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.

2022 ACF Winter

2022 ACF Winter

2022 ACF Winter will be held on November 5, 2022.

Editors

2022 ACF Winter is head-edited by Joseph Krol.

The subject breakdown by editor is:

Editor	Subjects
Eric Mukherjee	Biology
Justin Zhang	Chemistry
Joseph Krol	Physics, Other Science, Current Events
Henry Goff	British Literature, American Literature, Popular Culture
Eve Fleisig	Visual Fine Arts, Auditory Fine Arts, European Literature
Athena Kern	World Literature, Religion, Social Science
Ani Perumalla	Other Fine Arts, Geography, General Knowledge
Hari Parameswaran	American History, European History
Govind Prabhakar	Other History, World History
Ethan Ashbrook	Mythology, Philosophy

Online format

We hope that ACF Winter can be held in person. However, we acknowledge that some schools remain uncertain about the possibility of allowing large events due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, it is possible that some mirrors of ACF Winter will be held online, and we will work to create the most authentic and engaging quizbowl experience possible under these circumstances. We will continue to post updates as we learn more.

Registration

The registration form will open shortly, and will be linked here when available.

If possible, teams should register for the site that is geographically closest to them and/or is in the region they would normally attend.

Field

The field for each site can be found here.

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.

The “new to quizbowl” discount is for schools that have not sent a team to any mainstream collegiate academic tournament (not counting exclusively novice tournaments) since September 2021, and which have no players who competed in non-novice collegiate tournaments during that same period.

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.

See below for packet submission discounts.

The minimum fee is $0 per team.

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, 2021, is required to submit a half-packet (unless it is a high school team attending a high-school-only mirror). 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 −$0 (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:

Submission deadline	Packet discount
September 4, 2022	−$50
September 18, 2022	−$25
October 2, 2022	−$0 (no penalty)
October 16, 2022	+$25
October 23, 2022	+$50

There is an additional $10/day penalty for each day after October 23rd. If teams required to submit a half-packet have not submitted by October 30th, 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.”

Your assigned half-packet may ask for questions from more specific categories within the distribution. For instance, instead of being assigned an “American Literature” tossup, you might be asked to write a question on a 20th-century American poem, or an Economics bonus instead of “Social Science/Philosophy.” This should reduce redundancy in submissions and maximize the number of submitted questions we can use, without being too constraining.

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 editors. Non-playing students are welcome and encouraged to help their newer club members write, but it’s useful to know the contributors for both credit and logistical reasons.

If multiple teams from one school are submitting packets, they should NOT be aware of each others’ questions.

Tips and guidelines

Please make sure your questions are harder than questions in ACF Fall and easier than questions in ACF Regionals. 2019 EFT and 2020 ACF Winter are good difficulty targets. A majority of your tossup answers should conceivably be a tossup answer at ACF Fall.
Questions should be written in 10-point Times New Roman with one-inch margins. Although you may submit longer questions, tossups will be capped at seven lines. 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.
Especially if you are submitting for one of the later deadlines, the frequency of topic clashes means that broad common-link questions are unlikely to be used.

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

Distribution

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

Eligibility

For information on who is eligible to play ACF tournaments, see ACF’s official Eligibility Rules.

Hosting

If you are interested in hosting a mirror of ACF Winter, 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 winter@acf-quizbowl.com. Hosts must abide by ACF’s Hosting Guidelines.

Sites

Mirrors will by default be regional. ACF reserves the right to move teams and staffers between sites. ACF intends to mirror 2022 ACF Winter in the following regions:

Region	Site
Northeast
Upstate NY
Upper Mid-Atlantic
Lower Mid-Atlantic
Southeast
Florida
Great Lakes
Midwest
North
South Central
California
Northwest
Eastern Canada
United Kingdom

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.

Past tournaments

Sample questions from previous iterations of ACF Winter are on the Collegiate Quizbowl Packet Archive.

Announcements and information about previous iterations of ACF Winter are archived below:

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