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2017 EMT: Ryan's Questions (Science and Several Others)

Posted: Sat Mar 25, 2017 5:09 pm
by Bensonfan23
Hey everybody, thanks again for playing this tournament!

So, I ended up writing a pretty significant amount of questions for this tournament across a large number of categories. My chief responsibility for this tournament, however, was as the head science writer/editor; I also helped out with editing painting and a little of the sculpture though. If anyone would like to see/discuss any of my questions, then this is the place to do so!

Please keep in mind, that aside from writing most of the OtherScience for EFT 2016, this was my first major writing commitment. So, I’m sure there were some clunkers that didn’t play like I hoped they would have. Nevertheless, I tried to be as consistent as possible in terms of question difficulty, length, and quality in all the questions I wrote, while also trying to use as many fresh clues as possible (within the constraints of the difficulty level and the timespan we had to produce this tournament, obviously).

With that said, here’s a breakdown of everything I wrote for this:

Biology: All 15/15

Chemistry: All 15/15

Physics: All 15/15

Other Science: I was responsible for editing all questions in this category, but comp sci and math were originally written by Vasa (CS) and Alex D (CS and Math). My questions in this category were the following:
Tossups: Quasars, Precession, Ganymede, surname Taylor, Carboniferous period, corundum, Magellanic Clouds.
Bonuses: Rontgen, Dunes, hurricane eyes, asteroid belt, humoral theory, cosmic dust, Chandrasekhar limit

Painting: I ended up writing roughly half of these questions and editing the majority of the questions in this category. Questions I wrote were:
Tossups: Black, Winslow Homer, Fauvism, Mantegna, Luncheon of the Boating Party, Mantegna.
Bonuses: Lenin in art, Rousseau, Woman Series, Mondrian, Ingres, Tintoretto, Gauguin, Buddha in art, African-American art

Classical Music:
Bonuses: Samuel Barber, Leeds Festival themed-bonus,

Other Art:
Tossups: Canova, Venturi
Bonuses: Calder’s stabiles bonus, Henry Moore/Chicago,

Religion:
Bonus: Christmas Conference/Methodism/Great Awakening

Philosophy/Social Science:
Tossups: Quine, intelligence
Bonuses: Saussure, SSA/Weber/Goffman, crowds-themed bonus, Kuhn/science/puzzle-solving

Geography/Current events:
Tossups: Assassination of Kim-Jong Nam

Trash/Other:
Tossups: MJ on Wizards, Mellissa McCarthy, Grayson Allen tripping people,
Bonuses: American distance runners, Osweiler NFL trade, Lorde music, “finding bigfoot”, Powerless bonus, Chicago Cubs bonus

Re: Ryan's Questions (Science and Several Others)

Posted: Mon Apr 03, 2017 8:20 pm
by Silverman
It seemed to me and several other people at the OSU site that the distance running bonus was quite hard. We managed to 20 it by pulling Centrowitz out from somewhere, but at a non-trash tournament I think each part was one too high. Something like Pre/Rupp/Salazar (or Pre/Rupp/Centrowitz if you wanted to shade more recent) might've been better.

Also, and I realize this makes the question harder, but the Matt Centrowitz who won the 1500 in Rio is Matt Centrowitz Jr., and his father was also a distance runner. A prompt might be warranted there.

I don't know enough science to comment on most of your questions, but the Kim Jong-nam tossup was great.

Re: Ryan's Questions (Science and Several Others)

Posted: Tue Apr 11, 2017 1:31 am
by Charm Bison
I also loved the Kim Jong-Nam question.

Yeah, the distance running one was crazy hard. I'm surprised I even 10'ed it.

Both of your basketball tossups seemed like they were really obscure/specific things to toss up in an actual academic tournament. Also, the reader in my room didn't say "Player and team required" before the Jordan/Wizards tossup, so that definitely made it harder.

I'm disappointed that the "finding Bigfoot" bonus did not have a mention of Neal Sampat from The Newsroom.

The science questions that I can remember were good, although I wouldn't really know if they were bad, as I am terrible at science.

Re: Ryan's Questions (Science and Several Others)

Posted: Tue Apr 11, 2017 3:54 pm
by Bensonfan23
I also loved the Kim Jong-Nam question.
Glad to hear it! That was the only CE I wrote for this, and I was worried about it being a bit transparent, so I'm glad it seemed to have played well.
Yeah, the distance running one was crazy hard. I'm surprised I even 10'ed it.

Sorry, this was fixed for later mirrors, but from what I can tell, unfortunately not in time for packets to be sent for TI. It's now Prefontaine/Centrowitz/marathon (the event), which should play much easier. As said in the other thread, my bad entirely.
Both of your basketball tossups seemed like they were really obscure/specific things to toss up in an actual academic tournament. Also, the reader in my room didn't say "Player and team required" before the Jordan/Wizards tossup, so that definitely made it harder.
Yeah, in addition to the creative answerline, the Grayson tossup was admittedly as much CE as it was basketball (which is why I also wrote the MJ question). There was meant to be some humor in the former (while still being playable), but for anyone that's followed college basketball in the last year, for better or worse it was definitely a pretty big media story on multiple occasions. As for the MJ question, yeah, it looks like I had a bit of a swing and a miss on that one. It will be fixed in the future to just ask for MJ. Sorry I didn't have the time last week to change this before TI!
The science questions that I can remember were good, although I wouldn't really know if they were bad, as I am terrible at science.
Thanks!