from The Morning Call, Allentown, Pennsylvania

The Parkland High School team was slaying the competition like the 14th century conqueror Tamerlane.

They came, they saw and the scholastic scrimmage team almost conquered.

But a contested answer to a question about Tamerlane made the difference between a solo victory for Parkland and an unprecedented tie with two out-of-state schools last week on QuizNet, a national high school quiz game played in an online chat room.

Though Parkland is a traditional powerhouse at many academic competitions, there are no crowds, cheerleaders or marching bands to spur on these athletes who exercise their brains and compete at knowledge of art, history, literature, math, science and current events.

The nation is transfixed by television's "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" and "Jeopardy!" but there are no million-dollar prizes in these QuizNet games, no light banter exchanged with Regis Philbin or Alex Trebek.

What Parkland's scholastic games lack in fanfare and money, they make up in wit and stunning displays of intellectual prowess. And the contestants get a lovely gift of deep satisfaction from answering an abstruse question.

Parkland is among a growing number of U.S. high schools that are playing academic quiz games, whether televised, online or face-to-face, say game organizers and coaches.

"When I started marketing questions back around 1980, you could count the number of tournaments in the dozens, and now you can count them in the hundreds," said Chip Beall, host of QuizNet and president of Questions Unlimited, one of the largest and oldest suppliers of quiz questions.

On this day, the lure of competition has drawn a dozen members of Parkland's Scholastic Scrimmage team to huddle around a computer after school in a darkened classroom where a poster of Albert Einstein hangs next to the board.

A larger version of the computer screen is projected onto the board so everyone can follow. Peter Feldman, 17, a junior, has just come in from a run to Burger King, and there is relief over the arrival of french fries and soft drinks.

The QuizNet competition is about to begin, and there is chatting among the 14 teams from towns in Texas, Montana, Washington, New York and points in between.

"Good afternoon, friends, and welcome to QuizNet!" Beall types from his office in Columbus, Ohio. "Good luck to everyone! Now, let's get started."

The Parkland team moves into action and nails the first question, correctly attributing a quote to U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. "Parkland enters with a flourish," Beall writes.

As the competition progresses, Parkland's team continues to quip, concentrate, grow tense, shout and shush each other to be quiet. And they get the answers time after time.

"How did you know that?" someone asks.

"It comes from being psychic and knowing too much," says senior Chris Bench, 18, master of arcane knowledge and literature.

Feldman's cell phone suddenly rings by playing a tune.

"That would be Verdi?" Bench answers, and everyone laughs.

"It's fun to actually get to use this immense wealth of crap that I stored in my brain all these years," Bench said later. "I've got almanacs throughout the entire house. They're always being picked up and browsed. I must have gone through the Guinness World Records 10 times."

The team prepares by reviewing specially ordered quiz books, practicing in mock competitions with buzzers, and watching recordings of the Lehigh Valley PBS 39 program "Scholastic Scrimmage."

The questions tend to be more academic than the fare on the television quiz shows and are more related to a high school curriculum, coaches said.

Bench keeps poet T.S. Eliot's works on hand.

"At the beginning of each season, I reread 'The Wasteland' and 'The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock,'" Bench said, "because invariably some of the questions will be 'What happened in April? Which month is the cruelest? What were the women talking about as they come and go?'"

Bench said he has a knack for knowing what the end of a question will be, which helps give his team a jump on the others.

Team captain Nick Musolino said his teammates' broad range of expertise helps make them a strong team. "I think what makes us overwhelming for other teams is how fast we can be. Once we get momentum we really control a game by buzzing in quickly," he said.

Parkland is a team to be reckoned with locally and nationally, often placing first or among the top finishers. It qualified to compete with 120 of the country's best high school teams in June at the National Academic Championship in Washington, D.C., where the number of participating schools has doubled over 10 years.

In the Lehigh Valley, there has been a long tradition of participation in "Scholastic Scrimmage," one of the country's longest-running high school quiz shows, now in its 27th season, said Barbara Cohenour, co-producer of the TV show. Thirty public and private high schools in the area compete.

"It's almost an institution in the Lehigh Valley," Cohenour said. "It seems to be enjoying its usual tremendous popularity." The station has given the set a new, contemporary look this year.

Erie's public television station will air a "Scholastic Scrimmage" program, and the station in Harrisburg is considering one, she said.

"I think that says a lot. We're making a statement that we really support scholars and scholarship," Cohenour said.

"I think they've become more popular because of shows like "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" said Patricia Combs, coach of Southern Lehigh High School's team and previously Lehighton High School's.

She said television shows like "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" have mass appeal and have fueled the public's interest in scholastic high school games. In addition, the Internet has increased opportunities for students to play more games. Combs said more games exist now than she has seen in the 25 years she has been coaching.

At Bangor High School, where the scholastic team has been growing over the last five years, team members are savoring some of their recent victories, said coach John Gower, an English teacher. Their "Scholastic Scrimmage" victory against Catasauqua High School Thursday night, taped at Channel 39's studios in Lower Saucon Township, was announced over the public address system, and Gower played a videotape of the game to one of his classes.

Team members joked that they should hang a banner in the gym, he said.

At Parkland's QuizNet game, the jokes are flying fast and furious, but the team keeps them among its members and not online.

The players rib teammate Jack Shi, a master of Chinese history, who is teetering on a stool,

When someone jokingly cites George W. Bush instead of Sherlock Holmes as the person who said, "I perceive you have been in Afghanistan," Feldman says, "Bush? He doesn't know where Afghanistan is."

Beall once gave a point for humor to a losing Nevada team that was a first-time player. He doesn't tolerate bad sportsmanship and penalized a team 10 points during last week's QuizNet game because someone used the word "jerk."

Parkland's coach, Wendy Simpson, an earth sciences teacher, said her group always strives for good sportsmanship and to work as a team. "They're nice kids, and obviously they're incredibly smart," Simpson said.

Parkland's standings are so strong in this game that when the team incorrectly named a Robert Louis Stevenson novel, the other schools quickly copied their answer.

"They believe us!" a teammate said.

When another team incorrectly doubles the adjective and calls Van Gogh's painting "Starry, Starry Night," someone in the room quips, "The sequel," and another builds on the joke and says, "Revenge of Starry Night."

It's like this alot, Simpson said. "Their conversations are so funny to listen to. I always say there are too many neurons firing in here at once. It's always something intelligent, whether it's about current events or something learned that day. It's not the normal bicker you hear in the hallways."

(For the curious, the disputed question that put Parkland into a 3-way tie asked which people Tamerlane led to establish a 14th century empire with Samarkand as its capital. Parkland said it was the Mongols, but points were later awarded to the Bromfield School in Harvard, Mass., and the Tatnall School in Greenville, Del. Both schools said it was the Turks, and that answer was accepted after a protest.)

Reporter Wendy E. Solomon