The 2007 District Indoor challenge had an international theme to celebrate 100 years of scouting. On the day each of the 10 teams picked an envelope containing the name of a country. Their challenge for the competition was to figure out which photo on the wall was the landmark from their country, based on a description and to build a model of it. In addition they had to make the flag of the country, write out the cub scout law and promise and 3 traditional dishes for the country.
The final challenge during the afternoon was a music challenge where music from the 11 countries that had been chosen for the challenge (should another team have turned up on the day) was played and the cubs had to figure out which piece of music was for which country.
Our two teams respectively drew Malaysia and Italy. They build models of the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur and the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Both, like all other teams models were excellent, although extra credit does have to be given for the fact that they actually got the Leaning Tower of Pisa to lean and not fall over!
The competition was very tight, and it came down to a tie breaker between three teams. Initially it was attempted to resolve this by asking all teams to guess how many scouts were in a particular country – unfortunately every time a team other than the three tied for the lead got closest.
After 5 or so rounds the three teams who were drawn were called forward and asked to guess in which year scouting began in a particular country. One of these teams was our team who’d picked Malaysia. Again no one was exactly right (or within 2 years), so it was declared that the winner would be the team in the next round that picked the closest year. The answers were very close, but by a margin of 1 year, our team won, so we keep the indoor challenge shield for another year.