Moon Pie Classic (3/28/09) at UT-Chattanooga

[Your Genial Quizmaster]

The UTC Academic Trivia Association will host our 11th annual Moon Pie Classic on Sat., March 28, 2009. This will be a one-day academic quizbowl tournament, held on the campus of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. The tournament is designed for collegiate teams, but we will accept open teams, space permitting.

As usual, Moon Pie will be followed by the RC Cola trash tournament on Sun., Mar. 29 -- details on that will follow separately.

We will have two divisions, based on experience level, with the same questions used for both divisions. Question level should therefore be easy to moderate by current circuit standards; more on this below. Packet submission is not required, but the base fee of $100 per team assumes some amount of question writing (again, see below for details.) Discounts can be earned to bring that all the way to $0. Maximum fee with penalty is $150.

SCHEDULE: Registration will begin at 9 AM EDT 3/28/09, with announcements and schedule adjustments at 9:45 and tournament play beginning at 10 AM. Tournament HQ will be Grote Hall on the UTC campus; see directions below. We hope to be into playoffs by 7:30 PM and finished by 9:00 -- lately that's been the norm, but we'd be unwise to make any promises.

REGISTRATION: Our only pre-registration requirements are that you tell us (preferably by March 5):

* How many teams to expect
* In which division each team will compete
* How many buzzers and officials (if any) you expect to bring
* Whether or not you're submitting questions, and which option you're choosing (see below.)

Please e-mail this information to utcquizbowl [at] gmail [dot] com. Also, if your team includes players with disabilities or access issues, it will simplify things if you let us know in advance. That way we can take it into account when scheduling (building changes, etc.)

Payment, rosters, etc., can be handled on the day of the tournament. Payment is expected on tournament day unless arranged otherwise in advance. If you need an invoice or other official paperwork in advance, let us know and we'll be happy to oblige.

ELIGIBILITY: This tournament is designed for teams of current college students, with all players on a given team affiliated with the same university. If space permits, we will accept mixed-affiliation or purely open (i.e., non-collegiate) teams. However, the field is limited to 36 teams, and collegiate teams will be given first priority.

The tournament field will be divided into two divisions for separate play and awards. Division II will be limited to players in their first and second year of intercollegiate quizbowl play, with one extra year of eligibility allowed for players on teams from 2-year schools. (Note: due to the difference in formats, prior experience in College Bowl Inc., Honda Campus All-Star Challenge, or tournaments restricted to junior colleges will not count as prior experience when determining Division II eligibility.)

FEES: Base fee: $100 Base fee assumes full packet of 25 tossups and 25 bonuses, meeting specifications below, submitted by 12:01 AM Eastern Standard Time, Sun., March. 15th. Packet must be original and must be blind to all other teams, including those from the same school.

DISCOUNTS: The overriding interest for this year’s tournament is the production of quality packets. The organization is quite prepared to make minimal – even no - profit on this year’s tournament if it will ensure excellent questions. Therefore, we would like to make the following offer: if you write us a full 25/25 of questions by FEBRUARY 24th, of which 21/20 are 100 percent usable (meaning, with the only thing to be done to them being cosmetic – reformatting, spellcheck, scrambling), your entry fee will be $15. If same is provided by March 1st, the entry fee will be $30; by March 7th, $45.

If, on the other hand, you write 12/12 (which must include 1/1 apiece of biology, physics, and chemistry) that are all 100 percent usable by February 24th, the fee will be $30; by March 1st, $60; by March 7th, $90.

So, what does “usable” mean? It means that the questions must adhere to the set level of difficulty (more in a moment) and be the sort of clue-dense, pyramidal questions which have become standard for most ACF events. Please consult such excellent tournament sets as the ACF Falls for guidance on this.

On the other hand, packets seen by fellow players from your school not on your team or by anyone else not on your team do not fall into this category. This also goes for questions whose language is taken wholesale from obvious recognizable sources such Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, and the detested Wikipedia. FINALLY, IT GOES FOR ANY QUESTIONS NOT WRITTEN BY YOUR TEAM; EVIDENCE OF PLAGIARISM FROM OTHER PACKETS WILL RESULT IN FORFEITURE OF ANY DISCOUNT AND PAYMENT OF THE FULL $100 BASE FEE PLUS THE $50 NO PACKET FEE.
Other discounts/penalties:

A full packet of questions which can be made usable with work (which shows effort, in other words) by February 24: - $35 (fee: $65)
* by March 1st: - $25 (fee: $75)
* by March 7: - $ 15 (fee $85)
* by 12:01 AM March 14: -$ 5 (fee: $95).
* by 12:01 AM March 21: +10 (fee: $110)
* After March 21 without prior notice: +60 (fee: $160).

Teams that do not wish to submit packets may elect not to do so and still play. However, this will involve paying an additional $50 fee over the base fee (total: $150), and we must be notified of this decision BY MARCH 15TH.

Other discounts:

* For working lockout buzzer system (one discount per team unless we're short of buzzers): - $5
* For each competent full-time official for Moon Pie itself [plus dinner at Provino's Sat. night if you can join us, or a free set of the packets if you can't]: - $10
* For each competent full-time official for RC Cola on 3/29 [plus dinner at Provino's Sat. night if you can join us, or a free set of the packets if you can't]: - $10
* For each competent full-time official for our high school tournament on March 14th, the Dennis Haskins Open [plus dinner at Provino's that Sat. night if you can join us, or a free set of those packets if you can't]: - $30
* For teams making their first appearance at UTC: - $20 ($10 for second teams et seq. from the same school).

Note that excellent, punctual writers with a buzzer system and a competent official could end up paying $0, although discounts end there.


PACKET SPECIFICATIONS:

We'll say it again: Every team's questions must remain blind to the other teams from the same school.

DESTINATION: Seth Kendall will serve as editor-in-chief. So that the entire editorial crew will have access to the submissions, please send packets to utcacfediting [at] gmail [dot] com, rather than the UTC team e-mail address listed above for registration.

DEGREE OF DIFFICULTY: As noted above, we will have two divisions, based on experience level, with the same questions used for both divisions. Since the tournament is at the end of the season, question level should be moderate to easy by current circuit standards (or “standard difficulty level”, whatever that actually means). For tossups, this means first and foremost that the answers of almost all tossups should be well-known: if in doubt, select to write on “The Scarlet Letter” instead of “My Kinsman, Major Molineux”. Tossups should have early clues that are challenging but by the end should have giveaways making it answerable by almost anyone in the room. Bonuses should be such that a novice team stands a good chance of getting at least 10 pts., a good team 20, and the best teams all 30 pts. If you're just dying to ask something that's pretty obscure, at least confine it to one bonus part. Anyone who would like sample questions, please let us know and we'll e-mail you some.

EXCLUSIVITY: This is the third time we've said this, but we can't stress this enough: Packets must be unique to each *team*, and blind to all other teams including the others from your school. Since we will have mirror events scheduled elsewhere, questions must be original and blind to teams elsewhere in the country. Please do not play-test them online in advance.

FORMAT: -- Please arrange questions separately by category. If you want to make life easier for us, separate tossups and bonuses, and use the order of categories below. -- Please e-mail the packet as either an MS Word or RTF file, with the essential parts of the answer in bold and underlined. -- Make sure the words "for ten points" or abbreviation "FTP" appear in each tossup shortly before the final clue. -- Please insert the word "Answer:" followed by a single tab before each answer. -- Ideally, titles of books, plays, periodicals, films, TV series, and works of art should be italicized, while titles of songs, short stories, and TV series episodes should be placed in quotes. But we're not going to penalize you if you don't.

DISTRIBUTION: For a full packet, we ask for 25 tossups and 25 bonuses per packet, distributed as follows.

A) Literature: 5 tossups, 5 bonuses. Of these, at least 1/1 must be on European works/authors, and at least 1/1 on World (specifically, Asian, African, South American) works authors.

B) Sciences (including math): 5/5. Of these, at least 1/1 each of biology, physics, and chemistry. If you have a second question from any of these categories, try to make them from a different subcategory (e.g. two physics bonuses would be fine, but two on thermodynamics would be sub-optimal).

C) History: 5/5. Of these, no more than 2/2 on US history; at least 1/1 on events/people in the 20th/21st century, at least 1/1 pre-500 CE, and least 1/1 non-Europe/US.

D) Philosophy/religion/myth: 3/3. Of these, not more than 1/2 or 2/1 philosophy; at least one question (tossup or bonus) apiece religion and mythology.

E) Fine arts: 3/3. Of these, at least one question (tossup or bonus) must be on either sculpture or architecture, and no more than 2/2 painting, film, or classical music.

F) Social sciences: 1/1

G) Geography: 1/1

H) Your choice: 2/2. Anything goes, provided the minima amounts above have been provided for. This includes pop culture, current events, or other topics in which you may have already made your maximum.


STYLE: You probably already know the basics, but just in case: --- Tossups -- average length 3 sentences. Please include a unique clue early to avoid any ambiguity. We want questions that begin with lesser-known details and gradually get easier. And please don't violate the pronoun rule -- e.g.,, if your first pronoun is "He..." or "She...", the answer should be a person, not an object or the title of a work. --- Bonuses -- each bonus worth a possible 30 pts.; no single- part all-or-nothing bonuses. We don't want 5-part or 6-part bonuses unless they're very, very short, and even then use sparingly. Also use the 30-20-10 format sparingly, with 2 in a round as the absolute max. We can accept visual bonuses if reasonably structured.

ACCOMMODATIONS: We are working on a discount arrangement with one of the new hotels in the downtown area; details will follow when we have something in writing.

DRIVING DIRECTIONS: From Atlanta and points south -- take I-75 to Chattanooga, then I-24 west towards downtown, then follow the freeway splitoff for U.S. 27 North, downtown Chattanooga. From 27 North take the 4th Street exit, within sight of the Tennessee Aquarium. Go right on 4th St. (you have no choice) and follow it for ca. 1 mile. Go past the UTC Arena, after which E. 4th St. becomes part of E. 3rd St. After that, take the second right on Palmetto St. Go two blocks and turn right on Vine St. (just past the EMCS Building.) Just before the place where Vine St. is blocked off, the parking lot for Grote and Holt Halls is on the right. Enter Grote by the door next to the dumpster.

From Knoxville and points north -- take I-75 to Chattanooga, then I- 24 West; directions from there same as above.

From Nashville and points west/north: Take I-24 east to Chattanooga. As you round Moccasin Bend (freeway goes alongside river) watch for two exit lanes on the right; take the less rightward of the two, which will have signs above it for U.S. 27 N. Rest of directions are the same as above.

From Birmingham and points southwest: Take I-59 to the outskirts of Chattanooga, where it dead-ends into I-24. Get on I-24 East and follow the Nashville directions from there.

CONTACTS: The tournament director is your genial quizmaster, Charlie Steinhice, coach of UTC's quizbowl team. Nikki Poarch will serve as registrar, while Seth Kendall is editor-in-chief. For further information contact: General tournament business (inquiries, registration, etc.): utcquizbowl [at] gmail [dot] com Packet submission -- note new e-mail: utcacfediting [at] gmail [dot] com Snail mail: UTC A.T.A., c/o Charlie Steinhice, 8821 Winterberry Rd., Chattanooga, TN 37421.

[Your Genial Quizmaster]

P.S. The name "Moon Pie" is a registered trademark used with permission of Chattanooga Bakery, Inc.

[Scipio]

Wanted to bump this, seeing as the first deadline is today (or will be until midnight). Also, an additional douceur: for those of you who think you can complete a packet before 12:01 AM, March 1, but not before midnight tonight, send an e-mail to utcacfediting at gmail dot com and let me know. If you actually come through with the packet before March 1, I'll split the difference with you: instead of your fee being $30, you can play for $22 (full packet); instead of $60, 45 (half packet), but you must let me know.

[Your Genial Quizmaster]

So far we expect the following 15 teams at the Moon Pie (TM) Classic at UTC on Sat. 3/28/09:

Ala. School of Fine Arts (1 Div. II)
Berry (1 Div. II)
Centre (1 Div. II)
Chattahoochee HS (1 Div. II)
GPC (1 Div. II)
Lamar State CC (1 Div. II)
NE Alabama CC (1 Div. II)
Samford (1 Div. II)
South Carolina 2 (1 Div. I, 1 div. unknown)
South Florida (1 Div. I open)
Vanderbilt (1 Div. I)
Virginia Tech 2 (1 Div. I and 1 Div. II)
UTC (1 Div. I)

Please e-mail any corrections or late entry requests to utcquizbowl [at] gmail [dot] com. Thanks.

[azngod1992]

Hey, several of my teammates have bailed out on me.

Don't worry, I'm still going, but if anyone is interested in joining a team with me and perhaps a teammate of mine, please contact me at [email protected] or post here. I'll hate to play alone.

I hope this is all right with you Mr. Steinhice.

[Central_Slade]

GPC only has two people on it, and I certainly would not mind combining teams pending Charlie's approval. For that matter, I would not mind any tweaking to our team if necessary to accommodate the schedule.

[azngod1992]

Hey, thanks for the offer Slade.

I got a definite confirmation from a friend of mine that he'll come, and I got another person who's looking for rides to get there. If that person can't come (a likely possibility), my friend and I will be more than happy to join your team.

As Slade also said, I wouldn't mind our team being tweaked to better accommodate the schedule.

Mr. Steinhice, I assume that's alright with you?

EDIT: looks like the person I was referring to earlier isn't going to be able to make it. I would love to combine teams with Slade's.

[Quizzical]

Did/Will stats ever be posted for this tourney?