The Streets of Tawa Quest
Friday, October 30th, 2009

Five teams (38 kids) took part in Friday evening's 'The Streets of Tawa Quest'. We started at the church hall, headed north along the Main Road, cut through to Oxford Street, passed Grasslees, and continued along Luckie, Nathan & Beauchamp Streets to Duncan Park. After a brief drinks stop, we headed through the park and back along the Main Road (heading south now), took a short-cut through to Victory Cres and on up to Franklyn Road, ending up at the Judd residence.

The groups set out at 60-90 second intervals. The first team to finish the course arrived at about 8.30pm, the last team just before 9pm. Howvever, as it wasn't a race, that didn't affect their actual positions.

There were 33 questions to be answered along the way. Most were worth 20-30 points each, with harder ones worth 50. In addition to that, the question sheet contained black & white photos of five letter boxes in different streets. All that the 'participants' had to do was list the streets in which those letter boxes were located. The other photo was of a sign in a certain street. Most of the teams managed to get most of those correct.

The maximum number of points available was 1200, 900 for the general questions and 300 for the letterbox and sign questions. Points could be lost if teams were 'spotted', or if individuals were seen running, or separated from the rest of their groups.

Each group had to carry a plastic chair around the route. A certain vehicle was driving around with one of the leaders shooting a water pistol from the car, and those who were observed ('spotted') holding their chair rather than sitting in it as the car drove by lost a small number of points. It simply meant that the kids were kept 'on edge', moreso as it started getting dark two-thirds of the way through. As it turned out, every team lost a few points for one reason or another. Fortunately this didn't affect their final placings.

Four out of the five teams did very well with their answers ... in fact for the first time the winning team got a score of 100% (although they did lose a few points for 'infringing')!

ACTUAL RESULTS (after points deducted for 'infringements'):

5th - Purple fluffy things
Angus, Bridie, Emma, Jess, Katie M, Lauren, Maddie, Rachel (Leader - Dawn)
950 points

4th - Lions of Tawa
Alec, Bob Jr, Daniel K, Jayden, Liam, Matthew, Mourad, Patrick (Leader - Ross)
1110 points

3rd - I Q Teaspoon
Daniel R, Hamish, Joe, Jordan, Oscar, Riley, Sammy + 2 others (Leader - Keith)
1120 points

2nd - Hippopotamus
Ashleigh, Caitlin, Hayden, Kayla, Lauren H, Mikaela, Teagan (Leader - Rebecca)
1130 points

1st - The Knee-boppers
Breanna, Erin, Jodi, Katie F, Sarah, Sophie (Leader - James)
1170 points out of a possible maximum of 1200

CONGRATULATIONS to the winning team - they each deserve a little bar of chocolate! Pictured are two members of the winning team.