The Quizbowl Resource Center

Ethnic history of the Vilnius region wrote:Questions on important government programs seem to be an untapped area; I wonder what subject area that came under.

Current events; that's probably where these belong, unless they're old enough to pass muster as history questions.

Ringil wrote:I felt like this was a fine set for NAQT's distribution and stuff. There were some questions that were fairly hard, but cool like Theodoric

This was the last history question into the set Thursday night. I'm quite sure the leadin was (at least!) ICT difficulty, but I didn't have time to write something slightly easier.

round 14 wrote:The ~Gesta de Xysti purgatione~ portrayed this ruler as a new Valentinian. He tried to heal the Acacian Schism and took power by deposing a Scirian chieftain. One advisor to this ruler was the founder of a monastic retreat at Vivarium; another was (*) executed along with Symmachus and wrote ~The Consolation of Philosophy~. For 10 points--Cassiodorus and Boethius advised what successor of Odoacer, a "great" Ostrogothic king of Italy?

answer: _Theodoric_ the Great (or _Theoderic_ I of the Ostrogoths)

bt_green_warbler wrote:

Ringil wrote:I felt like this was a fine set for NAQT's distribution and stuff. There were some questions that were fairly hard, but cool like Theodoric

This was the last history question into the set Thursday night. I'm quite sure the leadin was (at least!) ICT difficulty, but I didn't have time to write something slightly easier.

round 14 wrote:The ~Gesta de Xysti purgatione~ portrayed this ruler as a new Valentinian. He tried to heal the Acacian Schism and took power by deposing a Scirian chieftain. One advisor to this ruler was the founder of a monastic retreat at Vivarium; another was (*) executed along with Symmachus and wrote ~The Consolation of Philosophy~. For 10 points--Cassiodorus and Boethius advised what successor of Odoacer, a "great" Ostrogothic king of Italy?

answer: _Theodoric_ the Great (or _Theoderic_ I of the Ostrogoths)

I'm a little confused at the Acacian Schism clue here. My understanding is, and a little bit of quick searching seems to support this, that Theodoric encouraged the schism because he wanted to break the Italian clergy from any possible connection to the eastern empire. When I heard this question during my bye, I would have negged that clue with Justinian (though I guess the word "tried" implies that the attempts were unsucessful).

Thomas Burns, A History of the Ostrogoths, p. 92 wrote:Justin and Hormisdas acted with the full knowledge of Theodoric, whom they kept well-informed at every stage. ... Theodoric had cause to rejoice in the reestablished propriety of unity. The single most sensitive focus of strife among his Roman subjects was gone, and with it an obvious kernel for rebellion.

I do think I could have rephrased that to make it easier to eliminate Justin and Justinian.

Jeff (or even others with access to the question set), could you please post the "hell is other people" tossup from DI. I'm not sure how others feel, but this seemed to me like a semi-bizarre answerline. I would have much rather seen a tossup on No Exit (which I give as my answer pretty early in the TU, although I'm sure I missed a key pronoun early on in the question due to fast-paced - but still very good - reading).

Also, since I'm not sure who the best person to ask is or where this question is best directed, I'll ask it while I'm here: how will we go about getting copies of the questions? As far as I know we're still guaranteed a copy of the set for playing, but we didn't receive any hard copies at the tournament (which ran a paperless tournament, as I'm sure most other sites did with the questions not being sent out till Friday).

round 14 wrote:This observation follows one man's plea that a woman recognize that pacifism--not cowardice--made him dodge military service. That woman admits she seduced her cousin's wife. It is said as the speaker strokes the bronze on a mantelpiece, after he dismisses (*) red-hot pokers. It is spoken by Garcin, who sees that the three tormented souls will make themselves miserable. For 10 points--give this four-word quote from Jean-Paul Sartre's ~No Exit~ about the nature of Hell.

Anyone who played SCT and would like a paper copy of the questions should email me; we will charge you $10 for shipping.

If it's not a hassle, could people indicate if they're talking about DI or DII questions in their posts?

Thanks,
-Seth

cvdwightw wrote:I think we've already exhausted in chat the non-unique clue in the Pan tossup (short version: Britannica, among other sources, says the whole King-Midas-judging-music-contest clue applies to both Marsyas and Pan; people who reflex buzzed off the clue - like me - should have probably been more aware that the early clues didn't make a lot of sense if the answer was Marsyas; question should have had a clue that only appears in the Pan myth of the music contest), but maybe Jeff should post that tossup so it's clear what's being talked about.

This one's on me; it didn't occur to me that people would think Marsyas was a viable option after the first two sentences, but putting in something unique to the Pan v. Apollo contest would have made the question stronger.

-Seth

Ondes Martenot wrote:Two minor issues I noticed while reading DII

1. There was a tossup on statins, and then a tossup the next round on cholesterol (I think there was significant clue overlap between the two)

I actually caught this one after the cholesterol tossup showed up late Thursday night. I let people know about it, but I guess that somehow got lost in the shuffle.

MicroEStudent wrote:There was a bonus on Shirley Sherrod/Andrew Breitbart/Tom Vilsack in one DI packet and then in the next packet, there was a tossup on Breitbart where the middle clues were exactly the same as the bonus clues, but inaccurate (Huffington Post, not Report, and he no longer works for Drudge).

This one I did not catch; I don't know if anyone else caught it but it didn't get fixed, or if it slipped past everyone. I also don't know how this one made it past the automated repeat checker.

-Seth

grapesmoker wrote:

theMoMA wrote:I think that the clue about Culture and Imperialism and Mansfield Park is somewhat tired at this point. It's a good sort of clue, but in this case, it's come up a lot recently and I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people who don't know much about either Said or the novel itself got fifteen for buzzing there.

It may not be the optimal clue, but the notion that one could only know about this because of quizbowl is entirely false.

Good thing I didn't say that, then.

setht wrote:

MicroEStudent wrote:Breitbart stuff

it slipped past everyone. I also don't know how this one made it past the automated repeat checker.

The repeat checker thought "Andrew Breitbart" and "Andrew J. Breitbart" were different people. I've since fixed this, but obviously I should have caught it when I read those rounds earlier this week.

Things that rocked:

Femtochemistry
Bolsa familia
500 days of summer

and some other things I can't recall.

setht wrote:

Ondes Martenot wrote:Two minor issues I noticed while reading DII

1. There was a tossup on statins, and then a tossup the next round on cholesterol (I think there was significant clue overlap between the two)

I actually caught this one after the cholesterol tossup showed up late Thursday night. I let people know about it, but I guess that somehow got lost in the shuffle.

I thought that that was fixed in DI (that was the only context in which I heard about the repeat). The only writing/editing I did for SCT happened after the DII set was more or less finalized, so I can't speak well to that.

Matt Keller wrote:My email to Jeff that made it here was from being on the protest committee; I actually had to step down as bio and chem editor due to lack of free time these days.

You're missed already.

The Quest for the Historical Mukherjesus wrote: More complaints:
Packet 2:
-Trees: Stylistically, it makes more sense to just have a tossup on trees in either Greek or Norse myth, esp when you're character-confined. The Welsh leadin was quite hard if you're someone not named Rob Carson, and it would have created a better gradient if you lead in with the Heliades, maybe go to Melampus, then end with Baucis and Philemon.
-Countee Cullen: Why on earth was "The Ballad of the Little Brown Girl" not in this tossup?
-Periodic: I liked this one. This is not a complaint (ILTO. TINAC)
-Hilbert: For all future reference, just say "He's not Peano, but he names a space-filling curve". Not that this was a problem since you mentioned the axiomatization of geometry before that, which is his second most famous thing.
-Phase transitions: Is there any reason to put Ehrenfest classification scheme after order parameter?

I extensively reworked the trees tossup, and perhaps was wrong to think that the Battle of the Trees was something anyone would know. Having said that, I'm not sure I agree with what I take to be your main argument here--that high-level NAQT myth questions can't afford to jump between different systems. I thought the edited version had a fairly good number of clues (including some context clues that I would have thought would be helpful to everyone regardless of their familiarity with the Volsungsaga or whatever).

Cullen: because I thought Copper Sun and The Black Christ (and Harlem Renaissance poet who is presumably not Langston Hughes) were sufficient. Is Ballad head and shoulders above the rest of Cullen's ouevre or something?

Does "ILTO. TINAC" mean something like "I liked this one. This is not a complaint"? Google suggests it means "Integrated Logistics Technology Office. Telecommunication Information Networking Architecture Consortium" but I am dubious.

Hilbert: the thing is that there are more than two people with space-filling curves; then again, it would appear that there are more than two square plane-filling curves, so that clue maybe should have had a bit more context to distinguish it.

Phase transitions: because I learned about Ehrenfest but not order parameter classification in undergrad courses on stat mech (including a p chem course). Is UC Berkeley weird in that regard or something?

The Quest for the Historical Mukherjesus wrote:Packet 3:
-Cherokee: I don't know if the point of this was to fulfill a general knowledge distribution. But pretty much everyone's buzzing on Sal.
-Syncretization was not accepted for Syncretism. Fuck you, name-redacted moderator from this match.

Cherokee: I wrote this to fill out the mixed academic distribution. I certainly did not expect pretty much everyone to buzz on Sal--for one thing, I hoped some people would know about the jazz song; for another, I was not under the impression that pretty much everyone has read The Luck of Roaring Camp.

Syncretization: should have been accepted.

The Quest for the Historical Mukherjesus wrote:Packet 4:
-Why is "refrigerator mothers" in power for Bettelheim?
-Babinet's principle is a strange thing to ask about.

I apparently have warped ideas about what Bettelheim is famous for.

Are you saying that Babinet's principle is super-hard and/or something random that no one actually cares about in physics? I would disagree with either claim, having learned about it in a lower-division class and seen it again in an upper-division class taught by different professors.

The Quest for the Historical Mukherjesus wrote:Packet 7:
-Racemic mixtures: This is completely unpowerable
-You could say that Alpher was on a paper with Bethe and Gamow.

Power marks on most of the bio and chem were done by me in a very compressed time frame, and many of them wound up being guesses on my part as a result.

I think Alpher's actual contributions to science (as opposed to his tangential involvement in a humorous incident of no real significance, which I'm under the impression he somewhat resented) are substantial enough to make for a viable hard bonus part. If that's not the case, I think it would be better not to write such a part at all, rather than relying on a quizbowl-famous anecdote.

-Seth

I wrote a number of questions in areas that I'm generally not super-comfortable writing, and in some cases I also made an effort to write some questions including some "non-traditional" clues or answers. Classical music and archaeology are two categories that come to mind in this regard. I wrote a couple music questions with clues about (what I believe are) well-regarded recordings, since that seems like a relatively untapped clue source that ought to be useful for music buffs. So, music mafia: are my kneecaps in imminent danger? I also wrote the archaeology tossups on "archaeology" and "age (or date or whatever)" using clues from an introductory archaeology course, in an attempt to break away from "Mayan/Mesopotamian site" bowl. Did those questions play reasonably well, or were they terrible?

-Seth

setht wrote: I also wrote the archaeology tossups on "archaeology" and "age (or date or whatever)" using clues from an introductory archaeology course, in an attempt to break away from "Mayan/Mesopotamian site" bowl. Did those questions play reasonably well, or were they terrible?

-Seth

Could you post them? I only heard the D2 version, and was not especially alert that round.

round 11 wrote:This discipline's namesake contexts were distinguished from systemic contexts by Michael Schiffer. Its processual school was championed by Lewis Binford, who adapted the sociological concept of middle-range theories to interpret data on the Mousterian assemblage. (*) Fieldwork in this discipline involves recording the provenience, or original location within a site, of found artefacts. For 10 points--name this study of the material remains of past societies.

answer: _archaeology_

round 13 wrote:This property can be determined in a relative fashion using a poset of interfaces and deposits known as the Harris matrix, or through seriation methods. Relative values of this property can also be found by applying the principle of superposition from stratigraphy, by examining (*) patination, or by measuring fluorine uptake, a method that was used to expose the Piltdown hoax. For 10 points--name this property that can be measured absolutely with radiocarbon methods.

answer: _age_ (or _date_; accept equivalents)

Sorry that these are different from the immediate subject, but they seem germane to the topic in general:
One tossup asked for "the goddess who held her lover Adonis in her arms as he died," to which I buzzed in, and answered "Venus." It was deemed incorrect, but would have been accepted if I had buzzed in with that same answer on the next clue, which said that her union with Anchises produced Aeneas. I am puzzled by this, because the answer line specifically said "accept Venus AFTER the Anchises clue" (pardon me if the wording is inexact--I don't have the questions in front of me right now). Would there be any reason for this? I didn't formally protest because the outcome of the match wasn't affected, but I am curious.

Also, one bonus asked for the first Bourbon king of France, who legalized Protestantism, and I answered "Henry IV of Navarre," which was deemed incorrect because the "of Navarre" part was not in the official answer. I suppose I'm just grousing about this one, but it was somewhat irksome in any case. Did anyone else experience similar problems?

The archaeology question was negged with anthropology in the round I was watching. (What's the difference between archaeology and physical anthropology? I guess the latter is more focused on human remains, and not civilization?)

That's pretty terrible if that wasn't accepted. The guy's from Navarre and was known as Henry of Navarre before he became Henry IV.

Division II, round 9 wrote:This goddess engineered the death of Glaucus, who was eaten by horses. The ~Iliad~ calls her a daughter of Dione, but other sources state that she, like the Erinyes, was born from the castration of Ouranos. She bore Phobos and Deimos to (*) Ares, and she held her lover Adonis as he died. She lay with the mortal Anchises to produce Aeneas. For 10 points--name this wife of Hephaestus, the goddess of love.

answer: _Aphrodite_ (accept _Venus_ after "Anchises")

NAQT correctness guidelines wrote:Questions that refer to "Greek myth" or include unambiguous references to Greek mythological characters generally require that the Greek forms of names be given as answers (e.g. Poseidon rather than Neptune). Similarly, questions that specifically mention "Roman myth" or include unambiguous references to Roman mythological characters generally require that the Roman forms of names be given as answers. The names of corresponding figures from other mythological traditions will not generally be prompted.

This one is slightly unusual in that it includes clues from both Greek and Latin traditions, thus generating the (rather rare) "accept after" construction.

Division II round 5 wrote:B. The Edict of Nantes was promulgated by this first Bourbon king of France; he converted to Catholicism to gain the throne.

answer: _Henry IV_ of France or _Henri IV_ of France (or _Henry IV Bourbon_; prompt on "Henry")

This, by contrast, should certainly have accepted _Henry of Navarre_ as well; I will add this for the subsequent uses of the set.

Melkor6000 wrote:Also, one bonus asked for the first Bourbon king of France, who legalized Protestantism, and I answered "Henry IV of Navarre," which was deemed incorrect because the "of Navarre" part was not in the official answer. I suppose I'm just grousing about this one, but it was somewhat irksome in any case. Did anyone else experience similar problems?

Although, technically, he's Henry III of Navarre and Henry IV of France, not Henry IV of Navarre (although I don't think there was Henry IV of Navarre).

Cheynem wrote:That's pretty terrible if that wasn't accepted. The guy's from Navarre and was known as Henry of Navarre before he became Henry IV.

It was weird, but I was so flustered I didn't protest. It was only for 10 and none of our games were that close (and I can't even remember what round it was--besides Cornell beat us so badly in both our losses that it wouldn't have mattered)

bt_green_warbler wrote:

Division II, round 9 wrote:This goddess engineered the death of Glaucus, who was eaten by horses. The ~Iliad~ calls her a daughter of Dione, but other sources state that she, like the Erinyes, was born from the castration of Ouranos. She bore Phobos and Deimos to (*) Ares, and she held her lover Adonis as he died. She lay with the mortal Anchises to produce Aeneas. For 10 points--name this wife of Hephaestus, the goddess of love.

answer: _Aphrodite_ (accept _Venus_ after "Anchises")

NAQT correctness guidelines wrote:Questions that refer to "Greek myth" or include unambiguous references to Greek mythological characters generally require that the Greek forms of names be given as answers (e.g. Poseidon rather than Neptune). Similarly, questions that specifically mention "Roman myth" or include unambiguous references to Roman mythological characters generally require that the Roman forms of names be given as answers. The names of corresponding figures from other mythological traditions will not generally be prompted.

This one is slightly unusual in that it includes clues from both Greek and Latin traditions, thus generating the (rather rare) "accept after" construction.

Ahh, I see, thanks for the clarification. I guess I didn't realize (a)the distinction in correctness guidelines, and (b)that "Venus and Adonis" was really "Aphrodite and Adonis". Oops, my bad. I'll pass that on to my squad.

OctagonJoe wrote:

Melkor6000 wrote:Sorry that these are different from the immediate subject, but they seem germane to the topic in general:
One tossup asked for "the goddess who held her lover Adonis in her arms as he died," to which I buzzed in, and answered "Venus." It was deemed incorrect, but would have been accepted if I had buzzed in with that same answer on the next clue, which said that her union with Anchises produced Aeneas. I am puzzled by this, because the answer line specifically said "accept Venus AFTER the Anchises clue" (pardon me if the wording is inexact--I don't have the questions in front of me right now). Would there be any reason for this? I didn't formally protest because the outcome of the match wasn't affected, but I am curious.

Also, one bonus asked for the first Bourbon king of France, who legalized Protestantism, and I answered "Henry IV of Navarre," which was deemed incorrect because the "of Navarre" part was not in the official answer. I suppose I'm just grousing about this one, but it was somewhat irksome in any case. Did anyone else experience similar problems?

Although, technically, he's Henry III of Navarre and Henry IV of France, not Henry IV of Navarre (although I don't think there was Henry IV of Navarre).

Interesting. My Euro textbook from HS always said Henry IV of Navarre, so I just believed it. Although it might have said Henry IV, of Navarre (the difference being a comma, which provides some more distinction)

The Quest for the Historical Mukherjesus wrote:

jonah wrote: Packet 7:
-You could say that Alpher was on a paper with Bethe and Gamow.

I would say that pronunciation guides would help on those names (which I realize is supremely nitpicky). The moderator I had for that round had trouble with them (and ended up pronouncing all of them incorrectly), and I would assume that others had similar experiences. I liked the question itself, though!

I just wanted to say that in the past I have been critical of questions that had inaccuracies regarding semiconductor related topics, but this year's iteration seem free of these errors.

setht wrote: I also wrote the archaeology tossups on "archaeology" and "age (or date or whatever)" using clues from an introductory archaeology course, in an attempt to break away from "Mayan/Mesopotamian site" bowl. Did those questions play reasonably well, or were they terrible?

-Seth

I didn't actually play on the latter question, but I remember being hesitant to buzz with "dating" or "age" because of some weird noun/verb confusion when I heard it for the D2 finals. That may be due to me not hearing correctly or moderator error... but the question itself is good.

The archaeology question is fine. The phrase "sociological method of middle-range theories" could probably have been boiled down to just "middle-range theories" if the latter phrasing would have permitted another middle clue, but I can see that possibly inducing some "sociology" negs

OctagonJoe wrote:

Melkor6000 wrote:Also, one bonus asked for the first Bourbon king of France, who legalized Protestantism, and I answered "Henry IV of Navarre," which was deemed incorrect because the "of Navarre" part was not in the official answer. I suppose I'm just grousing about this one, but it was somewhat irksome in any case. Did anyone else experience similar problems?

Although, technically, he's Henry III of Navarre and Henry IV of France, not Henry IV of Navarre (although I don't think there was Henry IV of Navarre).

I guess it gets down to how specific you want to be, but technically he is Henry IV of France, and Henry III of Navarre. In much the same way, I doubt that one would accept James I of Scotland for James I (as he was James VI of Scotland).

Melkor6000 wrote:

Cheynem wrote:That's pretty terrible if that wasn't accepted. The guy's from Navarre and was known as Henry of Navarre before he became Henry IV.

It was weird, but I was so flustered I didn't protest. It was only for 10 and none of our games were that close (and I can't even remember what round it was--besides Cornell beat us so badly in both our losses that it wouldn't have mattered)

bt_green_warbler wrote:

Division II, round 9 wrote:This goddess engineered the death of Glaucus, who was eaten by horses. The ~Iliad~ calls her a daughter of Dione, but other sources state that she, like the Erinyes, was born from the castration of Ouranos. She bore Phobos and Deimos to (*) Ares, and she held her lover Adonis as he died. She lay with the mortal Anchises to produce Aeneas. For 10 points--name this wife of Hephaestus, the goddess of love.

answer: _Aphrodite_ (accept _Venus_ after "Anchises")

NAQT correctness guidelines wrote:Questions that refer to "Greek myth" or include unambiguous references to Greek mythological characters generally require that the Greek forms of names be given as answers (e.g. Poseidon rather than Neptune). Similarly, questions that specifically mention "Roman myth" or include unambiguous references to Roman mythological characters generally require that the Roman forms of names be given as answers. The names of corresponding figures from other mythological traditions will not generally be prompted.

This one is slightly unusual in that it includes clues from both Greek and Latin traditions, thus generating the (rather rare) "accept after" construction.

Ahh, I see, thanks for the clarification. I guess I didn't realize (a)the distinction in correctness guidelines, and (b)that "Venus and Adonis" was really "Aphrodite and Adonis". Oops, my bad. I'll pass that on to my squad.

OctagonJoe wrote:

Melkor6000 wrote:Sorry that these are different from the immediate subject, but they seem germane to the topic in general:
One tossup asked for "the goddess who held her lover Adonis in her arms as he died," to which I buzzed in, and answered "Venus." It was deemed incorrect, but would have been accepted if I had buzzed in with that same answer on the next clue, which said that her union with Anchises produced Aeneas. I am puzzled by this, because the answer line specifically said "accept Venus AFTER the Anchises clue" (pardon me if the wording is inexact--I don't have the questions in front of me right now). Would there be any reason for this? I didn't formally protest because the outcome of the match wasn't affected, but I am curious.

Also, one bonus asked for the first Bourbon king of France, who legalized Protestantism, and I answered "Henry IV of Navarre," which was deemed incorrect because the "of Navarre" part was not in the official answer. I suppose I'm just grousing about this one, but it was somewhat irksome in any case. Did anyone else experience similar problems?

Although, technically, he's Henry III of Navarre and Henry IV of France, not Henry IV of Navarre (although I don't think there was Henry IV of Navarre).

Interesting. My Euro textbook from HS always said Henry IV of Navarre, so I just believed it. Although it might have said Henry IV, of Navarre (the difference being a comma, which provides some more distinction)

Hey, Zach, I was the on-bye Columbia reader for that match. I thought for a couple of seconds and ultimately didn't take it because I recalled something like what Carsten had pointed out from a History class I'd taken, as when I didn't see it on the answer list, I thought there might be some reason. In almost all cases I would've taken it since you knew, but I didn't want to veer from the answer line + my vague knowledge. Sorry if that affected things and/or stuck in your proverbial craw.

Bartleby wrote:

OctagonJoe wrote:

Melkor6000 wrote:Also, one bonus asked for the first Bourbon king of France, who legalized Protestantism, and I answered "Henry IV of Navarre," which was deemed incorrect because the "of Navarre" part was not in the official answer. I suppose I'm just grousing about this one, but it was somewhat irksome in any case. Did anyone else experience similar problems?

Although, technically, he's Henry III of Navarre and Henry IV of France, not Henry IV of Navarre (although I don't think there was Henry IV of Navarre).

I guess it gets down to how specific you want to be, but technically he is Henry IV of France, and Henry III of Navarre. In much the same way, I doubt that one would accept James I of Scotland for James I (as he was James VI of Scotland).

There is a difference here because there is no Henry IV of Navarre. I'd still think accepting Henry IV of Navarre is questionable because he was the third Henry in Navarre, not the fictional fourth Henry.

Rothlover wrote: Hey, Zach, I was the on-bye Columbia reader for that match. I thought for a couple of seconds and ultimately didn't take it because I recalled something like what Carsten had pointed out from a History class I'd taken, as when I didn't see it on the answer list, I thought there might be some reason. In almost all cases I would've taken it since you knew, but I didn't want to veer from the answer line + my vague knowledge. Sorry if that affected things and/or stuck in your proverbial craw.

No offense taken, I was merely puzzled. It was only for 10, and now I understand exactly why it wasn't accepted (this is why these fora are handy). If we were going strictly by facts, then I see that I was definitely incorrect in my answer. All in all, I should have not been a pretentious ass by giving more information than was necessary (after all, that's what prompts are for) That particular incident shall be noted in the UB Quiz Bowl annals, as well as in the general "stupid mistakes" category. By the way, you did a good job reading

setht wrote:

The Quest for the Historical Mukherjesus wrote:Packet 3:
-Cherokee: I don't know if the point of this was to fulfill a general knowledge distribution. But pretty much everyone's buzzing on Sal.

Cherokee: I wrote this to fill out the mixed academic distribution. I certainly did not expect pretty much everyone to buzz on Sal--for one thing, I hoped some people would know about the jazz song; for another, I was not under the impression that pretty much everyone has read The Luck of Roaring Camp.

Can someone post the text of this? I almost pulled the trigger off the jazz song, but I thought I misheard something that made me wait until "Sal."

setht wrote:

The Quest for the Historical Mukherjesus wrote:Packet 4:
-Why is "refrigerator mothers" in power for Bettelheim?

I apparently have warped ideas about what Bettelheim is famous for.

I get the impression that this is similar to the Mansfield Park question - it's important enough that people who have real knowledge will have no problem buzzing there, but the phrase is so distinctive that once you hear it come up in quizbowl, it's going to stick with you. For what it's worth, it apparently is a middle clue in an ACF Nationals '08 packet, after the word "kibbutz."

I feel that the "Ruby" tossup in Div2 was definitely a bad idea. The useful information in the first clue is "this is an object-oriented programming language with scripting capabilities," which applies equally well to Python, as well as likely a whole bunch of similar but less well-known programming language. The first clue at which the tossup is buzzable is "this language uses gems," which can be buzzed on with approximately zero real computer science knowledge, because assuming you know that Ruby is the name of a language, it's pretty obvious at that point what the question is talking about.

tiwonge wrote:The archaeology question was negged with anthropology in the round I was watching. (What's the difference between archaeology and physical anthropology? I guess the latter is more focused on human remains, and not civilization?)

Archeology is considered a subfield of anthropology, so that seems promptable. But yes, physical anthropology is specifically the study of fossil human remains and not cultures so if that was the neg. Both questions look fine anyways.

cvdwightw wrote:

setht wrote:

The Quest for the Historical Mukherjesus wrote:Packet 3:
-Cherokee: I don't know if the point of this was to fulfill a general knowledge distribution. But pretty much everyone's buzzing on Sal.

Cherokee: I wrote this to fill out the mixed academic distribution. I certainly did not expect pretty much everyone to buzz on Sal--for one thing, I hoped some people would know about the jazz song; for another, I was not under the impression that pretty much everyone has read The Luck of Roaring Camp.

Can someone post the text of this? I almost pulled the trigger off the jazz song, but I thought I misheard something that made me wait until "Sal."

Packet 3 wrote:The Ray Noble song of this name supposedly inspired Charlie Parker's creation of bebop. Sal, a woman with this nickname, dies giving birth to a baby who drowns with Kentuck in "The Luck of Roaring Camp." Members of this people include Confederate general Stand Watie, who signed the treaty of New (*) Echota, and a silversmith who created a syllabary for their language in 1821. For 10 points--name this Native American people who were forcibly moved to Oklahoma along the Trail of Tears.

answer: _Cherokee_

setht wrote:

Packet 3 wrote:The Ray Noble song of this name supposedly inspired Charlie Parker's creation of bebop.

That's what it was. I misheard "Ray Noble" and then figured that since the question didn't mention "Koko" (which is, by any account that I can find, the song that was actually based on "Cherokee"), it probably wasn't worth the risk to guess. As far as I can tell, that clue's not pervasive enough in quizbowl not to just name-drop the song.

cvdwightw wrote:

setht wrote:

Packet 3 wrote:The Ray Noble song of this name supposedly inspired Charlie Parker's creation of bebop.

That's what it was. I misheard "Ray Noble" and then figured that since the question didn't mention "Koko" (which is, by any account that I can find, the song that was actually based on "Cherokee"), it probably wasn't worth the risk to guess. As far as I can tell, that clue's not pervasive enough in quizbowl not to just name-drop the song.

I think it's very possible the clue was just referring to Parker's performance of Cherokee, which is very famous (in fact, before I heard this question, I had always assumed that Parker wrote it).

The Quest for the Historical Mukherjesus wrote: -Syncretization was not accepted for Syncretism. Fuck you, name-redacted moderator from this match.

I think you're being a bit hard on the moderator. As was pointed out here, lacks of alternative answers put moderators in a bind. I mean, how's a mod who's never studied or heard of the subject supposed to know that "syncretization" should be acceptable? Like, a mod would probably be wrong to accept "socialization" for "socialism." Word forms can change everything regarding answer choices. In this case, the agreement seems to be that your answer should have been acceptable. That's not always how it goes, and the mod should have had better guidance in the answer line.

Ethnic history of the Vilnius region wrote:

The Quest for the Historical Mukherjesus wrote: -Syncretization was not accepted for Syncretism. Fuck you, name-redacted moderator from this match.

I think you're being a bit hard on the moderator. As was pointed out here, lacks of alternative answers put moderators in a bind. I mean, how's a mod who's never studied or heard of the subject supposed to know that "syncretization" should be acceptable? Like, a mod would probably be wrong to accept "socialization" for "socialism." Word forms can change everything regarding answer choices. In this case, the agreement seems to be that your answer should have been acceptable. That's not always how it goes, and the mod should have had better guidance in the answer line.

I'm not a comparative religion scholar either. I don't think its that hard to be lenient.

I see nothing really wrong with moderators, especially inexperienced ones, erring on the side of caution. You can always protest. Obviously, of course, better answer lines are the best solution.

Eric, moderators who are not experts can't possibly know when they're being lenient enough and when they're being too lenient. At this event where being too lenient could be the difference between a team getting a bid to nationals or not, it is unreasonable to expect most moderators to go along with some sort of gut feeling about what should be right, especially when some number of them are probably random ACUI staff. We need to drive home to NAQT that they need to be incredibly thorough in their answerlines, rather than complain about moderators not overriding the packet.

Jeremy Gibbs Freesy Does It wrote:Eric, moderators who are not experts can't possibly know when they're being lenient enough and when they're being too lenient. At this event where being too lenient could be the difference between a team getting a bid to nationals or not, it is unreasonable to expect most moderators to go along with some sort of gut feeling about what should be right, especially when some number of them are probably random ACUI staff. We need to drive home to NAQT that they need to be incredibly thorough in their answerlines, rather than complain about moderators not overriding the packet.

Yes, you are right. But the answerline in question did say [accept word forms], and this was not a first-time moderator. I wouldn't be nearly as mad otherwise; the staff at Moravian were a kind and well-meaning bunch, and did a very good job hosting. In any case, this kind of issue is best brought up in other contexts.

And that abbreviation does stand for "I like this one. This is not a complaint." I think I defined it up there.

More stuff:

Packet 6:
-I'm kind of ambivalent about this spin tossup; dropping a word like helicity in the first line is a pretty big figure-it-out clue.
-I'm not a fan of this Runyon tossup, partly due to the idea of answering a tossup on the person who wrote "Guys and Dolls", but also because there seems to be a lot of biographical details and not a lot of descriptions of his work.
-Yellow Turban: ILTO. TINAC
-Ligands: This one was frustrating. In the first line, you're describing the crystal field splitting parameter (or ligand field splitting parameter), and saying "a splitting parameter associated with these entities". I buzzed in an said "d orbitals" because the ligand field splitting parameter is the difference in energy between two sets of d orbitals.
-Black Panther Party: This one was an instant race on the cafeteria thing.
-Ludendorf: I don't know enough about this one, but Chris negged with Hindenberg. Maybe there's an issue?
-Armenian: I have no idea who thought this was a good idea, but I'm willing to bet in pretty much every room it went blah blah blah genocide.
-Externality: shouldn't it be "These phenomena", plural?
-There's 1/1 linguistics in this packet.

Packet 8:
This one was pretty good, but....
-Plant hormones should have been promptable for cytokinins, because its not clear how specific you're being. I figured out that you were talking about zeatin in the second line, but it still didn't help me.
-I have a hard time believing that a bonus part on "The Raw Youth" would show up at a regular tournament
-I'm happy that Ahmed Zewail came up, but I said spectroscopy. I don't think that's wrong given the clues.
-I never expected artemisinin to come up. Ever. It would have been nice if you said quinine's outdated or something.

There was a Greensleeves tossup (in DII) that said that the song was used in the Intermezzo of St. Paul's Suite, which is incorrect as it's actually in the Dargason fourth movement. I buzzed in on that clue and got confused, leading to a neg.

Crossposted from other thread:

More stuff:

Packet 6:
-I'm kind of ambivalent about this spin tossup; dropping a word like helicity in the first line is a pretty big figure-it-out clue.
-I'm not a fan of this Runyon tossup, partly due to the idea of answering a tossup on the person who wrote "Guys and Dolls", but also because there seems to be a lot of biographical details and not a lot of descriptions of his work.
-Yellow Turban: ILTO. TINAC
-Ligands: This one was frustrating. In the first line, you're describing the crystal field splitting parameter (or ligand field splitting parameter), and saying "a splitting parameter associated with these entities". I buzzed in an said "d orbitals" because the ligand field splitting parameter is the difference in energy between two sets of d orbitals.
-Black Panther Party: This one was an instant race on the cafeteria thing.
-Ludendorf: I don't know enough about this one, but Chris negged with Hindenberg. Maybe there's an issue?
-Armenian: I have no idea who thought this was a good idea, but I'm willing to bet in pretty much every room it went blah blah blah genocide.
-Externality: shouldn't it be "These phenomena", plural?
-There's 1/1 linguistics in this packet.

Packet 8:
This one was pretty good, but....
-Plant hormones should have been promptable for cytokinins, because its not clear how specific you're being. I figured out that you were talking about zeatin in the second line, but it still didn't help me.
-I have a hard time believing that a bonus part on "The Raw Youth" would show up at a regular tournament
-I'm happy that Ahmed Zewail came up, but I said spectroscopy. I don't think that's wrong given the clues.
-I never expected artemisinin to come up. Ever. It would have been nice if you said quinine's outdated or something.

The Quest for the Historical Mukherjesus wrote:-Ludendorf: I don't know enough about this one, but Chris negged with Hindenberg. Maybe there's an issue?

He took command of the 14th Brigade after its leader was killed and soon forced the surrender of Liege. Along with Max Hoffman, he was sent to assist General Prittwitz's replacement and planned the battles of the Masurian Lakes and Lodz in late 1914. After Erich von (*) Falkenhayn's resignation he planned Operation Michael, the German assault on the Western Front in 1918, along with his partner Paul von Hindenburg. For 10 points--name this German general who took part in the Beer Hall Putsch.

Hindenburg is wrong from clue one, although I could imagine players becoming confused by the description of Hindenburg before he is named.

The Damon Runyon tossup only had one biographical clue (and it was important that he was a Hearst columnist). You can question whether or not tossing him up at all is a good idea, but for what it was, it seemed okay to me.

I was unaware of the Black Panthers' free breakfast thing being THAT stock, although I remember it coming up before. I buzzed there but it wasn't a race at our site.

-Ludendorf: I don't know enough about this one, but Chris negged with Hindenberg. Maybe there's an issue?

The lead-in started with the Siege of Liege, which was on the Western Front, which only Ludendorf was at while Hindenburg was on the Eastern Front the whole time. Ludendrof then went east and both worked on the Masurian Lakes campaign, but that came after the Liege clue, so it's legit.

setht wrote:

The Quest for the Historical Mukherjesus wrote: More complaints:
Packet 2:
-Countee Cullen: Why on earth was "The Ballad of the Little Brown Girl" not in this tossup?

Cullen: because I thought Copper Sun and The Black Christ (and Harlem Renaissance poet who is presumably not Langston Hughes) were sufficient. Is Ballad head and shoulders above the rest of Cullen's ouevre or something?

Eric, I think your ire is misplaced here. The Ballad of the Brown Girl (not the little brown girl) is, to my knowledge, not more well-known than other Cullen titles (especially some of his individual poems like "Yet Do I Marvel," which I think undergrads are most likely to read/learn about). Also, I don't think it's useful to criticize questions for not including one specific clue, unless that clue is necessary for that question to be converted at an acceptable level; as Jerry said in a different thread, there are a multiplicity of possible good questions that can be written on a topic, not just one good question.

bt_green_warbler wrote:

The Quest for the Historical Mukherjesus wrote:-Ludendorf: I don't know enough about this one, but Chris negged with Hindenberg. Maybe there's an issue?

He took command of the 14th Brigade after its leader was killed and soon forced the surrender of Liege. Along with Max Hoffman, he was sent to assist General Prittwitz's replacement and planned the battles of the Masurian Lakes and Lodz in late 1914. After Erich von (*) Falkenhayn's resignation he planned Operation Michael, the German assault on the Western Front in 1918, along with his partner Paul von Hindenburg. For 10 points--name this German general who took part in the Beer Hall Putsch.

Hindenburg is wrong from clue one, although I could imagine players becoming confused by the description of Hindenburg before he is named.

Yeah, I buzzed on "Falkenhayn's resignation" with Hindenburg; I certainly don't doubt the legitimacy and uniqueness of the other clues (which, obviously, I didn't recognize or know), but that one is a bit confusing.

Alright, inexperienced moderator question. DII, packet 4 bonus part:

Édouard Lalo composed this violin concerto for Spanish virtuoso Pablo de Sarasate.
answer: _Symphonie espagnole_

Captain: "Spanish Symphony."
Me: *hesitates*
Captain: [sub-1s pause] "Uh, Symphonie espagnole."

I wound up ruling that "Symphonie espagnole" was not making "Spanish Symphony" more specific (so I could only judge the correctness of "Spanish Symphony"), that "Spanish Symphony" was not an acceptable answer, and that the team absolutely should protest this ruling if it could matter (it didn't).

Based solely on the information I had in front of me and the NAQT rules, was this the right call? Does this change if I actually know something about the topic at hand?