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Quiz bowl ( quizbowl, scholars' bowl, scholastic bowl, academic bowl, academic team, academic challenge, etc.) is a family of quiz-based competitions that test players on a wide variety of academic subjects. Standardized quiz bowl formats are played by primary school, middle school, Secondary school, and university students throughout North America, Asia, Europe, Australia, and Africa.
Quiz bowl competitions are typically played with a lockout buzzer system between at least two teams, usually consisting of four players each. A moderator reads questions to the players, who try to score points for their team by buzzing first and responding with the correct answer.
Quiz bowl is most commonly played in a tossup/bonus format, which consists of a series of two different types of questions. Other formats, particularly in local competitions, may deviate from the above rules, with additions like lightning rounds or category choice.
In the first half of the 20th century, many other quiz-bowl-like competitions were also created. Delco Hi-Q began in 1948 as a radio quiz competition sponsored by the Scott Paper Company for high school students in Delaware County, Pennsylvania. It claims to be the oldest continuously running student quiz contest in the United States. The It's Academic televised student quiz show program has been run for high school teams in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area since 1961 and is recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records as the longest-running quiz program in television history. It's Academic has been spun off in many other U.S. media markets and has inspired many other televised high school competitions.
In 1977, College Bowl was revived as an activity on college campuses in the U.S. by College Bowl Company Inc. (CBCI). In September 1990, the Academic Competition Federation (ACF) was founded as the first major alternative to The College Bowl Company., p. 259 NAQT (NAQT) was founded in 1996 and currently organizes national competitions at all levels in the United States and supplies tournament questions for grade school and college teams across North America and other parts of the world., p.29-48 In 2008, the College Bowl program abruptly ended in the U.S., although the company itself continues to operate the Honda Campus All-Star Challenge (HCASC) for historically black colleges and universities.
Regional or local tournaments may dispose of any number of standard rules entirely. Some may only have tossups and not use bonuses at all, especially to prevent cheating at tournaments played online.
Some formats include a lightning round during which a team attempts to answer multiple questions as fast as possible under a given time limit, usually sixty seconds. Other formats include a written worksheet round, where teams work together for 2–5 minutes to agree on their written answers.
Match length is determined by either a game clock or the number of questions in a packet. In most formats, a game ends once the moderator has finished reading every question in a packet, usually 20. Tie-breaking procedures may include reading extra tossups until the tie is broken or sudden-death tossups.
Quiz bowl tests players in a variety of academic subjects including literature, Natural science, history, and . Additionally, some quiz bowl events may feature small amounts of popular culture content like , popular music, and other non-academic general knowledge subjects, although their inclusion is generally kept to a minimum.
In most quiz bowl competitions, players and coaches may protest the moderator's decision if they believe their answer was incorrectly rejected, or an opponent's answer was incorrectly accepted. Invalid protests or unnecessary protests can result in additional loss of points or an expulsion from the game.
Timeouts may be called by a player or coach (if the coach is not reading tossups.) These temporarily pause the game and players and coaches can talk. These may differ from improvement, point check or categories that are coming up.
Substitutions may be done at halftime (tossup 10 or 12 depending on tossups in match) or at a team's timeout. These involve removing one or more of the four playing members on a team to switch with a waiting player. These are usually done if player's categories have been used up or if they are taking turns if there are many players on a team. These rules about timeouts and subs may vary from different rule sets but are generally accepted in NAQT matches.
Timed matches may also be in play. These are usually done by 9 minute halves and at the end of the first half, if not at tossup 12 or beyond it, the moderator will automatically skip to it. If past tossup 12 after the first half, they will just start where they ended. These often require players to stall or go faster. Skipping bonuses may be used if players are uncomfortable with the bonus but it will completely skip it and not just one part. These tactics are mostly accepted in different matches.
Pyramidal or pyramid-style tossups include multiple clues and are written so that each question starts with more difficult clues and moves toward easier clues. This way, players with the most knowledge of the subject have the best opportunity to answer first. Pyramidal tossups are considered standard for competitive quiz bowl, especially at the collegiate level.
In most formats, correctly answering a tossup earns a team 10 points. Extra points, usually for a total of 15 or 20 points, may be awarded if a question is answered prior to a certain clue-providing keyword in the question, usually marked by an asterisk, an action known as "powering." Buzzing in before the entire question has been read and answering incorrectly is called "negging" and may incur a 5-point penalty for a team. After a neg occurs, the moderator continues reading the rest of the question for the other team. There are usually no further penalties after one team has already negged.
Most quiz bowl question producers, including ACF and NAQT, publish a distribution of the number of tossups and bonuses per round that will feature material from a given area of study.
ACF/mACF tossups are written in pyramidal style and are generally much longer than College Bowl and NAQT questions. Games are usually untimed and last until a total of 20 tossups are read. The published distribution of ACF quiz bowl emphasizes academic subjects, with very little popular culture. However, many "housewrites", or question sets written by schools themselves, may choose to modify the category distribution.
NAQT is another common variation on the tossup/bonus format that balances academic rigor with a wider variety of subjects, including popular culture and an increased amount of current events and geography content. Unlike many mACF events, most questions used in this format are written and sold by NAQT themselves. NAQT also uses "power marks" in their tossups, which reward players with 15 points instead of 10 for a tossup answered before a predetermined point. Games played on NAQT rules consist of two nine-minute halves and a total of 24 tossups. NAQT tossups are typically shorter than most other pyramidal tossups because of shorter character limits on its questions. The format used for the now-defunct College Bowl tournament uses comparatively shorter questions. Gameplay is relatively quick as it is played in eight-minute halves, to a usual total of 22–24 tossups read.
The Honda Campus All Star Challenge and University Challenge in the U.K. use similar formats.
Matches played at the National Academic Championship and its affiliated tournaments are split into four quarters, with differing styles of gameplay in each phase. Individual tournaments may use worksheet rounds, lightning rounds, or tossups without accompanying bonuses.
The 2020–2021 quiz bowl season saw a dramatic increase in the number of large online quiz bowl competitions due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In-person quiz bowl tournaments were cancelled, including all NAQT National Championships. Online competitions, often using the platforms Zoom or Discord, were widely used by tournament directors, including state championship organizers in 2020-21, as well as for the NAQT HSNCT and PACE NSC high school nationals tournaments. This allowed competition in spite of national and international lockdown requirements. These matches and tournaments were run in a similar manner to in-person competition, although some tournaments switched to tossup-only formats.
Players often research and write their own questions to prepare for quiz bowl. Active participation in academic coursework also helps to prepare for quiz bowl. Blind memorization of high-frequency out-of-context facts, often referred to as "stock" clues, is a common method of quiz bowl preparation, but is generally discouraged, because the memorization generally has little academic utility. Players benefit from exposure to a broad range of school, cultural subjects, memorization, and study skills, as well as an improved ability to cooperate and work in teams.
NAQT also sells lists of topics that are frequently asked about in their questions.
Some schools hold intramural tournaments where any team formed from students can play. High school quiz bowl is often played over an extended period of time by schools within a local area or pre-existing athletic conference, or in single matches against other schools.
Some regional variants organized for grade school students include Knowledge Bowl, Ohio Academic Competition (OAC), Florida's Commissioner's Academic Challenge (CAC), and various television quiz competitions such as It's Academic. Athletic and activities associations in some US states also organize quiz bowl competitions, including Missouri's MSHSAA, Illinois's IHSA, Kansas's KSHSAA, Kentucky's Governor's Cup and Virginia's VHSL.
Additionally, various formats have been developed to test knowledge in specific areas like the Bible quiz, classics, Science Bowl, and agricultural science. DECA runs quiz bowl events at their competitions that tests knowledge on business and market topics. Gallaudet University sponsors a National Academic Bowl for deaf high school students. Tournaments designated as "trash" focus on pop culture and sports trivia questions.
Several national competitions are conducted in the United States every year for high school students. Compared to the college level, there are usually more tournaments that allow teams to qualify. National tournaments include:
The following high school tournaments are for single all-star teams from each U.S. state or other political subdivision:
Beginning in 2018, NAQT has organized the Individual Player National Championship Tournament (IPNCT). Since 2019, IPNCT has been separated into high school and middle school divisions.
The use of mathematical computation problems in tossups is criticized by some for rewarding fast problem-solving skills over conceptual knowledge and for being non-pyramidal by nature.
College Bowl was broadcast on NBC radio from 1953 to 1955. The program moved to television as General Electric College Bowl and was broadcast from 1959 to 1970, first on CBS and later on NBC. College Bowl would return to CBS Radio from 1979 to 1982, and HCASC was broadcast on BET from 1990 to 1995. The Texaco Star National Academic Championship ran from 1989 to 1991 on Discovery Channel and was hosted by Chip Beall and Mark L. Walberg. In 1994, it was syndicated as the Star Challenge and hosted by Mark L. Walberg. University Challenge is licensed from CBCI by Granada TV Ltd. and still broadcast in the United Kingdom. Reach for the Top, a Canadian competition with a quiz bowl-like format, has been broadcast on the CBC in the past.
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