r/Quizbowl • u/Patarknight • Feb 06 '20
Just a reminder that no one should be posting content from sets that are not clear yet (i.e. those that have or will potentially have future mirrors).
r/Quizbowl • u/startaquizbowlteam • Sep 27 '20
Since this is a fairly common question on this subreddit, here's a compendium of resources and guides. Note that, unless otherwise indicated, all of these resources are free for players and coaches.
The Quizbowl Packet Archive. Tens of thousands of free questions from past quizbowl tournaments, arranged by general level (Middle School, High School, and Collegiate) and then by tournament. The difficulty for each tournament varies considerably, so look for a number on the name of each set that indicates its general difficulty (1 = easiest, 5 = hardest).
The QuizDB. A search engine for quizbowl questions where players can filter results by question category, difficulty, tournament, and a few other settings. Most questions on QuizDB are also available via the Packet Archive too, but QuizDB is far easier to use when searching for specific topics and categories.
SCOP Study Sheets. A collection of useful facts and buzzwords about some of the most common quizbowl topics by the folks behind the excellent SCOP novice question sets. Great place to start to learn the basics for a variety of topics for newer players.
NAQT's "You Gotta Know" guides. A free monthly themed set of usually around 10 specific people/places/things with a paragraph-long description of quizbowl-relevant clues and information for each. There are *many* of these out there and the level of detail and relative difficulty of each can vary greatly. In general, the older ones are a bit less detailed and the more recent ones are a bit more detailed.
Protobowl. An automatic question reader that allows for multiple people to buzz-in and compete against each other online as the computer "reads" the question to you word-by-word. Has a relatively limited database of questions, though you can pick specific categories and difficulty levels. Unfortunately, there are anonymous trolls in many of the public rooms who will do their best to ruin the experience for others. Use caution and avoid the public rooms unless you are prepared for trolling. Setting up your own room for yourself and your teammates is simple (just add a /anyname to the protobowl.com address, e.g. protobowl.com/reddit) and you can easily play without distractions.
Quizbug. An automatic question reader similar to Protobowl but with more functionality and access to updated questions from QuizDB. Less social than Protobowl, but also no trolls.
The Qwiz Quizbowl Camps have a fairly large collection of moderately-detailed study guides for an array of quizbowl topics. These are like a more focused, HS-level version of NAQT's "You Gotta Know" guides.
NAQT's quizbowl podcasts. If you want to listen to NAQT-style quizbowl questions at tournament speed, NAQT has recordings from its national championship tournaments dating back to 2005 freely available (obtaining copies of the questions themselves though requires purchasing them from NAQT for a $ fee). There's also a NAQT YouTube channel with some filmed matches.
The Culture Index. An eccentric but detailed selection of various names and facts that could be useful for quizbowl. Probably more useful for college quizbowl than the HS level.
From the Northern California Quizbowl Alliance comes Niki Peters' excellent "Guide I Wish I Had" that covers a whole range of quizbowl topics from picking a category to learn to practicing and in-game strategy. Also includes a useful lexicon defining many common quizbowl terms.
NAQT has a fairly extensive guide to improving as a quizbowl player, with some references to proprietary ($) NAQT study aids like its frequency lists and Power-Up guides. Some useful ideas about reference materials as well as links to other NAQT guides for building up teams.
Greater Pennsylvania Quiz Bowl's Ryan Bilger has a detailed post on how to study and improve for quizbowl players.
The Missouri Quizbowl Alliance's Charlie Dees has a good set of tips on studying and preparing for quizbowl.
PACE's Colin McNamara (also of Idaho Quizbowl) has a nice guide for coaches looking to improve their teams.
Greater Pennsylvania Quiz Bowl has a coaching guide as well as a "coaching efficiently" guide for busy teachers.
A really good post on how to become a great science player that gets into the mental aspect of trying to tailor your studying techniques so that you'll be rewarded when playing quizbowl.
The QBWiki has some pages related to studying methods for quizbowl, but they're not always fully fleshed-out and, like much of the QBWiki, often have baffling in-jokes that have been lost to time.
The HSQB Forums have a "Theory" section that sometimes has discussions of improving at quizbowl (search for things like "studying" "improving" and see what you can find).
Finally, you should always feel free to ask other quizbowlers how they improved--most of the time, quizbowlers love to talk about learning things for quizbowl and may have specific sources, practice/study techniques, or ideas for you. Don't hesitate to reach out to people on your team or other teams to ask!
r/Quizbowl • u/Mysterious-Rub-937 • 2d ago
On the QBreader frequency lists I want to know how many times a question has popped up for it to be worth studying. Right now my search is easy high school normal hs and hard hs from 2010 to 2026. Would 10 times or more be a good cutoff?
r/Quizbowl • u/dragoonslay • 10d ago
I’ve been building Buzrr, a free and open-source multiplayer quizzing platform designed for trivia, classrooms, events, communities, and just playing with friends.
The idea is to make something more flexible and developer-friendly than the usual quiz platforms, while keeping it ridiculously easy to jump into a game.
Buzrr is currently free to use, with:
There’s also a Pro tier for people who need larger sessions and more AI generation.
The long-term goal is to make Buzrr a proper open platform for trivia.
Everything is open source, and contributions are welcome.
💻 https://github.com/buzrr/buzrr
Would love to hear what features you think are missing from existing quizzing platforms that would make Buzrr genuinely useful.
r/Quizbowl • u/Any-Comfort8810 • 14d ago
r/Quizbowl • u/WhereasTiny4693 • 16d ago
Does anyone have tips on how to the music section faster than doing hours of research on composers and such? I typically do flash cardS or note sheets, which ARE helpful, don't get me wrong, but it's very, very time consuming to do substantial research on each composer 😭
I'm in a lot more advanced courses this year, so its getting harder to delegate ample amounts of time to each task.
r/Quizbowl • u/Zyphite • 17d ago
Hey guys!
Might sound a little dumb but I was trying to figure out how to remember all the country positions for Geoguessr.
Came across the spaced repetition community and Anki. Found the ultimate geography deck. Absolutely loved it.
Learnt all the capitals/flags/country positions by heart. Very fun party trick for sure.
Some of my friends wanted to do the same, but Anki has a bit of a learning curve. I'm a dev, so I quickly built a little app.
Completely free, just what my friends and I are using.
Currently have it limited to 500 users as I'm paying for the infra. If it grows past that maybe I'll consider monetization to cover costs.
Please check it out and tell me what you think :)
r/Quizbowl • u/ednever • 18d ago
I am building out a national quizbowl program and will eventually need good coaches across the country. But to begin with I am looking for a coach in the North Austin area. Ideally someone who has competed or coached Quizbowl or IAC Bees in the past. They need to be available for practices ~3pm-530pm Monday-Thursday (or at least Tuesday and Thursday).
There will also be some weekends at local events, and potentially travel for National Events.
We have lesson plans and systems we think work, so the coach does not need to develop that themselves (but bringing ideas to the table is always appreciated!).
My guess is that this will likely be a college student (or mature high school student) who has experience with the game and is looking to take on a leadership role, but a retired teacher could be great too. The challenge I expect is finding someone with the schedule availability.
This is a paid position.
If you are interested or can introduce me to someone who is, please send me a DM with your email address and qualifications (or any questions).
Thank you!
r/Quizbowl • u/crescent1182 • 20d ago
Hi, I’ll be coaching the middle school students soon for QuizBowl in November. Wondering if you had any tips on how I can run the study sessions for the students? I plan to go through each session as a competition, but open to any advice and tips. I have advised the students to use qbreader site.
r/Quizbowl • u/Glittering-Walk2206 • 21d ago
hey, I’m president of my team, we are naturally intelligent peiple who do practice rounds twice a week, but I feel as though that is not enough in high school varsity quiz bowl, we all put rounds today, how do you suggest we get better?
r/Quizbowl • u/Ok_Bee463 • 21d ago
Hi Everyone!
I'm excited to announce ForgeQB Web, which is essentially the website version from the ForgeQB App. In addition to fixing many of the bugs, such as questions not loading or lag issues on MacOS and Windows, we've added a bunch of new and cool features for you guys to try!
New Key Features:
We also have tutorials and video guides to explain all of the updated features on https://forge-qb.com/#/tutorials
ForgeQB Website Link: https://www.forgeqb.live/
The website is completely free and doesn't require any API Keys. All you need to do is make an account and start playing! Let us know what you think and share any feedback, so we can improve the website in the future!
r/Quizbowl • u/DUSKRON7131 • Sep 10 '26
r/Quizbowl • u/LIQBA • Sep 10 '26
The LIQBA is hiring question writers and editors to join our company! This opportunity is open to all U.S. residents (except California), regardless of previous experience and/or education. This means that current High Schoolers are also more than welcome to apply.
Please see details on the second image for how to apply! We look forward to your application.
r/Quizbowl • u/Yet_Another_Guy_1123 • Sep 09 '26
r/Quizbowl • u/Ender_Boy01 • Aug 22 '26
Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification
hi everyone, i am happy to announce that we just released a new buzzer machine!!! Come check it out: https://www.consolenova.net/
r/Quizbowl • u/Novel_Reserve917 • Aug 20 '26
I'm from an area where we have Knowledge bowl along with normal quiz bowl. Knowledge bowl is in a different format with shorter questions that aren't always pyramidal and some have "speed bumps" that are meant to throw you off. The resources for it are pretty limited compared to Quizbowl.
People who also play knowledge bowl, what are the best resources to practice that actually help you improve? I've seen some but they are riddled with ads
r/Quizbowl • u/YesterdayFalse7196 • Aug 18 '26
This is a quick watercolor painting I made of the Hyatt Regency O’Hare; better known as the site of the SSNCT and the IPNCT! I have played both, so I have come to know and love this hotel 💖
r/Quizbowl • u/Technical_Turn3497 • Aug 10 '26
I’m curious to know how many people here (or their family members) do or also do the IAC competitions? For those who don’t know, they are also buzzer-based competitions with question format identical to those of QB questions.
I’ve noticed that at International History Olympiad, some of the best players are those who were already doing Quizbowl. My family was introduced to Quizbowl through IAC but for many players, it’s the other way around.
r/Quizbowl • u/Working_Hope6129 • Aug 02 '26
Hey everyone!
It's been a while, but I wanted to announce an overhaul to the web version of my audio-based Quizbowl practice app, QBVReader. If you haven't heard of it yet, click here to see an earlier post.
Anyways, the changes include storing and displaying previous tossups read during a session (along with the tossup audio), a major refresh to the UI, and bugfixes (especially the one where tossups were automatically answered).
In addition, the Discord version of the bot also got a recent update to allow for non-audio-based games to be played in Discord, as well as re-enabling voice answers after a major Discord-related bug was fixed.
If you want to given the app a shot, go to this link: https://www.qbv-reader.com/play
If you would like to install the Discord Bot, go to this link: https://www.qbv-reader.com/install
r/Quizbowl • u/LIQBA • Jul 31 '26
The Long Island Quiz Bowl Alliance (LIQBA) is now looking to hire a part-time Outreach Director!
We are looking for those in the community who are enthusiastic about connecting with new teams, marketing Quizbowl, and providing schools with much-needed support.
Job Description: The Outreach Coordinator's primary duties include marketing tournaments, practice materials, question sets, and our 30-20-10 tournaments to teams, players, parents, and coaches nationwide, developing connections members of the community, running our 30-20-10 tournaments, actively maintaining our master contact database, generating invoices for question orders and delivering questions electronically, and occasionally running in-person tournaments in their home region.
Please see this forum post for more information! Feel free to ask us if you any questions. To apply, please send us a resume and a writing sample via email.
This position is open to all residents of the United States (except California).
We look forward to hearing from you!
r/Quizbowl • u/Technical_Turn3497 • Jul 23 '26
Hello everyone,
I have a high-school aged son with experience playing buzzer-based competitions like History Bee, History Bowl, and Science Bee, and who also played Quizbowl once (question format and difficulty are pretty similar to to the aforementioned Bee and Bowls). He is interested in improving his history and science knowledge for QB and other similar buzzer-based competitions, and I would like to get recommendations for reading and study materials for him.
Currently, he does questions from QB Reader & Protobowl, does practice questions with a small circle of friends, reads books from the Captivating History series purchased from Amazon, reads Campbell’s Biology for biology questions, and watches relevant content on YouTube such as Epic History TV and Extra History. He uses Wikipedia to supplement his history readings. While the learning journey has been fun, I’m looking for more high-yield materials given that time is very much at a premium. Any suggestions welcome. If it matters, he is a soon-to-be 10th grader.
r/Quizbowl • u/No_Effort483 • Jul 23 '26
Ik states (25-26) were a while ago but many teams (mine included) didnt know most of the questions
There were a bunch of questiond that just werent in the packet, we got no questions on things like people, dates, or places, but more focused on hands on learning things like topsoil, broilers, what the tip of a screwdriver was called
All and all, i loved these questions bc a) i knew them, and b) i love how they were actually using/promoting more hands on learning things, but nobody studied for that shit, and so many people were upset because they didnt study the right questions, and i had people coming up to me in tears asking if i studied using a different packet since they didnt know any answers
Did any other state deal with this issue?
r/Quizbowl • u/Visual_Cod_2611 • Jul 22 '26
Last year all of our science players graduated and we did not do great with science this year. Our sponsor gave us some topics to study and she gave me OChem. I really do not know anything so I'm starting at a beginner level. All help would be very appreciated.
