Bryce Avery
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| President or CEO | Bryce Avery | |
| Location: | Grand Junction, CO | |
| Status | Sold | |
Bryce Avery was the President of Avery Enterprises, which billed itself as "America's biggest supplier of custom-formatted questions for academic competitions." Bryce played College Bowl at BYU and California State Polytechnic, Pomona. In 2016, he purchased Questions Galore. In 2024, he announced that he was leaving quiz bowl; his client list was then purchased by the Long Island Quiz Bowl Alliance, which took over most of his old accounts.
Avery Praised by Avery
- Bryce Avery saw Avery Enterprises as favorable in comparison to his competitors, who did not write in as many formats.
- Bryce Avery described Avery Enterprises as "provid[ing] the best in fun and challenging quiz tournaments!"[1]
Avery Criticized by Others
Avery Enterprises was repeatedly panned on the HSQuizbowl forums, perhaps most notably by getting into fights with Charlie Dees, which ended with Bryce threatening to file a civil suit against Charlie for discussing bid details for a large contract; however, the bid was not a sealed bid to begin with, so nothing was actionable, and Bryce's already-poor reputation was permanently destroyed.[2]
Descriptions of Avery questions from those who played on them include: speed questions with an extremely large amount of trash, including, but not limited to, spelling questions and questions about types of detergent. He also had a noted conservative bent in his questions, often including Mormon apologetics.
Avery framed criticism of questions by players as "more of a criticism of the question requirements given by the sponsoring organization,"[3] with players successfully petitioning an organization for changes to those requirements. In reality, IESA added a Miscellaneous Pop Culture subcategory in 2019 because Avery included such questions in his sets before 2019 even though they were not supposed to be part of the distribution.
Fact Mountain
Avery, through his company Foothills Education, LLC, also produced a quizbowl study guide app series called "Fact Mountain." The apps were available for both Apple and Android. Offerings included American Literature to 1900, 19th-Century British Literature, Russian Literature, Great Paintings, U.S. Presidents, and the U.S. Constitution. Non-quizbowl apps with the same construction were available for Legal Ethics and for unofficial missionary preparation for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. The apps retail for around $3-$4, which were regarded as very expensive and sold poorly. The apps were discontinued shortly after Bryce retired.
Non-Quizbowl Activity
Apart from being a major question writer, Avery was also a registered patent agent and technical writer, which were advertised on their website along with their Quizbowl material. After retirement, he started a career in venture capital.