Training for Quizzers

Getting Started

How do I memorize?

Opening a Scripture Portion and seeing hundreds of verses that you must memorize can seem quite terrifying to a beginning quizzer. As with anything you do in life, if you break it up into little pieces, you’ll be stunned at how much you have done by the end of the quiz year. Fortunately, the Bible is already divided into chapters, sections and verses. We’ll start by looking at 1 Corinthians Chapter 1, but first I should discuss where you should memorize. There is no good answer to this question. Some quizzers can memorize while sitting completely still. Personally, I always needed to pace. The need to pace and the fact that there were too many distractions at home, led me to do much of my memorizing work at my church. You could also walk around your neighborhood and do it. What a better opportunity to run into someone and tell them what you’re doing!

Chapter 1 starts with the standard “Greetings and Salutations” that are common to Paul’s epistles. Keep in mind that in the introductory remarks for questions, this will typically be referred to as “The Untitled Section of First Corinthians”. The best way to memorize is by section, so typically you should divide the section into manageable chunks. Start with verse one. Read it, then try to recite it without looking. Check the portion to make sure you are saying it right. Remember, you want to be as accurate as possible, so don’t ignore “little” mistakes. If you hit a quotation question on that verse, you don’t want to lose the points because you didn’t spend the extra time to get it right at the beginning. If you memorize the first verse with a mistake, then don’t notice the mistake until several months later, it becomes much harder to fix, so take the time at the beginning. Now, repeat the verse five times (the exact number of times you repeat it is irrelevant). You want to have it down so well that if you were to play a video game for 30 minutes, at the end, you could immediately recall exactly how the verse goes (of course, I’m not recommending playing video games while you memorize). Go to the second verse and repeat. Once you have it down, recite verses 1 and 2 together three times (again, the exact number is irrelevant). Since many questions provide you a reference, you also want to learn the references while you’re doing this. The way most quizzers do this is to say “1” just before quoting verse 1, then “2” just before quoting verse 2. Don’t worry about getting yourself into the habit of saying these, because even if you give the verse reference when you answer a quotation question, provided it’s accurate, you cannot be counted wrong. Repeat the whole process with verse 3, then say the entire section until you have it down well. I’ll discuss this more later, but you should also take note of “analysis” items. By “analysis”, I mean people, places, questions, exclamations, parenthetical statements and Old Testament Scriptures. Some might also put “statements” in here. By that, I mean “Do not” commands, “I tell you the truth” statements and the like. Keep in mind that the rules do not acknowledge these as analysis items, nor does the chapter analysis. This section has two individuals and one geographical location. A question writer could ask for either of these by verse or by section. On top of learning analysis for a verse or section, you will also have to learn it by chapter and eventually by book.

Now that you have one section down, move to the second section. First take note of the section title. When you quote this chapter, on top of saying the verse references, you should also say the section titles. For instance, you start this section by saying: “Thanksgiving. 1:4 to 1:9”. Question writers almost always put a locator in the introductory remarks and knowing your section titles is vital to being able to answer (and interrupt) questions. This section is six verses long. While you could do all six verses in one batch, try breaking it up into two batches. Learn verses 4, 5 and 6 using the above methods, then say them together until you have them down. Then do verses 7, 8 and 9 in the same way. Then say the entire section enough times to have it down well. Then say everything you’ve memorized so far in the chapter a few times. The next section is eight verses long. It is not recommended that you ever try to memorize in chunks that big. Six verses was about the upper limit of what I would try. Here, you can either do 10 to 12, 13 to 15 and 16 to 17, or 10 to 13 and 14 to 17. Again, once you have it down, say the first three sections a few times. The point of this is to solidify the early material. The idea is that you want to make sure that you know the first few sections in spite of adding more sections to your memory. The final section is 19 verses long, but I would recommend starting by memorizing the first 14, which are contained in chapter 1. Try for yourself to figure out how to break this up into manageable chunks. Remember, if you pick five verse chunks, it doesn’t go into 14 evenly, but you can do two chunks of five and one chunk of four. Don’t worry if you don’t know how to break these long sections up just yet. You’ll develop a system, eventually. Now that you have one chapter down, quote that chapter multiple times.

Now we move to chapter 2. Five verses are still in the previous section, so memorize those first. Then quote the entire previous section a few times. If you want, you could also group these five verses with what you memorize for chapter 1. The second section is 11 verses. I would divide this into groups of four, four and three. Once you finish this section, you might want to quote chapters 1 and 2 together. This becomes a little impractical once you add more and more chapters. To start off with, you should make sure that you quote everything you know to someone else at least once a week. The frequency of this should increase as the season progresses, but use this as a bare miniumum. If you do not keep this up, you will almost certainly have to spend time re-memorizing a chapter you used to be able to quote.

While you were memorizing, you might have also noticed that some verses have bold dots next to them. If you are quizzing novice, this means that any quotation question must be asked from one of these verses. You might notice that these could be labelled as “key” verses in terms of the topics being discussed. Other than noticing the dots, you should not memorize these verses any differently than you memorize the others.

This looks like a lot to start off with, but keep in mind that this is not meant to be done in one sitting. If you start August 15, and memorize five verses a day, you’ll be done around the New Year. Your coach should give you a rough schedule of what is expected of you, so you can work around that. For a beginning quizzer, there is such a thing as “burn out”. This typically refers to when a quizzers starts memorizing the material as soon as district finals (or regionals or nationals) is over. They have about six months to memorize the material for the first league meet, but by the time the second league meet comes around, their lack of experience comes into play. Many quizzers who memorize large chunks of the material early, end up getting far behind and not finishing out the season. Don’t let that be you. I would say the earliest that you should start is mid-July and you should pace yourself to be done around late January. It’s not the end of the world if you finish later than that, but keep in mind that that’s when most of the top quizzers will be finishing. If you push yourself to finish earlier, you run the risk of being “sick” of having to quote it all every week by the time official competition rolls around. My senior year, I was very motivated to win nationals and had the material done by early December. The only reason I didn’t burn out was because I wanted to win so badly and I had the experience to know how to approach it.

By the time you finish the last verse, you’ll look back and be astonished at how much you have done. This material will never leave you. Not only have you learned valuable techniques for memorizing things (the bones in the human body, the periodic table of elements, etc) but you’ve also hidden God’s word in your heart and that never returns void. Sure, you may forget the exact wording of a verse, but the general ideas make it into your subconscious. As an adult, you’ll be shocked at how quickly you can recall verses that you memorized ten years ago.

Understanding Questions

Types of questions

This question has many answers, depending on who is writing the questions and what the level of competition is. Let’s look at First Corinthians 1:1.

Paul, called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and our brother Sosthenes

There are many questions that could be asked from this verse. The simplest on would ask you to quote the verse. There are also many ways to ask this. For instance:

Quote verse one from the opening chapter. Quote Mark 1:1. Quote the opening verse of Mark. Quote the verse in which Sosthenes is named. Quote the verse which names Sosthenes.

…and so on. You might notice that some of these questions are very similar, but have different wording. Typically writers make it possible for quizzers to interrupt the question. On the first question, you can finish the question from “opening”. On the second and third questions, you can’t hit until the last word. On the fourth question, you can hit on “Sosthenes”. On the fifth question, you can’t hit until the last word. We’ll talk more later about interrupting. Beyond quotes, there are analysis questions. For instance:

Mark 1:1 names which individuals?

These questions are always very popular. This is why you should learn the material by reference. Beyond these, there are “general knowledge” questions. For instance:

Who was called to be an apostle? Paul was an apostle of whom? Paul was an apostle of whom, by what? Who wrote First Corinthians? By whose will was Paul and apostle? Who is our brother?

There are others that can be written and you should try to write them yourself. See how many questions you can write for 1 Corinthians 1:2. The more questions you hear in practice, the better you will be at writing your own questions.

There are many more types of questions that are more advanced and you may eventually want to start learning.

What do all the introductory remarks mean?

There are several types of introductory remarks. First, you have locators. This will narrow down the question and answer to a specific section, chapter or book. Second, you have “question” modifiers. These tell you what kind of question is going to be asked. Third, you have “answer” modifiers. These tell you how you have to give your answer.

Question modifiers

Two-Part Question, Three-Part Question, Etc.

This introductory remark tells you that the question has two parts. Unless used in conjunction with a multiple part answer, there must be exactly as many answers as there are questions. An example of a Two Part Question is the following question from 1 Cor 1:22:

Jews demand what, and Greeks look for what?

Most of the time, the multiple parts of the question are somewhat related. For instance, if you interrupt this question after the first part, the logical completion is to play off the comparison Paul makes between Jews and Greeks. Similarly, a writer could ask:

Who demand miraculous signs and who look for wisdom?

Most writers will never ask something like the following:

Jews demand what and who look for wisdom?

These questions don’t go well together. When you complete these questions, try to remember the analogies that you have to do on standardized tests.

Quotation Question

These questions require the quizzer to give the verse perfectly. That means you cannot add, subtract, modify or change any word. You cannot say “Um” in the middle. You can’t stutter in the middle of a word and start it over again. There are typically two ways to ask these:

Quote the eighth verse from the opening chapter.

Here you are asked to quote by reference. Sometimes writers will put the chapter in the introductory remarks. There are technical reasons for doing so, but they are irrelevant now.

Quote the verse in which Apollos is named.

Here you are asked to quote based on the information in the verse. Writers can also ask you to quote sentences or similar things. You can use this remark in conjunction with multiple part questions. For instance, the following would have the introductory remark “Two Part Quotation Question. From Mark Chapter 1.”

Quote verses 8 and 9.

In this case, you can give the verses in any order you want. Also, if the chapter is given in the question instead of in the introductory remarks, it no longer needs to be a multiple part question as long as the verses demanded are consecutive.

Quotation Completion Question

The following is an example of a quotation completion question from 1 Cor 1:

Finish this verse, quote, “Therefore, as it is written…”

The rules state that you must start at the beginning of a verse in this case. The rules also state that the first word must be sufficient to differentiate the answer based on the material the question is asked from. In this case, no other verse of 1 Cor 1 begins with the word “Therefore”, so this question is valid. However, if the first word of the verse I demand is “For”, it is invalid, since verses 17, 18, 19, 21 and 25 begin with that word. However, if the question narrows it down to the section “Divisions in the Church”, it is valid.

You may also be asked to quote more than one verse. For instance:

Finish this verse, and the two which follow, quote, “Jews demand…”

Besides asking for verses, writers can ask you to finish a sentence, an Old Testament Scripture, etc.

Essence Question

The only difference between these questions and quotation questions is that you are no longer required to give the verse perfectly. This means you must only give, in essence, the phrases, clauses and keywords. It is up to the quizmaster and judges to determine if your answer is “in essence”. Leaving out a phrase is not a good idea. Replacing it with your own words is usually fine. In questions, the word “Quote” is usually replaced with “Give, in essence,”.

Essence Completion Question

As with Essence Questions, the only difference between these and quotation completion questions is that you can now give the answer in essence. The question looks exactly the same as a quotation completion completion.

Scripture Text Question

These questions involve a preamble, then the word “quote”, then a direct quotation from the Scripture. For instance, the following is from 1 Cor 1:1:

Who was a, quote, “apostle of Christ Jesus?”

If you interrupt one of these before the “quote”, you do not need to say “quote” when you finish the question. The rules state that the Scripture text must come from the verse, the previous verse or the following verse from which the answer comes.

Statement and Question

A statement and question is exactly what the name implies. For example:

First Corinthians was written by two people. Who are they?

Most good writers make it so that these questions may be interrupted by the time the statement is complete.

Application Question

These are provided in advance each year from NYM. The questions and answers are given in advance and the idea is to teach doctrinal knowledge. Please visit biblequiz.ag.org for more information.

Answer Modifiers

Two-(Three-,etc-) Part Answer

As the name implies, this is used to demand you to give multiple answers. For instance, the following is a three part answer from 1 Cor 1:13:

First Corinthians 1:13 contains which questions?

There is no analogous introductoy remark to reference questions. It is valid for a question to be labeled as a multiple part answer and have the answers come from all across the book.

Give A Complete Answer

This is used when the answer the writer wants has multiple clauses, phrases or key words. Unless used with other introductory remarks, the answer must come from a single verse. Consider the following question from 1 Cor 1:10:

What appeal did Paul make to the Corinthians?

Here, you do not necessarily have to give all of verse 10 to be counted correct. This is not a quotation question, so you must only give the answer in essence. Moreover, the way this question was asked does not have to demand “in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ” as part of the answer. Typically a writer will underline what they consider to be part of the answer on the question sheet given to the officials. Most of the time it’s best to quote the verse, but you have to be sure that by quoting the verse you aren’t providing incorrect information.

Give Two (Three, etc) Complete Answers

This is exactly like the multiple part answers, but each answer must be a complete answer.

Give A (Two, Three, etc) Complete Answer From Two (Three, etc) consecutive verses.

This type of answer spans multiple verses. For instance, the following question from 1 Cor 1:4-6 could be labeled “Give a Complete Answer From Three Consecutive Verses”

Why did Paul always thank God?

Here, the answer would be the end of verse 4 and all of verses 5 and 6.

The trickiest thing is to see what happens when you mix and match. For instance, see if you can find a question that might be labeled “Two Part Reference Question. Give Four Complete Answers.”

Question difficulty from Leagues to Nationals

Most modern writers have a set word-limit for 10 point answers. You can quickly determine this by looking at their practice sets. Typically answers are no more than ten words. This does not mean that any answer with fewer words MUST be a 10. Some of the hardest question have five-word answer. It just so happens that those five words come from all over the book. The difficulty of 10’s usually does not change depending on the competition. 10’s at leagues could just as easily be asked at nationals. 20’s and 30’s are different depending on where you are.

League Competitions

20’s are typically limited to one verse. The exception would be simple analysis question, such as naming three people from a section. There is an upper limit to what most writers will ask at leagues, but it varies from writer to writer. 30’s usually are limited to either one-verse answers for long verses, or maybe two-verse answers. Again, analysis items are fair-game at leagues. Concordance questions are fairly rare at leagues.

District Finals

20’s are now what 30’s were at leagues. 30’s are usually at least two-verse answers, but probably not more than three. Larger analysis questions might be asked. Some concordance questions might be possible here, but typically they should be reserved to things that are “obvious”. By that, I mean that you should be able to answer the question even if you haven’t studied every concordance item.

Regional Finals

20’s can now be two-verse answers. You also might see medium-size analysis and small, district level concordance being asked. 30’s take a step up. Three verses is typical and four would not be unheard of. Concordance questions asking you to quote three verses are not unheard of. Listing chapters in which someone is name is also fair game. To answer these 30’s, you will usually need to do separate study of the concordance. At this point, all but the longest analysis items are fair game.

National Finals

20’s are somewhere around what the easier 30’s were at regionals. However, they are not guaranteed to be that long. You might still see a district level 20 being asked. 30’s are a step up from what they were at regionals. Any chunk of material that is answerable in 30 seconds while speaking at a reasonable speed can be asked. The upper limit on verses is undefined, mainly because sometimes these consecutive verses are short. Over Luke, there was an eleven-verse answer, but the verses were short. Four-verse answers might be a 30 if the verses are long. All analysis is fair-game here as is all concordance. Over gospels, some writers will tend to focus on major themes since the material is already a bit of an obstacle for quizzers. Over epistles, since the material is short, a wider variety of questions are asked. See the section for advanced quizzers to learn how to study for these harder concordance questions.

Studying

What else should I be studying?

By now you’ve hopefully been to a few league meets and have seen the types of questions that are asked. Beyond simply learning the material, you might also want to start learning section/chapter analysis and concordance. You will have to do the section analysis yourself, but the chapter analysis is contained in between the portion and concordance. It is very important to look at this first to determine what is considered an analysis item and what isn’t. In the portion text, individuals appear in bold, geographical locations appear in italics and Old Testament Scriptures are underlined. Compound individuals and geographical locations are also underlined. You will not have to worry about these in Corinthians as there are none. Occasionally, mistakes are made by those who typeset the portion or write the chapter analysis. The general rule of thumb is that in those cases, you go with what the book says. In extreme situations, corrections are issued, usually on the Bible Quiz websites. Two questions that often come up here are “Jesus” and “Israel”. In gospels, Jesus is considered an individual, however in epistles, Jesus is considered deity and is not bolded. He is also usually considered a deity in Acts. Whether he is in the first eleven verses of Acts or not is usually decided each time we quiz over Acts. With “Israel”, sometimes it refers to Jacob, sometimes it refers to the country and sometimes it refers to a race of people. Sometimes it actually refers to more than one of these. Another reason you should read the chapter analysis in the back is to learn what exactly is considered a question or exclamation. Again, there has never been a set rule for how we deal with colons in the text. Sometimes the words before the colon are included and sometimes they are not, so check the chapter analysis to be sure.

If you’ve been to a few tournaments, you’ve probably also heard “cross-reference” or concordance questions. These are questions where the answers come from non-consecutive verses, possibly from across the entire material. These are some of the hardest questions to answer and it takes an enormous amount of effort to memorize answers for them. We’ll discuss these in more detail in the section for advanced quizzers, but for now, when you review the material each week by quoting it, try to make parallels in your mind. For instance, you might have noticed that in 1 Cor 1, it speaks of the household of Chloe and also of the household of Stephanas. Make a special note of that as you might be asked to give those two verses, or even to answer whose households are mentioned. Once you notice something like this, you should always look the word up in the concordance. In this case, the household of Stephanas is also mentioned in 1 Cor 16:15. A writer could ask you to give the two verses which mention Stephanas’ household, or he could also ask to give all three verses, usually as a two-part reference quotation quotation. You should not limit your concordance search to the word “household”. Notice that just above the word “house” also appears. 1 Cor 16:19 speaks of the house of Aquila and Priscilla and 2 Cor 5:1 speaks of an eternal house (used to signify heaven). You could also look at the words “home” or “house”.

Quoting by reference

After you have finished memorizing word-for-word a set of about 10 verses, one way of learning references is to do the following.

If you have not already, purchase the quote cards from the Gospel Publishing House.
Divide the box up into chapters.
Take out the cards with the 10 verses you have just memorized on them.
Mix the cards up so they are not in order.
Looking only at the back of the card, quote the verse corresponding to the reference.
Do this with all the cards until you are back at the first card you started with.
Use a stop watch to time yourself.
Set a goal. At first, a goal might be to complete the stack of cards in an average of 5 seconds each. After more experience, a goal might be to finish each verse in an average of 4 seconds each. There are some, who are experienced, who set their goal at finding the verse and quoting it in an average of under 2 seconds a verse.
After you have accomplished your goal, mix the cards up again and attempt to beat that goal a second time. Mix the cards up a third time and do the same. You should now know the references to those 10 verses.
After memorizing the next 10 verses, repeat the process. Then combine the two “sets” of ten quote cards. Mix these cards up and set a goal for yourself that gives you a little bit more time per verse. This could be from .5 seconds to 1 second of added time on average per verse. Learn these combined 20 references by doing the same thing you did to learn the first 10.

To learn a chapter, say Luke Chapter 1, which has 80 verses, you would do this:

Memorize and learn the references for verses 1 - 10.
Memorize and learn the references for the 11 - 20.
Combine and learn the references for verses 1 - 20.
Memorize and learn the references for verses 21 - 30.
Memorize and learn the references for verses 31 - 40.
Combine and learn the references for verses 21 - 40.
Combine and learn the references for verses 1 - 40.
Memorize and learn the references for verses 41 - 50.
Memorize and learn the references for the 51 - 60.
Combine and learn the references for verses 41 - 60.
Memorize and learn the references for verses 61 - 70.
Memorize and learn the references for verses 71 - 80.
Combine and learn the references for verses 61 - 80.
Combine and learn the references for verses 41 - 80.
Combine and learn the references for verses 1 - 80.

Remember, the more you follow this pattern, the faster you will become at naturally finding verses by their reference and quoting them. So after you have done this for a while, decrease the amount of time you give yourself to find and quote a verse. The faster you can find the verse, the better you know the Scripture you are studying, and the more time you have to think of the question and give the answer.

Studying the concordance

Studying the concordance is a very unique way of studying the Scripture. In quiz, there is a way to do it, and a way not to. In this lesson you will learn how to effectively study the concordance so that you can both do well at quiz, and learn the Word of God in a deeper and more meaningful way.

First, I must point out that studying the concordance is usually reserved until after the material has been mastered and the quizzer can quote the required material word perfect, with references, and knowing the chapter analysis.

Second, much of the work concerning the basics has already been done. If you wanted to do the basic concordance work required for nationals, all you would have to do is go to the “Concordance Lists” section and learn or have your quizzer learn every one of those lists. However, I will still show you how to find concordance and reference questions that might be asked.

You must first notice what types of questions are frequently asked in chapter questions. For example, when you hear a question that asks for all of the things described as being “of God” in a certain chapter, know that if it is givable, at Nationals they will ask for the quizzer to give all of the things described as “of God” from the entirety of the material being studied.

Question writers often like possessives and “of”s (i.e. Jesus’, God’s, Simon’s, of God, of Christ, ) So be sure to know all of those. If multiple words begin or end a certain phrase, (i.e. Kingdom of, of the Holy Spirit, etc.) be sure to know those as well.

If you want to be National Champion, though, you must go a lot further than this. This is how you do it:

Go to the concordance and look for things that are similar in different verses. The most obvious are the ones where two verses contain an identical unique phrase like “In the same way” or “province of Asia.” Question writers will either ask for these by saying quote Luke__ and Luke__ , or they will say quote the two verses which contain the phrase ______. This goes a step further and is applied to words that stand out like “Greeks” or “Super-Apostles”. I can assure you that this year you will hear the 2 questions, Give the 4 verses that mention Greeks and Give the 2 verses that mention super-apostles, multiple times. The words must not only stand out but they must be found in multiple verses. Study so that you can quote and give the references to all words like this in under 30 seconds each. Also, study words that stand out and are found in consecutive verses, (i.e. the 3 consecutive verses that mention Jews).

Be on the look out for words that are only found in one verse, but who have a counter part that it can be asked with. For example, Quote the two verses that mention the New Covenant, and the verse that mentions the Old Covenant. “Old Covenant” you wouldn’t normally study because it is found in only one verse, but now that you know it has a counterpart, you do study it. And now you can hit the question at “Quote the two verses that mention the New/” and know what it is going to be. This is how great quizzers can interrupt reference questions and know what they are going to be before they hit. After studying this type enough, you will begin to think like a question writer and learn how to finish these types of questions without having studied them before. Since great quizzers can’t always find every possible question they often have to just put two and two together and figure out the question without having studied it. For example, here’s any easy one that a great quizzer will know, even if they have just finished memorizing 1 Corinthians Chapter 1, and haven’t heard any questions. 2 Part Quotation Question. 3 Part Answer. From 1 Corinthians Chapter 1. Quote the two verses which mention Greeks.

A great quizzer will know instantly that the completion is /and the verse which mentions Gentiles. This is because by studying other reference questions, their mind has learned how to quickly make correlations between different verses. The above question could probably be figured out by quizzers that weren’t great, but great quizzers can figure out much harder ones than this one.

The next step is to buy every question that is written to prepare you for nationals and Memorize Them. Don’t memorize the question word-for-word so to say, but know the answers to all the questions that are found in those National level practice sets. Make sure there isn’t one question that is being sold that you cannot answer. And be sure to hear them multiple times.

This next part takes a lot of dedication and a lot of work, but if you do it, you will more than likely be the best quizzer of your time. First, go through the concordance and study the words that only appear in one verse. Study so that you are able to quote and give the reference for any of those verses when asked to. It is easy to find them in the concordance because they will only have one verse reference next to them. Most are found in the Unique Word List, but some words, like “abound” are found twice in one verse, but are still included in this category.

Next, go through the concordance and study the words that appear it two verses. Study them so that you are able to quote and give the references for the verses that contain those words when asked to. Be able to do this on demand, with any of the words. It is easy to find them in the concordance because they will only have two unique verse references next to them.

Now, go through the concordance and study the words that are found in 3 verses. Study them so that you are able to quote and give the references for the verses that contain those words when asked to, in under 30 seconds. Be able to do this on demand, with any of the words. It is easy to find them in the concordance because they will only have three unique verse references next to them.

After this, go through the concordance and study the words that are found in only 4 verses. Study them so that you are able to quote and give the references for the verses that contain those words if asked to, in under 30 seconds. Be able to do this on demand, with any of the words. It is easy to find them in the concordance because they will only have four unique verse references next to them.

Then, go through the concordance and study the words that are found in 5 verses total. Study them so that you are able to quote and give the references for the verses that contain those words if asked for, in under 30 seconds. Be able to do this on demand, with any of the words. It is easy to find them in the concordance because they will only have five unique verse references next to them.

Lastly, go through the concordance and study the words that are found in 6 verses altogether. Study them so that you are able to quote and give the references for the verses that contain those words when asked for, in under 30 seconds. Be able to do this on demand, with any of the words. It is easy to find them in the concordance because they will only have six unique verse references next to them.

I have never seen a question demand more than 6 verses with references, so there is no need to study that way with a higher number of “repetitions”. In other words, there is no need to do this same pattern with words found in 7 verses, 8 verses, 9 verses, etc. What you do need to do next is the following:

In the concordance, go through and find all the words that are repeated 7-15 times (i.e. found in 7-15 verses) and beginning with the words found in 7 verses, be able to give all the references for those words in 30 seconds. Then do the same thing with words found in 8 verses, words found in 9 verses, words found in 10 verses, all the way up to words found in 15 verses. Be on the look out, though, for words that stand out that are found in like 20 verses, (thus you would not normally study them) but are found in a certain chapter 4 times. (i.e. I missed a question years ago that asked for the four verses of a certain chapter that mentioned “mercy”. I hadn’t studied “mercy” because it was found in like 20 verses.) For these types of words, the Chapter Concordances that are found on this web page will help you to find all the words that might be asked this way. If you go through and do this right after you memorize a chapter, it will be ten times easier in the long run than waiting to do it until you have finished all the material, and you will know the material a lot better and know a whole lot more concordance in general.

NOTE: I did not say that all of these questions will be asked at Nationals. But if you study this way, you will know the answer to every question at Nationals, you will know the material in a deeper and more meaningful way, and you might possibly never forget it for the rest of your life.

There you go, now all the “secrets” of Reference Questions and Concordance work are unveiled.

These are the things you have to do to achieve the status you want or to obtain the abilities you desire.

How far do you want to go? How good do you want to be? That depends on how much you want to study.

Remembering what you've learned

You retain the material by constantly reviewing it. My coach taught me about what is meant by “rote memory”. If you ask any teenager who grew up in church what John 3:16 is, most can say it right away. In fact, even though I’ve been through two quiz years on John in NIV, I can still do it, without thought, in KJV. This is because I said it so many times as a young kid that it’s permanently in my mind. That’s the way you want the quiz material to be stored in your memory. Not only will this help you with your quizzing, but it also ensures that the Word will always stay with you.

The basic rule of thumb for retaining material is to quote everything you know, to someone else, at least once a week. As competition nears, you should probably step that up. Teams preparing for nationals will probably be quoting the entire material every day, on top of reviewing analysis and concordance. Think of it this way. You work hard to store the material in your memory and when a question comes up that tests your knowledge, you want to be able to earn the points. The longer it’s been since you reviewed it, the more likely you will miss a question that you could’ve answered at one time.

Interrupting, Completing, and Answering Questions

How do I interrupt questions?

Interrupting questions is one of the biggest challenges for new quizzers. Unlike JBQ, you no longer have a list of the questions to be asked. The best way to learn how to interrupt questions is to listen to questions. Some writers have specific patterns they use. In general, questions are written today so as not to make it difficult to finish the question if you choose to interrupt it in a good spot. Some quizzers learn techniques such as “Hit on the second word” for certain types of questions. If that’s the pattern the writer uses then you can take advantage of that, but the real rule should always be “Hit the question when you know how to finish it”. Eventually, you learn to anticipate keywords, but to start off with, just hit where you have an idea of how to finish the question.

Before getting to specific techniques, there are four guidelines that you must always follow when completing an interrupted question.

You must demand the same answer

For instance, the question “What does one of you say?” is different from “What does one of you do?” because the second question requires the word “said” while the second does not.

You must agree with the introductory remarks

If your completion asks two questions and the question is not labeled a two-part question, you are wrong. At first, you may have difficulty remembering the introductory remarks. You can overcome this by learning to mark your fingers. For me, right hand was for multiple part questions, left hand was for multiple part answers, my left pinky represented “Give a Complete Answer”, a right pinky represented “Scripture Text Question” and so on. Find something that works for you. That way you will never again hit a two part question and forget to ask two questions. Once the “part answer” gets beyond five, you can no longer use your hand and you will just have to remember, but that’s usually not hard with large answers.

You must not contain incorrect information

For instance, if you question says that Apollos was “our brother” instead of Sosthenes, it is incorrect. This seems like it would be impossible to violate, but when you “cover your bases” (which we will talk about later), you have to throw lots of information into your question.

You must ask the same basic question, though not necessarily in the same words

If you look in the rules, there is a long note following this rule that explains in some more detail what the “same basic question” is. We’ll discuss this more later.

Suppose that I ask the following 10-point question with no introductory remarks:

Who was called to be an apostle?

Certainly it is impossible to finish this question before the word “called”. The word “called” is a keyword in this question. This means that usually a writer will not include a word like that unless it is straight out of the Scripture. By looking up the word “called” in your concordance, you will see that it appears in 15 places. If you hit the question on “Who was called”, there are several ways to finish it from chapter 1, chapter 7 or chapter 15. If you find yourself in a situation like this, you should usually go with the first question to come to your mind. Your instincts will prove accurate most of the time. A good writer will have already seen that a quizzer might get “burned” by hitting there, so they will either narrow it down to chapter one or to the untitled section. Every other instance of the word “called” in chapter 1 has a plural answer, so all of those possible questions would start with “Who were”.

Some questions might provide you with a reference. Consider the following 10 point question with no introductory remarks:

According to First Corinthians 1:5, in whom have you been enriched?

This question can be interrupted on the word “in”. There are lots of ways to complete this if you hit on the reference, so writers typically make it so that the question is obvious by the first word after the reference. Looking at the verse, you might notice that the word “in” appears four times in this verse. However, the only other possible questions from that verse that begin with the word “in” are “in what have you been enriched” and “in all of what have you been enriched”. The first would be either a complete answer or a three part answer and the second would be a two part answer. If the question has any other introductory remark besides “Give a Complete Answer”, you can usually interrupt on the reference. There is only one good “Two Part Answer” in this verse and even if there were two, the writer would tend to shy away from asking a question that forces quizzers to have to guess.

If a 20 or 30 point question is labeled “Give A Complete Answer”, you should try to find an answer that has multiple clauses and that seems the appropriate length. An answer that is only four words long is not likely to be asked as a 20 or 30. For instance, if you interrupt a 20 point complete answer on, “According to First Corinthians 1:9”, the most logical way to complete the question is “Who is faithful?” as it demands most of the verse.

Scripture text questions are almost always interruptable by the first word of the actual Scripture text. Sometimes you can hit them earlier.

Suppose you interrupt a question and all you have heard is the following:

Whose household…

Ignore for the moment that there are two mentions of the word “household” in chapter 1. The answer to this question comes from 1 Corinthians 1:11, but how are you to know whether the question is “Whose household is mentioned?” or “Whose household informed Paul that there were quarrels among the Corinthians?” Those are NOT the same basic question. The way that good quizzers get around this is to complete the question “is mentioned that is also the same household that informed Paul that there were quarrels among the Corinthians?” Here, no matter what the question is, you are correct. Everything in your question is correct information, so in the worst case scenario, you can contest that you are still correct. However, most quizmasters know the material well enough to rule you correct right away, and even those who don’t will look it up in their Scripture Portions. The more information you throw into your question the better.

Practice makes perfect when it comes to interrupting and completing. When you are in practice and someone hits a question in a good spot and completes it, ask them how they did it. If you have an experienced coach, ask him to stop reading at the point where he thinks the question can be completed.

How do I learn to quote fast?

Any quizzer who has ever been to a national-level tournament or in a league with national-level quizzers has seen quizzers quote fast before. Some do it well and some do it quite poorly. The most important this is to know your limitations. The rules state that you are wrong if you fail to speak loudly and clearly. There is some obligation on the judges to be able to follow you, but there is a reasonable limit to what can be expected. If you don’t have a lot of experience speaking fast, if you immediately try to quote as fast as the best fast quoters you have heard, you will likely be slurring words together all over the place. To give you an example of the difference between clean-fast and slurry-fast, take your favorite Mp3 song (or maybe the latest Bible Quiz Podcast) and open it up in Windows Media Player (sorry Mac users). If you scroll through the advanced options you will find that you can double the speed of the conversation. You might start by just increasing to 1.4 times speed. Now open the same Mp3 in Quicktime player and find the option to increase the speed. You should notice a difference. The Quicktime one is harder to understand, right? This is because the algorithm used to speed up the Mp3 in the programs is different. That’s exactly what it’s like being a quizmaster and listen to a sloppy quoter.

The danger of quoting fast is that when you review every week, you might be speaking so fast that your parent or coach who listens to you quote cannot distinguish between “a” and “the” and you might be quoting the verse wrong! The solution to learning to speak fast is exactly the same as the solution to fixing sloppy-fast quoting. Buy a microphone for your computer and record yourself quoting at your fastest rate. Now open the file in either Windows Media Player or Quicktime and slow it down by 50%. Follow along in your portion and see how many of the words you said are understandable. You might even discover that you’re “ghosting” some words. Now slow yourself down until you can hear every single word when you slow the Mp3 down. Practice quoting at that speed over the next few weeks until you get used to it. Then, gradually, increase the speed. You should actually keep the Mp3s you record just so you can track your progress. You’ll be pretty shocked by the difference.

I would also recommend that you know when it’s appropriate to know fast and when it isn’t. First off, every once in a while, you should do a slow-quote when you quote to someone else. This is to make double-sure that you have everything down right. Second, in matches, you should not use your fastest speed when you are quoting one verse. You should only be quoting that fast when you need to. Six or seven verses is where you need to, in most cases. In some cases, if the six or seven verses are small, you don’t need to go nearly as fast.

Rules and Contesting

How do I know when to contest a ruling?

The better you know the material, the better you will know when to contest a ruling or contest validity. You should also know the rules fairly well. When another team is answering the question, you should never tune out. Pretend that you are the quizmaster and follow their answer against what you have memorized. Listen to the question and try to decide if it violates one of the rules for interrupted questions. In this regard, you do not have the benefit of seeing what the actual question is, however the rule of thumb is that when the quizmaster rules a quizzer correct, their question is effectively the official question. This means that if there is some difference between the completion and the question on their page, the quizmaster and/or judges have made the decision that it is the “same basic question”. Also, listen to their answer, making note of any differences between what the quizzer says and what the Scripture says. At the end make a ruling in your mind. If the quizmaster rules differently, you should consider a contest. Watch to see if the quizmaster and/or judges circle or write anything on their page. If they do, you know there is some difference. This can be your hint that there might be something to contest. If a quizmaster goes to the judges this means that there is something iffy and you should also consider contesting.

All of this must be mitigated by the fact that some decisions are simply judgment calls. Some quizmasters go to the judges any time they think there might be something that makes a quote wrong. Judges make a split-second decision as to whether it is correct or incorrect. It is usually rare for a team to contest a ruling on a quote and get it overturned. The only instance in which I have seen this happen is when the judges have actually made a genuine mistake, either by forgetting it was a quote or not knowing the rules well enough. For many other issues it is a complete judgment call. By this, I mean that there is no black & white ruling available and that if you were to present the contest in 100 quiz rooms, 50 would accept and 50 would deny. You should also keep in mind that when a quizmaster and/or judges make a ruling, they are going from the limited information that the question writer has provided on their page. Most officials have not memorized the material therefore do not know if a quizzer came from a “different” verse when the answer is a complete answer.