parlimentarian wali khan's
guide to becoming a certamen god
Do you want to be the very best certamen player there ever was, ever will be? Do you want the eternal praise and admiration from your peers? Do you want to bring honor to your school and take home the Certamen glory this year? The path you must take is rather simple. In my years of certamen, I have developed a genius strategy (thank you Mr. Alan Zhang)
1
identify a “trigger word,” allowing you to know an answer before the question was finished. This trigger word could be a “tanta” for a result clause in advanced, “wine mixer” for arbiter bibendi in intermediate, or “2nd Punic war” for Scipio in novice. Recurring questions help you find your “trigger words” allowing you to buzz earlier than the other teams.
2
Grab buzzer number 3 of my team. Buzzer 3 is simply the best. You are around
your team, get to talk to them during bonus. The sense of the team being around me makes me more confident in my buzz and my answers.
Hyperbuzzing is common, and you will do it even if you try not to. If you
hyperbuzz and say something that related but you know is wrong. 9 times out of 10, another team will buzz just because you buzzed. If you say something the related but is wrong, the other team(s) might follow in suit, thus no points are earned for the question. Yeah, you might have gotten it right if you heard the full question, but at least no one else got them.
3
4
ALWAYS consult your team for bonus. You might be extremely confident that
“pistor” means fisherman because it sounds like the word for fish, but your teammate says it means baker. You might think you are the best certamen-ator
ever, but you are on a team. There is a reason for that. You all must support each other, and everyone has their strengths. Pistor does indeed mean baker and my team got the question right, all because we decided to consult one another instead of going with a gut reaction.
BE RESPECTFUL. You may win, you may lose. The JCL is a
family, we support one another no matter what. If you expect the praise and admiration of your peers for winning, you must be willing to show everyone else your praise and admiration.
5
OJCL Torch
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