House General Knowledge

 Scores are out of 41:

• 1st - Raphael (35 - won following two tense tiebreakers)
• 2nd - White (35)
• 3rd / 4th - Walter, Mulcaster (34)
• 5th - Hilles (33)
• 6th - Andrewes (31)
• 7th - Spenser (28)
• 8th - Manor (27)

writes Henry C (L6th, Deputy Senior House Prefect of Raphael):

On Tuesday, Mr Wells ran the annual House General Knowledge Quiz. This year was the first time I took part in the competition for Raphael, my House, and competing alongside me was Charlie J. (L6th), Ayaan R. (L6th) , Leo F. (Divs) , Samay K. (Divs) , Aviral A. (Divs), Max H. (U3rds) and Ethan V. (3rds). We took on the other Houses across four rounds, with 10 questions each. The first round was the picture round where we had to identify some of London’s landmarks from sections of pictures with something cut out of it. For example, one of the pictures was the face of Nelson’s Column.

The next round was The World Around Us. Here we were asked questions about the world, such as the currency of Kenya (Kenyan Shillings) and the city which the United Nations has their headquarters in (New York).

The History round followed. This featured questions about events all over the world, from the first country to give women the right to vote in parliamentary elections (New Zealand) to who led the parliamentary forces in the English Civil Wars (Oliver Cromwell). The next round, and what was supposed to be the final round, was The Arts. Here we were asked questions from the name of Taylor Swift’s first album (Taylor Swift), to the location of the Mona Lisa (The Louvre).

After these four rounds, the Heads of Houses collected in our answers and rapidly marked them before reading out the House rankings and scores from last to first. Raphael and White house had drawn in first place with 35 points out of 40! This meant Mr Wells had to find some tie breaker questions. The three questions were “What year did Queen Victoria die?” (1901), “Who was the lead guitarist of Queen” (Brian May) and “What is the capital city of Sudan?” (Khartoum).

Our answers were then taken back in and both Houses got all three questions right! One final tiebreaker was then devised. To give the population of Italy to the nearest million. Surely we couldn’t give the same answer again? We did! We both answered with 60 million. So to finally determine the rightful winner of the quiz we had to then guess it to the nearest hundred thousand. We guessed 60.2 million and then Mr Wells read out that we had won!

Overall the quiz was very fun and I’m glad we competed. Thanks for organizing it Mr Wells!