What does the GW Quiz Team do? 
 

We are an organization of people who like to show off how much useless knowledge we have acquired by squaring off against people from other teams across the country in academic competition tournaments, such as College Bowl. In addition, we host tournaments where other people come to GW to show off how much useless knowledge they have acquired, and tournaments where GW students can compete against each other. In the process, players acquire even more unnecessary information.

If you've ever wanted to be or have been on Jeopardy, if you're the person everyone wants on their Trivial Pursuit team at family gatherings or parties, if you have done or have wanted to do this sort of thing in high school or college (grad students welcome), if you think you know a lot about a bunch of books you've never read, movies you've never seen, paintings you've never looked at, and obscure world capitals, in short, information you have no other conceivable use for, this is probably for you.

If you regularly make references to failed TV sitcoms of ten years ago, pieces of classical music most people haven't heard of, international politics, or ancient mythology that sail over people's heads, or can quote the Bible, Shakespeare, the Constitution, "Pulp Fiction," or episodes of “Gilmore Girls”, “Family Guy” or "The Simpsons," this is probably for you.

If you feel the need to do something competitive, and have no athletic ability whatsoever (OK…we’ll still welcome you  if you  have athletic ability… :p), this might be for you.

The first step is getting on our mailing list. To do so, just send an e-mail message to gwqt@gwu.edu asking to be on GWQT’s mailing list. (Alternatively, you could contact one of our officers, advisors, or members.) Then attend a few of our practices.

Before long, you'll be ready to help represent GW at various tournaments and to help the GWACC host events of our own. To learn more about the tournaments we plan on attending this semester, simply click here. We hope to be running tournaments again soon, and once we decide to, we’ll have pages up for them…

Not everyone is eligible for every tournament; some tournaments are limited only to undergraduate freshmen and sophomores, others to first-year players regardless of status. Some other tournaments place limits on the number of graduate students (i.e. anyone with an undergraduate degree) per team. Some other tournaments, referred to as "Masters" or “Open” tournaments, are open to non-student players as well. 

A team in standard college quiz bowl format generally has four people, though one can play with fewer. There is also a lockout buzzer system involved. There are two types of questions: tossup questions and bonus questions. The first player to ring in and correctly answer a tossup gets 10 points for his/her team, whether or not the moderator finishes reading the question. In some formats, one can receive 15 points for an especially early buzz.

There is a five point penalty for "interrupts," incorrect guesses before the question is finished. (There is no penalty for incorrect guesses if either the question is finished or if the other team has already been penalized with an interrupt, although the latter is not the rule at all tournaments.)

Each time a team gets a toss-up, it can confer to answer a bonus question (which usually consists of two or more parts) worth up to 30 additional points. Conferring is usually completely disallowed on tossup questions, though in some formats players are allowed to "signal" their teammates that they know or don't know the answer to a question in non-verbal and non-written ways.

It may be best to think of it as Team Jeopardy, except that you don't have to wait until Alex finishes reading the question to ring in.  You also don’t have to phrase your answer in the form of a question. (In fact, you’ll get looked at rather oddly if you do.)

Questions may cover just about anything, and their subject matter may not necessarily be associated with any academic field. 

ACF questions are almost wholly academic (i.e. questions about pop culture, current events, or general knowledge are kept to a minimum), and have longer questions. It tends to be more difficult, particularly for beginning players, although ACF has made strides for making their tournaments more accessible.

“Trash/TRASH” questions will strongly emphasize pop culture, current events, or general knowledge, but the questions are generally long and may be more difficult for younger players. (Questions may skew toward much older players, who are often welcome at trash/TRASH tournaments.)

College Bowl Inc. (CBI) questions tend to emphasize pop culture and current events in addition to more "traditional" academically-oriented subjects, and are brief (because the rounds are timed) and generally not very difficult, relative to other formats.

NAQT tries to strike a balance with the multiple formats, and similarly, invitational questions tend to lie somewhere between extremes in format.

The college quiz bowl circuit has a protracted debate about which format is best, which you can try to follow through a number of sources. Just check the links page!

For some sample questions, click here; these are designed to be about average for standard circuit tournaments.  Don't worry if you didn't know the answers, or even most of the answers, since practices and tournament experience will teach you the knowledge that you need and/or the ability to guess on such questions. It's important to know that new players almost never start out as superstars, and it is not unusual, for even players with a fair level of experience to go through a round and be utterly stumped by most of the question material, depending on the format. 

…We have to write questions? What’s up with that?

Some tournaments require each team to submit a packet of questions. (You play on every packet but your own.) – This is the case for a number of invitational tournaments and ACF Fall, ACF Regionals, and ACF Nationals.

Submitting questions to these types of tournaments early can mean a fee discount for a team. Submitting questions late, on the other hand, not only adds the fees your team has to pay, but also puts an undue last-minute burden on the team hosting such a tournament (Anyone that’s been through it will tell you it’s a very painful experience for the host if they don’t have questions in sufficient time for the tourney….)

There are a number of question writing resources online – most notably, through the Maize Pages and ACF’s Website (you can find them on our links page .) During practices and tournaments, Listening to questions and noting answers can also help you:  it helps you gauge what is generally asked (and what subjects you can write on) and helps you gauge question difficulty. 

Well, I could tell you that there was a simple way to establish definitively which team is best, but I'd be lying. Due to the different formats, each format has its own champion. Think of it like pro tennis, which different players or teams being best on different surfaces. Some years a team just goes and wins everything outright (like Chicago or Michigan teams of past years) and makes everything easy, but this feat is rare.

There are currently four organizations, each with their own unique format, that sponsor regional and national tournaments:

ACF (Academic Competiton Federation): ACF's regions are also loosely defined -- they depend on what schools host them in a given year. (In our area, many official ACF tournaments are held at the University of Maryland in nearby College Park MD, just a Metro ride away.)

We are free to send multiple teams to ACF events, though all ACF events are packet-submission (see the“…We have to write questions? ..."section). Qualification for ACF nationals (in April) is also loosely defined, but a given team's performance at: invitational ACF-format tournaments, ACF Fall (held in November) and ACF Regionals (held in February) are factored into the equation.

 The location for the 2005 ACF Fall Tournament is Maryland – College Park. The location of ACF’s Mid-Atlantic Regional is yet to be announced, and ACF Nationals will be at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor). 

NAQT (National Academic Quiz Tournaments, LLC):  NAQT sectionals (SCT) are early in the Spring semester, and they are the direct qualifier for NAQT’s national tournament, the ICT. Like ACF, what constitutes a region is loosely determined; unlike ACF, NAQT produces questions for their own tournaments.

We are allowed to send multiple teams to NAQT Sectionals, and in multiple divisions if we’re eligible. Whether or not we qualify for the ICT depends on how well we perform at sectionals – factoring in not only a given team’s performance in their individual sectional, but also performance compared to other teams in the other sectionals around the nation. Maryland will be hosting both the Mid-Atlantic SCT and the ICT in 2005-2006.

TRASH (Testing Recall about Strange Happenings) :  A TRASH Regional (Often held in November) is the direct qualifier for TRASHionals, and like all the other previously mentioned formats, what constitutes a region is loosely determined. Like NAQT, TRASH produces their own questions.

We can send as many teams as we wish to this tournament, but any team would be potentially competing against alumni or non-student teams. Qualifying for TRASHionals works much like qualifying for NAQT Nationals: it depends on how well a team performs at sectionals, factoring in other teams’ performances at other regional competitions. Maryland will be hosting TRASH’s Mid-Atlantic regional in November. This year’s TRASHionals will be in April, site yet to be determined.
           
CBI/CBCI (College Bowl Company, Incorporated ) : In February, CBI holds its Regional Championship Tournament (RCT), where schools in our region, ACU-I Region 4 (which includes most of Pennsylvania and all of Maryland and West Virginia in addition to the District of Columbia) compete against each other.

Unfortunately, each school can send only one team; our past teams have chosen based on knowledge/skill, areas of strong knowledge, practice/tournament attendance, participation, and performance, and overall team chemistry. If we win the RCT, or finish second and are lucky enough to get the wild-card spot given to one of the 15 teams that finish second, we go to CBI's National Championship Tournament (NCT) in late April. This year, CBCI's RCT will be held at Mount St. Mary's Univ. in Emmitsburg, MD, and the NCT will be held at The University of Hartford in Hartford, CT.

GW has not competed in CBI since 2002. Whether or not we will compete in future CBI events will be solely dependant on the interest of our team members.
 

How good are we?

Better than at football, that's for sure. :)

For a number of years, GW has had one of the top programs in the nation. We won CBI Region 4 a number of years in a row prior to 1996, and won again in 1999. We placed 11th of 48 teams at the NAQT Intercollegiate Championship Tournament in 2000. We also made  the playoffs of a number of invitational tournaments between 2000 and 2003.

At present, the team is in a rebuilding mode. On the down side, that likely means few opportunities to win tournaments, but, on the up side, means that there are many opportunities for new players to get in on the ground floor. Nonetheless, our teams have continued to do fairly well competitively at the tournaments we have attended. 

Yes... The answers, of course.

Oh yeah... and have fun! :) 

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FAQ created by Tim Young (JD ‘ 99. GWQT Alumni Advisor). Updated for GWQT by Tricia Southard (Staff Advisor), 10/14/05.