Quiznet

An online contest held by Questions Unlimited since fall of 1995, using the NAC four-quarter format minus the sixty-second round. Ten to twenty schools compete in each round, with the overall top teams going to a semifinal and then a final to determine the semester's champion. The winners of each round qualify for the NAC, while the tournament champion sometimes receives a prize such as free travel for one team member to the tournament.

The cost has ranged from $140 to $190 per team. Previous years' top NAC finishers sometimes received free entry as a prize. Winners usually receive a free entry for one of their players at the NAC.

Unique online rules

Unlike the Quizbowl IRC Chat, all non-bonus questions in Quiznet have every team entering what they feel to be the correct answer into the chat. Beall awards an insignificantly higher number of points to teams that buzz in first (with the exact, properly spelled answer that he is looking for) and every other team that buzzes in before his arbitrary and subjective time limit typically 5 less points than the first team.

Thus, it is possible for a team to not know any of the answers in a match and simply have a strong typist and some luck and finish on top. Typing speed and spelling abilities, therefore, play a very large role in Quiznet, sometimes more so than knowing the answer to questions.

On bonus questions, any team is able to try to answer a bounceback on a bonus. However, Chip only awards points to the first team who bounces back on a bonus. The team that gets points is the team that answer first after Chip calls "time" or "incorrect". This means for bonuses where many teams know the answer (and have it already fully typed into the IRC client waiting to press enter), the team that is awarded points (which can be as high as 20 points for the last part) is usually determined by lag and luck.

Chip does award "solo shots" for teams that answer a question without any other teams getting the answer. This leads to all sorts of stupid strategies about not buzzing when you know it but well after the entire question has been read in order to try to get "solo shot" points.

Quiznet is known for using current event questions on things that transpired just a few hours or days before the match. For example, when the D.C. Sniper was caught, Chip had a question later in the afternoon on "Where was the D.C. Sniper caught?"

Non-Unique (to Chip) Aspects

Chip's questions are either ludicrous or ridiculously unfair hoses. Examples:

"My dog got into my bag of Halloween candy and ate some it, but left pieces of the wrapper. I'll show you a "candy wrapper," you tell me what candy it belongs to. Part 1: SNCKRS"

"A musical about the career of Frank Valli and the Four Seasons won the 2005 Tony Award for Best Musical. If that was Jersey Boys, what other Boys won the 2005 Tony Award for Best Play?"

Champions

Season	Fall semester champion	Spring semester champion	Notes
1996	Downingtown	State College
1997	Henry Ford II	Syosset
1998	Millburn	Ridgewood
1999	Science Academy	Ridgewood
2000	IMSA	IMSA
2001	Millburn	IMSA
2002		Plano East
2003	Smithown	New Orleans Jesuit
2004	Pace Academy	Plano West
2005
2006	Northview	Plano East
2007	Syosset
2008	Plano West	Horace Greeley