HSAPQ Novice Set (Available early September)

[Cheynem]

I am pleased to announce that HSAPQ is producing a novice-level difficulty set that should be available by Labor Day.

WRITERS: This set is being written by HSAPQ (High School Academic Pyramid Questions). I, Mike Cheyne, am the chief editor. Other editors include Auroni Gupta, Tommy Casalaspi, Joelle Smart, Cody Voight, and Jordan Brownstein--between us, we have edited numerous high school and collegiate tournaments. All of us wrote for HSAPQ last year and are very experienced at producing quality, difficulty-appropriate questions.

DIFFICULTY: This set is novice level (perhaps comparable to a NAQT A-set, although perhaps even easier). It is ideal for teams with little to no experience playing quizbowl. It is not recommended for teams with lots of experience or are of a high skill level.

DISTRO: This set consists of 15 20/20 packets plus tiebreakers. All tossups are 5 lines or less. The vast majority of bonus parts feature 2 line prompts or less. The distribution is:

4/4 Literature (1/1 American, 1/1 British, 1/1 European, 1/1 Any Literature, which can include a few questions on World Literature
4/4 History (1/1 American, 2/2 European, 1/1 World)
4/4 Science (1/1 Bio, 1/1 Physics, 2/2 Other Sciences)
3/3 Arts (1/1 Painting, 1/1 Music, 1/1 Other Arts)
1/1 Religion (heavy emphasis on Bible/Christianity)
1/1 Myth
1/1 Thought (includes questions that would be categorized as philosophy or social science in other sets--some CE or Geo might end up here)
1/1 Geography and Current Events
1/1 Trash

INFORMATION: This set's tossups are used during VHSL Regular Season in quizbowl competitions in Virginia. Obviously, this set cannot be used in Virginia, then, or by any school who somehow has connections to VHSL.

COST: The cost is $14 per team.

WHY USE OUR SET?
We know you have a choice of question sets, and we know our price is not necessarily the cheapest. Why choose us? Here are three reasons.

1. Experience. You can rest assured that this set is being produced by editors who have all worked on multiple tournaments. Every editor of this set has worked on high school questions before and many have edited their own high school sets before.

2. A Quality Set. Our set is scrupulously controlled for length of questions. We include pronunciation guides to make reading these questions easy for moderators no matter their experience. Our answerlines are formatted to be easy to understand and determine correct answers. These aren't just empty promises for us--we know these questions will be used in the standard-heavy VHSL format.

3. Difficulty Control. Unlike other "novice" sets, we're not trying to "push the canon" with this set. We're not writing to improve as players or to show off by finding hard new clues. We want to write questions that can be answered by teams. Teams with little experience should still be able to get many of these questions. Teams with experience should be able to get our questions early.

QUESTIONS: Questions about the set should go to me (chey0004 AT umn DOT edu). Orders or questions about setting up tournaments should go to our Host Contact, Jacob O'Rourke (jacob.orourke.7 AT gmail DOT com).

We look forward to working with you. We hope to produce other sets at a range of difficulties, and we'll have more information about that in the future.

[1992 in spaceflight]

Mirrors:

UIUC-Date TBD. Contact Tyler Vaughan (tylervaughan1995 at gmail.com) for more information.
Chillicothe (Chillicothe, OH)-October 8, 2016. Contact Joshua Queen (joshua.queen at ccsd.us) for more information.
Chamois (Chamois, MO)-October 29, 2016. Contact Jason Loy (jloy at tuscumbialions.k12.mo.us) for more information.
MYST High School Novice Division (Moberly, MO)-November 5, 2016. Contact Kyle Hill (kyle at hillonline.net) for more information.
Boise High School (Boise, ID)-November 12, 2016. Contact Minji Ko (boisehsquizbowl at gmail.com) for more information.
Richard Montgomery-December 17, 2016. Email Alythia Vo (rmquizbowl at gmail.com) for more information.
Winnebago-January 14, 2017. Email Kristen Strey (strey.k.a at gmail.com) for more information.
Great Valley Tournament Novice Division-February 11, 2017. Contact Bernard McCauley ([email protected]) for more information.
California Cup #3 JV Division-February 11, 2017.
Triton Spring JV Division-sometime in May. Contact the UC-San Diego team (ucsdquizbowl at gmail.com) for more information.

[1992 in spaceflight]

We have one mirror confirmed for Chamois in Missouri on October 29th, so send me an email if you're interested in mirroring and SCOP is being used in your region!

[1992 in spaceflight]

The set has two new mirrors at Richard Montgomery and Chillicothe High School in Ohio, so let me know if you're interested in hosting a mirror for your region and it's not being served by one of our current mirrors!

[Cheynem]

Is Richard Montgomery really mirroring this in December 2017?

[1992 in spaceflight]

Is Richard Montgomery really mirroring this in December 2017?

That should be 2016, and the list of mirrors has been updated to confirm this.

[Cheynem]

This set is 100% finished.

[1992 in spaceflight]

This set is 100% finished.

And has been sent to our first host. If you're interested in hosting a Novice event in your area and want to use our set, send me an email.