elimination rounds
Tournament culling stages
Elimination rounds are stages in a competition where losing means you're out.
Unlike round-robin formats where everyone plays everyone, elimination rounds progressively narrow the field—winners advance, losers go home.
The term appears in tournaments, reality TV, and hiring processes: We made it past the elimination rounds to the finals.
- knockoutIncapacitating final blow
- bracketSupport or category
- tournamentMulti-round competitive event
- sweet sixteenCelebratory sixteenth birthday milestone
- semifinalsPenultimate tournament round
quarterfinals · playoffs · sudden death · do or die · heats · qualifying · cut line · cutoff · advance · survive · survival mode · losers · winners · last man standing · seeding · matchups · showdown · winner takes all
- sports tournamentschampionship games, playoff series, title matches, state finals, district finals
- competitionscontests, tournaments, match, matches, game
- archeryarrow, bow, bows, arrows, archer
- game modeseasy mode, ranked match, deathmatch, hard mode, practice match
- reality TVSurvivor, contestant, The Bachelor, The Bachelorette, The Simple Life
- spelling beespelling bee, speller, pronouncer, finalist, winner
elimination roundsround-robin
Format ensuring universal matchups
league play · group stage · pool play · regular season · qualifying rounds
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