The Quizbowl Resource Center

Apologies if this shouldn't be in the "Theory" section. I debated whether to post here or in "Miscellaneous," but ultimately I felt that this was the right forum. I think that what we are going to discuss falls under "theory" because these are things that have fallen out of quiz bowl vogue for a REASON. It will be interesting to discuss the reasons behind the demises of these relics of quiz bowl's past.

So, basically I was thinking back on things that have changed and realized that the game has evolved a good bit in the past several years. There are elements of quiz bowl that were around as late as 2010 that today's players have never experienced. For example, I was recently reading an older set of NAQT questions to my team and a 30-20-10 bonus came up. They had no idea what this was. I had to explain that they were fairly prevalent a few years back and that I just hadn't seen one in years.

So, while I understand the reason that 30-20-10 bonuses have vanished, I have to admit that I kind of miss them. I don't think they should come back, but I have a nostalgic soft spot in my heart for them.

So, what other "Ghosts of Quiz Bowl's Past" have gone the way of the 30-20-10? Does anyone know exactly when they vanished? Why did they go? Do you miss them?

I thought this might be a fun discussion.

"A, B, both or neither" bonuses.

Example:

State whether each of the following statements is true of Budapest, true of Bucharest, true of both, or neither
[10] Is located on a river
ANSWER: both
[10] Contains a slightly-larger replica of the Champs-Elysee
ANSWER: Bucharest
[10] Is home to the European Court of Justice
ANSWER: neither

Not really in keeping with the first two examples, but: When I was "growing up" in high school quizbowl in the mid-Atlantic, it was often the case at some of the bigger high school-hosted tournaments (maybe for 4 or 5 times each year) that there would be a breakfast put out for teams in attendance, as well as the parents, coaches, staff, etc. that brought them there. It wasn't always enough for everyone, but knowing even that there would be some small amount of bagels, donuts, orange juice, sometimes small muffins or even coffee, etc. was often a large relief when planning a morning of early wake-ups and hectic travel.

From what I can tell, this happens a lot less often now. I realize a lot of school/team budgets are tighter now than they were in 2008, and it's probably better if that money goes towards helping the host team pay for travel to nationals than into the stomachs of high school students and their accompanying adults, but it was always a nice touch when it happened. Perhaps teams were more able to provide in this way when tournaments were both larger and less frequent, so it didn't take as large or important a chunk out of the intake.

My favorite ghost of quizbowl past, as I'm sure I've mentioned in other similar threads, is the Deep Bench format. How this worked is that each school would field one team of eight people; this team would play half the tournament as two teams of four and the other half as three teams of two and two solo teams (you'd have two simultaneous round robins in which all the A quads and B quads would play each other, then five simultaneous round robins in which each school's first singles, second singles, first doubles, second, doubles, and third doubles would play each other, if that makes sense). Usually the scoring was tiered--say, you'd get five points for a match won by your first doubles team, but only three for the second doubles team and one for the first doubles team. I found playing on different sorts of teams over the course of the tournament to be pretty fun.

The problem with Deep Bench is that the questions at nearly every Deep Bench were unusually awful*, and there were A LOT of them (unsurprisingly, this format featured way more rounds than most). Bizarrely, the 2000 Deep Bench featured a sort of quizbowl mixer before actual rounds began in which the tournament hosts randomly assembled mixed teams from all of the players in attendance and had them play a couple of scrimmage rounds (this tournament must have set some sort of record for "number of rounds played in a weekend when we were really just playing one tournament")--this was actually pretty fun, but completely impractical from a time and question-writing standpoint.

*Even in 2001, it was not generally acceptable for the first two sentences of a geography question to read "It is the nation's largest city and its economic and administrative hub. A cultural center, the city has a noted opera house, the Royal Dramatic theatre built in 1908, and many museums," nor was it usual for a question on the Highlander to begin, "Born in the highlands of Scotland...". The 2001 Deep Bench also featured a bizarre "rules innovation" in which each packet would contain a lie (the subtitle of the tournament was "Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics"). Unsurprisingly, this did not catch on.

With respect to Matt's food thing...in my day, most kids who saw food at a tournament ate it and were glad to get it. Even the weeks-old packaged Day's Inn danishes were scarfed up in record time.

But in the last 7-10 years, since my kids started being teenagers, we've seen all kinds of food, brought by all kinds of people, for teenagers to social non-quizbowl events, at all times of day or night, and seen it go mostly uneaten/thrown out because everyone 's on some sort of "diet"--now it's even the boys. It runs the gamut from some actual diet/eating plan (that just started this morning, half the time) to what grown-ups used to call "picky eaters"--and every gradation in between. (Alas, even my own kids are not immune.)

It only takes one time for an adult coach to spend $X on stuff he's been told (by his team) that kids will eat--and have to take home/throw away > 50% because the bagel eaters won't touch danish and vice-versa, and the milk is 2% and not whole or skim, etc. --before he says "never, ever again."

I'm not sure if this is a good or a bad thing, but there seems to be a lot fewer organic chemistry questions on reactions named for people as there were back when I started in the late first decade.

bdavery wrote:With respect to Matt's food thing...in my day, most kids who saw food at a tournament ate it and were glad to get it. Even the weeks-old packaged Day's Inn danishes were scarfed up in record time.

But in the last 7-10 years, since my kids started being teenagers, we've seen all kinds of food, brought by all kinds of people, for teenagers to social non-quizbowl events, at all times of day or night, and seen it go mostly uneaten/thrown out because everyone 's on some sort of "diet"--now it's even the boys. It runs the gamut from some actual diet/eating plan (that just started this morning, half the time) to what grown-ups used to call "picky eaters"--and every gradation in between. (Alas, even my own kids are not immune.)

It only takes one time for an adult coach to spend $X on stuff he's been told (by his team) that kids will eat--and have to take home/throw away > 50% because the bagel eaters won't touch danish and vice-versa, and the milk is 2% and not whole or skim, etc. --before he says "never, ever again."

Not really sure that this is what's causing the problem. I've been to a couple of tournaments with breakfast, and over half of it going uneaten has never been a problem. Just because "kids these days" don't want to undiscerningly shovel food into their mouths doesn't mean that nobody will eat a selection of doughnuts and bagels.

As for the food issue, here is my experience:

I wanted the first high school invitational I ever hosted to be an EVENT. We hired a caterer and had a massive meal for all the teams. It hurt our profit, but I wanted to establish our tournament as something "classy" that teams would remember and would want to attend.

Coaches, kids, and parents just complained and whined to the point that I decided "never again." From that point on, we order pizza and sell it.

Also:

List bonuses.

Also, I miss this bonus lead-in:

"For 5 points for one, 10 for two, 20 for three, or 30 for all four..."

I always liked the old NSC format.

In SoCal, every tournament still has food in the morning. Sweet, sweet Costco blueberry muffins...

Somebody needs to make this a national thing again, ASAP.

bdavery wrote:But in the last 7-10 years, since my kids started being teenagers, we've seen all kinds of food, brought by all kinds of people, for teenagers to social non-quizbowl events, at all times of day or night, and seen it go mostly uneaten/thrown out because everyone 's on some sort of "diet"--now it's even the boys. It runs the gamut from some actual diet/eating plan (that just started this morning, half the time) to what grown-ups used to call "picky eaters"--and every gradation in between.

Speaking of the ghosts of the past...

Corry wrote:In SoCal, every tournament still has food in the morning. Sweet, sweet Costco blueberry muffins...

Somebody needs to make this a national thing again, ASAP.

A lot of tournaments in SoCal also sell food during lunch. Usually something simple like pizza from Costco, but it saves a lot of time for people that don't want to walk or drive to nearby eateries, and it makes a nice profit for the tournament hosts, so it's a win-win for both parties.

Dr. Loki Skylizard, Thoracic Surgeon wrote:I always liked the old NSC format.

The old NSC format was interesting. The Category Quiz is something I miss just because, when practicing for it, I would yell "CHOOSE!!!" in an overly dramatic and ominous manner after every single tossup. Imagine the "Choose your fate" voice from Mortal Kombat, only louder, angrier, and slightly more Southern.

That's the only reason I miss it, though.

Matthew Jackson wrote:Not really in keeping with the first two examples, but: When I was "growing up" in high school quizbowl in the mid-Atlantic, it was often the case at some of the bigger high school-hosted tournaments (maybe for 4 or 5 times each year) that there would be a breakfast put out for teams in attendance, as well as the parents, coaches, staff, etc. that brought them there. It wasn't always enough for everyone, but knowing even that there would be some small amount of bagels, donuts, orange juice, sometimes small muffins or even coffee, etc. was often a large relief when planning a morning of early wake-ups and hectic travel.

From what I can tell, this happens a lot less often now. I realize a lot of school/team budgets are tighter now than they were in 2008, and it's probably better if that money goes towards helping the host team pay for travel to nationals than into the stomachs of high school students and their accompanying adults, but it was always a nice touch when it happened. Perhaps teams were more able to provide in this way when tournaments were both larger and less frequent, so it didn't take as large or important a chunk out of the intake.

Maggie Walker still offers a breakfast like this at GSAC. Instead of getting the school to pay for it or using team funds, we just ask each team member's parents to volunteer to bring something. We usually end up with a lot of food that people are happy to eat.

quizbowllee wrote:Also:

List bonuses.

Also, I miss this bonus lead-in:

"For 5 points for one, 10 for two, 20 for three, or 30 for all four..."

Ah yes, the 5-10-20-30, so often combined with the A/B/both/neither format. My greatest (basically, only) moment of glory in terms of playing quiz bowl was on a CBI bonus that was for some bizarre reason a list bonus with "5 for one, 15 for two, or 30 for all three" scoring.

On the other hand, CBI things I don't miss, even ironically: variable value bonuses. Those of you who have entered the quiz bowl world in the last half-dozen years don't know what it was like to get a tossup and be told "you get a 20-point bonus because... suck it."

I miss elimination playoff formats. While I understand the fairness arguments against them and agree with them, it always disappoints me when the winner of a regular round-robin tournament becomes obvious halfway through the day because their record can't be caught and thus a lot of late-day games become pointless exercises. HSNCT seems to be the most exciting tournament of the year because of their double-elim format.

There was this random tournament in HS with a three period format, with the second period being delightfully unique.

In this format, there were four "lightning rounds" (10 short parts) in the second period, each with different categories (like Art, Baseball, Presidents, etc.). The captain would assign himself and his teammates to the lightning round that best matched their talents, and then each round was played one on one. This led to both interesting strategy, angry scapegoating when a teammate claimed he really knew opera and went 0 for 10, and some suspense when you had to figure out who would take the Science category on an all humanities team (I did once). You could also cackle in glee when a pet topic round gave you instant points. There were some fun aspects to it, like a teammate stuck with the "Business" round just because we couldn't figure out what else to give him, and he fighting it to a solid performance.

You know what kind of breakfast I miss? The Bruce Arthur potluck:

Skepticism and Animal Feed wrote:One possible solution might be to have a potluck breakfast before each tournament. Every team can bring some kind of food item, such as a roast, or a bowl of mac and cheese, or some sandwiches, and then they can get together in a room and share the food with each other, and presumably socialize while they're at it.

Cheynem wrote:There was this random tournament in HS with a three period format, with the second period being delightfully unique.

In this format, there were four "lightning rounds" (10 short parts) in the second period, each with different categories (like Art, Baseball, Presidents, etc.). The captain would assign himself and his teammates to the lightning round that best matched their talents, and then each round was played one on one. This led to both interesting strategy, angry scapegoating when a teammate claimed he really knew opera and went 0 for 10, and some suspense when you had to figure out who would take the Science category on an all humanities team (I did once). You could also cackle in glee when a pet topic round gave you instant points. There were some fun aspects to it, like a teammate stuck with the "Business" round just because we couldn't figure out what else to give him, and he fighting it to a solid performance.

I still really like the lightning rounds in History Bowl and kinda wish quizbowl had them too.

Here in Alabama, we still have worksheets. I'm hoping they become a ghost some day soon. As for lightning rounds, we got rid of those sometime in the mid 1990s. I remember, because I was still in high school at the time. We replaced them with worksheets, which are terrible. But, they are better than lightning rounds.

On another note, I could never have imagined that this conversation would be so food-centric.

I also liked the old NSC format.

And Lee, the caterer probably put dark meat in the chicken salad [this is a joke only Southerners will understand].


I think what happened with a lot of changes is that a number of people decided that quiz bowl should become more streamlined, but not everything went the way of all flesh. We still have state formats (though fewer, I suppose), and NAQT's 24-question rounds.

quizbowllee wrote:Also:

List bonuses.

Also, I miss this bonus lead-in:

"For 5 points for one, 10 for two, 20 for three, or 30 for all four..."

I didn't know these questions were becoming less common, but maybe that's because tournaments in my area usually stick to a modified CBI format. As a player, I loved list bonuses because you could score on them often and rack up points if you knew three or four!

Corry wrote:In SoCal, every tournament still has food in the morning. Sweet, sweet Costco blueberry muffins...

Somebody needs to make this a national thing again, ASAP.

In South Alabama, there's a LUXURIOUS tournament where they go all out, with a selection of meats and preservatives within biscuits, cinnamon rolls, coffee, donuts, cookies... It was a dream. My local league also still has donuts and juices every time you come - it encourages new players to come out and works as a recruiting tool when "you miss school" isn't enough.

Worksheets. Those were huge when I was playing 6-7 years ago. Almost every tournament had those.

Also the different styles of buzzers depending on who brought them. Also so many different types of tournaments.

NAQT was the dominant style in '07-'08-'09, but we had HSAPQ questions (more dedicated to science and other subjects), then our county tournament still used outdated Patrick's Press one-liners that repeated every year. USC was different also with no pop culture being asked.

I miss the days of Minnesota HSQB where the first round of the four-quarter format (the rest was on Patrick's Press, which...) began with ~10-12 "Current Events" tossups that were basically cribbed from that day's Star Tribune. My coach would throw (as turned into "tradition") the paper at me when we got in the van and I would read it on the 30-minute drive to Burnsville.

One iteration involved 8th- or 9th-grade me getting something like 9 of the first 10 questions (Including one which began "Heart health...*buzz*" "Answer: _olive oil_") over Blake A, who at that time was still a force to be reckoned with in MNHSQB. By the end of the match we lost by something like 250, but being up by about 100 points on one of the better teams in the Metro thanks to "CE" was pretty sweet.

Unfortunately, most of these so-called "ghosts" are still alive and well if you go to (Southern) Indiana

The old NSC format did have its charm, but by all accounts it was a nightmare to edit, with 3 different types of bonuses.

When I was starting out in quiz bowl, my team used old packets from maybe ten years ago (or even older, I'm not sure), and we came across list bonuses, "a, b, both or neither" bonuses, the "5 points for 1, 10 for 2, ...", etc. all the time during practice. And when we got to a tournament that didn't have any of the above bonuses, it came as a bit of a shock.

Spheal With It wrote:

Cheynem wrote:There was this random tournament in HS with a three period format, with the second period being delightfully unique.

In this format, there were four "lightning rounds" (10 short parts) in the second period, each with different categories (like Art, Baseball, Presidents, etc.). The captain would assign himself and his teammates to the lightning round that best matched their talents, and then each round was played one on one. This led to both interesting strategy, angry scapegoating when a teammate claimed he really knew opera and went 0 for 10, and some suspense when you had to figure out who would take the Science category on an all humanities team (I did once). You could also cackle in glee when a pet topic round gave you instant points. There were some fun aspects to it, like a teammate stuck with the "Business" round just because we couldn't figure out what else to give him, and he fighting it to a solid performance.

I still really like the lightning rounds in History Bowl and kinda wish quizbowl had them too.

Personally, I hate lightning rounds in History Bowl, but I want quizbowl to have lightning rounds too because a) if you're getting creamed really bad, it gives you a shot to get points--like in history bowl--and b) if you started out in History Bowl and transitioned over to quizbowl, there's something that you're used to.

Edit: I realized I made a few typos after I submitted this post.