ELVIS

[Skepticism and Animal Feed]

I'd like to learn more about the history of the ELVIS tournament at the University of Wisconsin.

By the time I started playing college quizbowl, the ELVIS tournament was defunct. I learned about it because apparently on our team's annual budget proposal, there was still a line for "costs of attending ELVIS" that nobody had edited out. Then my last year of college, ELVIS was suddenly revived. It was in the late spring. We went up to Madison for it.

It was pretty horrible. It was widely panned on these forums for having like 3-4 questions on "El Cid". Also, Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej came up like 2-3 times, which is probably still a record. In the finals there was a tossup on non-noted Byzantine Emperor Nikephoros I. I negged it and then the other team was given 10 points for saying "Nikephoros Phokas", which is a different Nikepheros and should NOT have been accepted. All in all it was a shitty way to end my University of Chicago quizbowl career. But I think we went to a good African restaurant afterwards? Also there was an apartment complex near the tournament site called the "Quisling Apartments", which I found lolarious.

As far as I know ELVIS hasn't happened since. Can somebody who has been to more than just 2007 ELVIS tell me about the ELIVSes of the past?

[theMoMA]

The really exciting thing about Elvis was that Andrew Yaphe played.

[Skepticism and Animal Feed]

The really exciting thing about Elvis was that Andrew Yaphe played.

It was his last tournament in a University of Chicago uniform. Same for Jared Sagoff and (I believe) Ray Sun.

[Susan]

Well, Bruce has probably already heard what I know of Elvis, but for the edification of other quizbowlers, I'll say what I recall.

Elvis, as Bruce has said, was a tournament hosted by the University of Wisconsin. (The full name was The Elvis Aaron [sic] Presley Memorial (??) Academic Quiz Tournament.) It was (at least while I was playing) usually hosted in early February; in at least some years it was a mirror of Cardinal Classic, Terrier Tussle, and/or Juan Carlos Viscerra. I guess by "was a mirror of" I mean more "shared packets with", as that was how mirroring sometimes worked back in the day; all of the packets from all of the sites would go to all of the editors and be separately edited by the editors at the different sites (no, I'm not sure why anyone thought this was a great idea) or each site would separately edit the packets they received and stick two or three differently-edited chunks of packets together as one big Frankenset (this was a even worse idea!). As of 2000, Elvis was in its 13th year. (If anyone's curious what a very detailed packet announcement from a tournament held in 2000 was like, see here.)

Basically, Elvis's schtick was wackiness. The hallmark of Elvis was the "fun" question. Examples of "fun" questions over the years include: acting out things from o-chem using people as atoms or functional groups; finger-painting, drawing, or performing by tableau works of art; acting out death scenes from plays, mythological impregnations, a conjunction bonus involving the answer "Harappa the Rappa"; and "acting out sports penalties" (I'm not sure what exactly was meant by this, sitting in a box?). Even without the fun questions, Elvis wouldn't have gone down in history as the finest tournament in all the land; the questions were really general-knowledge-heavy, even for the time (this was probably one of the most CBI-ish sets that didn't come on yellow paper), and the occasional uneven editing because of "mirroring" really didn't help matters. In the "other wackiness" department, Elvis encouraged teams to dress up in costumes (one of my earliest contributions to University of Chicago quizbowl was creating, but not wearing, the headgear that won the prize for second best hat at Elvis 2000). Additionally, there was, at some point in the shadowy history of Elvis, an associated pie-eating contest (this was a late lamented thing as early as 2000).

I can't say I miss Elvis, but my memories of Elvis are associated with my memories of a strong Wisconsin team that hosted things a lot, which would be a wonderful thing to have back on the Midwestern circuit at some point. We all used to really enjoy visiting Madison.

[Cheynem]

Perhaps "acting out sports penalties" involves miming the actions a referee would do to indicate a certain penalty? Like a false start?

I also concur that the midwestern circuit hosting more stuff at varied locations would be great. Carleton is starting to do this. Iowa did some stuff last year, as did Lawrence, and Northwestern is hosting stuff next term.

[theMoMA]

The fun question is the reason there is a picture of Selene and Seth as various parts of the IS/LM model somewhere.

[Charbroil]

...University of Chicago uniform...

You guys had uniforms?

[marnold]

[Skepticism and Animal Feed]

If I didn't have a final on Thursday, this is where I would photoshop William Dix's head onto a uniformed athlete for the lulz.

[Kanga-Rat Murder Society]

As far as I know ELVIS hasn't happened since. Can somebody who has been to more than just 2007 ELVIS tell me about the ELIVSes of the past?

The person that I know who has been associated with the team the longest is Gabe. If it happened before he arrived, I cannot help. I will see if I can track down the old sets, but I wouldn't expect anything.

I can't say I miss Elvis, but my memories of Elvis are associated with my memories of a strong Wisconsin team that hosted things a lot, which would be a wonderful thing to have back on the Midwestern circuit at some point. We all used to really enjoy visiting Madison.

This is a thing I can help with. Our team really has some comitted and some competent players. The problem had been with the people who had been running the club over the past couple of years. They pretty much forced the team to practice on old IS sets, and people who questioned this were outright rejected, as we were "about fun". It got to the point where the #15 scorer at this years Chicago Open was showing up, not buzzing on A-sets, and going home. It was funny to see their reaction when he beat them playing solo on good questions, as I literally do not think they realized how good he was.

Over the past few months, though, good quizbowl has taken over at our practices. In January, I will become club president. I assure you that Wisconsin will be an active team as soon as next year. I also will publicly state my desire to host a mirror of a college tournament next year. After seeing our team run an effective high school tournament, I think that we are ready to host.

[Susan]

That's great to hear! Good luck.

[Gautam]

This is a thing I can help with. Our team really has some comitted and some competent players. The problem had been with the people who had been running the club over the past couple of years. They pretty much forced the team to practice on old IS sets, and people who questioned this were outright rejected, as we were "about fun". It got to the point where the #15 scorer at this years Chicago Open was showing up, not buzzing on A-sets, and going home. It was funny to see their reaction when he beat them playing solo on good questions, as I literally do not think they realized how good he was.

Over the past few months, though, good quizbowl has taken over at our practices. In January, I will become club president. I assure you that Wisconsin will be an active team as soon as next year. I also will publicly state my desire to host a mirror of a college tournament next year. After seeing our team run an effective high school tournament, I think that we are ready to host.

Hey,

I'm really glad that you're taking the initiative to do this. I'd be really really happy to travel to Madison (any time I can avoid the Chicago great attractor clusterfuck is good in my book) and there'll hopefully be many opportunities for us to do that in the near future.

--Gautam

[Coelacanth]

I'd like to learn more about the history of the ELVIS tournament at the University of Wisconsin.
...
As far as I know ELVIS hasn't happened since. Can somebody who has been to more than just 2007 ELVIS tell me about the ELIVSes of the past?

Hey, I'm really old. I can answer this.

I attended the first 6 or so Elvises, or Elvi as we called them. The first was held in 1988. The early events featured T-shirts for all participants with lyrics from Elvis songs. I think I still have my shirt proclaiming that I was a Hunka Hunka Burning Love at the (Nth) Annual Elvis...

In the midwest at that time, essentially everyone was a CBI-only program, as there was nothing like a developed circuit. I believe UW Parkside, after discovering that they were required to submit a packet, sent in a CBI campus tournament round; they never actually showed up to play.

The questions were horrible, as all questions from that era were. I recall the first edition also featured slap-bowl in the later rounds as one of the buzzers expired. There was one moderator there every year (Bob I think his name was) who would invariably be eating something anytime he read for us.

I may come up with more stories later if I have time; right now I'm late for a meeting.

[Ukonvasara]

UW Parkside

Man, I've never even heard of this campus!

[Coelacanth]

UW Parkside

Man, I've never even heard of this campus!

I think they named it that because of a turf war between Kenosha and Racine over who the school would be named after. It's pretty much right between them.

They used to host GenCon there back in the day.

Just a note about the questions at those early Elvis tournaments. This was the era when "packet submission" meant "put a paper copy of your questions into the postal mail so that it gets to the tournament host in time for them to run photocopies". Many questions were typewritten, on an actual typewriter; most were printed using some godawful dot-matrix printers. Some were hand-written. "Editing" often involved cutting and pasting the questions to reorder them or combine two rounds. I mean cutting with an actual scissors and pasting with actual paste, or scotch tape.

So, how good do you think those questions were?

I'm just thankful that no electronic versions of some of those questions that I wrote still exist.

[theMoMA]

Were questions written directly from the library reference desk line?

[Coelacanth]

Were questions written directly from the library reference desk line?

I can't confirm or deny this. I know that we did write questions out of the New York Times Desk Reference.

More on the early Elvis...

This tournament was positioned as CBI-like. I think originally this was somewhat by default as most of the teams in the region had only played CBI. This means there were variable-value bonuses and I think one year we played on the clock. There was also threatened litigation; CBCI attempted to charge a "licensing fee". This resulted in UW removing the words "College Bowl" and the logo and other things from all promotional materials. Of course CBCI still wanted the money...

The early tournaments were 1-2 UW house teams, 2-4 teams each from Minnesota and Chicago, and a smattering of other random teams. I think Emory came one year, NYU another, Michigan maybe. Beloit was usually there. The first couple of years were dominated by Chicago; Minnesota didn't win for the the first time until 1991.

After a few years Eric Hillemann started up the Carleton program and the questions sort of standardized themselves: you had UW still writing very CBI-esqe questions, Minnesota who never met a trash question they didn't like or a distribution they didn't ignore (and by "they" I guess I should say "we"), Carleton producing very short, easy, proto-NAQT speedcheck tossups, and Chicago writing their novel-length, four-tossups-to-a-page packets. The luck of the draw in scheduling was paramount; it didn't matter who you played (it was always a full RR so you played everyone) but it very much mattered on whose packet you played them.

Imagine playing on questions from CBI, TRASH (with some academic content), ACF Regionals and an NAQT IS-set in the same tournament. That's what the early Elvis was like.

[Terrible Shorts Depot]

magine playing on questions from CBI, TRASH (with some academic content), ACF Regionals and an NAQT IS-set in the same tournament. That's what the early Elvis was like.

I smell a side event.

[Captain Sinico]

Actually, as it happens, we've got some old Elvis rounds in our archive and, as our digitization effort, which just produced its first fruits, proceeds, we'll all be able to see some soon! Huzzah!
Actually, that gives me a good chance to plug that same effort. If you've got some old paper rounds, a way to scan text in bulk, or especially electronic copies of (especially old) sets that are not widely available and are interested in contributing to our archive, please let me know. We've got about 200 old paper sets labeled and archived that I can't find electronic copies of so far. I recently received a lot more material that I will work on. We have scanned about 10 sets, but that effort is moving into gear thanks to the efforts of Charles Martin.

MaS

[bt_green_warbler]

If you've got some old paper rounds and are interested in contributing to our archive, please let me know.

Here is the (incomplete) parts list for Berkeley's paper packet archive. I have some of these in my possession now; let's coordinate so we don't go out of our way to digitize the same packets twice.

[Mike Bentley]

Actually, as it happens, we've got some old Elvis rounds in our archive and, as our digitization effort, which just produced its first fruits, proceeds, we'll all be able to see some soon! Huzzah!
Actually, that gives me a good chance to plug that same effort. If you've got some old paper rounds, a way to scan text in bulk, or especially electronic copies of (especially old) sets that are not widely available and are interested in contributing to our archive, please let me know. We've got about 200 old paper sets labeled and archived that I can't find electronic copies of so far. I recently received a lot more material that I will work on. We have scanned about 10 sets, but that effort is moving into gear thanks to the efforts of Charles Martin.

MaS

So is this stuff going to be available online?

[Captain Sinico]

Yes, eventually we'll put everything online for everyone's use.

MaS

[Brian Ulrich]

I actually edited an ELVIS in 2002 or 2003 or so - I forget the exact year. If I recall correctly, it was the first year we went from packet submission to in-house writing, which was a definite mistake.

If Mark "Death" Zimmer is still at Wisconsin, he'd be the one to ask.

Brian

[Steve Watchorn]

Actually, for several years, Mark Zimmer edited the tournament on his own. I was with UW quiz bowl for about six productive years in grad school, and I only edited the tournament once, in 2000 (with a packet swap that didn't go quite as planned). I also remember it, though, as the first tournament I heard of (the 1.5 years I played CBI at Michigan) which required this "packet submission," which was new to me. That was spring of 1993, the semester after I graduated (but still practiced with the CBI team while waiting to attend grad school).

[Steve Watchorn]

Additionally, there was, at some point in the shadowy history of Elvis, an associated pie-eating contest (this was a late lamented thing as early as 2000).

I believe in 1997 or 1998 there was pie-eating contest at halftime of the semi-finals, between the four remaining teams, and the winner received 50 points in the match. While the pies were hellaciously good (from the Norske Nook, a constant stop of ours on trips to Minneapolis), the getting-points aspect was widely derided, and the next year there was a pie-eating contest that was just for fun(n).

And yes, in 2000 I was naive enough to think that good editing was good editing, and ended up swapping edited questions for unedited ones from mirror sites, resulting in a wildly uneven set of questions with notable numbering errors. I would have loved to have had a chance to edit again after that, to learn from the experience, but graduation put the kibosh on that.

[Cheynem]

Sorry for thread bump, but I have some of the older Elvis sets, so we should play them for great amusement sometime.

[Coelacanth]

Mike has a different definition of "amusement" than the rest of us.