Quizbusters (WNAB)

Quizbusters is a quizbowl show that airs on WNAB-58 in Nashville, Tennessee. The show premiered in 2008. The winner would receive $5000, runner-up would receive $4000, semifinalists $2000, and round-of-sixteen teams $500. More recently, winnings amounts have decreased (winner: $4000, runner-up: $3000, 3rd and 4th: $2500, top 8: $2000) as Westfield Insurance's grants have decreased. It has continually drawn the most (and the most regular) participation of any tournament in Tennessee after the large Vanderbilt ABC tournaments of the past.

Format

2008-09

The season consisted of 13 regular season games. In the regular season, each game consisted of three rounds. The first and second rounds included 10 point tossups. The third round was the lightning round, where "the game can turn upside-down," because each team has two minutes to answer up to 20 questions in a category for 20 points each. As teams are assigned the categories, this has the effect of potentially screwing a team that gets stuck with a category for which they have little knowledge.

The top 8 teams advance to the tournament. In the tournament, the format changed slightly. The second-round tossups are worth 20 points, and the lightning round questions are worth only 10 points. Additionally, teams can now select from a choice of three categories from vague descriptions, with the lower-scoring team picking first.

During this season (with Questions Galore as the provider), some questions have been shown to come from the same packets as Wheaton North F/S tournament questions (which previously used Questions Galore).

2009-2011

The tournament format from the second half of the first season became permanent. Also, the second round consisted of two alphabet rounds where all the answers began with the same letter. Finally, the higher scoring team picked first in the lightning round, rather than the lower scoring team, but the lower scoring team still played first.

2011-present

The first round of 10 tossups is still 10 points, the second round includes 10 20-point tossups, and the lightning round is category, not letter-, based. The tossups in the first and second rounds are from an active NAQT IS-A set.

Question sources

Season	Provider
2008-09	Questions Galore
2009-10	Bryce Avery
2010-11	Questions Galore
2011-12	probably modified NAQT
2012-13	NAQT probably IS-A set "with some local color"

Sample questions (from the first season)

• "What elderly female American painter..." (Ans: Grandma Moses)
• "What credit card company's website is www.priceless.com?" (Ans: Mastercard)
• "Since 1949, what do all treasurers have in common?" (Ans: They are all female)
• "What tablet is written in three languages..." (Ans: Rosetta Stone)
• "What is the full title of Darwin's book on evolution?" (Ans given: On the Origin of Species, which is not the full title)

Links

Greg Gauthier's liveblog of an episode. [1]