Difference between revisions of "Tossup-Bonus Format"
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The '''tossup/bonus format'''[[CBI|™]] is the most common format used in both High School and Collegiate Quizbowl. | The '''tossup/bonus format'''[[CBI|™]] is the most common format used in both High School and Collegiate Quizbowl. | ||
Revision as of 21:23, 9 July 2013
Tossup-Bonus Format
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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 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. (The variable value bonus is an unfair bad quizbowl practice which has largely disappeared.)
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 included:
- 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.