ACF Fall Discussion

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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by Sir Thopas »

Habitat_Against_Humanity wrote:and saying Miguel Tejada was part of the Orioles was probably wrong when the question was written). My biggest issue with the tournament was the form of many of the lit bonuses. All too often it seemed that the order of a given lit bonus seemed to be:
Wrote it in June, actually. Didn't bother to think that he might have been traded after that, gah.
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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by Nicklausse/Muse »

Any thoughts as to the tossup on the Brothers Grimm that called the two "this author"? I know it's trying to avoid transparency, but it's a bit odd.
That made me a little bit crazy - I recognized the plot straight away, but did not buzz because the question had said "this author." Avoiding transparency is one thing - giving clues that are actively and deliberately wrong (like, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm were only one person) is another.

[I don't really get what people are complaining about with the lit/FA difficulty. So you thought it was hard because you could only get one bonus part - so I thought the science and math were hard, because I am not a science/math player. I thought the lit/FA were extremely easy ("Drink to me only with thine eyes" as the second clue for Ben Jonson? "In this opera, someone sings about conquering lands for his beloved--" as the first line of an Aida tossup???) but that is because I am a lit/FA(/RM) player.

If you're making the argument that ACF Fall should be so easy that anyone can second-line every tossup and 30 every bonus, come out and say so. I don't think that's really a good goal.]

[Edit: Rereading, I see that it wasn't necessarily about "omg hard lit/fa" and that "easy science" entered into it as well. I'm not best placed to judge the comparative difficulty of science questions because, as I stated, I am not a science player. However, it would be a good idea to keep in mind that what is hard! for, say, you, because you have never heard of On the Transmigration of Souls, is really easy for, say, me, and that what is an easy math bonus for you may be hard for me even though I have in fact taken calculus.]

History, however, was objectively too easy. "Holodomor" should not have been in the second line of a Ukraine tossup, nor "Iron Guard" in the same place for Romania, Matt Jackson's buzz with "Hungary" notwithstanding.

Also, "Dancing House in Prague" was a clue for Gehry in one round, and "Gehry's Dancing House" was a clue for Prague in the round immediately following. (Or something like that.)
Last edited by Nicklausse/Muse on Sun Nov 07, 2010 4:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by Nine-Tenths Ideas »

Nicklausse/Muse wrote:History, however, was objectively too easy. "Holodomor" should not have been in the second line of a Ukraine tossup, nor "Iron Guard" in the same place for Romania, Matt Jackson's buzz with "Hungary" notwithstanding.
NO DONT

What I mean to say is, you just sort of fell prey to the problem you described at the beginning of your post.
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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by AKKOLADE »

Nicklausse/Muse wrote:
Any thoughts as to the tossup on the Brothers Grimm that called the two "this author"? I know it's trying to avoid transparency, but it's a bit odd.
History, however, was objectively too easy. "Holodomor" should not have been in the second line of a Ukraine tossup, nor "Iron Guard" in the same place for Romania, Matt Jackson's buzz with "Hungary" notwithstanding.
History was so easy George Berry powered a question

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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by Nicklausse/Muse »

I guess my assumption is that when assessing difficulty level for history questions, it would do to keep in mind both that clue ordering is important, and that - unlike math/science or music - most players have taken years and years of history, including at least one world/Euro class. The problem isn't "this should not be a clue ever" but rather "before the giveaway - what can you possibly say about Romania that is easier than the Iron Guard?"

If it is likely to be one of only two things that someone who has not done any kind of in-depth study of the subject would know from a survey class and/or random knowledge - it should not be that early. Same as if your answer was "imaginary numbers" and your second clue was "these are indicated by i," or if you were writing about oxidation* and had "it is the loss of electrons" as an early clue instead of a giveaway.

Oh yeah, other history quibble - military history was disproportionate even by Quizbowl standards.

edited for spelling and examples

*The actual oxidation tossup ended up being a buzzer race (it seemed fairly obvious that everyone could tell it was either oxidation or reduction and was waiting to find out whether electrons were gained or lost), but hey, that's because there were no science players in that match.
Last edited by Nicklausse/Muse on Sun Nov 07, 2010 6:52 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN) »

Vlad Dracula is easier than the Iron Guard.
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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by Nicklausse/Muse »

Fair enough, though IIRC that did not come up later in the question.
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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by Judson Laipply »

I think that the first round had about 3/4 poetry out of 5/5 lit.
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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by OctagonJoe »

Nicklausse/Muse wrote:I guess my assumption is that when measuring difficulty level for history questions, it would do to keep in mind both that clue ordering is important, and that - unlike math/science or music - most players have taken years and years of history, including at least one world/Euro class. The problem isn't "this should not be a clue ever" but rather "before the giveaway of Ceauşescu - what can you possibly say about Romania that is easier than the Iron Guard?"

Oh yeah, other history quibble - military history was disproportionate even by Quizbowl standards.

edited for spelling
It's quite possible that clue was misplaced; I had never heard of the Iron Guard outside quizbowl, despite having taken AP Euro and generally enjoying history. I could see that being abnormal. The rest of the tossup did spend its time talking about Ceasescu, though, since he's a guy who people seem to know about.

With the military history, you're not the first to note that. By my count (done quickly) of stuff I wrote/edited for the tournament, purely military history was around 20%, this being on generals, battles, wars, etc. I really don't find that that bad. I probably missed some while just going through, but I don't think it hit a fourth of the history. It's quite possible I have a skewed interpretation of what military history is, though, which could shoot that number in any direction quite a distance, especially up. And I wouldn't be surprised if people think 20% is insanely high. Also, since it's easy to do this, some portion of the military history can be blamed on submissions that contained good questions or good answerlines in that area, which I wasn't going to toss away.

And to veer off from responding to your post, I'd like to know more about the "inaccuracies which totally slipped by editors" in history that got mentioned in another thread by Matt Jackson. It would help me considerably in the future to know where those happened.
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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by theMoMA »

It would be nice to see some levity here.

I don't speak for this year's editors, though I think they did a very good job staying true to the vision that has made Fall the most successful tournament in the history of player-run collegiate quizbowl. I've edited two Falls, one as the head editor. I've also contributed to three MUT sets that were written largely in line with the principles that I think should govern Fall editors. I have written none of those tournaments with any consideration for how the bonuses will distinguish between the top teams in the country. It simply makes no sense to do so.

Some bonuses are a little harder, some are a little easier. Which team get the slightly more favorable bonuses will certainly influence the outcome of a close match. But what really influences the score is getting more tossups. If both teams get ten tossups, each point per bonus of advantage for one team is worth ten points to that team over the course of a match. Each tossup exchange is worth something like seventy points. Harping on whether bonuses are gradating between a hypothetical 24 PPB team and a hypothetical 26 PPB team is pointless; even if one team is getting 22 PPB and the other is getting 28 PPB because of bonus unevenness, getting that eleventh tossup is still going to win the game for the 22 PPB team, assuming negs don't swing it the other way (110 + 240 = 350, 90 + 250 = 340).

So I generally try to dedicate my efforts to evening out the bonuses as much as possible (as opposed to trying to find four parts per twenty questions that the hypothetical 26 PPB team would get that a hypothetical 24 PPB team would not). And more importantly, I dwell extensively on clue ordering of tossups. I want the person who knows the most about the subject to have the best chance to get the tossup, since getting those tossups at the margin is what's going to win those close games. I thought that this year's Fall did a more than decent job of doing that.

When Matt Jackson says that it's "pointless" for him to play this tournament because each tossup he negged was an eighty-point swing, I could not disagree more. Playing your best and smartest game given the difficulty of the questions is one of the most important quizbowl skills to have, and I find it incredibly fun and challenging to figure out a successful personal playing strategy in varying situations.
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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by theMoMA »

Also, let's have a little pause for a discussion of ACF tournaments. I'm speaking only for myself as a former editor and ACF voter here, not for ACF. So if Jerry wants to contradict or elucidate anything I have to say, he can go right ahead.

First off, "ACF Novice" was not an ACF event. It was my independent project (with the help of a talented group of writers) conducted under the auspices of ACF. It did not "replace" Winter in any sense. I definitely anticipate that ACF will continue to sponsor the tournament as long as someone is willing to coordinate it (and I may indeed be interested in doing so again next year). I wouldn't mind if ACF adopts Novice as an official event, but I don't think that it's necessary for its continued success.

ACF members voted to contract the Winter event after a discussion in which we brought up three main concerns. First, many of us did not want to overtax or overextend ACF's resources, especially our editors. Second, many were concerned that having two similar tournaments in rapid succession detracted from each tournament's attendance and quality. Finally, many recalled the clogged second-semester schedule and hoped that concentrating on one regular-difficulty tournament would alleviate some of the congestion. It's my personal hope that ACF Regionals becomes a stronger, more cohesive, and more well-attended event because of the change. I would like to see Regionals become the flagship regular-difficulty event on the collegiate schedule, essentially (alongside SCT) the tournament that a quizbowl team plays in order to show that it's a team.

Finally, as I have said, ACF Fall is the most successful student-run quizbowl tournament ever. Over a hundred teams play each year. I don't know the exact numbers, but the only other tournament that comes close in attendance is SCT (depending on whether you combine DI and DII attendance). Fall has provided countless players with their first introduction to the collegiate game. New players are overwhelmingly excited to play it, and they almost uniformly enjoy themselves. More teams write for Fall than any other tournament, and it's no coincidence that good submissions to other tournaments are on the rise. Unlike other introductory events, Fall has been amazingly successful at funneling teams to other tournaments and more involvement in the circuit. In short, I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that Fall is ACF's greatest success story. Regardless of the "identity crisis" that certain players have imposed on it, Fall continues to be an appropriate, fun, well-written tournament for new teams and players.
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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by Ringil »

OctagonJoe wrote:
Nicklausse/Muse wrote:
Oh yeah, other history quibble - military history was disproportionate even by Quizbowl standards.

edited for spelling
With the military history, you're not the first to note that. By my count (done quickly) of stuff I wrote/edited for the tournament, purely military history was around 20%, this being on generals, battles, wars, etc. I really don't find that that bad. I probably missed some while just going through, but I don't think it hit a fourth of the history. It's quite possible I have a skewed interpretation of what military history is, though, which could shoot that number in any direction quite a distance, especially up. And I wouldn't be surprised if people think 20% is insanely high. Also, since it's easy to do this, some portion of the military history can be blamed on submissions that contained good questions or good answerlines in that area, which I wasn't going to toss away.
This may not be indicative of the overall amount in the set, but there was one packet with 4/0 military history TUs (little bighorn, boxer rebellion, siege of leningrad, lepanto). While, I do like military history, I think many would find this a bit excessive.

Overall, I found this tournament to be decent. I felt like the bonuses were noticeably easier than last year's set. This may be a function of me being better than I was last year, but I still think this is something to think about. However, I found the TUs to be mostly what I expected from this level of play.

(That tossup on personality and the bonus part on personality both had this clue about a Minnesota test or something)
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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by mc1093alpha »

The Toad to Wigan Pier wrote: In retrospect, the fact that Riemann manifolds exist should have come later in the question. But honestly the binary association between "namesake manifold" and Riemann is a foolish one as noted really important mathematicians Hilbert, Poincaré, and Banach have namesake manifolds among others. Note: I'm not trying to imply that there should be a ACF Fall tossup on Banach. Also if you know what the domain for a Mobius transformation is, good for you. Most quizbowlers don't.
I probably confused two bonuses, once the questions come out, if this is still something that people are talking about, I will support my views more with examples, or, alternatively, find I have a more selective memory than I thought :P, in which case I'll apologize for my unfounded comments :P

That all being said;

I am just judging relative to other ACFs that I have played in practice. Practically no questions could I "first line," and generally I don't consider myself a national-class math quizbowl player or anything like that. Perhaps I just got very lucky with this tournament or something to that extent, but I was generally unimpressed.

In previous years an entire bonus would be about linear algebra, with basis being the "easy" part of the bonus and things like eigenvalues/vectors and characteristic equations being the "hard part." Looking at 2009, for example, there are tossups like Mobius Strip-Klein Bottle-Legendre’s knot (the first math bonus I found opening a random packet (Rice+Michigan)), here you find the first is pretty easy, you know, someone who likes math a little probably would get it, the second is a tad harder, but still reasonable, while the last is hard and most likely only people with a fairly deep knowledge of the subject would get it. This similar structure is not at ALL reflected in the math bonuses in this years ACF fall.

The math tossups, in past years, were uniformly more obscure at the beginning. That similar difficulty was not reflected in this.
For If you look at these: ( http://www.carloangiuli.com/acfdb/searc ... hematics=1 ) They uniformly begin with harder clues, with perhaps occasional exceptions, than the majority of the questions this year.
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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by Marble-faced Bristle Tyrant »

Ringil wrote:This may not be indicative of the overall amount in the set, but there was one packet with 4/0 military history TUs (little bighorn, boxer rebellion, siege of leningrad, lepanto). While, I do like military history, I think many would find this a bit excessive.
It is within ACF's packet guidelines, though: "No more than 4 of your 10 total history questions should be predominately about battles, wars, or people known primarily for their military accomplishments."

Perhaps a couple should have been bonuses, though, for better packet fengshui.
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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by naturalistic phallacy »

Sir Thopas wrote:
SirT wrote:
Inkana7 wrote:Just off the top of my head, Sartre and Gibbs Free Energy were repeated, both in the same round.
Was Sartre really a repeat? At the point the question was gotten in my room, it was all about his philosophy stuff, and the earlier bonus was about his literature. Personality was definitely a repeat in that round though (with clue overlap), but that and gibbs free energy are the only ones I can really recall.

Edit - Just want to add that I enjoyed this tournament and didn't think it was too easy at all.
There was a Sartre philosophy question and a Sartre lit question; as the editor of the former, I made sure to not touch on his literary career at all. It's a pity they were both in the same round, though.
They weren't in the same packet (at least in the packets that I read). Perhaps the original poster meant that the second instances of Sartre and Gibbs happened in the same packet?

Regarding the set, I pretty much agree with everything that Mike has posted in this thread. It didn't seem to be that much different in quality or difficulty from the past couple of Falls - as always, some outlier hard parts and some gimme 30s. One thing I noticed while reading was the inconsistency of answerlines in providing alternate answers; some questions were really good at this, but a lot seemed incomplete, especially with translated titles. It really doesn't take that long to go to Wikipedia or Amazon (or to the packet archive) and look up other names for things, and it could smooth out matches for lesser experienced mods.
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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by master15625 »

I also had some comments on the trash. It did a good job in splitting between pop culture and sports.

However, I was just wondering what people thought of the Roger Federer tossup? I do admit that I follow tennis a lot, and I know people will just chastise me for falling into the trap of the Fundamental Error of QuizBowl, but when the clue starts off with a clue from the 2008 Olympics, isn't that not a good clue to start off with, because many of the medal winners will be remembered, especially those that are gold medalists?

I liked the South Africa sports question, even though South Africa was related to an answer for like the umpteenth time it seems.
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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by Mechanical Beasts »

theMoMA wrote:Regardless of the "identity crisis" that certain players have imposed on it, Fall continues to be an appropriate, fun, well-written tournament for new teams and players.
As one of the "certain players," I should clarify that I certainly don't dispute this. I think the only point on which we differ is whether there's a point to Matt Jackson playing, basically. I agree that that's a quizbowl skill but I'm not sure if honing that metagame skill is a worthwhile reason to attend a tournament like ACF Fall; you could just as easily do that in practice, I think. If I were in Matt Jackson's shoes, I might prefer to go to tournaments that challenge me more, in a direct sense, and omit Fall.
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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by indiaisasubcontinent7 »

master15625 wrote:I also had some comments on the trash. It did a good job in splitting between pop culture and sports.

However, I was just wondering what people thought of the Roger Federer tossup? I do admit that I follow tennis a lot, and I know people will just chastise me for falling into the trap of the Fundamental Error of QuizBowl, but when the clue starts off with a clue from the 2008 Olympics, isn't that not a good clue to start off with, because many of the medal winners will be remembered, especially those that are gold medalists?

I liked the South Africa sports question, even though South Africa was related to an answer for like the umpteenth time it seems.
When I played that question, a teammate and I buzzer raced to it before "Wawrinka" was even finished. If the answer had been "2008 Olympics," then the question would have been a hose because at that point, there was no way to know what the question was asking for. I also thought that that specific clue was far too easy, but I also follow tennis pretty thoroughly. The question probably would have been better if it had started with some minor result of his form some years back.

On another note, I didn't notice any Hindu myth in this iteration of ACF Fall. There was a packet I didn't play, but was there a reason it was omitted, or did I just not notice it?
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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by Rufous-capped Thornbill »

indiaisasubcontinent7 wrote:
master15625 wrote:I also had some comments on the trash. It did a good job in splitting between pop culture and sports.

However, I was just wondering what people thought of the Roger Federer tossup? I do admit that I follow tennis a lot, and I know people will just chastise me for falling into the trap of the Fundamental Error of QuizBowl, but when the clue starts off with a clue from the 2008 Olympics, isn't that not a good clue to start off with, because many of the medal winners will be remembered, especially those that are gold medalists?

I liked the South Africa sports question, even though South Africa was related to an answer for like the umpteenth time it seems.
When I played that question, a teammate and I buzzer raced to it before "Wawrinka" was even finished. If the answer had been "2008 Olympics," then the question would have been a hose because at that point, there was no way to know what the question was asking for. I also thought that that specific clue was far too easy, but I also follow tennis pretty thoroughly. The question probably would have been better if it had started with some minor result of his form some years back.

On another note, I didn't notice any Hindu myth in this iteration of ACF Fall. There was a packet I didn't play, but was there a reason it was omitted, or did I just not notice it?
There was a tossup on Avatars of Vishnu(?) in the final.
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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by mc1093alpha »

I will say, ignoring the minor math comments and some questionable difficult ranges in bonuses, I very much enjoyed the tournament and thought the questions were well written and the distribution was pretty good as far as being similar to past ACF Fall tournaments (I have my own problems with distribution favoring too much musicals/operas/plays, but that is probably just cause I don't appreciate them as much as the vast majority of others and the few I like never seem to be tossed up :P). Some particularly well liked questions were the Borneo question, the Second Coming question (I am still so angry I didn't buzz earlier on :P), the black hole question (arg, angry at myself for this one too!), the commutative question (a good example of pyramidal knowledge in a math question I thought (although now I forget what the beginning part was)), and the Omayyad Dynasty question (I really liked this one, I had a little "fuck! i.

As a n00b, I thought it was generally pretty accessible and fun tournament! In retrospect I realized I should have had this post much earlier, before I started to pick apart a few specific math questions :P
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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by mpellegrini »

I wrote a large chuck of the Delaware packet, but ended up missing the tournament. I'm curious to see how it got edited. Anyone know when this set is going to be posted?
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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by Frater Taciturnus »

mpellegrini wrote:I wrote a large chuck of the Delaware packet, but ended up missing the tournament. I'm curious to see how it got edited. Anyone know when this set is going to be posted?
after the british mirror on the 20th.
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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by Sun Devil Student »

A couple quick points from a time-strapped founder of the world's largest (by population/to my knowledge) quizbowl island:

1) Excellent tournament overall. The Arizona State squadron had a lot of fun at this, and I personally had the time of my life losing a 340-270 shootout to UCLA B (among many other memorable moments). It seems that the California Tech mirror (why don't we call them that anyway, like all the other "Techs" out there?) had a distinctly stronger-than-novice field, and/or the questions were easier than last year's ACF Fall, or maybe both - the vast majority of my opponents were either upperclassmen or were freshmen/sophomores with significant high school experience, and it showed in their excellent play on this level of questions. As I recall from my informal polling, the only truly first-year players other than my own novices from ASU were the two men of UCSD B and maybe 2 or 3 others.

2) Maybe this goes in the "hosting tournaments" thread, but I'd like to publicly compliment the Caltech hosting staff and all the moderators from any other schools for clawing back much of the horrendous delay in the tournament schedule after the first three rounds got far, far behind (they managed to finish round 13 by 6:30pm). Also, they didn't give out a sportsmanship award, so I'll give a shout-out to Claremont B, which declined to protest me being prompted (by a lay moderator, at my own suggestion) for "Legend of Zelda:" when the only underlined part was "Ocarina of Time" (in fact they helped the moderator keep score when she was struggling with laptop problems and roughly estimated that the protest was less than the 265-195 final score).

3) If my opinion as the de-facto coach of a very new team matters at all, I posit that there is no such thing as "too easy" when you're making a tournament for freshmen who not only have never played quizbowl before but also may have graduated from overcrowded, underfunded public high schools that don't teach some of the most basic names and ideas upon which our civilization is built. I would suggest that ACF Fall simply cover a wider range between the easy-part and the hard-part of the bonuses (contrast to Collegiate Novice, which I suggest should have non-hard hard parts that are about equivalent to "medium" ACF Fall parts), in order to expose novices to some of the beyond-basic stuff while still keeping most of the 10s and 20s at the basics in all fields. How about this: A 30 at ACF Fall should be equivalent to a 20 at ACF Regionals or a 10 at ACF Nationals. Give or take? Do I have the wrong idea about the relative levels of these tournaments?
(Exception: Trash can be harder because that's what new freshmen know nowadays, at least in the Sonoran Desert. I also would throw out the idea of using current events and interesting "cutesy"/mixed-category stuff to replace trash, but that's just me; my ASU teammates might prefer to see more "true" trash questions.)

4) In one round (I forget which one), UCLA A astutely observed that there were only three science tossups out of 20. We had both written down the tossup answers and I confirmed their observation. Did anyone else notice this (or remember which packet it happened in?)

5) The packet supposedly written by my team (ASU F) actually contains only three tossups and zero bonuses that have *any* resemblance at all to what I submitted. I'm curious as to whether this is just because I was late turning it in or because my questions were terrible (or duplicated a better-written question by other teams). E-mail feedback from editors would be appreciated. In any case, whoever played the ASU F packet has mostly the editors to thank, not me.

6) One of those tossups I do recognize in "my" packet is the Brothers Grimm one (I was trying to fill the "post-500 AD European lit" slot at the deadline and one of my teammates, who ended up not going due to illness, gave me the idea). I apologize to Rebecca Maxfield of Brown University and to all other players who were negatively affected by my use of "this author". I was, indeed, trying to avoid collapsing the answer space to only one possibility too early, and at the time saw no way to write the tossup without giving some kind of indication as to what kind of answer was desired. I attempted to compensate for the trickery by accepting either "Jacob Grimm" or "Wilhelm Grimm" as well as "Grimm brothers". In hindsight, I probably should have made the answer be "Grimm's Fairy Tales" (I didn't at the time because I thought it would still be too transparent; however, the collection is probably less transparent than the two authors and I did not realize how deceptive the singular "author" could be). Again, sorry to everyone who didn't convert the question for the above reason.

7) Once more, on behalf of myself as a player and the ASU Quizbowl Team as their coach, a big thank you to all quizbowlers who helped with putting on this tournament.

edit: I thought it was Rancho Bernardo that beat me 34-27 but Caltech's stats say it was UCLA B. I wasn't quite so close to RB but it was still a fun game.
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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by Auroni »

Sun Devil Student wrote:6) One of those tossups I do recognize in "my" packet is the Brothers Grimm one (I was trying to fill the "post-500 AD European lit" slot at the deadline and one of my teammates, who ended up not going due to illness, gave me the idea). I apologize to Rebecca Maxfield of Brown University and to all other players who were negatively affected by my use of "this author". I was, indeed, trying to avoid collapsing the answer space to only one possibility too early, and at the time saw no way to write the tossup without giving some kind of indication as to what kind of answer was desired. I attempted to compensate for the trickery by accepting either "Jacob Grimm" or "Wilhelm Grimm" as well as "Grimm brothers". In hindsight, I probably should have made the answer be "Grimm's Fairy Tales" (I didn't at the time because I thought it would still be too transparent; however, the collection is probably less transparent than the two authors and I did not realize how deceptive the singular "author" could be). Again, sorry to everyone who didn't convert the question for the above reason.
I want to praise you and the editors for selecting this fantastic answer choice -- the tossup on it was great. The pronoun choice was unfortunate, but it seems a little difficult to select at first -- the best that I could come up with was "one author with this surname," which is a semi-cumbersome phrase and has to repeat throughout the tossup. There might be some problems with that, namely that individual Brothers Grimm might not have authored whole stories, but that phrase choice does the least disservice to people playing out of anyone, with the maximum disservice being no tossups on this incredibly accessible and creative answer choice at all.

Again, I thought that the difficulty of this tournament was absolutely spot-on. Here is a tournament where a team consisting of players that have never played before can score up to 200-300 points in matches against other teams of their caliber. Among teams of players that have played before, I watched several high scoring matches all day. The tournament was absolutely not too easy for our field, and probably not for any of the sites that ran yesterday. When I read the unused packets in the car, I couldn't first- or second- line half of the tossups. That's how it's supposed to be. Nobody really dominated this tournament even if they ended up scoring around 27 points per bonus.

As to Matt Jackson's inquiry, I think that Matt Jackson and players of his caliber need to ask themselves what they are getting out of Fall, not what Fall should do to provide for players like him. Fall should be written in consideration of its target difficulty, namely being an incredibly accessible tournament that is fun for 99% of its attendees, instead of making concessions to any particular subgroup of people that might be playing it. It's okay to have a few tossup answers that predominate the regular collegiate game, and it's absolutely okay to have trash tossups on "kiddie" things if those things are things that people have a reasonably good chance of knowing. There was inevitably bonus variability that sometimes correlated with subjects, but 99% of the bonuses that I read to teams yesterday demonstrated a good-faith effort to be fair and accessible to teams.

So yeah, Fall should be like this every year. Is this a tournament that you might enjoy yourself playing? I think that if you are frustrated with so many easy early clues and "insta-30s," then the answer for you should be no. The majority of college tournaments are not like this one, so by all means sit this one out if it doesn't challenge you. That's the decision I made this year, and I think it was the right decision.
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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by Gautam »

theMoMA wrote:It would be nice to see some levity here.

I don't speak for this year's editors, though I think they did a very good job staying true to the vision that has made Fall the most successful tournament in the history of player-run collegiate quizbowl. I've edited two Falls, one as the head editor. I've also contributed to three MUT sets that were written largely in line with the principles that I think should govern Fall editors. I have written none of those tournaments with any consideration for how the bonuses will distinguish between the top teams in the country. It simply makes no sense to do so.

Some bonuses are a little harder, some are a little easier. Which team get the slightly more favorable bonuses will certainly influence the outcome of a close match. But what really influences the score is getting more tossups. If both teams get ten tossups, each point per bonus of advantage for one team is worth ten points to that team over the course of a match. Each tossup exchange is worth something like seventy points. Harping on whether bonuses are gradating between a hypothetical 24 PPB team and a hypothetical 26 PPB team is pointless; even if one team is getting 22 PPB and the other is getting 28 PPB because of bonus unevenness, getting that eleventh tossup is still going to win the game for the 22 PPB team, assuming negs don't swing it the other way (110 + 240 = 350, 90 + 250 = 340).

So I generally try to dedicate my efforts to evening out the bonuses as much as possible (as opposed to trying to find four parts per twenty questions that the hypothetical 26 PPB team would get that a hypothetical 24 PPB team would not). And more importantly, I dwell extensively on clue ordering of tossups. I want the person who knows the most about the subject to have the best chance to get the tossup, since getting those tossups at the margin is what's going to win those close games. I thought that this year's Fall did a more than decent job of doing that.

When Matt Jackson says that it's "pointless" for him to play this tournament because each tossup he negged was an eighty-point swing, I could not disagree more. Playing your best and smartest game given the difficulty of the questions is one of the most important quizbowl skills to have, and I find it incredibly fun and challenging to figure out a successful personal playing strategy in varying situations.
Best post in this thread.

I, too won't speak for the editors of this tournament, but I want to chime in with the "ACF Falls are not written with the top teams at the NE and mid-Atlantic sites in mind" message. This was not the message I received or gave out in the two years that I worked on fall either.

Also, to people making comments about the difficulty, I encourage you to think about tournament difficulty a la statistics instead of relying on anecdotal/experiential data. When you're working on 350 different tossups and bonuses with 5 different editors, you're never going to get 100% consistency in difficulty. There will always be a distribution of difficulty. If you actually take the time to consider this distribution, a lot of things have gone right. The expected value of the difficulty has been in line (good teams are getting 22+ ppb, middling teams are getting ~15-17 ppb, etc.) The standard deviation has not been too high (there are occasional bonus parts like "Convergence of the Twain" without Thomas Hardy but not too many.) The skewness tends to zero (there are some harder bonuses, some easier bonuses; they usually even out.) The kurtosis is almost always positive. The distribution is not multimodal suggesting that there is a decent level of communication between the chief editor and all the others about the difficulty, and everybody is mostly on the same page. In short, the difficulty distribution has been pretty damn close to one in which 100% of the questions are at the expected difficulty, i.e. a single line at the mean.

Unfortunately, a lot of things happen; editors are not 100% accurate at judging difficulty, chief editors do not have all the time at their hands to modulate the difficulty of each bonus, people submit some difficult things which editors might let through because they're in a good mood (this happens very rarely for easy tournaments; it is mostly observed with harder tournaments,) etc. If this is the reason why the difficulty isn't distributed at exactly the expected value, it's all okay.

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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by Gautam »

Sun Devil Student wrote: 3) If my opinion as the de-facto coach of a very new team matters at all, I posit that there is no such thing as "too easy" when you're making a tournament for freshmen who not only have never played quizbowl before but also may have graduated from overcrowded, underfunded public high schools that don't teach some of the most basic names and ideas upon which our civilization is built. I would suggest that ACF Fall simply cover a wider range between the easy-part and the hard-part of the bonuses (contrast to Collegiate Novice, which I suggest should have non-hard hard parts that are about equivalent to "medium" ACF Fall parts), in order to expose novices to some of the beyond-basic stuff while still keeping most of the 10s and 20s at the basics in all fields. How about this: A 30 at ACF Fall should be equivalent to a 20 at ACF Regionals or a 10 at ACF Nationals. Give or take? Do I have the wrong idea about the relative levels of these tournaments?
I am not quite sure what you want to say here, but 30 points at acf fall will never mean 20 at regs and 10 points at acf nationals. First of all, most of the teams that play acf fall will not play acf ntionals at all, so it makes no to arbitrarily compared the difficulty. Second, the easy part of a nationals bonus isn't exactly just as difficult as the hard part of a fall bonus; a fair number of times, it can be, but there's no rule saying that this should be the case. I can see "Convergence of the Twain" as a middle part of a 2011 Nats bonus (thought it might be a little on the easy side) even though it was a hard part at 2010 Fall.

The suggestion that fall should "simply cover a wider range between easy and hard parts" is also really confusing: are you saying that the easy parts should be easier and the hard parts should be harder, so that there can be more leeway in the meiddle parts? If so, this will undo the hard work from the last three years that's been devoted to calibrating difficulty. I really think that having harder hard parts will just indulge people who complain about things being too easy, and having easier easy parts will just be too insulting. People might disagree with me on this, and I'd love to hear about it, but I think Fall is at a good place wrt target difficulty of individual parts and I wouldn't want to see it changed.

EDiT: when I say "too insulting" i mean that most people who play fall probably come in with the expectation that the collegiate game is a little harder than the HS game they were used to. If people who've played quizbowl for the first time do find the easy parts of Fall too difficult, then they should try reading/practising on collegiate novice and highschool tournaments first and then move on to ACF Fall.

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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by Mechanical Beasts »

every time i refresh i have a new name wrote:I want to praise you and the editors for selecting this fantastic answer choice -- the tossup on it was great. The pronoun choice was unfortunate, but it seems a little difficult to select at first -- the best that I could come up with was "one author with this surname," which is a semi-cumbersome phrase and has to repeat throughout the tossup.
I'd think the solution to this--unless the tossup, which I haven't seen, drew on sources other than the fairy tales they co-wrote--could be to write a tossup on "stories by the Brothers Grimm" or "Grimms' fairy tales" or "accept basically anything indicating works written by one or more Grimm brothers." Since there are plenty of sets of works in literature, you're fine.
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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by theMoMA »

"one author with this surname wrote about...." That shouldn't be too confusing, though Andy's way is probably fine as well (though I would probably not write something like that for an audience that is unfamiliar with quizbowl; I've noticed that even the "Mozart's symphonies" type tossups get really confusing for new teams).
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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by Mechanical Beasts »

theMoMA wrote:"one author with this surname wrote about...." That shouldn't be too confusing, though Andy's way is probably fine as well (though I would probably not write something like that for an audience that is unfamiliar with quizbowl; I've noticed that even the "Mozart's symphonies" type tossups get really confusing for new teams).
Yeah, that's a good point--I forgot in the middle of writing that post that they're not given a nice easy title that's universally used; otherwise it'd just be as easy as tossing up a short story collection, say.
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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by theMoMA »

Crazy Andy Watkins wrote:As one of the "certain players," I should clarify that I certainly don't dispute this. I think the only point on which we differ is whether there's a point to Matt Jackson playing, basically. I agree that that's a quizbowl skill but I'm not sure if honing that metagame skill is a worthwhile reason to attend a tournament like ACF Fall; you could just as easily do that in practice, I think. If I were in Matt Jackson's shoes, I might prefer to go to tournaments that challenge me more, in a direct sense, and omit Fall.
I'm not trying to give players a motivation to play or not to play Fall (for what it's worth, I've never played Fall). I'm just saying that games are not "pointless" if both teams can thirty any given bonus. Playing well and winning games against other good teams is a pretty worthwhile point, if you ask me.
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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by Mechanical Beasts »

theMoMA wrote:Playing well and winning games against other good teams is a pretty worthwhile point, if you ask me.
I agree; that's pretty worthwhile--it can be a lot of fun. But it's neither the best way to improve nor the best way to have matches that you feel, inside, had a reliable result. When both teams have a near-maxed knowledge of the material in the abstraction of the fall canon, packet-to-packet variability (not the bad kind, just the "this packet's Euro lit is Spain/Russia not France/Germany" or "this packet's chemistry is thermo, not inorganic" or something) has a bigger and bigger influence on the winner. Doubtless it's productive to go to such tournaments! But if you had to pick between two tournaments, I can understand that Matt Jackson might find ACF Fall frustrating in some ways.
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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by Sun Devil Student »

gkandlikar wrote:you saying that the easy parts should be easier and the hard parts should be harder, so that there can be more leeway in the meiddle parts?
No, I was suggesting ACF Fall easy parts be about the same as for Collegiate Novice but that ACF Fall hard parts be harder than Collegiate Novice hard parts. I have the impression (perhaps incorrectly) that this is actually exactly what happened this year, and as I said, I'm very happy with how this tournament turned out overall. Over 12 rounds, I got only about 3 bonuses that I thought were too hard for this level. I couldn't comment much more without actually looking at the questions.
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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by Cheynem »

Another option might be to just make the Brothers Grimm material a bonus. For what it's worth, I thought the lead-in was really cool to that one.

Also, in my ignorance I had never heard of "Convergence of the Twain" until last year's ACF Nats and even then I only remember it as "that thing Andrew Yaphe said really quickly in the finals."
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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by Sun Devil Student »

gkandlikar wrote: I really think that having harder hard parts will just indulge people who complain about things being too easy
Also, I'm suggesting that the purpose of hard parts at ACF Fall should not be to please second- or third-year players. The purpose should be to let first-year players know that these harder answers exist (and it might be necessary to make the hard stuff into clues rather than answers for proper convertibility etc). That's just my suggestion though, those more experienced may disagree.
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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by mc1093alpha »

To some extent, "hard parts" are a benefit to first year players. Those that actually have knowledge in some field will be able to make the connection before some experienced player just frauds the question/already has some sort of binary knowledge built in. I don't think that it makes sense to have relatively easy parts earlier on just so that it gives an in-experienced player a chance at a buzzer race against an experienced player.

And, generally, I feel that the questions found a nice balance in early difficulty for newb players.
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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by grapesmoker »

theMoMA wrote:Also, let's have a little pause for a discussion of ACF tournaments. I'm speaking only for myself as a former editor and ACF voter here, not for ACF. So if Jerry wants to contradict or elucidate anything I have to say, he can go right ahead.

First off, "ACF Novice" was not an ACF event. It was my independent project (with the help of a talented group of writers) conducted under the auspices of ACF. It did not "replace" Winter in any sense. I definitely anticipate that ACF will continue to sponsor the tournament as long as someone is willing to coordinate it (and I may indeed be interested in doing so again next year). I wouldn't mind if ACF adopts Novice as an official event, but I don't think that it's necessary for its continued success.

ACF members voted to contract the Winter event after a discussion in which we brought up three main concerns. First, many of us did not want to overtax or overextend ACF's resources, especially our editors. Second, many were concerned that having two similar tournaments in rapid succession detracted from each tournament's attendance and quality. Finally, many recalled the clogged second-semester schedule and hoped that concentrating on one regular-difficulty tournament would alleviate some of the congestion. It's my personal hope that ACF Regionals becomes a stronger, more cohesive, and more well-attended event because of the change. I would like to see Regionals become the flagship regular-difficulty event on the collegiate schedule, essentially (alongside SCT) the tournament that a quizbowl team plays in order to show that it's a team.

Finally, as I have said, ACF Fall is the most successful student-run quizbowl tournament ever. Over a hundred teams play each year. I don't know the exact numbers, but the only other tournament that comes close in attendance is SCT (depending on whether you combine DI and DII attendance). Fall has provided countless players with their first introduction to the collegiate game. New players are overwhelmingly excited to play it, and they almost uniformly enjoy themselves. More teams write for Fall than any other tournament, and it's no coincidence that good submissions to other tournaments are on the rise. Unlike other introductory events, Fall has been amazingly successful at funneling teams to other tournaments and more involvement in the circuit. In short, I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that Fall is ACF's greatest success story. Regardless of the "identity crisis" that certain players have imposed on it, Fall continues to be an appropriate, fun, well-written tournament for new teams and players.
For what it's worth, this is an entirely accurate account of what happened and I stand behind all of this.

I have not seen the questions from this set, but I feel that some of the responses to it are operating from an entirely confused notion of what ACF Fall is. I will have some more detailed responses later today.
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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by Nick »

I think it should be pointed out that for every person on here who thinks ACF Fall was too easy, theres at least three more people who played the set and thought it was too hard, I guarantee it.

In general, I thought the set was very good and certainly within the standard "quizbowl margin of error" as far as wonky questions and difficulty fluctuations go.

With regards to Andrew's point: it seems evident that ACF Fall is a huge success and draws a significantly bigger crowd than most other college circuit tournaments- my question then is: why is there only one? Fall seems to provide good questions to all range of high school and college teams (minus the very top college teams) and apparently provides something that a lot of teams want to attend- so why aren't there more ACF tournaments at this level?
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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by Cheynem »

I'm not a member of ACF, but let's be realistic here, ACF is run by people who are in school and have full time jobs. The members of ACF, at various capacities, produce ACF Fall, ACF Regionals, and ACF Nationals, three highly successful tournaments. While different editors work on different tournaments, each tournament is a gigantic responsibility. I'm skeptical if ACF could produce "another" ACF Fall, for instance nor do I think they should. That's not to say I disagree with your point. I actually think more ACF Fall-like tournaments can and are able to be produced--collaborative tournaments, perhaps, written by various enthused programs.

EDIT: Andrew makes a great point: MUT and EFT are good examples of this, as would perhaps using a summer example, the VCU Open Sunday tournament. What do these tournaments have in common? They are written by active programs with a mix of experienced and not so experienced writers, and in some cases quite collaborative projects.
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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

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I would posit that EFT and MUT are among the best-attended circuit tournaments in overall attendance. Just because ACF isn't filling the demand for introductory tournaments doesn't mean that no one is.
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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by Frater Taciturnus »

theMoMA wrote:I would posit that EFT and MUT are among the best-attended circuit tournaments in overall attendance. Just because ACF isn't filling the demand for introductory tournaments doesn't mean that no one is.
Low (or at least lower in EFT's case) difficulty housewritten events drawing a large crowd eh? How much of this attendance bump can be attributed to high schools that decide to play MUT or EFT or Fall, but not other college events?
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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by Auroni »

Frater Taciturnus wrote:
theMoMA wrote:I would posit that EFT and MUT are among the best-attended circuit tournaments in overall attendance. Just because ACF isn't filling the demand for introductory tournaments doesn't mean that no one is.
Low (or at least lower in EFT's case) difficulty housewritten events drawing a large crowd eh? How much of this attendance bump can be attributed to high schools that decide to play MUT or EFT or Fall, but not other college events?
Illinois did an exceptional job garnering college teams that play infrequently at their EFT site a few weeks ago, so at least for this site, a ton of said high school teams weren't needed to host such a successful large tournament.
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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by Nick »

No, I definitly understand that theres only so much ACF specifically can organize. But I should be more clear- I mean that I think there should be more ACF Fall-difficulty tournaments in general. Yes, you're right, MUT and EFT also have huge fields. I think that my point is that theres something very relevant about that.

It seems that, and I could be way off, there are, traditionally, a handful of easier tournaments (EFT, Fall, MUT, Delta Burke), a handful of "regular difficulty" tournaments (SCT, Regs, Winter/MLK, Penn), and a handful of harder tournaments (ICT, ACF Nats, Chi Open, Minn. Open). I suppose I would contend that, for the sake of expanding quizbowl and providing more people with more meaningful/enjoyable games and more opportunities, the ratio shouldn't be 1:1:1, but instead something closer to 3:2:1.

Thoughts?
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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by dtaylor4 »

every time i refresh i have a new name wrote:
Frater Taciturnus wrote:
theMoMA wrote:I would posit that EFT and MUT are among the best-attended circuit tournaments in overall attendance. Just because ACF isn't filling the demand for introductory tournaments doesn't mean that no one is.
Low (or at least lower in EFT's case) difficulty housewritten events drawing a large crowd eh? How much of this attendance bump can be attributed to high schools that decide to play MUT or EFT or Fall, but not other college events?
Illinois did an exceptional job garnering college teams that play infrequently at their EFT site a few weeks ago, so at least for this site, a ton of said high school teams weren't needed to host such a successful large tournament.
To be more exact, there was one (1) "high school" team.
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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by Rococo A Go Go »

Nick wrote:With regards to Andrew's point: it seems evident that ACF Fall is a huge success and draws a significantly bigger crowd than most other college circuit tournaments- my question then is: why is there only one? Fall seems to provide good questions to all range of high school and college teams (minus the very top college teams) and apparently provides something that a lot of teams want to attend- so why aren't there more ACF tournaments at this level?
I don't think ACF themsevles need to do too much more on this front, as they already contribute a top novice tournament and sponsor another. There are basically 6 of these type tournaments on the schedule this year: ACF Novice, EFT, ACF Fall, Delta Burke, DII SCT and MUT. Even not counting Novice (which seems to be easier than the rest of those events), that's still 5 tournaments a year that are accessible for nearly all collegiate teams. I think there might be room for another novice-oriented tournament in the spring semester (I'm thinking MCMNT could fill this role, but it could be a new project too) if someone wanted to work one in, but I don't think overall there is a drought of easier events. All the quizbowl community needs to do is band together on these events and try to get a mirror in every region, and contribute questions when needed.

On a more general note: I personally didn't think this set was too difficult, but it represented a pretty good challenge for a player like me who isn't very good. I'm glad that some people are so good they can put up 90+ PPG against good competition on this set, but that definitely doesn't mean the set was too easy. There were teams that didn't put up a PPG that high this weekend, and I'm pretty sure that they don't share the sentiment that ACF Fall is too easy.
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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by Auroni »

Nick wrote: It seems that, and I could be way off, there are, traditionally, a handful of easier tournaments (EFT, Fall, MUT, Delta Burke), a handful of "regular difficulty" tournaments (SCT, Regs, Winter/MLK, Penn), and a handful of harder tournaments (ICT, ACF Nats, Chi Open, Minn. Open). I suppose I would contend that, for the sake of expanding quizbowl and providing more people with more meaningful/enjoyable games and more opportunities, the ratio shouldn't be 1:1:1, but instead something closer to 3:2:1.
This sort of matches up with a vision of quizbowl that I have, which will probably by its own nature never be realized. That is to make quizbowl as a whole "easier" in the sense that every tournament we have now move down a notch in difficulty from what the latest incarnation turned out to be (with some exceptions, like collegiate novice and ACF Fall, which are just fine where they are, as well as Chicago Open, which should be the hardest fucking event all year). I think that if we do that, we would have something close to your 3:2:1 ratio, but realistically I've seen that collegiate writers (admittedly, myself included) get tired of writing easy questions, which is why there aren't more easy tournaments than there are now. I think overcoming this tiredness and boredness with lower-difficulty writing would be a key step to providing more easy tournaments in the season at the expense of some of the harder ones.
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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by vcuEvan »

First, the editors of this tournament did a fantastic job. Dallas (lit, geo), Carsten (history), Will (science), John (arts), and Guy (RMP, SS, trash) should all be congratulated.

I don't have a lot to add on top of what others have said with regard to the vision of the tournament. It seems to me that over the past three years, Fall has had one of the most consistent missions of any quizbowl tournament, and for the most part, has hit that target fairly squarely. I stated in the announcement that
The difficulty level of ACF Fall 2010 is the same as that of the last two years, so teams are encouraged to follow the difficulty levels of ACF Fall 2008 and ACF Fall 2009.
This seems to have held true. I do agree with the criticism that difficulty seemed to vary somewhat between categories. There were attempts made to calibrate difficulty at the beginning of the process, and while these were somewhat effective, there's room for improvement here. I'd be interested in hearing any suggestions on this topic.

Regarding specifics. A few of the issues brought up, such as the wording of the British Columbia tossup, were mentioned to me before the set was sent and I simply forgot to change them. Also, the way this tournament was put together involves adding editor questions into packets, and the country clusters that people have pointed out were simply a result of my carelessness in adding them. I did catch a round that almost had 3/3 South Africa content, but clearly missed a lot of stuff as well. The Brothers Grimm tossup: I really liked the answer, but the execution clearly screwed people over.

Brandeis mirror: I appreciate Brandeis stepping in because there may not have been a New England mirror without them. However, there were obviously a lot of problems. Jerry is absolutely right that the search for hosts needs to be more proactive. I didn't go far beyond the editors of the tournament (Yale, Harvard, Brown) when the lack of New England bids became clear. There also needs to be a support system built in from old and new hosts. Some of this should come from ACF. It probably would have helped if I had offered a sober approach to seeding, finding moderators, etc. But some of this also needs to come at the regional level. With more collaboration we might have realized that Yale could reserve rooms and that Brown and Harvard could collectively provide staff. In regions where teams want to play or are willing to host but worried about their staffing resources being overwhelmed, these collaborations may be the answer.

Submitting teams: If you want your questions to get used, submit early. By the time the 20th packet rolls in, the majority of the questions are generally repeats. If you're sending in the 50th packet, it's probably all repeats and the tournament may already be written. If you want feedback on your packet, email me. I'll either answer your questions or defer them to the relevant editor.

Finally, a six line cap on tossups was actually enforced for this tournament with no exceptions. Do people agree with this policy?
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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by Frater Taciturnus »

vcuEvan wrote: Finally, a six line cap on tossups was actually enforced for this tournament with no exceptions. Do people agree with this policy?
Absolutely.
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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by Nick »

Auroni, I think you hit the nail on the head. The good, experienced players are the ones who edit the tournaments, and even before that, they decide which tournaments are going to exist. They might not always choose to give up writing the hard, open tournament that theyd rather play in favor of an easier tournament (or two) which might be boring to write, but will probably serve the wants/needs of three times as many people.

And Conder, I'd have to disagree that theres enough of Fall level tournaments. Even you said personally you were challenged by this ACF Fall. If you got to decide what the next tournament was in the college circuit schedule- would it be another ACF Fall kind of tournament or would it be something harder? If we polled everybody who might possibly go to either, I think the answer would overwhelmingly be another ACF Fall kind of tournament.
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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by The King's Flight to the Scots »

Nick wrote:Auroni, I think you hit the nail on the head. The good, experienced players are the ones who edit the tournaments, and even before that, they decide which tournaments are going to exist. They might not always choose to give up writing the hard, open tournament that theyd rather play in favor of an easier tournament (or two) which might be boring to write, but will probably serve the wants/needs of three times as many people.

And Conder, I'd have to disagree that theres enough of Fall level tournaments. Even you said personally you were challenged by this ACF Fall. If you got to decide what the next tournament was in the college circuit schedule- would it be another ACF Fall kind of tournament or would it be something harder? If we polled everybody who might possibly go to either, I think the answer would overwhelmingly be another ACF Fall kind of tournament.
I'm not sure I'd support adding more Fall events to the schedule, per se: this season has been so full of them that people like Evan and I have yet to compete in a real tournament. I would like to see more regular events around the EFT to T-Party range, though.
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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by Auroni »

Cernel Joson wrote:
Nick wrote:Auroni, I think you hit the nail on the head. The good, experienced players are the ones who edit the tournaments, and even before that, they decide which tournaments are going to exist. They might not always choose to give up writing the hard, open tournament that theyd rather play in favor of an easier tournament (or two) which might be boring to write, but will probably serve the wants/needs of three times as many people.

And Conder, I'd have to disagree that theres enough of Fall level tournaments. Even you said personally you were challenged by this ACF Fall. If you got to decide what the next tournament was in the college circuit schedule- would it be another ACF Fall kind of tournament or would it be something harder? If we polled everybody who might possibly go to either, I think the answer would overwhelmingly be another ACF Fall kind of tournament.
I'm not sure I'd support adding more Fall events to the schedule, per se: this season has been so full of them that people like Evan and I have yet to compete in a real tournament. I would like to see more regular events around the EFT to T-Party range, though.
I think it's been demonstrated that people like you and Evan have indeed played EFT and have indeed had competitive games there, even if both of you walked out with 25 ppb at the end of the day.
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