What is Quiz Bowl?  Well, it is kind of like Jeopardy, but you play with a team of people.  Those old enough may remember College Bowl on TV, which was sort of the forerunner of the school-based types of competitions, and was hosted by the guy who was also the first host of Jeopardy, Art Fleming.  Of course, quiz shows were popular on the radio and on TV at least until the 1950s scandals.  Quiz shows have made periodic comebacks, and local stations have, from time to time, held competitions between high schools with names like “Hi-Q” and such.

 

            Quiz bowl is a popular game that is played in many parts of the US.  Virginia, Kentucky, Illinois, South Carolina, Georgia, and Pennsylvania are some of the hotbed areas for quiz bowl.  Alabama, Arizona, California, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, and Texas also play, and there are active teams in nearly every state.

 

A variety of formats is also played.  In West Virginia, we usually play 25 tossups, interrupted at #10 by a 20-question worksheet round lasting two minutes.  There are variations, including 20 or 24 tossups and 15 questions on the worksheet with a 90 second time limit.

 

There are also a number of other formats, often played differently in different regions.  While we often use NAQT questions in WV tournaments, a true NAQT tournament has up to 24 tossup questions with bonuses for the team that answers a tossup correctly, and two timed (9-minute) halves.  The bonuses are bounceback, meaning that the team that answers the tossup gets first shot at the bonus, but if that team misses the other team gets a chance to answer the question.  Some bonuses in other competitions do not have a bounceback rule.

 

Ohio follows a different style, with 30 questions, 3 each in 10 different pre-defined topics.  One question goes to one team, the second to the other (sometimes called directed questions), and the third is a tossup for buzz-in answering.  This proceeds through all 10 topics.  Then there is a “lightning round,” a timed set of multi-topic short questions in a tossup style.  In a sense, Ohio plays their bonuses first, and each team gets one.

 

Another format is a four-quarter setup, familiar to those who have played at Ernie Anderson’s SCORES tournaments.  There is an opening round of toss-up questions, a second round of tossups with bonuses, a third round (or quarter) that is a lightning round where teams get to choose from a list of topics, and a fourth quarter of tossups that are harder and usually worth more points.  Similar to that is the Virginia rules, with three rounds of tossups first, directed questions second, and more tossups to finish.  That is actually somewhere in-between the four-quarter format and Ohio rules.

 

Bonuses also come in a variety of styles.  Some are single part, others are in multiple parts that may be worth the same number of points, or may increase with question difficulty.  Some are bounceback and some are not.

 

Additional other rounds that may not be tossups include worksheets and lightning rounds, as well as directed questions, asked of one team at a time.  Lightning rounds may be a series of questions on a single topic with a short time limit, or a list of things on one topic that a team must complete in a certain time.  Like bonuses, some of these are bounceback and some are not.  Worksheets are often a list of questions where answers all begin with the same letter, although sometimes they are also on a related topic.

 

Different competitions also vary in their use of topics.  Some use all academic topics, some use more fine arts, and others incorporate popular culture.  The percentage of questions devoted to literature, social studies, and math/science also varies between question providers. 

 

Some tossups are “power” tossups, where if the player buzzes in before a certain point in the question, additional points are awarded.  In addition, some tossup questions carry penalties for wrong answers, especially if the buzz-in occurs before the question is completely read.  Tossups tend to be in one of two styles:  “buzzer beaters,” usually short questions that rely mostly on speed to the buzzer to get a correct answer, and “pyramid style,” which are longer questions providing several clues that go from more difficult to easier as the question progresses.  An excellent player would theoretically be able to ring in earlier in the question, making pyramid questions more dependent on knowledge than speed.

 

Most states that have a wide participation in quiz bowl also have a state tournament.  Winning states, or finishing well at other tournaments, qualifies teams to go to one of the several national tournaments.  Different national tournaments (as I write this, there are at least four different nationals scheduled) have different qualification rules.

 

This article merely scratches the surface of what quiz bowl in the US is about.  More information can be gleaned through this website, by asking questions, or through the miracle of the Internet.  Start at Wikipedia and progress through other sites.