Hello all, it’s been a while. I have no excuse; I was supposed to start answering your pressing questions, but being the slacker that I am, I never made the time to respond, and for that, I apologize. But fear not, on this coming Monday, there WILL be a new SYW article, so please send any and all questions. Thanks a lot!
This past Wednesday I was involved in a brand new competition, called Bid-a-quiz. To summarize the rules real quickly, it is a one-on-one individual competition, where quizzers bid on questions by offering to answer them in fewer words than their opponent. It goes something like this:
Reader: Question 1 is a 10-word question from Chapter 3.
Let the bidding begin! Player 1 starts the bidding.
Player 1: I think I can answer it in 8 words!
Player 2: I can answer it in 5 words!
Player 1: I can answer it in 4 words!
Player 2: You can have it.
Reader: Who – is – the – Apostle.
Player 1: Dur, I dunno, I guess, Jesus?
Reader: That’s correct! The score is 1 to 0.
That goes on until a player gets 5 points, and points are awarded by answering correctly or your opponent answering incorrectly. A quiz can go until 9 questions, one from each of the 9 chapters that the competition covers. Other than that, it’s similar to quizzing in that it’s double elimination, and there’s a winner’s and a couple loser’s brackets.
Tournament Summary:
There were 22 competitors to spread across 8 rooms. Like I said, double elimination, so the 8 quizzers who lost their first quiz began an 8 bracketed tournament. The 8 winners advanced, and the 4 who lost battled it out, etc. Early shocker eliminations included Paige Warren and Kelsey Davies who, despite being strong quizzers, found themselves victim to the strange rules of this event. The field was whittled down to 5: Praise, winner of the winner’s bracket, Josh Thomas, Elisabeth Thomas, David Tyrrell, and relative newcomer Jessica West, who claimed the second victory over Open Door’s Grace D’Amico. Elisabeth scored an upset by eliminating David Tyrrell, and Josh Thomas edged out Jessica West, after an impressive come-from-behind victory from 4-0. However, Praise defeated Elisabeth and then Josh to win the tournament with no losses. Praise, Elisabeth, and Josh all finished “in the money” and won prices. Strangely, Praise chose the cash, Josh took the flash drive, leaving Elisabeth with the Disney tickets. Go figure High School logic, which makes the most valuable award fall to the third place winner. Congrats to Praise for winning the first Bid-A-Quiz!
I do want to talk strategy a bit as it pertains to this quiz. In theory, one could win and not know a single chapter, but by pressuring their opponent to bid a low amount that gives them a less chance of answering correctly. Additionally, as each quiz has 6 partial reference questions and 3 direct reference questions, keeping track of the number of direct reference questions asked could tip the scales in your favor. By bidding low on questions you think are direct reference, or by baiting your opponent in on questions that are unlikely to be direct reference, you could gain a major advantage. Lastly, by knowing the number of words in the question initially, and with the additional time (each quizzer gets 20 seconds to answer), truly smart quizzers might be able to assume the rest of the question in order to make a more accurate answer and not give too much information.
If you have any questions about this tournament, or anything in general, feel free to send me a question. See ya Monday!
P.S. BibleQuiz.cc can give you a more detailed overview of the Bid-A-Quiz results. Check it out!