The Quizbowl Resource Center

joshxu

Thanks to UCSD for hosting and all moderators and scorekeepers for making Triton Winter a smooth and fun tournament! We got through 11 rounds in just over eight hours with no major delays, ending at a very solid time for an online tournament. I also want to thank Yusuf for sharing his perspective on...

joshxu

[Edit: So in the month since ACE occurred, there have been some major adjustments to the official stats, with two teams (Del Norte A and St. Margaret's Episcopal) having been DQ'ed. Updating this post to reflect all the stats changes would be too much of a hassle, so for anyone reading this, keep in...

joshxu

I second Nick in thanking UCSD and everyone who staffed Triton Fall yesterday—this tournament was very smooth and we finished 11 rounds in 8 hours. I would also like to thank the writers and editors of LONE STAR, as in my opinion this was the best regs set that I've ever played. Yesterday, we saw Ar...

joshxu

Did you play sloppy, or did you just encounter clues you didn't know? Probably a combination of the two, but the former is definitely the bigger issue. I'm not so sure I would call it "sloppy" play per se, but rather an inability to find a "groove" and settle into the game. For ...

joshxu

I generally agree with Nick's analysis of the SoCal circuit this year, although I believe that the season beginning online will be a major factor that can lead to some major changes in these rankings (because of poor Internet, lack of motivation, people refusing to play, people being more eager to p...

joshxu

I have always struggled from relatively minute occurrences impeding my ability to perform well. Usually these are mental; sometimes I get bothered when I anticipate a question alluding to one thing but another clue contradicts my prediction, sometimes I get bothered when a moderator horribly mispro...

joshxu

Nick Dai has already done a solid "shilling" of SoCal, and I'd like to highlight some of these players as well. Largely because SoCal is a relatively small region, I don't believe that any more than two or three of these players should really be ranked in your top 30 overall, but neverthel...

joshxu

Dropping by to shill for my own team. Don't want to flex too much here, but just wanted to say that as an A team, we have the Cars opening monologue down pat. In terms of actual ability, we're pretty unrivaled, too. Wayzata has won Minnesota's largest speedcheck tournament for the past 9 years in a...

joshxu

How will WAIT, CALISTO, RAFT, and BHSAT play out? Will Westview return to dominance and win the three they won't host? Will Arcadia move up into tier 1? Will Canyon Crest prove all of our doubts wrong and meet its top-four expectations? Or will their A team again go missing until HSNCT? Will Del No...

joshxu

*I was going to post this in the previous vulching thread, but it's been locked now. This post should be read as a continuation of that earlier thread. Vulching and giving an incorrect answer has understandably been a problem for my team's novices. I used to tell them the traditional, "After a ...

joshxu

At our practices we have always kept score, for the reasons you listed under "pros". Additional reasons why we do so include 1) it trains players for in-game situations (e.g. knowing when to be extremely cautious, knowing when to not buzz no matter what), and 2) by keeping individual stats...

joshxu

Another four tournaments have occurred (Triton Winter (LOGIC), DNE (BLAST), SoCal States (IS #192), and NEGFIVE (IS #190)—I'm intentionally ignoring MWT at UCSD because it was a college tournament), and accordingly it's time to revisit the state of SoCal quiz bowl again. First, I'm going to direct y...

joshxu

As a disclaimer, I don't have a strong opinion on this topic and I'm not endorsing any positions or proposals made in this thread so far. To me, this seems too generous. Except for the bottom few teams at a tournament (which I'm guessing are much less likely to lodge a should have been prompted prot...

joshxu

Hey Rohan, thanks for sharing your thoughts! Josh, has SaMo established an A team, or at least part of one, yet? What about your B team? As with most other teams, our rosters aren't yet set in stone. We've essentially been constructing the rest of our A team (i.e. outside of me) based off of my weak...

joshxu

The first wave of tournaments has concluded, and as promised I'll take some time to share my thoughts on how things have transpired. General thoughts : Analyzing teams in SoCal at this point in time proved to be a difficult task for me, and these are only a few complicating factors, listed in no par...

joshxu

I mostly agree with Ameya on his analysis, and I just wanted to highlight some of the teams that particularly interest me. Arcadia (Varsity): With Andrew Hoagland's graduation, I don't know what to expect from Arcadia this year. I think it's somewhat of a stretch to call them national title contende...

joshxu

The NHBB circuit in Southern California has definitely been struggling the past few years, much of which stems from the fact that nobody wants to host any tournaments. Despite having an extremely limited sample size, Ameya Singh from Laurel Springs has written this solid writeup of the circuit, whic...

joshxu

If the player who responds is not on the same team as a player who did signal, the moderator will ignore the response (even if it is correct), and will recognize the player who actually signaled. Only that player will have a chance to respond, as the non-signaler has disqualified his team on that t...

joshxu

There are only about five people from SoCal who check these forums with any sort of regularity, so, like last year, this thread is probably going to remain idle for most of the season. Anyway, for those five or so people (or anyone not from SoCal who cares), here are some of my thoughts on the upcom...

joshxu

Can we see conversion stats for the tossups on Chile (round 2), the Toronto Raptors (round 4), Cyrus the Great (round 4), Fort Ticonderoga (round 6), the Kurds (round 7), Huawei (round 22), and the Red Sea (round 22)? I'm also interested in seeing which tossups were the most powered, least powered (...

joshxu

Can I see the Turkmenistan (round 1), Bounty Mutiny (round 7), Lake Texcoco (round 7), and Red Sea (round 22) tossups, and the Brunei bonus (round 20)? Edit: In light of Mike Bentley's post, the reason why I want to see the four tossups is that I feel I could [should?] have powered them all, and I w...

joshxu

TheScientists wrote: ↑Fri May 24, 2019 4:01 pm On another note - how many HSNCT qualifying events will be in SoCal?

There are usually tournaments run on every IS set in the season, so probably at least four. In years past there have also been SSNCT and SCT D-2 mirrors in SoCal.

joshxu

Hello Ronen,

The tournament is fast approaching, and I filled out the registration form a while ago but I have yet to receive any sort of confirmation. I have sent you an email--a reply when you see it would be much appreciated.

Thanks!
Josh

Update: Thanks Ronen!

joshxu

I don't see Triton Fall at UCSD on there (HS tournament). http://hsquizbowl.org/db/tournaments/5348/stats/combined/ A shorthanded CCA A team played ACF Fall at UCLA. http://hsquizbowl.org/db/tournaments/5393/stats/combined/teamdetail/#t0 Saratoga played Penn Bowl at Stanford. http://hsquizbowl.org/d...

joshxu

What do you all think of this question? One people of this area was found to use a bilabial trilled affricate which they hid as it was mocked by neighbouring peoples. A road through this area gives access to the Mapinguari National Park near Lábrea, but also allowed access to forests that were turn...

joshxu

Unlike geography, in which one specialist can rather easily power half the questions, history is a subject that you can always have multiple specialists in, due to its distribution and other factors. Even if your teammate gets the lion's share of history questions, there will always be gaps on tossu...

joshxu

Are you talking about buzzers that lay flat on the table, as opposed to handheld ones? With handheld buzzers, I find it by far the easiest to use my thumb to buzz in, but I agree with you about box buzzers that sit on tables. I'm talking about handheld buzzers in addition to box ones. Although it f...

joshxu

I definitely agree with the overall message of the quiz bowl community that it is much better to simply learn more stuff and therefore be the first person to know the answer than to try to find a way to buzz faster. Nevertheless, I have some basic strategies that you may or may not find helpful—thes...

joshxu

3. A member of the opposing team accidentally pressed her buzzer. All 4 of the players looked around to see who buzzed before she realized it was her. Then she gave a guess. Is there a difference between this and scenario 1? I can personally remember pressing down too hard once. I gave a random gue...

joshxu

Just curious, how would you buzzer fake? I have definitely met players (in Certamen, not quizbowl) who automatically buzz when they hear someone else buzz. Unlike quizbowl buzzers, Certamen machines recognize the first buzz on each team (so up to 3 basically simultaneous buzzes for 3 teams), and it...

joshxu

You say you're in 8th grade: so if you keep playing quizbowl in high school and college, your teammates will change several times. Areas that might be very well covered by one of your middle school teammates today might turn out to be weak areas for your future teams. I started my college quizbowl ...

joshxu

You are in your last year of middle school, which means that after this year, you will be moving up to high school, where you will have different teammates, and over the years, those teammates will change. At this point in your career, it's too early to simply become a specialist in one category sol...

joshxu

physicsnerd wrote:Hello,

Rising sophomore who just moved to LA area, in process of enrolling at North Hollywood. Would someone mind giving me the contact for the quiz bowl coach there so I can ask about practices/joining/etc? Thanks!

I sent you a PM with some contacts that may be helpful.

joshxu

Might I offer a suggestion? This thread would be more informative for players and writers if rather than just asking for a question or conversion stats you asked for why you were interested in that data. For instance, "I thought that the question on X had an awfully hard leadin. Could I see th...

joshxu

Can I see conversion stats for the witches tossup in round 19 and the knuckleball/Tim Wakefield/Phil Niekro bonus in round 26?

joshxu

Overall, I think the circuit as a whole won't be as good as last year, since almost every school that went to HSNCT or PACE graduates about half their nationals team (a few exceptions). I expect the same three teams to dominate: CCA (returns an entire B team and one A team member), Arcadia, and West...

joshxu

Can I see both the tossups and the conversion stats for Sonia Gandhi and cyanobacteria (both round 19)?

joshxu

Can I see the conversion stats for Lot and Gag Rules (both round 9), Pittsburgh Penguins, Morales, and Teapot Dome (all round 14), and Ted Cruz (round 23)?

joshxu

https://www.naqt.com/how-to/improve-as-a-player.html This NAQT article has many tips on how to succeed as well as links to study resources. Understandably, some of them (namely, the ones you have to pay for) won't be as practical as others. Additionally, there are many other threads on the hsquizbow...

joshxu

I'm of the belief that playing simulated games (whether intrasquad, on Protobowl, or by some other way) are primarily helpful as a way to study things you have already learned, and not to learn new information. That being said, it's important to learn new information first, which can be done through...

joshxu

When broadcasters, fans journalists, etc. talk about sports, it's perfectly natural and acceptable to refer to a team by its city (eg. Dallas) or team nickname (Mavericks/Mavs). I don't see why quizbowl should be any different here. As Jonah says, easy questions are going to be easy at the giveaway...

joshxu

If "Milwaukee" is acceptable for a Brewers question asking about an "NL team from Wisconsin", people who have absolutely no sports knowledge could easily guess it based on geography. Baseball and geography are totally separate, and the role the city of Milwaukee has played on the...

joshxu

Such guesses (if successful) demonstrate knowledge of what cities have applicable teams, or else they demonstrate luck. Quizbowl is generally happy to reward very minimal levels of knowledge when low-level questions get to the giveaway, and luck is pretty much unavoidable. Sometimes people guess &q...

joshxu

When sports teams (e.g. Chicago Bears, San Diego Padres, Calgary Flames) are the answer to a question (either tossups or bonuses), usually either the city name (Chicago, San Diego, Calgary) or the nickname (Bears, Padres, Flames) is acceptable. I don't believe that simply stating the name of the cit...

joshxu

My Chinese is quite poor, so I can’t say it with certainty, but quizbowl questions written in Chinese would probably create a lot of problems with pyramidality because of the different sentence structure and grammar. As a fluent Chinese speaker, I can confirm that pyramidality in Chinese would be h...

joshxu

I strongly recommend Quizlet over paper flashcards. Quizlet has many different study modes, and it will keep track of how well you do on each flashcard, and you can isolate any card(s) you want. Additionally, making online cards is much more efficient. I was able to make 10000 cards on Quizlet last ...

joshxu

the number of players we have available to us is quite limited, As we tend to only have a max of about 15 players on our team, and its usually more like 10. We finished 203rd at nationals, so we're mediocre at best, and the highest my school has ever finished was 190th or so. We have a small number...

joshxu

Getting 2-3 tossups per round equates to 20-30 PPG, which, when added on with the 40-50 PPG each from your lit and science players, is a good contribution to your team! Being a history player myself, I do believe that it is better to master one individual subject that you enjoy studying than to try ...

joshxu

Let's consider what my PPG in similar tournaments were for comparison. First off, I've never played many of these tournaments, but I'll give a comparison of my ppg at similar tournaments to Arjun's, and hopefully everyone will understand why he should be up at the top 3. For EFT, I had a pretty oka...

joshxu

joshxu wrote: For your information, Arjun himself sent me a private message last night.

REDACTED for the privacy of the sending individual

For the purposes of clarification:
Arjun and I have talked and all is good between us.

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