Quizzes are invariably about historical facts, world news, dates, famous people, animals, events…all this is collectively termed ‘general knowledge'. But Scholastic took a break from the conventional and organised Wordmaster Challenge and as the title suggests, it tested the participants' knowledge of English.
The competition was open to students of Std VII from various city schools. After a round of written preliminaries, eight teams made to the stage for the actual challenge and after elimination, five battled it out for the top three slots. It was not as easy as it sounds, because each round was different. While one round had students guessing rhyming two-word answer for a riddle eg: Washed legume. Ans: clean bean), another had them finishing incomplete proverbs like “Fools rush in…”, “Better late…”, “A friend in need…” and more.
An interesting round that upped the excitement was the “Letter Chase”. Try guessing the answer to : F +6 +3 U -3 -9 +10 H. (Hint: +6 means the sixth alphabet from ‘F') The answer is ‘Flourish'. This being a buzzer round, enthusiasm was high.
The last round was the rapid fire spellings round. Each team had to spell the word given to them within a stipulated period of time. It was a fitting final round to an overall exciting competition.
One could feel the rush and anxiety off stage as there were rounds for not just the students in the audience but for the teachers as well. The teachers had to recite a nursery rhyme. Egged on by the students, they sportingly recited “Georgie Porgie”, “Sing a song of six pence” and the like. Then there was a round of “Contradictory proverbs” round, where people in the audience had to guess the opposite of proverbs like “Pen is mightier than a sword” (ans: “Actions speak louder than words”), “You're never too old to learn” (ans: “You can't teach an old dog new tricks”) and “There's no such thing as a free lunch” (ans: The best things in life are free”).
Effy Oommen John and Hariharan G. of Pon Vidyashram, Injambakkam, were the winners. They were in the lead for quite a few rounds giving them an edge in the final. Runners-up were G. Pranav Hari and S. Pranav Kamesh (“We are not related,” they clarify), of P.S. Senior Secondary School.
Vael's Billabong High International School, Chinmaya Vidyalaya and Maharishi Vidya Mandir secured the third, fourth and fifth places respectively. Sanjay Pinto, Executive Editor – NDTV Hindu, who was the chief guest, was all praise for the participants. “Even I didn't know the answer to many of the questions. In fact, we could recruit them as editors,” he joked. “I am sure they learnt more today than in their classes. What matters is not the rank but the ability to communicate,” he felt.
EFFY OOMMEN JOHN and HARIHARAN G., Pon Vidyashram, Injambakkam: It was a superb experience. This quiz was different from the other because it was completely about English language. We did not have much time to prepare for it. We would meet up in school and practise with the help of books from the library. The toughest had to be the dictation round.
G. PRANAV HARI and S. PRANAV KAMESH, P.S. Senior Secondary School: At first we thought it was a general knowledge quiz. Only after we reached the venue we realised that it was a word challenge. Hence we never got to prepare. But since we have participated in spelling bees before it was okay. We are used to this kind of competitions. Next, we are aiming for the Landmark Quiz.
