And Then There Was One

Rajiv Rai did not place in the 17th quiz of BQC's third season -- but that made little difference to the league table. By winning two tough quizzes just before that, he ensured that he extended his lead in the standings to a point from where one of his nearest contenders will have to win five quizzes in a row with Rajiv not scoring to overtake him. Forget it.

Vibhendu Tiwari also continued a good run, and is now second in the standings. Sumant Srivathsan had early leads in the first two quizzes, but ultimately managed not to place in any of them, and slipped to third overall. [Update -- the last two sentences no longer hold; we made a mistake by giving Vibhendu points for a quiz he did not attend. Now corrected.) Udatta Duarah made a move up the charts.

The first of these three quizzes was conducted by Mitesh Agarwal on November 16. It was a wonderful, well-balanced quiz, and ended with Rajiv's team sneaking ahead of Vibhendu's Aadisht's.

Two weeks after that, Atul Mathew conducted a quiz, followed by Gopal Kidao, our guest of honour from Chennai, asking questions from an India quiz. (They also took part in the half conducted by the other, swapping places on the same team.) This quiz ended in a tie -- and Rajiv's team beat Udatta Duarah's team in the tiebreaker.

Aadisht Khanna was QM on December 14, and the quiz was nail-bitingly close, with all eight teams in the top three at different points of time. Udatta's team won on the tiebreak, as his partner Atul Mathew jumped on the only BQC question ever about a porn film. He will be remembered for this.

The results are below; mea culpa for being so late with them. They are incomplete, with latecomers' names not included. In Mitesh's quiz, I know that Vibhendu's team came second, but as he seems to have been a latecomer himself, I don't know which team he was part of. All these details will be filled within 24 hours. Many apologies. [Update: Corrections have now been made to this post.]

BQC Quiz 15 -- Mitesh Agarwal

1st Rajiv Rai, Mukund Sridhar, S Balakrishnan. 2nd Aadisht Khanna, Ajith Prabhakar, Ameya Samant. 3rd Anannya Deb, Prasann Potdar, Devang Ghia and Mithun Srivatsa.

BQC Quiz 16 -- Atul Mathew and Gopal Kidao

1st Rajiv Rai, Sajith Pai, Anand Sivasankar, Ameya Samant. 2nd Udatta Duarah, Ajith Prabhakar, Prasann Potdar, Bikash Mohapatra. 3rd Gopal Kidao/Atul Mathew, Arvind Krishnaswamy, Sandip Sen, S Balakrishnan.

BQC Quiz 17 -- Aadisht Khanna

1st Udatta Duarah, Atul Mathew, Kaustuv Gupta, Amit Sharma. 2nd Vibhendu Tiwari, Devang Ghia, Mayuresh Gaikwad, Shreya. 3rd Govind Grewal, Akanksha Mohan, Vijay Shankar, Atulya Bharadwaj.

And now for the league table:

BQC Season three Standings (from Seventeen quizzes, as of December 14, 2008)

96 points
Rajiv Rai

53 points
Sumant Srivathsan

51.5 points
Aadisht Khanna

48 points
Udatta Duarah

47 points
Vibhendu Tiwari

42.5 points
Amit Varma
Rishi Iyengar

38 points
Ajith Prabhakar
Ameya Samant
Atul Mathew

37 points
Sumit Roy

29.5 points
Anannya Deb
Pradeep Ramarathnam

28 points
Govind Grewal
Kaustuv Gupta

27 points
Rohit Ajitkumar
Shrikant Narasimhan

26.5 points
Prasann Potdar

26 points
Souvik Basu

25.5 points
Francis Rodrigues

25 points
Sandip Sen

24 points
Kedar Sastry

22 points
Amit Pandeya
Anand Sivasankar
S Balakrishnan
Vijay Shankar

20 points
Sajith Pai

18 points
Atulya B

17 points
Avinash Mudaliar
Bikash Mohapatra
Mahesh Murthy
Mukund Sridhar

15.5 points
Akash Bansal

15 points
Brian D'Souza

14 points
Mitul Kodali

12 points
Akanksha Mohan

11.5 points
Sarat Rao

11 points
Devang Ghia

10 points
Amit Sharma
Dhananjay Shettigar
Kashyap Pandeya
Rahul Gaur
Rushi Bhavsar
Sandeep Rajpurohit
Sireesh Talluri Rao
Srini Rajagopal

9 points
Mukund Krishnan

8 Points
Manish Mishra

7 points
Ajay Ravindran
Arjun Swarup
Avinash Umapathy
Kaustubh Chakravarti
Norbert Fernandes
Raamesh Gowri Raghavan
Rahul Bhaskar
Shreya
V Sreeharsha

5.5 points
Janardhan R
Leo Mirani
Nrupal Chaudhari
Rasik Tirodkar
Vikram Joshi

4 points
Arvind Krishnaswamy
Gopal Kidao
Mithun Srivatsa
Neelabh
Rajendra Parmar
Ravi Venkatesh
Vijay Chittoor

The next quiz will be conducted by Arvind Krishnaswamy on December 21. Details to follow within five minutes on this blog.