The Quizbowl Resource Center

Captain Sinico

ANNOUNCEMENT This year's NAQT Midwest Sectional Championship Tournament (SCT) will take place on Saturday, February 6, 2016 on the campus of the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. This event is hosted by the University of Illinois Academic Buzzer Team, with me, Mike Sorice, as tournament d...

Captain Sinico

In Our Time is far and away my favorite podcast. It's pretty austere, but I find its format endlessly engaging. It can also get you endless points if that's what you're after.

Captain Sinico

If I wanted to claim such inconsequential nonsense makes up the 5 most important things wrong with the game today, I'd probably never show my face again after, either!

Captain Sinico

I'm less likely to play a Friday night event since it may keep me up late the day before the most important tournament, which is maybe not worth the risk. I don't understand the gist of this thread. If playing 4 events in a weekend tires you out, then play less - nobody's making you play all 4. It's...

Captain Sinico

Contra that, I loved the schedule and I hope it stays where it is. There's no imperative to play everything if you don't want to or can't take it.

Captain Sinico

Jordan's got the distinction right: CO's for hard-ass hard questions that super-teams of hard-question-loving ballers struggle to eke out 18-19 PPBs on. As I said elsewhere, this year's was just about right with respect to difficulty. It could have been a bit easier, and might have suffered had it b...

Captain Sinico

Thanks very much for such a great tournament, Stephen! To repeat what others have said: this is one of the best subject tournaments ever written and I hope you'll all read it if you haven't already.

Captain Sinico

Thanks a lot to the editors and writers for such an enjoyable tournament! Though my feelings on losing are well known, I loved this set and the supreme level of competition all weekend, and especially on Saturday. I especially liked how it was just on the right side of crazy hard in the median, and ...

Captain Sinico

Baller! (If I missed that upthread, I'm sorry.) Shall we pick a start time, then?

Captain Sinico

It seems like now's a good time to re-pose the following: Is there an order for the side events on Sunday yet? Also, we should decide on projected start times, or at very least a start time for whichever of these fine side-bars of this weekend's quizbowl debauch is leading off. I notice lunch plans ...

Captain Sinico

Clues should be ordered so as to minimize the extent to which it's rational for a player with perfect knowledge (of a clue) to take a probabilistic risk (A knowledgable player may hear the first few words, think "Knowing Matisse, I know this is one of maybe 3 or 4 colors, which means I've got a...

Captain Sinico

This deserves its own thread, but Alexander Grothendieck is the most important mathematician of the past 60 years. His contributions to algebraic geometry should come up much more than space-filling curves, which in topology are objects of secondary importance. I don't agree with your assessment ei...

Captain Sinico

Our team's packet is done and will be submitted in a moment.

Captain Sinico

I'd love to play whatever this wacky thing is tonight, after I finish my C.O. History questions. Please let us know when!

Captain Sinico

I didn't start playing until junior year - it doesn't matter all that much as long as you'll put the work in.

Captain Sinico

The takeaway from this is: take registrations for teams, not interest. Since it wasn't clear which was wanted when, you two had different ideas of what each of you meant. There's no satisfactory resolution to that problem, so you have to fix this as best you can, and then do it better next time.

Captain Sinico

Thanks for writing and running this and sorry it's landed you with this problem. I guess it's a good thing that so many people want to play your tournament - I know I'm looking forward to it! Maybe I can help you square this circle some. You could try a different schedule of some form, assuming you ...

Captain Sinico

Kelly Tourdot and I arranged to team up a couple days ago.

Captain Sinico

I really don't know what to do with this, but this thread has some more observations on the possibility of humans becoming more accurate at calling time properly. Here's an important caveat to people reading the above thread. I add this because people at tournaments seem confused, and because I've ...

Captain Sinico

I do use a timer for pretty much all matches I moderate and don't find it onerous at all. I wear a watch with a digital second display. After the appropriate start point (usually when I recognize or whatever,) I look at the watch, and then call time when the number is one plus the answer time, modul...

Captain Sinico

I'm interested in this. Perhaps I could help staff, or play if people think that might be fun.

Captain Sinico

After years of this, I've distilled it to: "Competitive knowing stuff fast."

Captain Sinico

Angle! Now that's a new one to me.

Captain Sinico

Our local TV thing is the Parkland Challenge, run by the sumptuously appointed local Community College. They're nice people, albeit they use single-elim on mostly one-clue tossups. Also there's conferring on tossups the other team guesses wrong, and some other wacky format stuff. Anyway, watch some ...

Captain Sinico

A Dan Passner(?)-shot video of the 2004 ICT Undergraduate finals that I've been sitting on for a decade or more. If Dan or whoever wants to claim the YouTube dap for this, I'm happy to transfer ownership!

Captain Sinico

I still want my Mustadio points!

Captain Sinico

Whatever makes you wacky Epicurians happy, I guess!

Captain Sinico

Sorry if this was unclear: I'm 100% certain to be at CO and I definitely want to play this, so please put me down for a team. If people from the "Interest" list want to contact me to form a duo, please do!

Captain Sinico

I had the same problem at both HSNCT and ICT; trying to find the end of the pronunciation guides was difficult at times. Graying the pronunciation guides as suggested sounds like a very good idea. It seems to allow more efficient skipping of those I don't need and finding of their ends more easily, ...

Captain Sinico

Sorry to hear of your difficulties. I'm sure you can find a way around them if you'll put some effort in. Schools are often okay with a parent trusted by the coach accompanying a team for the purposes of making everything official. Even if your school's not cool with that, local tournament organizer...

Captain Sinico

While Academic League tossups are necessarily easier relative to pyramidal ones due to their one-line nature, there is a tendency towards "swerving" in questions which does not reward blitzing For the record, these are called "hoses." A hose is a question in which the earlier pa...

Captain Sinico

I have to agree with Chris - allowing corrections to completed answers isn't a good idea in practice and we should change that rule to something more straightforward.

Captain Sinico

I'd sure love to play this, as well as any and all side events. If some wind up being played on somebody's floor at 2 A.M. Monday, that's cool with me, too. I suppose that means I'm looking for a team or teammates!

Captain Sinico

NAQT's registration system does that automatically, to some extent.

Captain Sinico

Any chance you dudes can e-mail me when you're practicing? I'm in Chicago irregularly but I'd love to drop by when it works out.

Captain Sinico

Having just straight up walked into this tournament off the street knowing nothing about it other than time and location, I though it was a lot of fun (and negging!) Perhaps if I'd expected something easier, I'd be disappointed by how hard it was (hard, but not that hard,) but I don't think anyone c...

Captain Sinico

ValenciaQBowl wrote:...do we need to accept some weird allusions to something I've never heard of?

Congratulations: you've inadvertently created the world's best half-sentence question about quizbowl!

Captain Sinico

...a much more elegant solution is simply to use the precise reference throughout the entire question: "this man," "this novel," "this country," etc. Very rarely will this lead a player to be able to narrow down the answer space so dramatically that a question plays po...

Captain Sinico

To be honest, it's probably better than shitting on the front of someone, right? Probably my favorite quizbowl memory of any kind all-time is Zeke Berdichevsky, Andrew Ullsperger, Matt, and myself winning Chicago Open in 2005. Me being me, I mostly remember having a couple (morally undeserved) good ...

Captain Sinico

I know that! I was just wondering for, like, other people and so I can see whom we're playing against and stuff.

Captain Sinico

Is there any way to view registered teams? Can there be?!

Captain Sinico

I'd say that calling what's unambiguously a novel a "story" isn't really misleading, though it's perhaps not the best practice (unless you have some other reason to avoid saying "novel.") If, for example, someone were to protest that the bonus is misleading and must be thrown out...

Captain Sinico

Okay, stats are posted! Points scored should be accurate, except that I'm not sure who got TU 2 for Kankakee in Round 1. Games played are wrong for several teams & rounds: Peotone, Rd. 1 (maybe) Streator, Rd. 1 (don't know who came in/out or when at all!) Danville, Rd. 1 (don't know who came out...

Captain Sinico

It was (5) Streator over (4) Centennial in the finals, 220-80. Congratulations to Coach Tyne and the Bulldogs! We look forward to hosting you and our Section's other Regional winners at our Sectional this Saturday. Other semi-finalists were Bradley-Bourbonnais & Danville. Stats will be posted to...

Captain Sinico

Here's an e-mail I sent to coaches a little while ago: Coaches, Based on the results of our Doodle poll, and in light of the long travels here that many of you have and some facility considerations, we're going to start slightly later than the recommended time. The Coaches' Meeting will begin by 4:3...

Captain Sinico

Centennial is happy to host an IHSA Regionals site on 3/9. Your site manager is our AD, Mr. Brian Easter. You can contact me with questions. On tournament day, I'll post updates here as they happen, so stay tuned for exciting action! Teams in this Region: Bradley-Bourbonnais Centennial Danville Hers...

Captain Sinico

Observers of the passing scene noted the following errors in the stats: 1. Bloomington A had 355, not 255, vs. Metea Valley (addition on scoresheet was wrong) 2. Metea Valley had 190, not 90, against Auburn A (score was entered wrong) 3. Arjun from OPRF was 0/2/0 nor 0/0/2 against "Lake County ...

Captain Sinico

I'd sure like to play such an event.

Captain Sinico

I will neg anything if you give me a chance. Just try to stop me!

Captain Sinico

I'll 0/6 for anybody, anytime. Let me know!

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