The quizbowl decades project

Tell your tales of bygone days and rank historical things here.
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magin
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Re: The quizbowl decades project

Post by magin »

Bentley Like Beckham wrote:2009 Minnesota Open - Magin et al vs. Jerry et al (came down to the last bonus)
Man, don't remind me about this. I recognized musical clues from Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks well within power, was pleased with myself, buzzed in while reminding myself "remember, L in the first syllable of Eulenspiegel, not G," was negged for saying "Eugenspiegel," was sure I had said the correct answer, repeated my answer while trying to emphasize the L in the first syllable of "Eulenspiegel," was negged (for saying "Eugenspiegel" again!), and went all batshit crazy because I thought Andrew Hart was negging me for saying the correct answer. My resulting meltdown cowed even Jerry (although I managed not to throw anything).
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Re: The quizbowl decades project

Post by Important Bird Area »

You will never do that again if you remember that Till's name literally translates as "owl-mirror" (cf.)
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Re: The quizbowl decades project

Post by grapesmoker »

magin wrote:
Bentley Like Beckham wrote:2009 Minnesota Open - Magin et al vs. Jerry et al (came down to the last bonus)
Man, don't remind me about this. I recognized musical clues from Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks well within power, was pleased with myself, buzzed in while reminding myself "remember, L in the first syllable of Eulenspiegel, not G," was negged for saying "Eugenspiegel," was sure I had said the correct answer, repeated my answer while trying to emphasize the L in the first syllable of "Eulenspiegel," was negged (for saying "Eugenspiegel" again!), and went all batshit crazy because I thought Andrew Hart was negging me for saying the correct answer. My resulting meltdown cowed even Jerry (although I managed not to throw anything).
I really hated being part of that game because I realized immediately what happened but I felt really bad about it, since you had clear knowledge. A similar thing happened to me in our first game against Chicago at 2008 Nationals, I believe. I buzzed comfortably on "The Open Society and Its Enemies," and was negged when I said "The Open Society," which I was sure was the correct answer. We lost the game by 30 points, I believe. I've not made that mistake since.
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Re: The quizbowl decades project

Post by setht »

While I'm at it, I'll go ahead and posit that Andrew Yaphe has the most ACF Nationals titles and the highest ACF Nationals title efficiency.

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Re: The quizbowl decades project

Post by grapesmoker »

setht wrote:While I'm at it, I'll go ahead and posit that Andrew Yaphe has the most ACF Nationals titles and the highest ACF Nationals title efficiency.

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Re: The quizbowl decades project

Post by Blackboard Monitor Vimes »

Jeremy Gibbs Free Energy wrote: I also want to do a little campaigning in this category for my game against Maggie Walker at the PACE NSC 08 when I screamed like you wouldn't believe after negging the Gorecki tossup.
You frightened our assistant coach Mrs. Lasswell doing that, by the way, and don't forget the accompanying desk slam. Thought you were going to break the table...

My personal favorite game is probably the third place game at 2008 NAQT States in which a Gov B team consisting of Cameron, Matt Kluge, someone who may have been Nitya (Tommy was in NC seeing Spamalot), and myself beat Collegiate A on the final tossup to qualify for HSNCT at the absolute last minute. Thank you, Evan Adams, for teaching me about Matthew Arnold. Me getting that tossup put us down 20, and we went on to 30 an Arthur Miller bonus as a nice team effort to win the game. We played a lot of exciting games last year, but none of them quite stick out to me individually right now.
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Re: The quizbowl decades project

Post by AKKOLADE »

Jeremy Gibbs Free Energy wrote:I also want to do a little campaigning in this category for my game against Maggie Walker at the PACE NSC 08 when I screamed like you wouldn't believe after negging the Gorecki tossup. Another fun one might be top worst posts on hsquizbowl.
http://hsquizbowl.org/forums/viewtopic. ... 671#p83671
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Re: The quizbowl decades project

Post by Sima Guang Hater »

My Top 5 in no order:

Chicago Open 2008 Finals - probably the most high-powered game I've played, in terms of how much raw knowledge you could just feel in the room. Probably the highlights was Matt getting a tossup on "Fruit of the Poisonous Tree" like 8 words in, and losing a race to Andrew Yaphe on Bentham's "Fragment on Government". It was kind of embarrassing to miss the bio tossup, though.

Chicago Open 2009 Finals - A fun set of games overall, though kind of heartbreaking with Ted's misstep on Ferdydurke and Ashberry and our inability to convert Langmuir waves. Still, that TOR tossup will stick out in my memory for a while, not to mention the Rebellion of the Three Feudatories.

ACF Nationals 2008 Finals - So many mixed feelings about this one. Missing c-myc after Selene's neg, not getting Pomeranchuk cooling, the whole Correggio thing, Chicago getting myth and chem bonuses I'd have 30d, losing a buzzer race to Seth on the Wheezer (sp?) tossup, missing a bonus part on Cytochrome b6f despite it being on one of the slides in my intro class...on the flipside, there was the diols tossup, the MASH bonus, Some prefer nettles...yeah that was a fun round.

MO 2009 Finals - A lot of fun, the whole Andrew/Rob tag-team reading thing was really funny. Also Guy's a monster.

Kansas State High School State Championships Class 6A 2005 Finals - After repeatedly losing to Wichita East in the last two years, I finally clinched the game by answering all 3 of the computational math questions and some other stuff that I don't remember that well. There's a odd-looking trophy in the shape of Kansas with our picture stuck in it to commemorate the occasion.


Honor Roll:

ACF Winter 2009 vs Dartmouth - It was just me and Aaron, but this was post-freshman Aaron, so he was getting points all over the place (Dan had gone home after playing some of the prelim rounds). After initially beating Dartmouth in the prelims, we had to really claw our way to the championship cause of some bad breaks. But it all worked out, and with ~21 ppb to boot.

MLK 2007 vs Dartmouth - We were down 135 to -10 at the half, but I got like 5 tossups, Dennis got 4, and Phil Grice got 1, with us ending 260-150 or so. Also MLK 2007 in general was a huge turning point.

FICHTE 2008 vs Maryland A - we got within 5 points, I believe, and the science just wasn't working for me that round.

T-Party 2008 vs Chicago A Round 2 - Aaron Rosenberg's deep Thomas Cole knowledge and Sabrina the Teenage Witch saves the day!

TIT 2009 - That whole tournament was kind of surreal.

MO 2009 vs Chicago - Clinching "Sacred and Profane Love" and Safavids in a tight game really helped.

Stay tuned for this list to change when I finally play for Penn.
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Re: The quizbowl decades project

Post by Skepticism and Animal Feed »

The only notable game I've played in was the so-called "Slamma in Urbana", which I believe took place in the fall of 2006. That year, three teams tied for first place at Illinois Open, but due to certain time and equipment limits they decided to do a three-team final. Chicago A beat both Michigan A and Chicago B. Or maybe it was Chicago B that beat both Michigan A and Chicago A.

The other memorable game I witnessed was a game at Manu Ginobili between Illinois and Nathan Freeburg playing solo. Freeburg negged nine times and Sudheer Potru also negged a large number of times. I was told at the time that nine negs in one game for a single player was probably some kind of record.
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Re: The quizbowl decades project

Post by Down and out in Quintana Roo »

Whig's Boson wrote:I was told at the time that nine negs in one game for a single player was probably some kind of record.
This is one of the records that i absolutely want to see if we can find an "official" number on.
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Re: The quizbowl decades project

Post by Maxwell Sniffingwell »

Bentley Like Beckham wrote:Magin/Weiner/Jerry/Eric vs. Bentley/Passner/Kwartler/Nagler (not for competitiveness but for the near-grail performance of the Magin team)
Magin's team put up 380 against my team... in the first half. That's 380 in a 10-tossup, no-powers half of Chicago freakin' Open.
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Re: The quizbowl decades project

Post by Nine-Tenths Ideas »

Dr. Isaac Yankem, DDS wrote: This is one of the records that i absolutely want to see if we can find an "official" number on.
At the high school, level, I think I've come pretty close to 9 in some games.
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Re: The quizbowl decades project

Post by pray for elves »

cornfused wrote:
Bentley Like Beckham wrote:Magin/Weiner/Jerry/Eric vs. Bentley/Passner/Kwartler/Nagler (not for competitiveness but for the near-grail performance of the Magin team)
Magin's team put up 380 against my team... in the first half. That's 380 in a 10-tossup, no-powers half of Chicago freakin' Open.
And they scored 610 with a bonus conversion of 25.88 against us, the highest on both of those fronts in any of their games. They steamrolled a lot of people, including a game where they finished 19/1 on tossups, but the game against us was their most outrageous show.
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Re: The quizbowl decades project

Post by bsmith »

Dr. Isaac Yankem, DDS wrote:
Whig's Boson wrote:I was told at the time that nine negs in one game for a single player was probably some kind of record.
This is one of the records that i absolutely want to see if we can find an "official" number on.
What's the point? All it takes is one person to throw a game and go 0/20. I can't find the evidence, but I believe someone tried to do this in the late rounds of a losing day just for a neg prize. Another reason to stop giving recognition for negs...
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Re: The quizbowl decades project

Post by Gautam »

squareroot165 wrote:Some of the most memorable games I've seen:
First, the 2008 HS NCT game between East Lansing (Kurtis) and Eden Prairie in the playoffs, with winner reaching top 6. Eden Prairie got a huge lead, but Kurtis got a bunch of stuff in the second half and EL won. I think Gautam was there too; was it still fun to watch from the Eden Prairie side of things?
Second, the final at NAQT States last year between Country Day and Catholic Central. I don't remember a large lead for either team, and DCD won on the last tossup.
Also, the game we played against Chicago last year in DII ICT to force a tie for second and let us reach the finals was pretty fun too. I have no idea how the match looked to someone not playing though.
So I was. Yeah, this was one of the most exciting HSNCT matches I've seen, notwithstanding the 2007 EP/Santa Monica game I played in. It was pretty great to see both the teams compete.
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Re: The quizbowl decades project

Post by rylltraka »

Since everyone's doing it, I'll put in my two cents. I was on a perpetually undermanned, and certainly not nationally recognized, team for many years at USC, so it shouldn't be too surprising that CBI was the only thing close to an important tournament we ever played in. If it gets me laughed off the boards, so be it.

-CBI Nats '07 Finals - At the penultimate-ever CBI Nationals, the final match was us deadlocked vs. Minnesota. We wound up going 2-2 against them, all but one of them nail-biters. After (barely) entering the playoffs as the fourth seed, we fought our way through the losers bracket, winning the first game of an advantaged (for them) final to set up the last match. I expressed my nervousness by drinking massive amounts of water and hitting the restroom between matches. It was back and forth the whole way - we set up a slight lead only to have them take it back with a few minutes to go, and despite some hectic buzzing in the final seconds (Yogesh had a couple amazing buzzes), they won by a TU-bonus cycle. Still have some regrets about buzzes I didn't make et al., but what an exciting match that was to be in.

-CBI Regs '07 Playoffs/Finals - Similarly, our Regionals campaign involved a series of matches with our SoCal counterpart, UCLA. The backstory is that, since UCLA had been winning Regionals with some regularity (I forget the specifics and don't care to look them up), and also since their brusque and unusual mannerisms (probably from a few specific players, most of whom were actually not present at that tournament) had been off-putting to a bunch of the other CBI teams, there was a palpable animosity towards the UCLA team. Mostly from schools that really didn't play any other tournaments. By comparison, our USC team (only three people, since no one wanted to go to Fresno) was rather genial, myself, Yogesh, and our teammate Luke. It turns out that we'd been told repeatedly by other teams that they hoped we would dethrone UCLA. We lost our preliminary match to them; when we met in the playoffs, Yogesh dominated the round, answering in the region of 15 tossups, including a ridiculously early buzz on "Ivory Tower". We met again in the finals, and had probably the largest crowd I've ever played QB in front of, probably 70 people. Anyway, we established an early lead and gradually pulled away in the second half, and when we were announced as the winners, there was an eruption of applause and cheers from the crowd. It was nice to bask in the adulation for a bit, but I certainly made sure to be cordial to the UCLA team, who were, to be honest, disliked more for the sins of past teams than any behavior of theirs.

-CBI Regs '05(?) playoffs - Before the above incident, we had a long streak of third-place finishes at CBI Regionals, usually getting screwed over in one way or another. A story for another time. Anyway, we make the playoffs as a low seed, and in the first round, with a completely outgunned team, we shock Stanford (the eventual winners) with a five-point victory. Highlights included the winning buzz with "Bursitis" by my teammate Marc, and me using a clock-killing neg in the final seconds with a "clock-killing" long title I would only later be told I had learned from the Stanford QB website.

-EFT '08 - So in my first year at UCLA, we're in a looming circle of death with UCI and UCSD at what I believe is the EFT mirror at Caltech (?). In a tight match versus Auroni and co., in the match that would ultimately decide the outcome of the tournament (we backed into a win by record), it comes down to the final tossup. Based on clues, I realize it's a character from Julius Caesar, but I can't tell which one, until, at the words "the noblest Roman", I beat the entire room to the buzzer and am able to answer "Brutus" to win the game. Probably my best single buzz in terms of import.

-As for the best match(es) I've been a spectator to, probably the ICT final this year. Exciting stuff all around, and Shantanu almost single-handedly navigating Chicago to a win was really impressive.

- Also, for honorable mention, I had oodles of fun at CO Trash this year, where a ragtag team of C. Ray/Dees/Esser/me, assembled off the free agent list, pulled off unexpected upsets versus Passner/Nagler/Cheyne/? and Ullsperger and co. to make the top bracket.
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Re: The quizbowl decades project

Post by Susan »

Mik wrote:-CBI Regs '07 Playoffs/Finals - Similarly, our Regionals campaign involved a series of matches with our SoCal counterpart, UCLA. The backstory is that, since UCLA had been winning Regionals with some regularity (I forget the specifics and don't care to look them up), and also since their brusque and unusual mannerisms (probably from a few specific players, most of whom were actually not present at that tournament) had been off-putting to a bunch of the other CBI teams, there was a palpable animosity towards the UCLA team. Mostly from schools that really didn't play any other tournaments. By comparison, our USC team (only three people, since no one wanted to go to Fresno) was rather genial, myself, Yogesh, and our teammate Luke. It turns out that we'd been told repeatedly by other teams that they hoped we would dethrone UCLA. We lost our preliminary match to them; when we met in the playoffs, Yogesh dominated the round, answering in the region of 15 tossups, including a ridiculously early buzz on "Ivory Tower". We met again in the finals, and had probably the largest crowd I've ever played QB in front of, probably 70 people. Anyway, we established an early lead and gradually pulled away in the second half, and when we were announced as the winners, there was an eruption of applause and cheers from the crowd. It was nice to bask in the adulation for a bit, but I certainly made sure to be cordial to the UCLA team, who were, to be honest, disliked more for the sins of past teams than any behavior of theirs.
I'm just curious--was that animosity fed by CBI at all? I ask because apparently there was institutionalized animosity at the Region 8 (? I think that's what Chicago's in) RCTs toward the end of Chicago's time playing CBI.
a Chicago player's writeup of RCT 2004 wrote:[in a list of lowlights]
* The opening speech of the director of the tournament to the assembled
teams Friday night, which basically took the tone of: "Chicago wins this
tournament every year. Use whatever method necessary, be it cattle prods,
rape and torture, snipers in the gallery, or poisoned pencils to make sure
that THEY DO NOT WIN THIS YEAR."

* The awards ceremony, where said director gave these words of consolation
to the schools we crushed: "Just to be able to go to a tournament where
you can play the University of Chicago is a great honor."
I suppose this ought to have been an omen for what went down at CBI Nats that year.

Random other fact that I turned up while trying to find that message in our listhost archive: two Yale players wrote a letter to their dean requesting that Charles Meigs and Brendan Shapiro be admitted after Los Alamitos blew everyone out of the water at BHSAT 2003.
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Re: The quizbowl decades project

Post by AKKOLADE »

myamphigory wrote:Random other fact that I turned up while trying to find that message in our listhost archive: two Yale players wrote a letter to their dean requesting that Charles Meigs and Brendan Shapiro be admitted after Los Alamitos blew everyone out of the water at BHSAT 2003.
Niiiiice.
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Re: The quizbowl decades project

Post by Frater Taciturnus »

Dr. Isaac Yankem, DDS wrote:
Whig's Boson wrote:I was told at the time that nine negs in one game for a single player was probably some kind of record.
This is one of the records that i absolutely want to see if we can find an "official" number on.
I have scorekept a game at TIT 08 where Dan Leifer went 2-11 that I'm sure non-Eric Brown A wish they could forget. This game could take serious credit for the demise of the neg prize after dan narrowly edged out the competition to win behind that 11 neg last round.


Also, I think looking at the progress of CC quizbowl across the decade would be an interesting exercise.
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Re: The quizbowl decades project

Post by Cheynem »

Mik, the other player on the CO Trash team you beat was Ted Stratton.
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Re: The quizbowl decades project

Post by Sima Guang Hater »

myamphigory wrote:Random other fact that I turned up while trying to find that message in our listhost archive: two Yale players wrote a letter to their dean requesting that Charles Meigs and Brendan Shapiro be admitted after Los Alamitos blew everyone out of the water at BHSAT 2003.
List of best quizbowl recommendation letters forthcoming?
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Re: The quizbowl decades project

Post by rylltraka »

myamphigory wrote:
I'm just curious--was that animosity fed by CBI at all? I ask because apparently there was institutionalized animosity at the Region 8 (? I think that's what Chicago's in) RCTs toward the end of Chicago's time playing CBI.
I can't recall any of it being "institutionalized" - whatever I recall, I heard from other players. I didn't see any favoritism on the part of the staff, although I suppose that doesn't mean there wasn't any. But it didn't seem so.
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Re: The quizbowl decades project

Post by Lapego1 »

The Quest for the Historical Mukherjesus wrote:
myamphigory wrote:Random other fact that I turned up while trying to find that message in our listhost archive: two Yale players wrote a letter to their dean requesting that Charles Meigs and Brendan Shapiro be admitted after Los Alamitos blew everyone out of the water at BHSAT 2003.
List of best quizbowl recommendation letters forthcoming?
Do you think good grades, MCATs, and non-qb recs alone landed you Penn MD/PhD? :grin:
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Re: The quizbowl decades project

Post by cvdwightw »

Responding to previous posts:

Mik/Susan: I'm not sure whether the animosity was CBI-fed. After all, the previous year, we had some ridiculous amount of CBI-love after taking down Illinois and preventing a very embarrassing moment for Richard Reid, and we were on very good terms with at least one of the moderators. If there was any institutionalized animosity, it was probably for things like laughing at the comically misread tossup leadin "they look like Saskatchewans" and openly disparaging the tossup leadin "This most important book in Arabic..." I think a bunch of schools just didn't like that we had won it 5 out of the past 6 years, or maybe they just didn't like me (unlike me, the other members of our team were quite likeable), or maybe they still had residual hatred for any perceived slights Charles or Steve may have perpetrated against their teams, or maybe the Davis team was spreading rumors about how terrible we were after the whole Aztlan Cup II incident. Come to think of it, there were a bunch of non-institutionalized reasons why teams would have hated us.

That USC-UCLA final was epic for another reason: late in the first half, the reset-timer announcer (the person responsible for exactly four things: starting the timer, stopping the timer at a time-out or otherwise necessary stoppage in play, recognizing the player who buzzed in, and resetting the buzzer system after the buzz) forgot to reset the buzzer. A CBItastic tossup on James Michener showed up, and I tried to buzz, but I couldn't. I don't exactly remember what happened next, but at some point in the confusion Yogesh protested that he was also buzzing (I don't recall that anyone else was attempting to buzz, but I was a biased observer and I'm willing to admit that whether Yogesh was actually buzzing or just trying to game the system, it was a brilliant move). In any case, the protest went to "headquarters," where they conferred for several minutes on the phone as to what to do when the buzzer system was not reset. Ultimately, they came to the conclusion that not only would the tossup be thrown out, but they would not reset the clock to (1) what it would have been had the question not been read or (2) what it would have been had the reset-timer announcer not let about 20-30 seconds off the clock while the officials debated what to do about it. After the tournament, I realized that drawing the officials' attention to the fact that my buzzer was not working could have been construed as illegal conferring, and had we had a moderator whose only experience was CBI, I could well have been called for it. To paraphrase our then-"coach" Steve Kaplan in discussions of this after the tournament, "If that had happened, I would be in a Fresno jail right now."

Susan: I think you have the year wrong. Charles and Brendan could not have "burninated everyone" (according to a now-lost forum post) at Yale in 2003 as they were busy playing D2 ICT that year. The Yahoo! Group tells me this was BHSAT XI in 2002. That said, the recommendation letter story is quite hilarious.

Anyway, here is my list of my top 5 most memorable matches I played in in high school. Due to the "bad question"/"good question" dichotomy, I'll spend part of my drive up to Berkeley tonight dividing and ranking my college matches according to that dichotomy.

High School
5. Edison A 375, Capistrano Valley B 0 (2000 State Champs): I have a theory that every player, no matter how good he ends up being, has one of those "welcome to the big time" moments when he first starts playing. This was mine. Our team collectively buzzed once.

4. Capistrano Valley 290, Kent City 245 (2002 HSNCT). I had to pick something from the 2002 HSNCT, my favorite high school tournament I ever attended, and because we ended up on the winning side of this one it leapfrogged the game in which, down 60 with two tossups to go, I convinced myself that because Emily Browning was not Portuguese, the title of her sonnet collection could not have been "Sonnets from the Portuguese," and then, resigned to the outcome of the game, did not bother to buzz after I knew the next tossup well before the power mark. This match, in contrast to that early-round brainfart, was a hard-fought elimination bracket match between my team, who had won two elimination-bracket matches to stay mathematically in the playoff hunt, and Mike Cheyne's Kent City team, who had just been dropped into the elimination bracket. What was memorable about this match was that though I was doing the vast majority of my team's scoring, nearly single-handedly keeping us in the game, it was a freshman making his only correct buzz of the tournament that ultimately ended up clinching the match for us. (Note: this was not the last buzz of the game - I'll have to check my scoresheet for that game, but I'm pretty sure Kent City had a small comeback at the end - but it reads better this way. It's also an inspirational story for any coach trying to motivate the low-ppg players at their schools.)

3. Capistrano Valley 2xx, Occidental 2xx (2001 Riverside tournament). I remember the 2001 Riverside tournament for four things: getting creamed by Jerry for the first time, refusing to play in the terrible guerrilla trash tournament held afterwards, nearly holding a Los Alamitos team that I believe contained Charles Meigs to negative points, and this match. Occidental College was essentially Wesley Matthews, who was as unpredictably dominant then as he was at Indiana. Late in the first half, or maybe at halftime, we were down by a margin of something like 2xx-(-5), due to me outbuzzing Wesley Matthews when we were both going in with "Missouri Compromise" on a "Crittenden Compromise" tossup. Then we started pouring it on, and Wesley stopped getting tossups. We thirtied a bonus on Chinese dynasties, then a bonus on the early history of the camera. When the dust had settled, we had put up somewhere around 200 unanswered points and somehow won the game. I have never played Wesley Matthews since, so he qualifies as the "best player I have beaten at least once but have never lost to."

2. Capistrano Valley vs. Detroit Country Day (2001 HSNCT): okay, I'm cheating; I'm lumping these two matches together. In 2001 we knew we were pretty good, but we were completely ignorant of who else, other than DCC, was good that year, and the broader national community was ignorant of us. In the prelims, we won a close, hard-fought battle by a score of something like 325-300 (don't remember the exact specifics); that was probably the win that put us on the national radar as most "in the know" people knew that Country Day was pretty darn good that year. In the second round of bracketed-round-robin playoffs, we met again, with them winning by a final score of something like 290-275 when Nate Meyvis failed to correctly execute a clock-killing neg on the last tossup, but we could not pull "vapor point" at the end of the question.

1. St. John's 325, Capistrano Valley 285 (2003 HSNCT): If you want to make a list of the all-time chokes at HSNCT, I offer this match - it's memorable to me for all the wrong reasons. After scoring over 200 points in the first half and jumping out to a 140-point halftime lead, we thought we had the game under control. Oops. St. John's piled up power after power in the second half to energize their comeback. Late in the game, with us still clinging to a narrow lead, I picked up a tossup in an attempt to shift the momentum, but we inexplicably 10'd a bonus on "It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma" (Who said it? After debating between Churchill and Roosevelt, we guessed Roosevelt. What country was it about? After debating between Germany and the Soviet Union, we once again went with the wrong answer. Ultimately, as St. John's did not know the score going into the last tossup and would have presumably played the same way, a right guess on either bonus part would have won the game, but I'm getting ahead of myself.) A tossup or two later, St. John's powered One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and picked up enough bonus points to finally go up by 5 with only enough time left for one tossup. On that last tossup, St. John's negged with Malcolm X, tying the game, and the question continued to indicate heavily that this was a person heavily involved with Malcolm X and whose activity centered in Detroit. I will forever insist that had time run out before FTP I would have beat-the-clock-buzzed and guessed Elijah Muhammad, which was the correct answer. Damn my lack of Wallace Fard knowledge, I got hung up on the adjective "second" leader of the Nation of Islam and stupidly guessed Louis Farrakhan. Andrew Brantley scored all 40 points of the overtime period. Adding insult to injury: The last question I ever heard in my high school career was Andrew Brantley powering Donizetti on the done-for-formality's-sake third tiebreaker tossup. I thought he said "Gonzo."
Dwight Wynne
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Re: The quizbowl decades project

Post by Susan »

Dwight wrote:Susan: I think you have the year wrong. Charles and Brendan could not have "burninated everyone" (according to a now-lost forum post) at Yale in 2003 as they were busy playing D2 ICT that year. The Yahoo! Group tells me this was BHSAT XI in 2002. That said, the recommendation letter story is quite hilarious.
You're entirely right--I was trying to quickly figure out the year from the Yahoo! group and I must have screwed it up.
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Re: The quizbowl decades project

Post by Important Bird Area »

The most exciting game I've ever witnessed was the final game of the 2000 ICT. Clash of the Titans, Andrew vs. Subash, something completely ridiculous like 75% of the tossups were powered. (Someday I'll dig the scoresheet for that game out of NAQT's files.)

The following list is games I actually played in (although the 2003 ICT kind of blurred the distinction):

Honorable mention: the top five are all from grad school, perhaps because memories of my undergrad career are fading. But I wanted to mention the ridiculous series of games my Princeton teams played against the Virginia A team with John Kenney and Steve Perry in 2001-2002. Princeton and Virginia were two of the better teams in the mid-Atlantic back then and seemed to run into each other at every tournament. What made for unusual quizbowl was that both of our teams were dominant in history and had only nominal coverage of science. And every game saw tons of points scored on early buzzes in the humanities- but the games were always decided by which team could reach back and earn 20 points on that chemistry bonus or buzz on a late-middle clue for that subatomic particle when the other was waiting for the giveaway.

5. finals vs. Illinois, 2006 ICT

Berkeley is down something like 80 points in the second half, and it's looking grim because tossup 18 is science and starts out "A June 2004 paper in ~Nature~ described this phenomenon..." OH WAIT IT'S BIRD SCIENCE fifteeeen

4. vs. Stanford, 2003 SCT

Featuring Charles Meigs moderating at lightning speed. This was an evenly-matched contest between "Berkeley C" (me, Nick Meyer, Jon Pennington) and a Stanford team with Joon and Eric. Early in the second half Stanford opens out an enormous lead; it's not that we're playing badly, it's just one of those rounds where every question seems to be something the other team knows better. There's something like a five-tossup stretch of categories I don't like playing (think "current events: business" tossup). Possibly-inevitable swing: tossups 20-26 are loaded with stuff Nick and I do know well, including both geography tossups (Wood Buffalo National Park is in Alberta hey I hear it's a major nesting ground for whooping cranes; I read that book about UNITA insurgency for my history of southern Africa class and can thus confidently buzz on the names of plateaus in central Angola). Then the fairly-scarce "literature I've actually studied" category (Samuel Johnson hated the Scots, or so I'm told). Ten seconds on the clock, we're down thirty-five and going to hear the first sentence of a ... science tossup? It's asking for some kind of taxonomy: "This class once included the ammonites--" I buzz (just ahead of the potential clock-killing neg?) with cephalopods. Right, now the bonus. Twenty to tie, thirty to win- and it's African history again! Sharpeville for thirty and win by ten.

3. finals vs. Chicago, 2003 ICT

This might be the most unbalanced packet I've ever played on (sorry, R.) Between spring 2001 and fall 2002 I had four straight semesters of medieval history, so back then I was buzzing a lot on obscure Dark Age kings and monastic saints and church councils. Let's count the medievallish stuff in this packet (none of these are necessarily bad questions, it's just an odd kind of clumping): architecture tossup on Abbot Suger. History tossup on King Stephen. General knowledge on "Bluetooth" that starts with clues on Harald Bluetooth. The boardgame tossup on Carcassonne, with clues about the French castle. Common link on "Cuthberts" with the Anglo-Saxon bishop as the leadin.

So in any normal situation this would be something like my dream packet. THIS IS NOT A NORMAL SITUATION! This is playing against 2003 Subash. Subash takes half the medieval stuff off me anyway and proceeds to destroy the rest of the packet. I play a decent game (something like 2/3/1), but decent isn't enough to come close to 2003 Subash. Chicago puts up 600+ points and nearly triples our score. "All hail Subash, destroyer of worlds." --Joon Pahk's post-tournament commentary.

2. vs. Michigan, ACF Nationals 2003

Probably the best set of three games I've ever played. Oddly enough, I don't really remember anything about the third game that decided the title.

In the prelims we win by a ridiculously close margin (five points? ten?). Almost all of our damage is done by Seth and David; my contribution is to first-line the myth tossup (it's stuff from the Ulster cycle, which I spent that semester translating for my Old Irish class). (But then, we had Seth, so even regular myth might very well have been ours anyway.)

So we're undefeated and Michigan is x-1, setting up an advantaged final in our favor. And boy, do we need it: I play generally atrocious quizbowl for the first half (beaten by Zeke and Adam to the history, negging early on the geography tossup) and we're down something like 250-30 at halftime. Around tossup 12 we suddenly wake up and start playing quizbowl again. (David personally thirties two bonuses, I beat Zeke on some minor works by Jose Rizal.) It's not enough, of course; Michigan still wins by sixty points. But it was the jolt we needed to play steady, coherent quizbowl and close out the final game. After the match, one of the Michigan players tells us that most teams in that situation would fold. (And down 200-plus to Zeke, who could blame them, really?)

[There's a big gap here, because while the above are interesting games, nothing else is like the last one.]

1. vs. Chicago, ACF Nationals 2004

2004 was the year that Andrew and Subash teamed up to destroy everyone. Through 12 rounds our Berkeley team (me, Jerry, Seth, Kenny) and Chicago are both undefeated. We'll meet in the last game of the bracketed playoffs to see who gets the advantage in the finals. It's a real David and Goliath situation, this one, and the younger players reading this should pause for a moment to consider what Goliath looks like when the team with Seth, Jerry, and two good supporting players is Team David.

So, we play a good game- we get some science, we win a buzzer race or two, but we're still kind of outmatched. Going in to tossup 20 we're down by 35 points. It's history, the Bear Flag Revolt, and I somehow get in ahead of Andrew, Subash, and Ed. This is, by far, the best clutch buzz of my playing career: but it might be moot because we need thirty points on the bonus.

Now, this is ACF Nationals, and the bonuses are justifiably difficult- there aren't that many thirties on the table. I look over at Seth, and we know what we're both thinking: please let bonus #20 be something one of our players has really deep knowledge of (geography! myth! astrophysics!). Moderator: For 10 points each--name these Walter Scott works. Seth and I groan; the literature bonuses have been killing us all tournament. Our team doesn't really have deep knowledge, and it's usually been a struggle to even get 20. This was under the old-style ACF bonus rule, so we won't know the outcome until all three parts of the bonus are read.

I don't really have anything to contribute in conferral beyond "uh, this doesn't really sound like Ivanhoe." So we defer to Jerry, who from some unanticipated part of his knowledge base starts confidently naming minor works by Walter Scott. And Jerry's amazing knowledge of the plot of Kenilworth pulls it out: thirty points, Berkeley wins by 5.

Of course it was an anticlimax, as all it granted us was advantage in the finals. Andrew and Subash look down on your paltry "one-game advantage" with scorn, and proceed to steamroll us in two straight games to win the title. Nevertheless: 2004 Chicago A went 14-1 at ACF nats, and we were the one. The most exciting game of my quizbowl career, without a doubt.
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Re: The quizbowl decades project

Post by Cheynem »

I'm glad Dwight remembers the 2002 game. I don't quite recall it very well--it was one in a series of frustrating post-lunch losses at the 2002 HSNCT. Luckily, we managed to salvage the day somewhat by beating Cutter Morning Star for the Small School Title. I think Jason Loy was just a freshman or sophomore that year, so I didn't play him at his prime, but he was already a very good player.

I remember no specific matches from the 2002 NSC. I remember a few buzzes I liked, like a tossup on the X-Files character "Monica Reyes" and my best blitz ever (all I heard was the words "bodyguard Sugar Boy O'Shea or something like that," and I just buzzed and spat out Willie Stark-All the Kings Men-Robert Penn Warren as fast as I could. The moderator smiled and pantomimed shooting pistols).

My Top 5 WORST High School Quizbowl Experiences

1. Panasonic 2002. While the actual tournament was kind of dull, this is only tangetially related to it. On the last day, we were free to explore Disney World but we had to be back at a certain time for closing ceremonies. Now, first of all I genuinely got the time screwed up that we were supposed to be back, and then being teenage boys, we kind of were already late getting back anyway. The result? We missed like the keynote speaker and I got to hear a "I'm very disappointed in you" speech from my coach.

2. The Detroit Country Day hump. In one of my first matches against DCD, my team was actually winning for quite a while, but they made a big push. With the game still in doubt on the last question, they got it...it was on Robert Goddard, someone at the time I knew nothing about. They won that game and then proceeded to beat us every time we played them in the rest of my high school career.

3. The 2001 State Title flop. My team had a bit of a swagger in 2001. We were the defending "state champs," we had cleaned up in the bad local high school tournaments, and we had begun dabbling in NAQT a bit. We figured there was one team that could give us a challenge in C/D division (Hancock). Hancock beat us on the first day, and we slowly but surely worked our way through the playoffs to face them again. We had to beat Grand Rapids City High for the right to play Hancock. We had beaten City High every time we played them. Of course, they proceeded to jump out to a lead and beat us. I remember their coach making some sarcastic jokes to his team like "Oh, gosh, I don't know what's wrong with them right now. This is so unusual for them not to be playing well!"

4. 2000 NAC. Need I say more? The best part of this tournament was getting to see E.T.

5. QuizNet. Never before has sitting in front of a computer and typing prompted me to commit so many violent acts. Having my correct answer, entered a good minute before anyone else playing, be invalidated by a minor spelling error...aaagh. Losing one match in like triple or quadruple overtime also sucked.
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Re: The quizbowl decades project

Post by Skepticism and Animal Feed »

bt_green_warbler wrote: Berkeley is down something like 80 points in the second half, and it's looking grim because tossup 18 is science and starts out "A June 2004 paper in ~Nature~ described this phenomenon..." OH WAIT IT'S BIRD SCIENCE fifteeeen
I witnessed this game. I didn't know that you liked birds (at the time), so I didn't take any note of this. What I did take note of was that you also had a game-winning geography buzz on the last tossup of that game. The answer was "Panama" and you buzzed on the name of the third highest mountain in Panama, if I recall correctly.

Every player probably dreams of winning nationals by getting a question on their pet subject, but you seem to have done it so many times. Apparently twice in this one game!
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Re: The quizbowl decades project

Post by cvdwightw »

Cheynem wrote:I'm glad Dwight remembers the 2002 game. I don't quite recall it very well--it was one in a series of frustrating post-lunch losses at the 2002 HSNCT. Luckily, we managed to salvage the day somewhat by beating Cutter Morning Star for the Small School Title. I think Jason Loy was just a freshman or sophomore that year, so I didn't play him at his prime, but he was already a very good player.
I remember it because out of the 24 official matches I played as my team's captain at HSNCT, 13 were relatively uncontested matches in the second half (3xx-1xx or worse, except for a 195-90 game that was much less close than the score indicated as a significant part of that game consisted of me negging and them not picking up the rebound), 3 were losses that weren't really close after halftime, 3 were close losses decided in the latter stages of the second half, and 3 were last-question or overtime heartbreakers. The two close wins were vs. Kent City in 2002 (ultimately more memorable because the tournament itself was more memorable) and vs. Plano East at the 2003 HSNCT. There are two stories surrounding this game, and I'll tell them both.

Story 1: NAQT screwed up the Round 7 power-matching schedule at the 2003 HSNCT. Supposedly, what was supposed to happen is that the top team by PP20H at each record would play the team with the lowest PP20H at that record, unless they had already played all teams with that record, in which they played the next highest-ranked team they had not yet played (which is how 2-loss DCC, 2-loss us, and 2-loss Dorman ended up being undefeated Maggie Walker's last 3 opponents), or something like that. Going into Round 7, for various reasons including a favorable early schedule and beating up on a quality team in Round 6, DCC was the best 4-2 team by PP20H and we were the second-best. Somehow St. Andrew's, who was nowhere near the bottom of the 4-2 teams by PP20H, ended up playing DCC, while we ended up playing Plano East, who was also nowhere near the bottom of the 4-2 teams by PP20H. While we were waiting for our Round 8 assignments (this is in the bad old days before the HSNCT card system), the coach for St. Andrew's threw an absolute fit about the Round 7 assignments, at one point demanding that the entire round be thrown out. I forget who exactly commented on this on the forums, but the comment was "You'd be that mad too if you had to swap Plano East for DCC."

Story 2: I may have told this story before, but it's worth retelling. Against Plano East, we clinch the game by getting a late tossup and running out most of the rest of the clock on the bonus to go up 80 with about ten seconds left. Not wanting anything funny to happen, I start waving my arms around the table, motioning as if to say "don't buzz." The moderator gets through about three or four words before starting to stumble over a place name. As time winds down, she continues to get hung up on this place name, starting and stopping and stuttering and what have you, anything to make this place name as incoherent as possible. Which is fine by me, since that means that there's no way that Plano East can buzz, and the last few seconds are going to tick down, and we're going to win and get one win away from the playoffs. But my teammate Nick has other ideas. He buzzes in before the clock hits triple-zero and admonishes the moderator, "That's Comodoro Rivadavia and the answer's Patagonia." That power and the 30 on the resulting bonus was the difference in us leapfrogging Dorman A for the 7th seed in the playoffs.
Dwight Wynne
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UC Irvine 2008-2013; UCLA 2004-2007; Capistrano Valley High School 2000-2003

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Re: The quizbowl decades project

Post by Important Bird Area »

Whig's Boson wrote:The answer was "Panama"
Text:
2006 ICT, round 19 wrote:Baru, near the Gulf of Chiriqui, is the highest mountain in this nation, where the Tabasara Mountains in the west and the Cordillera de San Blas in the east are separated by a low saddle. Its Azuero Peninsula juts southward into the Pacific, while the (*) Mosquito Gulf flanks it on its northern Caribbean coast. For 10 points--name this Central American nation bordered by Costa Rica and Colombia.
I didn't actually remember the name of Volcan Baru, and buzzed on "Chiriqui."
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Re: The quizbowl decades project

Post by Camelopardalis »

bsmith wrote:
Dr. Isaac Yankem, DDS wrote:
Whig's Boson wrote:I was told at the time that nine negs in one game for a single player was probably some kind of record.
This is one of the records that i absolutely want to see if we can find an "official" number on.
What's the point? All it takes is one person to throw a game and go 0/20. I can't find the evidence, but I believe someone tried to do this in the late rounds of a losing day just for a neg prize. Another reason to stop giving recognition for negs...
Maybe this? 0/1/11 is pretty rough.

Exciting games I've played in definitely include Lisgar's 340-430 loss to UTS in the final at Reach for the Top Provincials, followed by our 420-415 win against UTS in the final at Nationals two weeks later. In good-though-relatively-inconsequential QB, Lisgar's 300-310 loss to Troy in the playoffs of the HSNCT, where I pretty much just sat there, felt quite exciting.
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Re: The quizbowl decades project

Post by cchiego »

Wofford at UTC's mirror of MO '08 decided to leave during the middle of the tournament in style, negging 18 times and then leaving. This may well be the record for most negs by a single team. In fact, that whole tournament was notable for how it brutally crushed the hopes and dreams of half the Southeast.

There are plenty of other amusing quizbowl moments too, including Aaron Kashtan venting his rage at NAQT during the 07 SCT and the infamous Ray-Meigs "shoving" incident at MUT '08. I also believe I recall someone getting very angry after a tiebreaker at the 07 ICT, but I can't remember the exact circumstances. In fact, there might be enough incidents for a top 10 list of QB-induced RAGE incidents
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Re: The quizbowl decades project

Post by Captain Sinico »

Fucking birds, man. That game haunted me for months. I was terrible!
Also, high school quizbowl is stupid.

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Re: The quizbowl decades project

Post by Matt Weiner »

Since I just finished reading Round 5 at Terrapin and am waiting for some other Round 5 games to start before we eventually go to lunch at 2 PM, I'll post my alluded-to top 5 games I've participated in.

5) 2000 HSNCT final. Having gone 0-13 against State College HS to this point in the year, my Governor's School team finally clicked and won a 430-395 barnburner in the first game of a disadvantaged final. It went down only as a milestone, since we were slapped 625-170 in the second game of the final.

4) 2007 ACF Nationals: Chicago A 240, VCU 165. It's 210-140 in Chicago's favor going into tossup 19. I'm playing with sophomore Andrew Alexander only, and we have only 1 loss in the tournament and are still in contention for the finals. I suss out that the tossup is on a Holy League leader at Lepanto, but I lose the coin flip and guess Alessandro Farnese when it's actually Don John. Chicago converts and gets a bonus on Harlem Renaissance authors that moderator Andrew Yaphe informs them "you don't know," but I had just studied Arna Bontemps and would have 30ed it; they get 20. We pick up TU 20 and 20 the bonus; the 75-point swing would have sent the game to the tiebreaker. This one neg (and the putative tiebreaker) prevented our two-man team from clinching at least second place at Nationals, just a week before a neg on the much more infuriating "James Webb space telescope" question did the same at ICT. I'm still pretty happy that we came within that margin of the undefeated ACF champions.

3) Chicago Open 2004: The Anti-Geography Army 320?, Living in the Cult of Blix 240? (Archive.org is down so I can't find the real score). Having not played a hard tournament since ACF Nats 2002, I had no idea if I would be worth anything playing alongside Mike Sorice, Andrew Ullsperger, and Sudheer Potru. We dropped our first game to Hentzel et al because we decided not to buzz on a pretty obvious Congress of Berlin q, but in round 2 we rallied against the stacked Yaphe/Teitler/Litvak/Hoppes. I went 7/1 and we clinched on TU 18, vindicating my eccentric no-practice, no-playing strategy of the previous twenty-six months.

2) Penn Bowl 2002: Princeton 425, Pitt 390. A crazy-ass slugfest on old-school bad questions in which powers and 30s fell left and right; my teammate Mike Davies had perhaps his best tournament ever, while Princeton brought both Jeff Hoppes and Jacob Mikanowski to bear. Highlights included me getting "XBox" off "some people on ebay.." and Jacob getting previously unheard-of answer Henryk Gorecki off just as little. In the end, Princeton was too strong for us, but it was still one of the most intense games I've ever been a part of.

1) Minnesota Open 2009: Snitches Get Stitches 240, Chicago RBI 235. There was no reason we should have won this game, since I had 2 stupid negs and there were, for no reason, 2 myth tossups, both of which Seth of course powered. Luckily, Charlie Dees had his "I'm not in high school anymore" moment and took the fuck over, destroying three questions on hard answers, including noted thing he had just read for some reason, The Marquise of O, to keep us in the game. The difference at the end was Chris Carter pulling out 10 points on a compsci bonus that stumped the humanities-heavy rest of the team, and me somehow divining "Seven Macaw" with no time left, which I still don't know how I did. And that's how you beat Chicago A on hard questions in the MO final.

Honorable mention: CO 2008 final; CO 2009 prelim game against Jerry & co; the four games VCU played with Vanderbilt at the 2005 to 2007 Nationals and ICT, each of which came down to the last one or two tossups and three of which decided who went on to the championship bracket; this year's MO games against Magin and Chicago; the 2005 CO final
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Re: The quizbowl decades project

Post by Auroni »

My single favorite game of all time has to be the one against Brown at ACF Nationals this year. The game proceeded with me winning a race on Safavid, me getting Tintin, Jerry one-lining Kobo Abe, Rogers going dead (I think), us getting Hainan. Jerry would destroy the shit of the Country Wife tossup, but we'd get Oni, Courbet, and Geertz (on a buzzer race). I remembered 20ing the Spanish lit bonus, getting Holliday Junctions, us getting Kekkonen!, them 20ing or 30ing a Graham Greene bonus.

Basically, the match was incredibly close until I decided to stupidly neg the Karlowitz tossup with San Stefano, which gave them the clinch. And that tossup was tossup 19.
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Re: The quizbowl decades project

Post by Eärendil »

Two of my favorite high school memories are from the 2006 HSNCT, when we upset both Maggie Walker and Richard Montgomery to finish atop the rankings after the prelims. I think that was the first time in a while that Grosse Pointe (yes, there's an 'e' at the end of both words) North quiz bowl received national attention. Also I remember powering a tossup on "Teotihuacan," that was fun.
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Re: The quizbowl decades project

Post by jonpin »

Oh I'll submit to vanity and talk about the five most personally interesting/memorable games I played or had a part in, in chronological order:

HSNCT 2001: Edmond (OK) 485, Bergen 140. Through the magic of a death-star tie for 2nd at states, we qualified to nationals in our first season where we got throttled. In one game, however, I powered "e" (the number), a math-calc question, and "Annabel Lee" (essentially the only literature I know) and also got a question on "trees" off of a mathy clue. All in the first half. All hail NAQT distribution.

NJ Science Bowl 2003: Bergen 64, East Brunswick 62. The only academic tournament Bergen won while I was there was won by the B team. But we did win Science Bowl regionals which was fun. The winning points in this semifinal came when I got an astronomy tossup, then we took all 20 seconds on the bonus (Order these stars from brightest to dimmest) before giving the answer backwards. When Congressman/Nuclear Physicist/Moderator Rush Holt tells me I'm wrong, I yell "Oh crap!" which flusters him long enough that time expires before the next tossup begins. My coach yells at me not to curse at members of Congress.

Rollapalooza 2004: WUSTL 505, Tulsa 150. The crowning moment of Andrew Brantley's first tournament with the team, he goes 1-10-0 for 115. We lose the next round and the tournament to Mizzou, but I was highly impressed. This tournament also featured the CBI-esque giveaway "...for ten points, name this vexological sextuplet."

CBI Nationals 2006: WUSTL 310, Minnesota 300. Elimination game in the playoffs. Tied with three minutes left, Andrew negs and Minnesota picks it up to open a 35-point lead. We get the next one, they get the next two but bagel both bonuses, so it's still a 35-point lead with under a minute to go. Minnesota negs, but Andrew doesn't know the answer until the giveaway, by which time 20 seconds are left. The bonus has a nice long rambling introduction before getting to the point: "the laws of gravity allow only four types of orbit around--". I interrupt the bonus and yell out "Elliptic! Hyperbolic! Parabolic! Circle!" as the clock runs out. "All three for thirty!" and we win. Moments later, we lose to UCLA, who then upsets Illinois twice for the championship. The physical copy of the last bonus is still in my possession.

LIFT 2009: Wilmington Charter 285, Hunter 225; Wilmington Charter 305, St. Joseph 275. Despite Bergen B having upset them in the playoff round-robin, Charter won their group and a spot in the final four. I read the semifinal against Hunter which looked to produce the favorite for the final. Hunter was still in it until the very end, but Charter grabbed #20 to clinch the match. I scorekept the finals against St. Joseph, which was even tighter. St. Joe's actually led 205-80 in the second half, but Charter fought back and pulled within ten entering the last tossup. They nailed it to tie the game and 30'd the bonus to win the tournament.
Last edited by jonpin on Tue Nov 17, 2009 6:09 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: The quizbowl decades project

Post by Captain Sinico »

Well, my desire ever to read this thread again has been crushed by a mountain of irrelevant game summaries. Thanks, quizbowl!

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Re: The quizbowl decades project

Post by The Laughing Man »

The best games I have participated in are these:

2009 PACE Final- Really painful, but definitely the most dramatic game I've had the opportunity play in.
2009 PACE game against Ike- The most ridiculous performance I've ever seen by a high schooler. Ike goes 6- 9 against us!!!!!!!
Prison Bowl Finals against Charter- Henry's "7th Fucking Buzzer Race" game... a true classic moment in high school quiz bowl anger
2008 HFT preliminary game against Hunter: My favorite quiz bowl gameplay moment ever. Goes to a 3 question tiebreak. 3rd tiebreak question (a vintage Andy Watkins classic and nomination for least difficulty appropriate question ever (if we ever make a list of that)) is... Dover Bitch. I buzz in about half-way through question... say "Dover Bitch?!?!?!?!", Graham stares at me angrily for losing the game by not only buzzing with Dover Beach on a poem which is clearly not Dover Beach (which he has memorized) but also forgetting/mispronouncing the title. Turns out I am correct. Everyone else in the room has never heard of Dover Bitch and is quite confused.
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Re: The quizbowl decades project

Post by cvdwightw »

Here are some records I think would be cool to look up/compute. Obviously we can have analogous ones at the high school level for some of these, but others would be difficult. I'm not sure whether we have the stats to do some of the all-time career ones:

SINGLE GAME
1. Most team points scored, any college difficulty level.
2. Most combined points between two teams, any college difficulty level.
3. Most team points scored, D1 ICT (and correspondingly ACF Nationals).
4. Most combined points, D1 ICT (and correspondingly ACF Nationals).

SINGLE TOURNAMENT
1. Highest team points per game, any tournament.
2. Highest team bonus conversion, any tournament.
3. Highest team points per game, Chicago Open (and correspondingly ACF Nationals and D1 ICT).
4. Highest team bonus conversion, Chicago Open (and correspondingly ACF Nationals and D1 ICT).
5. Team composition with, at the time of that tournament, the most national championships (any division, any format).
6. Team composition with, at the time of that tournament, the most real national championships (ACF or NAQT D1).
7. Highest individual points per game, any tournament.
8. Highest individual points per game, Chicago Open (and correspondingly ACF Nationals and D1 ICT).
9. Highest individual points per game by a player participating in his first-ever tournament.

CAREER
1. Highest individual winning percentage, Chicago Open (and correspondingly ACF Nationals and D1 ICT).
2. Most individual game wins, Chicago Open (and correspondingly ACF Nationals and D1 ICT).
3. Most distinct teammates, all college tournaments.
4. Most distinct packet co-authors, all ACF/mACF tournaments.
5. Most distinct co-editors, all ACF/mACF tournaments.
6. Two people, most ACF/mACF tournaments edited together.
7. Most tournaments directed (high school and college combined).
8. Highest non-infinite "Weiner Number" (like the Erdos Number, but with packets instead of papers).

And some dubious records I think would be cool but have varying degrees of difficulty to look up:
1. Most negs in a single game by a team that won that game, Single Game.
2. Fewest tossup points scored by a team that reached 100 points, Single Game.
3. Fewest bonus points scored by a team that reached 100 points, Single Game.
4. Largest margin of defeat by a team that scored 400+ points in a different game at that tournament, Single Tournament.
5. Highest ICT or ACF Nats finish by a team that had at least 2 players in common with a team that attended CBI Nationals that year and failed to make the playoffs (Can any team top Illinois '05?).
6. Most games lost at ICT via clock-killing negs, Single Tournament/Career.
7. Most-regifted prize.
8. "Best Coattail Rider:" Most national championships won while contributing under 10 ppg/pp20h, Career.
9. Lowest average bonus conversion across all teams, Single Tournament (this would also be cool to compute for CO/ACF Nats/ICT).
10. Highest winning percentage of a team that had been grailed at the tournament, Single Tournament.
11. Most tossups scored by an individual scoring more negs than tossups, Individual, Single Tournament.
12. Most teammates finishing with more negs than tossups, Team, Single Tournament.
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Re: The quizbowl decades project

Post by AKKOLADE »

To do list: split this thread into "quizbowl decades project" and "here are some fun games I played in/saw"
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Re: The quizbowl decades project

Post by Sima Guang Hater »

This is probably off-base, but how about best player lists? Maybe not a global one, but like best generalists, best specialists at category x, etc.
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Re: The quizbowl decades project

Post by Auks Ran Ova »

cvdwightw wrote:4. Largest margin of defeat by a team that scored 400+ points in a different game at that tournament, Single Tournament.
Chicago A just took a 500-point loss at IO.
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Re: The quizbowl decades project

Post by Ethnic history of the Vilnius region »

Reaching way back to Georgia Tech's 1999 MLK tournament, the USC Down South Hustlers (T.C. Ford, Adam Humphreys, Philip Stone, and Daniel Jones) lost a match to Maryland (Dave Hamilton, Julie Singer, Christine Moritz, and Zeke Berdichevsky) 600-90. link. South Carolina beat Georgia Tech 415-30 and also beat Oglethorpe 540-20 that day.
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Re: The quizbowl decades project

Post by marnold »

Ukonvasara wrote:
cvdwightw wrote:4. Largest margin of defeat by a team that scored 400+ points in a different game at that tournament, Single Tournament.
Chicago A just took a 500-point loss at IO.
Bonus points are awarded to us for then scoring nearly 500 against the same team that ravaged us. That was weird.
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Re: The quizbowl decades project

Post by Auks Ran Ova »

marnold wrote:
Ukonvasara wrote:
cvdwightw wrote:4. Largest margin of defeat by a team that scored 400+ points in a different game at that tournament, Single Tournament.
Chicago A just took a 500-point loss at IO.
Bonus points are awarded to us for then scoring nearly 500 against the same team that ravaged us. That was weird.
It sure was!
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Re: The quizbowl decades project

Post by bsmith »

Putting in some Canada-centric answers, which may get topped:
cvdwightw wrote:9. Highest individual points per game by a player participating in his first-ever tournament.
High school: Jamie Cooper got 93 PP20TH in the 2005 OQT, on an A-set.
College: Unless he went to the 2007 COTKU mirror, Eric Monkman got 71 PP20TH in DII at the 2008 SCT. Jamie pulled off the same feat at the 2009 SCT, but I assume you're excluding college players who had high school experience.
7. Most tournaments directed (high school and college combined).
Will be handily beaten, but I've done 16 at Ottawa, and essentially did 1 at Carleton (in contrast, I've only played 17 tournaments). I would not be surprised if the record is past 30 (4 events/year over 8 years? A teacher running a HS event for 30 years?)
1. Most negs in a single game by a team that won that game, Single Game.
Several Canadian teams have made 6 at SCTs. The record may be 8-9, especially in formats that allow more than 20 tossups per game.
2. Fewest tossup points scored by a team that reached 100 points, Single Game.
The house team at the 2009 Ottawa Hybrid got 30 TU points (and 70 bonus points) in a 100-point first-round loss. Unless a team with many tossups negs like crazy, I think this is about the limit.
3. Fewest bonus points scored by a team that reached 100 points, Single Game.
Rochester at ACF Fall 2005 got 20 bonus points (and 80 tossup points) in a 100-point first-round win. Ottawa pulled off a win over Case Western at the 2007 SCT with only 15 bonus points, but we only reached 90 points (in that game, both teams combined for 20 bonus points over 12 bonuses)
9. Lowest average bonus conversion across all teams, Single Tournament
I was about to say that Brock site of ACF Fall 2005 (with 8.4), but the UTC site of THUNDER had 7.2 PPB (4100 points / 573 bonuses)
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Re: The quizbowl decades project

Post by Auks Ran Ova »

bsmith wrote:
1. Most negs in a single game by a team that won that game, Single Game.
Several Canadian teams have made 6 at SCTs. The record may be 8-9, especially in formats that allow more than 20 tossups per game.
TJ had 10 negs in the 2005 HSNCT final.
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Re: The quizbowl decades project

Post by AdamL »

bsmith wrote:
9. Lowest average bonus conversion across all teams, Single Tournament
I was about to say that Brock site of ACF Fall 2005 (with 8.4), but the UTC site of THUNDER had 7.2 PPB (4100 points / 573 bonuses)
No clue about this being the lowest, but I just calculated the UTC mirror of Minnesota Open 2008 as having 7.02 PPB (8225 points/1171 bonuses)
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Re: The quizbowl decades project

Post by dxdtdemon »

As for who directed the most tournaments, isn't R. Robert Hentzel the official TD of all of the HS tournaments in Minnesota that use NAQT questions? Between that and HSNCT/ICT, it would be hard for others to come close.
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