The Quizbowl Resource Center

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 the ful...

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 Brewers franchise i...

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 "D...

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.

joshxu

What criteria was used here? I see that Arjun Nageswaran has put up scores of 42.50, 4.38, 29.17, 19.51, 6.00, 66.67, and 18.42 PPG at tournaments this season. His two best performances were when he was playing on teams where he was essentially playing by himself. While the 66.67 at PACE NSC is (no...

joshxu

5. 9th grade Player of the Year 1. Isak Dai, Mounds Park Academy, St. Paul, MN 2. William Groger, The Miami Valley School, Dayton, OH 3. Arjun Nageswaran, Adlai E. Stevenson High School, Lincolnshire, IL What criteria was used here? I see that Arjun Nageswaran has put up scores of 42.50, 4.38, 29.1...

joshxu

In a player poll like this, we wouldn't expect players such as Shripad or any of the other players we mentioned to crack the top 40. However, each of these players probably deserved to receive at least a couple votes. These players had better overall numbers than some of those in the "others receiv...

joshxu

In a player poll like this, we wouldn't expect players such as Shripad or any of the other players we mentioned to crack the top 40. However, each of these players probably deserved to receive at least a couple votes. These players had better overall numbers than some of those in the "others receivi...

joshxu

I agree that at present, IPNCT isn't a great tournament. However, you can't necessarily expect a top 40 player to carry their team individually (outside of the top 15-20 or so), as is the case with many unranked players in this poll who don't play for top-tier teams. There really isn't a way to get ...

joshxu

The geography problem is that people don't always know which stats to look at. I don't expect everybody to dig up stats from a random school across the country that has a terrific player but didn't attend every tournament and consistently puts up mediocre showings at national tournaments. Again, thi...

joshxu

There's no good, easy way to rank the best quiz bowl players across the country. A player's stats can be influenced by how good their team is, how good their opposition is, and the types of questions they hear. That's why I don't think the individual leaderboards at tournaments mean anything. One wa...

joshxu

Quick question regarding application of the rules: After completing 20 tossup/bonus cycles in Round 19, my team (Santa Monica B) and our opponent (Olympian A) had heard 19 bonuses (1 tossup went unanswered). We correctly answered tossup 21 for 10 points. Since there were only about 20 seconds left o...

joshxu

Important Bird Area wrote:
joshxu wrote:Can I see questions 23 and 24 from packet 19?
Tossups or bonuses?

That would be the tossups, thanks.

joshxu

I also want to see the Oakland Athletics bonus from packet 7.

joshxu

Also, can I see the Alberta tossup in packet 9?

joshxu

Can I see questions 23 and 24 from packet 19? Also, I recall that either packet 25 or 26 (I don't remember which) referred to Beverly Hills as a neighborhood of Los Angeles. Beverly Hills is not a neighborhood, it's a city. In addition, I think that packet 24 had a bonus which said Michael Beasley p...

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