3-2-1 Format and Rules
- This competition takes place online. Your team will be given the login information at the beginning of the week of competition. You may compete at any time during that week.
- If you must compete earlier due to calendar restrictions at your school, please contact us for an earlier code.
- You will need approximately 1½ hours to compete at the Middle School/Junior High level and approximately 2 hours at the High School level.
- By entering the competition, you are agreeing to standards of integrity and fairness. Please do not share the questions with any other teams, look up answers by any means, or in any other fashion skew the final results of this competition. Teachers, of course, may not assist the students in answering questions. Students are not permitted access to any electronics (calculators, computers, phones, etc.) during the contest.
- If you have technical difficulties at any time during the match, contact us immediately and we will rectify the situation.
- Each match will consist of a series of triad questions in pyramid format. The first question in the triad will be the most difficult clue. It will be worth 3 points if answered correctly. The second question will be a medium-difficulty clue with the same answer and be worth 2 points. This will be followed by the easiest of the three clues of that answer and be worth 1 point. If students answer the first clue correctly, they then simply write the same answer for the next two clues to earn the remaining points. Therefore, answering on the first clue will result in 3-2-1 points – or 6 points for that question. Answering correctly on the 2nd and 3rd clues will result in 2-1 points – or 3 points. Thus answering on the final clue is worth 1 point and an incorrect answer will be worth 0 points. Each question may contain visual or auditory information.
- These are all short answer questions. Spelling does count. It is advantageous to have your best speller at the keyboard and to have the team double check before hitting submit. At the same time, because we want this to be a contest of knowledge and not a spelling bee, we will strive to write questions that have answers with “accessible” spelling. Expect very few, if any, questions with answers like “triskaidekaphobia”.
- You may only take the competition once. You cannot go back to any questions or to the competition once it is completed.
- Your score will automatically be reported to us. There is no need to contact us with score information when you are finished.
- The results will be posted at the beginning of the week following competition.
- There is no limit to the number of students on a team. You may have a large team if you wish, or you may divide your group into more than one team, so long as you can pay the entry fee for each team.
- Middle school/junior high competition is designed to take about an hour and a half. There will be 156 questions (52 “triads”) and the coach, who is allowed to help with “pacing” but not with answers, should allot an average of 35 seconds per question. We have the technology to time the entire game (91 minutes), but not each question. We hope to have the ability to time each question for our Spring tournament.
- High school competition is designed to take about two hours. There will be 240 questions (80 “triads”) and the coach, who is allowed to help with “pacing” but not with answers, should allot an average of 30 seconds per question.We have the technology to time the entire game (120 minutes), but not each question. We hope to have the ability to time each question for our Spring tournament.