Flags, famous faces and fossicking through the newspaper tested more than 250 Central Otago school pupils competing in the Otago Daily Times Extra! current events quiz yesterday.
Goldfields School, of Cromwell, set a record after its team won the year 5-6 section with 99 points out of 100.
Quiz co-ordinator and Extra! editor Ivan Behrnes said it was the first time a Central Otago team had finished so close to a perfect score.
The winning team, Will Slattery, Quinn Roberts and Ben Sinnott, knew where they lost the point.
They dropped it in the ''who am I'' round, where competitors gain more points the fewer clues they need to correctly guess the answer.
It was the first time the boys had entered the current events quiz and Ben said their effort was all down to ''teamwork''.
Quinn said they had been regularly studying the ODT -''reading it at least three times, every paper, for months ... even as far back as last year''.
Their team won from 38 other year 5-6 teams and six teams scored 90 or more, with 20 scoring 80 or better, Mr Behrnes said.
The Terrace 1 and Holy Family 1 teams were equal second, on 95 points.
The 10-round quiz, staged at Cromwell, was a mixture of mapping, flag identification, general knowledge, identifying photos of newsmakers and geography skills.
Later in the evening, a team from the Holy Family School in Wanaka scored 98 points to win the year 7-8 section.
Isobel Smith, Lukas Schafer and Ben McLachlan were delighted with their win, especially as Isobel and Ben had competed unsuccessfully in a tie-breaker for top honours at another Extra! quiz.
''Finally, it's our turn to win,'' Isobel said.
The team had been training hard for the competition, with folders full of things to study, she said.
The two points they missed were for correctly naming a city and mountain marked on a New Zealand map.
Forty-six teams entered and teams from Queenstown Primary School and The Terrace School, Alexandra were equal second, on 94 points.
Today, year 9-10 teams from throughout Central Otago will take their turn at the quiz. The event is held in four locations - Christchurch, Dunedin, Cromwell and Timaru - and about 1400 children will take part.
