Our regular difficulty question sets are written primarily for octangular tournaments in Illinois. They are intended to be used by teams preparing for the IHSA State Series.

Available Dates

Regular difficulty sets are expected to be available from the beginning of January through the end of April.

Question Set Format

The set includes eight rounds of 24/24 (tossups/bonuses) and a half-packet of 10/10 replacement questions. Tossups are not powermarked. Bonuses have three parts, which are designed to be read one part at a time.

Subject Distribution

These sets follow the IHSA’s subject distribution. The full distribution is outlined in the Terms and Conditions on the IHSA’s scholastic bowl activity page.

4/4 Math
4/4 Science
4/4 Literature
4/4 History
4/4 Social Studies (Geography, Social Science, Religion, Myth)
3/3 Fine Arts (Visual, Audio, and Other)
1/1 Miscellaneous

Fees

The fee to use the High School Octangular set is $17/team. This includes “house” teams representing the host school.

There is a $1/team discount for complete statistics posted publicly or emailed to the set editor within one week of your tournament date. Complete statistics must include full statistics for each individual player on every team for every round, and must be recorded either in YellowFruit or in SQBS with round report enabled. Because Neg5 does not validate game data effectively, Neg5 statistics are not accepted for the stat discount.

There is a $1/team discount if you choose to email or snail mail your raw scoresheets to the set editor within one week of your tournament date.