The Quizbowl Resource Center

Coelacanth

CSQuizJags wrote:Barring some unknown last minute reason know only to God, it will be in Athens, Georgia.

TRASHionals: Avoiding the Midwest since 2002!

(This is not intended to disparage the fine folks of Athens. I can think of a lot of places I would less rather go.)

Coelacanth

I think folks at the U of Minnesota would also enjoy seeing the questions as well if that's possible. The best way to do this, clearly, would be to go to Armstrong on Saturday and help to staff the event. Failing that (what, you're playing in some tournament this weekend?) I'm sure Matt will make t...

Coelacanth

If you go to the Wastebin (I'm too lazy to link it but there is a stickied thread for it in the Trash area of the College/Open section) there are a couple of HS-level sets on there. Also, ACRONYM at Armstrong HS in Minnesota is a trash event this year; it's happening this Saturday. I've seen many of...

Coelacanth

Warning: bizarre off-the-wall suggestion ahead. Perhaps part of the issue is that SCT serves as a qualifier for ICT. In the ACF model, good writers and editors can work on Fall, Winter and Regionals and still have the opportunity to play Nationals. In NAQT's world, the writing pool for SCT consists ...

Coelacanth

The main problem with that tossup, Ken, is when it is read at those sites with suboptimal sound insulation between adjacent rooms. Most players will find it difficult not to answer it with a Brandoesque "STELLA!!!". That aside, if you've decided to write a question on Stellas, I think that...

Coelacanth

I look forward to seeing the conversion stats for this tournament. I thought last year's set had quite a few answers that were too hard. Just within history tossups I edited: (Jean Jaures, Battle of Kasserine Pass, Leander Jameson, Bartolome de Las Casas, Battle of Sluys, Miklos Horthy). All of tho...

Coelacanth

My problem with the "thirteen at dinner" question was that it somewhat penalized knowledge. Rob Carson (I think..) had an early buzz with "triskaidekaphobia" and when I prompted him he tried "fear of the number 13" or something. I'm sure it never occurred to him that &q...

Coelacanth

So, how'd this turn out? Minnesota B (Brendan Byrne playing solo) won Div I at 8-2. Just behind him were MN A (Andrew Hart/Ryan Peterson) and MN C(Rob/Mike/Gautam/Bernadette) with Carleton A also showing strong. In Div II Carleton C (led by Charlie) lapped the field. R has the stats, which I'm sure...

Coelacanth

To that end, we plan to collect a variety of proposed S-values and S-value-like-systems, including all of those discussed on this forum, and hold a competition between them in the summer of 2010. Objective: calculate a bunch of ranking systems, then compare them to the actual 2010 ICT and see which...

Coelacanth

(a) How long should an ideal tournament last? (b) Is there some way to structure a tournament that moves some of the more competitive matches earlier in the day, when teams have not been worn down as much? (c) Should a dinner break or other scheduled breaks aside from lunch be included in the tourn...

Coelacanth

In the TOMCAT format, the first ten tossups are 10 points, the next ten are 15 points, the next ten are 20, and the last ten are 25 despite uniform difficulty. R. informs me that the last section of this ("uniform difficulty") is not true; in fact, we sort the packets such that the more d...

Coelacanth

There was also a lot of play at the level that said "this team made a good decision in not going to ACF Winter". I'm not entirely sure what you meant here, but for the sake of clarity: I certainly don't think Gaurav or anyone was suggesting that every team should go to ACF Winter. Experie...

Coelacanth

A better format would to increase the number of playoff games and make it double bracket round robin or something like that. This is probably true, but as things are currently structured the playoffs are all run on one evening. Now, you could certainly argue for a two-tiered playoff structure, with...

Coelacanth

I am impressed by Gautam's ability to post updates on a precise 31-day cycle.

Coelacanth

a full-strength Illinois and a full-strength Chicago A playing each other at the Illinois-Chicago site Is Illinois planning on playing at the Chicago site? Seems like Bloomington is approximately the same distance for them and is actually, you know, in their ACUI region. I don't mean to diminish yo...

Coelacanth

Were questions written directly from the library reference desk line? I can't confirm or deny this. I know that we did write questions out of the New York Times Desk Reference . More on the early Elvis... This tournament was positioned as CBI-like. I think originally this was somewhat by default as...

Coelacanth

UW Parkside Man, I've never even heard of this campus! I think they named it that because of a turf war between Kenosha and Racine over who the school would be named after. It's pretty much right between them. They used to host GenCon there back in the day. Just a note about the questions at those ...

Coelacanth

I'd like to learn more about the history of the ELVIS tournament at the University of Wisconsin. ... As far as I know ELVIS hasn't happened since. Can somebody who has been to more than just 2007 ELVIS tell me about the ELIVSes of the past? Hey, I'm really old. I can answer this. I attended the fir...

Coelacanth

I liked the Unger tossup because Carleton negged it for no reason. It was the last question and it allowed us to force overtime, which we won. TRASH allows overtime now? This was in a playoff game. For regular round-robin games, the policy is still that a tie remains a tie. Fortunately that didn't ...

Coelacanth

Maybe my knowledge is skewed, but I think Ducky Medwick is a reasonable answer in the same way that Affirmed is. I think most people's "primary source" for sports knowledge is actually watching sports, and if you watch enough baseball Medwick is the answer to the Aflac trivia question a co...

Coelacanth

I may have more to say about specific questions as this thread unfolds. I didn't find any egregious issues with how the questions were distributed, either thematically or temporally. I do think TRASH needs to work on tossup accessibility. As I look at the stats across the various sites, it seems to ...

Coelacanth

Stats can be found here

Coelacanth

Brief results: After a triple round-robin, three teams were tied at 6-3. Tia and the TRASHmen had a slight edge in stats, so Carleton and Minnesota A played a play-in game. Minnesota A won that game in overtime, and went on to face Tia and the TRASHmen in the final. T&theT won in a close-fought ...

Coelacanth

Will this partnership force people to attend SCT only in their ACUI region? If so, there wouldn't be a Canadian tournament, and teams would have to all have passports just to attend when it is held in the other country. There's no reason this would preclude a Canadian site. ACUI regions extend into...

Coelacanth

There's absolutely no reason that a tournament advertised as "registration from 8 to 8:45; games start at 9" should start play after 9:30. If I didn't know who you were, I'd reply with "You're new to quizbowl, aren't you?" Actually, I meant to expand on this in my original post....

Coelacanth

Just chiming in to give a reader's perspective... I thought the quality control was 100% better than last year. Many fewer typos and grammatical errors, consistent tossup length, identifiable easy-middle-hard bonus parts. I heard a few complaints about factual inaccuracies or ambiguities, particular...

Coelacanth

My packet is essentially done, but I may end up tweaking one or two questions between now and Sunday.

I'll send it to you when I get home this evening, Donald, and if the final version that gets played at the MO site is slightly different, so be it.

Coelacanth

Cheynem wrote:Regarding my own event, I'm strongly leaning towards it being shootout with special scoring rules even if we do play it in Coffman anyway.

If this is the case, and it's held before the science, I'd like to play.

Coelacanth

Saturday Minnesota Open Time: 8:00 AM (registration starts) Place: Coffman Union third floor Mississippi Room I think it would be helpful, in the interest of logistics management at the start of what will surely be a long day, to put some more detail around the start time. Something along the lines...

Coelacanth

I am definitely playing this. My packet is 7-and-a-half-twelfths complete.

Coelacanth

Maybe we should try to clarify the schedule for Sunday. From the OP in this thread we have the Science event and Mike's vanity lit thing. Not mentioned in this thread is the guerilla sports over "lunch". If nothing is starting before noon, it sounds like Science first, with "lunch&quo...

Coelacanth

Minnesota Open Sunday will feature two academic subject events: Eric Mukherjee's science tournament and Mike Cheyne's vanity literature event. Now, it will have a short trash interlude! MO participants and local sports fans named Brian Weikle are encouraged to write 12 sports tossups for a short fr...

Coelacanth

Greg, unlike Lorin I read this board.

I think I've decided that I'm not coming to CO this year. If I were coming, I can think of nothing I would enjoy more than joining you, Brendan and Guy.

But I'm not coming, so that's moot.

Coelacanth

Just a few observations here from a reader's perspective. These are things I noticed as well as a summary of the players' comments throughout the day: * Variability in bonus difficulty was an issue. In one round, after four tossups each team had answered 2 and the score was 80-20. This had much more...

Coelacanth

Is there anyone on-site who is directing this tournament or the lit tournament? Tommy C. has emailed me asking where he should send the lit tournament packets. If no one steps up, I'll have him email them to me. I will be playing the lit tournament regardless, so I'd prefer to have the packets sent...

Coelacanth

Chris and Chris, I think this runners thing is really a generational issue. I pay almost no attention to track and field in general and distance running in particular; being 100 lbs overweight, it's obvious that the fitness movement passed me by completely. But I'm also old enough to remember the da...

Coelacanth

Brian and Mike L, We would definitely love it if you would be able to moderate at the event. As for "running" the tournament, we only really need a person to be the "on-site" person like you said. I am going to be making room reservations tonight as I finally got in touch with t...

Coelacanth

Hey, just to make sure, I am looking for people who are: a) going to be available to staff this tournament, and b) open to running this tournament. Hey, I can do both of these things! Maybe I can work with you on the "running" part; if you get the rooms reserved and the teams signed up, I...

Coelacanth

But my argument is that requiring the full first name doesn't keep those with knowledge from getting points, because nobody learns somebody's first initial and not their first name. On the other hand, it does allow people without knowledge to get points, as in the example I gave. Do you know the fi...

Coelacanth

Hey, if any of you youngsters is looking for an old person to balance out your team, I can probably be persuaded to come down for this event.

Coelacanth

There were a lot of complaints about how difficult/expensive it is to get to Minnesota by air when they hosted the ICT. I don't know to what extent that dissuaded people from attending last year's MO, but I thought I'd throw out the fact that MSP is now served by Southwest Airlines. Cheap flights on...

Coelacanth

So States happened last Saturday. Chaska won with EP in second. And once again I find myself disappointed not only at the question quality, but the way this tournament was run. Our team payed $80 to play this tournament, there were only 16 teams there and 15 packets, I would expect way more than 7 ...

Coelacanth

I can tell you that I personally had to use 3 different buzzers in my room over the course of the tourney, and at one point had to go door to door to find another room using the same (unfamiliar) model buzzers in order to replace a key part, so it caused a bunch of delays. If there were ~60 minute ...

Coelacanth

I note that a couple of Chicago people have expressed interest in attending next year's event if it's more local for them. TRASHionals has not been held in the midwest since 2002. Please...Chicago, Northwestern, Michigan, WashU or other air-accessible midwestern teams, put in a bid to host next year!

Coelacanth

Expanding on marnold's thoughts, which I mostly agree with.. Opening meeting: I'm sure that room had chairs in it when they scheduled it, but expecting people to just stand around waiting for things to start was a mistake. I agree that there's no need to introduce the teams, and they definitely shou...

Coelacanth

This seems to be a long conversation with not much by way of difference of opinion. There seems to be consensus that 1/1 hockey is too much, that zero hockey is too little, and there is room in between for regional variation. I tend to look at sports like this: Major Sports (1/1 per round each, but ...

Coelacanth

When we played that last question informally, we all were amazed that the event had any other name besides "Kermit Washington punching Rudy T". None of us had ever heard of it as "The Punch", which aspires to have the gravitas of much better-known events like "The Drive"...

Coelacanth

Charlie, fair questions. I don't think anyone is objecting to the really iconic albums like Born in the USA . The issue here is that people, especially today, tend not to listen to music in album form. People your age get music out of an mp3 player and people my age get it out of an arcane device ca...

Coelacanth

Tim To be clear, my objection is to tossups of the form "Guest artist X plays the xylophone on Track 2 of this album. Two songs mention laundromats in the lyrics, and the CD version has a bonus instrumental track entitled Granola. Also including songs such as Generic Title and Whateveria, for 1...

Coelacanth

I agree that Mike's post is great. A few quibbles... -Keep album titles to a minimum. While a few are highly notable, most are not. And yet they keep getting written about. Fixed for emphasis. -TV characters are a tough breed. I find nothing wrong about using good, solid, well-written hard clues to ...

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