New Startup (equipment, rules, learning etc.)

New high school teams looking for advice should post here.
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Farvezn
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New Startup (equipment, rules, learning etc.)

Post by Farvezn »

My school has recently gotten approval for a quizbowl team and had our first informational meeting. I have a few questions regarding high school teams:

1. Buzzer System? (what and where to buy, approx. costs, funding)
2. Quizbowl Format (rules, team size, topics covered)
- Also, are the questions for each season formulated randomly or is there a certain set of question packets where all the questions for each year's season are pulled from during tournaments that schools practice from prior to tournaments?
- And, I think I remember there were certain questions where you could talk over with teammates before answering. When do those occur during a match?
3. How to improve (I've only once been on a quizbowl team in 9th grade at my old school and we were utterly destroyed, probably buzzing only twice each round) :sad:
- especially how to improve if you think you know nothing or only specialize in a single subject and would like to expand?

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Important Bird Area
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Re: New Startup (equipment, rules, learning etc.)

Post by Important Bird Area »

Welcome to the quizbowl community!

1. "The Officiator" from Anderson Enterprises is a good inexpensive buzzer system.

2. Most quizbowl formats use four players per team; some standard rule sets are available (NAQT, ACF). Usually, if a player answers a tossup correctly, that player's team gets to confer on a multiple-part bonus question.

New questions are written for every season of quizbowl. Recycling tournament questions from previous practice material is widely considered unethical (because it can give particular teams an unfair advantage, depending on who has been practicing with exactly what old questions).

Tournaments announce their "distribution" (that is, how many questions per game will come from broad categories like "European history" or "math" or "painting"). For instance, the distribution for NAQT's high school national championship is here.

3. There's a lot of advice about how to improve in this forum; look at the older threads further down, both in this section for new teams and under "Theory."
Jeff Hoppes
President, Northern California Quiz Bowl Alliance
former HSQB Chief Admin (2012-13)
VP for Communication and history subject editor, NAQT
Editor emeritus, ACF

"I wish to make some kind of joke about Jeff's love of birds, but I always fear he'll turn them on me Hitchcock-style." -Fred
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Stained Diviner
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Re: New Startup (equipment, rules, learning etc.)

Post by Stained Diviner »

If you are looking for lots of free questions to read, go here. As Jeff said, you shouldn't find the same exact questions at any tournament. However, these questions are a good place to start learning what gets asked. There have been several essays written about how to get better at quizbowl, including this one.

If you let us know where your school is, we might be able to help you connect with good people in your area. You probably should look through the relevant regional discussion on this board.
David Reinstein
Head Writer and Editor for Scobol Solo, Masonics, and IESA; TD for Scobol Solo and Reinstein Varsity; IHSSBCA Board Member; IHSSBCA Chair (2004-2014); PACE President (2016-2018)
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