Knowledge Bowl

Knowledge Bowl (sometimes shortened to KB or KBowl) is a quizbowl format that previous used questions produced by Academic Hallmarks and currently generally uses questions from Question Authorities. It is currently played in several states, mostly West of the Mississippi River. It originated in Colorado, where it eventually spread to Washington, Minnesota, Tennessee, and a number of other states and countries. Knowledge Bowl tests a range of of academic subjects similar to other forms of quizbowl, but has come under criticism by advocates of "good quizbowl" for its question quality and format.

Format

The buzzer strip in action

Knowledge Bowl formats are generally the same across the nation although some regional differences exist. In oral rounds, three teams of four players each compete on 45 tossups. Many Knowledge Bowl circuits make use of a special "buzzer strip" system that consists of a single piece of pressure sensitive tape shared by members of a team. Once a team buzzes in, its members get to confer for 15 seconds before the spokesperson gives the answer. There are no bonuses. All tossups are worth one point and there is no penalty for guessing. Knowledge Bowl is also unique in that it has written rounds, which are 60 multiple choice questions similar in general style and difficulty to the tossup questions. The written round serves as a seeding round. The top 3 teams after the written round get to play in room A, Teams 4-6 play in room B and so on. After the end of each round, the teams are reseeded based on the cumulative score. The aggregate score at the end of the tournament determines the winner.

History

The term "knowledge bowl" was at one point the common name for high school quizbowl tournaments in southern California, with documented events held as early as 1960. There does not appear to be any direct affiliation between these tournaments and the later organiation.

Knowledge Bowl was started by the San Juan County Educational Service Union in Durango, Colorado (now known as the San Juan Board of Cooperative Educational Services). After the success of Knowledge Bowl in Colorado, the event soon attracted educators from Minnesota, Washington, South Dakota, and Tennessee who initiated the activity in their home states. At some point after 1983, former school superintendent Bill Brown founded Academic Hallmarks and began supplying questions to Knowledge Bowl events, which they continued to do until the sale of Academic Hallmarks in 2020. After the sale, Question Authorities, another Colorado-based question writing group headed by the former Grand Junction team coach, took over supplying Colorado, Washington, and Minnesota Knowledge Bowl tournaments. In 2021, the state Knowledge Bowl organizations of Colorado, Minnesota, and Washington organized a national Knowledge Bowl tournament that was held virtually.

Criticism

While Knowledge Bowl generally has traditional and institutional support within the states it is played, it also has garnered considerable criticism from players and observers.

First, the questions are often extremely short, limiting the ability of the questions to be pyramidal and encouraging buzzer races. Second, the questions often include swerves and hoses deliberately designed to trick or mislead players as well as extraneous information that does not uniquely specify what the question is looking for until the very end. Third, the distribution and difficulty of the questions in a given match often varies wildly, with very hard questions being included alongside very easy questions. Fourth, the questions used in some Knowledge Bowl events were not always "pristine" and sometimes re-used questions from previous years. Even supposedly pristine questions often bore striking similarities in wording and topics to previous years' questions, giving a major advantage to teams with large databases of old questions and familiarity with the pet topics of the question writers. And fifth, there are relatively few prompts and alternative answers are not generally accepted.

In some Knowledge Bowl formats, one rule that somewhat addresses the latter issue is that if a team buzzes in before the entire question is read, the spokesperson can give any amount of information that is included in the question (the information may or may not be read), and may also supply one factually correct statement that is not included in the question. Thus if tossup is binary, the spokesperson can give both the answers as a declarative statement, and his team can get points. For instance, if a question begins:

"He was Abraham Lincoln's vice-president..."

and a team buzzes in, it can say "Andrew Johnson and Hannibal Hamlin were vice-presidents under Abraham Lincoln" and still get points. However, the applicability of this rule is contingent on the reader and/or the judge knowing the truth value of the extra piece of information, and on several occasions, a correct answer has been ruled incorrect due to the moderator's incapacity.

Since the cumulative score determines the winner in KB tournaments, it can be advantageous for a "good" team to slide down to a lower room, and score several points more than they could have being in a higher room. Such a strategy is especially useful when there is no strength of schedule, and was roundly exploited at the 2006 Minnesota Knowledge Bowl State Championship by Buffalo (link). A strength of schedule gives teams in the A, B, and C rooms 1.5, 1, and 0.5 points per round respectively. e.g. a team that starts in room C in round 1, goes to room A in round 2, goes back to room A in round 3, and goes in room B for round 4 receives 1.5 + 1 + 2*0.5 = 3.5 bonus points. Similarly, a team may deliberately underperform in the written round and play with weaker teams in order to score more points.

Sample Knowledge Bowl Questions

A typical sample packet of Knowledge Bowl questions from the Academic Hallmarks years.

See also Academic Hallmarks and Question Authorities for more details on each question supplier.

Regional formats

Colorado Knowledge Bowl

Main Article: Colorado Knowledge Bowl

The Knowledge Bowl format began Colorado and Academic Hallmarks is still based in Durango. Hundreds of high schools from across the state play Knowledge Bowl and the season culminates with regional championships and the state competition. See the Colorado Knowledge Bowl website for more details.

Minnesota Knowledge Bowl

Main Article: Minnesota Knowledge Bowl

Knowledge Bowl in Minnesota was initiated in the 70's and was formulated after the Colorado version. Today, Knowledge Bowl is run by Minnesota Service Cooperatives and over 800 teams from 290 Minnesota school districts are involved with it. Although KB is the dominant format in most of the state, several active pyramidal quizbowl schools, such as Wayzata and Eden Prairie, are not involved knowledge bowl entirely.

Washington Knowledge Bowl

Main Article: Washington Knowledge Bowl

The state of Washington runs a number of Knowledge Bowl leagues and a statewide competition through its regional Educational Services Districts.

Tennessee Knowledge Bowl

Main Article: Tennessee Knowledge Bowl

Knowledge Bowl is also the name of a scholastic TV show in the Memphis/Midsouth area that has run since the late 1980s. Though the format has been tweaked a few times, it generally features two rounds of Great Auk tossup questions but uniquely has a final 5-minute lightning round entirely composed of current event questions.

Iowa Knowledge Bowl

Still exists in some parts of the state. A state meet is held every year in the spring. Additionally there seems to be an event held at the Iowa State Fair. See this website for additional details.

Other parts of the United States

A calendar posted onto the Academic Hallmarks website in the late 2000s showed that a number of competitions known as Knowledge Bowl are also held in states without a major state-level competition. Such areas include: Arizona, South Dakota, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, New Mexico, Missouri, Kansas, and Wyoming. Most of those competitions appear to be defunct or have moved on to other formats and question suppliers. Knowledge Bowl is also the name of an apparently unrelated league in Southern California, as well as a photography school in Singapore. Some Knowledge Bowl events were previously held in Wisconsin as well.

International Knowledge Bowl Competitions

Knowledge Bowl in Europe

Knowledge Bowl is sponsored internationally by Central and Eastern European Schools Association (CEESA) at the middle school and high school level. Due to the large number of teams entering, each competition is split between two European cities. There are also two small nationally competitions are held annually in the Republic of Georgia.

Knowledge Bowl in Central America

Knowledge Bowl is also hosted annually in Central America in both national and international levels (the international being limited to Central American Countries). The international level competes every year in mid November, and is organized by AASCA (Association of American Schools of Central America), and is limited to AASCA schools. Schools from Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama send students every year to compete. The national level dates vary depending on the country, and are also held once a year. The national levels are also limited to American schools; the Honduran Knowledge Bowl nationals are organized by ABSH (Association of Bilingual Schools of Honduras) and are also limited to ABSH. In El Salvador, the national is organized by the Association of Bilingual Schools of San Salvador, comprising five bilingual schools: four American and one British. The competition is also limited to these five.

In 2008, 2009, and 2010, the event was won by Colegio Maya of Guatemala for the junior varsity level, the most consecutive titles in the event's history. In 2011 and 2012 the title of varsity champions was won by the Escuela International Sampedrana (EIS of Honduras), with an outstanding performance of the two time MVP, Raul Jordan.

International Meet Format

[Note that it is unclear how widespread this specific format is]. Schools that participate in the tournaments are randomly seeded into groups, and the number of groups vary depending on how many schools participate. For example, if in a certain year 20 schools participate, 4 groups of 5 schools are made. In every group, the first and second placed groups would proceed to a quarter-final elimination round. Position within the group is decided by how many points a group has accumulated while playing other teams (in every group, every team must play all of the other teams in the group once).

A team is composed of five students, four of whom participate in a game lasting thirty minutes. After every thirty-minute game, substitutions can be made. In every game, only two teams compete against each other. After the thirty minutes are up, the game enters the lightning round (see below), a set of five final questions with mildly altered rules. If after the lightning round, there is still a tie between the two teams, the game enters a sudden-death mode, in which the first person to gain any amount of points wins, but a team that loses a point also loses the match.

Points are decided as such: For a normal, "toss-up" question, a team that buzzes in and answers correctly gains two points and a bonus question. In toss-up questions, team members are not allowed to communicate with each other, and are given 10 seconds to buzz in, and 30 seconds plus the use of scratch paper if the question is a math question. If a team member buzzes in and answers incorrectly, the team loses one point, and the question is repeated for the second team to answer. This is called a rebound. In rebounds, an additional 10 seconds are given for the second team, and team members can communicate with each other, but only the team captain can declare the answer. When a rebound question is answered correctly, one point is given. If a rebound question is answered incorrectly, no points are taken away. Bonus questions are similar to rebounds, but are a bit different. Only the team that acquired the bonus question can answer it, and team members can discuss the question, and again, only the team captain can give the answer. When a bonus is answered correctly, three points are given, whereas if it is answered incorrectly, no points are taken away. Bonus questions are not cumulative, and once they are over, another toss-up is given. If no one buzzes in for a toss-up question, no one gains or loses points. It should also be noted that if rebounds are answered correctly, they do not bring with them a bonus question. Once the 30 minutes of the match are up, the lightning round takes action. 5 final questions, only that when a rebound is answered correctly, a bonus question is also attained.

External References

• Gautam Kandlikar's mostly complete open letter on Knowledge Bowl outlines a number of criticisms of Knowledge Bowl
• Wikipedia entry on Knowledge Bowl