If you’re new and don’t know where to start, this is the place for you.
Quizbowl is a knowledge-based buzzer game played between two teams. Skill at quizbowl requires skill in various different fields, with diverse knowledge of topics being the most important. However, to play well a team cannot solely rely on their knowledge; mental toughness, teamwork, and trust in one another are necessities for a good quizbowl team.
Players compete to see who knows the answer to a long question fastest based on the given information. Nothing can help you but your knowledge, stamina, and intuition. If a player gets a tossup question (using buzzers), they unlock the opportunity to answer bonus questions in collaboration with teammates.
Gameplay rules
In a conventional round of quizbowl, there will be 20 question cycles a game. A question cycle is composed of a single tossup question and three shorter bonus questions.
Tossups
Tossups are paragraph long questions players can buzz in at any time to answer. Each sentence will be a clue about the answer, with the clues becoming progressively easier as the tossup goes on (i.e. the first sentence will probably be much harder to get an answer from than the last). Tossups cover dozens of categories, but they’re generally anything you can learn in school.
Correct Answers
Should they answer a tossup correctly, players can score either 15 or 10 points depending on the speed at which they answered. If they answered early in the tossup they would score more points than if they answered later (known as a “power”).
Incorrect Answers
If a player interrupts the tossup and answers incorrectly, they will lose their team 5 points (known as a “neg”) and their team will not be allowed to buzz for the rest of the tossup. The only exception to this rule is if a player does this after the other team has already negged. If this is the case, the player will not lose or gain any points, and the tossup is skipped (“dies”). If a player waits until after the tossup is finished reading and answers incorrectly, the player will not lose or gain any points.
Bonuses
If a player answers a tossup correctly, their team can get 3 bonus questions. These bonus questions are only available to the team that answered the tossup correctly. Bonuses are worth 10 points each if answered correctly and 0 points if answered incorrectly. Teams are given short amounts of time after each bonus question is read to confer and discuss answers, before being prompted to give a final answer.
Games are played until all 20 question cycles have been heard.
Tournaments
Tournaments are usually an all-day affair, running from the morning to late in the afternoon.
Typically, there will be preliminary brackets in the morning, and teams are then re-seeded into playoff/consolation brackets based on their performance. Expect to play teams of all different skill levels in prelims, and play teams of a similar skill level in playoffs. The best way to think of this is like pool play during the world cup: 5-6 teams are in a “bracket”, or pool, and all will play each other to determine who is best.
Team Structure
The most important grouping in quizbowl is the team. Teammates play together, work together, and win together. Teamwork is the make-or-break factor for whether a team is just 4 smart people in a room or a high-performing quizbowl machine.
Up to 4 people may actively play on a team. Many teams bring substitutions, who may switch places with any active player at halftime.
2 teams go head to head in a match, and the highest scoring team will win.
Why do Quizbowl?
Diverse and Welcoming Community
Quizbowl is a great opportunity for players of all ages, backgrounds, and identities to meet like minded people and play an incredibly fun and challenging game. No matter what, there will always be a home in the Quizbowl community for you and your teammates to thrive and make friends, and improvement is as simple as picking up a book. We have seen, time and time again, people who joined the Quizbowl community to pick up a new hobby and came out with lifelong friendships and bonds formed through the game we all love.
Application of Knowledge and Passions
In addition, the incredible diversity Quizbowl questions have to offer allows people with all sorts of interests to answer questions in their specific niche of knowledge or their favorite subject.
Quizbowl asks about a variety of subjects, ranging from history and science to film and popular culture. Anyone can answer, and more importantly, anyone can get better simply by studying a passion of theirs. Quizbowl is a truly all inclusive game as well as an all inclusive community.
Engaging and Interesting Gameplay
Quizbowl is one of the most engaging, mentally enriching, and fun games out there. During quizbowl, you are always on your toes, trying to recognize clues you can convert to points for your team and information that you know. This high pressure trains players to be more quick-thinking, intuitive, and quick to react. Quizbowl is a fun game, yes, but it is good for the mind as well!
For these reasons and so many more that you can only discover by playing, we hope that you, too, will join this great community and compete in our tournaments. We look forward to seeing you at our Island, Charter, Valley, Garden, and Mayflower cups at high schools near you!