Are the Scholar Quiz preparers smarter than the 8th graders?
History teacher Jed Rucker reads a Quiz question.
“Zero degrees Celsius is….”
Eighth grader Alec Lautanen raises his flag. “F-A-H-R-E-N-H-E-I-T.”
The crowd erupts into laughter.
The organizers of the Manhattan Beach Middle School Scholar Quiz have this problem every year—how to outsmart the middle schoolers. Because, by the end of the seven-day competition, the students tend to figure out the questions, even three words into it.
Lautanen, whose team beat out 600 students to win this year’s event, does a good job anticipating questions, says event chair Bert Bissell.
A couple years ago, while also team captain, he figured out the vocabulary questions early, she says, so this year they decided to ask them at the end of a very long question.
And yes, he answered—“Zero degrees Celsius is equal to 32 degrees Fahrenheit, Spell Fahrenheit”— correctly.
The Scholar Quiz is “the event” on campus, Bissell says. It is held in May, after state testing, and includes questions from current curriculum—“If neither the U.S President or the Vice President can serve, who fills the position,”—to pop culture, like “What did Kris Allen win on Wednesday night?”
The 150 teams participating this year trickled down to two final teams: the red team of Alec Lautanen, Nick Matson, Braden Currey and Ari Howorth and the blue team of Tom Wissel, Ron Yadin, Zach Gill and Rachel Azafrani.
By half time during the finals, the red team is up 125 to 45.
“I love multiples of nine, it’s my favorite number,” says a blue team member.
After the competition, the two teams hug and joke. They are all close friends, an onlooker says.
Then the winning team poses on the gym steps with their trophy for photos.
Howorth says his parents have been working him through dinner in preparation.
“When I got up there I was not so sure, but when people started cheering, it made me feel so respected,” he says, exaggerating every word.
His teammates laugh then try to describe the experience.
“You know the movie Rocky 4,” Matson says. “It’s not like that.”
For the more than 150 parent volunteers, planning the event is a learning experience. The test-writing team has to come up with 1000 questions and research them to determine the exact one answer.
“I guess it is back to the drawing board to try and figure out a new technique to stump these braniacs,” Bissell says.