ACRONYM X General Discussion
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- Rikku
- Posts: 308
- Joined: Sat Sep 13, 2008 7:41 pm
ACRONYM X General Discussion
Post general thoughts and comments on the ACRONYM X question set here.
Erik Nelson
Director, Minnesota High School Quiz Bowl
President, Play Quiz Bowl LLC
www.bouncebackfoundation.org
Director, Minnesota High School Quiz Bowl
President, Play Quiz Bowl LLC
www.bouncebackfoundation.org
Re: ACRONYM X General Discussion
The tournament was fun, as always, even as I drift farther and farther away from caring about top 40 music and similar elements of the zeigeist. I appreciate that it's not really meant to be played by open collegiate fields, and it doesn't bother me that most of the questions are powered and nearly all bonus parts converted in many matchups.
That said, I thought this set suffered a bit in comparison to past events because it had more of what I'd call "low-value clues." By that, I mean clues that a player isn't likely to know outright, but that are highly suggestive of a particular answer, leading to a situation in which players are calculating the risk and reward of making the obvious guess. These clues are "low value" because they aren't things that someone would tend to remember or care about, but are nonetheless likely to be buzzed on.
For instance, the question on the movie The Room opened with a clue about, if I recall correctly, people performatively throwing spoons during screenings. This seems highly suggestive of either The Room or Rocky Horror Picture Show; I can't think of another film that has similar watch-along choreography. I have never seen these films, but this is a basic thing I know about them, and given the flavor of ACRONYM, I was fairly certain that the answer was The Room.
The basketball tossup on "China" suffered similarly. The lead-in clue was, if I recall correctly, something along the lines of "in the mid-1990s, a basketball team called the Rockets was founded in this country." It seems like anyone who knows the first thing about international basketball could pretty reasonably guess the answer was "China"--even setting aside the unfortunate coincidence that the Houston Rockets subsequently became very popular in China because of Yao Ming--yet I doubt many people playing the tournament have heard of the Bayi Rockets or know anything about them.
ACRONYM is always going to be a fairly straightforward tournament, with lots of first-line buzzes and thirtied bonuses. But it's a lot less fun when those first-line bonuses aren't based on knowing a clue, but are instead the result of one player deciding "ok, this seems suggestive enough, I'm just going to buzz." The fundamentally fun thing about quizbowl is recognizing a clue you know and answering a question because of it (or being able to put a few tough clues together to come to a reasonably certain guess); clues that are easy to sleuth out but hard to know specifically can undermine that. And I guess that's my main critique of ACRONYM this year. A lot of the early clues seemed highly suggestive but difficult to know specifically.
That said, I thought this set suffered a bit in comparison to past events because it had more of what I'd call "low-value clues." By that, I mean clues that a player isn't likely to know outright, but that are highly suggestive of a particular answer, leading to a situation in which players are calculating the risk and reward of making the obvious guess. These clues are "low value" because they aren't things that someone would tend to remember or care about, but are nonetheless likely to be buzzed on.
For instance, the question on the movie The Room opened with a clue about, if I recall correctly, people performatively throwing spoons during screenings. This seems highly suggestive of either The Room or Rocky Horror Picture Show; I can't think of another film that has similar watch-along choreography. I have never seen these films, but this is a basic thing I know about them, and given the flavor of ACRONYM, I was fairly certain that the answer was The Room.
The basketball tossup on "China" suffered similarly. The lead-in clue was, if I recall correctly, something along the lines of "in the mid-1990s, a basketball team called the Rockets was founded in this country." It seems like anyone who knows the first thing about international basketball could pretty reasonably guess the answer was "China"--even setting aside the unfortunate coincidence that the Houston Rockets subsequently became very popular in China because of Yao Ming--yet I doubt many people playing the tournament have heard of the Bayi Rockets or know anything about them.
ACRONYM is always going to be a fairly straightforward tournament, with lots of first-line buzzes and thirtied bonuses. But it's a lot less fun when those first-line bonuses aren't based on knowing a clue, but are instead the result of one player deciding "ok, this seems suggestive enough, I'm just going to buzz." The fundamentally fun thing about quizbowl is recognizing a clue you know and answering a question because of it (or being able to put a few tough clues together to come to a reasonably certain guess); clues that are easy to sleuth out but hard to know specifically can undermine that. And I guess that's my main critique of ACRONYM this year. A lot of the early clues seemed highly suggestive but difficult to know specifically.
Andrew Hart
Minnesota alum
Minnesota alum
Re: ACRONYM X General Discussion
The Stanford tossup was another example of this. I don't know where specifically the Stanford banned has been band from, but I know it's a lot of places, so Disneyland seems plausible enough.
Jonah Greenthal
National Academic Quiz Tournaments
National Academic Quiz Tournaments
Re: ACRONYM X General Discussion
This is exactly what I thought when I powered this tossup. I was playing against a team of good players so I thought that I had to buzz on a reasonable guess if I wanted to get the tossup at all. I also was thinking "which other NCAA band could come up in this tournamentl?". Maybe have clues about their pretty successful women's basketball team in power?jonah wrote:The Stanford tossup was another example of this. I don't know where specifically the Stanford banned has been band from, but I know it's a lot of places, so Disneyland seems plausible enough.
Harris Bunker
Grosse Pointe North High School '15
Michigan State University '19
UC San Diego Economics 2019 -
at least semi-retired
Grosse Pointe North High School '15
Michigan State University '19
UC San Diego Economics 2019 -
at least semi-retired
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- Wakka
- Posts: 135
- Joined: Fri Dec 27, 2013 7:12 pm
- Location: Austin, TX
Re: ACRONYM X General Discussion
I wrote this question, but I originally wrote it as "One institution from this school has been banned from Disneyland since 1972," which I presume was changed to "band" in editing. Would the original have been a better clue, or should the clue be scrapped entirely?Progcon wrote:This is exactly what I thought when I powered this tossup. I was playing against a team of good players so I thought that I had to buzz on a reasonable guess if I wanted to get the tossup at all. I also was thinking "which other NCAA band could come up in this tournament?". Maybe have clues about their pretty successful women's basketball team in power?jonah wrote:The Stanford tossup was another example of this. I don't know where specifically the Stanford banned has been band from, but I know it's a lot of places, so Disneyland seems plausible enough.
Last edited by Quinctilius Varus on Tue Mar 14, 2017 5:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.
William Golden
University of Texas at Austin '22
University of Texas at Austin '22
Re: ACRONYM X General Discussion
The clue's fine but it should go later.Quinctilius Varus wrote:I wrote this question, but I originally wrote it as "One institution from this school has been banned from Disneyland since 1972," which I presume was changed to "team" in editing. Would the original have been a better clue, or should the clue be scrapped entirely?Progcon wrote:This is exactly what I thought when I powered this tossup. I was playing against a team of good players so I thought that I had to buzz on a reasonable guess if I wanted to get the tossup at all. I also was thinking "which other NCAA band could come up in this tournament?". Maybe have clues about their pretty successful women's basketball team in power?jonah wrote:The Stanford tossup was another example of this. I don't know where specifically the Stanford banned has been band from, but I know it's a lot of places, so Disneyland seems plausible enough.
Conor Thompson (he/it)
Bangor High School '16
University of Michigan '20
Iowa State University '25
Tournament Format Database
Bangor High School '16
University of Michigan '20
Iowa State University '25
Tournament Format Database
Re: ACRONYM X General Discussion
As usual, this tournament was fun and high quality. I appreciated the variety of music and video games (especially the tossup on Thriller).
One small thing, questions on Harambe are getting pretty old, even if the clues are fresh.
One small thing, questions on Harambe are getting pretty old, even if the clues are fresh.
Erik Christensen
University of Waterloo - School of Planning Class of '18
Defending VETO top scorer
University of Waterloo - School of Planning Class of '18
Defending VETO top scorer