The Quizbowl Resource Center

RexSueciae

I'll respond to Cody's points when I respond to the whole NHBB thread next week, but in response to the above, the "good of the game" argument held to a point during the Blitz when I had been repeatedly lied to by someone the community trusted who then totally flaked out two days before a...

RexSueciae

I'm interested in writing and/or playing this event.

RexSueciae

Great Bustard wrote: 2016 Weekend of April 22th-24th

It probably bears mention that in 2016, Passover begins in the evening of April 22nd and continues until April 30th. This may be a problem.

RexSueciae

I agree broadly with the idea that it's a bad idea on its face for people to be producing more question sets just because it sounds like a good way to raise funds / acquire prestige / learn knowledge / have fun. However, I'm not quite sure about the math on how many question sets total currently exi...

RexSueciae

I'm curious about the reasoning behind the exclusion of any Detroit Catholic Central coach from the ballot. Just wondering, why was a certain Lexington (MA) sophomore not part of the top 4? The answer, of course, is that Dave Madden harbors a personal burning hatred for all things related to DCC an...

RexSueciae

To the best of my knowledge, the only organization in my area that mandates the use of an official timekeeper during regular quizbowl tournaments is the VHSL Scholastic Bowl (i.e. the ineptly run state-sponsored academic competition that somehow grew to be part of the athletic program). Scholastic B...

RexSueciae

As it is written, I don't think the Chesapeake Bay tossup has anything wrong with it at all. That being said, I'm wary of how qualified I am to judge the clue placement of this particular question. I grew up in the Tidewater of Virginia (along the Rappahannock River, no less) and thus learned about ...

RexSueciae

I'll probably write essays about them, but should I leave them under extracurriculars since I'm History Bowl President at our school and run everything? Or should I put our competition results under awards/honors and emphasize the club and community aspect under extracurriculars? Go ahead and list ...

RexSueciae

I might have missed the memo, but will the question set(s) be made publicly available? I can't remember what NHBB policy is for middle school questions.

Also, out of curiosity, how were the questions for the Middle School National History Bowl produced this year?

RexSueciae

Are there the same requirements for adding powers/superpowers to all questions, or has that requirement been waived?

RexSueciae

Why is there no penalty for a third incorrect buzz once a question is over, while there is one if the question has not been finished? Doesn't this encourage buzzer races at the end of the question after two negs? It's traditional in quizbowl to not penalize wild guesses at the end of tossups. The b...

RexSueciae

To the best of my knowledge, there is a net total of zero recurring quizbowl tournaments of any kind which do not charge some sort of fee for registration, nor do I know of any quality question set that has offered mirrors of itself for free (excepting guerilla events). Every quizbowl player and eve...

RexSueciae

Going off the previous Tricon distributions, I'd very much like to see Byzantine and medieval Slavic history make a recurrence, plus trash music and "post-World War II science fiction, children's, or pulp literature." (And poetry, if possible.) Having run out of ideas, I then turned to a r...

RexSueciae

In order to avoid giving off the wrong impression, I'd like to specifically note that the Rhine tossup that appeared in the finished set was much better than the original, especially once its lead-in had been fixed. That being said, a ton of issues remain, such as instances of truncated questions or...

RexSueciae

jonpin wrote:I think he means not the IHO but, e.g. the France championship or Europe championship.

That would make more sense. (Although - how many potential competitors from Europe know of the question databases in the first place?)

RexSueciae

Wait. If the international championship is to be "crafted out of the US high school and middle school Nationals sets" plus the A set, to the point where all of those question sets will be unavailable for viewing until international events are concluded, does that mean that any person who p...

RexSueciae

atai wrote:Some people praised the set

You are either a great liar, or the quizbowl community at large is less intelligent than I gave it credit for.

RexSueciae

Okay, having had the chance to read at a mirror of this tournament, I’m going to list a few more things that I found of interest. The tossup on Francisco Franco mentioned the Nationalists (and, for that matter, Spain) before it mentioned the Rif Wars. This was probably a mistake. The Rif Wars are a ...

RexSueciae

Is anyone going to be organizing another iteration of Triacontakaipentagon this year, or is that project dead now that Matt Weiner's gone?

RexSueciae

Could I see the tossup on W. H. Auden? The lead-in was completely new to me--just wondering where it was quoting from, it sounded interesting.

RexSueciae

The source of this river is at Lake Toma, though it is called the Vorderrhein until it merges later with the Hinterrhein. Mentioning the primary tributaries of the Rhine by name, especially when those names are "Anterior Rhine" and "Posterior Rhine," is maybe not a good idea. it...

RexSueciae

Oh, I've got a story for this thread. See, in my favorite medieval grand strategy computer game of all time , one of the mercenary bands that is available for hire is the Victual Brothers. So, when I played BELLOCO last year, I made a very excited first-line buzz in a tossup which began by describin...

RexSueciae

mithokie wrote:How does the distribution for HSNCT differ from IS sets. I know that there are not computation TU at HSNCT. Do those questions all go to math?

I am not a representative of NAQT, but I believe the distribution for HSNCT can be found on their website.

RexSueciae

I was unaware of either meaning of this term until Vasa enlightened me. Same. By the years you give, I'm guessing this is a 6th-8th grade thing? 4th-5th grade. Also, I distinctly remember that the 2007 iteration (the one that I attended while in 5th grade) took place in Williamsburg, near the colon...

RexSueciae

[Note: Please exercise caution when Googling "The Great American Challenge." Take my word for it, the top results are completely different from what I'm about to talk about. I explain why later in this post.] When I was in 4th and 5th grade, I participated in an academic competition calle...

RexSueciae

Okay, so apparently the University of Virginia's mail services, and probably its IT department, are staffed by colossal idiots, because only a few days ago I received an email stating the following: Your {Description} with tracking number {TrackingNumber} has been received by the University and is b...

RexSueciae

Remind me when this is about to happen and I'll do my best to turn out for this.

RexSueciae

RexSueciae

The private discussion board is up. This is probably a stupid question, but how does one request access to this board? Click on "User Control Panel," then go to Usergroups, and apply to join. Once you're accepted, you'll be able to access the GSAC discussion subforum, which should be loca...

RexSueciae

Scores for the Warren Zevon packet, an unmitigated disaster punctuated by moments of levity: Ramapriya 20 Matt Weiner 20 Andrew Wang 20 Dan Passner 10 Trevor Davis 10 Mik Larsen 10 Mike Cheyne 10 Eric Douglass 10 Eric Mukherjee 10 Andrew Hart 10 Bernadette 10 Matt Jackson -5 I almost certainly left ...

RexSueciae

I don't think I've received anything yet--if the gift was not sent through FedEx or similar companies but was sent through the postal service, could my Secret Santa resend to P.O. Box 250 [same town, zip code, etc.] if possible? It occurs to me that my benefactor may have sent my gift to my address...

RexSueciae

I will be present and may possibly have a Warren Zevon themed packet of questions (no actual knowledge of Warren Zevon's music necessary). This is going to happen. I currently have 10 tossups of dubious quality (more may occur, depending on circumstances), which take the form of common links on the...

RexSueciae

I will be present and may possibly have a Warren Zevon themed packet of questions (no actual knowledge of Warren Zevon's music necessary).

RexSueciae

Given the way things seem to be going, you could probably enter a team on the waitlist right now and still get in.

RexSueciae

Roll of Honor 1. DJ Snake and Lil Jon - Turn Down For What: If this song isn't a timeless hit, I shall eat my hat. 2. Sia - Chandelier: Haunting. Beautiful. Stylish. 3. Katy Perry ft. Juicy J - Dark Horse: Powering a tossup on this song at the last HSNCT of my high school career was something of a ...

RexSueciae

I'll let New England people who know Harvard pass judgment on that, although the point that I intended to make was that HFT is probably not a good question set for circuit-building purposes. There are certainly enough good teams in the region to allow for a HFT mirror, so long as people make sure te...

RexSueciae

Isaac, the creation of a formal group for the purposes of promoting Maryland quizbowl is still completely unnecessary for the things you propose: running possible joint tournaments, deciding which question sets to mirror where and when, and creating a nice looking schedule can already be accomplishe...

RexSueciae

Hey, you have some misconceptions here. I did not include the name "FUNKADELIC" in any email or mail sent for that tournament, with the subject line being "It's Academic Tournament at Oakland Mills High School." For HFT, we mirrored it because there were few options left and mar...

RexSueciae

Actually, I was referring to several different incidents that I can remember--I'm not sure how useful it would be, but if you really wanted I could list off the various teams whose hosting faux pas stuck in my memory. (I won't be rude and mention the Oakland Mills BDAT mirror called "FUNKADELIC...

RexSueciae

To whomever received my name, I gave Fred an address that may not quite work out. If you've already sent the thing, it might be returned to you (my bad); if you haven't sent it yet, I sent Fred the address that I should have said, so contact him (sorry). I will definitely send a present to the perso...

RexSueciae

I think that an actual state quizbowl association in Maryland would be more effective in getting schools here to participate. A formal association probably won't be necessary. First and foremost, the circuit needs a few programs who are willing to regularly host tournaments in a competent and profe...

RexSueciae

I'm going to put it out there and say that things are probably not going to change a terribly great deal as compared to last year. There isn't yet a large enough collection of stats to make any but the most preliminary of predictions, and I think it's fair to say that the same top three or four team...

RexSueciae

I've got to say--given the circumstances, I actually found this tournament quite DEES-ent.

RexSueciae

― If you are an editor, and you receive a common-link tossup on "normal forms", you should have the author of the tossup flogged. You don't necessarily need to flog the person who wrote this tossup for DEES, but, you know, if it ever happens again. The Virginia packet did not contain a to...

RexSueciae

Given that teams usually have only 5 seconds or so to answer bonuses and such, and that tossups on elements rarely give information like "name this element with atomic number 10" until the very end of the question, I'm not sure of the utility of consulting a classroom poster during a game.

RexSueciae

This man responded to praise from Moses Seixas in his “Letter to the Hebrew Congregation at Newport.” This man said that “overgrown military establishments” are hostile to liberty in a speech explaining that North and South, and East and West, were in “unrestrained intercourse.” This man shamed reb...

RexSueciae

I am still honestly curious if Wheelerburg ever got a copy of this set and if their tournament ended up materializing. My guess is "no," but...

RexSueciae

Name: Vasa Clarke Email: vasa.rex.sueciae[at]gmail.com Present requests: A book or books (potentially but not limited to one of the following: history, Utilitarian philosophy, or I'll Sleep When I'm Dead: The Dirty Life and Times of Warren Zevon ) An autograph, memento, or corporeal relic of someone...

RexSueciae

hydrocephalitic listlessness wrote:Only one reader used paper packets at the tournament. Anyway, clearly at least one reader (John) saw my email!

Ah. So only the unprepared, laptop-less reader was issued paper packets (hence why only one reader managed to mix up several different rounds). Thank you for the clarification.

RexSueciae

There was a bonus that I think was in packet 6, but I'm not sure. The word "altruism" came up in the second part of the bonus, then was the answer to the third part. My teammate sitting next to me said "I think it's altruism". I replied to him with, "But they just said altr...

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