Pyramidality

Pyramidality is a concept in tossup-writing that states that clues should be arranged in descending order of difficulty, with the hardest information first and the easiest at the end, after the "For 10 points." The hardest clue at the beginning of a tossup is generally called the leadin, while the easiest clue at the end is called the giveaway. Clues or tossups that do not fit the pyramidal model are termed anti-pyramidal.

Pyramidality is fundamental to the writing of good tossups that determine fairly which team knows more in a given game. NAQT, HSAPQ, PACE, ACF, and the National History Bowl all use pyramidal tossups.

Anti-pyramidality

Anti-pyramidality stems from misplaced clues. A misplaced clue results when the author or editor places more well-known clues before lesser-known clues in a tossup, making the tossup anti-pyramidal.

Transparency and Anti-pyramidality

See article on Transparency

A common form of anti-pyramidality is transparency, which is the significant narrowing-down of the list of possible answers to a tossup based on non-clues such as pronouns and unspecific information.

Internal pyramidality

Internal pyramidality is the idea that within a clue, the sentence structure should be rewarded pyramidally; that is, with the hardest information first and the easiest last. An internally pyramidal clue will generally state descriptions before titles and more obscure names before more famous names.

Example of an internally pyramidal clue

• "Characters like Charles Bon and Thomas Sutpen appear in this author's Absalom! Absalom"

The same clue, rendered anti-pyramidally

• "Absalom! Absalom! by this author features characters like Thomas Sutpen and Charles Bon."

Notice that in the first example, more obscure characters like Charles Bon are stated before less obscure characters like Thomas Sutpen, while the title comes last. The second example is completely anti-pyramidal, in that the most well-known information, the title Absalom! Absalom comes before Bon or Sutpen, which are given in the wrong order of notoriety.