Two Close Quizzes in a Close Season

The world of tennis has looked much more competitive this season because Roger Federer's not been his usual dominant self. Well, there's Roger, and here's Rajiv. Last year's BQC league was dominated by Rajiv Rai, but this year he's off to a slow start, at least by his lofty standards,: he finished third in both the last two BQC quizzes. The field is deeper this year, and the competition is stiffer, and while there's little doubt that Rajiv remains the favourite to win Wimbledon this year's league, there are plenty of young lads who fancy being Nadal and Djokovic.

Quiz No. 5 of the season took place on Sunday, June 8, and was conducted by Abhishek Nagaraj. Aadisht Khanna and Ajith Prabhakar stormed to a narrow win over Kaustubh Chakravarty, Pradeep Ramarathnam and Mukund Krishnan. The quiz was entertaining in various ways, but a last question mix-up caused much confusion. It was a multi-part question with many +15s and -10s and -5s and so on, but after much activity, the question was scrapped. The positions of the teams had changed because of the question, but its scrapping enabled Aadisht to end up in first and Rajiv's team to take third place.

Quiz no. 6 took place on Sunday, June 22, and was conducted by Ameya Samant, with Amit Pandeya shooting 18 questions at the end as Ameya took his place as a participant. Both parts of the quiz had plenty of excellent fundas on India, a feature sometimes missing from BQC quizzes. The quiz was won handily by a team consisting of me (Amit Varma), Vibhendu Tiwari, Ananya Deb and Kedar Sastry. Mukund Sridhar, Udatta Duarah and the toggling combo of Ameya and Amit Pandeya pipped Rajiv's team to second place by half a point.

Now, very quickly, the results, followed by the BQC Season Three standings.

BQC Quiz 5

First: Aadisht Khanna and Ajith Prabhakar.

Second: Kaustubh Chakravarty, Pradeep Ramarathnam and Mukund Krishnan.

Third: Rajiv Rai, Anand Sivasankar.

Fourth: Ananya Deb, Kedar Sastry and Nrupal Chaudhari

Fifth: Mukund Sridhar, Sarat Rao and Naveen Unni

Sixth: Amit Varma, Amit Pandeya and Dhananjay Shettigar

Seventh: Udatta Duarah, Ameya Samant and Francis Rodrigues

Eighth: Sumant Srivathsan, Devang Ghia and Sumit Roy

And now for our latest quiz:

BQC Quiz 6

First: Amit Varma, Vibhendu Tiwari, Ananya Deb and Kedar Sastry

Second: Mukund Sridhar, Udatta Duarah and Amit Pandeya/Ameya Samant

Third: Rajiv Rai, Brian D'Souza and Akanksha Mohan

Fourth: Arun Srikumar, Nrupal Chaudhari and Francis Rodrigues

Fifth: Govind Grewal, Mukund Krishnan and Rahul Bhaskar

Sixth: Pradeep Ramarathnam, Devang Ghia, Ajay Ravindran and Sumit Roy

Seventh: Sumant Srivathsan, Souvik Basu and Shiv Anant Tayal

Eighth: Aadisht Khanna, Dhananjay Shettigar and Gautam Bastian

Points for the league table are given as follows: Each member of the winning team gets 10 points, each runner up gets 7, and members of the team coming third get 4 each. If second and third are tied, then 5.5. Here are the standings:

BQC Season three Standings (from six quizzes, as of June 22, 2008)

27 points
Amit Varma (from 6 quizzes)
Sumant Srivathsan (6)

25.5 points
Rishi Iyengar (4)

25 points
Rajiv Rai (4)

24 points
Kedar Sastry (6)

20 points
Govind Grewal (5)

19.5 points
Pradeep Ramarathnam (5)

17 points
Avinash Mudaliar (3)
Mahesh Murthy (2)

16.5 points
Amit Pandeya (6)

15.5 points
Ananya Deb (4)

14 points
Ajith Prabhakar (5)
Udatta Duarah (5)
Vibhendu Tiwari (4)

11 points
Ameya Samant (4)

10 points
Aadisht Khanna (2)
Mitul Kodali (2)
Sandeep Rajpurohit (4)
Sandip Sen (1)
Shrikant Narasimhan (1)

8 Points
Anand Sivasankar (4)
Brian D'Souza (4)
S Balakrishnan (3)
Sireesh Talluri Rao (2)

7 points
Ajay Ravindran (3)
Kaushtubh Chakravarti (1)
Mukund Krishnan (2)
Mukund Sridhar (3)
Raamesh Gowri Raghavan (2)
Rahul Bhaskar (3)
V Sreeharsha (1)

5.5 points
Janardhan R (1)
Leo Mirani (1)
Nrupal Chaudhari (3)
Prasann Potdar (1)

4 points
Akanksha Mohan (1)

The next quiz will be conducted by Devang Ghia on Sunday, July 6. That will also be the day of the Wimbledon final. Will Roger Federer storm back to the top?