Cambridge’s quiz show powerhouse Buckingham Browne & Nichols (BB&N) faced off last Friday with upstart challengers from Cambridge Rindge & Latin School (CRLS) in a battle for brainy bragging rights in the opening taping for GBH’s 17th season of “High School Quiz Show.”
BB&N won the competition in 2023 (Season 14) and lost in the finals in 2024 and 2025, both times losing to Lexington High School.
CRLS, meanwhile, is making its first appearance in the competition. It qualified by going to GBH’s Brighton studios last November for Super Sunday, a quiz show smackdown where 70 Massachusetts high schools vie for the 16 spots in the show. A 17th team is added as a wildcard and plays in the first match of this bracket-style competition.
CRLS had little experience with quiz bowl-type events before this school year, said Julian Salazar, one of the team coaches and a CRLS geometry teacher. Its team had only been to a couple of competitions and had a practice scrimmage match against Somerville High School, veterans of “High School Quiz Show” who lost to BB&N in the semi-finals last year.
The CRLS team, which Salazar describes as an entirely student-led effort, wanted to participate in Super Sunday. “We brought them here and they crushed it,” he said.
Two Cambridge schools facing off “highlights the extraordinary academic depth found within this community,” said Hillary Wells, the show’s executive producer and GBH Director of Youth Media. “Cambridge is a global hub of innovation, and that intellectual rigor was on full display in this match-up,” she added.
A quiz show team features four players. The CRLS starting four is made up of senior Maude Ullman, junior Declan Lewis, sophomore Safi Twombly, and freshman Ezra Hurst-Hiller. The group came into the match with some quiz bowl experience, though no prior Quiz Show experience. “A lot of our preparation was watching old episodes of the show, reading transcripts and answering the questions,” said Hurst-Hiller.
Though he’s the youngest team member, being literally in the spotlight didn’t faze him. Hurst-Hiller acts in plays, and said the quiz show experience is “a kind of improv.”
Ullman kept her nerves in check by recalling a gaff made by Saturday Night Live cast member Colin Jost. When Jost was a Harvard undergraduate he competed on a college-themed episode of the trivia quiz show “The Weakest Link.” Jost was asked what season August is in, “and he says August is in the Fall, and he was wearing a Harvard sweater – so I can’t be as embarrassed as that,” she joked.
Most contestants quickly lose their butterflies, said Joe Hanson, who has been the host of the game show since 2024. “You can see those nerves a little bit before the show starts – and I know it sounds cliché – but they are competitors,” Hanson said. “As soon as that buzzer comes up and it’s time to play, you just see them go steely-eyed.”
On the other side of the podium, BB&N is on a mission to reclaim its crown after two straight years as runner-up. “A big goal of ours is to give it another good push this year, especially given the history of our team in this competition,” said You-Yan Wang, a BB&N senior who has been on the team for two years.
Along with Wang, BB&N’s starting lineup includes senior Alec Bailey — the sole team member from Cambridge — sophomore Dean Riaz and junior Andreas Bai, a three-year member and the team’s captain. “For this [particular] group, last year was our first year on the show, so we tempered our expectations and thought of it as a mini-rebuilding year,” Wang added.
Beyond setting those expectations, BB&N’s quiz team co-advisor Sam Crihfield said the emphasis has always been on having fun with knowledge. “One thing they have continued to do over the years is keep things light and fun and not stress too much,” he said.
Hanson says it’s good to see mental skills get the spotlight. “We are so used to high school sports getting that attention and energy, it’s awesome for the districts and the schools and the towns to show that they are making [knowledge] a priority,” he said.
While they were the first match-up filmed, they aren’t the season opener on air. The season premiere will be Feb. 7, 2026. The matchup between the two Cambridge schools is slated to air on March 5 at 6 p.m. ET on “High School Quiz Show’s” YouTube Channel, followed by a GBH2 broadcast on March 7 at 6 p.m. ET.
This story was updated to note that the CRLS coach’s first name is Julian, and to include this season’s premiere date on GBH.
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