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Cheynem

Just eyeballing the bonuses in that packet, I'm not exactly sure what happened, but that packet also saw the lowest bonus conversion in the prelims at our site too. It was a packet written by Gautam and me (ostensibly originally written for Winter but never submitted) and not a late submission at all.

Cheynem

Here's the breakdown: Movies: Die Hard, Fritz Lang, Inglorious Basterds, The Hangover bonus (with Slowskys part) TV: Arrested Development, Monk, Mark Wahlberg TV Shows bonus, The Office bonus (with a sports part) Other: Board Games bonus Cross-Distro: Santa Claus (movies/TV), Morgan Spurlock bonus, ...

Cheynem

Discuss away. I'll let others break down their involvement. I wrote/edited all of the American history, pretty much all of the European history bonuses, and a large chunk of the trash. Bruce wrote/edited the European/world history tossups. Shantanu wrote quite a bit of the world history bonuses and ...

Cheynem

This was a very fun set. There's all sorts of coolness in this set, so play if it you get a chance--I guarantee you will have fun even if you suck at art like me. At our site, the one and only MICHAEL ARNOLD won it, followed by Rob Carson and Andrew Hart who tied for second. Paul Baker, a Wisconsin ...

Cheynem · Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: T-Party Midwest at Minnesota (02.13.2010) SUPER-DUPER

SUPER-DUPER

Cheynem

I'll probably be there around that time too, with history/trash, if people are interested.

Cheynem

Our A team will have fun winning every match by 500 points. TAKE NOTE, FANTASY TEAM OWNERS.

Edit: A joke, no offense to Northwestern or Carleton.

Cheynem

Who wrote the DII literary titles/baseball teams bonus? That's just the sort of crazy stuff I'd like to see a whole packet of.

Cheynem

Bumped to repeat Jerry's request. This isn't a two-team scrimmage, is it?

Cheynem

This is the same hotel that HSNCT was held at, right? If so, it has a delightfully whimsical layout.

Cheynem

Yeah, Minnesota police are Nazis when it comes to towing.

Cheynem

Andy's post about bonuses reminds me that I tend to like some of the more creative NAQT lit bonuses and have tried experimenting in that style with some of my own questions for other tournaments as of late. I think this would actually be one way of alleviating the (work/author/character or work/auth...

Cheynem

What do I like (or rather don't mind staying the same) about a NAQT format? That's a good question. I would say: 1. The length of tossups. 2. The different distribution (I'm okay with NAQT having more current events, I wouldn't mind seeing trash go down) 3. The somewhat indiosyncratic answer selecti...

Cheynem

Cry the beeeeeeeeeloved meme

Cheynem

I have no problem with trash questions, and provided they are well written, I'm actually okay with NAQT's distro having that proportion of trash questions. I think one of the aesthetic problems with cross-disciplinary things is just the sort of sickening feeling that real academic knowledge was not ...

Cheynem

Thanks, Mike. Looking forward to the tournament even though I probably won't answer a single question. As that woman in the Focus Factor commercial says, "If they're giving it away for free, it must be good."

Cheynem

That would seem to make the most sense, although I haven't been in conversation with Mike. Technology would be the sticking point here, I suppose, as we'll need a projector.

Cheynem

I certainly do agree that shorter tossups are difficult to pull off, Ted. I think though this reflects more of a general quizbowl attitude which needs to change as opposed to an inability by writers in general. I generally find nothing wrong with 6-8 line tossups, though--by "shorter" toss...

Cheynem

Why do we need the Comedy Central clue there? Putting aside the fact that you wrote this quickly off a hypothetical example, I can honestly say that I don't like these "Wikipedia Disambiguation Tossups," but it's tolerable if you threw out the random trash clue, in my opinion.

Cheynem

I think shorter tossup length requires that better care be taken to include lead-ins. When you write a 12 line long monster tossup, you can include some tidbits that practically no one will buzz on. A 6 line tossup can't afford to waste time with that. This does not mean that a 6 line tossup is a ba...

Cheynem

EDIT: Jerry is right (see below). Please come to this event and hopefully the difficulty is appropriate.

Cheynem

Yeah, this tossup sucks. I've seen a few Woody Allen films and read a bit about his works. He's a good dude to tossup, being a very important American filmmaker. Since I don't know what kind of font he uses in his credits and I had to parse that "Interiors" was a film title and not a phras...

Cheynem

Deaccessioning is actually one of those really cool but offbeat things that makes a fine Miscellaneous bonus. It rewards a certain level of academic study (I studied it in my master's program and did it when I worked in a museum) that doesn't pop up in the other forms of the distribution (nor should...

Cheynem

What was the meta question again?

Cheynem

I actually have no problem with the question length (for tossups) and I really don't have a problem with the time to answer thing.

Cheynem

This is another one in which I think there is enough material there perhaps for an interesting bonus (on like, Loki and other things), but as a tossup it just doesn't work. Unless you think rewarding random knowledge of one Agatha Christie novel or of the customs of the Savoy Hotel is great, then, w...

Cheynem

As an educator, I've found that the simplest way to get students to shut up is to attempt to relay important information to them. Invariably, a student will realize what is going on and will begin a chain reaction of telling other students to shut up. Simply beginning to read the next question, in m...

Cheynem

It's not just Friday, either. If ICT is a little ways away, teams might have to leave on Thursday! Also, as a grad student, missing "one day" is usually unacceptable. Many grad classes meet only once a week, so that's like missing a whole week of classes for a non academic reason. Grad cla...

Cheynem

I completely agree with Hannah, although I don't really have a problem with asking for Alex--he's a pretty famous main character.

Cheynem

Someone makes perhaps odd choices in a poll!

Cheynem

I think imposing something like "Ten Minutes," but at least 20 questions, would be a good start. I agree with Marnold in that I like how the clock keeps things moving, but I have played at tournaments that did not have this problem without the use of clocks.

Cheynem

Yeah, I've watched an entire documentary on Jack Johnson and taken a sports history course, and that was pretty tricky. I think the last part (Jeffries) was a good hard part, as that Great White Hope is legitimately important. But Tommy Burns...that's pushing it.

Cheynem

I've sort of outlined my feelings in the other thread, but to summarize: 1. I think cross-disciplinary works if there are legitimate clues from various disciplines to begin with. There are a number of tossups (good ones) that could utilize a mix of, say, literary/historical/art clues. And that would...

Cheynem

To me, cross distributional things are a good idea and should be retained at NAQT. Like asking about a city using a mixture of literary, history, and geographical clues is fine. It's the cross distributional things that are just stacked in favor of one thing that are dumb--tell me, if you didn't kno...

Cheynem

The Medusa tossup isn't really cross distributional though, it's just dumb. A history tossup on the Medusa is pretty much not answerable by someone who doesn't know about the painting. So you require some art knowledge off the bat. But unless you've like studied the hell out of the backstory of that...

Cheynem

Yeah, it was well run and at least on the Div I side (don't know about Div II), moderators did a great job. Even Mr. Weikle who didn't have a scorekeeper a lot of the time.

Cheynem

This tournament could also have benefited from just calmly examining answer lines and asking the question "Is this is a good idea?" Who in their right mind thinks A HISTORY TOSSUP ON THE DAMN SHIP THE MEDUSA is a good idea?!

Cheynem

The problem with a lot of these ridiculous bonus parts is that they become okay or better bonus parts with one, VERY OBVIOUS switch. That bonus with three random-ass Mamet films? What the hell?! Was "Mamet" as a part that damn hard for whoever wrote this question? How about that bonus aski...

Cheynem

Removing the clock would also (hopefully) allow some more room to put information in bonus parts (or, although I don't mind the shorter length, tossups). I hate clocks. They're stupid. What's the justification here? Aside from pure capriciousness and some compulsion to "move things along" ...

Cheynem

Yeah, last year having ICT on Friday night forced me to pay (OUT OF MY OWN POCKET) hundreds of dollars to buy a plane ticket to fly out on Friday as I could not leave Thursday as I was giving a grad school presentation. Even more galling is the fact that the matches on Friday night take up relativel...

Cheynem

I don't think me, individually, needs to be able to answer every question in a packet per se. I'm not a good music player, so I recognize I won't be able to answer most of those questions. I do think it's not out of the question for me to have at least heard of 95% of the answer lines, which is what...

Cheynem

It was after the snowpocalypse. They had to get to the SCT power station.

Cheynem

Awesome--snack.

Cheynem

Ironically, University of Illinois was my second choice for a doctoral program. I could have experienced graduate assistant strikes and massive budget slashes, as opposed to just one of the two at Minnesota.

Cheynem

I assume he could still show up at lunch and play TIDUS, or perhaps staff.

Cheynem

Bad Andy. Good T-Party.

Cheynem

Are you in a time crunch for this? I have no time at all for the next month and a half or so, but around March 15th or so, I might have some time to work on it.

Cheynem

This raises the question of what sort of knowledge the religious distro is meant to reward. Since I only have personal and intellectual experience with Judeo-Christian stuff, let me speak to that. On one hand, I could write a tossup by taking a biblical book, picking out clues, incidents, and quotes...

Cheynem

Having written for the set and thus gotten a chance to look at some of the questions, I have mixed feelings. I don't want to sound too negative, as there were quite a few fine questions, but these are some general problems which should be reviewed for the next edition: 1. Questions are too long. Unl...

Cheynem

That's a good point, Bruce. I've been kicking around writing a Bible set for a while out of both personal (for those who may not be aware, I'm a practicing Christian) and quizbowl reasons. One challenge here is that such a set tends to become two things: either more of a philosophical set which uses...

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