Giving Answers

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cchiego
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Giving Answers

Post by cchiego »

In light of what I've seen after reading at a number of quiz bowl events over the years, I thought I would add a few things from the perspective of a moderator for players of all abilities (not just less-experienced players) in terms of giving answers. Some of these are commonsense, but may bear repeating for even more experienced players. Others deal with situations where there's a bit of ambiguity in the rules and I'd be interested in hearing others' thoughts on how to fill these in/respond to these situations.

To Players:

1. If you have a lisp or other speech impediment, please alert the reader before the match starts. Doing so will help the reader better interpret your response and will warn the other team so they don't get up in arms about something you say during the match. If you do not warn the reader in advance, don't be surprised/offended if the reader negs you.

2. If you give an answer very fast, do not be surprised/offended if the reader asks you to repeat the answer. It's fine to give an answer fast, but between the sounds of the buzzer itself and possibly a whole group of people trying to do full-body buzzes at once, it can be challenging for a reader to hear exactly what you said, especially if you blurt it out fast. Repeat your answer slowly.

3. Adding "uh uh uh uh uh so it's the ah the uh" or "It can't possibly be THE..." or "So it's just like as simple as a..." or numerous other things before your answer is rather dangerous, especially when you're dealing with the titles of works. Yes, most rules allow you to omit a leading article, but the more stuff you throw at the reader the more likely it is you may say something incorrect. Remember too that most rules consider an answer "locked in" after you complete an entire word of the answer itself.

4. If you are asked to repeat your answer and change your answer from an incorrect one to a correct one, you will almost certainly be called out on it by the opposing team and/or the moderator. Do not do this. As a moderator, I may not have been able to tell exactly what you said the first time if it was close to the right answer, but I can tell if you say something again that sounds very different. There is no better way to earn the enmity of a moderator or an opposing team than trying to pull this bait and switch.

5. On bouncebacks, be ready the moment the reader bounces back to you if you want to take a crack at it. Be discussing (quietly) what you think it is during the bonus part, not after the other team guesses.

6. On bonuses, if someone on your team is looking at the reader and says an answer towards the reader, there's an excellent chance the reader might take that response. It is your responsibility as a team to ensure that the answer directed at the reader at any part of the bonus is the answer you have decided on as a team.

7. Remember what is protestable and what isn't. A quick, polite "protest" is fine and can be adjudicated at the end of the match or halftime if necessary. Blowing up at the moderator is a waste of energy and usually rude to boot, especially mid-match.

To Writers:

1. Please make "DO NOT ACCEPT" very clear and do not be afraid to include this if there are similar but incorrect answers out there that players might give. Play testing would be useful for this and for the next point.

2. Please do include as many alternative acceptable answers as possible that a player might reasonably give at some point in the question. For instance, I've seen several science ones where near the end of the question the question text will say "also called X" though X is not listed as an acceptable answer, and inevitably a player buzzes in before the mention of X and gives it. As a non-science person, this puts me in a tough position to make a call on that.

3. There now seem to be more questions popping up about unnamed things, actions, or processes. If you are going to write a question on this, please help both the moderator and the player by including something like "description acceptable" at the start of those questions. Or better yet, reconsider if you really need to write that question on "trying to invade Georgia" and instead just do a question on "Georgia."
Chris C.
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Re: Giving Answers

Post by Adventure Temple Trail »

In the spirit of point number 3 above: From a moderator's perspective, the most annoying and difficult-to-handle addition to a player's answer is "It's not X, is it?" If I'm reading a tossup on Botticelli and a player buzzes in and merely says "it isn't Botticelli..." or similar, without clarifying whether they're giving an answer, serious bad things can result (including accidentally giving someone points or negging them).

I am not in favor of Chris's discouragement of tossups on concepts without proper noun names; while I admit it does take some level of judgment and testing and writing experience to figure out which potential "description-style" answers will go over well and which won't, such questions are pretty important for keeping the game fresh.
Last edited by Adventure Temple Trail on Thu Jul 03, 2014 11:13 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Giving Answers

Post by merv1618 »

This is tangential but still relevant. To moderators, if someone's obviously very close but still incorrect, don't say "Sorry, I can't take that" or things of the sort because it essentially gives it away for the other team. Also, don't preface tossups with ANYTHING: prominent examples are "this'll be fun," "oh, I wrote this tossup," or my personal favorite, "I'm going to judge whoever gets this one."
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Re: Giving Answers

Post by cchiego »

if someone's obviously very close but still incorrect, don't say "Sorry, I can't take that" or things of the sort because it essentially gives it away for the other team
Granted, the other team could probably figure this out anyways with a regular -5 since the moderator might need to take a couple of seconds to make sure or have already asked for a repeat/spelling. But it's still good form to limit one's self to "neg 5" or "no penalty."
don't preface tossups with ANYTHING: prominent examples are "this'll be fun," "oh, I wrote this tossup," or my personal favorite, "I'm going to judge whoever gets this one.
This is all true and is likely a product of people treating tournaments like they're practice. In practice, such asides might be appropriate in moderation, but definitely not in tournaments. That said, I don't mind tossups that might be on more "creative" answer lines including the "description acceptable" or other appropriate, brief instructions to help warn players.
while I admit it does take some level of judgment and testing and writing experience to figure out which potential "description-style" answers will go over well and which won't, such questions are pretty important for keeping the game fresh.
Keeping the game fresh is great, but I've seen a number of clunkers recently that tried this and ended up more confusing than anything else. Again, this makes it harder on the reader as he/she is forced to try to adjudicate "was this description acceptable enough" or "can I prompt on that," especially if little help was given by the writer. These are not inherently bad, but these should be treated carefully given extra attention in playtesting and such.
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Re: Giving Answers

Post by Schroeder »

Would it be considered bad sportsmanship (or otherwise frowned upon) to mispronounce an answer deliberately (for example, pronouncing Camus the way it looks like in English)?
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Re: Giving Answers

Post by Skepticism and Animal Feed »

Schroeder wrote:Would it be considered bad sportsmanship (or otherwise frowned upon) to mispronounce an answer deliberately (for example, pronouncing Camus the way it looks like in English)?
In my experience, this happened all the time in college quizbowl, including by some of the world's best players, and nobody cared. Your real risk is running into a pedantic moderator who incorrectly negs you for it, rather than offending somebody on the other team.
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Re: Giving Answers

Post by alexdz »

I wouldn't go so far as to say it's to be desired for anyone, or "good form," to deliberately mispronounce an answer just for fun. I doubt you run the risk of really offending anyone by doing it, but I know that when people I play against (or even with) do it, I die a little inside. It's silly, and to me it seems a little "show-off-ish" (this may be a result of the particular people I've witnessed do this). Plus, as Bruce said, you always run the risk of getting negged, especially if you deviate too far or start to mangle entire chunks of words.

So, bad sportsmanship? Nah. Frowned upon? In my book, yes.
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Re: Giving Answers

Post by cchiego »

It's never a good idea to showboat on answers. I've seen plenty of frustration in the past on people who gave non-English names for paintings or included the wrong middle initial on an answer.

That said, remember that phonetic pronunciation is pretty much always acceptable. Many new players have never actually heard the answers they're giving said out loud before and might only know them from reading them somewhere. For instance, I used to pronounce Goethe as "Go-eth" before I realized the correct way to say it. So long as the response is phoenetically correct, it should be fine.
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