Written by Siri, Year 8
Hello! I’m Siri from Year 8, and I was on the quiz team for three matches that were rather successful.
The first match was the Junior match against Brighton College Prep. I was on a team with Jemima, Margaret and Stella, all of whom are in my year. Jemima was really good at answering lots of the starter questions – from Formula One questions (one would have thought that the McLaren team would have at least one person called McLaren in the driver’s seat, but it appears not) to Strictly and more. In the end we comfortably beat them 590 to 120.
I was asked to join a Year 10 team for the Intermediate quiz match against Haliford School. My teammates were Flora and Anisha. We won 490-400 – I learned from my older teammates appropriate ways to express your joy of victory. This time, Anisha answered lots of the questions and earned us lots of points (at least half of our total for that match).
Then came the Senior Team. We were playing against students 3-5 years older than us, but we only lost by 20 points after a tiebreak. I managed to answer a couple of questions – like one about the first line of 1984 (“It was a bright, cold day in April, and the clock struck thirteen”) – and Molly managed to answer a question about the national flower of France even though it was on the other team’s uniforms (Fleur de Lis). Molly was a really good quizzer in this match and provided us with the answers to quite a lot of the questions.
As for how I prepare for matches – I find that fast reaction times mean that you can buzz in quicker than your opponent and thus get more points, so I focus on that.