The Quizbowl Resource Center

I really enjoyed this tournament. The field was fun to play against, and I can say for the first time that moderators were memorable in a good way! My main complaint is that the set itself went from readily fraudable/transparent in the earlier rounds (How many reasonable paintings contain city buildings obscured by dust on the right?) to exponentially more difficult as the night went on, with tossups in the final getting to the last line and bonuses getting 10ed (what team can reliably name three different ancient Greek sculptures of Venus?). There were also some clear editing and grammar oversights, though they didn't detract from the gameplay very often and sometimes added to the sense of fun and good humor.

How did the playoff brackets work? I was trying in vain to follow them online.

everyday847 wrote:How did the playoff brackets work? I was trying in vain to follow them online.

Basically the same way they worked at PACE -- two brackets of six, followed by an ACF-style semi-final for bracket championship on half-packets, and then playing for placement. Unfortunately, we had a few teams that had to leave, as well as one game that was accidentally reported in round 11.

So were the final four standings correct?

Accoriding to Poets.org it is indeed "Kaddish", with "for Naomi Ginsberg 1894-1956" as a subtitle. I stand corrected.

Sir Thopas wrote:Did you switch the finals and 3rd place game? SC and Gov were undefeated, as I saw it.

State College and us were undefeated, and GDS and Charter had one loss. This resulted in State College playing GDS and us playing Charter on advantaged half-packets, and we both lost and met in the 3rd place game.

This tournament was pretty good overall, and I was really glad to finally get to play State College. However, at least two or three TUs started out talking about where people where in the Inferno, and that was not uniquely in at least one case (the Aeneas TU; he's far from the only leader/general/whatever word was used in with the Virtuous Pagans). I think that's my only specific complaint, although I found the end of the playoffs a little odd. The moderators were definitely much better this time, as well.

Ugh, I would miss the one time we play Maggie Walker. Can I look forward to questions being posted?

I'm having a hard time figuring it out... who won the consolation bracket "playoffs"? Or, can a winner be declared at all?

I can't find a team that went 4-0. Did anybody? MW C went 3-0 then had a bye, it looks, or something (did they have two byes in the day? eek). But then i think i see a bunch of 3-1 teams, including us.

Caesar Rodney HS wrote:I'm having a hard time figuring it out... who won the consolation bracket "playoffs"? Or, can a winner be declared at all?

I can't find a team that went 4-0. Did anybody? MW C went 3-0 then had a bye, it looks, or something (did they have two byes in the day? eek). But then i think i see a bunch of 3-1 teams, including us.

No, MW C did not have two byes. Apparently, our 8th round game was not entered. I believe we lost to Churchill A in that game. I followed our C team all day, but did not keep very good records, and a lot of the details of the day I am forgetting. So, it appears that Churchill A is the missing 4-0 team and hence the winner of the consolation group. Hopefully, one of the TJ people can confirm or deny this and will find and enter the missing scoresheet, just for the official record.

Ah, that must be it, i did see that they won their other games as well now.

Congrats to Churchill then. Looks like Lucas had a heck of a day. Nice job.

On the whole, this tournament was overall, a good-faith effort that had some fun answer selection and generally pyramidal questions. There were also a few issues-- things like that vague IM Pei tossup, and the wildly variable bonus difficulty (ranging from "Name these types of mortgages" [which was incredibly difficult] to a "El Greco, Goya, Velazquez" Spanish artist bonus). However, in general, this tournament, while featuring a number of harrowing matches for us, was enjoyable.

Can someone please post this I.M Pei TU, assuming this event isn't going to be mirrored

If this event was going to be mirrored, then people probably wouldn't have been discussing answers in the first place. =_="

EDIT: grammar

Naren has told me that TJ would like to edit it for grammar a little bit before posting it.

I almost forgot-did did anyone else think the postmodernism question a tad wonky?

I thought the postmodernism question was a bit odd--one usually doesn't think of it in regards to architecture, but I guess as an architecture school reject I shouldn't quibble.
I quite enjoyed this tournament, and I apologize for our team's lateness. Our oversleeping combined with a cabbie who got lost on the highway made us miss the first round.

I thought the postmodernism question was a bit odd--one usually doesn't think of it in regards to architecture, but I guess as an architecture school reject I shouldn't quibble.

I'd heard of postmodern architecture(which is apparently some kind of combination of historicism and plain weirdness). I just thought the question sounded odd.

Thank you to everyone who came. First off, congratulations to Charter for winning, to GDS for pulling through over a formidable State College team, and as always, to Gov for stellar performances without negging. All four of you qualify for PACE (again). Our alumni, many of whom came back to moderate, were very impressed.

Overall, I am happy to hear that you have mostly positive feedback about tournament logistics and the set. I know that there were some issues in earlier rounds with vague clues and pyramidality, predominantly limited to Rounds 1, 2, and to a lesser extent 3. I believe (and I hope you do, too), that from Round 4 on these issues were for the most part resolved; the playoffs were of uniformly good quality; and the tiebreakers and finals (Rounds 11 and 12), though hard, were enjoyable to play.

There were some variations in bonus difficulty that would certainly have been fixed had we had a little more time to edit, as would the problems that appeared in the early round packets. From some discussions with people on the college circuit, I have now learnt that they are willing to pitch in and help if we are having issues getting to every question, and that is surely help upon which next year's house-written tournament will draw to improve question quality in the preliminary rounds. Also, we should have taken the example of pretty much every other tournament and spread those questions which were problematic out through the first five rounds instead of grouping them in Rounds 1 and 2 to minimize their effect on the outcome of games. We also know that some of the questions written by our underclassmen, despite our edits, still had flaws, and we are conducting question-writing and tutorial sessions with them now to ensure that these problems are resolved for next year. I apologize if Rounds 1 and 2 or the difficulty of the finals made the tournament unenjoyable for any team.

Once again, thank you for coming, and I especially hope that all of you who got prizes are enjoying your Jeff Gordon poster, your Flarp, or your cinnamon balls.

Is that missing match from Maggie Walker C and Churchill A going to be added/found?

EDIT: Additionally, while the bracketing was pretty good, i will say that there ended up being a couple stacked ones. Let's just say that CR is very glad we weren't in the All Your Base bracket: GDS A, MW C, Charter C, St. S&A, Stuy, and Robinson. Wow. Considering some of the massacres i witnessed on Saturday, it's amazing to have a bracket where all 6 teams averaged over 100 PPG, 5 of them about 150 or more.

We appear to have been lucky to end up in a bracket with 2 far superior teams (Whitman and MW A) and 3 subpar teams (Coll C, Churchill B, Longfellow)... we didn't have a close game until the second consolation round.

EDIT#2: I see a mistake in at least one match. Stuyvestant was credited with 290 bonus points in a game against Charter C, but only got 9 tossups right, giving them an average of 32.22 PPB that round.
I also see Churchill B credited with -5 bonus points in round 2 against CR A. Um. No? (The scorekeeper we had for the first and second round seemed a little out of practice.)

This was an excellent tournament. I liked a lot of the questions, and I had a great time. Glad we didn't get stuck in ice on the way home :D

Did anyone else think that the angular momentum tossup was... well, not great? I mean, it's a good thing to ask about, but putting quantum numbers in the opening clue narrows it to four things already, and then I don't think any knowledge about azimuth something-or-others is necessary (I don't know what they are) to figure out that it is angular momentum at that point, since azimuth -> rotation. Eh, it's probably not important, and I'm probably making myself look like a fool.

Definitely a fun time! Thanks a lot TJ!

Yeah, there were two science tossups - namely the angular momentum and Brownian motion ones - I was pretty sure that I had deleted, but someone must have resurrected them by accident.

Yeah I'm not a science player, but the science seemed really good. I thought that Ginzburg Landau is probably too famous to be a superconductivity lead in though. Anyway, the reason I'm posting is I know you are editing the set before posting it, and I think the Diels Alder reaction bonus may have had a factual error. If I remember correctly, the bonus said something to the effect of : The Diels Alder reaction produces one of these, which can come in boat and chair confirmations. And, off of the information about the conformations, we said cyclohexane and got the points. But I just happened to hear another Diels Alder tossup up and I looked up the reaction and it produces a cyclohexene. I may have misheard or be misremebering, but you should check that out.

This is true; I think we may have noticed it when playing the packets in IRC, too. Half-chair, I think you mean. As the conformation for cyclohexene, that is.

Are these questions going to be posted?

BGSO wrote:Are these questions going to be posted?

They will, once some of the various grammatical problems and whatnot are fixed.

Every time I have seen Joaquin Rodrigo Vidre's name (which admittedly isn't very much), it has been printed as "Joaquin Rodrigo" or simply "Rodrigo" - except on Wikipedia, where his full name is written once. Is "Rodrigo Vidre" considered a compound last name?

I usually hear him referred to on the radio and in scholarly publications as just Joaquin Rodrigo. I guess he does have a compound last name in full, but the suppression of part of a name isn't uncommon (consider Pablo Ruíz y Picasso, for example.) Certainly any question on him ought to accept just Rodrigo.

MaS

I believe it was a third bonus part in the playoffs on him, not a tossup. That said, perhaps it was too hard to be asked at all. Also, since we are now second semester seniors, we can get around to editing those grammatical errors so that the set can be posted...

closesesame wrote:I believe it was a third bonus part in the playoffs on him, not a tossup. That said, perhaps it was too hard to be asked at all.

Gigantic understatement right there.

hwhite wrote:

BGSO wrote:Are these questions going to be posted?

They will, once some of the various grammatical problems and whatnot are fixed.

Are you still fixing it?