All hail Rajiv, the SEQC Satan!

The last Leg of the 'Devil take the Hindmost' solo quiz series saw two different levels of competition. At the top, Rajiv finished well ahead of the pack. He had already sealed the series victory at the previous Leg, but with this, he finished a clean sweep of 4 first-pace finishes. Amazing!

But behind him, the peloton saw some vicious scrapping during this Leg. To begin with, Amol failed to qualify for the Top 16 through a tie-breaker, but Vikram, who had tied with him for the last spot had to leave, which meant that Amol got through anyway.

In the first Set of the Round of 16, Viola beat Aastha by 0.5 points to qualify for the next Round! In the other set, Doc's 4-point advantage took him into the last 8 ahead of Sreesh.

The close contests continued into the Round of 8. A Top 4 finish for Mayur in this Leg would have made him #2 in the competition behind Rajiv, irrespective of other results. But he finished 1 point behind Vilas, and didn't make it to the last Circle as a result. Kunal, who had no skin in the larger game, but was on track to qualify for the final 4, took a -5 on the very last question and was taken by the Devil. This Circle finished with Vilas on 155, Mayur on 154, and Kunal on 153.5.

With Rajiv, Srijit, Doc and Vilas in the last 4, there were some of the expected fireworks, but the real back-end tension was whether Srijit would win the 2nd spot, which would also make him #2 in the overall competition, 1 series point ahead of Mayur. Going into Q7 of the 8-question buzzer round, Doc was 0.5 points ahead, but he took a -5 on that question, and with Rajiv taking the final question on the buzzer, Mayur's fate was sealed.

Here are Top 4 scores for Leg 4:
1st: Rajiv -- 275
2nd: Srijit -- 219
3rd: Doc Shekhar -- 214.5
4th: Vilas -- 160

Here's the Top 8 list at the end of the series:



The full Leaderboard can be viewed at:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1fQc2-gzZuYdLwmIBP-_70sDDp4A7Z3Pf/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=101090708872883864349&rtpof=true&sd=true