The University Challenge. Everyone has seen the show. Everyone has always wanted to be as smart as the contestants, and on the 18th January, the Year 10 students at Sydney Russell were given the chance to get a taste of their own version of the University Challenge as a house competition.
The contestants were some of the brightest minds of Year 10 put against each other to win 100 points which went towards their house competition, one step closer toward the eventual winner of the house cup. Each team had three buzzers to share between their 5 team mates and were faced with questions from every subject to, mentally, fight to the last of the 20 rounds.
Like the realistic version, each round started with a starter question, open to all contestants to buzz in. If the Contestants answered correctly, they were given 3 follow up questions which would award 5 points each and could not be answered by any of the other teams unless the question was answered wrong.
As the competition, advanced, there was a series of quick-fire questions, each awarding 10 points, which caused a drastic change within the leader board as losing teams finally had a chance to catch up, the groups with the fastest reactions benefitting from this.
At the end of the challenge, there was one bonus question, rewarding 40 points to the team who answered correctly, the question being, What Disney movie was about a boy who was raised by wolves? Which, as all Disney fans would know, is The Jungle Book. The team that answered correctly was my team, the Centaur house, which brought us up to second place, unfortunately missing first place by 10 points.
The house that did win was the Dragon house who celebrated with various whoops and hollers, clearly excited for their win as other houses sat glum as the Dragons received 100 hundred points closer to the final battle of the houses, the final competition for the House Cup.
-Saima Ali
The Sydney Russell School
