Swerve

A swerve is related to a hose, in that the question punishes players who buzz in with knowledge of the answer. Unlike with hoses, the player is not the victim of blatantly wrong information (or information that "uniquely" identifies multiple answers); rather, the question "swerves" to a new direction by asking something tangentially related to the rest of the question.

Swerves and hoses are considered anathema to good quizbowl because they specifically inhibit players with knowledge from buzzing.

Types of Swerves

Left Turn

The left turn is the classic type of swerve, in which the question literally "turns" from one subject to another in the middle of the tossup. This is often caused by failure to correctly use pronouns. For example:

...He initiated a crusade against the Catholic Church called Kulturkampf as well as a war with Austria over Schleswig and Holstein. (*) For 10 points, Bismarck is the capital of which U.S. state?
ANSWER: North Dakota

Anyone with knowledge will buzz in at or before the (*) mark with "Bismarck", since the pronoun "he" seems to be talking about a man, and certainly not a country. Two alternate ways to write the question, so that the left turn is eliminated:

(information about Bismarck)...He initiated a crusade against the Catholic Church called Kulturkampf as well as a war with Austria over Schleswig and Holstein. (*) For 10 points, which German statesman lends his name to the capital of North Dakota?
ANSWER: Otto von Bismarck

(information about North Dakota)...This state's capital was named after a statesman who initiated a crusade against the Catholic Church called Kulturkampf as well as a war with Austria over Schleswig and Holstein while chancellor of Germany. (*) For 10 points, Bismarck is the capital of which U.S. state?
ANSWER: North Dakota

Of these, the first is preferred as it completely eliminates the possibility that a player could buzz in with "North Dakota" and be factually correct, while the second still allows for the possibility that a player who had been zoning out could buzz with "Bismarck" and believe himself correct.

NAQT Left Turn

The NAQT Left Turn is the least egregious kind of swerve, not least because it only occurs on bonuses. It is named after NAQT due to its prevalence in NAQT, but is not solely relegated to NAQT questions.

In the NAQT Left Turn, one or more bonus parts have absolutely nothing to do with the lead-in to the bonus. Thus, the question turns in an entirely new direction from where players think it is going. This occurs on the second or third part of the bonus, so that the lead-in is still validly referring to the first part.

One exception to the above rule comes from the 2007 Matt Cvijanovich Memorial Novice Tournament, in which a bonus asking about uses of the letter k in chemistry was converted to a bonus in which the answers were "law of mass action", "equilibrium constant", and "Gibbs free energy", with only the middle part mentioning the letter k. This would have been fine, except that the leadin remained "Answer each of the following about a certain letter for ten points", prompting many players to become confused and think that the answer to the first bonus part contained a specific letter.

Although NAQT Left Turns are generally frowned upon, they are occasionally used to turn one part of a difficult bonus into the "easy part", and are thus not always considered bad quizbowl.