The Quizbowl Resource Center

bdavery

The Consortium for Ocean Leadership and National Ocean Sciences Bowl (NOSB®) are seeking question writers for the 2008-09 competition. The National Ocean Sciences Bowl (NOSB), managed by the Consortium for Ocean Leadership, is a national competition for high schools on ocean-related topics. Categori...

bdavery

Shawn did a great job spraying answers around the entire pop culture answer space (he even vacuumed out some dust bunnies in the corners.) A lot of different things are in there, every question has a fairly easy part, and if there are multiple difficult parts within one bonus, well...it _is a state ...

bdavery

:chip: told me once that he had fired a writer who had plagiarized questions from the Stanford Archive (but only after multiple complaints). So my guess is, if CBI complained about this one, he would tell CBI that it was one of his writers who did it without his knowledge or consent, fire that perso...

bdavery

As someone whose income has been 80-90% quiz writing for most of the last 5 years, I agree with what has been said by others. I would add: 1) Practice writing and re-writing and editing until you learn to enjoy all of those processes. You may find that writing 20 tossups for one pack is fun, writing...

bdavery

Here is the Arkansas quizbowl bid announcement for this coming year. Dear Sir or Madam: The Arkansas Governor’s Quiz Bowl Association (AGQBA) is an alliance of Quiz Bowl coaches from around the state, with the goal of promoting academic team competition throughout the state and at all education leve...

bdavery

As the last person who had Shawn's (thankless?) job in MIssouri, and knowing that he had his first child this past year or so, congrats on great work, Shawn--and I entirely sympathize. Writing a lot of conference rounds (besides the 13 for the state series) is a tremendous amount of work, especially...

bdavery

The issue isn't so much about avoiding quiz players as it is that Jeopardy is beyond paranoid about question security. The reason for "are you affiliated with NAQT?" is probably that since :kenj: writes for NAQT, you might know Ken personally, and he might have told you some of the answers...

bdavery

Many standardized tests now include questions that are not multiple-choice. One basic rule of writing such questions is: Less than 20% full-credit answers means it's too hard; more than 80% full-credit answers means it's too easy. As many have said already, packets (especially in college events) are...

bdavery

We did 7 Illinois conferences this year, 3 other Illinois tournaments and an Illinois radio series. Most of the conferences have been with us for more than one year. Most of the conferences are in the Chicago area (which is, with a few clear exceptions) the best place in the state for quality Schola...

bdavery

I could live with making bonuses all the same value (say, 15 each). I don't know if the organizers adjusted my point levels, but since there are only 4 bonus levels and bonuses are 1 or 2 parts only, establishing a fairly clear cutoff is pretty easy. Most disagreements in a knowledgeable committee w...

bdavery

Tossups are 10 points each; bonuses are 1 or 2 parts, worth even numbers from 12 to 18 points, based on difficulty. (I wrote 60% of the questions this year after several years of writing the current events/pop culture category only, so I know that much; as far as rules/procedures onsite, I defer to ...

bdavery

Charlie, I know your heart is in the right place on this. But since I'm an adult and you are not, I will tell you something important --and you should pay attention even though you think little of my question-writing skills. (This applies to the rest of you readers under age 21, too.) You have proba...

bdavery

I have a 3-part response. 1) The errors Charlie mentions are my fault. The Merchant of Venice is a true atrocity. Sincere apologies--and sincere embarrassment. I gotta edit a lot better--and do even more checking of the work of those I buy questions from. The Clinton question was, "name the hom...

bdavery

I did contact the tournament leader for this event and offered the Kansas state CC championship set we wrote for this year (on the assumption that no one from KS would be driving to AL for a weekend)--since the A set proposal got such deserved ridicule. If any other CC group wants to do a tournament...

bdavery

We do quite a few events in Illinois and would love to help you out next year. http:www.averyenterprises.net/academic.html

bdavery

I think it is possible that the index finger may be a tiny bit faster; you should be able to research that online a bit somehow. FWIW, I personally always used a thumb because it felt more comfortable, but I had a teammate who tried to keep the buzzer halfway down with his thumb all the time-- to re...

bdavery

I agree with theMoMa. The "200" answer is ridiculous. The CBS answer is a good answer, but the dates don't help anyone as clues, especially HS kids.

bdavery

The problems people have complained about with Masons questions for the last 3 years didn't come up in the 2 years before that, when we wrote them. (/shameless plug). If someone else who is good were to write them, that would be good for IL quizbowl in general, as it's a good experience for teams th...

bdavery

Gallaudet runs an annual tournament for deaf schools nationwide. It's set up on the CBI format, where you play at a regional and regional winners go to nationals at Gallaudet. The Gallaudet people have a system they use to convert Word-file questions into PowerPoint slides and then just e-mail the s...

bdavery

I'll save Shawn the e-mail.

The problem is not who writes the questions, as I thought. The problem is that DOE is the final arbiter. After even the world's best porterhouse steak goes through the DOE meatgrinder, you're left with horse meat.

bdavery

Back in the day... 1) My team lost a CBI regional final because someone accidentally kicked the buzzer plug-in out of the outlet before the first tossup. So a buzzer check before every game (and perhaps before every half or round, in a two-half or multi-round game at a championship level) should be ...

bdavery

After QU had used 2 or 3 of mine off the Stanford Archive, I wrote to Chip and said if it didn't stop, he'd have to start writing me checks. He responded that he'd had one writer who had been using the Stanford Archive regularly over a period of time, and that he had finally sacked that writer. Assu...

bdavery

Well, two out of three's not bad: your Babar and math examples do seem to have multiple answers, but I see no problem with not accepting "Toqueville" (sp) for Alexis de Tocqueville.

bdavery

well done on that one! But if you have to ask, you obviously don't read Garfield (or haven't read it enough).

bdavery

It is a very impressive feat and a tribute to your coaching. Congratulations!

bdavery

I did see Kenny, and he did indeed know many answers. It was unfortunate that he didn't grasp the concept that he didn't need to win in order to get to the next round. Had he bet so as to have $10,000 left after Final Jeopardy (my long-honed estimate as to the minimum amount that pretty much guarant...

bdavery

Back in the Stone Age (1986), CBI divided the 15 regional winners that year into 4 sectional groups. One group was Utah, UC Irvine and Alaska-Anchorage. As I was the only spectator with a clue who was not affiliated with one of the 3 teams, I ended up as the judge. The first tossup answer of one gam...

bdavery

My 2 cents: It is nearly impossible for even the best editors to catch all duplicates when editing the packets individually, in the text/Word files they arrived in. On the flip side, players, who only hear each round once, tend to have really bad memories about what they heard (unless they're charti...

bdavery

One way to help with difficulty is to put one subject at a time into a tournament. For example, if you're doing 10 rounds and each has to have a US history question, then rounds 1-3 might include George Washington and Bill Clinton as answers, while rounds 8-10 might have Battle of Chickamauga and th...

bdavery

Shawn is very kind to take the arrows for the questions, but he was only the sub. I did the final editing/putting in games, etc. , so you can complain to me about the set. Looking at the set again, several current-events questions would have been quite difficult now (as noted, they were intended for...

bdavery

Lee, 80% of the kids in America would be _infinitely_ better off being homeschooled than going to public school. The only reason the other 20% shouldn't is that their family lives are so disadvantaged or screwed-up that government-run schools are actually an improvement over their daily lives. These...

bdavery

Far be it from me to praise Chip questions (though he finally did fire the writer who'd been plagiarizing my stuff from the Stanford archive)--and especially those examples submitted. But I have to comment on one statement: 'First tossup of round 2: "In 1598 France's King Henry IV..." Mark...

bdavery

The laws vary in every state, both as to how a homeschool can be legally done (it is legal in all 50 states now) and the athletic rules pertaining thereto. My wife and I have homeschooled our 6 kids for their whole lives. In Colorado, where we live, we haven't checked the athletic rules for fielding...

bdavery

Worksheets are $10 each. Please specify whether these are tournament or practice (it will make a difference as to which ones I send you).

bdavery

Rounds of 20 tossups, 20-question worksheet round, 20 tossups are $45 each and are available within 72-96 hours of your order (because they're already written, which means you even get 2005 current-events questions, no extra charge) grin: Rounds of 25 tossups, 20-question worksheet round, 25 tossups...

bdavery

We also have Ohio-format questions available from our website http://www.averyenterprises.net, including the last 2 Ohio regional/state championship tournaments.

best, Bryce

bdavery

You may purchase the 14 rounds in OAC format we wrote for this year, which would be 40% of your work done. Plus since we wrote the state tournaments last year, it will give you experience with our style in case we get the job again this year (no word yet). e-mail is bda@averyenterprises.net best, Br...

bdavery

Avery Enterprises of Johnstown, Colorado is the official writer for both the middle-school and high-school competitions of the 2005 National Science Bowl, run by the U.S. Department of Energy! As you know, thousands of past Science Bowl questions are available for free on the Internet. However, expe...

bdavery

My plan is 60% short-answer and 40% multiple choice this year. I do know the government person in charge of the questions; however, he would not appreciate e-mail on the issue of format (yet). My personal suspicion as to format (just a theory) is 2-fold: a) someone was familiar with tossup-bonus for...

bdavery

(Moderator: please move if this is the wrong place) Avery Enterprises of Johnstown, Colorado is pleased to announce that it will provide questions for both the middle-school and high-school competitions of the 2005 National Science Bowl! We are looking for several freelance writers to help us with t...

The Quizbowl Resource Center

Search found 90 matches

National Ocean Science Bowl --call for writers

Re: Appropriate Pop Culture Subjects In HS

Re: Chip Beall- Big Plagiarizer or the Biggest Plagiarizer?

Re: Question Writing Questions

Arkansas quiz bowl

Re: My withdrawal from the Missouri market

Re: College Jeopardy finally finds a way to avoid quizbowlers.

Re: All Things Bonus

Illinois 08-09 SchoBowl conference questions

Re: RESULTS: High IQ Bowl (2/16/2008) (Greensboro, NC)

High-IQ scoring

MO questions

MO districts

NIT

Congrats

buzzer

trash

Mason Bowl

deaf quiz bowl

Science Bowl

buzzer malfunctions

plagiarism

another ridiculous protest

editing

question difficulty

Fremd event

home schooling and quiz bowl

QU tournament

home-school quiz bowl

Worksheet rounds

Questions for Ironminds

Ohio format questions

OAC rounds

National Science Bowl warmup tournament

NSB format

National Science Bowl writers needed!