A Social(ist) Experiment

That was merely one of several descriptions that Anand Sivashankar's (and absentee QM Vibhendu Tewari's) quiz drew from the small group of participants that did show up on a rainy Sunday afternoon. A late notification email to the group could have been the main culprit (and we'll do our best to be more timely about such matters).

As Anand explained in his intro, his rather original direct-and-passing system was designed to ensure that all teams had an equal opportunity to answer questions. Whether this intention was met, we shall see, but it did result in a very tight quiz indeed, with the lead changing hands amongst at least four of the eight teams.

Teams answered questions in increasing order of their points tally after each question, with tied teams taking turns in clockwise or anti-clockwise patterns. With this system in place, Anand proceeded to ask a number of excellent questions, something which could easily have been missed amidst the novel system which contained them.

New system or old, some things never change, and Rajiv Rai, with Ravi Venkatesh in tow (and solo for the last few questions), won the day. Again. Prasann Potdar, Saurav and Kartik Ramadass fended off four other teams for second place, leaving them tied for third place.

The Results:

First Place - 14 Points
Rajiv Rai
Ravi Venkatesh

Second Place - 13 Points
Prasann Potdar
Kartik Ramadass
Saurav

Third Place (tied) - 12 Points
Ameya Samant
Avinash Mudaliar
Sarat Rao

Rishi Iyengar
Sumant Srivathsan

Souvik Basu
S Balakrishnan

Amit Pandeya
Francis Rodrigues
Mukund Krishnan

Seventh Place (tied) - 11 Points
Ajith Prabhakar
Dhananjay Shettigar

AP Alagarsamy
Devang Ghia
Kedar Sastry

BQC Season Two Standings (from 11 quizzes, as of September 23, 2007)

69.5 points
Rajiv Rai (from 9 quizzes)

48 points
Ashwan Lewis (7)

47.5 points
Rishi Iyengar (9)

41 points
Prasann Potdar (7)

38 points
Amit Varma (8)

29 points
Pradeep Ramarathnam (8)

28 points
Mahesh Murthy (6)
AP Alagarsamy (9)
S Balakrishnan (7)

26 points
Govind Grewal (9)

24 points
Amit Pandeya (9)
Anand Sivasankar (9)
Kartik Srivatsa (4)

23 points
Sumant Srivathsan (7)

22.5 points
Mukund Krishnan (4)

22 points
Ajith Prabhakar (9)

20.5 points
Ameya Samant (9)

18 points
Kedar Shastry (7)

17 points
Ravi Venkatesh (5)

16.5 points
Dhananjay Shettigar (9)

15 points
Vibhendu Tiwari (9)
Devang Ghia (9)

14 points
Samrat Sengupta (3)
Kartik R (?)

11 points
Ajay Ravindran (3)
Meghashyam Shirodkar (2)
Nandan Krishnaswamy (5)
Avinash Mudaliar (6)
Sarat Rao (?)

10 points
Aravinda Talluri (1)
Neeraj (1)
Nilesh Jain (1)
Tanmay Sharma (2)
Gaurav Singh (1)
Raghu (?)

8 points
Hanisha Vaswani (5)

7 points
Akshay Mahajan (1)
Rahul Bhaskar (2)
Saurav (?)

4 points
Francis Rodrigues (6)
Padma Sinha (3)
Pranav Kukreja (1)
Sireesh Talluri Rao (5)
Sushant Raut (5)
Udatta Duarah (2)

1 point
Souvik Basu