The Quizbowl Resource Center

I just had a general question about the packets for the HSNCT. Were the playoff packets designed to be harder than the prelim packets? Additionally, was each playoff packet supposed to be harder than the last (finals questions harder than semifinals, semifinals harder than quarterfinals, etc)?

If you want to be a ridiculously, unbelievably good player, get a job at Barnes & Noble or Borders. The people who work there know everything there is to know about literature. Once I went into a Borders and saw The Tale of Genji filed under Shikibu. Fair enough. Although a lot of people who kn...

I disagree with Cameron. Lists are a good foundation for lit knowledge. If you want to be an average lit player, memorize lists. If you want to be a good lit player, read a lot of sparknotes. If you want to be a great lit player, read a lot of works. If you want to be a ridiculously, unbelievably g...

Quiz Kids, the televised quiz bowl event for Northern California.
http://www.vimeo.com/album/70031/page:3

I would rank Gunn and MSJ C about the same.
Gunn still has Ben, who was a one-man destruction squad on Quiz Kids and is a solid player. Obviously, you (Jeffrey) know more about how Mission will arrange its teams, but I feel as though Gunn was relatively consistent last year.

Last year was a breakout year of sorts for NorCal quiz bowl. We qualified 5 teams to Nationals, 4 made it to elimination rounds, and Mission San Jose A (a team of juniors) took 11th. Any predictions for this year?

Another useful way to study for geography is to look at travel resources, since they condense the information into stuff that's relevant and useful. The travel pages in newspapers (many of which are available online) will provide historical context as well. I also frequent MSN Travel for the interes...

Are there any plans for a similar quiz bowl camp on the West Coast?

[10] Name this state, the home of Crater Lake, with capital at Portland.
Answer: Oregon

^^ that question is in HSAPQ ACF2 Round 3...bonus 4

I don't think any American state has a capital at Portland...

I moderated for Bellarmine A and Mission San Jose A in the playoffs, and thought both were solid teams, though Rancho Bernardo was probably better than Mission San Jose and Bellarmine A would probably be around 5th-6th best in Southern California (granted, we had a really good crop of teams in Sout...

When compared to the bonus which asked for the repeat winners of NBA titles in the last 15 years (which quite literally requires an encyclopedic knowledge of basketball history since 1993), the discrepancy in difficulties is too great. Really? Fifteen years takes you back all the way to 1994, and a...

And in addition to the hockey bonus being painful, I think I recall a bonus about the Olympics where the last clue was "Czech two-time long jump champion" or something to that effect. Although this follows the pyramid format for being harder than the other two, I almost yelled an expletiv...

By the way, I think it'd be fair to acknowledge some people here.
History questions were great.
Myth questions (the few that existed) were challenging but appropriate.
And current events questions were nice and relevant (Somalian pirates, etc).

"the hood" for "ghetto", "Big Papi" for "David Ortiz" Both of these are acceptable as they are other valid ways of referring to the answer (well, maybe the first one is sort of debatable, but whatever). I don't know anything about linguistics though. Well yea...

However, questions about teams (especially in their abundance at the HSNCT), such as the Lions and Royals, beginning with names such as Caleb Campbell and Luke Hochevar (who have done nothing of note in the sports world, are unacceptable. For teams that are academic stalwarts but slightly weaker in...

One more note: "Carat" shouldn't have been acceptable for "circumflex". Especially not at HSNCT, and definitely not if the question was being characterized as linguistics. I'm not blaming the linguistics guy (I thought his questions were fine), but accepting "carat" wou...

Another part of a question that irritated me was in a round against Santa Monica (I forget which one, it was between rounds 5-8) where we ended up losing by 10 (completely our fault, since we didn't know that first half questions should be challenged at halftime). The question's answer was "Bha...