SWAMP (HS Regs), Available November 2023

[komododragon655]

Hello! I am excited to announce SWAMP (Starting Writers' Academic Mirrored Packets) on behalf of our team of editors and writers! This is a regular difficulty (regs) set for the 2023-2024 season and part of the 2024-2025 season (through December 31st, 2024), with mirrors starting in November 2023. This set is also available for use at college novice tournaments. I, Andrew Gao, will be the head editor and logistics coordinator.

Mirror requests should be submitted using THIS FORM. Our mirror fee will be $12/team + a $30 base fee ($50 if statistics are not posted within three weeks of the tournament and/or if payment isn't received within three weeks).

SWAMP will consist of 10 regular difficulty packets of 20/20, and 2 regular difficulty plus (regs+) finals packets of 20/20. Tossups will be pyramidal and powermarked. This set is intended to be accessible to all high school teams and good middle school teams. It is most similar to SHOW-ME (for the regs packets) and NEWT (for the regs+ packets). We will provide adequate regs and regs+ replacements so all 12 packets can be used in their entirety. Tournaments with most common field sizes can run in 10 rounds or less while giving teams 9 games of regs (not counting any finals/placement games on regs+).

This set is over 95% written. We will use the next two months to edit, host a playtest mirror, and proofread, to ensure a high-quality set for hosts, content-wise and prose/grammar-wise.

As the name suggests, many of our writers are mostly new to writing. This set is an adaptation of the MSQB Madness III set, which was used and created for a summer packet submission tournament played by 10th graders and younger. A past version of the MSQB Madness set (without bonuses and less polished) is available here. This was used for multiple tournaments last year.

Our writing team consists of: Aadi Pudasaini, Aarushi Kanigicherla, Aatreyo Bhattacharyya, Aldric Benalan, Alvan Hossain, Anthony Zhao, Christian Oh, Claire Chan, Elijah Guenthner, Fierro Grey, Gregory Zeldovich, Haughton Neppl, Jack Tzimenatos, Jackson Riddle, Meghna Rao, Melody Zou, Nicholas Munkhbaatar, Padraig Finan, Rajiv Pujara, Ryca Finan, Shishir Bharadwaj, Sivaneyan Vivekanandhan, Sophia Guo, Sreekar Vajjha, and Vidyut Arvind.

Our editing team consists of: Aditya Khambekar (Seven Lakes), Andrew Gao (Belmont), Brodie Henry (West Point), Charles Heydt (Midtown), Cindy Gao (Carnegie Mellon), Danny Peelen (Pittsburgh), Deven Hagen (TJ), Joy An (Harvard), Owen Mimno (NYU), Sinecio Morales (Johns Hopkins), Neev Sahgal (Darien), Rohan Ganeshan (Buffalo Grove), and Sam Macchi (Vassar).

Tossups will be between 550 and 675 characters. Bonuses are capped at 650 characters. Our distribution, along with the editors of each subcategory is listed below:

4/4 Literature (1/1 American [Cindy Gao], 1/1 British [Cindy Gao], 1/1 European [Cindy Gao], 1/1 World [Cindy Gao])
4/4 History (1/1 American [Neev Sahgal + Deven Hagen], 1/1 European [Sam Macchi + Deven Hagen], 1/1 World [Neev Sahgal + Deven Hagen], 1/1 Ancient/Other History [Sam Macchi + Deven Hagen]
4/4 Science (1/1 Biology [Rohan Ganeshan], 1/1 Chemistry [Rohan Ganeshan], 1/1 Physics [Charles Heydt + Sinecio Morales], .5/.5 Math [Charles Heydt + Joy An], .5/.5 Other Science [Charles Heydt + Sam Macchi])
2.67/2.67 Fine Arts (1/1 Visual [Brodie Henry], 1/1 Auditory [Sam Macchi], .67/.67 Other Fine Arts [Andrew Gao + Owen Mimno])
2/2 RMPSS (1/1 Myth [Aditya Khambekar], .5/.5 Philosophy + Social Science [Cindy Gao], .5/.5 Religion [Aditya Khambekar + Sinecio Morales])
1/1 Geography [Andrew Gao]
1/1 Current Events [Andrew Gao]
1/1 Trash [Neev Sahgal]
.33/.33 Other + Mixed Impure Academic [Andrew Gao]

We hope for this set to be mirrored in all regions of the U.S. and internationally. Please feel free to direct questions/comments/concerns to my email, [email protected].

[1992 in spaceflight]

We will provide adequate regs and regs+ replacements so all 12 packets can be used in their entirety. Tournaments with most common field sizes can run in 10 rounds or less while giving teams 9 games of regs (not counting any finals/placement games on regs+).

Just want to make sure I'm reading this correctly: there will be adequate numbers of replacement questions for each difficulty level that we won't have to set aside a packet for replacements if we mirror this set?

[komododragon655]

We will provide adequate regs and regs+ replacements so all 12 packets can be used in their entirety. Tournaments with most common field sizes can run in 10 rounds or less while giving teams 9 games of regs (not counting any finals/placement games on regs+).

Just want to make sure I'm reading this correctly: there will be adequate numbers of replacement questions for each difficulty level that we won't have to set aside a packet for replacements if we mirror this set?

Yes, this is correct—to be specific, we are planning on at least 8/8 regs replacements and 4/4 regs+ replacements.

[Krik? Krik?! KRIIIIK!!!]

Wow, I'm really excited to see this set get announced, especially with all of the new writers. Our circuit in Missouri needs more Regs sets Well done. Congrats on taking the leap of faith! Two quick thoughts:

1. I strongly recommend dropping down the two finals packets to just Regs difficulty. In brief, I'm of the philosophy your entire set should be the same difficulty so that there's a "standard" of "Bulkington Academy performs this well at this difficulty." I imagine the Regs+ finals could be a headache for rankings, throw teams off that don't know about the difficulty, or be a tough end to the day. See the feedback to GSAC which also had this quirk.

Tossups will be between 550 and 675 characters. Bonuses are capped at 850 characters.

The bonus cap should be dropped significantly: for context, last year's NSC was capped at 650. Long bonuses really drag tournaments on.

[komododragon655]

Hi! Thanks for the feedback:

1. I strongly recommend dropping down the two finals packets to just Regs difficulty.

We were planning from the start to write at least one Regs+ finals packet, and we have ~90% of our Regs+ questions written. For this reason, we don't believe it would be right to downconvert almost two packets worth of Regs+ and label them as Regs, so we will be sticking with this format (though we may consider adding another Regs packet).

At the start of writing, our philosophy for the Regs packets was to ensure accessibility for teams newer to quizbowl, so we created a second Regs+ packet for some of the harder Regs questions/answerlines. We knew that given a group of newer writers, some content could overshoot, so we decided against trying to stuff it into the last packet and call it Regs. We hope this will make our set closer to the stated difficulty and more enjoyable for your average team.

Tossups will be between 550 and 675 characters. Bonuses are capped at 850 characters.

The bonus cap should be dropped significantly: for context, last year's NSC was capped at 650. Long bonuses really drag tournaments on.

I agree, and we will drop our bonus character limit to 650 as well- thank you for notifying us about this.

[komododragon655]

Joy An and Sinecio Morales have joined the editing team. Joy will be helping us edit math and Sinecio physics and religion. Also, I have announced a playtest mirror on October 7th for all college undergraduates and certain high schoolers, please check out the link for more details.

[komododragon655]

An update on the set: the SWAMP team would like to thank Owen Mimno, Aum Mundhe, Conor Thompson, and Andy Yu for proofreading/agreeing to proofread the set to ensure quality and those who attended our playtest mirror in October! We are looking for mirrors across much of the country (and internationally)—prospective hosts should fill out the mirror request form. A list of mirrors will be posted in the coming days.

[komododragon655]

SWAMP Mirrors — add yours to this list!

--COMPLETED MIRRORS--
- SWAMP Online Playtest Mirror @ Online — October 7th, 2023; stats!
- Tryouts @ University School of Nashville (Nashville, TN) — November 13th, 2023
- Belmont Winter Tournament II @ Belmont High School (Belmont, MA) — December 16th, 2023; stats!
- [College] WACCC @ Southern Illinois University Edwardsville (Edwardsville, IL) — January 20th, 2024; stats!
- Singapore American School Spring Invitational @ Online (Asia) — February 4th, 2024; stats!
- James Blair Bowl VII @ William & Mary (Williamsburg, VA) — February 17th, 2024; stats!
- Johns Hopkins Spring Invitational @ Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore, MD) — March 30th, 2024; stats!
- HAMLET @ Online (California) run by Mira Loma — March 30th, 2024; stats!
--UPCOMING MIRRORS--
- Valley Cup II: April @ Horace Greeley High School (Chappaqua, NY) — April 13th, 2024; register now!
- SWAMP (at) McGill @ Online (Canada) — April 27th, 2024
- SPRING III @ Online (Nationwide) — May 5th, 2024; register now!

[komododragon655]

Our first big mirror was well received with lots of positive reviews from teams (see stats here)! We are looking for more mirrors around the country and especially in the following states: Alabama, California, Missouri, Minnesota, Illinois, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. Submit mirror requests using this form.

[komododragon655]

I would like to make it official that SWAMP is available for use at college novice tournaments and tournaments through the end of 2024. Hosts should fill out this form. We had a college novice mirror today, and have also added four new HS mirrors since the last post (in Singapore/Asia Online, Virginia, Maryland, and New York). Please check out more information about the tournaments above if your team is interested in playing the set!

[komododragon655]

A reminder that we are still looking for mirrors through the end of the calendar year! We recently added a mirror for Canadian teams and more information about the nationwide online mirror has been released here. Players/staffers who have already seen the set are invited to join our discussion server here: https://discord.gg/63dbVvBJuv.