The Quizbowl Resource Center

GDS has tentatively scheduled the 2009-10 Ben Cooper Memorial Tournament for February 6th, 2010. The current plan is for it to be house-written and power-marked. We are also considering running a vendor-questions tournament early in the year.

Flavor Flav's girlfriend "New York" come to mind as particularly bad Really? I'm sort of surprised that of all the tossups in this set that were clearly poorly executed, you'd identify this - is it just the answer selection? New York is (regrettably) a pretty recognizable recent tv figure...

Also, i noticed that the trash questions and bonuses tended to partially ignore sports... save for one hockey bonus, one basketball bonus, one incredibly difficult European soccer bonus, a possible-sports question about Mick Foley (pro wrestling isn't a sport), and one or two more. But that's a min...

GDS beats Charter 320-270 in the final and wins the tournament with a 9-1 record. Comments: Thanks to Maryland for writing and running a fun tournament. The harder-than-normal difficulty was a pleasant surprise, while the fluctuation between games (probably due to a late start on editing) wasn't exp...

I'm interested in the Saturday evening thing, should it happen.

GDS is expressing interest in sending a team or two to this.

Is the NSC-1 set cleared for view and/or discussion?

ACF-format rules (20/20 untimed tossups/bonuses, etc.) don't necessarily imply an ACF tournament, if that's the confusion here.

I'll be there with a team of GDS students.

Is this set posted somewhere? If not, is it safe to post now that the Minnesota mirror is over?

Charlie and Mr. Reinstein pretty much said everything I had to say pretty well, but here are a few additional thoughts: -The best way to control difficulty is to have a target difficulty. If you want to write a tournament with 5-line questions and IS difficulty, which is perfectly fine by me, it's i...

Were the questions used at this event identical to the ones used at BATE? If not, will the unique ones be posted sometime soon?

It's looking more likely that I won't be making it to this one. Break a leg hosting your first tournament, Cosby!

I seem to have a vague memory of a tournament held at GDS when I was in seventh grade that I think was billed as the "NAQT MD/DC State Championship." I've been seeing on the announcement board that a lot of other states have such a tournament this year, but not the MD/DC area. Is there an...

I'm in for Singles.

ihavenoidea wrote:Did anyone else think the Lamassu lead-in for Assyrians was nonspecific? In our Art History class, Lamassu has pretty much been associated with every Ancient Near Eastern Culture.

I buzzed in with "Babylonia" and protested, but it ended up not mattering. I guess we were just wrong...

Congratulations to WJ for winning an incredibly intense playoff bracket, and to VCU for running an amazingly efficient tournament, getting eleven rounds done with a lunch break by 4:15 PM! (Somehow we got home at our usual time, despite 2 hours more driving - wow!) We got in some pretty solid compet...

Overall, I liked this set. It definitely erred on the side of easy, which was certainly a better decision than erring on the side of hard for a company's first high school set. There were a few questions with answers like "Russian" or "money" that led to a sense of "No, real...

I really enjoyed this tournament. The field was fun to play against, and I can say for the first time that moderators were memorable in a good way! My main complaint is that the set itself went from readily fraudable/transparent in the earlier rounds (How many reasonable paintings contain city build...

It is January 2nd. Are the remaining sets going to be posted soon, or will they be used more next semester?

This seems to be two questions in one: Is it possible to produce a set of questions that are fully pyramidal and follow "good quizbowl" principles while still at a difficulty level better suited for new players? The answer to this one is a definite yes. Slightly shorter questions (meaning ...

Today, at practice, on Maryland Fall 07:

Given: Gundam Wing
Answer: Battle of Lepanto

That's what happens when one walks into practice mid-tossup after a teammate guesses "...that robot fight..."

Have these been posted/Where are these posted? I missed this tournament and would like to see the questions.

Hi. I'm posting to say that I wrote both the Arnolfini Wedding tossup and the Waste Land tossup; I apologize for the issues with them. I'll try to make sure similar issues don't happen in my future question writing. Re: Arnolfini Wedding: Now that I think about it, there is probably no good leadin f...

all of these comments on IS-80A apply equally to IS-79. Seriously, this was a disgrace. Seconded. IS-79 was a huge dive downward in quality from IS-77. If NAQT is going to remain a product that good teams are willing to play, the overall quality needs to increase significantly. While IS-77 had its ...

My congratulations to Charter A for a victory well deserved, to the TJ staff for running an enjoyable tournament full of quizbowl, and to NAQT for really outdoing themselves in making the worst IS set in recent memory. "FIFTEEEEN"s, excessive fraud, giveaway leadins, recycled material, all...

My full congratulations to Charter; you guys played greatly in the finals, and before that of course. Though obviously I shouldn't discuss HSAPQ specifics yet, overall I was happy with the questions. A few complaints: the difficulty seemed to vary between categories (maybe I'm used to SCIENCE! in an...

I was that "sophomore" who Sarah mentioned from GDS, & I thought it might make sense to post here first. Hello everyone! It looks like the first few months of the year (maybe even the first semester?) will have many of the area's top teams playing each other in some really intense comp...