Quiz bowl is a family of quiz-based competitions that test players on a wide variety of academic subjects. Standardized quiz bowl formats are played by primary school, middle school, high school, and university students throughout North America, Asia, Europe, Australia, and Africa.
College Bowl is a radio, television, and student quiz show. College Bowl first aired on the NBC Radio Network in 1953 as College Quiz Bowl. It then moved to American television broadcast networks, airing from 1959 to 1963 on CBS and from 1963 to 1970 on NBC. In 1977, the president of College Bowl, Richard Reid, developed it into a non-televised national championship competition on campuses across America through an affiliation with the Association of College Unions International (ACUI), which lasted for 31 years. In 1989, College Bowl introduced a (sponsored) version of College Bowl for historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) called Honda Campus All-Star Challenge (HCASC) which is ongoing. In 2007, College Bowl produced a new version and format of the game as an international championship in Africa, called Africa Challenge. The College Bowl Campus Program and National Championship ran until 2008.
University Challenge is a British television quiz programme which first aired in 1962. University Challenge aired for 913 episodes on ITV from 21 September 1962 to 31 December 1987, presented by quizmaster Bamber Gascoigne. The BBC revived the programme on 21 September 1994, the programme's 32nd anniversary, with Jeremy Paxman as the quizmaster. Paxman relinquished his role as host following the conclusion of the 52nd series in 2023, after which he was succeeded by Amol Rajan. In October 2022, an ITV documentary, Paxman: Putting Up With Parkinson's, explored how Parkinson's disease has impacted him and revealed that Paxman recorded his last episode of University Challenge on 15 October 2022, which aired on 29 May 2023.
Arthur Bamber Gascoigne was an English television presenter and author. He was the original quizmaster on University Challenge, which initially ran from 1962 to 1987.
The $64,000 Question is an American game show broadcast in primetime on CBS-TV from 1955 to 1958, which became embroiled in the 1950s quiz show scandals. Contestants answered general knowledge questions, earning money which doubled as the questions became more difficult. The final question had a top prize of $64,000, hence the "$64,000 Question" in the show's title.
Challenging Times was a television quiz show for teams representing higher education institutes in Ireland, both those in the Republic of Ireland and those in Northern Ireland. It was televised by Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ) from 1991 to 2001, sponsored by The Irish Times, and presented by Kevin Myers, then a columnist with that newspaper. The programme used a quizbowl format similar to that of University Challenge in the United Kingdom, which is itself a licensed version of the College Bowl format popular in the United States. Each year, 16 teams qualified for the televised knockout stages, with two teams of three competing in each programme up to the final.
Cheaters is a 2000 HBO television drama film that chronicles the story of the 1994–1995 Steinmetz High School team that cheated in the United States Academic Decathlon (USAD). It is based on a true story. The movie was filmed in Toronto and Chicago. It was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Limited Series, Movie, or Dramatic Special.
Eggheads is a British quiz show produced by 12 Yard. It was first broadcast in November 2003 chaired by Dermot Murnaghan. In 2008, Jeremy Vine became joint chair, and subsequently sole chair. The show has inspired three spinoff series: Are You an Egghead? (2008), Revenge of the Egghead (2014) and Make Me an Egghead (2016). There have also been episodes of the regular series featuring teams of celebrities in their own short series, with their own rolling prize fund.
University Challenge is a long-running New Zealand television quiz show, running originally from 1976 to 1989 before its revival in 2014 after a 25-year hiatus. The format was based on the British show of the same name, which was itself based on the American College Bowl. The 2014–2017 series were produced by Cue TV in Invercargill. The title holders are the University of Canterbury, who won the final series on 21 January 2017.
Stein Olav Bjortomt is an English international quiz player, four-time world champion and three-time individual European champion. He is the star player of the world's most successful quizzing clubs, Broken Hearts, with which he has won several European championships.
Bible Quiz, also known as Bible Bowl or Bible Quizzing, is a quiz-bowl competition based on Bible memorization and study. The competition takes place between teams, and participants are quizzed on the content of a pre-determined section of the Bible. They are a popular activity in some Protestant churches and organizations, particularly in the United States. The exact rules of the game differ depending on the sponsoring organization.
Bamboozle! was a quiz game featured on Channel 4 Teletext in the United Kingdom. It was originally part of Teletext's "Fun & Games" category, though the rest of the category had been discontinued for some years before Bamboozle! ended. The last edition, themed around 'Ends and Lasts', appeared on Monday 14 December 2009. The Boozler 'family' appeared one last time on Tuesday 15 December 2009 saying farewell to the Teletext audience.
"Bambi" is the seventh episode of British sitcom The Young Ones. It was written by Ben Elton, Rik Mayall and Lise Mayer, and directed by Paul Jackson. It was broadcast on BBC2 on 8 May 1984, as the first episode of the show's second series. It parodies University Challenge. This scene also showcased the two emerging sides of British comedy at the time: The Young Ones, representative of the new British 'Punk' Alternative Comedy scene, against comedians who represented the new "Oxbridge" Comedy Scene.
The Alice series is a young adult book series written by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, consisting of 25 books and three prequels, and it has been frequently challenged, as documented in the American Library Association's lists of the 100 most frequently challenged books from 1990 to 2019. The main character is Alice McKinley, and the Alice series covers her development through adolescence and puberty to the final book, Now I'll Tell You Everything, where Alice turns 60 years old. Through intimate relationships, jobs, disastrous accidents, and accidental parental meetings, the journey from a child into a grown woman is narrated in the Alice series. Important and notable characters are Alice's three best friends, Pamela, Gwen, Elizabeth; her first love, Patrick; her aunt, Sally; her brother, Lester; and her father. Dating, sex, friendship, familial matters, religion, and homosexuality are some of the controversial themes that Phyllis Reynolds Naylor uses to narrate the life story of Alice McKinley.
Mark Andrew Labbett, also known by his professional nickname "The Beast", is an English professional quizzer and television personality. Since 2009 he has been one of the "chasers" on the ITV game show The Chase. He previously appeared between 2013 and 2015 on GSN's American version as their sole chaser; between 2016 and 2020 as one of six chasers on the Australian version; and as one of four chasers in the second season of ABC's American revival and from late February 2022 rejoined the Australian version of the show.
Schools' Challenge is the primary national general knowledge competition for schools in the United Kingdom, founded by Colin Galloway in 1977 and currently overseen by Robert and Allison Grant. Intentionally based on University Challenge, it has a notable resemblance to quizbowl competitions in its question content and format. Schools' Challenge is currently divided into Senior, Intermediate and Junior competition sections, which take place annually: Westminster School and Hampton School are the current Senior and Intermediate champions respectively with the Junior section yet to be played.[Note 1]
Starter for Ten by David Nicholls is a novel first published in 2003 about the character Brian Jackson and his first year of university (1985–86), his attempts to get on the Granada Television quiz show University Challenge, and his tentative attempts at romance with Alice Harbinson, another member of the University Challenge team. The title is taken from an opening question to a round on the quiz show worth ten points, known as the teams' "starter for ten". Because this reference might be lost on American readers, it was originally released as A Question of Attraction when it was published in the United States.
Are You an Egghead? is a BBC quiz show that was presented by Dermot Murnaghan. It is a spin-off from the quiz show Eggheads, with its goal to find a further Egghead to complement the existing team. The first series was aired weekdays from 20 October to 2 December 2008 and was won by Barry Simmons. The second and final series was aired from 12 October to 23 November 2009 and was won by Pat Gibson. A similar show, Make Me an Egghead, aired in 2016.
"World Forum/Communist Quiz" is a Monty Python sketch, which first aired in the 12th episode of the second season of Monty Python's Flying Circus on 15 December 1970. It featured four icons of Communist thought, namely Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, Ché Guevara and Mao Zedong being asked quiz questions.
The 53rd series of the quiz show University Challenge began on 17 July 2023 on BBC Two, and ended with the final on 8 April 2024, when Imperial College London triumphed for a record-breaking fifth time. This was the first series to be hosted by Amol Rajan, who succeeded Jeremy Paxman. Rajan's presenting style, more energetic and less austere than his predecessor, garnered positive reception from critics and viewers.
