After jumping to joint lead following a crushing victory over Maxime Vachier-Lagrave of France, Anand could not repeat the magic and Caruana deserved all the credit for taking chances.
The Indian ace still has to play Fabiano Caruana of the United States and ultra-solid Sergey Karjakin of Ukraine in the remaining rounds.
Having won two games in a row with white pieces earlier in the tournament, Carlsen could do little against Anand this time and the Norwegian was not quite happy with his play.
With the invincible tag around him these days, Ding Liren did not face any real danger from Anand, who has 1.5 points in all.
It was on the eighth move that Anand was caught unaware. Aronian was following an earlier game by countryman Hrant Melkumyan and as Anand confided to him after the game, he had not paid enough attention to this move order.
The finish in the top half means that Anand will get an extra white five white against four black games in what is known as the strongest tournament of the year.
Adhiban became only the second Indian after Abhijeet Gupta (in 2016) to win the prestigious Reykjavik Open.
The Indian Grandmaster Anand defeated Ian Nepomniachtchi, Alexander Grischuk and Daniil Dubov of Russia and Hikaru Nakamura of the United States en route to his final score.
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Looking for his sixth record title, Anand took his tally to 4.5 points out of a possible eight and now needs to score at least two wins in the remaining five rounds to be in with a chance to win the title.
The loss proved costly as Anand slipped to joint sixth spot from his overnight joint second position, while, Shakhriyar Mamedyarov of Azerbaijan stretched his lead to a full point after his third straight victory in the tournament.
The Indian ace had scored an excellent victory over Caruana in the same opening a couple of days back but Wei Yi appeared better prepared.
Anand said there have been very few people who have finished on the podium in both formats, which made the achievement all the more sweet.
After ending the first day of the Blitz category on a disappointing note, Anand was a class act on the final day as he won against Maxime Vachier-Lagrave of France.
Playing with black pieces, the former world champion played the contest on an aggressive note which caught the world number one Carlsen off guard.
After the sixth round, both Anand and Swapnil were at the joint third place along with 16 others with 4.5 points at the end of round six.
International Master Praggnanandhaa, who is just 12 years old, took 64 moves to force 26-year-old Howell to surrender, taking take his overall points to 3.5.
Anand will face Latvian grandmaster Shirov Alexei, while Harika will take on French Grandmaster Laurent Fressinet in the fourth round.
Anand notched up an emphatic win over American Marc Esserman, while Harika beat Englishman Oyama Akito in the first round late last night.
Earlier, five-time world champion Viswanathan Anand, B Adhiban, P Harikrishna, Murali Karthikeyan and Deep Sengupta had lost in the knockout event.
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