If you are having difficulty finding questions in your preferred format, we may be able to connect you with a writer who can help or provide you with custom-written questions. Contact us for more information and read our licensing policy here.
Know Your Specifications
Before you get in contact, take some time to consider what type of questions you will need. We recommend that you provide a sample of a full round of the style of question you want, but please consider all of the following points, as well.
Question Type
What type(s) of questions do you want? The most common question types are tossups, bonuses, and lightning rounds, but your desired format may use different types altogether. For convenience, here are descriptions of common question types and variations:
Tossups are questions that are read to more than one team or player on the buzzer. We generally write “pyramidal” tossup questions, meaning that the clues start out at a harder difficulty and become easier through the tossup, ending on the easiest clue about the answer. Tossups can be as short as one sentence or can extend past six lines of text, and can be written at any target difficulty. Common variations on tossups include “shorts,” which are typically one to two sentences long, and “speed checks,” which are single-line questions with one main clue. You can see examples of our standard tossups by downloading past RQBCo Novice sets, and can see examples of our short tossups by downloading past Stateline Junior sets.
Bonuses are questions that are read to a team of players, who have a chance to discuss the bonus before answering. We generally write “ACF style” bonuses, three-part bonuses in which the parts are read one at a time and build on each other. Common variations are two-part bonuses read one at a time and four-part bonuses in which all parts are read at once. You can see examples of our standard bonuses by downloading past RQBCo Novice sets.
Lightning Rounds are multi-part questions read to a team of players on the clock. Lightning rounds generally have an introduction and either eight or ten very short questions that can be read rapid-fire. You can see examples of our lightning rounds by downloading past Stateline Junior sets.
We welcome the opportunity to write other styles of questions! Please be prepared to describe your question needs.
Question Style
How long do you want the questions to be? This might be measured in words, characters, or lines of text.
Are there any specific words or phrases that the questions should contain? For example, many tossups are expected to include the phrase “for ten points,” and many bonuses require the phrase “for ten points each.”
Do you need any point changes marked in the questions? Some question sets with pyramidal tossups use “powers,” meaning that an early buzz is worth fifteen points instead of ten, and the division between those sections of a tossup must be marked. Some very difficult sets may extend this rule to include “superpowers,” in which case two point changes must be marked.
Question Content
Do you want the question content to follow a particular school district curriculum, state learning standards, or other metric?
What categories do you want represented and how many of each category should be in each round? You can see an example of our standard category distribution on the RQBCo Novice sets page.
Game Length
How many questions of each type should be in each round?
Do you prefer to have replacement questions included in each round, or in a separate packet?
Formatting
Do you have specific formatting needs, such as the use of a specific font or large type size?
How do you want these questions laid out? For example, if you are using a standard tossup-bonus game format, you might request twenty tossup and twenty bonuses, with the question styles alternating. Please be sure to indicate if you want bonuses to be thematically connected to specific tossups.