Knowledge Bowl is the name for several interdisciplinary academic quiz bowl-like competitions across the United States and the world.
The questions for many Knowledge Bowl competitions are supplied by the Academic Hallmarks company of Durango, Colorado.
Knowledge Bowl is usually a power competition in which team groupings are rearranged after each round on the basis of their total points accumulated.[where?]
Knowledge Bowl originated in 1976 as a project within the San Juan Board of Cooperative Services in Durango, Colorado.
[citation needed] Within two years, it evolved to include scores of invitational meets in addition to regional competitions and a Colorado state championship that has been held annually ever since.
The first statewide Colorado State Knowledge Bowl was held in 1978 at Fort Lewis College in Durango.
[citation needed] The event soon attracted educators from Minnesota, Washington, and South Dakota who initiated Knowledge Bowl programs in their home states.
From 1983 to 2012, Colorado teams also participated in a Colorado-specific Knowledge Master Open (KMO) online competition.
Knowledge Bowl was initiated in Minnesota by David Heritage, an administrator in the Hibbing Public Schools.
After contacting other schools around the country to see what was done to challenge their best students, as a result Heritage started the first Knowledge Bowl competitions in the state.
The spokesperson has the ability to defer their answer to another person on their team as long as they do so before the 15 second time limit.
While not all regions use the power ranking method, it is used in the Minnesota Service Cooperatives' State Knowledge Bowl Meet.
These are the ten/eleven regions throughout the state of Minnesota, and the city in which they are headquartered: Northwest (I/II),[nb 1] Thief River Falls; Northeast (III), Mountain Iron; Lakes Country (IV), Fergus Falls; North Central (V), Staples; West Central/Southwest (VI/VIII),[nb 2] Marshall; Central (VII), St.
Cloud; South Central (IX), North Mankato; Southeast (X), Rochester; Metro (XI), St. Anthony.
[2] Imported from Colorado, the first Knowledge Bowl in Washington state for high school students in grades nine through twelve was conducted by the Olympic Educational Service District 114 in 1981.
Within several years, each of the nine Educational Service Districts were holding regional competitions and the first statewide tournament was held in 1983.
The regional competitions that determine which teams will advance to the state tournament typically take place in February or early March.
The format for the state tournament begins with a written round of 50 multiple-choice questions with a 35-minute time limit.
CBS affiliate WREG produces a televised high school quiz tournament for teams in the Memphis metropolitan area.
Due to the large number of teams entering, competitions are split between two European cities, different each year.
International level competition is held in late November and features schools from Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama.
In 2011 and 2012 the title of varsity champions was won by the Escuela International de Tegucigalpa (EIT), with an outstanding performance of the two time MVP, Ricardo Cálix, becoming the first consecutive winner of the award in the history of Knowledge Bowl World Championships.
Nicolas Bran finished as the highest scorer of the competition in 2015 and was rightfully considered the unanimous decision for MVP that year.
In 2022, AASCA Knowledge Bowl was won by the American School of Tegucigalpa (AST), who defeated Colegio Americano de Guatemala (CAG) in the finals.
In 2023, CAG won in the finals against AST, who was the only team to defeat them in the round robin stage of the tournament.
The following year, CAG went undefeated and once again bested AST in the finals for back-to-back championships.
Depending on the number of participating schools, the teams with the best records in the round robin phase will go to the elimination bracket on day three, with tiebreakers decided by head-to-head records against other tied schools, then by total points scored.
After the thirty minutes are up, the game enters the lightning round (see below), a set of five final questions with mildly altered rules.