The Quizbowl Resource Center

So apparently Lusher Charter School won the New Orleans phase, which means that they now advance to the overall finals in Chicago...which is the same weekend they're registered to play the NSC.

Hopefully they make the right choice.

Good to know that Chip is still awkwardly resizing pictures using html tags instead of editing them in literally anything else.

nAC wrote: Pingry extended that lead to 100 after identifying "neutralization" after hearing definitions of the word in Linguistics, Immunology, and Chemistry.

I read stuff like this and I really want to know what the question sounded like, AND if the whole question got read. That is, was it something like (clue on Lingusitics)...(blank stares)...(clue on Immunology)...(blank stares)...(clue on mixing sodium hydroxide and hyrdochloric acid)[EVERYONE BUZZ]
See? Isn't pyramidality better than single clue toss-ups?

Dead Parrot wrote:So apparently Lusher Charter School won the New Orleans phase, which means that they now advance to the overall finals in Chicago...which is the same weekend they're registered to play the NSC.

Hopefully they make the right choice.

Doesn't nac resort to a paper tiebreaker anyway if they're not there? Canceling NSC to play for a championship they could win anyway seems like doubling down. OTOH, maybe they feel they're good at qunlimted and feel they are massive favorites in that format. Also, I know I'd be unhappy to 'win' a national championship, only to be told, "but not really" a few weeks later when a team at a different site beat us on a paper tiebreaker. I'd want to lose at the buzzer, and Lusher may feel the same. Find out soon enough...

Pingry extended that lead to 100 after identifying "neutralization" after hearing definitions of the word in Linguistics, Immunology, and Chemistry.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutralization wrote: Neutralization (chemistry), a chemical reaction where a base and an acid react to form a salt
Neutralisation (immunology), pathogen neutralization caused by antibodies
[...]
Neutralization (linguistics), the elimination of certain distinctive features of phonemes in certain environments

you don't say

the return of AHAN wrote:

Dead Parrot wrote:So apparently Lusher Charter School won the New Orleans phase, which means that they now advance to the overall finals in Chicago...which is the same weekend they're registered to play the NSC.

Hopefully they make the right choice.

Doesn't nac resort to a paper tiebreaker anyway if they're not there? Canceling NSC to play for a championship they could win anyway seems like doubling down. OTOH, maybe they feel they're good at qunlimted and feel they are massive favorites in that format. Also, I know I'd be unhappy to 'win' a national championship, only to be told, "but not really" a few weeks later when a team at a different site beat us on a paper tiebreaker. I'd want to lose at the buzzer, and Lusher may feel the same. Find out soon enough...

I think they do that with the middle school kids, but the high school teams that win the first two sites have always been flown out to play at the third site. In 2000, Grand Junction said they would send their B team because their A team was already scheduled to attend Panasonic. Beall through a chip fit and disqualified them. I just checked to see if the "Grand Junction Rule" still existed, and it looks like it's been adjusted:

6. The top teams from the first two phases of the Varsity tournament are expected, at the expense of the N.A.A., to travel to the third phase to compete against the other two site winners. The N.A.A. will purchase 5 tickets (max. $500 apiece). If for whatever reason the team is not able to travel to participate in the final phase, that team’s record in the preliminaries and playoffs shall not be sullied, but the second-ranked team will be asked to go in their stead.

I humbly request that you spare Smithtown from the anti-Chip wrath, as we all can't stand him either, and the only reason we're stuck going is because of inane bureaucracy where we can either go or lose our funding. The entire team really, really doesn't want to deal with Chip and his *lovely* shenanigans.
So yeah, the plan is to try and win a little money to go to more pyramidal tourneys next year, and get a few days off in the process.
And if we somehow do well, I won't even bother claiming we're #1 because we are certainly not.

Edit: We're going to DC on friday. Yay.

Try to enjoy our nation's capital. It's well worth the trip. And who knows? If you go into it with the attitude of it not being important, you may find yourself 'winning' more as a result of said relaxed attitude.

Okay so my team just finished the New Orleans NAC, and first off, congrats to Lusher! They took us out in the quarterfinals. (For the record, we were leading until 60 second round, and then we got a physics category and our world fell apart... hehe.)

Anyway, I am new to the boards, but as the team captain and the only person afillliated with the team (coaches or otherwise) taking it seriously at a national level, I wanted to ask advice.

I can tell that NAC is frowned upon here. I agree, there are lots of buzzer races in the first round and the questions are quite odd... However, what other routes are there? How hard is it to qualify for these tournaments? Our team did just get back to NAC for the first time in six years and we got fifth, so I'm sure we can hang with many teams next year when we return all of our starters.

User was reminded to enable a signature. --Mgmt.

You're from Bayside Academy, correct? I believe you said so in a different subforum. You can see here that you guys actually qualified for HSNCT: http://www.naqt.com/stats/tournament-te ... nt_id=5816
Additionally, since your league uses NAQT questions, the top teams qualify for HSNCT.

NAC is not just bad for buzzer races, but for relatively poor competition (Pingry, the runner-up, did not finish higher than sixth in any regional event and is ranked 101st in the country on pyramidal questions), a limited number of games, countless ethical issues, and other problems with the questions. You guys should try to attend HSNCT or NSC next year, and you will almost certainly qualify.

Mucho Macho Man wrote:You're from Bayside Academy, correct? I believe you said so in a different subforum. You can see here that you guys actually qualified for HSNCT: http://www.naqt.com/stats/tournament-te ... nt_id=5816
Additionally, since your league uses NAQT questions, the top teams qualify for HSNCT.

NAC is not just bad for buzzer races, but for relatively poor competition (Pingry, the runner-up, did not finish higher than sixth in any regional event and is ranked 101st in the country on pyramidal questions), a limited number of games, countless ethical issues, and other problems with the questions. You guys should try to attend HSNCT or NSC next year, and you will almost certainly qualify.

Wow... Okay, I had no idea that that performance would qualify us. I'll definitely try to get the team down there next year! Wish me luck. Thank you so much!

Mucho Macho Man wrote:NAC is not just bad for buzzer races, but for relatively poor competition (Pingry, the runner-up, did not finish higher than sixth in any regional event and is ranked 101st in the country on pyramidal questions), a limited number of games, countless ethical issues, and other problems with the questions.

I'm not saying that we're one of the best teams in the region, but we're not bad either. Contrary to what you said, we tied for third at QuAC at Penn, tied for fifth at QuBIT at High Tech, and tied for fourth at BASQT at Bergen (all of which contained teams from multiple states). So the competition as NAC is not as rigorous as HSNCT or PACE (both of which we had to miss because of date conflicts), but that doesn't mean that all the teams at NAC are awful.

Will, I don't think anyone was trying to say "all of the teams at NAC couldn't do well at pyramidal quizbowl." What we're saying is that the competition at NAC is not up to par with the competition at NSC and HSNCT, in that none of the best teams in the country are at NAC.

I recall a time where High Tech was making the switch from NAC to HSNCT a few years back. I think some haters thought High Tech would get clobbered, but they were very competitive, going 9-1 on Saturday, losing only to eventual champ, Bellarmine. But back-to-back losses to LASA and Wayzata sent them to the rail earlier than expected in the Sunday playoffs.

So, there was a question today:

On a standard computer keyboard, this number is located below the dollar sign-- *BUZZ*

I don't even want to know what the the rest of that question was...

Also,
- A texas team got two tossups- one in first quarter and one in 3rd- that no team outside of texas evan has a remote chance of answering.
- We, from NY, got a lightning-round set on NYC bouroughs.
- gave the "These questions were written months ago" spheal for the texas stuff.
- And finally, Ernie made his bad jokes and repeatedly pugged his rado show in WV.

UGH. But hey, we went 5-1 and are going to playoffs tomorrow!

As of right now, we are 6-0. The middle schools teams are very very easy, the only team we had a challenge from was Woodland from Arkansas (in which we won 305-300). Hopefully we get competition in the Playoffs.

Snoopy wrote:So, there was a question today:

On a standard computer keyboard, this number is located below the dollar sign-- *BUZZ*

I don't even want to know what the the rest of that question was...

Also,
- A texas team got two tossups- one in first quarter and one in 3rd- that no team outside of texas evan has a remote chance of answering.
- We, from NY, got a lightning-round set on NYC bouroughs.
- gave the "These questions were written months ago" spheal for the texas stuff.
- And finally, Ernie made his bad jokes and repeatedly pugged his rado show in WV.

UGH. But hey, we went 5-1 and are going to playoffs tomorrow!

Surprising to me that the Arkansas team didn't go to New Orleans... Same could be said for the Texas team depending on where in TX.

Also, did there seem to be a Beatles obsession? I counted seven clues about the Beatles in New Orleans, and that was just in the few rounds I played or watched.

That's something I've noticed over 3 years of that dumb competition: There are a million and a half questions on identifying Beatles songs. The TX team was from el Paso, btw.

But in good news, my coach got so ticked at chip and his lousy moderating that he chewed him out, fired off a nasty email, and swore that we will never go back again! So that solves that problem! :D

http://m.arkansasonline.com/news/2015/m ... r-2015053/ Left without comment because Jesus Christ

Try this link if the above doesn't work. The key quote:

The team, made up of seventh- and ninth-graders, made it to the finals. But soon into the game, the students spoke up, unprompted, after realizing they recognized some of the questions being posed, their coach later told the players' parents in an email.

The questions were the same as those that had been purchased for practice.

Chip actually re-used questions from a practice set in the finals of his "national championship" tournament. No person with any shred of integrity can continue to be associated with that sleazeball or any of this tournaments (this includes you, Arkansas Quiz Bowl and AETN).

But, good on the Pulaski Academy kids for speaking up. Reminds me of a team that DIDN'T speak up at a non-conference triangular meet back in my Cahokia days. But, long story short, my kids took out their revenge on them at sectionals on a set blind to both teams.

cchiego wrote:

The team, made up of seventh- and ninth-graders, made it to the finals.

Chip actually re-used questions from a practice set in the finals of his "national championship" tournament.

Just to tidy up "finals" terminology so we can string the man up properly and prevent confusion: The match in question was evidently a 6 vs. 11 playoff match for a spot in the quarterfinals. This adds the potential that up to four other rooms were hearing the same publicly-for-sale set of questions at the same time.

It does make you wonder: Since has said that he is essentially his only question writer, what percentage of his "new" questions are reused? It was certainly happening when I was in high school, though not at the national stage.

I'll post the entire relevant text here:

TRUE WINNERS: When the six Pulaski Academy quiz bowl team members recently attended the Questions Unlimited Junior National Championship Tournament in New Orleans with their coach Jacob Harris, the students didn't win the competition. No matter. They'd already achieved something far greater -- upholding honor and integrity.

The team, made up of seventh- and ninth-graders, made it to the finals. But soon into the game, the students spoke up, unprompted, after realizing they recognized some of the questions being posed, their coach later told the players' parents in an email.

The questions were the same as those that had been purchased for practice.

Many of the coaches and parents from the other teams praised the students for their honesty. After a long delay during which a new set of questions was put together, the competition continued, Harris wrote. The hard-fought, close competition against St. Ignatius Catholic School of Mobile, Ala., ended with the other team defeating Pulaski Academy by a one-question margin.

"It's a real testament to their character," Harris said of his students to Paper Trails.

Dead Parrot wrote:So apparently Lusher Charter School won the New Orleans phase, which means that they now advance to the overall finals in Chicago...which is the same weekend they're registered to play the NSC.

Hopefully they make the right choice.

It appears the entirety of the Lusher team, as shown in the NAC winners' photo http://www.qunlimited.com/national.htm#nat1, is in attendance at NSC http://www.hsquizbowl.org/db/tournament ... etail/#t47.

In other news, it seems QU has managed to lure Palatine's Quest Academy http://www.qunlimited.com/chsche15.htm, to say nothing of luring a Bolingbrook scholastic bowl team (Jane Addams MS).

According to this, Coronado High (El Paso, which plays most of its tournaments on NAQT sets) won the overall. From Twitter, it sounds like they may have beaten Lusher in the finals, who in turn beat Bishop Kelley (OK).

There's also this great quote:

This win makes the Coronado High team the undisputed top quiz team in all of the United States.

Isn't this parallel universe amazing?

cchiego wrote:According to this, Coronado High (El Paso, which plays most of its tournaments on NAQT sets) won the overall. From Twitter, it sounds like they may have beaten Lusher in the finals, who in turn beat Bishop Kelley (OK).

There's also this great quote:

This win makes the Coronado High team the undisputed top quiz team in all of the United States.

Isn't this parallel universe amazing?

Which would mean Lusher went from DC straight to Chicago yesterday... Given a Barrington team of sophomores & freshmen beat Lusher this weekend, maybe they should go play NAC so they, too, can be crowned the "undisputed quiz team in all of the United States." Pay no mind to that #49 finish at NSC...

So, Palatine's Quest Academy did, in fact, prevail in the MS playoffs of the Chicago "national finals." Based on what I'm guessing is points per game, Quest was awarded 2nd place money and declared the "Rookie Team of the Year," while Vikas Reddy was the National MVP. So I take it to mean that Sutton will be declared as the #1 team as their PPG was 377.8 (compared to Quest's 376.7), though Quest had the best margin of victory, and scored more points during the single-elimination playoff games, and was also undefeated.

I think I'm ready to submit that the teams playing Junior NAC are better prepared and more likely to be successful if they are regulars in the NAQT circuit (Quest played a number of NAQT tourneys but, like us, had to miss MSNCT b/c they qualified for IESA State this year). Seriously. I had little doubt that Quest was going to run through the field of teams unknown to NAQT. And I'm struggling to find instances of teams that played MSNCT that failed to qualify for the NAC playoffs. I know it's fashionable in these parts to deride the NAC as an inferior product, and yet teams still play. I submit that the teams who WANT to play it should at least consider playing NAQT tournaments to broaden their knowledge base, and perhaps stand a chance when playing the Trickums, Suttons, Danville Bates, Quests, etc. of the world.

the return of AHAN wrote:

cchiego wrote:According to this, Coronado High (El Paso, which plays most of its tournaments on NAQT sets) won the overall. From Twitter, it sounds like they may have beaten Lusher in the finals, who in turn beat Bishop Kelley (OK).

There's also this great quote:

This win makes the Coronado High team the undisputed top quiz team in all of the United States.

Isn't this parallel universe amazing?

Which would mean Lusher went from DC straight to Chicago yesterday... Given a Barrington team of sophomores & freshmen beat Lusher this weekend, maybe they should go play NAC so they, too, can be crowned the "undisputed quiz team in all of the United States." Pay no mind to that #49 finish at NSC...

Yes, last week, after Lusher won the New Orleans regional, we asked for confirmation they were still coming to NSC, and they confirmed that they were flying out Sunday after our tournament ended for the Monday finals of Chipbowl. As to the "undisputed" quote, it's a school district press release; I've never seen one that wasn't aggressively exaggerating accomplishments.