Tossup-Bonus Format

The tossup/bonus format™ is the most common format used in both High School and Collegiate Quizbowl.

A tossup is a question that is read out loud to both teams. It typically contains several sentences describing the answer and ends with a "giveaway" clue about the answer. Players can buzz in anytime they think they know the answer. Tossups are written in a pyramidal style or, in some sets, as simple questions. Points are awarded to the team of the person that answered the tossup correctly. Tossups are usually worth 10 points.

A bonus (Plural: Boni or Bonuses) is a set of several questions that the whole team can work together to answer. Bonuses are given as a reward to the team that answered a tossup question immediately beforehand. Bonuses have many different styles, as seen below. Bonuses are typically worth 30 points each, and have been standardized as three-part questions, with each question being asked in succession for a value of 10 points each. Three-part bonuses are intended to have an "easy part" accessible to most teams, a "middle part" for many teams, and a "hard part" that the top teams at a given tournament should be able to answer, usually (though not necessarily) in that order. (See variable value bonus.)

Minor variations on this format include the additions of negs and powers. A more substantial change is the addition of bouncebacks.

The tossup-bonus format can be played timed, in which case the clock determines how many tossup-bonus cycles are read, or more commonly untimed, in which a set number of tossups and their corresponding bonuses are read each round. The standard used by ACF, HSAPQ, and PACE since 2010 is the reading of twenty tossup-bonus cycles, in which case the format is sometimes called the 20/20 format.

Defunct styles of bonuses

Before the easy-middle-hard bonus format became completely standardized, bonus formats could vary from bonus to bonus within a tournament. Examples of such various formats are:

• three answers, ten points per answer
• four answer, 5 for one, 10 for two, 20 for three and 30 for getting all four answers correct
• two answers, with two clues. 15 after the first clue for each answer, 5 after the second ("15-5")
• five answers, five points per answer with an additional five for all correct
• six answers, five points each (this and the above are used mainly for list bonuses)
• two difficult answers of 15 points each
• one answer, three clues of decreasing difficulty. 30 points after the first clue, 20 after the second, 10 after the third ("30-20-10")
• three answers of increasing difficulty. 5 points for the first, 10 for the second, 15 for the third ("5-10-15")
• three answers, each with two clues of variant difficulty. 10 points for the harder clue, 5 for the easier ("10-5")

All but the first of these are now strongly discouraged, if not forbidden outright, in standard high school and collegiate play for reasons of fairness.

Note: none of these formats applies to Illinois Scholastic Bowl.