PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by jonah »

The Gambler, the Nun, and the Radio wrote:
Captain Sinico wrote:To keep the facts completely straight, the latest Saturday round 12 finish that I'm aware of was somewhat before 7
Our room finished Round 12 at about 7:15.
As did mine, which was one of the faster rooms in bracket.
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by DumbJaques »

I want to offer my heartfelt congratulations to all of the teams who attended the 2010 NSC. I can say without a doubt that this tournament was far and away the finest example of high school quizbowl competition that I have ever witnessed - that's a sentiment I heard echoed by numerous staffers in a group that has collectively witnessed almost everything in quizbowl history over the last decade and a half. If you want to get an idea of what the competition was like this year, I firmly believe that at minimum 5-6 teams at this tournament would very likely have won a national title playing against almost any previous year's field.

I'd like to note that our top 8 finishers were split entirely evenly between some of the oldest, most continuous top bracket presences over the last decade and teams who just a few years ago were not even active at the highest levels; as a group that's devoted a great deal of effort toward furthering this game, I believe I speak for all of PACE when I say that very little could make us happier. The players and coaches at those programs should be profoundly proud - building up a program to that level, or maintaining a program's success in the face of an obviously rapidly-shifting game, are challenges few could meet.

I was fortunate enough at this event to read for a wide spread of teams and games - I read games between teams who finished in all four playoff flights, and spent the Saturday playoff rounds in the fourth bracket. I've played and read a great deal of high school rounds over the last 7 years, and I've never been more impressed with the collective level of competition, spirit, and sportsmanship than I was this weekend.

A lot is going to be made in the coming weeks over how far the very best of high school teams have come over the past few years (and, make no mistake, it's astronomical). Just as amazing to me is how far the field has come, as a whole. Prior to reading the first round of playoffs in the 4th playoff flight, I tried to come up with a minimum number of buzzes prior to "for 10 points" I could see that would make me feel, as an editor, that the set was accessible enough. The number I came up with was for the entire Saturday playoffs (5 games); it was exceeded in the first round, which I did not read for even the top-finishing teams in that bracket. This tournament was a joy to watch and filled me a great amount of sunshine 'n rainbows-style hope for where quizbowl is going. On a personal level, I want to thank each and every team I read for this past weekend - during every game, you really affirmed the work I put into this set and I look forward to seeing you guys on the college circuit (a statement that, amazingly, is no longer accurate only for graduating seniors!) or back at NSC next year.

I'm going to make another post shortly about the set itself, but I wanted to extend an extraordinary amount of thanks and kudos to my editing team this year: Rob Carson, Hannah Kirsch, Bernadette Spencer, and Andy Watkins. You guys did an excellent job amidst variously trying circumstances.
-Rob, you're an outstanding editor and soldiered through this project tirelessly. I've got a whole lot of respect for the way you stuck this thing out with us through the end (while responsible for the largest category share of the subject editors). I want to make sure everyone knows that Rob saw a frankly unbelievable failure rate among the writers in his category, which left him responsible for generating a great deal more of the set than anyone had planned without a whole lot of advanced warning. It's not a situation too many people I know would have handled half as readily, or capably.
-Hannah was absolutely invaluable to this set's completion despite joining the project just a few months ago. In addition to her question-editing responsibilities served as an exemplary proofreader for the set. If you came across grammar issues, the fault lies with me and not with her. I only wish I would have devoted more time and attention to making sure all her edits got through - while the set was on the whole pretty crisp in terms of copy editing, it would have been quite noticeably better had I done so. Hannah also wrote a huge amount of questions in a great range of categories to cover writers who bailed on their assignments, which is a big reason this set got done in time.
-Bernadette handled the job of filling the 25/25 distributions for religion and philosophy; doing so while staying within the high school canon ain't easy and she frankly did a better job of keeping the topics accessible than even I would have. B, you had to fill a religion distribution expanded beyond any previous year's while managing the social science and philosophy questions, which have probably seen the most difficulty abuse of any category at past NSCs. Your work maintaining the precarious balance between accessibility and rigor was nothing short of exemplary.
-Andy came onto the project just a few months ago and managed to finish his categories first despite also doing substantial work for the HSNCT; he also helped me with administrative duties that I am simply not very good at, something that no doubt improved the set vastly. People like to joke around about Andy's flair for the impossible, but I didn't see teams struggling with the science at this event - in fact, I think this year's science was as accessible as that of any previous NSC's, while providing teams with absolutely no less rigorous a challenge. And believe it or not, I'm speaking as a former NSC science editor here! Incidental to all that, Andy is also the most reliable editor I've ever worked with at any level of quizbowl - his stuff was never late (and was almost always early) and he helped myself and many other contributors manage our own jobs better. You did an outstanding job dude, and I'm very grateful.

I'm also appreciative of the numerous contributors to this set (too innumerable to list here) who helped make it what it was: obviously, we couldn't have done it without you. I do want to specifically thank Guy Tabachnick, Andrew Hart, and Shantanu Jha, who helped us wrap up some crucial distributions over the last few weeks, on very short notice. I'm sure the subject editors might have some more people to thank in that regard as well, so apologies if I've missed anyone.

As I'm going to discuss, I'm really, really proud of this set - and grateful to all the writers and editors who helped make it happen. You guys are awesome.

-Chris R., 2010 NSC Editor in Chief
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by The King's Flight to the Scots »

Now that I'm at least slightly recovered, I'd like to congratulate some of our competitors. LASA and Southside both played excellently to pull off close wins against us; Maggie Walker showed how formidable they were by, frankly, tearing us apart. I'd also like to congratulate State College for their win, although I hardly feel qualified given how easily they trounced us. The calmness they showed in the face of such an enormous gap brought this year's ACF Nationals final to mind; their incredible teamwork and frightening buzzes were really something else.

Additionally, I'd like to say some words of praise for the set we played. As Chris referenced, the difficulty in writing high school questions consists in coming up with new, interesting ways to ask about a very limited academic canon. Some sets end up just reusing the same early clues for the same old answers, and some lazily extend the canon by taking answers straight from recent college packets. This year's PACE (and HSAPQ sets, for that matter) valiantly strove to avoid those paradigms, ultimately succeeding. All of the early clues in this set were challenging, but also important and interesting. It used a combination of staple answers with exciting leadins (One Hundred Years of Solitude, Mrs. Dalloway); harder, yet important answers that logically extended the high school canon (Sula, Simon de Montfort); and tossups on very easy answers which have not been tossed up recently, bringing in exciting new clues (very prevalent in the history: Mecca, Baghdad, etc.) On a number of questions, I found myself thinking in novel ways to find the answer: instead of reflex-buzzing on titles or treaties, I might try to place a deep plot clue, or use a sense of chronology and some understanding (I especially enjoyed Savonarolafor this last reason). Basically, the whole set had a fun, new kind of feel, and I greatly thank the authors of a product appropriate for this incredible competition.
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by DumbJaques »

As promised, my thoughts on the 2010 NSC set itself. I hope that everyone will bear with me for some rather un-humble reflections on this set, and some brevity-challenged musings on how I think high school national tournaments should look in general.

I was considering feigned humility, but this post is really long so I think I'll just go ahead and say that in my opinion, this was the best high school national set of the modern era. I should note I haven't seen this year's HSNCT, which seems to have been praised as the best NAQT set in recent memory, so I can't compare against that event. Though there are always a few lingering edits you'd go back and make, I feel like this set was functionally close enough to my platonic ideal of a high school national to call it a full success.

Despite the absurd frequency with which the best teams at this tournament were powering questions and 30ing bonuses, I don't know how anyone could possibly characterize this set as too easy. The microscopically precise point at which difficulty perfectly intersects with the upper limits of a field's capabilities is as impossible to define as it is to hit, but I'm willing to bet that Matt from GDS being able to convert a bonus part on Napoleon Chagnon or Amit from Southside powering a question on Paul Klee three lines in pretty darn close. There was some *hard* stuff in this tournament, and where players converted those questions it was almost uniformly because of how much they rock at quizbowl rather than the questions being anything short of extremely rigorous.

Similarly, I think this NSC did an excellent job of staying accessible to the bottom 50% of the field, though I suppose stats will bear this out ( and I guess it'll be hard to compare due to format changes). In the five games I read in the 4th playoff flight, at least 16 tossups were converted in every game and very few bonuses were 0ed. I'd like to hear more from the players and coaches about their thoughts on the sets difficulty, but I think we walked that line about as well as you can possibly do so.

I will submit this tournament as evidence for my oft-repeated argument that there is no logical reason why national tournaments necessarily must cap out at around 20 ppb for the best teams. Without having stats handy, it's my impression that the top teams at this event were converting around 24 ppb; I think that's probably close to ideal. To be clear, I don't think you can't have a good national tournament where the best team puts up 19 ppb - there have been good tournaments exactly like that! I just don't buy the argument that you have to accept that drop off. Our bonuses go up to 30 points, and I'm a firm believer that as an editor you should use the full range of tools available to you to craft a set that accurately ranks teams. If you put enough effort into familiarizing yourself with the high school canon and spend enough time ensuring that your bonuses follow the easy-middle-hard script, you can negate that dropoff without in any way compromising your results.

I posted at the beginning of the year that I intended this set to be an ideal test of the high school quizbowl canon. There was a lot of criticism (a good deal of it just) of previous NSC sets for being too much a product of the college canon creeping into the writing. I continue to believe that high school tournaments should absolutely not be written based on the college canon. While I think that what happens in the collegiate game inherently trickles down to the high school level (especially with increased attendance at college events by high school teams), we should respond to this by making sure that our sets reflect the entirety of the present high school canon - if we do that, then we'll inherently be addressing the ways the high school game has expanded due to collegiate influence over the past year. I tried very hard with this event to remove the "have you been to a college tournament? Yes - 30 points, no - 0 points" bonuses, and I think we succeeded.

I also think it's evident enough that you don't need to write a question on a very hard answer to test a particular area of knowledge - I'll submit my tossup on "Mecca" from the finals as an example of that, since I think it tested some very deep world history knowledge despite being an answer that most teams (and not just most teams at the NSC) would convert by the end. To clarify, I don't JUST think an ideal high school national has such questions - there SHOULD be a number of harder topics represented, because it's nationals. But if you inflate the answer line difficulty for a disproportionate amount of your set, you cause a lot of problems.

Think of it as analogous to a tossup on, say, "the liver." A regular season tossup on the liver will have deep leadins and transition to middle and then to easy clues. A nationals tossup on the liver will, ideally, have deeper leadins and then cover a larger spread of difficulty as it transitions through middle clues all the way to the easiest giveaway.* The middle clues of the tossup will be more fleshed out to evaluate a finer gradient of knowledge, the leadins will be deeper because you're testing teams which are at the top of regular season game, etc.

*I think this also explains why nationals tossups on most answers should ideally be in the 7-9 lines in tnr 12 range, but I'll get to that in a minute.

So, the difficulty spread of a nationals tournament should be similarly adjusted using the regular season canon as a guide. You want a small portion of your tossups to cover material that is just outside what you'll see covered by tossups during the regular season, but is a natural extension of the difficulty standards. You want a somewhat larger portion of tossups to cover the hardest material seen in regular season events - the difference here is that the material covered by the hardest 10% of tossups at a regular season event will naturally compose a much more significant portion of a national set. The bulk of your tossups should cover important, canonical material that really separates the best 100-150 teams in the country (because, after all, this is nationals). This group includes questions about the "easiest" material, though at nationals of course you'll be covering deeper knowledge of that material.

I know this has been the second of two monster posts in this thread, but I hope I've summed up my guiding principles for writing this set, and explained why I think it constitutes such a solid paradigm for a high school national tournament. Frankly quizbowl will be facing a lot of problems if we can't continue to strike a balance between rigor and accessibility, so I hope that the editing team for this year's NSC has done it's part in creating a solid starting point for that process. More than anything, I want to hear what you think, so I'll stop now and listen.



EDIT: Putting those keen listening skills to work:
Since this tournament seemed to be written in 12-point TNR, a length cap of 8 lines on tossups and 2 to 2.5 lines on bonus parts would do a lot to keep the tournament moving.
Tossups in the prelims were in fact capped at 8 lines, while no tossup in the entire tournament was longer than 9 lines. I'd say across the entire set, most were 8, a solid portion were 9, and some were 7. I tend to run a little wordy on my bonuses, but no bonus in this set exceeded 3 lines and I made an effort to make sure that bonuses rarely had more than one part with a 3-line prompt. In terms of bonuses, that's probably a fair critique (I like stuffing them with clues, to a bit of a fault at times) but I honestly don't think changing the tossup length would be good for the set, nor do I think it would have any positive impact on time.

Sure, if you're writing 13 line tossups and you're talking about shaving 4-5 lines off each of them, that saves time. But shaving an average of half or 3/4 of a line of text off each question is going to be kind of negligible, that's not what causes tournaments to run long. I think this length is pretty ideal for NSC tossups, and I don't think the delays we had were of the "rounds taking too long" variety. Certainly I agree it's unnecessary to go beyond these length limits, though.
When will packets be posted?
I'll be taking a few days to tidy up some typos and other minor things, as well as fix some question attribution issues and investigate how a bonus from the finals packet mysteriously vanished between Friday and Sunday (underpants gnomes???), and then sending it on for posting. Should be up shortly after that.

Randomly, something weird happened when I was transferring some copy edits and a single question in the set was mistakenly not included in its edited form. The tossup on "Hurricanes" should have been significantly better than it was and that's the one substantively change I'll be making to the set when it's posted. In general, I don't believe in altering sets from how they were when they were played, as looking over a set is a key way to evaluate an event's results. However, Andy made that tossup a lot better than it was when read and I'd like the record to reflect that, for whatever it's worth (specifically, the tossup was edited to stop repeatedly noting that these are things that happen in the Atlantic and Pacific, which really solved all of its issues).
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by Coach K »

DumbJaques wrote:Similarly, I think this NSC did an excellent job of staying accessible to the bottom 50% of the field, though I suppose stats will bear this out ( and I guess it'll be hard to compare due to format changes). In the five games I read in the 4th playoff flight, at least 16 tossups were converted in every game and very few bonuses were 0ed. I'd like to hear more from the players and coaches about their thoughts on the sets difficulty, but I think we walked that line about as well as you can possibly do so.
As the coach of a team in that bottom 50%, I thought the set was was very accessible in terms of difficulty. I never felt like we were being overwhelmed with answers and questions that we had never heard before and I know my team felt the same way. Several of them commented on the way home that they felt like every match was won by the team that knew more (whether us or our opponent), and to me that's exactly what any set (especially a nationals level set) should do.

Our only problem echos Matt Jackson's comments from earlier. It was frustrating to have Saturday run so long and I know by round 12 my team felt like they were about to pass out (and me right along with them!). But overall we had an overwhelmingly positive experience and look forward to coming back in future years.
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by jbarnes112358 »

I also would like to congratulate State College on their impressive win. In what was decidedly the strongest field of high school quizbowl teams ever assembled, they were the most deserving of the victory. They were the favorites going in, and they were not to be denied. They had been so tantalizingly close so often over the last decade, it was good to see them finally come out on top. Although it has been a long time coming, it is going to be hard to keep them from winning back-to-back championships. Somebody is going to need to work really hard to beat them next year, as they will be the clear favorites.

Although State College was the clear winner, I agree that several teams had the knowledge base to win this thing. I was struck by the degree of parity among the top teams. I had not seen a full strength Southside team before Sunday. They were indeed impressive, and were just a couple of questions away from winning it all themselves. What an impressive run they had. Congratulations to them as well.

Coming in third was certainly no shame for us. Winning the third place game against an awesome LASA team was quite a feat. I, too, wish we had played a full packet, but I understand the reasons we did not. LASA should also be proud of their top four finish. They are the real deal. We split with them in full games over the last couple of weeks. We were fortunate enough to win the rubber match on that half packet. I am proud of how Maggie Walker did this year. It was no doubt the most knowledgeable MW team ever. The 2007 MW players, who were so dominant that year, would be the first to confirm this statement. As good as that team was relative to the competition, they would have had a hard time competing in this year's field. This is further evidence as to far and how quickly the high school game has progressed.

I would also like to give my props to our DC neighbors St. Anselm's and GDS. Though we have met them several times this year, I have never seen them in better form. So many other teams are also praiseworthy, but I have to stop somewhere, as this field was deep with high-quality, talented teams.

As for the tournament itself, this was as well run as I have seen for an NSC. Only a few minor issues kept this tournament from being almost perfect. The rooms were too warm, and a bit crowded in some of the playoff games. But, aside from that and a few understandable minor delays, I have no real complaints. The moderators were world class readers who were clear and efficient. The questions were well written and appropriate for the caliber of teams competing. Congratulations to the whole staff for a job well done.

I was highly impressed with both nationals this year, with both of them reaching new heights in both quality and quantity. Long live NAQT and PACE, two high class organizations!
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by The King's Flight to the Scots »

The one critique I'll make of this set is that the third parts could use some ironing out. To get 30, you'd have to know the basic plot of Disgrace or the title of the other Spinoza work, other times you'd have to know the plot of Too Late the Phalarope (which keeps coming up, inexplicably) or The Circular Ruins, or know who Ignacio Comonfort was.
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by Mechanical Beasts »

I think we were generally aware that we were inevitably going to have to have some harder hard parts and some easier ones. We attempted to modulate that problem by putting the harder ones in the playoffs (and to a greater extent in the superplayoffs); I'll readily admit, though, that we could have done a better job of that.
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by DumbJaques »

I mean, you're always going to have slight variability in hard parts - I didn't stack those two South African literature bonuses up against each other, but I did try to make sure they weren't of an extraordinarily different difficulty than the other questions in their packets. To me, that's all you can try to do. Really, I think it just comes down to what you happen to know - I think you'd find that very little in quizbowl varies as much as subjective views about a given hard part. If it's on a topic you know really well, the hard part is often going to seem insufficiently challenging. If it's not a topic you know well, I can find answers much easier than Disgrace that are going to be puzzling.

Actually, I think Matt's example ironically kind of epitomizes this - I don't agree at all that asking for Disgrace off of plot description is really so much easier than asking for Too Late the Phalarope off of plot description. Disgrace is, in my experience, the more important novel, but Nmandi Azikiwe is more important than The Monkey Grammarian and was almost certainly not as well converted. If you know Azikiwe then you possess as deep a knowledge of Nigerian history as I'd ever ask about at this tournament; similarly, there's no reason to use a three-part bonus to see who only knows the four or five most famous works of Octavio Paz, and who knows Eastern Slope or something. All you can do is construct a bonus that tests for each of basic, substantial, and deep knowledge about a topic, and make sure that it doesn't create an obviously easier opportunity for most teams than the other bonuses in the packet.
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by nobthehobbit »

Re: Chris's comments on bonus conversion:

This issue reminds me of a quote from someone in the USGA regarding the difficulty of the U.S. Open (Oh no! Sports analogies!): (perhaps not exact) "We're not trying to embarrass the best golfers in the world. We're trying to identify them." One comment from a local sports columnist (I think) made about the PGA Championship that same year was that you can identify the best golfers by letting them make birdies as much as by making them struggle to get par. So the "teams should be challenged to hit 20 PPB" idea (as seen at ICT and ACF Nationals, and also at HSNCT, where only MW, SC A and DCD broke 20 PPB over the whole tournament, or in the prelims) is the "USGA approach", while the approach taken at PACE (the stats will bear this out once posted, I suppose) seems to be the "PGA approach". I like the latter better, because it's more fun to score points than not.

EDIT: Added/moved a few quotation marks; second edit: added a missing space.
Last edited by nobthehobbit on Tue Jun 08, 2010 12:08 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by Not That Kind of Christian!! »

nobthehobbit wrote:I like the latter better, because it's more fun to score points than not.
This. Rare (or nonexistent?) is the player who would rather experience a bonus conversion of less than 15! The idea that the tournament isn't challenging enough if good teams, of which, as everyone is pointing out, there was an extraordinary number at the tournament, don't have to struggle to get some third parts is counterproductive to the vast majority of players actually enjoying the tournament.
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by Charley Pride »

Cernel Joson wrote:The one critique I'll make of this set is that the third parts could use some ironing out. To get 30, you'd have to know the basic plot of Disgrace or the title of the other Spinoza work, other times you'd have to know the plot of Too Late the Phalarope (which keeps coming up, inexplicably) or The Circular Ruins, or know who Ignacio Comonfort was.
I love Ignacio Comonfort.
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by Marty McFly »

Being from Illinois, a state notorious for not fostering much out-of-state competition and having horrible questions, HSNCT and NAQT were the first times that I had seen quizbowl played at the highest level possible. I was extremely impressed by what I saw, especially from the top 8 teams. State College is unreal; I think they powered 12 tossups against us, and their comeback in the final match of NSC was one of the most dominant halves of quizbowl that I have seen played. And with all of their players being juniors this year, I don't even want to think about how good they will be next year. That being said, Southside, Maggie Walker, and LASA were all extremely good teams that deserved to fill out the top 4. We played them all, and they not only beat us handily, they also put forth a very balanced team effort and showed grace in winning as well. Great job by them. Not to mention St. Anselm's, GDS, Dorman, and Torrey Pines, all of whom are great and belonged in the top 8.
I'd also like to thank Torrey Pines, DCC, and Northmont for great matches that went down to the last tossup. Skeptics I know say that quizbowl can never rival the excitement of an athletic event, but those matches would prove them otherwise. Those teams showed great sportsmanship and it was an honor to play against them.
In addition, great job by my fellow Illinois teams. As a state, I think we did fairly well, and hopefully this was only a preview of what is to come, since a majority of the best players in the state will be returning next year.
Finally, I'd like to give a shout-out to my teammate Kevin Malis. He went from being a minor contributor on our team to being the 6th-leading scorer in the NSC prelims over the course of one year, and has almost single-handedly brought the Stevenson quizbowl program from the darkness of apathy into the national quizbowl picture (maybe not to the top of the heap, but definitely better than we were). His dedication to the game is inspiring, and I know he will be focused on improving over the summer; I only hope that I can keep up with him and contribute to our team next year.
Overall, NSC was an awesome experience, and I'm already excited for next year.
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by Albox »

Crazy Andy Watkins wrote:I think we were generally aware that we were inevitably going to have to have some harder hard parts and some easier ones. We attempted to modulate that problem by putting the harder ones in the playoffs (and to a greater extent in the superplayoffs); I'll readily admit, though, that we could have done a better job of that.
This isn't at all an egregious problem in what was a fine set, but I think you should strive to have all the playoff and superplayoff rounds be of equal difficulty, so all games counted in the round robin of the top eight teams are on similar questions.
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by DumbJaques »

This isn't at all an egregious problem in what was a fine set, but I think you should strive to have all the playoff and superplayoff rounds be of equal difficulty, so all games counted in the round robin of the top eight teams are on similar questions.
Oh, I was actually going to say something about that - I didn't actually set about to create a different metric for playoffs vs. superplayoffs, for the precise reason you brought up. I definitely intended playoffs to be harder than prelims and finals to be harder than playoffs, but that's it. If you look at like, packet 11 and packet 17 or whatever, I don't think you'll see a difference the way you would if you looked at either of those packets and packet 5.

I also meant to say earlier that I absolutely support having tiebreakers played off on full packets when they effect top bracket placement (assuming it's not a 3-time tiebreaker that automatically requires two half games or whatever). I feel the same way about tiebreakers that impact who gets into the top bracket, as well.
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by jonpin »

In the bouncebacks thread, dtaylor4 wrote:One of the tiebreaker games was tied, and it took a minute for Sorice to decide how to break the tie. The decision was to use the standard full-game tiebreaker (3/3, then change in score).
Hopefully, this didn't change the outcome, but the staff packet emailed a few days beforehand said this:
I.3.2. Minimatches consist of 10 tossups with associated bonuses valued as usual, i.e. at 20 points before or during the reading of the phrase "for 10 points," and at 10 points afterwards. If a minimatch ends in a tie, sudden death tossups are read per rule I.1.2.
cf. I.1.2. If the match is still tied, sudden death tossups (without bonuses) will be read such that the first correct answer wins the game. [...]
The section in italics was outdated and I imagine was changed between that draft and the final physical copies handed out over the weekend (I don't have that copy in front of me to check), but the bolded section says to use sudden death overtime (This is what I told the teams playing in tiebreakers in my room would happen, though neither ended in a tie).

If two-team ties remain on 10-question games*, I think I would recommend the tiebreaker packets be produced as discrete 11/10 sets. This would have the advantage of removing some confusions:
1. I heard a report that one two-team tie after Phase 2 was broken on a full packet, the second half of which changed the result.
2. Reading part two of a three-team tiebreaker, I was unsure whether to continue bonuses from where I left off, or start at bonus 11. I chose the latter on the basis that the packets were likely balanced by half (1-10 and 11-20).
3. If a tiebreaker goes to overtime, whether the moderator is to read tossup 11 or skip ahead in the packet to TB1.

*-Like Chris Ray, I support them being switched to full games, as the time and questions are most likely already being used. Definitely tiebreakers that eliminate a team from championship contention (entry into the Sweet 16 and Elite 8) should use that principle; I am less insistent that a tiebreaker to determine who goes to the 29th place game and who goes to the 31st place game use a full game.
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by The King's Flight to the Scots »

When will playoff stats be posted?
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by AKKOLADE »

Cernel Joson wrote:When will playoff stats be posted?
This can't get any worse. Zydrunas?

YOU GOT OWNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNED
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by Whiter Hydra »

The Granny wrote:
Cernel Joson wrote:When will playoff stats be posted?
This can't get any worse. Zydrunas?

YOU GOT OWNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNED
To be fair, seeing that would have required him to go into the Illinois forum.
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by dtaylor4 »

Then I'll say it here. Stats will be up soon. Do not expect them today. People who are particularly bothersome in this regard will be dealt with.
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by AKKOLADE »

The Gambler, the Nun, and the Radio wrote:
The Granny wrote:
Cernel Joson wrote:When will playoff stats be posted?
This can't get any worse. Zydrunas?

YOU GOT OWNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNED
To be fair, seeing that would have required him to go into the Illinois forum.
To complete the reference:

It can get worse!
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by BRizzle »

I remember a question on time dilation that mentioned Ives and Stillwell in the first line and the word "effect." Was it a poor decision to buzz in and say doppler effect? Should I have waited? Also, on the Dorothea Lange tossup, midway through it mentioned a photographer who worked at Manzanar. Was it a poor decision to buzz in and say Ansel Adams?

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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by AlphaQuizBowler »

BRizzle wrote:I remember a question on time dilation that mentioned Ives and Stillwell in the first line and the word "effect." Was it a poor decision to buzz in and say doppler effect?
This happened in our room, too. I don't remember the exact text, but it seemed like a hose for "Doppler effect" or "transverse Doppler effect."
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by The King's Flight to the Scots »

AlphaQuizBowler wrote:
BRizzle wrote:I remember a question on time dilation that mentioned Ives and Stillwell in the first line and the word "effect." Was it a poor decision to buzz in and say doppler effect?
This happened in our room, too. I don't remember the exact text, but it seemed like a hose for "Doppler effect" or "transverse Doppler effect."
Yeah, it was negged in our room as well...but the leadin was something like "it was first experimentally verified by..." which kind of rules out Doppler. I actually didn't know that clue, so my lack of knowledge saved me.
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by Stained Diviner »

Based on these descriptions, it sounds like Transverse Doppler Effect should have been acceptable at that point and probably a few other things as well, but the experiment did contradict the classical understanding of the Doppler Effect, so a neg could be justified.

Also, giving Adams for Manzanar photographer makes a lot of sense unless there was something earlier that made it obvious that Adams was wrong.
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by Mechanical Beasts »

AlphaQuizBowler wrote:
BRizzle wrote:I remember a question on time dilation that mentioned Ives and Stillwell in the first line and the word "effect." Was it a poor decision to buzz in and say doppler effect?
This happened in our room, too. I don't remember the exact text, but it seemed like a hose for "Doppler effect" or "transverse Doppler effect."
It's a hose only in that people who just buzz off the sound of "Ives-Stilwell" and hope for the best will frequently neg. The degree to which it's a hose in real life is zero, seeing as the first clue does not at all apply to the Doppler effect.
Westwon wrote:Based on these descriptions, it sounds like Transverse Doppler Effect should have been acceptable at that point and probably a few other things as well
The text up to the point where the buzz of "Doppler effect" is even reasonable is:

"This effect was first experimentally verified when Ives and Stilwell observed the exact decrease in frequency predicted by the transverse Doppler effect."
Ives-Stilwell was not a verification of the transverse Doppler effect or of the Doppler effect; moreover, there was verification of the Doppler effect well before Ives and Stilwell did their thing. So no, not really, and "probably no" to the "few other things" unless there was something else besides time dilation that Ives and Stilwell were verifying (and it's rather hard to verify the presence of two phenomena at once, obviously, so even though I'm no historian of science I'll say that I doubt it).
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by Auroni »

Westwon wrote: Also, giving Adams for Manzanar photographer makes a lot of sense unless there was something earlier that made it obvious that Adams was wrong.
This is entirely dependent on the context, since both Lange and Adams worked on Manzanar and I think even collaborated on a project about it (I might be misremembering)
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by magin »

Yeah, neither of those questions are hoses (even I had enough science knowledge to overrule a potential protest when a player negged with the Doppler effect on the Iver-Stilwell clue).

I only saw one pretty bad hose, which was the leadin in the Borodin question saying that he composed the ballet Mlada; he worked on it with a bunch of other Russian composers (although it was never finished) and Rimsky-Korsakov eventually composed a ballet with that name, making him the best answer for that clue.
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by abnormal abdomen »

magin wrote:Yeah, neither of those questions are hoses (even I had enough science knowledge to overrule a potential protest when a player negged with the Doppler effect on the Iver-Stilwell clue).

I only saw one pretty bad hose, which was the leadin in the Borodin question saying that he composed the ballet Mlada; he worked on it with a bunch of other Russian composers (although it was never finished) and Rimsky-Korsakov eventually composed a ballet with that name, making him the best answer for that clue.
Yeah, that was me, and I understood why I was wrong after you explained it. That kind of thing happens when you reflex buzz on stock clues without contextual knowledge of the stock clue.
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by setht »

Crazy Andy Watkins wrote:
AlphaQuizBowler wrote:
BRizzle wrote:I remember a question on time dilation that mentioned Ives and Stillwell in the first line and the word "effect." Was it a poor decision to buzz in and say doppler effect?
This happened in our room, too. I don't remember the exact text, but it seemed like a hose for "Doppler effect" or "transverse Doppler effect."
It's a hose only in that people who just buzz off the sound of "Ives-Stilwell" and hope for the best will frequently neg. The degree to which it's a hose in real life is zero, seeing as the first clue does not at all apply to the Doppler effect.
Westwon wrote:Based on these descriptions, it sounds like Transverse Doppler Effect should have been acceptable at that point and probably a few other things as well
The text up to the point where the buzz of "Doppler effect" is even reasonable is:

"This effect was first experimentally verified when Ives and Stilwell observed the exact decrease in frequency predicted by the transverse Doppler effect."
Ives-Stilwell was not a verification of the transverse Doppler effect or of the Doppler effect; moreover, there was verification of the Doppler effect well before Ives and Stilwell did their thing. So no, not really, and "probably no" to the "few other things" unless there was something else besides time dilation that Ives and Stilwell were verifying (and it's rather hard to verify the presence of two phenomena at once, obviously, so even though I'm no historian of science I'll say that I doubt it).
The claims "Ives-Stilwell is about time dilation but not transverse/relativistic Doppler" and "Ives-Stilwell is the first experimental verification of time dilation but not the first experimental verification of transverse/relativistic Doppler" don't really fit with what I remember from long-ago physics courses, nor do they seem to agree with what I was able to find online. Is there some good reference supporting one or both claims?

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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by Monk »

Cernel Joson wrote:The one critique I'll make of this set is that the third parts could use some ironing out. To get 30, you'd have to know the basic plot of Disgrace or the title of the other Spinoza work, other times you'd have to know the plot of Too Late the Phalarope (which keeps coming up, inexplicably) or The Circular Ruins, or know who Ignacio Comonfort was.
Well, I knew The Circular Ruins, and I find it hard to believe some other teams didn't get those other bonus parts. I really appreciated the deep knowledge elements of the tournament that rewarded actual comprehension or experience.

Although I do think quizbowl could do a year of no Mjollnir mentions anywhere.

This should be my last post, or close to it. Quizbowl has been fun!
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by Rufous-capped Thornbill »

Monk wrote:
Cernel Joson wrote:
Although I do think quizbowl could do a year of no Mjollnir mentions anywhere.
I didn't play the NSC, but the HSNCT had a distinct lack of Norse Mythology questions, which saddened me.
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by Cheynem »

I'm not a member of PACE, so I'm not speaking for the organization, but I would like to advocate for the removal of trash from NSC next year. Maybe this deserves its own thread. I saw very few teams respond favorably to it throughout the day and I think its replacement with some solid current events/your choice type questions would accomplish the same thing.
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by kayli »

Cheynem wrote:I'm not a member of PACE, so I'm not speaking for the organization, but I would like to advocate for the removal of trash from NSC next year. Maybe this deserves its own thread. I saw very few teams respond favorably to it throughout the day and I think its replacement with some solid current events/your choice type questions would accomplish the same thing.
Second through infinity-ed. Stick to the S in NSC. Else, let's be a little more honest with the people attending and call it the National Scholastic and Occasional Completely Non-scholastic Championship. Rolls right off the tongue.
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by Captain Sinico »

BRizzle wrote:I remember a question on time dilation that mentioned Ives and Stillwell in the first line and the word "effect." Was it a poor decision to buzz in and say doppler effect? Should I have waited?
Yes, it was a poor decision, but no, you should not have had to wait. The question stated that the effect in question was first observed in the Ives-Stillwell experiment. That's fantastically untrue of the ordinary Doppler effect, which had been very well understood and reliably measured for decades at the point the Ives-Stillwell experiment was designed.

Now, I know many of you are thinking "But there's a unit-weight edge from 'Ives-Stillwell' to 'Doppler effect' in my flash card neural network!" That's because they've come up a lot together. I'll explain why that is to you.

Formally, the Ives-Stillwell experiment measured an aspect of the Doppler effect, the transverse Doppler effect (the classic Doppler effect is longitudinal only,) which is a consequence of special relativity and, in particular, can be viewed as a consequence of time dilation. In fact, it's quite possible and, indeed, likely that the Ives-Stillwell experiment was the first designed to measure the transverse Doppler effect. Therefore, speaking as head of the protest committee, an early buzz with "transverse Doppler effect" or even "relativistic Doppler effect" would probably have warranted at least a prompt (pending confirmation of my suspicion that Ives-Stillwell is the first intentional measurement of it,) but a buzz with "Doppler effect" is unambiguously wrong given the clues. (Since Seth has posted since I wrote this, I think this is the answer to his issue as well.) So I'd judge the question to be not great, but also not a hose for "Doppler effect."

M
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by Smuttynose Island »

Captain Sinico wrote:
BRizzle wrote:I remember a question on time dilation that mentioned Ives and Stillwell in the first line and the word "effect." Was it a poor decision to buzz in and say doppler effect? Should I have waited?
Yes, it was a poor decision, but no, you should not have had to wait. The question stated that the effect in question was first observed in the Ives-Stillwell experiment. That's fantastically untrue of the ordinary Doppler effect, which had been very well understood and reliably measured for decades at the point the Ives-Stillwell experiment was designed.

Now, I know many of you are thinking "But there's a unit-weight edge from 'Ives-Stillwell' to 'Doppler effect' in my flash card neural network!" I'll explain why that is to you. Formally, the Ives-Stillwell experiment measured an aspect of the Doppler effect, the transverse Doppler effect (the classic Doppler effect is longitudinal only,) which is a consequence of special relativity and, in particular, can be viewed as a consequence of time dilation. In fact, it's quite possible and, indeed, likely that the Ives-Stillwell experiment was the first designed to measure the transverse Doppler effect. Therefore, speaking as head of the protest committee, an early buzz with "transverse Doppler effect" or even "relativistic Doppler effect" would probably have warranted at least a prompt (pending confirmation of my suspicion that Ives-Stillwell is the first intentional measurement of it,) but a buzz with "Doppler effect" is unambiguously wrong given the clues. (Since Seth has posted since I wrote this, I think this is the answer to his issue as well.) So I'd judge the question to be not great, but also not a hose for "Doppler effect."

M
The Ives-Stilwell experiment was the first experiment to verify the transverse Doppler effect; however and correct me if I'm wrong, I believe that the first experimental verification of time dilation was accomplished by the Kennedy-Thorndike experiments, which occurred several years earlier, which would mean that buzzing in with "Transverse Doppler Effect" or "Relativistic Doppler Effect" would be the only correct answer.
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by Captain Sinico »

That's possible. I don't know off-hand and didn't check that fact since I didn't hear (even rumblings of) a protest on that basis. If that's the case, you're right, we have a bad question that should have been thrown out and about which the only remaining possibilities are: that "transverse/relativistic Doppler effect" are the only right answers, under the assumption that the Ives-Stillwell experiment was the first measurement of that, or that the question has no obvious right answer, under the opposite assumption. "Doppler effect" remains wrong everywhere in the question even in that case, but is more understandable as a neg in that case: anyone who knows quizbowl would have to stop and wonder at a tossup on the transverse Doppler shift and specifically not the Doppler shift, regardless of what they know about physics.

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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by AlphaQuizBowler »

There was a question in round 15 that referred to Aegir as the "primary Norse sea god" or something similar. Is this accurate? I thought that the sea was primarily the domain of Njord.
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by Boeing X-20, Please! »

AlphaQuizBowler wrote:There was a question in round 15 that referred to Aegir as the "primary Norse sea god" or something similar. Is this accurate? I thought that the sea was primarily the domain of Njord.
Yeah, I've heard Njord and Aegir both as being that role at some point or other but the other clues [i.e. the big cauldron] clearly applied to Aegir and not Njord, so I don't see this as really big a big problem or source of confusion.
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by Boeing X-20, Please! »

Also, I think Aegir is usually called the god of the seas and Njord the god of the oceans.
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by The King's Flight to the Scots »

The other clues (billow maidens, Ran, etc.) differentiated between the two.
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by AKKOLADE »

Hey, I don't think has been announced yet, but it should be - St. Anselm's successfully pulled off a grail on Saturday against Seven Lakes B. Anselm's powered 10 tossups and correctly answered the others in a 810-0 win. Congratulations to them for this amazing performance.
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by AlphaQuizBowler »

Secretary of Bobcats wrote:
AlphaQuizBowler wrote:There was a question in round 15 that referred to Aegir as the "primary Norse sea god" or something similar. Is this accurate? I thought that the sea was primarily the domain of Njord.
Yeah, I've heard Njord and Aegir both as being that role at some point or other but the other clues [i.e. the big cauldron] clearly applied to Aegir and not Njord, so I don't see this as really big a big problem or source of confusion.
Because if Njord is the primary sea god (I have one book that refers to him as "ruler of the winds and the sea"), then you have a situation where there is no right answer because the question has clues referring specifically to two different answers. On top of that, is Aegir even considered a god? I thought he was a giant (though he may be both, perhaps?).
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by Boeing X-20, Please! »

AlphaQuizBowler wrote:
Secretary of Bobcats wrote:
AlphaQuizBowler wrote:There was a question in round 15 that referred to Aegir as the "primary Norse sea god" or something similar. Is this accurate? I thought that the sea was primarily the domain of Njord.
Yeah, I've heard Njord and Aegir both as being that role at some point or other but the other clues [i.e. the big cauldron] clearly applied to Aegir and not Njord, so I don't see this as really big a big problem or source of confusion.
Because if Njord is the primary sea god (I have one book that refers to him as "ruler of the winds and the sea"), then you have a situation where there is no right answer because the question has clues referring specifically to two different answers. On top of that, is Aegir even considered a god? I thought he was a giant (though he may be both, perhaps?).
In most sources I've read he is not a sea god, but rather the god/ruler/whatever of the oceans. So if one source calls him the god of the seas while lots of other sources more frequently call him the god of the oceans, I don't think you can really argue that he is the primary sea god. Also even if you're willing to say something like since he was mentioned in my source as being the primary sea god, that doesn't refute the fact that there is also another figure which can be considered the primary sea god. Even if you consider these 2 figures to be doing the same role (which you really shouldn't), the further clues did not apply to Njord and did to Aegir, so the differentiation was clearly made between the two and Njord really can't be answered with any significant degree of correctness.
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by Nuclear Densometer Test »

Not to distract from the Norse sea-god discussion, but I wanted to give my two cents about the NSC.

First off, I wanted to congratulate every team we played for a fantastic match, especially State College for a well-deserved victory in the finals. We don't travel much to big tournaments up north, so it was exciting to play so many good teams.

I also wanted to address the set itself. I thought the vast majority of the tossups were extremely well written and well within the expected difficulty for the NSC. (I.e. no tossup on Altdorfer) Many common answers were tossed-up with some very unique clues which changed the game a bit. Some that come to mind are The Last Supper, with a pretty awesome lead-in referencing Yo Mama's Last Supper and the Alexander Calder tossup. I also enjoyed the inclusion of a few "expansion" answers, for lack of a better word. Essentially, answers that don't come up too often at this level, but are not extremely difficult--Sillitoe and Klee for example.

The moderators for the most part were also very good. I don't think I had a single major problem the entire tournament. Pronunciation errors were minimal and speed was optimal. Relatedly, Guy Tabachnick, you are a fantastic reader.

One criticism I do have however is the occasional "easy answer within power" problem, which like always is a controversial statement to make due to difficulty in determining what actually is "difficult". A few I found quite notable include Self Portrait With Seven Fingers within power of the Chagall tossup since, to the best of my knowledge, this is arguably his second most famous work and "addition of Pareto efficiency" in the Arrow's Impossibility Theorem tossup, since that was probably the first clue I learned about Arrow's theorem and I consider it to be quite stock.
I think these are pretty minor issues with the set as a whole and they didn't really affect play by too much. I just wanted to bring them to attention and see if anyone else agreed or disagreed.

Thanks to everyone who helped write the set. Even with the changed format, I found this year's to be preferable to last year's in terms of difficulty and overall quality, so I look forward to playing again next year.
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by Susan »

I moved the grail discussion here (though it looks like I missed a post or two, which I'll clean up now).
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by jonpin »

As I said I'd do in IRC, here are PDF scoresheets for the last three games in the Lecture Hall: MW's last-tossup win over LASA in the third-place tiebreaker; State College's incredible come-from-behind win in the championship; and the highly amusing All-Star Game (no, I don't have a column for the audience's score).
Attachments
NSC10_AllStar.pdf
(60.52 KiB) Downloaded 368 times
NSC10_Final_SS_SC.pdf
(59.86 KiB) Downloaded 371 times
NSC10_3rd_LASA_MWGS.pdf
(59.79 KiB) Downloaded 1507 times
Jon Pinyan
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by Cassian »

I wanted to comment, especially since it was LASA’s first NSC. As I told Mike after the all-star game ended, we enjoyed ourselves tremendously and we’ll certainly be back next year (and hopefully with more than one team). Some of the great things about this tournament –

The questions – They were amazing. We had the opportunity to play some excellent sets this year (Prison Bowl, HSNCT, EFT, the ACF sets) and this one was truly outstanding.

The teams – The field at this tournament was, from top to bottom, simply incredible. State College should be heartily congratulated for managing to come out on top of this tremendous group of high school teams. It was a great pleasure to play against the competition we faced in the super-playoffs, and I’m happy that many of these great players and teams will be back next year to do it all again.

The staff – In the just over 18 rounds we played, we had some of the best moderators we have ever seen at any tournament. It was also really good to see R. Hentzel moderating at NSC, especially since he didn’t get to read the late rounds of HSNCT last weekend.

There were a few issues (which people have discussed at length in this forum so far) – a couple of questions, the temperature of some of the game rooms (particularly on Sunday), the long delay to reseed on Saturday – but these were very minor and did not at all detract from the exceptionally high quality of the tournament itself. There was also a little discussion about the increase in difficulty level of the set in the later rounds. I am in favor of this, but I would like to see this jump in difficulty happen between the initial prelim round and phase two, especially since some of the games in phase two count towards placement in the super-playoffs / final games. Also, I know there was some complaint about the seeding in the initial bracketing, but I am confident that PACE will address this issue next year as well.

Again, I would like to thank Mike Sorice and the PACE organization for a great tournament, and to congratulate State College (along with Southside, Maggie Walker and everyone else) for their performance this weekend. We look forward to seeing all of you over the course of next year (and also some of you this coming weekend in Nashville). We’ll be traveling a couple of times next fall and next spring to tournaments up north, and we’d love to have some of you come down to Texas next year for something as well.

PS – We’d love to see the full stats at some point…
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Edward Elric
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by Edward Elric »

Cassian wrote:
PS – We’d love to see the full stats at some point…
I know Donald is hard at work getting the playoff stats together. I assume it will be a couple of days before everything is posted.
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by DumbJaques »

There was also a little discussion about the increase in difficulty level of the set in the later rounds. I am in favor of this, but I would like to see this jump in difficulty happen between the initial prelim round and phase two, especially since some of the games in phase two count towards placement in the super-playoffs / final games.
I'm really glad you liked the questions so much. I mentioned this before, but Andy was mistaken in implying that there was a calculated difficulty change between phase two and phase three - rounds 8-18 (and the tiebreaker 2 packet) were written to be a single, playoff difficulty for the precise reason people have brought up.
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