The Quizbowl Resource Center

I am far from an expert, but was confused by the lack of a prompt on "cloud formation" for "cloud seeding." The answerline said "prompt on making clouds ." It's conceivable that another moderator might have interpreted "cloud formation" as equivalent to "...

Here are some questions I found particularly enjoyable to edit and read: Tossups Monteverdi - Berkeley A - extremely good clues, hardly needed editing Czech republic in music - UBC B - Loved the inclusion of Pavel Haas, and the other clues were really well-chosen too France in music - Harvard A - Sp...

Sorry about that, while the tossup generally called it a "concept," there was one line that called it an "influential model" (in quotes) because the Elinor Ostrom book discusses it in a section entitled "Three Influential Models," so I thought that phrasing might be he...

Some questions that I remember really enjoying were: Wolves tossup Turkey in opera tossup Supermodels bonus Paraphilias bonus I remember being confused that tossup on "tragedy of the commons" used "this model" as a pronoun. I've always thought of the tragedy of the commons being ...

I was impressed by the clarity of writing in this set. I noticed significantly fewer confusing turns of phrase than I do in the average set. I agree with Will's point about bonuses being overly long. There were many times where my team would think a bonus part was over, give our directed answer, and...

If I remember correctly, the tossup on "sepoys" mentioned "blowing from a gun" in the first or second clue. I think that clue should have been moved later in the question, since the Indian Sepoy Mutiny of 1857 is the most famous historical period for use of that method of executi...

Here are two questions that I wrote down for negative reasons while playing the set. There are a much larger number of questions that I enjoyed, which I might comment on once I see the packets. There was a bonus about Massachusetts in literature that seemed to refer to The Crucible as being set in a...

UC Berkeley A won this tournament with a 9-0 record. In second place (and the top-placing high school) was Mission San Jose, and UCLA took third place.
Full stats are available at https://hsquizbowl.org/db/tournaments/6599/.

There are 16 teams signed up. We are closing the field for now. Any teams who still wish to sign up can still contact us; your team will be placed on a waitlist. If we can find enough staffers we may be able to expand the field and take teams off the waitlist.

Stanford will be hosting an online mirror of Longhorn Invitational Tournament (LIT) on October 24, 2020! The tournament will start at 9 AM Pacific time and have 9 rounds, lasting approximately until 5:30 PM. You may read more about the set here: https://hsquizbowl.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=...

I encountered a situation today when my internet briefly went out while I was typing an answer. When the internet came back, the page seemed to be stuck on "Submitting answer" and nothing was happening. So I refreshed the page, and it advanced to the next question, skipping the step where ...

After playing my first game on Qblitz (the seeding round of MARCATo), I was impressed with how smoothly the user interface works. I have two suggestions that I feel would further improve the experience. 1. Prompts. The writers should be able to specify certain possible answers that trigger a prompt ...

Rohan, if you don't think that 11-year-old kids should have an adult along with them while walking by a busy road as part of an official school activity, I don't know what to tell you. First of all, kids that age are not mature enough to manage a situation if one of them gets lost or has a medical e...

When a season of Buzzword is over, overall standings reflect the best 5 games of each player. Will category standings be calculated similarly, or are they only based on total points scored in each category, favoring players who played more games?

Re: breakout rooms, I suspect that the perceived delay was not really a delay. When you reassign people into breakout rooms, you basically need to wait for all of the rounds in the bracket to finish. Re-assigning breakouts is not difficult and should take 1 minute max per team. I am guessing that i...

Is it required that the webcam be pointed at our hands? Or is a built-in laptop webcam that can only view our face OK?

My completely subjective impression is that, compared to 2019 Regionals, the 2020 tossups were equal in difficulty while being more engagingly written/fun to play. The bonuses seemed slightly harder than last year.

I'm surprised that Rahul Keyal has not gotten more discussion on here. He lead a team to T-7 at ICT, ahead of teams like MSU and Penn, and with a better PPB to boot. I'm bad at remembering categories, but I read for him at both ICT and Nats and he was a force to be reckoned with at both. You should...

Aaron's Rod wrote: ↑Tue Apr 16, 2019 11:54 am I also hear that Natan of Stanford first-clued the composer tossup in Editors 1

It was more of a third-clue buzz.

I'd love to play this! I'll be out of town approximately July 7 through July 28, so I would strongly prefer a June or August date.

One idea we had was combining religion and myth into a single 1/1 I like this idea. I'd use the resulting extra question to have 1/1 "mathematical sciences" including pure math, math applications, statistics, and CS, and 1/1 "other science" including Earth science, astronomy, en...

the absurdity of nationals is discouraging for far more people. Being on a two-person team as you were must make Nats feel even harder and more stressful than it already is. I think the difference in how much a full team can enjoy a tournament relative to a short-handed team probably grows with que...

I really enjoyed playing this set!
It did seem like the visual art was skewed toward pre-19th century stuff. The Earth science bonuses seemed too easy.
I was impressed with how the score clues in music tossups were well-chosen and clearly described, which is not the case in some tournaments.

Are there any plans for a mirror of this in California?

My earth science packet "Unaccustomed Earth System Science" is done, at 20 tossups and no bonuses. I'm planning to read it tomorrow (Wednesday, July 25) at 8 PM ET on Discord.

I'm writing a packet entirely on Earth science (some of the questions are equally at home under physical geography). I plan to read it on Discord in a few weeks. I've created a poll to gauge interest; please respond if you'd like to play! https://www.strawpoll.me/16083814

Are there any plans for an online mirror of this set, aside from the playtesting today?