HOUGHTON – Ten teams from seven high schools in the Upper Peninsula tested their knowledge base and buzzer skills Saturday at the Blizzard Bowl at Michigan Technological University.

This is the second year Michigan Technological University has hosted the competition, following one last spring. Tech will host two this year, said Liz Fujita, organizer of the event and coordinator in the Center for Pre-College Outreach at Michigan Technological University. Blizzard T. Husky was also present.

The top qualifiers from the tournament can qualify for regional or national-level tournaments, Fujita said.

Contestants had to draw on their knowledge of subjects as disparate as geometry, the Edict of Nantes and the musical “Hamilton.”

“These students are all super-smart,” Fujita said. “A lot of them have regular practices, a lot of them know an amazing amount of general knowledge, ranging from pop culture to sports to literature to science. It’s really impressive to watch them listen to these questions and know stuff based on really obscure clues.”

Houghton’s A team came out on top with a 9-0 record. Ironwood’s A-team took second at 8-1, while Dollar Bay (6-3) won third place outright after both they and the Houghton B team chose to hold a tiebreaker round with Houghton B. Republic-Michigamme, Ironwood, Dollar Bay, Calumet, L’Anse and Baraga also competed in the event.

The round-robin tournament allowed each team to play each other once. In the tournament, a moderator reads a toss-up question to both teams; whichever team gets the question right will then have first shot at a series of bonus questions that go further into the topic.

Each round is divided into seven-minute halves. A team unencumbered by opposition (and presumably gifted with an auctioneer for a moderator) could get 1,400 points. The balance of teams and the need to hear some portion of the questions means teams typically max out between 300 and 400, Fujita said; the maximum Saturday was 485.

Teams also compete in the televised Quiz Bowl competitions in Marquette. As in that competition, Saturday’s teams face no penalties for wrong answers unless one player tries to answer more than once. On one question: Houghton’s A team gradually whittled down possibilities as it gained more information about the subject: A structure, parts of which are linked with ethers, which is a subject of the fluid mosaic model, made more rigid by cholesterol, and forms vesicles during endocytosis.

“For 10 points, name this structure made from a phospholipid bilayer,” the question concluded.

“Cell membrane,” said Harkin Massopust, the last team member eligible.

Ben Lilleskov, a member of Houghton’s A team, is in his first year. The team has optional practices Mondays and Wednesdays, also in the game’s format.

“I like knowing the facts,” he said. “It’s fun to be involved with people who know things.”