Masonic tournament
The Masonic tournament is one of the state championships in Illinois, growing from 16 teams in its first few years to about 300 teams each year now. It is sponsored by Masonic lodges throughout Illinois and has the financial resources to offer free entry fees to all teams and cash awards for teams that do well.
It used approximately the IHSA format and distribution through 2009, including what was then all-at-once bonuses, then switched to a unique format for 2010. In the Masonic tournament, the match starts with 6 tossups, then alternates 8 team questions (which work like bonuses, but each team controls half of them no matter who answers the tossups), then 6 more tossups, then 8 more team questions, then 4 more tossups. The bonuses bounce back, and they became one part at a time starting in 2013.
For most of the tournament's history, it used what was called a double-elimination format at Sectionals and State, though it was actually a single-elimination tournament with a consolation bracket. Around 2010, they switched to a tournament format that has two pools of 6 teams each play round robin, followed by the top two teams in each pool moving on to a single-elimination two round playoff.
It used Answers Plus for a very long time, eventually switched to Academic Hallmarks for (at least) 2006 and 2007, used Aegis Questions questions in 2008 and 2009, used Questions Galore in 2010 and 2011, and hired David Reinstein (who has gotten help from Donald Taylor) to write the questions for 2012. For those of you who don't know, the Aegis and Reinstein questions were much better than the others.
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