Format
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Regionals is being held online this year. ACF will coordinate with host schools to hold mirrors using Discord, and will work to create the most authentic and engaging quizbowl experience possible under these circumstances.
Qualification Changes
Because Regionals will be held online, it will not serve as the qualifier for ACF Nationals. The replacement qualification method will be announced soon.
Packet Submission
Any team with at least two people on it who played a regular, collegiate, academic quizbowl tournament* (either as a college student or as a high school student) prior to September 1, 2019, is required to submit a half-packet. If you are unsure whether your team is required to submit a half-packet, please email us at [email protected]. A team that is not required to submit a packet may submit an optional packet by the no-penalty deadline for a $50 discount.
* For these purposes, all ACF tournaments, NAQT SCT (Division I or Division II), NAQT ICT, and typical college-level academic invitationals count as regular collegiate academic tournaments. Pop culture or “hybrid” tournaments, HCASC, and tournaments played on NAQT’s Collegiate Novice series sets do not.
If your team is obligated to submit a half-packet or wishes to do so, please register with this form by January 3, 2021. A half-packet distribution will be mailed to you. If you have already received a half-packet distribution, please still register, but no additional half-packet will be emailed to you. If you register and do not receive a half-packet distribution in a timely manner, please email [email protected]. Registering to submit a half-packet does not constitute registration for ACF Regionals, which will be set up after sites are announced.
The submission schedule is as follows:
- November 22, 2020: -$50
- December 6, 2020: -$25
- December 20, 2020: -$0
- January 3, 2021: +$25
- January 17, 2021: +$50
The submission discounts and penalties – but not the schedule – may differ for teams attending sites outside of the United States, and will be detailed on the relevant site's forum post.
In order to meet a deadline, you must submit your half-packet to [email protected] before 11:59pm Pacific Time on that date. Half-packets should be submitted in Microsoft Word .doc or .docx format. Please do not submit packets as pdfs. If a team wishes to outsource part of its packet to a player not expected to play on that team (e.g., a student who has graduated), it must first receive approval from the head editor. Teams should email in their submissions separately and should not collaborate on packets; i.e., a school’s A team and B team should not write two half-packets together. However, if anyone who works on a packet or has access to that packet ends up playing on a different team (e.g. if someone originally intended to be on your school’s B team instead plays for your school’s A team) please let the head editor and your local TD know as soon as possible.
Fees
Additional details can be found on the ACF website. Fees and discounts for this tournament are structured as follows:
- Base fee per team: $120
- New to quizbowl discount: –$80
- Shorthanded discount (1-2 players): –$60
- Staffers: –$25 per staffer with a functional laptop and a stable internet connection. Staffers must register with ACF in advance and affirm that they have completed ACF’s moderator training (note: staffers who have not completed the training may scorekeep).
Host sites will bill teams as soon as possible after the teams register. Teams should pay their host sites by whatever method is convenient for the hosts, who will in turn pay ACF by check, bank transfer, cash, or PayPal.
Distribution
The distribution for this tournament will follow the standard ACF distribution, as laid out here.
Accessibility
This tournament is intended to be easier than ACF Regionals 2018, close in difficulty to ACF Regionals 2019, and slightly easier than ACF Regionals 2020. While writing submissions, please keep the following in mind:
- At least 50% of tossup answerlines should be things that can be tossed up at ACF Fall or below. This does not mean “answerlines with an easy giveaway, but no other Fall-level clues in their category” (e.g., a literature question with an answerline of “Delaware,” exclusively on Delawarean authors) but rather answerlines that could have a full Fall-level tossup in their category written on them (e.g., a geography question on Delaware).
- The remaining tossup answerlines should be predominantly things that could be uncontroversially tossed up at regular difficulty. While you should feel free to submit tossups with unconventional answerlines that are still accessible (e.g., the trend of writing harder tossups on elements of core-canon works) these should make up no more than one or two of your overall submission.
- Easy parts for bonuses should be genuinely easy, gettable by around 90% of teams. However, try and avoid “curved yellow fruit” style bonuses that don’t reward knowledge and can actually obfuscate an answer.
- Hard parts for bonuses should be genuinely hard, but gettable by around 10% of teams. That 10% is important - a Regionals hard part is not a Nationals hard part. It may be canon-expanding, but should still be relevant.
- Tossups this year will be hard-capped at seven lines, 10-point Times New Roman with one-inch margins. Please do not submit tossups that run into the ninth line or are shorter than five full lines. For bonuses, please do not submit any bonus parts that are over three lines, and aim for 1-2 lines per part.
Hosts
If you are interested in hosting an online mirror of ACF Regionals, fill out this form. The deadline to submit a bid is December 5th. Sites will be announced by December 12th.
If you have any questions about hosting or about the form, contact ACF’s Mirror Coordinator, Margaret Tebbe, at [email protected]. Hosts must abide by ACF’s Hosting Guidelines and the updated guidelines for hosting online tournaments.
Mirrors will by default be regional. One benefit of online tournaments, however, is that smaller sites can be condensed without creating transportation barriers. ACF reserves the right to move teams and staffers between sites. ACF intends to mirror 2021 ACF Regionals in the following regions:
Northeast: Yale
Upper Mid-Atlantic: NYU
Lower Mid-Atlantic:
Southeast: Georgia Tech
East Coast Overflow: *
Great Lakes:
Midwest:
North: Minnesota
South Central: Nebraska
Mountain West:
Northern California:
Southern California:
Northwest:
Eastern Canada:
United Kingdom:
Invitational: ACF
High-school-only sites: Westview
* May be any site on the east coast, due to anticipated overflow from existing sites.
Further Questions
If you have any further questions, please reach out to us at [email protected]. Thanks!