Tossup
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A tossup is a question that more than one team can answer. During a game, any player who believes they know the answer to a tossup can use their buzzer to interrupt the question and only they can deliver an answer to score points for their team. Tossup questions are the staple of game play for virtually all contemporary quizbowl.
A tossup typically contains several sentences. Players can buzz in anytime they think they know the answer. Good Quizbowl advocates write in pyramidal style, which means that sentences in a question start with more in-depth knowledge, progressing towards easy clues in the last sentence, which is known as a "give-away". The intent being that more knowledgeable teams should answer before less knowledgeable teams. However, if a player answers incorrectly, an action known as negging (structure and writing)
Tossups are usually worth 10 points but there are other ways that score is affected. When a team neg penalties, or gives and incorrect answer before the tossup's end, they can't answer the question again and, under some rules, lose points. powers, which give more than the standard number of points that a team that buzzes in during an early part of the question with a correct answer received (scoring)
Players have a finite amount of time after buzzing to provide and answer. In ACF, PACE, and NHBB gameplay, players have five seconds to begin their answer. In NAQT rules, players have two seconds. Additionally, if nobody buzzes in of the end of a tossup, it goes dead, disregarded and next tossup read. This time limit is within five seconds in ACF and PACE rules and three seconds in NAQT rules.
Sample tossup
From the Buffalo packet of ACF Fall 2012:
Nicolas Poussin painted this figure being helped by a faun onto a goat while looking at a putto attacking a young satyr. Four paintings also by Poussin depict this figure presenting weapons forged by Vulcan to her son. Jacques-Louis David's last painting shows this figure disarming Mars. Two paintings by Rubens depict this figure gazing into a mirror held by another son who has wings. Titian made a depiction of this goddess reclining on a couch in a painting commissioned by the Duke of Urbino. Botticelli painted the birth and arrival on a seashell of, for 10 points, what figure, the Roman goddess of love?
ANSWER: Venus [do not accept “Aphrodite”]