The Teen Bible Quiz Rules for the upcoming Acts season are now available to download.

Last season, several changes were made to the conferring and contesting procedures for official competition. Upon receiving feedback from coaches, quizzers, and officials, the Rules Committee considered how the changes impacted both experienced teams and brand new teams. The committee revised the rulebook with these considerations in mind.

The following changes have been instituted and are in effect for the upcoming season over Romans and James.

To help quizzers, coaches, officials, and question writers understand the latest changes, we have compiled many of the common questions with answers from multiple verses to show the differences. The following examples will feature two questions in a before/after format.

The Problem​

Historically, the Reference Question has been one of the most difficult introductory remarks to understand.

Is it asking me to give references?

Wait, it's almost never asking for references?

It's an answer that comes from more than one verse, right?

Then why is it a question introductory remark?

Wait, it has to do with the question and not the answer?

You get the picture.

Created to help quizzers better finish questions, the Reference Question, in theory, indicates that each question will come from a separate verse. In practice, however, it has been used to indicate that the answers come from more than one verse rather than the questions. Take a look at the following example:

20 points. Two-part reference question. Seven-part chapter analysis answer.
Matthew chapter 14 names which individuals and mentions which geographical location?

Individuals
14:1+ Herod
14:1+ Jesus
14:2+ John (the Baptist)
14:3 Herodias
14:3 Philip
14:28+ Peter
Geographical Location
14:34 Gennesaret

Do the questions come from separate verses? Not really. The questions themselves aren't coming from any specific verses at all. These are general questions about the chapter. The answers, however, clearly come from separate verses. So, why is this a reference question? Exactly. And therein lies the problem.

In practice, the reference question ends up being about where the answers come from. It's much easier to quickly see where the answers are located than to figure out where the questions are coming from.

Because of the fogginess surrounding where specific questions come from, complicated contests occur based on validity, and quizzers learning the ropes puzzle over what should be a regular multiple part question and what should be a multiple part reference question. In fact, upon polling dozens of National-level quizzers on the reference question rule, we found that most of them—even quizzers in the top 10—did not fully understand the Reference Question.