The Quizbowl Resource Center

a 24 hour quizbowl practice once allegedly undergone by Princeton under Jeff Hoppes. Whether this actually happened or not aside That's no allegation. That was brutal reality from late spring 2000. The setup: from about 1998 or so Princeton's lexicon had an entry for "latest time yet reached a...

I was going to ask whether this would be a great idea, considering that you are supposed to be there on someone else's dime to help them run a tournament... theirs. Logistically how are you going to do this (unless the NAQT folks wants to do it)? Just wondering. Everyone posting above has rationall...

Sure, as long as it happens before Sunday evening.

I think you're missing part of my point here... Why should we stop people from attempting to participate in what I view as a valuable activity for both students and institutions because some local tournaments might be run poorly at first? I didn't mean to imply that I was somehow against expanding ...

squareroot165 wrote:Is the Okavango River really obscure enough to be a lead-in for Botswana?

No, it's not.

Both the V1 and the Fourth Lateran strike me as perfectly good ideas for tossups, but probably too hard for Regionals.

a lot of quizbowl players have disdain for other student groups and campus activities personnel... and like organizing their travel, finances, and tournaments independently. This has a certain appeal and has worked relatively well over the years thanks to tremendous efforts of certain individuals i...

So this year, CBI undoes our efforts by direct contacting an administrator. Is this a neat trick others are experiencing? Isn't this how it's always been? College Bowl has a network of random student union employees who don't know anything. They are the market, not quizbowl teams. Princeton's club ...

grapesmoker wrote:the requirement of having a moderator and a scorekeeper in every room is very limiting for smaller clubs.

What Jerry said. Berkeley is a big club in a small region. And yet, we came very close to running out of staff and had to draft Gaius ten minutes before the tournament began.

username: btgreenwarbler

It has to be announced by the moderator before the match starts. You can't claim it retroactively.

That's NAQT rule F.5, specifying that the tossup be completed if the official clock is not visible to both teams. It's not some bizarre scenario banning the players from using their own clocks.

Anyone who would like to comment on specific history questions from the SCT is encouraged to email me. In the interest of producing ICT questions that are met with something more positive than rage...

Unofficial results from DI:

1. Stanford B
2. Stanford A
3. UC Irvine
4. UCLA

Bentley Like Beckham wrote: Some bonuses didn't even come close to having an easy part (the really hard Aztec myth bonus... for example.

Which bonus was this? The only one I remember hearing seemed perfectly reasonable.

I was hoping that some college players would talk about some interesting anecdotes/how he managed to do what he did etc. but maybe he was active before the players active today started playing? There are plenty of us around who have played against Subash. It's just that Subash c. 2003 was the most ...

I just took a look back at the reaction to the 2003 ICT on the Yahoo group. Joon Pahk's is a fair summary: "subash laid the smack down at that tournament like the smack has never been laid down before. you talk about sheahan's 7/7/0 game, fine, but subash had 8 power TUs in the finals alone, ag...

the battle of Lutzen. It's not fair to players with legitimate history knowledge to say "Joao" or "Torsten StÃ¥lhandske" in the first line of such a question. If there are that many players with "legitimate history knowledge" at your tournament, the right thing to do i...

more complex history cannon

Brief unofficial results:

1. Chicago A
2. Stanford A
3t. UC Irvine
3t. Berkeley A
5. Stanford B
6t. Berkeley B
6t. UCLA
8. Chicago B

(edit: fix lower bracket standings)

As Jerry mentions, starting with "what professional historians write about" is not the best way to compare the state of quizbowl history with what's taught in history departments. (Otherwise, I hope everyone is ready for a bonus on New Model Army dragoon captains to follow Jerry's tossup o...

Cultural history, however, is much more askable.

Quite often this material shows up in quizbowl outside of the history distribution. A lot of the material in John Brewer's The Pleasures of the Imagination comes up in quizbowl; just not under the label of "history."

This post comes with the following warnings attached: 1. I didn't play at this tournament and haven't yet seen the questions, so what I'm going to say is mostly high theory in reaction to previous comments. 2. If this tournament's distribution did in fact favor "17th-19th century kings, treatie...

Dwight's first two paragraphs are great, but I completely disagree with the third. many almanac clues (start point, end point, length, tributaries, etc.) result in no substantive cuing beyond what's already been established as the "possible answer space", For me only "length" fro...

You are now Marmora's Warbler, a typical warbler!

Typical? Those guys are a polyphyletic bunch of ten-primaried wannabes. Don't send a sylvid babbler, parrotbill, and/or ally to do a real warbler's job.

As for who powers geography questions, I realize that some of the 30+ year old people who are still playing quizbowl instead of just being in the masters tournaments for some reason had not been in school when the Geography Bee existed. For many people 25 and younger who are in quizbowl, this was p...

I cannot remember playing against someone who has had in depth knowledge on NAQT style geography questions (read: almanac questions). What do we mean by "almanac questions" here? I've always thought of these as those awful questions that begin with a leadin of the type "it's two hund...

the short story General Knowledge, Private Information by George MacDonald Fraser, in the short story collection McAuslan in the Rough... It's pretty awesome.

What laszlow said.

I can't play, but would be happy to help with editing.

testing

Canadian stuff was fairly well represented, but once again, it seemed to be concentrated in geography, AND for some reason the territories still received a disproportionate amount of geographical attention. I interrupt the lab science discussion to expand on this point. I haven't seen the questions...

ICT isn't the equivalent to Regionals, though. It's the equivalent to Nationals. I didn't mean to imply that it was. I just wanted to note that 1. ICT bonuses are harder than the proposed standard and 2. ICT bonuses are becoming more difficult. Yet we rarely (ever?) hear complaints that excessive b...

If new difficulty goals are met then you will hopefully see 85% of teams get 10 points per bonus, 50% of teams get 15 points per bonus, and 10% of teams get 20 points per bonus. Is ACF actually planning to write questions in accordance with these goals? Such questions would be not just easier than ...

Stupid almanac clues in geography questions: Didn't we have a big discussion about this after the ICT last year while trying to figure out how to make the overlarge geography distribution more tolerable? No one wants to hear clues like "60 mile long canal" or "1200 miles long." ...

California-Los Alamos (?) played in the Northeastern Conference at Yale.

Jeff Stewart playing solo.

I still think I would include the 1560 metres. If you're going to say it's the highest town in Europe, and it is also surprisingly low for that, then I think you should say how high it is. The reason for including the height would not be that I'd expect anybody to get it off that clue (though it's ...

if anyone really is dedicated enough to memorize the elevations of minor towns, then they deserve to be rewarded. Let me start by saying that I flatly disagree with this, because the precise elevation is substantially less significant than the other clues you mention about the town's literary, athl...

TOSSUP 6
At one thousand five hundred and sixty metres above sea level,

In addition to the things Jerry mentioned, it's never a good idea to begin a tossup with statistics like this, because it either wastes everyone's time or rewards memorization of almanacs.

And, if you're going to define canon expansion the way you are, then absolutely every packet should expand the canon in that it should have at least some unique clues. My whole point is that at harder-level tourneys, I'd like to see less of this type of expansion and more of the usual type of expan...

New Model Army is not canon expansion, it's a very easy question on something that gives itself away. As Chris mentions above, canon expansion is as much about the substance of the clues as about answer selection. This tossup's leadin is the first time I recall mention of Sprigge's Anglia Rediviva ...

As far as the avoidance of military stuff and biography, I think that these things account for such a large chunk of history knowledge that they really should come up quite a bit. As I've said before, I'm a big fan of rewarding people for the difficulty and effort it takes to acquire knowledge (pro...

If any of the people who were in charge of this tournament are reading this, please get in touch with me by email. There is interest in holding a west coast mirror tomorrow afternoon or evening.

BASQUE 2006 took place today at Berkeley and will continue tomorrow. Berkeley defeated Stanford 325-150 to win the Chicago Open mirror. The two teams split their matches during the double round robin. Third through fifth were Caltech and two UCLA teams, in some order I will determine when I dig out ...

Hi, I was just wondering what time we are supposed to show up.

Registration will be at 9 am tomorrow in 118 Barrows. Play should begin around 9:30.

For all those folks on the East and West coasts who are awaiting word on a possible mirrors,

I've just posted an announcement and field update for the west coast edition over in the BASQUE thread.

Yes, it's going to happen and here's an actual announcement... BASQUE, a mirror of the Chicago Open, will take place at Berkeley on Saturday, July 29th. Please email me (jthoppes (at) berkeley (dot) edu) to register. The base fee will be $100. Teams that bring buzzers will receive a $10 discount. Pa...

I find myself disagreeing with a number of points made here recently. Chris just dismissed geography and current events as "high school relics." I've made my argument about geography elsewhere here, but just what is it that bothers people about pyramidal, well-written current events? I've ...

Jeff, that's like having a tournament that contains 3/3 physics and me saying, "I don't see the problem with 3/3 physics because I can answer those questions." I did not mean to claim that NAQTâ€™s current distribution is ideally balanced or that every tournament should have more geograph...

A slightly more philosophical addendum to my post above, reflecting on timed rounds and the rewarding of knowledge. 1. On second thought, I just realized that there are indeed good reasons to abolish timed rounds, or at a minimum to keep the final tossup of the half on the clock, as NAQT already doe...

I shouldnâ€™t be wading into this discussion this late at night, but I just wanted to note that I enjoyed this tournament and thought that the question quality was a substantial improvement over the last ICT I attended (the 2004 version). It seems to me that complaints about the ICT resolve into a f...

was Odoacer really an Ostrogoth? I haven't seen this question, since I was moderating in D2 all day, but the short answer is "no." "...Odovacer and his brother Onulph. Their father, Edeco, is thought to have been a Hun, and their mother was a member of the probably Germanic people ca...

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