Knowledge Bowl
Background
Knowledge Bowl is an alternative method of playing Quiz Bowl. 3 teams of 4 players each compete on 45 tossups. 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. 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 determines the winner of the tournament.
Shortcomings
While the format itself is creative, there are several negatives associated with it. First, the game-play does not take place on a lock-out system. The questions are supplied by Great Auk, which necessarily implies that they are full of hoses and buzzer races. The difficulty of the question ranges wildly; there are no prompts, and alternative answers are not generally accepted. Generally, one has to predict the flow of the question to be able to give an answer.
One rule that somewhat addresses this 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.
Sample questions
1. Which novel by Mary..... buzz buzz buzz ..... Ann Evans ..... (as opposed to Mary Shelley)
More sample questions available at the Great Auk website
Strategy
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 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.
Greatest Players
Andrew Hart is probably the world's greatest Knowledge Bowl player. Other great players may or may not include James Benhardus and others.
Knowledge Bowl in Tennessee
Knowledge Bowl is also the name of a scholastic TV show in the Memphis/Midsouth area. Like the Minnesota version, it features Great Auk questions for two rounds but uniquely has a final 5-minute lightning round entirely composed of current event questions. It is notable for awarding massive scholarships to winning teams, with all six members of the winning team receiving $7,500 each and the runner-ups $3,500. Sponsored by WREG Channel 3, it has been running for almost 20 years. Unfortunately, teams that play this format have more incentive to focus on speed check questions and rarely, if ever, attend outside pyramidal tournaments. See [1] for the official site.
External References
1. Gautam Kandlikar's mostly complete open letter on Knowledge Bowl