High-level quizbowl questions should be shorter

[theMoMA]

My only real systematic critique of this year's CO set was that the tossups were too long. My impression was that, even accounting for an additional game room and additional games, rounds at this CO took noticeably longer to play than rounds at last year's, when I imposed a strict length limit (for tossups, ten lines in the final packets, or roughly eight lines in the standard 10-point Times New Roman; for bonuses, consciously limiting parts to one or two lines whenever possible).

There are several consequentialist arguments for why questions could stand to be shorter, all of which I find at least somewhat persuasive. First, it makes the tournament move more quickly. Second, when the questions are on difficult subjects, the utility of the extra clues is likely not very high; for nearly everyone, the difference between a twelve-line tossup on Main Currents of Marxism and a six-line tossup on that answer is negligible. Similarly, at regular-difficulty tournaments designed for broader audiences, non-elite teams may feel overwhelmed by very long tossups. Third, at any level of play, there's something pleasing about games played on brisk, snappy, well-written questions that keep players engaged instead of dragging on for line after line of unbuzzed clues.

Although there are certainly more good-effects-based arguments to be made for shorter questions, I'll turn to the wider world of writing to make an argument for length limits.

A sonnet is a set form: 14 lines with a particular rhyming structure and meter. Yet despite those strictures, poets throughout history have been able to use that form to convey ideas about life, love, the world, other people, etc. Although a tossup has a much more utilitarian purpose than a sonnet, I think the same idea holds: even if you set strict boundaries for the tossup form, you can still convey lots and lots of interesting ideas.

And like in poetry, I think that imposing formal boundaries often leads to linguistic improvement and innovation that might not otherwise occur when people aren't as interested in fitting their material into rigid boxes. I find that I write more elegantly, more directly, and more carefully when I'm conscious of how much space I have and how my clues fit into that space. I certainly can't be alone; one of the common responses I've heard about writing for NAQT, with its very strict (and very short) length limits, is that it makes people hyper-conscious of their wording, their clues, and the overall structure of their questions. After hearing some sprawling questions at recent open events, a formal device that would make circuit writers take this kind of care seems highly beneficial.

Let me suggest a rule for editors: regardless of how long you'd like your questions to be, you should set length limits and adhere to them strictly. (I like eight lines for tossups, eleven lines for bonuses, in the standard 10-point Times New Roman, 1" margin, but people are obviously free to pick whatever they'd like.) For packet authors supplying the raw material, I think it's fine to go over (and I often do so myself, in the hopes of giving the editors as much raw material as they need). But I think editors should be more conscious of their polishing function to turn that raw material into something that's as honed-down and sleek as it can be.

[grapesmoker]

I apologize for the length of the questions. We definitely didn't control it the way we should have. All I can say is that in the google doc they seemed shorter than they ended up being in the PDF, not that that's any excuse.

[theMoMA]

To be clear, I didn't find CO particularly egregious in this regard. In fact, it seems to me that CO is one place where most of the audience appreciates a certain weightiness to the questions. Reading through the above, I didn't articulate quite what I wanted to say about regular difficulty, which is that I have a strong suspicion that long tossups (anything over 6 or 7 lines, basically) are not very fun for teams not among the best 50 or so in the game at a given time, and are minimally useful for distinguishing between the best couple teams at a given tournament.

It's been shown that CO can exist on 8-line questions. But what I'd really like to see is someone showing that Regionals can exist on 6-line questions.

[rylltraka]

I don't have much to say about the greater state of quizbowl, but as a reader there were a memorable amount of bonuses during CO proper which were quite voluminous (3-4 lines per part) and a real bear to read through; I wondered at the time whether they were insufficiently converted tossups.

[Adventure Temple Trail]

It's been shown that CO can exist on 8-line questions. But what I'd really like to see is someone showing that Regionals can exist on 6-line questions.

ACF Regionals had a six-line cap on tossup length in 2008.

[Sam]

To be clear, I didn't find CO particularly egregious in this regard. In fact, it seems to me that CO is one place where most of the audience appreciates a certain weightiness to the questions. Reading through the above, I didn't articulate quite what I wanted to say about regular difficulty, which is that I have a strong suspicion that long tossups (anything over 6 or 7 lines, basically) are not very fun for teams not among the best 50 or so in the game at a given time, and are minimally useful for distinguishing between the best couple teams at a given tournament.

It's been shown that CO can exist on 8-line questions. But what I'd really like to see is someone showing that Regionals can exist on 6-line questions.

Something I became conscious of, perhaps belatedly, when writing my questions for our CO packet was that it's okay if the tossups' lengths vary. Even at CO, I'd be happy if the tossups the writers and editors know only a handful of people are going to get by the giveaway were shorter, keeping the twelve-line ones for easy answer lines like F. Scott Fitzgerald, or Ryszard Kapuscinski. This might not carry over as well to other tournaments because the difference between a two- and five-line tossup is a lot larger than the difference between a five- and eight-line one, but I think the CO answer line space is large enough editors could get away with wildly varying lengths.