Terrapin available for Spring 2019 mirrors

[wcheng]

I am pleased to announce that the 2019 edition of Terrapin will be available for pre-Nationals mirrors starting in March 2019!

Eligibility

All high schoolers are eligible to play Terrapin as closed teams in designated high school mirrors. Students who are dual-enrolled are eligible to play in either a collegiate or a high school mirror for their respective institutions.

Difficulty

This tournament is designated as collegiate medium-difficulty, meaning that its intended difficulty level is below that of ACF Regionals and roughly equivalent to 2017 EFT. At this difficulty level, we expect the questions to be fairly challenging for an experienced high school audience while still having many accessible answerlines. As a result, we would recommend using this set in any Nats-prep tournaments you intend to host in the spring.

Editing

I, Weijia Cheng, am head-editing this tournament. The subject editors will be as follows:

Weijia Cheng: History, Religion, Social Science, Geography/Current Events/Other Academic
Jordan Brownstein: Literature, Visual Arts, Mythology
Graham Reid: Science
Caleb Kendrick: Philosophy
Ophir Lifshitz: Auditory Arts

Andrew Wang is also joining the editing team as a science oversight editor.

Distribution

The editors reserve the right to change the distribution. Any changes will be posted in this thread.

4/4 Literature
-> 1/1 American
-> 1/1 British
-> 1/1 European
-> 1/1 World/Other
4/4 History
-> 1/1 American
-> 2/2 European/Commonwealth/Classical
-> 1/1 World
4/4 Science
-> 1/1 Biology
-> 1/1 Chemistry
-> 1/1 Physics
-> 1/1 Other*
3/3 Fine Arts
-> 1/1 Painting and Sculpture
-> 1/1 Classical Music
-> 1/1 Other Arts
2/2 Beliefs
-> 1/1 Religion**
-> 1/1 Mythology***
2/2 Thought
-> 1/1 Philosophy
-> 1/1 Social Science
1/1 Geography/Current Events/Other Academic

* Includes 1 Math or CS question per packet.
** With an emphasis on practices, scriptures, and doctrines.
*** Including legends of a religious nature.

Mirrors

The mirror fee will be $40 per team, including house teams. If you are interested in mirroring this set, please send me an email at [email protected]. We are seeking bids from hosts that can guarantee internet access for moderators to use online scoresheets. Moderators will be trained to use online scoresheets that will be used to create detailed stats that include buzzpoint and category conversion data. The following mirrors have been set up:

DC Metro: UMD
Texas: Texas Invitational

Additionally, we welcome states to use Terrapin for their NASAT tryouts. Mirror fees for NASAT tryouts (and other individual events) will be $10 per person. The following states have elected to use Terrapin for NASAT tryouts:

Illinois
Missouri
Virginia

[Jasconius]

GDS and a couple of other high school teams were unable to play EFT at UMD because of UMD room reservation policies. Will UMD Quizbowl be working to be sure that they will have worked around said policies and be allowed by the school to host a high school mirror of Terrapin?

[wcheng]

GDS and a couple of other high school teams were unable to play EFT at UMD because of UMD room reservation policies. Will UMD Quizbowl be working to be sure that they will have worked around said policies and be allowed by the school to host a high school mirror of Terrapin?

Hi Matthew, we completely understand the concerns you might have about a high school mirror of Terrapin given your experience with the EFT mirror. We will be working hard on future mirrors to make sure we are aware of and can properly deal with all relevant administration policies beforehand, but if this turns out not to be possible we will work to ensure that Terrapin can still be mirrored at a local high school or other location.

[Abdon Ubidia]

GDS and a couple of other high school teams were unable to play EFT at UMD because of UMD room reservation policies. Will UMD Quizbowl be working to be sure that they will have worked around said policies and be allowed by the school to host a high school mirror of Terrapin?

Hi Matthew, we completely understand the concerns you might have about a high school mirror of Terrapin given your experience with the EFT mirror. We will be working hard on future mirrors to make sure we are aware of and can properly deal with all relevant administration policies beforehand, but if this turns out not to be possible we will work to ensure that Terrapin can still be mirrored at a local high school or other location.

Has this been confirmed (either UMD or an alternate site)?

[wcheng]

Yes, I have confirmation from MAQT's club president that we will be able to host a Terrapin mirror.

[wcheng]

We've gotten a lot of interest from states in using Terrapin for their NASAT tryouts, and we are excited to see our set being used in this way! I've added some information about which states will be using Terrapin in the OP--mirror fees for NASAT tryouts and all other individual events will be $10 per person. If you are planning on attending NASAT tryouts, please do not register for any of our high school events or the open playtest at the risk of losing eligibility.

[wcheng]

Hey, if you're a college or high school player who's yet to hear the Terrapin questions, I would highly recommend checking out our online mirror on Qblitz from May 13-17 if you haven't already! We are very excited to bring our questions to this new platform, and the more people who play, the more people who you can compare your results against. The entry fee is $25 per person.

From my perspective as a writer and editor, Terrapin is a really good set for high school players to prepare for the high school national tournaments, especially PACE NSC--we've made a point to write several questions in this set that have deep, challenging clues but also have answerlines that are appropriate for the PACE NSC/ACF Fall level. This is a great opportunity to warm on after school in the weeks before nationals!