Maryland Spring Tournament

[DumbJaques]

Paul will have a full tournament recap, but here are the stats from today's event. Note that TJ B was not eligible for the top bracket since it was playing as an amalgam team due to a last minute snafu with our scab team situation.

[Smuttynose Island]

I know that it's a long shot, but did anyone find an all-French copy of Gargantua and Pantagruel laying around somewhere? I think I left my copy in one of the bottom floor rooms.

Edit: Also, this was an enjoyable tournament. Thank you for hosting it.

[JamesIV]

Many thanks to the Sid Academy of Champions B-Team for letting me crash the party. 'Twas great fun!

[Down and out in Quintana Roo]

This set was hard but really good. I hope it's put online so other teams can use this as great study material for nationals. There were a few odd issues with questions having "this [thing]" for two different [things] in the question, meaning it was unclear what they were looking for. But that was pretty rare and i usually caught them as i was reading. Other than that, this set was really excellent for what it was: a very challenging high school set that might be at least as hard as EFT. There were a few variances in bonus difficulty, but that's bound to happen and it was far and few between.

Thanks Maryland for hosting this. It was a nice way to end the year and end the careers of Cameron and Corben. We (me, Alexa, Pratyusha, and hopefully two other good players...) will see everybody again next year. Best of luck at nationals for all the teams attending.

[Anathemalice]

As Aidan previously mentioned, the RM A team consisting of Samantha, Raynell, and Arun cleared the field after 9 rounds. Congratulations to you guys.

I welcome your feedback on the tournament, as this was my first time as head editor of a set, and improving is supposedly a good thing to do.

I want to thank SteveJon Guth, Logan Anbinder, Chris Ray, Isaac Hirsch, Ozzie Fallick, Gary Weiser, and Jeff Amoros for their contributions to the set. The moderation at the tournament was, for the most part, pretty awesome and got us done rather quickly. So mad props to all those who helped run the tournament.

I appreciate all of you attending and we hope to see you next year.

[JamesIV]

I welcome your feedback on the tournament, as this was my first time as head editor of a set, and improving is supposedly a good thing to do.

I enjoyed this tournament tremendously, but I do feel there were things that might have been improved upon (I don't know whether we're allowed to discuss specifics, so I shall be general). First and foremost, there was a lot of repetition, particularly a pair of bonuses on the same topic with a shared answer line. There were several instances of clues appearing in more than one question, including a few that, for a team that was listening carefully, might have given them the answer to the latter question.

[DumbJaques]

I enjoyed this tournament tremendously, but I do feel there were things that might have been improved upon (I don't know whether we're allowed to discuss specifics, so I shall be general). First and foremost, there was a lot of repetition, particularly a pair of bonuses on the same topic with a shared answer line. There were several instances of clues appearing in more than one question, including a few that, for a team that was listening carefully, might have given them the answer to the latter question.

Those two bonuses were pretty egregious, since they more or less tested the exact same information (as an additional kick in the pants, neither was particularly well-written). However, and this is more of a general point rather than one directed at Spence in particular, pointing out clear oversights like that will not really help anyone improve. At least, I hope not, since I hope nobody on my team is under the impression that having bonuses that are more or less 2/3 identical is a good thing. That's not to say you're entirely welcome to raise legitimate gripes (if an editor used a 5/5 cheese distribution, feedback of any kind is unlikely to really help that person but you can damn sure still complain about it). If you're responding to someone's request for feedback though, as I read to be implied by your post, that kind of stuff probably isn't going to be much use. There were of course many areas of improvement for the set, but I was very pleased with the job our younger players did.

Other than that, this set was really excellent for what it was: a very challenging high school set that might be at least as hard as EFT.

Did you really think so? The occasional outlier aside, I don't think there's any way this set was harder than EFT. It was certainly harder than fall, but then so are many high school events (and certainly both nationals). I'm curious if this is really how you saw the set's difficulty or if there's a bit of confusion about the difficulty level of EFT here.

[Down and out in Quintana Roo]

Well, okay, it certainly wasn't harder than EFT, but it might have been close to it. It was just the best comparison i could think of. St. Anselm's actually played EFT this year and got about 20ppb on it, and not too much higher on this set. Considering how long ago they played EFT and how the team has gone from really good to really really good through the course of the year, i'd say the sets compare.

And just to make it clear, i'm honestly (for once) not complaining that this set was too hard, really. It was as advertised. There were a few things asked about that i thought were very very difficult, but that's going to happen at times.

[JamesIV]

I enjoyed this tournament tremendously, but I do feel there were things that might have been improved upon (I don't know whether we're allowed to discuss specifics, so I shall be general). First and foremost, there was a lot of repetition, particularly a pair of bonuses on the same topic with a shared answer line. There were several instances of clues appearing in more than one question, including a few that, for a team that was listening carefully, might have given them the answer to the latter question.

Those two bonuses were pretty egregious, since they more or less tested the exact same information (as an additional kick in the pants, neither was particularly well-written). However, and this is more of a general point rather than one directed at Spence in particular, pointing out clear oversights like that will not really help anyone improve. At least, I hope not, since I hope nobody on my team is under the impression that having bonuses that are more or less 2/3 identical is a good thing. That's not to say you're entirely welcome to raise legitimate gripes (if an editor used a 5/5 cheese distribution, feedback of any kind is unlikely to really help that person but you can damn sure still complain about it). If you're responding to someone's request for feedback though, as I read to be implied by your post, that kind of stuff probably isn't going to be much use. There were of course many areas of improvement for the set, but I was very pleased with the job our younger players did.

My sincere apologies, I misunderstood what was wanted in terms of feedback.

I thought, and still think, that the tournament was fundamentally solid. I really enjoyed the set, I thought there were some interesting answer lines, and I learned some stuff, which is always the best bit. My only major critiques would be with a few of the toss-ups having some pretty substantial difficulty cliffs and some of the bonuses being of unequal difficulty. As to the relative difficulty of the set, I am singularly unqualified as a judge of set difficulty, so I won't embarrass myself by pretending otherwise. I will only say, once more, that I had a jolly good time, and I am indebted to Maryland for a great last hurrah with high school quizbowl.

[Rufous-capped Thornbill]

So is this set clear for posting online?

[Charbroil]

So is this set clear for posting online?

I actually just emailed about possibly mirroring this set for a summer event in St. Louis if I can't get Moon Pie, so if you could wait a couple of weeks to see what happens with that, that would be appreciated.

[Mewto55555]

So is this set clear for posting online?

I actually just emailed about possibly mirroring this set for a summer event in St. Louis if I can't get Moon Pie, so if you could wait a couple of weeks to see what happens with that, that would be appreciated.

Well, I just received a copy of this set, having been told it was cleared, and then passed it on to a few other people in the Missouri/St. Louis area. Methinks it may be a bad set to mirror mayhaps?

[Charbroil]

So is this set clear for posting online?

I actually just emailed about possibly mirroring this set for a summer event in St. Louis if I can't get Moon Pie, so if you could wait a couple of weeks to see what happens with that, that would be appreciated.

Well, I just received a copy of this set, having been told it was cleared, and then passed it on to a few other people in the Missouri/St. Louis area. Methinks it may be a bad set to mirror mayhaps?

Yeah, never mind, then. Here's hoping UTC gets back to me about Moon Pie.

[AlphaQuizBowler]

So, given that it's not being mirrored, will this set be posted sometime this week?