Lightning Rounds in Academic Competition

• From: michael_a_knapp
• Date: Mon, 08 May 2000 18:50:34 -0700
• Message-ID: <000SHERNA.000E48AOC.12170551-quizbowl_at_...>

I've probably only read 50% of the complete
archive of all messages posted to the Yahoo quizbowl
Club.

I've not seen any reference yet to Lightning
Rounds.

What IS a Lightning Round??

My experience with
Lightning Rounds goes back to my high school Quiz Bowl
days. Some of you have heard of the public-television
HS quiz show out of WKAR TV in East Lansing called
Quizbusters. It currently follows a format such as
follows:

Quick Ten: ten quick tossup questions, +10 for correct,
no neg for incorrect answer

"Regular Game
Play": 3-4 minutes worth of 10 point tossup questions
which lead to 40 point bonuses--10 points for correct
responses to the first two bonus questions, and 20 points
for getting the third and sweeping the category
(occasionally they throw in an "All-inclusive" bonus question,
in which the first two correct answers to the
question are worth 10 and the third and final is worth
20).

Pop Quiz: A total of 12 questions based on "Words
that start with ***"--either a two-, three-, or
four-letter combination. It's kind of hard to explain this
portion--visualize the Quizbusters set, in which Team A is on the
top (on the wooden risers) and Team B is at
floor-level. This establishes a one-to-one correspondence
between players from Team A and Team B. The Pop Quiz as
such pairs respective players from Team A and Team B
and asks all 4 pairs of players 3 questions each. 10
points for correct answer, 0 points for a
miss.

Then....2-3 more minutes of regular game play, followed by
Halftime, 3-4 minutes of regular game play, the second-half
Pop Quiz, 3-4 minutes more of Tossup-Bonus play, and
then...

The Lightning Round. Sixty seconds of tossups, worth
10 points for correct answers, but now costing a 10
point penalty for an incorrect response (regardless of
whether the response interrupted the tossup). 

For
what it's worth, at least two high school quiz bowl
leagues in the Lansing area (the Tri-County Academic
League and the Capital Area Conference), since the
start-up of Quizbusters in 1989, have altered their
formats to put a 1-minute lightning round at the end of
their games.

Anyhow. This is an awful long way
to go to ask the following question: how often (if
ever) has a Lightning Round been used in a
college/masters-level tournament format?


mak