2016 Terrapin Specific Question Discussion and Errata

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2016 Terrapin Specific Question Discussion and Errata

Post by Jem Casey »

Discuss specific questions and errata here.
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Re: 2016 Terrapin Specific Question Discussion and Errata

Post by What do you do with a dead chemist? »

A couple of minor things that I remember from yesterday. In the question on Carbonyls, I think you dropped Felkin Ahn at the end of the first line, which felt very early and the question on violins mentioned scordatura in the first line which narrows it down to string instruments, even if you don't know the Biber sonatas.

The one other issue I remember being prominent was the biodiversity tossup which was negged in every room at the UK site with entropy (in 3 rooms) and information (in 1 room) on the Shannon clue.
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Re: 2016 Terrapin Specific Question Discussion and Errata

Post by Red Panda Cub »

I think the leadin to the Locke tossup about the locked room is pretty well known just as an anecdote outside of a purely philosophical context, so might be a bit early in the question.

The Jane Jacobs bonus should accept "pavements" for "sidewalks" :wink:

I didn't have a problem with it on its own terms, but a few people commented, and with this I agree, that the assassinating Qin Shi Huang tossup felt stylistically quite out of place in the set. That funky items are being used makes it pretty clear early that it's assassination, so it basically becomes a game of figuring out who is targeted anyway
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Re: 2016 Terrapin Specific Question Discussion and Errata

Post by vinteuil »

Stephen negged the biodiversity question on the Shannon index clues with "entropy"—is there any reason why that shouldn't have been acceptable or promptable?
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Re: 2016 Terrapin Specific Question Discussion and Errata

Post by UlyssesInvictus »

vinteuil wrote:Stephen negged the biodiversity question on the Shannon index clues with "entropy"—is there any reason why that shouldn't have been acceptable or promptable?
This seems to have been a case where the author was only familiar with the Shannon index in a diversity context, which admittedly seems like a really common usage. I'm not sold it deserves outright acceptance, but it definitely needs a thing like "it's not entropy, but--." Then again, I negged with complexity at the same clue, then just went straight for entropy on a prompt, so it's a little tricky since you might just get more people like me still buzzing and thinking you want information or the like.
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Re: 2016 Terrapin Specific Question Discussion and Errata

Post by UlyssesInvictus »

Also, please, please fix the MATLAB bonus. As I complained at the time, asking for the operation that gives you elements in a matrix and then wanting colon is like

1) asking for the operation that makes 2 and 3 equal to 5
2) and then wanting an answer of "T sign"

Because
1) Indexing into the matrix is the actual operation
2) Colon isn't how you index in MATLAB, parens is, colon is just how you split ranges if you want subvectors

Sorry if I went too in-depth on a single bonus part, that bonus was just emblematic to me of fairly boring/nonstellar CS in the set.
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Re: 2016 Terrapin Specific Question Discussion and Errata

Post by UlyssesInvictus »

Could I also see the REST bonus, because I remember that one being fairly bad as well.
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Re: 2016 Terrapin Specific Question Discussion and Errata

Post by The Stately Rhododendron »

Could I see the anthro TU on "war"? I liked it (especially since I had taken a class on the anthropology of war!) but I remember having some issue with the wording?
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Re: 2016 Terrapin Specific Question Discussion and Errata

Post by wcheng »

Could I also see the REST bonus, because I remember that one being fairly bad as well.
This architectural style is practiced by companies like Twilio and GitHub. For 10 points each:
[10] Identify this design pattern developed by Roy Fielding which has six constraints, including client–server, stateless, and uniform interface. Implementations typically use HTTP verbs like GET, PUT, and DELETE.
ANSWER: _REST_ [or _Representational State Transfer_; accept _REST_ful]
[10] An oft-neglected part of REST design is this constraint which requires that users of an API should only know a single start URL, and should navigate to others via hyperlinks that the API provides.
ANSWER: _HATEOAS_ [or _Hypermedia as the Engine of Application State_]
[10] The format of resources in a REST API is described by the use of these two-part identifiers which were originally used for email attachments. Common ones include “text/xml” and “image/png.”
ANSWER:_ media type_s [accept _MIME type_s or _Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions type_s; accept _content type_s]

This bonus was definitely way too difficult, and it has been moved to the tiebreakers packet and replaced with a more accessible bonus. There were plans to edit this and make it easier, but that fell through during the packetization effort.
Could I see the anthro TU on "war"? I liked it (especially since I had taken a class on the anthropology of war!) but I remember having some issue with the wording?
Maurice Bloch described how the “rebounding” form of this phenomenon characterizes the interaction between “the transcendental” and “the vital” in rituals. Pierre Clastres argued that South American tribes use this phenomenon to oppose state-formation in a book on the “Archaeology” of it. A film shot by Tim Asch depicts men engaging in this behavior in the town of Mishimishimabowei-teri. A researcher was accused of encouraging this phenomenon through goods traded for genealogical information in (*) Patrick Tierney’s Darkness in El Dorado. Napoleon Chagnon controversially claimed that the Yanomami tribe was constantly engaged in this behavior. For 10 points, Max Weber claimed that the state had a monopoly on what type of behavior, defined as the “intentional use of physical force?”
ANSWER: _violence_ [or _force_ until it is read; accept _aggression_, _fierce_ness, _war_fare, _fight_ing, or other equivalents]
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Re: 2016 Terrapin Specific Question Discussion and Errata

Post by touchpack »

I profusely apologize about the state of the computer science in the set. Unfortunately I know very, very little about computer science and did not delegate effectively, so stuff got pushed to last-minute and most of it was written the night before and/or completely unedited. I will make sure ALL of the computer science questions get looked at in detail before the next mirror.

As to REST bonus--both me and Ophir marked it as needing extensive editing/reworking, but somehow it mistakenly got marked as "edited" in the answer doc and slotted into the final packets unedited. That bonus was not supposed to be played in anything even closely resembling its current form. Similar story with the MATLAB bonus; it got slotted into the final packets completely unedited despite being identified as requiring attention.
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Re: 2016 Terrapin Specific Question Discussion and Errata

Post by touchpack »

people wrote:stuff about the biodiversity question
Packet 8 wrote:One measure of this property is denoted H because its formula is the same as that of the H-function from thermodynamics; that measure is the Shannon index.
Ooooof, this one's on me; that's an embarrassing oversight. I added "it has nothing to do with information theory" to the beginning of the sentence. To defend myself a little, if this really WERE a question about entropy, this clue would be completely godawful, and I try not to write completely godawful questions :P

Oh also accepting or prompting entropy is completely wrong. The purpose of a prompt is to give the player to clarify a closely-related but imprecise answer, whereas this is a completely unrelated topic which has similar nomenclature due to analogy. I just didn't think about how a player who doesn't know what the Shannon index is would process the clue, which is a bad oversight.
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Re: 2016 Terrapin Specific Question Discussion and Errata

Post by vinteuil »

touchpack wrote:
people wrote:stuff about the biodiversity question
Packet 8 wrote:One measure of this property is denoted H because its formula is the same as that of the H-function from thermodynamics; that measure is the Shannon index.
Ooooof, this one's on me; that's an embarrassing oversight. I added "it has nothing to do with information theory" to the beginning of the sentence. To defend myself a little, if this really WERE a question about entropy, this clue would be completely godawful, and I try not to write completely godawful questions :P

Oh also accepting or prompting entropy is completely wrong. The purpose of a prompt is to give the player to clarify a closely-related but imprecise answer, whereas this is a completely unrelated topic which has similar nomenclature due to analogy. I just didn't think about how a player who doesn't know what the Shannon index is would process the clue, which is a bad oversight.
Well, just to clarify, Stephen (along with the rest of us) was primed to buzz from the weird description, and buzzed immediately on "Shannon" before "index"...
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Re: 2016 Terrapin Specific Question Discussion and Errata

Post by UlyssesInvictus »

touchpack wrote:As to REST bonus--both me and Ophir marked it as needing extensive editing/reworking, but somehow it mistakenly got marked as "edited" in the answer doc and slotted into the final packets unedited. That bonus was not supposed to be played in anything even closely resembling its current form. Similar story with the MATLAB bonus; it got slotted into the final packets completely unedited despite being identified as requiring attention.
Actually, I kind of hope you'll edit and then keep those questions in...it was sort of nice to see more application-based CS, rather than another question on algorithms. (Which you had with the string search and decidability questions, I guess--speaking of which, could I see the decidability bonus?) Like, the concept was cool, just what you asked for was kind of weird. If you care:

The REST part was probably too hard to be a middle part for anyone who doesn't actually do web dev, and it's worded in sort of a weird way. I got it from you describing states and the HTTP verbs, but you probably just want to outright give the word "resource." No one cares who invented RESTful, though. Similarly, I'd argue no one cares what HATEOAS is actually called, though it is a thing I've heard about doing before. A more useful hard part would be to like, ask for a common error code or a specific HTTP verb. Finally, I got super confused by the "two-part identifier" phrasing and tried to give like, "application type" to match the two-part thing, but that might've just been on me. There's also no way you need more than just "type"; admittedly it's formally MIME or content type, but you normally just informally call it type, I'd argue.
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Re: 2016 Terrapin Specific Question Discussion and Errata

Post by touchpack »

vinteuil wrote:
touchpack wrote:
people wrote:stuff about the biodiversity question
Packet 8 wrote:One measure of this property is denoted H because its formula is the same as that of the H-function from thermodynamics; that measure is the Shannon index.
Ooooof, this one's on me; that's an embarrassing oversight. I added "it has nothing to do with information theory" to the beginning of the sentence. To defend myself a little, if this really WERE a question about entropy, this clue would be completely godawful, and I try not to write completely godawful questions :P

Oh also accepting or prompting entropy is completely wrong. The purpose of a prompt is to give the player to clarify a closely-related but imprecise answer, whereas this is a completely unrelated topic which has similar nomenclature due to analogy. I just didn't think about how a player who doesn't know what the Shannon index is would process the clue, which is a bad oversight.
Well, just to clarify, Stephen (along with the rest of us) was primed to buzz from the weird description, and buzzed immediately on "Shannon" before "index"...
I understand that, but adding a prompt doesn't fix that problem. The problem is the clue applies to 2 answers which are completely disjoint; adding a prompt is improper and doesn't fix the question. (What realistically would happen is Stephen would buzz with entropy, get prompted, then negged.)
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Re: 2016 Terrapin Specific Question Discussion and Errata

Post by Jem Casey »

touchpack wrote:I profusely apologize about the state of the computer science in the set. Unfortunately I know very, very little about computer science and did not delegate effectively, so stuff got pushed to last-minute and most of it was written the night before and/or completely unedited. I will make sure ALL of the computer science questions get looked at in detail before the next mirror.

As to REST bonus--both me and Ophir marked it as needing extensive editing/reworking, but somehow it mistakenly got marked as "edited" in the answer doc and slotted into the final packets unedited. That bonus was not supposed to be played in anything even closely resembling its current form. Similar story with the MATLAB bonus; it got slotted into the final packets completely unedited despite being identified as requiring attention.
Just chiming in to apologize for the computer science. I ended up writing 2/3 cs questions (string searching tu, the stack tu, complexity/undecidable/Berry Paradox*, currying/lamda cal/types, hash functions/Bloom filter/collisions) in about two hours on Friday night; given the time constraints and my lack of qualifications for any sort of science writing, it's not surprising that these questions were more "boring/nonstellar" than most of the stuff in the set. It's worth noting, however, that the case of the cs questions is not at all emblematic of how the set was produced; in fact, all but three subcategories were effectively complete a week before the first mirrors.

*the answerlines for this question were supplied by Ophir. As per Raynor's request, here's its text:
The Kolmogorov type of this property for a string is defined as the length of the shortest computer program that can output that string. For 10 points each:
[10] Name this property, whose time variety for algorithms is often expressed in big-O notation. Solutions to problems in the NP class of this type can be verified in polynomial time.
ANSWER: complexity [or Kolmogorov complexity]
[10] The problem of finding the Kolmogorov complexity of a string has this property, which Turing proved for the halting problem. In problems of this type, no algorithm can be created that will yield a definitive yes or no answer.
ANSWER: undecidable [or non-computable]
[10] This paradox can be used to prove that Kolmogorov complexity is undecidable. This paradox arises from the fact that the expression “the smallest positive integer not definable in fewer than twelve words” is itself eleven words long.
ANSWER: Berry paradox
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Re: 2016 Terrapin Specific Question Discussion and Errata

Post by UlyssesInvictus »

Hmm, I don't think I ever heard the stack/hash questions. Rather than wait for the set to come out, could I see them here?

Also, (last) minute nitpick: you should probably ask for "term" instead of "property" in the complexity bonus part, since it's misleading to imply that Kolm. complexity, time complexity, and problem-class complexity all refer to the same type of base property.
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Re: 2016 Terrapin Specific Question Discussion and Errata

Post by George Corfield »

The first line of the joints tossup contains the word "periarticular" which only requires you to know that articular is the adjective which refers to joints, which isn't especially difficult.
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Re: 2016 Terrapin Specific Question Discussion and Errata

Post by Corry »

Overall, I liked this set quite a bit. Some random thoughts:
  • The tossup on the Red Guards should really prompt on you on other things, e.g. "Chinese Communist Party" (which I buzzed with), "Chinese students," etc. "This group" is a reasonably nebulous term.
  • This set occasionally had substantial variation in answer line difficulty, e.g. Stroessner. The Madhist War was probably also up there. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but I'd be curious to hear about whether the set had some overarching philosophy regarding answer line selection.
  • The econ in this set was decent, but the tossup on "Pareto efficiency" seemed suboptimal. The Edgeworth box clue didn't seem to be particularly helpful, or was at least very difficult to parse. Could I see the text of that?
  • Things I liked: the Court Jews bonus, the slave narratives bonus, the Kingdom of Kongo tossup, and a whole bunch of other stuff that'll come back to me eventually
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Re: 2016 Terrapin Specific Question Discussion and Errata

Post by vinteuil »

touchpack wrote:
vinteuil wrote:
touchpack wrote:
people wrote:stuff about the biodiversity question
Packet 8 wrote:One measure of this property is denoted H because its formula is the same as that of the H-function from thermodynamics; that measure is the Shannon index.
Ooooof, this one's on me; that's an embarrassing oversight. I added "it has nothing to do with information theory" to the beginning of the sentence. To defend myself a little, if this really WERE a question about entropy, this clue would be completely godawful, and I try not to write completely godawful questions :P

Oh also accepting or prompting entropy is completely wrong. The purpose of a prompt is to give the player to clarify a closely-related but imprecise answer, whereas this is a completely unrelated topic which has similar nomenclature due to analogy. I just didn't think about how a player who doesn't know what the Shannon index is would process the clue, which is a bad oversight.
Well, just to clarify, Stephen (along with the rest of us) was primed to buzz from the weird description, and buzzed immediately on "Shannon" before "index"...
I understand that, but adding a prompt doesn't fix that problem. The problem is the clue applies to 2 answers which are completely disjoint; adding a prompt is improper and doesn't fix the question. (What realistically would happen is Stephen would buzz with entropy, get prompted, then negged.)
Fair enough, and I like your fix.
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Re: 2016 Terrapin Specific Question Discussion and Errata

Post by wcheng »

This set occasionally had substantial variation in answer line difficulty, e.g. Stroessner. The Madhist War was probably also up there. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but I'd be curious to hear about whether the set had some overarching philosophy regarding answer line selection.
As the person who wrote most of the world history, including the two of the tossups you mentioned, I can comment on this. I agree that some of the questions had significantly harder answerlines than others, and if that proved to be an issue during the tournament, I apologize. My aim in selecting world history anwerlines was to provide a geographically and chronologically diverse subdistribution, and to cover interesting material that had not come up much in the past. You can see this in the tossups I wrote on the Mahdist War, Kongo, and Sejong the Great, among others.
The econ in this set was decent, but the tossup on "Pareto efficiency" seemed suboptimal. The Edgeworth box clue didn't seem to be particularly helpful, or was at least very difficult to parse. Could I see the text of that?
According to the Greenwald–Stiglitz theorem, markets will not satisfy this condition so long as there is imperfect information, or the market is incomplete. In a certain diagram, this condition is satisfied at the points where the indifference curves for two agents intersect tangentially; that diagram, the Edgeworth box, can be used to draw the contract curve. By taking into account the possibility of (*) compensations, Kaldor and Hicks introduced a more general form of this condition. This condition is satisfied in a competitive equilibrium according to the first fundamental theorem of welfare economics. For 10 points, name this condition in which there exists no alternative allocation of resources that would make someone better off without making someone else worse off.
ANSWER: _Pareto optimality_ [or _Pareto efficiency_; accept other word forms]
I wrote this tossup. I could see the Edgeworth box clue as being somewhat hard to parse, but from what I understand, Edgeworth boxes are a fairly common way of graphically representing Pareto optimality, as you can see from this Google Books search.
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Re: 2016 Terrapin Specific Question Discussion and Errata

Post by Jem Casey »

UlyssesInvictus wrote:Hmm, I don't think I ever heard the stack/hash questions. Rather than wait for the set to come out, could I see them here?
Sure.
The article “The Geometry of Innocent Flesh on the Bone” described a technique in which this structure is made to execute bits of code called gadgets; that technique is Return Oriented Programming. The return-to-libc method circumvents schemes in which this structure is non-executable, although it is usually defeated by the use of Address Space Layout Randomization. Adding random values called canaries to this structure is intended to prevent the overwriting of return pointers on this structure’s (*) frames, which is often the goal of attacks that “smash” this structure. This structure grows downwards, in contrast to another region used for dynamic memory allocation, the heap. When a function exits, its variables are popped off this structure. For 10 points, name this region of computer memory that shares its name with a first-in, last-out data structure.
ANSWER: the stack
A probabilistic algorithm for estimating the Jaccard (“jah-CAR”) similarity of two sets uses the minimum value for one of these functions to compare the members of the sets. For 10 points each:
[10] Name these functions that map keys to indexes in an array, which are used to implement namesake tables.
ANSWER: hash functions
[10] Like the MinHash algorithm, this data structure uses hash functions probabilistically. This structure is used to quickly detect whether an item is in a set, and can return false positives but not false negatives.
ANSWER: Bloom filter
[10] Bloom filters can return false positives due to these events. These events occur when multiple keys resolve to the same location, and can be resolved by linear probing.
ANSWER: collisions
Corry wrote:Overall, I liked this set quite a bit. Some random thoughts:
  • The tossup on the Red Guards should really prompt on you on other things, e.g. "Chinese Communist Party" (which I buzzed with), "Chinese students," etc. "This group" is a reasonably nebulous term.
  • This set occasionally had substantial variation in answer line difficulty, e.g. Stroessner. The Madhist War was probably also up there. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but I'd be curious to hear about whether the set had some overarching philosophy regarding answer line selection.
Sorry about the lack of answerline instructions on the "Red Guards" question; that resulted from a weird lack of foresight on my part, and will be fixed for future mirrors. I don't think we had any carefully-conceived philosophy irt to answerline selection for this set, other than that some harder answerlines were fine as long as we kept about half ACF fall-appropriate and most of the rest very accessible. Most sets are going to have some tossups that are harder than the average question simply by virtue of their topic, which I think is probably a fine thing. Glad you enjoyed the history overall!
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Re: 2016 Terrapin Specific Question Discussion and Errata

Post by Corry »

wcheng wrote:
The econ in this set was decent, but the tossup on "Pareto efficiency" seemed suboptimal. The Edgeworth box clue didn't seem to be particularly helpful, or was at least very difficult to parse. Could I see the text of that?
According to the Greenwald–Stiglitz theorem, markets will not satisfy this condition so long as there is imperfect information, or the market is incomplete. In a certain diagram, this condition is satisfied at the points where the indifference curves for two agents intersect tangentially; that diagram, the Edgeworth box, can be used to draw the contract curve. By taking into account the possibility of (*) compensations, Kaldor and Hicks introduced a more general form of this condition. This condition is satisfied in a competitive equilibrium according to the first fundamental theorem of welfare economics. For 10 points, name this condition in which there exists no alternative allocation of resources that would make someone better off without making someone else worse off.
ANSWER: _Pareto optimality_ [or _Pareto efficiency_; accept other word forms]
I wrote this tossup. I could see the Edgeworth box clue as being somewhat hard to parse, but from what I understand, Edgeworth boxes are a fairly common way of graphically representing Pareto optimality, as you can see from this Google Books search.
As far as I can tell, the Edgeworth box clue also applies for an answer of "equilibrium," which is non-ideal.

As an aside, the Greenwald-Stiglitz theorem sounds remarkably similar to the Grossman-Stigiltz theorem, which argues that the efficient markets hypothesis (notably another economic "condition" involving markets!) is impossible due to imperfect information (!). So there's nothing factually wrong with the first line, but it still kind of threw me off.
Last edited by Corry on Sun Nov 13, 2016 11:41 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: 2016 Terrapin Specific Question Discussion and Errata

Post by Corry »

Also, could somebody post the art tossup on Alexander the Great? There was one clue there that I found somewhat confusing.
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Re: 2016 Terrapin Specific Question Discussion and Errata

Post by wcheng »

As far as I can tell, the Edgeworth box clue also applies for an answer of "equilibrium," which is non-ideal.
Good catch, thanks. I've edited the tossup to make it clearer and exclude this answer as a possibility.
Also, could somebody post the art tossup on Alexander the Great? There was one clue there that I found somewhat confusing.
Reinhart Koselleck used the anachronisms of a painting partly titled for this man, and Schlegel’s reaction to that painting, to argue for the occurrence of a “temporalization of history.” A family dressed like Venetian noblewomen kneel before this person in a Paolo Veronese painting. A bare tree is the only background detail of a work in which a horrified man extends his arm to this person as he is born away from him. Words supplied by Johannes Adventius appear on a (*) tablet suspended in the sky in a painting centered on this person. This man appears helmetless in a namesake mosaic in the House of the Faun in Pompeii. The moon and the sun appear in the sky over a sprawling 1529 world landscape depicting a battle won by this person. For 10 points, Albrecht Altdorfer’s Battle of Issus depicts a victory of what ancient conqueror?
ANSWER: Alexander the Great [or Alexander III of Macedon]
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Re: 2016 Terrapin Specific Question Discussion and Errata

Post by ElysiaJW »

The question on Swan Lake could have had a better lead-in in my opinion. The Dance of the Cygnets is just so iconic choreographically (it and the 32 fouettés are up there with the most iconic sections in ballet in general, tbh). It stuck out to me as coming too early in the question - I would think it has to be more widely known than the Neapolitan/czardas sections mentioned in the second clue? - and a few others made the same comment at our site.
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Re: 2016 Terrapin Specific Question Discussion and Errata

Post by touchpack »

George Corfield wrote:The first line of the joints tossup contains the word "periarticular" which only requires you to know that articular is the adjective which refers to joints, which isn't especially difficult.
Thanks, I replaced it with a clue about HLA-B27.
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Re: 2016 Terrapin Specific Question Discussion and Errata

Post by AGoodMan »

Can I see the Book of Romans and Peter tossups?
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Re: 2016 Terrapin Specific Question Discussion and Errata

Post by kitakule »

randomguy1997 wrote:Can I see the Book of Romans and Peter tossups?

I'd like to see them as well.
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Re: 2016 Terrapin Specific Question Discussion and Errata

Post by wcheng »

This book states that its author learned what it meant to covet through the commandment “You shall not covet,” because sin deceived him through the commandment. This book describes how after men began worshipping idols, God gave them up to “dishonorable passions,” causing them to perform homosexual acts. This book states that a Jew is one inwardly, and that (*) circumcision is a matter of the heart, not the letter. A commentary on this book, described as “a bombshell in the playground of the theologians,” was written by the Swiss Protestant theologian Karl Barth. The word “alone” was added to a verse in a German translation of this book by Martin Luther. For 10 points, name this longest Pauline epistle addressed to inhabitants of an empire’s capital.
ANSWER: Epistle to the _Romans_ [or Letter to the _Romans_; accept reasonable equivalents thereof]
After another man fell at this man’s feet and worshipped him, this man lifted him up and said, “Stand up; I too am a man.” That other man, described as “an upright and God-fearing man, who is well-spoken of by the whole Jewish nation,” sent three men from Caesarea to Joppa to find this man. This man received the command “What God has made clean, do not call common” during his vision of a (*) sheet containing unclean animals being lowered from heaven. That vision took place a few days before this man met a Gentile convert, who was a centurion named Cornelius. Along with his brother Andrew, this man was called a “fisher of men.” For 10 points, name this apostle who denied knowing Jesus three times and is traditionally considered to be the first Pope.
ANSWER: Saint _Peter_ [or _Simon_]
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Re: 2016 Terrapin Specific Question Discussion and Errata

Post by Corry »

Oh yeah, that tossup on Basques was good stuff. Especially that first line- can I see the full text?
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Re: 2016 Terrapin Specific Question Discussion and Errata

Post by wcheng »

Oh yeah, that tossup on Basques was good stuff. Especially that first line- can I see the full text?
A woman of this ethnicity known as “Lieutenant Nun” wrote an autobiography describing how she disguised herself as a man to lead military campaigns against the Mapuche. The region home to this ethnic group is also home to a class of untouchables known as the cagots (“kah-GO’s”). Pierre de Lancre had many of these people burnt at the stake during some 17th-century witch trials. Fishermen of this ethnicity were targeted in a 1615 massacre in Iceland and established (*) whaling outposts in Labrador. Many people of this ethnicity emigrated to America after the defeat of the Carlists. While returning from the siege of Zaragoza, Charlemagne’s rearguard was ambushed by members of this ethnicity at Roncevaux Pass. For 10 points, ETA has violently campaigned for the independence of what ethnic group from Spain?
ANSWER: Basques [or Vascos; or Euskaldunak; or Euskotarrak]
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Re: 2016 Terrapin Specific Question Discussion and Errata

Post by Red Panda Cub »

The (excellent) tossup on Dickinson's 'graves' misquotes "I died for beauty, but was scarce" as saying "as kinsmen met at night" when it should be "as kinsmen met a night"
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Re: 2016 Terrapin Specific Question Discussion and Errata

Post by Jem Casey »

Short-beaked echidna wrote:The (excellent) tossup on Dickinson's 'graves' misquotes "I died for beauty, but was scarce" as saying "as kinsmen met at night" when it should be "as kinsmen met a night"
Fixed, thanks. Glad you liked it!
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Re: 2016 Terrapin Specific Question Discussion and Errata

Post by vinteuil »

We just read the tiebreakers packet in practice, and it included tossups on diphthongs and Mexico that Ophir originally tried to include in MYSTERIUM.

For one thing, I still think the diphthongs tossup is incredibly transparent and the Mexico tossup is well beyond regular difficulty. But, more importantly, what the fuck dude? If those questions had been the game-deciding tiebreaker in one of our matches, how does it look if I have to say "Oh guys we totally can't use this question that I've heard before but you can trust me that all of the other questions we heard today are fine."
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Re: 2016 Terrapin Specific Question Discussion and Errata

Post by Corry »

Can I see the tossup on colonial Virginia? The first clue seemed to be on William Byrd's diary, but I was having a hard time differentiating that from Thomas Thistlewood's diary in Jamaica, so I was hoping to see the specific wording on the line.
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Re: 2016 Terrapin Specific Question Discussion and Errata

Post by wcheng »

Can I see the tossup on colonial Virginia? The first clue seemed to be on William Byrd's diary, but I was having a hard time differentiating that from Thomas Thistlewood's diary in Jamaica, so I was hoping to see the specific wording on the line.
A man from this colony kept a repetitive, coded diary which details his “rogering” of various women and the whippings he gave his slaves. In this colony, a black property owner named Anthony Johnson won a suit to keep John Casor as his slave for life, paralleling this colony’s earlier case involving John Punch. A governor of this colony used a flotilla of smallpox-infected ships to house his Ethiopian Regiment, which he’d formed via a (*) proclamation promising freedom to slaves who joined. Slavery gained popularity in this colony after a man issued the “Declaration of the People” and burned down the capital before dying of dysentery. This colony home to William Byrd was governed by Lord Dunmore and William Berkeley. For 10 points, slaves harvested tobacco in what colony where Nathaniel Bacon burned down Jamestown?
ANSWER: Virginia
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Re: 2016 Terrapin Specific Question Discussion and Errata

Post by Sima Guang Hater »

The second "R" in barbiturates is often silent.
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Re: 2016 Terrapin Specific Question Discussion and Errata

Post by Sima Guang Hater »

Also, Taejong launched the Oei invasion, not Sejong
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Re: 2016 Terrapin Specific Question Discussion and Errata

Post by wcheng »

Also, Taejong launched the Oei invasion, not Sejong
This has been fixed. Sorry about this mistake!
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Re: 2016 Terrapin Specific Question Discussion and Errata

Post by vinteuil »

Sorry about the weird timing, but I just remembered: there was a bonus part on Jusepe de Ribera which I was originally going to answer with "de Ribera," but then mentioned "a certain Italian nickname," so I said Lo Spagnoletto—which wasn't part of the answerline for some reason?
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Re: 2016 Terrapin Specific Question Discussion and Errata

Post by Bloodwych »

The Quest for the Historical Mukherjesus wrote:The second "R" in barbiturates is often silent.
I pronounced it this way and was given points. Did that not happen everywhere?

Andrew Lim pointed out something to me about the question on the Long Telegram saying it was written using the pseudonym "X" or something. I don't really remember the bonus but it was only published using the name "X," and being an internal memorandum, George Kennan would have written it under his own name. I don't have the set so this may be different than I recall.
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Re: 2016 Terrapin Specific Question Discussion and Errata

Post by AGoodMan »

wcheng wrote:
Also, Taejong launched the Oei invasion, not Sejong
This has been fixed. Sorry about this mistake!
I don't know what the wording of the actual tossup is, but my understanding is that the third Oei expedition (1419) was sent out during Year 1 of Sejong's reign. At that point, Taejong was alive (he abdicated in 1418 and died in 1422) but had passed the kingship to his son Sejong.
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Re: 2016 Terrapin Specific Question Discussion and Errata

Post by wcheng »

randomguy1997 wrote:
wcheng wrote:
Also, Taejong launched the Oei invasion, not Sejong
This has been fixed. Sorry about this mistake!
I don't know what the wording of the actual tossup is, but my understanding is that the third Oei expedition (1419) was sent out during Year 1 of Sejong's reign. At that point, Taejong was alive (he abdicated in 1418 and died in 1422) but had passed the kingship to his son Sejong.
The way that the question was worded initially, it stated that Sejong was the one who launched the Oei Invasion. This is not totally correct, since Taejong was also involved in launching the Oei Invasion. The clue has been modified to state that the Oei Invasion took place during Sejong's reign.
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Re: 2016 Terrapin Specific Question Discussion and Errata

Post by rahulkeyal »

Could I see the TUs on "lightness" and "graves" in Dickinson's poetry? Having recently read The Unbearable Lightness of Being, it was exciting to hear clues from the novel come up, especially something as memorable/important as the bit with Stalin's son (which introduces the whole section on kitsch in the novel) yet doesn't seem to come up too often. Seeing as the TU incorporated other authors who discussed the philosophical concept of lightness (which I didn't realize was discussed in the larger literary realm), I'd love to see what other works/authors were clued.

As for the "graves" TU, I negged the question at what seemed to be the first quote from "Because I could not stop for Death." Despite realizing what poem was being discussed in the question, I was confused by what the question was asking for and was unable to come up with an answer. However, even after the question was finished, I was still confused what exactly the question wanted. While previous poems described in the TU might have featured more explicit references to graves, it seems to me the location being traveled to in "Because I could not stop for Death" is more implied, hence my confusion. I'm not sure whether this is an issue with the question/giveaway's wording or simply my lack of knowledge, but it seemed like the question was phrased in such a way that made it challenging to convert, especially for those with cursory knowledge of Dickinson. While it approached its subject in a very fresh / interesting way, in similar fashion to the lightness TU, it seemed like the "graves" TU simply didn't lend itself to be converted nearly as easily (although this may not have been the case for other players).

I certainly agree with the sentiments echoed in the General Discussion thread about the set being very well written and successful in meeting, but not overstepping, its difficulty goals. While I can't comment on many subjects at this difficulty, I felt that the literature didn't definitely have many of the issues that I've personally felt in the past with college sets (unreasonable middle/hard parts, extremely challenging TU answerlines, inability to distinguish between teams in later sentences).
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Re: 2016 Terrapin Specific Question Discussion and Errata

Post by aseem.keyal »

Some minor errors/issues:
Packet 07:
Robert Calasso's name is misspelled in the Cadmus tossup.
Jim Gray's name is misspelled in the databases tossup.
Tokugawa Ieyasu is erroneously referred to as an emperor in the world history bonus.

Packet 10:
If I'm not mistaken, the clue in the square planar tossup regarding the highest energy d-orbital and the splitting into 4 energy levels is also true of square pyramidal geometry.
Last edited by aseem.keyal on Tue Nov 22, 2016 1:42 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: 2016 Terrapin Specific Question Discussion and Errata

Post by Jem Casey »

vinteuil wrote:Sorry about the weird timing, but I just remembered: there was a bonus part on Jusepe de Ribera which I was originally going to answer with "de Ribera," but then mentioned "a certain Italian nickname," so I said Lo Spagnoletto—which wasn't part of the answerline for some reason?
The wording was actually "[he] adopted an Italian first name after moving to Naples," referring to "Jusepe," but I know this clue rused at least one other player into giving the same answer. Sorry about that; the answerline's been modified for future mirrors.
rahulkeyal wrote:Could I see the TUs on "lightness" and "graves" in Dickinson's poetry?
Terrapin, Packet 3 wrote:An essay titled for this concept closes by discussing Kafka’s story about a man riding a coal bucket into the Icy Mountains. A novel partly titled for it illustrates this quality with a story about Yakov Stalin smearing shit in a POW camp latrine, then throwing himself on an electric fence. The first of Italo Calvino’s Six Memos for the New Millennium discusses this concept. In a novel partly titled for this concept, its opposite is exemplified by the words “Es muss sein!” from a (*) Beethoven string quartet. That novel begins by discussing how our lives take on this quality if Nietzsche’s concept of eternal return is false. This word is the first title noun of a novel in which Sabina is the mistress of Tereza’s husband Tomáš. For 10 points, name this “unbearable” quality attributed to “being” by the title of a Milan Kundera novel.
ANSWER: lightness [or leggerezza; or lehkost; or légèreté]
Terrapin, Packet 6 wrote:One poem claims “And so we move as far as Enemies” away from these places after explaining why “We do not play” on them. In another poem, two people who converse in these places agree “we brethren are” and talk between the rooms “as kinsmen met a night.” A poem titled in reference to these places describes how, outside of them, “Diadems drop and Doges surrender – Soundless as dots on a Disc of Snow”; that poem calls these places “alabaster (*) chambers.” On a journey to one of these places, the speaker passes “a School, where Children strove At Recess.” One of these places is “a House that seemed a Swelling of the Ground” in a poem describing a ride to one with a figure who “knew no haste.” For 10 points, the speaker of Emily Dickinson’s “Because I could not stop for Death” is taken to what type of place?
ANSWER: graves [or tombs; or graveyards; or alabaster chambers before “alabaster” is read; or equivalents such as coffins or crypts; prompt on chambers or houses]
rahulkeyal wrote:As for the "graves" TU, I negged the question at what seemed to be the first quote from "Because I could not stop for Death." Despite realizing what poem was being discussed in the question, I was confused by what the question was asking for and was unable to come up with an answer. However, even after the question was finished, I was still confused what exactly the question wanted. While previous poems described in the TU might have featured more explicit references to graves, it seems to me the location being traveled to in "Because I could not stop for Death" is more implied, hence my confusion. I'm not sure whether this is an issue with the question/giveaway's wording or simply my lack of knowledge, but it seemed like the question was phrased in such a way that made it challenging to convert, especially for those with cursory knowledge of Dickinson. While it approached its subject in a very fresh / interesting way, in similar fashion to the lightness TU, it seemed like the "graves" TU simply didn't lend itself to be converted nearly as easily (although this may not have been the case for other players).
Sorry that this was confusing. When I wrote the tossup, I assumed that anyone who had read "Because I could not stop for Death" would know what the (somewhat implicit) destination of the speaker's journey is; obviously, though, this wasn't as straightforward an association as I hoped.
aseem.keyal wrote:Some minor errors/issues:
Packet 07:
Robert Calasso's name is misspelled in the Cadmus tossup.
Tokugawa Ieyasu is erroneously referred to as an emperor in the world history bonus.
Fixed, thanks.
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Re: 2016 Terrapin Specific Question Discussion and Errata

Post by Amizda Calyx »

The bio in this set was good! I don't think I have any errata, although I'd like to see the insulin tossup since I think I remember a PTEN clue that confused me.

The only complaint would be that fetal hemoglobin was too early (shouldn't be in power) and a couple bonuses seemed to have two easyish parts (something that wasn't sequence alignment but mentioned k-mers/poly-A tail/GC; bacillus/anthrax/protein folding). These weren't particularly grievous, but the middle parts did seem pretty easy. Bacillus seemed on the easy side for a hard part as well since subtilis is fairly well-known.
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Re: 2016 Terrapin Specific Question Discussion and Errata

Post by sarangyeola »

Amizda Calyx wrote:The bio in this set was good! I don't think I have any errata, although I'd like to see the insulin tossup since I think I remember a PTEN clue that confused me.
The PTEN clue was in the thyroid tossup:
Terrapin, Packet 11, question 19 wrote: Cancer in the prostate, breasts, uterus, and this structure can be caused by mutations in PTEN. That mutation is the main indicator of Cowden syndrome, which increases the risk of cancers like Hürthle cell carcinoma in this structure. A peroxidase named for this structure creates modified tyrosine residues and can be inhibited by propyl·thio·uracil or methimazole. People with low function of this structure are treated with (*) Synthroid. One autoimmune disorder of this organ often presents with inflamed and bulging eyeballs. Patients with Down syndrome often overproduce TSH to compensate for this gland’s underproduction of T3 and T4. Enlargement of this gland due to an iodine deficiency is called goiter. For 10 points, name this endocrine gland in the neck.
ANSWER: thyroid gland (The autoimmune disorder is Graves’ disease.)
But here's also the insulin tossup for good measure:
Terrapin, Packet 9, question 9 wrote:This protein is found in the controversial GIK infusion used to treat acute myocardial infarctions. It’s not Wnt, but the binding of this protein to its receptor triggers a PI-3 kinase-based signaling pathway that deactivates GSK3. The primary ligands of this protein’s associated receptor tyrosine kinase are this compound and two growth factors that have a similar structure to this protein, whose precursor form consists of A and B chains connected by the (*) C-peptide. Frederick Sanger won a Nobel Prize for sequencing this hormone, which indirectly stimulates glycogen production. Glucagon opposes this hormone, which is secreted by the beta cells of the pancreas. For 10 points, the release of glucose from blood to tissues is promoted by what hormone whose deficiency causes diabetes?
ANSWER: insulin
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Re: 2016 Terrapin Specific Question Discussion and Errata

Post by Bosa of York »

Could you post the tossups on Al-Baqarah and swords?
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Re: 2016 Terrapin Specific Question Discussion and Errata

Post by 1.82 »

Xochicuicatl Cuecuechtli wrote:Could you post the tossups on Al-Baqarah and swords?
12. This section of a holy text describes how a man passes by a ruin and asks “How will God bring this to life after its death?”; that man is then killed and revived after a hundred years. It recalls how the angels Harut and Marut declared that “We are a trial, so do not disbelieve,” before teaching people magic. This section of a holy text recalls how the angels were ordered to prostrate before Adam, which Iblis, the Devil, refused to do. An object in this sūrah is said to (*) extend over the heavens and the earth; that object is the subject of the Throne Verse. The namesake of this sūrah is said to be yellow and is neither trained to irrigate the field nor to pull the plow. For 10 points, name this second and longest sūrah in the Qur’an, which describes how Moses told the Israelites to sacrifice a certain animal.
ANSWER: Al-Baqarah [or The Cow; or The Heifer; or the second sūrah or equivalents before “second” is read]
<WC Religion>
14. Sheikh Edebali began the tradition of having the head of the Mevlevi Order present one of these objects to the Ottoman sultan during his coronation. Smaller versions of these objects are traditionally used to perform the dhabihah ritual. Zaynab was the first to perform a ritual in which these objects serve the same purpose as chains called zanjeer; that ritual, tatbir, is performed by some Shias on Ashura. Muhammad gave (*) Ali one of these objects named Zulfiqar, which had a bifurcated shape. These objects title a text that orders readers to perform certain actions “when the sacred months have passed”; that text is the fifth verse of the Sūrat at-Tawbah, or The Repentance. For 10 points, name these objects that title a Qur’anic verse that orders readers to slay unbelievers.
ANSWER: swords [accept knives, daggers, or other types of blades; accept sayf; prompt on weapons]
<WC Religion>
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