IAC’s online live quizzes will return in Summer 2021.
For results from earlier quizzes, please visit our Facebook page.
Note the following guidelines:
1. While these quizzes are nominally free of charge, we appreciate donations of even $1-$10 per player from those who are able to pay, as part of the reason for these quizzes is to keep our staff employed at a time when we would usually be organizing our National and International Championship tournaments. Donations are accepted via Venmo (@Nolwenn-Madden) or by check (payable to International Academic Competitions; mail to IAC c/o David Madden, 15 Lafayette Place, Burlington, VT 05401)
2. The team quizzes are open to individuals as well. We ask that teams playing limit themselves to 6 players per team.
3. Teams and players are assigned to divisions based on age/grade level. If playing on a team with players who are classified in different divisions individually, the team’s division is based on that of the oldest player on the team. Divisions are classified as follows:
Open: Any player who has already completed high school (including parents, teachers, coaches, and college students alike).
Varsity: Current 11th and 12th grade students (graduating classes of 2020 and 2021)
Junior Varsity: Current 9th and 10th grade students (graduating classes of 2022 and 2023)
Middle School: Current 7th and 8th grade students (graduating classes of 2024 and 2025)
Elementary School: Any student currently in 6th grade or younger (graduating classes of 2026 and later)
If you have questions about division assignments/eligibility, please email info@iacompetitions.com.
4. We have encountered a few instances of cheating over the past few weeks in our Online Picture Quiz (which continues on a weekly basis at https://www.iacompetitions.com/usa/picture-quiz/ – submissions are due by 11:59 pm New York time on Monday of each week) and in our online B and C Set mirror tournaments. Please note: for the 4 live online quizzes, there are no prizes involved, and we fail to see how cheating on these (i.e. no googling, no outside resources, no asking answers from people not on your team / not yourself) results in a good time for anyone.
Life itself is lived on the honor system and it is always more fulfilling to have earned a legitimate victory, or even a legitimate last place finish (where you still have learned something!) than a finish that you didn’t earn, and that denigrates the achievements of teams who played honestly. Please don’t cheat! If that weren’t reason enough not to cheat, many of the instances of cheating so far have been obvious to us (we have ways of checking, including follow up questions to specific players in individual chats). Players caught cheating risk bans from future IAC live events, and IAC reserves the right to let other quizzing organizations know of cheating as well.
5. In terms of difficulty, there will be quite a bit of variability within the questions, so that both novice and experienced players can answer questions, and that both middle school and high school teams can play along in the team competitions.
6. All live quizzes will be broadcast from the IAC Facebook page which can be accessed at https://www.facebook.com/iacompetitions/ . Submissions will be done by Google Forms; links to answer sheets for each round will be posted at the top of this page before each quiz. We’ll have a team of graders, so unless we get completely swamped, we should have standings ready very soon after the quizzes end. All quizzes should last 1-1.5 hours.
7. As players outside the USA are actively encouraged to compete in these, the questions will have a somewhat smaller amount of US history content than players in the USA are used to.
8. The quizzes will generally consist of five themed rounds with eight questions in each round. Variations in any quiz will be announced at the beginning of that quiz’s live stream. The quizzes do not have any buzzer-based elements.
9. No pre-registration is necessary, but please be on the Facebook live stream at least 5 minutes in advance of the start time.