PACE NSC 2012 Set Discussion

[Mike Bentley]

The set is clear, feel free to discuss.

[Golden-bellied Starfrontlet]

Has this set been posted anywhere yet? I assume it will go to the temporary archive if it hasn't.

[The Toad to Wigan Pier]

Has this set been posted anywhere yet? I assume it will go to the temporary archive if it hasn't.

I'm just waiting for a copy of the audience participation questions from the all-star game before posting the set.

[The Toad to Wigan Pier]

This is now posted: http://goo.gl/bC3CY

[Grams's Go-Go Boots]

I'm really surprised that people reacted to the Eastwood as a director TU as it being "trash." Why are you so wrong, people?

[Kenneth Widmerpool]

I edited all of the RMP. My personal thoughts were that 1 philosophy was too much and resulted in some hard bonus parts and top-heavy tossups. But to look at it another way, it forced us to dig for creative answers on tossups that I hope were enjoyed (scientific method, colors, ships, logic for four examples).

I also heard that there was a paucity of Norse myth at this tournament, but this is simply not true. Norse myth content was present in 4/4 of the set, which I think is appropriate for a 25-packet set. The Greco-Roman myth was given a slightly higher weight (0.6) than the other myth because I thought that we'd quickly be delving into the minor mythology content. However, it didn't really work that way and I think that the classical myth felt a bit stale. Let me know what you think.

I will also say that religion was a lot of fun to write and edit. I hope you guys enjoyed all of the creative questions written in that category.

[Kenneth Widmerpool]

I'll also apologize to any team that may have been screwed over by that Indian weddings tossup not including "marriages" in the answerline, that was a really stupid oversight of mine.

I'll also like to thank Matt Jackson, Eric Mukherjee, Rob Carson, Bernadette Spencer, Matt Bollinger, Matt Weiner, and Sarah Angelo for advising me on various tossups and catching lots of mistakes.

[The Two Hearts of Kwasi Boachi]

Are mass wasting and landslides different things? I noticed this in round 14 in the 2nd bonus, but I am nowhere near competent at science, so I was curious.

[Ukonvasara]

Are mass wasting and landslides different things? I noticed this in round 14 in the 2nd bonus, but I am nowhere near competent at science, so I was curious.

The latter is a (high-speed) subset of the former.

[Grams's Go-Go Boots]

I'm really surprised that people reacted to the Eastwood as a director TU as it being "trash." Why are you so wrong, people?

HERE COMES A SCREED

Note that I didn't write this tossup or anything.

In the 7.5 line tossup on Eastwood, there are:
~2 lines on Play Misty for Me
~1 line on Unforgiven
~1 line on Letters from Iwo Jima
~2 lines on Million Dollar Baby
~1.5 lines on acting in the Dollars trilogy, Gran Torino & MDB

Eastwood is listed by theyshootpictures.com as the 78th highest ranked director of all time and has a rating on par with Orson Welles, Frank Capra, Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, Woody Allen, and Werner Herzog, amongst others. His rating is also above that of directors like Griffith, John Huston, Polanski, Altman, Soderbergh, David Lean, Jean Vigo, dot dot dot

Four of his films - The Outlaw Josey Wales, Unforgiven, The Bridges of Madison County and Million Dollar Baby - appear in their list of the 1000 greatest films of all time, which is equal to the count for Capra, Herzog, Bernardo Bertolucci, Joseph Makiewicz, etc.

In the same site's "250 most acclaimed movies of the 21st century" section, he has directed 4 of the titles - Baby, Iwo Jima, Mystic River and Flags of Our Fathers - which is tied for the second most of any director in that time period, behind only Gus Van Sant and tied with the Coens, Scorsese, and Jia Zhangke.

He's won two Best Director Oscars and has been nominated for two more.

Eastwood is a tremendously successful and influential director in terms of artistic output and is one of the most acclaimed directors of today. The question focused on his directorial output and didn't go off asking about, I don't know, goofy bits from Paint Your Wagon or Space Cowboys or end "For 10 points, name this actor whose day you better not make hyuk hyuk!"

Sorry I didn't list titles in ALL CAPS (2012) or whatever.

[Cheynem]

Fred is completely right (although his slur against Space Cowboys is out of line).

Quizbowl has something of a bias against American, genre directors being considered as "art" films (sure, toss up any French or Russian dude you want, but an American?). Let me just say a few points:

1. Film has always been part of the fine arts distribution.

2. Within film = fine arts, I would toss up things using the same criteria that we use for literature and paintings--i.e., some mix of academic significance, accessibility, etc. Just as we don't write literature tossups on Twilight or art tossups on the dogs playing poker, we don't write film tossups on Dumb and Dumber because there's no academic "significance" in these things.

3. However, Clint Eastwood's films are studied on an academic level and are accessible. Their genre/popular status really shouldn't matter. Alfred Hitchcock was a popular, genre director too, but apparently is okay to tossup because he's dead or something. Charles Dickens was a popular genre author and he gets tossed up.

4. Clint Eastwood is a fine choice for a fine arts tossup, provided it focuses on his "significant" films, which the question did.

5. I don't know if he had been tossed up before as fine arts. I don't care.

6. Even if you haven't seen the films, you can read about movies and answer questions that way.

[abnormal abdomen]

I just wanted to say two things:

a) I really enjoyed this set, particularly the visual arts. Lots of really cool ideas there.
b) Aside from the whole logistic aspect of the tossup in question right now, I think I should mention that this clue isn't correct: "In Islam, it happens to people who fail the interrogation of Munkar and Nakir." Well, if not "incorrect," it's certainly misleading. I wasn't playing in this match, but if I was, I probably would have buzzed on this clue and said something like "uhh you're whipped or beaten," because that's commonly what is taught. Basically, what I've learned is that if you fail the questioning of Munkar and Nakir, you're punished until the Day of Judgement; Muslims believe that it is at the Day of Judgement that you are sentenced to jahannam/hell or allowed to enter into jannah/paradise. You are not necessarily damned to hell right after you fail the questioning of Munkar and Nakir, at least from my understanding.

[Susan]

All of the posts that were only about the question on "going to hell", the protest that it engendered, and the resolution of that protest have been moved here.

[jonpin]

I heard a grand total of two rounds of this tournament being played, including the final, but what I heard was good. One point that I wanted to note was that the early round I heard was a bottom tier game where "Franklin Roosevelt's court-packing scheme" went unanswered. I'm not certain that the teams knew it, but about midway through the question, I could figure out that's what the question was asking about, but would not have been willing to buzz, primarily because of the recent trend towards people saying "Things Have Names" and if you don't know those names, you deserve to not get points.

Search fails me, so I can't find those threads right now (maybe they were more IRC discussions), but a strong bias toward saying "Your descriptive name is insufficient, give me the formal name" in some cases may lead to missed questions where there is no formal name, and students have been conditioned not to try to give a descriptive name.

Does this make sense to anyone, or am I explaining it very poorly?

[Bartleby]

I heard a grand total of two rounds of this tournament being played, including the final, but what I heard was good. One point that I wanted to note was that the early round I heard was a bottom tier game where "Franklin Roosevelt's court-packing scheme" went unanswered. I'm not certain that the teams knew it, but about midway through the question, I could figure out that's what the question was asking about, but would not have been willing to buzz, primarily because of the recent trend towards people saying "Things Have Names" and if you don't know those names, you deserve to not get points.

Search fails me, so I can't find those threads right now (maybe they were more IRC discussions), but a strong bias toward saying "Your descriptive name is insufficient, give me the formal name" in some cases may lead to missed questions where there is no formal name, and students have been conditioned not to try to give a descriptive name.

Does this make sense to anyone, or am I explaining it very poorly?

So, the "things have names" trend can ultimately become confusing when one might think something has a "name" and it in fact does not? I think that what you're saying, if I understand you, makes sense, and I would also be shy about buzzing early for that reason.

[Skepticism and Animal Feed]

I think his point is this:

Consider somebody buzzes early on the court-packing tossup and says "this is FDR's attempt to expand the size of the Supreme Court in order to create a majority that would uphold New Deal legislation", or something which similarly displays knowledge but does not say the words "court packing". Current quizbowl orthodoxy would say that since this person does not know the name of the thing, he should not get points. I think what he is asking is, should this be revisited because it may be preventing teams from buzzing, out of some fear that the thing they recognize might have a name that they don't know?

EDIT: I don't necessarily agree that current quizbowl orthodoxy actually would say this person should get negged, but I don't actually know anything about high school quizbowl, so I'll assume that quizbowl orthodoxy says this because Jon, an expert on HS quizbowl, seemed to imply so. At the college level, I suspect that this person would be fine because of an [accept clear equivalent] in the answer line.

[tintinnabulation]

I heard a grand total of two rounds of this tournament being played, including the final, but what I heard was good. One point that I wanted to note was that the early round I heard was a bottom tier game where "Franklin Roosevelt's court-packing scheme" went unanswered. I'm not certain that the teams knew it, but about midway through the question, I could figure out that's what the question was asking about, but would not have been willing to buzz, primarily because of the recent trend towards people saying "Things Have Names" and if you don't know those names, you deserve to not get points.

Search fails me, so I can't find those threads right now (maybe they were more IRC discussions), but a strong bias toward saying "Your descriptive name is insufficient, give me the formal name" in some cases may lead to missed questions where there is no formal name, and students have been conditioned not to try to give a descriptive name.

Does this make sense to anyone, or am I explaining it very poorly?

I like these types of questions because of the kind of knowledge that it tests, but most of the time when I hear these questions, I figure out what it's talking about and spend ten more seconds trying to figure out what to say as an answer. As long as there is an [accept clear knowledge equivalents] in the answer line, I like with these kinds of questions, but I'm not cool with the "Things Have Names"/ no [equivalents] philosophy on these because of the aforementioned punishment for not knowing the "name."

[Ukonvasara]

I heard a grand total of two rounds of this tournament being played, including the final, but what I heard was good. One point that I wanted to note was that the early round I heard was a bottom tier game where "Franklin Roosevelt's court-packing scheme" went unanswered. I'm not certain that the teams knew it, but about midway through the question, I could figure out that's what the question was asking about, but would not have been willing to buzz, primarily because of the recent trend towards people saying "Things Have Names" and if you don't know those names, you deserve to not get points.

Search fails me, so I can't find those threads right now (maybe they were more IRC discussions), but a strong bias toward saying "Your descriptive name is insufficient, give me the formal name" in some cases may lead to missed questions where there is no formal name, and students have been conditioned not to try to give a descriptive name.

Does this make sense to anyone, or am I explaining it very poorly?

The answer line as listed was "Franklin Roosevelt's court-packing scheme [or Judicial Procedures Reform Bill of 1937]"; while it's almost always referred to as that, as far as I know, I personally agree that it probably should've accepted clear-knowledge equivalents.

[jonpin]

I think his point is this:

Consider somebody buzzes early on the court-packing tossup and says "this is FDR's attempt to expand the size of the Supreme Court in order to create a majority that would uphold New Deal legislation", or something which similarly displays knowledge but does not say the words "court packing". Current quizbowl orthodoxy would say that since this person does not know the name of the thing, he should not get points. I think what he is asking is, should this be revisited because it may be preventing teams from buzzing, out of some fear that the thing they recognize might have a name that they don't know?

EDIT: I don't necessarily agree that current quizbowl orthodoxy actually would say this person should get negged, but I don't actually know anything about high school quizbowl, so I'll assume that quizbowl orthodoxy says this because Jon, an expert on HS quizbowl, seemed to imply so. At the college level, I suspect that this person would be fine because of an [accept clear equivalent] in the answer line.

From my understanding, it varies on set author aesthetics how exactly the answer line will be phrased and/or protests will be handled, but if someone's been burned in the past, they might hesitate to buzz and say "FDR's expansion of the court" for fear that they would be prompted to come up with the Name that Thing has, not know it, be negged and hand the question on a platter to their opponents.

[Lightinfa]

Could someone post the tank bonus from the finals?

[Kenneth Widmerpool]

10. Identify the following about tanks, for 10 points each.
[10] The first combat use of tanks was at the village of Flers during this World War I battle, which also
included the South African defense of Delville Wood.
ANSWER: Battle of the _Somme_ [or _Somme_ offensive]
[10] Although around a thousand of the second iteration of these German tanks were used in the Invasion
of Poland, Allied tanks with 50 or 75 millimeter weapons started rendering that iteration ineffective.
ANSWER: _Panzer_ Tank [or _Panzerkampfwagen_]
[10] 1961 saw a tank standoff at this German border crossing. Peter Fechter’s body was stranded here a
year later, and it’s now home to the Allied Museum.
ANSWER: _Checkpoint Charlie_ [prompt on "Berlin Wall"]

[tiwonge]

Was there a myth question on spiders that referenced Navajo (and Pueblo, maybe? Or Hopi?) creation myths that Spider woman created the world?

I was excited to hear a reference to Navajo mythology, but my knowledge of Navajo mythology doesn't have such a story in it. (A cursory web search doesn't find one, either--the closest I can find is that the Spider woman weaves a map of the universe.) The biggest role the Spider Woman plays in Navajo mythology is in the story of the Monster Slayer twins where she helps them and gives them advice for overcoming obstacles in their quest to see the Sun. There are also local stories around Canyon de Chelly about her, but no creation stories that I know. I suppose it's entirely possible that a local tribe of Navajos might have adapted the Hopi story, but I don't think it's part of the larger myth.

It's not terribly important, I guess, because it was an early clue (and the Hopi part was right), but I was so excited to hear Navajo myth and then discover that I wasn't familiar with the one in question.

[Kyle]

Name some creatures from Native American myth, for 10 points each.
[10] This trickster and culture hero is credited with bringing fire to mankind and for canoeing to the very edge of the world.
ANSWER: Coyote
[10] An evil whale was once stopped by this benevolent and gigantic mountain-dwelling creature whose wings and eyes are responsible for meteorological phenomena.
ANSWER: Thunderbird [or Kw-Uhnx-Wa; or animikii; or binesi]
[10] The Pueblo and Navajo Indians asserted that the world was created by a woman or a grandmother who assumed this animal form.
ANSWER: spider [more specific answers fine, as long as spider is mentioned]

[List of Fighting Spirit characters]

10. Identify the following about tanks, for 10 points each.
[10] The first combat use of tanks was at the village of Flers during this World War I battle, which also
included the South African defense of Delville Wood.
ANSWER: Battle of the _Somme_ [or _Somme_ offensive]
[10] Although around a thousand of the second iteration of these German tanks were used in the Invasion
of Poland, Allied tanks with 50 or 75 millimeter weapons started rendering that iteration ineffective.
ANSWER: _Panzer_ Tank [or _Panzerkampfwagen_]
[10] 1961 saw a tank standoff at this German border crossing. Peter Fechter’s body was stranded here a
year later, and it’s now home to the Allied Museum.
ANSWER: _Checkpoint Charlie_ [prompt on "Berlin Wall"]

Should Hunter's answer of "Panther" have been acceptable/promptable for the second part since that is the translation?

[Madagascar Serpent Eagle]

I don't speak German, but by my understanding Panzer is German for tank. I actually was kind of surprised at this question while watching simply because it was basically asking for the German type of tank that is tank in German. The Panther was a much larger type of tank that was used in the last few years of the war, while the Panzer II was a smaller tank with lighter armor that was phased out of front-line service after the first few years of the war.

[Wackford Squeers]

Should Hunter's answer of "Panther" have been acceptable/promptable for the second part since that is the translation?

No, because "panzer" means "armor." There was a tank called the "Panther," but that word is the same in English and German.

[Ukonvasara]

Should Hunter's answer of "Panther" have been acceptable/promptable for the second part since that is the translation?

No, because "panzer" means "armor." There was a tank called the "Panther," but that word is the same in English and German.

This is 100% correct.

[Lightinfa]

Honestly bonus parts just on "Panzer" are silly because the only unifying thread for the word "Panzer" is German tanks and they are all diferent- there were Panzerkampfwagens I-VIII which were all wildly different creatures. If we want to be really specific Panther really ought to have been prompted because the technical name for the Panther was the Panzerkampfwagen V- just like the tank referenced in the question was the Panzerkampfwagen II.

EDIT: To clarify my point is that there is no such tank as the "Panzer" and Panzers I-VIII are not different "iterations" of the same model as this question implies. They are all different tanks just like the US M3 Lee is different from the M4 Sherman- just because they share the designation "Medium tank" does not mean they are variants of each other.