ACF Winter is a medium-difficulty tournament (halfway between ACF Fall and ACF Regionals). It is meant for players with a variety of experiences: from players in their first semester of college quizbowl, to players who have been to ACF Nationals. ACF Winter was revived in 2020; the original iterations of ACF Winter were held in 2009 and 2010.

2020 ACF Winter

2020 ACF Winter

2020 ACF Winter was held on November 7, 2020.

Editors

2020 ACF Winter is head-edited by William Golden and edited by Ganon Evans, Nick Jensen, Vishwa Shanmugam, Bryanna Shao, Christopher Sims, Jaskaran Singh, Andrew Wang, and Chandler West. Andrew Wang will also provide science oversight.

Online format

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, ACF Winter will be held entirely online this year. ACF will coordinate with hosts to hold mirrors using Discord, and will work to create the most authentic and engaging quizbowl experience possible under these circumstances.

Packet submission

Any team with at least two people on it who played a mainstream, collegiate, academic quizbowl tournament* (either as a college student or as a high school student) prior to September 1, 2019, is required to submit a half-packet. Email winter@acf-quizbowl.com if you are unsure whether your team is required to submit a half-packet. A team that is not required to submit a packet may submit an optional packet by the no-penalty deadline for a $50 discount.

* For these purposes, all ACF tournaments, NAQT SCT (Division I or Division II), NAQT ICT, and typical college-level academic invitationals count as mainstream collegiate academic tournaments. Pop culture or “hybrid” tournaments, HCASC, and tournaments played on NAQT’s Collegiate Novice series sets do not count.

Here is the submission schedule:

September 6, 2020: −$50
September 20, 2020: −$25
October 3, 2020: −$0
October 17, 2020: +$25
October 24, 2020: +$50

If teams required to submit a half-packet have not submitted by November 1, they will be dropped from the tournament, with no exceptions.

If your team is going to submit a half-packet, whether required or not, email winter@acf-quizbowl.com to request a distribution. All finished packets must be sent to that email before 11:59 p.m. Pacific Time on the day listed to receive the discount or penalty. Please send the half-packet in .docx format. The email subject line should list the name of the school, the team number (if applicable), and the words “half-packet.”

Registration

To register for 2020 ACF Winter, fill out the central 2020 ACF Winter registration form with all relevant information.

Field

The field for each site can be found here.

Distribution

ACF Winter uses the standard ACF distribution, which is the same distribution as ACF Regionals.

Fees

Base fee per team: $120
New to quizbowl discount: −$80
Shorthanded discount (1–2 players): −$60
Staffers: −$25 per staffer with functional laptop. Staffers must register with ACF in advance.

The “new to quizbowl” discount is for schools that have not sent a team to any mainstream collegiate academic tournament (exclusively Novice tournaments do not count) since September 2019, and have no one on the team(s) claiming this discount who played those tournaments for another school.

Host sites will bill teams as soon as possible after the teams register. Teams should pay their host sites by whatever method is convenient for the hosts, who will in turn pay ACF by check, bank transfer, cash, or PayPal.

Tips and guidelines

Please make sure your questions are harder than questions in ACF Fall and easier than at ACF Regionals. 2019 EFT is a good difficulty target. A majority of your tossup answers should conceivably be a tossup answer at ACF Fall.
Questions should be written in 10-pt Times New Roman with one-inch margins. Although you may submit longer questions, tossups will be capped at seven lines for the tournament. Each bonus part should be a maximum of three lines in length, with the majority being one or two lines long.
When writing bonuses, aim for the easy parts to be converted by around 90% of teams. The giveaways for tossups should also conceivably be answered by the majority of teams. While creative questions are great, don’t sacrifice playability for novelty.

More information can be found in ACF’s packet submission guidelines.

Staffing

To staff ACF Winter, please fill out the staffer registration form.

Hosts

Mirrors will by default be regional. One benefit of online tournaments, however, is that smaller sites can be condensed without creating transportation barriers. ACF reserves the right to move teams and staffers between sites. ACF intends to mirror 2020 ACF Winter in the following regions:

Region	Site
Northeast	Yale
Upper Mid-Atlantic	Rutgers
Lower Mid-Atlantic	Maryland
Southeast	Vanderbilt
Great Lakes	Ohio State
Midwest	Midwest
North	Iowa
South Central	Texas
Mountain West & Northwest	Washington
California	USC
Eastern Canada	Toronto
United Kingdom	Warwick
High school only	High school only

High school mirrors

ACF Winter will be available for high school mirrors. If you want to host a high school mirror of ACF Winter, email hosting@acf-quizbowl.com. High school mirrors are restricted to high school teams only; no college teams can participate.

If you have any questions, email winter@acf-quizbowl.com.