During KMO competitions, teams of students from many schools earned points by answering multiple-choice questions quickly and accurately.
The questions included 15 subject areas: American history, world history, government, recent events, economics & law, geography, literature, English, math, physical science, biology, earth science, health & psychology, fine arts, and useless trivia.
The Academic Hallmarks and Knowledge Masters mascot is a great auk[3] with an affinity for puns.
They could use pencil and paper, but no other resources such as calculators or reference books, and assistance from coaches or spectators was not allowed.
Once a particular contest was over, the participating schools could use a second password to unlock the questions for unlimited use in practice sessions.