Minnesota High School Quiz Bowl League

The Minnesota High School Quizbowl League is one of the most popular quiz bowl formats in Minnesota and is a member association of the Minnesota Quiz Bowl Alliance. It is currently run on questions supplied by NAQT, derived from one of the A series they produce each year. It is directed by R Robert Hentzel and takes place over 4 nights and has 4 sites. The 4 sites are each home to one division, which are supposed to be divided equally by talent and location, but recently divisions have been rather lopsided. Each night a team plays four rounds within its division, except for the last night which is the "playoff" night, where the top teams from each site come together and play for the title in a single elimination playoff bracket.

Format

MNHSQBL uses a Four-quarter format, though they are referred to as "phases". The first phase consists of twelve warm-up tossups, which are short and worth only ten points each. The second phase consists of standard NAQT tossups with powers and bonuses. The first two phases are combined for timing purposes, and are 9 minutes long. The third phase is lightning rounds consisting of ten related questions worth ten points each. The team that is not in the lead gets to go first and picks from three subjects for their round. They then have one minute to answer as many as they can. Then the other team has a 30 second bounce-back phase on questions heard but passed on or incorrectly answered. Then the lead team picks one of the two remaining lightning rounds, and they have one minute to answer followed by their opponent's 30 second bounce-back phase. If a team manages to get all ten parts of their lightning round correct, they get an extra 20 points. The fourth phase is more tossups with powers and bonuses, for 6 minutes. Neg fives are not used. This means there are a total of 1140 points available to a team in a round.

Questions

The questions are very easy, generally easier than NAQT A-Series questions. You can read a sample packet here.

History

Since the 2006-2007 season League play has been on NAQT questions. Before that it was run on Patrick's Press questions, and on Questions Unlimited in the mid-eighties. In 2009, Chaska won the league title; the two previous seasons were won by Eden Prairie. Very shady records can be found here.