2025 ACF Winter
Last updated: August 21, 2025
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.
Table of Contents ¶ ↑
2025 ACF Winter ¶ ↑
2025 ACF Winter will be held on November 15, 2025.
Editors ¶ ↑
2025 ACF Winter is head-edited by Rachel Ezrielev. The subject breakdown by editor is:
| Editor | Subjects |
|---|---|
| Emily Bussa | American Literature, British Literature |
| Sinecio Morales | World Literature, Mythology, Philosophy |
| James Wang | Biology, Chemistry |
| Walter Zhang | American History, Social Science, Geography, Other Academic |
| Brendan Bethlehem | Religion |
| Aiden Dartley | European History, Other History |
| Jacky Xu | World History |
| Jamie Burchett | Pop Culture |
| Vivek Sasse | Physics, Current Events |
| Frances Hadley | Other Fine Arts, Classical Music |
| Steven Yuan | Painting and Sculpture |
| Linus Luu | Other Science (excl. Earth Science) |
| Dan Ni | Earth Science |
| Rachel Ezrielev | European Literature |
Hosting ¶ ↑
If you are interested in hosting a mirror of ACF Winter, fill out the hosting bid form before 11:59 p.m. PT on Saturday, September 15, 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 September 23, 2025, after host bids have been adjudicated. The registration form will be available here.
Distribution ¶ ↑
ACF Winter uses the standard ACF distribution, which is the same distribution as ACF Regionals.
Fees ¶ ↑
| Category | Fee / 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 | −$25 per pre-registered staffer w/ 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 ¶ ↑
Any team with at least two people on it who played a regular, collegiate, academic quizbowl tournament* (either as a college student or high school student) prior to September 1st, 2024, is required to either (a) submit a half-packet, or (b) pay an opt-out fee. ACF is using an opt-out fee to reduce the number of late submissions received. High school teams attending a high school-only mirror are exempt from this requirement.
Note
For these purposes, all ACF tournaments, NAQT SCT (Division I or Division II), NAQT ICT, and typical college-level academic invitationals count as regular collegiate academic tournaments. Pop culture or “hybrid” tournaments, HCASC, and tournaments played on NAQT’s Collegiate Novice series sets do not.
Please 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 half-packet by the ±0 deadline for a $50 discount.
Warning
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 / Fee |
|---|---|
| August 24, 2025 | -$50 |
| August 31, 2025 | -$40 |
| September 7, 2025 | -$30 |
| September 14, 2025 | -$20 |
| September 21, 2025 | -$10 |
| September 28, 2025 | ±$0 |
| October 5, 2025 | +$10 |
| October 12, 2025 | +$20 |
| October 19, 2025 | +$30 |
The opt-out fee is $50. If a team does not submit a half-packet by October 19, 2025 and is required to submit per the criteria above, they must instead pay the opt-out fee; submissions will not be accepted following this date.
Packet Distribution & Authorship ¶ ↑
If your team is going to submit a half-packet, whether required or not, email winter@acf-quizbowl.com to request a distribution. The Winter 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. Although you may submit longer questions, tossups will be capped at 7 lines for the tournament. Each bonus part should be a maximum of 3 lines in length, with the majority being 1 or 2 lines long. 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 by emailing it to winter@acf-quizbowl.com.
- Please format the half-packet as a
.docxor.docbefore 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 winter@acf-quizbowl.com.
Tips & Guidelines ¶ ↑
- Please make sure your questions are harder than questions in ACF Fall and easier than at 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.
- 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 ¶ ↑
For information on who is eligible to play non-Fall ACF tournaments, see ACF’s official eligibility rules.
Mirrors ¶ ↑
Mirrors will by default be regional. ACF reserves the right to move teams and staffers between sites. ACF intends to mirror 2025 ACF Winter 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 |
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: