Caesar Rodney Rider Bowl (April 17th, 2010)

[Angry Babies in Love]

Matt Bollinger: stop it.

71 powers. Like whoa.

[Edward Powers]

Thanks to Coach Chrzanowski, Trey and all the Caesar Rodney Community for hosting an excellent tournament. Despite the small size of the field, the competition was first rate. Congratulations to Saint Anselm's for its truly outstanding play, but given its performance so far this year, this was no surprise. And congratulations to Charter, Kellenberg and Quince Orchard for the very high calibre of their play as well, and, of course, to all others in the field who came and tried their best. Finally, we hope that this original CRRB is the first in long line of successful CRRB's in the future.

[Unicolored Jay]

That has to be the highest Power to Tossup ratio I've ever seen.

[Down and out in Quintana Roo]

With regards to the set...

Yes, this was the easiest set that HSAPQ produced this year (possibly in either of the last two years too). But that was made clear. This was a creation from VHSL questions which we were told many times this year were accessible, well-written, and downright easy (the argument i heard was that VHSL was "scared to death" that HSAPQ might make them too hard, so they tried to tone them down).

I think that's actually a great thing. I thought the questions were of very good quality. Okay, did they have some lead-ins that great teams had heard before? Of course! Did they have predictable bonus answers once you heard the introductory clue? On some occasions, yes. But we were specifically trying to expose teams to good quizbowl and i think we did that. Unfortunately not many of "those teams" showed up (and then they pretty much left after Round 7 anyway), but that was our intent, and i was very pleased with the set. We knew that some of these schools were going to do poorly; that's what happens when you come to 2-3 tournaments a year and basically don't practice at all. Additionally, there were several times in this tournament where after seeing a tossup or bonus answer i remarked "that's hard" and that's fine too. But largely i thought the questions were just about right.

This is a set that i'm sure my kids will enjoy practicing on next Fall, since its difficulty is practically just in-between novice and regular. I hope other teams realize the potential this set will have in terms of exposure to the canon and good clues.

[Down and out in Quintana Roo]

Oh, one more thing.

Since a lot of teams weren't there, and a lot of teams didn't get the joke, here are the bracket names that we chose for the day.

purring, perfect pitch, spider webs, Pure Pwnage, Times Like These, Keyboard Cat

[Rufous-capped Thornbill]

Oh, one more thing.

Since a lot of teams weren't there, and a lot of teams didn't get the joke, here are the bracket names that we chose for the day.

purring, perfect pitch, spider webs, Pure Pwnage, Times Like These, Keyboard Cat

Dude that Keyboard Cat question was awesome. Don't hate.