One more Sunday, one more quiz

Shiv Anant Tayal steps forward to the plate to conduct the next BQC quiz this Sunday, August 3. This will be the ninth quiz of the season -- admirers of Odin will understand the significance of that number. Be there to be initiated.

The details:

Who:Shiv Anant Tayal

When: 3:00 pm, Sunday, August 3, 2008 (Please be there by 2:40 pm)

Where: Pinstorm, Ground Floor, Swati House (Next to Kotak Bank on Linking Road), North Avenue, Santa Cruz (W).

Directions:

From the south: If you come north on Linking Road from Bandra to SantaCruz, you'll find a large Benetton Store on the right. At the end of that block is a Kotak Bank at the corner. Take a right and it's the next building, take the first gate and tell the sentry you've come for a meeting.

From the north: If you get on to Linking Road at the airplane park end, you'll cross a HDFC Bank. A block later, you'll see a Kotak Bank on the corner - do not cross it. Take a left at that point and it's the building next to Kotak Bank.

Newcomers are welcome at BQC quizzes, and do not need to form teams before coming. Teams are normally formed by a draw of lots at the venue itself, and everybody gets to take part. The questions are generally not the boring "you-know-it-or-you-don't" types, but accessible and workoutable ones. You'll have fun!

The results of the last quiz and current league standings are here.

The Landmark Boys Assert Themselves

A few weeks ago, Rajiv Rai, Sumant Srivathsan and Vibhendu Tiwari combined to win the Landmark Quiz in Pune. The three of them asserted themselves at the latest BQC quiz as well: Sumant and Vibhendu won the quiz on Sunday, conducted by Ajay Ravindran, and Rajiv leapt to the top of the BQC League standings by coming second.

Ajay's quiz was painstakingly compiled, but the afternoon was riddled by goof-ups. First there were software issues with the presentation of the quiz; then there was a scoring goof-up (mea culpa); finally, there was yet another software goof-up that led to the excel file on which the teams were saved doing mysterious things, culminating in the record of the teams getting wiped out (Bill Gates culpa). Anyway, after much reconstruction of events, here are the top three teams of the day:

1st place
Sumant Srivathsan
Vibhendu Tiwari
Dhananjay Shettigar
Akash Bansal
Rohit Ajitkumar

2nd place
Rajiv Rai
Udatta Duarah
Sumit Roy
Kaustuv Gupta

3rd place
Aadisht Khanna
Ravi Venkatesh
Souvik Basu
Akanksha Mohan
Neelabh

After eight quizzes, this is how the BQC standings look:

BQC Season three Standings (from eight quizzes, as of July 20, 2008)

42 points
Rajiv Rai (from 6 quizzes)

37 points
Sumant Srivathsan (8)

35.5 points
Rishi Iyengar (6)

32.5 points
Amit Varma (8)

24 points
Kedar Sastry (8)
Vibhendu Tiwari (6)

22 points
Amit Pandeya (8)

21 points
Udatta Duarah (7)

20 points
Govind Grewal (7)
Shrikant Narasimhan (2)

19.5 points
Aadisht Khanna (4)
Pradeep Ramarathnam (7)

17 points
Avinash Mudaliar (4)
Mahesh Murthy (2)
Sumit Roy (4)

15.5 points
Akash Bansal (2)
Ananya Deb (5)

14 points
Ajith Prabhakar (7)

11 points
Ameya Samant (5)

10 points
Dhananjay Shettigar (?)
Mitul Kodali (2)
Rohit Ajitkumar (1)
Sandeep Rajpurohit (4)
Sandip Sen (2)

8 Points
Akanksha Mohan (2)
Anand Sivasankar (5)
Brian D'Souza (5)
S Balakrishnan (3)
Sireesh Talluri Rao (2)

7 points
Ajay Ravindran (4)
Kaushtubh Chakravarti (1)
Kaushtuv Gupta (1)
Mukund Krishnan (3)
Mukund Sridhar (3)
Raamesh Gowri Raghavan (2)
Rahul Bhaskar (3)
V Sreeharsha (1)

5.5 points
Francis Rodrigues (7)
Janardhan R (1)
Leo Mirani (1)
Nrupal Chaudhari (3)
Prasann Potdar (2)
Rasik Tirodkar (1)
Sarat Rao (4)
Vikram Joshi (2)

4 points
Ravi Venkatesh (?)
Souvik Basu (?)
Neelabh (?)

You can also view an excel sheet of the league table, with details of each quiz, here. Our thanks to Aadisht Khanna for putting this together.

The next quiz is on August 3. Shiv Anant Tayal conducts. More details will follow on this blog.

Another Sunday, Another Quiz

Ajay Ravindran conducts his first BQC quiz this Sunday, and girls have already started queuing up at Bandra, from what I hear. It's like when McDonald's first opened in Mumbai, remember? Except that McDonald's stayed open, but once Ajay's quiz is done, it's done. So be there!

The details:

Who:Ajay Ravindran

When: 3:00 pm, Sunday July 20, 2008 (Please be there by 2:40 pm)

Where: Pinstorm, Ground Floor, Swati House (Next to Kotak Bank on Linking Road), North Avenue, Santa Cruz (W).

Directions:

From the south: If you come north on Linking Road from Bandra to SantaCruz, you'll find a large Benetton Store on the right. At the end of that block is a Kotak Bank at the corner. Take a right and it's the next building, take the first gate and tell the sentry you've come for a meeting.

From the north: If you get on to Linking Road at the airplane park end, you'll cross a HDFC Bank. A block later, you'll see a Kotak Bank on the corner - do not cross it. Take a left at that point and it's the building next to Kotak Bank.

Newcomers are welcome at BQC quizzes, and do not need to form teams before coming. Teams are normally formed by a draw of lots at the venue itself, and everybody gets to take part. The questions are generally not the boring "you-know-it-or-you-don't" types, but accessible and workoutable ones. You'll have fun!

The results of the last quiz and current league standings are here.

Back in the High Life

Rajiv Rai, defending BQC league champion, got back to his winning ways with a last-question win at the BQC quiz held on July 6. Devang Ghia, conducting his first BQC quiz, put together a stunning set of questions, all of which were well-framed, interesting and workoutable. There was something for everyone -- if you were looking for enjoyment, that is. If it was points you wanted, it was going to be a brutal battle.

Insistent calls for seedings at the start of the quiz were turned down, rather foolishly, by this author -- who then lost his league lead as last year's top two, Rajiv and Rishi Iyengar, found themselves in the same team after our randomisation software did its mojo. Aadisht Khanna's team led by a healthy margin almost all the way, with Rajiv's team, my team and Vibhendu Tiwari's team fighting for the remaining points on offer. (The first three teams get league points.) A thrilling theme round right at the end changed all that, as Rajiv's team won by one point, with 61, over my team and Aadisht's boys, tied at 60. In a quiz where each question was 4 points, this was a brutal margin, and for days the second- and third-placed teams moaned about how they wrote the right answer here and cut it out, or discussed the right answer there but said something else. Without such agonies, what would be the joy of quizzing?

The results:

1st with 61 points
Rajiv Rai
Rishi Iyengar
Shrikant Narasimhan
Sumit Roy

2nd-3rd (tied) with 60 points
Amit Varma
Amit Pandeya
Vikram Joshi
Francis Rodrigues

Aadisht Khanna
Sarat Rao
Rasik Tirodkar
Akash Bansal

4th with 48 points
Vibhendu Tiwari
Ananya Deb
Ameya Samant
Joanna Lobo

5th with 39 points
Sumant Srivathsan
Ajith Prabhakar
Pranob Gupta
Brian D'Souza

6th with 19 points
Ravi Venkatesh
Udatta Duarah
Pradeep Ramarathnam
Avinash Mudaliar

7th with 15 points
Govind Grewal
Souvik Basu
Aditya Agarwal
+ 1

8th with 2 points
Kedar Sastry
Ajay Ravindran
Neelabh
Rohit Bhat

For our league standings, everyone in the winning team gets 10 points, the runners-up get 7, the third-placed team gets 4. We always resolve a first-place tie with tiebreakers, but give 5.5 each if there is a tie for second, as happened this time. So here are the league standings, (sob) a little different from last week:

BQC Season three Standings (from seven quizzes, as of July 6, 2008)

35.5 points
Rishi Iyengar (from 5 quizzes)

35 points
Rajiv Rai (5)

32.5 points
Amit Varma (7)

27 points
Sumant Srivathsan (7)

24 points
Kedar Sastry (7)

22 points
Amit Pandeya (7)

20 points
Govind Grewal (6)
Shrikant Narasimhan (2)

19.5 points
Pradeep Ramarathnam (6)

17 points
Avinash Mudaliar (4)
Mahesh Murthy (2)

15.5 points
Aadisht Khanna (3)
Ananya Deb (5)

14 points
Ajith Prabhakar (6)
Udatta Duarah (6)
Vibhendu Tiwari (5)

11 points
Ameya Samant (5)

10 points
Mitul Kodali (2)
Sandeep Rajpurohit (4)
Sandip Sen (1)
Sumit Roy (3)

8 Points
Anand Sivasankar (4)
Brian D'Souza (5)
S Balakrishnan (3)
Sireesh Talluri Rao (2)

7 points
Ajay Ravindran (4)
Kaushtubh Chakravarti (1)
Mukund Krishnan (2)
Mukund Sridhar (3)
Raamesh Gowri Raghavan (2)
Rahul Bhaskar (3)
V Sreeharsha (1)

5.5 points
Akash Bansal (1)
Francis Rodrigues (7)
Janardhan R (1)
Leo Mirani (1)
Nrupal Chaudhari (3)
Prasann Potdar (1)
Rasik Tirodkar (1)
Sarat Rao (4)
Vikram Joshi (1)

4 points
Akanksha Mohan (1)

The next BQC quiz will be conducted at 3pm on Sunday, July 20 by Ajay Ravindran. Full details will follow shortly on this blog.

Devang Ghia, First Day First Show

This Sunday at the BQC, Devang Ghia, a longtime regular known for his knowledge of movie fundas, conducts his first quiz of the season. If entertainment is one of your strong suits, and you enjoy being entertained, this quiz should be tailor-made for you. The details:

Who:Devang Ghia

When: 3:00 pm, Sunday July 6, 2008 (Please be there by 2:40 pm)

Where: Pinstorm, Ground Floor, Swati House (Next to Kotak Bank on Linking Road), North Avenue, Santa Cruz (W).

Directions:

From the south: If you come north on Linking Road from Bandra to SantaCruz, you'll find a large Benetton Store on the right. At the end of that block is a Kotak Bank at the corner. Take a right and it's the next building, take the first gate and tell the sentry you've come for a meeting.

From the north: If you get on to Linking Road at the airplane park end, you'll cross a HDFC Bank. A block later, you'll see a Kotak Bank on the corner - do not cross it. Take a left at that point and it's the building next to Kotak Bank.

Newcomers are welcome at BQC quizzes, and do not need to form teams before coming. Teams are normally formed by a draw of lots at the venue itself, and everybody gets to take part. The questions are generally not the boring "you-know-it-or-you-don't" types, but accessible and workoutable ones. You'll have fun!

The results of the last quiz and current league standings are here.