The Quizbowl Resource Center

Late night skype conversations with friends have led me to make this post.

We were talking about our worst moments in the past year when I proceeded to tell my worst (and most rage filled) moment in quizbowl as such:


Around March of this year, our team was headed to a Jeopardy!-style tournament (very popular in NJ. If you don't know what that is, this post will tell you the basics. It's not quizbowl per se, but my point still stands.) that was around an hour away from our HS, so we were definitely hoping that we would come away with a trophy at the end of it. This was our first appearance at this particular tournament (which I will not name)

However, once we got to the first round, we knew it wasn't gonna be good. Legitimately one of the questions in that round was "What did Bernie Sanders Campaign for? Answer: Free College". This question made me gag inside at over how bad and -ish it was. It should've NEVER been allowed to be printed onto the question packet. Nevertheless, we persisted.

By some miracle (albeit a small one), we had made it out of the preliminary rounds in first place and, having beaten our first playoff round opponent, had made it to the finals. Little did we know, it was only worse from here.

Earlier on in the tournament, there was a question on Arrhythmia that was fairly normal and had no faults to it. However, in this final round there was ANOTHER question on Arrhythmia with legitimately the same clues as the last question, although they were worded only slightly differently.

We immediately protested this, as it shouldn't have come up in the FIRST PLACE. The other team (who got it right) agreed with us, and the student moderators proceeded to message their TD.

The message that they got back was astonishing. The TD came into the room, heard the protest, said "deal with it", and left the room. I found this to be HIGHLY unprofessional. I felt so degraded that I hardly wanted to proceed. In the end, the other team beat us by 10 points, the question being worth 50. We congratulated the other team, who again said that they agreed with us on the protest, and received a second place trophy (for which we were highly grateful of). We went home slightly agitated, slightly sad over what had happened. However, we did achieve our goal of getting a trophy, which was nice, but it was still my worst moment in quizbowl.


After telling that LONG story, what was your worst moment in quizbowl?

In June 2017, my team had the displeasure of attending the QU NAC. I knew we'd have bad questions but my team needed more experience than most of our players had so I figured we could benefit from it. During our 4th round, there was a comp math question where the answer was something like 2sqrt7. The other team buzzed in and starting reading off the answer, but continued past the actual answer and added "+ 4pi." Normally, this would constitute a wrong answer. Nope. The moderator just stopped him as he was reading and said "Nope, I just needed that first part, you're right." I'm pretty sure everyone on both teams was confused and my coach didn't want me to protest because there had already been a number of problems that had been mentioned but not solved earlier. In any case, this was ridiculous to experience but also kind of funny. In the future, if I'm unsure of which war introduced mustard gas, I'll say "WW1 OR WW2" and see if that passes.

The angriest I have ever gotten at a quizbowl tournament was Oxford Open 2011, in the semifinal round. My team was in "we are mathematically guaranteed to win if we don't neg" territory and there was a literature tossup. It was clearly about a character from "The Devil and Daniel Webster".

My teammate buzzes in, and says Daniel Webster. Neg 5, they were looking for The Devil. We lose the game as the other team sweeps all remaining points and wins a tiebreaker.

The tournament was in friggin' GREAT BRITAIN, they don't even know who Daniel Webster is there. Why would you buzz in with Daniel Webster and not with The Devil, whom they have known in Britain for centuries? I still don't get it. It hurt extra because the teammate who made this neg was somebody I had been playing with for years and is probably my favorite regular teammate I ever had.

I once negged "pardoning Nixon" with "forgiving Nixon" in power and could not convert even with multiple prompts. That sucked. During one round in SCT last year, I went 0-0-4. That also sucked.

I negged 5 times and incorrectly vulched twice, ending the round with -25 points, against Hunter C (made up of middle schoolers) at BHSAT last year. I just kept thinking "this time I actually know the answer" and kept not getting it. We won thanks to the non-idiocy of my teammates.

I once got so angry that I stormed out of the room after the opposing team got the tiebreaker tossup, this coming after me tying the game on the last question and getting 20 (I think) on the bonus. What stung even worse was that this was the third time we'd played this particular team that year and our third loss to them. I acted a fool that day and it was probably my worst moment in quizbowl. We did manage to notch a victory later in the year against that team though.

AGoodMan wrote:I once negged "pardoning Nixon" with "forgiving Nixon" in power and could not convert even with multiple prompts. That sucked. During one round in SCT last year, I went 0-0-4. That also sucked.

That just sounds like the moderator was being nitpicky. "Pardoning" and "forgiving" are essentially the same.

tksaleija wrote:

AGoodMan wrote:I once negged "pardoning Nixon" with "forgiving Nixon" in power and could not convert even with multiple prompts. That sucked. During one round in SCT last year, I went 0-0-4. That also sucked.

That just sounds like the moderator was being nitpicky. "Pardoning" and "forgiving" are essentially the same.

Well one is an official act of the US President and a legal term while the other is the emotional act of letting someone go or being chill or whatnot. But anyway that's not the point of this thread, just figured I'd chime in.

Neggman wrote:

tksaleija wrote:

AGoodMan wrote:I once negged "pardoning Nixon" with "forgiving Nixon" in power and could not convert even with multiple prompts. That sucked. During one round in SCT last year, I went 0-0-4. That also sucked.

That just sounds like the moderator was being nitpicky. "Pardoning" and "forgiving" are essentially the same.

Well one is an official act of the US President and a legal term while the other is the emotional act of letting someone go or being chill or whatnot. But anyway that's not the point of this thread, just figured I'd chime in.

You do have a point, I stand corrected.

Negging (or zeroing) 10-12 times in various matches at Scobol Solo

Not as a player but as a TD, my worst moment was the SoCal States I directed where pretty much everything went wrong. I had slightly put our field cap too high at 24, thinking I should have no problem getting enough staff. Week of the tournament I had 5 people drop out, and was barely able to scrape by with 1 staffer per room thanks to extra parents volunteering as of day of the tournament. And then it turned out a door was broken so we couldn't get into the room. Someone literally took the handle off of a door and maintenance couldn't get the door open until Monday. So one of our rooms (fortunately secluded) was in a hallway on the floor.

My school was hosting a tournament and being a lazy-ish sophomore I didn't feel like staffing so they let me solo the tournament, which was pretty lit

Turns out I was a lot worse than I even thought, and I had 8 negs in one game (remarkable ended up positive with 1-4-8), but yeah it was pretty terrible. By the 4th neg ("Vienna" for "Austria" or something like that) I was so out of it. Also I must mention the 6ppb on the bonuses I was read.

I accidentally said "total-la-ri-an-ism" instead of "to-ta-la-tar-rian-ism" while giving the answer to a bonus, which I quickly corrected myself on before the reader acknowledged me(which was allowed that tournament).
They initially accepted it, but the other team protested because earlier, their captain had said "Golgi desert" instead of "Gobi Desert". and they didn't accept it. ( Yes, this was their actual reason for protesting.)
TD comes and and asks the reader what she heard.
She says "I don't know".
They rule in favor of the opposite team because I had already admitted to saying the wrong answer first.

This was the last bonus of the game and we lost by 10 because of that.

Wait ethan ur on this site? do u remember me from ACE ^^^^
Anyways, my worst moment was when I knew the answer was Corsica, but I buzzed in and accidentally said Sicliy. It ended up not mattering, but it was REALLY embarassing for me.

A teammate having his phone go off in the middle of a bonus in an elimination match at the 2004 HSNCT. A bonus that I never heard but would have 30'd, which forced me to go for a power on a Lute Olson question with time running out (I missed).

After it had happened--and he had been severely chewed out--at a Friday practice match. Then he asked me why I didn't wait on the Olson question because I clearly would have gotten it had I waited.

At HSNCT 2018 I said "gravitron" on a bonus where the answer was "graviton." We lost the game by ten points and were eliminated.

User was reminded to enable a signature. --Mgmt.

My whole freshman season due to some bad-mannered teamates (Which I have learned to ignore, and unfortunately I have to be on a team with them again) These 2 folks really like/liked to bring up my short-comings at every chance they can get. And just demoralize(d) me. At one point i just lashed out at a tournament and had some choice words for these teammates (in very hushed tones). The No cares teammate calmed me down before it got ugly. Definitely the lowest point in that year in relation to QB.