The Christmas Quiz

To account for the Christmas holidays, the 18th quiz of this season will take place a week early, on December 21. This Sunday. Arvind Krishnaswamy will conduct, hopefully in a Santa Claus suit. Be there -- or wait till next Christmas. The details:

QM: Arvind Krishnaswamy

Time: 3 pm, Sunday, December 21, 2008 (Please be there by 2:40 pm. Ha!)

Venue: 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.

The winning team get free reindeer. Er, wait, we're out of stock. Okay -- they get stinky socks to hang by the fireplace. Fine?

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.

Slumdog Non-Millionaire

"If thy wants to be rich," thunders Shylock near the start of William Shakespeare's famous play, "be not a quizzer but a moneylender. Therein lie the rewards of life."

And yes, in the real world, it may seem that we slumdog quizzers never get rich -- in monetary terms. But our afternoons of enjoyment at BQC quizzes have their own value, and cannot be measured in rupees or paise. And here's the staggeringly amazing part -- the enjoyment is free!

Yes, BQC quizzes are open to all, and you are hereby invited to the 17th quiz of BQC's Season Three, to be conducted by Aadisht Khanna this Sunday. Memorize the details carefully -- as soon as you finish reading this post, this website will vanish, so burn these words in your memory:

QM: Aadisht Khanna

Time: 3 pm, Sunday, December 14, 2008 (Please be there by 2:45 pm)

Venue: 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 should note that they do not need to form teams in advance -- teams are formed by a draw of lots. So if Bipasha Basu and Katrina Kaif turn up for one of our quizzes, which is not unlikely, they might well be on the same team as you, oohing and aahing in admiration, and resting their palms on your thigh, as you answer those difficult questions about things they have never even heard of. Motivation enough?

ps. And ah, I plead guilty on not putting up reports of the last two quizzes. By tomorrow...

The Quiz Must Go On

It's been a terrible, terrible week for everyone who lives in Mumbai or cares for it, and at one level it seems perverse to plan enjoyment of any kind. But the best way to fight these blues is to get on with life as usual, and we at the BQC will do just that this Sunday, when the 16th quiz of our 3rd season is conducted. The details are below:

QM: Atul Mathew

Time: 3 pm, Sunday, November 30, 2008 (Please be there by 2:4 pm)

Venue: 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.

Also, I realise that I haven't yet put up a report of the last quiz. Mea culpa; apologies. I shall now wait for this quiz to pass and upload both reports together.

The Mitesh Agarwal Quiz

This Sunday's quiz, the 15th of BQC's third season, will be conducted by Mitesh Agarwal. Mitesh is flying down specially for this quiz, and rumour has it that he has spent the last few days in the US, quizzing Obama's transition team. Questions like, Is Africa a country or a continent? I am told that Obama's team passed. But what about us?

This quiz, btw, starts half an hour earlier than the others, because it needs to wind up before a business quiz in the evening that many BQCites wish to attend. A pox on them. The quiz will start at 2.30 pm sharp, and quizzers are requested to arrive at the venue by 2.15. The details:

QM: Mitesh Agarwal

Time: 2.30 pm, Sunday, November 16, 2008 (Please be there by 2:15 pm)

Venue: 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.

PS: Africa is a continent.

Udatta Duarah saves the day

The BQC quiz of November 2 almost didn't happen, with the scheduled quizmaster backing up at the last moment. The night seemed dark, the sky was cloudy, the quiz was in doubt. Then one man emerged from the shadows to save us. "My name is Duarah," he said. "Udatta Duarah."

Udatta put together a wonderful quiz at the last moment, and the 14th quiz of the BQC's third season saw a full house. Like all of Udatta quizzes, it went down to the wire, with the last round of differential scoring causing much turmoil. Vibhendu Tiwari's team came out of nowhere in the last one-third of the quiz, charging into the top three, and then taking away first place. Rajiv Rai's team came second.

For saving the quiz at the last moment, the managing committee decided, after arduous deliberation, to award 6 points in the league table to Udatta. His real reward, of course, shall come in R'lyeh.

The results:

BQC Season 3, Quiz 14

1st with 51 points
Vibhendu Tiwari
Prasann Potdar
Francis Rodrigues
Sajith Pai

2nd with 42 points
Rajiv Rai
Srikant Narasimhan
Norbert Fernandes
Arjun Swarup

3rd with 35 points
Aadisht Khanna
Anand Sivasankar
Govind Grewal
Sarat Rao

4th with 27 points
Amit Varma
Ajith Prabhakar
Mukund Sridhar
Bikram Barua

5th with 26 points
Sumit Roy
Amit Pandeya
Akshay Krishna

6th-7th (tied) with 19 points
Sumant Srivathsan
Sandip Sen
Brian D'Souza
Kaustuv Gupta

Pradeep Ramarathnam
Atul Mathew
Shiv Anant Tayal
Christina Fernandes

8th with 16 points
Anannya Deb
Akanksha Mathur
Vijay Shankar
Asim Anwar

And now for the league standings, which reveal a pitched battle for second place, and none at all for the top spot!

BQC Season three Standings (from fourteen quizzes, as of November 2, 2008)

76 points
Rajiv Rai

53 points
Sumant Srivathsan

44.5 points
Aadisht Khanna

42.5 points
Amit Varma
Rishi Iyengar

41 points
Vibhendu Tiwari

37 points
Sumit Roy

31 points
Udatta Duarah

29.5 points
Pradeep Ramarathnam

27 points
Rohit Ajitkumar
Shrikant Narasimhan

26 points
Souvik Basu

25.5 points
Anannya Deb
Francis Rodrigues

24 points
Ajith Prabhakar
Atul Mathew
Govind Grewal
Kedar Sastry

22 points
Amit Pandeya

21 points
Ameya Samant
Sandip Sen

18 points
Kaustuv Gupta
Vijay Shankar

17 points
Avinash Mudaliar
Mahesh Murthy

15.5 points
Akash Bansal
Prasann Potdar

15 points
Brian D'Souza

14 points
Atulya B
Mitul Kodali

12 points
Anand Sivasankar

11.5 points
Sarat Rao

10 points
Bikash Mohapatra
Dhananjay Shettigar
Kashyap Pandeya
Rahul Gaur
Rushi Bhavsar
Sajith Pai
Sandeep Rajpurohit
Sireesh Talluri Rao
Srini Rajagopal

9 points
Mukund Krishnan

8 Points
Akanksha Mohan
Manish Mishra
S Balakrishnan

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

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

4 points
Ravi Venkatesh
Neelabh
Rajendra Parmar
Vijay Chittoor

The next quiz will be conducted by Mitesh Agarwal on Sunday, November 16. A separate post follows about that.

The BQC Schedule for November and December...

... is as follows:

November 2: Arun Srinivas is QM.
November 16: Mitesh Agarwal
November 30: Atul Mathew
December 14: Aadisht Khanna
December 21: Arvind Krishnaswamy

Souvik Basu and Shambhu Shankar will probably conduct the one after that, but the entire schedule is tentative -- look for confirmations on this blog the week before the quiz is due.

For now, I can confirm that the 14th official quiz of BQC's third season will be conducted this Sunday by Arun Srinivas. The details are below: note that besides the date, they apply for all BQC quizzes.

QM: Arun Srinivas

Time: 3:00 pm, Sunday, November 2, 2008 (Please be there by 2:40 pm)

Venue 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.

Jesus Meets Sisyphus

So there's this story about Jesus going for a walk on the hillside when he comes across a dude in a Greek costume rolling a stone uphill. "How now, Sisyphus," he says. "Long time no see. Strange that we always meet here, no?"

"You can kiss my buttockular region," says Sisyphus, who seems irritable for some reason. "And hey, I heard you were dead. What're you doing up and about?"

"I returned to tell the world about this 11th Commandment I thought of," said Jesus. "Coming to think of it, it's especially apt for you. Wanna hear?"

"Yes, but hurry up, I got a stone to roll."

"Ya, whatever. Ok, here's the 11th Commandment: Thou Shalt Be Patient.

*

And on that note, an apology for this extremely late post, which shall encompass the results of three Sundays, when good Christians go to church, good quizzers head over to the BQC and Sisyphus does that rock 'n roll thing on a hill somewhere. Brace yourselves.

First up, Udatta Duarah conducted a quiz on September 21, which was, as usual, closely contested. Sumant Srivathsan's team, well down in the points at the halfway mark, made a late surge to win the quiz on the last question. Rajiv Rai's team was second. The results:

1st Sumant Srivathsan + Atul Mathew + 1, 2nd Rajiv Rai + Sumit Roy + 1, 3rd Aadisht Khanna + Vijay Chittoor + Manish Mishra

On October 5, Nishant Gupta conducted the 13th BQC quiz of the season. This was again a close quiz, with the top two teams scoring 73 and 71 respectively. The results:

1st Rajiv Rai + Pradeep Ramarathnam + Rahul Gaur + Francis Rodrigues, 2nd Sumit Roy + Sandip Sen + Atul Mathew + Brian D'Souza 3rd Sumant Srivathsan + Vijay Shankar + Kaustuv Gupta +1

In the weeks following this result, we had a slight mix-up, as we thought at one point that we didn't have a full quiz available for October 19. So that quiz got cancelled, and then kind gents volunteered questions, and we ended up having a non-comp quiz. Rahul Gaur and Sumant Srivathsan conducted half a quiz each, and it was outstanding stuff, and a pity that the points didn't count. I don't have the results with me, but I do remember first place:

1st Amit Varma + Aadisht Khanna + Shambhu Shankar

All in vain. Anyway, the points table now stands thus:


BQC Season three Standings (from thirteen quizzes, as of October 19, 2008)

69 points
Rajiv Rai

53 points
Sumant Srivathsan

42.5 points
Amit Varma
Rishi Iyengar

40.5 points
Aadisht Khanna

37 points
Sumit Roy

31 points
Vibhendu Tiwari

29.5 points
Pradeep Ramarathnam

27 points
Rohit Ajitkumar

26 points
Souvik Basu

25.5 points
Anannya Deb

25 points
Udatta Duarah

24 points
Ajith Prabhakar
Atul Mathew
Kedar Sastry

22 points
Amit Pandeya

21 points
Ameya Samant
Sandip Sen

20 points
Govind Grewal
Shrikant Narasimhan

18 points
Kaustuv Gupta
Vijay Shankar

17 points
Avinash Mudaliar
Mahesh Murthy

15.5 points
Akash Bansal
Francis Rodrigues

15 points
Brian D'Souza

14 points
Atulya B
Mitul Kodali

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

9 points
Mukund Krishnan

8 Points
Akanksha Mohan
Anand Sivasankar
Manish Mishra
S Balakrishnan

7.5 points
Sarat Rao

7 points
Ajay Ravindran
Avinash Umapathy
Kaustubh Chakravarti
Mukund Sridhar
Raamesh Gowri Raghavan
Rahul Bhaskar
V Sreeharsha

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

4 points
Ravi Venkatesh
Neelabh
Rajendra Parmar
Vijay Chittoor

We have many exciting quizzes coming up, and a schedule for the next few quizzes will be put up shortly. Be, um, patient!