Elimination sounds natural in a game but we are here to learn and learn together. It doesn’t make sense to leave someone out from a learning journey.
Wildcard is an opportunity for eliminated teams to make a come back. A team that gets eliminated at the end of a round gets an opportunity to participate in OPEN questions of the next round. This is their opportunity to score, come back in the game and knock other teams off.
This idea does have a side-effect though.
Let’s assume that a team gets eliminated at the end of Round1 and makes a comeback by participating in OPEN questions of Round2. This means there will be 2 eliminations at the end of Round2 because Round3 is played between 3 teams.
Eliminated teams from Round2 can participate in OPEN questions of Round3 and take their total high enough to go to the last round which has only 2 teams.
Eliminations still exist but no one is left out completely. The idea behind wildcard is to keep everyone engaged in the game while still keeping the fun element alive.