2021 WORKSHOP: Specific Question Discussion

[reindeer]

Discussion of specific questions goes here.

[TaylorH]

Notes jotted down by packet/round:

R1
-The Sumerian myth bonus seemed pretty hard
-Our team found it odd when we were prompted upon giving the answer "priest" on the TU on prostitutes; if that prompt is going to be in there it needs to be directed to avoid confusion
-Maybe a regional bias, but the Pennsylvania hard part felt quite hard
-L'Oreal question was interesting and good
-The question on voodoo felt quite easy compared to many other bonuses: we managed to 30 it with somewhat scant knowledge in this area.

R2
-The Igbo question felt quite hard
-The Slav myth question being so close to the Igbo religion question felt like bad feng shui
-Really interesting carpet TU
-Really interesting bonus on the sociology of the family
-observation in psych was good idea but seemed quite hard to buzz on until "Hawthorne effect"
-Enjoyed the crown Basquiat question, though I suspect it will play hard
-Really not a fan of the "swan" hard part in Persepolis; a very minor detail that I suspect you could only remember if you just recently read the book
-Like the bonus on identity

R3
-liked the question on growth written in a more qualitative way.
-Loved the Berenice Abbott bonus
-the first two parts of the meat packing bonus felt quite hard
-the coin TU did not work for me at all: it was a line or two shorted than other questions and the clues didn't feel like they belonged together.
-as was noted in a protest, the AC current question was confusing
-The Vachel Lindsay question was quite easy/transparent compared to many of the other poetry question: the first two clues mentioned an onomatopoeia, a dark jungle, and suggestion that the poem should be performed to specific ensembles of musicians. To me, these are all the most notable things about his poetry, and it felt a bit antipyramidal to clue him like this
-The existentialism question was a bit on the easy side
-Not the biggest fan of cluing Kanye in the FA distro, especially since regs did that exact same thing last week
-The South Africa history question was quite hard compared to most others

R4
-really liked the smoking SS TU
-"situated" probably should not be in power in the knowledge question: it caused a four way buzzer race in our rooms and feels a good deal easier than the previous clue
-As has been noted, the Russian opera question was quite hard and could maybe use a "its not Czech" since there is a clue in there that sounds quite a bit like Jenufa
-liked the ballots CE TU
-liked the tea making TU
-the use of "these creature" + gothic sounding names early made the vampire question quite transparent

R5
-feng shui thing: Hinduism TU lead directly into Hinduism bonus
-liked the Arabic language question
-the revolutions named after flowers TU felt a bit forced
-the power felt very stingy on the Iran film question: the early clues were quite hard and the power ending clue was on the opening shot of A Separation. I think the metafictional clue early suggested Kiarostami to me but it seemed quite hard to buzz on as clued
-The venom question really just needs to be made easier. Maybe add a late clue suggesting its in snakes by naming a snake or two.
-The wave science question seemed quite hard
-The proton decay question was quite hard overall, and I suspect the clue about the Cherenkov rings is not unique to it: wouldn't any particle with a similar decay scheme show similar behavior in a light-emitting detector?
-like the nails in art bonus
-not a huge fan of the conflation of impetus/motion conflation in the philosophy bonus. I hesitated to buzz on the Buridan clue thinking "surely they aren't TUing impetus"
-The South African drama question felt quite easy to power: the Sizwe Banzi is Dead clue in the second line has come up quite a lot
-liked the Ida Wells TU

R6
-loved the Firemen's Ball bonus
-The Mafouz question was a little transparent, as both "alley" and Arabic-sounding names were said in power
-The Tuscany question was quite interesting and fresh, though it cliffs quite a lot at "Cosimo." It might just work better if it was on Italy
-both Hawking and wormholes are easy part in the physics bonus
-liked the Joan of Arc film question
-loved the DFW TU

R7
-the telegraph TU fell a little flat and caused a 8 way buzzer race at the FTP
-interesting TU on gifted children
-liked the mustard TU, though it was on the hard side
-TUing up Spalding is obviously quite hard but I apricated it, this should be the hardest arts question in the set though

R8
-The Botswana question felt quite hard and a little "atlas bowl-y" at time
-sculpture question here felt a little easy compared to most other arts, maybe removing the artist of the tomb name for the Wilde part would help
-cool question on bread

R9
-The Kobo Abe question felt quite hard, as it focused on the minor works of Clockbugs and the Ark Sakura. I think my question on him at FLopen was easier, and that was intended as a harder tournament.
-The bonus on Lorde/Angelou/hooks felt quite easy: I really don't think either hooks or Lorde are proper hard parts at this point.
-The Alice Coltrane question should certainly not say "harp" until FTP; having it mid question threw me quite a bit

I played the next 2 round but didn't take notes. I will come back with some more thoughts after reading the rest of the packets,

[jinah]

(Let me know if this should go in general discussion)

I edited the philosophy for this set. I’d be particularly interested in hearing in specific question discussion about:

• Clues people thought were hard to parse or didn’t seem informative
• Answerlines that were hard to pull together based on the clues
• Bonus parts that seemed like they failed to hit their difficulty target as marked in the packets (especially too-hard parts and any easy parts that felt facile, or bonuses that felt markedly harder/easier than other bonuses in the set or in the subject)
• Cliffs in difficulty in tossups
• Errors and errata

I was brought on later in the process so I just kept the previous distribution, but particularly given the ordering of questions I realized only two straight contemporary analytic tossups were played and the set leaned older and more continental overall. I’d be curious to know if this was a problem for people who weren’t me or if the subdistributional balance felt fine.

[Inscrutable Fox]

I enjoyed playing the myth yesterday! A few notes, which are really more nitpicks than actual issues.

• I enjoyed the Lilith tu. Probably not a real issue, but I did think it was perhaps hard for there to be other possible answers once it’s clear that it’s a female figure with Judeo-Christian demonic husbands

• On the basilisk / rooster crow / gold bonus: fun idea! I answered cockatrice based on the weasel clue – I still think I was wrong but do want to point out that upon googling this, it seems some sources conflate the two. I’ve just spent a confusing time looking through the history on that and think the two are still distinct enough for it to be reasonable to just take basilisk, especially with the other clues, but thought I would at least mention this

• Also on the basilisk / rooster crow / gold bonus: I think it’s perhaps a bit easier than is optimal to confuse the Ragnarok roosters with Gjallarhorn. It’s definitely unique with the basilisk clue and I’m dreadful at Norse things, but from the translation of the Voluspa I’m looking at, Gjallarhorn also sounds pretty far and is described right after the roosters crowing (and I think it’d be a bit uncharitable to say that “beginning of Ragnarok” should be delineated that finely). Perhaps it might help to make it clear this sound is coming from three different sources?
  
  Fast move the sons | of Mim, and fate
  Is heard in the note | of the Gjallarhorn;
  Loud blows Heimdall, | the horn is aloft,
  In fear quake all | who on Hel-roads are

• In the Ganesha tu, is it perhaps a little early to mention peacocks + mango tree in the second line? I know that it’s a different story there, but those two things together had me at Kartikeya vs Ganesha (I did wait much longer to buzz though, so perhaps that’s not a problem)

• I think it’s a little surprising how much of the Nepthys tu seems to rely on her being the younger (specifically) sister of Isis? That seems to be referenced in three different clues. It’s a cool question in any case, I just think it narrows down the answerspace a bit quickly

Other things:

Perhaps the world history tu on Jesuits was a little easy to fraud on a group who was in Japan + “deusu”

Maybe a description acceptable for the textile / monochrome / Popova bonus? Saying “it’s also white” in response to the Malevich clue gets at the same thing

I didn’t think the Sumerian bonus was too hard, it seems quite reasonable with galla demons given

The Igbo tu was really cool! I wish I’d recognized the changeling spirit clue, that was definitely mentioned in Things Fall Apart – I do think that the later clues, excepting New Yam Festival, seem a lot harder than ideal for that late in the question though (I guess being able to establish it’s not the Yoruba, which I think you can do quite definitively by Chukwu, helps though)

I liked the GFP tu! Also quite enjoyed the nails art bonus (is it worth packetizing it somewhere else since there’s a DRC bonus in the same packet?), the Japan fashion tu, the Goryeo tu, the Berenice Abbott bonus, the touch tu, the Snow White bonus, the performing from memory music bonus (is mentioning Clara Schumann explicitly in the hard a little soft though?), the underwater panther bonus (I’d switch the medium and hard though), the smoking ss tu, and the Slavic myth tu. Medical schools in Malawi was pretty cool too

[mico]

Now that I’ve had the chance to look over the packets, I wanted to share my thoughts about the few questions I have the knowledge to comment on. As a whole, the vast majority of questions in this set had interesting ideas and were well-written. The sample I have comments on probably bring out the side of the set that needs more editing, but they are not representative of the set as a whole. They also are very nitpick-y.

Packet 1 TU 13: Malaysia – Really enjoyed this question! Much of the post World War II content in Southeast Asia focused on the Khmer Rouge or the Vietnam War, so I’m glad to see representation in some other countries, without the difficulty getting out of hand.
Packet 1 TU 15: Antarctica – Also enjoyed the cluing of some new ideas here. Thought the indicator of “this place” worked well in this question.
Packet 1 TU 20: Ireland – I personally subscribe to the school of thinking that using “this region” as an indicator should be the last option if nothing else works. I’ve seen “this region” refer to “the World’s Oceans,” “the Sahara,” and many things in between. The particular issue with “this region” is that it does not distinguish between physical and political entities. With regards to Ireland in particular, an indicator of “this modern-day country” (if the clues still hold as true) or even “this island” would work much better. In our room, this question got negged with “Ulster” since the player was unclear whether “this region” just referred to “Ireland” or if it wanted a specific historical county.
Packet 1 B 9: Philadelphia/Haiti/Azyle – This bonus exemplified part of a larger trend within the history of some bonus medium parts being on the easier side and some of the harder side. I think having more time to edit the set with help balance difficulty out, but, at this level, “Philadelphia” is probably a bit too easy if you mention a “1793 epidemic.” Also worth spending a bit of time confirming how relevant “Azyle” is as a bonus part, since I had never heard of it despite growing up in Pennsylvania and it seems to have never been mentioned before in any set.
Packet 1 B 14: Liao/Jurchen/Song – This bonus was well done, even though the answerlines seem fairly straightforward (asking for 2 dynasties and an ethnic group).

Packet 2 TU 9: Zapata – A well-written question that had interesting clues even if it exposed my ability to tell apart all the Mexican revolutionaries. Only thing I’d add is that the power mark could be moved to before “San Luis Potosi” since “Plan of” doesn’t really give much extra information due to the amount of various plans in revolutionary Mexico.
Packet 2 B 13: family/Ong/spirits – I’m a sucker for social science questions that I don’t know, but enjoy listening to, and I certainly enjoyed listening to this one!
Packet 2 B 18: Jeltoqsan/Kazakhstan/Nazarbayev – This was very interesting content. I’m not sure how convertible the hard part is, but it doesn’t detract from the bonus as a whole. I’m of the opinion that the question should prompt on “Nursultan” given that it clued him as “the namesake of the country’s capital.” If you have people guessing “Nursultan” based on knowledge from that clue alone, they deserve a prompt at minimum.

Packet 3 TU 2: Madagascar – I think this got mentioned before, but I agree with the opinion that Madagascar is overrepresented in Quiz Bowl history questions than it probably should be. Additionally, there are a limited amount of clues for Madagascar questions so all the previous TUs generally have many overlapping clues. If this question is kept, there probably needs to be a clue before “tangena.”
Packet 3 TU 13: Jesuits – This question is an example of the great job this set did with making relatively standard answerlines into interesting questions. Jesuits outside of Europe has come up many times before, but this question still seemed fresh and interesting.
Packet 3 TU 17: Chancellorsville – When I heard this in game, I thought it exceeded the intended difficulty of this set by a large margin. According to database searching, it has not been an answerline at the college level since 2014, but it was a bonus part at Pace NSC 2016. In terms of Civil War battles, there are many others that would be less controversial to TU. If this question wants to keep the Stonewall Jackson clue, turn it into a TU on the general himself with the Battle of Chancellorsville as a clue. The last clue pre-FTP noted Union armies pushed “back across the Rappahannock,” which is not even the most notable battle in which that action occurred!
Packet 3 B 6: Kenmu Restoration/Kamakura/Emperor of Japan – Another example of fairly standard answerlines written in a way that kept the clues interesting! Only thing I would note is that Kamakura may be a generous medium part at this level.
Packet 3 B 18: South Africa/Verwoerd/Bus boycott – As I think Tracy noted, Verwoerd as a medium part is absurdly difficult. He has been an answerline once at VCU open in 2009, and not since then!

Packet 4 TU 1: Metis – This is a tough answerline to pull off and I don’t think it quite got there. Anytime the question starts naming Canadian names in the first few sentences combined with “this group” makes many people just sit on Metis.
Packet 4 TU 15: SPD – Including the “GSG9” clue in the first sentence turns this TU into a waiting game before people hear more clues on telling apart which main German party the question wants. There’s no content lost by just changing “GSG9” to “counterterrorism forces” or something along those line.

Packet 5 TU 7: flowers – This was a really fun way to include history from multiple countries, some of which may be difficult to TU on their own.
Packet 5 TU 10: kings of Norway – There’s nothing in this TU that tells me this question would not function better with the same clues as a TU on “Norway”

Packet 6 TU 2: Dutch East Indies – Enjoyed this question’s content. I would wonder if there aren’t any additional clues that could be put before the power mark since the “Ethical Policy” and “Liberal Period,” while they are specific clues to the DEI, give the impression of vague clues that would not play as well in game. Regardless, the question is very fun!
Packet 6 TU 9: Tuscany – The existence of a directed prompt asking for “a broader region” illustrates the drawbacks of using “this region” as an indicator. Although, in this particular case, the Italian equivalents of American states are called regions, so I guess there’s not much that can be done.
Packet 6 TU 11: Macau – I don’t think there’s much pyramidality in this question since all the clues are very difficult. The clue before FTP is useless in my opinion since it will just lead to buzzer races with people guessing one or the other unless they have studied the relative sizes of Macau and Hong Kong.

Packet 7 TU 3: US Constitution – Need a directed prompt on “constitution” here to make sure people knowing it’s the American constitution don’t try to give a specific amendment or the bill of rights.
Packet 7 B 13: coal/Liberal/XR – This question seems pretty difficult all around. Also I think both the Canadian Liberal Party and the Australian Liberal Party were answerlines in the set, so may be something worth changing up.

Packet 8 TU 8: Eritrea – This question is way too hard for this level. I don’t think it’s particularly salvageable either since there are not many clues that could make Eritrea’s postwar history easier bar eliminating all its bordering countries in the question. I’m all for postwar world history and like the idea, but it’s just not going to work in my opinion. A question on Somalia or Ethiopia during the same period would have more success.
Packet 8 TU 9: Burger’s Daughter – As long as it’s ok to have two South African lit TUs, I really enjoyed playing this question!
Packet 8 TU 14: turnout – Agree with a prompt on “voter participation,” but I don’t see why “voter participation rate” cannot be outright accepted here.
Packet 8 TU 16: giving to charity – Super cool idea here!

Packet 9 TU 2: Cossacks – Don’t think “host” should be in power, or even right after the power break in this question. Could also do without dropping Bendery quite so early.

[TaylorH]

Packet 13, Q10 on Papua New Guinea: the clue on the film Dead Birds focuses on the Dani people, who live in Western New Guinea ie Indonesia, so it appears this clue is not correct. I like this question otherwise though!

[VSCOelasticity]

What I said in the Discord. It will be kind of scattered because I didn't give all feedback in Discord in packet order.

• glad to see subcutaneous rabbit illusion come up!
• drosophila genetics bonus was good treatment of well trodden stuf
• combustion tu cool
• the ports/reactance/resistance bonus was a rare boring physics bonus (addendum: I meant that the last two parts felt more "phoned in" than all other physics bonus)
• AC current as a phenomenon was a weird referrent for me
• never heard of a maxene(?) but seemed cool
• carnivorous plants i think got scooped? but cool idea
• time-invariant was good core stuff
• i think the tu on pericyclic should prompt with something about the transition state, bc "concerted" is also a mechanism
• prompt on saliva for snake venom was weird bc the preFTP said "predigestion" without (that i heard) [any] indication it was reptiles
• the "slowing down" part of the waves bonus felt weirdly phrased. i thought [it] wanted a named thing? we said something about an increase of amplitude bc we didn't process the clues
• heuristics is a good core CS TU
• after the leadin, the solar cell bonus part described a simple one as like a p doped layer on top of an n doped layer, which doesn't point to a unique semiconductor device IMO (again, lead-in aside)
• was there a clue about a Cantor map going from the unit interval to the unit cube? I can't find what that is on Google [Note: i had just misheard]
• GFP tossup was interesting approach to very canonical thing!
  coulomb's law bonus was fun
• also I thought the phrasing of kNN was weird for the first part of the ML/stats bonus, but I could have just been sleepy(edited)
• Re: Dead Souls TU. also the chapter where he reviews the list of peasants' names opens with the narrator of dead souls doing some pontificating, which threw me off. [addendum: thinking more about this, it could also be helpful to give one of the epithets of the peasants, or not the one peasant that he crosses off for being a woman]
• I also think the last bio bonus, with parts on rubisco and cytochrome c oxidase, seemed a bit easier than other bio bonuses. I wasn't sure what the hard part was
• The science has been pretty cool and interesting in general, but a few questions (including venom and proton decay as mentioned) seem to lack adequate middle clues for this difficulty level
• AC, diodes, and current analysis bonus all in the first 2-3 packets
• seemingly random [state from a] senator for a M part in the first packet seemed less than ideal for CE
• weird undirected prompt on prostitute for priest
• voodoo bonus seemed a bit easy
• like the way cauchy's integral formula was asked
• also there were two quantum bonuses in the last two packets (unless we read more packets than i realized and we read packet 10 last [Note: I was referring to the one on squeezed states and the one on Fourier transforms]
• bio tu and bonus in last packet were fun and good
• semiconductor fab bonus seemed good
• pseudogenes seems like a tough medium part [Note: it was actually the hard part lol, so I said anti-freeze proteins might be a tough medium]
• sorting bonus was confusing to me, but maybe i was just tired

[cwasims]

Thanks to Taylor, Annabelle, and Grant for the great feedback on some of my questions! Just to comment on a few of the concerns:

I realize the "deusu" clue might be a bit fraudable in the Jesuits tossup but I think it's pretty necessary to complete the clue and I'm not really all that averse to giving people buzzes if they're able to "figure out" something like that.

Although the "flowers" question did not necessarily link related events, my justification for including it was largely along the lines of what Grant said: it's pretty difficult to ask about a lot of these events without this kind of conceit. I will make the question slightly easier for future mirrors, though.

While the "kings of Norway" tossup could certainly be changed to a "Norway" tossup, I think it's good in a set to mix up the answer lines you're using as long as doing so isn't confusing (as I don't believe it is here), especially given that country answer lines are used extensively in almost every category. This answer line also feels more natural to me given that the entire question is about the kings specifically, and not really about the country they ruled.

I had actually thought the Dutch East Indies clues gave a fair amount of context besides the fairly bland names of the policies. It's actually not so easy to find a lot of clues on that area, so I think I will leave it as-is. (And sorry about the Indonesia negs! An embarrassing omission on my part.)

I admit I'm a bit surprised people so quickly intuited that the Métis tossup was on something Canadian based primarily on one Scottish name (from the sounds of it), but some of these concerns had been previously expressed to me so I'll make some changes.

I'll also make some changes to the "Ireland", "SPD", and "Cossack" tossups based on feedback and make the South Africa bonus easier (probably with Vorwoerd as a medium). I'm also glad people liked some of the more original answer lines like "ballots" and "bread".

[Jem Casey]

Packet 13, Q10 on Papua New Guinea: the clue on the film Dead Birds focuses on the Dani people, who live in Western New Guinea ie Indonesia, so it appears this clue is not correct. I like this question otherwise though!

oof, thanks for catching this!

[Santa Claus]

I enjoyed playing the myth yesterday! A few notes, which are really more nitpicks than actual issues.

[...]

• On the basilisk / rooster crow / gold bonus: fun idea! I answered cockatrice based on the weasel clue – I still think I was wrong but do want to point out that upon googling this, it seems some sources conflate the two. I’ve just spent a confusing time looking through the history on that and think the two are still distinct enough for it to be reasonable to just take basilisk, especially with the other clues, but thought I would at least mention this

• Also on the basilisk / rooster crow / gold bonus: I think it’s perhaps a bit easier than is optimal to confuse the Ragnarok roosters with Gjallarhorn. It’s definitely unique with the basilisk clue and I’m dreadful at Norse things, but from the translation of the Voluspa I’m looking at, Gjallarhorn also sounds pretty far and is described right after the roosters crowing (and I think it’d be a bit uncharitable to say that “beginning of Ragnarok” should be delineated that finely). Perhaps it might help to make it clear this sound is coming from three different sources?
  
  Fast move the sons | of Mim, and fate
  Is heard in the note | of the Gjallarhorn;
  Loud blows Heimdall, | the horn is aloft,
  In fear quake all | who on Hel-roads are

Basilisks and cockatrices seem to be frequently conflated, which makes sense considering how similar their mythology is. I attempted to only choose clues which were only associated with basilisks, but seems I missed slightly with weasels. I will look into finding a replacement.

I included the Norse clue for rooster crow to hopefully give a second avenue for conversion of roughly the same difficulty - I did not anticipate it causing confusion. I think that the context of the first bonus part and the first clue should be enough to disambiguate between answers of "crowing rooster" and "the sound of the Gjallarhorn", but ultimately that still relies on knowing that both those things happen at (roughly) the beginning of Ragnarok.

• I think it’s a little surprising how much of the Nepthys tu seems to rely on her being the younger (specifically) sister of Isis? That seems to be referenced in three different clues. It’s a cool question in any case, I just think it narrows down the answerspace a bit quickly

I think that Nephthys was likely the hardest myth tossup we had in the set - she's only been tossed up a small handful of times. As such, I tried to limit the clues to things which were linked to better known myths, for instance the lead-in being on the fifth epagomenal day and the later clues on her role in the myths of Osiris. A side-effect of this is that you frequently need to disambiguate her from her older sister Isis, who appears alongside her in various texts/legends. There are clues which uniquely point to Nephthys and only Nephthys, but I don't think anyone knows them and it seems like a much smaller ask to require people to know the two pieces of information of "which two goddesses did X" and "which one is the younger goddess". As a side note, the fact that almost every room converted this question (the majority of which in power) really speaks to how strong of a field this was for mythology.

the underwater panther bonus (I’d switch the medium and hard though)

It seems that several teams recognized "underwater panther" but I don't think I would go so far as to call it a medium (that reminds me that I should include "jaguar" as potential answer).

I chose the "X" bonus part because I felt it was a very distinctive aspect of how the Thunderbird is frequently depicted. It seems that it played hard for a medium, but hopefully it can be softened up by improving the directed prompt - most teams were able to get to "triangle", then couldn't get to either "X" or "hourglass", though I imagine part of that is because triangle is a natural guess for a shape.

I liked the GFP tu! Also quite enjoyed the [...] Slavic myth tu.

:)

What I said in the Discord. It will be kind of scattered because I didn't give all feedback in Discord in packet order.

• drosophila genetics bonus was good treatment of well trodden stuf
• combustion tu cool
• carnivorous plants i think got scooped? but cool idea
• heuristics is a good core CS TU
• GFP tossup was interesting approach to very canonical thing!

Thanks! The carnivorous plants tossup was actually proposed roughly a week before I playtested Regs and saw that they also had a carnivorous plants tossup. Due to stylistic differences between myself and Hasna there was almost no overlap in power though haha.

• i think the tu on pericyclic should prompt with something about the transition state, bc "concerted" is also a mechanism

Yeah, we'll try to improve the directed prompts for "pericyclic" a bit more. I also received information about how the MacMillan lab works with organocatalysis, which could have technically been an answer given the referrent - originally it had explicitly mentioned it but I ended up cutting it for space since I didn't think anyone would say that haha.

• prompt on saliva for snake venom was weird bc the preFTP said "predigestion" without (that i heard) [any] indication it was reptiles

On some level, I feel like you kinda have to put together some of the pieces together and realize that when you give an answer of "saliva" a few words after the question says "this substance contains hemorrhagins and alpha-neurotoxin" you should expect to be prompted. Nevertheless, that's a pretty harsh stance to take on a question that definitely was too hard, so as part of making it easier I'll make sure to namedrop a few organisms so people can figure it out.

• the "slowing down" part of the waves bonus felt weirdly phrased. i thought [it] wanted a named thing? we said something about an increase of amplitude bc we didn't process the clues

I'll throw in a "description acceptable" there for sure, but it seems like a lot of people gave answers that just repeated what the question said about shoaling (i.e. the wave gets taller, steeper, etc) so it seems the clues just weren't evocative enough. I thought I described a lot of things that indicate that the wave is changing velocity (it refracts towards headlands, it conserves energy while increasing in amplitude, thus slowing down) but I'll look into changing them.

• also I thought the phrasing of kNN was weird for the first part of the ML/stats bonus, but I could have just been sleepy(edited)

It's hard to describe kNN without saying distance, but I thought that the combination of "average the output of a subset of the training set" and "namesake constant" would have been enough for people to figure it out - maybe not.

• I also think the last bio bonus, with parts on rubisco and cytochrome c oxidase, seemed a bit easier than other bio bonuses. I wasn't sure what the hard part was

I think you just know a lot about cytochrome c oxidase :) That being said, cytochrome c oxidase played easier than is desirable and RuBisCO definitely played as the easy part while splicing did not, so I think I'll flip the tags on those two and make splicing a bit tougher.

• pseudogenes seems like a tough medium part [Note: it was actually the hard part lol, so I said anti-freeze proteins might be a tough medium]

Antifreeze proteins being in the blood of icefish is something that I think people tend to learn from pop sci angles, but I feel like I gave a lot of context for what sort of thing a protein which binds to "crystalline water and [inhibits its] growth" in icefish could be doing.

• sorting bonus was confusing to me, but maybe i was just tired

The hard part of this was meant to be primarily converted via reasoning rather than knowledge of network-implementations of sorting algorithms so it might have been a bit hard to parse. If you have any specific notes after looking at the question, I'd be interesting in knowing.

Notes jotted down by packet/round:

R5
-The wave science question seemed quite hard

I've already given some notes on the medium part of this bonus, but I will not apologize for asking about a very descriptively-named approximation that forms the basis of basically all oceanography/meteorology. >:(

[kidgib]

Hey! I enjoyed this set! I wanted to ask if I could see the "epilepsy" and "Eatonville" tossup. Generally, my only complaint was that some of the literature—like these two tossups—were unnecessarily convoluted. I don't understand the philosophy behind tossups like these. Why not make it something much simpler that's more evocative from the respective novels (say the actual novel or the author)? I hope this doesn't come across as some salty tirade—I was just confused and a little frustrated about tossups like these.

[caroline]

Hey! I enjoyed this set! I wanted to ask if I could see the "epilepsy" and "Eatonville" tossup. Generally, my only complaint was that some of the literature—like these two tossups—were unnecessarily convoluted. I don't understand the philosophy behind tossups like these. Why not make it something much simpler that's more evocative from the respective novels (say the actual novel or the author)? I hope this doesn't come across as some salty tirade—I was just confused and a little frustrated about tossups like these.

Sure! The TL:DR of it is "we asked about it this way because it's important literary knowledge."

Both these tossups have the underlying philosophy of testing specific knowledge of an aspect of an author's work (as many common links do) instead of just matching clue -> author/work. This tended to lower conversion somewhat, and it's certainly not a broader philosophy I would apply to all my questions—I think it's probably the lowest level of accessibility I would be comfortable for a literature tossup to have at this level—but conversion has still been pretty reasonable from what I've seen (with many people getting good buzzes!) and I'm content with how they've played.

8. A fictional leader of this town describes the “Sun-Maker” while unveiling a street lamp. In a story set in this town, Joe stops tossing silver dollars at his wife after he discovers her cheating on him with the owner of an ice cream parlor. The protagonist of a novel is forced to keep her hair covered with a headwrap in a general store in this town managed by her husband, who (*) oversees the funeral for Matt Bonner’s yellow mule. This town is the setting of the short story “The Gilded Six Bits.” An author described leaving this town in the essay “How It Feels To Be Colored Me.” After the death of Jody Starks, Tea Cake leaves this town for Belle Glade with Janie Crawford. Much of Their Eyes Were Watching God is set in, for 10 points, what Florida town, the hometown of Zora Neale Hurston?
ANSWER: Eatonville, Florida

Hurston's hometown, which influenced a ton of her work and is where she set a lot of it, is important. More specifically, the tossup emphasizes Eatonville is important to Hurston's larger body of work instead of just "what town is Their Eyes set in"—from this tossup alone, she's written about it in a short story, an autobiographical essay, and her most famous novel, though she's also included it in many more works. I also thought that was important enough I prefer that it's on the town specifically rather than, for example, Florida (that, and the possible answerspace for "this state" at this level isn't very large).

17. This medical condition floods a character’s soul “with intense inner light” while he is attacked by a man with a knife in a hotel stairway. A man worries about this condition after his love interest tells him not to talk about the idea “beauty will save the world.” The consumptive Hippolyte reveals he hates a character with this condition in an “Essential Statement.” The murder of (*) Dimitri’s father is committed by Smerdyakov, who has this medical condition. A man who breaks a Chinese vase is forced to end his speech at a dinner party due to this condition. After discovering Rogozhin murdered Nastasya, a man returns to a Swiss sanatorium where he was treated for this condition. For 10 points, name this neurological disorder that afflicted both Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Prince Myshkin in his novel The Idiot.
ANSWER: epilepsy

Epilepsy is a really important aspect of Dostoyevsky's work; he suffered from the condition and wrote about characters with epilepsy in six of his novels (I can't link it because it's a paywalled article but Iniesta's Epilepsy in the process of artistic creation of Dostoevsky is an interesting read). I focused specifically on The Idiot with a lone clue from TBK because it's the most prominent in there, and focused most of the clues around times Myshkin is thinking about his condition rather than just "this thing happened to a character and he is also epileptic," to help reward people who have read the novel closely and are (hopefully) equipped to place the clues in context rather than just "this happened in The Idiot." The first sentence describes one of the two seizures Myshkin has onscreen in the novel (the other being the Chinese vase incident) and the second when Myshkin spends all night worrying about possibly having a seizure at the dinner party.

I will also note both tossups are on "core" elements of highly canonical works, which I realize may have made the tossups feel more frustrating, since many players will think something like, "okay, I know this work / can tell you at least a little bit about it but I can't tell you the specific thing this question wants even though I know this book/author." That's an irritating feeling and I sympathize with it a lot, but I don't think it's a reason that we should be writing yet another tossup on The Idiot or whatever (although there is nothing wrong with doing so) as opposed to wanting people to know more about the themes and motifs of a major work with a lot of real-world importance and scholarship (and there is a lot of academic scholarship on both the topics tossed up!), and which has been a canon staple for a long time.

[Votre Kickstarter Est Nul]

I'm just flipping through my notebook to give some scattered thoughts, hopefully it is of some use. I had a good time yesterday, so thanks for the set! Also some of my comments may come on topics I'm not super well informed on so sorry if any of the comments seem dumb, they may well be (though I'll try and indicate that when applicable).

Packet 1
- Christmas seemed cool, don't know anything about it though.

Packet 2
- I liked the crown Q
- Art seemed hard. I know nothing about jazz, but Art Blakey as the "thing that should let most teams get it" seems a tad hard. Especially since the other Jazz TU I can recall was Esperanza Spalding (which, hard? or I'm being dumb?), it seemed like the jazz was just hard.
- NC State said fruit fly for drosophila and was not given the answer (mod said it wasn't in the answerline). I know no science but fruit fly should be acceptable if not at least promptable right?
- San Fran seemed an easy medium part, if not at least cause it's very guessable as the last part and therefore with all the context of 1960s gay rights activism that isn't NY cause Stonewall is the middle part.
- Perhaps this is very stupid, but is it really wrong to say "global temperature" for the "climate" part of little ice age bonus? I get that, scientifically speaking, they're not synonymous, but it felt like the info tested was "do you know these things have been attributed to it being colder then" and getting there then not getting points was sad.
- Harper's bonus was amusing
- MIT is technically in Cambridge right? but Lahiri's stories tend to be in Boston? Look tbh I have no clue if Cambridge is it's own city and I'm too old to learn that now, but Darren and I were both momentarily struggling with that (though given how we answered I assume both are acceptable)

Packet 3
- coin seemed cool
- dropping moving back to Martinique midway through Negritude seemed to place it a bit too specifically geographically (since I also think contextually it was clearly 20th century)
- question was fraudable at "one of two responses but only one is expected" which I think was last line of power. Hard to think of something that isn't "yes or no" as those answers.
- Afrikaans felt very easy as a middle (this other south african language that is european in origin")
- the Moliere hard part about the opera made me chuckle
- deathbed edition seemed interesting

Packet 4
- "group" for Metis seemed weird to me. It didn't cause any issues gameplay-wise, but as far as I understand the Metis are a people, and the "group" here was moreso "Red River Rebellers" or something to that effect. Seems fine to go with "these people" here. It was gotten at the Wolseley clue, but I didn't think before then it was too obvious it was Canada so I don't think these people is too obvious.
- ballot seemed dope
- the ambiphd clue was very memorable to me when I read WAVF
- Suleiman seemed like it clued cool things before Itamar answered it 10% in (same with Elephants)
- The Ellington part seemed worded a bit confusingly? It wasn't my bonus so I was a little checked out, but Itamar seemed to also think it was looking for a Japanese musician influenced by Ellington and not vice versa.
- the "passport" bonus part was very long. You can cut the whole "he won the Nobel for it" since either the player known was Nansen passports are or not and that clue won't help, and it's not a funny anecdote or wild fact that I think merits eating that much space in an easy part (or medium part? idr, but Whites was probably the easy wasn't it)
- Maybe this is stupid, but "this sort of scale which was (if you're counting as you listen) 5 notes" seemed a bit figure out-able just by counting.
- Philly seemed easy as a middle.
- can't say I knew what was happening before Bernays clues, but the smoking Q seemed dope

Packet 5
- praying seemed very fraudable, but these TUs often seem that way even when they actually aren't, so sorry if this is off base. But the first line seemed to narrow it down to only a few things, and right after it you have a clue about doing it as you wake then "the number of times you do it was reduced." Again, this may be very stupid.
- I'd move tukul huts before villagization in the Ethiopia TU. I'm aware what I'm about to say it somewhat stupid, but I buzzed on villagization and said Tanzania, which I think is the most famous instance of that, and the fact that differentiates the two instances is those huts, which comes after; move the huts before villagization and then by the time the "thing that applies to a few countries to varying degrees of fame" will be unique when you hear it, not after.
- Also getting to FTP in Ethiopia would allow to to get an Ethiopia bonus part later (I'm forgetting right now which, but I'll note it when I get there)
- epilepsy seemed cool, though I still think probably a bit too hard, but eh, you get a few of those in a tournament and this seemed a solid use of it.
- the Wells TU was fun, can't say I know much about her.
- Glasgow/Chairs/princess was fun and well executed (I think. I know nothing about the Glasgow part, so maybe that's the worst bonus part in history and I can't speak on it. Seems unlikely though. Cool bonus)

Packet 6
- TWA was maybe a line too early in airlines? Maybe not. I don't really know.
- Fearless girl seems very famous, as does the bull, so I think you could maybe stick a new end of power clue in the middle, then clue Fearless Girl, then have the FTP be the bull? I sorta think you'd get 90% or so conversion like that, and have a bit less of a end of power race on hips.
- I know no food. Tuscany seemed cool.
- Wordsworth was cool.
- cool submarines bonus

Packet 7
- Having "Islamic philosopher influenced by Artistotle who also worked on medicine" all in power for Avicenna seemed very easy. May also be my ignorance on these matters speaking, since maybe that doesn't point to Avicenna quite as much as I think.
- cool lesbianism TU
- ancestors was insanely fraudable and played like that in the rooms all the rutgers teams played. Basically 8 lines of "these people venerated in asia by holidays that aren't divine"
- L'oreal was cool
- disabled people was cool
- as mentioned earlier, Esperanza Spalding seems very hard! Especially since Jazz is small as a category, and the other TU was Art, this feels far too hard without having the same sort of reasoning that could be applied to something like epilepsy (there are 1000000 lit TUs we can throw you a screwball).
- You could get this Ethiopia part from the TU earlier)
- why u gotta make me know Numidia is in Mauretania. that's mean to my refusal to know things about the ancient world.
- objectification/Nussbaum/Dworkin and McKinnie(?) seemed hard relative to most of the bonuses in this tourney (mainly having Nussbaum as a medium)
- ghost characters bonus good
- nice Chanel bonus. In general, I enjoyed the fashion in this set both in frequency of coming up and in execution. Whoever was responsible for both/either of these things, nice!
- oh boy about to make myself seem stupid: I've always conceived of Mannerism as emerging in the transition away from the High Renaissance, and therefore was thrown off a bit by calling Pontormo Renaissance when he's a Mannerist. Now, I know Renaissance (the time period) and (early/high) Renaissance(s) are different things, and I wouldn't have converted this anyway, but I guess when I heard Renaissance in an art bonus I think it means the artist belonged to the early or high renaissance artistic styles, and not just lived at the time. This may be very very dumb and let opponents who play me in the future know they need not fear me. alas.
- Maori/Soprano/microtonal seemed tough

Packet 8
- liede seems a little hard as an easy
- Jericho wasn't exactly a repeat, but the Arc of the Covenant Q did give you a biblical city that famously had walls and then this bonus part is which biblical city famously had walls.
- "clay" not being accepted (or prompted) for ceramics seemed questionable to me, since it was not super clear in the phrasing at game speed that you're looking for what comes out rather than what goes in a kiln. This happened to at least one other team, so I'm hoping I'm not super dumb.
- I liked the Clockwork Orange hard part

Packet 9
- nice masks tossup
- Senegal on Sembene and "Telephone Conversations" (or was it Kongi's Harvest) both seemed like hard middles relative to many of the middles in this set (for instance, it is preceded by Poitiers as a middle). Obviously variability in difficulty is inevitable, but those two just felt like middles that were in line with a slightly harder conception of the tournament (this is much truer to me of the Soyinka bonus than the Sembene, which isn't very difficult, but world film also ain't the most famous thing, so I figure maybe it applies there too).
- Windsor/Kennedy/Due Process felt easy
- I liked Siddal/Ophelia/Cameron alot. learned about Cameron from an LSAT passage. Thanks for validating some boring reading comp work.
- Know Nothing felt like a soft middle part.

That's all I played. Hopefully at least some of these comments are helpful. Sorry I use both middle part and medium part interchangeably, though I tried to be clear when I said middle part as in second part of the bonus and not middle in difficulty.

[Votre Kickstarter Est Nul]

8. A fictional leader of this town describes the “Sun-Maker” while unveiling a street lamp. In a story set in this town, Joe stops tossing silver dollars at his wife after he discovers her cheating on him with the owner of an ice cream parlor. The protagonist of a novel is forced to keep her hair covered with a headwrap in a general store in this town managed by her husband, who (*) oversees the funeral for Matt Bonner’s yellow mule. This town is the setting of the short story “The Gilded Six Bits.” An author described leaving this town in the essay “How It Feels To Be Colored Me.” After the death of Jody Starks, Tea Cake leaves this town for Belle Glade with Janie Crawford. Much of Their Eyes Were Watching God is set in, for 10 points, what Florida town, the hometown of Zora Neale Hurston?
ANSWER: Eatonville, Florida

Hurston's hometown, which influenced a ton of her work and is where she set a lot of it, is important. More specifically, the tossup emphasizes Eatonville is important to Hurston's larger body of work instead of just "what town is Their Eyes set in"—from this tossup alone, she's written about it in a short story, an autobiographical essay, and her most famous novel, though she's also included it in many more works. I also thought that was important enough I prefer that it's on the town specifically rather than, for example, Florida (that, and the possible answerspace for "this state" at this level isn't very large).

I'm not sure this last point is true. If the theme is "an author writes about a state she is famously from" it could be any state where a famous author is famously from (like Steinbeck in California, Roth in NJ, etc). Besides the answerspace being reasonably large enough, this tossup doesn't make it fraudably clear it is any specific state or author (in the same way a tossup on this Pope at this level can only really be a handful of things, but if it clues encyclicals that aren't obviously written by a modern pope or an italian pope or whatever, it doesn't much matter that the answerspace is only x popes; to buzz the player still needs to know who wrote that encyclical).

Here is this tossup quickly rewritten on Florida (I italicized the wording I changed):

A fictional leader in this state describes the “Sun-Maker” while unveiling a street lamp. In a story set in this state, Joe stops tossing silver dollars at his wife after he discovers her cheating on him with the owner of an ice cream parlor. The protagonist of a novel is forced to keep her hair covered with a headwrap in a general store in this state managed by her husband, who (*) oversees the funeral for Matt Bonner’s yellow mule. This state is the setting of the short story “The Gilded Six Bits.” An author described leaving a town in this state in the essay “How It Feels To Be Colored Me.” After the death of Jody Starks, Tea Cake leaves that town in this state for Belle Glade with Janie Crawford. Much of Their Eyes Were Watching God is set in, for 10 points, what state's town of Eatonville, the homestate of Zora Neale Hurston?
ANSWER: Florida

With a little more reworking (since I do think your TU is a good and well written TU), I think it could accomplish the same goals of making it clear it's important where Hurston is from and what she wrote about it while also increasing its convertibility. I'm curious what the conversion of this was. If you or anyone on the set has that data I'd be curious to see. My instinct is that the powers and middle of the tossup 10s would be somewhat similar to how this Florida TU played, but that the Florida TU would generate more buzzes on the Tea Cake line and the FTP. I'm also making a prediction within the world of comparison with this alternate TU cause I don't know the early clues, so I have no idea if in either instance it got/would get powered alot or very little, 10d alot or a little, etc.

Of course, it's perfectly reasonable to ratchet up the difficulty a little in specific places for "importance" or whatnot reasons. But I do think this tournament had its fair share of decently tough lit TUs (Burghers Daughter, Kobo Abe, epilepsy, lesbianism, mad woman in the attic, off the top of my head, all seemed tough either in answerline or in clues, and there were a few more I think that seemed tough on standard answerlines). I get that it's important that she's from Eatonville, but when (imo) such small tradeoffs are at play, it's worth going for the more converted answerline.

EDIT: I don't mean to misstate the entire reason you gave as "the answerspace is small" since it's a parenthetical remark appended to another sentence, though I hope the post somewhat touches on the other reasoning even if it's more directly a response to this. Once again, if it wasn't clear in my other posts too, I thought there was alot of cool literature!

[caroline]

I'm not sure this last point is true. If the theme is "an author writes about a state she is famously from" it could be any state where a famous author is famously from (like Steinbeck in California, Roth in NJ, etc).

That's fair; it's probably just my bias against literary state tossups speaking. At the risk of straying too far into "everything has to be original and new and innovative" territory, my experience has been that I usually understand it's important Steinbeck wrote a lot about California and by the 4th time I hear it, it's pretty predictable.

With a little more reworking (since I do think your TU is a good and well written TU), I think it could accomplish the same goals of making it clear it's important where Hurston is from and what she wrote about it while also increasing its convertibility.

I don't agree with that — Hurston being from Eatonville, which is a town in Florida (as opposed to just being from Florida), is important while Steinbeck being from a specific town in California (as opposed to just writing a lot about certain regions of California) or Roth from a specific town in New Jersey is not that important.

My instinct is that the powers and middle of the tossup 10s would be somewhat similar to how this Florida TU played, but that the Florida TU would generate more buzzes on the Tea Cake line and the FTP. I'm also making a prediction within the world of comparison with this alternate TU cause I don't know the early clues, so I have no idea if in either instance it got/would get powered alot or very little, 10d alot or a little, etc.

I think I probably agree with this, but I'm fine with having a couple TUs with lower conversion.

Of course, it's perfectly reasonable to ratchet up the difficulty a little in specific places for "importance" or whatnot reasons. But I do think this tournament had its fair share of decently tough lit TUs (Burghers Daughter, Kobo Abe, epilepsy, lesbianism, mad woman in the attic, off the top of my head, all seemed tough either in answerline or in clues, and there were a few more I think that seemed tough on standard answerlines). I get that it's important that she's from Eatonville, but when (imo) such small tradeoffs are at play, it's worth going for the more converted answerline.

From what I've seen of literature's conversion overall (having staffed/spectated 3 sites so far), literature conversion has been reasonably high, powered noticeably more than other categories, and probably easier than most other categories in this set. Also, to nitpick at a couple examples you listed, Regionals (a similar difficulty set) tossed up Wide Sargasso Sea this year, which feels pretty clearly harder to me than a Bertha Mason tossup where maybe 5 clues are about WSS, and I don't think lesbianism skewed particularly difficult as an answerline, though I suppose it clued a few more extracanonical works than the average TU. I just don't think the literature in this tournament was particularly difficult either relative to the rest of the set or to its target difficulty.

Thanks for the feedback overall, by the way, it was very helpful! Also particularly glad you liked the Siddal and Glasgow bonuses, as the author of those and a first-time art writer. :-)

[Votre Kickstarter Est Nul]

response to above post that I'm too lazy to do the effort of breaking down into bit by bit.

I mostly agree with what you've said. On the Florida point I still mostly feel that the importance of Eatonville (I know nothing of Hurston, so I'm arguing from a point of ignorance which I'm happy to have dismissed as ignorance and nothing more) isn't a strong enough factor to go with the harder answerline, but the explanation is certainly reasonable.

I'm intrigued by the notion that the literature was powered noticeably more, and am curious if it could just be a sample size issue that I noticed the exact opposite (I'm speculating, hopefully not unfairly, that spectating makes a person more likely to be watching solid to good teams). My different but super biased sample is myself and Darren vs. mostly middling to weaker teams (I don't mean to be mean, but, for the purposes of this, kinda have to be). We saw one literature question powered between both teams in our 9 rounds (Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf) between both teams combined.

Obviously the second issue here—that powers come in small enough numbers that the data is nigh useless on this scale—factors in too, but for reference there were more history powers (same with science, which was basically handicapped by myself and darren being useless on it). This is mostly academic at this point, since I think the literature was pretty strong as a category, but if there are stats out there either just from our mirror as a whole or a combination of the mirrors thusfar I'd be very interested to see them. My impression is that some of the questions I pointed to (lesbianism, bertha mason) weren't hard in answerline but rather in content (fwiw, a brief scan of my Regionals notes just gives me the impression WSS was one of the hardest lit TUs at Regionals). I'm therefore a little surprised to hear it powered alot since my impression of answerlines like those is that their conversion would be standard and powers a bit low, especially at the non-Playtest mirror given the playtest mirror's strength.

[caroline]

Yes, I do have that kind of data but I won’t reveal specific numbers due to certain constraints (at this time, I don’t believe the data will be made available to non-editors/writers). Literature was on average powered more than other categories (tied for the highest power percentage out of all categories) and in general buzzed on earlier — I’m sorry I can’t tell you more than that!

(Edit to clarify this holds for the Mid-Atlantic site specifically, and mostly the playtest site as well.)

[Mike Bentley]

Yes, I do have that kind of data but I won’t reveal specific numbers due to certain constraints (at this time, I don’t believe the data will be made available to non-editors/writers). Literature was on average powered more than other categories (tied for the highest power percentage out of all categories) and in general buzzed on earlier — I’m sorry I can’t tell you more than that!

(Edit to clarify this holds for the Mid-Atlantic site specifically, and mostly the playtest site as well.)

Curious to learn more about the rational for collecting the data but not making it publicly available. (To be clear, this is genuine curiosity and not "Why are you not releasing this data!?!?!")

[Votre Kickstarter Est Nul]

Yes, I do have that kind of data but I won’t reveal specific numbers due to certain constraints (at this time, I don’t believe the data will be made available to non-editors/writers). Literature was on average powered more than other categories (tied for the highest power percentage out of all categories) and in general buzzed on earlier — I’m sorry I can’t tell you more than that!

(Edit to clarify this holds for the Mid-Atlantic site specifically, and mostly the playtest site as well.)

Interesting. Thanks for letting me know that! Guess it just wasn't up our alley but thanks for the data and the explanations on the various things and questions!

[Smuttynose Island]

Maybe I'm the only one dumb enough to be affected by this, but I was disappointed when my answer of "chorus" wasn't prompted on the Furies bonus part. I knew the question was about the chorus/the Furies in The Eumenides, but wasn't sure if they wanted Furies or chorus. I picked poorly.

EDIT: Big shout out to whoever wrote the "tea" TU. It was a great idea. I've been waiting for a TU on "tea ceremonies" for ages now! Thank you for delivering.

Second EDIT: The D. Melanogaster bonus part in Packet 2 should prompt on or accept "fruit fly" and "vinegar fly."

[Belgium]

I didn't play (only modded) and don't have the brainpower to remember specific tossups very much, but thanks for finally cluing the Liège Revolution <3

[Santa Claus]

Second EDIT: The D. Melanogaster bonus part in Packet 2 should prompt on or accept "fruit fly" and "vinegar fly."

Jeez don't know how I forgot to incorporate this after the previous mirror - will make sure to add this now.

[MMSANCHEZ]

Really enjoyed the Literature from this tournament! I thought Workshop did a really good job clueing interesting and less canonical content while still hitting target difficulty. Personally I didn't find the Eatonville tossup at all confusing, and I think at this difficulty it's not unreasonable to expect people to know the city Hurston is from/Their Eyes Were Watching God is set. The epilepsy in the works of Dostoevsky was a cool concept, well executed, but it did give me some pause before buzzing, questioning whether epilepsy was something that would be tossed up.

I have a few minor comments on power marking. I felt in a few places it was a little bit stingy and in slightly weird spots.

From the RUR tossup: "Nana encourages burning a manuscript these characters need to survive while speaking to a (*) member of the
League of Humanity."
In the game I buzzed on "survive" but the reader ended up bleeding until "member." To me it seems a little bit weird to put the power mark there instead of "League" or "Humanity," which are substantive clues people could buzz on, whereas "member" is not.

From the WAOVW tossup: "One character in this play shoots a gun that fires a parasol before (*) arguing about the color
of his son’s eyes."
In the game there was a multiple way buzzer race on "parasol," but the buzz didn't end up being recognized until "arguing." Personally I think that "parasol" should be the word out of power, but if it were to be kept in power, moving the power mark to "son's" or "eyes," seems a more natural place than "arguing."

Power marking is a somewhat minor issue, but I think with online play bleeding extra words is unfortunately unavoidable. Having power marks at points where substantive clues are given helps minimize scenarios where people buzz on the last real clue within power, but they lose the power because of bleed, or even because the took an extra couple words to process a clue they knew.

Overall, Workshop was a really fun set, and any critiques I had didn't take away from my enjoyment of it.

[Shahar S.]

Could I see the sexual selection tossup? It was a cool idea but I got led on a spiral of prompts on the lek clue and wanted to read the question before commenting further.

[warum]

Here is my feedback on the first 5 packets. I will probably do another post for packets 6-10 later.

1
Concrete TU was cool
Othello TU was impressively "fresh" on a very core work
Japan TU was fun
Scordatura seems easy for a hard part
Pottery bonus was cool
Vodou/Sioux/Orishas was quite easy relative to the set
Blank pages bonus was super cool

2
For the "combustion" TU, the clue "This process is coupled with gas chromatography..." led me to buzz with "mass spectrometry" because GC-MS is a very common procedure. It didn't make sense with the previous clues, but I'd still suggest trying to improve the phrasing of that clue.
Tossing up nuclear reactors in history was a great idea, although I didn't buzz because I wasn't sure whether it was reactors or enrichment plants
Crowns in art seemed hard
Mattachine/Stonewall/San Francisco seemed a slightly on the easy side
Mars bonus calling Mars a "region" was very confusing to me

3
In the "carnivory" TU, the clue "Stricter definitions of this trait exclude species that rely on the feces of mutualistic hemipterans (“hem-IP-ter-ins”) like the assassin bug" is ambiguous when read aloud: are other species relying on assassin bug feces, or is the assassin bug an example of a species that relies on feces?
Regression TU leadin does not disambiguate between regression and regularization
Questions TU was fun
Globalization bonus was cool
"Yogic flying" was very fun to learn about through a bonus

4
Social science TU on "smoking" was a great idea
Knowledge tossup was fun
I said "ocean currents" for "oceans" and was prompted; the mod said the answerline was unclear about whether that answerline should be prompted or accepted outright
Concerto focusing on Baroque music was very fun
Yom Kippur bonus was fun; I liked the way it tested knowledge of Jewish practices in a fresh way
I found "copper" to be easier than "Butte" (opposite of the way they were labeled in the packet)

5
Proton decay TU seemed very hard relative to the set
Venom TU was fun
Dolls TU was cool
The large number of acceptable answers in the "motion" TU seems less then ideal, but I don't know how that could be fixed
Coleridge-Taylor/Royal Albert Hall/Dvorak bonus was extremely good, in terms of both choice of topics and execution

[Shahar S.]

Could I see the sexual selection tossup? It was a cool idea but I got led on a spiral of prompts on the lek clue and wanted to read the question before commenting further.

Sorry, didn't realize packets were posted elsewhere when I posted this. After reading it over I personally feel like the answerline would probably work better if the question was description acceptable but I recognize that solution can also create ambiguity.

[Santa Claus]

Could I see the sexual selection tossup? It was a cool idea but I got led on a spiral of prompts on the lek clue and wanted to read the question before commenting further.

Sorry, didn't realize packets were posted elsewhere when I posted this. After reading it over I personally feel like the answerline would probably work better if the question was description acceptable but I recognize that solution can also create ambiguity.

I don't really understand how you make a question on "sexual selection" description acceptable, but I do see your point that several of the clues point to too wide of an answer space. I think I'll have this include a directed prompt asking "What more general process is that part of?" on answers like "mating" and hopefully this will help the prompt chains end in positive points instead of negative ones.

Mars bonus calling Mars a "region" was very confusing to me

3
In the "carnivory" TU, the clue "Stricter definitions of this trait exclude species that rely on the feces of mutualistic hemipterans (“hem-IP-ter-ins”) like the assassin bug" is ambiguous when read aloud: are other species relying on assassin bug feces, or is the assassin bug an example of a species that relies on feces?
Regression TU leadin does not disambiguate between regression and regularization

I said "ocean currents" for "oceans" and was prompted; the mod said the answerline was unclear about whether that answerline should be prompted or accepted outright

The full answerline was the much more region-like "surface of Mars", though Mars was all that was needed. Overall I'm surprised by how few people have been able to figure out this bonus - I feel like it is very strongly implied that it is not on Earth. Would the descriptor "place" be more appropriate?

Thanks for pointing out the ambiguous phrasing - the intention was the first, but I can definitely see the second reading now.

Will accept regularization before the first clue that rules it out.

"Ocean currents" should have been accepted because you said the word "ocean", but it is very understandable that a moderator would not know exactly what to do in that intersection of acceptable and promptable answers - I'll add that in explicitly.

I'll also separately note that I'm going to prompt on "metrics" for the question on "heuristics" and try to reword it a little to dissuade that buzz.

[warum]

Here are my comments on the remaining packets I played at the West Coast mirror on March 6.

6
"Sequencing" and "airline industry" were both cool ideas
Tuscany TU seems a bit cliffy on Cosimo
Dirac delta function TU was fun
In the "twin prime" conjecture bonus, I don't really understand the clue "which is about as difficult as Goldbach’s." I'm no mathematician but it seems like a very qualitative statement that is of limited clueing value.
In the biofilms bonus, I was confused by the pronoun "this factor" for "presence of antibiotics."
Submarines/Yeltsin/Nautilus bonus was cool

7
For some reason, I was prompted on "kami" for "ancestor spirits" although it is not in the answer line and I don't think it should have been prompted.
"Disabled persons" was a cool tossup
It seemed weird to have the L'Oreal TU and the perfume bonus in the same packet
"British Expeditionary Force" seemed like a very hard answerline
Esperanza Spalding TU was fine, but definitely the hardest music TU in the set, in my opinion. Would not have wanted to play multiple music TUs of that difficulty.
In the Ethiopian religion bonus, the phrase "That abbess was named Walatta, or “daughter of,” this Biblical figure" confused me. Because the quotation marks are not perceptible when the phrase is read aloud, I couldn't tell whether Walatta means "daughter of Peter" or whether her full name was "Walatta Peter."

8
Sexual selection, halo effect, and Cantor tossups were cool
Schubert wrote more than two works called Standchen (e.g. one in Schwanengesang); it might be good to note that the ones mentioned in the bonus are not the only ones
Underwater panther/thunderbird/Ocean seemed hard
Wine chemistry bonus was super fun

9
I found the "masks" tossup transparent, maybe because of the Modigliani clue being similar to clues about Picasso that are more famous.
"Eight" music TU seemed hard
Coulomb's law bonus sounded very interesting to learn about

10
Next To Normal bonus was extremely hard.
In the phytoremediation bonus, it said "translocation occurs between their leaves and their roots." I interpreted this phrase as meaning "something is being moved from the leaves to the roots," but in hindsight I think it's the opposite way around. There should be a clearer way of phrasing whatever the actual definition is.

[caroline]

Maybe I'm the only one dumb enough to be affected by this, but I was disappointed when my answer of "chorus" wasn't prompted on the Furies bonus part. I knew the question was about the chorus/the Furies in The Eumenides, but wasn't sure if they wanted Furies or chorus. I picked poorly.

Ah, my bad about that—I think generally questions about the Furies haven't accepted/prompted chorus before, but it's definitely reasonable to include a prompt and I did write the question with their function as the chorus in mind. Will add for future mirrors.

I have a few minor comments on power marking. I felt in a few places it was a little bit stingy and in slightly weird spots.

Thanks for the comments and attention to detail! You're right that it needs more attention, particularly in an all-online quizbowl time where lag is inevitable; I'll take a second look at the powermarking on the lit tossups.

[Zealots of Stockholm]

Misc thoughts from the rounds I played:

R1:
Vietnam War tossup felt potentially transparent (mentions a Stevens poem quite early, that narrows you down a lot)
really like this daughters in art tu
I am a noted hater of questions on characters, but I wonder if pantagruel was negged with gargantua a lot
Adorno tossup felt really top heavy (teammate knows quite a bit about him but we raced on poetry after Auschwitz clue)
Like this Japanese fashion tu
bonus 1 on lazarus is interesting (and very fair difficulty wise)
Really liked this tobacco in religion bonus even though we botched the hard part :/
really good O'keeffe bonus

R2:
I really liked this Igbo religion tossup. Probably a pretty hard tossup for the field but I was able to power from having read a lot of Nigerian lit. Cool idea!
Even though I negged it (should've actually read "The Gilded Six Bits" when it got assigned to me!), I think this Eatonville tossup is an excellent idea/way to ask about some of Hurston's other work without just tossing her up
Tossup on crowns seems both hard and was a kinda frustrating playing experience since I said skulls right before the tossup ruled that answer out. Cool idea, though
I think this E Browning bonus is good but its weird to me that the Slave Ship came up in this bonus and a tossup. I think there was some other repeated content in the set too
good Lahiri bonus
like this US history bonus but maybe Mattachine is on the softer side for a hard
good photo bonus
Book of Disquiet seems maybe like a tough middle?
Ma Rainey feels more likely to be gotten from lit/movie knowledge given the recent Netflix adaptation of Wilson's play
this identity bonus is super cool/interesting

R3:
Forster tossup is clued well throughout, would personally put one of room with a view/passage to india at the end but eh
coins tossup was interesting
I really liked the Negritude tu
I like this Howl tu a lot, its maybe easier given recent events but was presumably written before
Okay this Dylan Thomas bonus is the first one I will contend has an impossible hard part for this level (though the rest is fine)
big fan of this Whitman bonus that asks about the deathbed edition, though!
cool bonus on NYC/Man Ray/physics
Okay this Adichie bonus also has an incredibly difficult hard part imo. She's one of my favorite authors and I've read a lot of her stuff and I think this is just too hard for this level. I think "The Thing Around Your Neck" as the first part could work as a good hard, obscuring the author and perhaps the fact that its a title story. Perhaps also something like "giving birth" from "Headstrong Historian" and "Zikora," though I'm not sure if Amazon emailed just me a million times about "Zikora," or if others read/were generally aware of it

R4:
I liked this tossup on the Metis even if its maybe pushing it in difficulty
Bolding issue in the Metamorphoses tu
this tu on smoking is awesome
I made the same buzz as max on this WAOVW tu, so would agree powermark should be moved (imo parasol being first word out of power is fine)
cool tu on ballots
SDP seems like quite a hard answerline
like this Bertha Mason tu a lot (even though i am a character tu hater)
Rebecca Solnit maybe a tough medium, though I do appreciate Playing in the Dark coming up in the part on Morrison
this Braithwaite bonus seems to have a pretty difficult hard and middle part, especially since there's only a very short clue about Petals of Blood
von Ranke is mega over-asked compared to his academic importance, especially when historiography only comes up a few times a tournament!
christie/stein/fingersmith bonus seems tough too. I don't know anything about the hard but would argue the stein part is pretty tough as written
like this sneakers bonus, though Holzer might be a tough middle. I also got baited into saying album covers at the mention of murakami but thats probably just me being dumb
Babette also seems hard for a middle
this copper bonus just seems like a US history bonus imo

R5:
Auden <3
agree with critiques of the flowers tossup
how is this South Africa tu britlit? Also question having a tossup on both SA drama and Burgher's Daughter
cool phil tu on motion/movement
was less of a fan of this epilepsy tu, but i also admit to not knowing a lot about the idiot
i liked this chinese shortfic/poetry bonus a lot!
SS bonus on homosexuality/Hooker/ego was interesting
good beowulf bonus, hard maybe on the easier side but considering most of my complaints are about stuff being too hard its prob actually fine
I find leaders of Civil Rights organizations really hard to keep straight since there were a bunch of them, and think this US hist bonus is on the harder side
Glaspell seems tough for a middle and I agree with others' comments on the bonus part on Hale

Okay I'm tired maybe I'll do the next 5 later

[cwasims]

7
"British Expeditionary Force" seemed like a very hard answerline

I will note that although the BEF is the primary answer line (because it's the most correct), just "British army" is acceptable, which I definitely don't think is too difficult.

R1:
Vietnam War tossup felt potentially transparent (mentions a Stevens poem quite early, that narrows you down a lot)

This is a fair point - the tossup originally mostly used "this event" which some of the playtesters suggested be changed. I had not really considered that the Wallace Stevens clue might make it more fraudable so I might see if I can re-phrase that a bit.

R4:
SDP seems like quite a hard answerline
von Ranke is mega over-asked compared to his academic importance, especially when historiography only comes up a few times a tournament!

I agree that SPD is definitely on the harder side (I certainly wouldn't put it in an easier set than this) but as one of the two main German political parties I think it's totally fair game at this level. I do think von Ranke is important although I can see how he may be somewhat over-asked (though a quick Aseemsdb search doesn't make it seem like he's super over-asked). There are a lot of historiography clues in this set, though, so I don't think there was any lack of this content overall.

[Zealots of Stockholm]

R4:
SDP seems like quite a hard answerline
von Ranke is mega over-asked compared to his academic importance, especially when historiography only comes up a few times a tournament!

I agree that SPD is definitely on the harder side (I certainly wouldn't put it in an easier set than this) but as one of the two main German political parties I think it's totally fair game at this level. I do think von Ranke is important although I can see how he may be somewhat over-asked (though a quick Aseemsdb search doesn't make it seem like he's super over-asked). There are a lot of historiography clues in this set, though, so I don't think there was any lack of this content overall.

Yeah, this is fair. There was a good amount of historiography in this set, and I apologize if I made it seem like there's not. I view von Ranke similar to Freud coming up in the SS distro, which psych majors/etc are often upset about (though von Ranke is certainly not as famous as Freud, lol). Just would rather hear the bit of historiography that does come up (and is much more aligned with what one learns in classes than standard qb history fare) be more on the modern than historically important side.

[Bhagwan Shammbhagwan]

Wanted to preface this post by saying that I enjoyed the history in this set for the most part.

In the Ethiopia tossup (round 5), I think that second clue could use a bit more description. Villagization is not unique to Ethiopia, and I don't think the context of "tukul huts" makes this clue much more buzzable (seems to also be built in parts of Sudan and Eritrea).

[Crazy Khan Tech]

Wanted to preface this post by saying that I enjoyed the history in this set for the most part.

In the Ethiopia tossup (round 5), I think that second clue could use a bit more description. Villagization is not unique to Ethiopia, and I don't think the context of "tukul huts" makes this clue much more buzzable (seems to also be built in parts of Sudan and Eritrea).

Thank you for pointing this out. This clue will be replaced for future mirrors.

[Auroni]

The lesbianism in literature tossup was much appreciated but I thought that the clues about "A Room of One's Own" were a little imprecise:

"The narrator of an essay contemplates Cleopatra’s jealousy of Octavia and says, “Do not blush” before discussing this characteristic."

"A discussion of this trait begins with the narrator noticing a phrase from Mary Carmichael’s Life’s Adventure in A Room of One’s Own."

The issue is that there are multiple layers of readings of the text. The primary one suggested by Woolf is that throughout the history of literature, women were generally only defined in relation to men and therefore didn't have the agency to interact with or form impressions of one another on their own terms, which is why Carmichael's novel was such a breath of fresh air -- one woman simply liked the other as a person. Now, there's absolutely a subtextual lesbian implication within Woolf's text and the attraction between the two has been centered in later critical literature (as suggested by the title of Lillian Faderman's anthology of lesbian literature Chloe Plus Olivia). But, on the clues provided, worded as given, an answer like "women not hating each other" is as, if not more, correct, given that that is the straightforward focus of the bulk of the passage (especially given the leading mention of Cleopatra and Octavia, who are cited as a foil to Chloe and Olivia specifically on the basis that they only matter to one another insofar as they are both romantically connected to the same man). I think more careful wording is needed to ensure that lesbianism is the only correct answer here. If that's not possible, maybe a different work could be substituted. There are enough well known examples of this topic in literature for the tossup to function without necessarily needing "A Room of One's Own." Without even leaving Woolf, it's definitely possible to write a clue that isolates and specifically describes Clarissa Dalloway's attraction to Sally Seton, for instance.

[db0wman]

The tossup on masks is marked as Geo/CE/Other despite it being primarily composed of art clues.

In the tossup on the halo effect, the bottom 60% of the question seems to all be restating the same clue with different coats of paint.

In the tossup on motion in philosophy, the clause "most famous" in the line about Jean Buridan wasn't really helpful and I ended up making a donkey-related neg. Perhaps "most famous" could be replaced with something more specific?

The tossup on mountains in mythology stating second line that "a king is bound beneath one of these locations" seemed quite transparent, since being trapped beneath a mountain is a common theme in many myths. Anecdotally, I lost a buzzer race to a player who was also just guessing off of that. I also thought that heuristic functions, weddings in poetry, and forms in philosophy were transparent, though to a lesser degree.

[Sam]

I have two questions on prompts. The first is a genuine question, the second is more rhetorical (whining).

For the question on the Métis people, I see it says to not prompt on "First Nations" or "Native Americans" but to accept indigenous Canadians or Aboriginal Canadians. I'm guessing that's the correct prompt just because the writer wouldn't have included it if they didn't have a good reason, but as someone who knows nothing about the topic I'm curious about the difference.

The second question is on the bonus part on the Little Ice Age. First I should say I really enjoyed this bonus overall. Looking through the packets I see the history questions I enjoyed the most (ballots, airlines, this bonus) were all by Chris Sims, so thank you, Chris! (I enjoyed the economics as well.) That being said, I'm not sure I agree with not prompting on "Ice Age." It's possible "Ice Age" has a specific scientific meaning which the "Little Ice Ages" do not qualify for, but I'd imagine many people are familiar with the historical literature concerning the Little Ice Ages without having a full grasp of the climatology behind them. There are some cases where you don't want to prompt on the more "general" answer, because a player could be genuinely unsure when answering and the prompting gives more information. ("John Adams" versus "John Quincy Adams" is the classic example.) At this point in the bonus, it's clear we're talking about ancient Rome and the early modern period, so the concern someone might have said "Ice Age" thinking it was the Last Glacial Period seems unlikely.

[cwasims]

Thanks for the kind words about some of my questions!

I have two questions on prompts. The first is a genuine question, the second is more rhetorical (whining).

For the question on the Métis people, I see it says to not prompt on "First Nations" or "Native Americans" but to accept indigenous Canadians or Aboriginal Canadians. I'm guessing that's the correct prompt just because the writer wouldn't have included it if they didn't have a good reason, but as someone who knows nothing about the topic I'm curious about the difference.

I gather these various bits of terminology are not commonly used in the US, so this confusion is very understandable. "Indigenous" and "aboriginal" peoples are considered in Canada to comprise three distinct groups: the First Nations, the Métis, and the Inuit. In the US, "Native American" refers to First Nations and Inuit but not a group like the Métis (which does not really exist in the US). Since Métis is a distinct identity from First Nations in both a cultural and ethnic sense, it's not correct to call them either First Nations or Native Americans but it is correct (although not specific enough) to call them indigenous or aboriginal since they do fall under that umbrella.

The second question is on the bonus part on the Little Ice Age. First I should say I really enjoyed this bonus overall. Looking through the packets I see the history questions I enjoyed the most (ballots, airlines, this bonus) were all by Chris Sims, so thank you, Chris! (I enjoyed the economics as well.) That being said, I'm not sure I agree with not prompting on "Ice Age." It's possible "Ice Age" has a specific scientific meaning which the "Little Ice Ages" do not qualify for, but I'd imagine many people are familiar with the historical literature concerning the Little Ice Ages without having a full grasp of the climatology behind them. There are some cases where you don't want to prompt on the more "general" answer, because a player could be genuinely unsure when answering and the prompting gives more information. ("John Adams" versus "John Quincy Adams" is the classic example.) At this point in the bonus, it's clear we're talking about ancient Rome and the early modern period, so the concern someone might have said "Ice Age" thinking it was the Last Glacial Period seems unlikely.

The Little Ice Age is not, in fact, an ice age: the name was coined by a Dutch geographer in the 1930s to refer to a period of global cooling during the early modern period that was much less severe than a true ice age (the Late Antique Little Ice Age is a comparatively recent term that draws inspiration from the "original" Little Ice Age). You are probably right that there is a low risk of confusion with the Ice Age during the Last Glacial Period, but calling it an "ice age" is not scientifically correct and nor I have I ever seen it referred to as such. I think it's fine for a medium part to test whether people actually know the specific term rather than guessing (incorrectly) that the climate event being referred to is an "ice age" and then possibly figuring it out from the prompt.

[Sam]

Thanks for the explanation of the Métis prompt! That's useful to know.

I think it's fine for a medium part to test whether people actually know the specific term rather than guessing (incorrectly) that the climate event being referred to is an "ice age" and then possibly figuring it out from the prompt.

That's always a reasonable consideration. I think where I differ is the probability someone stumbles upon "ice age" and then guesses to append "little" when prompted versus the probability someone familiar with the history says "ice ages" without realizing it's not technically correct. The first seems more unlikely, especially given nothing in the bonus so far suggests this was a period colder than normal. On the other hand, looking at the question again I am reminded there was a prompt for "Specific term required," and it's at least partly on us for not taking that seriously enough.* I believe even with that the false negative rate would exceed the false positive, but by how much and whether that's even a problem is not obvious; it may be fine as is.

* That's right! Shocking as it may be, this bonus part I have issues with for impartial reasons of form was also one our team got wrong.

[etotheipi]

I really enjoyed this set overall. I'm definitely not within the target audience for this set, but I thought I'd point out a couple of things I encountered at the high school mirror:

I think this has already been mentioned, but the first part of bonus 9 in packet 2 seemed a little confusing. From what I remember, we basically realized it was Mars immediately, but thought the word "region" meant that it was asking for a specific region on Mars, which we weren't able to come up with. I think the same thing happened to other teams at our site too.

For bonus 15 in packet 2, we said something along the lines of "global cooling" for the first part. While this is an incorrect answer (due to our use of the word "global", which I don't believe applies to either of the events), I feel like there should be at least a prompt on "cooling" or similar answers (from what I remember, I basically realized that the Geoffrey Parker thing was about the Little Ice Age, but wasn't able to get that into the form the answerline wanted).

I think there were a couple of questions (the cancel culture letter bonus and possibly the bonus on Jagannath) that said "description acceptable," but didn't really end up accepting descriptions, which kind of threw us off.

A couple of questions I enjoyed: Quartet for the End of Time TU, the manganese nodules bonus, the telegraphs TU, the Maori opera/music bonus, the Extinction Rebellion/Australia environment/politics bonus, and the ecology TU.

[eygotem]

I think the question set was overall good and enjoyable (as much as a Regionals-level college set can be at a high-school mirror), though there were a few outlier questions difficulty-wise, with some especially hard tossups (e.g. "snake venom") and some bonuses with two easy- or medium-feeling parts.

I also noticed an apparent abundance of questions asking about "these people" or "people with this trait"*—these did do a good job cluing interesting and underrepresented content, though I'm not sure if it was the best way to have so many questions with this answer theme. Some of the clues (e.g. the first few clues in P7 TU2 "lesbianism") also seemed non-unique.

*Though, this might just be due to the fact that the "lesbianism," "disabled persons" and "giftedness" tossups all happened to be in packet 7... (going off the 3/27 packets in this subforum, don't recall where they were packetized yesterday)

As for some specific questions (skewed towards the subjects I know):

P10 TU9, "ecology": I answered "environmentalism" and received the directed prompt, “what is the associated scientific discipline?” after which I was negged for saying "environmental science." The giveaway clue (which hadn't been read yet) also happens to be: "Green socialists apply Marxism to sustainability theories in, for 10 points, what scientific field, the study of the environment?" Both of these seem to point towards envionmental science as the answer; ecology is also one of the disciplines that fall under environmental science, and only earlier clues that mention specific terms and titles with "ecology" in them seem to distinguish it as the answer. This could possibly be fixed with better wording in the directed prompt and giveaway.

P10 TU10, "monsoons": The other team answered "winds" and was not prompted, before "wind patterns" had been read. I do feel like some of the clues could apply to specifically to "monsoon winds," if one interprets the winds associated with monsoons as "events" in their own right.

P2 B15, "climate/Little Ice Age/volcanic eruptions": I do think this was a cool bonus (no pun intended). Despite what some people are saying, "Ice Age" should definitely not be promptable here as it is completely incorrect—a Little Ice Age is not a subtype of ice age, and no common conception of an ice age would coincide with the "early modern period" as clued in the question, unless you're referring to the entire Quaternary Glaciation of the last few million years. As for the first part, I agree that "cooling" or "warming" should probably be promptable.

P2 B19, "identity/sitting together in the cafeteria/cognitive dissonance": We answered "sitting together at lunch" on the middle part, which was not accepted. The answer line does say to "accept word forms and synonyms for any of the underlined words," so this may have been a moderator error; perhaps "lunch" should be explicitly mentioned in the answer line, if it is acceptable.

P5 B13, "shallow-water/tsunami/shoal": The first part seemed quite confusing, as it has very little indication of what the clues' context was. Yes, revealing too much would make it fraudable, but I do feel like there'd be clearer way to ask about wave mechanics.

P3 TU6 "prostitutes" and P7 TU7 "ancestors" seemed quite fraudable, though I was too afraid of negging over knowledgeable teammates to go for the buzz.

Also, amusingly, a teammate of mine received a quadruple prompt on P8 TU5 "sexual selection" after failing to recall the term, though I don't really see this as an issue with the question.

[eygotem]

I also enjoyed P2 TU15 "plate tectonics"—good science history content! However, I found it somewhat strange that the question clues both the modern theory of plate tectonics/seafloor spreading and Alfred Wegener's theory of continental drift, which to my knowledge are distinct concepts: Wegener's idea involved continents "ploughing" through the ocean floor (as clued in the question), while plate tectonics involves lithospheric plates moving atop the plastic asthenosphere.

(The opposing team made an unresolved protest along these lines after I got the question right by answering "continental drift" upon receiving the directed prompt, after initially giving "seafloor spreading"; I'd buzzed on the "axial declination... provided evidence" clue.)

In fact, the giveaway clue: "For 10 points, Alfred Wegener championed what theory, which states that the continents have moved over time because they lie on segments of the Earth’s crust?" is technically incorrect for the reasons stated above, and it seems problematic that the answer line says to prompt on (rather than accept) continental drift after "continents" is read.

[eygotem]

The first part of P2 B9 "Mars/rovers/beryllium" is definitely an issue—"this region" seems to imply that the answer is a specific place on Mars, rather than its surface in general (fortunately, we were anti-prompted after answering with the name of a specific crater). This could be fixed by changing the indicator to something like "this general location" and maybe adding some directed prompts.

[Santa Claus]

P10 TU10, "monsoons": The other team answered "winds" and was not prompted, before "wind patterns" had been read. I do feel like some of the clues could apply to specifically to "monsoon winds," if one interprets the winds associated with monsoons as "events" in their own right.

Here's the question:

These events are responsible for the only site of upwelling on the western boundary of an ocean. Short and long-term variances in the intensity and timing of these events are termed “bursting” and “vagaries” respectively. The troughs of these events roughly align with the ITCZ, whose northward movement causes trade winds that cross the equator to approach land from the southwest. The conventional theory of these events relies on differences in specific heat between sea and land. The presence of these events defines the Am (“A-M”) (*) tropical climate in the Koppen system, which has distinct wet and dry seasons. For 10 points, name these periodic changes in wind patterns that bring intense rain to regions like Southeast Asia and India.
ANSWER: Indian monsoon seasons [or South Asian monsoon seasons; accept the African, Arabian, Asian, East Asian, Southwest, Northeast, Indo-Australian, or North American monsoon seasons; accept monsoon trough or monsoon currents; prompt on wet seasons, rainy seasons, dry seasons, or seasons until read]
<KW, Other Science>

The decision to omit "monsoon winds" from the answerline was not deliberate, as I had not considered it as a viable answer at the time of writing, so its omission was a mistake on my part - my bad.

The question was written from the perspective of monsoons as the seasonal changes in wind systems, rather than the wind systems themselves (hence the pronoun "events"), but "winds" is still a valid way of thinking about monsoons. That being said, "winds" is at best only a little bit right and the question says "winds" roughly a third of the way through so honestly I don't see much reason to add it as a prompt.

P5 B13, "shallow-water/tsunami/shoal": The first part seemed quite confusing, as it has very little indication of what the clues' context was. Yes, revealing too much would make it fraudable, but I do feel like there'd be clearer way to ask about wave mechanics.

I will not apologize for asking about a very descriptively-named approximation that forms the basis of basically all oceanography/meteorology. >:(

Honestly I'll walk this back a bit - I probably should apologize somewhat for writing what was objectively too difficult of a bonus part. The topic is certain important (and I daresay interesting) but I do not think people have the requisite knowledge to get this purely from a description of the approximation (or from a specific property of shallow-water waves).

I think this has already been mentioned, but the first part of bonus 9 in packet 2 seemed a little confusing. From what I remember, we basically realized it was Mars immediately, but thought the word "region" meant that it was asking for a specific region on Mars, which we weren't able to come up with. I think the same thing happened to other teams at our site too.

Perhaps "place" would have been a better choice of pronoun. Overall I'm disappointed in myself that players with the requisite knowledge of interesting clues couldn't convert because of phrasing issues - my bad.

I also enjoyed P2 TU15 "plate tectonics"—good science history content! However, I found it somewhat strange that the question clues both the modern theory of plate tectonics/seafloor spreading and Alfred Wegener's theory of continental drift, which to my knowledge are distinct concepts: Wegener's idea involved continents "ploughing" through the ocean floor (as clued in the question), while plate tectonics involves lithospheric plates moving atop the plastic asthenosphere.

(The opposing team made an unresolved protest along these lines after I got the question right by answering "continental drift" upon receiving the directed prompt, after initially giving "seafloor spreading"; I'd buzzed on the "axial declination... provided evidence" clue.)

In fact, the giveaway clue: "For 10 points, Alfred Wegener championed what theory, which states that the continents have moved over time because they lie on segments of the Earth’s crust?" is technically incorrect for the reasons stated above, and it seems problematic that the answer line says to prompt on (rather than accept) continental drift after "continents" is read.

Here's the question for convenience's sake:

Evidence for this theory came in the form of a V-shaped feature on all 6 one-to-one-million profiles by Marie Tharp that was dismissed as “girl talk” by Bruce Heezen. Harold Jeffreys joined contemporaries in criticizing the word “ploughed” in an early text on this theory. Preservation of axial declination below the closure temperature provided quantitative evidence for this theory, which competed with the contraction model of (*) fixists. Opinion swung towards this theory in response to the finding that long arcs are traced out over time by apparent polar wander, and it was cemented by proof of magnetic polarity reversing with distance from mid-ocean ridges. For 10 points, Alfred Wegener championed what theory, which states that the continents have moved over time because they lie on segments of the Earth’s crust?
ANSWER: plate tectonics [accept continental drift until “continents” is read and prompt afterwards; prompt on geomagnetic reversal, seafloor spreading, or the Vine–Matthews–Morley hypothesis by asking “what theory did that provide evidence for?”]
<KW, Other Science>

I'm surprised you found it strange, considering almost every other question on the subject ever written has discussed both. Continental drift is the concept that continents have moved. Wegener gave one explanation, which ended up being wrong - the correct explanation is that they exist on plates (i.e. plate tectonics). "Continental drift" has since been subsumed into the broader theory of "plate tectonics", but this question only focuses on the area where they overlap: the movement of continents and other features on the Earth's surface and how.

Plate tectonics is the primary answer, since it is the most correct. Continental drift is accepted for most of the question, because that's the aspect of plate tectonics that's being asked about. It is no longer accepted after the word "continent" is read because that is ~50% of the words in that answer and it is very easy to fill in "continental [blank]". I probably shouldn't have used the phrase "Wegener championed", which conflates them slightly more than is necessary, but it seems a tad much to suggest that this is "problematic".