Competitive Intellectual Formation!
What is Quiz Bowl?
Quiz bowl is a game in which two teams compete head-to-head to answer questions (click here for more information about the questions) from all areas of knowledge, including history, literature, science, fine arts, current events, popular culture, sports, and more. Catholic quiz bowl, in particular, focuses on the Catholic canon of questions. More on this below in the "What is Catholic Quiz Bowl?" section.
Here is a quiz bowl introductory video produced by NAQT:
Buzzers
“Buzzers” are a defining feature of quiz bowl. Players "buzz" in to interrupt the reading of a question as soon as they know the answer. You may be familiar with how Jeopardy! reads the entirety question, before allowing contestants to buzz in. This is not the case with traditional quiz bowl. Players are encouraged to buzz in as soon as they know the answer, beating the other team to the answer. This element creates an exciting game atmosphere. Beware, though, a team receives negative points if a wrong answer is given before the entire question is finished being read.This element of interrupting the questions adds a dimension of excitement, anticipation, and rapid recall to a game about knowing facts.
Tossup for Bonuses
Those “tossup” questions are answered individually, but doing so earns one’s team a chance at a three-part “bonus” question. Bonus questions are worth a total of thirty points, and teams can work together to answer the questions. Like an inverse of the tossups, the bonuses get progressively harder.
Quiz Bowl Competitions
Teams that compete in the CQBO regional and national tournaments may also be interested in competing at other tournaments with a similar format for the sake of practice.
NAQT tournaments are very helpful in this regard, and are held all across America year-round. NAQT is a company run by former players and coaches that provides tournament questions, practice material, rules, and guidance to all manner of quiz bowl tournaments, from casual competitions among fraternities to intense national championships for the best teams in the country.
If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to write to us at cqbo@cqbo.org.
What is Catholic Quiz Bowl?
Catholic Quiz Bowl differs from other quiz bowl competitions in two major areas: the canon of knowledge and the tournament structure.
The Catholic Quiz Bowl Canon
You may know what quiz bowl is, but what is Catholic quiz bowl? The main difference is the canon or corpus of questions. In the quiz bowl community, there is a general sense of a "canon" of knowledge that is significant enough to asked about in quiz bowl. The term "canon" is actually used to describe this corpus of knowledge, even though canon, canonization, etc. is a specifically Catholic term. This canon of knowledge generally tracks with high school and university curricula. The problem is that high school and university curricula has increasingly diverged from the good, the true, and the beautiful, the transcendentals of Catholic teaching and intellectual formation. These curricula are also increasingly atheistic and materialistic in scope.
In short, Catholic quiz bowl seeks to restore the canon of quiz bowl knowledge for the sake of proper intellectual formation.
To this end, Catholic quiz bowl questions will address all major areas of knowledge from a Catholic perspective.
The Catholic Quiz Bowl Tournament Structure
CQBO will host a national tournament of diocesan champions. All participating dioceses will host a tournament to determine its diocesan champion. All diocesan champions will then converge at the national tournament to determine the CQBO national champion.
Other tournament options are available. Several states may choose to host a state tournament, for example. It is also our hope that, like the Church, the CQBO tournament will be international, as well.
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