30-20-10 bonuses

A 30-20-10 bonus is a bonus in which the moderator reads one clue or set of clues and the controlling team has a chance to answer. If the team is correct, they receive 30 points. Otherwise, the moderator reads another clue or set of clues and the controlling team has a chance to answer for 20 points. If the team is incorrect, the moderator reads a final clue or set of clues and the controlling team has a chance to answer for 10 points. If the team is incorrect, they receive no points and the bonus ends. They were used in NAQT questions until about 2009.

This structure is intended to match pyramidality in the sense that the hardest clue(s) should go first and thus be worth 30 points, the intermediate clue(s) should go in the middle and thus be worth 20 points, and the easiest clue(s) should go last and only be worth 10 points, but question writers generally now prefer to use the same clues in the same order but as a pyramidal tossup.

Some (relatively less formal) question sets extended this format to offer 40 points for an answer based on essentially nonexistent or non-unique information (e.g., "He was a scientist") and/or 1 point for an answer based on inordinately easy information (e.g., "His name rhymes with Schmalbert Schmeinstein").