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Lightning round strategy?

Posted: Fri May 24, 2013 9:10 pm
by Couch's Kingbird
My team will be competing in a tourney that involves a lightning round. Does anyone know any strategies that may come of use when doing the lightning round? Any advice will be appreciated!

Re: Lightning round strategy?

Posted: Sun May 26, 2013 1:51 pm
by The ChatSack Triple-Play
I'll follow in the format of probably every other poster here and encourage you to play more good quizbowl, which generally doesn't follow 4Q or similarly weird formats. EDIT okay so it turns out HSAPQ has done this in the past (which I was aware of) and NAQT as well (which I wasn't.) Pardon my unilateralism.

However, there's a good chance you're playing a TV tournament or some other form of :chip: for funding purposes or something (I was dragged into doing this a couple years ago. Somehow, we won the whole thing.) These vary in format wildly; you don't even have a guarantee that the questions won't take sudden left turns ("The father of our country was George Washington. What was the name of his vice-president/wife/beloved mini schnauzer?")

The questions in the lightning rounds, generally though, won't do things like that, and moreover usually have a common link; once you get a line on that (they'll probably tell you what it is) you're pretty much safe giving the first somewhat reasonable answer that you can think of. In that sense, there's not really a lot of strategy to be had.

Re: Lightning round strategy?

Posted: Sun May 26, 2013 3:38 pm
by Good Goblin Housekeeping
I'd recommend learning enough so that the amount of time you have doesn't matter