The Quizbowl Resource Center

Mike Bentley

It's likely there will be an 11th packet for a finals if needed.

Still lots of room for people to sign up. And could use some more staffers (you'll get $50 for your trouble).

Mike Bentley

I split this up into separate packets and uploaded it here: https://hsquizbowl.org/db/questionsets/2971/

Mike Bentley

Reminder that this tournament is taking place in 2 weeks. Would be great to get at least 8 teams signed up.

In talking with people, I think I maybe oversold how old the set will feel. There should be plenty of fresher clues and answers too.

Mike Bentley

This tournament will take place on June 24th.

Mike Bentley

Actually, I forgot that 6/17 is NASAT so may go with 6/24. Make your voice known in the poll if you have a strong preference.

Mike Bentley

From Tuesday, 5/30 through either this Thursday or Friday I'm going to read 3 or so Shock of the Old packets each night at 7 PM Eastern on the main quizbowl Discord. I know this is a little earlier than packets are usually read but this is the best time that works with my schedule. After this, I'll ...

Mike Bentley

It's looking pretty likely this will work best for me on June 17th or 18th, but if there's a strong preference for one of the other dates I'll reconsider. Will make a final announcement by Tuesday or Wednesday.

Mike Bentley

Inspired by the no-longer-current-events packets I recently read on Discord (which will be posted to the archive soon), I've decided my next tournament is going to be called ARCHIVE (A Randomish Collection of Choice Tossup Ideas, some Very Elderly). Think of this as my version of a set like TELEOLOG...

Mike Bentley

Not seeing a lot of poll interest so I'm probably not going to run this. Will probably informally read these on Discord as I have some time over the next few weeks around 7 PM Eastern.

Mike Bentley

Quick reminder that we still have a few more spots open if you'd like to be a sponsor.

Mike Bentley

There were several people who told me they wanted to play Shock of the Old, my most recent tech tournament, but couldn't make the previous online mirror. If this is you, please fill out this poll. Poll will close on 5/16. My plan is to make this a doubles tournament because I don't think there will ...

Mike Bentley

Will re-read this tonight at 7 Eastern, along with a decent chunk of new-to-everyone shorter questions of varying quality.

Mike Bentley

This is postponed for now, will announce a new date soon.

Mike Bentley

I have a rough packet of Current Events tossups that have mostly aged out of relevance. I will be reading them on the quizbowl Discord at 7 PM Eastern tonight, 5/9/23. Don't get your hopes up for a lot of quality or answer variability or coherent theming.

Mike Bentley

Given the endless discourse over the last 10+ years of the end of film, the rise of television, and the lack of a high culture / low culture divide between film and television, one natural next question to me becomes, "does TV become a small part of the academic film distribution?" I do th...

Mike Bentley · Re: Rhythm Heaven at ICT [4/1/23] Any chance of an online mirror?

Any chance of an online mirror?

Mike Bentley

Is this tournament still happening?

Mike Bentley

Congrats to Towards Fungal Computer for defeating Dental Plan / Bodies and Spaces in a 1-game final. Stats are here: https://hsquizbowl.org/db/tournaments/8119/ And thanks to everyone who helped staff / agreed to play at the last minute to help fill out teams. I hope everyone had fun! There will lik...

Mike Bentley

I've sent out a logistics mail. There are still a few remaining free agent slots for anyone who wants to sign-up at the last minute. I could still use a few more staffers who will be paid $50 each. And if there's a surge in 2 more teams interested I'd be happy to accommodate them. Even if you're uns...

Mike Bentley

Quizbowl is biased towards things that have names. There are some things worth knowing about that do not have a single, widely accepted name. Yeah I think I'm bothered more than the typical quizbowler with quizbowl's rigidity towards "this thing has a name." There are all sorts of answer ...

Mike Bentley

using “description acceptable” for answerlines without proper names is a bad writing tick that should be abolished. top 3 pet peeve. a player instruction, such as “description acceptable”, is only necessary when departing from standard quizbowl rules – e.g. descriptions are not acceptable for thing...

Mike Bentley

I'll assign any free agents not on a team to a team by Thursday. It would also be great to get a few more staffers for this so we have some backups and the ability to expand the field.

Mike Bentley

Congrats!

Mike Bentley

Some tossups that I recall thinking narrowed down the answer space too quickly included: "wireless Internet" in Africa (what else are people delivering to rural areas by balloon?), the Dominican Republic dance tossup (it's not Cuba but in the Spanish-speaking Caribbean and has musical gen...

Mike Bentley

My second favorite moment was on Tossup 1 in this tournament and first-lining the South Dakota trusts clue. That sent me a good message that this was going to be a tournament where I'd still be able to get some buzzes despite being on such a good team. This round ended up being a bit of a fluke for ...

Mike Bentley

I very much enjoyed the stuff at the bottom of this tournament's distribution list, namely the Other Academic, Geography, Current Events and Pop Culture. These had a good mix of interesting clues, whimsy and diversity in what was asked about. Of course, not every question across all these categories...

Mike Bentley

Will post more specific feedback later, but wanted to quickly say that I really liked this tournament. The additional "other" and whimsy content played to my interests and strengths. I'm hoping more open tournaments use this as a potential model. Of course, there are other models for how y...

Mike Bentley

I'm open to another mirror if there's interest. I personally would only do another online mirror but if someone wants to run an in person one, contact me.

Mike Bentley

There are currently a lot of 2-person teams signed up. For now, I'm still going with this tournament as a quads event unless there's strong interest in doubles and more staff. And because short-handed teams require as much staff as full teams, I'll be charging each team the whole $80 registration fe...

Mike Bentley

Reminder that there's still a bunch of open spots, would love to see some more sign-ups soon. I promise there will be some fun questions in here even if this is outside your normal wheelhouse. I also needed to move up the start time to 10 AM Eastern because I stupidly booked a flight on this date an...

Mike Bentley

5. Economists Howlett and Broadberry examined whether this decade's slogan of "business as usual" was appropriate or not for the British economy. In Britain, luxury goods such as clocks, movies and motorcycles were assigned a 33% levy in the McKenna duties passed during this decade. Durin...

Mike Bentley

I was actually curious what prompted the Babe Ruth tossup in this set, since I don't remember ever hearing many of those clues before. 16. This man's father made the bartender George Sowers sign a letter stating "I … fucked [this man's mom] March 12 1906 on her dining room floor," one of ...

Mike Bentley

Motivated by a Discord discussion of how there should be more forum posts and an idea from Mike Cheyne (plus my secret motivation to get more sign-ups for my upcoming Shock of the Old tech/business/science history/whimsy tournament ) I thought I'd dive into a few questions from my 2020 set Myth of t...

Mike Bentley

Suggestion: the reader counts down from five on their fingers and calls time when they're all down. That way, players always have a warning for when they need to say an answer, but it's not a distraction that interrupts the thought process. This is a hassle for the moderator. Please do not require ...

Mike Bentley

Suggestion: the reader counts down from five on their fingers and calls time when they're all down. That way, players always have a warning for when they need to say an answer, but it's not a distraction that interrupts the thought process. This is a hassle for the moderator. Please do not require ...

Mike Bentley

Hi everyone, I'm pleased to announce the return of the Round Sponsorship program for the 2023 PACE NSC. For a donation of $100 (or $500 for a round in the finals), you can be a sponsor of an NSC round. Your name and a brief message will be read at the beginning of the NSC match and you'll be listed ...

Mike Bentley

I think it's absolutely critical that moderators prompt "answer please" on bonuses and we definitely should not change that rule. I still think it would be more consistent if we did this on tossups but can live with the current system. I don't think it really harms anything if a moderator ...

Mike Bentley

I don't do this "answer please" prompting on tossups, but I also wonder if there's a good reason to keep having these different rules. I guess the idea is it's redundant and might give players an extra second or two because the moderator stops counting when saying "answer please."...

Mike Bentley

The tournament will take place on Sunday, March 12th (not the 5th, which I accidentally originally mentioned). Original post has been updated with details.

Mike Bentley

Please get your votes in by tomorrow. I'm tentatively leaning towards Sunday, March 12th as I realized the weekend of 3/4-3/5 is the undergrad championship and I don't want to conflict with that. But if not enough people can make that date, I'll consider another one.

Mike Bentley

The online Zoom mirror of Shock of the Old will take place on Sunday , March 12th, 2023 starting at 10 AM Eastern and going to approximately 3 PM. The tournament is 11 rounds of 20 tossups. Each packet consists of: 6 Science history and non-computer technology history 5 Computer-related things, alth...

Mike Bentley

I'm probably not attending this year's event so might be willing to make some contributions.

I've long felt the round robin format of CO is pretty dumb even if I'm probably in the top 5% of people willing to tolerate playing quizbowl at 11 PM. I'd be happy to turn this into a more normal tournament.

Mike Bentley

Wildcard bids for the NSC are now open. Please email [email protected] with applications. Include the team's name, some links to tournament results, and a brief justification for the bid. Thanks!

Mike Bentley

Hi, I'm looking for playtesters for my upcoming tech tournament, Shock of the Old. I'll be doing a couple of sessions over Discord in the next week or two, mostly on weekends. Send me an email at bentley.michael.j@gmail.com. Even if you're not an expert in these subjects, the topics asked about are ...

Mike Bentley

This is an announcement for Shock of the Old, the fifth of my "tech tournaments." It will be 11 packets of 20 tossups. Like the previous sets, each packet will have: 6 Science history and non-computer technology history 5 Computer-related things, although very little actual computer scienc...

Mike Bentley

With the end of the year fast approaching, I wanted to remind the quizbowl community that PACE is a 501c3 non-profit and that any donations made are tax deductible. If you're interested in giving, please visit our donate page here: http://www.pace-nsc.org/donate-to-pace/. PACE is run by a dedicated ...

Mike Bentley

John makes some good points, and I think some of them are correct in a vacuum, but I'll say this: I think the primary use of quizbowl questions are to be played by teams/players at tournaments. In that moment, almost all teams and players are focusing on winning the game and correctly answering the...

Mike Bentley

I personally find line-based restrictions somewhat annoying to implement. I'm a bigger fan of a hard cap on character count. This gives you some flexibility to make one part longer when it needs to be while trimming from other parts of the bonus.

Mike Bentley

Is there a date for determining whether this tournament will happen or not? I'm guessing we'd need at least 4 teams to be viable and right now there are at most 3 signed up.

Mike Bentley

Do we need to do anything to register beyond putting our names down in the Google Doc?

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