Quiz Bowl: Academics Competing Across The Country

Quizbowl

It goes by many names. The most common are quiz bowl, scholastic bowl, scholars’ bowl or just quiz team. Then there are the regional names, based on local television shows attempting to capitalize on the public’s love of “Jeopardy” and other game shows. Examples of this include “It’s Academic,” or “It’s Ac” for short, in the greater D.C. area and “Battle of the Brains” in Virginia. Whatever you call it, quizbowl follows the same principles everywhere: gather high school and college students (usually) who enjoy competition and love knowledge of academic subjects. The result is a nation-wide subculture that has thrived in the last decade. Whether you are a student looking for an exciting extra-curricular activity or you have a friend that is a member of this subculture, this article will explain the idea behind quizbowl, the people involved in quizbowl and the rules of the game.

The Idea

The theory behind so-called “good quizbowl” is that “tossup” questions will decide which individual in the room has the greatest depth of knowledge in the subject area of the question. A tossup therefore is usually at least four lines long and begins with the deepest information, the facts that will lead only the most knowledgeable student to the answer. The rest of the tossup includes progressively more accessible clues until the final line, or giveaway, allows at least one person on the average team to answer correctly. In most forms of quizbowl, the individual who answered the tossup earns a “bonus” question or set of questions for the team. On bonus questions, unlike tossups, the team may confer among themselves about the answer, allowing the questions to be a little more difficult than tossups. Bonuses usually consist of three parts in which one part is more accessible and one part is less accessible than the third part. This allows scoring systems to distinguish teams based on depth of knowledge in the subject area of the bonus.

Examples of Questions

A tossup in a tournament I attended (ACF Regionals 2009) provides an example:

This author wrote about an aged woman who tells stories about Danko, who tears his heart from his chest in a forest, and Larra, who becomes unable to die after killing a young girl, in “Old Izergil.” This author’s first play focuses on the expelled student Pyotr and his sister Tanya, who are oppressed by their father Vassily. Besides that play, which is variously translated as The Petty Bourgeois and The Philistines, this author wrote a play about the truth-telling Bubnov and the locksmith Kleshch, which is set in a boarding house run by Vassilissa and the landlord Kostylyov. For 10 points, name this Russian author who pioneered socialist realism in his novel Mother and wrote The Lower Depths.