The Quizbowl Resource Center

Theodore

Colonel By can confirm 3 full teams of 4; more is possible (and we'll notify you of this)

Can we have a field update please?

Theodore

Will there be a write-up similar to that of the collegiate poll?

Theodore

I don't know of any event/fair liek this, but generally thrift store/charity stores/second-hand stores offer comparable prices all year-round. At Salvation Army Thrift stores, books are generally $1 to $2, maybe $3-$5 if they're in perfect mint condition. Goodwill is slightly more expensive ($2.50 o...

Theodore

ahan108 wrote:Is there any more interest for a Suits or BBT packet?

I would love to play a BBT pack!

Theodore

Dr. Loki Skylizard, Thoracic Surgeon wrote: I know I have emails inquiring about hosting from the following schools:

Carleton

Carleton University or Carleton College?

Theodore

Andrej is now unfortunately unable to come to this tournament; we're looking for a free agent to play with myself, Cameron, and Di for both this and the Texas tournament Sunday.

EDIT: We have acquired Jesse Wang for Sunday, but still require 1 teammate for VCU Open.

Theodore

Not clear what your plan is, but I interpret (please correct me if I'm wrong) that you intend on advertising Quizbowl as Reach. Don't do that; it just leads to confusion. Unrelated bonuses (E.g. FTPE answer these questions about Colonel John By) make very good categories. 60 second rounds make good...

Theodore

Not clear what your plan is, but I interpret (please correct me if I'm wrong) that you intend on advertising Quizbowl as Reach. Don't do that; it just leads to confusion.

Theodore

I have mixed feelings about the draft; of course it's nice to meet new people, but it can lead to some wonky teams (e.g. 4 players with significant overlap in history knowledge), and can be poorly organized. Team roster-building is (or at least should be) very meticulous and strategic, and not (or a...

Theodore

Could we please get a field update for this please? I presume it's the same as the VCU Open field, but that isn't a good assumption

Theodore

Like other people have said, a lot of students travel around to schools outside their neighbourhood and don’t reflect the income data. This is especially true of Colonel By and Lisgar; I don't know a single member of my team that lives within 15 km (10 miles) of my school. Fred, are there any futur...

Theodore

Firstly, I think the first step is to integrate the guide to quizbowlpackets.com or move it to a website like HSQBRank where more people would more easily find and access it; information isn't terribly useful if people can't/don't find it. We should figure out a community way to get more data togeth...

Theodore

How likely is a teacher labour dispute now, given the Liberal majority victory? I think the #1 thing the Canadian circuit needs is more presence in Toronto. Of course, the universities will have to bid, but I think a provincials hosted in/near the GTA would greatly help. Also, will the ONQBA hold a ...

Theodore

Could you please post the diffraction tossup? I remember that 'Huygens(-Fresnel) principle' sounded like it was acceptable for one clue.

Theodore

So I've made this guide to packet difficulty . People have already given me constructive criticism on missing and mis-categorized sets, and I encourage the community to continue to do so. Fred Morlan suggested that I further subdivide sets by year, which is something I would like to do. I would just...

Theodore

The Difficulty Index is pretty good, except, I believe that NASAT is meant to be regular college difficulty. I know when we practice on NASAT sets we drop a handful of toss-ups per round, while we nearly never drop a PACE question in practice by the give away. Thank you, that's been noted. I apprec...

Theodore

Colonel By will be there with at least 1 team (probably 2-3).

Theodore

I have cannot think of a regular attender from the metro area whose pyramidal team did not develop from a team constructed primarily to compete on It's Academic . I assert that pyramidal quizbowl would be nearly nonexistent in the Baltimore-DC area were it not for It's Academic in the first place. ...

Theodore

I have one question, though; how does something like History Bowl help bridge a gap between Reach and good quizbowl? It seems to be if not enough people want to play quizbowl, even less people/coaches would want to attend a subject specific event. As Patrick stated, approaching a history teacher sa...

Theodore

I believe you're missing ACF Regionals (http://www.hsquizbowl.org/db/tournament ... /complete/) for Colonel By (if you decided to include ACF Regionals in the rankings). Also, could you please post the updated stat adjustments for sets?

Theodore

Why would people be unhappy, I mean just like in the states, "quizbowl" means "academic competitions featuring buzzers", and in Cananda "reach" is synonymous, I'd think it'd be okay to call a tournament "Southern Ontario Reach Tournament", especially since yo...

Theodore

I love this idea, but to be honest I'm not sure we have enough interested teams/schools to support a championship, as Quizbowl is only present in pockets in Alberta and Ontario. Ontario Provincials this year has about 10-15 teams, and there are probably fewer teams that exist in Alberta. I'm neither...

Theodore

Ted, you might have more of a grievance with your high school. Colonel By's Reach club has evolved into a pretty worthwhile unofficial quizbowl club. Since there are now dozens of students who want quizbowl practice, the school might owe it to you to adapt the club's mission to something involving ...

Theodore

TEACHERS choose whether to officially participate in Reach. Not students. I think this is an extremely important aspect of spreading good Quizbowl. Take my school for example: all of our players love Quizbowl and find Reach to be downright comical with its poor quality questions. Despite this, our ...

Theodore

Each and every member of my team enjoys good pyramidal Quizbowl, and we are frustrated by the numerous glaring flaws of Reach for the Top, the bad non-pyramidal format that plagues Canada (think of it as the :chip: of the North) Our coach simply refuses to steer away from Reach or play Quizbowl at p...

Theodore

Glad somebody asked this question! The main reason I love Quizbowl is that for the most part, it's "pure knowledge"; people having fun while learning simply for the sake of learning (it would be incorrect and ignorant to assume everybody plays Quizbowl for learning and nothing else, but th...

Theodore

But in areas new to quizbowl, or where there still are no teams in the top 200 nationally, it's far more important that questions are made accessible. Personally, I think NAQT A Sets are even too hard for many teams. Having a reworked A set version (perhaps with fewer packets - in most new areas, 1...

Theodore

Checking stats for Michigan Fall, I have Colonel By A and B, Western Albemarle (solo), Lafayette High School, Harmony, Reagan, and LASA A (though really a watered down LASA B) playing the tournament. HQBC and Tamil Tiger Mothers also played MFT, but they're pseudonymous high schools, so I don't kno...

Theodore

Just wondering: what determines whether a set is used or not to determine rankings? For example, why does FKT have a PPB adjustment (http://hsqbrank.com/2014/02/05/2013-2014-stat-adjustments/), but not SCOP? Another example would be how Michigan Fall is not included, but Penn Bowl is. Is it simply t...

Theodore

My experience is that coaches prefer nonpyramidal quizbowl for three reasons: 1) Their goal is to win a nonpyramidal tournament, so they focus on whatever will be similar to that tournament. 2) They are often forced to moderate and don't want to read through the long questions. 3) They don't value ...

Theodore

Great to see more Southern Ontario teams; I look forward to meeting you all!

Colonel By will officially sign up 1 team for now. We may have a second (and maybe even a third), although this is not confirmed at the moment.

Theodore

IHBB (International History Bee and Bowl) is likely to inaugurate a Canadian division next year. This would entail regionals in about 8-10 areas (BC, Alberta, Manitoba, Windsor, Hamilton, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, Halifax or so) initially, and ultimately grow within 2-3 years to every province and...

Theodore

The #1 criticism is indeed length. (I don't really have the heart to tell the rest of the league that we're on A sets and MS sets, and the IS sets would be even longer.) After the first game, the organizer chopped our 1st and 3rd rounds from 8/8 each to 6/6 each at JV. He still thinks the games dra...

Theodore

The fact that coaches and teams want to practice on these kinds of questions follows directly from them being only willing to attend and/or run these kinds of tournaments. If all after school tournaments used pyramidal questions, this would probably be a different conversation. As for practicing on...

Theodore

Good, pyramidal Quizbowl has come a long way in the last decade or so, but there are still regions where low-quality non-pyramidal questions are dominant (such as mine). When I explain the merits of pyramidal Quizbowl to students, they quickly realize the value in it, and easily see why pyramidal is...

Theodore

Perhaps the context of my post wasn't clear, I'm not advocating quiz bowl at the "regular" Saturday tournament level should be purely canonical and "stuff you learn in school", but definitely it should be a lot more prevalent vs the topics I just mentioned. Harder answerlines =/...

Theodore

How many schools actually teach authors such as Allende, Coetzee, Gordimer, Keneally, Pamuk, Soyinka, and Tagore? How many high schoolers take English courses with assigned readings such as Journey to the West , Blood Knot , Betrayal by Rita Hayworth and Temple of the Golden Pavilion ? I agree that...

Theodore

Also, if anyone has the technical expertise to do so, I'd be interested in talking with people about starting up some sort of a Quizbowl podcast for high school Quizbowl. I think it'd be a good way to promote the game and get a little more information about the teams in high school Quizbowl than ju...

Theodore

I feel that resting my eyes every now and then helps. I don't find my ability to listen to tossups to be compromised when I close my eyes (after all, all you're doing is listening--no need to look at anything). I've also heard that muting one sense enhances the others?

Theodore

Any hotel/lodging recommendations? (preferably those fairly close to the tournament site)

Theodore

Einhard wrote: We do indeed have undergraduate status. However, based on my ACF Fall experience, I do not believe we're eligible for DII?

Thank you for clarifying!

No, we're not eligible for DII.

Theodore

Do high school teams have undergraduate status?

Theodore

Colonel By will be sending precisely one team to this. Is the discount determined by every 200 km or 200 miles? Would just like to verify this as this changes the numbers (and discounts) by quite a bit. Also, are a set of 8 BuzzBox buzzers + a laptop eligible for a buzzer system discount? We'll also...

Theodore

What are buzzbox buzzers? They are the buzzers used for Playstation Buzz! games: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buzz! They can be plugged into the USB port of a computer and used as a regular lock-out system with the use of this free program: http://www.shelty.ca/buzzbox2.html While they are signific...

Theodore

Colonel By would like to officially register one team! We're almost finished our packet and should have it in soon.

Theodore

I tire of hearing "quizbowl being harder than Reach" when 83% of tossups were converted at last year's OQT on an IS set compared to 57% conversion at that year's Ottawa Reach preliminaries. This is a common "illusion" resulting from long, pyramidal questions. To me, it is one of...

Theodore

minusfive wrote:no BuzzBox buzzers because Jordan Palmer will, like a Male Lion which takes over a pride and spots cubs that are not his, DESTROY THEM SO THEY CAN'T REPRODUCE

If you decide to change your mind and permit BuzzBox Buzzers, Colonel By will promise to actually bring a laptop this time, I swear.

Theodore

I play pyramidal Quizbowl in a region (Ontario, Canada) where a non-pyramidal format is dominant. Please do not feel obliged to play non-pyramidal Quizbowl just because the other schools in your region are. Even if pyramidal Quizbowl is not the dominant format in your region, it's still more academi...

Theodore

Kenneth Widmerpool wrote:"How to get the most out of practice time" is something that I'd like to see

I would definitely like to see this. I simply read packets at my club practices, but I'm sure there's a lot more to practices than that.

Theodore

pandabear555 wrote:Has the difficulty for this tournament be determined yet?

Based on the results of the Ottawa SCOP Novice mirror, I would advocate for the use of an IS-A set. This is still a new and growing Quizbowl circuit.

Search found 111 matches