Josh Meltzer | The Roanoke Times

Zoe Raymond, 9, (left) and fellow Crystal Spring Elementary School third-grader Maddie Balzan, 9, react to a correct question.

Sometimes parents don't know everything.

Like what's the word for king in Mali?

It's "mansa," but Lutheria Smith had to ask her daughter, a third-grader at Crystal Spring Elementary, for the answer.

The question was one of many in the school's version of the television game show "Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader?"

The competition Thursday night was aimed at helping the third-graders study for SOL tests, which begin Tuesday.

The game used the format of the show "Jeopardy!" to question the two teams, one of students pitted against one of parents.

It was evident the students had been studying.

Not only did they know the four stages of the water cycle, but they said them in order.

They knew that hieroglyphics was the written language of ancient Egypt, and could list the three layers of soil.

And their deafening screams echoed through the school gym before, during and after each answer -- even when they got it wrong.

Some questions definitely stumped the parents, a much, much quieter bunch.

When a student incorrectly identified the landform a visitor to ancient Rome would have seen, the parents didn't try answering, though they could have given it a shot.

The answer was hills.

Another time, a parent's math didn't add up when he responded to the question, "How much money is three quarters, two nickels, four dimes and eight pennies?"

"$1.28," the parent said.

"That is incorrect," third-grade teacher Michele Dahlquist told the contestant.

The answer was $1.33.

The parents recovered from that math mistake when they correctly responded that the answer in a subtraction problem is called the difference.

By the end of the first round, the students were winning $6,000 to $3,500.

But things changed in the second round.

The parents scored $11,100 on a Daily Double.

The question: This explorer searched for a western trading route to Asia in 1492.

Minutes later, the parents hit another Daily Double.

"Risk it all! Risk it all!" the students chanted, their fists pumping in the air, while the parents' team set its wager at $500.

It was a good thing they didn't risk it all. Their answer was wrong.

Parent Tom Thomas said he didn't think there was a reason to worry about being put on the spot by the third-graders.

"Knowledge is something you pick up along the way," the confident 43-year-old said before the game.

Later, he admitted to being confused about a multiplication learning tool called an array.

"I looked at it, I was like, 'Oh my God,' " he said. "It reminded me of statistics."

Another parent, Barry Ward, wasn't as confident as Thomas going into the game.

"I think these guys have been studying so hard they will show us up," he said before the game.

He wasn't nervous, though, until Crystal Spring principal David Merritt told the contestants they couldn't get any help from their teammates.

In the end, though, the parents outsmarted the students. The final score was $25,200 to $12,000.

"We've found that parents don't want to be shown up by their children, so they're studying with their children," Dahlquist said.