Reviving some HSNCT discussion

[theMoMA]

There wasn't really a hardcore HSNCT question discussion this year. I kind of meant to start one after playing the mirror about a month ago, but didn't. Now I'll share my thoughts.

First, I'm not a terribly complete NAQT player because the music, movies, geography, political leaders, and current events are either things I don't know or have answer selection that tends to play away from my strengths. That said, I thought this set offered plenty of good academic questions and for the most part, rewarded knowledge.

I don't want to get into critiquing flaws specific to individual questions, so I'll make some blanket criticisms of the set and back each up with an example or two.

First, I thought there were quite a few questions with kitschy early clues. One of my bigger beefs with NAQT sets in general is that they tend to have vague or cutesy leadins instead of finding more difficult concrete facts. The tossup on Ionesco was a perfect example. Instead of rewarding deeper knowledge on something like The Lesson, the leadin was basically "Contrisse Chauve." In my vast ignorance I was unaware that this was an alternate title for the Bald Soprano, but I did recognize a Romance language word for bald next to a word that invokes a singer, so I powered the question. I can't imagine I was the only one.

I noticed a lot more X, Y, both, or neither bonuses in this set, and those are annoying because they test on one bit of understanding. They tend to give 20s and 30s to teams who understand the concept in question and a random number of points between 0 and 30 to the rest of the teams forced to guess.

Another problem that I tend to have with NAQT in general that manifested itself in this set is the geography that comes up. Is anyone out there powering questions on Tuvalu, Vanuatu, Tonga, Comoros, etc? I don't think any of these came up in the set (though I'm sure I've seen at least three NAQT questions on each at some point), but I'm pretty sure Nauru came up as a tossup answer. Questions in the form "It is really small. A history thing happened here. FTP, name this place that you won't know until capital city (or occasionally, until we say that Survivor _ was filmed here)." exemplify just how trivial a place like Nauru is. Just because a thing appears on a map doesn't make it significant geography. A lot of the time these questions are just tacking 400 characters to the question "what country has its capital at _______?"

Finally, I'm really tired of the promulgation of leader clues in the middle of country questions. There is no knowledge more list-oriented than leader-country, yet time and time again (this applies to both NAQT and PACE) current leaders come up in the middle of questions. A related annoying phenomenon is the fact that writers seem to like putting current leader clues in so many categories, including geography, history, and current events.

Anyway I enjoyed playing the set, and I hope this didn't come across as too negative. It was one of the better high school tournament sets I've seen.

[Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN)]

I think I powered that nauru tossup, actually, on something about mining phosphates. Although I like Nauru more than anybody should.

Pretty much I'll agree with what Hart wrote. This is a different question/complaint, but was anyone besides me a little dissappointed by NAQT having notably less differentiation (ie, up to 5th place everybody just tied for a spot without any differentiation or mini playoff), or did this make people more happy? I dunno. I didn't want to bring this up randomly, but now this thread popped up.

[First Chairman]

Finally, I'm really tired of the promulgation of leader clues in the middle of country questions. There is no knowledge more list-oriented than leader-country, yet time and time again (this applies to both NAQT and PACE) current leaders come up in the middle of questions. A related annoying phenomenon is the fact that writers seem to like putting current leader clues in so many categories, including geography, history, and current events.

Anyway I enjoyed playing the set, and I hope this didn't come across as too negative. It was one of the better high school tournament sets I've seen.

For Matt W to address:
I don't recall that many geography country questions where the current leader is not a later clue at the NSC. Unless the country was absolutely obscure for which one cannot know the answer unless you mention a politician's name followed by the capital, I don't know which ones you meant by this remark.

On the other hand, should not current leaders be part of current events? I guess I want to see a little expansion of this topic.

[Stained Diviner]

I agree with the geography comments, and the same issues came up in the IS sets this year. For some reason, the geography answer space was more obscure than the answer spaces in other categories. The tossups that went dead or lasted until some silly giveaway often were geography tossups.

Personally, I thought the number of cutesy clues was, fortunately, pretty small at HSNCT. I was not bothered by them.

One thing to keep in mind about the Ionesco tossup is that the majority of teams at HSNCT could not get Ionesco if they said The Bald Soprano (in English). I'm not saying it's a great clue, but I would be surprised if it led to a lot of buzzes.

[Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN)]

I think a ton of semi-decent teams would get the Bald Soprano.

[DumbJaques]

I think Andrew was more talking about how some current events/recent history tossups where the answer is a country mention current leaders in the middle of the questions (sometimes, before the power mark). It's not a huge issue in the scheme of things, but it is kind of a problem.

I was more struck by how there are really only 10 tossups per game that are hardcore, well-written academic questions. The other ~15 are on geography, current events, pop culture, sports, things like detective novels that are not academic, things like corporate history which is not academic, and random and usually terrible general knowledge tossups. Along with that, there were usually like 2-3 questions per round whose answer selection almost precluded a good academic question from being written (why do you need a physics tossup on the ratio of 1.5:1? There aren't enough things in science to ask about?)

In my opinion this is a huge problem. Teams are more and more capable of succeeding at harder questions, and if you could somehow analyze conversion percentages, I'd bet that NAQT's academic questions (by which I mean the 10 or so mentioned above) beat the living christ out of the conversion numbers for the "other" distribution. This isn't an issue of accessibility for younger or comparatively worse teams, I'm sure every meaningful stat would go up if 10 of those 15 were even EVENLY divided between accessible and very difficult pyramidal answers, which isn't an ideal ratio anyway (as an aside, absurd bonuses without discernible easy parts, or hard parts, or anything probably don't help overall stats). I would really like to see some reason for having these questions in there, since I can't see it serving any purpose.

One thing to keep in mind about the Ionesco tossup is that the majority of teams at HSNCT could not get Ionesco if they said The Bald Soprano (in English). I'm not saying it's a great clue, but I would be surprised if it led to a lot of buzzes.

While you may be correct that at least 51% of teams wouldn't get Ionesco from Bald Soprano (debateable), but aside from the fact that it's a very well known work by a very well known writer, I think that about 90% of the top teams will get that clue cold. Andrew's point, again, I think was more about clue placement. At the beginning of the question in a national championship round, a clue that leads to buzzerraces between even 50% of the top teams is wildly unacceptable.

[Quantum Mushroom Billiard Hat]

I think I powered that nauru tossup, actually, on something about mining phosphates. Although I like Nauru more than anybody should.

I think I could say the same, though that power could have been in a different tournament.
Although I like to hear geography questions that are not about common places, some are often repetitive because there is just not that much information. Almost every question about Nauru I have heard has an early clue about phosphate mining. Almost every question about Angkor Wat begins with something about bas reliefs. I'm sure this list could continue for quite a while.

I thought the questions were very good overall, though of course there is always room for improvement.

[Coelacanth]

First, I'm not a terribly complete NAQT player because the music, movies, geography, political leaders, and current events are either things I don't know or have answer selection that tends to play away from my strengths.

So the seven powers (in a 20-TU game) you rang up against us in the finals of the mirror were on the things that you do know, presumably.

I'm not trying to make a snarky comment; just wanted to give you full props for a remarkable performance. I guess the round we beat you on during the RR was full of geography, current events, etc.

[theMoMA]

To clarify what I mean about world leaders...they should only show up in one part of the distribution. I don't care what one it is (current events makes the most sense) but they shouldn't be showing up in every TU whose answer is a country. And when the appear, they should show up towards the end. The current function of world leaders as a throwaway line in a middle-to-end clue before the FTP only serves to reward list knowledge.

My point on the Ionesco tossup isn't really about difficulty. It's about clue quality. It's bad quality to use a clue whose only discerning value is whether or not you know the original language title (or in my case, if you know French cognates for Spanish words). The leadin should be on a more obscure work (The Lesson, the Chairs, the Leader, the Future is in Eggs, etc.) to reward deep knowledge, not on a translation that rewards very trivial knowledge like foreign language titles.

Another thing I forgot to mention. Did anyone else think that there were a ridiculous amount of questions on kinds of animals?

[Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN)]

Possibly too many animals, although that didn't exactly stick out. Although it seemed like there were flower questions, so maybe that whole "objects" question category was too much.
I didn't like the foreign language use either. The biggest one that sticks out to me is the Schubert tossup in the final. That one did not please me aesthetically when they switched back and forth from english to german titles.

[theMoMA]

First, I'm not a terribly complete NAQT player because the music, movies, geography, political leaders, and current events are either things I don't know or have answer selection that tends to play away from my strengths.

So the seven powers (in a 20-TU game) you rang up against us in the finals of the mirror were on the things that you do know, presumably.

I'm not trying to make a snarky comment; just wanted to give you full props for a remarkable performance. I guess the round we beat you on during the RR was full of geography, current events, etc.

My 15s were in American lit, Euro lit (2), painting, chemistry, philosophy, and newspaper comics. I 10'd a current events and ancient history. Honestly I would have negged about 5 questions that someone just beat me in on. I don't remember our round robin match very well, but I don't remember the distribution being skewed one way or another.

[Zip Zap Rap Pants]

I think I powered that nauru tossup, actually, on something about mining phosphates. Although I like Nauru more than anybody should.

WHOA I'm not the only one! I missed power by one syllable, only because I was too slow on buzzing on the phosphate stuff, and I was thinking "Wait, they can't be asking about this. No way, this is awesome guys!" But I'll admit it is kind of a lame tossup answer choice, the only non-trash stuff you can mention about it are: it's a single island which no one could really figure out what country it belonged to so the UN said "okay, independence," its capital (Yaren), the fact that it's the country with the lowest actual population, and phosphate.

[Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN)]

Oddly enough, there was a story about Nauru on "This American Life" that I've heard rebroadcast a lot. It was actually pretty interesting/bleak.

[Sir Thopas]

I think I powered that nauru tossup, actually, on something about mining phosphates. Although I like Nauru more than anybody should.

WHOA I'm not the only one! I missed power by one syllable, only because I was too slow on buzzing on the phosphate stuff, and I was thinking "Wait, they can't be asking about this. No way, this is awesome guys!" But I'll admit it is kind of a lame tossup answer choice, the only non-trash stuff you can mention about it are: it's a single island which no one could really figure out what country it belonged to so the UN said "okay, independence," its capital (Yaren), the fact that it's the country with the lowest actual population, and phosphate.

I seemed to have had a bye round (or else it was later in the playoffs), but I would have powered it at mining phosphates also. Another fact about Nauru: it is the only country without an official capital. Its administrative buildings are in the Yaren district, but that's it.

[Stat Boy]

Nauru also, despite its temporary mineral wealth from guano, had a life expectancy in the 50s due to the national pastime of buying expensive cars, driving very fast, and crashing.

[theMoMA]

Oddly enough, there was a story about Nauru on "This American Life" that I've heard rebroadcast a lot. It was actually pretty interesting/bleak.

I think I've heard about that. Didn't they hilariously mismanage their resources and waste their entire profits from doing so sponsoring a musical?

Also, I negged Nauru with the notably phosphate rich Atacama desert.

[theMoMA]

IN OTHER NEWS: BACK TO DISCUSSION YOU NAURU ENTHUSIASTS!

[Dachspmg]

Oh, I don't know. I never did really like quiz bowl science questions in general...if a science question is such that I can get the answer, then it's probably a bad question. ;)

I do think that many American history tossups are silly. Plumbing the dark depths of about four hundred years of really boring stuff gets to you after a while if you don't want to answer horribly canon stuff (and everyone loves a clone of a question that's been asked in every possible form already, like Arnolfini Marriage/Wedding/yktd) or military history (wars? Wars aren't important! What are you talking about? Gigantic amounts of soldiers fighting and dying can't be important! When has fighting ever solved anything?). We need more questions about the rest of our North and South American friends, plenty of whom have had histories all their own and all very interesting. Either that, or Europe and East Asia, which are also neglected, such that one can never hear a reference to the Eastern Roman Empire for an entire tournament, or a single word about the Goths, a complete ignorance of the Treaty of Bjorko, or anything remotely like Yuan Shikai.

On that note, IMHO the geography was a little poor - they honestly didn't have to resort to Nauru just yet, as there was plenty of East Asian geography to be mined*, for example.

...and I suppose I should put it right out there that I dislike almost all math calc questions, and my opinion of this tournament's is about the same as most tournaments.

*=Entirely intended.

[jrbarry]

Chris:

Geography IS academic in nature. Please do NOT group it with etc categories like trsash and sports.

I wish NAQT would include more US geography. I find many quiz bowl players know more about the geography of Nauru than of the Ozark Plateau or Great Basin. tsk, tsk...

[Matt Weiner]

Chris:

Geography IS academic in nature. Please do NOT group it with etc categories like trsash and sports.

It's grouped with trash not because it is unacademic like trash, but because it is bizarrely overrepresented in NAQT like trash.

[First Chairman]

Chris: Geography IS academic in nature. Please do NOT group it with etc categories like trash and sports.

I don't know where in Chris's remarks he implies that geography is not academic. Like Matt, I read Chris's reply as an overrepresentation issue, not an academic issue.

[jbarnes112358]

Chris:

Geography IS academic in nature. Please do NOT group it with etc categories like trsash and sports.

It's grouped with trash not because it is unacademic like trash, but because it is bizarrely overrepresented in NAQT like trash.

Having had a major geography buff (i.e., walking world atlas) like we had, I relished every geography question that came up. I believe Mark powered the majority of them.

[jbarnes112358]

Chris: Geography IS academic in nature. Please do NOT group it with etc categories like trash and sports.

I don't know where in Chris's remarks he implies that geography is not academic. Like Matt, I read Chris's reply as an overrepresentation issue, not an academic issue.

Well. I read it the same way jrbarry did. Perhaps Chris can resolve whether or not he meant that geography is considered academic. Geography is definitely academic. We even offer AP Geography at our school.

[First Chairman]

I agree that geography is academic, but the way a lot of geography questions are written seems very list and almanac oriented. I haven't picked up an AP Geography textbook, but I hope the curriculum is not so centered on the memorization of capitals to countries as it is about more interesting concepts of geography as it pertains to cultures or geology or something more intriguing.

I'll let Chris clarify his thoughts.

[vcuEvan]

Just for the record AP Human Geography has nearly nothing to do with any NAQT question. It just doesn't intersect with the high school canon very much.

[Stained Diviner]

I have the HSNCT questions in front of me, and I just reread the first round (26 tossups). I don't want to go into too much detail because of copyright issues. Here are my opinions.

I count five history questions, two in US. The topics are legitimate, though two of them seem to have straightforward openings.

I count three science questions. (Another question could be classified as either Earth Science or Geography.) One of them is biographical, but it focuses on his scientific accomplishments and is an OK question. There is a good anatomy question (if you're into that sort of thing). There is a somewhat problematic physics question--there's an instruction to accept a partial answer until you get to a certain point and then prompt thereafter. It is not difficult to imagine somebody buzzing in after that point with the partial answer, which is pretty much correct, and not being able to fix their answer with the prompt, which would result in a cheap neg.

I count four lit questions. I consider them legitimate, though one is about a somewhat recent work that is more popular than literary, though it did win a Pulitzer. One of them, which was referenced upthread, begins, "This screenwriter of The Mire wrote of a professor murdering his pupil in The Lesson and of the Fire Chief visiting the Smiths in London in an early one-act play, La Cantatrice chauve..."

There are four geography questions. One has a lot of literature in the question (and probably could be classified as lit as easily as geography), and another has some science (see above). It's still a lot of geography. The lit/geography question is difficult, but the pure geography questions are easy--they get stupid easy at the end.

There are two math word problems and one math noncomputational. The noncomputational is on the trivial side; it's semi-trashy. The word problems are good problems unless you think math tossups suck in general.

There are two current events questions. They are two of the weaker questions in the match--the first one has a lot of information before the power mark and suddenly gets easier right around the power mark, while the other one is as likely to get answered on a good guess as on real knowledge. Maybe I'm being too harsh on the first one--it's decent.

There's one fine arts question about a painting. It's OK, but there is an early clue that somebody might possibly get based on 'sounds like'. One fine arts question is not enough.

There's a language arts question. It's OK. (Language Arts generally comes in two categories: OK and Bad.)

There's one social science/historiography question. It probably went dead in a lot of rooms, but it's not a horrible question.

There are two trash questions--one that might have slight value in American Cultural Studies and another about a country song (meaning it is entirely without value).

Overall, I think anybody even in a bad mood would consider at least half of them to be truly academic. If you count math, current events, and language arts as academic, then it would be well over half. NAQT has a distribution that changes a little round, so your mileage may vary.

[Sir Thopas]

IThere's a language arts question. It's OK. (Language Arts generally comes in two categories: OK and Bad.)

No. NO. That mood question was TERRIBLE. In addition to just being a stupid question, it was misleading and wrong. The two differ in number and mood, and it was read poorly, with the end result that I, who have taken four years of Latin and certainly know how to distinguish the indicative and subjunctive, was left grasping at straws and ended with a lame-duck neg, just because I couldn't bring myself not to power a linguistics question, or at least do well on it (egotistical, yeah, but they come up rarely, and . . . yeah).

[quizbowllee]

I never weighed in on this.

I do have the questions, but haven't done an in-depth analysis. Here's the impression that I and my teams came away with:

1) There were way too many science bonuses. This might have been bad luck, seeing as science is a weakness of ours, but it seemed that there was an enormously disproportional amount of science in the bonuses.

2) There weren't as many lit questions this year. Again, this might have been an impression that we got that can't be backed up mathematically, but it definitely seemed like the lit was lacking.

3) There was a lot of "random crap". These are things that the normal quiz bowl player is not going to be exposed to regardless of how much he or she prepares for quiz bowl. These are just random things that some question writer wrote about on a whim and people either know them or they don't. I don't particularly like these questions.

Examples off the top of my head:

"You're the man now, dog"
Collateral (the movie)
Aly & AJ
Puppy Bowl
The Young and the Restless

4) Really bad and abundant geography questions.

5) More questions than ever about professional athletes.

6) Questions that really stretched the high school canon to the breaking point. I might get some backlash for this one. I KNOW it's a National Championship, but come on. Did I see a tossup where the answer was Clifford Geertz??? I can honestly say that was the first time I had ever heard him come up in a high school round. If I were practicing with my team on a college packet and Geertz came up, I would likely have told them that it wouldn't come up in high school. Maybe I can see it as the hard part of a three-part bonus on anthropology (along with easier folk like Boas or Levi-Strauss) but, as a tossup that is a little tough in comparison to the other questions.


I guess those are the main observations. I love NAQT and I will continue to support them and their format. However, the one thing that I can say about PACE that I can't about NAQT is this:

A team can truly prepare for PACE. If a team dedicates itself to learning significant academic facts in the areas of the high school canon of knowledge, then they will do well at PACE. The same just can't be said for NAQT.

[Matt Weiner]

3) There was a lot of "random crap". These are things that the normal quiz bowl player is not going to be exposed to regardless of how much he or she prepares for quiz bowl. These are just random things that some question writer wrote about on a whim and people either know them or they don't. I don't particularly like these questions.

Examples off the top of my head:

"You're the man now, dog"
Collateral (the movie)
Aly & AJ
Puppy Bowl
The Young and the Restless

Far be it from me to defend the comically high levels of trash in NAQT, but I do want to point out the difference between trash and "random crap" as it pertains to your comments about preparing. I think it is in fact possible to prepare for trash (either as a format in and of itself, or a ridiculously expansive subset of the NAQT distribution). You figure out what bands, movies, websites, and so forth are popular, especially among people who share an age group with either NAQT's average writer or average player, and you learn the clues for those things. Now, this is not a great use of your time for two obvious reasons: since only NAQT out of the various important high school formats gives such a laughably enormous role to trash, you're not getting as much return on your study time as you would preparing for science, myth, music, etc questions that appear in all tournaments. And, the larger benefits of quizbowl are pretty much lost when you're figuring out potential leadins for Tom Cruise movies. However, this is possible and those questions should not be surprising. What is more aptly described as "random crap" for which it is impossible to prepare are a certain style of "general knowledge" tossups on the history of various foods, breeds of horses, famous uses of beehives as symbols, the ways in which flags are made, and so forth. At the collegiate level, it has been observed with approval that these sorts of questions are far less common in NAQT than they used to be. I cannot say whether that is the case at the HSNCT.

[Stained Diviner]

5) More questions than ever about professional athletes.

I disagree. I think professional athletes came up about once every three or four rounds, which is less often than they have come up in the past.

My team did well at the tournament despite not knowing which band Jim Morrison sang for. The tournament had some Trash, but there was less than I was expecting based on past experience. I can't say that I'm shocked, shocked that there were 2-3 Trash tossups per round.

[Coelacanth]

I never weighed in on this.

1) There were way too many science bonuses. This might have been bad luck, seeing as science is a weakness of ours, but it seemed that there was an enormously disproportional amount of science in the bonuses.

My impression was that the amount of science was appropriate, but it skewed too much to cellular biology, particle physics and chemistry at the expense of things like classical physics, earth science, zoology, and astronomy. In general, it seemed much more like questions about "things high schoolers learn about in AP science class" rather than "things high schoolers who are interested in science will know about".

Of course, speaking as someone whose 20-year HS reunion is in less than a month, I may be a bit out of touch with what the youngsters are learning these days.

[Bigfoot isn't the pr]

I'd like to chime in on the Trash topic. I do not want to talk about the amount of trash or its legitimacy, because that seems to be a touchy subject. I want to talk about the quality of the trash.

Trash tends to fall into a lot of different categories, not by topic, but by accessibility to your average quizbowler. For instance, a question about The Joy of Cooking will probably get answered much more than a question about some country song (mind you I am not a fan of country). For clarification, a question about Raiders of the Lost Ark would be answered in almost every room, compared to a question about the aforementioned Collateral.

This leads me to think that trash at NAQT should be comprised of easy answers, but with harder clues (till the end and the give away of course). This would still allow for those who study trash to have a better crack at it than a team that does not and it also keeps trash questions from going dead. A good example of this would would be in packet 4 where a question about a Harry Potter character is accessible to anyone who has read the books to seen the movies, but those that are really into it will get it sooner. Had this been earlier in the packet, I don't think it would have gone dead in any room.

Thats enough for now.

P.S. I lied about not talking about the amount. I would just like to note though, that because of the way questions are distributed in NAQT you may end up feeling like four questions in a packet were trash, but, as an example, one was a popular genre of literature, the other was a current event, and the other two were actually trash.

[DumbJaques]

I definitely did not mean geography is not academic. I've always included a geography quota in my packets even when they were acf-style and for college tournaments, partially because I feel there's a negative reaction with some people over NAQT georaphy that it gets underrepresented. I will put forth the corpus of my work along with all subsequent DACQ packets to defend the fact that I like geography and don't think it's trash.

I included it in that category for several reason. One, it's hilariously overrepresented in NAQT at the cost of things like fine arts, philosophy, social science, mythology, religion, etc. A packet should have a geography tu, it shouldn't have three. Two, I find NAQT geography tossups to be rather poorly chosen/written by and large. Obviously there are exceptions because lots of different people write questions, but I think there are tons of things in geography that are worth well-written tossups (as I'm sure Mr. Barry has taught and will agree with), and many, many questionable things have much better clues than are usually employed. Multipe questions on minor pacific islands = bad. Also, I am invoking mod powers for the first time in my life and saying that any subsequent post that talks about where you would've/could've/actually did power narau will be edited to express your lifelong dream of being able to dress like a teletubby.

Basically, I grouped geography in NAQT in with those categories since it's part of the distribution that needs a major overhaul and is really hurting the game, particularly at that national level. In some cases, answer selection is bad or the clues are awful. In most cases, there are simply more geography questions than there should be. The point I was trying to make is that when combined with all those other things, you get well over half the packet most times, which is well and truly ridiculous particularly when we consider what questions aren't able to make it in because of the space those things take up.

[jbarnes112358]

Just for the record AP Human Geography has nearly nothing to do with any NAQT question. It just doesn't intersect with the high school canon very much.

Having taken the class, would you see the AP Human Geography curriculum as a source for reforming some of the geography questions from NAQT?

[DumbJaques]

one was a popular genre of literature

Dude, that's trash! Harry Potter is not a lit tossup, this is something that's been discussed many, many times. Unless you mean classic genre writers like Hammet or Philip K. Dick (shouldn't ever by definition come up more than maybe twice per category per tournament anyway), this is way of base. I can stretch numerous people who write in a "popular genre of literature" into tossups, but none of them will be real lit questions. Here's to a 10 line tossup on Fabio's romance novel in next year's PACE finals!

the other was a current event

This could be trash, depending on what it's on. Political events or leaders or recent national history, those kind of things are current events and are slightly overrepresented as it is. Tossups on Anna Nicole Smith or the corporate history of McDonald's or Jared Leto's gout are not current events, they are trash.

[jbarnes112358]

Why do people keep trashing country music for somehow being inappropriate trash? I happen to like country music as do many participants at HSNCT. So as trash goes, country music is as good as other genres of trash.

The solution I would advocate, as unpopular as it might be, is to remove all the trash, all the so called "random crap," and especially all the hockey questions.

[DumbJaques]

Why do people keep trashing country music for somehow being inappropriate trash? I happen to like country music as do many participants at HSNCT. So as trash goes, country music is as good as other genres of trash.

I don't think really well-known (particularly, older and "classic" country music) is horrible to ask about in a trash distribution. I tend to think NAQT questions involve less Johnny Cash or Lorett Lynn or a few of the contemporary people non-country fans might have heard of and involve more Aaron Tippin and Jason Aldean (I seem to remember a really, really ludicrous singer tossup in the early rounds I played at the mirror, though maybe it wasn't country).

[theMoMA]

While we're on the subject of trash, I'd like to commend NAQT's baseball questions. All of the questions with baseball players as answers were powerable to a knowledgeable person and used meaningful statistics and accomplishments and not the almanacky crap that comes up a lot of the time.

[Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN)]

I was just browsing through the packets and I kept seeing things about Israel coming up. Does there strike anyone else as too much Israel stuff? Now, I didnt notice thiss during the tournament but we only heard one Israel (Yitzakh Rabin) question the whole time due to byes/whatever. Now before I start off a firestorm about "Israel is more important than most places," I'm very pro-Israel, but that should have nothing to do with its distribution. Germany's pretty important too but I dont see 3 tossups or bonuses about it in a quick 5 minute scan of the questions.

I am invoking mod powers for the first time in my life and saying that any subsequent post that talks about where you would've/could've/actually did power narau will be edited to express your lifelong dream of being able to dress like a teletubby.

Actually I used to have a teletubby Halloween costume that I would wear and pretend to be younger to get more candy. It worked since I'm pretty short and infantile anyway.

[jrbarry]

Thanks, Chris. I agree that geography is probably overrepresented in NAQT packets. Of course, all of social studies is overrepresented in NAQT packets.

On another note...I like almanacs and lists as learning tools. JUst an observation.

[DumbJaques]

On another note...I like almanacs and lists as learning tools. JUst an observation.

I like lists as learning tools, too. I think it's a lot easier to comprehend and remember stuff from reading a book or article if you're passably familiar with the major terms. Lists are certainly invaluable to players just starting out, particularly at the high school level. Of course, I think we can all agree that someone who has read the book or journal article about a topic should get a question on it before someone who's just read a list.

[vcuEvan]

Just for the record AP Human Geography has nearly nothing to do with any NAQT question. It just doesn't intersect with the high school canon very much.

Having taken the class, would you see the AP Human Geography curriculum as a source for reforming some of the geography questions from NAQT?

Nope. I'd say remove half of them and replace them with art/myth etc. Which is something that should be done to the GSAC as well.

[Matt Weiner]

Thanks, Chris. I agree that geography is probably overrepresented in NAQT packets. Of course, all of social studies is overrepresented in NAQT packets.

I don't think the non-geography quizbowl categories (history, economics, psychology) that make up what is sometimes called "social studies" pedagogically are overrepresented in NAQT at all. In fact, they seem to have sacrificed a lot of categories more commonly found in other formats, such as history, literature, and especially arts, in order to cram in more geography, trash, and math calculation than we need.

[btressler]

such as history, literature, and especially arts, in order to cram in more geography, trash, and math calculation than we need.

I agree with most of this.

In fact, after one of the LIFT tournaments (and keep in mind that was level A) I wrote NAQT complaining about the math calculation. According to my teams' records, about 30% were getting converted. I think since then that number has gotten a little better because the questions don't seem as hard.

The response I got was that I was the first person asking for less calculation. R indicated that many regions were asking for more. This is why we seem to now get an average of 2 per packet, plus the physics over the last two years has been going more computation, less concepts.

[Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN)]

The reason more places want more is because of regions like Missouri and Illinois and Kentucky where math gets as much distribution as Lit, Science, and History. Now, I don't disagree that the calc should be minimal, but most places don't understand why math calc should be a much smaller distribution.

[Matt Weiner]

The reason more places want more is because of regions like Missouri and Illinois and Kentucky where math gets as much distribution as Lit, Science, and History. Now, I don't disagree that the calc should be minimal, but most places don't understand why math calc should be a much smaller distribution.

Well, yeah. But there's no places where geography and trash are considered so important, so it makes one wonder how important this feedback really is to the distribution.

[Tegan]

I don't think the non-geography quizbowl categories (history, economics, psychology) that make up what is sometimes called "social studies" pedagogically are overrepresented in NAQT at all.

I will agree that the history could be increased a tad ..... but only in NAQT do we see so much sociology, psychology, and economics ..... we do cover those subjects in Illinois, but nowhere near at the level and quantity that NAQT does ..... my personal two bits is that those subjects are a little overemphasized. I'm not saying that this means to add even more geography, but I would say that more history, especially more world history, would be a good thing.

[theMoMA]

I'd just like to take this opportunity to say that I was wrong about the Ionesco tossup. I don't have the set in front of me, and I certainly didn't remember The Lesson coming up in the leadin. I still maintain that the second clue in the power mark (the Cantatrice Chauve part) rewards fraud knowledge and not in-depth knowledge, and would have liked to see it replaced by something less kitschy, but the question was better than I represented it.

[wd4gdz]

I'm interested in hearing what people consider the ideal high school packet distribution, so I made a topic in the theory section. Go and post.

[quizbowllee]

5) More questions than ever about professional athletes.

I disagree. I think professional athletes came up about once every three or four rounds, which is less often than they have come up in the past.

Round 1:

Bonus on Phillies
Ryan Howard
Mike Schmidt

Round 2:

Bonus on Super Bowl XLI

Round 3:

Bonus on “Cinderella Teamsâ€