I'm not going to produce a numerical ranking here, and I'm not going to plug any sets I've worked on (although I think 2014 Fall and 2016 MYSTERIUM were truly great sets, especially the latter; I'm very proud of the 2017 and 2018 SCTs, especially the former; and I think 2014 CO was excellent despite my contributions; 2018 is a little too fresh to rank). But in ascending order of difficulty/chronology, I think the best all-subject sets I've heard or played since the last thread were:
- 2013 DRAGOON
- 2015 Regionals
- 2016 MLK
- 2016 Terrapin
- 2017 Regionals
- 2017 ICT
- 2018 CMST
- 2017 Nationals
- 2018 Nationals
- 2015 CO
I could also be convinced that this kind of ranking/discussion is best done in difficulty tiers. In that case, we could also open the discussion up for subject tournaments; obviously I'm a big fan of VICO, but I think that It's Lit, Jordaens, 2015 CO Visual Arts, and SHEIKH really set a high standard for "standard quizbowl fare" side events, and the Mike Bentley and Will Nediger events have been just awesome for their well-built questions on not-at-all-standard quizbowl fare.
Finally: how do the older sets match up? In practice, I've been stunned at how well both Regionals and Fall from 2008 have stood up. I think MAGNI, and 2011/12 Regionals all would play pretty well now. (At least for me, 2010 Regionals may have been a victim of its own success—too many of the tossup clues seem to have become hyper-canonical, so it's hard for me to judge. The same might be true of the 2011 VCU Open.) 2010 MO was probably the best tournament of its kind until CMST, and I could be easily be convinced that it tops the latter. And 2012 Nationals could hold its own against a tournament as good as 2015, I think. (2005 Nationals remains humanities-impossible.)
Some honorable mentions:
- 2014 Nationals. Aside from some wonkiness in the lit and visual arts, and some problems in the music, the rest of this tournament really was stellar.
- 2015 VCU Open. Mostly fantastic, but the science could be all over the place.