ANNOUNCEMENT: MYSTERIUM (UMD/Yale), March-April 2016

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ANNOUNCEMENT: MYSTERIUM (UMD/Yale), March-April 2016

Post by vinteuil »

I'm excited to announce MYSTERIUM: Maryland/Yale Spring Tournament Edited for Regular difficulty In University Material, the successor to last year's STIMPY, 2014's SUBMIT, and the Terrapin Invitationals of years past. The set will be written by members of the Yale and Maryland teams, and will be played in the late spring (March-April—the same timeframe as STIMPY last year). I (Jacob Reed) will head-edit the set, with oversight/help from Jordan Brownstein.

The target difficulty for the tournament is (to use Jordan's phrase) "classical" regular difficulty. This attitude hews closer to how good (challenging) high school sets are written than college sets: we'll try to make a large number of the questions strongly "curricular," and keep difficulty decidedly below last year's version of regular difficulty.

There will be 14 powermarked packets, plus 10/10 tiebreakers.

Our distribution is slightly experimental:
4/4 Literature (1/1 world and other)
4/4 History
4/4 Science (1/1 biology, 1/1 chemistry, 1/1 physics, 1/1 math and other)
3/3 Arts (like STIMPY last year: 1/1 visual, 1/1 auditory, 1/1 audiovisual or "useable")
1/1 Religion
1/0 or 0/1 Mythology (with some material absorbed into literature)
1/1 Philosophy
1/1 Economics and Psychology
1/0 or 0/1 Other social sciences
1/0 or 0/1 VICO-style "Other thought" (literary criticism, art history, historiography, etc.)
1/0 or 0/1 "Other" (current events, other academic, human and physical geography, etc.)

Mirrors
Please contact Isaac Kirk-Davidoff ([his first name].[his last name, with hyphen]@yale.edu) if you're interested in mirroring this set! We're looking for mirrors in the following regions:

Pacific Northwest/Skype: UW, 5/7 (Open)
Northeast: Yale, 4/2
Mid-Atlantic: UMD, 3/26
Southeast: UGA, 4/2
West Coast: UCLA, 4/23
Midwest: Northwestern, 4/2, and
Chicago, 5/7
Canada: Waterloo, 4/23
UK: Oxford, 5/?

High school: Texas Invitational, 4/9
Last edited by vinteuil on Tue Apr 12, 2016 3:40 pm, edited 19 times in total.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: MYSTERIUM (UMD/Yale), March-April 2016

Post by Cheynem »

Why are econ and psych mandated 1/1, as opposed to the other social sciences? Are you operating on the idea that they are the most accessible of the social sciences?
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: MYSTERIUM (UMD/Yale), March-April 2016

Post by vinteuil »

Cheynem wrote:Why are econ and psych mandated 1/1, as opposed to the other social sciences? Are you operating on the idea that they are the most accessible of the social sciences?
If you define "accessible" in a certain way, yes—I think that more economics and psychology results (and more of the people who conducted the studies etc.) make it into newspapers, blogs etc., for instance. And I think that people are more likely to have taken classes in those two than in the other social sciences. But it's definitely not a normative claim about how much econ and psych are intellectually "worth."
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: MYSTERIUM (UMD/Yale), March-April 2016

Post by Lo, a momentary rabbit-stage »

Can you expand a bit on the "GR myth will be partially covered by classical lit"? Are you just counting tossups on things like _Antigone_ and _The Odyssey_ as GR myth, or can we expect tossups on like, _Dionysus_ (using only clues from the Metamorphoses)? In either case, the focus on GR myth only seems a little arbitrary, unless we can expect the actual myth distribution to have far more non-GR myth.

Thanks!
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: MYSTERIUM (UMD/Yale), March-April 2016

Post by vinteuil »

Lo, a momentary rabbit-stage wrote:Can you expand a bit on the "GR myth will be partially covered by classical lit"? Are you just counting tossups on things like _Antigone_ and _The Odyssey_ as GR myth, or can we expect tossups on like, _Dionysus_ (using only clues from the Metamorphoses)? In either case, the focus on GR myth only seems a little arbitrary, unless we can expect the actual myth distribution to have far more non-GR myth.

Thanks!
I was thinking of questions more like your Dionysus/Ovid example; but you're right that a "literary" question about the Eddas, etc. could absorb some of the reduction of myth as well.

EDIT: changed original post to reflect this.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: MYSTERIUM (UMD/Yale), March-April 2016

Post by Habitat_Against_Humanity »

Definitely interested. What, if any, are the eligibility rules?
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: MYSTERIUM (UMD/Yale), March-April 2016

Post by vinteuil »

Habitat_Against_Humanity wrote:Definitely interested. What, if any, are the eligibility rules?
Normal (ACF) eligibility for currently enrolled college students. People should email me if they have any questions.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: MYSTERIUM (UMD/Yale), March-April 2016

Post by naan/steak-holding toll »

This social science distribution is delightful. I am very excited to play this set!
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: MYSTERIUM (UMD/Yale), March-April 2016

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Sriram Pendyala has joined our writing team!
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: MYSTERIUM (UMD/Yale), March-April 2016

Post by vinteuil »

This tournament is still happening! And Ike Jose has joined our writing team as well.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: MYSTERIUM (UMD/Yale), March-April 2016

Post by Silverman »

Are there any updates on mirror locations or dates (particularly the UMD and Midwest mirrors)?
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: MYSTERIUM (UMD/Yale), March-April 2016

Post by vinteuil »

I've finally edited all the links and dates into the first post above. Sorry about the delay.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: MYSTERIUM (UMD/Yale), March-April 2016

Post by vinteuil »

Mods: could we get a discussion forum for this?
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: MYSTERIUM (UMD/Yale), March-April 2016

Post by Auks Ran Ova »

vinteuil wrote:Mods: could we get a discussion forum for this?
Done. Non-Jacob people, please request membership in the relevant usergroup in your User Control Panel.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: MYSTERIUM (UMD/Yale), March-April 2016

Post by naan/steak-holding toll »

Not to be intrusive, but is there a reason the Northwestern mirror hasn't posted a forum announcement, even though their tournament is only days away?
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: MYSTERIUM (UMD/Yale), March-April 2016

Post by Harpie's Feather Duster »

Periplus of the Erythraean Sea wrote:Not to be intrusive, but is there a reason the Northwestern mirror hasn't posted a forum announcement, even though their tournament is only days away?
We don't have the resources to run anything more than a tournament for the small amount of teams (us, Illinois, WUSTL, Michigan, and Chicago A/B) who contacted me about running a highly competitive Nats warmup site, so we felt like we didn't need to announce on the forums since we already had a full house. Chicago should, within the next week, be announcing another mirror for the rest of the teams in the region that will be happening sometime after Nationals.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: MYSTERIUM (UMD/Yale), March-April 2016

Post by vinteuil »

The SEMO mirror of MYSTERIUM has officially been cancelled. We hope that other midwest teams can make it to the Chicago mirror in May.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: MYSTERIUM (UMD/Yale), March-April 2016

Post by Cheynem »

Was it actually cancelled or is this an April Fools?
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: MYSTERIUM (UMD/Yale), March-April 2016

Post by vinteuil »

Cheynem wrote:Was it actually cancelled or is this an April Fools?
Forgot I had to make that clarification. It was actually cancelled.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: MYSTERIUM (UMD/Yale), March-April 2016

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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: MYSTERIUM (UMD/Yale), March-April 2016

Post by Maxwell Sniffingwell »

jonah wrote:Northwestern site stats: http://www.qbwiki.com/statistics/2016-m ... dings.html
Every player with a power, and the low PPB was 20. That was neat.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: MYSTERIUM (UMD/Yale), March-April 2016

Post by Sigurd »

cornfused wrote:
jonah wrote:Northwestern site stats: http://www.qbwiki.com/statistics/2016-m ... dings.html
Every player with a power, and the low PPB was 20. That was neat.
Those are some truly ridiculous stats. 2/3rds of Chicago A's buzzes are powers, Michigan has nearly 24PPB?!?!?!?! On a regular difficulty set! Well....something to work towards I guess............
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: MYSTERIUM (UMD/Yale), March-April 2016

Post by vinteuil »

The Pacific Northwest mirror of MYSTERIUM at UW is now set to become a skype mirror. Details to follow.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: MYSTERIUM (UMD/Yale), March-April 2016

Post by Bosa of York »

Will this set be posted? Is an Oxford mirror happening in the future?
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: MYSTERIUM (UMD/Yale), March-April 2016

Post by vinteuil »

The Oxford mirror already happened. I'll get the set posted soon.
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