They live eight blocks apart, on either side of California Avenue --- the private-schooled sixth-grader and the Madison Middle School eighth-grader. When the dust had settled on the 21st annual Washington Geographic Bee at Stadium High School in Tacoma last Friday, these two West Seattle students had claimed two of the top seven places in the whole state.

Newcomer Mark Mockett placed fourth, while five-time veteran Sean Keller finished seventh.

Keller's total of five appearances in the state-level competition, beginning as a fourth-grader, is uncommon. At the earliest, his feat will not be matched again until 2011, and the most recent instance was 2003 or prior. The Bee is open only to grades four through eight.

The competition began with 101 students, separated into five groups. Alphabetically, they had come from Anacortes to Yakima, and from many places in between: from tiny Royal City, from distant Nine Mile Falls.

As occurred in the Washington Bee last year, even Keller's and Mockett's perfect scores of eight correct answers in the morning round were not enough to advance them automatically to the final round of ten. In order to appear on stage in the afternoon, Mockett and Keller first had to survive a tie-breaker round that reduced eleven contestants by one. (In contrast, the sudden-death tie-breaker in Oregon served to augment a mere seven perfect scores from among those who had scored only seven in the preliminary round.)

The National Geographic Society prepared the questions. Here is a sample:

1) Which state, which borders the Canadian provinces of Quebec and New Brunswick, was part of Massachusetts until achieving statehood in 1820?

2) Connecting George Town, on the island of Pinang, to the city of Butterworth, [this bridge] is located in which southeast Asian country?
3) Which country is bordered by Thailand and India?

4) The Eurostar Express carries travellers from Waterloo Station to Paris North Station through a tunnel under which body of water?

5) Which country, commonly referred to as the Land of the Morning Calm, is also one of the wealthiest in Asia?

6) The largest city in Siberia, with an estimated 1.4 million people, is located on the Trans Siberian Railway. Name this city.

It would be appropriate to say, "Google for the answers," since Google was one of two corporate sponsors of this year's sequence of school-state-national bees.

The other is Plum Creek, the timber resources company. Here are the six answers: 1) Maine. 2) Malaysia. 3) Myanmar. 4) English Channel (or more precisely, the Strait of Dover). 5) South Korea. 6) Novosibirsk.