2006 NAQT HSNCT

Dormant threads from the high school sections are preserved here.
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Post by NotBhan »

leapfrog314 wrote: But Coach Lee has reminded me of something that I noticed this year. There were a LOT of questions with dumb punnish giveaway endings. The Bride and Prejudice question asked for a title that sounded like Austen's...then there was the naval captain with a "preadolescent" name, the painting with two "diplomats"... Does the last clue really have to be about the answer itself, and not more information? (New Trier capitalized multiple times on these, by the way, so I'm not being sour.)
These endings rub many people the wrong way, but I think they can provide a good final clue. The diplomats clue, for instance, is one which separates a team which could answer "X" (I don't want to write an answer) from a team which hasn't heard of the painting. And if either team knows anything more about the painting, the tossup should have been answered before that giveaway. Same thing with Bride and Prejudice (I'd never heard of it, so that last clue would have separated your knowledge of the film from mine). If such endings were universally expunged, quite a few more questions would go dead, and more bonuses would go unheard. That said, those giveaways can be irritating when overused, and they should fit logically with the question (the diplomats and Austen clues, at least, meet that criterion). The class of "NACuties" which I dislike have an obscure set of opening clues paired with a very easy, tacked-on "shares his name with" ending.

--Raj Dhuwalia

P.S. Kudos indeed to Shanghai Academy on the strong performance, especially under those circumstances. Best of luck with the new program, Mr. Harvey.
Last edited by NotBhan on Thu Jun 08, 2006 9:45 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Tegan »

ekwartler wrote: So tell me, Mr. Reinstein, you want to start a national organization dedicated to providing pyramidal questions (which, last time I checked, means questions that go from hard clues to easy ones), and you're "uncomfortable" on questions that, oh no, don't tell you exactly what they're all about from the get-go? I mean god forbid a question not specify whether the person, place, or thing that is its subject is real or not, then knowledge of real and fictional things might come into play. Maybe before you even open your mouth about pyramidality or any such thing you should become more comfortable with questions that actually exhibit it.
Mr. Ekwater,

When you get a clue, and I suggest you start by searching for one by removing your head from that orifice of your body from which you seem to speak from, give us a call. That uninformed attack was groundless and without warrant.

Sorry folks for dragging the classiness of the forum down, but I'm concerned about having an Ann Coulter-like aura developing around here: you know, quiz bowl must be my way, and all others with differing thoughts or opinions are inferior and open to being attacked, and unworthy of being considered.

David Reinstein is very concerned about helping to foster good quiz bowl, and if you would bother to read even a small percentage of his posts, you would be aware of this ..... heck, you might even be aware that he supports virtually all of the assertions you do! Instead, you pick on one single issue that he addresses (and doesn't even state that he supports), and you completely blow it out of proportion to assume that just because this is the rule in that particular state, that he must be filled with poor ideas and/or bad intentions. What utter classless garbage!

If David Reinstein is guilty of anything, it is the following:

1. Trying to build a group which could potentially help his own state continue to improve through the power of a collective group which might have the power to force change.

2. Trying to buld a group which could potentially help other states in need of help to improve quiz bowl have the power to improve it in those states.

I'm not speaking for David, but if this is the charge, I bet you couldn't stop him from yelling "Guilty" at the top of his lungs.

Now maybe you don't want more states getting better because that means more competition for you ..... I don't know, but that would explain a lot about why you would attack this guy. That, or you just wanted to start some drama by attacking someone whom you know little about.

End transmission.
Last edited by Tegan on Thu Jun 08, 2006 10:33 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Post by NotBhan »

Tegan wrote: Mr. or Miss Ekwater,
That's actually Mr. or Miss Eric Kwartler.
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Post by Hopesworth »

Lapego1 wrote:To add on to the results, State College A beat Maggie Walker A 360-330 I think. State College would have had to then beat RichMo twice for the championship. They pulled off one win by 100+ points, then lost the second of the finals matches by 85 or so from what I hear. State College had a 70 point swing protest, but it didn't matter in the end.
Those were absolutely amazing games.
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Post by Hopesworth »

NotBhan wrote:
leapfrog314 wrote: But Coach Lee has reminded me of something that I noticed this year. There were a LOT of questions with dumb punnish giveaway endings. The Bride and Prejudice question asked for a title that sounded like Austen's...then there was the naval captain with a "preadolescent" name, the painting with two "diplomats"... Does the last clue really have to be about the answer itself, and not more information? (New Trier capitalized multiple times on these, by the way, so I'm not being sour.)
Yeah, the Bride and Prejudice question was unfair.
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Post by Mr. Kwalter »

Tegan wrote:stuff
As Raj so graciously pointed out, my name is Eric Kwartler. I will soon be a fourth year player at the University of Texas-Austin, so I'm not really worried about Mr. Reinstein's business creating more competition for me.

I'm also sorry you "dragged the classiness of the forum down." Next time you want to say something objectionable, find one of my many posts on this forum that contain my email address (or, for that matter, my opinions) and keep it between us. Mr. Reinstein has no concept of pyramidality, and I make no apologies for saying that repeatedly. It's true and it's a problem. I apologize if people viewed my post as thread-jacking, but next time, Mr. Egan, if you've got an issue, try to make the problem better instead of worse.

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Post by Romero »

As to not continue this hijacking, I have placed a reply to Egan in another thread ("Road to Hell...")
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Post by First Chairman »

quiz4life wrote:I hope you do not mind me throwing a few kudos to my former team Shanghai and their performance at NAQT. 7-3 and an overall 16th place is darn good. But what makes it even more impressive, from a very biased point of view, are two things 1) Shanghai played in just ONE tournament the entire year, that being with KMO questions in Manila. Other than that they practice amongst themselves. 2) Only the team captain is a member of the "A" team. The principal would not allow any non-seniors to miss school. As such the rest of the team members, though fine players, were basically made-up of team B & C members. Two of which had never played in any tournament. A big loss was the young sophomore who is the math, music and art stand-out. Yes Matt this is the kid who scored a 5 on AP Calc as a freshman :smile: My guess is that with their true A team Shanghai would have placed in the top ten.
Because school is now over the A team will be attending NAC.
Well, that is very impressive. Hopefully the success of your program with HSCT and the NAC will encourage your admins to get more people to attend.

And one day, you'll come to PACE, yes?
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Post by alkrav112 »

What stood out to me was the number of repeats on bonuses from the practice rounds I had read the night before. I read one bonus on Friday night on Hero-Leander-Hellespont, and the exact same three answers come up again on Saturday.


Same thing happened my senior year with an Agrippina-Nero-Tiberius bonus. NAQT seems fond of reusing answers, albeit with a slight twist on the wording of the question. Granted, the HS canon is such that there are only so many bonuses to ask...
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Post by Strongside »

I have been referenced several times so I would like to respond to those and add a few more things.

To Richard Montgomery's coach. Thanks for complementing my play against your team. I was having a hard time trying to figure out how before the tournament I had only had two rounds with more than 4 powers and both of those rounds were A level questions and then how after barely playing any quiz bowl since February I can put up five powers against the best team in the nation. My best explanation for this is that the round we played they asked several questions I knew early and it just so happened we were playing you. When I saw we were playing RM in round 1 I didn't know what to think. Was this a sign of things to come, a good omen, a bad omen, I wasn't sure? One thing I was sure of that it we would probably lose. I had read these forums before the tournament and knew you were the team to beat at this tournament. Fortunately we won six of our next seven and made the playoffs.

I didn't have more than 3 powers in any of my other seventeen matches but I did have at least 1 power, and 7 questions answered correctly in all 18 rounds. I was surprised to win the individual scoring title. I knew that I had done well but I figured someone had beaten me as there were a lot of good players at the tournament. I was even more surprised and happy to learn I had still won the title even though a scoring/data entering error gave all 60 points that I scored in one match to one of my teammates and I in turn got zero points for that round. Obviously, I wasn't the best player there, but it felt good to see my name on the top.

To Andrew Hart from Chaska thanks for complementing me on my performance. With Saint Thomas finishing in the top 20% and us in the top 10% we represented Minnesota quiz bowl well.

About the logistics. The system they used wasn't perfect but it was pretty close. Losing a match wasn't that bad in the sense that theoretically for every match you lost each subsequent game was against an easier team. Even though losing their first game gave Gross Pointe North an easier schedule for a few games they still beat RM and MW A, argubly the two best teams there. Grosse Pointe was defintely a legit team.

I noticed that Brookwood did have to play a tougher schedule and we Mounds Park gave up more points than any other team. Maybe it was fitting that we were the only teams not seeded below 15 to place in the top 15.

Eight powers by an individual player in a playoff game at Nationals is quite impressive.

NAQT could randomly assign each team ten prelim games which would be much easier than power matching but wouldn't be very fair so I applaud NAQT for trying to be fair.

About bounceback bonuses. I personally feel they are stupid but I see legitimate reasons for using them.
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Post by cvdwightw »

bjb87 wrote:NAQT could randomly assign each team ten prelim games which would be much easier than power matching but wouldn't be very fair so I applaud NAQT for trying to be fair.
This was the system in 2001 and before with eight prelim games. Going to power matching has made the system much better and after instituting the winning-record-gets-you-in-playoffs system, usually errs on the side of more (arguably some less deserving) teams getting a chance to prove themselves rather than shutting out deserving teams that just got screwed over with their schedule.
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Post by mlaird »

quiz4life wrote:Also someone mentioned the "International Cup" unless Shanghai (SAS) played an unofficial match v. Lisgar it seems the 16th place is a bit higher than 25th, thus the "cup" goes to SAS.
They did play an unofficial match in the consolation rounds. Donald Taylor and I moderated for them, and it was probably the best match I had seen all weekend. Lisgar pulled ahead nearing the end (by sweeping a Hockey bonus), and then on the next tossup strategically negged in order to run out the clock (which was a good plan, because off the clock, I read the rest of the question, and SAS only needed about 3 more words to power a tossup about where the 2006 Asian Games would be held). Well played both teams, and I hope to see some of you guys and your coaches in the future.
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Post by samer »

e_steinhauser wrote:So, anyone care to explain why a team should earn bonus points when they never did anything to warrant a bonus in the first place?

You want the bonus? You get the tossup. It's that simple.
Suppose every bonus had exactly three answers, each worth 10 points; if the first team misses, then they rebound to the other team, but only for 5 points per answer.

Would your opposition still be as strong?
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Post by chaska »

I love the double-elim setup. Our state science bowl tournament uses it, and it's really the best thing ever.
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Post by conker »

Just wanted to point out that Mr. Harvey is no longer our coach, so he doesn't have much control over whether we are able to return to Chicago in the future. :cool: He is in Abu Dhabi now...hopefully he will be able to bring his team to NAQT in a few years (although they have an even longer flight than we do!).
They did play an unofficial match in the consolation rounds. Donald Taylor and I moderated for them, and it was probably the best match I had seen all weekend. Lisgar pulled ahead nearing the end (by sweeping a Hockey bonus), and then on the next tossup strategically negged in order to run out the clock (which was a good plan, because off the clock, I read the rest of the question, and SAS only needed about 3 more words to power a tossup about where the 2006 Asian Games would be held). Well played both teams, and I hope to see some of you guys and your coaches in the future.
Yeah, it was a really close match. Lisgar is a better team than their 6-4 record shows. I still think we could have won that game if you hadn't started over after they negged on the Asian Games tossup. :wink: There were still 5 seconds left after they negged, which would have been enough to read those next 3 words. But anyway, thanks for moderating that match. Maybe in the future, NAQT will have an International playoff just as they have a Small Schools playoff.

I have to say that one team we were really impressed by was Wilmington Charter, not only because of their skill--although they had plenty of that--but their sportsmanship. They play quiz team the way it's supposed to be played, with good humor and a competitive spirit. We were fortunate to have the chance to play both their A and B teams, and I think their B team was the best team in the tournament relative to experience. This is, after all, a team of freshmen and sophomores that ended TJ A's streak and gave us a run for our money (they opened the match to a 120 - [-5] lead). And although I think their entire A team is heading off to college next year, Wilmington is definitely going to be a team to be reckoned with.
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Post by dtaylor4 »

conker wrote:Yeah, it was a really close match. Lisgar is a better team than their 6-4 record shows. I still think we could have won that game if you hadn't started over after they negged on the Asian Games tossup. :wink: There were still 5 seconds left after they negged, which would have been enough to read those next 3 words. But anyway, thanks for moderating that match. Maybe in the future, NAQT will have an International playoff just as they have a Small Schools playoff.
I politely disagree. I was reading the tossup on the paper as I was scorekeeping, and he started over at the beginning of the sentence he had started when Lisgar took the strategic neg. The concept of the International Cup is a good one. If the international schools are at the HSNCT next year, and if NAQT won't officialy do anything, I'd be more than willing to moderate/scorekeep again, and I'd assume Mr. Laird would be willing to do it again as well.
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Post by conker »

DaGeneral wrote: I politely disagree. I was reading the tossup on the paper as I was scorekeeping, and he started over at the beginning of the sentence he had started when Lisgar took the strategic neg. The concept of the International Cup is a good one. If the international schools are at the HSNCT next year, and if NAQT won't officialy do anything, I'd be more than willing to moderate/scorekeep again, and I'd assume Mr. Laird would be willing to do it again as well.
Yeah, but the beginning of the sentence was the beginning of the question...he had only gotten 5 or 6 words into the question before Lisgar buzzed in. It certainly would have made the game more interesting had he continued on with the question. I don't think it was a strategic neg; I think Lisgar actually thought they knew it (as the player who buzzed explained afterwards, he figured there were only so many places "hosting" something in 2006, but couldn't think of anything after buzzing in). As for the International Cup, I think we would need another team before that could become a serious possibility. But thanks again to both you and Mr. Laird for moderating those matches.
Last edited by conker on Fri Jun 09, 2006 10:36 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by thepowerofche »

Matt Morrison wrote:There was one time when Mission buzzed in with (upon a prompt, thermo)nuclear fission, and the moderator and scorekeeper talked to each other for about 10 minutes and decided it was a neg. The answer was nuclear reactor, but at that point in the tossup there was hardly anything definitely distinguishing the two from each other.
Yeah, that happened in our match. After the question said something about "tokomak" (something last year's captain didn't believe existed), I was in with "nuclear fusion," which the moderator promptly ruled incorrect. We protested, which followed with a rereading of the tossup, which began "This type of device..." after which we politely rescinded our protest.

A couple other notes about the matches:
-I really liked the card-switching thing. It worked at the New Trier Solo tournament and it worked fantastically well at NAQT.
-Thank goodness for double-elimination playoffs.
-It is now categorically proven that I play exponentially better when I'm drinking a 64-ounce Gatorade than when I'm not.
-I found that the trash wasn't really anything different from what I've come to expect out of NAQT. Negging on SOAP as the first tossup, however, is probably the low point of my quiz bowl career.
-Powering a question off of a death metal clue is without a doubt the high point of my quiz bowl career, if not my entire life. Being clobbered a second match by State College A was completely negated by that one question in that round.
-My teammates are probably the greatest people ever to live.
-I'd like to see perhaps statistics on the most games that came down to the final tossup. I know we had six of those on Saturday and Sunday combined.

Two things about this thread that got hijacked by big fat meanies who hide behind the intarweb:
1. Bounce-back bonuses are an integral part of the future of quiz bowl. When you have unrelated bonuses (as in NAQT's format), the "reward" for answering a tossup is something, as its name implies, unrelated to the tossup, it negates the logic behind the "answer the tossup, get the bonus, the other team isn't going to know the answers anyways" response. For instance, at the HSNCT, I powered something on an insanely awesome buzz and then proceeded to get steamrolled by a three-part bonus about some garbage nobody on my team had ever heard of. The other team probably deserved to get all 30 points if they knew the answers, but had to content themselves with wailing and gnashing their teeth in anguish instead. Plus, everyone involved with quiz bowl is in it because they want to show off how smart they are; we should extend them the opportunity at every chance we can.

2. popculture, I laughed my ass off at both of your posts on this thread. The problem is that people on this board have a propensity to take everything seriously. If any serious trolls got loose on this board, it would probably get DoSed because it wouldn't be able to handle the number of flame posts hourly.


What people need to realize is that people engage in this activity to have fun. Nobody makes money by playing quiz bowl professionally. The game needs to be kept to where that it stays fun for the kids. Bottom line.


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Post by Mr. Kwalter »

thepowerofche wrote: 1. Bounce-back bonuses are an integral part of the future of quiz bowl. When you have unrelated bonuses (as in NAQT's format), the "reward" for answering a tossup is something, as its name implies, unrelated to the tossup, it negates the logic behind the "answer the tossup, get the bonus, the other team isn't going to know the answers anyways" response. For instance, at the HSNCT, I powered something on an insanely awesome buzz and then proceeded to get steamrolled by a three-part bonus about some garbage nobody on my team had ever heard of. The other team probably deserved to get all 30 points if they knew the answers, but had to content themselves with wailing and gnashing their teeth in anguish instead. Plus, everyone involved with quiz bowl is in it because they want to show off how smart they are; we should extend them the opportunity at every chance we can.
So, people being pissed that they don't get to show off their knowledge is not a justification for anything. Neither is being pissy about getting a bonus you don't know anything about. You don't deserve to get points on a bonus if you don't have knowledge, and they don't deserve to get points on a bonus if they don't have knowledge. If there's a buzzerrace (on a good question), then neither team had sufficient knowledge to beat the other team outright. The fact that the bonus topic is unrelated doesn't mean the correlation between getting a chance at a bonus and getting tossup points is unrelated. In fact, saying that makes no sense. The logic is not "the other team isn't going to know the answer anyways." The logic is "know enough about things to get the tossups before the other team, and you'll get the bonuses. Know enough about things in general, and you'll get points on the bonuses you got by getting the tossups. That's how you win quizbowl games." If all teams should have a chance at the bonus, tossups, and thus the buzzer aspect of the game, are diminished almost to the point of not mattering at all.
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Post by First Chairman »

thepowerofche wrote: Two things about this thread that got hijacked by big fat meanies who hide behind the intarweb:
1. Bounce-back bonuses are an integral part of the future of quiz bowl. ....
I cut the rest of your point on this to ask... have you ever practiced or competed at the NSC? We not only have reboundable bonuses, but the first ten tossups have RELATED bonuses. I think you are confusing both issues together, but still... the PACE NSC has that.

But bouncebacks are integral to the future of quiz bowl... are you kidding me? The point is if this is truly your opinion about how the game should be, why are you not coming to the NSC? Until the NSC gets even up to its maximum of 48 teams, as the head honcho of PACE, even I am very hard-pressed to agree with you on that opinion.
What people need to realize is that people engage in this activity to have fun. Nobody makes money by playing quiz bowl professionally. The game needs to be kept to where that it stays fun for the kids. Bottom line.
Yeah... that's why no one really cares about trying out for Jeopardy!, being in the presence of Ken Jennings, or winning the tournament to compete against teams in Japan. I won't go so far as to say, if it's all about fun, why keep score? ... but there, I said it.
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Post by grapesmoker »

thepowerofche wrote: 1. Bounce-back bonuses are an integral part of the future of quiz bowl. When you have unrelated bonuses (as in NAQT's format), the "reward" for answering a tossup is something, as its name implies, unrelated to the tossup, it negates the logic behind the "answer the tossup, get the bonus, the other team isn't going to know the answers anyways" response. For instance, at the HSNCT, I powered something on an insanely awesome buzz and then proceeded to get steamrolled by a three-part bonus about some garbage nobody on my team had ever heard of. The other team probably deserved to get all 30 points if they knew the answers, but had to content themselves with wailing and gnashing their teeth in anguish instead. Plus, everyone involved with quiz bowl is in it because they want to show off how smart they are; we should extend them the opportunity at every chance we can.
Not to rain on your parade, but I guess I should warn you that the collegiate game does not have bounce-backs, and almost certainly never will. So, bouncebacks are the past, not the future. The standard conception is that getting the tossup gives you a shot at 30 points on the bonus; that's the reward. Whether or not you convert that doesn't really matter.

Actually, I suspect that most teams in college would not want bouncebacks. The reason is that, unlike high school, where many teams are relatively close together with a few powerhouses above the rest, collegiate fields are more spaced out in terms of team quality because there are fewer of them. Bouncebacks would almost certainly result in a depression, rather than an elevation of scores in college games; we'd end up with good teams picking up over 500 points against weaker ones, which I would think would be quite discouraging.
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Post by jrbarry »

Dr Chuck:

thepowerofche has attended several national tournaments in his career.

NAC in 04
PACE in 05
NAQT in 04-05-06

In fact, it is he that chose NAQT for Brookwood this year, from among those three choices. I know that the Jeopardy tryout was a factor. He can post any other considerations he chooses to.
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Post by First Chairman »

jrbarry wrote:Dr Chuck:

thepowerofche has attended several national tournaments in his career.

NAC in 04
PACE in 05
NAQT in 04-05-06

In fact, it is he that chose NAQT for Brookwood this year, from among those three choices. I know that the Jeopardy tryout was a factor. He can post any other considerations he chooses to.
I never remember who is associated with whatever handle on any board (most of the time), so sorry about that. I'm just differing with the opinion on bouncebacks being the future of the game, citing that if that is his opinion, his desire to try out for Jeopardy seemed to contradict attending another event that had reboundable bonuses. Nothing more. Of course, if he thought that PACE's reboundable bonuses weren't to his liking... that would be nice to know.

That said, remind me: Chip only rebounds on his 10-question team round, right?
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Post by First Chairman »

grapesmoker wrote:Actually, I suspect that most teams in college would not want bouncebacks. The reason is that, unlike high school, where many teams are relatively close together with a few powerhouses above the rest, collegiate fields are more spaced out in terms of team quality because there are fewer of them. Bouncebacks would almost certainly result in a depression, rather than an elevation of scores in college games; we'd end up with good teams picking up over 500 points against weaker ones, which I would think would be quite discouraging.
While I agree with Jerry's entirety of his post, I'm going to disagree with that particular point because I have run reboundable bonuses since the 1997 Great Lakes Regional Academic Championship (which was PACE format). Basically put, I don't really see a significant depression in scores over the 8+ years of running PACE format (which is essentially tossup/bonus with various twists). In any games with mismatches, the disparity in scores was not due to stealing points from weaker teams. Tossups still mattered, and steal points available for the good teams were fewer because the weaker team could not get the tossups. The maximum number of points stolen in a match at PACE is 135 see the record page, and steal points do not predict winning a match (see other side when Gonzaga stole 120 points from Brookwood A but lost the match).

I guess my point is that the rebound bonus effect doesn't really tip the scale so much in the overall outcome of things. However, since the college game has always embraced exclusive bonuses, it will be very difficult to change that facet of the game at the college level. Operationally, moderators would have to remember to bounce, and in timed matches, you have to be subconsciously primed to do that.

I can go into OAC rebounds later...
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Post by grapesmoker »

E.T. Chuck wrote: While I agree with Jerry's entirety of his post, I'm going to disagree with that particular point because I have run reboundable bonuses since the 1997 Great Lakes Regional Academic Championship (which was PACE format). Basically put, I don't really see a significant depression in scores over the 8+ years of running PACE format (which is essentially tossup/bonus with various twists). In any games with mismatches, the disparity in scores was not due to stealing points from weaker teams. Tossups still mattered, and steal points available for the good teams were fewer because the weaker team could not get the tossups. The maximum number of points stolen in a match at PACE is 135 see the record page, and steal points do not predict winning a match (see other side when Gonzaga stole 120 points from Brookwood A but lost the match).
Well, I was referring more to college matches. My own experience says that in most cases, a stronger team basically knows everything that the weaker team knows and then some. So, given sufficient disparity between teams, Stronger Team A will always be able to steal, but Weaker Team B will almost never be able to do so. Therefore, the beneifts of stealing would be disproportionately awarded to the stronger team.

As a test case, consider a situation where Team A is stronger than Team B, but they play on a packet where the tossups favor Team B. Suppose Team B gets 13 of 20 tossups in the round, while Team A gets the other 7 (I am neglecting negs for the purpose of this thought experiment). Also, let's assume Team B is not very good but is able to pick up 10 points on every bonus, but never more (on average). Team A is better than Team B and picks up 20 points on every bonus, with the important assumption that Team A knows pretty much everything that Team B does, and more (one might argue that this contradicts the assumption that Team B would get more tossups, but since I know these situations occur, sometimes for reasons of losing buzzer races, I don't think there's any contradiction). So, Team B picks up 130 points from tossups and another 130 from their 10 points per bonus, for a total of 260. However, Team A picks up 70 points from tossups, converts 20 points per bonus (on average, again), and steals an additional 10 points from Team B for every one of Team B's 13 tossups. The end result is that Team A now has 70 + 140 + 130 = 340 points while Team B has 260 (remember, B can't steal from A, on average). Without steals, on the other hand, the game would end Team A 210 - 260 Team B.

That's a situation which strikes me as being manifestly unfair. Team B clearly played better, even if they didn't know more overall, and adding bouncebacks would hamper the "play" aspect of the game. It would just turn into a situation which gifts points to the most knowledgeable team but doesn't give the weaker teams much chance.
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Post by brownboy79 »

Since when is the weaker team supposed to have a chance? Isn't the point of the game to figure out the smarter team?
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Post by e_steinhauser »

brownboy79 wrote:Since when is the weaker team supposed to have a chance? Isn't the point of the game to figure out the smarter team?
No, I think the point of the game is to determine who is able to accumulate the most points on a particular set of questions during the course of a tossup+bonus buzzer game.

Knowledge is not the be-all, end-all of quizbowl, no matter how much we do emphasize it. You simply cannot divorce quizbowl from the buzzer system, which also then introduces the importance of speed, recall, anticipation, and, in some cases, strategy.

As I've stated before, if you think that quizbowl is, or should only be about what team has the most knowledge, you should be advocating for the elimination of the buzzer system and shifting the game to a written worksheet. Thankfully, I don't think anyone is actually advocating this reductio ad absurdum position, but sometimes I do wonder ...
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Post by grapesmoker »

brownboy79 wrote:Since when is the weaker team supposed to have a chance? Isn't the point of the game to figure out the smarter team?
No, the point is to play the game. Look, every game is potentially open. I've been on both the receiving and the giving ends of upsets, and I can tell you that it's what makes the game interesting. We play the games precisely because the results are not predetermined and it is the "play" element which makes the difference. Otherwise, why wouldn't we just have worksheets or something?
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Post by First Chairman »

Hey Jerry,

I'm not disagreeing with you all the way... I'm just saying that based on even high school matches with relatively academically rigorous questions, the effect of bounceback bonuses may be smaller because the stronger team will still be able to scoop up most of the tossups and should convert bonus points, giving very few scraps to the weaker team.

Is it possible to get an unfair result? Possibly... but then the perceivably stronger team has to really be weak on bonus conversion. The bonus conversion negates the strategic reward of speed on the buzzer, which may reward some teams that have those traits better overcome (as an example) a one-person superplayer and three wallflowers. In the end it's about points, and if a team cannot close the deal, does it mean that they aren't better of the two teams? Objectively, yes it does for that particular test.

While stealing would likely be more beneficial to stronger team A, the fact is that team B would also have very few opportunities to give team A a chance to steal its bonuses unless team B is a juggernaut at getting tossups. As a result, it has been my observation that blowouts are not more exacerbated by steals.

It does boil down to defining "stronger". If it turns out a packet seems to have tossups better suited for A and bonuses better suited for B, then objectively who is the better team? Do we want to reward speed of knowledge in tossups over depth of knowledge in bonuses? In any event, the points would reflect better the true knowledge base that both teams have on that packet (presumably), and that makes the score a fairer indicator of a team's relative strength (even if it is on one packet). I'm just saying that based on the data we have at PACE, there are few "unfair results" in blowouts as we can perceive them. For the closer games, sometimes there are matches where not having rebounds switches the victor, but usually both teams get their chances at each others rebounds, and the difference comes in bonus conversion and steal conversion. That puts more emphasis on the team knowledge aspect than speed, but that's what we wanted to emphasize.

Again, I can live with it or without it. I do think that reboundable bonus rules came into effect in high school because coaches wanted to make sure that the weaker teams were given a chance to answer the question on the mistakes of a stronger team. It's a fairness principle on that end in favor of the "weaker team".
Last edited by First Chairman on Fri Jun 09, 2006 11:41 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Post by First Chairman »

grapesmoker wrote:
brownboy79 wrote:Since when is the weaker team supposed to have a chance? Isn't the point of the game to figure out the smarter team?
No, the point is to play the game. Look, every game is potentially open. I've been on both the receiving and the giving ends of upsets, and I can tell you that it's what makes the game interesting. We play the games precisely because the results are not predetermined and it is the "play" element which makes the difference. Otherwise, why wouldn't we just have worksheets or something?
Ooo dem's fightin' words. :lol:

And you play to win the game...

No, winning a game does not mean you are "smarter" than the other team. Otherwise, rather than having worksheets, we'd actually have people write essays, complete IQ puzzles, sculpt, and sing songs (peers over at Morrison)*. Just as there are "smart" football players, your victories only mean you are "smart" quiz bowl players.

* Play Cranium (TM).
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Post by insaneindian »

E.T. Chuck wrote:That said, remind me: Chip only rebounds on his 10-question team round, right?
Lightning round and bonus round bouncebacks. In Bonus round you get bonus questions until you miss (5 10 15 20). So if you get the 5 and 10 and miss the 15, and the other team answers 15 correctly...net points for you on the bonus = 0.
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Post by Strongside »

One thing I noticed about the tournament was that there seemed to be several questions where I was thinking of an answer and then an opponent buzzed in with the same answer and it was wrong. Then I listened to the podcasts and someone buzzed in with the same wrong answer. These were not trick questions and I am not complaining about them but it was interesting that several people were thinking of the same wrong answer.
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Playoff Seeding

Post by rhentzel »

davinci wrote:The one thing I didn't like about the playoff formatting was how in the double elimination rounds they used the preliminary seeds in order to rank the pools of temas by record.
For those of you who weren't there, this is correct. Each round of the playoffs was paired first by won-lost record in the playoffs and then by the final seed from Saturday's (preliminary) games. Therefore low seeds who won continued to get tough matches. Conversely, top-seeded teams continued to get an advantage from their Saturday performance.

This was intentional; it was thought that standard double-elimination brackets didn't do enough to reward teams for high finishes on Saturday and allowed an early upset to give a top-seeded team a tough schedule for the rest of the playoffs.

So, you experienced the system as it was intended to work. That said, NAQT doesn't have rock-solid arguments that this is the right way to run things. We've certainly altered our playoffs before based on participant feedback and we'd definitely look at doing so again if we preceived a clear sentiment in favor of a different approach.

Feel free to e-mail us at [email protected] with comments or include them in the free-form field on the satisfaction survey sent to coaches.

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Post by First Chairman »

insaneindian wrote:
E.T. Chuck wrote:That said, remind me: Chip only rebounds on his 10-question team round, right?
Lightning round and bonus round bouncebacks. In Bonus round you get bonus questions until you miss (5 10 15 20). So if you get the 5 and 10 and miss the 15, and the other team answers 15 correctly...net points for you on the bonus = 0.
Or worse, you get the 5, miss the 10, get the 10 stolen... and you are net -5.
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Did NAQT change its distribution for the 2006 HSNCT? No.

Post by rhentzel »

RandomScreenname wrote:Maybe this is just me being bitter, but did anyone else notice that there seemed to be an usually high distribution of current events/politics and pop culture?
NAQT made no changes to its distribution for the 2006 HSNCT as compared with the year's invitational series (save for it being 26/26 rather than 24/24); there were only minor changes as compared to the 2005 HSNCT.

At the highest level, the fraction of history, current events, and popular culture questions remained the same from 2005 to 2006.

To wit:

2006 HSNCT:
History 18.7%
Popular Culture 4.9%
Current Events 7.2%

2005 HSNCT:
History 18.7%
Popular Culture 4.8%
Current Events 7.1%

IS #59 [last set of the 2005-2006 year]:
History 18.8%
Popular culture 4.9%
Current events 7.1%

It's possible that the order of questions within packets could have had a significant effect on the distribution you actually heard, but some database queries don't show any substantial deviation to me when I compare numbers for the first 20 tossups in each set versus the set as a whole.

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Post by rhentzel »

nurgles_herald wrote:No, I think you're absolutely correct. I'm a big history buff, and I was rather disappointed by the selection of asian history in particular exhibited at the tournament: namely, basically none.
NAQT didn't change its quotas for Asian history for this tournament vis-a-vis either the year's invitational series or the 2005 HSNCT.

Looking at the questions from this year's tournament shows that the "miscellaneous Asian history" quota saw more questions about the Middle East than last year; when you hear questions about Israel/Sumer/the Ottomans/whatever, do you classify those as Asian history or are you primarily thinking of China, Japan, and India?

NAQT frequently has question shortfalls in Asian history categories; if you really like that area, we'd love to have you sign up as a writer when you're done competing on tournaments that use Invitational Series.

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Post by rhentzel »

etchdulac wrote:Is that 885 against Walton correct? I know it's mathematically possible, but damn.
Yes, it is. I believe I read that game.

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The HSNCT distribution follows the Invitational Series

Post by rhentzel »

RandomScreenname wrote:If NAQT wants to change their general distribution, that's fine by me, it's their right to do that. What I have a mild problem with is that they sort of sprung it on us at a national tournament. It seems to me that these changes should've been seen in the invitational packets to at least give us a chance to prepare.
Without wanting to rehash the question of whether or not the distribution changed, I wanted to add that this is exactly what NAQT would do if it were going to change the distribution. We think it's important that the HSNCT be played on question of similar style and distribution to the year's qualifying tournaments.

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Post by rhentzel »

RandomScreenname wrote:While I am vaguely aware of the differences between ACF and NAQT distribution at the college level, NAQT distribution is the norm to me. So, even being used to the "dearth" of fine arts in NAQT, I noticed the relative lack of those types of questions at the HSNCT.
2006 HSNCT Fine Arts: 6.27%

2005 HSNCT Fine Arts: 6.22%

IS #59 Fine Arts: 6.25%

Fine arts has historically been an area in which there is widespread disagreement at the high school level as to the degree to which they should be represented.

We routinely get complaints about having far too many fine arts questions as well as having far too few. The current distribution attempts to strike a workable compromise.

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Post by rhentzel »

dschafer wrote:I wasn't at HSNCT this year, but the math I've heard so far in the podcasts has been decent-to-poor in quality.
I'm disappointed to hear that you felt that way; we at NAQT would be interested in suggestions that would improve our computation (and/or theoretical math) questions. Feel free to contact us at [email protected] or to post ideas on this message board.

We are also always in need of new writers of computation questions for our high school packets; I hope that you'll consider submitting a writing sample to us at some point in the future.

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Post by quizbowllee »

I'd like to personally commend R. for coming to this board, taking the time to read all of it, and responding to our criticisms and questions. I think that speaks volumes about his dedication to the improvement of NAQT and the game in general. Thanks, R.

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The Desperate Frenzy of NAQT tournaments

Post by rhentzel »

popculture wrote:NAQT clearly strives to create a single effect in each of its matches, that I can't completely describe other than its being marked by, what I would call, frenzied desperation. This effect is created by its questions, rules, and treatment.
I may be inferring more than you intended with this statement, but I wanted to explicitly state that NAQT strives to create much more than a "single effect" with its matches and questions.

It's true that we want quiz bowl to be, in general, a fast-paced and exciting game.

It's also true, however, that we want to create a game that measures academic and cultural knowledge, as well as a game that is fun to play, rewards practice, and encourages teamwork. These goals, taken together, inform our writing of questions and choice of rules.
The questions are confusing; NAQT clearly goes out of its way to make it so.
I would take issue with the exact choice of words here. To the best of my knowledge, no NAQT writer sits down to write a question with the goal of bewildering or confusing players at the buzzer. It is certainly true that many questions do not make it immediately clear that the subject matter is history or that we are looking for a battle or a novel, but we don't see that as any more "confusing" than the basic idea of starting with hard clues that players are not likely to recognize. We don't feel that an important quality of quiz bowl questions is that they can be easily classified into a major category based on their first two lines. By the end, of course, the topic and subject area should be pretty obvious.

You are free to view this as writing "confusing" questions, but I think that adjective is rather strong for the situation as it exists.
By not labelling the questions, players (if they're like me) are often asking themselves "Is this history or literature?" [pause] "Or art?" [dramatically raise one eyebrow while looking at camera, place hand on chin].
Is this actually true? I'm certainly willing to believe that it's true for you, and some other players as well, but I'm not sure it's true for a majority of quiz bowl players.

NAQT doesn't see the classification of questions as history/literature/art as a significant aspect of *answering an individual question* (though, of course, adhering to packet-wide and tournament-wide distributions are very important). Is the classification of questions while hearing them actually a prominent element in most players' thought processes?

I suspect we'd say that if knowing, in advance, that an upcoming question was "history" or "literature" made it much easier to answer, then there may have been something wrong with the question given how little information a labeling of "history" or "literature" should provide compared with the actual clues of the question.
The early clues in each question often contain much larger, more difficult words, leaving those without large vocabularies clueless, even if they have the knowledge.
Statistically, I don't think this is the case. NAQT certainly doesn't have guidelines that suggest the use of sesquipedalian lead-ins. It's quite possible that lead-ins are more apt to feature proper nouns that are unfamiliar, but I think that's part and parcel of the goal of writing difficult lead-ins that are worth power points.
Bouncebacks make the game more fair (I'm sorry, but it's true); the reason NAQT does not have bouncebacks (by my reckoning) has nothing to do with not wanting to reward the team that was too stupid to get the tossup. It is entirely because bouncebacks take away from the breakneck pace they are aiming for.
I am in a position to speak with authority on why NAQT does or does not do different things, and in this case, you are not correct.

NAQT has no problem with some teams using bounceback bonuses and has no moral or aesthetic objection to them. We do not use them for several reasons:

1. They shift the relative values of answering tossups and bonuses and the relative importance of tossup-related skills and bonus-related skills. In our opinion, the balance currently in NAQT packets is a more-or-less optimal compromise. People can, and will, obviously disagree on this point.

2. They lengthen the game, reducing the number of questions heard in a game or the number of games heard in a full day of quiz bowl.

3. We want to have uniformity between our high school, community college, and college tournaments.

Our non-use of bounceback bonuses has nothing to do with the desire to create desperate frenzies at our tournaments. If we were interested in doing that we would mandate the use of clocks, dump bonuses entirely, shorten our questions to the merest stubs, and prohibit people from playing our questions under non-conforming rules.

We see no problem with people preferring bounceback bonuses, but I don't think a blanket statement that "they are fairer" can be made.

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The Pronoun Rule

Post by rhentzel »

grapesmoker wrote:One of the major problems with many NAQT questions is their writers' resistance to the proper use of pronouns. I refer particularly to the so-called "list tossup" in which a list of things with some common characteristic is given and one must then figure out the common link. In any tossup, whether of the "common link" style or not, the first pronoun (and the first clue) must unambiguosly identify the answer, and that pronoun should appear as soon as possible to prevent any confusion.
NAQT completely accepts the "pronoun rule" as one that should never be broken; any questions that violate it represent mistakes in the editorial and playtesting process and should not have appeared in final packets. Any examples that are sent to us will be fixed in our archives before future orders of practice sets are filled.

That said, NAQT does use "list tossups" in which the goal is to determine the common link between a number of ostensibly disparate items. Some players dislike these and some enjoy them...much like many of our other classes of questions. We do put significant editing time into list tossups to eliminate any potential interrupts that we can come up. Do we always succeed? No, but we don't always succeed with non-list-tossups either.

Quiz bowl questions should never be hoses, but NAQT doesn't believe that it logically follows that the ideal question should always begin "This man..." or "In this novel..."

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Bride and Prejudice: An intentional hose?

Post by rhentzel »

quizbowllee wrote:As for the questions, I know I'm not supposed to discuss specifics, but there was one question that REALLY, REALLY bordered on being a hose. In fact, I kinda feel like the question was - in fact - designed to get people who had a working knowledge of a a certain book to neg on it.
Here's the text of the question:
Lalita Bakshi [LA-lee-tuh BAHK-shee] comments that her mother "thinks that any single man with big bucks is shopping for a wife," as she and her sisters prepare for a party at which they hope to be introduced to the rich Balraj [bahl-rahzh] (*) Bingley and his rich American friend, William Darcy. For 10 points--name this 2004 Gurinder Chadha movie that replaces a 'P' with a 'B' in the title of the Jane Austen novel about Elizabeth Bennet.
In my opinion, as NAQT's Chief Editor, this is not a hose. In fact, it was explicitly written to start with an Indian name, use the given name of Balraj Bingley, and include a quote that couldn't possibly be from ~Pride and Prejudice~ ("big bucks") before any clue that could plausibly be reflex-buzzed. I can see that a player might reflex buzz on "Bingley" or "Darcy," but in this case, I would argue very strenuously that they weren't paying very close attention to what was actually being said and didn't have a "working knowledge" of the book.

In any case, NAQT does not write questions that are intended to elicit negs regardless of players' knowlede level. We do occasionally produce, and fail to catch, hoses, but to intentionally write such questions would be an abrogation of our principles.

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Post by Zip Zap Rap Pants »

rhentzel wrote:
dschafer wrote:I wasn't at HSNCT this year, but the math I've heard so far in the podcasts has been decent-to-poor in quality.
I'm disappointed to hear that you felt that way; we at NAQT would be interested in suggestions that would improve our computation (and/or theoretical math) questions. Feel free to contact us at [email protected] or to post ideas on this message board.

We are also always in need of new writers of computation questions for our high school packets; I hope that you'll consider submitting a writing sample to us at some point in the future.

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As a non-math person who usually only buzzes on the math questions that dont really require pencil and paper (ERA questions, questions about a student's grades, some other stuff - lazy me), I won't comment in depth on the math question quality, but it did seem like most of them either took too long to do for people to buzz, or they were pretty easy. To allow some more time to buzz in, I would suggest doing what the VHSL Scholastic Bowl does: read the whole question once, read it in full a second time (without any power possibility at this point, in NAQT's case) and then allow 10 seconds. This also helps in cases where you can do the problem but are missing one component because you didn't have time to write it down or remember it when it was being read the first time. This procedure seemed to help when I was at VHSL regionals last year, but then again, we had our amazing math genius with us, so that might have skewed my perception a bit...

[Edit: Oh yea, what was the deal with that income tax amendment bonus that erroneously had "17th amendment" as the answer? I hope that gets changed for any future copies of the nationals set that are sold. Also, hopefully that didn't affect the outcome of any games...]
Last edited by Zip Zap Rap Pants on Wed Jun 14, 2006 7:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Crossover giveaway clues

Post by rhentzel »

leapfrog314 wrote:But Coach Lee has reminded me of something that I noticed this year. There were a LOT of questions with dumb punnish giveaway endings. The Bride and Prejudice question asked for a title that sounded like Austen's...then there was the naval captain with a "preadolescent" name, the painting with two "diplomats"... Does the last clue really have to be about the answer itself, and not more information? (New Trier capitalized multiple times on these, by the way, so I'm not being sour.)
It depends on what you mean by "have to be." It's clear that, logically, those don't have to be the final words of tossups, but they're put there for a reason, rather than a desire to have flippant clues for their own sakes.

NAQT doesn't use crossover/pun/"sounds like" giveaways unless we've already given the easiest clues that we know for the answer and still think that the tossup won't achieve the 85% answerability level that we try to use as a standard. If you look at the questions to whose giveaways you object you'll (hopefully) see that there really weren't any easier clues that could have been used instead to bring up the answerability. If you do see such clues, please sign up as a writer...we always need more people writing accessible questions.

NAQT is trying to balance the competing goals of a broad answerspace that expands even more at the nationals level with our desire to have most tossups (85%) answered. Going with harder, less-common answers reduces the rate at which they are answered. We choose to take some questions that might only be answered, say, 70% of the time, and include them with crossover clues rather than restricting ourselves to workhorse answers from the high school canon that we know will hit the 85% mark.

We, of course, want to avoid questions that are answered 5% of the time before a crossover (i.e., in the "meat" of the question) clue and 90% of the time on such a clue. This has been considered to be a problem with some of NAQT's college sets in the past and we've worked hard to remove such questions during the editing process in the last several years. I don't think any of the examples you mention fall into that category.

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The 16th Amendment and Fusion power

Post by rhentzel »

Matt Morrison wrote: I also noticed one question in the tournament that was flat out wrong. When our A team was playing Mounds Park, they had a bonus question basically asking for the income tax amendment, which Mounds Park said was the 16th, but the moderator said it was the 17th. Despite being ratified in the same year, the income tax amendment is the 16th one and the direct election of senators one is the 17th.
Yep, we botched that. I can't say much more than that "I'm sorry." Some teams having their packets mailed to get will get copies of the practice set version in which that error is fixed.
Also, did anyone notice that there were some really weird questions in the first half of round 8? Maybe it's just me because both teams negged all over the place (we were playing Mission San Jose). There was one time when Mission buzzed in with (upon a prompt, thermo)nuclear fission, and the moderator and scorekeeper talked to each other for about 10 minutes and decided it was a neg. The answer was nuclear reactor, but at that point in the tossup there was hardly anything definitely distinguishing the two from each other.
Here's the question:
The Lawson criterion for this type of device is the product of the confinement time and ion density necessary to achieve ignition, although multiplying by the plasma temperature is more accurate for tokamaks. Overcoming the Coulomb barrier between two (*) nuclei and dealing with bremsstrahlung radiation formed by the plasma are the two main difficulties in--for 10 points--what source of power contrasted with fission?

answer: nuclear _fusion reactor_
I am not NAQT's science editor, but I believe this is uniquely specifying from "Lawson criterion" onward. I think "fission" is completely wrong at any point in the question and am somewhat surprised that there was even a discussion about it. At "type of device," it should be clear that we are looking for some sort of physical object rather than a process or concept.

-- R. Robert Hentzel
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National Academic Quiz Tournaments, LLC
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Linking tossups and bonuses

Post by rhentzel »

thepowerofche wrote:When you have unrelated bonuses (as in NAQT's format), the "reward" for answering a tossup is something, as its name implies, unrelated to the tossup, it negates the logic behind the "answer the tossup, get the bonus, the other team isn't going to know the answers anyways" response.
NAQT sees the issue differently; we don't pair tossups and bonuses by subject matter to give a team an incentive to, for instance, put a player who is good at science, but not good at tossups, on their team.

If tossups and bonuses were paired, then a team whose strongest tossup players know history and literature isn't going to get very many science bonuses and they would tend to move science players off the team in favor of players who know more literature and history.

That's an understandable way to do things and I don't think one approach could be said to be "fairer" than the others, but it is a choice that NAQT consciously made to increase the potential contribution of players that are not particularly strong at answering tossups.

-- R. Robert Hentzel
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National Academic Quiz Tournaments, LLC
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Thanks for the thanks!

Post by rhentzel »

quizbowllee wrote:I'd like to personally commend R. for coming to this board, taking the time to read all of it, and responding to our criticisms and questions. I think that speaks volumes about his dedication to the improvement of NAQT and the game in general.
NAQT appreciates this praise; quiz bowl is still largely a labor of love for us and it is really nice to be told, publicly or privately, that any aspect of our operations is appreciated.

That said, I would tend to think that reading these boards and responding to at least some comments should be considered a *minimal* level of community involvement for any organization that had pretensions of catering to the nation's top teams and running a quality event.

NAQT monitors feedback on these boards and is always interested in what people have to say. We look forward to the more structured feedback of our surveys, but many of their questions and answers (including their wording) originate in comments on hsquizbowl.org.

Not everybody will agree with the choices we make, but we'll try to explain our choices as best we can, even if the ultimate motivation is a capitalist one (as it sometimes is).

We're glad to see lots of positive remarks about the HSNCT and hope to resolve some of the problems by next year.

Along the same vein, we hope that many of the people reading this board today will eventually become writers, editors, and even members of NAQT. Only three of our currently active members were present at the company's founding.

-- R. Robert Hentzel
President and Chief Technical Officer,
National Academic Quiz Tournaments, LLC
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Re: The 16th Amendment and Fusion power

Post by Zip Zap Rap Pants »

rhentzel wrote: I am not NAQT's science editor, but I believe this is uniquely specifying from "Lawson criterion" onward. I think "fission" is completely wrong at any point in the question and am somewhat surprised that there was even a discussion about it. At "type of device," it should be clear that we are looking for some sort of physical object rather than a process or concept.
I'm sorry, now that I think about it, they actually did say "nuclear fusion," (not fission, my bad) then they were prompted, upon which their response was "thermonuclear fusion." Then the moderator and scorekeeper discussed it for eternity, then called it a neg. Didn't matter in the end though. Now that I see the question, it is more obvious what is being asked with "device" near the beginning.
Matt Morrison, William & Mary '10, Tour Guide &c., MA in History '12?

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