
Prasann Potdar
Tanmay Sharma
Kartik Srivatsa

2nd with 49 points
Anand Sivashankar
Ashwan Lewis
Amit Varma

3rd with 42 points
Padma Sinha
Hanisha Vaswani
Vibhendu Tiwari

4th with 41 points
Sarayu
Pradeep Ramarathnam
Sushant Raut

5th with 39 points
S Balakrishnan
Devang Ghia
Dhananjay Shettigar
Nrupal Chaudhary

6th with 28 points
Arvind Krishnaswamy
Arjun Sinha
Rishi Iyengar
Sarat Rao

And now for the standings, after three quizzes this season:

BQC Season Two Standings (as of June 4, 2007)

17 points

Prasann Potdar (from 3 quizzes)

14 points
Ashwan Lewis (2)

11 points
Dhananjay Shettigar (3)

10 points
Ajit Prabhakar (1)
Amit Pandeya (3)
AP Alagarsamy (2)
Avinash Mudaliar (1)
Kartik Srivatsa (1)
Mahesh Murthy (1)
Rajiv Rai (1)
Tanmay Sharma (2)

8 points
Govind Grewal (2)
Vibhendu Tiwari (2)

7 points
Akshay Mahajan (1)
Amit Varma (1)
Anand Sivashankar (2)
Meghashyam Shirodkar (1)
Pradeep Ramarathnam (2)

4 points
Francis Rodrigues (1)
Hanisha Vaswani (2)
Padma Sinha (2)
Samrat Sengupta (1)
Sushant Raut (2)

The next quiz will be conducted by Arvind Krishnaswamy and Samrat Sengupta on Sunday, June 17, at 3pm. The venue, once again, will be the Pinstorm office. Directions are here.