The Quizbowl Resource Center

so .... if the answer were "Galileo" ... you would prompt for "Galilei"? I see your point here, but, as stated, the question would be analogous to "Which Italian astronomer and inventor was the subject of the Bertolt Brecht play 'Life of Galileo'?" In this case, I woul...

segregold wrote:Yeah. It's a good idea. Feel free to IM me too, I'm the co-coordinator. (Great word, that: "co-coordinate". Tricordinator, it almost seems.)

My IM sn is "segregold". Original, I know.

But not as good as being the cocoa-ordinator. :)

I respectfully submit the argument that video games are legitimate quiz bowl information not only because they are some of the most important works in the history of the universe (anyone who has played Half-Life 2, Civ 4, or Galaga will certainly agree with me) and some of them deal with the most i...

I'm all about technology, but I think that the traveling to different schools and face-to-face competition are essential to the spirit of quiz bowl. I fear that such a leap might ruin quiz bowl. So the question was "How would you run an online Quiz Bowl tournament?" My answer is: I wouldn...

Given the hostility toward :chip: I've seen on this site, I almost hesitate to ask, but how do you guys feel about the QuizNet format, and, if it were up to you, how would you run an online Quiz Bowl tournament? Just to kick things off, QuizNet seems to me to place too much emphasis on typing skills...

The benefits to a quiz bowl tournament include: --Fairer, more interesting matches for teams. --Somewhat lessened possibility for blowouts. --Alleviate issues caused by bracketing based on team strength. There are, naturally, some drawbacks: --More questions required to run alternating brackets. --...

First, I don't see how a quiz bowl class prevents any student from taking advanced classes (AP, IB, etc.). Lee, I think the point is that many schools offer grade point incentives for taking advanced or AP classes. I don't know this from experience, but I believe some schools also have enough advan...

good teams are good teams regardless of the buzzers...

Oh, absolutely, and the difference (if there even was one) was minute. Generally, if the buzzers are the same for each team, all's kosher. I was just stating my personal preference.

Why don't you just use your finger rather than your thumb on the handheld then? Well, as I said I preferred to use my paired index and middle finger. That combo feels awkward on the handheld signalling devices. I guess I could have held it with one hand and tapped it with my other hand, but I also ...

Nonsense. The entire purpose of proscribing a grammar is in the fact that people using grammars that they've made-up (by whatever means) will and, indeed, frequently do have difficulties communicating with others who ostensibly speak the same language that they do; a situation that you erroneously ...

Some of you oldsters may have seen this one on the NAC intro trailer some years back. The question started something along the lines of "Her facelift had a pricetag of $70 million..." I buzzed in at that point and said "Elizabeth Taylor". The correct answer was, of course, "...

How can that possibly be when it is exceedingly likely that any two given members of the general populace would be at great odds with one another about even the most basic grammatical rules? In fact, what does "the general populace" understanding something even mean? Because your average ...

Native speakers of any language don't automatically learn grammar, and it's really not worth it to spend school time teaching grammar (IMO). Language evolves, from proto-Indo-European to Anglo-Saxon to middle English to modern English to 1337, and I guarantee you that the general populace has rarel...

Here, tossups are worth 10 (w/o negs) and PLEASE MAKE FUN OF ME BECAUSE I SPEAK NEITHER LATIN NOR ENGLISH (which bounceback) are worth up to 20 each. If Team A is up by 5, and Team B goes in early and misses, Team A benefits by not getting the tossup and finishing the game because if Team A gets th...

3. [...] If the other team misses the last tossup and we are ahead by less than ten points, give the wrong answer.

Ok, I'm new, I'll bite. What is the point of this? Not, I feel confident, just to deny the other team the benefit of your knowledge....

Well, there certainly is a subtext in Christian theology that the pursuit of knowledge is sinful...look at the Garden of Eden story. Eating from the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is a sin. This mindset has manifested throughout Christian history, notably in the pre-Age of Reason church quas...

According to the rule as stated (Harmless or inadvertent embellishment of responses will not be penalized, so long as the embellishment does not make the response wrong) the Magellan answer would be counted wrong because it DOES make the response wrong with regards to the question being asked... &qu...

I am a new Quiz Bowl coach and I think Quiz Bowl has some great academic and social benefits for high school kids: Reinforcing knowledge connections and quick recall, inspiring learning about new things, and encouranging socialization. What are some other examples of ways high school students benefi...

On the "same muscles to activate" argument... In high school I always activated tabletop buzzers with my paired index and middle fingers rather than my thumb. Thumbing it just seemed awkward to me, and I feel like my fingers have a better reaction time than my thumb, generally. Even in my ...

Tegan wrote: Now this I found to be a very convincing argument against including computation. If you include that skill, then why not writing? Because math questions *usually* lend themselves to concrete, easily judged answers, while essays don't. [There's a reason very few math questions ask you t...

I'm a new teacher trying to start a Quiz Bowl team and looking for tournaments in West Texas. We're in Big Spring, between Midland/Odessa; Sweetwater/Abilene; Lubbock; and San Angelo. There was apparently an Academic Challenge tournament until this year at an Abilene TV station (KTXS) but it has bee...