The connection between a quiz bowl background and J! success

[hbomb1947]

Interesting article by KJ.

https://slate.com/culture/2019/04/jeopa ... nings.html

I didn't do quiz bowl, but wish I had. At least I've gotten to play it every year at TCONA (and now Trivia Nationals).

[Vintsanity]

A matter of correlation not equaling causation imo. Are the type of people who do well on J! also the type of people who do QB? Absolutely. But success in one is not guaranteed success in the other. I had a poor approximation of a kind of quiz bowl in high school, but my success on J! clues comes from outside knowledge and specifically studying the rather limited J! canon. I don't think being a quiz bowl regular would add much to that for J! purposes, although it could be fun for its own sake.

[boson]

There is a strong correlation. But, the games are different. Quiz Bowl rewards deeper knowledge than Jeopardy does, but typically has a narrower subject matter - more academic or more "trashy", for the pop culture. There are few questions with the hints and wordplay that J has. QB also emphasizes speed (knowing the answer first) over timing (ringing in at the proper time).

However - if you spend time getting good at QB, it will help J a lot - and vice versa. It is the motivation to spend time getting better at answering trivia questions that makes you better at both games.

[Lefty]

I'd like to have done quiz bowl, but isn't it one of those things you have to keep your grades up for?

[BRD-98]

As someone with several years of high school and then college quiz bowl experience, it will only help out in the academic areas. If you live under a rock and don't go to the movies or own a television (me), no matter how great you are at quiz bowl, it doesn't substitute in for pop culture knowledge. Also, Jeopardy! wordplay can get tricky because quiz bowl is a straightforward, literal-minded affair.

But is there a strong correlation? Absolutely.

[jeff6286]

The article says besides Julia, just two of the other 17 All-Stars didn’t play quiz bowl in high school or college. Does anyone know definitively which ones? My guesses would be maybe Alex and Austin?

[hbomb1947]

The article says besides Julia, just two of the other 17 All-Stars didn’t play quiz bowl in high school or college. Does anyone know definitively which ones? My guesses would be maybe Alex and Austin?

According to a tweet by Ken, it's Alex and Jennifer. Alex separately tweeted that he didn't do quiz bowl.

[floridagator]

In my humble opinion, we ought to see a difference between contestants who went through College Bowl in the 1990s or earlier versus those who went through in the 2000s. Sometime around 2000, they rejiggered College Bowl to make it more academic in nature. The pre-2000 College Bowl was a lot like Jeopardy! It was important to be quick on the buzzer and to have very fast recognition of the question. In the post-2000 College Bowl, it's not as important to be quick on the buzzer. The questions are all very backloaded. It's like listening to a textbook being read. Having depth of knowledge is more important. I suspect that College Bowl players from before this switch have an advantage at J! that those who trained after the switch don't have.

Typical pre-2000 question:

For a quick 10 points, what president wrote "Why England Slept"?

Typical post-2000 questions:

To the ancient Greeks, it was a unit of volume equal to 10.3 gallons. To the ancient Romans, it was a unit
equal to 6.84 gallons. To us, it is merely a type of tall, narrow, two-handled jar that the ancients used to
store wine or other liquids. For 10 points -- what is this three-syllable word?

His parents named him J. H. to keep whites from calling him by just a first name. When he enrolled in the
Air Force in 1950, he was forced to give himself a full first and middle name and chose James Howard.
For 10 points -- name this African American who, in 1962, integrated the University of Mississippi.

[Cat Hammarskjold]

I think that playing in the era where questions were transitioning from more wordplay/pop culture questions to more academic stuff is even more of a benefit. The people in that age cohort were also born around the time of the beginning of the Trebek version J! so we associate more of our memories with events that happened on the show and the show is probably more meaningful to us than people who were born before or after us.

[floridagator]

The people in that age cohort were also born around the time of the beginning of the Trebek version J! so we associate more of our memories with events that happened on the show and the show is probably more meaningful to us than people who were born before or after us.

Why Cat! I never knew you were such a young pup.

[boson]

The transition happened earlier than this: in 1990 - 1996 I played 'College Bowl' questions like the simple ones you listed, but by the end of that time few others did. NAQT and ACF and community-written questions were taking over.

[Cat Hammarskjold]

NAQT and ACF until 2005 or so were at least a third general knowledge/pop culture, and still had giveaways of "sound like" or "is an anagram of", among others. Most high school teams played various non-pyramidal quizbowl more than NAQT until 2010 or so. Around half of the states in the US were still eligible for the free NAQT tournament for states that had never had one before at the time I graduated college the first time in 2007. I was ticked because I had seen that Ohio had one in 2005 when I tried to host a tournament at Ohio State in 2007, and was ticked I'd have to pay for the questions despite the fact that all the teams in the Columbus area had never played NAQT at that time. So while ACF began in 1990, College NAQT in 1996 and high school NAQT in 1998, the transitional era lasted a long time.