The Quizbowl Resource Center

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If you want someone to key in on Ohio/West Virginia/ west PA, let me know.

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Just a question that sprung to my head, how/why are charter schools eligible to participate in this competition?

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I wonder if your coach may be onto the idea that perhaps some of the kids on your team that are either not good or don't really care about quiz bowl are probably trying to milk the idea of the team going to a national tournament as an excuse for a mini-vacation.

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Has anymore run a QB team vs. Teacher game during school as a fundraiser? If so, do you have any tips on to plan such an event and please feel free to share your experiences. Thank you! User was reminded to enable a signature. --Mgmt. How do you run this as a fundraiser if it's an event taking plac...

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Speaking as someone who is from a team that may come out in the Spring, I think having a tournament on a day such as the SAT works better for a lot more people than a tournament on Sunday. SAT testing may really only affect a few kids from some teams. A Sunday tournament makes it rather difficult fo...

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Does anyone reading this have any idea if Battle of the Burgh @ uPitt is getting announced; if so, when?

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Is there any word when staaaaaaats will be posted? I'm eager to see how our B team did. That, and I think there were a few schools here that'd make the "MaxFreds" rankings.

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I have started to listen to BBC's World Service (notably "The Fifth Floor" program) and BBC World News in the car. Even if it doesn't necessarily serve as much help for "current events", it's still a good listen (and who knows, what's happening from now and until probably early M...

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It was a very well run tournament that my team enjoyed playing in immensely. I can't tell you all the standings (we finished somewhere around 7th out of 25 teams), but the real story of the tournament was a deep Fisher Catholic team beating Winchester-Thurston (led by the ever impressive Nathaniel ...

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Into the Woods was a tossup at the 2012 HSNCT, and it was refreshing.

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http://plato.stanford.edu/ <- I like to think this is a good resource for learning everything you'd want to about philosophy, from learning the basics of the really famous guys ( Aristotle , Socrates , even Nietzsche ) to learning as much as you could possibly want about the philosophers you may hav...

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At the A-set tournament we played at Tipp, out of the x+1 YA lit tossups we heard, I only recall one of them getting answered (my teammate powered it). The other such tossups I recall just simply went dead w/ no negs. Of the x+1 YA Lit bonuses we heard, all but one were just simply converted for zer...

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Franz Kafka was the least converted European/World Lit tossup?

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Congrats to Chicago A for defeating Michigan A in the first game of the final to win. Northmont and Ohio State A rounded out the top 4, with Northmont winning DII and OSU A getting second. Actually, OSU A wins DII, as high schoolers are not eligible for DII at ACF tournaments . I apologize for our ...

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I know he graduated from Manheim Township last year, but I believe he actually goes to Carnegie Mellon now, so it may be worth making acquaintances with Campbell Fitzhugh (I think that's his name) and if he's willing, perhaps you can get some pointers from him.

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What were the conversion statistics on the "New Wave" tossup from the set that was commonly used at NAQT state competitions last year? I imagine they were pretty low.

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question distribution at the HSNCT includes a lot more geography and current events How much of a difference will this make in a game? I'm pretty sure that's something in the area of 120 or so points on the board (three tossups with three part bonuses). If you're not very proficient in those areas,...

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samus149 wrote:I assume any foreign film question outside of Kurosawa or Fellini would also be too difficult for high schoolers.

Marcel Marceau and Battleship Potemkin are both popular.

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If Charter A and DCC A are higher than us due to PHSAT stats, it's because they got an extra 1.5 PPB or so on the NAQT website (NAQT messed up the data input for the final round). The entry on the database is more accurate, though not combined. Which teams would be affected by this? Just DCC/Charte...

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What happened to South Charleston? I thought their good player(s) from last year were returning, but that could have been wrong. Matt Massie, who was basically their whole team, graduated. Good player, he's at Yale now but I don't think he plans on doing college quiz bowl. While we're on the topic,...

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So you can theoretically be the team that gets the first buzz (as well as the points) on fifteen tossups, but if you neg up or get beat on the other five then you could lose?

edit after Fred's post : shoulda clarified negs as in "misses"

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Obviously this isn't an issue that concerns sexism, or Marshall, but I think the high school section is fine: except I feel as if the threads and posts about the NAC in the past could've been handled more gentler. Of course, saying why the NAC is bad isn't the problem. Some posts, however, I think c...

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I don't see why you wouldn't aim to improve. It's not impossible to be good at quiz bowl; in fact, it can be very enriching and being competitive is rewarding in itself. In terms of "glory", people remember and talk about the team that wins stuff, not the teammates that make it a competiti...

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If you're trying to find a sense of self-satisfaction by stat padding in a quiz bowl match then you're going to enjoy quiz bowl less and less. To answer your question: my team doesn't have that problem and neither do other good teams. In the instance of my team, I don't really care who picks it up, ...

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I guess the key is less of a talent pool, yeah, or perhaps less access to things like AP classes, although if you have a talented and motivated team/coach/player, those things can be overcome. My school was fairly small and only had three AP classes (none of which really helped for quizbowl), but i...

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Since our coaches might take a while to get back to you, Fisher Catholic would like to be in the really competitive bracket. Thanks!

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I can't back you up on this one, Will. NAQT has a decent science distribution, but I will admit they have alot of geo (although housewrites have too little geo) and almost no economics, although econ has a very small canon, so having more isn't very feasible. Disagreed (and I'm going to preface thi...

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If you really enjoy social studies (and what is happening in the world around you), you may find NAQT's distribution to be favorable towards you. A "colossal advantage"? No. Science and literature are pretty well represented themselves (in fact, I believe science is actually represented th...

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Beachwood and South Range look to be contenders for small school.

edit: and if they fall under the enrollment guidelines for NAQT's small school definition, I would expect Bexley to make a splash.

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If room reservations at the Cathedral of Learning are at a premium, aren't there other buildings on campus that could be possibly used? I was a freshman when we went to Battle of the Burgh in 2011 (UPitt's spring tournament), and the experience at the Cathedral of Learning certainly lived up to its ...

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(I'm trying to advice them to do a trash tournament in the spring for fundraising purposes). there aren't any trash sets to use which are appropriate for high schools in difficulty or subject matter. If you're interested in a trash set, contact Bob Kilner (PM me and I'll give you his email). Ohio h...

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Nick, you know places like Ashland, KY (think Paul G Blazer HS) are MUCH closer to Charleston, WV than Louisville, KY, right? And it's much easier to get to than Bowling Green. It sounds like you're more interested with what concerns you and quiz bowl clubs in Kentucky than you do in helping spread ...

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However, the FKT has bonuses assigned to tossups, and this is not ideal as it makes the new players believe this always occurs. I'm not seeing how this is not ideal, unless the target audience isn't going to be playing a lot of tossup/bonus quiz bowl. Even if they aren't going to be exposed to TU/B...

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Also, I'll say this about atlases. They can be pretty great tools if you enjoy them. I don't use an atlas that much, namely because the good ones can get expensive and the not-so-good ones can bore you to tears. If you really want a near-complete knowledge of world geography, supplement what you lea...

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If you have a decent grip with current events and history, you're starting off with a better groundwork than someone who doesn't. You should most definitely read a ton, and if and when possible, watch programs on any educational/interesting broadcast. World geography isn't something you can master o...

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Please tell us more about this super secret preseason ranking method. It's just PPB from HSNCT pro-rated by returning players... Fisher Catholic returns everyone from a squad that had a higher HSNCT ppb then Carbondale, Menlo, State College, and Oak Ridge, and who also beat two teams you had in you...

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If you happen to be acquainted with any players on the Hawken team (or better yet, any former players, like Anirudh Dasarthy or Eric Xiao, both class '12), ask for pointers from them on what you should do to ensure you have a high shot of making the team since different schools have different standa...

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Thanks for posting, Jeff. I blew the Tom Stoppard tossup right at "Septimus" with Virginia Woolf (thinking the clue was referring to Mrs. Dalloway, not Stoppard's Arcadia), so I was curious to see if it was a reasonable take or not judging by whether or not the actual text said "work&...

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I really enjoyed the Greco-Roman myth in this year's NAQT sets, in particular the IS-124 bonus that went epimetheus/Cronus/Deucalion. Thanks Fred!

Could I see the Tom Stoppard tossup from IS-120, tossup on David McCullough from IS-124, and tossup on The Kiterunner from IS-126? Thanks!

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Could one possible panacea to what you are describing be that schools who do very at high-quality quiz bowl at the regional and state levels, who are going to nationals, contact their local medias (I imagine a newspaper would be more effective than a tv station) and send them a list of accomplishmen...

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What category was the rook question considered? Chess is a board game, and therefore I think it deserves to be considered trash, just like asking questions about Monopoly or Sorry or any other board games would be considered trash. Yes, chess is totally like Sorry and Monopoly because it's played o...

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What was the text of the Dave Brubeck tossup?

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In the cases of Tammuz, Nawaz Sharif, and Cartoons of the New Yorker, obviously these appear to have considerably sub-optimal conversion rates and egregiously high neg totals, as well as astonishingly low power numbers (whoever powered that Tammuz tossup has got to be a total hoss at RMP). I can't ...

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In the cases of Tammuz, Nawaz Sharif, and Cartoons of the New Yorker, obviously these appear to have considerably sub-optimal conversion rates and egregiously high neg totals, as well as astonishingly low power numbers (whoever powered that Tammuz tossup has got to be a total hoss at RMP). I can't i...

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Can you post the text and conversion rates for "cartoons of the New Yorker" and John Forbes Nash, please?

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I just swung by for the hell of it and this is the first thing I encounter (caveat, language is NSFW).

Uh yeah suffice to say that /lobby is the worst thing ever and the only thing that is worse are the idiot apologists who defend it as a reputable and perfectly fine environment.

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If you do like podcasts, I recommend 12 Great Byzantine Rulers by Lars Brownworth as well as Mark Duncan's "History of Rome". Mark Schauss (sp?) also has a very enjoyable and thorough series on Russia.

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Ohio.... I recognize one of the schools, Licking Heights, they play in our league. We'll make sure to show them the way. Also some of these schools are repeat offenders and their coaches take them to legit competitions, but of recent haven't been in the top echelons of competitiveness in Ohio. I kn...

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I know in the case of Hawken, they have undergone a huge program change as their coach from last year is no longer there and they are essentially starting young and fresh. Such a shame, they were a pretty good team last year

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Fisher played eight playoff teams (6-4 USN, 7-3 Macomb, 7-3 Wayzata A, 7-3 Cave Spring, 6-4 Desert Vista B, 8-2 Richard Montgomery, 6-4 Solon A, 6-4 Kealing) with 5-5 Clements and St. Joe's (NJ) as our two games after Cave Spring and before Desert Vista). We were 5-2 before we dropped our last three...

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