ACF Fall is the premier easy tournament in college quizbowl. Designed as an introduction to college quizbowl for novices and players with limited high school quizbowl experience, over 200 teams compete on ACF Fall each year, making it the most widely-played set in the college calendar.

Table of Contents ¶ ↑

2025 ACF Fall

2025 ACF Fall ¶ ↑

2025 ACF Fall will be held on October 18, 2025.

Editors ¶ ↑

2025 ACF Fall is head-edited by Eva Wang. The subject breakdown by editor is:

Editor	Subjects
Abhinav Rachakonda	Religion, Myth
Forrest Weintraub	Physics, Philosophy, Other Science (excl. Math)
Lucia Gellert	American Literature
Noah Chin	British Literature, European Literature
Yaj Jhajhria	American History, European History, Social Science
Jason Zhang	Chemistry, Biology
Evan Knox	Current Events, Pop Culture, Other Fine Arts, Geography
Ganon Evans	Visual Fine Arts, World History
Rhys Lewis	Math, Auditory Fine Arts
Sean Farrell	Other History, World Literature

Hosting ¶ ↑

If you are interested in hosting a mirror of ACF Fall, fill out the hosting bid form before 11:59 p.m. Pacific Time on Sunday, August 17, 2025. Mirrors of this tournament may be held in-person or online. If you have any questions about hosting, please email ACF’s Site Coordinator at hosting@acf-quizbowl.com. Hosts must abide by ACF’s Hosting Guidelines.

Registration ¶ ↑

Registration will open by August 24, 2025, after host bids have been adjudicated. The registration form will be available here.

Distribution ¶ ↑

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

Fees ¶ ↑

Category	Fee / Discount
Base fee per team	$120
New to quizbowl discount	−$80
Shorthanded discount (1–2 players)	−$60
Travel discount	−$10 per 200 miles traveled one-way
Buzzers	−$10 per functional buzzer system
Staffers	−$25 per pre-registered staffer with functional laptop
Submission discount(s) / opt-out fee	As noted below

The new-to-quizbowl discount is for schools that have not sent a team to any regular collegiate academic tournament since September 1, 2024, and have no one on the team(s) claiming this discount who played those tournaments for another school. Exclusively novice tournaments do not count as regular collegiate academic tournaments.

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.

The minimum fee is $0 per team.

Packet Submission ¶ ↑

As for the past few editions of ACF Fall, no teams are required to submit questions in order to play the tournament. However, ACF still needs high-quality half-packet submissions from teams to complete the set. This year, each team has the option to submit either a full half-packet (12/12 questions) or a quarter-packet of 7/7 questions, with adjusted discounts listed below.

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.

Submission Schedule ¶ ↑

Submission Deadline	Packet Discount (Half)	Packet Discount (7/7)
July 20, 2025	-$60	-$30
August 03, 2025	-$40	-$20
August 10, 2025	-$30	-$15
August 17, 2025	-$30	-$10
August 24, 2025	-$10	-$5

Packet Distribution & Authorship ¶ ↑

If you would like to submit a half-packet or quarter-packet, fill out the packet submission form. The Fall head editor will respond with a half-packet or quarter-packet template specifying which categories you are assigned to write.

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 20th-century American poetry, or an Economics bonus instead of “Social Science/Philosophy.”

Before writing, please review ACF’s packet submission guidelines and stick to the format provided. Questions should be written in 10 pt Times New Roman with one-inch margins. Tossups should be 6-7 lines, and each bonus part should be at maximum 2 lines in length. Teams may be asked to edit submissions, which may lead to them missing deadlines, if multiple questions are much too short or much too long.

When finished, submit your half-packet or quarter-packet by emailing it to fall@acf-quizbowl.com.

Please format the half-packet as a .docx or .doc before sending it.
The email subject line should list the name of the school, the team number (if applicable), and the words “half-packet.”
To to meet a given deadline, the finished packet must be sent to that email before 11:59 Pacific Time on the corresponding listed day.

If multiple teams from one school are submitting packets, they should NOT be aware of each others’ questions. Any roster changes that entail an author for one packet playing for another (e.g., if a player on Team B moves to Team A) should be flagged to the TD and to fall@acf-quizbowl.com.

Tips & Guidelines ¶ ↑

Tossup answerlines should generally emphasize playability over creativity; aim for creative and interesting clues with straightforward answerlines. 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.
When writing bonuses, aim for the easy parts to have 90% conversion, medium parts to have 50% conversion, and hard parts to have 10% conversion.

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

Eligibility ¶ ↑

To make this tournament more accessible to new teams and players, ACF is enforcing eligibility guidelines for ACF Fall. Players are not eligible to compete at 2025 ACF Fall if, at any point, they:

Scored more than 60 PPG in the prelims of a college mirror of ACF Fall, OR Were the top scorer (highest overall PPG) on a team that finished in the top 15% of the field, rounded up, at ACF Fall, OR
Scored more than 60 PP20TUH in the prelims of HSNCT or 60 PPG in the prelims of PACE NSC, OR
Were the top scorer (highest overall PPG) on a team that finished in the top 30 at HSNCT or top 10 at PACE NSC, OR
Finished in the top 12 in IPNCT
Scored more than 20 PPG in the prelims of ACF Nationals

Players are responsible for determining their own eligibility; if you have questions, or believe a player should be eligible to play but is excluded by the current guidelines, please don’t hesitate to email eligibility@acf-quizbowl.com. Failure to abide by these eligibility guidelines may result in disqualification from ACF Fall and/or future ACF tournaments.

Mirrors ¶ ↑

Mirrors will by default be regional. ACF reserves the right to move teams and staffers between sites. ACF intends to mirror 2025 ACF Fall in the following regions:

Region	Site
Northeast	TBA
Upper Mid-Atlantic	TBA
Upstate New York	TBA
Lower Mid-Atlantic	TBA
Southeast	TBA
Florida	TBA
Great Lakes	TBA
Midwest	TBA
North	TBA
South Central	TBA
Pacific Northwest / Mountain West	TBA
Northern California	TBA
Eastern Canada	TBA
United Kingdom	TBA
Overflow (Online)	TBA

As in previous years, ACF is willing to provide the ACF Fall set for high-school-only tournaments. If you are interested in hosting a high-school-only mirror of 2025 ACF Fall, email hosting@acf-quizbowl.com and CC fall@acf-quizbowl.com. However, we do not plan to offer mixed mirrors that include high school and college teams.

Past Tournaments ¶ ↑

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

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