Some Thoughts Concerning Studying Methods (2025)

Quiz Bowl is an activity that demands practice, preparation, and hard work from teams what wish to do well. The following is a guide that outlines a few key ways in which a player can improve in Quiz Bowl. The order of this guide runs from the most basic study strategies for novices all the way to advanced strategies for more experienced players. PLEASE NOTE: this guide is focused on High School Quiz Bowl, so please don't expect me to discuss how to prepare for ACF Nationals or Chicago Open or something. Thanks, and enjoy! Any feedback, suggestions, comments, etc are appreciated.

I. The Starting Block

Choose the category(ies) that you are best at, or that interest you most. Please keep in mind that your favorite subjects at school may not be your preferred Quiz Bowl categories, so do not make the assumption that you must be good/bad at certain categories based on your performance in those classes at school. Try studying all categories at first – you will quickly realize which categories you like and which ones you don’t.

Get exposed to the canon. The most difficult step for all novice/beginner-level Quiz Bowl players is developing a sense of which topics to study. Quiz Bowl is a canonical realm – certain names and terms will appear much more frequently than others. To make matters worse, there are different canons for different levels of play. But luckily, there are guides such as NAQT’s “You Gotta Know” section that will aid you in gaining a better understanding of which answers are part of the novice canon. The cool thing is: higher levels of play have canons that include everything in the novice canon as well, so having a good grasp over the most basic elements of the canon is essential to even the most advanced players. And of course, being exposed to the canon requires one to start reading packets. At this point in one’s career, one should not be researching the lead-in clues or the in-power clues of any question yet – developing a solid sense of what topics are likely to be asked is the most important objective.

Learn Beginner-Level Theory – Good vs. Bad Quiz Bowl. To be honest, studying is not the most exciting activity. Therefore, everyone wants to get the most out of the time spent studying. With that in mind, it is certainly helpful to know what types of information to study. There are certain types of clues that are considered “Bad Quiz Bowl” and are therefore not used in questions. These clues include the exact birth dates of people, exact areas (like area in square miles) of countries, and other facts that do not contribute to a better understanding of a topic. QBWiki has excellent guides on Good vs. Bad Quiz Bowl.

Begin to Look at Lists. I am aware that lists are considered a classic example of Bad Quiz Bowl. Simply memorizing the names of Nobel Prize winners or things like that does not help any player at higher levels of play. More difficult tournaments have tossups of 8 lines in length. The terms that appear on these lists will always be placed after clues that mention more detailed information about those terms, so that any player with any in-depth knowledge is guaranteed to get the question before the player with only binary-match list knowledge. So why look at lists? Well, all sophisticated, in-depth knowledge stems from basic knowledge. It is horribly insufficient to only study lists, but taking a list and researching each term further goes beyond simple memorizing and will certainly help the player. Consulting a list of facts (Authors and their works, etc) can help introduce a player to the types of topics that he/she needs to study in order to improve at QB. In other words, lists are like doorways that lead to more in-depth, more useful knowledge – they are a means to an ends, not vice versa.

II. The Intermediate Stage

More theory – intermediate level. Studying more theory will allow for more efficient and comprehensive conversations about Quiz Bowl. Learn what stock clues are, learn what “frauding” a question is – all of these terms will contribute to a better understanding of how each question works, which in turn, will allow players to have better anticipation and awareness in matches. Alongside the vocabulary, one should aim to slowly read everything on QBWiki – there are many entries worth reading in the “Quiz Bowl Lingo” and overall the “Quiz Bowl Basics” sections.

Begin writing some questions. Eventually, it will be a good idea to raise funds and/or have some fun by hosting a house-written tournament. Writing questions (and staying true to pyramidality, of course) forces a player to research any and all topics he/she writes about. This practice not only improves a player’s knowledge (the act of having to read information and create clues out of it helps to cement that knowledge in a player’s memory), but also allows for a headstart on what will be needed for any future house-writes.

LOOK AT LOTS OF PACKETS. How do you know which topics to study? Look at past tournaments! Quizbowlpackets.com and the QuizBowlDB site are great places to look. You will quickly learn which tournaments are the most well-known, and which provide the best studying material. Remember that canons are manifested in tournament questions – the topics asked in one tournament are bound to overlap with those in another. Canons are built, revised, and expanded based on happenings/trends at these tournaments, so the best way to obtain a good grasp on any canon is to study the tournaments.
(Cont.) At this point, since we are at the intermediate stage, players should begin to study not only the last (giveaway) clue of each topic, but should start studying all parts of the question. If a question summarizes the plot of an author’s work, memorize the title AND plot. More in-depth knowledge always helps a player at future tournaments, especially more difficult ones. Use of a highlighter is recommended.

Improve on knowledge of the canon. At this point, players should be getting better at distinguishing between different levels of Quiz Bowl. Players should be well on their way to developing an idea of what is “common” and what is “obscure”, what is/is not “stock”, etc. Basically, players should be able to prioritize which topics are worth studying for each desired level of difficulty.

Pay attention in class. Some things that you learn in school are utterly useless for Quiz Bowl, but many facts are worth noting. For example, many of the topics in history class will show up in Quiz Bowl tournaments. So DO NOT simply slack off and go to sleep in history class when facts are being taught. In fact, I argue that at easier levels of Quiz Bowl (middle-high school), history is the school subject that has the most applicability in Quiz Bowl.

III. Advanced Methods of Study

Look up terms in reference sources - legitimate ones. Now we are in the land of people who want to prepare for difficult tournaments.
In order to follow the rule of not writing unreasonably difficult questions, writers will certainly use many of the terms that one has heard about in studying previous tournaments. However, the writer will try to avoid using previously-used clues and may even create tossups out of terms that may have been mentioned only once in your studies. If you only go so far as to memorize those names and titles, you will be hopeless at even moderately difficult tournaments playing against competitive teams. Reserving your knowledge of a topic to the giveaway phase of a question is as good as giving your opponent free points. So do the right thing, and actually look up the terms.
Now that you know what you should NOT do, let’s talk about what you should do. Look up the topics AT LEAST on Wikipedia/Sparknotes/misc. sources so that you actually know some in-depth information on each topic. Ideally, these encyclopedic sources will never yield as much depth and understanding as studying the topic in a class, but at the high school level, there are very few available classes that discuss the types of early clues that appear in Quiz Bowl (how are you going to ensure that your literature class is specifically going to read “When I was one and twenty” by A.E. Housman?). So at least these encyclopedic sources give you decent information on, say, a book’s plot and who some of the important characters are. Underline some key words or phrases in the question that talk about the book, and supplement it with your own notes in the margin, where you briefly jot down some key plot points. This practice is not perfect, but better than blindly memorizing clues.
Finally, it is important to know why this habit of researching terms and taking notes on them is important. The theory on the order of difficulty of tournament questions goes as follows. The “novice” level is limited to certain answers and certain clues. The “intermediate” level simply involves adding more obscure clues to the topics used in novice tournaments, with additional, more difficult topics. The “elite” level of Quiz Bowl involves adding considerable amounts of very obscure clues, adding obscure tossup topics, and above all, taking terms that are used as clues in intermediate Quiz Bowl and writing tossups out of them. For example, intermediate tournaments may ask questions about Johannes Brahms in which the clue “this composer of the German Requiem…” appears. At PACE NSC 2010, the topic “German Requiem” by Brahms was made into a standard, 8-line tossup. Players who researched this piece when they first came across it could certainly have gotten it in power or slightly after power. Those who didn’t put in the research time would have had to wait until after the giveaway.

A Quick Note on Researching Visual Art…LOOK UP THE ART ON GOOGLE IMAGES OR SOMETHING. There are countless ways to describe each piece of artwork, so it is essential that Fine Arts players have running images of the art they study in their memory. Additionally, clues on works of art do not tend to have obvious buzzwords so don’t try to listen for them. It is only through piecing together (in your mind) the images in the clues that you can virtually recreate the painting, sculpture, or other type of art work from the clues and then match it to a piece of artwork in your memory.

Talk about Quiz Bowl/Finish Learning Theory. Discuss strategy and material with your team. Talk about which tournaments are worth studying, which new references you have come across, etc. Most importantly, make sure that every category is covered between the members of your team. Don’t have everyone study science and leave the other categories blank. Winning consistently against competitive opponents requires your team to have the best possible chance of answer every question (a.k.a you need all the help you can get) – never deliberately leave knowledge gaps in certain categories.
(Cont.) In terms of theory, make sure that your team is familiar with psychological strategy in Quiz Bowl. Know the “Romero Method”, “MacKenzie Method”, etc. Having a good grasp over these terms allows team members to quickly develop strategy within a match, depending on how the match is going. A good team must be in agreement over whether to be aggressive or passive, lateral or exact in their play. Having the wrong mindset can lead to unnecessary risks or slowness, which may result in negs/late buzzes and then losses.

Notebooks and Note-Taking. Notebooks for writing down clues/notes are truly optional, but some players prefer this method to printing out the packets and highlight/annotating. And of course, as mentioned in a previous point, note-taking of some sort is essential to improving knowledge. Of course, there are many who prefer taking electronic notes, and that is fine.

Recommended, but optional: House-Write! Schedule for your school to host a tournament and divide up question-writing responsibilities amongst the team. The need to write good questions will force you to do research that you otherwise might not have done. It’s a great way to study while helping your team raise money for tournaments/trips. It is not mandatory for a team to do a house-write - writing questions for NAQT or other organizations/tournaments will also help a player improve. It's just that doing a House-Write can help players recognize and practice engaging in many of the roles they don't usually fill in the Quiz Bowl world (moderating, writing, editing, maybe even tournament directing etc)

Read about terms that aren’t mentioned in previous packets. Just because you have never seen a term mentioned in a packet you’ve studied does not mean it’s not important – especially the works of famous people. Sooner or later, those terms will be incorporated into the canon, and most likely, you will not know that the assimilation has happened until you come across it in a tournament. I am not suggesting that you study every work of every person, but if there’s a work that has never been mentioned but is considered one of a famous person’s best works, or a Nobel laureate that has never come up in tournaments, then it is worth looking them up.

IV. Myths Regarding Studying Methods

1. “Reading the actual novels, plays, etc is the most efficient way to study literature”

Now, I will admit that reading REALLY famous works is helpful, especially on answering tossups on said works. But one should not devote 24 hours a day to reading "Forest of the Pygmies". There are simply too many works of literature that one must study, and one simply does not have the time to fully read everything. There will, of course, be some clues that can only be known through real reading. But realistically, do you believe you will have time to read EVERY work of literature you come across? Perhaps if you limit your canon to novice high school, where writers cycle between Great Expectations, The Scarlet Letter, Brave New World, and The Great Gatsby all day. But certainly not if you ever plan to move onto higher difficulty levels.
Don’t take this the wrong way. Reading is great, even in Quiz Bowl. You will definitely get questions on books you’ve read faster than those on books you’ve never read. It’s just that you can, at most, fully read less than 50% of all literature that is asked (and that estimate is being really generous), and that’s if you don’t spend any time doing anything else, including homework/sports/other extracurriculars/being with friends. My argument is that while reading may be the most comprehensive way to learn literature, it is not the most time-efficient.

2. “Computational Math is worth studying for Quiz Bowl purposes.”

NO. Math VOCABULARY is worth studying, but what are you going to do with comp math? Research the different clues that one writes for the answer line of “36”? Oh, I'm sure that knowing that "36 is the derivative of 36x" will help you a great deal when you are years away from even touching the subject of calculus. And no comp. math clue is likely to be repeated, so don't expect to take shortcuts by memorizing clues. It is important to pay attention in math class, but there is no point in trying to learn EXTRA computational math just for Quiz Bowl purposes.

3. “Listening to works of music helps everyone improve at answering Fine Arts questions.”

This might be my most controversial argument, but I do not believe that everyone benefits from listening to works of music for purposes of Quiz Bowl improvement. Yes, if you take a class, watch a lecture, or have some sort of analytical discussion on a piece, then you can buzz on clues such as “This piece opens with descending triplets in A Major”, but the average listener cannot tell the key in which a small segment of music is played, and fewer listeners actually note that in their memory banks naturally. Those who have indeed analyzed a piece of music will see the significance in these seemingly obscure-sounding clues and therefore be able to get a question off of them, but the reality is: most people have not had the privilege of carefully scrutinizing every well-known piece of music. Therefore, for the sake of pyramidality, I am not suggesting a change in the types of clues that are used in music questions, but am rather just alerting novice players to the fact that blindly listening to a piece will not help you nearly as much as reading a Sparknotes entry on a work of literature, for example. To a player who does not recognize the significance in specific small segments of each music piece, a clue on musical structure is just as useless as a visual art lead-in that goes “In this painting, there is a tree.” I remember reading a thread on the HSQuizBowl forums where one individual was suggesting that clues on musical structure and notation were bad – I am not suggesting that. But I am adamantly stating that players (especially novice players) with no at-least-somewhat decent understanding of music as a whole will never benefit from blindly listening to pieces of music without any idea of what they are listening for.
Again, I highly recommend listening to music in general, but it is not the best use of your time to listen to music purely for Quiz Bowl purposes if you do not understand the language of music well.

4. “Quiz Bowl practices are a good way to study.”

Definitely NOT. Practice is a great place to train the skills that cannot be developed while doing research and taking notes: teamwork, reflexes, strategy, etc. Practice is also a great place to apply the knowledge you have gained, and it is a good idea to write down new, unheard topics in practice. But to actually research the topics? Definitely not in practice. And to believe that “hearing a clue once in practice” means “committing the clue to memory and magically acquiring in-depth information on that clue”? Definitely not valid, though it would be cool :)

EDIT: Changed "Torrey Pines Database" to its replacement: "QuizBowlDB"