Chicago Open Discussion

[Vernon Lee Bad Marriage, Jr.]

So I don't have anything to contribute to this discussion except to note that I negged "A Theory of Interstellar Trade" with "The paper in which Hari Seldon proposed psychohistory."

[theMoMA]

Why not just write on "Interstellar Trade," by the way? I mean, things have names and whatnot, but this is a weird tossup on a hard answer, and I can't imagine I was the only person who forgot that the words "The Theory of" were tacked in front of "Interstellar Trade."

[cornfused]

So I don't have anything to contribute to this discussion except to note that I negged "A Theory of Interstellar Trade" with "The paper in which Hari Seldon proposed psychohistory."

On "Trantor"?

[Excelsior (smack)]

So I don't have anything to contribute to this discussion except to note that I negged "A Theory of Interstellar Trade" with "The paper in which Hari Seldon proposed psychohistory."

I think that this firmly establishes Matt Bollinger as the greatest quizbowl player of our time.

[No Rules Westbrook]

So, that tossup on "The Theory of Interstellar Trade" - if this were ACF Nats, and I were editing it, I would certainly not have let that question go as it was.

But, I support Chicago Opens having a degree of whimsy, so long as it doesn't overpower the packet or affect gameplay too much. I'm fine with there being 1 or 2 questions per packet that are very hard, or kind-of-absurd or surreal (or one question per packet specifically on Sasha Grey) - in fact, I quite strongly support a smattering of those kinds of tossups at Chi Open. There's no doubt that there becomes a point in that tossup where you can no longer hide that it's a satirical econ paper about space - and then, well, what more is there to say...I completely get that, but my general feeling was "eh, if you happen to know this title - congratulations, you get 15 points - if you don't know the title, well, you're not going to be buzzing at all, and this'll be one of a handful of tus in this tourney which just float by".

Also, what did people think of a tossup on Richard Florida - I thought that was a pretty inspired idea. He seems to be very important in certain urban studies/social science sectors, and widely read. While I'm chatting about the Cheyne packet, I'll also say I love the idea of Charles Starkweather.

[Demonic Leftovers]

When you say you love the idea of Charles Starkweather do you mean you love my tu on it, the idea of a tu on him, or the idea of a spree killer?

[Cheynem]

Ryan loved our packet so much yet didn't give us a discount. Come on man, how many philosophy tossups on "wrestling" must I write to get that best packet award?

[No Rules Westbrook]

When you say you love the idea of Charles Starkweather do you mean you love my tu on it, the idea of a tu on him, or the idea of a spree killer?

The idea to write a tossup on him. Not that your tu was terrible - I just didn't see much use in mentioning the judge and stuff.

I'd like to say I support the "idea of a spree killer", but murder is one of like three things that I totally think should probably be illegal.

[cornfused]

Also, what did people think of a tossup on Richard Florida - I thought that was a pretty inspired idea.

I loved it - he's someone I read for a 200-level comparative gov class who then reappeared in the higher-level poli sci seminars. Not someone I'd seen in quizbowl before, but definitely someone who shows up in actual political science curricula - and just a really interesting idea for a tossup.

[The Kid Who Collects Spider-Man]

Also, what did people think of a tossup on Richard Florida

While I'm not a huge Florida fan, I think that having a tu on him was a good idea because it rewards people that actually know stuff about social science over people who memorize packets.

After looking back at that particular packet, I think that the Bernard Lewis question was supremely constructed, even though I negged it with "Schlesinger" because the first clue made me think it was an Americanist, "stirred" made me think of The Disuniting of America, and because Chomsky has referred to Schlesinger as a propagandist. I didn't think of it at the time, but Lewis's interpretation of thawra is central to Said's discussion of him in Orientalism, so that probably gave a few people a deserved 15 points. I think that notable critical evaluations of a person's work are very good clues to have early in questions, and having clues about critiques of Richard Florida in place of clues discussing some of his silly indexes would have improved that question, since silly indexes are basically the thing he's known for.

[Kenneth Widmerpool]

Yeah, having to say that economics has been called the "dismal" science and that a particular case of a one-person economy with production is known as "Robinson Crusoe" is pretty much high-school level economics.

No, not really.

[The Kid Who Collects Spider-Man]

Now that I think of it, that Lewis question provides an example where using the word "famous" can actually improve a question. At the time, I thought the criticism was some random book review, but I might have been prompted to think of Orientalism if I had known that the criticism itself was famous.

[Cheynem]

I wrote both the Florida and the Lewis tossups. I have modest familiarity with both of these guys and I think Alex's critiques are reasonable: the Florida question was written EXTREMELY quickly after I realized the packet required 2 social science questions, so yeah, it came down to the silly indexes because that's what I had immediately at hand to think about; I found the question based on a good idea but fairly transparent, yet didn't have the time to really dig down for clues.

I'm glad you found the Lewis clues interesting.

[grapesmoker]

The Richard Florida tossup seemed immediately obvious to me, but I think I'm alone in this; I probably read more about him and criticisms of him than most people. The particle ID question was terrible, for the simple reason that you kinda had to read the question writer's mind to try and figure out just what was being talked about.

Sorry about that "moons of Uranus" tossup. That was me being lazier than I should have been. Is the set posted yet?

[Gautam]

The Richard Florida tossup seemed immediately obvious

Mike Cheyne was reading on our room, so he knows that I buzzed in right before the power mark. I'd figured it out right away, too, but I figured if anybody in the room had known, they'd have buzzed in as well.

Mike Cheyne has also seen me rant about how awful Richard Florida is, so I'm okay with not seeing more tossups on him and his ilk. In my opinion he's just another one of those people who sell like hot cakes at airport bookstores... If we do start writing more tossups on Richard Florida, then I think we should be okay with seeing more tossups on the rando pretend-intellectual people who are on the posters at the non-fiction section of your favorite airport.

--GK

EDIT:

So, that tossup on "The Theory of Interstellar Trade" - if this were ACF Nats, and I were editing it, I would certainly not have let that question go as it was.

But, I support Chicago Opens having a degree of whimsy, so long as it doesn't overpower the packet or affect gameplay too much. I'm fine with there being 1 or 2 questions per packet that are very hard, or kind-of-absurd or surreal (or one question per packet specifically on Sasha Grey) - in fact, I quite strongly support a smattering of those kinds of tossups at Chi Open. There's no doubt that there becomes a point in that tossup where you can no longer hide that it's a satirical econ paper about space - and then, well, what more is there to say...I completely get that, but my general feeling was "eh, if you happen to know this title - congratulations, you get 15 points - if you don't know the title, well, you're not going to be buzzing at all, and this'll be one of a handful of tus in this tourney which just float by".

Ryan, my biggest beef was that it was the second sub-optimal question in the packet. I have mentioned this to Drew somewhat emphatically, but the "cooking spaghetti" was not a good idea. I negged with "ironing clothes" which is another thing people in Murakami books do to kill time, and which seems to happen just as often as cooking spaghetti... And I buzzed in before Joe Hansen buzzed in! Never have I ever gotten a chance to outbuzz Joe on a Japan-related question. Seeing an Econ TU go dead after that was just heartbreaking.

[Cheynem]

I'm okay with a modicum of questions on pseudo-intellectuals (in retrospect, I suppose I shouldn't have written two questions on pseudo-intellectuals in that packet). Florida is a junk theorist, but his junk theories have had social impact and get studied within the classroom (sometimes as examples of junk theory). I wouldn't want a lot of questions on these dudes, but they have an impact that could be questioned on.

[Kenneth Widmerpool]

Yeah, that "cooking spaghetti" tossup was annoying since that's a trivial detail from the opening of the novel that has been repeatedly clued in questions on that novel. It doesn't have any bearing on the actual plot of the novel; it literally just appears in the first few pages. I think that that novel is a pretty good book and that that question was a missed opportunity to test knowledge of more notable elements of it.

[Chimango Caracara]

Although I have read "The Year of Spaghetti," the clues in the cooking spaghetti tossup did not make me think of it, and when it got to the part about The Thieving Magpie, my thoughts were along the lines of "Stop thinking about The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle! That's not the only thing in the world to mention Rossini!" I was hoping for a bonus on "Hanalei Bay," "A Shinagawa Monkey," "A Slow Boat to China" or "New York Mining Disaster" or a tossup on What I Talk About When I Talk About Running or Dance, Dance, Dance or one of the myriad of other fantastic Murakami works.

I thought the plankton tossup was a bit screwy since although I was thinking "plankton" the whole time, I didn't want to say it until the "paradox" part since it's such a fuzzy, non-taxonomic term.

I can't decide if the brood reduction tossup was the best or worst thing I've ever heard.

I don't know what was with the trees tossup (it was not written by the Dartmouth team). I wish people would stop talking about climax communities, especially when it's one of three or so ecology topics in quizbowl. Nobody takes that idea seriously anymore.

EDIT: To whomever wrote the Kaibab bonus, thank you for writing a good ecology bonus.

[magin]

I'm going to echo the dislike for the "cooking spaghetti" tossup. It seems like a really bizarre answer, and I'm surprised that Ryan let it in the set. Also, let me be the first to complain about the literature tossup on Kokoschka. That same packet also had a tossup on Randall Jarrell's novel, of all things, and in general, I felt that this set suffered from a lack of editorial discipline which allowed in some pretty ill-conceived questions (like "The Theory of Interstellar Trade").

I appreciate Ryan's hard work on the set, and I wish he would have had the time to edit or replace these subpar questions.

[saintanthony]

As I hinted at in my last post, I am responsible for the unholy trinity of tossups from my team's packet including the spaghetti tossup. (I wrote the already dissected Interstellar Trade and I also get to claim Burchfield.)

The spaghetti tossup was inspired by that Murakami bingo card that floated around the internet at the start of summer. In the first version of the tossup, I opened with a reference to the letter Toru sends Midori toward the end of Norwegian Wood with "the writer of a letter that begins “April and May were painful, lonely months for me” hopes to perform this action to impress Midori after learning a new technique at his weekend job." Shortly before submitting the question I realized the implications of unintentional innuendo so I just chopped it off. I should have realized that by removing that line the tossup suddenly became focused on the opening scene to Wind-Up Bird Chronicles since the clues from The Year of Spaghetti just got muddled in. The road to Trantor is paved with good intentions.

[grapesmoker]

I suspect that I am the only one who has read Pictures From an Institution and I couldn't get that question until the penultimate line. I think that's a really weird thing to write on, and the way that it was written made the question very hard to answer.

edit: the "cooking spaghetti" tossup is a great example of the over-abuse of certain authors. So now we can't write questions about any one Murakami novel because everyone has read that, but Murakami is a quizbowl darling so we just dig ever deeper into the Murakami canon, instead of going out there and finding something else interesting to write about.

[No Rules Westbrook]

I didn't think Pictures from an Institution was incredibly hard. I thought people flippin' loved Randall Jarrell - and the novel is actually read, it's not like it's one of those deals where some guy who primarily does other genres decided to write a goofy-ass novel. Hey, I didn't actually tossup Spiro Agnew's Canfield Decision!

I won't defend that "cooking spaghetti" tossup with much gusto - the best clue is the reference to Murakami's story about 1971 being the "year of spaghetti" - after that, it does get transparent. I certainly won't hold it up as a gem.

My point about whimsy is that I tend to privelege very avant-garde stuff when it comes to CO - now, I could have edited the crap out of the submitted "Cao Dai" tossup in that packet and used that instead of "cooking spaghetti"...But who in lord's name wants another Cao Dai tossup? Those all end the same way - unsatisfying! If the choice is between something "dicey but creative" or something "safe and boring" - for CO, I'll pick the former one about 80 percent of the time.

[Cheynem]

Eh, I'd argue that "cooking spaghetti" isn't that creative--maybe it's an odd answerline, but it strikes me as navel-gazing into an established quizbowl obsession, an odder way to ask yet another Murakami question.

[No Rules Westbrook]

I think you're right, Cheyne. But, it's still better than Cao Dai!

[Cheynem]

Well, ideally we don't have to choose between "Cao Dai" and "making spaghetti," but I respect the time crunch you were in and I suppose there's an onus on the question writer as well.

[gyre and gimble]

I suspect that I am the only one who has read Pictures From an Institution and I couldn't get that question until the penultimate line. I think that's a really weird thing to write on, and the way that it was written made the question very hard to answer.

I wrote both this and the tossup on Kokoschka, and I'm sorry if they didn't play very well. After taking a class that spent a couple weeks on the latter I got the sense that, at least in terms of academic and cultural influence, Kokoschka's writings were at least as important as his paintings and that CO was an okay place to make that point. I mean, I think he's got a better case going for him than Dante Gabriel Rossetti or Michelangelo. This wasn't the first tossup on Kokoschka's writings, either (see this year's MO) so I thought it'd be all right.

As for Pictures from an Institution it was just something I'd recently come across while reading Jarrell and the only reason I picked it was because it would be easy for me to write on and I wanted to make the packet deadline. So I guess I can't really defend the question and if knowledgeable people think it shouldn't be asked then I guess I agree. I'm curious to hear how the way I wrote the question made it hard to answer though.

[Vernon Lee Bad Marriage, Jr.]

I suspect that I am the only one who has read Pictures From an Institution and I couldn't get that question until the penultimate line. I think that's a really weird thing to write on, and the way that it was written made the question very hard to answer.

I wrote both this and the tossup on Kokoschka, and I'm sorry if they didn't play very well. After taking a class that spent a couple weeks on the latter I got the sense that, at least in terms of academic and cultural influence, Kokoschka's writings were at least as important as his paintings and that CO was an okay place to make that point. I mean, I think he's got a better case going for him than Dante Gabriel Rossetti or Michelangelo. This wasn't the first tossup on Kokoschka's writings, either (see this year's MO) so I thought it'd be all right.

As for Pictures from an Institution it was just something I'd recently come across while reading Jarrell and the only reason I picked it was because it would be easy for me to write on and I wanted to make the packet deadline. So I guess I can't really defend the question and if knowledgeable people think it shouldn't be asked then I guess I agree. I'm curious to hear how the way I wrote the question made it hard to answer though.

I actually didn't think either of those questions were bad in isolation (although you could have thrown us a bone with Kokoschka after FTP). That said, they're both very, very niche at best--having both of them in the same packet along with another hard answer like "Letters to a Young Poet" was kind of strange, not to mention that the rest of the tournament also had a bunch of similarly weird stuff.

[gyre and gimble]

I actually didn't think either of those questions were bad in isolation (although you could have thrown us a bone with Kokoschka after FTP). That said, they're both very, very niche at best--having both of them in the same packet along with another hard answer like "Letters to a Young Poet" was kind of strange, not to mention that the rest of the tournament also had a bunch of similarly weird stuff.

The question I submitted ended with "Bride of the Wind," so I'm not sure what happened there.

[No Rules Westbrook]

I decided to make it a pure literature tossup - and not give Bride of the Wind. Plus, there was a bonus elsewhere (which I dont think actually made it in the tourney) which had Bride of the Wind as a part. (I think I deliberately sunk that bonus so as not to over-Kokoschka the tournament)

Cutting out a giveaway that "steps outside the question" is something that I think is reasonable at hard events - for example, it should have been done on that "trans effect" tossup. That's a fine really hard thing to write about - but it shouldn't end by saying to the player "durr, it's the opposite of cis!" - because it's a huge cliff that completely steps outside of the tenor of the question. I'd rather just cut that giveaway, and had it go dead if there wasn't legit chem knowledge in the match, instead of increasing the randomness of the match by throwing in a 50-50 buzzer race (or maybe even worse, handing that hard tossup to a team on a silver plate if there was a neg by the other team).

[Excelsior (smack)]

Cutting out a giveaway that "steps outside the question" is something that I think is reasonable at hard events - for example, it should have been done on that "trans effect" tossup. That's a fine really hard thing to write about - but it shouldn't end by saying to the player "durr, it's the opposite of cis!" - because it's a huge cliff that completely steps outside of the tenor of the question. I'd rather just cut that giveaway, and had it go dead if there wasn't legit chem knowledge in the match, instead of increasing the randomness of the match by throwing in a 50-50 buzzer race (or maybe even worse, handing that hard tossup to a team on a silver plate if there was a neg by the other team).

This is in fact exactly what happened in my room. The giveaway said something about octahedral complexes, so Rob and I buzzer-raced to neg with "Jahn-Teller" and he won the buzzer race, so I got points for knowing what the opposite of cis was. I don't know if the trans effect competing with the cis effect is actually a thing or what, but if it isn't, it probably would've been better to take it out of the giveaway.

[touchpack]

Cutting out a giveaway that "steps outside the question" is something that I think is reasonable at hard events - for example, it should have been done on that "trans effect" tossup. That's a fine really hard thing to write about - but it shouldn't end by saying to the player "durr, it's the opposite of cis!" - because it's a huge cliff that completely steps outside of the tenor of the question. I'd rather just cut that giveaway, and had it go dead if there wasn't legit chem knowledge in the match, instead of increasing the randomness of the match by throwing in a 50-50 buzzer race (or maybe even worse, handing that hard tossup to a team on a silver plate if there was a neg by the other team).

This is in fact exactly what happened in my room. The giveaway said something about octahedral complexes, so Rob and I buzzer-raced to neg with "Jahn-Teller" and he won the buzzer race, so I got points for knowing what the opposite of cis was. I don't know if the trans effect competing with the cis effect is actually a thing or what, but if it isn't, it probably would've been better to take it out of the giveaway.

Perhaps, in this case, it might have been better to just give a definition of trans, saying something like "FTP, name this effect whose name derives from the fact that the involved ligands are on opposite sides of the molecule." Of course, this doesn't work for Kokoschka.

[No Rules Westbrook]

Also, if you're lobbying for writing on new exciting avenues in Japanese lit, instead of finding new oddball ways to light up the old avenues - hey, I'm all with you, so where was the praise for my brilliant Ryu Murakami tossup last year! Come on, that was the bees knees - and back then, you were arguing for spaghetti instead of Ryu Murakami!

[Magister Ludi]

I suspect that I am the only one who has read Pictures From an Institution and I couldn't get that question until the penultimate line. I think that's a really weird thing to write on, and the way that it was written made the question very hard to answer.

I got the sense that, at least in terms of academic and cultural influence, Kokoschka's writings were at least as important as his paintings and that CO was an okay place to make that point. I mean, I think he's got a better case going for him than Dante Gabriel Rossetti or Michelangelo. This wasn't the first tossup on Kokoschka's writings, either (see this year's MO) so I thought it'd be all right.

It's important to look at the context when you pick answerlines. Anyone who studies Kokoschka in class would read Murderer, Hope of Women as supplemental background information for his artwork and Expressionism in general. But no one would pick up Kokoschka's plays for their literary merit, so the claim his writings are as important as his paintings is wrong. Accordingly, the MO tossup smartly used his literary works as the first few clues in a tossup that devoted a decent amount of space to his artwork. There is a difference between someone like Rossetti whose poems are individually featured in poetry anthologies and artists who are primarily known for one genre whose work in other genres might be studied as footnotes. It seems fine to have some occasional clues about stuff like Kokoschka's plays or Jarrell's novel (which is a less egregious example of the same phenomenon), but it is misguided to devote consistently whole tossups to such fringe topics.

Oddly, these questions seem to violate the spirit of the rule you espoused in the WELD thread about tossups on poetry collections such as The Whitsun Weddings. I don't take such a hardline stance against tossups on poetry/short fiction collections (and thought the Larkin tossup was fine, if not ideal), but it would be more convincing if you took a consistent stance on these types of issues.

[gyre and gimble]

I suspect that I am the only one who has read Pictures From an Institution and I couldn't get that question until the penultimate line. I think that's a really weird thing to write on, and the way that it was written made the question very hard to answer.

I got the sense that, at least in terms of academic and cultural influence, Kokoschka's writings were at least as important as his paintings and that CO was an okay place to make that point. I mean, I think he's got a better case going for him than Dante Gabriel Rossetti or Michelangelo. This wasn't the first tossup on Kokoschka's writings, either (see this year's MO) so I thought it'd be all right.

It's important to look at the context when you pick answerlines. Anyone who studies Kokoschka in class would read Murderer, Hope of Women as supplemental background information for his artwork and Expressionism in general. But no one would pick up Kokoschka's plays for their literary merit, so the claim his writings are as important as his paintings is wrong. Accordingly, the MO tossup smartly used his literary works as the first few clues in a tossup that devoted a decent amount of space to his artwork. There is a difference between someone like Rossetti whose poems are individually featured in poetry anthologies and artists who are primarily known for one genre whose work in other genres might be studied as footnotes. It seems fine to have some occasional clues about stuff like Kokoschka's plays or Jarrell's novel (which is a less egregious example of the same phenomenon), but it is misguided to devote consistently whole tossups to such fringe topics.

Oddly, these questions seem to violate the spirit of the rule you espoused in the WELD thread about tossups on poetry collections such as The Whitsun Weddings. I don't take such a hardline stance against tossups on poetry/short fiction collections (and thought the Larkin tossup was fine, if not ideal), but it would be more convincing if you took a consistent stance on these types of issues.

I mean, I agree it's not the ideal thing to write on and I probably won't do it again; I might have had a misguided idea of what's okay to submit in a CO packet, this being only my second time (and as far as I know nobody complained about my questions last time). So I'm not going to argue with anybody over Kokoschka.

I'm confused how this has anything to do with my stance on collections, though. My point there was that tossing up collections will prevent people from buzzing who know the work that come up early in the tossup and recognize the author but have no idea which collection it's from, which in most cases is not at all important. The argument has nothing to do with whether it's okay to toss up fringe topics. I don't see how I've been inconsistent considering these two issues couldn't be called the same "type of issue."

[S.P.A.C.E.]

At this point, I don't really need to add anything to the din of groaning at that tossup on cooking spaghetti, which to me stinks of being written expressly to piss people off in an attempt to discredit Murakami Haruki as a writer and stir up more animosity about Japanese lit as a sub-distribution, but I really question putting this in the set. I don't want to give the impression though that I'm blaming editorship that was obviously very taxed with other tasks that are much more important than cultivating a very small sub-distribution. I want to advocate for CO being a home for experimentation with hard and whimsical things, but personally, I would prefer a boring, no harm done tossup on Cao Dai to an overindulgent, poorly-conceived and trivial narcissism on a subject people have already voiced irritation with that is actively picking at a scab to the point of discrediting a writer's work as a whole because of quizbowl stupidity, not to mention an overall pretty distasteful tossup, which, does itself no favors by inexplicably including spaghetti spelled out in romanji in the answer line. There's a difference between examining new, exciting, unexplored, or hard things, and diving headstrong into stupid minutia that are probably only brought to their writer's attention out of a cliquey fetishization. I think set as a whole trended toward the former, but a tossup like cooking spaghetti is a missed opportunity.

I personally prefer the overall feel of the previous two years incarnations to this CO, though I liked this set very much and enjoyed playing it as much as I have in the past. Whether it serves me or not, I really enjoy absorbing a tournament experience on very difficult sets. CO seems to me the opportunity for difficult exploration, and I think this set could have pushed a small increment further toward the experimental and difficult without anyone really blinking much of an eye or complaining, and I would have enjoyed it even more if that were the case.

Thanks to Ryan and editors for a great set and for a massive amount of hard work. I've enjoyed my participation in COs past and as an outsider figure enjoy the chance to show up and let the set wash over me. I'm looking forward to my dismal PPG next year also.

I loved that tossup on Nicanor Parra a lot even if I sat on it for a long time (what else do I do?). Thanks whoever!

[No Rules Westbrook]

Damn right. Who else loves Nicanor Parra?

Jon Magin thinks we should have two Nicanor Parra tossups in all tournaments. Yea, nay?