The Quizbowl Resource Center

Hello quizbowl,

So whenever I'm at a tournament (either staffing or directing one), I always seem to dread having to figure out a protest. Not researching the protest or figuring out the points involved-I dread figuring out whether to replace the tossup. Missouri is also going to have a lot of new hosts in the next few years, so I was wondering if there would be community interest in making a guide to resolving protests this summer? I think it would be a great thing to give to hosts (new and experienced alike).

The basic principle is that you throw out and replace the tossup if there is no plausible factually correct answer to the tossup, or if the officiating of the match made it impossible to ascertain whether a team could have given a/the factually correct answer to a tossup. In the simple case where a correct answer was inaccurately ruled incorrect, you just reverse that ruling accordingly without needing to throw anything out and replace it. The mere fact that a question is "bad" or "poorly worded" or whatever, doesn't rise to the level of protestable and doesn't merit throwing out or replacing anything.

A good place to look might be rules H.12.a through H.12.d of the PACE official gameplay rules, which delineate various protest scenarios and what the proper procedure is for resolving each of them.