ACF Regionals
Last updated: March 22, 2022
ACF Regionals is a difficult tournament that serves as a qualifier for ACF Nationals. ACF Regionals prepares teams to ramp up to Nationals difficulty while still providing a rigorous qualifying experience. Many players will find ACF Regionals to be a significant but rewarding challenge.
Table of Contents
2022 ACF Regionals
2022 ACF Regionals was held on January 29, 2022.
Editors
2022 ACF Regionals is head-edited by Taylor Harvey and edited by Jaimie Carlson, Ganon Evans, Alex Hardwick, Nick Jensen, Arjun Nageswaran, Grant Peet, Graham Reid, Eleanor Settle, Chandler West, and Annabelle Yang.
| Editor | Subjects |
|---|---|
| Taylor Harvey | Religion, Philosophy, Other Fine Arts (Auditory), Music |
| Jaimie Carlson | British and European Literature |
| Ganon Evans | Other Fine Arts (Visual), Geography, Pop Culture, General Knowledge |
| Alex Hardwick | World Literature, Social Science (Linguistics) |
| Nick Jensen | World History, Biology, and Social Science (excluding Linguistics) |
| Arjun Nageswaran | American History |
| Grant Peet | British/Commonwealth History, European History, Other History |
| Graham Reid | Chemistry |
| Eleanor Settle | Physics, Other Science, Current Events |
| Chandler West | American Literature, Painting/Sculpture |
| Annabelle Yang | Mythology |
Format
We hope that ACF Regionals can be held in person wherever possible. However, we acknowledge that many schools are uncertain about the possibility of allowing large events due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, it is possible that some mirrors of ACF Regionals will be held online, and we will work to create the most authentic and engaging quizbowl experience possible under these circumstances.
Qualification
ACF is allowing for in-person and online sites for 2022 ACF Regionals. Only teams who attend in-person ACF Regionals sites will be able to qualify for ACF Nationals by A-value. Teams that are not located near any in-person ACF Regionals sites can apply for a wildcard bid. Hosts of in-person and online sites can apply for wildcard bids. The process for ACF Nationals qualification is described here.
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, 2020, is required to submit a half-packet. Email regionals@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.
If your team is obligated to submit a half-packet or wishes to do so, email regionals@acf-quizbowl.com by January 2, 2022. A half-packet distribution will be mailed to you. Emailing to request a half-packet does not constitute registration for ACF Regionals, which will be set up after sites are announced.
In an effort to reduce the number of submitted questions that cannot be used for distributional reasons, the editors may include suggested subtopics along with your half-packet distribution. For example, if the social science editor has received many economics questions already, but few anthropology questions, you may see a note like “We suggest that you write this question on an anthropology topic” in your distribution. Teams who abide by these suggestions are more likely to see their questions used, but they are not obliged to write on the suggested subtopic if they do not feel comfortable doing so.
The submission schedule is as follows:
| Submission deadline | Packet discount |
|---|---|
| November 16, 2021 | −$50 |
| November 28, 2021 | −$25 |
| December 12, 2021 | −$0 (no penalty) |
| January 2, 2022 | +$25 |
| January 9, 2022 | +$50 |
After January 9, 2022, teams will be required to pay an additional $10 per day their packet is late. Teams that have not submitted a packet by January 16, 2022, will be dropped from the tournament, with no exceptions.
The submission discounts and penalties – but not the schedule – may differ for teams attending sites outside of the United States, and will be detailed on the relevant site’s forum post.
In order to meet a deadline, you must submit your half-packet to regionals@acf-quizbowl.com before 11:59 p.m. Pacific Time on that date. Half-packets should be submitted in .docx format. Please do not submit packets as PDFs. If a team wishes to outsource part of its packet to a player not expected to play on that team (e.g., a student who has graduated), it must first receive approval from the head editor. Teams should email in their submissions separately and should not collaborate on packets; i.e., a school’s A team and B team should not write two half-packets together. However, if anyone who works on a packet or has access to that packet ends up playing on a different team (e.g. if someone originally intended to be on your school’s B team instead plays for your school’s A team) please let the head editor and your local TD know as soon as possible.
Fees
| Team entry fee or discount | |
|---|---|
| Base fee per team | $150 |
| New to quizbowl discount | −$100 |
| Shorthanded discount (1–2 players) | −$75 |
| Travel discount | −$10 per 200 miles traveled one-way |
| Buzzers | −$10 per functional buzzer system |
| Staffers | −$15 per staffer with functional laptop. Staffers must register with ACF in advance. |
Staffers must register with ACF in advance and affirm that they have completed ACF’s moderator training (note: staffers who have not completed the training may scorekeep).
The “new to quizbowl” discount is intended for schools that have not sent a team to any mainstream collegiate academic tournament (exclusively Novice tournaments do not count) since September 2020, 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, cash, or PayPal.
Distribution
ACF Regionals uses the standard ACF distribution.
Accessibility
This tournament is intended to be close in difficulty to ACF Regionals 2021. While writing submissions, please keep the following in mind:
- Around 50% of tossup answerlines should be on things that can be tossed up at ACF Fall or below.
- The remaining tossup answerlines should be on things that can be tossed up at Regionals difficulty (“three dots”). If you do not know what sort of answerlines this entails, I encourage you to look at ACF Regionals questions from recent years to get a feel for them. You should feel free to submit tossups with unconventional answerlines that are still accessible, but tossup answerlines themselves are usually not the place for “canon expansion.”
- Easy parts for bonuses should be genuinely easy, gettable by around 90% of teams. However, try and avoid “curved yellow fruit” style easy parts that (a) don’t reward knowledge and (b) can actually obfuscate an answer.
- Hard parts for bonuses should be genuinely hard, but gettable by around 10% of teams. That 10% is important – but a Regionals hard part is not a Nationals hard part. It may be canon-expanding, but should still be something that someone with an interest in the bonus topic could organically know, rather than an ultra-specific detail or some random piece of arcanum.
- Tossups will be capped at 7 lines, 10-point Times New Roman with 1-inch margins. Please do not submit tossups that run into the 9th line or are shorter than 6 full lines. Bonuses do not have explicit length limits, but try to keep things concise and only add extra clues when they are meaningfully necessary.
- Submissions that flagrantly disregard the length or difficulty guidelines will be sent back to teams and will be considered unsubmitted for the purposes of packet discounts. If you would like to request an extension for your deadline, please submit your request and explanation to regionals@acf-quizbowl.com.
Registration
To register for 2022 ACF Regionals, fill out the central 2022 ACF Regionals registration form with all relevant information.
Field
The field for each site can be found here.
Staffing
To staff ACF Regionals, please fill out the staffer registration form.
Hosting
If you are interested in hosting a mirror of ACF Regionals, fill out this form. If you have any questions about hosting or about the form, email ACF’s Site Coordinator at hosting@acf-quizbowl.com and CC regionals@acf-quizbowl.com. Hosts must abide by ACF’s Hosting Guidelines.
Sites
Mirrors will by default be regional. If any sites end up being online, ACF reserves the right to move teams and staffers between sites. ACF intends to mirror 2022 ACF Regionals in the following regions:
| Region | Site | Type |
|---|---|---|
| Northeast | Brown | in person |
| Upper Mid-Atlantic | Penn State | in person |
| Upper Mid-Atlantic | Stony Brook | online |
| Lower Mid-Atlantic | Duke/UNC | in person |
| Southeast | Vanderbilt | in person |
| Florida | Florida | in person |
| Great Lakes | Kentucky | in person |
| Midwest | Chicago | in person |
| North | Minnesota | in person |
| South Central | UT Austin | in person |
| Overflow | Nebraska | online |
| Eastern Canada | Toronto | online |
| United Kingdom | Warwick | in person |
If you have any questions, email regionals@acf-quizbowl.com.
Past tournaments
Sample questions from previous iterations of ACF Regionals are on the Collegiate Quizbowl Packet Archive.
Announcements and information about previous iterations of ACF Regionals are archived below:
Dates of note
| Event | Date |
|---|---|
| ACF dates announced | June 7, 2021 |
| ACF Regionals announced | October 11, 2021 |
| Bidding opened | November 14, 2021 |
| Bidding closed | November 26, 2021 |
| Host sites announced | December 1, 2021 |
| Registration opened | December 1, 2021 |
| Registration closed | January 24, 2022 |
| ACF Regionals held | January 29, 2022 |