New Kid vs Old Sage

David met Goliath a weekend ago -- and they won a quiz each. First, in an open quiz conducted by Dhananjay Shettigar at NM College on March 15, the avuncular Rajiv Rai beat out an impressive field of finalists, partnered by AP Alagarsamy. Then, a day later, the young, almost foetal Govind Grewal stormed to victory in the BQC quiz, letting out a feral roar when first place was assured.

"You're an obnoxious little weed," Rai told him.

"You're a big monkey," Grewal replied.

Anyway, apologies for this late report -- the results of those two quizzes are below, as well as the league standings. With one quiz left in the season, Rajiv has wrapped up first place, and Rishi Iyengar is assured of second. Third place is still open, so bloodshed cannot be ruled out.

NM Open Quiz

First with 240 points
Rajiv Rai
AP Alagarsamy

Second with 140 points
S Balakrishnan
Udatta Duarah

Third with 130 points
Sumant Srivathsan
Arnab Bhattacharya

Fourth-sixth with 120 points (tied)
Amit Varma
Rishi Iyengar

Vibhendu Tiwari
Anand Sivasankar

Govind Grewal
Souvik Basu

As this was an open quiz, with prelims, all finalists got two points for the league table. The other points were awarded as usual: 10 for the winning team, seven for second place, four for third.

The quiz on the 16th was conducted in two halves, by me and Rishi Iyengar respectively. As has become the custom for such quizzes at the BQC, we also took part in each other's halves, swapping places on the same team. The results:

First with 87 points (48 after first half)
Govind Grewal
Amit Pandeya
Pradeep Ramarathnam
Mukund Krishnan

Second with 74 (53)
Rajiv Rai
Sandeep Sen
Anand Sivasankar

Third with 61 (8)
Rishi Iyengar/Amit Varma
Sarat Rao
Devang Ghia

Fourth with 60 (14)
Vibhendu Tiwari
Dhananjay Shettigar
Aditya Agarwal
+ one?

Fifth with 57 (32)
Sumant Srivathsan
Sireesh Rao
Souvik Basu

Sixth with 48 (24)
S Balakrishnan
Arvind Krishnaswamy
+ one

Seventh with 47 (16)
AP Alagarsamy
Udatta Duarah
Sushil Menon

Eighth with 46 (9)
Prasann Potdar
Sandeep Rajpurohit
Sriram Krishnan

A couple of names, of latecomers, are missing. I'll duly fill them in.

And now for the league standings:

BQC Season Two Standings (from 25 quizzes, as of March 28, 2008)

140.5 points
Rajiv Rai (from 19 quizzes)

98 points
Rishi Iyengar (21)

79 points
Amit Varma (21)

75 points
Sumant Srivathsan (21)

72 points
Prasann Potdar (19)

67.5 points
Vibhendu Tiwari (22)
AP Alagarsamy (19)

62 points
Kedar Sastry (16)

59 points
Ajith Prabhakar (17)
Govind Grewal (19)

48 points
Ashwan Lewis (8)
Amit Pandeya (12)


47.5 points
Mukund Krishnan (13)

44 points
Anand Sivasankar (19)

43.5 points
Souvik Basu (?)

43 points
Pradeep Ramarathnam (15)

42.5 points
Devang Ghia (22)

42 points
S Balakrishnan (16)

40 points
Ameya Samant (19)

31 points
Shambhu Shankar (?)

28 points
Mahesh Murthy (6)

26 points
Sarat Rao (?)

24 points
Kartik Srivatsa (5)

21 points
Udatta Duarah (10)

18 points
Avinash Mudaliar (9)
Kartik R (?)
Francis Rodrigues (12)

17 points
Ravi Venkatesh (6)

16.5 points
Dhananjay Shettigar (12)

14 points
Samrat Sengupta (7)
Sritanu Chakravarty (4)
Arvind Krishnaswamy (7)

11 points
Ajay Ravindran (4)
Meghashyam Shirodkar (3)
Nandan Krishnaswamy (6)
Atulya Bharadwaj (2)
Sandip Sen (4)

10 points
Aravinda Talluri (1)
Neeraj (1)
Nilesh Jain (1)
Tanmay Sharma (2)
Gaurav Singh (1)
Raghu (?)
Sowmya Ramaswamy (1)
Hansraj Singh (1)
John Mascarenhas (3)
Vaibhav Devanathan (1)
Sameer Nair (2)
Movin Miranda (1)
Aditya Agarwal (2)

8 points
Hanisha Vaswani (5)

7 points
Akshay Mahajan (1)
Rahul Bhaskar (3)
Saurav (?)
Nrupal Choudhari (?)
Harshil Shah (1)
Devangshu Datta (1)
Kaustubh Chakraborty (1)

4 points
Padma Sinha (3)
Pranav Kukreja (1)
Sireesh Talluri Rao (8)
Sushant Raut (5)
Chitra Raghunath (1)
Sandeep Randery (1)
Kishalaya Bhattacharjee (1)
Brian D'Souza (1)
Ramesh (1)
Arnab Bhattacharya (?)

There is exactly one quiz left this season, which will be conducted this Sunday by Sumant Srivathsan. The details:

Time: 3pm, Sunday, March 30 (reporting time: 2.40pm)
Quizmaster: Sumant Srivathsan
Venue: Pinstorm, Ground Floor, Swati House (Next to Kotak Bank on Linking Road), North Avenue, Santa Cruz West. (Detailed directions here.)

A BQC celebration is expected after the event, and rumour has it that Rajiv, to celebrate his win, will take all past and present BQC quizzers, and their extended families, for drinks to a suitable watering hole. A large catering order for infants has also been made, and fun will no doubt come. So must you.

More Exciting Than the Democratic Convention

Yes, the BQC is all set to meet again! Details:

Time: 3pm, Sunday, March 16 (reporting time: 2.40pm)
Quizmasters: Amit Varma and Rishi Iyengar
Venue: Pinstorm, Ground Floor, Swati House (Next to Kotak Bank on Linking Road), North Avenue, Santa Cruz West. (Detailed directions here.)

A report of the last quiz, and the latest standings, are here.

Like Obamaniacs at a Democratic Caucus...

... the crowds thronged to the latest BQC quiz, conducted by Arvind Krishnaswamy and Govind Grewal. Attendence was high and the quiz was good, with no chestnuts that I spotted -- though there was a question about the Banquet of Chestnuts -- and many current questions. It was an ideal quiz, especially as it almost led to a homicide, caused by Young Grewal displaying an unwareness of the difference between "whose name" and "what name". Still, he is young, and even Nixon left Watergate behind him. (I kid; the rest of his questions were wonderful.)

The seedings went awry, old warriors returned to the BQC stage, and as a result, some immensely strong teams were formed after the draw of lots. Rishi Iyengar and AP Alagarsamy got together with Aditya Agarwal and Francis Rodrigues to take first place, while the all-star team of Rajiv Rai, Vibhendu Tiwari, Kaustubh Chakraborty and Shambhu Shankar came second. My team came third, half a question behind. The results:

First with 240 points
Rishi Iyengar
AP Alagarsamy
Aditya Agarwal
Francis Rodrigues

2nd with 210 points
Rajiv Rai
Vibhendu Tiwari
Kaustubh Chakraborty
Shambhu Shankar

3rd with 205 points
Amit Varma
Devang Ghia
Sritanu Chakravarty

4th with 180 points
S Balakrishnan
Samrat Sengupta
Neelabh

5th with 150 points
Ameya Samant
Udatta Duarah
Avinash Mudaliar
Karthik R

6th and 7th with 135 points each
Ajith Prabhakar
Kedar Sastry
Amit Sharma
Sriram Krishnan

Sumant Srivathsan
Mukund Krishnan
Souvik Basu

8th with 130 points
Prasann Potdar
Brian D'Souza
Kartik

(Some names aren't filled in, I'll fill them in as soon as I get them. Done.)

As for our league standings, well, with two quizzes left in the season, first and second places are wrapped up. But a battle for third place is taking place that seems destined for a bloody ending. Indeed, I wake at night panting, dreaming that Mr Potdar is at my bedside about to carve my neck open, even as Mr Srivathsan stands behind him, about to decapitate Mr Potdar with a battleaxe, unware of Mr Tiwari behind him, about to set fire to a tyre. We all wish we'd never gotten involved, but the BQC is a bit like Hotel California -- you can never leave.

Here come the standings (we give 10 points for first place, seven for second, four for third):

BQC Season Two Standings (from 23 quizzes, as of March 3, 2008)

123.5 points
Rajiv Rai (from 17 quizzes)

92 points
Rishi Iyengar (19)

73 points
Amit Varma (19)

72 points
Prasann Potdar (17)

71 points
Sumant Srivathsan (19)

65.5 points
Vibhendu Tiwari (20)

62 points
Kedar Sastry (16)

59 points
Ajith Prabhakar (17)

57.5 points
AP Alagarsamy (17)

48 points
Ashwan Lewis (8)

47 points
Govind Grewal (17)

41.5 points
Souvik Basu (?)

40 points
Ameya Samant (18)

38.5 points
Devang Ghia (21)

38 points
Amit Pandeya (11)

37.5 points
Mukund Krishnan (12)

35 points
S Balakrishnan (14)
Anand Sivasankar (17)

33 points
Pradeep Ramarathnam (14)

31 points
Shambhu Shankar (?)

28 points
Mahesh Murthy (6)

24 points
Kartik Srivatsa (5)

22 points
Sarat Rao (?)

18 points
Avinash Mudaliar (9)
Kartik R (?)
Francis Rodrigues (11)

17 points
Ravi Venkatesh (6)

16.5 points
Dhananjay Shettigar (11)

14 points
Samrat Sengupta (7)
Udatta Duarah (8)
Sritanu Chakravarty (4)
Arvind Krishnaswamy (6)

11 points
Ajay Ravindran (4)
Meghashyam Shirodkar (3)
Nandan Krishnaswamy (6)
Atulya Bharadwaj (2)

10 points
Aravinda Talluri (1)
Neeraj (1)
Nilesh Jain (1)
Tanmay Sharma (2)
Gaurav Singh (1)
Raghu (?)
Sowmya Ramaswamy (1)
Hansraj Singh (1)
John Mascarenhas (3)
Vaibhav Devanathan (1)
Sameer Nair (2)
Movin Miranda (1)
Aditya Agarwal (1)

8 points
Hanisha Vaswani (5)

7 points
Akshay Mahajan (1)
Rahul Bhaskar (3)
Saurav (?)
Nrupal Choudhari (?)
Harshil Shah (1)
Devangshu Datta (1)
Kaustubh Chakraborty (1)

4 points
Padma Sinha (3)
Pranav Kukreja (1)
Sireesh Talluri Rao (7)
Sushant Raut (5)
Chitra Raghunath (1)
Sandeep Randery (1)
Sandip Sen (3)
Kishalaya Bhattacharjee (1)
Brian D'Souza (1)
Ramesh (1)

The next quiz will be conducted on March 16, with Rishi and me contributing half a quiz each. That will be the penultimate quiz of the year. Be there, much carnage is promised.

Here We Go Again

This time, it's Arvind Krishnaswamy's turn to play Grand Inquisitor, with a little bit of Govind Grewal thrown in. You should come, mostly because we need hands to hold Rishi back from considering young Govind an infant, also known as meat.

The quiz will be great fun, too.

Location:

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.

Two To Remember

It was a good afternoon at the BQC. In fact, it was bloody awesome. Udatta Duarah and Ajith Prabhakar, each in their turn, set a bar for BQC sessions that will be very, very hard to beat. It is a huge task to set questions that would challenge quizzers without turning tedious, and these guys did a fabulous job of it. Rajiv Rai's off day, and a surprise new addition to the crew, meant that the lesser mortals (with special guest Alagarsamy, last year's champ) would battle it out for podium finishes, and when the dust settled, this is what happened:

First Place (67 points)
Arvind Krishnaswamy
Kedar Sastry
Prasann Potdar

Second Place (59 points)
Anand Sivashankar
Souvik Basu
Sumant Srivathsan

Third Place (57 points)
Ramesh (where has this guy been all along?)
Rishi Iyengar
Shambhu Shankar

Fourth Place (54 points)
AP Alagarsamy
S Balakrishnan
Brian
Sarat Rao

Fifth Place (32 points)
Pradeep Ramarathnam
Sireesh Rao
Vibhendu Tewari

Sixth Place (31 points)
Ajith Prabhakar/Udatta Duarah
Devang Ghia
Samrat Sengupta

Seventh Place (27 points)
Parag
Rajiv Rai
Sriram

Eighth Place
Anand Babu
Govind Grewal
Sushil Menon

Apologies for not getting everybody's last names. League table updates coming soon.

The Return of Udatta

Ajith Prabhakar and Udatta Duarah come together today at the BQC. Udatta's return is joyously anticipated as there are many new candidates in the BQC just waiting to be ushered into shrieking insanity.

Location: Pinstorm office, 3:00 PM.

Directions

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

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.

The Quizzes Sweep Past

The BQC hasn't quite been inactive of late, but it's certainly been out of the public eye, mainly due to the results of our quizzes not being updated here -- entirely the fault of this blogger. There are two quizzes that took place recently that went unreported. Here are the brief reports:

On January 19, when our designated quizmaster for the day failed to turn up, Rajiv Rai and Amit Pandeya conducted half a quiz each. They were also in the winning team. How's that, you ask? Well, each took part in the half of the quiz that he did not conduct, instead of the other. Amit excelled in the second half of the quiz, which Rajiv conducted.

Sadly, the scoresheet mysteriously went missing, but here are the results as we can reproduce them:

1st Rajiv Rai, Amit Pandeya, Souvik Basu and X, 2nd Vibhendu Tiwari, Ajith Prabhakar and Mukund Krishnan, 3rd Sumant Srivathsan, Ameya Samant and Kishalaya Bhattacharjee

On February 3, Pradeep Ramarathnam and Arun Srinivas conducted half a quiz each -- and took part in the half they didn't conduct. The results:

1st with 25 points
AP Alagarsamy
Ajith Prabhakar
Devang Ghia

2nd with 24 points
Govind Grewal
Souvik Basu
Kedar Sastry

3rd with 22 points
Sumant Srivathsan
Sarat Rao
Brian D'Souza
Pradeep Ramarathnam

4th with 18 points
Amit Varma
Dhananjay Shettigar
Francis Rodrigues

5th with 14 points
Vibhendu Tiwari
Anand Sivasankar
Ameya Samant
Sriram Krishnan

6th with 5 points
Prasann Potdar
Kartik R
Sushil Menon

Our league table functions thus: The members of the team coming first get 10 points, the runners up get 7, and the team coming third gets 4. The standings:

BQC Season Two Standings (from 21 quizzes, as of February 3, 2007)

116.5 points
Rajiv Rai (from 15 quizzes)

78 points
Rishi Iyengar (17)

69 points
Amit Varma (18)

64 points
Sumant Srivathsan (17)

62 points
Prasann Potdar (15)

59 points
Ajith Prabhakar (16)

58.5 points
Vibhendu Tiwari (18)

52 points
Kedar Sastry (14)

48 points
Ashwan Lewis (8)

47.5 points
AP Alagarsamy (15)

47 points
Govind Grewal (16)

40 points
Ameya Samant (17)

38 points
Amit Pandeya (11)

37.5 points
Mukund Krishnan (10)

35 points
S Balakrishnan (12)

34.5 points
Devang Ghia (19)
Souvik Basu (?)

33 points
Pradeep Ramarathnam (13)

28 points
Mahesh Murthy (6)
Anand Sivasankar (16)

24 points
Kartik Srivatsa (5)

22 points
Sarat Rao (?)

20 points
Shambhu Shankar (?)

18 points
Avinash Mudaliar (8)
Kartik R (?)

17 points
Ravi Venkatesh (6)

16.5 points
Dhananjay Shettigar (11)

14 points
Samrat Sengupta (5)
Udatta Duarah (6)

11 points
Ajay Ravindran (4)
Meghashyam Shirodkar (3)
Nandan Krishnaswamy (6)
Atulya Bharadwaj (2)

10 points
Aravinda Talluri (1)
Neeraj (1)
Nilesh Jain (1)
Tanmay Sharma (2)
Gaurav Singh (1)
Raghu (?)
Sritanu Chakravarty (3)
Sowmya Ramaswamy (1)
Hansraj Singh (1)
John Mascarenhas (3)
Vaibhav Devanathan (1)
Sameer Nair (2)
Movin Miranda (1)

8 points
Hanisha Vaswani (5)
Francis Rodrigues (10)

7 points
Akshay Mahajan (1)
Rahul Bhaskar (3)
Saurav (?)
Nrupal Choudhari (?)
Harshil Shah (1)
Devangshu Datta (1)

4 points
Padma Sinha (3)
Pranav Kukreja (1)
Sireesh Talluri Rao (7)
Sushant Raut (5)
Chitra Raghunath (1)
Arvind Krishnaswamy (5)
Sandeep Randery (1)
Sandip Sen (3)
Kishalaya Bhattacharjee (1)
Brian D'Souza (1)

The next quiz will be conducted on February 17 by Ajith Prabhakar and Udatta Duarah.

We're quizzing again!

There's a quiz tomorrow at 3pm. Details:

Time: 3pm, Sunday, February 3 (reporting time: 2.40pm)
Quizmasters: Pradeep Ramarathnam and Arun Srinivas
Venue: Pinstorm, Ground Floor, Swati House (Next to Kotak Bank on Linking Road), North Avenue, Santa Cruz West. (Detailed directions here.)

The report of the last quiz, conducted by Amit Pandeya and Rajiv Rai after a no-show by the QM, hasn't yet gone up because, um, some particulars have been lost. We'll compile those details again tomorrow and both reports will appear together. Apologies if anyone has suffered material losses because of this.