Championship Match
The participants in the Championship Match are the one player who won all 7 preliminary matches (the Morning Champion), the seven players who won 6 of their preliminary matches, and the (one) player who had the highest points per tossup heard among those who won 5 of their preliminary matches.
Unlike in the preliminary rounds, all incorrect answers result in a deduction of 1 point. This is true regardless of whether the incorrect answer interrupted the question; it is thus different from ordinary “negs”.
Each player starts with 3 points. A player whose score reaches 0 is immediately removed from the match.
If any player reaches a score of 10 during the first 20 tossups, they sit out until tossup 21.
The Morning Champion sits out for the first 20 tossups, and enters at tossup 21 with a score equal to that of the leader at that time. After tossup 40, the lowest-scoring players are removed until four remain; if necessary, tiebreaker tossups are used, but they do not count in the overall score of the championship match. After tossup 50, the lowest-scoring remaining players are eliminated until two remain; the tiebreaker procedure is the same as before. At the conclusion of the match, tiebreaker tossups are read if and as necessary.
| Kevin Kodama | Olivia Lamberti | Ethan Strombeck | Aristotle Vainikos | Hanson Hao | Govind Prabhakar | Jonathan Lau | Dylan Bowman | Tomás Aguilar-Fraga | Answer | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oak Park-River Forest | Stevenson (Lincolnshire) | Auburn (Rockford) | Sandburg (Orland Park) | IMSA (Aurora) | Stevenson (Lincolnshire) | University Lab (Urbana) | University Lab (Urbana) | Saint Joseph (South Bend, Indiana) | ||
| Initial scores | 3 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 3 | ||
| 1 | 1 | “The Idea of Order at Key West” | ||||||||
| 2 | −1 | 1 | First Battle of Bull Run | |||||||
| 3 | 1 | Bahá’i | ||||||||
| 4 | 1 | Reynolds number | ||||||||
| 5 | 1 | Sweeney Todd | ||||||||
| 6 | 1 | Margaret Chase Smith | ||||||||
| 7 | 1 | Rosalind | ||||||||
| 8 | 1 | triangular numbers | ||||||||
| 9 | 1 | Max Weber | ||||||||
| 10 | 1 | trumpet | ||||||||
| 11 | 1 | Pablo Escobar | ||||||||
| 12 | 1 | −1 | molecular orbital theory | |||||||
| 13 | 1 | Uganda (in history) | ||||||||
| 14 | −1 | 1 | Istanbul (in literature) | |||||||
| 15 | 1 | Armenian genocide | ||||||||
| 16 | 1 | sex determination | ||||||||
| 17 | 1 | Mary Cassatt | ||||||||
| 18 | Annie Proulx | |||||||||
| 19 | 1 | Serengeti National Park | ||||||||
| 20 | 1 | Cambrian Period | ||||||||
| Scores through 20 | 3 | 6 | 6 | 7 | 4 | 6 | 5 | 3 | ||
| Kevin Kodama, as Morning Champion, entered the game with a score equal to that of the then-leader, Hanson Hao: 7. | ||||||||||
| 21 | 1 | Peter Debye | ||||||||
| 22 | Charles Bukowski | |||||||||
| 23 | 1 | Acadia National Park | ||||||||
| 24 | 1 | −1 | China (in painting) | |||||||
| 25 | 1 | Cleon | ||||||||
| 26 | 1 | hash table | ||||||||
| 27 | 1 | cows (in Celtic mythology) | ||||||||
| 28 | −1 | 1 | Menander | |||||||
| 29 | 1 | Great Zimbabwe | ||||||||
| 30 | 1 | restriction enzymes | ||||||||
| 31 | 1 | France (in film) | ||||||||
| 32 | 1 | Jim Jordan | ||||||||
| 33 | Robert Hayden | |||||||||
| 34 | 1 | cubing | ||||||||
| 35 | 1 | Cleveland (in history) | ||||||||
| 36 | 1 | Hannah Arendt | ||||||||
| 37 | 1 | Orlando (the Virginia Woolf novel) | ||||||||
| 38 | 1 | Finland (in music) | ||||||||
| 39 | 1 | Solidarity | ||||||||
| 40 | 1 | esters | ||||||||
| Scores through 40 | 9 | 5 | 9 | 7 | 11 | 6 | 7 | 6 | 3 | |
| The five players with the lowest scores were to be eliminated. Govind Prabhakar, Dylan Bowman, and Tomás Aguilar-Fraga were thus eliminated. A tiebreaker was held to determine whether Aristotle Vainikos or Jonathan Lau would remain in the game; Jonathan answered the first tiebreaker correctly, so Aristotle was eliminated. Thus, Kevin Kodama, Ethan Strombeck, Hanson Hao, and Jonathan Lau remained. | ||||||||||
| 41 | 1 | Henry’s law | ||||||||
| 42 | 1 | Émile Zola | ||||||||
| 43 | 1 | John Bolton | ||||||||
| 44 | 1 | Mohammad Reza Shah Palavi | ||||||||
| 45 | 1 | −1 | magnetic permeability | |||||||
| 46 | 1 | Wilkie Collins | ||||||||
| 47 | 1 | Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky | ||||||||
| 48 | Mahavira | |||||||||
| 49 | 1 | Queen Anne | ||||||||
| 50 | −1 | 1 | matrix inverse | |||||||
| Scores through 50 | 13 | eliminated | 11 | eliminated | 12 | eliminated | 7 | eliminated | eliminated | |
| The two players with the lowest scores were eliminated: Ethan Strombeck and Jonathan Lau. Thus, Kevin Kodama and Hanson Hao remained. | ||||||||||
| 51 | 1 | Sandra Cisneros | ||||||||
| 52 | 1 | Beethoven’s piano sonatas | ||||||||
| 53 | 1 | endosymbiosis | ||||||||
| 54 | 1 | Boudicca | ||||||||
| 55 | 1 | Armenia (in geography) | ||||||||
| 56 | 1 | flowers (in literature) | ||||||||
| 57 | 1 | William Herschel | ||||||||
| 58 | −1 | Austria | ||||||||
| 59 | 1 | Arabic (in philosophy) | ||||||||
| 60 | −1 | Slaughterhouse cases | ||||||||
| Final scores | 17 | eliminated | eliminated | eliminated | 14 | eliminated | eliminated | eliminated | eliminated | |
Kevin Kodama of Oak Park and River Forest High School is the champion of the 2018 Scobol Solo. He is the first player from OPRF to win the tournament. The previous best finishes by OPRF players were second place (Kevin himself, 2017; Ben Carbery, 2010).