Novice
Novices are players who have recently started playing quizbowl - there is no formal definition, but players in their first year of playing or who have not attended regular difficulty tournaments are often considered novices.
A novice tournament is one that uses easier questions (novice difficulty) and has severe eligibility restrictions. Novice tournaments typically restrict eligibility to players who:
- have played mainstream quizbowl for fewer than two years and/or
- are freshmen or sophomores academically
In college, typically both conditions must be met. In high school, many tournaments require one and disregard the other; tournaments that only use the second restriction are often referred to as junior varsity.
Novice sets
A novice set or novice-difficulty packet set is one that is intended to be significantly easier than a standard, regular-difficulty set. At the college level, novice sets traditionally include "easy"-level sets ("1 dot" on Ophir's scale) like ACF Fall and Minnesota Undergraduate Tournament, though some members of the community contend that these sets are too difficult for true novice players. NAQT also produces a yearly Collegiate Novice set that is easier than ACF Fall ("0.5 dots" on Ophir's scale), intended for players who are new to collegiate quizbowl who were not as dominant in their high-school playing career.
At the high school level, SCOP Novice sets and NAQT IS-A sets are the most widely played examples of novice sets (though the latter are not explicitly billed as such). Recently, some middle-school sets like RAMS and ERIS have expanded their markets by doubling as high-school novice sets.