In Sir Walter Scott’s Kenilworth, which historical figure lays down his cloak in a muddy spot at Grenwich for the queen to step on?

The Quiz Kids would know. Buzzing their way through binders of trivia questions, five members of the Quiz Kids club competed at the National Academic Quiz Tournaments’ (NAQT) annual national tournament. From May 25 to 27, senior club president Kevin Chung, junior team captain David Brown, senior Max Fox, sophomore Annie Chin, freshman Ben Bendor and club advisor Heather Mellows traveled to Chicago as Gunn’s first team to qualify for the NAQT nationals. “We worked hard, had talented players and good direction from Dr. Mellows to lead us there,” Chin said.

The Quiz Kids members meet every Monday and Wednesday to test their knowledge in mock trivia rounds. Mellows reads out trivia questions that can cover anything from modern art to chemical structures, while members anticipate the answers and try to buss in first on electronic buzzers. The questions come from previous NAQT competitions. “The facts are random, but interesting,” Chin said. “The topics span anywhere from geography, to math, to science, literature, history and even pop culture.”

The club meetings prepare the team for local tournaments, which, this year, led them to the national competition. The team competes in the Bay Area Academic League, NAQT, Knowledge Master Open and “Bay Area Quiz Kids,” a television show. The team qualified for nationals in the last possible tournament, the Nor-Cal State Championship on April 29.

Mellows helped to lead the young, two-year-old team to success. She became the club advisor this year after the previous advisor, Chris Stallings, left the district. Mellows was drawn to the collaborative aspects of the team. “I am happy to promote an academic competition that requires cooperation between the team, which is more than just taking a test individually,” she said.

Despite the team’s enthusiasm, the road to Chicago wasn’t easy. The team is relatively young, unfamiliar with certain subjects and short on money. Quiz Kids needed $4,000 to travel to Chicago. But never short of an answer, Quiz Kids held a week-long fundraiser from May 14 to 19. Members stayed after school each day to sell baked goods and ice cream, and even held a car wash at Gunn on May 19. The club raised over $1,400.

Mellows selected five members of the club to attend the national tournament in Chicago based on areas of expertise, individual records from regional competitions and availability. Each has a specialty. Chung specializes in geography, Brown in literature, Chin in chemistry and Fox and Bendor in history.

“Quiz Kids is kind of like sports for your brain–one may be good about some subjects, but you need to fit the pieces together to get a well-rounded team with as many subjects covered as possible,” Mellows said.

The competitors arrived on Friday and toured the city before the competition began on Saturday at the Crowne Plaza Hotel. After a welcoming statement from NAQT president R. Robert Hentzel, 160 teams from the nation gathered to compete. “We were competing in hotel rooms without beds, essentially,” Chung said with a laugh. “There were so many games going on at once, they couldn’t put us all in one large room.”

There were ten round robin games for each team. “Our record was 5-5, and a 6-4 or better record was required to advance to the next round,” Brown said. “But I still think we did extremely well.” Gunn placed 72nd out of 168 teams, the second highest place from northern California.

The team toured Millennium Park and the Magnificent Mile. Competitors also witnessed a rare phenomenon–once every 17 years, thousands of cicadas in Illinois tunnel up from the ground to shed their exoskeleton. The team enjoyed their trip. “The overall experience was really good. Spending time as a team solidified the group dynamic and made us more cohesive,” Mellows said.

The team is looking towards the future. Though Chung and Fox will graduate this year, members remain optimistic. “Even though Max and I won’t be here next year, I’m sure the team will qualify for nationals again and go even further,” Chung said.

So which historical figure lay down his cloak in mud? Ask a Quiz Kid.

Think you can compete with the Quiz Kids? Try these questions:

1. What tall, anvil-shaped clouds, also called thunderheads, extend from 4,500 feet to well over 20,000 feet?

2. His brother Aberforth was once prosecuted for practicing inappropriate charms on a goat. A lover of tenpin bowling and chamber music, he discovered the twelve uses of dragon’s blood, defeated the dark wizard Grindelwald, worked on alchemy with Nicholas Flamel [fluh-MEL] and became a popular transfiguration teacher, before taking Armando Dippet’s job. Name this headmaster of Hogwarts.

3. In what movie does Michael Palin play a stuttering con who, trying to kill Mrs. Coady, kills her dogs off instead, one by one?

4. Augustus De Morgan discussed its lack of sevens, but he was using the flawed calculation of William Shanks; today, it is believed that all digit combinations are equally likely. Brouwer asked if it ever contains a thousand consecutive zeroes. Name this number approximated in the Egyptial Rhind Papyrus as four times 8/9 squared, and by Aristotle as 22/7.

5. Testimony as to its efficacy includes invitations to tea from dukes and maharajahs. But it must be used carefully, for it can change your life–it can even make your girl your wife! Saying it backwards is going a bit too far. Name this extremely long word, which, if you say it loud enough, will make you sound precocious.

–Taken from www.NAQT.com (sample questions from National High School Competition 2003)

Answers: 1. Cumulonimbus clouds 2. Dumbledore 3. “A Fish Called Wanda” 4. Pi 5. Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious