The Quizbowl Resource Center

Mike Bentley

Here is a field update for ASS: The following teams have confirmed that they are coming: Wilmington Charter School - 1 Team University of Rochester - 3 Teams Dan Goff and others - 1 Team UVA - 1 Team Brick Barientos and others - 1 Team These teams registered for the earlier date but have not confirm...

Mike Bentley

While having the tournament on the same day as Penn Bowl doesn't sound like a good idea, moving it to Sunday January 28th would make it interfere with ASS, a trash tournament that we're hosting here at Maryland. While BU and Maryland are decently far away, I get the feeling that some teams in New Yo...

Mike Bentley

This tournament, along with the Terrapin Invitational Tournament, will be delayed until the last weekend in January. Specifically, the new date of ASS will be on Sunday, January 28th. All of the other information in the first post stands. I'd like to remind teams that this will be an open tournament...

Mike Bentley

I am of the opinion that there ought to at least be a "TRASH Fall" tournament in the vein of ACF Fall that that appeals much more to current undergraduate players with slightly easier questions with a distribution that more accurately reflects current popular culture. There was a "TR...

Mike Bentley

I agree with most of theMoMA's criticisms about this tournament. I am of the opinion that there ought to at least be a "TRASH Fall" tournament in the vein of ACF Fall that that appeals much more to current undergraduate players with slightly easier questions with a distribution that more a...

Mike Bentley

tomburr wrote:At the Delta Burke last weekend:

"It's dimensions are 8.75 by..buzz"

"Nintendo Wii"

Wow, I had to wait until they mentioned the Hollywood Processor on a different Wii question to get it. That's pretty impressive.

Mike Bentley

Oh, and at that tournament with the Oscar Meyer Weiner bonus, earlier bonuses had delightful bonuses like:

"Add the number of players on a soccer team to the number of championships that the Yankees have, then multiply them by the number of goals in a hat trick, ..." etc.

Mike Bentley

So in the finals of a high school match we got the first tossup and our bonus was: "All or nothing, sing the Oscar Meiner Weiner song". The one kid on our team who sort of knew it apparently messed up two of the words and we didn't get any points on it. We lost the match be only a few poin...

Mike Bentley

Except baseball games don't start at 9 AM and end a 9 PM with a long ride home (as ACF Fall did this year). You're no longer getting your "money's worth" forcing yourself to play questions that you do not want to play. Keeping teams this long also, in my opinion, discourages people from ge...

Mike Bentley

This is a new announcement for our cheaply priced trash tournament, ASS - The Atlantic Seaboard Skirmish - which will be held on Sunday, January 28th, the day after the Terrapin Invitational Tournament. Please disregard all of the information in the previous announcement. The reason for this re-anno...

Mike Bentley

Just wanted to say a few things about this tournament while it was still fresh in my mind. Overall it was very enjoyable, it was nice having a Trash tournament that focussed a lot on more recent Trash. I felt that music was a little overrepresented in this tournament, seeming to always have 4/4 each...

Mike Bentley

actually the plethora of CS was part of the problem: no packet should have both a tossup and a bonus on CS (combined with 4 science tossups and a math tossup)....combined with "geek trash" Yeah, 1/1 Comp Sci is too much for a packet, and there was likely too much for the entire tournament...

Mike Bentley

I should also note that PARFAIT II is the only tournament in my recent memory where "they both only have one leg" was a correct answer. That by itself is worth a lot. Was this in one of the final two packets? I don't remember that one. I liked that Computer Science finally got a healthy n...

Mike Bentley

On balance, I liked this set. I felt it was "on the money" in that the answer set was accessible and the tossup clues were structured to reward knowledge. The bonuses were structured to have one easy, one medium, and one difficult part in most cases (which made 30's at the Maryland site f...

Mike Bentley

Jonathan Maggin will be one of the editors for TIT this year. There will almost certainly be at least one other person helping out with editting, but we haven't worked that out yet. Also, for anyone going to this tournament also consider staying for the Atlantic Seaboard Skrimage on Sunday, which wi...

Mike Bentley

So is the above message saying GW is going to host a mid atlantic trash regionals? I've read through it several times and I can't figure out what it's saying.

Mike Bentley

Well, the general format of the tournament is going to stay the same. It will still be an It's Academic style tournament. I just think that it's possible that a few things might be adjusted so as to make it more balanced (such as making the two team rounds equal in points and making sure the order i...

Mike Bentley

As a writer for the tournament, I have to say that I also do not particularly enjoy writing team rounds. They're very hard to balance correctly, and it's always very hard to gauge what are two comparable levels of knowledge. I think that's why you saw a lot of same subject comparisons in this tourna...

Mike Bentley

I'm not entirely sure yet. I'll update when I get a confirmed answer.

Mike Bentley

The Terrapin Invitational Tournament returns to the University of Maryland in College Park on December 2 as part of the T&A weekend. This will be an open tournament, so anyone willing to write a packet, travel to Maryland and pay the registration fee is welcome to play. Base Price: $100 Minimum ...

Mike Bentley

By the way, the 'T' in the T&A weekend stands for TIT, the Terrapin Invitational Tournament. See the appropriate announcement for that on the non-trash announcements forum if you're interested.

Mike Bentley

The first-ever Atlantic Seaboard Skirmish will occur at the University of Maryland in College Park on December 3 as part of the T&A weekend. This will be an open trashy tournament, so anyone is eligible to play. The tournament will be entirely house-written and consist of themed packets with que...

Mike Bentley

First off, video game tossups can be VERY well done, just as almost any other subject. This could even be expanded to trashy video game clues on academic subjects (in trash tournaments, of course.) Here's a question: in a normal, academic-ish (after all, I'm talking about Illinois here) high school...

Mike Bentley

While gaming may be quite popular, is it really all that ripe for good quality tossups? Aside from the big franchises, people's tastes vary so widely that I'm not so sure you can fill more than one tossup per round with a solid question. Even where answers might be quite knowable, the surrounding m...

Mike Bentley

Err, I mean ACF Fall, not ACF Regionals.

Is there any reason there isn't an edit button? Or am I just not able to find it?

Mike Bentley

What's the target difficulty level of this tournament? Standard early fall (ACF Regionals, TIT) level stuff?

Mike Bentley

Although I don't play trash, I would like to see video games represented more than they are in generic trash distributions. I agree. It seems like the standard TRASH distribution is stuck in the early '90s to a certain degree. The popularity of big categories such as Movies, TV, and Pop Music have ...

Mike Bentley

Jason won the singles tossup-only CO mirror, with Jonathan from UMD I believe coming in second (there ended up being a total of 5 people playing). Geezers for The Next Generation (Arthur, Adam, Michelle, Jason D.) won the trash mirror with a record of 6 and 3. The other three teams, You Call THIS Ke...

Mike Bentley

I understand that this tournament was writing about what Andrew and Zeke like, but I don't really see how the 1 meta question per packet and things like 1/1 Hip Hop were enjoyable for almost anyone but the writers. I was reading for this tournament and the meta questions were enjoyable for me. They...

Mike Bentley

Thanks to Andrew and Zeke for writing 10 entire packets by themselves. The tournament was very well editted. However, I did have some complaints about the questions in the tournament. I understand that this tournament was writing about what Andrew and Zeke like, but I don't really see how the 1 meta...

Mike Bentley

Who says computer science has to be about programming? What about rewarding hardware or OS knowledge? I've written questions like this in the past for the NSC. Well, hardware knowledge is a little more Computer Engineering and Operating Systems a little more Information Systems, but these might as ...

Mike Bentley

MLafer wrote:people have cheated, people will cheat

it's fine for practice, but i really don't trust anyone for online quiz bowl of any degree of importance

I agree. I see it being something to practice against other people (or yourself) with easily.

Mike Bentley

Has anyone ever tried playing a round using a Teamspeak or Ventrilo server? Seems like that could be a little annoying having to yell buzz (and having someone dedicated to reading), but I've never personally tried it. One of the benefits of the system I'd like to do would be to get rid of the need ...

Mike Bentley

After doing some searching I realized that people do indeed play online in IRC chatrooms. Is there any desire to improve on these?

Mike Bentley

Sitting at work I got to thinking about a system for playing Quizbowl matches online. Two teams (or more) would compete against each other in a chat room of sorts. Each person can identify what team they're on. There would be one person who would serve as host and would be able to choose a packet st...

Mike Bentley

Just distribution wise, I only remember hearing 3 computer science questions in the opening 9 packets (the graph theory bonus in round 5, the compiler bonus, and the NTFS question which is pretty borderline CS). Astronomy seemed well represented, there seemed to be almost 1/1 astronomy per packet. I...

Mike Bentley

Did the Podcast get updated since April? I think maybe I'm on a seperate feed that is not being updated.

Mike Bentley

As a CS major, I naturally feel there is a lack of CS in Quizbowl. Being in that optional science category with astronomy, math, and other branches, a CS question is lucky to pop up once in two question sets. Most other "popular" majors at the very least see 1/1 guaranteed in their respect...

Mike Bentley

You at the very least should throw an index page in there so people can't snoop around the directory. You also should make the directory's permissions such that people who have not logged in through the site cannot view the files posted there.

Mike Bentley

Any thoughts on what the difficutly level of this tournament will be?

Mike Bentley

The worst packet was the one with the 2 comedy central bonuses. That's fine for a trash packet but not an academic one. I've attended a lot of tournaments in my 4 years playing quiz bowl and have heard hundreds of packets, the aforementioned packet by far had the worst question I have ever heard. I...

Mike Bentley

But doesn't this go back to that silent majority thing that NAQT likes to bring up? "Silent majority" is the quizbowl equivalent of a Republican talking point. It's unfalsifiable nonsense used to automatically marginalize all feedback of any kind. After all, if the majority is silent than...

Mike Bentley

First of all, maybe you can tell me whether the above accusations have been leveled at any of the ACF tournaments this year or other outstanding events like MLK. The fact that they have not is, I think, indicative of the relative quality of the aforementioned events as compared with ICT. But doesn'...

Mike Bentley

Actually, it turns out that the teams will initially be meeting in the Armory, not the physics building. So disregard the above post. The best place to park (after 4) for the Armory is in Lot L which is right next to that building. From Route 1, turn left at the M Traffic circle. Take a left into th...

Mike Bentley

If you are arriving on campus before 4 for some reason and don't want a ticket, you can usually find meter spaces relatively close to the physics building by taking the following path: Enter campus from Route 1, take a right at the "M" Traffic Circle. Turn left at the second stop sign (it ...

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ASS @ Maryland - 1/28

ANNOUNCEMENT: Terrapin Invitational Tournament - 12/2 @ UMCP

ANNOUNCEMENT: Atlantic Seaboard Skrimage (Themed) @ Maryland

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