Worldly-Wisest Student Proves She Knows Where She's Going

Jon nodded. "I just came sooo close."

Partha lost on which country was the most populous in the Southern Hemisphere and had at one point withdrawn from the United Nations. (Answer: South Africa.)

Defeat one year often inspires a greater fight for victory the next. Of the 10 finalists, six had battled in the 2006 championship.

Among them was Ben Geyer, the three-time D.C. champ, who broke through this year to the final 10.

The competition, he said, was brutal.

Questions crisscrossed the globe, delved back in time and called up the haunting phrases of Silbo, a code language whistled across the island of Gomera.

(And Gomera is administered by which country? Answer: Spain)

Ben, 13, a seventh-grader at the British School of Washington, was flummoxed by the cameo appearance of a tamandua. The furry, insect-eating creature inhabits parts of South America and a nearby island that borders the Gulf of Paria, otherwise known as . . .

"Name that island!" "Jeopardy!" host Alex Trebek bellowed.

The finalists split between the Falklands or Trinidad.

Fatally, Ben opted for the Falklands, his second mistake. He was the first to go, followed soon by 10-year-old Ben Taylor of West Virginia, the youngest and shortest of the finalists, who told Trebek he had to sit on a huge cushion to see above his name card.

Exeunt also in short order the contestants from Alaska, Colorado, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Puerto Rico and Tennessee.