On Wednesday May 7, two Year 8 Cobham Intermediate teams and one Year 7 team competed in the Otago Daily Times Spelling quiz 2019. Four spelling quizzes were taking place across the country in Cromwell, Dunedin, Timaru, and Christchurch. Naturally, the Cobham teams attended the quiz in Christchurch.

Upon arriving at Christchurch South Intermediate, the teams found themselves waiting for about half an hour until 6:40, when the quiz commenced. Paper plaques saying a school name and the team number were distributed spontaneously on each desk in the Christchurch South Intermediate hall. The quizmaster was a woman called Patricia, who was the editor of the Otago Daily Times Extra newspaper.

There were ten rounds that the teams would participate in. Abbreviations, matching words to their country’s origin, spelling words, matching words with their meanings, proofreading, and guessing a word from clues. The spelling rounds were more difficult than in 2018 with a number of silent letters,  irregular words, and the challenging word, mischievous. 

The competition commenced with a spelling round, which was our teams’ forte, and the following rounds included choosing the correct word from two homonyms and writing out some tricky abbreviations. Several other rounds took place and our teams competed fiercely to earn a perfect score in each round. Halfway through the night, the record of the points was announced, with Cathedral Grammar school in the lead on 53 points. Christchurch South and Cobham team 38 tied on 52 points with Cobham Intermediate team 46 was close behind on 51 points. Excitement mounted.

At the conclusion of the competition, the Cobham teams placed exceptionally well, with all of the teams earning a TOP SEVEN slot on the night.  We would like to extend a big congratulations to the team members who competed on the night!

At the end of the quiz, Cobham Intermediate team 38 tied for a commendable SECOND EQUAL with Christchurch South, earning 81 points. Well done to Evangelyn Teh, Ody Ubukata Sekman and Ryan Yi on their success!

Written by Evangelyn Teh with support from  M McCombe