The Quizbowl Resource Center

Chimango Caracara

stuff about chickens Nick, the chicken thing is an example of a model organism that I would argue is famous but not as knowable as other ones we tossup like, say E. coli. As far as I can tell, I was responding to John's point with that example. I don't know why you're even referring to Cane Ridge R...

Chimango Caracara

Sure, so I don't look at it like "is this the 7th hardest tossupable answer on Gass*" or not. While I certainly do factor in giveaway difficulty into account, I ask myself if the topic is knowable. Personally, my (gambling) gut tells me that very, very, very few people know anything about Frank Chi...

Chimango Caracara

Joseph Conrad I don't want to pick on this particular question too much, but maybe the thought process it reveals reflects on the rest of the tournament. I wrote a question for the seeding packet in last year's Gorilla Lit on "Typhoon," because I'd seen it around a great deal, read it and liked it,...

Chimango Caracara

Will and Ike, you both raise good points, and I know how frustrating it is to only retroactively recognize a clue from a book you've read, especially one you liked. I tried to make all my clues both evocative and interesting, both to help players who have read the works recall them, and to interest ...

Chimango Caracara

I have to agree that many of the common links were excessively hard. The vision for this tournament that John laid out was to have common links which would have early clues about works that are worth knowing but that don't come up much, but later clues about canonical works, in order to incorporate...

Chimango Caracara

Anyone who would like to have the cleaned-up Modern World questions, for this or other events, can email me to get a copy. There are 10 packets of 20 tossups and bonuses and one additional packet of 20 tossups. I tried to salvage as many questions as possible, but I apologize in advance if I overloo...

Chimango Caracara

I can get rid of the problematic Modern World questions and organize the hopefully-not-terrible ones into new packets for anyone who is interested in them.

-Nick

Chimango Caracara

Stats will be posted as soon as I have all the files in my possession. Thanks to everybody who helped staff this event. I have heard from multiple sources that Blake, Bruce Arthur's non-quizbowl playing friend, was threatened during the first round by a member of Matt Weiner's team after that playe...

Chimango Caracara

Hi everyone, I'm very sorry that this tournament was such an unpleasant experience. While I am gratified to hear that people apparently liked at least some of my questions, I do feel responsible for failing to fix all the problems with other questions in the set. I spent a long time editing Kirk's q...

Chimango Caracara

I can't really defend my actions. For fairly petty reasons, I made a bad decision that ended up inconveniencing a lot of people, and I'm very sorry about that. I hope that everyone can move on from this incident and not let it tarnish a tournament that, question-wise, was one of the most interesting...

Chimango Caracara

I apologize to the teams to the teams who were impacted by our team forfeiting. I would like everyone who is angry at Cameron to note that he had to drive us to New York on Friday, got less than 6 hours of sleep Friday night and then didn't get back to the hotel until about 1 AM last night. He need...

Chimango Caracara

I apologize to the teams to the teams who were impacted by our team forfeiting. I would like everyone who is angry at Cameron to note that he had to drive us to New York on Friday, got less than 6 hours of sleep Friday night and then didn't get back to the hotel until about 1 AM last night. He neede...

Chimango Caracara

I thought there were a lot of cool answerlines in this tournament. I especially liked the questions on gene duplication, the TCR, calmodulin, hybrid sterility and C-H bonds.

Chimango Caracara

It looks like I'll be able to make it to CO. I like writing quizbowl questions better than playing quizbowl, so if you'd like someone else to write your entire packet (except music, probably) for the earliest deadline, you should put me on your team. I can't promise great things in terms of playing,...

Chimango Caracara

I was coming here to comment on the heavy weighting of protein/molecule-related questions (I wasn't even going to touch the ecology distribution...), but it looks like the Berkeley mirror unfortunately just didn't get to some of the more physiology-based tossups (hearing, phagocytosis, PSI). I do t...

Chimango Caracara

Just as a note, Sinan and I brought up the difficulty of the bio and chem bonuses several times in playtesting. I'm not sure if any of the bonuses were changed with our feedback, but it'd be a bit frustrating if they weren't. I did make several bonuses (e.g. the neurobiology one, the trp operon one...

Chimango Caracara

What exactly did people neg with on the protein trafficking tossup? I buzzed when I heard some heat shock proteins (hsp70 and BiP?) and orientation and decided to answer with something along the lines of inserting transmembrane proteins. This can partially be attributed to me mixing up consecutive ...

Chimango Caracara

I was coming here to comment on the heavy weighting of protein/molecule-related questions (I wasn't even going to touch the ecology distribution...), but it looks like the Berkeley mirror unfortunately just didn't get to some of the more physiology-based tossups (hearing, phagocytosis, PSI). I do t...

Chimango Caracara

I'm by no means an expert on evolutionary biology, but I thought that the clues in the eusociality tossup made it very difficult to distinguish between the answer you wanted and closely related concepts like altruism and kin selection. Those were both promptable throughout. Here is that tossup: In ...

Chimango Caracara

So, I don't know that much about chemistry or biology, but I felt like the bio and chem bonuses shaded significantly harder than the rest of the questions. It hurt us at the end of the day to lose Richard Yu, who was the one person on our team who really had deep chemistry knowledge; without him, w...

Chimango Caracara

I might post something more later, but one complaint I had with tossups on the LUMO and Photosystem 1 was that these tossups made it very clear to me pretty early that it was one of two possible answers in both cases (HOMO or LUMO, PS1 or PS2). If I'm playing against Billy Busse, Ashvin or Eric, I'...

Chimango Caracara

There are some problems with the early clues in the T cells tossups. CLIP and MHC class II presentation are features of professional antigen-presenting cells (dendritic cells, Langerhans cells, macrophages, B cells and some weird epithelial cells like those in the thymus). The TCR of CD4+ T cells IN...

Chimango Caracara

I've thought about the microstates bonus part a bit, and I still don't think there's any way I would be able to come up with "microstates" after hearing that. This might just be because I'm dumb, though, so maybe check with some other people to see what they thought about it? I used pretty much onl...

Chimango Caracara

I've thought about the microstates bonus part a bit, and I still don't think there's any way I would be able to come up with "microstates" after hearing that. This might just be because I'm dumb, though, so maybe check with some other people to see what they thought about it? I used pretty much onl...

Chimango Caracara

I guess future tossups on chickens can talk about disordered hyperuniformity.

Chimango Caracara

I enjoyed the increased proportion of EEB questions in this tournament, but at the same time would be opposed to seeing those topics receive significantly increased representation in all tournaments. Your questions on these topics were very interesting, and the ones I knew anything about seemed goo...

Chimango Caracara

I wrote all of the Biology and Chemistry for this tournament. Gautam gave me a lot of helpful feedback on my questions, but mostly allowed me the freedom to write them as I intended. Obviously, this tournament's Biology distribution had a greater proportion of ecology and evolution than is typical. ...

Chimango Caracara

The splicing bonus part should say "post-transcriptional" rather than "post-translational." Sorry for not catching that.

Chimango Caracara

Here is my packet in case anyone else is interested in it.

Chimango Caracara · Re: Triacontakaipentagonline (12/21/13) My packet is essentially done.

My packet is essentially done.

Chimango Caracara

It's looking like we won't have a full team, so you can play with us, Ted.

Chimango Caracara

9. The zombie effect must be accounted for when studying the remanie or derived types of these objects. William Smith pioneered the identification of strata using them, whose namesake principle of succession is essentially an application of the principle of superposition. The field of taphonomy is ...

Chimango Caracara

I can write some questions for this.

Chimango Caracara

I think you have to distinguish between the accessibility of clues and the accessibility of answerlines. For example, "bladder" is a really easy answerline, but I would say it's one of the less accessible organs to toss up in terms of clues because (in my experience) you don't learn about it much in...

Chimango Caracara

The...Shakespeare authorship tossups seemed pretty transparent. Can you expand on this? Well, it's a debate that seems to hinge on reading texts and seems to concern somebody's identity. I didn't notice the honorificabilitudinitatibus clue when I played it though (maybe the moderator had trouble pr...

Chimango Caracara

I, for one, enjoyed the zany answerlines at this tournament. I thought answerline selection was one of its best features. In most subjects, questions were interesting, which to me is a very important element of a good tournament. I thought a lot of bonuses in some of the subjects I like seemed to ha...

Chimango Caracara

I liked the Adam tossup that used Islamic clues. The Seven Ages of Man speech was also really neat (although I wouldn't have said "Orlando" so early). Caryatids was cool as well. I'm so glad that Piranesi was a bonus part. I think the moderator might have skipped the cheese bonus in our room because...

Chimango Caracara

I would also like to express appreciation for including trash questions that don't impact the game. I really hope that this becomes a standard practice.

Chimango Caracara

In the light of the other books you've liked, I recommend Zadie Smith and Edwidge Danticat. You might also enjoy The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, which is about the immigrant experience in a bit of a different way.

Chimango Caracara

I enjoyed The Fish Can Sing and was disappointed to learn that there probably won't be tossups on it forthcoming. I also recommend John Cheever's short stories, "Goodbye, My Brother" in particular.

I guess my South American plug will be for Vargas Llosa's The Storyteller.

Chimango Caracara

Cameron Orth is not terribly enthused about playing this tournament with me, so if anyone is interested in joining my team I am available. I am currently 2/3 of the way through a class on modern and contemporary architecture and have a decent background in classical, non-western and Renaissance stuff.

Chimango Caracara

I would really like to play several of these packets; June 1 would possibly work for me while May 18 almost certainly wouldn't. Post-June 18 would be much better for me if that's at all workable.

Chimango Caracara

I don't think my contributions to Mike Fink quizbowl fanfiction need anything else added to them. Instead, my packet will be called "Extinct Beasts". The distribution is as follows: "The Big 3" 4/4 Dinosaurs 4/4 Ice Age 4/4 Modern Extinctions Other Subjects 2/2 Other Post-Permian Beasts 2/2 Paleozo...

Chimango Caracara

I mean, I don't literally mean that those three are the main things that come up in physics. I mean that most physics tossups are on fundamental concepts that are analogous to those in chemistry. Obviously there are many, many more of these than the ones I listed; those were examples.

Chimango Caracara

I really don't think the chemistry answer space is that small... It's just that a few topics that are easy to write poorly, primarily named reactions, have dominated the distribution. There are a ton of things to ask about in inorganic chemistry, for example. And organic chemistry questions are only...

Chimango Caracara

Could someone post the somewhat discussed tapestries question? 16. A piece of art in this medium contains the letters “A E,” representing Anne of Brittany’s motto “A ma vie,” emblazoning a central fountain surrounded by animals. In France, Beauvais and Gobelins were the main sites of their manufact...

Chimango Caracara

As others have said, I thought this tournament was easier than "regular difficulty." Since an easier tournament was Auroni's intent, I respect that outcome and I think he and the other editors did an okay job being consistent about difficulty, although many bonuses handed most teams 20 points and a ...

Chimango Caracara · Re: WIT at Harvard (3/9/13) We should just be bringing one team.

We should just be bringing one team.

Chimango Caracara

I didn't play this question, but when I looked at that packet I had to read the leadin several times to parse it. It seemed like it was saying that there was one mole of the compound in the iodoform reaction or something. I almost certainly would have negged with ketones on that clue since it menti...

Chimango Caracara

I think there was a factual inaccuracy in the tossup on "aldehydes." It led in with something about how "besides secondary alcohols, the methyl forms of these compounds undergo the iodoform reaction" and I buzzed in with "ketones," since methyl ketones do in fact undergo the iodoform reaction, but ...

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