Every buzz this season, dissected. How fast the room really is, which subjects are
gifts and which are graveyards, how the season sharpened week over week — and the records that make
you go how did they know that already?
When in a question does a correct buzz actually land? Almost never at the start — the
room waits for the unique clue. The pile-up between words 15 and 25 is the heartbeat of Science Bowl:
enough has been read to be sure, but every word you wait is a word someone else might beat you to.
Correct buzzes, grouped by how many words had been read. Mean = 25 words.
02
Every subject has a personality
Down-and-left is a friendly subject (buzzed early, rarely goes dead); up-and-right is a
grind. Earth/Space is the season's gift — solved fastest and dead almost never. Physics and Math sit
in the far corner: you have to hear the whole question, and plenty still die. Dot size = bonus
conversion.
BiologyChemistryComp SciEarth/SpaceMathPhysics
Subject
Avg word buzzed
Went dead
Bonus conv.
Earth/Space
17.6
4.8%
67%
Biology
21.6
8.8%
54%
Chemistry
24.4
11.6%
52%
Comp Sci
26.3
16.2%
44%
Math
29.8
16.8%
39%
Physics
31.8
16.0%
48%
03
The season sped up — and got greedier
As players learned the format, fewer questions went dead (the room got sharper). But the
trigger fingers got itchier too: the neg rate climbed as everyone raced to buzz first. Sharper
and riskier.
Dead-tossup rate
a mid-season spike, then down to a season low
Neg rate
rising — more aggressive buzzing
04
Round report card
Seven rounds, one per week of the regular season. Some were gifts; one was a bloodbath. Here's how the whole league fared against each.
🟢
Easiest: Round 7
Only 9% of tossups went dead — the league feasted, converting 91%.
🔴
Hardest: Round 3
19% went dead (and the most negs) — the graveyard packet nobody could crack.
🔫
Most chaotic: Round 4
A 24% neg rate — the itchiest trigger fingers of the season.
💰
Highest-scoring: Round 5
8.2 points per tossup — the most generous set on the board.
Round
Converted
Went dead
Neg rate
Bonus conv.
Pts / tossup
Round 1
88%
12%
14%
52%
8.1
Round 2
86%
14%
18%
52%
7.9
Round 3
81%
19%
20%
56%
7.8
Round 4
87%
13%
24%
52%
8.0
Round 5
89%
11%
21%
52%
8.2
Round 6
90%
10%
21%
46%
7.7
Round 7
91%
9%
18%
49%
8.2
05
Snipers & gunslingers
Every buzzer picks a spot on this map. Far right = deadly accurate; high up = lives
dangerously. The gold names are the extremes — the pure snipers who almost never miss, and the
gunslingers who'll eat a neg to get there first. Dot size = total buzzes (min 15 to appear).
⚡ Fastest triggers
words earlier than the field on the same questions — not raw speed (≥6 shared Qs)
Player
Words earlier
Raw avg
Gets
1
bora
+6.3
24
13
2
potential man
+3.5
18
24
3
ishaan k
+2.0
19
14
4
Ryan K [Blair Clemens]
+1.8
22
8
5
roshan
+1.6
21
24
6
suzuko
+1.2
21
21
7
Sohil
+1.1
29
21
8
Varyan J
+1.0
20
23
🎯 Most accurate
highest share of buzzes converted
Player
Convert
Buzzes
1
snapninja
88%
16
2
Advik S
80%
20
3
Angelina Y
79%
19
4
theenash s
79%
28
5
Kian D [SOG]
77%
52
6
Arjun D [WWPS]
75%
16
7
shean F
75%
28
8
akhil
74%
50
🔫 Most aggressive
highest neg rate (≥6 negs)
Player
Neg rate
Negs
1
Sanjay O
47%
7
2
Abhinav A
47%
7
3
bora
42%
10
4
ishaan k
36%
12
5
pancreas uvula
35%
15
6
potential man
34%
14
7
Monish S
33%
6
8
William Jung
29%
6
⚖️ Why "fastest" isn't the lowest average. Raw buzz position is mostly a fact about the question — longer, harder clues get buzzed later — so a low average can just mean you drew easy questions. The board above fixes that: it grades every buzz against everyone else who saw the same question. It flips the picture. The lowest raw averages belong to players who were simply handed shorter questions; the real speed king, bora, sits at a middling raw ~24 yet buzzes a full 6 words earlier than the field on shared questions. Same idea powers the whole modeling paper: buzz timing is ~76% question, ~10% person.
06
The record book
The season's outliers — the buzzes and questions worth telling stories about.
⚡
Fastest buzz of the season
Angelina Y buzzed at word 3 of a 17-word Biology question — answer Septa.
🧱
The unbeatable question
A Comp Sci tossup (answer SAME, SAME) was read 6 times and went dead every single time.
🔥
Most fearless trigger
Sanjay O negged on 47% of buzzes (7 negs) — high risk, 7 gets to show for it.
🎯
Easiest vs hardest category
Earth/Space went dead just 4.8% of the time; Math stumped the room 16.8% of tossups.