Quodpot History & Overview

Quodpot is Quidditch’s sister-sport in the Americas. While Quidditch is the most popular sport east of the Atlantic, Quodpot is king on the west side.

When the United States was still a fledging country at the end of the eighteenth century, the magical folk on the continent were also busy establishing themselves—forming Quidditch leagues and tackling the complex sport wasn’t high on their todo lists.

Abraham Peasegood, acting as a diplomat to England for the Magical Congress of the United States of America, brought back a few Quidditch supplies to North America to see if he could convince his kids and their schoolmates to try it out. While traveling, he kept his wand and a quaffle stowed in his trunk (Peasegood was a bit of an eccentric, as not carrying one’s wand in one’s robes is strange in any century). His wand hit the quaffle, and when Peasegood removed it from the trunk, he noticed that it was enchanted. After throwing it around for a few minutes, the quaffle exploded in his face. He thought this was a pleasant surprise and was instantly inspired to make a game out of it.

Peasegood tried the game out on his children and their peers near his home in Philadelphia. It was an instant hit and soon traveled throughout the Americas.

Quodpot is played with one ball, known as a quod, and players attempt to get the quod into the scoring circle. There is only one scoring area. The quod will explode in an unknown amount of time; the scoring circle is filled with a potion known as the quodpot solution that will stop the quod from exploding. At the other end of the field is the starting circle: This is where the new quod appears once the previous one has exploded or has been scored. Each team has eleven players. When a player drops the quod in the scoring circle, their team receives a point. The quod must be passed by throwing; a player cannot move with the quod in their arms—this is known as traveling. If the quod explodes in a player’s face, they are out. When one team has no more players, the game is over; and the team with the most points wins.

While the rules are straightforward, Quodpot enthusiasts will argue that the strategies teams employ can be quite complex. Some have a player be a timekeeper—the quod almost always explodes between one and five minutes—they make complicated hand signals to relay the exact number of seconds (sometimes milliseconds) that have passed so the team can make riskier moves at the beginning of play and become more reserved as time goes on. Other teams will have a few members that are skilled in divination; some use tea leaves or crystal balls while others used tarot cards (easier for flying) to divine when the quod will explode. Some players claim to be able to feel when it’s ready to pop, but there has been no evidence that the quod gives off any “signs” of its impending doom.

Most explosions are harmless, but some variants of Quodpot up the ante. These explosions aim to injure or maim, with a few deaths in the sport’s history. These variants are banned from professional Quodpot. Other variants still can cause the quod to erupt with a sticky goo, freezing water, silly confetti, or golden snitches.

Professional Quodpot does not contain any variants, and it has a very enthusiastic fanbase in the Americas. The National Quodpot League (NQL) has two conferences: the American Quodpot Conference (AQC), for the Central and South American countries, and the Canadian Quodpot Conference (CQC), for the North American countries. Professional teams within their conferences play seventeen games through the main season (September through December). After the main season finishes, the playoffs begin in January. Each conference sends seven teams to the playoffs: Four chosen teams have the best records at the end of season; the other three are chosen in a random draw. The random draw is quite the spectacle. A player from each unchosen team holds a quodpot; the last three to explode get to go to the playoffs. In the random draw event, the AQC's quodpot explodes in a mess of agave while the CQC's is made of maple syrup. The playoffs end the SuperQuod game, which wizarding folk from all over the Americas travel to see.

The constant influx of new quods throughout the game allow for many opportunities for tampering. There is a large illegal betting market for Quodpot, and many gambling rings will attempt to tamper with quods so that they explode when they reach the hands of a certain player. The League of American Magical Equity in Sports (LAMES) updates the magic and oversight that goes into making quods tampering-proof almost yearly, but bad actors are usually able to break through again after a few months.

The sport is also popular at Ilvermorny and Castelobruxo, where the sport is played throughout the fall.

Each house at Ilvermorny has their own team, with a house championship game happening shortly before the professional SuperQuod game takes place. Other sports are less popular, like Quidditch, and are relegated to the spring—and usually houses have to join together to make full teams.

Castelobruxo does not have houses, but does require its students to be involved in one extracurricular activity. Many students do choose Quodpot, making it more popular than the other broom sport options. The school has two competitive teams (each broken into two leagues for fundamental and superior students), which engage in games all year long. The teams have a bitter rivalry, but they have maintained a relatively even winning record since the creation of the sport.

There have been many critics of Quodpot (mainly Brits) who complain about the lack of elegance in the game, its simple rules, the unfairness of the quod explosions, and the eerie spectacle of watching a quaffle being blown up in someone’s face. In 1888, Rowan Agnew, a sports writer for The Daily Prophet, wrote an extensive takedown of the American sport. Bob Ryan, an American sports writer, requested to publish a response in the newspaper the following week, which simply stated, “I’m sure British readers had time to read Agnew’s Quodpot diatribe while waiting a few days for their seekers to finally snatch a snitch. I, however, was too distracted by several thrilling games of Quodpot.”