Difference between revisions of "Quizbowl"

Revision as of 21:56, 13 May 2019

Introduction to Quizbowl

Quizbowl
How Quizbowl Works
How Collegiate Quizbowl Works

"Good quizbowl"
Pyramidality
Knowledge vs. Trivia
Buzzers

Tossup-Bonus Format
(Tossups · Bonuses)
Studying · Writing · Editing
NAQT · ACF · Housewrites
The circuit · Outreach

Resources
hsquizbowl.org
(database · archive · forums)
Discussion forums
College directory

List of basic quizbowl terms
List of quizbowl concepts

Quizbowl, sometimes spelled Quiz Bowl, is the most common name for a competition involving answering knowledge-testing questions with a buzzer. Quizbowl has many different names and is played in many different formats throughout the world, but the most common format on the national high school and college level is a two-team competition in which the teams compete to buzz in on tossup questions and then collaborate on bonus questions.

The typical quizbowl competition features questions from a variety of academic subjects, including literature; science; history; religion, mythology, and philosophy; fine arts; social science; and geography.

A transcript of a sample game can be found here.

Some of the alternative names for Quizbowl include Scholastic Bowl, Academic Bowl, Scholars Bowl, Quick Recall, Knowledge Bowl, and College Bowl.

Formats

Quizbowl tournaments are buzzer competitions that cover a variety of academic categories. The following things are not quizbowl, even though many of the same people who play quizbowl are interested in them:

Written tests or competitions or anything that does not use a buzzer at any time
Network game shows
Bar trivia/NTN
Trivial Pursuit and other board games
Subject-specific tournaments run by and largely for non-quizbowl people (Science Bowl, Entomology Bowl, Beef Bowl, and so on)

Such activities may have plenty of merits, but they are not quizbowl.

The main format of college quizbowl, which is generally more uniform than the high school game, is ACF, which is a type of Tossup-Bonus Format, i.e. in which each game consists of a packet with 20 tossups and 20 bonuses. (It is not unusual for tournaments to use powers, which ACF does not use.) The high school game is more diverse and regional, but the trend in recent years has been for many high tournaments to move towards being similar to ACF in format. There are also a growing number of middle school tournaments that are similar in format to ACF.

Tossup-bonus is not the only format used. Another common format is the four-quarter format, which may incorporate alternative question types like worksheets and lightning rounds.

Another trend in quizbowl is an increasing use of the tenets of good quizbowl, one of which is pyramidality.

History

United States

Don Reid developed a quizzing game for soldiers during WWII. He modified his game to produce College Bowl for radio in 1953, featuring teams of college students. College Bowl later moved to, then left, television, and its format was further modified to create the different quizbowl formats offered today. Over the years, many college national, high school national, and high school state championships developed in addition to many local tournaments.

Canada

I.Q. was a CBC radio quiz show for high school teams based on College Bowl's format. It was canceled at about the same time that CBC Television began airing Reach for the Top, based on the UK's Top of the Form radio show. Reach for the Top left television in 1985, but continues within schools. More recently, good quizbowl tournaments have emerged in Canada, largely through the establishment of events running the same questions as American tournaments, sometimes with some additional Canadian content added.

United Kingdom

BBC radio produced Top of the Form for high school students in 1948 and continued into the 1980s. At the university level, Don Reid brought College Bowl's format to British television with University Challenge in 1962, a program that still airs to this day. Similarly to Canada, a few events have been established using American questions, such as the NAQT British Student Quiz Championships.

Tournaments

Quizbowl teams typically play each other at tournaments. Most tournaments do not require any sort of qualifier. A few tournaments, usually national or state championships, restrict eligibility to teams that qualify by winning smaller, local tournaments.

Most tournament matches consist of two teams competing head to head in individual rounds on a packet of questions. The most common tournament format is round robin pools in the morning with the best teams spread out into different pools followed by round robin pools in the afternoon with the best teams playing each other. Smaller tournaments play a complete round robin.

In the middle school and high school game, tournament questions generally come from an outside vendor, are written by the organization hosting the tournament, or are mirrored from another host. The two most respected question vendors are HSAPQ and NAQT. In the college game, tournament questions generally come from packet submission, meaning that each team attending writes a packet of questions which are then usually sent to an editor or team of editors who weed out any duplicates and who change and/or replace questions that are problematic. Since individual teams have not told the other teams what they've written, packet submission tournaments are able to take place by having the team that wrote the packet sit out of one round while the other teams play the packet.

Some high school competitions are run as after-school leagues rather than weekend tournaments; though this is a rarer practice, nothing prevents leagues from using good questions or being legitimate. Examples include the Virginia High School League Scholastic Bowl.

Questions

Here are many examples of good questions.

Resources

Wikipedia Article on Quizbowl
The World of High School Quiz Bowl (hsquizbowl.org)—Useful links, thriving message boards for college, high school and junior high school game.

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
 {{Intro}}
-'''Quizbowl''', sometimes spelled '''Quiz Bowl''', is the most common name for a competition involving answering knowledge-testing questions with a [[buzzer]].  Quizbowl has many different names and is played in many different formats throughout the world, but the most common [[Tossup-bonus format|format]] on the national high school and college level is a two-team competition in which the teams compete to buzz in on [[tossup]] questions and then collaborating on [[bonus]] questions.
+'''Quizbowl''', sometimes spelled '''Quiz Bowl''', is the most common name for a competition involving answering knowledge-testing questions with a [[buzzer]].  Quizbowl has many different names and is played in many different formats throughout the world, but the most common [[Tossup-bonus format|format]] on the national high school and college level is a two-team competition in which the teams compete to buzz in on [[tossup]] questions and then collaborate on [[bonus]] questions.
-The typical quizbowl competition features questions from a wide variety of academic subjects, including [[literature]], [[science]], [[history]], [[RMP|religion, mythology, and philosophy]], [[arts]], [[social science]], and [[geography]], so teams must have a well-rounded knowledge base to score more points than their opponents and win games.
+The typical quizbowl competition features questions from a variety of academic subjects, including [[literature]]; [[science]]; [[history]]; [[RMP|religion, mythology, and philosophy]]; [[fine arts]]; [[social science]]; and [[geography]].
+A transcript of a sample game can be found [[How Quizbowl Works#Sample_Game|here]].
+Some of the alternative names for Quizbowl include Scholastic Bowl, Academic Bowl, Scholars Bowl, Quick Recall, Knowledge Bowl, and College Bowl.
 ==Formats==
-The college game is in general more uniform than the high school game.  The main formats are [[ACF]] and [[NAQT]].  [[CBI]], a descendant of the old televised College Bowl game which used to be the main college format, fell out of favor with most people that enjoy [[good quizbowl]] for numerous reasons (see [[bad quizbowl]], for instance), and in June 2008 the CBI program was suspended indefinitely.
+Quizbowl tournaments are buzzer competitions that cover a variety of academic categories. The following things are not quizbowl, even though many of the same people who play quizbowl are interested in them:
+*Written tests or competitions or anything that does not use a buzzer at any time
+*Network game shows
+*Bar trivia/NTN
+*Trivial Pursuit and other board games
+*Subject-specific tournaments run by and largely for non-quizbowl people (Science Bowl, Entomology Bowl, Beef Bowl, and so on)
-The high school game is very diverse, although national tournaments like NAQT's [[HSNCT]] and [[PACE|PACE's]] [[NSC]] help unify different regions of the country.  Both of those tournaments feature formats that are relatively similar to the predominant college game, in that they feature [[pyramidal]] questions (which have many clues allowing teams with expert knowledge to distinguish themselves from people with more basic knowledge) and generally focus on academic subjects.  While nothing inherent to the [[four quarter format]] prevents tournaments using it from being just as good as the tossup/bonus format, many of the most prominent tournaments in four quarter, such as the [[NAC]], are terrible.
+Such activities may have plenty of merits, but they are not quizbowl.
+The main format of college quizbowl, which is generally more uniform than the high school game, is [[ACF#ACF_Format|ACF]], which is a type of [[Tossup-Bonus Format]], i.e. in which each game consists of a packet with 20 tossups and 20 bonuses. (It is not unusual for tournaments to use [[Powers|powers]], which ACF does not use.) The high school game is more diverse and regional, but the trend in recent years has been for many high tournaments to move towards being similar to ACF in format. There are also a growing number of middle school tournaments that are similar in format to ACF.
+[[Tossup-Bonus Format|Tossup-bonus]] is not the only format used. Another common format is the [[four-quarter format]], which may incorporate alternative question types like [[worksheet]]s and [[lightning round]]s.
+Another trend in quizbowl is an increasing use of the tenets of [[good quizbowl]], one of which is [[pyramidal|pyramidality]].
 ==History==
 ===United States===
-Don Reid developed a quizzing game for soldiers during WWII.  He modified his game to produce ''[[College Bowl]]'' for radio in 1953, featuring teams of college students.  ''College Bowl'' later moved to, then left, television, and its format was further modified to create the different quizbowl formats offered today.
+Don Reid developed a quizzing game for soldiers during WWII.  He modified his game to produce ''[[College Bowl]]'' for radio in 1953, featuring teams of college students.  ''College Bowl'' later moved to, then left, television, and its format was further modified to create the different quizbowl formats offered today.  Over the years, many [[:Category:National championships|college national]], [[:Category:High school national championships|high school national]], and [[:Category:State championships|high school state]] championships developed in addition to many [[:Category:Tournament categories|local tournaments]].
 ===Canada===
-[[I.Q.]] was a CBC radio quiz show for high school teams based on ''College Bowl'''s format.  It was canceled at about the same time that CBC Television began airing ''[[Reach for the Top]]'', based on the UK's ''Top of the Form'' radio show.  ''Reach for the Top'' left television in 1985, but continues within schools. More recently, bona fide quizbowl tournaments have emerged in Canada, largely through the establishment of events running the [[mirror|same questions as]] American tournaments, with some additional Canadian content added.
+[[I.Q.]] was a CBC radio quiz show for high school teams based on ''College Bowl'''s format.  It was canceled at about the same time that CBC Television began airing ''[[Reach for the Top]]'', based on the UK's ''Top of the Form'' radio show.  ''Reach for the Top'' left television in 1985, but continues within schools. More recently, [[good quizbowl]] tournaments have emerged in [[Quizbowl in Canada|Canada]], largely through the establishment of events running the [[mirror|same questions as]] American tournaments, sometimes with some additional Canadian content added.
 ===United Kingdom===
-BBC radio produced ''Top of the Form'' for high school students in 1948 and continued into the 1980s.  At the university level, Don Reid brought ''College Bowl'''s format to British television with ''University Challenge'' in 1962, a program that still airs to this day.
+BBC radio produced ''Top of the Form'' for high school students in 1948 and continued into the 1980s.  At the university level, Don Reid brought ''College Bowl'''s format to British television with ''University Challenge'' in 1962, a program that still airs to this day. Similarly to Canada, a few events have been established using American questions, such as the [[NAQT]] [[British Student Quiz Championships]].
-===What is and is not quizbowl===
-While some opine that [[College Bowl]], the [[National Academic Championship]], and bizarre state formats such as [[OAC]] are so aberrant that they should not be considered the same game as [[mainstream quizbowl]], this division is controversial and often exaggerated for rhetorical effect. What is clear to almost everyone is that the following things are not quizbowl, even though many of the same people who play quizbowl are interested in them. Editors of the [[Wikipedia article on quizbowl]] and people looking to crow about their own accomplishments should take note:
-*Written tests or competitions or anything that does not use a buzzer
-*Network game shows
-*Bar trivia/NTN
-*Trivial Pursuit and other board games
-*Subject-specific tournaments run by and largely for non-quizbowl people (Science Bowl, Entomology Bowl, Beef Bowl, and so on)
-Such activities may have plenty of merits, but they should be conceived of separately from what is meant by reference to the high school and collegiate quizbowl communities.
 ==Tournaments==
-Quizbowl teams typically play each other at tournaments.  Most tournaments are open tournaments, in that anyone who fits the eligibility requirements (such as having a team consisting entirely of students from one high school) can participate in the tournament.  A few tournaments, usually national tournaments, restrict eligibility to teams that qualify by winning smaller, local tournaments.
+Quizbowl teams typically play each other at '''tournaments'''. Most tournaments do not require any sort of qualifier. A few tournaments, usually national or state championships, restrict eligibility to teams that qualify by winning smaller, local tournaments.
-Most tournaments, especially at the college and elite high school levels, consist of two teams competing head to head in individual rounds on a packet of questions.  Tournaments usually feature a number of preliminary rounds before teams are seeded into some sort of playoff structure.  College tournaments tend to favor using a round robin playoff schedule so that more games are played by each team, as do most [[good quizbowl|good]] high school events, though many high school tournaments do use an elimination playoff system.
+Most tournament matches consist of two teams competing head to head in individual rounds on a packet of questions. The most common tournament format is round robin pools in the morning with the best teams spread out into different pools followed by round robin pools in the afternoon with the best teams playing each other. Smaller tournaments play a complete round robin.
-In the high school game, tournament questions almost always come from an outside vendor or are written by the organization hosting the tournament.  This is also true for college tournaments held on [[NAQT]] or [[CBI]] questions.  [[mACF]] and [[ACF]] college tournaments, however, usually are [[packet submission]] (although there are noted exceptions to this, such as [[EFT]] or [[PARFAIT]]; there is nothing inherent in the mACF or ACF rules that require these tournaments to be packet submission).  Each team attending a packet submission tournament writes a packet (somewhere around 20-26 tossups and bonuses) of questions which are then usually sent to an editor or team of editors who weed out any duplicates and change and replace questions that are problematic.  Since individual teams have not told the other teams what they've written, packet submission tournaments are able to take place by having the team that wrote the packet sit out of one round while the other teams play the packet.
+In the middle school and high school game, tournament questions generally come from an outside vendor, are written by the organization hosting the tournament, or are [[Mirror|mirrored]] from another host. The two most respected question vendors are [[HSAPQ]] and [[NAQT]]. In the college game, tournament questions generally come from [[Packet submission|packet submission]], meaning that each team attending writes a packet of questions which are then usually sent to an editor or team of editors who weed out any duplicates and who change and/or replace questions that are problematic. Since individual teams have not told the other teams what they've written, packet submission tournaments are able to take place by having the team that wrote the packet sit out of one round while the other teams play the packet.
-Some high school competitions are run as after-school [[league]]s rather than weekend tournaments; though this is a rarer practice, nothing prevents leagues from using good questions or being legitimate. Examples include the [[VHSL|Virginia High School League]] Scholastic Bowl.
+Some high school competitions are run as after-school [[:Category:High school leagues|leagues]] rather than weekend tournaments; though this is a rarer practice, nothing prevents leagues from using good questions or being legitimate. Examples include the [[VHSL|Virginia High School League]] Scholastic Bowl.
 ==Questions==
-For examples of good quizbowl questions, turn to [www.quizbowlpackets.com] or [http://collegiate.quizbowlpackets.com].
+[http://www.hsquizbowl.org/db/questionsets/search/?archived=y Here] are many examples of good questions.
 ==Resources==
 *[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quizbowl Wikipedia Article on Quizbowl]
-*[http://www.hsquizbowl.org The World of High School Quiz Bowl] - Useful links, thriving message boards for college, high school and junior high school game.
+*[http://www.hsquizbowl.org The World of High School Quiz Bowl] ([[hsquizbowl.org]])—Useful links, thriving message boards for college, high school and junior high school game.
 [[Category:Quizbowl basics]]
 [[Category:Original QBWiki Page]]