Search found 1364 matches

by vinteuil
Thu Apr 11, 2019 11:03 am
Forum: College area archives
Topic: ICT format and seeding discussion
Replies: 74
Views: 45204

Re: The ICT format is awful and unfair (or: why I now play for the "Ann Arbor Campus, University of Michigan")

D-value overranks very good regular-difficulty teams who don't scale all that well. This is a well-known problem trying to evaluate teams from regular season stats, and I'm not sure there's a good statistical way to resolve it in the absence of detailed stats. I don't think using the midseason poll...
by vinteuil
Wed Apr 10, 2019 8:18 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: ICT format and seeding discussion
Replies: 74
Views: 45204

Re: The ICT format is awful and unfair (or: why I now play for the "Ann Arbor Campus, University of Michigan")

McGill: 11th on the midseason poll, 12th by D-value (or 13th, if we assume that Florida at full strength would have had a higher D-value), 4th by A-value. Based on those numbers it doesn't seem crazy to me that they'd be a low 2-seed (close to 12th overall) and have to face a strong 3-seed. Are the...
by vinteuil
Tue Apr 09, 2019 1:06 am
Forum: College area archives
Topic: 2019 ICT DI general discussion and thanks
Replies: 27
Views: 2926

Re: 2019 ICT DI general discussion and thanks

I was disappointed in this set, which I thought represented a real step backward from previous years. In something like descending order of severity: Too many tossups had horribly misplaced leadins ("___ parametric down-conversion," Come Sunday for Ellington, Cassiodorus (and then Boethius...
by vinteuil
Fri Apr 05, 2019 8:42 am
Forum: College area archives
Topic: 2019 PIANO/MO Thanks and General Discussion
Replies: 50
Views: 9790

Re: 2019 PIANO/MO Thanks and General Discussion

If I were writing this tossup, I would say "A 1980 study of sculptors who worked with this material discusses how they would negotiate 'conditions of trade' with their financiers as part of an economic 'client-patron' relationship whose existence was theorized by Michael Baxandall." so th...
by vinteuil
Tue Apr 02, 2019 8:51 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: 2019 PIANO/MO Thanks and General Discussion
Replies: 50
Views: 9790

Re: 2019 PIANO/MO Thanks and General Discussion

I'll take Jakob Burckhardt as an example. Say, as a writer, you come across a very juicy and interesting Burckhardt clue. You start to think of the ways that you could work that clue into a tossup. You might think of a historical or intellectual narrative or conversation into which the clue slots, ...
by vinteuil
Mon Apr 01, 2019 9:46 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: 2019 PIANO/MO Specific Question Discussion
Replies: 110
Views: 292280

Re: 2019 PIANO/MO Specific Question Discussion

The Swiss history question seemed quite difficult: Jacob Burckhart has been a hard part of a few bonuses, but that's all of the clues after power until cantons basically - this seems like an immense drop in difficulty. Maybe he's very famous among history students/historians, but another clue that ...
by vinteuil
Mon Apr 01, 2019 2:51 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: 2019 PIANO/MO Specific Question Discussion
Replies: 110
Views: 292280

Re: 2019 PIANO/MO Specific Question Discussion

1.82 wrote: Mon Apr 01, 2019 12:14 pmas will anyone who knows what municipality I live in.
For what it's worth, the only person who mentioned this to me (a very good geography player who knows you pretty well) said that the connection only clicked after they got the tossup, i.e. they did not buzz on this knowledge.
by vinteuil
Sun Mar 31, 2019 11:18 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: 2019 PIANO/MO Specific Question Discussion
Replies: 110
Views: 292280

Re: 2019 PIANO/MO Specific Question Discussion

For the bulk of the English speaking readership, Stoner was catapulted to fame via the NYRB publication, whose preface/introduction discussed at length the argument for Stoner as a "hero," as labeled by the author in a later interview. I don't want to sound too dismissive here, but have I...
by vinteuil
Sun Mar 31, 2019 8:04 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: 2019 PIANO/MO Thanks and General Discussion
Replies: 50
Views: 9790

Re: 2019 PIANO/MO Thanks and General Discussion

And I might be mistaken, or it might be an unfortunate result of randomization, but I remember literally zero photography questions from the 10 packets we played. This is my single biggest regret from this tournament—a bad mistake that I thought I'd put something in the answerline spreadsheet to pr...
by vinteuil
Sun Mar 31, 2019 2:15 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: ANNOUNCEMENT: 2019 PIANO/Minnesota Open
Replies: 89
Views: 49338

Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: 2019 PIANO/Minnesota Open

This set is now clear and will be posted later today after typos and last-minute errata are fixed.
by vinteuil
Sun Mar 31, 2019 9:27 am
Forum: College area archives
Topic: 2019 PIANO/MO Errata
Replies: 35
Views: 3819

Re: 2019 PIANO/MO Errata

Re: top quark: I did edit the leadin to discuss axigluons to totally invalidate B mesons as being acceptable for that clue (I had initially thought that "asymmetry in producing matter vs. antimatter" was different enough from "oscillating between matter and antimatter" to deter ...
by vinteuil
Sat Mar 30, 2019 9:25 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: 2019 PIANO/MO Errata
Replies: 35
Views: 3819

Re: 2019 PIANO/MO Errata

I told Adam about this one already, but Vestibular schwannomas (also known as acoustic neuromas, acoustic schwannomas, acoustic neurinomas, or vestibular neurilemomas) (cf here: https://www.uptodate.com/contents/vestibular-schwannoma-acoustic-neuroma) I've also heard that the top quark TU will be m...
by vinteuil
Sat Mar 30, 2019 8:53 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: 2019 PIANO/MO Specific Question Discussion
Replies: 110
Views: 292280

Re: 2019 PIANO/MO Specific Question Discussion

Could I see the TU on Alyosha from Karamazov? I negged very early in with Stoner on the hero/preface clue which I thought was a reasonable thing to answer. In an authorial preface, this character is called a “hero” despite being “a figure of an indefinite, indeterminate sort” and an “odd man.” This...
by vinteuil
Tue Mar 26, 2019 6:32 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: 2019 PIANO/MO Specific Question Discussion
Replies: 110
Views: 292280

Re: 2019 PIANO/MO Specific Question Discussion

Although there are a few clues I felt were misplaced/ bonus parts I felt were too difficult, I trust the editors of this set (and most sets) to have done their due diligence and made a deliberate choice with regard to clue placement, and think that that trust should be more generally extended. (I'm...
by vinteuil
Tue Mar 26, 2019 1:15 am
Forum: College area archives
Topic: 2019 PIANO/MO Specific Question Discussion
Replies: 110
Views: 292280

Re: 2019 PIANO/MO Specific Question Discussion

John Ketzkorn wrote: Tue Mar 26, 2019 1:00 am Also re: a metaphysics discussion with Brad McLain -- substances was probably too hard.
Would you or Brad care to enlighten us on this point? (It's not exactly easy to go far with Aristotelian—and thus a lot of later—metaphysics without learning a thing or two about this topic.)
by vinteuil
Mon Mar 25, 2019 8:34 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: 2019 PIANO/MO Errata
Replies: 35
Views: 3819

Re: 2019 PIANO/MO Errata

The question on Orthodox Jews didn't accept our team's answer of "Haredi." Unless we misunderstood the clues, I think our answer, or the phrase "ultra Orthodox" are in fact the only correct answers - most religious Jews in Israel are what we would call Orthodox, and they still g...
by vinteuil
Mon Mar 25, 2019 8:21 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: 2019 PIANO/MO Specific Question Discussion
Replies: 110
Views: 292280

Re: 2019 PIANO/MO Specific Question Discussion

Loved the idea of a tossup on harmoniums, but weren't you describing an indian instrument with an accordian part pretty early in the tossup? Unless it has changed since I last touched it, there's no indication that it has an accordion part in the clues about Hindustani music, merely that it can't d...
by vinteuil
Mon Mar 25, 2019 7:50 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: 2019 PIANO/MO Thanks and General Discussion
Replies: 50
Views: 9790

Re: 2019 PIANO/MO Thanks and General Discussion

I would have liked to have heard more myth, and would be interested to know how many of the "religious texts, myth, and legends" actually went to myth, and how many were on "religious texts". I feel like religious texts are in some ways a very different category from myth. We en...
by vinteuil
Mon Mar 25, 2019 4:23 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: 2019 PIANO/MO Thanks and General Discussion
Replies: 50
Views: 9790

Re: 2019 PIANO/MO Thanks and General Discussion

I hereby announce the formation of the Lazy Literature Question Society, dedicated to the promotion of basic, in-depth tossups on single works and authors which a lot of people in the field have read. As I am thoroughly unqualified to head such an organization for a large number of reasons, we are ...
by vinteuil
Mon Mar 25, 2019 1:49 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: 2019 PIANO/MO Specific Question Discussion
Replies: 110
Views: 292280

Re: 2019 PIANO/MO Specific Question Discussion

Also some of these tossups could've been reworked to be non-country, non-language answerlines: Japan Russian (literature) Switzerland Argentina Czech Republic Egypt Greek Barcelona Nigeria Scotland Hebrew Australia Polish South Korea Almost none of these tossups draw mostly from a single answerline...
by vinteuil
Mon Mar 25, 2019 1:38 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: 2019 PIANO/MO Thanks and General Discussion
Replies: 50
Views: 9790

Re: 2019 PIANO/MO Thanks and General Discussion

While I thought this set was very interesting, and I commend all the writers for taking the time to help put together this novel-length set, I think there was far too many country and language tossups (not that they're inherently bad, but this felt lazy). I counted 18 non-history country and langua...
by vinteuil
Mon Mar 25, 2019 9:19 am
Forum: College area archives
Topic: 2019 PIANO/MO Thanks and General Discussion
Replies: 50
Views: 9790

Re: 2019 PIANO/MO Thanks and General Discussion

Another issue one of my teammates noticed was that a few major myth systems (Finnic, Welsh) simply didn't come up (if questions about this are in packets or bonuses we didn't play, apologies in advance). Indeed, neither came up (although the Kalevala was namechecked as "fakelore"!). I thi...
by vinteuil
Mon Mar 25, 2019 9:11 am
Forum: College area archives
Topic: 2019 PIANO/MO Errata
Replies: 35
Views: 3819

Re: 2019 PIANO/MO Errata

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. Yikes! 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...
by vinteuil
Thu Mar 21, 2019 12:35 am
Forum: Quizbowl History Forum
Topic: Happy 6th Watkinsgate Anniversary!
Replies: 18
Views: 18213

Re: Happy 6th Watkinsgate Anniversary!

And because of Andy's insane knowledge of Thailand, I personally will be celebrating by eating Thai food every March 20th. gave me an oddly unsettled feeling when I read it that I've been struggling to put into words. Obviously you can do and eat whatever you want, but it's just kind of uncomfortab...
by vinteuil
Tue Mar 19, 2019 12:07 pm
Forum: Community Discussion
Topic: How We Treat Each Other: 2019
Replies: 32
Views: 26375

Re: How We Treat Each Other: 2019

OK, but do you socialize with these people outside of quizbowl? Do you ever try to introduce your quizbowl friends to non-quizbowl friends? I don't think I'm wrong to say it's extremely rare for quizbowl people to drop each other a line when they're in town and get a group together to go to a museu...
by vinteuil
Mon Mar 18, 2019 4:42 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: Harder Questions in the Finals?
Replies: 11
Views: 6870

Re: Harder Questions in the Finals?

I believe that the usual justification for this practice is that the better teams play each other in the finals (and playoffs) and thus harder answerlines are less likely to go dead in matches that will decide final placement. (With the perverse side "benefit" that more tossups go dead in ...
by vinteuil
Fri Mar 15, 2019 9:33 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: Where are you going next year? (Collegiate 2019)
Replies: 37
Views: 27861

Re: Where are you going next year? (Collegiate 2019)

As my signature, online activity, and malevolent demeanor have indicated, I am joining the Evil Empire for a PhD.
by vinteuil
Wed Mar 13, 2019 5:15 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: 2019 PIANO/MO Specific Question Discussion
Replies: 110
Views: 292280

Re: 2019 PIANO/MO Specific Question Discussion

Karansebes Schnapps Vendor wrote: Wed Mar 13, 2019 4:44 pm
-The replacement tu about _storms_ didn't seem to handle buzzes about floods during the Their Eyes Were Watching God clue
This is now fixed—stupid of me not to think of that buzz!
by vinteuil
Wed Mar 13, 2019 12:56 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: 2019 PIANO/MO Specific Question Discussion
Replies: 110
Views: 292280

Re: 2019 PIANO/MO Specific Question Discussion

Could I see the Rimbaud tossup please? I've read The Drunken Boat several times but none of the lines were actually ringing a bell. Was it clued anywhere other than the FTP? If it was then I probably just did a poor job of remembering the poem. The Drunken Boat was only clued at the end: A poem by ...
by vinteuil
Mon Mar 11, 2019 12:58 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: 2019 PIANO/MO Thanks and General Discussion
Replies: 50
Views: 9790

Re: 2019 PIANO/MO Thanks and General Discussion

As another high schooler who played this set, I thoroughly enjoyed it. While it was extremely challenging, I still enjoyed hearing tossups on topics I've never even heard of. People posting about "core Western painting" here: are you not including tossups like Book of Kells and Pompeii? (...
by vinteuil
Mon Mar 11, 2019 12:25 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: 2019 PIANO/MO Specific Question Discussion
Replies: 110
Views: 292280

Re: 2019 PIANO/MO Specific Question Discussion

"Covering space", while enjoyable-- very nice to have a pure math TU not emphasizing history, 'who proved what result in number theory', etc.-- seems too hard, even for e.g. nats/open difficulty. It's been too long since my math education ended but I didn't take Topology and while I vague...
by vinteuil
Mon Mar 11, 2019 12:19 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: 2019 PIANO/MO Specific Question Discussion
Replies: 110
Views: 292280

Re: 2019 PIANO/MO Specific Question Discussion

Examples of the former which come to mind are the tossup on miniatures , which said "specific word required" (making me and other players think you needed an Arabic term or some specific illustration pattern) and then had clues from several different things which I don't think uniquely pi...
by vinteuil
Mon Mar 11, 2019 9:40 am
Forum: College area archives
Topic: 2019 PIANO/MO Thanks and General Discussion
Replies: 50
Views: 9790

Re: 2019 PIANO/MO Thanks and General Discussion

Also -- I think I heard three math TUs in 12 rounds? it's disappointing to have not even got like 0.5/0.5 math. Has anybody ever done this amount for a non-high school set? I believe that in the past .5/.5 has been proposed as a theoretical upper bound. (We had 5/5 pure and applied math, of which I...
by vinteuil
Mon Mar 11, 2019 9:13 am
Forum: College area archives
Topic: 2019 PIANO/MO Errata
Replies: 35
Views: 3819

Re: 2019 PIANO/MO Errata

ansonberns wrote: Mon Mar 11, 2019 7:54 am The bonus part on Oscar and Lucinda said that it was written by Miles Franklin instead of Peter Carey, which caused us to get it wrong.
This was an (egregious!) error introduced in proofreading on Saturday night, and has now been corrected.
by vinteuil
Mon Mar 11, 2019 12:45 am
Forum: College area archives
Topic: 2019 PIANO/MO Specific Question Discussion
Replies: 110
Views: 292280

Re: 2019 PIANO/MO Specific Question Discussion

-Ferrara: Maybe my least favorite tossup in the set. Maybe I'm just salty because I read HTTB five years ago and couldn't remember where it was set so I just buzzed and said Florence, but this tossup really didn't need to exist. "Ferrara" literally appears once in My Last Duchess and isn'...
by vinteuil
Mon Mar 11, 2019 12:20 am
Forum: College area archives
Topic: ANNOUNCEMENT: 2019 PIANO/Minnesota Open
Replies: 89
Views: 49338

Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: 2019 PIANO/Minnesota Open

Courtesy of Matt Jackson, here are a few conclusions we've come to about how the set is playing, difficulty-wise: bonuses are noticeably easier to 20 than the most recent Nats, though seemingly not easier to 30 and maybe slightly harder to 30 lumping 15s and 10s, tossups are gotten at about the same...
by vinteuil
Mon Mar 11, 2019 12:13 am
Forum: College area archives
Topic: 2019 PIANO/MO Thanks and General Discussion
Replies: 50
Views: 9790

Re: 2019 PIANO/MO Thanks and General Discussion

People posting about "core Western painting" here: are you not including tossups like Book of Kells and Pompeii? (i.e. topics covered in any reasonably thorough Western art survey. I obviously have a very strong opinion on this, so I might as well tip my hand here...) EDIT: Also, Western &...
by vinteuil
Mon Mar 11, 2019 12:03 am
Forum: College area archives
Topic: 2019 PIANO/MO Errata
Replies: 35
Views: 3819

Re: 2019 PIANO/MO Errata

jsingh wrote: Sun Mar 10, 2019 10:13 pm I think there was a bonus that mentioned the 1897's World Fair and the answer was Chicago; clearly, that should be 1893.
Yet again my mistake! (It is fixed.)
by vinteuil
Sun Mar 10, 2019 11:56 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: 2019 PIANO/MO Errata
Replies: 35
Views: 3819

Re: 2019 PIANO/MO Errata

justinfrench1728 wrote: Sun Mar 10, 2019 4:16 pm I think the bonus on Chinese poetry said that ghazals have four lines, which does not make any sense.
This is my own wild nonsense (presumably meant "ruba'i") and will be corrected.
by vinteuil
Sun Mar 10, 2019 11:44 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: 2019 PIANO/MO Specific Question Discussion
Replies: 110
Views: 292280

Re: 2019 PIANO/MO Specific Question Discussion

Aseem was negged for saying "Kells" for Book of Kells and I was negged for saying "Anna Magdalena" for "Anna Magdalena Bach." While perhaps technically corrected these were pretty obnoxious negs to get. Does anybody actually refer to the Book of Kells as just "Kel...
by vinteuil
Sun Mar 10, 2019 7:30 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: 2019 PIANO/MO Specific Question Discussion
Replies: 110
Views: 292280

Re: 2019 PIANO/MO Specific Question Discussion

I was glad to see John Kani and Winston Ntshona to come up, but I object strongly to the statement in the question that Sizwe Bansi is Dead was primarily written by Athol Fugard. Zakes Mda called out this common misconception in the preface to one of John Kani's plays. As the idiot who added the &q...
by vinteuil
Sun Mar 10, 2019 7:23 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: 2019 PIANO/MO Specific Question Discussion
Replies: 110
Views: 292280

Re: 2019 PIANO/MO Specific Question Discussion

Finally, a lot of the math hard parts were on named theorems. In particular, "Hasse-Minkowski" struck me as needlessly specific, since the bonus part could have been just the "local-global principle" itself. I'll change this to just "Hasse"; it's very possibly a quirk ...
by vinteuil
Sun Mar 10, 2019 7:21 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: 2019 PIANO/MO Specific Question Discussion
Replies: 110
Views: 292280

Re: 2019 PIANO/MO Specific Question Discussion

Could I see the tossup on sarcophagus? I answered "tomb" on the Barbatus clue, which I'm sure is technically wrong, but it's frustrating since it was in the "Tomb of the Scipios" and I might have been able to get it on a prompt. The Tomb of the Scipios isn't an "object,&quo...
by vinteuil
Sun Mar 10, 2019 7:16 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: 2019 PIANO/MO Specific Question Discussion
Replies: 110
Views: 292280

Re: 2019 PIANO/MO Specific Question Discussion

Aseem was negged for saying "Kells" for Book of Kells and I was negged for saying "Anna Magdalena" for "Anna Magdalena Bach." While perhaps technically corrected these were pretty obnoxious negs to get. Does anybody actually refer to the Book of Kells as just "Kel...
by vinteuil
Sun Mar 10, 2019 7:02 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: 2019 PIANO/MO Thanks and General Discussion
Replies: 50
Views: 9790

Re: 2019 PIANO/MO Thanks and General Discussion

Edit to add: this tournament felt like it had almost 1/1 econ per packet, which really, really sucked. I applaud expanding the social science distribution to 2/2 1/1 Economics and Psychology ... 1/1 Other religion and other social science As in, exactly .5/.5 econ (and .5/.5 psych and .5/.5 other s...
by vinteuil
Sun Mar 10, 2019 10:06 am
Forum: College area archives
Topic: 2019 PIANO/MO Errata
Replies: 35
Views: 3819

Re: 2019 PIANO/MO Errata

The “negative index of refraction” tossup showed up in two packets. This was the reason for my complaint about not getting a physics replacement since we never had our first clean shot at a physics tossup. I sincerely apologize for this dumb mistake, which we have since rectified. Hopefully this di...
by vinteuil
Sat Mar 09, 2019 11:16 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: 2019 PIANO at Stanford (3/9)
Replies: 4
Views: 3014

Re: 2019 PIANO at Stanford (3/9)

I hope people enjoyed playing the set! There's a discussion forum up now—request access under User Control Panel→Usergroups.
by vinteuil
Sat Mar 09, 2019 11:13 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: PIANO/Minnesota Open @ JHU (3/9/19)
Replies: 33
Views: 14769

Re: PIANO/Minnesota Open @ JHU (3/9/19)

I hope people enjoyed playing the set! There's a discussion forum up now—request access under User Control Panel→Usergroups.
by vinteuil
Sat Mar 09, 2019 5:41 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: 2019 PIANO/MO Specific Question Discussion
Replies: 110
Views: 292280

Re: 2019 PIANO/MO Specific Question Discussion

We've also adjusted the "classrooms" tossup to accept "schools" before the word "jigsaw."

The tossup on Athena now prompts on "Nike" as well as accepting "Athena Nike."
by vinteuil
Sat Mar 09, 2019 5:39 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: PIANO/Minnesota Open @ JHU (3/9/19)
Replies: 33
Views: 14769

Re: PIANO/Minnesota Open @ JHU (3/9/19)

Courtesy of Matt: Teams may not object to the specific replacement question which gets read unless it is an exact repeat (See C.13). (In particular, players have no basis for expecting that a replacement question be from the same category as a question which was thrown out, or for expecting that the...