The Quizbowl Resource Center

Hello everyone,

On behalf of the Harvard Quiz Bowl team, I am very excited to announce the main site for the 12th annual Harvard Fall Tournament, on November 11th, 2017!

Logistics:
The tournament will be held in historic Tercentenary Theatre, which is located right next to Harvard Yard. We recommend using the MBTA Red Line to get to the tournament, since parking options are limited in Harvard Square and the traffic can be quite unpredictable. We are aiming to start the first round at 9:00 AM and having most rounds finish by 6:00 PM at the latest (teams in finals or tiebreakers may need to stay until 6:30 PM). There will be preliminary and playoff rounds, with re-bracketing in between. A lunch break will take place when most convenient; we will most likely be selling pizza, and teams will have access to a variety of food options in Harvard Square.

We will provide more logistics information as we finalize the details.

Registration:
The initial field size will be capped at 24 teams. We will increase the field size as we get a better idea of our staff commitments, as we've usually hosted 32-36 teams for HFT. The field has filled up to capacity relatively quickly in previous years, so act swiftly if you want to guarantee your spot at HFT! We will have a first-come, first-served waitlist if there are more teams than our field size. Finally, team sizes will be capped at six players.

To register, email me at [email protected] or post in this thread. Please include "HFT Registration" in the email subject, and specify the number of teams and any relevant discounts. Registrations are not complete until I respond in some fashion saying so!

Fees:
Tournament fees/discounts are the following:
+$90 per attending team
-$5 per working buzzer system (must have power cord and 8 functional buzzers, maximum three buzzer systems per organization)
-$10 per experienced scorekeeper (must be familiar with quiz bowl rules/scoring)
-$20 per experienced moderator (must be familiar with quiz bowl rules/scoring, and have good pronunciation, speed, and reading skills)

All discounts are applied per organization, and the minimum average fee for any team in an organization is $60. We reserve the right to revoke discounts for violations in good faith, and the right to charge additional penalties for egregious and blatant violations. Teams dropping out after 9:00 PM EST on November 10th will still be responsible for the entirety of the fee, even if no longer attending (we will make exceptions for valid medical, weather, and other emergencies at our discretion). As stated last year, we will try to be understanding, and this policy will not punish teams uncertain of their initial field, but it is unfair to our program and other teams attending to drop without any fair warning.

We will accept cash and checks made out to "Harvard College Bowl" on the day of the tournament. Invoices will be provided upon request.

Set Details:
Details for HFT XII can be found here. Like last year's HFT XI set, Raynor Kuang (aka UlyssesInvictus) will be head editing.

Final Comments:
Please feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions relating to the tournament! If you're coming from out-of-town, I'll be more than happy to provide suggestions relating to food, transportation, things to do, etc.

CONFIRMED FIELD
Organization / Teams / Buzzers / Scorekeepers / Moderators
Lexington HS (3/1/0/0)
Hoover HS (1/1/0/0)
Andover HS (1/1/0/0)
Community School of Naples (2/0/0/0)
Hunter College HS (2/1/0/0)
Smithtown HS East (2/2/0/0)
Smithtown HS West (2/1/0/0)
Lehigh Valley Academy (1/1/0/0)
Hanover HS (1/3/0/0)
Detroit Catholic Central HS (2/1/0/0)
Acton-Boxborough Regional HS (3/0/0/0)
Hingham HS (1/0/0/1)
Plymouth Regional HS (1/1/0/0)
Phillips Academy Andover (3/3/0/0)
Trinity School (3/0/0/0)
Belmont HS (1/1/0/0)
St. Mark's School (1/0/0/0)
Kellenberg Memorial HS (3/3/1/0)
AMSA (2/2/0/1)
Dexter Southfield School (1/0/0/0)
TOTAL (36/22/1/2)

WAITLIST
Organization / Teams / Buzzers / Scorekeepers / Moderators
Needham HS (1/1/0/0)
AMSA (1/0/0/0)
TOTAL (2/1/0/0)

Lexington would like to register (as of now) 4 teams, with 1 buzzer set and 0 staffers.

Hoover High (Alabama) would like to register one team. We will bring a buzzer set.

It's been a little more than 48 hours since I posted this announcement, but we have already filled a third of our initial field size. While we anticipate expanding the field as the tournament date approaches, this is a friendly reminder to get those registrations in quickly!

Hello,

Smithtown would like to Register Three Teams: One for Smithtown East, one for Smithtown West, and One for Smithtown combined.

User was reminded to enable a signature. --Mgmt.

Field update, 8/16. With a little less than three months before the tournament, we currently have 20 teams registered out of an initial field size of 24 teams. While we anticipate expanding the field as we get a better idea of our staffing commitments, now is a great time to register teams and avoid being placed on the waitlist!

Plymouth Regional High School, from New Hampshire would like to enroll 1 team (as of now) with a buzzer and no readers/scorers.

Hello,
Coach Fogarty would like to accept Plymouth Regional High School's invitation to this tournament. Plymouth (NH) will have one team, one set of buzzers.

Troy Harris
Plymouth, NH

Field update, 8/17. We have reached our initial field cap of 24 teams, and plan on raising this field cap in the near future. If you're interested in attending HFT XII, make sure to register ASAP to be placed on the first-come, first-served waitlist!

Field update, 8/30. We're not quite ready to increase the field size yet, but we're planning on a final field size of either 32 or 36.

Additionally, I'm pleased to announce that HFT XII has been awarded platinum certification by PACE! This means that the top 25% of teams (rounded up to the nearest integer) will qualify for PACE NSC on the weekend of June 2nd-3rd, 2018 at the Hyatt Regency Reston outside of Washington, D.C.

Field update, 9/17. We have increased the field size from 24 teams to 32 teams! We are still working hard to increase the field size to 36 teams in the near future.

Field update, 9/28. We have increased the field size from 32 teams to 36 teams!

Some useful links for tomorrow...
Logistics and Rules: tinyurl.com/hftxiiinfo
Schedule: tinyurl.com/hftxiischedule (currently blank but will be updated with prelim brackets, and later playoff brackets)
Live Stats: tinyurl.com/hftxiistats

May I ask why the stats vanished at lunch, never to return?

Snoopy wrote:May I ask why the stats vanished at lunch, never to return?

Not to be curt, but you should check the Neg 5 thread for an explanation. I just think it's funnier if you learn it in real time.

Before I say anything else, I first want to thank everyone who played the tournament (including teams from Michigan, Alabama, Florida, etc.). We hope you guys enjoyed the set as much as we enjoyed writing it. We are hoping to set up a private discussion forum for the set in the near future, so please refrain from specific question-related feedback on this thread. We also recognize that the set is not perfect, and we will make sure to proofread, edit, and revise our questions to address the imperfections we found.

I was the Tournament Director, but I want to thank Jiho Park and Raynor Kuang for basically being co-TDs with me, along with all the other staffers who helped out. Much that could have gone wrong did go wrong, including rooms that we had booked months earlier not being available to us, statkeeping issues, etc, but we still managed to finish the tournament by around 7PM. That would not have happened without all the teams and staffers being flexible, alert, and extremely patient. I cannot thank you guys enough.

Here are the top 4 teams:
1. DCC A (12-0)
2. Hunter A (11-1)
3. Lehigh Valley (10-2)
4. Hoover (9-3)

The afternoon stats were kept using Google Sheets; we will try to get them all uploaded to Neg5 at the latest by Monday night. We apologize for the delay.

It's probably worth noting that Hunter A held a 165-point halftime lead in the final before one of their players had to leave.

UlyssesInvictus wrote:

Snoopy wrote:May I ask why the stats vanished at lunch, never to return?

Not to be curt, but you should check the Neg 5 thread for an explanation. I just think it's funnier if you learn it in real time.

Ah, my sincerest apologies, I was unaware. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction.

I'm obviously biased, but HFTs have a traditional of occasionally going way off the rails and I don't think the tournament went that insane. Most teams finished by 5:30 and it was only the teams that played 2 extra finals rounds that went to 7. Rather, it was a good lesson for any new TDs on the importance of backup plans: we lost rooms for reasons out of our control, so we used backup rooms and then worked with available resources to find pro tempore rooms give what we had; Neg5 went down so we used our backup scoresheets; we rotated staff where needed and had a good running thread of communication.

Jon and Jason did admirably planning on the fly and I'm really hopeful that for everyone attending, they received quality questions and got to see a little more of Harvard than they were expecting.

Just a reminder not to discuss the actual questions in this thread since we have multiple mirrors planned. A private discussion forum should be up soon!

I want to apologize to everyone involved in this tournament for the issues with Neg5. Having hosted a few tournaments back in high school, I know first hand how stressful it can be when unexpected things pop up, especially in something so important like stats. The fact that the issues with stats generation cascaded to the moderators' abilities to enter matches and run their event is inexcusable.

Tomorrow, I will be posting a short-summary of the issues Neg 5 faced along with some action items that can be taken to reduce the chance of this happening in the future. I would appreciate any feedback on this after it's posted.

The private forum has been created. For those who are not familiar with them, go to User Control Panel -> Usergroups -> Select "2017 Harvard Fall Discussion" -> Click "Submit".

Stats are up. We were able to recover the complete information for all of our matches except for a Round 3 game between DCC B vs. Naples A. We were able to recover the individual stats, but not the bonus conversions. Once again, we apologize for this lack of oversight.

DCC B won the game by an unknown number of points and all players heard 20 tossups.

DCC B:
Jonah Fanning: 1-2-0
David DeBacker: 2-4-1
Parker Stogdill: 2-0-0
Colin Stewart: 0-1-0

Naples A
Bridget Denzer: 1-1-0
John Neumann: 0-2-1
Jack Ciabaton: 0-1-0
Anabella Galang: 0-0-0

AGoodMan wrote:Stats are up. We were able to recover the complete information for all of our matches except for a Round 3 game between DCC B vs. Naples A. We were able to recover the individual stats, but not the bonus conversions. Once again, we apologize for this lack of oversight.

DCC B won the game by an unknown number of points and all players heard 20 tossups.

DCC B:
Jonah Fanning: 1-2-0
David DeBacker: 2-4-1
Parker Stogdill: 2-0-0
Colin Stewart: 0-1-0

Naples A
Bridget Denzer: 1-1-0
John Neumann: 0-2-1
Jack Ciabaton: 0-1-0
Anabella Galang: 0-0-0

The score was 460-120 DCC B.

CGismondiCC wrote:The score was 460-120 DCC B.

Stats have been updated to reflect the DCC match. Thanks for the information!

I was glad that we came. Yes, on the negative side, the building/room situation was messed up and pushed everything back an hour-plus, which screwed things up for Hunter at the end of the tournament. I think it's reasonable to expect that, if you have a commitment somewhere as Chloe did, you should be able to count on finishing a regular HS tournament by 6:00. The Harvard guys said it was the school's fault for not opening a building that they had signed off on, but I've seen similar problems at Columbia and Princeton--and heard them blamed on the colleges, there, too--so I am a little skeptical that all bases had been truly covered heading into Saturday.

I rent rooms from a college, year-round, for my business so, ALL college QB TD's, here's some advice: double-check your room/building assignments the week before your activity. Also, get to know the people who work there year-round: the employees in charge of booking rooms, the security, even the custodians. If they know you by name or even just by your face, they are much more likely to trust you and help you out when you get in a jam. There is no real incentive for these folks to help you unless they are sure it won't come back to bite them in the ass. Also, some university employees tend to resent college students (often with justification) and sometimes enjoy not helping them when they can justify it. I'm not saying this is the case with you Harvard guys--you seem very nice to me--but a greeting, a kind word here and there as you go through your daily routine on campus can pay off big-time when you actually need a favor. Plus, it's just a nice way to live.

That being said, no one is perfect. And I enjoyed the Harvard tournament this year and would have gone even if I had known about the delay--and we drove 5-plus hours to get there. I've heard some complaints about the set from the PA mirror students--mostly about power markings and difficulty "cliffs"--but I thought it was a very good, tough set, with few crappy questions. And I really appreciate that the Harvard guys did not rely too much on their past sets. I am often dismayed by the sloppiness and/or laziness of house writers. I get that studying earlier iterations of a set is a part of our due diligence, but this shouldn't provide teams who memorize these packets with an insuperable advantage. This was not the case at HFT this year, so kudos to the Harvard QB team.