Cheynem wrote:I had a debate once with, I think, Evan Adams, about this. I wrote a hard tossup on Hawthorne (the author, not the Jada Pinkett Smith TV show that Carsten likes) for MO (a hard tournament) and the giveaway I think was something like "author who wrote the collections Mosses from an Old Manse and Twice Told Tales." I thought that was, while hardish, the appropriate giveaway at this tournament. He argued that I should tack on something like "also the author of Young Goodman Brown" or "The Scarlet Letter." I was a cocky 45-year old kid who didn't see his point. I think now I would probably definitely add on something like wrote Young Goodman Brown (that's actually in Mosses from an Old Manse anyway!). I still would object to the Scarlet Letter--I don't think that's necessary at harder difficulty sets. I can't fully explain why not, but I do.
I also find that such giveaways artificially boost conversion rates. Almost everyone will get them, but probably a lot of teams won't get them early and they'll go to a buzzer race. Perhaps buzz point tech will help us here. More should probably be done to make your tossups on the whole easier other than giveaways. Note that I don't necessarily have a problem with writing a hard tossup, but your tacked-on giveaway doesn't necessarily make it easier.
That's true, and in fact we might be going as far back as when NAQT was exclusively producing college questions (i.e., its first year or two). I don't remember exactly from when the document I found dated.Big Y wrote:To add a bit of historical perspective, if we're going far back in NAQT history, then IS were the easiest sets they produced, and IS were a little more difficult than they should have been.
Big Y wrote:I'm not sure what level you are talking about.
Skepticism and Animal Feed wrote:I think it's been a few years since we've had an argument about this, but I think (and hope) that quizbowl theory's general position is still that you should make giveaways as easy as possible: at that point it's simply better for the long-term health of the game to increase tossup conversion rates. Making tossups harder by making the giveaway harder makes the game less satisfying for novice players in exchange for questionable benefits.
Irreligion in Bangladesh wrote:the type of player who buzzes before "FTP" is read after the other team negs even if there aren't powers - so they won't even hear your giveaway. :)
Cheynem wrote: I really dislike geography giveaways for history tossups, for example.
1.82 wrote:from a competitive standpoint, it'd be better for that tossup to go dead if neither team has knowledge than it would be for one team to get points for being faster to hit the buzzer.
Neggman wrote:Cheynem wrote: I really dislike geography giveaways for history tossups, for example.
May I ask why? My first thought when it comes to dropping the capital is that you could theoretically have learned the capital from studying history since obviously most countries have lots of history tied into their capitals. But I'm curious why they bother you (on the other hand I understand all other forms of cross-distributional being annoying).
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