Criticisms of Reach for the Top

Reach for the Top is a popular Canadian format that is heavily criticized once people are exposed to good quizbowl, for similar reasons people criticize NAC. Unlike NAC, Reach for the Top has essentially a monopoly in the country, and was the predominant format in Canada until the early 2000s when Ben Smith, Tamara Vardomskaya, and Lisgar began to play good quizbowl. All cited questions are verbatim from the 2012-2013 regional level competition unless stated.

The biggest concerns include:

• Question quality - non-pyramidal, hoses
• Tournament structure and format - Single elimination playoffs, expensive registration fees
• Lack of central editing - repeats, uneven distribution, repeats, different questions to each team of inconsistent difficulty, repeats
• "Game show" set mentality, even though it has been four years since a game was televised

Question Quality

An ideal Reach for the Top would be very similar to NAQT speed checks, however it is not.

Non-Pyramidal Clues

Reach for the Top has a question type called the 40-point (who/what/where/etc.) am I? which consists of four clues with decreasing point value, beginning with a opening question. If answered correctly on this question, that team gains 40 points. If neither team guesses correctly, the answer is not read, and a clue worth 30 points is read. This continues for two more questions (worth 20 and 10 points respectively), until, if no team is able to give the correct answer, the answer is read. This is similar to reading each clue of a four clue tossup in order, however these questions are usually problematic. These may be vague, e.g. "I am an institution located on Prince of Wales Drive in Ottawa" which leads to knowledgeable teams resorting to guess between a few answer choices. Often, the first clue would be the date of birth of a person or date of creation of an item, e.g. "I was born in 1982 in England, and grew up in Chapel Row at Bucklebury, a village near Newbury, Berkshire". Anti-pyramid questions of this type, even in the same clue, have been seen.

• CLUE 1: I am a chemical element with the symbol Hg and the atomic number 80.
• CLUE 2: I am the only metal that is liquid at standard conditions for temperature and pressure.
• CLUE 3: I am also known as quicksilver or hydrargyrum.
• CLUE 4: I was once commonly used in thermometers, but am now less often used due to my toxicity.

Any team with any science knowledge is surely to answer the question correctly on the first clue, for 40 points. In a close game, this is an 80 point swing. In the same packet this question was used, a question stated "Name the current President of Mongolia", which was only worth the normal 10 points. Furthermore, the first clue itself is flawed, as more people are aware that mercury is Hg and would interrupt after that, than being able to get it off the second clue of having atomic number of 80. The first clue has also been extremely easy as seen in "CLUE: I was born Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger." or "CLUE 1: I am a painter born on March 30, 1853 in the Netherlands". These may seem particularly difficult (even the mercury question, as Clue 3 and 4 are more general knowledge rather than science) to a team that knows nothing but trash.

Guessing is encouraged in some clues that have only a few logical answers on the first clue, thus in a close game, the winner may be determined just by a coin flip where there's two logical answers, as seen in "CLUE A: I am named after a scientist whose first name is Christian", picking either Huygens' principle or Doppler effect, or "CLUE: I am an institution that was established in England sometime late in the 11th century." which is a guess between Oxford or Cambridge.

These questions are of such concern because of the huge point swing in such easy clues.

Lack of Editing

There are often factual errors present. e.g. "A plural noun referring to any of various bacteria, especially a rod-shaped bacterium. Spell ‘bacillus’". The editing has improved significantly over the period between 2010-2013 due to numerous complaints from the quizbowl community.

Inconsistency with answer lines

Reach for the Top lacks a standard to accept alternate answers. In 2010, a packet listed the Chinese poet Li Bo (Cantonese) / Li Bai (Mandarin) using Cantonese, but later, was listed as Mandarin, without acceptable alternate answers. This led to some teams to be upset and complain. In 2013 there was a question with answer line Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj without indication of pronunciation or which name is given and which name is family. This causes the protest table at high level events to be at least 10 times as long as it is at HSNCT or PACE NSC. Some answer lines on names contain acceptable parts e.g. ANSWER: FERDINAND MAGELLAN (ACCEPT MAGELLAN) but most questions do not, although it is a convention that just the last name is acceptable. Some alternate answer lines are flat out retarded e.g. CURIOSITY (accept MARS ROVER).