The Quizbowl Resource Center

Psst... you have an entire forum to post in. Feel free to make new threads to discuss certain subjects, such as regionals.

FredMorlan wrote:Psst... you have an entire forum to post in. Feel free to make new threads to discuss certain subjects, such as regionals.

Where's the fun in that?

BGSO wrote:

FredMorlan wrote:Psst... you have an entire forum to post in. Feel free to make new threads to discuss certain subjects, such as regionals.

Where's the fun in that?

Yeah who doesn't like posting long threads for a whole page long. By the way, I am hoping to get my team to NAQT State, so it'll be fun. Does anybody know which teams are going to this (If it is a big deal or not). I've seen Viator might come and also Auburn.

New Trier and Loyola will be there.

Alex and Jonah: Of course we'll continue to attend well-written in-house-written tournaments, I did mean commercial writers.

And....I would encourage everyone to attend the Loyburn Tourament on Feb 14 and NAQT State on March 7, these should be two great tournaments!

David Riley wrote:And....I would encourage everyone to attend the NAQT State on March 7

If you're attending the NAQT State Championship, you should also consider playing the Solo tournament, to be held immediately afterwards.

dtaylor4 wrote:

David Riley wrote:And....I would encourage everyone to attend the NAQT State on March 7

If you're attending the NAQT State Championship, you should also consider playing the Solo tournament, to be held immediately afterwards.

Do you have Kristin and I down for moderating Solo? I can't remember if we've told you or not.

So what was the reaction to the QB questions at Sterling?

styxman wrote:

dtaylor4 wrote:

David Riley wrote:And....I would encourage everyone to attend the NAQT State on March 7

If you're attending the NAQT State Championship, you should also consider playing the Solo tournament, to be held immediately afterwards.

Do you have Kristin and I down for moderating Solo? I can't remember if we've told you or not.

You hadn't, but now I do know. Please email me so I can remember it better.

rockinzeppelin wrote:I am hoping to get my team to NAQT State, so it'll be fun. Does anybody know which teams are going to this (If it is a big deal or not).

As of today, the following schools have said they are sending teams to NAQT State:
New Trier
Loyola
Carbondale
Auburn
St. Viator
Lisle (probably)
Fenton

Hopefully, we'll get a few more.

dtaylor4 wrote:

styxman wrote:

dtaylor4 wrote:

David Riley wrote:And....I would encourage everyone to attend the NAQT State on March 7

If you're attending the NAQT State Championship, you should also consider playing the Solo tournament, to be held immediately afterwards.

Do you have Kristin and I down for moderating Solo? I can't remember if we've told you or not.

You hadn't, but now I do know. Please email me so I can remember it better.

That's what I thought - I think I may have been confused as to where Solo was taking place, and that's why I hadn't emailed you yet. Email's on its way.

David Riley wrote:So what was the reaction to the QB questions at Sterling?

Springfield thought they were terrible. Talking with Morrison about how the questions - one in particular that was not only a hose, but instructed the moderator to laugh at the hosed player* - they appreciated that their next tournament would be using questions that didn't punish them. Aside from those two, I don't think anyone else freaking cared. Everyone seemed very happy at this tournament.


*At least 4 tossups in the morning were of the form "Computational Algebra. Solve for x in the equation ax + b = c." As bad as that specific type of computational tossup is, it's nothing compared to this tossup (reproduced verbatim except for the numbers) in one of the afternoon rounds:

"Computational Algebra. Ah, yes, it is time for a buzzer race question. Solve for x in the equation ax + b = cx + d."
The question writer set up the expectation that it'd be ax + b = c, hoping to foster a buzz before the equation was finished. How do I know that the writer specifically intended on this? The moderator note "Feel free to instruct the player that 'speed kills.'"

styxman wrote: "Computational Algebra. Ah, yes, it is time for a buzzer race question. Solve for x in the equation ax + b = cx + d."
The question writer set up the expectation that it'd be ax + b = c, hoping to foster a buzz before the equation was finished. How do I know that the writer specifically intended on this? The moderator note "Feel free to instruct the player that 'speed kills.'"

I have nothing to say.

And I thought QG questions were terrible. But the fact that a question writer would intentionally trick players into giving a wrong answer is beyond the pale. It's not like they're writing questions that are unintentionally misleading (like the Brain Game question that said that "Lost" and "Heroes" aired on NBC). There is no longer any benefit of the doubt. Question Bank is come to Illinois.

As if buzzer races weren't bad enough to start with, let's have buzzer races that reward the slow player! Hurray!

we keep going to these avery and qb tournaments hoping it will get better but they never do, other than hurting their bottom line is there a way we can tell them that there product is unacceptable?

Without being sued

BGSO wrote:we keep going to these avery and qb tournaments hoping it will get better

"Doctor, it hurts when I do this..."

BGSO wrote:we keep going to these avery and qb tournaments hoping it will get better but they never do, other than hurting their bottom line is there a way we can tell them that there product is unacceptable?

Without being sued

Greg wins the thread, or at least this part of it. To answer your question, you can tell them their product is unacceptable in pretty much any way: write them, call them, email them, boycott tournaments they've written, post rants about it here; the only way it could be illegal is if you make provably false defamatory statements about them (cover my butt: I am not a lawyer). Based on past results from similar things, though, none of that is likely to work unless vast numbers of people do it, which doesn't seem probable.

David: I think people have told them in some form or other; they either don't listen, don't care, or don't understand what the problem is.

This is radical, not very well thought out, and I will probably get major flamed for this but...The question provider for Sterling knowingly and intentionally put a hose into a set of questions, by IHSA rules this is illegal...is there anyway we could set a statewide ban a question provider for intentionally violating a rule?

This is really extreme and to me feels like scholastic bowl communism, but it's just an idea that I thought of while trying to fall asleep.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

I know this would never work, but do you think it could make the providers realize what they are doing, or would they just ignore it like everything else?

BGSO wrote:This is radical, not very well thought out, and I will probably get major flamed for this but...The question provider for Sterling knowingly and intentionally put a hose into a set of questions, by IHSA rules this is illegal...is there anyway we could set a statewide ban a question provider for intentionally violating a rule?

This is really extreme and to me feels like scholastic bowl communism, but it's just an idea that I thought of while trying to fall asleep.

By IHSA rules, he also flouted the distribution and the suggestion that questions should be pyramidal. That said, I don't think there's a function through which he can be "punished" other than by only getting the business of tourneys that don't care (note: this business is profitable).

Yeah, otherwise NAQT and HSAPQ should also be banned by your logic since they don't adhere to IHSA rules. A general rule of thumb is that individual tournaments can use whatever kind of format they want in their events, whether or not it matches up to state guidelines.

Yeah, you're right, it's just stressful that there's so little we can do other than the obvious stuff; which is working but not at any speed that is satisfying.

Just got back from coaching the F/S B Team at the Wheaton North F/S Tourney. Overall, this tournament was just OK. Questions were from Questions Galore and, therefore, awful. There numerous mistakes, hoses, buzzer beaters, and the bonuses alternated between 3, 4, and 5 parts, causing frustration for scorekeepers and making for some very strange scores. The questions did, however, have a pretty good category distribution (ahem, Fremd). The morning groups were fairly even, with the 7 pool winners and 9 wild cards advancing, therefore avoiding a group of death (another knock at Fremd).

And finally, I seem to say this a lot, but this tournament was well-run. It started on time and did not run late. The coaches' meeting was brief. Moderators were efficient. The school was navigable and teams knew exactly where to go next, keeping the matches on time. There were score runners. There were neutral moderators in the afternoon rounds. "Tournament central" was very accessible, with a large screen projecting the group standings. These are just a few good things, I apologize if I'm forgetting any. Congratulations to Phyllis Kidd and the Wheaton North people.

Our A team lost in the quarterfinals, so I don't know who the final four were. I assume Stevenson won and that Zach Blumenfeld was the top scorer, but I'm not sure.

So... Wheaton North, Winnebago, how bad were they?

Auburn won Winnebago, which apparently was played on IS-79.

Winnebago results:

1. Auburn A
2. IMSA
3. Sterling
4. Moline
5. Winnebago
6. Byron
7. Bettendorf
8. Auburn B

Michael Jiang (Auburn) topped the All Tournament team with 46, then Bonny Jain (IMSA) with 35, then Cresston Gackle (Bettendorf) and Marc Smith (Byron) with 24.

After a week of miscommunication and mistakes, this tournament switched to NAQT IS 79 at the last moment - like, literally Friday afternoon. No powers, no negs, and bounceback ACF bonuses. I don't believe comprehensive stats for this tournament will be put together, but 200 ppg was good for the 8 seed in the afternoon, and 120 ppg was good to get to the consolation bracket, so generally high scores across the field.

Our A team lost in the quarterfinals, so I don't know who the final four were. I assume Stevenson won and that Zach Blumenfeld was the top scorer, but I'm not sure.

Actually Krystle from Naperville Central was the top scorer. I coached our A team and lost in the first round of the playoffs. I was too lazy to stay and watch so I don't know how it ended up. Overall, I thought it was a well organized tournament and I'm not just saying that because my school hosted it.

DD60004 wrote:There numerous mistakes, hoses, buzzer beaters, and the bonuses alternated between 3, 4, and 5 parts, causing frustration for scorekeepers and making for some very strange scores.

As question editor for the tournament (editing questions from QG), I'm curious as to which questions you thought had problems. Please e-mail me, as I do not think these sets are cleared for discussion.

Re 3-, 4-, 5-part bonuses: I was given a week to edit the material. There were a lot more pressing things to do with the questions than to standardize/replace/reword their bonuses to be all 4 parts. As such, I felt that it would be okay to write a few 3-part bonuses (since every other form of legitimate quizbowl has 3-part bonuses) to fill in the gaps created by list bonuses, stupid bonuses that had to be removed on principle, and bonuses that weren't even in the original packet (I'm not making this up!)

Re buzzer beaters: Many of the questions that were at least somewhat pyramidal mostly stayed, sometimes with the reordering of clues if they were obviously misplaced, and the addition of a harder lead-in. Overall, I was more worried that, given that this is a F/S tournament, to start each question with 4 lines that would stump the entire field would be counterproductive. Also, I tried to put a hard line cap on each question, which is much shorter than a varsity question (but still allowing for more than 1 or 2 sentences). Finally, I tried to get rid of the difficulty cliffs that were present in the original material. Yes, any set of questions will have buzzer races. I feel that I did as much as I could to remove that aspect from the questions.

Re hoses and mistakes: I thought I got rid of most of them. Please e-mail me if you thought I missed one.

Well, I'm glad to hear this material was somewhat edited. I totally understand now about the 3,4,5-part bonus issue.

And I did notice that the questions made an attempt at pyramidality—it was much appreciated. I won't have the packets in front of me again until Monday, but I can think of one buzzer beater and one (tiny) mistake right off the bat. I'll e-mail you, but I need your address. (Your user profile isn't showing it.)

I do appreciate the hard work you put into editing, though. From what I can gather, these questions could have been a lot worse, so I thank you.

DD60004 wrote:I'll e-mail you, but I need your address. (Your user profile isn't showing it.)

Oops. My e-mail address is gregory[ DOT ]j[ DOT ]gauthier[ AT ]vanderbilt.edu

Thanks to Greg. The questions were much better than I expected them to be, since I was expecting them to be absolutely dreadful. There were still a few early easy clues, but given the level of competition they sometimes did not lead to buzzer races.

The errors were few and far between. An equation for a hyperbola had equals zero when it should have had equals one, and a question on scales said ___ when it should have said ___ Flat.

Shcool » Sun Jan 25, 2009 3:26 am

Geez...

Aub-ZH wrote:

Shcool » Sun Jan 25, 2009 3:26 am

Geez...

It's worse than you imagine. I'd bet major money that wasn't up late—he had just woken up.

I occasionally have coughing fits at night and can't go right to bed afterwards. My wife, who is a doctor, claims I have apnea, but my doctor claims I don't. Be glad that you're young. I occasionally get up at 3:30 AM on purpose, but last night was not one of those times, and I did get back in bed and sleep for five hours.

Haha, I feel bad for you. I wasn't mocking you, though, as I've been on these boards before at least that late.

I would just like to congratulate Litchfield High School for winning the Springfield High School tournament this Saturday. They were able to beat Porta, who was ranked number one in single A by well over 100 points. They also, in a very closed match, which included adding a tiebreaker question, were able to defeat Springfield High School and finished the day off by beating Glenwood High School. There were 24 teams there, many of which included double A, and Litchfield won.:) Possibly a team to look out for at state?

TheTeen wrote:I would just like to congratulate Litchfield High School for winning the Springfield High School tournament this Saturday. They were able to beat Porta, who was ranked number one in single A by well over 100 points. They also, in a very closed match, which included adding a tiebreaker question, were able to defeat Springfield High School and finished the day off by beating Glenwood High School. There were 24 teams there, many of which included double A, and Litchfield won.:) Possibly a team to look out for at state?

Did you do well, then? (You being Elizabeth from Litchfield, I assume.)

No I am not Elizabeth. I was on the JV team last year, but unfortunately was not able to play this year because I went to a different school for the first semester.

TheTeen wrote:I would just like to congratulate Litchfield High School for winning the Springfield High School tournament this Saturday. They were able to beat Porta, who was ranked number one in single A by well over 100 points. They also, in a very closed match, which included adding a tiebreaker question, were able to defeat Springfield High School and finished the day off by beating Glenwood High School. There were 24 teams there, many of which included double A, and Litchfield won.:) Possibly a team to look out for at state?

I personally was really surprised by Litchfield not being ranked in the preseason poll. They had the only returning first team all state player in Class A, which should be enough to get your team ranked. Also, Evan Daigle (the aforementioned player) went to ACE camp and was in Room Two most of the time, if I am not mistaken. Considering how weak Class A is this year, I think this alone should be enough to get them into the top 5, though I think they are probably higher. I would like to know who votes in the Class A poll, because I see no logic to them being unranked.

I was quite surprised too. Ltichfield was never on the ranking last year, but we still made it to state. Coach Scobbie said that we should be on in the rankings now. If we aren't, someone doesn't like LItchfield..lol

TheTeen wrote:No I am not Elizabeth. I was on the JV team last year, but unfortunately was not able to play this year because I went to a different school for the first semester.

Ah. I was guessing based on the first post in your history, from last year; you identified yourself as such. Color me surprised.

EDIT: except I can't read English and you said "like Elizabeth" in that post and I am not such a good detective after all I guess

BG MSL Champs wrote:I would like to know who votes in the Class A poll, because I see no logic to them being unranked.

While you do see the rankings posted on the IHSSBCA website, what you don't see is the total number of points and number of mentions. This tells a different story when you look at the Class A Rankings:

IHSSBCA Newsletter wrote: (Numbers are Points/No. of mentions/No. of #1 mentions)
1. (tie) Petersburg PORTA 16 / 2 / 1
1. (tie) Chicago Latin 16 / 2 / 0
3. Macomb 14 / 2 / 1
4. Marissa 11 / 2 / 0
5. (tie) Fairfield 8 / 1 / 0
5. (tie) Warrensburg-Latham 8 / 1 / 0
7. Peoria Heights 7 / 1 / 0
8. Normal University 6 / 1 / 0
9. (tie) Orion 5 / 1 / 0
9. (tie) Winnebago 5 / 1 / 0
Other schools receiving at least one vote: Byron, Carterville, Chillicothe IVC, Farmington, Sterling Newman, Wethersfield.

So that means only two people bothered to submit ballots. You're only allowed to rank your own class, so no Class AA coaches would be able to vote to make the balloting seem more meaningful.

P.S. Class AA only had 8 coaches submit ballots. I'm not sure if people just don't want to be bothered to submit them or if Coach Palmer has some sort of criteria for picking specific coaches. All I know is that I'm not allowed to vote, since I was affiliated with Loyola, and Riley already votes.

Springfield was a mirror of Auburn's F/S Knight Challenge, right? If so, what did varsity play on?

mlaird wrote:

BG MSL Champs wrote:I would like to know who votes in the Class A poll, because I see no logic to them being unranked.

While you do see the rankings posted on the IHSSBCA website, what you don't see is the total number of points and number of mentions. This tells a different story when you look at the Class A Rankings:

IHSSBCA Newsletter wrote: (Numbers are Points/No. of mentions/No. of #1 mentions)
1. (tie) Petersburg PORTA 16 / 2 / 1
1. (tie) Chicago Latin 16 / 2 / 0
3. Macomb 14 / 2 / 1
4. Marissa 11 / 2 / 0
5. (tie) Fairfield 8 / 1 / 0
5. (tie) Warrensburg-Latham 8 / 1 / 0
7. Peoria Heights 7 / 1 / 0
8. Normal University 6 / 1 / 0
9. (tie) Orion 5 / 1 / 0
9. (tie) Winnebago 5 / 1 / 0
Other schools receiving at least one vote: Byron, Carterville, Chillicothe IVC, Farmington, Sterling Newman, Wethersfield.

So that means only two people bothered to submit ballots. You're only allowed to rank your own class, so no Class AA coaches would be able to vote to make the balloting seem more meaningful.

That still is not an excuse fot the two coaches not checking the IHSSBCA Website and noticing that Litchfield has a 1st team all state player. If coaches are not willing to put in the time to do the research, then the poll should not exist.

On a seperate note, here is an e-mail from our coach:

David,

Due to the fact that there are several Math Teamers on our squad (you,
Ward, Ly, Sarah, etc) and that the 21st is the Math team Regional, I have
withdrawn us from the Masonic tournament. It is not right for the
scholastic bowl team to jeopardize the the chances of Math team to advance
in the state series.
As much as you guys wanted to go, you and the other math team kids will
better serve the school on that day as math teamers rather than
schobowlers.

Mr. Park

It does not matter that David and Greg (Ward) would finish early in the morning, missing at most two rounds. It does not matter that Ly is at most a tiny contributor to our team and actually Sarah is not on math team. It does not matter that the tournament is free and has a possible monetary award. It does not matter that they are good questions. It does not matter that David, Greg, and I have each spoken to him and told him that this is our number one priority for that day. It does not matter that we are the best team in school history and have (a small) chance to make some noise. What matters is that he has an excuse for us not to go, and that trumps the personal priorities of team members who have spent dozens of hours getting better so that we can succeed at tournaments like Masonics.

Sorry about that mini-rant.

JackGlerum wrote:Springfield was a mirror of Auburn's F/S Knight Challenge, right?

If this is true, and it's not being used anywhere else, will the set be posted? If not, can someone from Rockford Auburn e-mail it to me (ralphus84 AT yahoo.com). Thanks.

We're planning on keeping the set under wraps for a little bit longer in case someone else comes forth with a mirroring request. In the meantime, I should soon be able to release last year's questions, which were similar in tossup style and quality but had Illinois format bonuses.

Siverus Snape wrote:We're planning on keeping the set under wraps for a little bit longer in case someone else comes forth with a mirroring request. In the meantime, I should soon be able to release last year's questions, which were similar in tossup style and quality but had Illinois format bonuses.

That would be equally cool.

Woody Paige wrote:Bye bye Rockford West/Washington. We hardly knew ye.

What happened? Did they not field a team?