Terrapin Invitational Tournament (1/22/11) at Maryland
Posted: Tue Sep 21, 2010 1:04 am
Terrapin Invitational Tournament XXIV
Saturday, January 22, 2011
University of Maryland - College Park
ANNOUNCEMENT
The Maryland Academic Quiz Team is pleased to announcement the 24th incarnation of our annual (okay, so there was no TIT in 2010. deal) Terrapin Invitational Tournament. We plan on making this year's tournament the same difficulty as last year, plus or minus epsilon, somewhere around the mythical "Regular Difficulty."
This is a packet submission event following the normal guidelines - if you were playing tournaments prior to last year, your team should be writing a packet. If your team meets this definition in name but doesn't really have much writing experience, you should email me *right away* to discuss it - I want teams to be able to attend this event, but building writing experience for teams is just as important as this event actually having enough submissions.
This set will be head edited by myself, SteveJon Guth, with assistance from the rest of the Maryland Academic Quiz Team.
MIRRORS
This space reserved for mirror information. We are looking for mirrors in the following locations:
Midwest - Michigan
Canada - Toronto
Northeast - Yale
Pacific Northwest - Washington
South - Texas
Southwest
West Coast - Arizona
We are actively looking for mirrors. If you are interested, email me at [email protected].
RECEIVED PACKETS:
-$50
UNC
VCU
Nediger + Zafar (Mirror)
-$25
OSU A (Mirror)
OSU B (Mirror)
Toronto (Mirror)
+$0
Delaware
RPI (Mirror)
Queens A (Mirror)
Queens B (Mirror)
+$25
McMaster (Mirror)
UVA
Duke
+$50
Columbia A (Mirror)
Columbia B (Mirror)
Chicago A (Mirror)
Obscenely Late -- you should look down your nose at these people
Laferbrook +$110 (Mirror)
Harvard +$110 (Mirror)
Minnesota +$130 (Mirror)
Penn +$200
PRICING:
+$100 - Base Fee
-$50 - Packet submitted by Saturday, November 27th.
-$25 - Packet submitted by Saturday, December 4rd.
+$0 - Packet submitted by Saturday, December 18th.
+$25 - Packet submitted by Saturday, December 25th.
+$50 - Packet submitted by Saturday, January 1st.
+$100 - Packet submitted by Saturday, January 8th.
+$10 - every day after January 8th. Seriously. Why would you wait this long? I reserve the right to boot you from the field if you don't tell me why your packet is so late.
-$5 - Working buzzer discount, unlimited
-$10 - Competent moderator discount
+$10 - Formatting penalty for formatting your questions incorrectly (see formatting section below).
Minimum Fee Per Team: $40.
PACKET GUIDELINES
5/5 Literature [1/1 American, 1/1 British, 1/1 European, 1/1 World, 1/1 Your Choice]
5/5 Science [1/1 Biology, 1/1 Chemistry, 1/1 Physics, 1/1 Other, 1/1 Your Choice]
5/5 History [1/1 American, 2/2 European, 1/1 World, 1/1 Your Choice]
3/3 Fine Arts [1/1 Painting, 1/1 Non-Opera-Music, 1/1 Anything Else]
3/3 RMP [1/1 Philosophy, appropriately vary 2/2 Religion and Mythology]
1/1 SS [two different disciplines]
1/1 Geo/CE/more SS [pick two, and write one of each]
1/1 Your Choice [at most one may be trash, but the other may be borderline]
Difficulty
Your answer selections should range between Fall and Regionals difficulty, inclusive. Last year's Terrapin is probably the best model for likely difficulty of this event, and is definitely the best model for how hard you should make your questions. You are strenuously encouraged to err on the easier side. I'm happy to be excited by accessible tossups on stuff that doesn't get as much coverage as it should, but if you're writing a tossup you honestly don't believe more than 20% of the field will convert - stop.
Every bonus should have a clear easy, medium and hard part. Almost every team in the tournament should be converting the easy part of the bonus, while a little more than half of the teams should be converting the medium part. The hard part of a bonus should be able to be answered by those with in-depth knowledge in the field.
Question Length
All of the following lengths apply to documents written in Word with 1 inch margins (change these from the default), and a 10 point Times New Roman font.
Final tossups will be between 6 and 8 lines long. However, we'd prefer that you submit tossups on the long side (or even over the 8 line limit), since it's always easier for us to get rid of clues that we don't like than to add additional clues by ourselves.
Bonus parts should be kept within reason. Do not write extremely lengthy leadins or bonus parts (try to keep them under 2 lines, generally). Also do not write extremely short bonuses or list bonuses, as these are typically not very interesting. The vast majority of your bonuses should be 10-10-10. Please do not write any 30-20-10 bonuses, as these really throw off the balance of the bonuses in a round. 5-10-15 bonuses are similarly bad and should be shunned, since they arbitrarily weight the hard part when in theory the bonus should have the same relative difficulty to all the others. However, I have an unusual tolerance for 10-5 bonuses and a few other creative point structures, so including one or two of these isn't out of the question, but don't do it more than that.
Formatting
Please format your questions in the following matter:
1/1 Unfunny Meta Example Questions (reused to honor our recent alum):
The person involved in this event is starting a rumor that it was actually a planned occurrence to get himself mentioned in a meta question in Matt Weiner's canceled Chicago Open trash tournament. Immediately after this event occurred, one person was unable to identify Okazaki Fragments. It was preceded by Jeremy Eaton answering a tossup on time dilation. The person responsible for this event blamed not getting enough sleep the night before and the two hour drive to Richmond, but most of all just plain not paying attention. Occurring in a game against South Carolina at the 2007 VCU Open, it is now immortalized in the YTMND page Nude Descending a Gas Chamber. FTP, identify this action wherein Mike Bentley erroneously answered "The Armory Show" for "Auschwitz".
ANSWER: Worst Buzz (also accept Nude Descending a Gas Chamber before mentioned, Mike Bentley's Embarrassing Neg with The Armory Show on the Auschwitz Question at the 2007 Illinois Novice Tournament, and clear knowledge equivalents; do not accept just "Armory Show" or "Auschwitz")
Answer the following about a certain comic strip, FTPE.
[10] Like Chris Ray, the title character of this Dik Browne comic strip has red hair and a big beard, and is also illiterate and bathes only once a year.
ANSWER: Hagar the Horrible
[10] Using Wikipedia might erroneously lead you to believe that Hagar the Horrible was based on this play by Henrik Ibsen in which Sigurd defeats Hjardis by killing her sentinel, a white bear.
ANSWER: The Vikings at Helgeland
[10] If Jonathan Magin had his way, Hagar the Horrible and all other comic strips would be inspired by this Robert Louis Stevenson novel about some Scottish dude and his buried treasure.
ANSWER: The Master of Ballantrae
DO NOT USE ANY AUTOMATIC WORD FORMATTING EXCEPT FOR SMART QUOTES. Specifically, do not use any indentation or automatic numbering in your packets. Submit all packets in .doc or .rtf format please.
If questions are not correctly formatted (at the discretion of the editors), your packet will be returned for you to reformat. If you submit your packet at the deadline and it is rejected for formatting issues, you will be charged a $10 formatting fee (and asked to reformat the packet), but you will not have to pay any additional fees for missing the deadline, unless you are aggravating about resubmitting the format fixes.
Also note that your questions should be organized by category and type, not pre-mixed or divided into tossups and bonuses (thus, you should have the 5 history tossups followed by the 5 history bonuses, followed by the 5 lit tossups and 5 lit bonuses, etc.
As with all packet submission tournaments, questions must be blind to all other teams attending the tournament. Specifically, if a school is sending more than one team to the tournament, members of different teams should not know of each others' questions.
Please do not plagiarize questions. Do not copy direct passages and phrases from the sources you use to write questions. Additionally, do not write questions directly out of Wikipedia. While Wikipedia can be a useful source in finding preliminary information on a question, we encourage you to use more in-depth, scholarly and peer reviewed sources when writing your questions. Please see various question writing guides such as Jerry's guide for more information on where to find good sources for writing questions.
REGISTRATION
To register, email me at [email protected]. Please indicate how many teams you're bringing (or interested in bringing) and what discounts you think you apply for (such as the number of moderators and buzzers you're bringing).
Details on where on campus the event will be held and when specifically registration will be will be announced closer to the date of the tournament.
Saturday, January 22, 2011
University of Maryland - College Park
ANNOUNCEMENT
The Maryland Academic Quiz Team is pleased to announcement the 24th incarnation of our annual (okay, so there was no TIT in 2010. deal) Terrapin Invitational Tournament. We plan on making this year's tournament the same difficulty as last year, plus or minus epsilon, somewhere around the mythical "Regular Difficulty."
This is a packet submission event following the normal guidelines - if you were playing tournaments prior to last year, your team should be writing a packet. If your team meets this definition in name but doesn't really have much writing experience, you should email me *right away* to discuss it - I want teams to be able to attend this event, but building writing experience for teams is just as important as this event actually having enough submissions.
This set will be head edited by myself, SteveJon Guth, with assistance from the rest of the Maryland Academic Quiz Team.
MIRRORS
This space reserved for mirror information. We are looking for mirrors in the following locations:
Midwest - Michigan
Canada - Toronto
Northeast - Yale
Pacific Northwest - Washington
South - Texas
Southwest
West Coast - Arizona
We are actively looking for mirrors. If you are interested, email me at [email protected].
RECEIVED PACKETS:
-$50
UNC
VCU
Nediger + Zafar (Mirror)
-$25
OSU A (Mirror)
OSU B (Mirror)
Toronto (Mirror)
+$0
Delaware
RPI (Mirror)
Queens A (Mirror)
Queens B (Mirror)
+$25
McMaster (Mirror)
UVA
Duke
+$50
Columbia A (Mirror)
Columbia B (Mirror)
Chicago A (Mirror)
Obscenely Late -- you should look down your nose at these people
Laferbrook +$110 (Mirror)
Harvard +$110 (Mirror)
Minnesota +$130 (Mirror)
Penn +$200
PRICING:
+$100 - Base Fee
-$50 - Packet submitted by Saturday, November 27th.
-$25 - Packet submitted by Saturday, December 4rd.
+$0 - Packet submitted by Saturday, December 18th.
+$25 - Packet submitted by Saturday, December 25th.
+$50 - Packet submitted by Saturday, January 1st.
+$100 - Packet submitted by Saturday, January 8th.
+$10 - every day after January 8th. Seriously. Why would you wait this long? I reserve the right to boot you from the field if you don't tell me why your packet is so late.
-$5 - Working buzzer discount, unlimited
-$10 - Competent moderator discount
+$10 - Formatting penalty for formatting your questions incorrectly (see formatting section below).
Minimum Fee Per Team: $40.
PACKET GUIDELINES
5/5 Literature [1/1 American, 1/1 British, 1/1 European, 1/1 World, 1/1 Your Choice]
5/5 Science [1/1 Biology, 1/1 Chemistry, 1/1 Physics, 1/1 Other, 1/1 Your Choice]
5/5 History [1/1 American, 2/2 European, 1/1 World, 1/1 Your Choice]
3/3 Fine Arts [1/1 Painting, 1/1 Non-Opera-Music, 1/1 Anything Else]
3/3 RMP [1/1 Philosophy, appropriately vary 2/2 Religion and Mythology]
1/1 SS [two different disciplines]
1/1 Geo/CE/more SS [pick two, and write one of each]
1/1 Your Choice [at most one may be trash, but the other may be borderline]
Difficulty
Your answer selections should range between Fall and Regionals difficulty, inclusive. Last year's Terrapin is probably the best model for likely difficulty of this event, and is definitely the best model for how hard you should make your questions. You are strenuously encouraged to err on the easier side. I'm happy to be excited by accessible tossups on stuff that doesn't get as much coverage as it should, but if you're writing a tossup you honestly don't believe more than 20% of the field will convert - stop.
Every bonus should have a clear easy, medium and hard part. Almost every team in the tournament should be converting the easy part of the bonus, while a little more than half of the teams should be converting the medium part. The hard part of a bonus should be able to be answered by those with in-depth knowledge in the field.
Question Length
All of the following lengths apply to documents written in Word with 1 inch margins (change these from the default), and a 10 point Times New Roman font.
Final tossups will be between 6 and 8 lines long. However, we'd prefer that you submit tossups on the long side (or even over the 8 line limit), since it's always easier for us to get rid of clues that we don't like than to add additional clues by ourselves.
Bonus parts should be kept within reason. Do not write extremely lengthy leadins or bonus parts (try to keep them under 2 lines, generally). Also do not write extremely short bonuses or list bonuses, as these are typically not very interesting. The vast majority of your bonuses should be 10-10-10. Please do not write any 30-20-10 bonuses, as these really throw off the balance of the bonuses in a round. 5-10-15 bonuses are similarly bad and should be shunned, since they arbitrarily weight the hard part when in theory the bonus should have the same relative difficulty to all the others. However, I have an unusual tolerance for 10-5 bonuses and a few other creative point structures, so including one or two of these isn't out of the question, but don't do it more than that.
Formatting
Please format your questions in the following matter:
1/1 Unfunny Meta Example Questions (reused to honor our recent alum):
The person involved in this event is starting a rumor that it was actually a planned occurrence to get himself mentioned in a meta question in Matt Weiner's canceled Chicago Open trash tournament. Immediately after this event occurred, one person was unable to identify Okazaki Fragments. It was preceded by Jeremy Eaton answering a tossup on time dilation. The person responsible for this event blamed not getting enough sleep the night before and the two hour drive to Richmond, but most of all just plain not paying attention. Occurring in a game against South Carolina at the 2007 VCU Open, it is now immortalized in the YTMND page Nude Descending a Gas Chamber. FTP, identify this action wherein Mike Bentley erroneously answered "The Armory Show" for "Auschwitz".
ANSWER: Worst Buzz (also accept Nude Descending a Gas Chamber before mentioned, Mike Bentley's Embarrassing Neg with The Armory Show on the Auschwitz Question at the 2007 Illinois Novice Tournament, and clear knowledge equivalents; do not accept just "Armory Show" or "Auschwitz")
Answer the following about a certain comic strip, FTPE.
[10] Like Chris Ray, the title character of this Dik Browne comic strip has red hair and a big beard, and is also illiterate and bathes only once a year.
ANSWER: Hagar the Horrible
[10] Using Wikipedia might erroneously lead you to believe that Hagar the Horrible was based on this play by Henrik Ibsen in which Sigurd defeats Hjardis by killing her sentinel, a white bear.
ANSWER: The Vikings at Helgeland
[10] If Jonathan Magin had his way, Hagar the Horrible and all other comic strips would be inspired by this Robert Louis Stevenson novel about some Scottish dude and his buried treasure.
ANSWER: The Master of Ballantrae
DO NOT USE ANY AUTOMATIC WORD FORMATTING EXCEPT FOR SMART QUOTES. Specifically, do not use any indentation or automatic numbering in your packets. Submit all packets in .doc or .rtf format please.
If questions are not correctly formatted (at the discretion of the editors), your packet will be returned for you to reformat. If you submit your packet at the deadline and it is rejected for formatting issues, you will be charged a $10 formatting fee (and asked to reformat the packet), but you will not have to pay any additional fees for missing the deadline, unless you are aggravating about resubmitting the format fixes.
Also note that your questions should be organized by category and type, not pre-mixed or divided into tossups and bonuses (thus, you should have the 5 history tossups followed by the 5 history bonuses, followed by the 5 lit tossups and 5 lit bonuses, etc.
As with all packet submission tournaments, questions must be blind to all other teams attending the tournament. Specifically, if a school is sending more than one team to the tournament, members of different teams should not know of each others' questions.
Please do not plagiarize questions. Do not copy direct passages and phrases from the sources you use to write questions. Additionally, do not write questions directly out of Wikipedia. While Wikipedia can be a useful source in finding preliminary information on a question, we encourage you to use more in-depth, scholarly and peer reviewed sources when writing your questions. Please see various question writing guides such as Jerry's guide for more information on where to find good sources for writing questions.
REGISTRATION
To register, email me at [email protected]. Please indicate how many teams you're bringing (or interested in bringing) and what discounts you think you apply for (such as the number of moderators and buzzers you're bringing).
Details on where on campus the event will be held and when specifically registration will be will be announced closer to the date of the tournament.