Jordan Brownstein

Jordan Brownstein
Noted subjects	Literature, History, Dijkstra's algorithm
Past colleges	Maryland (2013-2017)
High school	Plymouth Regional (2013)
Stats	HDWhite • NAQT

Jordan Brownstein was a member of the Class of 2017 at the University of Maryland. During his undergraduate career, he was widely recognized as the best active player in quizbowl, and, after leading the field in scoring en route to winning the 2016 Chicago Open and 2017 ACF Nationals, as one of the greatest college quizbowl players of all time.

As early as his freshman year, Jordan was notable for his extremely deep specialty areas in literature and history (despite being a computer science major) and for coming out of relative nowhere—namely Plymouth, New Hampshire, where his only good quizbowl exposure was one or two History Bowl events—to establish himself nearly immediately as an elite collegiate player. After a year playing alongside (and sometimes outscoring) Chris Ray, Jordan became lead scorer of the Maryland team that finished 4th at ICT and 3rd at ACF Nationals in 2015. He was the lead scorer on the 2nd-place team at the 2015 Chicago Open, and high scorer overall at the main event, literature side event, and history side event.

Prior to teaming up at 2014 Chicago Open, Mike Cheyne gave Jordan the nickname "The Viper", a reference to a particularly sadistic WWE wrestler. The name has stuck. Noted misanthrope Tommy Casalaspi has referred to Jordan as "the nicest person in quizbowl."

Jordan has also been recognized for his prolific and high-quality question-writing, including for the 2014 NASAT, 2016's MYSTERIUM, 2016 PACE NSC, 2016 Terrapin, the 2018 ACF Nationals, 2018 Chicago Open, and the side events SHEIKH (history) and Jordaens Visual Arts.

ACF Nationals Leading Scorer
Preceded by	Year	Succeeded by
Auroni Gupta	2016, 2017	Itamar Naveh-Benjamin

ICT DI Leading Scorer
Preceded by	Year	Succeeded by
Matt Bollinger	2016, 2017	Itamar Naveh-Benjamin