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.

Much fun x 2

This is a report of two quizzes, one conducted by Rajiv Rai on October 8, and one by Arun Srinivas on October 29. Immense fun came in both of them, though there's not much new about that. Is there?

Rajiv's much-awaited quiz was superbly balanced and keenly contested, with all 17 participants taking part in the finals, if one may call it that, in five teams of three each and two lonely souls. Sumant Srivathsan, Anand Sivakumar and Arun Srinivas led from start to finish, eventually winning by a whopping margin of five points, 27.5 to the 22.5 of two other teams. The final results (and scores):

1] Sumant Srivathsan, Anand Sivashankar and Arun Srinivas (27.5 points)

2] Nandan Krishnaswamy, AP Alagarsamy and Souvik Basu (22.5)
2] Arvind Krishnaswamy, Pradeep Ramarathnam and Amit Varma (22.5)

4] Govind Grewal and Aadisht Khanna (20)

5] J Ramanand, Naveen Unni and Satyam (19)

6] Rishi Iyengar, Aditya Jalan and Ravi Venkatesh (17.5)

Arun's quiz on the 28th got a low turnout, perhaps because it came just after Diwali. Many who confirmed did not come, and redemption, I'm afraid, will not come easy for them. In any case, the quiz turned out to be quite a thriller, and was decided by a last-question buzzer. In brief, the results:

1] Rishi Iyengar and Amit Varma
2] Sumant Srivathsan and Naveen Unni
3] Arvind and Nandan Krishnaswamy

A post with the league standings, written by Rishi, will arrive duly.