Geography Bee Winner on Top of the World

May 24, 2006 — -- Bonny Jain has had to overcome a lot of challenges to get where he stands today, at the top of the middle school geography game. There was the state competition, for one, and Tuesday's preliminary rounds of the 18th annual National Geographic Bee, in which he received a perfect score.

And then last night, at a picnic for the 55 Geographic Bee finalists from around the country, Jain got smashed in the face with a basketball during a pickup game.

He rules out foul play. But it would make sense if one of his fellow competitors had tried to knock him off his game. Jain, representing Illinois, had to be one of the favorites coming into this week's bee in Washington, D.C. Last year at the competition, he did as well as he possibly could -- fourth place -- without removing himself from future contention.

"[Last year] I wanted first, and then if I got second or third I couldn't come back this year, so after first it was fourth," Jain explained to bee moderator Alex Trebek during the competition.

Jain bested 10 other finalists who advanced after Tuesday's preliminary rounds. The winning question asked the contestants to "name the mountains that extend across much of Wales, from the Irish Sea to the Bristol Channel." The answer is the Cambrian Mountains.

From Satellite Images to Rapid-Fire Questions

The questions in the final round came in several formats. For one series of questions, each contestant was shown a satellite image that zoomed in -- à la Google Earth -- to reveal some characteristic of physical geography, such as a mountain or lake. They were then asked to identify it.

Another series presented the finalists with the names of three cities and asked which river runs through them. For example, one contestant had to know that the Mekong River runs through the cities of Savannakhet, Phnom Penh and Kratie.

And, to help bring geography to life, human and animal guests appeared onstage at various points in the competition, including a live armadillo (from the Pantanal, the region where Bolivia, Paraguay and Brazil converge); a 20-foot-long Burmese python from the area surrounding the largest freshwater lake in Cambodia (the Tonlé Sap); and a man dressed as the Buddhist deity Damdinchoijoo -- the lord of death -- who might have performed in Mongolia's largest city (Ulaanbaatar).When all the others had been eliminated, the final three contestants -- Jain; runner-up Neeraj Sirdeshmukh, representing New Hampshire; and third-place finisher Yeshwanth Kandimalla from Georgia -- wowed the audience by answering a set of rapid-fire questions as fast as host Trebek could ask them. They lasted five minutes without a single wrong answer.

"Is anyone tired yet?" Trebek joked.

Tuesday's contest consisted of nine rounds of questions, each with a different emphasis, from world agriculture to the geography of current events. The 55 competitors even had to complete a set of geographic analogies, such as "Urdu is to Pakistan as Sinhalese is to what?" The answer, of course, is Sri Lanka.

For his vast knowledge of geography, Jain was awarded a $25,000 college scholarship, which he hopes to put to good use at either Harvard or MIT, studying cultural anthropology. The second- and third-place finishers received $15,000 and $10,000, respectively.

But whatever great feats Jain goes on to achieve, Wednesday was a day to appreciate the little things. A fellow competitor reminded him of an important milestone in his life that he had achieved: He can now have his own Wikipedia entry.

"Aww, sweet!" Jain exclaimed at that notion.