HSAPQ Novice Set (Available early September)
Posted: Wed Jul 13, 2016 3:25 pm
I am pleased to announce that HSAPQ is producing a novice-level difficulty set that should be available by Labor Day.
WRITERS: This set is being written by HSAPQ (High School Academic Pyramid Questions). I, Mike Cheyne, am the chief editor. Other editors include Auroni Gupta, Tommy Casalaspi, Joelle Smart, Cody Voight, and Jordan Brownstein--between us, we have edited numerous high school and collegiate tournaments. All of us wrote for HSAPQ last year and are very experienced at producing quality, difficulty-appropriate questions.
DIFFICULTY: This set is novice level (perhaps comparable to a NAQT A-set, although perhaps even easier). It is ideal for teams with little to no experience playing quizbowl. It is not recommended for teams with lots of experience or are of a high skill level.
DISTRO: This set consists of 15 20/20 packets plus tiebreakers. All tossups are 5 lines or less. The vast majority of bonus parts feature 2 line prompts or less. The distribution is:
4/4 Literature (1/1 American, 1/1 British, 1/1 European, 1/1 Any Literature, which can include a few questions on World Literature
4/4 History (1/1 American, 2/2 European, 1/1 World)
4/4 Science (1/1 Bio, 1/1 Physics, 2/2 Other Sciences)
3/3 Arts (1/1 Painting, 1/1 Music, 1/1 Other Arts)
1/1 Religion (heavy emphasis on Bible/Christianity)
1/1 Myth
1/1 Thought (includes questions that would be categorized as philosophy or social science in other sets--some CE or Geo might end up here)
1/1 Geography and Current Events
1/1 Trash
INFORMATION: This set's tossups are used during VHSL Regular Season in quizbowl competitions in Virginia. Obviously, this set cannot be used in Virginia, then, or by any school who somehow has connections to VHSL.
COST: The cost is $14 per team.
WHY USE OUR SET?
We know you have a choice of question sets, and we know our price is not necessarily the cheapest. Why choose us? Here are three reasons.
1. Experience. You can rest assured that this set is being produced by editors who have all worked on multiple tournaments. Every editor of this set has worked on high school questions before and many have edited their own high school sets before.
2. A Quality Set. Our set is scrupulously controlled for length of questions. We include pronunciation guides to make reading these questions easy for moderators no matter their experience. Our answerlines are formatted to be easy to understand and determine correct answers. These aren't just empty promises for us--we know these questions will be used in the standard-heavy VHSL format.
3. Difficulty Control. Unlike other "novice" sets, we're not trying to "push the canon" with this set. We're not writing to improve as players or to show off by finding hard new clues. We want to write questions that can be answered by teams. Teams with little experience should still be able to get many of these questions. Teams with experience should be able to get our questions early.
QUESTIONS: Questions about the set should go to me (chey0004 AT umn DOT edu). Orders or questions about setting up tournaments should go to our Host Contact, Jacob O'Rourke (jacob.orourke.7 AT gmail DOT com).
We look forward to working with you. We hope to produce other sets at a range of difficulties, and we'll have more information about that in the future.
WRITERS: This set is being written by HSAPQ (High School Academic Pyramid Questions). I, Mike Cheyne, am the chief editor. Other editors include Auroni Gupta, Tommy Casalaspi, Joelle Smart, Cody Voight, and Jordan Brownstein--between us, we have edited numerous high school and collegiate tournaments. All of us wrote for HSAPQ last year and are very experienced at producing quality, difficulty-appropriate questions.
DIFFICULTY: This set is novice level (perhaps comparable to a NAQT A-set, although perhaps even easier). It is ideal for teams with little to no experience playing quizbowl. It is not recommended for teams with lots of experience or are of a high skill level.
DISTRO: This set consists of 15 20/20 packets plus tiebreakers. All tossups are 5 lines or less. The vast majority of bonus parts feature 2 line prompts or less. The distribution is:
4/4 Literature (1/1 American, 1/1 British, 1/1 European, 1/1 Any Literature, which can include a few questions on World Literature
4/4 History (1/1 American, 2/2 European, 1/1 World)
4/4 Science (1/1 Bio, 1/1 Physics, 2/2 Other Sciences)
3/3 Arts (1/1 Painting, 1/1 Music, 1/1 Other Arts)
1/1 Religion (heavy emphasis on Bible/Christianity)
1/1 Myth
1/1 Thought (includes questions that would be categorized as philosophy or social science in other sets--some CE or Geo might end up here)
1/1 Geography and Current Events
1/1 Trash
INFORMATION: This set's tossups are used during VHSL Regular Season in quizbowl competitions in Virginia. Obviously, this set cannot be used in Virginia, then, or by any school who somehow has connections to VHSL.
COST: The cost is $14 per team.
WHY USE OUR SET?
We know you have a choice of question sets, and we know our price is not necessarily the cheapest. Why choose us? Here are three reasons.
1. Experience. You can rest assured that this set is being produced by editors who have all worked on multiple tournaments. Every editor of this set has worked on high school questions before and many have edited their own high school sets before.
2. A Quality Set. Our set is scrupulously controlled for length of questions. We include pronunciation guides to make reading these questions easy for moderators no matter their experience. Our answerlines are formatted to be easy to understand and determine correct answers. These aren't just empty promises for us--we know these questions will be used in the standard-heavy VHSL format.
3. Difficulty Control. Unlike other "novice" sets, we're not trying to "push the canon" with this set. We're not writing to improve as players or to show off by finding hard new clues. We want to write questions that can be answered by teams. Teams with little experience should still be able to get many of these questions. Teams with experience should be able to get our questions early.
QUESTIONS: Questions about the set should go to me (chey0004 AT umn DOT edu). Orders or questions about setting up tournaments should go to our Host Contact, Jacob O'Rourke (jacob.orourke.7 AT gmail DOT com).
We look forward to working with you. We hope to produce other sets at a range of difficulties, and we'll have more information about that in the future.