Knowledge Bowl Films for Matchwits

Mackenna Yount, Copy Editor

On Friday, November 2, 2018, the Knowledge Bowl team traveled to Pueblo to film for an episode of Matchwits on Rocky Mountain PBS. Matchwits is a high school quiz show in which teams from high schools all over Colorado compete in three rounds of trivia with an additional tiebreaker round it needed. This is Matchwits’s 34th and final season.

Back in September, five team members, Molly Arndt (12), Gunnar Marquardt (12), DJ Char (12), Liam Davidson (11) and Nathan Hudson (11), were chosen to compete in the qualifying Matchwits test that was held digitally. Manitou qualified in 6th place out of the 16 teams that qualified for filming with a total of 48.5 points. The team that Manitou was up against was the 11th place team from Palisade High School.

Round one was the Toss-Up Round in which each team had three members answering questions by buzzing in whenever they wanted. Team members may not talk to each other during this round. Arndt, Marquardt and Hudson answered the Toss-Up questions. Each question was worth ten points and if a player buzzed in while the question was being read and answered incorrectly, the team lost five points.

Round two was the Captain’s Challenge in which players could consult with their team but the answer had to be given by only the team captain. Again, Arndt, Marquardt and Hudson were playing in this round but only Arndt could answer the questions because she was team captain. The Captain’s Challenge had a time limit of one minute where the teams try to get as many correct answers before the time is up. Both teams do not play this round at the same time and each question was worth ten points.

The third round was the Speed Round. During the Speed Round, there is a time limit of one minute and 40 seconds in which the losing team starts and picks a category of questions to answer as many as possible in the allotted time. Each correct answer is worth ten points and both teams play this round separately.

The final round allowed for substitutions, so Marquardt subbed out and Davidson replaced him. In the Head to Head Round, one player from each team takes turns in answering the given Toss-Up question, then after that question, the game continues to the next player on each respective team and so on continuing until all the questions are answered. There is no talking to other teammates in this round and each question was worth ten points.

To see how Manitou did against Palisade High School, tune in on February 9, 2019, at 4:30 PM on Rocky Mountain PBS.