The Quizbowl Resource Center

Adventure Temple Trail

It's easy to forget just how much smaller the universe of good high school quizbowl was nine years ago, and just how inadequate the available offerings would be to teams today -- and were even to teams back then. Outside the PACE NSC and a handful of scattered, inconsistent housewrites, there just w...

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"If today were the day you had to stop dancing. ...How would you feel?" I was gonna go full Joseph Knecht and write a huge detailed letter laying out this game's place in human history and its effect on me. Then I wasn't sure whether to write anything at all. I'll split the difference by keeping it...

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It'd be useful to hear from various teams about who they're losing and returning (and perhaps have it in the top post?), so that voters don't base their ballots on mistaken information.

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All of this is good stuff. I want to put in a plug for another resource: other people. They might not always be available: maybe this is a tournament you have to write solo, or literally everyone else is playing, or it's just for your packet, etc. But odds are there will be people who are not playi...

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I've written a lot of questions in my day, and one of the most frustrating things about the question-writing process is stalling out while I try to think of question ideas. Even though this is a game where lots of topics come up in questions over and over, it paradoxically can become very difficult ...

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At my first-ever college tournament, I asked one of my teammates to punch me, in the hopes that this would give me an adrenaline rush and cause me to perform better in our final game. Said teammate declined and also quit quizbowl after the tournament. Part of me wonders if that would have worked. I...

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Thank you for an incredible post, Tamara. It says something succinctly and clearly that I've seen a lot of players struggle to convey about why they find this game so special. I think it's pretty fair to say that every clue a player includes should be at least in theory gettable by someone who knows...

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Cheynem wrote:I will read my Tricon packet and Film Packet for people not playing those events (or I guess if you're planning on reading for those events or reading those packets specifically) tonight in the IRC at 9 PM EST.

Wouldn't it be better to wait until after those events are run?

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Cheynem wrote:How many packets will there be?

Urech hydantoin synthesis wrote:7

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Irreligion in Bangladesh wrote:I could ask Dave if he wanted make an apology post

Uh, what?

(emphasis added)

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I, on behalf of NHBB and with David's blessing, apologize for the threats of legal action related to discussing NHBB matters. I'd like to apologize to Bunnie specifically, as the target of David's e-mail, and to the members of the board broadly for violating board rules. David's actions were far mo...

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Regarding that "Simi Valley" TU, I was reading it (as a 15-year resident of Los Angeles) and wondering how anyone could answer it, especially since it doesn't describe where Simi Valley is in terms of the geography of LA (say, just west of the Valley). And wow, it was negged in 90% of the rooms. I ...

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This thread is a mess, and almost everything everyone is saying is totally irrelevant. There is ONLY ONE issue here, which is that David Madden has bullied members of the quizbowl community by threatening legal action against them for daring to criticize him or his product. This is an ethical lapse ...

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It shouldn't matter to anyone when or where this event is, because volunteering to aid David Madden is off the table indefinitely for anyone with ethical standards.

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For what it’s worth, after consulting with my lawyer, both he and I came to the conclusion that it’s not worth my time or energy to pursue any lawsuit against Bunnie (or anyone else) regarding non-disclosure agreements, unless it’s a matter of disclosing confidential business plans and financial in...

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I can easily imagine NHBB descending into chip-like levels of question recycling and low quality. I can also imagine that, as long as Dave keeps spending to make his events look fancy, that might not affect attendance—and therefore, rather than seeing NHBB burn to the ground, we'd have a growing, e...

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It is absolutely prohibited to threaten, or in any way imply that you are threatening, legal action or the exacting of a monetary fine from any other person for something they posted on the board. If you do this, you will be banned, with no warning or second chance. If you genuinely believe that so...

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Bruce's three suggested clue types are all sound, and fit well as sub-examples of how to do the first and second bullet points on my own list. Second, if staleness and size of answer space create issues, those issues exist around Regionals level. As others have correctly noted, this isn't a problem ...

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disclaimer: I am still not a scientist How would people feel about a distribution which split things along different lines than we do now? Treating biology, chemistry, and physics as the core triad of scientific inquiry is a pretty dated mindset, and I suspect it does something of a disservice to th...

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In keeping with my points about "distributional pluralism" at the end of the other thread: I would be interested to see a larger discussion about how and whether to get more computer science and computational methods content into quizbowl. My suspicion is that the number of computer science majors h...

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Prefatory note: This post applies only to college tournaments of Regionals difficulty and above . High school tournaments can afford to have a lot more mythology, as can easy college tournaments, because at that level the basics of myths from the various world pantheons are the subject of more genu...

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Chicago Open is difficult enough, and CO players' pockets of deep knowledge often surprising enough, that figuring out what might or might not be an appropriate hard part is often something of an educated guess. (Precisely because we are all generalists to some degree, there is basically no alternat...

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I can't speak about any of your math points, but your last point I'm not sure i understand. That's kind of a weird complaint, that an editors' question seemed similar to a question you submitted. I wrote a bonus on the history of Kansas and then a tossup was submitted on the history of Kansas, whic...

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...maybe we should have a discussion on what mythology as a category should be. I plan to start such a discussion soon -- be on the lookout for a separate thread this evening. Your thoughts will certainly be welcomed and appreciated. Re: the Canary islanders myth question: I'm willing to admit that...

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The set is now posted to collegiate.quizbowlpackets.com, which should obviate future requests to post the text of specific questions.

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Could I see the "authoritarianism" tossup? According to Juan Linz, this political phenomenon is characterized by "mentalities," which are more flexible than ideologies. A data set of all examples of it since 1945 was gathered for a game-theoretic paper on its "Breakdown" by Barbara Geddes. A study ...

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I have received permission to read my CO team's edited packet, which I will do on IRC (#quizbowl) tomorrow at 9 PM EST, along with outtakes. After talking it through with Auroni and John, the schedule for CO readings is being changed somewhat. Starting tonight at 8 PM EST, we'll be reading the rema...

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Are the questions from these events archived or made available somewhere?

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The Superfluous Man wrote:( none of us are going to veto it).

Unless you're a terrible editor.

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At the risk of even more editors tooting their own horn, here are some more of my long-form thoughts. The original plan, as hatched in July 2015, was for John and I to co-edit most/all of the non-science, and bring in two or three more people to help with science and gaps in our knowledge bases. Bet...

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Cheynem wrote:Is that foreshadowing anything?

breaking: eric mukherjee transfers to Kansas to win his home town a title

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I have received permission to read my CO team's edited packet, which I will do on IRC (#quizbowl) tomorrow at 9 PM EST, along with outtakes. After talking it through with Auroni and John, the schedule for CO readings is being changed somewhat. Starting tonight at 8 PM EST, we'll be reading the rema...

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There will be an IRC reading of the three remaining editors' packets for CO 2016 tomorrow night starting at 8 PM EST, in channel #COFinals (on slashNET as usual). After that, other people are invited to read cut submissions or highlights of their packets or whatever.

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The Superfluous Man wrote:Looks like removing Dan from the SQBS file bumped all your stats down one row, Chinmay. I'll fix that. Anyone else with stats corrections can post here or email me.

The Individuals page for the combined stats file is for some reason only displaying the values for the prelims.

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There being no mirrors, the question set for Chicago Open 2016 is now cleared for discussion.* Here is the list of who edited what: John Lawrence: All Literature, Auditory Fine Arts, Philosophy Mike Cheyne: All History Matt Jackson: Religion, Mythology, all Social Science except econ, most Your Choi...

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It would be kind of cool to straight-up do whatever schedule format the high school National History Bee does, with minimal modification. I think that involves quasi-randomly seeded prelim rooms of equal size for several rounds, then elimination rounds which slowly whittle the field down.

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The format in question we used was identical to the format used at USABB Academic Bowl Nationals which teams both there and in Asia seemed to enjoy as a cross between NHBB 4 quarter format and 20/20. The main features of it are 7 tossup/three-part bonus cycles to start, with the broad topic of the ...

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The format in question we used was identical to the format used at USABB Academic Bowl Nationals which teams both there and in Asia seemed to enjoy as a cross between NHBB 4 quarter format and 20/20. The main features of it are 7 tossup/three-part bonus cycles to start, with the broad topic of the ...

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Set is fully written and undergoing a last round of cosmetic/nit-pick edits now. Have fun, suckas

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I've elaborated upon this before , so I'll be brief: I agree with pretty much everything this thread says. In particular, themed questions are great, and everybody should write them. However, I am still suspicious of "creative" answer lines (creative questions are fine and good, of course). Even th...

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I've elaborated upon this before , so I'll be brief: I agree with pretty much everything this thread says. In particular, themed questions are great, and everybody should write them. However, I am still suspicious of "creative" answer lines (creative questions are fine and good, of course). Even th...

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How many rooms does NAQT believe a question has to be played in for conversion data to be meaningful?

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We are still hoping that some more free agents might be available to play Chicago Open on a 20th team, which will make our schedule work more efficiently. This team would be packet-exempt. Contact chicagoopen2016@gmail.com, CCing Dan Passner at humanstainremover@gmail.com, if interested.

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Given the growing organizational and conceptual separation between quizbowl* and History Bowl, and the continued disappointment on the part of many in quizbowl with various facets of History Bowl as currently put in practice, it doesn't strike me as odd that people are more frustrated now than they ...

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The Top Percentage of Rattatas wrote:
Wynaut wrote:Have you received a packet from Chris Borglum et. al. yet? Dylan says he submitted it days ago.
It's marked as submitted in the team formation sheet, so I think we're fine, though I never got a confirmation.

Yes, we received this.

Other teams: Be like Chris Borglum et. al. Submit packets!

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Given the relatively small number of matches which occur on Sunday, the team attendance record over the past few years, and the large registration and travel costs which teams often have to raise themselves to attend NASAT, has thought been given to making it a one-day event, akin to ICT? Given that...

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All, Chicago Open, to be held on the day preceding this tournament, is currently in need of at least two more experienced staffers to run successfully. If you're currently planning only to attend CO Trash, and are around and able to help with the event that makes CO Trash possible, please get in tou...

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The Oklahoma team has dropped from the CO field. This means we have the very inconvenient number of 19 teams, which would force us to use a pretty contorted schedule with multiple byes for some teams. (A full round robin is currently not an option given scheduling constraints.) We're reasonably sure...

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Is there a reason tossups are worth only 1 point in the Bowl? Just to keep things consistent with the Bee?

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Tonight is the no-penalty deadline for basically everybody -- make it count!

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