List of notable protests

This is an (incomplete) list of noteworthy protests and protest resolutions. The entries in this page should be limited to those which occurred at nationals between top teams and/or received discussion on the forums.

2020 onward

• 2025 ACF Nationals - After tossup 20 of the one-game final between Stanford A and Chicago A, Chicago led 265-255. A protest lodged by Stanford on a bonus part about leucine-rich repeats was ultimately upheld, accepting "leucine-rich regions" and tying the game. The resulting tiebreaker tossup on the TVA was converted by Allan Lee, winning Stanford the title.
  • This protest was then litigated on the forums on the basis that there wasn't enough backing for the answer to be accepted outright (with only one citation located at the time of resolution) and a "should have been prompted" resolution would have made more sense.
• 2025 ACF Nationals - Multiple teams were negged for giving the answer "New York Ballet" on the tossup on the New York City Ballet. Some players protested and had their protests upheld but were not informed, leaving them unaware of their record.
  • The facts of this protest were then extensively argued on both the Discord and the forums. Parties supporting the decision to accept "New York Ballet" argued that various reputable publications had used it while parties against it claimed that the answer was not in common usage and did not properly disambiguate from other ballets in the city - at least one ballet dancer was consulted during the discussion. A major point of discussion was about the criteria needed for something to be in "common use" enough to be accepted on protest.

• 2024 NASAT - After Team Maryland answered a tossup on COVID-19 their opponent Illinois Cobalt protested that their answer should not have been accepted because of the question's use of the pronoun "this pathogen". This protest was upheld and went unnoticed until a year later when it was discussed on the forums and defended by tournament director Fred Morlan, who stated that the editor had chosen an incorrect answer to be their primary answerline and that COVID-19 was the disease and SARS-COV2 the pathogen. In addition to going against precedent for questions on diseases (e.g. taking "bubonic plague" for "Yersinia pestis") it also contradicted common usage in both the medical community and the general public. After community outcry, Fred eventually issued an apology.
• 2024 ACF Nationals - Stanford A protested that they should have been prompted on a tossup against Columbia A and it was upheld, meaning they were read a tossup only they could answer. However, they did not convert the tossup on Cortona and, per ACF rule F.12C, the original score on the question stood and they lost 225-235.

• 2023 NSC - "Plymouth Academic Team" played Detroit County Day and buzzed with "transcribing an operator" on a tossup on transcription. They were informed that they won the protest but then told to return at the end of the day's rounds, where they learned the original ruling was overturned and they had lost the game 340-360. This left "Plymouth" tied at 8-2 with Detroit County Day and Richard Montgomery and the three teams played a two-game sequence for the second spot in the top superplayoffs. After losing the statistical tiebreaker, Detroit County Day beat Richard Montgomery then "Plymouth" on half-packets to break into the top 8 - they placed 7th while "Plymouth" finished 13th. Note also that the entire reason for the extremely laborious and time-consuming protest procedure at PACE NSC is to prevent this exact situation from happening, in the wake of the protest issue at the 2011 NSC. No explanation for how it managed to take place anyway in 2023 was ever provided.
• 2023 NSC - A tossup on Becky Sharp was negged with "Juliette Nichols" from the Apple TV+ show Silo. The question was protested and it was revealed that the show had borrowed the plot device of "identifying a letter as dictated due to perfect spelling" from Vanity Fair. The protest was ultimately denied as additional clues had been read at the time of the buzz.
• 2023 HSNCT- Saratoga played Detroit County Day in the Super Seven of HSNCT. During the course of a comeback, Saratoga buzzed with "railroads" and then "railroad engines" on a tossup before immediately saying the correct answer of locomotives. Detroit County Day protested, and was eventually ruled correct as the clue referred to a specific locomotive resulting in DCDS's 355-335 win. The resolution of the protest led to outrage by several of the parents in the area, leading to a briefly chaotic scene before the game's score was eventually finalized.

• 2022 ACF Nationals - A team answered a tossup on DNA strands with "chains" and then protested - it was accepted but in an unorthodox interpretation of ACF rule H.11 the resolution involved a replacement tossup being read to both teams.

2010-2019

• 2019 Age of Empires - Charles Hang protested six questions in a 24-tossup, no-bonus game, leading to a heated argument with Will Alston in the hallway where Will was heard stating "I am in charge here! I am the one to make a decision!" The decision on the protest changed several times, including once after the playoff seeding had already been decided based on the original result.

• 2019 HSNCT - One-loss Stevenson A played one-loss Thomas Jefferson A in the double-elimination playoffs. Luke Lamberti answered a question on Little Dancer of Fourteen Years by Edgar Degas with an incomplete answer and protested. They won the protest, which made the final score 360-340 in favor of Stevenson; Thomas Jefferson was eliminated at t-5th and Stevenson went on to place 4th after losing to eventual runner-ups University Lab.

• 2018 EFT - An infamous tossup on carbon AND carbon received numerous protests,. ultimately resulting it in being rewritten with a new answerline.

• 2017 NSC - As Hunter was defeated by an Ed W. Clark team consisting of a freshman Eshaan Vakil playing solo, they lodged a number of spurious protests; one of these was that an answer was incorrect because Cyprus was not a country.

• 2016 HSNCT - During the finals game with Thomas Jefferson, Hunter protested that their answer of "dehydration synthesis" was correct for a bonus on condensation reactions. This was accepted and resulted in a tie - Hunter proceeded to convert all three tossups in the tiebreaker sequence to win 400-355.

• 2015 George Oppen - Multiple teams answer "CREEP" for a tossup on the Plumbers. Protests were denied on the basis that, though the Plumbers had an overlap in personnel with CREEP, it was not a subset nor did all of the clues also apply. These protests are best remembered for Marshall Steinbaum taking the stance that CREEP should have been prompted before escalating the discussion by comparing Matt Weiner directly to the criminal defense of Richard Nixon - Marshall was then banned for a week for continuing to make this comparison.
  • The discussion resulted in a prolonged discussion about whether "must apply to all clues" and other idealized standards were viable criteria for determining when to include prompts and whether to accept "should have been prompted" protests.

• 2015 STIMPY - A protest that "conjugation" should have been prompted on a tossup on hyperconjugation was denied and compared to "how pineapples are not the same as or a type of apple."

• 2014 HSNCT - In a playoffs match against LASA B, Ben Zhang of Ladue answered "macrophages" for a tossup on neutrophils and protested. Investigation revealed that it was not possible to determine whether the first clue about "namesake extracellular traps that contain elastase" also applied to Ben's answer, as extracellular traps had only recently been discovered in macrophages and the scientific community did not know whether they contained elastase - as of 2025, this is still not known. The resolution ultimately involved a unique "catch-22": either macrophage extracellular traps did not contain elastase and the answer was incorrect or they did and the protest would be rejected because the clue was not unique. This gave Ladue their second loss, resulting in them taking 4th and LASA B completing the "Texas Sandwich" with their A team and St. John's.

• 2013 ACF Nationals - Marshall Steinbaum of Chicago and tournament director Matt Weiner engaged in an extensive relitigation of a protest about an answer of "Providence" for the Colony of Rhode Island. The facts of the protest mainly concerned whether a giveaway being non-unique or pointing towards an unintended answer ("name this colony founded by Roger Williams") was enough to override the previous clues being specific to the correct answer; however, it eventually morphed into an argument about the application of the rules that leaked into later discussions about protest procedure before coming to a head after 2015 George Oppen.
  • The discussion of this protest marks the first articulation of the stance that a question's editor does not need to be consulted to resolve a protest after it was revealed that the tossup's editor Bruce Arthur would have accepted the answer.

• 2013 ACF Nationals - The first line of a tossup on Sextus Empiricus included a clue about a ladder that could be discarded after use that was also applicable Ludwig Wittgenstein - at least one team made this neg and protested it. The ambiguity regarding how to handle this situation was directly referenced during later discussions on changing rules around protesting.

• 2011 NSC - Bellarmine protested a question against Hunter which is upheld, winning Bellarmine the game. The protest was subsequently reviewed and reversed which made Hunter 6-1 and tied for first with State College. A persistent rumor is that the intercession of Hunter alumni played a factor in the protest committee's decision to revisit the protest, though this is likely embellished; it is believed that protest was reversed because the facts had been filed wrong initially. State College ultimately won the final but would have cleared outright had Bellarmine won against Hunter. Bellarmine was offered a full refund from PACE for this and other issues with the tournament.

• 2010 ACF Nationals - During the finals game with Stanford, Rob Carson of Minnesota buzzed with "B trees" on a tossup on self-balancing binary search trees and followed a series of prompts that culminated in him saying "binary search trees", an answer accepted by an out-of-his-depth Ezequiel Berdichevsky. Stanford protested, correctly, that the initial answer of "B tree" should not have been prompted and won, ultimately securing them the victory.

2000-2009

• 2009 HSNCT - The deciding game of the finals turned on a protest where a team answered "fluoride" for a tossup on fluorine that used the pronoun "this element." While ultimately, the correct decision was made (denying the protest, as fluoride is not an element) it was not provided until several minutes after the end of the game. The anticlimactic resolution of an NAQT staffer walking onto the stage to announce who had won the national championship fifteen minutes earlier sparked a "storming" of the stage by the parent and grandparent entourage of the losing team. This and the above-described protest at 2010 ACF Nationals sparked a best practice recommendation of announcing protest resolutions in "stage" games as soon as they are available, rather than at the end of the game. This tournament also featured a minutely-discussed protest on the difference between "brahma" and "brahman" and an incident of a player changing his answer when asked to repeat himself by a moderator that was captured on podcast audio.

• 2006 ICT - Multiple teams answered "Herman" for a tossup on Arminius and protested, with the protest being denied. This resulted in VCU taking a loss against Stanford that left them tied with Chicago A, forcing them to play a tiebreaker that they lost to leave them at 4th place. This was also one of several protests between Michigan and Vanderbilt that were resolved at half-time and then re-resolved after both teams left without properly communicating this to other teams.
  • A major contention was that the protest committee had done an inadequate job of obtaining information during the resolution. This event was ultimately dubbed "the Arminius scandal" and commemorated with the :arminius: emoticon on the forums.

• 2004 NAC - The NAC final is decided on a protest of a math calculation question which had an objectively wrong answer on the paper. The protest, lodged after the end of the game when one team was already celebrating their apparent victory, is resolved correctly, though no explanation of how such a fundamental error made it into the finals of a national championship tournament is offered. The main recap of the game in the tournament writeup offered by QU directly conflicts with their separately posted explanation of how the protest was lodged and resolved. The captain of the St. Thomas team later posted that he "won by being a complete dickhead to the other team." In the same tournament, a team was allowed to play a replacement lightning round after 0ing their original round because they "forgot" the leadin and gave related but wrong answers to every part; their opponent's protest at the moderator's decision was denied.

• 2003 NAC - The "Lake Maracaibo Protest"

• 2001 NCT - At College Bowl Nationals, the TD of a Regionals site that received heavy negative feedback online is assigned to read a game involving one of her most vocal critics. After the critic's team pulled to within 15 points of their opponent with 20 seconds left on the clock, the TD stood at the podium shuffling papers around and reading no further questions until time expired. The team is informed that the moderator's refusal to read questions while the clock is running is not protestable.

• 2000 NAC - The "Bushing Protest"
• 2000 HSNCT - The play-in game to the finals is decided on a correctly resolved physics protest. A bonus part asked "an electron is what type of particle because..." and gave the definition of a fermion. The team protested that their answer of "lepton" was correct because an electron is a lepton, irrespective of the actual clues in the question, and was denied. Between NAQT members and Georgia Tech students staffing the tournament, somewhere between 5 and 10 people with advanced physics degrees are on hand to parade through the room and try to convince the team that the protest was resolved correctly.

Prior to 2000

• 1997 NCT - Virginia correctly wins a championship-deciding protest of a question that attempted to maintain that the "Congress Party" and "Indian National Congress" are two different things, leading to Brian Rostron jumping off a stage and yelling something variously reported as "victory!" or "justice!" at Harvard.