The Quizbowl Resource Center

Please talk about general aspects of the set here.

Hey, just wanted to say thank to my collaborators, Rob and Carsten, for all their hard work on the set. Rob wrote a huge chunk of questions across all categories, and Carsten contributed many of the TV and movie questions (in addition to a smattering of questions in other areas) and proofread the set to heretofore-unseen levels of readability.

Thanks also to everyone who played the event. We're all really pleased that your reactions have been positive, and we're looking forward to presenting the next iteration in two years!

This tournament was a blast; thanks to Rob, Andrew, and Carsten for the work they put into writing it. Unsurprisingly, I was pleased with the amount of "old guy" answer lines: Darryl Dawkins, Dallas Cowboys (opening Alvin Harper clue), Cannonball Run, McCloud (!!! I can't wait to see the conversion on that one--maybe it offered a homonym clue or something toward the end? Who under 40 has heard of that show?). Great work, y'all.

McCloud was a common link; its giveaway was Starfox.

I also was a bit mystified when I buzzed on the Dennis Weaver TV show, wondering where else it was going.

Yeah, the clues for McCloud were drawn from, in order: F-Zero, McCloud, Brewster McCloud, and Fox McCloud from Star Fox. Something for all ages!

Let me first say I loved this set. There were really entertaining ideas (Morgellons!). My only minor gripe is that it seemed that were a fair number of music questions based on "this n-word phrase" such as "Come On" and "On the Road Again." Were there really that many or am I a crazy person?


Clarification: "n-word" as in a variable number, not a slur.

Habitat_Against_Humanity wrote:Let me first say I loved this set. There were really entertaining ideas (Morgellons!). My only minor gripe is that it seemed that were a fair number of music questions based on "this n-word phrase" such as "Come On" and "On the Road Again." Were there really that many or am I a crazy person?


Clarification: "n-word" as in a variable number, not a slur.

I also noticed that there were a lot of music common links. I didn't do well of them because I don't know trash music but I feel like they were well done.

I personally ended up writing more than a few common-link music questions ("lights" in Kanye songs, "On the Road Again," "independent," "come on," "Ronald Reagan," "Rich Girl," "rock," and "Tuesday"). Rob wrote a few more ("break your heart," "dominoes," "21," "Breakaway," and "17"). So it looks like 13 out of 52 of our music tossups were common links. About 20 tossups were on individual songs or aspects of songs, 12 were on artists, and 3 were on albums. The remaining 4 or so were on miscellaneous things (like bands from Japan or the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's role in music, which I guess could be considered common link).

Speaking only for myself, I tried to write music questions on songs, artists, or albums only when I knew I could find a solid body of interesting clues. I tried to stay away from types of clues I consider boring (about "one cover of this song," chart positions, preceding or following songs on albums, tons of quotes from minor parts of songs, etc.). I also tend to find questions that incorporate clues from both inside and outside the work itself more interesting than ones that focus only on internal characteristics. That might have resulted in a more common-link-heavy music distribution than is typical.

Yeah, I have absolutely no problem with common links and even really enjoy them. Lord knows I wrote a fair share of them in 2013. I was specifically commenting about the common-links-on-a-phrase questions, which never really occurred to me as a way to do a common link. I thought they were interesting if somewhat hard to parse at times, so I was just curious if that particular flavor of common link was intentional or not. It appears it wasn't.

Habitat_Against_Humanity wrote:Yeah, I have absolutely no problem with common links and even really enjoy them. Lord knows I wrote a fair share of them in 2013. I was specifically commenting about the common-links-on-a-phrase questions, which never really occurred to me as a way to do a common link. I thought they were interesting if somewhat hard to parse at times, so I was just curious if that particular flavor of common link was intentional or not. It appears it wasn't.

Ah, that makes sense. I tried to indicate the word length of phrases--and some titles, such as "There She Goes"--throughout my tossups of that kind, so that it'd be easier for people to buzz in with confidence when they recognized something. It's always a bit annoying to me when I have a decent buzz on a music tossup, only to find that the title of the song is "There She Goes" rather than "There She Goes Again" or whatever. Songs titles are important to know (things have names, attention must be paid, etc.), but the way we listen to music doesn't always result in remembering the exact title of a particular song, and I tried to include little guideposts, typically thing like "this four-word title" or whatever, to help players get the right formulation.

I wanna thank you guys for doing an online mirror. I thought the tournament overall was very good, and I especially enjoyed the comics/comic book questions.

This subforum should now be available for anyone to see; I suggest you partly shield your eyes to avoid taking in its full Zeus-like glory.

hi this tournament was very good kthx

This or CULT were probably the best trash tournaments I can remember playing (nothing will top a tournament, though, that tossed up The Skulls and John Q in the same packet). What I liked best about this is that the same care that went into an academic tournament clearly went into this tournament, so instead of endless tossups on dumb memes or flavor of the week crap, there was an admirable attempt at asking stuff from all time periods and interests.

I know that I'm late to the party, but I played the mirror of this tournament that was held in Athens, GA, and I want to say that I really enjoyed the set and add in my thanks to the authors for their hard work. The only thing that really stood out to me in a negative sense was the large amount of common link music toss ups, though I figured that they could probably be explained by the writers being able to find more useful clues for them than for toss ups on individual songs (and possibly artists or albums).

Most of the toss ups that I was getting were either music or baseball, but I also want to thank the author of the Walker, Texas Ranger toss up for finally giving me a chance to power a question on that show.

I hope to be able to play the 2018 edition!