Thursday, August 30, 2007

The Do Numberi finally makes it!

This post has been written by Rajiv Rai, and is posted on his behalf.

Amit Varma had been the perpetual runner-up in this season's edition of the quizzes, several times the bridesmaid, but never destined to climb the altar. But it all changed this Sunday at the Pinstorm office. In the company of Samrat Sengupta and S Balakrishnan, he took the lead from the first written round, and built on it to finish 3 questions adrift of the closest competition. It mattered little that the questions dealt with the sublime [what connects Kafka, Pinter and Bradman - adjectives formed from their names use the ending -esque] or the ridiculous [songs sung by Sanjay Malakar in his squeaky quest for the American Idol] - these were answered with equal aplomb and equanimity.

The battle for second position was a humdinger, with Rishi Iyengar, Ameya Samant and Mukund Krishnan slugging it out against Rajiv Rai and Dhananjay Shettigar. While all eyes were on these two teams, Ashwan Lewis, Ajith Prabhakar and Kedar Shastry quietly toted up the points and with a question to go, could have stolen the second position. Sadly, that was not to be and the first two mentioned teams tied for the second position. Even a written tie-breaker could not split the deadlock and the points were split.

This quiz was billed as a "Meghasyam special," and so it turned out to be. Good questions, diced up with good humour and regularly punctuated with questions on the Bombay Underground and Dogs, kept the team on their toes.

Detailed list of standings in the quiz, and individual rankings are given below.

1st with 30 points
Amit Varma
Samrat Sengupta
S Balakrishnan

2nd-3rd with 24.5 points (tied)
Rajiv Rai
Dhananjay Shettigar

Rishi Iyengar
Ameya Samant
Mukund Krishnan

4th with 23.5 points
Ashwan Lewis
Ajith Prabhakar
Kedar Shastry

5th with 20 points
Anand Sivasankar
Vibhendu Tiwari
Devang Ghia

6th with 15 points
Govind Grewal
Sarat Rao
Rahul Bhaskar

7th with 13.5 points
Pradeep Ramarathnam
Souvik Basu

8th with 9.5 points
Sireesh Rao
Nrupal Choudhari
Vidya

And now, the league standings:

BQC Season Two Standings (as of August 27, 2007)

59.5 points

Rajiv Rai (from 7 quizzes)

39.5 points
Rishi Iyengar (7)

38 points
Amit Varma (7)
Ashwan Lewis (6)

29 points
Pradeep Ramarathnam (8)

28 points
Mahesh Murthy (5)

27 points
AP Alagarsamy (7)
Prasann Potdar (5)
S Balakrishnan (6)

24 points
Amit Pandeya (8)
Anand Sivasankar (8)
Kartik Srivatsa (4)

22 points
Ajith Prabhakar (7)

19.5 points
Ameya Samant (7)

19 points

Govind Grewal (8)

18 points
Sumant Srivathsan (5)

17 points
Kedar Shastry (5)

16.5 points
Dhananjay Shettigar (8)

15 points
Vibhendu Tiwari (8)

14 points
Devang Ghia (7)
Samrat Sengupta (3)

12.5 points
Mukund Krishnan (2)

11 points
Ajay Ravindran (3)

10 points
Aravinda Talluri (1)
Avinash Mudaliar (4)
Neeraj (1)
Nilesh Jain (1)
Tanmay Sharma (2)
Gaurav Singh (1)

8 points
Hanisha Vaswani (5)

7 points
Akshay Mahajan (1)
Meghashyam Shirodkar (1)
Nandan Krishnaswamy (4)
Ravi Venkatesh (4)
Rahul Bhaskar (2)

4 points
Francis Rodrigues (4)
Padma Sinha (3)
Pranav Kukreja (1)
Sireesh Talluri Rao (4)
Sushant Raut (5)
Udatta Duarah (1)

Saturday, August 25, 2007

The Meghasyam Special!

There is a BQC quiz coming up tomorrow at 3pm. The details:

Time: 3pm, Sunday, August 26 (reporting time: 2.40pm)
Quizmaster: Meghasyam Shirodkar
Venue: Pinstorm, Ground Floor, Swati House (Next to Kotak Bank on Linking Road), North Avenue, Santa Cruz West. (Detailed directions here.)

The latest league standings are here. Hop on over, leave your mark!

Monday, August 13, 2007

Rajiv Rai shows his class

If John Updike was to watch the Bombay Quiz Club in action, he would no doubt describe Rajiv Rai's recent roll as a "Tiger Woodsian performance". Rajiv won yet another BQC quiz this Sunday, shooting to 54 points in the league championship table, a full 16 points ahead of his nearest competitor, Ashwan Lewis.

The quiz was conducted by Avinash Mudaliar, and put together by Avinash and Kedar Shastry. It contained over 100 questions, and far more audio-visuals than the BQC is accustomed to. Immense fun thereby resulted, and the quiz was extremely close throughout -- Defending league champion AP Alagarsamy's team battled valiantly to second place, while the third place changed almost ten times in the second half of the quiz. Mahesh Murthy's team eventually cracked the last question to jump from joint fourth to third place.

The results:

1st with 36.5 points
Rajiv Rai
Pradeep Ramarathnam
Amit Pandeya
Devang Ghia

2nd with 31 points
AP Alagarsamy
S Balakrishnan
Ashwan Lewis
Mukund Krishnan
Rahul Bhaskar

3rd with 29.5 points
Mahesh Murthy
Udatta Duarah
Kartik Srivatsa
Ajith Prabhakar

4th with 28 points
Govind Grewal
Dhananjay Shettigar
Nandan Krishnaswamy
Mehar Sridhar

5th with 27.5 points
Vibhendu Tiwari
Ravi Venkatesh
Amit Varma

6th with 24.5
Rishi Iyengar
Sumant Srivathsan
+ 2 (I don't have these names, will fill them in when I get them)

7th with 23.5 points
Anand Sivasankar
Souvik Basu
Kartik Ramadas
Shambhu Shankar

8th with 18 points
Arvind Krishnaswamy
Sireesh Rao
Pratik Chaturvedi
Seeta Menon

And now for the league standings:

BQC Season Two Standings (as of August 13, 2007)

54 points

Rajiv Rai (from 6 quizzes)

38 points
Ashwan Lewis (5)

34 points
Rishi Iyengar (6)

29 points
Pradeep Ramarathnam (7)

28 points
Amit Varma (6)
Mahesh Murthy (5)

27 points
AP Alagarsamy (7)
Prasann Potdar (5)

24 points
Anand Sivasankar (7)
Kartik Srivatsa (4)
Amit Pandeya (8)

22 points
Ajith Prabhakar (6)

19 points
Govind Grewal (7)

18 points
Sumant Srivathsan (5)

17 points
Kedar Shastry (4)
S Balakrishnan (5)

15 points
Vibhendu Tiwari (7)

14 points
Ameya Samant (6)
Devang Ghia (6)

11 points
Ajay Ravindran (3)
Dhananjay Shettigar (7)

10 points
Aravinda Talluri (1)
Avinash Mudaliar (4)
Neeraj (1)
Nilesh Jain (1)
Tanmay Sharma (2)
Gaurav Singh (1)

8 points
Hanisha Vaswani (5)

7 points
Akshay Mahajan (1)
Meghashyam Shirodkar (1)
Nandan Krishnaswamy (4)
Ravi Venkatesh (4)
Mukund Krishnan (1)
Rahul Bhaskar (1)

4 points
Francis Rodrigues (4)
Padma Sinha (3)
Pranav Kukreja (1)
Samrat Sengupta (2)
Sireesh Talluri Rao (3)
Sushant Raut (5)
Udatta Duarah (1)

The next quiz will be conducted on Sunday, August 26. More details later.