Gibson assembly

In quizbowl, Gibson assembly is a question writing technique that consists of pulling sentences almost word-for-word from clue sources and using them as clues in tossups. A tossup written in such a manner is called "Gibson-assembled." Gibson assembly is widely frowned upon for writing questions, as it constitutes plagiarism of informational sources and past questions.

Writing tossups via Gibson assembly is a common mistake for newer writers trying to find clues. The existence of large databases of clues and questions like QuizDB makes Gibson assembly very easy, as one can pull one clue each from five or six different questions to make a new question that functionally works as a tossup, despite having little to no new creative input. Experienced writers and editors are able to detect when questions are Gibson-assembled and throw out such questions from their sets.

In a non-quizbowl context, Gibson assembly refers to a molecular cloning technique that uses a series of enzymes to assemble DNA fragments into a single strand. As such, the taking of sentences from past tossups and combining them into a new tossup can be thought of analogously to the Gibson assembly of DNA.