NASAT 2015 Specific Question Discussion

The King's Flight to the Scots · Mon Jun 15, 2015 9:05 pm

Exactly what it says on the tin! Discuss specific questions away.

Eddie · Post by **Eddie** » Mon Jun 15, 2015 9:59 pm

Hello, friends.

I wrote much of the questions in music and mythology, with much supervision from my helpful editors. As it was my first time writing in this quantity for a tournament of this magnitude significance, I am quite interested in feedback from players or readers on topics from overarching stylistic points to minutae in wording cluing order, etc.

Here are the questions that I wrote for this tournament:

Music TUs: Beethoven, Handel, cantatas by J.S. Bach, France, violin, Mozart, Haydn, Mahler, four, symphonies by Brahms, Schubert, Ravel, Shostakovich, Schoenberg, carnival, The Arabian Nights, Pictures at an Exhibition
Music Bs: Ars nova / mass / motet, Turkish Concerto / piano / bassoon, string quartet / Erdody / fugue, D minor / concerto grosso / basso continuo, Vespers of 1610 / Monteverdi / Tallis, Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 / Pathétique / violin concerto, Franck / Kreutzer Sonata / piano, cello concerto / minuet / guitar, Young / minimalism / Reich, flute / Brandenburg Concertos / Telemann, Symphony No. 1 / Jupiter Symphony / Moonlight Sonata, etude / Mephisto Waltzes / Liszt, Quartet for the End of Time / Dukas / pipe organ, major third / E-flat / Chopin, Elgar / Pomp and Circumstance / "Dorabella"

Mythology TUs: suitors of Penelope, Paris, the head of Medusa, cleaning the Augean stables, Medea, Agamemnon, Athens, leaping into the sea, Dionysus, golden apples, Thor and Jormungandr, Loki, Utnapishtim, Xibalba, Ulster, Arjuna, Horus, China
Mythology Bs: trees / washing his feet / Procrustes, Psyche / Cupid / she spills hot oil on his shoulder, Aeneas and Turnus / Jupiter / belt, Persephone / Pirithous / he is crushed to death with tree trunks and stones, they are turned into rivers / cyclops / Laestrygonians, walls / Thebes / Adrastus, horses / Ares / he is touching the earth, Atalanta / lions / bees, Sedna / Inca / Amaterasu, all the stories of the world / Anansi / creation of the world, Culhwch / Excalibur / Gareth, Indra and Vritra / nagas / Ganesha, Skadi / Frey / rings, Sekhmet / Ra / Tezcatlipoca, the churning of the ocean / Kurma / Vishnu, Marduk / Ninurta / Ea

Miscellaneous TUs: Einstein on the Beach, Ezekiel, Turandot, Don Giovanni, Wagner, Nebuchadnezzar, Brubeck, The Firebird
Miscellaneous Bs: La traviata / "Libiamo ne' lieti calici" / camellia, English / "When I am laid in earth" / The Tempest, Philemon / Paul / Ephesians, "fourth floor" / prestige / United Kingdom, La Bayadère / pas de deux / Swan Lake, Indo-European languages / Germanic languages / comparative method

Post by **Auks Ran Ova** » Mon Jun 15, 2015 10:15 pm

Of the myth tossups, I think the only one that didn't really work was the "leaping into the sea" tossup. Perhaps more players can confirm (or deny) this, but from my perspective it seemed like something where even people with lots of knowledge would have a hard time figuring out what you wanted them to say; in my room the team that buzzed pre-giveaway answered "drowning", were prompted, and were unable to get there (eventually coming up with "walking into the sea"). It's not that the clues were inaccurate - seeing the whole question at once, I recognized that all of the myths mentioned involved someone jumping into the sea - just that I think it's a hard sort of thing to try to pull at game speed, given its oddity and specificity as an answerline.

Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock · Mon Jun 15, 2015 10:32 pm

Auks Ran Ova wrote:Of the myth tossups, I think the only one that didn't really work was the "leaping into the sea" tossup. Perhaps more players can confirm (or deny) this, but from my perspective it seemed like something where even people with lots of knowledge would have a hard time figuring out what you wanted them to say; in my room the team that buzzed pre-giveaway answered "drowning", were prompted, and were unable to get there (eventually coming up with "walking into the sea"). It's not that the clues were inaccurate - seeing the whole question at once, I recognized that all of the myths mentioned involved someone jumping into the sea - just that I think it's a hard sort of thing to try to pull at game speed, given its oddity and specificity as an answerline.

I'll chime in and say that in my room, one of my teammates answered "suicide," was prompted, answered "jumping off a cliff," was prompted again, and finally answered "jumping from a great height into the sea," which was taken. I think the clue was well-written, but I can also see how that could be a bit confusing.

As a music player, I liked the fact that the clues were difficult but the answerlines were pretty accessible on tossups. I think the bonuses were also pretty good for a tournament of this level (although it is my first such tournament, so if anyone who's done this more thinks otherwise I won't argue), so good job on those too!

1992 in spaceflight · Mon Jun 15, 2015 10:34 pm

Since Eddie has decided to do the same, I'll go ahead and ask for feedback on the questions I wrote for this year's NASAT as well. I'm really interested in feedback on the anthropology, as I think the anthro bonus I wrote was too hard for the teams in the bottom bracket of NASAT (based on how it played in one room, granted).

Anthropology (1/1): Home erectus; Piltdown hoax/Taung/Australopithecus

Literature: (2/4): Robert Browning, Colonel Aureliano Buendia; Mr. Kapasi/Lahiri/"A Temporary Matter", a prostitute/The Flies/No Exit, The Labyrinth of Solitude/Paz/Pachuco, Jean Genet/The Balcony/Algeria

History (11/13): Pius IX, Tokugawa Shogunate, Peter the Great, Poland, Lord Palmerston, Otto the Great, Greece, Charles Parnell, the Carlist Wars, Nicholas I, the Spanish Civil War; Do-Nothing Congress/Truman/Recognizing Israel, Likud/Begin/Camp David hotels, Juan de Escobedo/Don John of Austria/Lepanto, Eugenics/Buck v. Bell/Oklahoma, Second Bank of the US/Jackson/Kendall, Sonni Ali/Songhai Empire/Griots, General Order Number 11/Jesse James/Northfield, MN, Tlatelolco Massacre/PRI/Mexico, Tryst with Destiny speech/Nehru/Jinnah, Ann Lee/New York/John Humphrey Noyes, Vichy France/Petain/Vel d'Hiv roundup, Judaism/Aethelred the Unready/salt (based on taxes in history).

Santa Claus · Post by **Santa Claus** » Mon Jun 15, 2015 11:06 pm

A few comments on the science (in order, though not sorted by packets because bleh):

The bonus part on iron-56 was kinda lame, just because the only real substantial clue was that it had the second highest binding energy.

Would it have been unreasonable to clue CpG islands for that bonus part of islands? It seems like that answerline in the context of horizontal gene transfer is pretty hard and a common link would have been pretty cool.

This is actually pretty similar to a complaint I had at HSNCT, but the clue they used for the bonus part on SSTs (El Niño and stuff) confused me and I said "atmospheric pressure", since that's the quantity associated with the Southern Oscillation. Would recommend a friendly reminder for people who can never figure out which one they're referring to.

Phase was pretty hard, but I think the clue on the Aharanov-Bohm effect was super cool, if a bit unhelpful if you didn't know the specific phrase Berry phase.

That tossup on night was pretty coolio, though its intentional vagueness meant that there were a few negs with stuff like "day-night cycles"; I'd appreciate looking at the tossup and its acceptable answers. It was already pretty lenient with prompts and the like, but it was pretty hard to tell what they were looking for (especially with that vertical migration of krill clue).

What's the difference between a blastocyst and a blastula? I never learned the term blastocyst in bio, and was not aware it was a specific step in development.

The tossup on stratification was cool; I really appreciated that you guys threw in a limnology clue with what I assume were mostly geology clues.

NOT SCIENCE: That bonus on maritime policy (EEZ/Iceland/China) was pretty cool; I don't remember whether you said 200 nautical miles or 200 statute (or just didn't specify), but it should be nautical.

I think I was literally the only person who was excited by Coomassie Brilliant Blue coming up.

The first line for corona, while not particularly well-known as a specific clue, was similar enough to stories of other elements found (or thought to have been found) in the corona that it ended up being a lot easier than it was intended to be. Would appreciate seeing the rest of the question since I never heard it. :(

I thought the bonus on urban heat island/remote sensing/geostationary was super cool.

The biochem theme on the sulfate tossup was cool.

This is not really a complaint, but the tossup on tsunamis used the same second clue as when it was last tossed up in 2013 NASAT (1st packet).

I really liked the bonus on Hello World/teapot/%; it was probably my favorite comp sci all tournament.

That tossup on dilating pupils was pretty out there. Since I had no idea what was going on for most of the question, I can only really say that good job using good giveaway/pre-FTP clues.

Herbicides was an interesting way to tossup stuff you might have studied while learning about auxins and other plant hormones and stuff; I don't think it played out super well though.

Pyroxene felt like the Cascadia subduction zone of this year (i.e. that one crazy science tossup), though thankfully it was actually gettable in comparison. Though it was probably just because of the massive hole in my knowledge that is mineralogy, I can't help but wonder what the conversion stats on this were...

Rings was hard; I think that second clue was describing the properties of a Noetherian ring though, so that was nice.

On the tossup on centrifugal force, was there really any problem with the answer centripetal force other than the fact that it would be the exact negative value?

The tossup on triangular numbers could have done with a "Though they're not Fibonacci numbers..." to keep people with more buzzer speed than common sense (e.g. me) from buzzing on "generating function of 1/1-z..." before they say that key word "cubed".

That bonus on QAPF/feldspar/Na+K was pretty cool; it played out pretty well in our room but I question how many teams would known QAPF.

I love the trend of clue-ing those little molecule building kits for colors like red and stuff; nice way to see if people paid attention in class.

NOT SCIENCE: Dude that bonus on polar exploration was great! Erebus + Terror are super notable.

The tossup on geodynamo was mildly disappointing as it sounded like geomagnetic reversals but then eventually that was used as a clue. Hard to say whether it would have been easier or harder with that as the answer line.

I liked the clue on "methyl transferase" in the adrenal glands a lot, though it seemed odd that it was followed up with "created from dopamine", which felt out of place as far as difficulty goes.

Overall I liked how much earth science there was, and the science as a whole seemed less crazy than last years (but that's a really subjective standard). A few people mentioned that it was a bit silly that ochem was purposely left out, but arguably more complex concepts like quantum mechanics weren't, and I'm inclined to agree; some feedpack on that stance would be pretty cool.

Fun fact: I used the word "cool" like, 10 times in this post.

Eddie · Post by **Eddie** » Tue Jun 16, 2015 12:18 am

gettysburg11 wrote:
Auks Ran Ova wrote:Of the myth tossups, I think the only one that didn't really work was the "leaping into the sea" tossup. Perhaps more players can confirm (or deny) this, but from my perspective it seemed like something where even people with lots of knowledge would have a hard time figuring out what you wanted them to say; in my room the team that buzzed pre-giveaway answered "drowning", were prompted, and were unable to get there (eventually coming up with "walking into the sea"). It's not that the clues were inaccurate - seeing the whole question at once, I recognized that all of the myths mentioned involved someone jumping into the sea - just that I think it's a hard sort of thing to try to pull at game speed, given its oddity and specificity as an answerline.
I'll chime in and say that in my room, one of my teammates answered "suicide," was prompted, answered "jumping off a cliff," was prompted again, and finally answered "jumping from a great height into the sea," which was taken. I think the clue was well-written, but I can also see how that could be a bit confusing.

I did have some apprehensions regarding the leaping into the sea TU, but it did seem to go well when I playtested it, and I thought that the generous prompts would be sufficient to guide players towards the correct answer, since, as you said, each of the myths in the question very uniquely pointed to a case of dramatically leaping into watery depths. In general, I've gotten some pretty mixed reactions to this one, so I'm curious if people think these types of very specific answer lines that require key details should be avoided due to the difficulty of being able to know which specific detail the question wants, or if it was just a case of not enough prompts (and maybe not enough specific prompts, such as asking people "where do they drown?" a la BHSAT 2015).

In either case, I really appreciate the feedback.

gimmedatguudsuccrose · Tue Jun 16, 2015 9:22 am

Schoenberg was my favorite tossup of the set! His chamber symphony is a very important piece and (as far as I know) this is the first time it has been tossed up!

On the Carnival tossup, the Dvorak clue seemed a little early.

One bonus that had a ridiculous third part (ie I'm not sure if anyone could pull this?) was the music bonus in round 16. Perhaps my knowledge of Dinu Lipatti is lacking, but this seems to be a pretty obscure.

Cheynem · Post by **Cheynem** » Tue Jun 16, 2015 12:00 pm

These aren't all of the questions I wrote, but I wondered what people thought of them.

Tossups
Memphis--tried to write a different take on the answerline of MLK assassination
HAL 9000--not sure if it ended up too easy
spying for the Soviet Union--for some reason, I felt the answerline was possibly confusing when I wrote it
Harper's Weekly--different sort of idea
University of Virginia--was this too obvious? too regional?
Jacob Riis--tried to make him an artist tossup
The Stanford prison--hopefully this didn't confuse anyone

Bonuses
Hard parts I enjoyed and wondered what you thought of them
"visiting all fifty states" in the Nixon/JFK debate
palimony
A Bright Shining Lie--although really hard
Wizard of Oz (as Populist metaphor)
Labour Isn't Working
sidewalks--in the Jane Jacobs bonus
ax--in the Chagnon bonus
Met Office
Xenu

gimmedatguudsuccrose · Tue Jun 16, 2015 12:29 pm

I'm not sure if this is just me, but I thought the Wizard of Oz as a populist metaphor was a famous thing - in US history that was our introduction to populism.

Cheynem · Post by **Cheynem** » Tue Jun 16, 2015 12:34 pm

I think that was actually the middle part, looking at it now, but I did wonder what people thought of it.

theking259 · Post by **theking259** » Tue Jun 16, 2015 1:06 pm

May I see the tossups on Ohio, KKK, Indonesia (current events), Zoot Suit Riots, and Red Square?

Thank you!

Steeve Ho You Fat · Post by **Steeve Ho You Fat** » Tue Jun 16, 2015 1:34 pm

I thought the Memphis question was a cool idea. UVA was fine on its own, but felt a bit weird after the NSC question - obviously there's nothing wrong with repeats between the two sets (and it would be nigh impossible to avoid them completely), but it was odd to see two similar questions on the same current events story. Jacob Riis I was less enamored with, because I don't think that high schoolers (at not the ones I was reading for) know much about or study him as an artist besides the historical stuff.

Eddie · Post by **Eddie** » Tue Jun 16, 2015 2:24 pm

Mafia Kraut Rights wrote:Schoenberg was my favorite tossup of the set! His chamber symphony is a very important piece and (as far as I know) this is the first time it has been tossed up!

On the Carnival tossup, the Dvorak clue seemed a little early.

I'm glad I was able to write your favorite tossup! I think you hit the nail on the head with the bit about the chamber symphony - I tried really hard to reward "real knowledge," so to speak, by incorporating a lot of academically, culturally, or concertly important pieces that were neglected by the canon, while at the same time keeping things accessible.

On the carnival tossup, you're probably right; I think I could have swapped the Dvorak and the Davidsbündler clues, or maybe used a harder Schumann clue.

Mafia Kraut Rights wrote:I'm not sure if this is just me, but I thought the Wizard of Oz as a populist metaphor was a famous thing - in US history that was our introduction to populism.

I agree that the Wizard of Oz part was probably too easy for a hard part, but at the same time I thought it was a really cool idea. If it's any help, the first time I learned about the Populist interpretation of the book was from reading this Cracked article back in 2012.

Knickerbocker glory · Post by **Knickerbocker glory** » Tue Jun 16, 2015 3:03 pm

Who thought it would be a good idea to toss up Elegabalus?

Wynaut · Post by **Wynaut** » Tue Jun 16, 2015 5:04 pm

So yeah, just like other people posted, I'm looking for some feedback on the questions I wrote. There were some things I neglected to fix, like the bonus that looked for the "founder of the Carolingian dynasty" for Charlemagne even though Pepin the Short can be considered the founder. There were also some bonuses I wrote that I felt didn't have clear middle or hard parts, especially with some of the classical history ones.

History TUs: Hearst, raising the flag on Iwo Jima, locomotives, Belgium, Italy (WWII), paintings, Battle of Tours, Kievan Rus, helots, Algeria, guano, mining (in South Africa), New Zealand, Kurds, Mysore
Geo/CE TUs: Indonesia, Canada, Rohingya, Edward Snowden, Red Square, tomatoes, San Francisco Bay, Wisconsin, Troy, Kinshasa, Cambodia, Manila, Western Australia, pearls, Singapore, Namib Desert
Misc TUs: Hertz, tunneling, inductors, The Crying of Lot 49, The Great Dictator

History Bonuses: Brady/assassinating Reagan/Haig (a bit too easy), New Sweden/Delaware/Saint Kitts, Ticonderoga/Arnold/snowshoes, Hanseatic League/Visby/London, Aviz/Portugal/Aljubarrota, Pugachev/serfs/Old Believers, Ceausescu trial/Timisoara/Romania, 1968/Prague/Powell, Mussolini/Battle of the Bulge/kidnapping Miklos Horthy Jr., coup attempt against Gorbachev/Yeltsin/Cheka, Partisans/Bosnia/UNESCO, Catiline Conspiracy/Cicero/Gaul, Thessalonica/Theodosius I/Milan, Pyrrhus/Magna Graecia/Mamertines, Themistocles/Thermopylae/Halicarnassus, Cleisthenes/Pericles/bribing the Oracle, Stamford Bridge/Wallace/Richard II, Plataea/bronze/Constantinople, Mayor of the Palace/Pepin/Charlemagne, Lawrence/Balfour/Egypt, Ottoman/Tanzimat/millet, Liu Xiaobo/Charter 08/Aung San Suu Kyi, Cajamarca/Pizarro/Famous Thirteen, Meroe/pyramids/Aksum
Science Bonuses: filaments/Langmuir/Edison, Kirchhoff/nodes/Y-delta transform, blackbody/infinity/equipartition theorem, ladder operators/angular frequency/Hermite polynomials, charge symmetry/weak force/Sakharov, ion trap/antiproton/Dirac, helium phase II/triple point/HCP
Geo/CE Bonuses: Boko Haram/Mexico/Peshawar, Brazil/2014 World Cup/journalists, Finland/Sami/Karelia, Ben Nevis/Britain/Svalbard, Staten Island/landfills/Tompkinsville, Nile/Tanzania/Chad, Golden Triangle/Yangtze/Rajasthan, EEZs/Iceland/China, ice/Harbin/Kashmir, Andaman/India/Sentinelese, Congo River/Eq. Guinea/South Sudan, Bahia/Carnival/cangaco
Misc. Bonuses: Smiles of a Summer Night/Bergman/Allen, The Women of Algiers/Picasso/Sabine Women, Bernice/Fitzgerald/"The Cut Glass Bowl", The Maltese Falcon/Miles Archer/Hong Kong, If on a winter's night.../Calvino/tarot cards, "The South"/"The Aleph"/Borges

Also, shoutout to Auroni for writing that Edwin Landseer tossup.

Good Goblin Housekeeping · Tue Jun 16, 2015 5:51 pm

GOODCOMPANY88 wrote:Who thought it would be a good idea to toss up Elegabalus?

Who wouldn't ?!?!?

Adventure Temple Trail · Tue Jun 16, 2015 11:36 pm

GOODCOMPANY88 wrote:Who thought it would be a good idea to toss up Elegabalus?

I wrote this tossup, among the 9 tossups and 31 bonuses I contributed to the set. Was the issue that the tossup was too difficult for this field?

mushroom · Post by **mushroom** » Wed Jun 17, 2015 3:18 am

This was a lot of fun to play, thanks to everyone that was involved in delivering the set. I especially enjoyed Thor and Jormungandr and Hello World/teapot/% as creative and fun. Horses / Ares / he is touching the earth, Tryst with Destiny speech/Nehru/Jinnah seemed a bit easy, while The Cut-Glass Bowl and Sentinelese felt like pretty rough hard parts.

There were two bonus parts in separate packets where one asked for Peter Singer given Animal Liberation, and a later part asked for the decade of publication of Peter Singer's Animal Liberation. If that order was specifically planned in packetizing then I guess it's ok. If it happened by chance and they could've been flipped, it would feel a little awkward to have the exact answer to a question given away earlier in the day.

Santa Claus · Post by **Santa Claus** » Wed Jun 17, 2015 2:00 pm

Wynaut wrote:History TUs: Kievan Rus

Notably a history question I beat Bruce to in the first round.

Wynaut wrote:Science Bonuses: filaments/Langmuir/Edison, Kirchhoff/nodes/Y-delta transform, blackbody/infinity/equipartition theorem, ladder operators/angular frequency/Hermite polynomials, charge symmetry/weak force/Sakharov, ion trap/antiproton/Dirac, helium phase II/triple point/HCP

I am almost certain that Edison is not the sole inventor of the lightbulb, and in recent years (relative to his death I guess) people have been emphasizing the role of other people in a bunch of his inventions.

Nodes sounded an awful lot like junctions (of junction rule fame) and I don't know if many high-schoolers (if any) know what the Y-delta transform is.

I don't think I heard the blackbody bonus, but it seems reasonable.

The QHO bonus was mildy funny how the medium and hard parts felt like "do you know the stock clues"; that being said, Hermite polynomials was pretty hard considering not a lot of outside context was given.

We didn't hear the charge symmetry bonus, but I assume that the third part was the Sakharov conditions for baryogenesis, which is cool.

For ion trap, would just trapping be acceptable/promptable? It was the other team's bonus, so I didn't get to test that out. The other two parts were very reasonable.

I didn't like the helium-II bonus part just because you already mentioned it had superfluidity and that's pretty much it's defining feature that it's a superfluid.

1992 in spaceflight · Post by **1992 in spaceflight** » Wed Jun 17, 2015 2:11 pm

mushroom wrote:This was a lot of fun to play, thanks to everyone that was involved in delivering the set. I especially enjoyed Thor and Jormungandr and Hello World/teapot/% as creative and fun. Horses / Ares / he is touching the earth, Tryst with Destiny speech/Nehru/Jinnah seemed a bit easy, while The Cut-Glass Bowl and Sentinelese felt like pretty rough hard parts.

Funnily enough, it seems like the Nehru bonus went the opposite way that I wanted it to when writing it. I intended for "Tryst with Destiny" to be the middle part and for Jinnah to be the hard part, but my guess is more people seem to know about Jinnah.

Wynaut · Post by **Wynaut** » Wed Jun 17, 2015 2:49 pm

Santa Claus wrote:I am almost certain that Edison is not the sole inventor of the lightbulb, and in recent years (relative to his death I guess) people have been emphasizing the role of other people in a bunch of his inventions.

Nodes sounded an awful lot like junctions (of junction rule fame) and I don't know if many high-schoolers (if any) know what the Y-delta transform is.

I don't think I heard the blackbody bonus, but it seems reasonable.

The QHO bonus was mildy funny how the medium and hard parts felt like "do you know the stock clues"; that being said, Hermite polynomials was pretty hard considering not a lot of outside context was given.

We didn't hear the charge symmetry bonus, but I assume that the third part was the Sakharov conditions for baryogenesis, which is cool.

For ion trap, would just trapping be acceptable/promptable? It was the other team's bonus, so I didn't get to test that out. The other two parts were very reasonable.

I didn't like the helium-II bonus part just because you already mentioned it had superfluidity and that's pretty much it's defining feature that it's a superfluid.

The Edison part was added during editing. The bonus originally went filaments / argon / Langmuir, but I think argon was also used in a chem bonus somewhere.

I'll take full responsibility for that EE bonus about circuit analysis. (Man, it's been a long time since I've heard people say "junction rule" and "loop rule" instead of "current law" and "voltage law"!)

Glad you enjoyed some of the other physics bonuses! Some of them were used as Bonus #21, which explains why they weren't read.

The ion trap bonus part instructs the reader to prompt on a partial answer.

I didn't like my superfluid bonus either, but it went through a lot of editing changes. It originally went helium-4 / capillary action / Heike Kammerlingh-Onnes.

All in all, thanks for the feedback!

Cody · Post by **Cody** » Wed Jun 17, 2015 2:50 pm

Santa Claus wrote:I am almost certain that Edison is not the sole inventor of the lightbulb, and in recent years (relative to his death I guess) people have been emphasizing the role of other people in a bunch of his inventions.

While this is certainly true, a question needn't spell out all the caveats with a clue as long as it (a) isn't confusing and (b) will result in people saying the correct answer. This is the case here.

Santa Claus wrote:Nodes sounded an awful lot like junctions (of junction rule fame) and I don't know if many high-schoolers (if any) know what the Y-delta transform is.

The terms are often used interchangeably; it's a difference in where the term is applied. "Nodes" is the proper term and when performing "nodal analysis" (aka the node-voltage method), you apply KCL to "nodes" instead of "junctions". (Hence the name of the method and the phrasing of the question). I may include "junctions" in the prompt to prevent people from saying the wrong answer in the future, though.

Santa Claus wrote:For ion trap, would just trapping be acceptable/promptable? It was the other team's bonus, so I didn't get to test that out. The other two parts were very reasonable.

No; you would've been prompted on a partial answer.

Santa Claus wrote:I didn't like the helium-II bonus part just because you already mentioned it had superfluidity and that's pretty much it's defining feature that it's a superfluid.

Well—yes. I'm not sure what your complaint is here; in my opinion, the answerline of helium II is sufficiently hard that it was appropriate to drop the most basic clues in the prompt.

Auroni · Post by **Auroni** » Wed Jun 17, 2015 3:29 pm

Mafia Kraut Rights wrote: One bonus that had a ridiculous third part (ie I'm not sure if anyone could pull this?) was the music bonus in round 16. Perhaps my knowledge of Dinu Lipatti is lacking, but this seems to be a pretty obscure.

You need to listen to more songs by The Mountain Goats then!

This was an instance of me taking a risk, since I was aware that Lipatti was a renowned classical pianist, but hadn't seen him as an answer before. Since my view of NASAT is that editors shouldn't be afraid to just go for risky answers sometimes (ie, the Landseer question), I just went for it anyway, but it may well have been too hard.

adamsil · Post by **adamsil** » Wed Jun 17, 2015 5:18 pm

I wrote only science for this set--including probably the majority of the chem and physics, but I'd appreciate any feedback on the stuff I wrote. These aren't all the questions that I wrote, but a few that I was most curious about:

Stuff that wasn't chemistry or physics:
restriction digest (this may have been kind of obvious early)
function arguments (CS)
power series
divergence/normal/area

And then a couple of chem/physics that I'm curious how they went over:
enzyme velocity (did this answerline trip people up?)
virial equation (too hard?)
nitrogen and oxygen, up quarks and down quarks (I've never really taken to the "two answerlines required" thing, but I'd always wanted to see a tossup on stuff like "a bond between these two elements" happen; I think quarks turned out to be really obvious early on)
conservation of mass (I think this had a pretty big cliff)
pipe friction (I thought this was a fun idea, but I'm sympathetic to the "high schoolers don't really know engineering" notion, since I picked up most of the clues from my fluid mechanics classes)
Doppler effect (entirely on the relativistic effect)
the bonus on Carnot engines that went work/reservoirs/temperature of the surroundings. I was a bit concerned that the last two parts would cause some problems.

In response to a couple of Kevin's comments upthread about stuff I wrote--most of the clues on the centrifugal force tossup (centrifugal pumps, Clairaut, Lagrangian mechanics, Lagrange points) are completely specific to it, and the only one that could potentially be an issue with the negative sign is the actual formula for centrifugal force, which is unpleasant, I'll admit (m omega squared r, but with cross products in weird places)--I hadn't envisioned that confusing people, but I see how it's possible.

You will no longer be excited to see Coomassie after you try to get it out of your lab coat. I promise you this. :)

I doubt Victor's reasoning for excluding organic chem is much different than what I outlined in the NSC thread; that said, the chem distribution for NASAT is much less, so it's pretty easy to make do without asking organic chemistry questions directly, and again, there were plenty of opportunities to get buzzes on orgo clues (the chloroform tossup had EVEN MORE radical chlorination, the aluminum tossup had some orgo clues, plus Joelle's question on ionization was pretty much a tossup on mass spec.)

Whenever I write for NASAT, I try to pick answerlines that wouldn't be out-of-place in an IS set, but then delve deep to find harder clues. My favorite part of NASAT always was hearing tossups on stuff like diffraction and diffusion and A Tale of Two Cities right next to the every-once-in-a-while tossup on Edwin Landseer or pyroxenes. It doesn't often happen like that in college tournaments.

Knickerbocker glory · Wed Jun 17, 2015 11:01 pm

Matthew J wrote:
GOODCOMPANY88 wrote:Who thought it would be a good idea to toss up Elegabalus?
I wrote this tossup, among the 9 tossups and 31 bonuses I contributed to the set. Was the issue that the tossup was too difficult for this field?

Yeah it definitely seemed a little out of place. I (along with the rest of team California, and Ankit Aggarwal) was shocked at the difficulty of the answerline, which, as Andrew Wang noted later, came up at ACF Nationals 2014. I hesitated for a few clues before buzzing because I thought "no way that's the answerline".

I know NASAT is supposed to be experimental and have more difficult answerlines than what might be expected to come up at ACF Regionals, but maybe Elegabalus was pushing it. That being said, the history was incredibly fun to play--it was creative and well-written, and I think history questions in general could be more like NASAT history rather than the "stock" answerlines that come up again and again in other tournaments.

Rufous-capped Thornbill · Wed Jun 17, 2015 11:29 pm

GOODCOMPANY88 wrote:
Matthew J wrote:
GOODCOMPANY88 wrote:Who thought it would be a good idea to toss up Elegabalus?
I wrote this tossup, among the 9 tossups and 31 bonuses I contributed to the set. Was the issue that the tossup was too difficult for this field?
Yeah it definitely seemed a little out of place. I (along with the rest of team California, and Ankit Aggarwal) was shocked at the difficulty of the answerline, which, as Andrew Wang noted later, came up at ACF Nationals 2014. I hesitated for a few clues before buzzing because I thought "no way that's the answerline".

I know NASAT is supposed to be experimental and have more difficult answerlines than what might be expected to come up at ACF Regionals, but maybe Elegabalus was pushing it. That being said, the history was incredibly fun to play--it was creative and well-written, and I think history questions in general could be more like NASAT history rather than the "stock" answerlines that come up again and again in other tournaments.

Elegabalus is an entertaining and memorable emperor, and NASAT traditionally pushes the boundaries, so I think it was a fine idea for a challenging history question, and answered with a great buzz.

Santa Claus · Post by **Santa Claus** » Fri Jun 19, 2015 2:28 am

Hooray more commentary on science.

adamsil wrote: Stuff that wasn't chemistry or physics:
restriction digest (this may have been kind of obvious early)
function arguments (CS)
power series
divergence/normal/area

Restriction digest was read in the finals and was first-lined at dcm/dam methylation (with the answer given being something like "cleaving DNA using restriction enzymes"), so I guess your fears were well-founded.

Function arguments was read in the round between Illinois and Virginia that decided who went to the finals and was negged at "passed by value or reference" with variables, before being picked up at the end. It was a bit confusing because though the concept of passing is for arguments, the things you pass are variables (or pointers to variables); it might be worth including the word variable in there if it is feasible to keep it pyramidal.

The question on power series was very general, which led to some interesting problems in our room, where nobody knew it and then when I figured out what the question was asking for, I failed to properly identify power series despite getting prompted/anti-prompted at total of three times. I think that may have been its biggest problem.

I don't remember the divergence bonus very well but it seems hard.

adamsil wrote: enzyme velocity (did this answerline trip people up?)
virial equation (too hard?)
nitrogen and oxygen, up quarks and down quarks (I've never really taken to the "two answerlines required" thing, but I'd always wanted to see a tossup on stuff like "a bond between these two elements" happen; I think quarks turned out to be really obvious early on)
conservation of mass (I think this had a pretty big cliff)
pipe friction (I thought this was a fun idea, but I'm sympathetic to the "high schoolers don't really know engineering" notion, since I picked up most of the clues from my fluid mechanics classes)
Doppler effect (entirely on the relativistic effect)
the bonus on Carnot engines that went work/reservoirs/temperature of the surroundings. I was a bit concerned that the last two parts would cause some problems.

I don't think we heard the tossup on enzyme velocity; would it have accepted something like turnover number, which is related?

The tossup on virial equation went to the clue on truncation, and I'm not sure any teams got it earlier than maybe a line before that, when they were describing the equation. It was pretty hard, but I think the end conversion would have been decent.

Both the tossup on nitrogen and oxygen and up and down quarks were very interesting; I didn't know enough to actually get them, but it seemed that the other teams did, and the idea of having a "two answers required" in a science tossup was cool.

I don't remember the tossup on conservation of mass; it may not have been played.

The tossup on pipe friction was really hard; it was played in our game against Illinois to get in the finals and the point where they buzzed (and I recognized it) was somewhere in the vicinity of Moody charts, which is a pretty dang hard clue to have two lines before FTP (or where ever it was; it felt late). I think it followed it up with the Pouiselle equation, which would make sense, so the theme was overall pretty interesting, but I feel like the hard bits were too hard.

The tossup on Doppler effect was certainly different because of the clues you used, but I think it was still pretty reasonable, especially considering where you dropped Ives-Stillwell.

Reservoirs was converted in our room, and I imagine that part went okay, but the part on temperature of surroundings wasn't, and I imagine there were probably similar difficulties in other rooms.

adamsil wrote: In response to a couple of Kevin's comments upthread about stuff I wrote--most of the clues on the centrifugal force tossup (centrifugal pumps, Clairaut, Lagrangian mechanics, Lagrange points) are completely specific to it, and the only one that could potentially be an issue with the negative sign is the actual formula for centrifugal force, which is unpleasant, I'll admit (m omega squared r, but with cross products in weird places)--I hadn't envisioned that confusing people, but I see how it's possible.

:(

To someone who didn't explicitly know any of the clues, it really felt like centripetal force (in that sort of gut feeling way), then I negged at omega squared in the formula and then felt sad.

Muriel Axon · Post by **Muriel Axon** » Fri Jun 19, 2015 1:20 pm

Santa Claus wrote:Restriction digest was read in the finals and was first-lined at dcm/dam methylation (with the answer given being something like "cleaving DNA using restriction enzymes"), so I guess your fears were well-founded.

Nah, I think the most likely explanation for this is that whoever buzzed knew a lot about restriction digests. Just because a question gets converted on the first line, doesn't mean it's too easy - on the contrary, we should hope that many questions get early buzzes, because otherwise those first few clues aren't doing much.

Santa Claus · Post by **Santa Claus** » Fri Jun 19, 2015 11:48 pm

Muriel Axon wrote:Nah, I think the most likely explanation for this is that whoever buzzed knew a lot about restriction digests

That feeling when it was you who buzzed early on restriction digests.

Post by **Amizda Calyx** » Sat Jun 20, 2015 11:18 pm

My questions (I've included some of the answerline for questions where it may have not been clear):

Tossups
Bio
•pupillary dilation [or light-near dissociation until "Horner's" is read; or mydriasis until it is read]
•age-related macular degeneration
•darkness [or absence of light, scotopic conditions, nighttime, or twilight; prompt on nocturnality, circadian rhythms, and sleep-wake cycle until "exogenous" is read; prompt on light/dark cycle]
•RNA splicing [or specific types; prompt on pre-messenger RNA processing and spliceosome formation]
•dialysis [or specific types; prompt on renal replacement therapy]
•wildfire [or specific types; or burning; or obvious equivalents; prompt on heat and smoke]
•vacuole [or specific types; or vacuolar membrane; prompt on tonoplast until "cell sap" is read; prompt on vesicle until it is read]
•cysteine
•aneurysm [or specific types]
•bird migration [prompt on orientation; prompt on animal behavior until "behavior" is read; prompt on navigation until it is read]
•bacteriophage [or specific types]
•hoof [prompt on feet, claws, and nails; prompt on toe until it is read]
•nucleolus [prompt on nucleus before "organizer" is read]
•cranium [or skull cap]
•herbicides [or defoliants; or weedkillers until "kill weeds" is read]
•Staphylococcus [or Staphylococcus aureus]
•bilirubin [prompt on hematoidin; prompt on bile pigments]
•adrenal glands
•tropism [or specific types; prompt on directional growth until it is read]
•glycolysis [or equivalent pathways]

Chemistry
•ionization [or specific types; or creating ions; prompt on MALDI; prompt on creating either positive or negatively charged molecules]
•scanning electron microscope

Arts
•Apollo and Daphne
•US Civil War

Geography
•drums

Religion
•menstruation [or being on your period]

"CS"
•traffic

Lit
•figs

---------------
Bonuses
Bio
•secondary structure/proline/turns
•oxygen/NADPH/atherosclerosis
•transcription factors/temperature/leucine
•mastication/trigeminal/tongue
•gyrus/cerebral cortex/lissencephaly
•petiole/water potential/phloem
•reptiles/kidney/lymph
•RNA editing/uracil/mitochondria
•phylogenetic tree/Bayes/one
•vitamin E/fat soluble/chylomicrons
•syphilis/malaria/saddle nose
•horizontal gene transfer/transposons/islands
•shaken baby syndrome/ribs/spiral fractures
•hyaloid artery/tail/epididymis
•parathyroid/parafollicular cells/iodine
•hair/Tanner scale/breast
•crustacean/mantis shrimp/bubbles
•dorsal-ventral axis/beta-catenin/microtubules
•response elements/trans/leukemia
•gene knockout/blastocyst/electroporation
•barn owls/time/brainstem
•ATP/purines/platelets

CS
•Hello, World!/Utah teapot/percent sign

Physics
•wind turbines/angle of attack/boundary layer

Astronomy
•NASA/clouds/sun-synchronous

Geography
•HMS Terror and HMS Erebus/McMurdo Station/Robert Scott
•Amsterdam/Kolkata/soaplands
•Kyoto/Gion Festival/Japanese New Year

Arts
•Louis XIV/Le Brun/Jules Hardouin-Mansart

Phil
•Derrida and Searle/analytic philosophy/deconstruction

Econ
•SEC/Dutch auction/Vickrey auction

Religion
•Ol/Obatala/Nigeria

Post by **Amizda Calyx** » Sun Jun 21, 2015 12:08 am

Santa Claus wrote: That tossup on night was pretty coolio, though its intentional vagueness meant that there were a few negs with stuff like "day-night cycles"; I'd appreciate looking at the tossup and its acceptable answers. It was already pretty lenient with prompts and the like, but it was pretty hard to tell what they were looking for (especially with that vertical migration of krill clue).

Here's the tossup on night:

The ATPase PINA is expressed at high levels under this stimulus. The DLMO response to this stimulus triggers PRC phase-advance. Some organisms occupy the epipelagic zone during diel vertical migration in response to this exogenous stimulus. Phacelia is dependent on this stimulus for germination, and pitaya flowers only bloom when it is present. A condition appearing under this stimulus is often the first symptom of retinitis pigmentosa. A steady influx of sodium through certain cGMP-gated channels occurs under its namesake "current" and is reversed by activation of transducin by opsin. This phenomenon increases pineal gland secretion of melatonin, which stimulates sleep. For 10 points, name this phenomenon during which nocturnal animals are active.

I agree there was some vagueness in the wording--hopefully people were prompted on "day/night", since the answerline does ask to prompt on "light/dark" cycles. I believe the stimulus for it is "increasing darkness", but I should have been more clear in accepting things like "day turning into night".

Santa Claus wrote: What's the difference between a blastocyst and a blastula? I never learned the term blastocyst in bio, and was not aware it was a specific step in development.

Oops, looks like that was an oversight in editing--I meant to add more acceptable answers. Sorry!

Santa Claus wrote: I really liked the bonus on Hello World/teapot/%; it was probably my favorite comp sci all tournament.

Glad you liked it!

Santa Claus wrote: That tossup on dilating pupils was pretty out there. Since I had no idea what was going on for most of the question, I can only really say that good job using good giveaway/pre-FTP clues.

The clues were pretty med school, although I tried to include things people might know from learning about parasympathetic/sympathetic pathways (I know sympathetic stimulation of the radial muscle was used as an example in some classes). It wasn't the best idea for a tossup at this level, though.

Santa Claus wrote: Herbicides was an interesting way to tossup stuff you might have studied while learning about auxins and other plant hormones and stuff; I don't think it played out super well though.

I was worried that people would neg it with things on the specific molecules/pathways the herbicides disrupt (for example, if someone somehow buzzed on the acetolactate synthase clue with "drugs preventing branched-chain amino acid synthesis"). It was also pretty top-heavy.

Santa Claus wrote: NOT SCIENCE: Dude that bonus on polar exploration was great! Erebus + Terror are super notable.

Thanks! I was actually a little worried that the medium part (McMurdo) was too hard--although apparently it's shown up in TV shows or something, so hopefully it went over okay.

Santa Claus wrote: I liked the clue on "methyl transferase" in the adrenal glands a lot, though it seemed odd that it was followed up with "created from dopamine", which felt out of place as far as difficulty goes.

I probably should have worded it to be "Phenylethanolamine N-methyltransferase catalyzes methylation of a dopamine-derived hormone released by this structure" rather than having the dopamine part immediately after "this structure", since it would make it more clear which PNMT-catalyzed event is occurring. I'm not convinced that people know more about PNMT than the fact that NE and E are derived from dopamine, though.

Post by **Auks Ran Ova** » Sun Jun 21, 2015 1:56 am

Amizda Calyx wrote:•Ol/Obatala/Nigeria

This was nuts--easily one of the hardest bonuses in the set. Not even a particularly forgiving easy part, given the clues!

Santa Claus · Post by **Santa Claus** » Sun Jun 21, 2015 12:29 pm

Amizda Calyx wrote:
Santa Claus wrote: That tossup on night was pretty coolio, though its intentional vagueness meant that there were a few negs with stuff like "day-night cycles"; I'd appreciate looking at the tossup and its acceptable answers. It was already pretty lenient with prompts and the like, but it was pretty hard to tell what they were looking for (especially with that vertical migration of krill clue).
Here's the tossup on night:
The ATPase PINA is expressed at high levels under this stimulus. The DLMO response to this stimulus triggers PRC phase-advance. Some organisms occupy the epipelagic zone during diel vertical migration in response to this exogenous stimulus. Phacelia is dependent on this stimulus for germination, and pitaya flowers only bloom when it is present. A condition appearing under this stimulus is often the first symptom of retinitis pigmentosa. A steady influx of sodium through certain cGMP-gated channels occurs under its namesake "current" and is reversed by activation of transducin by opsin. This phenomenon increases pineal gland secretion of melatonin, which stimulates sleep. For 10 points, name this phenomenon during which nocturnal animals are active.
I agree there was some vagueness in the wording--hopefully people were prompted on "day/night", since the answerline does ask to prompt on "light/dark" cycles. I believe the stimulus for it is "increasing darkness", but I should have been more clear in accepting things like "day turning into night".

For the krill clue in particular, they go down when it's day and up when it's night; I noticed you said to accept either of the day-night transitions in the errata thread though, so that's great.

Amizda Calyx wrote:
Santa Claus wrote: I liked the clue on "methyl transferase" in the adrenal glands a lot, though it seemed odd that it was followed up with "created from dopamine", which felt out of place as far as difficulty goes.
I probably should have worded it to be "Phenylethanolamine N-methyltransferase catalyzes methylation of a dopamine-derived hormone released by this structure" rather than having the dopamine part immediately after "this structure", since it would make it more clear which PNMT-catalyzed event is occurring. I'm not convinced that people know more about PNMT than the fact that NE and E are derived from dopamine, though.

I actually thought that you were talking about COMT (catechol-O-methyltransferase), which is pretty similar and fits like, all the same clues.

Post by **Amizda Calyx** » Sun Jun 21, 2015 10:18 pm

Auks Ran Ova wrote:
Amizda Calyx wrote:•Ol/Obatala/Nigeria
This was nuts--easily one of the hardest bonuses in the set. Not even a particularly forgiving easy part, given the clues!

Yeahhh it was like 3am and I forgot that the first two parts were actually both ideas for a hard part, and the last part was going to be medium, and then I somehow managed to playtest it on Auroni without noticing the problem. The Friday before NASAT I was going to add a comment telling the editor it needed a lot of fixing, but then I forgot that as well. Ooooof. Sorry!

With regards to the diel migration clue, I probably could have made it more gettable by saying the organisms "move up to the epipelagic zone" instead of "occupy".

Sam · Post by **Sam** » Mon Jun 22, 2015 8:19 pm

I wrote much (but not all) of the economics and am curious what people thought, especially about the difficulty.

mushroom · Post by **mushroom** » Tue Jun 23, 2015 11:07 pm

Can I see the Derrida and Searle/analytic philosophy/deconstruction bonus? Also, were there three poetry questions in the first packet? I remember Freneau and The Ballad of Reading Gaol and I thought there was another one.

Post by **Amizda Calyx** » Wed Jun 24, 2015 4:41 pm

One of these two men gossiped that Michel Foucault had called the other's writing style "terrorist obscurantism", prompting the latter to add "Afterword: Toward An Ethic of Discussion" to his essay collection. For 10 points each:
[10] Name these two philosophers whose disagreements over the permanence of intentionality in a speech-act arose from a critique one of them wrote on J.L. Austin's How to Do Things with Words, which the other criticized in "Reiterating the Differences". Some of their exchanges are presented in the collection Limited Inc.
ANSWER: Jacques Derrida and John Searle [accept in either order]
[10] The serial misunderstanding of each other's points may be partly attributed to Derrida belonging to the continental tradition while Searle held strongly to this philosophical school articulated by G.E. Moore and Bertrand Russell.
ANSWER: analytic philosophy
[10] Searle also expressed derision at this style of critical analysis formulated in Derrida's On Grammatology, which aims to undermine the binary oppositions and implicit assumptions of "logocentric" traditional philosophy.
ANSWER: deconstruction

i never see pigeons in wheeling · Wed Jun 24, 2015 7:49 pm

Amizda Calyx wrote:One of these two men gossiped that Michel Foucault had called the other's writing style "terrorist obscurantism", prompting the latter to add "Afterword: Toward An Ethic of Discussion" to his essay collection. For 10 points each:
[10] Name these two philosophers whose disagreements over the permanence of intentionality in a speech-act arose from a critique one of them wrote on J.L. Austin's How to Do Things with Words, which the other criticized in "Reiterating the Differences". Some of their exchanges are presented in the collection Limited Inc.
ANSWER: Jacques Derrida and John Searle [accept in either order]
[10] The serial misunderstanding of each other's points may be partly attributed to Derrida belonging to the continental tradition while Searle held strongly to this philosophical school articulated by G.E. Moore and Bertrand Russell.
ANSWER: analytic philosophy
[10] Searle also expressed derision at this style of critical analysis formulated in Derrida's On Grammatology, which aims to undermine the binary oppositions and implicit assumptions of "logocentric" traditional philosophy.
ANSWER: deconstruction

I was very amused by this bonus because:

an ACF Nationals submission of mine from a few years ago wrote: At one point in this exchange, a participant noted that institutions which seem to be neutral must be “unmasked” to better combat the proliferation of political power and oppression. For 10 points each:
[10] Identify this 1971 discussion moderated by Fons Elder over the innateness of human nature. It later veered into a discussion of the legitimacy of the state, including one participant’s insistence that workers must be given creative control of where their work goes.
ANSWER: the debate between Avram Noam Chomsky and Michel Foucault [prompt on partial answer; accept word order differences]
[10] These two fundamental schools of philosophy differ on how to analyze the world, with one using empirical analysis and the other a history-based textual methodology.
ANSWER: the Analytical and the Continental Schools [accept equivalents]
[10] An extension of the Analytical-Continental split is the feud between these two modern philosophers, one of whom was called out on engaging in “terrorism obscurante” by Foucault. That man used the afterword of Limited Inc to defend himself against the other’s criticism, which was contained in Reiterating the Differences.
ANSWER: the feud between John Searle and Jacques Derrida

armitage · Post by **armitage** » Mon Jun 29, 2015 1:54 am

Santa Claus wrote:That bonus on QAPF/feldspar/Na+K was pretty cool; it played out pretty well in our room but I question how many teams would known QAPF.

Mega late, and I see there are about as many "list of stuff I wrote" posts as there are actual comments, but here's the meager stuff I wrote if future mirror people have comment/criticism that would otherwise be lost to the ages:
TU: Hittite king, Kalevala, Gaudi, Welsh politicians, Walesa, She Stoops to Conquer, Mapuche (did this go badly?), Stoic, Montaigne, hash table
B: Aequi/Cincinnatus/Sabine, Wedgwood medallion/slave trade abolition/Wilberforce, Xi xia/Liao/silk, emotions/two-factor/suspension bridge effect, QAPF, Kalam/Quran/monotheism, Etymologiae/Seville/Alaric, Weavers/Hauptmann/Frogs, Postman/McLuhan/Gutenberg, Unconsoled/Stevens/Ishiguro (originally Unconsoled/RotD/Ishiguro), La Perouse/Louis XVI/Cartier, Akbar/jizya/Aurangzeb, Bataille/surrealism/Breton

1992 in spaceflight · Post by **1992 in spaceflight** » Mon Jun 29, 2015 2:15 pm

mushroom wrote:Can I see the Derrida and Searle/analytic philosophy/deconstruction bonus? Also, were there three poetry questions in the first packet? I remember Freneau and The Ballad of Reading Gaol and I thought there was another one.

The third one was the Cantos.

Nabonidus · Post by **Nabonidus** » Wed Jul 01, 2015 12:35 pm

The only specific question I recall thinking were too transparent was Thor v. Midgard Serpent (if I recall correctly the first clue indicated that somebody in a boat was fighting something not in a boat).

I very much enjoyed the bio in this set, both in terms of the actual answerlines and the amusing negs they produced.

Sun Jul 12, 2015 11:17 pm

There was a general consensus that, in the 12 packets we heard at the WUSTL site, the tossup on Herbert Simon was far and away the hardest tossup in the set. I'd imagine it did not play particularly well for a high school field. I'll have more when I skim through the set by the end of the week.

EDIT: Oh man, Edwin Landseer! That was also on the far end of the hardness spectrum for this set.

Make sure your seatbelt is fastened · Wed Jul 15, 2015 5:28 pm

Craise Finton Kirk Royal Academy of Arts wrote:There was a general consensus that, in the 12 packets we heard at the WUSTL site, the tossup on Herbert Simon was far and away the hardest tossup in the set. I'd imagine it did not play particularly well for a high school field. I'll have more when I skim through the set by the end of the week.

This.

Also, the bonus on Lahiri in R15 could've been a lot more forgiving had it accepted "the Interpreter of Maladies" for the first part.

Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock · Sun Sep 27, 2015 12:43 pm

I know it's kinda late, but since I heard the full set won't be released can I see the Thaddeus Stevens tossup?

Cheynem · Post by **Cheynem** » Sun Sep 27, 2015 1:05 pm

Since I (apparently, as I have literally no memory of doing so) wrote this question, I'll post it:

During debates, Congressman William Barksdale once drew a knife on this politician. Abraham Lincoln once told this man the country was trying to catch a "pretty big hog." He reportedly sneered "the country is going to the devil" after Senator Edmund Ross broke with his party during a crucial vote. This man insisted "if you don't kill the beast, it will kill you" after Edwin Stanton was removed. The New York Herald claimed this clubfooted man had a "face of corpselike color" during the impeachment of his nemesis, Andrew Johnson. For 10 points, name this Pennsylvania Congressman who was one of the main Radical Republican leaders during Reconstruction.
ANSWER: Thaddeus Stevens

Vainamoinen · Post by **Vainamoinen** » Mon Sep 28, 2015 7:10 am

gettysburg11 wrote:I know it's kinda late, but since I heard the full set won't be released can I see the Thaddeus Stevens tossup?

Is this true? If so, why?

Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock · Mon Sep 28, 2015 8:31 am

Vainamoinen wrote:
gettysburg11 wrote:I know it's kinda late, but since I heard the full set won't be released can I see the Thaddeus Stevens tossup?
Is this true? If so, why?

I've since been told that this is incorrect, so never mind that.

Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock · Mon Oct 26, 2015 1:05 am

Also, can I see (if I remember correctly and am not conflating this with another tournament in my head) the Masaccio tossup? Thanks again.

1992 in spaceflight · Mon Oct 26, 2015 11:04 am

Here it is.

NASAT wrote:This artist's brother was an inept painter nicknamed "The Splinter." This artist depicted the infant Jesus eating grapes in his earliest-attested painting, the San Giovenale Triptych. This artist carved a Latin inscription reading "I once was what you are and what I am you also will be" atop a skeleton resting on a cadaver tomb in a version of the Crucifixion under a Roman-style coffered barrel vault in the church of Santa Maria Novella. He painted an angel with a flaming sword chasing Adam and Eve in one painting, and depicted St. Peter extracting a coin from a fish's mouth in another. For 10 points, name this Renaissance artist whose Brancacci Chapel paintings include The Expulsion from the Garden of Eden and The Tribute Money.
ANSWER: Masaccio [or Tonmaso di Ser Giovanni di Simone Cassai]