Enjoyment explodes at the Naveen Unni quiz

The BQC resumed quizzing after quite a while with a quiz by Naveen Unni, conducted at the Pinstorm office in Bandra, a venue generously provided by Pinstorm boss Mahesh Murthy. Twenty-five people turned up and got divided into six teams. The quiz was excellent, with most questions being eminently workoutable. Immense enjoyment was had, and Naveen was duly given joyous bumps later on, as is the tradition for our quizmasters.

The results:

1st with 21 points
Rajiv Rai
Brian D'souza
Francis Rodrigues
AP Alagarsamy

2nd with 18.5 points
Arvind Krishnaswamy
Ravi Venkatesh
Govind Grewal
Souvik Basu
Prasann

3rd with 17 points
Sumant Srivathsan
Nandan Krishnaswamy
Ajay Ravindran
Sudhanshu

Other finalists
Kaustubh Chakraborty
Arun Srinivas
Aswin Palanivel
Kartik R

Vibhendu Tiwari
Kartik Srivatsa
Venkatesh Raghavan
Shambhu Shankar

Eva Joshi
Raghu Gopalan
Tanmay Sharma
Amit Varma

And now for the league standings:

BQC Aggregate Points Table (as of February 4, 2007)

Amit Varma: 35.5 from 6 quizzes

AP Alagarsamy: 31 from 4

Ravi Venkatesh: 27 from 5

Vibhendu Tiwari: 24 from 4

Nandan Krishnaswamy: 22.5 from 5

Anand Sivasankar: 22 from 3

Rajiv Rai: 21 from 3
Sumant Srivathsan: 21 from 3

Arvind Krishnaswamy: 20.5 from 5

Rishi: 20 from 5

Naveen Unni: 19 from 3

Prasann: 16 from 3

Souvik Basu: 12.5 from 2

Aadisht Khanna: 12 from 2
Kaushtubh Chakraborty: 12 from 2
Arun Srinivas: 12 from 2
Shiju Thomas: 12 from 2*

Amit Pandeya: 10 from 1
Rohan Khanna: 10 from 1

Govind Grewal: 9 from 2

I haven't compiled the entire standings yet, but there are many people who attended a quiz or two and got points in the single figures. For how the points system works, see here (scroll to the last third of the post).

One thing to note is that when the season ends, we will not take aggregate points, but results from the top 60% of total quizzes. This season, we've had seven quizzes so far, so everyone's best four results count. By that reckoning, here's a virtual leadership chart, listing everyone with more than 20 points:

BQC Effective Leaderboard (as of February 4, 2007)

AP Alagarsamy: 31 from 4

Amit Varma: 29.5

Ravi Venkatesh: 25

Vibhendu Tiwari: 24

Anand Sivasankar: 22

Rajiv Rai: 21
Sumant Srivathsan: 21

Nandan Krishnaswamy: 20.5

Thus, the effective lead of the BQC standings deservedly shifted to AP Alagarsamy with today's quiz, and much fun will surely happen at the top of the table in coming weeks, when quizzing will be more regular. Joy.

*In the last league standings I'd listed Shiju as 10 from 1, but had missed out an earlier quiz where he was a finalist. I've added that to this list.

In case I've made any computing error while compiling the current league table, do let me know.

Quiz on February 4

The BQC resumes quizzing with a quiz on Sunday, February 4, at 2.15 pm. The venue is the Pinstorm office in Bandra. The directions, as given by the kind Pinstorm people:

"Pinstorm is at 402, the 4th floor, Dheeraj Swapna (the building between Hotel Pali Presidency and 5 Spice Restaurant), Pali Naka, Bandra West.

Enter the place just to the left of 5 Spice, turn left, take an elevator to the 4th floor, ring the bell on the green door."

Do land up. Naveen Unni will be the quizmaster, and fun threatens to result.

(Reports of the last quiz, and the league standings, are here.)

Bombay Quiz Club

The BCQC is holding a quiz in Pune tomorrow. Details can be found here. Some BQC members are meeting up at Dadar at 9:30 tomorrow morning and going down to Pune. If you wish to join us, get off at Dadar (E), walk straight down from the station to Cafe Coffee Day. If you wish to talk to any of us before coming to get a contact number, drop us a line at the group.

A great way to spend a Sunday morning

An excellent quiz took place at the YWCA this morning, conducted by Ravi Venkatesh. Ravi had 35 questions with him while Shamanth Rao, who had been supposed to co-quizmaster, had sent 30 more to Ravi, though he couldn't make it himself.

Thirteen people turned up and split into six teams, created by a drawing of lots, and the quiz was well-contested throughout. No team was ever out of the race, and it needed a tiebreaker to decide the winner: Vibhendu Tiwari and Shiju Thomas edged out AP Alagarsamy and Nandan Krishnaswamy on the tiebreak question. The results:

1st with 21 points (on tiebreaker)
Vibhendu Tiwari
Shiju Thomas

2nd with 21 points
AP Alagarsamy
Nandan Krishnaswamy

3rd with 19 points
Mukund Krishnan
Amit Varma

Joint 4th-6th with 16 points each
Dipankar Goswami
Samrat Sengupta
Meghna Sengupta

Raghu Gopalan
Prasann

Arvind Krishnaswamy
Rishi

The quiz was well-balanced, and not too heavy: there weren't too many connects, and the ones that were there weren't too convoluted, as can be the case sometimes. The quizzers finished the quiz not tired and desperate for rest, as sometimes happens, but refreshed and hungry for more. More will duly follow.

The league standings (updated from here) are below:

BQC Points Table (as of November 26, 2006)

Amit Varma: 33.5 from 5 quizzes

Anand Sivashankar: 22 from 3
Vibhendu Tiwari: 22 from 3

AP Alagarsamy: 21 from 3

Ravi Venkatesh: 20 from 4
Rishi: 20 from 5

The Invizible Man: 19 from 3

Nandan Krishnaswamy: 18.5 from 4

Sumant Srivathsan: 17 from 2.

Arvind Krishnaswamy: 13.5 from 4

Aadisht Khanna: 12 from 2

Rajiv Rai: 11 from 2

Amit Pandeya: 10 from 1
Milo and Minderbinder: 10 from 1
Dhoomk2: 10 from 1
Rohan Khanna: 10 from 1
Shiju Thomas: 10 from 1

Prasann: 9 from 2

Prasad Shetty: 7 from 1
Rohit: 7 from 1
Saurabh: 7 from 1

Naveen Venkarataman: 6 from 3

Pradeep Ramarathnam: 5.5 from 1
Souvik Basu: 5.5 from 1

Arjun Chatterjee: 4 from 1
Leslie Mathew: 4 from 1
Mukund Krishnan: 4 from 1
Sarat Rao: 4 from 1

(There are also many two pointers, whose names haven't yet been included in this listing for reasons of length.)

To recap, here are how the points are allocated. Each member of a winning team gets 10 points. There are 7 points each for second place, 4 each for third and 2 each for being in the finals. In case of a tie between positions, points are split. (For example, if two teams are tied for 2nd, they get 5.5 each.) The only exception is for the top spot, which we always try to decide with a tiebreaker.

At the end of the season, we don't take aggregate results, but results from the top 60% of total quizzes. So if there are 20 quizzes, everyone's best 12 results are taken into account. That way, no one is penalised for missing a few quizzes or starting the season late. So far this season we've had six quizzes, and I'm hoping we can get more regular and have 12 to 15 more by the middle of 2007.

And, er, if you're a casual reader who chanced upon this post and are curious about what quizzing is all about, do drop in on the next one. As any attendee would tell you, it's not intimidating in the least, and you'll have fun. Keep an eye on this blog for schedules and updates, or join the mailing list.

Bombay Quiz Club

We're holding a quiz on Sunday starting at 10:30 AM. The quizmasters are Ravi Venkatesh and Shamanth, so it willbe good. The early start is because one of the quizmasters needs to be elsewhere later. The venue is the YWCA in Colaba. Just get off at Regal, cross the road, walk past Cafe Royal and turn left.

Bombay Quiz Club

The stars are not in alignment thsi weekend. Therefore, the quiz scheduled on the 19th has been cancelled and rescheduled to the 26th. The quizmaster has changed as well. Ravi Venkatesh will be doing the quiz in place of Naveen Unni. Venue details will be posted later.

Peace, and Cthulhu fthagn.

Bombay Quiz Club

The next BQC quiz has been scheduled for 19th Nov, Sunday. (11.30 am)
Naveen Unni will quizmaster.
Venue : Cathedral High School, near VT station.

The Call of Cthulhu

It was while perusing the papers of the late Francis Wayland Thurston that I first read of the strange and sinister events that nearly unleashed forces of ravening madness upon this Earth. We live in a fragile bubble of life, warmed by the comforting hearthglow of our ignorance, in which we select the facts we wish to see. There are those who knowingly pierce that bubble, exposing themselves to the horror that no human mind can comprehend and still stay sane. Thurston talks about the merciful inability of the human mind to correlate all the contents of the world. I, who in my unthinking folly, once prided himself in his skill at drawing linkages between apparently unrelated facts, concur. If I had not seen a curious convergence between the last attempt to free Cthulhu on 1 April 1926 and the formation of the Bombay Quiz Club, 80 years later to the very day, I would not now be plagued by nightmares of clammy terror, of vast dripping Cyclopean architecture, and always, waking or asleep, the guttural incantation:

Cthulhu fthagn

I present these facts in the hope that, forewarned, no other human being accidentally falls into the clutches of the monstrous Amit Varma or the cruel Dhoomk2.

Struck by the coincidence of the day on which the BQC was founded- 1 April, 2006- with the anniversary of those terrible events experienced by poor Thurston, I blithely decided to explore this odd and intriguing society. Little did I know of the yammering insanity of alien dimensions of eldritch dread that the Bombay Quiz Club hopes to set loose upon our world, so gay and defenseless amidst infinite echoing halls of blackness and evil, like a child’s laugh in some Torquemadan dungeon.

It is with curious reluctance that I set down these feeble words, so pitifully inadequate to describe the unspeakable abomination that is the BQC League table. The rituals of the BQC are centered around the Master of Ceremonies- and thus far, it has only been a Master. Some women have been involved in these atrocious deeds, but none has, as yet, stepped up to lead the Cult. These loathsome occasions involve an endless testing to weed out the weak from the Chosen, as the Master fires complex questions at the cultists, demanding an answer that will satisfy his unappeasable lust for intricate correlations between human domains of knowledge. The dark mania of these other-humans manifests itself in shrieks and groans of dismay, convulsive twitching as they clasp their heads in rabid attempts to extract the desired linkage, shocking outbursts of violent swearing, appeals to Crom; such is the tumultuous passion with which the participants get involved, that ordinary, everyday weapons like battleaxes and halberds are deposited outside the venue, that the hideous practices may continue uninterrupted. As I witnessed this, there began to grow upon me visions of Rl’yeh, glimpsed by a luckless few, enigmatically referred to in the Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abu al Hazred. Above all, past the spine-chilling cacophony of roars of triumph mingled with the wailing of the defeated, throbbed an insistent question- Why? What would motivate Rajiv Rai to connect a model of Ford, a breed of goat¹, an island and an article of clothing? What spectral visions did Milo and Minderbinder seek to conjure up by linking theories of colour with Webern and a fine French painter? In an awful moment of coherence and utter illumination, I saw the execrable truth: not content to wait for the stars, in their aeons-long drift, to come into alignment, these quizzers seek to recreate the abnormal, non-Euclidean incubus that is R'lyeh in the minds of men. The strange angles, the alternate topography ne’er imagined, will become a stronger and stronger vision, a message of power that will penetrate Cthulhu’s endless sleep and resurrect It upon this earth. To the winners of the league will go the honour of being eaten first, while the rest of humanity plunges into shrieking torment for an age and an age.

Remember these names as the shreds of your sanity claw at the enveloping darkness to come, for it is they who will raise Cthulhu and end the shrill, brief history of our race:

BQC Points Table (as of Sep 29, 2006)

Amit Varma: 29.5 from 4 quizzes

Anand Sivashankar: 22 from 3

Ravi Venkatesh: 20 points from 4

The Invizible Man: 19 from 3

Rishi: 18 from 4

Sumant Srivathsan: 17 from 2.

AP Alargarsamy: 14 from 2

Aadisht Khanna: 12 from 2

Vibhendu Tiwari: 12 from 2

Arvind Krishnaswamy: 11.5 from 3

Nandan Krishnaswamy: 11.5 from 3

Rajiv Rai: 11 from 2

Amit Pandeya: 10 from 1

Milo and Minderbinder: 10 from 1

Dhoomk2: 10 from 1

Rohan Khanna: 10 from 1

Prasad Shetty: 7 from 1

Prasann: 7 from 1

Rohit: 7 from 1

Saurabh: 7 from 1

Naveen Venkarataman: 6 from 3

Pradeep Ramarathnam: 5.5 from 1

Souvik Basu: 5.5 from 1

Arjun Chatterjee: 4 from 1

Leslie Mathew: 4 from 1

Sarat Rao: 4 from 1

1. Surprisingly, not Shub Niggurath, the infernal black goat with a thousand young.