LIST is looking for mirrors!

[Mewto55555]

The Ladue Invitational Spring Tournament is looking for mirrors nationwide! We will offer 15 packets FOR THE VERY LOW PRICE OF TEN DOLLARS PER TEAM. Mirrors will preferably be on or after April 2nd, 2011 (the date of our tournament), though if you want to run a tournament a few weeks earlier, that can definitely be arranged.

SET DETAILS:

We will be shooting for a very high tossup conversion throughout the tournament, so the answer lines to tossups will be relatively easy. The questions will be pyramidal in nature, so they will be excellent for play between any level of team attending. Each round will consist of 21 powermarked (if you want) tossups and 21 rebounding thirty-point bonuses, with additional tossups for tiebreaker purposes. The distribution of the tossups and bonuses will be as follows (each number is how many tossups and how many bonuses, so 4 History means 4 history tossups and 4 history bonuses per packet):

4 History: 1 American, 1 European, 1 World, 1 Ancient
4 Literature: 1 American, 1 British, 1 European, 1 World
4 Science: 1 Physics, 1 Biology, 1 Chemistry, 1 Misc. Science
2 RMP (Religion, Mythology, Philosophy)
1 Math (Non-computational)
1 Art
1 Music
1 Geography
1 Social Sciences
1 Current Events
1 Trash (Pop Culture and Sports)

If the thought of mirroring even crosses your mind, or you have any questions whatsoever, please feel free to email me at [email protected]

Max Schindler: LIST Co-TD

[Mewto55555]

Current tournaments using the LIST set:

4/2/11- LIST (MO)
4/23/11- Kris Durham Memorial Hybrid (GA)
5/14/11- WIST (CA) (was cancelled)
5/21/11 - LIST Mirror at VCU (VA)

[Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN)]

I know usually people have a lot to be wary of when a brand new set is being written by a young star player, but I wanted to let you all know that I have playtested portions of this set, and everything I have seen so far is incredibly well written and accessible. This is a set that is really, really worthy of lots of mirrors, and if you are looking for a set that will be able to appeal to teams of all skill levels, this is it. I am a notorious complainer about sets being too difficult, so when I approve of Max's work, that means I am serious.

[Mewto55555]

Just so y'all know, the list of tournaments running on LIST above is still accurate; we would love to have more than just one outside mirror! The set is turning out really nicely, and if you're interested in hosting a mirror, I could show you a small sample of our work so far.

[rylltraka]

I'm going to recommend to my UCLA brethren that we host this sometime in April or May. If so an announcement will be forthcoming.

[Mewto55555]

VCU will be holding a mirror on some Sunday in May (either the 15th or the 22nd).

[Mewto55555]

The first use of this set happened yesterday at Ladue in Missouri. It was well-received, with comments made on the moquizbowl boards such as "I would say this ranks up there with GSAC and HSAPQ 15 as one of my favorite sets I've played all year" and "Best of the year by far".

Also, our going rate for questions is only $10 per team at your tournament, which is pretty darn low. More of you should mirror LIST!

[WSchneider]

Very strong possibility of Kings Park hosting a mirror; if you guys are still looking?

[Mewto55555]

We are always looking; just shoot me an email!

[rylltraka]

I have very recently formalized our desire to hold such a mirror, and sent an email to the address you provided in the initial announcement.

[Mewto55555]

Yeah, so LIST has 3 additional mirrors now. Would any of you like to host a 4th?

[AlphaQuizBowler]

Yeah this set was really really good, and really really accessible.

I have to say that Dees has been greatly exaggerating the quality of this tournament. It was in fact "really really accessible" but not "really really good." I'll start with the difficulty. First of all, this claim:

f you are looking for a set that will be able to appeal to teams of all skill levels, this is it.

is not true. This set does not do an adequate job of appealing to teams of the top skill level. And I don't just mean top 5 teams like LASA and State College: I can't imagine this set doing a good job differentiating between most of the teams in the top 30 or so of Fred's rankings.

I'm sure I'm going to run into the whole "You're a good high school quizbowl player, so quit complaining about things being to easy," so let me just say the problem with the difficulty didn't just stem from the fact that an inordinate number of tossups were first-lined or that our PPB was 26.5: the biggest problem with this set was that, out of all the sets billed as regular high school sets that I've played or read, this tournament probably did the worst job finding creative and lesser-used lead-ins and third parts. "Easy" shouldn't equate to "I'm going to lead in tossups with clues everybody's heard before." Even Fall Novice had some new and interesting lead-ins, and I would say that Fall Novice was easier than LIST. There's also been a trend this year of much more predictable bonuses, and this tournament took that trend to the extreme.

But then there were issues unrelated to difficulty. There were some very questionable choices for the "science" distribution. I should've taken a look at the distribution before I played, but I have a feeling that other teams playing future mirrors won't really appreciate the fact that RMP is reduced to 2/2, despite what Charlie Dees like to say about the accessibility of RMP to high schoolers. The precious little philosophy there was made too much use of biographical clues and lacked content from the most important works of the philosophers being tossed up. Having a combined 3/3 Geography, CE, and Trash, when combined with some of the more questionable tossup choices, led to very noticeable strings of what I would call "junk questions" that weren't very enjoyable at all.

I'm not saying this was a horribly-written tournament. It was an average-quality high school housewrite, and excellent work for someone writing their first tournament, and I'm happy to provide more specific feedback to Max if he wants it. I just wanted to share my thoughts because I feel like the quality of this tournament didn't really match the incredible reviews it's been given.

[Mewto55555]

It was an average-quality high school housewrite, and excellent work for someone writing their first tournament, and I'm happy to provide more specific feedback to Max if he wants it.

Please do; my email's in the first post.

EDIT: Not confirming/denying the legitimacy of the rest of the complaints (as I don't have specifics yet!), but why is having the best teams break 25 ppb so bad?

[Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN)]

Yeah this set was really really good, and really really accessible.

I have to say that Dees has been greatly exaggerating the quality of this tournament. It was in fact "really really accessible" but not "really really good." I'll start with the difficulty. First of all, this claim:

f you are looking for a set that will be able to appeal to teams of all skill levels, this is it.

is not true. This set does not do an adequate job of appealing to teams of the top skill level. And I don't just mean top 5 teams like LASA and State College: I can't imagine this set doing a good job differentiating between most of the teams in the top 30 or so of Fred's rankings.

I'm sure I'm going to run into the whole "You're a good high school quizbowl player, so quit complaining about things being to easy," so let me just say the problem with the difficulty didn't just stem from the fact that an inordinate number of tossups were first-lined or that our PPB was 26.5: the biggest problem with this set was that, out of all the sets billed as regular high school sets that I've played or read, this tournament probably did the worst job finding creative and lesser-used lead-ins and third parts. "Easy" shouldn't equate to "I'm going to lead in tossups with clues everybody's heard before." Even Fall Novice had some new and interesting lead-ins, and I would say that Fall Novice was easier than LIST. There's also been a trend this year of much more predictable bonuses, and this tournament took that trend to the extreme.

But then there were issues unrelated to difficulty. There were some very questionable choices for the "science" distribution. I should've taken a look at the distribution before I played, but I have a feeling that other teams playing future mirrors won't really appreciate the fact that RMP is reduced to 2/2, despite what Charlie Dees like to say about the accessibility of RMP to high schoolers. The precious little philosophy there was made too much use of biographical clues and lacked content from the most important works of the philosophers being tossed up. Having a combined 3/3 Geography, CE, and Trash, when combined with some of the more questionable tossup choices, led to very noticeable strings of what I would call "junk questions" that weren't very enjoyable at all.

I'm not saying this was a horribly-written tournament. It was an average-quality high school housewrite, and excellent work for someone writing their first tournament, and I'm happy to provide more specific feedback to Max if he wants it. I just wanted to share my thoughts because I feel like the quality of this tournament didn't really match the incredible reviews it's been given.

Your post is so stupid! Geography and Current Events are academic topics, they aren't junk! High school philosophy questions empirically have horrible rates of conversion! As for freshness of leadins, sorry you know a lot of things that this set asked about. On the topic of predictable bonuses, that was an idiotic complaint when Elite Team Player made it in 2008 about Andrew Hart's writing style, and it's equally idiotic when made here. Max wrote a set that did a really good job of actually being full of things teams will know, even if they are not good teams, and if you don't like how easy that makes it for you, then you need to grow up.

[Mewto55555]

Oh, William, I can email a copy of the set if you give me your email too, if that helps with your feedback.

[AlphaQuizBowler]

Some more incredibly logical reasoning from noted expert Charlie Dees. Even though you didn't take the time to really discuss my points at all, I'm going to take some time to make myself clear anyway.

Geography and Current Events are academic topics, they aren't junk!

Fair enough. My point was that geography and current events are more prone to questionable answer lines because writers seem very prone to the mindset "I'm going to write a question on Random Country (or State) X and write almanac clues about its rivers and highest points," leading to many geo questions that aren't converted until the question writer mercifully throws in the capital as the last clue. Or "Here are some minor things that an active politician did: you have to wait all the way until I tell you his/her most famous position/action." This happens in NAQT, too, because of the prevalence of CE. In this set, though, some questionable choices on CE and geo, coupled with the more odd lit and science tossups, led to strings of questions where even the best teams were buzzer racing once a real clue finally got dropped or when they finally puzzled out what the question wanted.

High school philosophy questions empirically have horrible rates of conversion!

This doesn't mean that the philosophy questions you do include have to be bad! Even accepting that the lower philosophy distribution in this tournament is good for high school, the questions included could still be improved greatly by including more clues about the philosopher's works.

As for freshness of leadins, sorry you know a lot of things that this set asked about.

I'm not complaining about knowing what this set asked about. I should probably expect to know over 95% of the tossup answer lines at any given "regular" high school tournament. But that doesn't mean you can't find some new clues for an accessible tossup answer--in fact, I thought that's what question writers were supposed to do. [Note: this example has nothing to do with the LIST set] I've read [literary work redacted], and I've looked over old questions about [work]. But that doesn't mean someone can't find a cool lead-in about [work] that I can't get.

On the topic of predictable bonuses, that was an idiotic complaint when Elite Team Player made it in 2008 about Andrew Hart's writing style, and it's equally idiotic when made here.

My main complaint isn't about bonus style--I accept that there are important reasons why most lit bonuses, for example, come out Work/Author/Another Work or Work/Author/Character. I'm talking about the fact that my teammates and I, with very high consistency, could guess the next two parts of the bonus after hearing the first part. The better high school tournaments I've heard find enough new material (and not even necessarily harder material) for the third parts to keep things interesting; this tournament really did not.

And yes, style does play a part as well--despite the prevalence and importance of the aforementioned styles, every once and a while a bonus could go Work/Author/Author's contemporary or Author/Character/Character or talk about poems with related material or something. The best tournaments do this enough to keep players thinking.

Max wrote a set that did a really good job of actually being full of things teams will know

Here's the problem: I don't deny this, but I also don't agree that this fact in itself makes the set good. GSAC was also full of things teams will know, but it was higher-quality than LIST. Quality has to do with having good clues as well as having accessible answer lines.

Redacted uncleared answer --Mgmt.

EDIT: I apologize for including an uncleared answer; it was completely unintentional, as at the tournament I played I didn't hear the packet containing that answer.

[ryandillon]

I'm not complaining about knowing what this set asked about. I should probably expect to know over 95% of the tossup answer lines at any given "regular" high school tournament. But that doesn't mean you can't find some new clues for an accessible tossup answer--in fact, I thought that's what question writers were supposed to do. [Note: this example has nothing to do with the LIST set] I've read [literary work redacted], and I've looked over old questions about [work]. But that doesn't mean someone can't find a cool lead-in about [work] that I can't get.

If you read a book, and then read over a good amount of old questions about the work, you're going to have not only a good grasp on the content of the work itself, but also the clues and lead-ins that often come along with it. You're playing a regular difficulty set here. If you aren't getting books that you've read and looked over questions about on the first clue, you won't be getting anything on the first clue. And if that's the case, then that lead-in probably isn't gettable by very many high schoolers playing the set. I find it hard to believe that you are complaining about a lack of inventiveness of a tossup on something you are very familiar with on the basis that you got it on the first clue. Whether or not you've heard the lead-in before or not is kind of irrelevant. All tossups should be able to be gotten on the lead-in if someone is very deep on the subject matter, and having read the work in question makes it seem that you possessed that knowledge.

[Boeing X-20, Please!]

I'm not complaining about knowing what this set asked about. I should probably expect to know over 95% of the tossup answer lines at any given "regular" high school tournament. But that doesn't mean you can't find some new clues for an accessible tossup answer--in fact, I thought that's what question writers were supposed to do. [Note: this example has nothing to do with the LIST set] I've read [literary work redacted], and I've looked over old questions about [work]. But that doesn't mean someone can't find a cool lead-in about [work] that I can't get.

If you read a book, and then read over a good amount of old questions about the work, you're going to have not only a good grasp on the content of the work itself, but also the clues and lead-ins that often come along with it. You're playing a regular difficulty set here. If you aren't getting books that you've read and looked over questions about on the first clue, you won't be getting anything on the first clue. And if that's the case, then that lead-in probably isn't gettable by very many high schoolers playing the set. I find it hard to believe that you are complaining about a lack of inventiveness of a tossup on something you are very familiar with on the basis that you got it on the first clue. Whether or not you've heard the lead-in before or not is kind of irrelevant. All tossups should be able to be gotten on the lead-in if someone is very deep on the subject matter, and having read the work in question makes it seem that you possessed that knowledge.

So, I think what you're possibly missing out on here is that sometimes multiple people are going to have read the same work and often, especially in the case of the types of games between top teams that William is arguing that this set did a poor job of differentiating between, these people will have knowledge of the work on a different level (i.e. somebody reading Things Fall Apart in an AP Literature class and discussing its place in Achebe's body of work, recurring themes, etc. and somebody who casually read it while on vacation). While William's post makes in a way makes it seem that question writers should basically play a version of "stump the players" with their lead-ins, I think that he's saying that these lead-ins due to their repeated use before or how prominently they featured in the work failed to achieve their purpose of properly differentiating knowledge, at least at the higher level. Of course, having not seen the set I have no idea as to how valid this argument is.

[ryandillon]

I'm not complaining about knowing what this set asked about. I should probably expect to know over 95% of the tossup answer lines at any given "regular" high school tournament. But that doesn't mean you can't find some new clues for an accessible tossup answer--in fact, I thought that's what question writers were supposed to do. [Note: this example has nothing to do with the LIST set] I've read [literary work redacted], and I've looked over old questions about [work]. But that doesn't mean someone can't find a cool lead-in about [work] that I can't get.

If you read a book, and then read over a good amount of old questions about the work, you're going to have not only a good grasp on the content of the work itself, but also the clues and lead-ins that often come along with it. You're playing a regular difficulty set here. If you aren't getting books that you've read and looked over questions about on the first clue, you won't be getting anything on the first clue. And if that's the case, then that lead-in probably isn't gettable by very many high schoolers playing the set. I find it hard to believe that you are complaining about a lack of inventiveness of a tossup on something you are very familiar with on the basis that you got it on the first clue. Whether or not you've heard the lead-in before or not is kind of irrelevant. All tossups should be able to be gotten on the lead-in if someone is very deep on the subject matter, and having read the work in question makes it seem that you possessed that knowledge.

So, I think what you're possibly missing out on here is that sometimes multiple people are going to have read the same work and often, especially in the case of the types of games between top teams that William is arguing that this set did a poor job of differentiating between, these people will have knowledge of the work on a different level (i.e. somebody reading Things Fall Apart in an AP Literature class and discussing its place in Achebe's body of work, recurring themes, etc. and somebody who casually read it while on vacation). While William's post makes in a way makes it seem that question writers should basically play a version of "stump the players" with their lead-ins, I think that he's saying that these lead-ins due to their repeated use before or how prominently they featured in the work failed to achieve their purpose of properly differentiating knowledge, at least at the higher level. Of course, having not seen the set I have no idea as to how valid this argument is.

You make a good point with the Achebe argument. However, if you have two top caliber high school teams, both of which have a player that's read a certain book (whether it be in an AP lit class or just for kicks), it's going to be very hard for a question-writer to differentiate between those two levels of deep knowledge. Especially considering the fact that the person who studied it in the AP lit class may have deeper knowledge of the work than the question-writer himself. However, I believe that William was saying that he wished that LIST contained a lead-in that he couldn't get. If one possesses the knowledge and familiarity with a work that William has with the work in question, it is somewhat absurd to expect that a regular difficulty tournament would have a tossup on that work with a new, and inventive lead-in that goes beyond his knowledge, and to feel that a lack of such a lead-in would constitute a poorly-written tossup.

[AlphaQuizBowler]

Nolan said it better than I could. In terms of tossups on books, I should've probably said the writer could find a lead-in I'd never heard, rather than a lead-in I couldn't get. What Nolan said about the "repeated use" of certain lead-ins is really what I was talking about.

[Mewto55555]

Also, if there was any question on where I was intending LIST to fall on the difficulty spectrum:

We will be shooting for a very high tossup conversion throughout the tournament, so the answer lines to tossups will be relatively easy.

[ryandillon]

Also, if there was any question on where I was intending LIST to fall on the difficulty spectrum:

We will be shooting for a very high tossup conversion throughout the tournament, so the answer lines to tossups will be relatively easy.

That's understandable, but I think what is at issue here is the lead-ins and the bodies of the questions themselves, not necessarily the answer line selection.

[Mewto55555]

Also, if there was any question on where I was intending LIST to fall on the difficulty spectrum:

We will be shooting for a very high tossup conversion throughout the tournament, so the answer lines to tossups will be relatively easy.

That's understandable, but I think what is at issue here is the lead-ins and the bodies of the questions themselves, not necessarily the answer line selection.

Yeah, I know, I was just clarifying in case there was any confusion.

[Mewto55555]

Will, our next mirror is approaching, so if you could get me that list of problems soon, that'd be great! Even a partial one would be very helpful.

[AlphaQuizBowler]

I just emailed you some notes on the first 5 rounds.

[Mewto55555]

Our last mirror is this weekend; I'm planning on getting the set put up on the interwebs as soon as it's over unless anyone emails me soon asking for like a summer mirror or something.

[Mewto55555]

Not having received any such emails as described above, this set is now clear; feel free to discuss any specific questions or general trends (good or bad) in this thread or by emailing me at [email protected] This is our first time writing a tournament and we hope to do so again (and improve for) next year, so feedback would be very much appreciated!

The set should hopefully be up on quizbowlpackets.com shortly; if it's not there when you read this feel free to email and ask for it.

[Mewto55555]

This set is now online at http://quizbowlpackets.com/archive/LIST2011 and http://quizbowlpackets.com/archive/LIST2011.zip

[i never see pigeons in wheeling]

If it isn't too much effort for you, could you repost it with standard packet format (i.e. the pages arranged in a linear downward fashion rather than spread out over multiple sheets on a single page)?

[Auroni]

You can fix the layout of the Word doc yourself.

[AKKOLADE]

You can fix the layout of the Word doc yourself.

"Fix it yourself" isn't a good solution to something that'll affect anyone who downloads it in the future, which probably includes people who don't know how to fix it.

[jonah]

I don't see any problem with the documents.

[Mewto55555]

If it isn't too much effort for you, could you repost it with standard packet format (i.e. the pages arranged in a linear downward fashion rather than spread out over multiple sheets on a single page)?

I dunno how to repost it (George Berry did the posting), but to fix it just press ctrl and do the mousewheely thingy on your mouse, or zoom in in another manner of your choice.

[nadph]

Yeah, this is just a problem with your zoom level, Ankit.

EDIT: Whoops, did not see that this thread has been inactive for over a week. Sorry for the necro.