Like Obamaniacs at a Democratic Caucus...

... the crowds thronged to the latest BQC quiz, conducted by Arvind Krishnaswamy and Govind Grewal. Attendence was high and the quiz was good, with no chestnuts that I spotted -- though there was a question about the Banquet of Chestnuts -- and many current questions. It was an ideal quiz, especially as it almost led to a homicide, caused by Young Grewal displaying an unwareness of the difference between "whose name" and "what name". Still, he is young, and even Nixon left Watergate behind him. (I kid; the rest of his questions were wonderful.)

The seedings went awry, old warriors returned to the BQC stage, and as a result, some immensely strong teams were formed after the draw of lots. Rishi Iyengar and AP Alagarsamy got together with Aditya Agarwal and Francis Rodrigues to take first place, while the all-star team of Rajiv Rai, Vibhendu Tiwari, Kaustubh Chakraborty and Shambhu Shankar came second. My team came third, half a question behind. The results:

First with 240 points
Rishi Iyengar
AP Alagarsamy
Aditya Agarwal
Francis Rodrigues

2nd with 210 points
Rajiv Rai
Vibhendu Tiwari
Kaustubh Chakraborty
Shambhu Shankar

3rd with 205 points
Amit Varma
Devang Ghia
Sritanu Chakravarty

4th with 180 points
S Balakrishnan
Samrat Sengupta
Neelabh

5th with 150 points
Ameya Samant
Udatta Duarah
Avinash Mudaliar
Karthik R

6th and 7th with 135 points each
Ajith Prabhakar
Kedar Sastry
Amit Sharma
Sriram Krishnan

Sumant Srivathsan
Mukund Krishnan
Souvik Basu

8th with 130 points
Prasann Potdar
Brian D'Souza
Kartik

(Some names aren't filled in, I'll fill them in as soon as I get them. Done.)

As for our league standings, well, with two quizzes left in the season, first and second places are wrapped up. But a battle for third place is taking place that seems destined for a bloody ending. Indeed, I wake at night panting, dreaming that Mr Potdar is at my bedside about to carve my neck open, even as Mr Srivathsan stands behind him, about to decapitate Mr Potdar with a battleaxe, unware of Mr Tiwari behind him, about to set fire to a tyre. We all wish we'd never gotten involved, but the BQC is a bit like Hotel California -- you can never leave.

Here come the standings (we give 10 points for first place, seven for second, four for third):

BQC Season Two Standings (from 23 quizzes, as of March 3, 2008)

123.5 points
Rajiv Rai (from 17 quizzes)

92 points
Rishi Iyengar (19)

73 points
Amit Varma (19)

72 points
Prasann Potdar (17)

71 points
Sumant Srivathsan (19)

65.5 points
Vibhendu Tiwari (20)

62 points
Kedar Sastry (16)

59 points
Ajith Prabhakar (17)

57.5 points
AP Alagarsamy (17)

48 points
Ashwan Lewis (8)

47 points
Govind Grewal (17)

41.5 points
Souvik Basu (?)

40 points
Ameya Samant (18)

38.5 points
Devang Ghia (21)

38 points
Amit Pandeya (11)

37.5 points
Mukund Krishnan (12)

35 points
S Balakrishnan (14)
Anand Sivasankar (17)

33 points
Pradeep Ramarathnam (14)

31 points
Shambhu Shankar (?)

28 points
Mahesh Murthy (6)

24 points
Kartik Srivatsa (5)

22 points
Sarat Rao (?)

18 points
Avinash Mudaliar (9)
Kartik R (?)
Francis Rodrigues (11)

17 points
Ravi Venkatesh (6)

16.5 points
Dhananjay Shettigar (11)

14 points
Samrat Sengupta (7)
Udatta Duarah (8)
Sritanu Chakravarty (4)
Arvind Krishnaswamy (6)

11 points
Ajay Ravindran (4)
Meghashyam Shirodkar (3)
Nandan Krishnaswamy (6)
Atulya Bharadwaj (2)

10 points
Aravinda Talluri (1)
Neeraj (1)
Nilesh Jain (1)
Tanmay Sharma (2)
Gaurav Singh (1)
Raghu (?)
Sowmya Ramaswamy (1)
Hansraj Singh (1)
John Mascarenhas (3)
Vaibhav Devanathan (1)
Sameer Nair (2)
Movin Miranda (1)
Aditya Agarwal (1)

8 points
Hanisha Vaswani (5)

7 points
Akshay Mahajan (1)
Rahul Bhaskar (3)
Saurav (?)
Nrupal Choudhari (?)
Harshil Shah (1)
Devangshu Datta (1)
Kaustubh Chakraborty (1)

4 points
Padma Sinha (3)
Pranav Kukreja (1)
Sireesh Talluri Rao (7)
Sushant Raut (5)
Chitra Raghunath (1)
Sandeep Randery (1)
Sandip Sen (3)
Kishalaya Bhattacharjee (1)
Brian D'Souza (1)
Ramesh (1)

The next quiz will be conducted on March 16, with Rishi and me contributing half a quiz each. That will be the penultimate quiz of the year. Be there, much carnage is promised.