Auxiliary Verbs

is, am, are, was, were, be, being, been, has, have, had, do, does, did, shall, will, should, would, may, might, must, can, could

When I was a Freshman in High School, our English teacher required us to memorize the 23 auxiliary verbs. These are foundational elements of writing. Some of my classmates struggled with this exercise, but since I was memorizing the Gospel of Luke at the time, learning a list of 23 words was not an especially daunting task.

These verbs come in very handy in Bible Quiz when attempting to complete questions. Here's an example from the championship playoff at Friendship. The question was:

10 points. From Hebrews chapter 11.
What was formed at God's command?
11:3 the universe

The question was interrupted on the word "was" and ultimately missed. Almost everyone in the room assumed it was an overhit, and that there was no way to know the correct completion. I disagree. The key to completing this question lies in understanding auxiliary verbs.

"Was" is the fourth verb on our list, and it is the key word in the above question. I realize it doesn't seem like much of a key word, but if you look in chapter 11, the word isn't found very often. More importantly, in most of the verses where it is found, the context referred to a person (Abel, Enoch, Moses, Rahab, etc.). Since the first word of the question was "what" we aren't looking for a person as our answer. So we can eliminate all of those.

This leaves far fewer possibilities. The main alternatives to our question are verse 3 (what was made out of what was visible?), verse 34 (what was turned to strength?), and verse 38 (what was not worthy of the faithful?). Note that in verse 3 you can't really ask "what was visible?" because there isn't an answer to the question.

The other question from verse 3 would require a complete answer remark, since the answer is "what is seen." The question from verse 34 had already been asked, word-for-word, during the tournament. It is unlikely that the same question would be repeated.

This leaves two real possibilities. In Bible Quiz, we are always playing percentages. There aren't a lot of sure things when it comes to interruptions at the highest level. In choosing between the actual question and the option from verse 38, the choice should be to go with the question that was less awkward in its wording. That leads you to the correct completion.

Is it possible that the question might be something different? Absolutely. Could the writer have chosen to use something else, even if was an awkward wording? Certainly. In quizzing, you often have to take some chances and trust that the writer will do the best thing.

So how do you prepare your quizzers to complete this kind of hit? The first answer is the most obvious: make sure they are keeping up with their quoting. Words jump out at quizzers when they've prepared themselves. Next, make sure your quizzers hear a lot of questions. The hope is that quizzers will hear nearly every possible question in practice before they get to the game.

Another way to prepare your quizzers is to do an auxiliary verb drill. Make copies of one page of the Scripture Portion and have quizzers go through and highlight or circle all the verbs. They'll usually find most of the regular "action word" verbs, but fail to see the auxiliary verbs. Write the above list on the board and have them find all of those, too. By doing this, you call attention to these verbs and teach your quizzers to use them as key words when necessary.

People tend to groan when we start talking about language and grammar, but it's essential to remember that questions are written in English. To complete them correctly, a quizzer needs to have a pretty good understanding of the rules of the language. In doing so, quizzers will be prepared to interrupt questions early and complete them correctly.