Announcement: SHAWARMA I (visual movies)

[Beast Mode]

At long last, here is the official announcement for the first of two tournaments titled SHAWARMA (Saul Hankin Admittedly Watches Appallingly Random Movies; Apologies). Both are visual tournaments about movies I like a là Connor Teevens's awesome TAMIL. Despite the title, most of these movies are ones that I think other people like, or at least have seen, or at least can fraud. This tournament is done and free to play, so I hope mirrors will take place for the rest of this semester. (A "mirror" could be as something as casual as a quizbowl practice.)

Why two tournaments?

My original plan was to do one big tournament, evenly split between movies made before and after I was born (1991). However, it turned out that grad school actually kept me busy, so I broke SHAWARMA into two tournaments in order to have something ready for play sooner. SHAWARMA I covers only movies from after I was born; SHAWARMA II will cover only movies from before I was born. (So stay tuned, fellow Turner Classic Movies watchers.)

About the tournament:

-It consists of five rounds (two of which were already played by some people at HSNCT and NSC), each composed of 20 tossups on movies I like and one single-slide tossup on a movie I dislike. (This follows the 20 regulation tossups, and can be used as a very lame tiebreaker if your format of choice requires those.)

-Each round has the following chronological distribution:

• four tossups on movies from 1991-1995
• four tossups on movies from 1996-2000
• four tossups on movies from 2001-2005
• four tossups on movies from 2006-2010
• four tossups on movies from 2011-2015
• one joke tossup on movies from 1991-2015 (The five joke tossups for the tournament are drawn, one apiece, from the five half-decades demarcated above.)

-None of these movies came up in TAMIL.

-Gameplay (shamelessly stolen from TAMIL) is as follows:

• Every tossup asks players to "Name the movie."
• Every regulation tossup has eight slides (down from TAMIL's nine); the first three have a sky blue background to indicate power, and the last one has a green background to indicate it's the giveaway.

-For those who are running this for players under 17 and care: I have tossed up R-rated movies, but none of the tossups are R-rated (by the strictest definition of the MPAA; some of them push it).

-Alternate answers and prompts are sometimes more generous than players should expect in an actual tournament setting, and I hereby empower moderators to be even more generous as the spirit moves them, unless there's a "do not accept" directive in the answerline. (For example: a few people have buzzed in early on one particular tossup and replaced the word "and" in the title with "versus." I was so pleased with the buzz that I gave it to them.)

-Spoiler: there are spoilers.

To ask questions about the set, request the set for a mirror, or give feedback:

Email me at saul [dot] hankin [at] comcast [dot] net to request the set. You can also email me with questions and feedback, or post here if your concern is one that others might have (and doesn't spoil answers).

[TheRhymeMinister]

This was mirrored at Carleton last weekend, and I can confirm that it is a quick and incredibly fun tournament. I'm glad we had an opportunity to play it and if anyone else is considering running it as a side event I would highly recommend it.

In case anyone is looking for stats from the Carleton SHAWARMA mirror, they are here.

[Beast Mode]

Per a request, I'll be maintaining in this post a list of "public" mirrors of the set (as opposed to, say, a team just running it in practice). If I've forgotten your public mirror, email me.

-Penn emailed me the week before their Penn Bowl mirror about running it either at Penn Bowl (October 24) or some other time; if it was "some other time," they were thinking of opening it up to people in their area. It didn't happen at the Penn Bowl mirror, and I don't know if anything came of another date.
-Carleton University ran it at their Penn Bowl mirror on November 14.
-Brown ran it at their Missouri Open mirror on November 14.
-Michigan will run it at their MLK mirror on January 16.

[Beast Mode]

I'd like to post SHAWARMA I on the archive by the start of August, so email me in the next week if you want a copy to run it for people who still haven't seen it. Assuming no one makes such a request by the end of Chicago Open weekend, I'll open things up here for a few days of discussion before posting the set. Said discussion will mainly be a chance for people to recommend switching the order of slides in a given tossup, as I'm far too lazy to replace bad slides or tossups.

[Cheynem]

When does SHAWARMA II come out? I've been waiting for years.

[Beast Mode]

When does SHAWARMA II come out? I've been waiting for years.

I hope to have it ready by the next HSNCT.

[Cheynem]

It'd be good to finally have a quality visual film tournament.

[Beast Mode]

I've had a request to mirror this on August 20, so discussion and uploading won't take place for another few weeks.

[Beast Mode]

I've had a request to mirror this on August 20, so discussion and uploading won't take place for another few weeks.

This happened, and I didn't have any other requests for an end-of-summer mirror, so I'm now opening up the set for a week or so of discussion before I post it. Let me know if you need a copy of the set to refer to when commenting here.

I won't be replacing any slides or tossups because I'm far too lazy, but if you think a tossup's slides should be in a different order, I'll have a look and see if I agree.

[Beast Mode]

I'm now opening up the set for a week or so of discussion before I post it.

Fine work, Saul. (Thanks to Aakash Patel for asking me if I was still planning to post the set, thus making me realize that I'd completely forgotten to do so for a month and a half. Sorry, everyone.)

Turns out the rounds are too big for me to upload myself, so I've sent the set off to Jeffrey Hill for archiving. I'll add a link here when the set is up.

EDIT: SHAWARMA I is up. Thanks to Jeff, and I hope everyone who hasn't already seen the set will download it and enjoy it.

[Beast Mode]

When does SHAWARMA II come out? I've been waiting for years.

I hope to have it ready by the next HSNCT.

Update: this won't happen, as I've currently written 13 tossups out of 100. I think even the August open is too optimistic a goal, but if I end up being wrong, hosts can certainly run it then. Most likely, we're looking at SHAWARMA II coming together by the 2018 HSNCT.