Set by Aditya Gadre, Aniket Khasgiwale and Yash Marathe
Format: After no tournament last year on account of the pandemic, this year we decided to the take the BC Cup online. Hence the format was sligtly modified for this year.
For starters we had a 40 question elim to determine the 8 quarter finalists. The elim was specially designed to deter googling - with automatic transitions every 40 seconds and significant efforts put to ensure questions are not google-able. For the first time ever, we used guinea pigs for a BC Cup set - from the point of view of google stress testing. (On that note, many thanks to Sumant, Rajiv, Abhinav and Yasho).
The rest of the quiz was the same format - 60 question quarter to determine the top 4 for the semi finals. 40 question semi-final to determine the top 2. A 28 question final to determine the winner. The only difference was that we also shared the question in the chat window so that people could read the question (another BC cup first) which was necessary for time management.
Report
The 12th edition of the BC Cup saw the strongest field ever with 60 stalwarts from all over the country taking part. The elims were intentionally on the tougher side and in our opinion did a great job to identifying the best quizzers to go ahead to the Quarter Finals. Prithwish Datta and Kinshuk Biswas joint top scored with 18 points. We has a bit of a snafu with 1 question which impacted 2 individuals - hence we took 10 quarter finalists for this year. The cut off was 12 points with 2 stars. Venky Srinivasan actually qualified with 13.5 pts but unfortunately had another engagements and had to pull out of the quarters.
The Quarter Finals
The top 10 in the quarter finals were:
Prithwish Datta, Kinshuk Biswas, Gokul S, Arnold D'Souza, Suraj Menon, Anannya Deb, Deepanjan Deb, Venkatraghavan S (Ingit Sir), Samrat Sengupta, and Ranajeet Soman.
The quarters as expected were a very close affair - with at least 5 different people in the lead at various points of time. Most of the time all 10 people were separated by 1-2 points across the 60 questions. Over time Prithwish, Deepanjan and Ingit sir pulled away and had secured qualification spots, with all 7 other individuals in contention with 3 questions to go. Suraj and Samrat both pulled out clutch answers to stick their nose ahead (6 pts) leaving 4 others tied on 5 going into the last question. Ranajeet - routinely called BFQI (Best Football Quizzer in India) - got the last question on direct - and somehow missed a question around his pet topic and favourite club in football - to ensure that only Suraj and Samrat go into the tie breaker to decide the last semi final slot.
Suraj won the 3 question tie breaker 2.5 - 1 and booked his spot in the Semi.
The Semi Finals:
The top 4 were: Suraj, Ingit sir, Deepanjan and Prithwish
All participants started well and everyone was close by with one third of the semis gone. But then Deepanjan and Prithwish both started pulling brilliant answers out of nowhere to build a lead over the other two. Deepanjan took it to another level all but booking his slot in the final with a few questions to spare. Suraj then made a good comeback with a few great answers and was just 1 point behind Prithwish with about 5 questions to go. But then Prithwish got 2 of the last 5 and comfortably booked his slot in the final.
The Finals:
Prithwish and Deepanjan faced off in the BC Cup final. Prithwish in his fourth consecutive final and Deepanjan in his first. Deepanjan won the toss and decided to go second. Prithwish missed his first question and Deepanjan scored a crucial away goal to put the pressure on right from the outset. He then scored another away goal - to take a commanding 2-0 lead with just 7 questions gone. Deepanjan started his set well scoring a goal on his question to make it 3-0 but then Prithwish pulled back two quick away goals on consecutive questions to make it 3-2. Prithwish's second home set started familiarly with Deepanjan scoring an away goal on the first question to make it 4-2, but the rest of the set was a washout, fatigue surely now setting in as we entered out 6th hour of quizzing for the day. Deepanjan's last set started with an away goal from Prithwish to make 4-3. Prithwish now ensured that he just needed to tie to win since he had matched Deepanjan on 3 away goals with this answer. Deepanjan duly answered the next question to make it 5-3. The next few questions were unanswered, and we came to the last 2 questions both of which Prithwish had to score to win. He missed the second last question and Deepanjan won the highest scoring BC Cup final in years.
BC Cup Winner 2021: Deepanjan Deb
Runner Up: Prithwish Datta
List of BC Cup Winners:
2009: Sameer Deshpande and Suraj Menon
2010: Anannya Deb
2011: Anannya Deb
2012: Sumant Srivathsan
2013: Ramkey V
2014: Prithwish Datta
2015: Samrat Sengupta
2016: Shrirang Raddi
2017: Suraj Menon
2018: Suraj Menon
2019: Prithwish Datta
2020: No tournament
2021: Deepanjan Deb