Almost perfect: Andy Bay team wins its section

Dunedin's own Anderson’s Bay Primary School took first place with an almost-perfect score at yesterday’s Extra! Quiz, defeating some of the finest young minds around.

At Otago Museum, 10 groups of year 5 and 6 pupils competed in the Extra-Tapiri quiz, with teams from Ashburton, Timaru, and Dunedin lining up.

The winning Anderson’s Bay team of Sam Crawford, Luca Gardiner and Ed Young scored 99 out of 100, missing only a single question over the 10 rounds when they did not know whether Vladimir Putin was president or prime minister of Russia.

Questions they had to answer included what is the Maori name for the native morepork (answer: ruru) to how many bones are in the human body (206).

The winning pupils were confident, predicting their victory before the scores had been tallied, but were quick to point to each other’s strengths.

"We nailed the flag one because he’s really good at flags," Ed said of team-mate Luca.

A total of 27 teams attended, split into year 5 and 6, year 7 and 8, and year 9 and 10 sessions. Every question was met with a flurry of activity as the teams of two or three put their heads together to find the correct answer before the next question was asked.

Second and third place in the year 5 and 6 session were claimed by the two groups from Timaru’s Gleniti School.

The year 7 and 8 quiz was won by another Dunedin team, Noah Crannitch (12), William Blaikie (12) and Sam Maley (12), from Tahuna Intermediate.

Prebbleton School won both second and third place.

The year 9 and 10 session was won by a team from Central Southland College, made up of Lucas Gill (15), George Tolentino (14), and Ryan Callaghan (15).

rowan.sinclair@odt.co.nz