2009-10 NAQT IS sets: question-specific discussion

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2009-10 NAQT IS sets: question-specific discussion

Post by Important Bird Area »

These sets are now clear for discussion:

Invitational Series # 86, 88, 90, 92, 94, 95

Introductory Invitational Series # 87A, 89A, 91A, 93A

I will be happy to post the text of individual questions as requested.
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Re: 2009-10 NAQT IS sets: question-specific discussion

Post by Lightly Seared on the Reality Grill »

Two bonuses in IS-95 asked for the derivative of ln x. That's pretty much inexcusable IIRC. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think one of the first few questions of the first packet of 89A had only two lines? It was my first experience with an A packet, so the ending seemed to come out of nowhere.
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Re: 2009-10 NAQT IS sets: question-specific discussion

Post by Carambola! »

Regarding IS-87A, would time dilation not be promptable early on acceleration if one buzzed on "twin paradox"? I thought this was an ambiguous leadin.
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Re: 2009-10 NAQT IS sets: question-specific discussion

Post by Important Bird Area »

rpond wrote:Two bonuses in IS-95 asked for the derivative of ln x. That's pretty much inexcusable IIRC.
This is correct. I just found and fixed the bug in our repeat-checking system that allowed this, so it shouldn't happen again.
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Re: 2009-10 NAQT IS sets: question-specific discussion

Post by Important Bird Area »

rpond wrote:I think one of the first few questions of the first packet of 89A had only two lines? It was my first experience with an A packet, so the ending seemed to come out of nowhere.
I just looked at this, and the first half dozen or so tossups all seemed to be of normal length for our introductory sets. Do you happen to remember the subject of the question?
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Re: 2009-10 NAQT IS sets: question-specific discussion

Post by Important Bird Area »

laserphaser wrote:Regarding IS-87A, would time dilation not be promptable early on acceleration if one buzzed on "twin paradox"? I thought this was an ambiguous leadin.
This had an explicit "do not prompt on time dilation" note.
IS #87A, round 4 wrote:The key to relativity's twin paradox is that only one twin experiences this phenomenon. A non-inertial frame lets it occur without a net force, and it can be calculated using (*) Newton's second law. For 10 points--name this quantity measured in meters per second squared that is denoted ~a~.

answer: _acceleration_ (do not prompt on "time dilation")
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Re: 2009-10 NAQT IS sets: question-specific discussion

Post by Carambola! »

I know, I have the packet; I'm wondering why it is not promptable, given that time dilation and acceleration are both phenomena that are key to the twin paradox.
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Re: 2009-10 NAQT IS sets: question-specific discussion

Post by Stained Diviner »

Each twin experiences time dilation from the point of view of the other one, so the only way you would have any argument at all is if you buzzed in before the word Only, and I don't think you would have a good argument even then.

IS 94 had a tossup asking to identify a UFC fighter, which, while I realize it goes back to the lack of a pop culture canon debate, I thought was a particularly bad idea.

For 87A, playing 20/20 in each round, there was only one visual arts tossup in the first six rounds, and it was a very transparent Last Supper question that, if I remember correctly, described the way various apostles appeared in the painting.
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Re: 2009-10 NAQT IS sets: question-specific discussion

Post by AKKOLADE »

Westwon wrote:IS 94 had a tossup asking to identify a UFC fighter, which, while I realize it goes back to the lack of a pop culture canon debate, I thought was a particularly bad idea.
I wrote this tossup. Any particular reason you think this was a "particularly bad idea"?
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Re: 2009-10 NAQT IS sets: question-specific discussion

Post by Dresden_The_BIG_JERK »

The Granny wrote:
Westwon wrote:IS 94 had a tossup asking to identify a UFC fighter, which, while I realize it goes back to the lack of a pop culture canon debate, I thought was a particularly bad idea.
I wrote this tossup. Any particular reason you think this was a "particularly bad idea"?
Who was the fighter in question?
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Re: 2009-10 NAQT IS sets: question-specific discussion

Post by Nine-Tenths Ideas »

What I found to be a bad idea was tossups in one set on Clifford Odets and "The Medium Is the Message" [the latter of which I only got because I had written a tossup on McLuhan for Penn Bowl]. I don't know if you have conversion rates for either, but I imagine they would both be very low.
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Re: 2009-10 NAQT IS sets: question-specific discussion

Post by nobthehobbit »

Isaacbh wrote:What I found to be a bad idea was tossups in one set on Clifford Odets and "The Medium Is the Message" [the latter of which I only got because I had written a tossup on McLuhan for Penn Bowl]. I don't know if you have conversion rates for either, but I imagine they would both be very low.
It's "The Medium is the Massage" (we are talking about the book and not the catchphrase, right?), and while that's perfectly good as a tossup at higher levels, I really can't see that being converted well in an IS set.
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Re: 2009-10 NAQT IS sets: question-specific discussion

Post by jdeliverer »

laserphaser wrote:I know, I have the packet; I'm wondering why it is not promptable, given that time dilation and acceleration are both phenomena that are key to the twin paradox.
It doesn't really mean anything to say only one twin experiences time dilation - time dilation is a relative concept. If my understanding of the concept is correct, acceleration is the only thing that isn't relative, which is why it explains the paradox.
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Re: 2009-10 NAQT IS sets: question-specific discussion

Post by AKKOLADE »

Dresden_The_Moderator wrote:
The Granny wrote:
Westwon wrote:IS 94 had a tossup asking to identify a UFC fighter, which, while I realize it goes back to the lack of a pop culture canon debate, I thought was a particularly bad idea.
I wrote this tossup. Any particular reason you think this was a "particularly bad idea"?
Who was the fighter in question?
Tito Ortiz.
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Re: 2009-10 NAQT IS sets: question-specific discussion

Post by Dresden_The_BIG_JERK »

The Granny wrote:
Dresden_The_Moderator wrote:
The Granny wrote:
Westwon wrote:IS 94 had a tossup asking to identify a UFC fighter, which, while I realize it goes back to the lack of a pop culture canon debate, I thought was a particularly bad idea.
I wrote this tossup. Any particular reason you think this was a "particularly bad idea"?
Who was the fighter in question?
Tito Ortiz.
He well known enough IMHO. He's on the shortlist of MMA guys that are tossupable with Chuck Liddell, Kimbo Slice and couple others.
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Re: 2009-10 NAQT IS sets: question-specific discussion

Post by kayli »

Does MMA really count as a sport though? How many people actually watch it? I sort of wish there were conversion statistics for these answers.
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Re: 2009-10 NAQT IS sets: question-specific discussion

Post by Stained Diviner »

I know the Ortiz thing at some point just comes down to personal preference. Nobody in the room knew anything about him--I don't know if that would be different now that he got in a big spat with the commissioner, though at the time he was one of the best, if not the best, fighters. One of the things I like about quizbowlers is that they generally don't know much about MMA, but maybe that's just my issue. Also, if the goal is to hit 85% conversion overall, one category where that level is attainable is pop culture, so it seems odd to have a low conversion pop culture tossup.

I'll agree that my complaint with the visual arts in 87A was more significant than my Ortiz complaint.
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Re: 2009-10 NAQT IS sets: question-specific discussion

Post by Kwang the Ninja »

I'm not sure when Brecht became an easy enough answer at IS level that we don't even give Mother Courage and Her Children in an IS level tossup on him, but I'm almost certain that tossup went dead across the board at the Chipola spring tournament.
Also, there was a Carter tossup in that set that killed me when it used "Are you better off now than you were four years ago" as the beginning of a sentence rather than clarifying he was the target of that phrase rather than the speaker. Obviously it's not neg-bait, since there are several lines of clues devoted to Carter before that, but I just thought it was pretty poor sentence construction.
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Re: 2009-10 NAQT IS sets: question-specific discussion

Post by Important Bird Area »

Isaacbh wrote:What I found to be a bad idea was tossups in one set on Clifford Odets and "The Medium Is the Message" [the latter of which I only got because I had written a tossup on McLuhan for Penn Bowl]. I don't know if you have conversion rates for either, but I imagine they would both be very low.
We don't have conversion numbers from IS #94 yet, but I agree that both of these were too hard for this level. (And yes, the McLuhan tossup was on the catchphrase.)
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Re: 2009-10 NAQT IS sets: question-specific discussion

Post by Important Bird Area »

Kwang the Ninja wrote:I'm not sure when Brecht became an easy enough answer at IS level that we don't even give Mother Courage and Her Children in an IS level tossup on him, but I'm almost certain that tossup went dead across the board at the Chipola spring tournament.
IS #94, round 2 wrote:In one play by this author, Yang Sun is loved by the owner of a tobacco factory, Shen Te, who maintains a male persona. In addition to ~The Good Person of Szechwan~ [sech-wahn], he wrote about a cauliflower crime syndicate, a peasant girl who steals a baby, and the highwayman (*) Mack the Knife. For 10 points--name this German author of ~The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui~, ~The Caucasian Chalk Circle~, and ~The Threepenny Opera~.
It's not at all obvious to me that Mother Courage is an easier giveaway than The Threepenny Opera.

Here's the text of the Carter tossup:
IS #94, round 5 wrote:During his presidency Congress passed the Airline Deregulation Act, and three new Cabinet departments were created, including Energy and Education. He fired Michael Blumenthal as treasury secretary in a shake-up that led to Paul (*) Volcker becoming chairman of the Federal Reserve. For 10 points--"are you better off now than you were four years ago" was Ronald Reagan's attack on what Georgia Democrat elected in 1976?
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Re: 2009-10 NAQT IS sets: question-specific discussion

Post by kayli »

I think that The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui and The Caucasian Chalk Circle are much harder than Mother Courage and Her Children... and arguably The Good Person of Szechuan.
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Re: 2009-10 NAQT IS sets: question-specific discussion

Post by Mechanical Beasts »

Arsonists Get All the Girls wrote:I think that The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui and The Caucasian Chalk Circle are much harder than Mother Courage and Her Children... and arguably The Good Person of Szechuan.
That's true...
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Re: 2009-10 NAQT IS sets: question-specific discussion

Post by jdeliverer »

Arsonists Get All the Girls wrote:I think that The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui and The Caucasian Chalk Circle are much harder than Mother Courage and Her Children... and arguably The Good Person of Szechuan.
In terms of quizbowl frequency (in NAQT), from easiest to hardest is Mother Courage and her Children > The Caucasian Chalk Circle > The Good Person of Szechuan >Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui.

The Threepenny Opera is arguably easier than any of those, though you might want to say "along with Weill" or something along those lines, since I've often heard it referred to as by "Brecht and Weill".
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Re: 2009-10 NAQT IS sets: question-specific discussion

Post by Important Bird Area »

Westwon wrote:For 87A, playing 20/20 in each round, there was only one visual arts tossup in the first six rounds, and it was a very transparent Last Supper question that, if I remember correctly, described the way various apostles appeared in the painting.
Introductory Invitational Series sets have only five painting tossups (I assume you're not counting architecture as visual arts). These were in packets 3, 7, 9, 10, 12.
IS #87A, round 3 wrote:Simon the Zealot is shown talking to two men on the right. Peter holds a knife, while a man with a bag in one hand reaches for (*) bread at the same time as the central figure. The only elbow on the table is that of Judas in--for 10 points--which Leonardo da Vinci painting of a final meal?
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Re: 2009-10 NAQT IS sets: question-specific discussion

Post by Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN) »

Introductory Invitational Series sets have only five painting tossups (I assume you're not counting architecture as visual arts). These were in packets 3, 7, 9, 10, 12.
I just wanted to point out that, even if visual has some lower conversion rates than desired, less than 1 tossup every other packet is pretty absurd.
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Re: 2009-10 NAQT IS sets: question-specific discussion

Post by Dan-Don »

I've written two tossups on McLuhan this season. One was rejected for being too difficult for NTV, a slightly harder-than-usual varsity set. The other, which I submitted to NAQT was given a difficulty of 4 (4=HSNCT, 2=IS set) and used in the HSNCT set. Yet the second-best known phrase (after "global village") of McLuhan was tossed up for an IS set? That seems odd.

Another issue with that Last Supper painting is that here we have a set of questions that is meant to be introducing players to pyramidal quizbowl and this tossup doesn't even say what it's asking for until the end.
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Re: 2009-10 NAQT IS sets: question-specific discussion

Post by Steve Watchorn »

Another issue with that Last Supper painting is that here we have a set of questions that is meant to be introducing players to pyramidal quizbowl and this tossup doesn't even say what it's asking for until the end.
I'm not sure that's an argument against pyramidality, as long as the clues are (at least for this level) pyramidal. What else could the question be asking for?
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Re: 2009-10 NAQT IS sets: question-specific discussion

Post by Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN) »

It doesn't change the fact that the question never actually comes out and says what the kind of answer there is supposed to be. That's one thing I wish NAQT would fix - I have noticed a number of NAQT questions that give a bunch of clues about something, but which never actually include the necessary pronoun like "In this painting" until after the FTP. Guys, this isn't that hard, stop writing questions which require players to make that extra leap to guess at what the answer is. Nobody else good does it anymore, even if it usually is somewhat clear what is wanted. That's no excuse to not do the 3 seconds work of figuring out how to open the question with "In this painting, Simon the Zealot is shown talking to two men on the right."
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Re: 2009-10 NAQT IS sets: question-specific discussion

Post by Cheynem »

I also think that if you come out of a "bad quizbowl" tradition, you are a little gunshy. When I was a high schooler, it would be pretty common for a tossup that began "Simon the Zealot is seen on the left...in The Last Supper, a painting by what man?" Bad quizbowl providers probably still write like this and I think one of the nicest things good quizbowl can do is show clearly that "no, this is not about dumb hoses."
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Re: 2009-10 NAQT IS sets: question-specific discussion

Post by Mechanical Beasts »

Jeremy Gibbs Freesy Does It wrote:It doesn't change the fact that the question never actually comes out and says what the kind of answer there is supposed to be. That's one thing I wish NAQT would fix - I have noticed a number of NAQT questions that give a bunch of clues about something, but which never actually include the necessary pronoun like "In this painting" until after the FTP. Guys, this isn't that hard, stop writing questions which require players to make that extra leap to guess at what the answer is. Nobody else good does it anymore, even if it usually is somewhat clear what is wanted. That's no excuse to not do the 3 seconds work of figuring out how to open the question with "In this painting, Simon the Zealot is shown talking to two men on the right."
This is endemic to NAQT questions in particular because of the character limit, and IS-A in particular because of the bonkers 291 character limit.
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Re: 2009-10 NAQT IS sets: question-specific discussion

Post by Steve Watchorn »

Good point about distinguishing from bad quiz bowl hoses. I see what you mean.
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Re: 2009-10 NAQT IS sets: question-specific discussion

Post by Ras superfamily »

In IS-95:

Is "In Melville's Piazza ones" a good lead-in for a common link tossup on tales? What were the following clues in this tossup?
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Re: 2009-10 NAQT IS sets: question-specific discussion

Post by Tanay »

I don't remember if this was in an IS-set or HSNCT, but would it be possible to see the conversion stats for The Garden Party?
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Re: 2009-10 NAQT IS sets: question-specific discussion

Post by nadph »

NoWayItsTanay wrote:I don't remember if this was in an IS-set or HSNCT, but would it be possible to see the conversion stats for The Garden Party?
There was definitely a tossup on it at the HSNCT. There might have been a question on it in an IS set, but that would have been crazy.
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Re: 2009-10 NAQT IS sets: question-specific discussion

Post by aestheteboy »

jdeliverer wrote:
laserphaser wrote:I know, I have the packet; I'm wondering why it is not promptable, given that time dilation and acceleration are both phenomena that are key to the twin paradox.
It doesn't really mean anything to say only one twin experiences time dilation - time dilation is a relative concept. If my understanding of the concept is correct, acceleration is the only thing that isn't relative, which is why it explains the paradox.
My understanding is that acceleration is also a relative concept. It's impossible to have A accelerating relative to B, but not B accelerating relative to A. I'm certainly not a physics expert, but it seems to me that time dilation would at least be as correct as acceleration for that clue.
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Re: 2009-10 NAQT IS sets: question-specific discussion

Post by Important Bird Area »

TheCopleyIndian wrote:In IS-95:

Is "In Melville's Piazza ones" a good lead-in for a common link tossup on tales? What were the following clues in this tossup?
IS #95, round 5 wrote:Herman Melville wrote "The Piazza" ones, Charles and Mary Land adapted some "from Shakespeare," and F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote about those "of the Jazz Age." Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote those "of a (*) Wayside Inn," James Michener wrote some "of the South Pacific," and Judy Blume wrote some "of a Fourth Grade Nothing." For 10 points--name this type of literary work that James Fenimore Cooper wrote about "Leatherstocking."
(And there was already a bonus in this set about the Canterbury Tales, in case anyone wonders why they didn't appear as well.)
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Re: 2009-10 NAQT IS sets: question-specific discussion

Post by Important Bird Area »

NoWayItsTanay wrote:I don't remember if this was in an IS-set or HSNCT, but would it be possible to see the conversion stats for The Garden Party?
It was certainly HSNCT, and we haven't finished tallying the conversion stats yet.
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Re: 2009-10 NAQT IS sets: question-specific discussion

Post by Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN) »

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote those "of a (*) Wayside Inn," James Michener wrote some "of the South Pacific," and Judy Blume wrote some "of a Fourth Grade Nothing."
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Re: 2009-10 NAQT IS sets: question-specific discussion

Post by Schweizerkas »

aestheteboy wrote:
jdeliverer wrote:
laserphaser wrote:I know, I have the packet; I'm wondering why it is not promptable, given that time dilation and acceleration are both phenomena that are key to the twin paradox.
It doesn't really mean anything to say only one twin experiences time dilation - time dilation is a relative concept. If my understanding of the concept is correct, acceleration is the only thing that isn't relative, which is why it explains the paradox.
My understanding is that acceleration is also a relative concept. It's impossible to have A accelerating relative to B, but not B accelerating relative to A. I'm certainly not a physics expert, but it seems to me that time dilation would at least be as correct as acceleration for that clue.
You're correct that if A is accelerating relative to B, then B is accelerating relative to A. However, the crucial point is that twin A (who stays on earth), is in an inertial reference frame, while twin B (in the spaceship) is not in an inertial reference frame. What's important for explaining the twin paradox is that only twin B is accelerating with respect to an inertial frame. I suppose one could object that the tossup didn't specify "only one twin experiences this phenomenon with respect to an inertial frame," but I think most physics experts would understand the statement "only one twin experiences acceleration" to imply "with respect to an inertial frame."
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Re: 2009-10 NAQT IS sets: question-specific discussion

Post by Cody »

Schweizerkas wrote:
aestheteboy wrote:
jdeliverer wrote:
laserphaser wrote:I know, I have the packet; I'm wondering why it is not promptable, given that time dilation and acceleration are both phenomena that are key to the twin paradox.
It doesn't really mean anything to say only one twin experiences time dilation - time dilation is a relative concept. If my understanding of the concept is correct, acceleration is the only thing that isn't relative, which is why it explains the paradox.
My understanding is that acceleration is also a relative concept. It's impossible to have A accelerating relative to B, but not B accelerating relative to A. I'm certainly not a physics expert, but it seems to me that time dilation would at least be as correct as acceleration for that clue.
You're correct that if A is accelerating relative to B, then B is accelerating relative to A. However, the crucial point is that twin A (who stays on earth), is in an inertial reference frame, while twin B (in the spaceship) is not in an inertial reference frame. What's important for explaining the twin paradox is that only twin B is accelerating with respect to an inertial frame. I suppose one could object that the tossup didn't specify "only one twin experiences this phenomenon with respect to an inertial frame," but I think most physics experts would understand the statement "only one twin experiences acceleration" to imply "with respect to an inertial frame."
1) It's an IS-A Set. 2) Most people are not physics experts!
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Re: 2009-10 NAQT IS sets: question-specific discussion

Post by Mechanical Beasts »

Right, but buzzing there indicates that you do know something about that clue. Like, that clue, as a self-contained entity, is fine precisely because it's assuming you're able to think about special relativity (and someone hearing that clue and considering buzzing there should not neg with acceleration because they do have that knowledge--or, if they do make that neg, it's because they have a poor understanding of the twin paradox and special relativity and should not get that tossup). The appropriateness of such a tossup in an IS-A set, now, is very questionable.
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Re: 2009-10 NAQT IS sets: question-specific discussion

Post by Stained Diviner »

The biggest problem with the acceleration is that its shortness allows only a few clues. Considering its length, though, it's a perfectly decent question. The first clue is uniquely identifying and very difficult for the target audience, just like first clues are supposed to be--anybody who says that the key to relativity's twin paradox is that only one twin experiences time dilation is demonstrating a fundamental misunderstanding. Keep in mind that there are some good teams that sometimes play A Sets for one reason or another, either because they don't know how good they are or because it's the best tournament in their region that time of year, so opening clues in A Sets should challenge decent high school teams. By the end of the question, it's pretty darn easy, as it should be.
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Re: 2009-10 NAQT IS sets: question-specific discussion

Post by AKKOLADE »

Jeremy Gibbs Freesy Does It wrote:
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote those "of a (*) Wayside Inn," James Michener wrote some "of the South Pacific," and Judy Blume wrote some "of a Fourth Grade Nothing."
Are you kidding me?
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