The Quizbowl Resource Center

2019 HSNCT round 4 wrote:A shop across a street from this building contains a single cash register and no other signage. The now-vacant Mulry Square may have been the site of the inspiration for this building, which has no visible entrance. The man who depicted this building claimed it was located "where two streets meet" in (*) Greenwich Village. An advertisement for Phillies cigars adorns—for 10 points—what building in an Edward Hopper painting?

answer: (the) diner in Nighthawks (accept answers indicating both Nighthawks and the notion of a diner or caf\'e or restaurant; prompt on "diner" or similar answers that don't mention the painting; prompt on "(the building in) Nighthawks")

2019 HSNCT round 16 wrote:Legendre polynomials have this property since the inner product of two of them is proportional to a Kronecker delta function. Vectors must be linearly independent if they mutually have this property. The Gram-Schmidt process finds vectors that have this property, possibly (*) normalized. Two vectors with this property have an inner product, or dot product, of 0. For 10 points—name this generalization of perpendicularity.

answer: orthogonality (or being orthogonal; prompt on "perpendicular(ity)" before "perpendicularity")

Important Bird Area wrote: ↑Fri May 31, 2019 10:06 pm

2019 HSNCT round 16 wrote:Legendre polynomials have this property since the inner product of two of them is proportional to a Kronecker delta function. Vectors must be linearly independent if they mutually have this property. The Gram-Schmidt process finds vectors that have this property, possibly (*) normalized. Two vectors with this property have an inner product, or dot product, of 0. For 10 points—name this generalization of perpendicularity.

answer: orthogonality (or being orthogonal; prompt on "perpendicular(ity)" before "perpendicularity")

2019 HSNCT round 22 wrote:It's not in Maine, but the Supreme Court case U.S. v. Maine ruled this island is legally not an island. Jones Beach can be accessed via this island's Southern State Parkway, which Robert Moses allegedly designed to limit bus access by low-income residents. This island's wealthy (*) Suffolk County contains the Hamptons. The boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens are on—for 10 points—what New York island named for its length?

2019 HSNCT round 22 wrote:This letter is not lambda, but David Hilbert used it for an operator that replaces logical quantifiers in a namesake "calculus." The Levi-Civita symbol is usually represented by the lowercase form of this Greek letter. This letter represents (*) empty strings in formal languages and empty transitions of finite-state machines. For 10 points—name this Greek letter that appears with delta in the formal definition of limits.

2019 HSNCT round 23 wrote:The lemniscate of Bernoulli is made by inverting this curve about a circle with the same center. Rotating this curve about an axis can produce a quadric surface with one or two "sheets." The equation "y equals (*) plus or minus b over a times x" gives the asymptotes ["ASS-imp-totes"] of this curve. For 10 points—name this curve defined as the locus of points with a fixed difference of distances from two foci, a conic section with two branches.

answer: hyperbola(s) (do not accept or prompt on "hyperboloid")

2019 HSNCT round 23 wrote:This film's heroine name-drops attorney J. Noble Daggett, and taunts a Texan by saying all Texans "cultivate their hair like lettuce." Glen Campbell portrayed Texas Ranger La Beouf, who is among those tracking Ned Pepper and Tom Chaney in this movie, in which (*) Mattie Ross hires an old U.S. Marshal. John Wayne's only Oscar came for playing Rooster Cogburn in—for 10 points—what Western remade in 2010 by the Coen brothers?

2019 HSNCT round 23 wrote:The compound that makes up this amino acid's side chain diffuses to another site of this compound's synthase via substrate channeling. This compound is hydroxylated to form serotonin. This amino acid co-activates its own repressor in an oft-studied (*) operon. Because of its indole side chain, this amino acid with symbol "W" is aromatic. For 10 points—name this amino acid often linked with drowsiness after eating turkey.

answer: tryptophan (or Trp or tryptophane; accept W before "W")

2019 HSNCT round 23 wrote:This civilization built the oldest known dock at its port of Lothal. This civilization also built the world's oldest public sanitation systems, exemplified by the reservoirs at Dholavira. Its "Pashupati Seal" may be an early depiction of the (*) Hindu god Shiva. Its two largest cities were Harappa in the south and Mohenjo-daro. For 10 points—what Bronze Age civilization flourished in the valley of Pakistan's longest river?

insohumniac wrote: ↑Sat Jun 01, 2019 1:32 am the Pulp Fiction tossup (Round 18 or 19, I think)

Kasper Kaijanen wrote: ↑Fri May 31, 2019 10:47 pm

Important Bird Area wrote: ↑Fri May 31, 2019 10:06 pm

2019 HSNCT round 16 wrote:Legendre polynomials have this property since the inner product of two of them is proportional to a Kronecker delta function. Vectors must be linearly independent if they mutually have this property. The Gram-Schmidt process finds vectors that have this property, possibly (*) normalized. Two vectors with this property have an inner product, or dot product, of 0. For 10 points—name this generalization of perpendicularity.

answer: orthogonality (or being orthogonal; prompt on "perpendicular(ity)" before "perpendicularity")

Its probably worth including orthonormality in the answerline since, as the question notes, Gram-Schmidt is usually an orthonormalization process.

bolshevik wrote: ↑Sat Jun 01, 2019 12:27 pm

insohumniac wrote: ↑Sat Jun 01, 2019 1:32 am the Pulp Fiction tossup (Round 18 or 19, I think)

Could I see this tossup?

2019 HSNCT round 19 wrote:For this film, Urge Overkill covered Neil Diamond's "Girl, You'll Be a Woman Soon." A passage in this film describing "furious anger" is identified as Ezekiel 25:17. 666 is the combination to a (*) briefcase in this film whose glowing contents are never explained. This 1994 film revived the career of John Travolta, who played the hitman Vincent Vega. A genre of cheap novels titles—for 10 points—what Quentin Tarantino film?

jonpin wrote: ↑Sat Jun 01, 2019 1:13 pm

Kasper Kaijanen wrote: ↑Fri May 31, 2019 10:47 pm

Important Bird Area wrote: ↑Fri May 31, 2019 10:06 pm

2019 HSNCT round 16 wrote:Legendre polynomials have this property since the inner product of two of them is proportional to a Kronecker delta function. Vectors must be linearly independent if they mutually have this property. The Gram-Schmidt process finds vectors that have this property, possibly (*) normalized. Two vectors with this property have an inner product, or dot product, of 0. For 10 points—name this generalization of perpendicularity.

answer: orthogonality (or being orthogonal; prompt on "perpendicular(ity)" before "perpendicularity")

Its probably worth including orthonormality in the answerline since, as the question notes, Gram-Schmidt is usually an orthonormalization process.

I negged a player who said "orthonormal" and that neg was upheld upon protest, and I believe the explanation was that Legendre polynomials are not necessarily normalized.

dwd500 wrote: ↑Sat Jun 01, 2019 3:49 pm Could I see the bonus on "Sumer is icumen in?" (I think it's round 1).

I can't remember what the other two parts were. There weren't many 0's on bonuses in the room I read, and that one in particular stuck out to me.

2019 HSNCT round 1 wrote:This song's lyrics note that "Awe bleteth after lomb," meaning "the ewe bleats after the lamb." For 10 points each—

A. Name this Middle English rota, a verse that is often sung as a round. It describes various animals's excitement for warm weather, including how "the buck farts."

answer: Sumer is icumen in (accept translations such as "Summer has come in")

B. This fascist poet of the Cantos and "In a Station of the Metro" wrote "Winter is icumen in," a parody of "Sumer is icumen in."

answer: Ezra Pound (or Ezra Weston Loomis Pound)

C. In Middle English, the phrase "is icumen" is not a present progressive; rather, it's in this tense and aspect indicating recent completion.

answer: present perfect (do not accept or prompt on partial answers)

2019 HSNCT round 20 wrote:The title of a book by Bastian Sick calls this case "the death of the genitive," referring to a possessive construction in German. In Latin, this case can express "separation" or "disadvantage"; in second-declension nouns, this case is identical to the (*) ablative. Some German prepositions can govern nouns in either the accusative or this other case. For 10 points—name this grammatical case often used for indirect objects.

setaisjihad wrote: ↑Sun Jun 02, 2019 1:28 pm Could I see the sports tossup (from Round 2 I believe) on the University of South Florida? This seemed quite hard for HSNCT difficulty level.

Periplus of the Erythraean Sea wrote: ↑Sun Jun 02, 2019 1:54 pm I think, similarly to as was done with this year's MSNCT, the HSNCT could probably stand to have harder playoffs. I don't think the jump needs to be as drastic as it was for MSNCT - I think the HSNCT playoffs could stand to be L7 (for those who don't know NAQT's difficulty scale, that's equivalent to D2 ICT) instead of L6, as the prelims are. However, I think that, given the extremely similar strength of the teams at top (all but one of the T-8 teams had over 21 PPB) and that even weaker playoff teams are still handily beating 15 PPB, the playoffs could stand to amp up difficulty slightly to more finely grade these teams' skill.

Important Bird Area wrote: ↑Sun Jun 02, 2019 3:02 pm

Periplus of the Erythraean Sea wrote: ↑Sun Jun 02, 2019 1:54 pm I think, similarly to as was done with this year's MSNCT, the HSNCT could probably stand to have harder playoffs. I don't think the jump needs to be as drastic as it was for MSNCT - I think the HSNCT playoffs could stand to be L7 (for those who don't know NAQT's difficulty scale, that's equivalent to D2 ICT) instead of L6, as the prelims are. However, I think that, given the extremely similar strength of the teams at top (all but one of the T-8 teams had over 21 PPB) and that even weaker playoff teams are still handily beating 15 PPB, the playoffs could stand to amp up difficulty slightly to more finely grade these teams' skill.

We don't believe this would be a good idea under current conditions (but we're open to reassessing that in the future if we see significant changes in conversion data).

2019 HSNCT round 11 wrote:This borough is home to the main American factory of piano-maker Steinway and Sons. This borough's Rockaway Peninsula is one terminus of the "A" train. A "Unisphere" built for the 1964 World's Fair is in this borough's (*) Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, which is also the location of Citi Field, the home of the Mets. Both LaGuardia Airport and JFK Airport are in—for 10 points—what easternmost New York City borough?

2019 HSNCT round 18 wrote:Particles with a spin of this value are described by the Klein-Gordon equation. Two observables are compatible if the commutator of their operators is this constant. A subscript of either four or this number is assigned to the (*) time coordinate in special relativity. For an object in static equilibrium, the net torque and net force equal—for 10 points—what number, which gives the velocity of a particle at rest?

2019 HSNCT round 14 wrote:An ancient human skeleton found in this state's On Your Knees Cave was eventually returned to a native group. A large molybdenum reserve is part of this state's Misty Fjords National Monument, within its (*) Tongass National Forest. A shipping route called the Inside Passage runs along this state's panhandle and its cities of Sitka and Skagway. For 10 points—what state's panhandle also includes its capital, Juneau?

2019 HSNCT round 24 wrote:When an L2 penalty is used in this process, the result is called Tikhonov regularization, or the "ridge" version of this process. In one form of this process, the matrix "X transpose X inverse X transpose" is called the "hat matrix." By the Gauss- (*) Markov theorem, the best unbiased estimator for this process's linear case is the ordinary least squares method. For 10 points—what technique estimates two variables' relationship?

answer: regression (or linear regression or ridge regression or ordinary least squares regression or OLS regression)

bigbluemist wrote: ↑Wed Jun 05, 2019 3:17 pm Round 25

Could you post the question where I believe the answer was single payer healthcare but universal healthcare for all was accepted after originally ruled incorrect. I wasn’t in the room but would like to see it

2019 HSNCT round 25 wrote:A January 2019 letter to Keith Hall about this type of system noted the lack of a "clear blueprint." A May 2019 CBO analysis of this policy used Taiwan as one of six "selected countries" compared and was commissioned by John Yarmuth, chairman of the House Budget Committee. Britain's (*) NHS and "Medicare for all" exemplify—for 10 points—what policy under which the government, alone, covers healthcare costs for all its citizens?

answer: single-payer healthcare (system) (accept Medicare for all before "Medicare"; prompt on "universal health care" or "government health care" or "government health insurance" or "health reform"; do not accept or prompt on "Medicare")

2019 HSNCT round 13 wrote:This book's narrator is apprenticed to a man he calls "good master Bates." A minister named Skyresh Bolgolam vows to be its narrator's "mortal enemy," and conspires to banish him for urinating on the queen's (*) house. Late sections of this novel feature intelligent horses, humans called Yahoos, and the flying island of Laputa. A doctor's adventures in Lilliput [LIL-ih-put] are recounted in—for 10 points—what satire by Jonathan Swift?

2019 HSNCT round 20 wrote:The Conway chain "a, b, c" is equivalent to an expression involving c of these symbols. The three-argument Ackermann function can be conveniently expressed using these symbols. Graham's number is defined recursively using the number (*) 3 and these symbols. Two of these symbols indicate iterated exponentiation. For 10 points—Donald Knuth suggested that what symbols be used iteratively to help express very large numbers?

answer: up arrows (accept any reasonable answer indicating an arrow pointing up; accept answers that specify Donald Knuth's up arrows; prompt on "arrow(s)")

2019 HSNCT round 26 wrote:A character in this film narrates about the time before the "Age of Obedience," during which a legendary boy warrior composed the battle-poem "I turn my back / On man-kind! / Frost on window-pane." In this film, most of the lines delivered by the "Little (*) Pilot" are not translated into English. Atari Kobayashi searches for Spots in--for 10 points--what 2018 Wes Anderson film in which canines are exiled to the title place?

2019 HSNCT round 31 wrote:In this film, a woman who asks for something "light" to read is given a leaflet on "Jewish sports legends." A child in this film realizes that Roger Murdock is actually the basketball player (*) Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Leslie Nielsen co-stars in this film as a doctor who remarks "don't call me Shirley." Otto the inflatable auto-pilot appears in—for 10 points—what 1980 disaster movie parody about a troubled flight?

jzlau2 wrote: ↑Mon Jun 24, 2019 11:19 am The stats for the University Lab vs Stevenson A game in Round 29 are incorrect. I should have 3 negs (TUs 13, 22, 23), and Dylan should have 2 negs (TUs 5 & 24).

J. Young wrote: ↑Wed May 29, 2019 4:41 pm Can I see conversion stats for the bonus on fictional metals (alloys?)? Curious as to how many teams converted the third part.

2019 HSNCT round 5 wrote:For 10 points each—answer the following about fictional metals and alloys:

A. In the Marvel Comics universe, Wolverine's claws are made from this metal that was also used to reinforce his skeleton.

answer: adamantium (do not accept or prompt on "vibranium")

B. In The Hobbit, Thorin Oakenshield gives Bilbo Baggins a mail shirt made out of this strong, priceless metal that was mined in Moria.

answer: mithril

C. In the Star Wars expanded universe, this energy-resistant ore has the ability to block lightsabers.

answer: cortosis (ore)

A_Failure wrote: ↑Wed May 29, 2019 5:29 pmI would like to see the conversion data on the Carmen and Puccini bonuses when that becomes available. Both of those felt much easier than a nationals playoff bonus should be.

Rocket21 wrote: ↑Fri Jul 12, 2019 3:13 am Could you post conversion stats on "Ivory Coast", "Mutiny on the HMS Bounty", and the geography bonus on the Azores/Canary Islands (Rd 1 or 2 I think)

whatamidoinghere wrote: ↑Fri Jul 12, 2019 10:20 am Can I see the conversion stats for the "Mexico" question in Round 5 and the Robinson question in round 1?

Rocket21 wrote: ↑Fri Jul 12, 2019 8:21 am Were there any tossups on “Arthur Miller” or “Phillip Roth” and if there were could you post them? Thanks!

Important Bird Area wrote: ↑Fri Jul 12, 2019 12:02 pm

whatamidoinghere wrote: ↑Fri Jul 12, 2019 10:20 am Can I see the conversion stats for the "Mexico" question in Round 5 and the Robinson question in round 1?

E. A. Robinson: 9/52/2 in 83 rooms

I'm not finding a tossup with answer _Mexico_ in round 5; there's a tossup there on the Battle of Puebla. Let me know if that's what you'd like to see stats for.

A_Failure wrote: ↑Fri Jul 12, 2019 12:14 pm

Important Bird Area wrote: ↑Fri Jul 12, 2019 12:02 pm

whatamidoinghere wrote: ↑Fri Jul 12, 2019 10:20 am Can I see the conversion stats for the "Mexico" question in Round 5 and the Robinson question in round 1?

E. A. Robinson: 9/52/2 in 83 rooms

I'm not finding a tossup with answer _Mexico_ in round 5; there's a tossup there on the Battle of Puebla. Let me know if that's what you'd like to see stats for.

Tossup 2 of Round 5 was a literature tossup on Mexico (right after the Battle of Puebla tu, which seems less than ideal to me).

whatamidoinghere wrote: ↑Fri Jul 12, 2019 12:24 pm Can we see the conversion stats for the Jonas Brothers bonus in round 7? (it was the first bonus)