I will preface this post by noting that, while it was written by me and me only, and no one else should be flamed for it, the sentiments in it are not at all unique to me. Most, if not all, of the criticisms here have been levied at the HSNCT and NAQT in general by many elite players from elite teams (I'll define "elite" as "having a reasonable chance to make HSNCT playoffs") on the hsquizbowl discord server. I have made an effort to avoid listing reasons why I in particular don't like HSNCT/NAQT, and instead to attempt to explain why much of the elite high school quizbowl community holds such negative views of both. Recognizing that elite high school teams are not the target audience of most of NAQT's sets (in particular IS and IS-A sets), I have made an effort to restrict my criticisms to just HSNCT-adjacent topics.
This post will be divided into four overarching criticisms of HSNCT, specifically this year's HSNCT. I will try to provide ways NAQT can address these criticisms, whether now or for next year or maybe beyond that.
1. Cheating
I include this first because it is the most obvious problem with this year's HSNCT, as well as the easiest one to fix.
It's clear that cheating (in the form of using a search engine to illicitly obtain information during a game, or "biking" as it is sometimes called) is a problem that faces online quizbowl, and a nationals at which there is cheating, or at which there is even the possibility of cheating, is not particularly legitimate. Unfortunately, NAQT does not appear to be doing anything to prevent cheating other than requiring a camera, which is known to be an ineffective measure.
There have been multiple cases of people cheating on camera this year, sometimes even while showing one of their hands on camera. While many of these people have been found and called out, (1) we do not know how many people get away with cheating and (2) even those cheaters who were caught managed to ruin multiple games. For example, take Joe, a cheater on the quizbowl team of City High. Joe cheats his way to the quarterfinals, where he is caught. Now, Joe might have beaten the team from Lambert in the previous round. Should Lambert now be able to play the quarterfinals? What about North High, who lost their last match of the prelims to City High, knocking them out of the playoffs? Even if cheaters are caught, they can ruin a tournament.
Even if, by some miracle, no one ends up cheating at this hypothetical online HSNCT, the tournament is still ruined. Let us say Jim has been studying extremely hard over the past semester, and ends up putting up extremely good stats at the tournament, leading his team to a reasonably high finish. Instead of being rewarded for his hard work, Jim is now faced with suspicion from the entire quizbowl community, because it seems that he cheated (and the statistics may well point to this). There is no way to distinguish people who have improved from cheaters without camera evidence, no way to prevent "microcheating" (maybe someone only cheats on the last tossup of important matches; they've probably only cheated 3-4 times throughout the day but have significantly influenced the course of the tournament).
What can NAQT do to prevent this? It's as easy as mandating that both hands of every player are shown on camera the entire time. PACE has done a very good job of instituting anti-cheating measures for its national tournament; those procedures could serve as a guideline for NAQT to establish its own. This would only require a minor change to the rules, and I urge that, despite one's opinion on the rest of these criticisms, NAQT take a stronger stance against cheating.
[edit: after I'd written this section, I was informed that NAQT does intend to institute greater anti-cheating policies for the HSNCT. I applaud this decision, and hope that NAQT considers the rest of the criticism I've presented.]
2. Cost/Structure.
HSNCT is far too expensive, and it is far too short.
HSNCT's registration fee for this year is $650. This is virtually unchanged from last year's fee, despite the online setting. Compare this to the NSC, which costs $450 this year, down from over $700 last year. The ONCT, meanwhile, will only cost $250.
NAQT will only guarantee eight games. Compare this to, say, the SMH Southeast Mirror (the last tournament I was involved in), which guaranteed nine games on a similar-difficulty set and cost $70, about 10% of the price. Sure, SMH is being mirrored in multiple places as opposed to HSNCT, which is grounds for an increased price. But ten times the price? I think not.
One could bring up length considerations. But consider that SMH Southeast ran 9 rounds from 9 AM to 5 PM, with a 45 minute lunch break in between, and one staffer in each room, with generous timing rules (more on this later) and longer questions (more on this later as well). Within the thirteen-hour period NAQT has designated, it is certainly possible to run 15 or more rounds, especially if lunch breaks are staggered.
In fact, I know of multiple teams who are either strongly reconsidering their decision to attend HSNCT, or who have decided not to attend HSNCT whatsoever, due to the high cost. Especially in this year, when school administrations may be (understandably) more reluctant to cover expenses, and when many teams are paying out of pocket, charging the same amount for less games is unfortunate.
In general, HSNCT's format is incredibly outdated. Very few other tournaments use double elimination. Most, including the two other national tournaments set to run this year, use a rebracketing format. Why does HSNCT not use rebracketing, and if necessary, restrict its field size to make this possible? This would guarantee most teams more games (certainly more than the abysmal eight that is currently guaranteed). Furthermore, double elimination does not guarantee games against teams of the same level in the way that rebracketing does; for example, the top team in the prelims will spend much of the playoffs racking up easy wins, instead of playing against every team of similar calibre. Why use a convoluted power-matching system/double elimination if better alternatives exist?An elite player who is not me wrote:My team's attended HSNCT almost every year we have qualified for as long as we have existed, but we're very unlikely to this year. The price is a big deal since we don't have school funding, but it's also the late announcement and a general sense than NAQT has been a lot less prepared for online than the other main quiz bowl groups, although Buzzword is of high quality.
What can NAQT do to fix this? Unfortunately, I am not privy to NAQT's finances. But if other organizations, like PACE, are able to significantly cut their prices and simultaneously guarantee thirteen games, I do not think it is unreasonable to expect NAQT to do the same. I am sure many of NAQT's employees have substantially more experience designing tournament structures than I do, and could thus come up with a structure that guaranteed more (and more even) games to everyone. Just eight guaranteed games is unreasonable, and charging $650 for the privilege of playing them is even more so.
3. Timing Rules
NAQT's timing rules, while not-great before online play, have not been optimized for online play. I am sure many others have encountered the following scenario:
I buzz in, and I answer, not noting that I am muted. Someone notices that I am muted; I am reminded to unmute and immediately give my answer, which is then evaluated by the moderator.
Using a timing system like 8/8/8 (which I support for online play) allows this to happen, allows for lag, allows for one to collect oneself before one answers a question. Under NAQT's extraordinarily strict 2-second policy, many people who know the answer are going to be cheated out of points for either technical difficulties or normal behavior, or a combination of both. I don't think this is ideal at all.
Add to this the fact that some mods are going to be generous to people with technical difficulties, and others are going to be extremely strict (and some moderators do not know what one second is), and timing will just be a mess.
This is also easily fixed; NAQT should just amend its timing rules to something closer to 8/8/8 for HSNCT. Certainly more than 2 seconds after buzzing are necessary for proper play.
4. Questions
NAQT's questions are low-quality. This is a big one.
Throughout this section, I will use questions from NAQT's sample HSNCT packet (2019 HSNCT Round 31, I believe) as evidence. I would use other packets, but for whatever reason, NAQT does not believe in adhering to the quizbowl norm of releasing a set to the public after it is done being mirrored. I certainly do not want to be sued by NAQT, and anyways do not have any copies of any HSNCT packets. This is also something NAQT should change (its policy of not releasing packets to the public after they are clear), if it is not obvious from my tone.
I will first note that I have yet to find a high schooler who supports NAQT's distributional variance. There are certainly some who support the increased geography/current events/trash and decreased fine arts/pss. There are some who go the other way. This is not an argument I am interested in having now. But NAQT ensures that luck plays an even larger role than normal because it does not distribute its questions properly (per packet, not per tournament; frankly, I don't care about per tournament distribution).
NAQT's tossups are short. Even including powermarking/bolding and the copious pronunciation guides NAQT puts in, many tossups are only four lines long, and none over five. Question 6 in the sample packet is just three sentences long.
There are clear problems with questions of this length being used in national tournaments. The first is simply the lack of places to buzz. If there are only four or so buzzable clues, compared to the eight or nine of standard questions, there is that much more potential for a buzzer race.
The second is the impact of lag. If questions are short, the buzz distribution is more compact, leading to even one second of lag making a large impact on one's playing.
A third is that less clues means more cliffs. Instead of a nice smooth pyramid of clues, we get a ziggurat.
HSNCT tossups are shorter than those of every other non-novice high school set. For example, in last year's CALISTO set, which was pretty much universally lauded, tossups ranged from six to sometimes seven lines. The same was true of last year's BHSAT and LOGIC. BLAST was seven lines. PACE is generally around eight, as is SMH. There is a reason that every single other set writes longer questions than NAQT, and that is because longer questions are better at differentiating teams and providing a positive playing experience.
This makes NAQT's structure/cost decisions even more absurd. Seeing as HSNCT tossups are quite literally half of the length of standard nationals tossups, teams are in effect paying for four rounds' worth of tossups, not eight. If NAQT wants to pay its writers more, maybe it should ask them to actually write questions, not to string a three-sentence stub together and call it quits.
Now, moving on from NAQT's question size, we encounter their quality. Unfortunately, there are no redeeming factors here.
Let's start with difficulty variation. Some difficulty variation in every set is desirable, at least in tossups. Bonuses should be as uniform as possible. It is obvious that NAQT does not try to control the difficulty of its bonuses. I point to the following bonuses:
NAQT wrote:It takes two values to specify the location of an object in the sky. For 10 points each—
A. One value, the declination [dek-luh-NAY-shun], measures an object's angle north or south of the “celestial” feature
named for this great circle on Earth.
answer: (celestial) equator
B. This is the second coordinate. It measures the distance eastward, in hours, from the Sun's location at the vernal
equinox to the great circle containing the object.
answer: right ascension (prompt on “RA”; do not accept or prompt on partial answers)
C. This is an arrangement of two or more objects in the sky with the same right ascension. If the objects also have
matching declination, a syzygy [SIH-zuh-jee] results.
answer: conjunction(s) (in right ascension)
I think it's pretty clear that the first bonus is significantly harder than the second. Consider, for one, that the medium and hard parts of the first bonus have been asked about a combined two times (and indeed, conjunction has never actually been asked about in quizbowl before). On the other hand, the second bonus has a medium part (4'33" I assume) that, with roughly the same information, appeared as a medium at HFT 2016, noted non-nationals set. Its hard part can barely even be called a hard part; I do think that prepared piano is a reasonable hard part for a high school regular set, and it has come up as the middle part in a recent PACE.NAQT wrote:This work's composer noted that he had created many performances of it while walking alone in the woods.
For 10 points each—
A. Name this work premiered by pianist David Tudor at the Maverick Concert Hall in Woodstock, New York.
answer: 4'33” [“four minutes thirty-three seconds”]
B. This American composed 4'33”.
answer: John Cage (or John Milton Cage Jr.)
C. Cage's early works—such as Sonatas and Interludes—called for screws, paper, and other objects to be inserted
between a piano's strings, a technique known as this type of ”piano.”
answer: prepared piano (or preparing the piano; accept all forms of prepare or prepared or preparation(s))
There are several other bonuses in this packet that are either far too easy or far too hard. Entire categories seem more difficult or more easy than others.
Other examples include rather hard answerlines (Zadie Smith, trigonal planar geometry, multiple inheritance, and Norman Schwarzkopf stand out; the first has never been tossed up below Terrapin difficulty, the second has never been tossed up, nor has the third or fourth). The third of these answerlines led to an absurd powermark placement, two words before "for 10 points." This kind of powermark placement clearly means that no thought has gone into how the tossup will actually play; if there are virtually no post-powermark, pre-FTP clues, one can expect buzzer-races on the last line for sure (if the tossup does not go dead).
Meanwhile (and this is all in the same packet, mind you), we see a commonlink on souls, which attempts to clue a Sam & Dave song, whatever that is (seems to be more "boomer trash," as NAQT trash has often been described), along with the video game Dark Souls and DuBois' The Souls of Black Folk, before ending with a clue from Henley's Invictus and a weak description. Leaving aside the weird, certainly-not-pyramidal difficulty of this tossup, I'm curious to know what writer even thought this was a good idea and what editor approved this absurd trash-literature-philosophy common link, and why it is taking up space from, say, more fine arts content (another policy decision that makes no sense, NAQT, why no writer tags?).
This same packet contains a math tossup on the number two-pi. NAQT math has long been one of the main subjects of criticism from the high-school community, but I'd like to focus on one particular clue, the tau manifesto one. Instead of finding an actual math clue, the writer/editor of this question decided to insert (in a crucial place, a place where a lot of players would normally buzz) what amounts to a pop-culture clue.
This should be reasonably easy for NAQT to fix; after all, if every other set is able to produce a reasonable-quality product, why can't NAQT? If many of the people who work for NAQT have written and edited some very good sets, why can't they do the same for NAQT?
I think I've ranted enough about HSNCT question quality, but the fact is that in the end, NAQT is offering a more expensive and shorter national tournament, without adequate cheating precautions, and with low-quality questions (questions of such low quality that it's hard to call NAQT "pyramidal good quizbowl" anymore).
To NAQT, I ask, what gives? More importantly, how do you expect HSNCT to continue to be viable without doing anything to satisfy your customers? The revolt has already begun; multiple top teams have already decided against playing HSNCT this year.
And to coaches and players, consider not attending HSNCT this year. Both PACE and ONCT offer good sets, reasonable prices, and reasonable formats/guaranteed games.
Note: I am a writer for the set that ONCT is using, the Southeast-Midwest Housewrite. However, there exists no financial incentive for me to recommend ONCT, due to the details of our arrangement. The recommendation I make for ONCT is solely based on the format, question quality, etc, and has nothing to do with my affiliation with ONCT.