The Quizbowl Resource Center

Judson Laipply

Can I see the velocity question? I had no idea what that distance ladder clue was at the start and I'm also curious as to how there were so many negs and such low conversion. Velocity is an answerline that would fly in middle school so there must have been a very stingy giveaway.

Judson Laipply

Could I see the tossup on Shanghai? I think there was a clue about "the Mercedes-Benz Arena" that led me to buzz with "Stuttgart". There are several Mercedes-Benz Arenas so maybe it would be better to clarify that it is a non-European city or something along those lines. Definit...

Judson Laipply

RE the sterile neutrinos bonus part: As someone who knows what Mini-BooNE and Ice Cube are (neutrino detectors) and someone who knows what a type of matter that only interacts through gravity is (dark matter), I should be able to say either neutrino or dark Matter and get prompted. I decided to say ...

Judson Laipply

Could I see the TUs on "retrograde" and "Pyrrhus"? 4. Bodies undergoing this phenomenon have tidal bulges that cause a restoring force, resulting in tidal deceleration. <LC, Other Science (Astronomy)> This seems like it should not be unique to retrograde motion but I cannot conf...

Judson Laipply

Bumping this because Combined stats are now available.

Judson Laipply

Another comment on that embryonic stem cells question. I'd need to see the question text but I'm pretty sure I buzzed on a clue about teratomas and at that point there would be no reasonable way to distinguish between embryonic stem cells and other types of pluri/totipotent stem cells. Also that Mir...

Judson Laipply

This was fantastic as always. My only regret is that we didn't get through all the packets. When can we expect packets to be posted? This, like its predecessors, was a delight to play and consistently hit on stuff that's hard to ask a lot of in normal tournaments in a very interesting way. I wish mo...

Judson Laipply

I assume you have access restricted on these sheets so that people can't share them and give away answers by accident, but be prepared to get a bunch of permission request via email over the next couple weeks.

Judson Laipply

Five days out from the date of the tournament, it would be nice to know if there is more interest in this tournament than the 3 free agents in the google doc.

Judson Laipply

wcheng wrote:I'd be completely unable to attend this tournament if it was moved to any later of a date, so I'm hoping it can stay where it is.

I can also only attend this date and have already booked travel for this date.

Judson Laipply

If anyone is interested in going to Fenway Sunday night (8PM*) to see the Yankees play the Red Sox on Sunday Night Baseball, DM me. It looks like there are still some reasonably priced tickets available directly through the red sox website. *Assuming that there won't actually be any side events runn...

Judson Laipply

I’m aware we are the big evil cabal, but as far as I know there’s still only one Chicago institution.

Judson Laipply

I emailed you a while back to register my team (Tamara Vardomskaya, Mike Cheyne, Sam Bailey, and me) for the tournament. Did you get the registration? It appears that we are not included in the field in the first post.

Judson Laipply

Now that I can access the "color" question from Editors one, I can confirm my suspicion that the first two clues are nearly unbuzzable and if you do buzz on them you are either a) the Eric Weisstein's world of astronomy page that the clue was taken from or b) about to neg with "Infra...

Judson Laipply

Now that I can access the "color" question from Editors one, I can confirm my suspicion that the first two clues are nearly unbuzzable and if you do buzz on them you are either a) the Eric Weisstein's world of astronomy page that the clue was taken from or b) about to neg with "Infrar...

Judson Laipply

Shameless Chicago promotion time: Matthew Lehmann and Luke Tierney are both freshmen who scored over 20 PPG in the ACF Nationals top bracket and led their team to it's first top 10 finish in at least the last 5 years (and probably more than that). If they aren't both in your ballot for rookie of the...

Judson Laipply

For the jazz, I did my best to be innovative, including writing on things like jazz practice (the bonus on fake books) and education (the bonus part on Stan Kenton). As a former, and hopefully future, jazz musician, this was noticed and appreciated although our team did not get to answer either bon...

Judson Laipply

Researchers in 2007 observed the effect of sudden changes in this variable in the upregulation of alpha crystallins, or sHSPs, in the eggs of zebrafish. Saccharomyces mutants sensitive to this variable were used by Hartwell to figure out the role of cyclins in cell division. This variable is observ...

Judson Laipply

It would necessitate rewriting a bunch of clues and the answerline, but "this variable" or "these reaction conditions" might work better. I hate tossups using “this variable” in bio and reaction chem since that immediately narrows it to an answer space of 3 or 4. “These reaction...

Judson Laipply

I should also note that while Aseem claims that the balance of the other science was due to some form of mistake, I think the balance of the other science was better than any tournament I've played in a while. Math doesn't really deserve to have one or even more than one question per packet and I do...

Judson Laipply

I don't think anyone has brought this up yet, but the bonus leadins were oppressively long in many cases. This caused my team to question at several points to wonder if the moderator was accidentally reading a tossup. The exhausting effect of this was only compounded by the fact that the bonuses usu...

Judson Laipply

Marmaduke van Swearingen wrote:There were two too many questions on cryptocurrencies.

Given what is currently in the news, your acceptable number of cryptocurrency-related questions is at least one too low.

Judson Laipply

The first clue in the pendulum TU seems to me like it would be true for every SHO but that’s based on distant memories of sophomore physics. The first clue in the exoplanet tossup is taken almost directly from Wikipedia and the second half of it basically describes what an echelon spectrograph dies ...

Judson Laipply

Regarding point 3, while obviously you want every moderator in a top playoff bracket to be good, in my experience, the bottom brackets also especially require good moderators. I realize this sounds stupid--you want good moderators in every room if possible--but sometimes it's natural for staffers t...

Judson Laipply

What about looking at SCT ppb only? I've strongly suspected this for years now while looking at recently underranked teams like Chicago B. PPB should definitely be more strongly included in the D-Value as it is a direct measure of team strength (albeit scattered by how strong the bonus rollercoaste...

Judson Laipply

It might be useful to share a bit of data from our statistical survey of D values and ICT performance. Using the new D value calculation, the historical r^2 between D value and ICT performance for teams maintaining substantial roster continuity between the tournaments is about 0.75 (roughly speakin...

Judson Laipply

Was the tossup on blood type unique for ABO typing? I negged with "Rhesus factor" (which I don't think fits the earlier clues) near the part about immunoglobulins crossing the placenta, but I'm curious as to exactly how wrong I was. I also was pretty sure that clue was describing (if not ...

Judson Laipply

I’m interested and some people have unironically described me as a science player.

PM me if you’re interested.

Judson Laipply

msacks wrote:UPDATED FIELD as of 12/30/17
...
David Sacks, Erika Schafer-Sacks, Richard Sacks, Rachel Sacks and Joshua Sacks
...

I'm unilaterally declaring that this team's name is the Illinois Sacks Exchange

Judson Laipply

So it looks like some people are applying to the “WAO” discussion group to try to join this tournament’s discussion group.

I encourage people to join the WAO 2 discussion group instead since that is, you know, the actual discussion group for this tournament.

Judson Laipply

I have no experience in running skype mirrors, but I would be very interested in playing if someone with experience were to set one up.

Judson Laipply

-My teammates noticed an overemphasis on a few pet topics in the science (lab techniques, fluid dynamics). Well it's all well and good to write about stuff that interests you, exclusively doing so can be a source of irritation to people who don't specialize in these things. -This set definitely see...

Judson Laipply

Periplus of the Erythraean Sea wrote:We are a week away, and we have confirmed enough staff for this event. Would free agents be okay being combined onto a single scab team?

No objections here.

Judson Laipply

If there's even a packet or two, the bevy of summer events this year would most-likely have a lunch-time audience for this.

Judson Laipply

The Notre Dame mirror is apparently no longer happening. Any Midwest site would be greatly appreciated.

Judson Laipply

Preference for April 1 and 15. April 1 is better because it can be a tuneup for both nationals.

An informal poll of the Chicago team suggested we can field one team (of people who didn't play the oxford site). Formal polling might get a second team.

Judson Laipply

I've talked to some people about potentially organizing an Oxford or Cambridge mirror in NYC in the last two weeks of March, or in April avoiding either national. I think this could be a self-running tournament if we can find enough staff and the field isn't too large; it could also be staffed usin...

Judson Laipply

The tossup on resistors contains a first line which also applies to a DC brushed motor. This should be fixed. Also, the beginning of the elasticity tossup seemed to refer to a wing as something with the "aeroelastic" property, which is at best an abuse of language. "Aeroelastic"...

Judson Laipply

Couple of quibbles: the Quantum Dots bonus set is brutal. I sat through way too many lectures on QD synthesis last year and could have pulled Stranski-Krastanov growth but still sat there like an idiot and said CVD for the last part - though it was late in the day so I may be biased. Interesting......

Judson Laipply

This is a thread for the discussion of the Science questions for WAO. I edited the Chemistry, Physics, and Other Science as well as the Bio tossup on transplants. I would like to thank Jason and Jonathan for editing the Bio as well as for some comments on submissions, especially the CS. I would also...

Judson Laipply

Congrats to Grandma Morgab Got Run Over by a Reindeer (Ike Jose, Andrew Wang, Morgan Venkus, and Friend) who beat Chicago A in game 1 of an advantaged final to win the tournament. Thanks to all of the moderators and teams for helping to make this tournament happen. Stats are here , including tiebrea...

Judson Laipply

Final field update posted. Two teams dropped tonight so we are left at 11. Format will be a full round robin with byes. All teams registered should have received a logistics email. If not, PM me or email me.

Judson Laipply

WAO @ UChicago will now be hosting a mirror of Eyes that do not See VIII, a visual fine arts tossup only tournament. Previous incarnations can be found at the bottom of this page: http://www.doc-ent.com/trash/index.html Signup sheet is here Format will be determined based on interest and number of s...

Judson Laipply

Waitlist no longer exists. All of the multitudes of team on the waitlist are now included in the field. Some people have indicated intent to submit packets and/or have indicated intent to play and have not yet formally registered. You know who you are. Please email me ASAP to give me the team number...

Judson Laipply

CPiGuy wrote:Is Notre Dame hosting a mirror of this?

The Upper Midwest Mirror has been moved to UChicago. Announcment thread here: viewtopic.php?f=8&t=19403

Judson Laipply

http://i.imgur.com/44U6WjZ.png Image credit Joey Goldman This is the official announcement for the University of Chicago's mirror of the Brief Wondrous Tournament of WAO (Will Alston Open), or just WAO for short, on Saturday, January 21st, 2017. The tournament will take place in Saieh Hall(5757 S. ...

Judson Laipply

Chicago A cleared the field at 7-0(Playoff record only). Chicago C came in second at 5-2. Illinois, DCCA, and Northwestern tied in 3rd at 4-3. Thanks to all the teams for playing. Stats posted here. Prelims: http://www.hsquizbowl.org/db/tournaments/3576/stats/prelims/ Playoffs: http://www.hsquizbowl...

Judson Laipply

My "Personal Knowledge" question which got (wisely) turned into a Michael Polanyi question, still retained some of the original pronounage, i.e. the original clues referred to Polanyi as "this book" while the new clues used "this man."

Judson Laipply

Thanks for writing this set-- it was my favorite that I played all year, mostly due to the excellent physics questions. Stephen did a great job asking about important things that come up in quantum, E&M, classical, and stat mech courses, and the bonuses parts were well-selected in general and f...

Judson Laipply

I think the Hubble parameter question referred to it as the "first rung" on the cosmic distance ladder. I believe it is standard to number the rungs from the bottom (i.e. measurements for closer objects). Furthermore, attempting to correct this by saying something like "top rung"...

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