You’ve probably heard the saying: “No matter how good you are, there’s always an Asian kid better than you.”
Well, we might have just found someone who this refers to, and he hails from none other than our little red dot.
Appeared on British Quiz Show
Maximilian Zeng rose to fame after displaying his abilities on the British television quiz programme, University Challenge.
Zeng is one-fourth of the team representing Imperial College London on the show. In the quarter-finals of the show, his team was up against student contestants from King’s College London.
You can watch the episode here:
In this round, a map of India was flashed on the screen. Its state borders had been completely removed. With just a pin on the map indicating a state capital, contestants were supposed to name the capital city and its corresponding state.
Totally unfazed, Zeng, 21 at the time, hit the buzzer within seconds after the first pin is shown and answered, “Chennai and Tamil Nadu.”
And he was correct.
The Singaporean, currently studying at Imperial College London, answered three more questions correctly. To which, no one was surprised anymore. Truly built different.
Newfound Britain Social Media Fame
After the episode aired, netizens started a thread of hilarious comments, all in awe of Zeng’s incredible abilities.
One comment wrote, “Rumour has it that Google Maps confers with Zeng before any map inclusions.”
Another says, “You can drop Zeng in the middle of the Pacific, he’ll still know the way home.” Others referred to him as “GPS Zeng”, while another dubbed him “The Human Atlas”.
Clearly, the English community has taken a liking to Zeng after discovering his unchallenged knack for hyperniche geography questions in a country with a strong quiz culture.
Started Reading Maps at Three
Speaking to Channel News Asia, Zeng shared about how he developed his interest.
While most of us were probably playing with building blocks, Zeng was already looking at maps at the tender age of three.
By the time he was six, he knew all the countries and capitals.
He even had to be “banned from the atlas” when he was in Primary Five, because it was affecting his concentration.
The quiz whiz added, “I stare at maps for about four hours a day. Not in one stretch, but I just stare at maps when doing other things. I’ll just tab into Maps and tab out of it. I use OpenStreetMap; I hate Google Maps. I have OpenStreetMap open constantly; I’ll just tab in, tab out.”
Um, sounds like what we do… with work and emails.
Putting His Interest to Use
On his unique fascination with maps, Zeng said, “It’s kind of a … fixation. I have very little of a social life. So I have a very restricted set of interests. I just think of maps all day.”
Zeng, who is now 22 and in his third year at university, realised he could put his interest in geography to use on University Challenge because every match has a picture round and “one of them is almost guaranteed to be a map”.
“The first picture round is normally a map, or normally geography-related. I don’t like flags but I can answer questions on flags.
“I have a reputation on my team for complaining about the questions I answer after I answer them. But the point is, I can answer them. So that’s obviously an advantage,” he said, laughing.
We can’t even fault him for flexing because he is that good.
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Not Studying Geography Academically
For all his talent, it is quite surprising that Zeng is not studying geography at university, but rather biochemistry.
He said geography is not actually his main interest and he is more interested in “linguistics, anthropology, language distributions; linguistics as in a repertoire of all languages or how they’re related to each other or how to speak them”.
“But it just so happens I’m good at physical geography. And physical geography is more prominent in University Challenge,” he added.
To Zeng, studying anything which isn’t science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) in a classroom or examinable setting causes him to lose interest very quickly in the subject.
Preparing For ‘Quiz Challenge’
Zeng, a Hwa Chong Institution alumnus, said that “rote memorisation” in the Singapore education system can be beneficial for the purpose of a quiz like University Challenge, as it “teaches you how to answer questions with single answers”.
Like most Singaporeans, he “doesn’t approve of it that much”. As such, he is not a fan of making flashcards to cram for the quiz – a popular study strategy.
Zeng dislikes the concept of a quiz as something to study for.
He remarked, “But how much do you know out of your own interests, your own ability, rather than what you study for the sake of answering quiz questions? Personally, I just go in with whatever I have learnt so far.”
The only thing that Zeng learnt “for the purpose of University Challenge” was the list of Nobel Prize recipients for peace, because “everyone on the team was learning the Nobel Prizes for at least one field”.
“That was the only thing I learnt explicitly. Everything else I refuse to. I refuse to learn anything for the (sake of a) quiz,” he said.
Doesn’t Buzz Unless Confident
Despite being a fast buzzer, Zeng doesn’t actually hit the buzzer to answer a question unless he “absolutely knows the answer”, which is probably why he is so confident when he does.
Not the risk-taker, he said, “pretty much every single time I press the buzzer, I’m like 99 per cent sure of what the answer is going to be.”
Zeng admitted that sometimes an answer becomes obvious beyond a certain point in the question.
“I (have hit) buzzers three words in, five words in. And it’s because at that point, the answer can’t be anything else. If you know the subject well enough, you can actually gauge (the answer),” he said.
His strategy is to not make the answer “super specific”.
Piece of Advice
While we are unlikely to take part in the quiz, Zeng has some advice to offer, that is – don’t be afraid to hit the buzzer.
“Even if I still beat the other team to it, I still regret certain questions. My team always laughs at me for saying this, but I make a lot of fuss about how I could have answered faster,” he said.
Recalling a time when he had to name Uzbekistan in an answer, he couldn’t help fretting about how he could have done better even though he got it right.
But Zeng also added that it’s normal to have regrets.
Imperial College’s subsequent showing was yesterday against the University of Reading. Prior to the episode airing, Zeng declined to share whether he expected his team to make it this far.
Since filming for the show has wrapped, Zeng has had more time to continue with his passion. Recently, he memorised the states of Brazil as they appear on the Brazilian flag as stars.
Well, Zeng has proven that sometimes the things we are good at are not necessarily the ones we study and it’s totally ok to pursue those interests.
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Featured Image: Screengrab of Youtube (Dave Garda)
