New Trier Scobol Solo - Winnetka, IL (11/9/13)

[Stained Diviner]

The Thirteenth Annual New Trier Scobol Solo will be held on Saturday, November 9. New Trier is located in Winnetka, just north of Chicago. This tournament is not being mirrored in Illinois this year, but it might be mirrored in other states. (Alpharetta, Berkeley, and Walter Johnson have mirroring rights.)

Unlike most other tournaments, this one will feature one-on-one matches (i.e. no teams). Each match will consist of twenty tossup questions without bonuses. Each individual who enters is guaranteed seven matches, which will take place from 9:00-3:00. We will then have a Championship Match at 3:30 featuring the top nine students all playing at once.

The cost to participate is $30 per player for the first ten players on your team. If you can supply an experienced moderator, then the cost is only $20 per player for the first ten players, and it is only $10 per player if you have two moderators. I am willing to negotiate if you have more than two moderators. Lunch will be provided for everybody. Keep in mind that moderators will be unable to watch their own players' matches. Even if you don't moderate, there will be several times that some of your students play at the same time. If you wish to enter more than ten players, they will be entered on a standby basis. If there is room for them to play, they will play for free. I will let you know by November 1 how much room we have--we are hoping to have exactly 128 students total. The tournament is set up so that matches always feature two students with identical records.

Old questions are here.

Please return the attached form with a check. If you want to hold some spaces for your school while your business office is cutting the check, email me at [email protected], call me at (847)784-6616, or post below. Reserve spaces by October 31. Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.

We are definitely looking for staffers.

Field:
Auburn (10)
Barrington (4)
Bloomington (5)
Carbondale (7)
El Paso Gridley (1)
Fenton (4)
Fremd (2)
Homewood-Flossmoor (3)
IMSA (6)
Keith (7)
Latin (6)
Loyola (10)
Maine East (4)
Maine South (7)
Metea Valley (9)
Naperville Central (3)
New Trier (4)
Saint Ignatius (8)
Saint Joseph (2)
Saint Viator (10)
Stevenson (5)
Wheaton North (3)
Wheaton Warrenville South (8)

[Stained Diviner]

The field is already 2/3 full. If you want a space, claim it before the field is completely full.

[Dominator]

IMSA would like to reserve 8 spots. The exact roster will be turned in soon.

[Stained Diviner]

I currently have room for about 10 more students and 10 more moderators.

[Stained Diviner]

I am starting a waitlist. We now have too many students and not enough moderators.

[Stained Diviner]

I am still waiting for rosters from Keith, Loyola, Metea Valley, Saint Ignatius, and Stevenson.

One difference between this year and last year is that each round will only have one math question, and each round will have both current events and geography.

[Stained Diviner]

The set will be used December 7 at Mount Vernon (IL) and may be used elsewhere after that, so please do not post or tweet anything about specific questions.

I want to thank Sameen Belal, Willie Chang, Daniel Goldman, Jonah Greenthal, Eddie Kim, Mike Laudermith, and Tom Moore for writing questions for this set. Tom Egan also provided feedback on many questions, and Jonah did a huge amount of editing to get it into shape. I was the head editor, so any problems should be blamed on me.

If all goes according to plan, you should be able to follow results here.

[jonah]

We are about to begin the championship match, which will feature Jason Asher from Stevenson (the morning champion, i.e., 7–0), James Zetterman from Carbondale, Anton Karpovich from IMSA, Prerak Trivedi from Carbondale, Evan Pandya from Auburn, Greg Krzywicki from Fenton, Alston Boyd from Bloomington, Pranav Sivakumar from Barrington, and Jeeho Lee from Stevenson (who advanced from among the 5–2 players based on total tossups answered).

[jonah]

The category champions are as follows:

Physics: Prerak Trivedi, Carbondale (7)

Chemistry: Justin Millman, Stevenson; Prerak Trivedi, Carbondale (7)

Biology: Stae Schipper-Reyes, Bloomington; Rohan Shivde, Fenton; Prerak Trivedi, Carbondale (6)

Other Science: Stae Schipper-Reyes, Bloomington (7)

Math: Robert Andrews, Fremd; Siva Gangavarapu, IMSA; Jeeho Lee, Stevenson; Stae Schipper-Reyes, Bloomington (7)

U.S. History: Bryce Cai, Barrington; Jack Claiborne, Wheaton Warrenville South; Justin Millman, Stevenson; Nathaniel Perrin, Wheaton North; Connell Stanton, Loyola (6)

European History: Waleed Ali, IMSA (7)

World History: Jack Claiborn, Wheaton Warrenville South; Jack Miller, Wheaton North (7)

Military History: Jonathan Huh, Carbondale (7)

U.S. Literature: Andrew Salij, IMSA (7)

British Literature: Jason Asher, Stevenson; Jonathan Huh, Carbondale; Sriharsha Marupudi, Metea Valley (7)

European/World Literature: Jonathan Huh, Carbondale; Becca Kobernat, Keith Country Day; Evan Pandya, Auburn; Dan Pechi, IMSA; Philip Shih, Fremd (7)

Poetry: Prerak Trivedi, Carbondale (7)

Painting: Melissa Engel, Metea Valley (7)

Instrumental Classical Music: Davide Behr, St. Joseph, Jonathan Huh, Carbondale, Jeeho Lee, Stevenson; Mahir Morshed, Carbondale; Tarun Nagarajan, Metea Valley; Evan Pandya, Auburn; Dan Pechi, IMSA; Will Rupprecht, Auburn; Liam Warner, St. Viator (6)

Other Fine Arts: James Zetterman, Carbondale (7)

Religion/Mythology: Brad Kane, Wheaton Warrenville South; Nathaniel Perrin, Wheaton North (7)

Social Science/Philosophy: Cole Timmerwilke, Auburn (7)

Current Events: Max Frankel, New Trier; Anton Karpovich, IMSA; Jonathan Mishory, Stevenson (7)

Geography: Anton Karpovich, IMSA (7)

[Stained Diviner]

1. Anton Karpovich, IMSA
2. Evan Pandya, Auburn
3. Jason Asher, Stevenson
4. Pranav Sivakumar, Barrington

Congrats to everyody who played. The competition all day was very strong, with a whole lot of students answering a whole lot of questions. The questions in the championship were absolutely brutal, but pretty close to all of them were answered.

Thanks to a whole lot of people for moderating and keeping things running at headquarters. Special thanks to Jonah for his software making it easier to enter stats and for his editing of the set.

Remember that the set is not clear. I am hoping to set up a private group for people who want to discuss individual questions, and you can email me if there is something you want to say.

[Stained Diviner]

Conversion yesterday was 74.7%. I believe that it has been between 60 and 70 percent every year before this one.

[kievanrustic]

Conversion yesterday was 74.7%. I believe that it has been between 60 and 70 percent every year before this one.

Mr. Reinstein (or anyone for that matter), would you attribute this to a push to make Scobol Solo questions more convertible this year or to something else? This is my first year playing Scobol Solo, so I don't have any answers.

Sincerely,

Andrew Salij

[Stained Diviner]

I think it was more than one factor.

Part of it was me making more of an effort to ease up a little bit. Part of it was the category change--it's easier to write 20 appropriate math questions than 40 appropriate math questions, and having more current events and geography improves conversion because those categories are often handled well even by students who haven't gotten the canon down.

Part of it depends on what teams enter. Most of the teams that entered this year are teams that play a lot of good events, so their students know what they are doing.

Part of it is the general improvement in Illinois, which isn't all that different from what is happening elsewhere. Students have access to better websites and question archives than they did a few years ago. Tournaments are better than they used to be. It's hard to notice sometimes because change is slow, but students who are juniors and seniors now have been playing good tournaments since they entered high school, which wasn't the case with juniors and seniors a few years ago. Some of them played the first good middle school tournaments in Illinois. ACE has now been in Illinois a couple of years, and that's having an impact. More conferences are using NAQT instead of worse alternatives. Additionally, coaches have now figured out what it takes to be successful--practice on good questions, because that's what you'll find at NAQT and Masonic State in addition to IHSSBCA tournaments and other events you play. Teams are also figuring out that learning important subjects makes you a stronger team. (It is in some ways fortunate that coaches don't know how bad the IHSA questions will be this year, so they won't practice on bad questions to prepare for it.) A lot of Illinois teams have been to HSNCT and/or NSC, and they plan to return, so they are aiming high. The impact of these changes is that students know more things.

[kievanrustic]

Thank you for your answer. It gives me a lot to think about. While I generally think that Illinois lacks the superstar individual firepower that it had last year (i.e. No Dylan Mynarik got more than 100 questions in the prelims), I can see where you come to the conclusion that in Illinois (and across the country) quiz bowl skill is growing.

[Stained Diviner]

The week before Solo, there were 10 teams that got over 18 PPB playing ACF Fall and an additional 3 teams that broke 15 PPB. A lot of the same students showed up at Solo and answered lots of questions.

[AKKOLADE]

Illinois has a lot of HS teams good at quiz bowl. This is not new nor dependent upon individual people who score 100 ppg. Pretty sure there's several players in IL that could do that if it weren't for the "curse" of very good teammates.

[Stained Diviner]

Thanks to Andrew Hart, we have a private discussion group. Go to your User Control Panel, then Usergroups, then choose Scobol Solo 2013 discussion. Once I accept you, look for the group in the Miscellaneous High School Quizbowl section.