Harvard Fall Tournament (HFT) XI Is Available For Mirrors

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Harvard Fall Tournament (HFT) XI Is Available For Mirrors

Post by UlyssesInvictus »

Hi all! The 10th edition of the annual Harvard Fall Tournament (HFT X) was received very well this past year, so we are now announcing that HFT XI will be available for high school tournament mirrors starting October 15, 2016, and until two days before the 2017 HSNCT. I (Raynor Kuang) will be head editor, with contributions from Robert Chu and the rest of the Harvard team. The Harvard editing team is approaching the idea of collaborators, but as of now the set will solely be written by Harvard members. This is the set that will be produced for the Harvard tournament also on November 5, for which another post will be made.

The Set

As last year, I will be head-editor. This set is targeted at the core high school "canon," but I personally have a desire to see questions used which accurately reward knowledge learned in the classroom and with "real world" significance. Answerline difficulty will vary, with most being comparable to a NAQT Invitational Series set, but some may be easier, and some (i.e. fewer rather than more) will be HSNCT difficulty. We are looking to make the set slightly more difficult than last year, but were overall satisfied with performance statistics from last year. As with previous years, there will be 15 power-marked rounds, with the last two rounds being finals packets of slightly higher difficulty. The vast majority (95%) of questions will be 5-6 lines Times New Roman 10 point font. The distribution is as follows:

4/4 Literature (1/1 American, 1/1 European, 1/1 British, 1/1 World/Ancient/Misc)
4/4 Science (1/1 Biology, 1/1 Chemistry, 1/1 Physics, 1/1 Math/CS/Earth Science/Astro/Other)
4/4 History (1/1 American, 1/1 World, 2/2 European/British/Ancient)
3/3 Fine Arts (1/1 Painting/Sculpture, 1/1 Classical Music, 1/1 Other Arts)
1/1 Social Science / Philosophy
1/1 Religion
1/1 Mythology
1/1 Geography/Modern World
1/1 Popular Culture

Notes:
-A tiebreaker tossup and bonus will be provided for each round coming from one of the "Big Three" categories (literature, history, or science), in addition to some emergency backup questions.
-Some subdistributions will not be precise, to allow for heightened presence of more "important"/high school appropriate answers (e.g. math) and decreased presence of traditionally difficult high school topics (e.g. world literature or social science).
-Like last year, the popular culture category will be focused primarily on film, television, sports, and music, and an effort will be made to provide answerlines that have a strong presence in the US popular conscience, or even academic importance.

Fee and Mirrors

The fee is $15 per non-host team present at your mirror site. This fee is negotiable to lower amounts for special events, such as solo sites, sites with low team attendance (< 8 teams), or sites with significant team attendance (>40 teams). This negotiability is completely at my discretion and is in no way set in stone.

If would you like to mirror this set, please contact me at raynorkuang AT college DOT harvard DOT edu. If I don't respond in a convenient time, definitely email me again. A running list of mirrors and desired geographic sites will be maintained in the post below. When the mirror period is over, I will personally upload the set immediately. If there are conflicting regional requests, consideration will be made for attendance size, quality/consistency of program (i.e. I'd prefer not to have the mirror evaporate the day before), and first-come first-serve.

Other Comments

I'm personally very excited to be editing this set, and hope you're excited to mirror/play it! If you have any questions or comments at all about mirroring the set, such as fee, logistics, content, and/or what you are/are not allowed to do with the set, please contact me, and I will endeavor to be as helpful as possible (questions about playing it should probably go in the main site thread, which will be posted as soon as we get some more logistical details sorted). Looking forward to hearing from you!

Mirror Sites

10/15: Hoover Invitational (Alabama and neighboring)
11/5: Harvard (Northeast; main site)
11/12: North Carolina School of Science and Math (NC)
11/19: Western Kentucky University (WKU)
11/20: Michigan State University (MSU)
12/3: Auburn HS (Illinois)
12/10: MOQBA "Fall" (Columbia College, Columbia, MO)
12/17: Texas (TBD site)
1/28: Rutgers (New Jersey/New York)
2/19: Solon High School (Comet Winter Clash) (Ohio)
3/4: Canyon Crest Academy HS (SD, SoCal)
4/8: Marist HS (Georgia)
4/8: Downington East HS (Pennsylvania)
4/29: Georgetown (Mid-Atlantic)
Last edited by UlyssesInvictus on Sat Mar 18, 2017 10:32 pm, edited 21 times in total.
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Re: Harvard Fall Tournament (HFT) XI Is Available For Mirror

Post by Cheynem »

Do you mean the 2017 HSNCT?
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Re: Harvard Fall Tournament (HFT) XI Is Available For Mirror

Post by UlyssesInvictus »

Cheynem wrote:Do you mean the 2017 HSNCT?
Indeed.
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Re: Harvard Fall Tournament (HFT) XI Is Available For Mirror

Post by Cody »

UlyssesInvictus wrote:
Cheynem wrote:Do you mean the 2017 HSNCT?
Indeed.
Do tournaments normally run on Thursdays? Seems like an odd end date?
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Re: Harvard Fall Tournament (HFT) XI Is Available For Mirror

Post by UlyssesInvictus »

Cody wrote:Do tournaments normally run on Thursdays? Seems like an odd end date?
I moved it back to give me more time to properly clean up the set after the final mirror and encourage teams to host/attend mirrors.
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Re: Harvard Fall Tournament (HFT) XI Is Available For Mirror

Post by UlyssesInvictus »

Sites at Solon (Midwest: Ohio) and Georgetown (Mid-Atlantic) have been announced. The set is speeding along, so keep those inquiries coming!
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Re: Harvard Fall Tournament (HFT) XI Is Available For Mirror

Post by UlyssesInvictus »

Due to good progress on the set, we've accepted a proposal from Hoover High to mirror HFT XI at Hoover Invitational on October 15th. As such, HFT XI is now available for mirrors as early as that date!
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Re: Harvard Fall Tournament (HFT) XI Is Available For Mirror

Post by UlyssesInvictus »

Original post has been updated with several accepted mirrors.

We are still looking for sites in Northern California, Missouri, the Southeast, and any other areas not already covered. If you'd like to mirror and don't believe any of the above listed sites would conflict with your potential field, please contact me.
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Re: Harvard Fall Tournament (HFT) XI Is Available For Mirror

Post by The Polebarn Hotel »

Ithaca High School isn't hosting HFT; Cornell is. The announcement is here.
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Re: Harvard Fall Tournament (HFT) XI Is Available For Mirror

Post by UlyssesInvictus »

The Baking of the English Working Class wrote:Ithaca High School isn't hosting HFT; Cornell is. The announcement is here.
Thanks: did this late at night, and messed up my free association of names. Call it a real life neg.
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Re: Harvard Fall Tournament (HFT) XI Is Available For Mirror

Post by UlyssesInvictus »

Mirror field updated, 9/25. (Major points: date changes for Mid-Atlantic and SoCal sites; added MOQBA site.)

You could be the next one to host an HFT mirror! Let me know if you're interested :D
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Re: Harvard Fall Tournament (HFT) XI Is Available For Mirror

Post by UlyssesInvictus »

Mirror update, 10/4. Sadly, Cornell's cancelled their mirror because of team drops, but we've just added a mirror for now on 11/20 (a Sunday, notably) at Michigan State.
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Re: Harvard Fall Tournament (HFT) XI Is Available For Mirror

Post by UlyssesInvictus »

Packets have been sent out for the first mirror! Mods could I get a subforum set up to discuss the set?
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Re: Harvard Fall Tournament (HFT) XI Is Available For Mirror

Post by Important Bird Area »

UlyssesInvictus wrote:Mods could I get a subforum set up to discuss the set?
Enjoy!
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Re: Harvard Fall Tournament (HFT) XI Is Available For Mirror

Post by UlyssesInvictus »

bird bird bird bird bird wrote:
UlyssesInvictus wrote:Mods could I get a subforum set up to discuss the set?
Enjoy!
Thanks! As a lesson to anyone who hasn't used usergroups before, you'll have to

- Go to your User Control Panel.
- Select the Usergroups tab.
- Check the "2016 Harvard Fall Discussion" group and apply for membership, which I need to approve manually. If you don't have a full name associated with your account, I won't approve you.

For obvious reasons, no one (but me and the other writers) will be admitted to the group until after Hoover hosts the first mirror.
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Re: Harvard Fall Tournament (HFT) XI Is Available For Mirror

Post by UlyssesInvictus »

Oh jeez, I totally forgot to thank Neil Gurram for writing about 15 science questions for this set over the summer--his swan song to quizbowl I guess. Sorry about the late thanks, Neil!

I'll also formally thank all the writers/contributors to this set now, since our main site is this weekend: Robert Chu, Jason Park, Sriram Pendyala, Neil Gurram, Erik Owen, Jonathan Suh, Roger Jin, Vimal Konduri, and Mark Arildsen (we used one of your unused questions from last year, Mark).

And as always, if you'd like to mirror, pop me a message :)
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Re: Harvard Fall Tournament (HFT) XI Is Available For Mirror

Post by Amizda Calyx »

Some comments after seven rounds:
I'd suggest if you want more successful mirrors of this tournament, you should include at least some pronunciation guides. Even experienced readers are going to be tripped up on Polish names! And I don't think I saw any PGs for science terms either.
The leadins and hard parts for many questions were also pretty insane -- difficult ACF Nats answerlines should absolutely not be questions in an "IS set". Powers were fairly unforgiving.
The editorialization in many of the questions fell super flat and dragged things on unnecessarily, and there were at least two instances of in-groupy jokes, one of which *blatantly* rewarded players who visit the collegiate discussion parts of the forums.
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Re: Harvard Fall Tournament (HFT) XI Is Available For Mirror

Post by UlyssesInvictus »

Amizda Calyx wrote:Some comments after seven rounds: [stuff].
Hi Joelle: I'm politely going to dispute some of these points, but I'm going to do it in the private discussion forum. In the meantime, could I kindly ask that you strip any of the even implicit question content of this post (if you see fit to leave the general tone of criticism, that's fine by me) and repeat it in the private forum instead?

Edit: I see that you haven't applied for permission to join the group yet either. I'm going to paste your comment myself over there so I can start responding, but please don't see that as me co-opting your post.
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Re: Harvard Fall Tournament (HFT) XI Is Available For Mirror

Post by UlyssesInvictus »

The Penn State mirror has been cancelled due to lack of interest, and there is a tentative mirror happening instead at Downington East HS at April 8 that hasn't been confirmed yet.
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Re: Harvard Fall Tournament (HFT) XI Is Available For Mirror

Post by UlyssesInvictus »

UlyssesInvictus wrote:The Penn State mirror has been cancelled due to lack of interest, and there is a tentative mirror happening instead at Downington East HS at April 8 that hasn't been confirmed yet.
This has been confirmed.
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Re: Harvard Fall Tournament (HFT) XI Is Available For Mirror

Post by UlyssesInvictus »

The Georgetown mirror has been moved to 4/29 to try and increase the field size.
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Re: Harvard Fall Tournament (HFT) XI Is Available For Mirror

Post by UlyssesInvictus »

Unfortunately, Marist has had to cancel their mirror. If any other Georgia or Southeast schools would like to mirror, please let us know ASAP!
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Re: Harvard Fall Tournament (HFT) XI Is Available For Mirror

Post by Jasconius »

Is there a private forum for this?
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Re: Harvard Fall Tournament (HFT) XI Is Available For Mirror

Post by UlyssesInvictus »

Curious Homunculus wrote:Is there a private forum for this?
Yup! 2016 Harvard Fall discussion. (If you couldn't find it because it's now 2017, I don't blame you, I just did the same.)
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Re: Harvard Fall Tournament (HFT) XI Is Available For Mirror

Post by UlyssesInvictus »

Mirrors are done, so set's just been uploaded. Best of luck at HSNCT.
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Re: Harvard Fall Tournament (HFT) XI Is Available For Mirror

Post by raginbulls »

Could you provide a link to the set? I can't seem to find it on the archive.
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Re: Harvard Fall Tournament (HFT) XI Is Available For Mirror

Post by Tippy Martinez »

raginbulls wrote:Could you provide a link to the set? I can't seem to find it on the archive.
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Re: Harvard Fall Tournament (HFT) XI Is Available For Mirror

Post by UlyssesInvictus »

raginbulls wrote:Could you provide a link to the set? I can't seem to find it on the archive.
I believe there's a waiting period while it gets manually approved by admins, so you should be able to find it on the top of quizbowlpackets.com once that happens. I don't expect it to take too long.
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