All hands for Mr Rodrigues

The 10th BQC quiz of Season 3 takes place tomorrow, and will be conducted by Francis Rodrigues. You are free not to come -- but then, you are also free to jump off your friendly neighbourhood skyscraper. All we can do is tell you what's good for you.

The details:

Who: Francis Rodrigues

When: 3:00 pm, Sunday, August 24, 2008 (Please be there by 2:40 pm)

Where: 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. Got it? Understood? Come then!

The results of the last quiz and current league standings are here.

The Last Question

There is no quiz more exciting than one that is decided on the last question. That's exactly how the last BQC quiz, conducted in two parts by Shiv Anant Tayal and Rahul Gaur, ended. When the last question was asked, with two points at stake, four teams had a chance of winning the quiz. Which team won? My team won. This post would otherwise have been too traumatic to write.

Both halves of the quiz were good, with many workoutable questions. It could be argued that there were a few sitters and chestnuts, and few questions went all the way around, but it was good fun nevertheless. Here are the results:

1st with 35 points
Amit Varma
Ananya Deb
Rohit Ajitkumar
Ameya Samant
Rushi Bhavsar

2nd with 33 points
Aadisht Khanna
Atulya B
Kaustuv Gupta
Vijay Shankar

Tied 3rd-4th with 31.5 points
Rajiv Rai
Sireesh Rao
Sumit Roy
+1

Sumant Srivathsan
Souvik Basu
Sarat Rao
Mukund Krishnan

5th with 30 points
Govind Grewal
Ajith Prabhakar
Atul Mathew
Jenish Shah

Tied 6th-7th with 26.5
Amit Pandeya
Pradeep Ramarathnam
Bikash Mohapatra
Shambhu Shankar

Kedar Sastry
Mukund Sridhar
Suraj Balakrishnan
+ 1

8th with 25 points
Vibhendu Tiwari
Dhananjay Shettigar
Francis Rodrigues
Sharath Manian

I've missed out the names of a few latecomers, and will fill them in once my operatives in the field get me the information.

And here come the league standings.

BQC Season three Standings (from nine quizzes, as of August 3, 2008)

44 points
Rajiv Rai (from 7 quizzes)

42.5 points
Amit Varma (9)

39 points
Sumant Srivathsan (9)

35.5 points
Rishi Iyengar (6)

26.5 points
Aadisht Khanna (5)

25.5 points
Ananya Deb (6)

24 points
Kedar Sastry (9)
Vibhendu Tiwari (7)

22 points
Amit Pandeya (9)

21 points
Ameya Samant (6)
Udatta Duarah (7)

20 points
Govind Grewal (8)
Rohit Ajitkumar (2)
Shrikant Narasimhan (2)

19.5 points
Pradeep Ramarathnam (8)

19 points
Sumit Roy (5)

17 points
Avinash Mudaliar (4)
Mahesh Murthy (2)

15.5 points
Akash Bansal (2)

14 points
Ajith Prabhakar (8)
Kaustuv Gupta (2)

10 points
Dhananjay Shettigar (?)
Mitul Kodali (2)
Rushi Bhavsar (2)
Sandeep Rajpurohit (4)
Sandip Sen (2)
Sireesh Talluri Rao (3)

9 points
Mukund Krishnan (4)

8 Points
Akanksha Mohan (2)
Anand Sivasankar (5)
Brian D'Souza (5)
S Balakrishnan (3)

7.5 points
Sarat Rao (5)

7 points
Ajay Ravindran (4)
Atulya B (?)
Kaustubh Chakravarti (1)
Mukund Sridhar (4)
Raamesh Gowri Raghavan (2)
Rahul Bhaskar (3)
V Sreeharsha (1)
Vijay Shankar (?)

6 points
Souvik Basu (?)

5.5 points
Francis Rodrigues (8)
Janardhan R (1)
Leo Mirani (1)
Nrupal Chaudhari (3)
Prasann Potdar (2)
Rasik Tirodkar (1)
Vikram Joshi (2)

4 points
Ravi Venkatesh (?)
Neelabh (?)

The next quiz takes place on August 24. More details will follow on this blog.

One more Sunday, one more quiz

Shiv Anant Tayal steps forward to the plate to conduct the next BQC quiz this Sunday, August 3. This will be the ninth quiz of the season -- admirers of Odin will understand the significance of that number. Be there to be initiated.

The details:

Who:Shiv Anant Tayal

When: 3:00 pm, Sunday, August 3, 2008 (Please be there by 2:40 pm)

Where: 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. You'll have fun!

The results of the last quiz and current league standings are here.

The Landmark Boys Assert Themselves

A few weeks ago, Rajiv Rai, Sumant Srivathsan and Vibhendu Tiwari combined to win the Landmark Quiz in Pune. The three of them asserted themselves at the latest BQC quiz as well: Sumant and Vibhendu won the quiz on Sunday, conducted by Ajay Ravindran, and Rajiv leapt to the top of the BQC League standings by coming second.

Ajay's quiz was painstakingly compiled, but the afternoon was riddled by goof-ups. First there were software issues with the presentation of the quiz; then there was a scoring goof-up (mea culpa); finally, there was yet another software goof-up that led to the excel file on which the teams were saved doing mysterious things, culminating in the record of the teams getting wiped out (Bill Gates culpa). Anyway, after much reconstruction of events, here are the top three teams of the day:

1st place
Sumant Srivathsan
Vibhendu Tiwari
Dhananjay Shettigar
Akash Bansal
Rohit Ajitkumar

2nd place
Rajiv Rai
Udatta Duarah
Sumit Roy
Kaustuv Gupta

3rd place
Aadisht Khanna
Ravi Venkatesh
Souvik Basu
Akanksha Mohan
Neelabh

After eight quizzes, this is how the BQC standings look:

BQC Season three Standings (from eight quizzes, as of July 20, 2008)

42 points
Rajiv Rai (from 6 quizzes)

37 points
Sumant Srivathsan (8)

35.5 points
Rishi Iyengar (6)

32.5 points
Amit Varma (8)

24 points
Kedar Sastry (8)
Vibhendu Tiwari (6)

22 points
Amit Pandeya (8)

21 points
Udatta Duarah (7)

20 points
Govind Grewal (7)
Shrikant Narasimhan (2)

19.5 points
Aadisht Khanna (4)
Pradeep Ramarathnam (7)

17 points
Avinash Mudaliar (4)
Mahesh Murthy (2)
Sumit Roy (4)

15.5 points
Akash Bansal (2)
Ananya Deb (5)

14 points
Ajith Prabhakar (7)

11 points
Ameya Samant (5)

10 points
Dhananjay Shettigar (?)
Mitul Kodali (2)
Rohit Ajitkumar (1)
Sandeep Rajpurohit (4)
Sandip Sen (2)

8 Points
Akanksha Mohan (2)
Anand Sivasankar (5)
Brian D'Souza (5)
S Balakrishnan (3)
Sireesh Talluri Rao (2)

7 points
Ajay Ravindran (4)
Kaushtubh Chakravarti (1)
Kaushtuv Gupta (1)
Mukund Krishnan (3)
Mukund Sridhar (3)
Raamesh Gowri Raghavan (2)
Rahul Bhaskar (3)
V Sreeharsha (1)

5.5 points
Francis Rodrigues (7)
Janardhan R (1)
Leo Mirani (1)
Nrupal Chaudhari (3)
Prasann Potdar (2)
Rasik Tirodkar (1)
Sarat Rao (4)
Vikram Joshi (2)

4 points
Ravi Venkatesh (?)
Souvik Basu (?)
Neelabh (?)

You can also view an excel sheet of the league table, with details of each quiz, here. Our thanks to Aadisht Khanna for putting this together.

The next quiz is on August 3. Shiv Anant Tayal conducts. More details will follow on this blog.

Another Sunday, Another Quiz

Ajay Ravindran conducts his first BQC quiz this Sunday, and girls have already started queuing up at Bandra, from what I hear. It's like when McDonald's first opened in Mumbai, remember? Except that McDonald's stayed open, but once Ajay's quiz is done, it's done. So be there!

The details:

Who:Ajay Ravindran

When: 3:00 pm, Sunday July 20, 2008 (Please be there by 2:40 pm)

Where: 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. You'll have fun!

The results of the last quiz and current league standings are here.

Back in the High Life

Rajiv Rai, defending BQC league champion, got back to his winning ways with a last-question win at the BQC quiz held on July 6. Devang Ghia, conducting his first BQC quiz, put together a stunning set of questions, all of which were well-framed, interesting and workoutable. There was something for everyone -- if you were looking for enjoyment, that is. If it was points you wanted, it was going to be a brutal battle.

Insistent calls for seedings at the start of the quiz were turned down, rather foolishly, by this author -- who then lost his league lead as last year's top two, Rajiv and Rishi Iyengar, found themselves in the same team after our randomisation software did its mojo. Aadisht Khanna's team led by a healthy margin almost all the way, with Rajiv's team, my team and Vibhendu Tiwari's team fighting for the remaining points on offer. (The first three teams get league points.) A thrilling theme round right at the end changed all that, as Rajiv's team won by one point, with 61, over my team and Aadisht's boys, tied at 60. In a quiz where each question was 4 points, this was a brutal margin, and for days the second- and third-placed teams moaned about how they wrote the right answer here and cut it out, or discussed the right answer there but said something else. Without such agonies, what would be the joy of quizzing?

The results:

1st with 61 points
Rajiv Rai
Rishi Iyengar
Shrikant Narasimhan
Sumit Roy

2nd-3rd (tied) with 60 points
Amit Varma
Amit Pandeya
Vikram Joshi
Francis Rodrigues

Aadisht Khanna
Sarat Rao
Rasik Tirodkar
Akash Bansal

4th with 48 points
Vibhendu Tiwari
Ananya Deb
Ameya Samant
Joanna Lobo

5th with 39 points
Sumant Srivathsan
Ajith Prabhakar
Pranob Gupta
Brian D'Souza

6th with 19 points
Ravi Venkatesh
Udatta Duarah
Pradeep Ramarathnam
Avinash Mudaliar

7th with 15 points
Govind Grewal
Souvik Basu
Aditya Agarwal
+ 1

8th with 2 points
Kedar Sastry
Ajay Ravindran
Neelabh
Rohit Bhat

For our league standings, everyone in the winning team gets 10 points, the runners-up get 7, the third-placed team gets 4. We always resolve a first-place tie with tiebreakers, but give 5.5 each if there is a tie for second, as happened this time. So here are the league standings, (sob) a little different from last week:

BQC Season three Standings (from seven quizzes, as of July 6, 2008)

35.5 points
Rishi Iyengar (from 5 quizzes)

35 points
Rajiv Rai (5)

32.5 points
Amit Varma (7)

27 points
Sumant Srivathsan (7)

24 points
Kedar Sastry (7)

22 points
Amit Pandeya (7)

20 points
Govind Grewal (6)
Shrikant Narasimhan (2)

19.5 points
Pradeep Ramarathnam (6)

17 points
Avinash Mudaliar (4)
Mahesh Murthy (2)

15.5 points
Aadisht Khanna (3)
Ananya Deb (5)

14 points
Ajith Prabhakar (6)
Udatta Duarah (6)
Vibhendu Tiwari (5)

11 points
Ameya Samant (5)

10 points
Mitul Kodali (2)
Sandeep Rajpurohit (4)
Sandip Sen (1)
Sumit Roy (3)

8 Points
Anand Sivasankar (4)
Brian D'Souza (5)
S Balakrishnan (3)
Sireesh Talluri Rao (2)

7 points
Ajay Ravindran (4)
Kaushtubh Chakravarti (1)
Mukund Krishnan (2)
Mukund Sridhar (3)
Raamesh Gowri Raghavan (2)
Rahul Bhaskar (3)
V Sreeharsha (1)

5.5 points
Akash Bansal (1)
Francis Rodrigues (7)
Janardhan R (1)
Leo Mirani (1)
Nrupal Chaudhari (3)
Prasann Potdar (1)
Rasik Tirodkar (1)
Sarat Rao (4)
Vikram Joshi (1)

4 points
Akanksha Mohan (1)

The next BQC quiz will be conducted at 3pm on Sunday, July 20 by Ajay Ravindran. Full details will follow shortly on this blog.

Devang Ghia, First Day First Show

This Sunday at the BQC, Devang Ghia, a longtime regular known for his knowledge of movie fundas, conducts his first quiz of the season. If entertainment is one of your strong suits, and you enjoy being entertained, this quiz should be tailor-made for you. The details:

Who:Devang Ghia

When: 3:00 pm, Sunday July 6, 2008 (Please be there by 2:40 pm)

Where: 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. You'll have fun!

The results of the last quiz and current league standings are here.

Two Close Quizzes in a Close Season

The world of tennis has looked much more competitive this season because Roger Federer's not been his usual dominant self. Well, there's Roger, and here's Rajiv. Last year's BQC league was dominated by Rajiv Rai, but this year he's off to a slow start, at least by his lofty standards,: he finished third in both the last two BQC quizzes. The field is deeper this year, and the competition is stiffer, and while there's little doubt that Rajiv remains the favourite to win Wimbledon this year's league, there are plenty of young lads who fancy being Nadal and Djokovic.

Quiz No. 5 of the season took place on Sunday, June 8, and was conducted by Abhishek Nagaraj. Aadisht Khanna and Ajith Prabhakar stormed to a narrow win over Kaustubh Chakravarty, Pradeep Ramarathnam and Mukund Krishnan. The quiz was entertaining in various ways, but a last question mix-up caused much confusion. It was a multi-part question with many +15s and -10s and -5s and so on, but after much activity, the question was scrapped. The positions of the teams had changed because of the question, but its scrapping enabled Aadisht to end up in first and Rajiv's team to take third place.

Quiz no. 6 took place on Sunday, June 22, and was conducted by Ameya Samant, with Amit Pandeya shooting 18 questions at the end as Ameya took his place as a participant. Both parts of the quiz had plenty of excellent fundas on India, a feature sometimes missing from BQC quizzes. The quiz was won handily by a team consisting of me (Amit Varma), Vibhendu Tiwari, Ananya Deb and Kedar Sastry. Mukund Sridhar, Udatta Duarah and the toggling combo of Ameya and Amit Pandeya pipped Rajiv's team to second place by half a point.

Now, very quickly, the results, followed by the BQC Season Three standings.

BQC Quiz 5

First: Aadisht Khanna and Ajith Prabhakar.

Second: Kaustubh Chakravarty, Pradeep Ramarathnam and Mukund Krishnan.

Third: Rajiv Rai, Anand Sivasankar.

Fourth: Ananya Deb, Kedar Sastry and Nrupal Chaudhari

Fifth: Mukund Sridhar, Sarat Rao and Naveen Unni

Sixth: Amit Varma, Amit Pandeya and Dhananjay Shettigar

Seventh: Udatta Duarah, Ameya Samant and Francis Rodrigues

Eighth: Sumant Srivathsan, Devang Ghia and Sumit Roy

And now for our latest quiz:

BQC Quiz 6

First: Amit Varma, Vibhendu Tiwari, Ananya Deb and Kedar Sastry

Second: Mukund Sridhar, Udatta Duarah and Amit Pandeya/Ameya Samant

Third: Rajiv Rai, Brian D'Souza and Akanksha Mohan

Fourth: Arun Srikumar, Nrupal Chaudhari and Francis Rodrigues

Fifth: Govind Grewal, Mukund Krishnan and Rahul Bhaskar

Sixth: Pradeep Ramarathnam, Devang Ghia, Ajay Ravindran and Sumit Roy

Seventh: Sumant Srivathsan, Souvik Basu and Shiv Anant Tayal

Eighth: Aadisht Khanna, Dhananjay Shettigar and Gautam Bastian

Points for the league table are given as follows: Each member of the winning team gets 10 points, each runner up gets 7, and members of the team coming third get 4 each. If second and third are tied, then 5.5. Here are the standings:

BQC Season three Standings (from six quizzes, as of June 22, 2008)

27 points
Amit Varma (from 6 quizzes)
Sumant Srivathsan (6)

25.5 points
Rishi Iyengar (4)

25 points
Rajiv Rai (4)

24 points
Kedar Sastry (6)

20 points
Govind Grewal (5)

19.5 points
Pradeep Ramarathnam (5)

17 points
Avinash Mudaliar (3)
Mahesh Murthy (2)

16.5 points
Amit Pandeya (6)

15.5 points
Ananya Deb (4)

14 points
Ajith Prabhakar (5)
Udatta Duarah (5)
Vibhendu Tiwari (4)

11 points
Ameya Samant (4)

10 points
Aadisht Khanna (2)
Mitul Kodali (2)
Sandeep Rajpurohit (4)
Sandip Sen (1)
Shrikant Narasimhan (1)

8 Points
Anand Sivasankar (4)
Brian D'Souza (4)
S Balakrishnan (3)
Sireesh Talluri Rao (2)

7 points
Ajay Ravindran (3)
Kaushtubh Chakravarti (1)
Mukund Krishnan (2)
Mukund Sridhar (3)
Raamesh Gowri Raghavan (2)
Rahul Bhaskar (3)
V Sreeharsha (1)

5.5 points
Janardhan R (1)
Leo Mirani (1)
Nrupal Chaudhari (3)
Prasann Potdar (1)

4 points
Akanksha Mohan (1)

The next quiz will be conducted by Devang Ghia on Sunday, July 6. That will also be the day of the Wimbledon final. Will Roger Federer storm back to the top?