The Quizbowl Resource Center

A Dim-Witted Saboteur

I would strongly prefer this being in August, but I realize I'm likely close to the only one

A Dim-Witted Saboteur

I would love to just once read a questions discussion thread where the players who didn't actually write the set respond to the editors who did write a set that makes an honest effort at being good quizbowl, worth one's time and money, without a list of proclamations that the clues are BAD AND MISP...

A Dim-Witted Saboteur

Update: This is in 5 days, and we'd like to see as many teams as possible register. Please do so by Friday morning; I plan to close the field then.

A Dim-Witted Saboteur

This set was probably my favorite that I've played this year, and it left me with a ton of things I'm excited to learn about, which is what sets should do. As mentioned in the intro post, Jason's history leadins (and questions in general) were consistently engaging, even when the material he was wri...

A Dim-Witted Saboteur

I found it a bit iffy that a history tossup on holy Roman emperors named Otto and an art tossup on Charlemagne were in the same packet. The Castiglione clue in the Qianlong tossup was non-specific; Castiglione served as a court painter to three different Chinese emperors, including the one I negged ...

A Dim-Witted Saboteur

I was 13 when this happened. I don't know why continuing to commemorate Watkins is necessary, especially in this weirdly celebratory tone. Cheating is bad, but I'm sure people are aware of this and that doesn't strike me as a terribly valid excuse to post. If this is just a Guy Remembering exercise...

A Dim-Witted Saboteur

I was 13 when this happened. I don't know why continuing to commemorate Watkins is necessary, especially in this weirdly celebratory tone. Cheating is bad, but I'm sure people are aware of this and that doesn't strike me as a terribly valid excuse to post. If this is just a Guy Remembering exercise,...

A Dim-Witted Saboteur

Given multiple mirror cancellations, our team felt it was fair to offer a second online mirror of Spartan Housewrite for March 30. The fee structure will be $100 per team, payable via venmo (strongly preferred) to Jakob Myers or by a check written to the MSU Academic Competition club (once again, co...

A Dim-Witted Saboteur

A quick update: Jakob has offered to run a closed Discord mirror on March 30th. I am staffing a high school tournament that day. Him and I want at least 8 closed HS or college teams to sign up. Please email me and cc him to do so. If we get eight teams in the next week or so, I will allow this mirr...

A Dim-Witted Saboteur

x-post from the matchmaking thread:

I made a team formation spreadsheet:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... sp=sharing
If you have formed a team, please register that information therein.

A Dim-Witted Saboteur

I made a team formation spreadsheet:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... sp=sharing
If you have formed a team, please register that information therein.

A Dim-Witted Saboteur

A fairly common trend in quizbowl is to tag some of the harder questions for the finals of a tournament. If I recall, this got some discussion at one point and there was some pushback against doing it, but I don't remember if that went anywhere. This isn't related to any specific tournament, but I'...

A Dim-Witted Saboteur

I'll co-sign on all of Seth's posts regarding the linguistics; Chomsky-centricity is a real problem with the way QB asks about linguistics that I'd like to see something done about. He is an influential figure, yes, but not influential enough that he should be coming up in half of all questions. Als...

A Dim-Witted Saboteur

A few impressions -science seemed easy in general, especially bio -This tournament's tossups felt below EFT in difficulty, but bonuses, especially hard parts, did not. Who were parts like "Zazie" (a book that no one in our field had heard of besides Mitch McCullar, who still did not conver...

A Dim-Witted Saboteur

Habitat_Against_Humanity wrote: ↑Sat Mar 16, 2019 12:16 am
An Economic Ignoramus wrote: ↑Fri Mar 15, 2019 11:49 pm Shill time: NASAT is notably available for mirroring as a summer open and is not terribly difficult!

I honestly didn't know that. Where 'bouts?

Keep your eyes peeled in the coming months for a mirror site near you!

A Dim-Witted Saboteur

Shill time: NASAT is notably available for mirroring as a summer open and is not terribly difficult!

A Dim-Witted Saboteur

I'll have more thoughts later on, but for now, here are a few extremely scattershot observations that hopefully other people can build on: I honestly couldn't imagine something like that Tricon Kirk Jing question happening today. References to QB "notables" in questions for academic tourna...

A Dim-Witted Saboteur

This is about the time of year I posted this thread last year. If you're a current high school senior, post here once you know what your plans are!

A Dim-Witted Saboteur

Matthew Lehmann
Vishwa Shanmugam
Alston Boyd
Berkeley A
Alt: Dylan Minarik

A Dim-Witted Saboteur

iarehavethestupid wrote: ↑Tue Mar 05, 2019 1:27 pm Are all/most of Norman Davies's books good for quizbowl?

Yes. Europe and Vanished Kingdoms (in addition to the aforementioned God's Playground) are both pretty good reads and very clue-dense. Highly recommend.

A Dim-Witted Saboteur

Sjenk225 wrote: ↑Sun Mar 03, 2019 9:55 pm This one's ridiculously catchy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ

Epic.

A Dim-Witted Saboteur

In light of the recent kerfuffle surrounding tournaments geared for newer players, I would like to issue an addendum to the eligibility of players for this tournament, whose purpose is, per the editors, "to provide an accessible tournament for new college quiz bowl players that will still be e...

A Dim-Witted Saboteur

a) http://hsquizbowl.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=21943 for the additional reason that if you don't, teams that do not belong at your novice-oriented tournament will attend it and put up >25 ppb against clubs that acted in good faith and sent actual less experienced players (Chicago, etc.) b) ...

A Dim-Witted Saboteur

The Billiards Fool wrote: ↑Tue Feb 26, 2019 6:31 pm Packet 12, bonus 19 incorrectly states that Marc-Andre Hamelin finished second at the 2015 International Chopin Piano Competition; it was Charles Richard-Hamelin who finished second.

Good eye; that'll be fixed in future editions.

A Dim-Witted Saboteur

16. For 10 points each, answer the following about the historical works of the Comte de Volney in 19th century literature: [10] In one novel, Felix De Lacey teaches Safie, a woman from this modern-day country , French using Volney's Ruins of Empires. Another woman from this country, Haydee, helps...

A Dim-Witted Saboteur

For the leadin to the Blake tossup, describing Stedman's Suriname as anti-slavery is a bit suspect. He attacks some of the more egregious practices of Dutch slave masters in places, but he expresses his attitude that slavery is biologically pre-ordained for black people and condemns the maroons he w...

A Dim-Witted Saboteur

Just drawing attention to the fact that Columbia A is indeed flying to this because it's the only PIANO date that our whole team can play, and if MSU and Chicago can be roped in this there's suddenly a crazy strong pre-nats field, so I'm gonna need you all to FREE YOUR MINDS about a Sunday event an...

A Dim-Witted Saboteur

Myers/Borecki's lineup:
Jonathan Tran
Vishwa Shanmugam
Matthew Lehmann

Berkeley A

Alternate: Michael Borecki

A Dim-Witted Saboteur

Is there any word on the status of the Brown site? I've heard it was cancelled, but whatever that status is, it would be nice to get word from NAQT on it.

A Dim-Witted Saboteur

The Abydos Helicopter wrote: ↑Wed Jan 23, 2019 8:45 amAda Kaleh is a meme.

A Dim-Witted Saboteur

I agree with you on the Spanish Civil War and Tasmania tossups. I will, however, dispute the idea that Ryukyu being a difficult EU4 achievement that people post about a lot should make cluing it in a tossup on a historical topic to which it was very important haram. I'll also defend veches and the B...

A Dim-Witted Saboteur

Between the Discord mirror and the in-person mirror, this set went through very extensive revisions. We'd like to thank everyone who left comments on the set in the past few weeks, especially Will Alston, Jason Golfinos, Ryan Rosenberg, and Mike Bentley. Thanks are also due to Billy Busse for steppi...

A Dim-Witted Saboteur

Everyman wrote: ↑Sat Jan 19, 2019 9:56 pm Tewkesbury is north of Gloucester; I believe the bonus part claimed the opposite.

That's my bad; I'll fix it. Thanks!

A Dim-Witted Saboteur

Matthew Lehmann
Vishwa Shanmugam
Alston Boyd
Penn
Alt: Boyang Jiao

A Dim-Witted Saboteur

This project is now being integrated with QBNotify to tell registered staffers about local tournaments. If anyone has suggestions on an efficient way to notify tournament hosts of available staffers, I'd be open to hearing them. For now, name and email information on local staffers is available to t...

A Dim-Witted Saboteur

Cheynem wrote: ↑Wed Jan 09, 2019 11:28 pm A number of schools in those fields already registered to go elsewhere for SCT (Illinois and Purdue, for one).

Subtracting MSU and Illinois from last year's Northwestern SCT D1 field leaves just 4 Chicago teams, which doesn't sound like the most optimal field to me.

A Dim-Witted Saboteur

Having sites at Northwestern and Michigan both strikes me as not the best idea, especially given that Northwestern SCT's Division 1 had 6 teams from 3 schools attend, at least one of which the Michigan site is more convenient for. It's roughly a 4 hour drive between the two, and all the teams that w...

A Dim-Witted Saboteur

I'm not mad that three questions were bad, or even that a good portion of the tournament was bad. Lots of tournaments are bad. If you read what I said, I'm mad that the editors required that hosts take advanced stats, and then (read closely, since this is the important part) did nothing with them! ...

A Dim-Witted Saboteur

Mitski

A Dim-Witted Saboteur

Mitski
Lucy Dacus

A Dim-Witted Saboteur

#1: Mitski - Be the Cowboy
#2: Pusha-T - Daytona

#7: Lucy Dacus - Historian
#1: Janelle Monáe - Dirty Computer

A Dim-Witted Saboteur

OK Will and Jacob are correct that I definitely had too narrow of a view of what "literary criticism" is in my initial post. You should read the essays at the beginnings of editions of novels. I'll say, however, that whether pursuing secondary literature as a matter of first resort in lear...

A Dim-Witted Saboteur

Oops; I was under the impression that a call to writers had already been posted in this thread. If you're interested in writing, email me at [email protected] or Fred at [email protected].

A Dim-Witted Saboteur

I'd advocate learning the canon in terms of plots, character names, etc. before you start delving into literary criticism. My entry point into literature was noticing topics I was annoyed at getting beaten to and just reading either the works themselves or the wikipedia articles on them. Later, I st...

A Dim-Witted Saboteur

Here were the notes I took that I also posted in the Discord channel: • General ○ Agreed with the sentiment that literature and arts were for the most part pretty good ○ History as a bit hit or miss. There were some tossup answer choices that seemed a little on the difficult side for regular diffic...

A Dim-Witted Saboteur

#1: Mitski - Be the Cowboy vs. #4: Car Seat Headrest - Twin Fantasy #2: Snail Mail - Lush vs. #3: Beach House - 7 #1: Kids See Ghosts - Kids See Ghosts vs. #5: JPEGMAFIA - Veteran #2: Pusha-T - Daytona vs. #3: Noname - Room 25 #1: Kacey Musgraves - Golden Hour vs. #4: U.S. Girls - In a Poem Unlimite...

A Dim-Witted Saboteur

Whoever got me a copy of the Rukhnama because I asked for "a book by a non-European author that I don't own": you're very funny. I already own one.
EDIT: Also thanks for A Grain of Wheat, Conor!

A Dim-Witted Saboteur

Ray does have 5 of the 11 Indian films listed on TSPDT. For the other directors: Guru Dutt - 1 results (Scattegories '13; Pyaasa was mentioned without Dutt's name at the 2018 NSC) Ritwik Ghatak - 0 results Mehboob Khan - 0 results (Mother India was clued in Scattegories 2) Ramesh Sippy - 0 results ...

A Dim-Witted Saboteur

About the Idaho question: The Basque clue appears to be inaccurate. http://nabasque.eus/us_basque_population.html, a website about the Basque diaspora, says that Winnemuca, Nevada claims that honor. Wikipedia seconds that claim (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basque_Americans#Population), but points...

A Dim-Witted Saboteur

If you mean Bollywood as in "Indian popular film", the Satantango comparison doesn't really hold water; they'd be in different parts of the distribution (art vs. trash). I'd also be interested in seeing an expansion in Nollywood content but recognize basically no one would convert that.

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