The Quizbowl Resource Center

setht

Can someone post that tossup on the Slam Dunk contest? In 1986 this event included {Terry Tyler} and Paul Pressey, while Terence Stansbury executed a "Statue of Liberty" maneuver. In 2000 a man from Toronto who beat his cousin in this event dangled from his {elbow}. Gerald Green once (*) ...

setht

What role did Andrew play in all of this? Andrew made valuable contributions to internal discussions focusing solely on what NAQT should do. He also graciously allowed me to pass on one of his internal emails to Chicago club leaders because I thought it would help them out. I am very sorry he was u...

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I was the first NAQT member to whom Jimmy brought his suspicions. I went and told R., and then we asked Jimmy to come in and tell us what he'd noticed. Andrew and Jeff were there as well; I don't remember if others were also present. Jimmy and Matt later got in touch with me to inquire after NAQT's ...

setht

I’m not one to post extensive breakdowns of individual questions, and I don’t have a copy of the set anyway, so I’ll mostly limit myself to general observations. By and large, I found the science in this set a bit frustrating. I’ll begin by appealing to the useful dichotomy drawn above between empi...

setht

I can't speak to a lot of those "wacky" questions Seth mentioned, but my teammate who has good and real classics knowledge had no problem with the "clients" tossup. Could I see this question? I confusedly gave a wrong answer, though I readily admit it's because I don't know much...

setht

History was quite good; there were really some quite good ideas like "Joseph Cannon getting shitcanned." Agreed that this was a good idea, but it should have said "description acceptable." Can somebody post this question here to see what the answerline said exactly? I gave a des...

setht

I'm late with this, but I want to thank all of the writers and editors who worked on the DI set this year. This year's set did not saunter jauntily over the finish line with plenty of time to spare. I'm not sure what would have happened without everyone's contributions; I'm just very, very glad that...

setht

I won't list all the questions I wrote, but I want to solicit feedback (good, bad, or ugly) on anything where people care to give it. I'm most interested in feedback on the DI versions of my questions, but I'm also interested in feedback on DII versions (where they exist). I wrote most (or in a coup...

setht

can you post the "Game Theory" tossup? This discipline's "inverse" form, which utilizes the revelation principle, is known as mechanism design. This field's central models can be expressed using trees with dotted lines joining nodes in information sets; those extensive-form repr...

setht

I had a great time playing the tournament, thanks for doing it.

-Seth

setht

The wording of J.4.1.2 seems self-contradictory to me: if someone buzzes at a point where a tossup is ambiguous, then no answer has been uniquely identified by the clues, right? In the Panipat example, there are multiple "victors of the Battle of Panipat," so no one answer has been uniquel...

setht

The "whales" tossup has to accept "giant fish" or similar answers outright or cut the clue about Jasconius, since Jasconius from the Voyage of Saint Brendan is explicitly not a whale except in mistranslations of the original Latin. Good point. The Yggdrasil question had a clue a...

setht

Could I please see the D2 bonus with Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle and H-bar has two of the answers? The bonus part on h-bar does not prompt on "Planck's constant" even though the word "reduced" is in the question. It is impossible to simultaneously know both the position and...

setht

Stuff about a chemistry question On top of that, the actual clues throughout the question were not really exclusive to one answer or the other. As a somewhat tangential point, I think the "accept [answer1] until *" construction should be used as sparingly as possible. It's often unnecessa...

setht

Vernon Lee Bad Marriage, Jr. wrote:The current events questions in this set seemed less well-written than those in last year's SCT. Was there a change in editorship?

There was no change in CE editorship. Do you have more specific comments on what seemed better last year/worse this year?

-Seth

setht

This act was repeatedly performed by a former Libyan princess who had the power of popping out her eyes. Zeus turned the sons of Lycaon into wolves in punishment for this act. Procne tricked Tereus into performing this act, and Thyestes was similarly duped by Atreus. The (*) Laestrygonians subjecte...

setht

So, could you please post the tossups on the 1812 Overture, Pomp and Circumstance Marches, and Leonard Bernstein? Thanks. Here they are: In this piece, a tambourine ostinato accompanies a violin dance melody that then passes through the strings. Its time signature changes from 4/4 ["four-four&...

setht

For the bonus part on aspiration in DII (round 14 I think) would rough breathing been acceptable? This went into protest (and was being researched) in our game versus Harvard A, but we never got final ruling due to the results of the tiebreakers. Here's the bonus part: B. Grassmann's law describes ...

setht

I'm going to get this in before I forget: the reference (or possibly references) to the Confederacy as a "country" was really regrettable, as this is an assertion that is: a) not really true to the best of my knowledge (if I remember correctly, no nation gave official diplomatic recogniti...

setht

Hey all,

I'll post some of the requested questions in just a moment. Before I start in on that, I just wanted to ask that people make sure to include in their posts which division they played in.

Thanks,
-Seth

setht

Hey,

I hope everyone enjoyed SCT. If you have any feedback, I'm sure all of the people involved in writing and editing the sets would love to hear it. One thing that would be helpful is if people could note in their initial posts what division they played in.

Thanks,
-Seth

setht

I liked several of the physics/astro/math tossups: they were on topics scientists care about; they had good clues; they were presented in clear prose (I think—I can't be 100% sure without looking at the set, but I'm usually pretty good about catching and being flummoxed by quizbowlese, so I'd be sur...

setht

Is a 6th team going to materialize? If not, can we dematerialize a team, possibly by allowing 5-player teams? It seems silly to have byes.

-Seth

setht · Re: Old-Timey Guerilla QB Event - Pittsburgh, 11/23/2013 I'm in. -Seth

I'm in.

-Seth

setht

Look, could we do this: Could all the people who have interest in attending this tournament come out of the woodwork, and openly state their intentions to do so (in this thread and/or the spreadsheet)? Then, once we know who's planning on coming, we can address the question of competitive team comp...

setht

Hey I was reading this tournament again and I want to complain about an absolutely awful question that still makes me mad. This type of structure is preferentially stained by thiazole orange. A ribosomal frameshift event for HIV requires formation of this type of structure in messenger RNA. It form...

setht

I think there could some value in doing a "selected release" of unused questions, expunging the bad ones, but leaving in some of the comically insane or awful questions every set seems to get (such as that tossup on "paint drying" we got for ACF Regionals last year). Seems like ...

setht

I'm talking to Katy about Seth's schedule and whether it's workable. I'm not really following the bracketology here but I'm happy to consider it if it's not going to endanger the completion of the set or the tournament. If anything is unclear, or if there are additional constraints (rooms, staff, p...

setht

Three playoff brackets (top bracket: teams 1-3 and a-c; middle bracket: teams 4-6 and d-f; bottom bracket: teams 7-10 and g-i). Play a round-robin. This requires 5 rounds with no byes for the top and middle brackets, and 7 rounds with 1 bye/round for the bottom bracket. Use packets 7-10 for the fir...

setht

I think the idea is this: Original brackets of 9/10 play 9RR on packets from bracket A (as they have the bye). Playoffs are top 3/middle 3/bottom x. The top two brackets are 5RR, while the bottom is 7RR. The first five rounds use four packets from the bottom group from bracket B and an editor packe...

setht

Are there other bracketed schedules that provide some sort of compromise solution? For instance, could we split into 9/10 brackets with 19 teams? Assuming that every team writes a packet, and that any ties that need to be broken are broken by statistics: With 18 teams, I think it should work to do ...

setht

Vernon Lee Bad Marriage, Jr. wrote:In more logistical news: Matt Jackson has informed me that there are currently 17 teams signed up here. I don't think we can handle any more teams than that

Is this based on rooms or staff or something else?

-Seth

setht

I also want to thank all the people who worked on the set--the 101 people who wrote questions in the set, the 23 people who subject edited questions in the set, and the people who worked on set editing: Selene Koo for playtesting some questions, R. Hentzel's playtesters for playtesting some packets,...

setht

There weren't that many obviously noticeable repeats, but one really glaring one was when... ...the tossups on heat capacity and Einstein that were in consecutive early packets both began with his QHO formulation. This one jumped out at me while I was reading. I'm not sure how it snuck by us during...

setht

geolawyerman wrote:What was the final tossup?

Prompt! (By which I mean, are you asking about final tossup #1 or final tossup #2?)

-Seth

setht

Congrats to LASA! In the Final game on Sunday, Ladue scored 26.36ppb (their highest for the tournament) and got 10 powers, and still lost! I calculated the combined point totals from the Finals game at each HSNCT since 2000, and it shows how incredibly talented both Ladue and LASA are. 2013-895, 20...

setht

I didn't receive Max's email, but I assume the schedule for the Expert Division is "n games, all of which are forfeits." Let us know if Selene and I should plan on anything in particular--exhibition matches, enormous trophies, etc.

-Seth

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Regardless of what may happen this fall, this set is definitely open for discussion, and we're hoping there will be some. Possibly all the competitors and coaches were fine with everything in the set and have no comments, or perhaps everyone is busy with other stuff, but we really would like to hear...

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Agreed with Eric on the ribosomes TU. That was hella frustrating. Is the ribosome referred to as a molecule? I believe Selene specifically chose that noun to help guide people away from negging with ribosome. She may have more to say about this question in a few days when she's done traveling, but ...

setht

{Marshall Sahlins}'s theory of the {original affluent society} drew on work on these {hunter-gatherer}s by Lorna Marshall and Richard Borshay Lee, whose study of their diet highlighted the nutritious {mongongo} nut. Lee noted their love for {diarrhea}-inducing fat in a paper on their {trance} dance...

setht

As a follow-up on last year's thread , here's a rough overview of who all contributed to this year's SCT and ICT sets: For DI SCT, a little over half (~400) questions came from circuit people (including Andrew Hart's 190); about 50 were lingering questions from writers who I believe have retired; An...

setht

I've been thinking some more about the kivas tossup and other common-link tossups, which had answer lines of varying generosity, and I'm wondering if it's possible to come to some consensus about how generous common-link answer lines should be. Here are a couple tossups from the DI set: One group of...

setht

In other news, the Roman Declaration of War was definitely powerable because fetiales (the priests who do the ritual) was in power, but it took a bit for Dallas and me to figure it out. That tossup really threw me because I picked up that it was some Roman ritual very quickly, but despite all of th...

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those tossups on "Rome Declaring War" and "The Canadian Great Depression" were really bad ideas (especially the latter!) and we should try to avoid that. Assuming "we should try to avoid that" means something more general than "we should try to avoid these two spe...

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Characteristic features overlying these structures include palsas, pingos, and sand-wedge polygons. So-called "drunken trees" result when these structures produce slumping thermokarst terrains. The namesake tables of these regions form the bottom surfaces of active layers, which can under...

setht

Can you please post the tossups on George Akerlof, Chile (literature), and Anatole France? Thanks in advance! This man collaborated with Rachel Kranton on a 2010 book about how our "identities shape our work, wages, and well-being." This man's wife, who worked with him on the fair wage-ef...

setht

FWIW, my answer of "Anasazi" on the description of a kiva was negged--one of several examples of insufficient prompting/alternative answers in the set. I'm sympathetic to the idea that this particular tossup (and perhaps some others) would have benefited from a more generous answer line, ...

setht

Was the DII set too hard? Too easy? Were middle parts of bonuses too variable? Did tossup answers range too widely in difficulty, or not widely enough?

Here's the thread to talk about that kind of stuff.

-Seth

setht

Was the DI set too hard? Too easy? Were middle parts of bonuses too variable? Did tossup answers range too widely in difficulty, or not widely enough?

Here's the thread to talk about that kind of stuff.

-Seth

setht

Here's a thread for discussion (and posting, if needed/wanted) of specific questions in the DII set.

-Seth

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