COLT Discussion

[Mike Bentley]

Use this thread to discuss the 2011 iteration of COLT.

[Mike Bentley]

Some things I'm interested in hearing feedback on:

1. Sports questions. Once again, I ended up having to write more of these than I would have liked (i.e. more than 0 sports questions). I wrote all of the football, all of the college basketball, some baseball and the non-soccer portion of the minor sports. I know last year some people felt the football wasn't very good, I'd be interested in hearing some feedback on it this year. By the way, I didn't set out to be so cute with the back to back football tossups on "Brian" and "Ryan", that was more of an accident due to a last minute replacement of some other question that I didn't like. There were also probably more tossups than at a usual trash tournament on games or teams from particular years. How do people feel about those type of questions?

2. Videogame questions. I made an effort to make these easier and in less predictable areas than last year. Going into the tournament I felt that many of the bonuses in this category were probably too easy, but I didn't necessarily see that play out in the tournament itself except in a few small cases (for instance, it seemed like lots of people who haven't played Heavy Rain mysteriously knew who the antagonist of that game was).

3. Difficulty of the tournament. It seemed when I was reading the tournament that it ended up being a bit easier than I would have liked, however, the stats seem to indicate the difficulty was pretty similar to CULT last year and a bit easier than CO Trash 2011, which was the stated goal.

[Cheynem]

I liked the set. Sports seemed fine--I really like specific tossups on teams and games, provided you're a little generous with the answer lines (such as saying, "Giants/Ravens" for that Super Bowl, etc.).

My biggest issue was that it seemed like having a broad superficial knowledge at times was rewarded more than deep knowledge. For instance, I have never seen an episode of "Capital Critters," but I'm aware it exists (I have seen an episode of "George and Leo," however). I don't really know much about the Golddiggers, and yet I powered all three of these tossups basically off being familiar with certain titles. I think revising these common links to reward deeper knowledge of more familiar things would have been a better idea (I say this, of course, but having just worked on a trash tournament, I know how hard that can be!).

Bonuses occasionally seemed too easy, but hard parts generally seemed appropriate. I think differentiating easy and middle parts more would have been nice, if as always, very hard to do in trash tournaments.

[ValenciaQBowl]

I had a great time and appreciate the work the writers and Mike put into the set. I did miss the small amount of sort of "academic trash" that the Yaphe iterations had (finding trash ways of asking about "A Theory of Justice," for instance), but that may be a minority taste, and I understand Mike didn't have a lot of time for that concern.

This may well be wrong, but my impression is that there was less college football, seemingly significantly less, than pro. But I may just feel that way since we always think there's less of what we like best.

[Mike Bentley]

I intentionally set out to give more weight to professional sports than college sports, with the idea being that professional sports are typically more popular than college sports (also, I don't find college basketball particularly interesting, as the clues are mostly limited to the NCAA Tournament). I don't recall what the final distribution ended up being. I think there was more college football than college basketball, though. In many cases I tried to include both college and pro clues in questions.

[Edward Elric]

First of all I want to thank everyone for helping write and edit the set. Specifically, I had a couple of issues with the questions. To preface this, the only issues I had were with the topics not the questions themselves.

For the music questions, I was surprised and disappointed by the choice of TU questions. I think that there was way too much rap and indie music as compared to classic rock and metal. I think that tossing up the Buggles is a very poor idea since they have only one real hit (Video Killed the Radio Star) and the other clues before the song lyrics didn't help me convert it. I felt like with the exception of the Disraeli Gears TU and the Yard Birds (I'm not sure if it was a TU or Bonus) and Robert Plant, there was very few rock questions. If thats what the distro was aiming for, so be it, but I expected more classic rock to be asked. I probably missed a bunch of rock questions (This was a couple days ago and I have forgotten some since then).

Regarding videogames, I thought they were done well. I don't play videogames at all but I was still able to convert some TU and bonuses based on games i've heard of or seen friends play (Heavy Rain and James Bond come to mind). Sports wise, I thought there was way too many baseball questions in relation to everything else. I did like what was done with some of the sports questions (give the two teams involved in specific contest/ contest) but I felt that baseball took the lead. That being said, the basketball and soccer questions were done very well as were the baseball ones i heard.

Movies were pretty good, though I did expect more movies from the 60s and 70s then more recent (Edge of Darkness wasn't that well-received of a movie but it was tossed up).

That's really all that I have to say. It was a lot of fun to play and was a great change of pace playing a not as difficult as Marnold trash tourney.

Edit: I also negged the tossup on the 2009 wimbeldon with 2009 US open off the Melanie Oudin/ Jelena Jankovic clue. IIRC Jelena was #6 and got upset in the early rounds and Melanie Oudin pulled off an early upset in both.

[theMoMA]

I thought that the lyrics given for songs were often very unhelpful. I tend to remember and recall lyrics well, but I was having a hard time converting music tossups on bands that I like because a lot of the lines chosen seemed terribly generic. The sports was fun for the most part; no real complaints. And I enjoyed the set on the whole.

[Scipio]

There was a lot that I loved about this tournament, and very little I can recall disliking about it. One thing I would like to mention again (as I did repeatedly at the site itself) is my wholehearted enthusiasm for asking for event and either year or teams involved; in fact, I very much hope the "Year and event required" tossups become a thing of the past because of this practice, and that everyone remembers you fondly for killing them.

[Mike Bentley]

For the music questions, I was surprised and disappointed by the choice of TU questions. I think that there was way too much rap and indie music as compared to classic rock and metal.

Rock as a genre pretty much doesn't exist anymore. It’s pretty much holdovers from the alt-rock ‘90s (e.g. bands like Foo Fighters, U2 and Coldplay) and “indie rock”.

I guess I could have a few more metal questions, but this seems like a pretty niche genre. Besides Metallica, I don’t think there’s a relevant metal band today. During the ‘70s and ‘80s there were of course several such bands, and this tournament did ask about some stuff from that period (e.g. Jethro Tull, Lars Ulrich).

Rap had at most 1/1 per packet and probably more like 0.65/0.65. It’s clearly a genre that’s not super popular amongst many quizbowlers, but at the same time it’s a very important genre amongst the general music listening population.

I felt like with the exception of the Disraeli Gears TU and the Yard Birds (I'm not sure if it was a TU or Bonus) and Robert Plant, there was very few rock questions.

Just going through the tossups in the first 6 rounds, out of the 24 total music tossups, these fell into the rock category (and this doesn’t include “indie rock”):

The Byrds
Youth of the Nation
Daydream Believer
Fountains of Wayne
Chicago
3 Doors Down
Steppenwolf
Please Mr. Postman (if you count the stuff about the Beatles)
Some of the Australia tossup
Paint it Black
Maybe Kids in America

I don’t think this is an underrepresentation of rock.

I think that tossing up the Buggles is a very poor idea since they have only one real hit (Video Killed the Radio Star) and the other clues before the song lyrics didn't help me convert it.

The band's history seemed interesting to me, but perhaps this could have spent a bit more time on Video Killed the Radio Star.

Sports wise, I thought there was way too many baseball questions in relation to everything else.

Baseball had 1/1 questions per packet (not counting common link), as did football and basketball.

Movies were pretty good, though I did expect more movies from the 60s and 70s then more recent (Edge of Darkness wasn't that well-received of a movie but it was tossed up).

Did other people really feel there wasn’t enough classic film in this tournament?

[Cheynem]

I felt there was a lot of old film and I enjoyed buzzing on those questions (now the specific pluses and minuses of those film questions could be debated, I guess). I'm not certain how many of those old film choices were from the '60s or '70s, however.

[Edward Elric]

I had forgotten about some of those tossups so thanks for reminding me. I don't have the set infront of me so some of my comments are probably slightly skewed. I have no problems with rap/ hip hop or indie rock, by the way, I just felt that classic rock took a back seat most of the day. Though the more you brought up the answer lines, the more I remember some of the other music tossups.

Great Set, if I didn't mention that already. It was fun to play.