GSAC XVI: December 6, 2008

[closesesame]

Thank you, Greyson, for posting on my behalf about the number of teams :-P. Actually, we may yet have 5 teams if I can convince this one other guy to come. I'd prefer two three-person teams to one six-person team, and I think the other teams attending would, too. So if it is at all possible, can you give us another day to figure out our number of teams, Sarah?

[MLWGS-Gir]

Thank you, Greyson, for posting on my behalf about the number of teams :-P. Actually, we may yet have 5 teams if I can convince this one other guy to come. I'd prefer two three-person teams to one six-person team, and I think the other teams attending would, too. So if it is at all possible, can you give us another day to figure out our number of teams, Sarah?

Certainly, Naren. I can make the schedule Friday. I needed to make contingency ones anyway.

[cvdwightw]

If you're down to 32 teams, one way to run the schedule is 5 records-matched rounds followed by taking the top 16 (the 1 5-0 team, the 5 4-1 teams, and the 10 3-2 teams), running four four-team brackets, then a semifinals and finals among the winners of those four pools.

[closesesame]

Only 4 teams for TJ it is.

[MLWGS-Gir]

Tucker has also dropped, bringing us to 31 teams. If we can get a scab team, there won't be byes. If not, sorry. Also, I've heard that State College A will actually be State College B. If someone can confirm that for bracketing purposes, that be would be awesome.

[intothenegs]

Hopefully, this doesn't complicate things further, but James Monroe will likely not be able to bring their buzzer set. It is a bit erratic right now; we ordered a new cord for it three weeks ago and it was supposed to be delivered to our school earlier this week, but unless it arrives tomorrow, the buzzers won't be in working condition.

[MLWGS-Gir]

I think we're actually fine on buzzer sets. I'd rather not have to deal with a potentially unreliable one, so it's okay if you end up not bringing yours. Dr. B. will probably ask your team to forfeit your buzzer discount, though.

[Melonman64]

Tucker has also dropped, bringing us to 31 teams. If we can get a scab team, there won't be byes. If not, sorry. Also, I've heard that State College A will actually be State College B. If someone can confirm that for bracketing purposes, that be would be awesome.

Yes, we're missing a few people.

[intothenegs]

That's fine.

[MLWGS-Gir]

That's fine.

We have 17 buzzer systems without yours for 31 teams, plus four buzzer sets Matt volunteered to bring in case people forget. So I can now confirm that you withdrawing your buzzer set is absolutely fine. Good luck getting it fixed; ours has been broken for months.

[cvdwightw]

If someone can confirm that for bracketing purposes, that be would be awesome.

I can think of only two schedules that do 32 teams in 10 packets:

Schedule 1: 8 of 4 to start, then (A1,B2,C3,D4; E1,F2,G3,H4; B1,C2,D3,E4; F1,G2,H3,A4; C1,D2,E3,F4; G1,H2,A3,B4; D1,E2,F3,G4; H1,A2,B3,C4); then take winners of each of those brackets and put in two more brackets of 4, with winners playing a final. Advantage is that every team gets 6 ostensibly meaningful games, and only "single-elim" is finals round. Disadvantage is if you don't have exactly 32 teams, byes complicate things, plus poor initial bracketing or early upsets can lead to "bracket(s) of death".

Schedule 2 is as I posted above: 5 records-matched rounds, with the 1 5-0 team, 5 4-1 teams, and 10 3-2 teams advancing to four 4-team brackets (you could simultaneously run the same structure with the bottom 16 or so teams, if they're up for it), then run a semifinals and finals among the winners of the four brackets (I would suggest teams advance on playoff record with overall record as first tiebreaker) with semifinal losers playing a 3rd place game; same thing for 2nd place, 3rd place, 4th place for spots 5-8, 9-12, 13-16. Advantages is that poor bracketing is automatically avoided (if the 2 best teams play in the first round, one will be 5-0 and the other 4-1 and will likely get the top two seeds), fewer than 32 teams is easily dealt with (teams just get random forfeit wins), and every team that wants to play will get 8-10 games depending on how many fewer than 32 teams you have. Disdvantage is that worst team gets only 3 "meaningful" games, 2 rounds of single-elim instead of just 1.

If you're worried about correctly judging the strength of multiple teams, then schedule 2 seems to me to be the better option. Hope this helps.

[MLWGS-Gir]

Dwight, I don't speak scheduling. I thank you for your suggestions, but I am quite frankly not comprehending them. I've been thinking 5 brackets; 4 of 6 and 1 of 7. Five prelim rounds; each team in the big bracket doesn't play one other team in the bracket (TBD randomly). I'm not entirely pleased with that but don't see a clear way around it. That would be followed by two play-off brackets for the top 8 as I've described several times above, with single elim consolation for the following 16 teams. That eliminates 7 teams right away, which I'm not too crazy about doing, but if some of them want to scrimmage, I have enough staff. That only takes 9 rounds, but I like Matt's suggestion of having the extra round as a tiebreaker. Once again, I'm thoroughly open to any teams who didn't hear the tiebreaker round playing it after the tournament against an opponent of their choice if they so desire.

Dwight, if you can explain your idea in terms I may be more able to understand, I'd be willing to give them more consideration, but taking the top 8 does allow me to screw up initial seeding a little bit over 5 brackets, which it seemed one of your systems did as well. I'm sorry I'm failing to understand this, but my brain doesn't work that way and I'm pretty sleep-deprived...

[Matt Weiner]

Some 32-team, 10-round possibilities:

1) Four brackets of 8; top 2 from each bracket go to single-elim
2) 5 rounds of swiss pair; then top 8 to two playoff groups of 4 which play bracketed RR, winners of brackets play final (extra packet for tiebreakers or for a weighted final if you want to put in a provision about what to do if the final is a rematch)

[MLWGS-Gir]

2 intrigues me, but wouldn't that cause fairly long delays between rounds, as well as general confusion? Also, am I crazy, or does 1 also only use 9 packets (RR = 7, 8 after semifinals, 9 after finals)? I'd be inclined to use option 1 if I had more confidence in all the teams returning from lunch. Actually, though, I think there's only one or two teams I'm not familiar with coming this weekend, and I think most everyone would probably stay... We may switch to option 1. I will speak to Dr. Barnes. We have one moderator who needs to leave at 3, but I can move some people to staff a 7-game round robin. Thanks, Matt, for speaking in words I could understand.

[BuzzerZen]

Some 32-team, 10-round possibilities:

1) Four brackets of 8; top 2 from each bracket go to single-elim
2) 5 rounds of swiss pair; then top 8 to two playoff groups of 4 which play bracketed RR, winners of brackets play final (extra packet for tiebreakers or for a weighted final if you want to put in a provision about what to do if the final is a rematch)

You can also do 5 round Swiss pairs from each are sorted into 4 snaked (I think) playoff brackets of four ([1, 8, 9, 16] [2, 7, 10, 15] [3, 6, 11, 14] [4, 5, 12, 13]). Play a three round RR in each bracket, bracket winners play a single elim playoff. Compared to Matt's (2), this gives more teams meaningful playoff games, but you lose the extra packet and will have to rely on the much-discussed Statistical Tiebreakers to determine who gets out of the playoff brackets. But honestly, (1) is probably the easiest thing to run and gives teams the most possible games. Single elimination is less than ideal, but it's not the end of the world or anything. Plus Swiss pairing isn't exactly a breeze to do if you've never done it before.

[closesesame]

Sarah, I like your bracket idea better than the single-elim options. I'm always nervous about making "top" teams play single-elim.

[MLWGS-Gir]

Sarah, I like your bracket idea better than the single-elim options. I'm always nervous about making "top" teams play single-elim.

I'm not comfortable trying to run Swiss pairs when we've never tried that before, and I agree that the bracketed play-off has advantages over single-elim. So many games have been so close this season that single-elim can be harsh, but, like Evan said, it isn't completely the end of the world. However, I think my idea also gives top teams more opportunities to play each other (4 guaranteed games between all members of the top 8 rather than a possible low of 2 under Matt's suggestion) rather than beating people by 300 points all day, which isn't fun for either side. I'd love more input from other people who are actually going to be directly affected by this, but for those reasons I think I'll probably still end up going with my plan, unless someone is able to point out a truly drastic flaw.

[aestheteboy]

I think 2 is much much better than 1. A tournament with 32 teams is just begging for swiss-pairs (which shouldn't cause any delay - winner and loser each knows exactly where to go as soon as the game is over).

EDIT: doing 5 rounds of swiss-paired games with 32 teams is actually really easy, so I don't think you have anything to worry about. EDIT EDIT: Well, each game in each round, you know exactly how many wins each team has (because every game in every round features teams with the exactly same number of wins), so you can build your schedule based on that. EDIT EDIT EDIT: if you have an odd number of teams, no matter what system you choose, there will be byes equal to the number of prelim rounds, so it's not like the situation is any worse with swiss-pairing.

[MLWGS-Gir]

I think 2 is much much better than 1. A tournament with 32 teams is just begging for swiss-pairs (which shouldn't cause any delay - winner and loser each knows exactly where to go as soon as the game is over).

Well, we don't have 32 teams, so there's a bye in there somewhere if we can't get a scab team. I don't know if that complicates things... anyway, I know nothing about scheduling...please elaborate?

[The Gambler, the Nun, and the Radio]

If you're doing swiss pairs, I would recommend you Charter's site.

[MLWGS-Gir]

This is awesome. Thank you, Harry, and whichever Charter people were responsible for this site. I could add room numbers and just print off a bunch of cards...this will now have to go under serious consideration.

[MLWGS-Gir]

So...Charter's site has a 5 round card system set up. Would it then make sense to do what I wanted to for play-offs anyway now that the prelims are presumably equitable or does something else work better?

[cvdwightw]

Sarah,

Once you run five rounds of SIMPLE! Swiss pairs, you have two options:
Option A: Four brackets of four teams, play a full round robin. Seed by record, then by ppb or other tiebreaker stat. If you can avoid/minimize rematches, that's great, but the first priority should be balancing the brackets. Winners of each pool advance to play semifinals/finals/3rd place match for places 1-4, second place in each pool play for places 5-8, etc.

Option B: Two brackets of four teams, use whatever you want as a tiebreaker between the 10 3-2 teams but they get seeds 7 and 8, seeds 2-6 determined from among the 4-1 teams via tiebreaker. Again, avoiding rematches is great, balancing the brackets is more important. Winners of each pool advance to a final. 10th round packet used as in Matt's suggestion.

Honestly, I would choose between Option A and Option B based on the number of "top teams" you expect to show up at your tournament. If you expect more than 8 teams to be in competition for the title, then I'd run Option A. If you expect only a handful of teams have a reasonable chance of winning, I'd go with Option B.

[MLWGS-Gir]

With this field, Option B would be most appropriate. I don't want to get that argument started again in this thread, but has any conclusion been reached in the tiebreaker thread about which is fairest? I haven't had time to keep up with it...if not, PPB makes the most sense to me. Thanks so much to everyone who's been helping me with this; due to Cameron dropping out we were suddenly left without anyone with any scheduling experience on the team. Hopefully I will be slightly more competent in the future...

[Matt Weiner]

EDIT EDIT EDIT: if you have an odd number of teams, no matter what system you choose, there will be byes equal to the number of prelim rounds, so it's not like the situation is any worse with swiss-pairing.

Yeah, but having one bye in a seven-round schedule is a lot different than having one bye in a five-round schedule. I don't think four games is enough for anyone, so I'd advise against the swiss-pair option (or any other option with five-round prelims) if you're not sure you can either get 32 teams somehow, or offer afternoon games to everyone.

[cvdwightw]

offer afternoon games to everyone.

This is easily done with the bracket system. Split 8-8-8-x (with the implication being equal splitting into two groups among the 8 and the x, which is 7 or 6). Assuming 30 teams or more, this gives everyone a minimum of 7 games in 9 rounds.

[MLWGS-Gir]

EDIT EDIT EDIT: if you have an odd number of teams, no matter what system you choose, there will be byes equal to the number of prelim rounds, so it's not like the situation is any worse with swiss-pairing.

Yeah, but having one bye in a seven-round schedule is a lot different than having one bye in a five-round schedule. I don't think four games is enough for anyone, so I'd advise against the swiss-pair option (or any other option with five-round prelims) if you're not sure you can either get 32 teams somehow, or offer afternoon games to everyone.

We stand at 31. Odds are high that we can get a scab team together, and if we can't, I will have at least 2 runners who are MLWGS underclassmen who haven't seen any of the questions. I am willing to field them as a house team if absolutely necessary. And I do intend to give teams who are eliminated the option to scrimmage as long as we have enough staff and buzzers.

Also, Dwight: Matt may have some idea what that means, but I'm not getting it.

[cvdwightw]

Also, Dwight: Matt may have some idea what that means, but I'm not getting it.

You have your top 8 teams (the 1 5-0 team, the 5 4-1 teams, seeded 2-6 by ppb, and the 2 best 3-2 teams by ppb, seeded 7 and 8 by ppb) play round-robin in two brackets of four (e.g. 1,4,5,8 in one bracket; 2,3,6,7 in the other), then have the top in each bracket play for 1st place, 2nd in each bracket for 3rd place, 3rd in each bracket for 5th place, 4th in each bracket for 7th place. You do the exact same things with teams 9-16 that you do with teams 1-8, (9,12,13,16 in one bracket;10,11,14,15 in the other) except that those should all be 3-2 prelim teams that didn't make the top 8 and they are playing for 9th, 11th, 13th, 15th place. You do the same thing with teams 17-24 that you do with teams 1-8, (17,20,21,24 in one bracket and 18,19,22,23 in the other) except that those should be the eight best 2-3 prelim teams by ppb and are playing for 17th, 19th, 21st, 23rd place. You do the same thing with teams 25-31 or 25-32, (25,28,29,32/BYE in one bracket; 26,27,30,31 in the other) except that those should be the other two 2-3 teams (seeds 25 and 26 by ppb) and the 5 1-4 teams (seeded 27-31 by ppb), and I guess the 1 0-5 team, if there's a 32nd team, and they'd be playing for 25th, 27th, 29th, and I guess 31st place. This guarantees every team that stays through 9 rounds a minimum of 7 games and a full 9 games if there's no bye.

Is this making any more sense?

[MLWGS-Gir]

Also, Dwight: Matt may have some idea what that means, but I'm not getting it.

You have your top 8 teams (the 1 5-0 team, the 5 4-1 teams, seeded 2-6 by ppb, and the 2 best 3-2 teams by ppb, seeded 7 and 8 by ppb) play round-robin in two brackets of four (e.g. 1,4,5,8 in one bracket; 2,3,6,7 in the other), then have the top in each bracket play for 1st place, 2nd in each bracket for 3rd place, 3rd in each bracket for 5th place, 4th in each bracket for 7th place. You do the exact same things with teams 9-16 that you do with teams 1-8, (9,12,13,16 in one bracket;10,11,14,15 in the other) except that those should all be 3-2 prelim teams that didn't make the top 8 and they are playing for 9th, 11th, 13th, 15th place. You do the same thing with teams 17-24 that you do with teams 1-8, (17,20,21,24 in one bracket and 18,19,22,23 in the other) except that those should be the eight best 2-3 prelim teams by ppb and are playing for 17th, 19th, 21st, 23rd place. You do the same thing with teams 25-31 or 25-32, (25,28,29,32/BYE in one bracket; 26,27,30,31 in the other) except that those should be the other two 2-3 teams (seeds 25 and 26 by ppb) and the 5 1-4 teams (seeded 27-31 by ppb), and I guess the 1 0-5 team, if there's a 32nd team, and they'd be playing for 25th, 27th, 29th, and I guess 31st place. This guarantees every team that stays through 9 rounds a minimum of 7 games and a full 9 games if there's no bye.

Is this making any more sense?

Much more sense. Thanks. More words tend to help. That seems workable...but I'll have to talk to Dr. B. about this in the morning. Now I have to get some sleep.

[MLWGS-Gir]

So here's the plan:

32 team card system (5 rounds) followed by the top 8 making an upper bracket consisting of the 5-0 team, 4-1 teams, and the two 3-2 teams with the highest PPB. The next 16 teams will play another card-system-like-thing where their seed is their first card and they follow the schedule we'll give them from there. The bottom 8 will then have some sort of round robin (depending on how many of them stay/if we really can get 32 teams) run the same way as the upper bracket. I've heard that both GDS and Cosby may have extra players, so I'm fairly certain we'll be able to pull a scab team together.

Thanks a million to Matt Weiner and Evan Adams for helping me finish logistical stuff so I could get home at a reasonable hour tonight, and thanks to everyone who offered assistance with scheduling. See everyone in the morning!

[ieppler]

We only have 1 player for a scab team.

[The Gambler, the Nun, and the Radio]

The next 16 teams will play another card-system-like-thing where their seed is their first card and they follow the schedule we'll give them from there.

You might want to make sure that teams 9 and 10 would only play each other in the last round. It's easy to mess up seeding with a card system.

[MLWGS-Gir]

We only have 1 player for a scab team.

That's fine. Cosby I've heard may have a few, and you really never know how many people some teams will bring. I'd be comfortable fielding a 2 person scab team for the sake of an actual game being played rather giving 5 random teams a forfeit win.

And Harry, that's a valid point. Do you mean last round of the prelims or last round of the play-offs for final placement?

[Frater Taciturnus]

Lunchtime and rebracketing:

5-0
GDS

4-1
State College A
Dorman A
TJ A
Whitman
Robinson

3-2 wildcards:
Walter Johnson
James Monroe

indiv:

"essays" WJ 108.00
Sam C'ville 90.00
Chuhern James Monroe 68.00

[Frater Taciturnus]

GDS wins
2. Walter Johnson
3. TJ A
4. Dorman
5. State College A
6. Whitman
7. James Monroe
8. Robinson

[MLWGS-Gir]

Prelims stats here

Play-off stats here

[MLWGS-Gir]

So today I was going to put GSAC XV and XVI on my flashdrive to get them sent to Chris Carter to be posted...but I forgot. My apologies. I will get both those tournaments sent to Chris on Monday after I've had access to school computers again; our team has its own account we save that sort of thing on, so nothing final is on my computer.

Thanks to everyone who came to staff today, as well as to the teams who attended. Also, thanks to Matt Weiner for helping me figure out the schedule and teaching me how to post stats, which were two things I'd never done before.

[MLWGS-Gir]

Hey, forgot to post this earlier. Someone left a red jacket in one of the rooms (I think it may have been 106). If anyone can claim that and we'll be seeing you somewhere, we'll be sure to bring it. If not, we can mail it, I guess.

Also: Dorman wanted a printed copy of the questions which were sitting in the War Room in an envelope with "Dorman" on it...somehow that got buried under something and thus was still there when I left. Dr. Barnes is going to mail it. Sorry about that.

[intothenegs]

Sarah, the State College-James Monroe match has been left out on prelim stats.

Overall, this was a very well done tournament; I think the card system moved pretty efficiently. Some of the playoff questions had giveaway-ish clues in their early lines and didn't seem too well edited, and there was a lot of bonus difficulty fluctuation, but the questions were still pretty good for the most part. Good job, Sarah!

[The Gambler, the Nun, and the Radio]

I thought the tournament was very well-run and the card system generally worked quite well. We also finished at a reasonable time, which was very nice.

However, I did feel that the question quality suffered a bit since last year. There was that big D-Day/Operation Overlord/Invasion of Normandy/"The invasion of France on June 6, 1944" (which Josh said after about the second prompt but was still called wrong on, since it didn't have Normandy in it) fiasco, as well as a few questions with similar formatting problems ("It was the first in its group to be made into a compound" comes to mind). Yes, I know you guys were pressed for time, but I really think a quick proofread of the questions would have gotten rid of most of the problems.

Hey, forgot to post this earlier. Someone left a red jacket in one of the rooms (I think it may have been 106). If anyone can claim that and we'll be seeing you somewhere, we'll be sure to bring it. If not, we can mail it, I guess.

301, actually.

EDIT: Quint didn't moderate for us. I'm disappointed.

[MLWGS-Gir]

I thought the tournament was very well-run and the card system generally worked quite well. We also finished at a reasonable time, which was very nice.

However, I did feel that the question quality suffered a bit since last year. There was that big D-Day/Operation Overlord/Invasion of Normandy/"The invasion of France on June 6, 1944" (which Josh said after about the second prompt but was still called wrong on, since it didn't have Normandy in it) fiasco, as well as a few questions with similar formatting problems ("It was the first in its group to be made into a compound" comes to mind). Yes, I know you guys were pressed for time, but I really think a quick proofread of the questions would have gotten rid of most of the problems.

Hey, forgot to post this earlier. Someone left a red jacket in one of the rooms (I think it may have been 106). If anyone can claim that and we'll be seeing you somewhere, we'll be sure to bring it. If not, we can mail it, I guess.

301, actually.

That fiasco resulted because someone copied a question into a round incorrectly when we packetized; there were additional prompts that somehow didn't make it. I ended up having to resolve 3 or 4 protests because of that, and I certainly apologize for that mistake. I'm going to look into different ways of packetizing for our next tournament. And we fully intended to proof-read the questions in their rounds, but Friday came and no one was there to do it. Quint went to a swim meet, Greg had a family crisis, and Tommy actually did fix some stuff but had to leave at 5. It ended up taking a while to deal with the other stuff... I apologize for having too much faith in my editors, and if I'm correct in assuming that the majority of the issues were with science questions, that won't be happening again.

[MLWGS-Gir]

Sarah, the State College-James Monroe match has been left out on prelim stats.

Overall, this was a very well done tournament; I think the card system moved pretty efficiently. Some of the playoff questions had giveaway-ish clues in their early lines and didn't seem too well edited, and there was a lot of bonus difficulty fluctuation, but the questions were still pretty good for the most part. Good job, Sarah!

The scoresheets are in a drawer in the war room, so I can get that entered eventually. Sorry about that.

[MLWGS-Gir]

Also, I forgot to thank GDS and Cosby above for keeping our field at 32 and allowing the card system to work. That was very cool of you guys.

[aestheteboy]

For those of you who were wondering: after the playoff brackets were over, the bracket with Dorman, SC, Robinson, and WJ had a circle of death situation, so we resolved that with half-packets. WJ beat SC in the first game and beat Dorman in the second game to get into the finals against GDS.

I think the writers and editors did a good job with this set. The tossups were quite solid - an interesting collection of mostly good with some medicore and some bad. The bonus seemed inconsistent, however. The margin of error (so to speak) of the ppb today seemed greater than in other tournaments. Not very many bonuses achieved the ideal easy-middle-hard balance. I think it's nearly impossible to come up with good bonuses without consciously and actively trying to write one easy, one middle, and one difficult part, so it's definitely something that you guys should try to do next year. It does look like we were the only team that had a catastrophic drop in bonus conversion in round 5, though.

Congrats to GDS for going 10-0 while beating pretty much every top tier team in the tournament. It was impressive.

[Doink the Clown]

Yeah, I prompt-negged with D-Day/Battle of Normandy and protested.
The tournament was well-run(aside from one terrible moderator we had), but I do have two questions I would like to cite as being problematic off the top of my head:
1. The Sepoy Mutiny tossup was transparent.
2. The Arnolfini Wedding came up for the 1x10^7th time.

[MLWGS-Gir]

Yeah, I prompt-negged with D-Day/Battle of Normandy and protested.
The tournament was well-run(aside from one terrible moderator we had), but I do have two questions I would like to cite as being problematic off the top of my head:
1. The Sepoy Mutiny tossup was transparent.
2. The Arnolfini Wedding came up for the 1x10^7th time.

I was torn about getting rid of the Arnolfini TU. I got it as a submission from one of my teammates and decided that rather than just not use it, I would attempt to edit it in such a way that hasn't been done before. Every Arnolfini TU I've ever heard talks about the same few things; I avoided those things until about line 5. That one's on my computer; here it is:

Small sculptures depicted in this painting include a praying human, as well as two gargoyle-like creatures on a chair in the background. A feather-duster hangs near the human sculpture, and a close look a this painting reveals a second window that is often ignored. The signature on this painting notes that its artist “fuit hic” [FU-it HEEC] or “was here,” and that signature is above a mirror in which the artist can be seen. Below the mirror is the chair, in front of which there are red sandals which vaguely resemble another pair in the foreground. FTP name this painting depicting the title event by Jan van Eyck.
A: The Arnolfini Wedding Accept The Arnolfini Portrait or anything that expresses the general idea of some merchant named Arnolfini getting married

I decided to see if a decently unique TU on that painting could be written. Also, I wrote that Sepoy Mutiny TU and I told Greg when I sent it to him that I thought it was transparent and that he should try to do something about that. He tried; evidently he did not succeed.

Also, if you wouldn't mind sending me the room number or a description of that moderator in private (Facebook message would probably be easiest) and what exactly the issue was, I can address that with that person if he/she ever reads for us again.

[closesesame]

Oh Kevin Casto, why did you say Pullman Strike for Watts riots? (85 point loss to GDS in Round 8 :-/) I thought the tournament was definitely well-run, as getting done at 5 o'clock even with playing 9 rounds (and taking the time for 10 because of that circle of death situation) is impressive. The speed of posting stats is something that TJ will seek to emulate for the M.O.H.I.T. The tossups definitely got better going into the playoffs, particularly the science ones. I'm of the same mind as Daichi et al. on weird bonuses, such as the science ones with very vague clues. Aside from those issues, the tournament was great.

[Sir Thopas]

Small sculptures depicted in this painting include a praying human, as well as two gargoyle-like creatures on a chair in the background. A feather-duster hangs near the human sculpture, and a close look a this painting reveals a second window that is often ignored. The signature on this painting notes that its artist “fuit hic” [FU-it HEEC] or “was here,” and that signature is above a mirror in which the artist can be seen. Below the mirror is the chair, in front of which there are red sandals which vaguely resemble another pair in the foreground. FTP name this painting depicting the title event by Jan van Eyck.
A: The Arnolfini Wedding Accept The Arnolfini Portrait or anything that expresses the general idea of some merchant named Arnolfini getting married

Hey, that's actually not bad. I like the fuit hic clue because it's actually important and doesn't come up much.

[MLWGS-Gir]

Small sculptures depicted in this painting include a praying human, as well as two gargoyle-like creatures on a chair in the background. A feather-duster hangs near the human sculpture, and a close look a this painting reveals a second window that is often ignored. The signature on this painting notes that its artist “fuit hic” [FU-it HEEC] or “was here,” and that signature is above a mirror in which the artist can be seen. Below the mirror is the chair, in front of which there are red sandals which vaguely resemble another pair in the foreground. FTP name this painting depicting the title event by Jan van Eyck.
A: The Arnolfini Wedding Accept The Arnolfini Portrait or anything that expresses the general idea of some merchant named Arnolfini getting married

Hey, that's actually not bad. I like the fuit hic clue because it's actually important and doesn't come up much.

Thanks, Guy. I took a close look at the signature for the first time the other day and actually laughed because hey, "Jan van Eyck was here." Maybe that was only funny to my exhausted mind... It's my new favorite signature, not that I had one before. Anyway, I really appreciate feedback on this TU, since I took it as an opportunity to do something new and different just to prove that something coming up a lot doesn't mean that it shouldn't be written on, but that it should be written on differently. I don't like the idea of throwing stuff out when there's more that can be done with it.

[closesesame]

Yeah, I got that TU off of "fuit hic", which made me happy. There were plenty of questions at this tournament I thought were good because they avoided most stock clues.