Local brain gang claims knowledge turf

La Conner’s Knowledge Bowl Team, “Somewhat Clean,” started off the competition year with an impressive victory in their first of three district rounds last week in Snohomish.

Meanwhile, La Conner’s team “Too Fre$h,” consisting mostly of freshmen new to Knowledge Bowl, took second place in the 2B division.

“Somewhat Clean” is mostly made up of seniors this year and is proving to be the team to beat, as they secured the overall winning spot by a margin of 13 points — even when competing against schools from Northwest Washington in all size divisions.

La Conner is in the smallest 2B division, but in the district tournaments, they compete against even the much larger 4A schools, so their win speaks volumes of just how big it was.

Knowledge Bowl is a brain sport, somewhat like Jeopardy!, where teams compete to be the first one to answer questions correctly before the 15-second buzzer sounds.

The first round consists of 50 written questions, after which the teams are placed in oral round rooms based on how well they did in the written round — the three highest scoring teams compete against the other highest scoring teams and on down the line.

Each team, consisting of up to four members, sit with their hands hovering over a buzzer bar, and the first team to buzz in, once the question begins to be read, gets the first shot at answering questions like, “What element was named for Marie Curie’s homeland?” or “What prime minister of India oversaw that country’s transition from a monarchy to a republic?” Both questions were answered correctly by team “Somewhat Clean.”

Subject categories include literature, history, current events, politics, geography, math, science, grammar and pop culture.

Many of the math questions are nearly impossible to answer in the allotted 15 seconds. For example, “Express the year in which the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor as a binary number,” takes a little doing, but the competitors try.

More often than not, a team buzzes in before the question is fully read, which stops the reading and the team must answer, giving their best guess, since they don’t fully know what the question is.

Often, the biggest clue is placed at the end of the question. Part of the strategy is holding back from buzzing in, because if the team that buzzed in early gets it wrong, the reader will repeat and complete the question for the teams that did not buzz in, increasing the odds of getting the point, but timing is everything.

The rock star of team “Somewhat Clean” has been, and continues to be, senior Will Malcomson, a walking dictionary of historical, geographical and political facts that left opposing teams shaking their head, in disbelief as he answered question after question with amazing accuracy.

Out of 200 total questions in the tournament, team “Somewhat Clean” answered an impressive 92 correctly.

Many of this year’s Knowledge Bowl team members were not able to make the tournament due to illness, so both teams competing last week only had three members each.

Coach Sally Schroeder said, “With any luck, we will have three teams compete at the next event on December 8.” It’ll be a tournament worth watching.