The Quizbowl Resource Center

This is the official announcement for the Terrapin Invitational Tournament 2013 which will take place at the University of Maryland, College Park on March 24, 2013. This event will be a packet submission tournament aiming to be roughly the same difficulty as the last TIT.

Our packet submission requirements are the same as that of ACF: "Any team with at least one person on it who played a regular, collegiate, academic quizbowl tournament (either as a college student or as a high school student) prior to September 1, 2011 is required to submit a packet in order to participate".

The main editing team consists of me, the head editor, Chris Manners and Brian McPeak.

MIRRORS:

We are actively seeking mirrors and will keep a running list in this thread, if you're interested, contact Brian McPeak at bmcpeak at terpmail.umd.edu.
MSU, 3/23/13: viewtopic.php?f=8&t=13828
Washington University of St. Louis, 3/23/13: viewtopic.php?f=8&t=14139
Skype, 5/4/13: viewtopic.php?f=8&t=14130
Rice

PRICING:

+$100 - Base Fee
-$50 - Packet submitted by Saturday, February 2.
-$25 - Packet submitted by Saturday, February 9.
+$0 - Packet submitted by Saturday, February 16.
+$25 - Packet submitted by Saturday, February 23.
+$50 - Packet submitted by Saturday, March 2.
+$100 - Packet submitted after that, with an additional $10/day

PENALTIES:

+$10 - For egregiously bad formatting; teams should stick as closely to the ACF formatting as possible:
http://acf-quizbowl.com/documents/2012- ... formatting

DISCOUNTS:

-$5 - Working buzzer discount, unlimited
-$10 - Competent moderator discount

Minimum fee per team: $40.

PACKET GUIDELINES:

Standard ACF distribution and question length, see: http://acf-quizbowl.com/documents/2012- ... stribution and
http://acf-quizbowl.com/documents/2012- ... es/#length

REGISTRATION:

To register, email Brian McPeak at bmcpeak at terpmail.umd.edu. Please indicate how many teams you're bringing (or interested in bringing) and what discounts you think you apply for.

PACKETS RECEIVED:

Rice
Rutgers-New Brunswick
Dartmouth
VCU A
Ladue
Penn A
Michigan A
St. Joseph A
Washington
Texas A & M
UVA
Mike Bentley
Nick Jensen

EDIT: Fixed the year.
EDIT2: Changed the date, added mirror.

Zuz wrote:This is the official announcement for the Terrapin Invitational Tournament 2013 which will take place at the University of Maryland, College Park on March 16, 2013. This event will be a packet submission tournament aiming to be roughly the same difficulty as the last TIT.

For reference, what was the difficulty of the last Terrapin?

The Eighth Viscount of Waaaah wrote:

Zuz wrote:This is the official announcement for the Terrapin Invitational Tournament 2013 which will take place at the University of Maryland, College Park on March 16, 2013. This event will be a packet submission tournament aiming to be roughly the same difficulty as the last TIT.

For reference, what was the difficulty of the last Terrapin?

Past incarnations have been more or less regular, around Regionals difficulty, we're aiming to continue that.

VCU is hosting a HS tournament on this date. This means we would be unable to come.
viewtopic.php?f=48&t=13233

It's been almost two weeks; is there any news on whether or not this can be moved? VCU has been planning to have a high school tournament on 3/16 for over 5 months now, and it would suck if (a) we couldn't get any UVa staffers because of Terrapin and (b) couldn't go to Terrapin. (Note that March 23 is also a bad date [UD & UVa tournaments], so you'd have to use the 17 or 24 if you wanted it in that two weekend period)

This will be held on March 24th. Arun will change the original post shortly.

We've only received one packet for the first deadline. The next one's in a week and I hope people are writing for it. I don't think Arun said where to send packets, but you can send them to me at [email protected]

I have one, which I will send tomorrow. [EDIT: Have actually cannibalized some questions for a different project; will still submit but not for this deadline, or for a while, to give me time to write new questions]

What will be your policy if you do not get enough packets to make a viable tournament?

I think that's a pretty unlikely scenario. If it does happen, I guess it means we don't have enough interest in the tournament, but we are getting more packets and should be fine.

Hey, so I submitted a packet for TIT last year, but since it didn't run last year, that packet was never used...do I still have to submit a new packet this year if I want to submit a team (either at Maryland, or at any potentially closer mirror)?

Zuz wrote:Washington University of St. Louis

Is this mirror going to happen? If so, when?

Hey, I'm really sorry about the delay, but we are indeed hosting a mirror of TIT. I expect to be able to put up an announcement tomorrow, and I've asked Brian about giving teams at our site some leeway with the no penalty deadline. In any case, interested teams should start writing their packets soon since even adding a couple more days doesn't leave a huge amount of time to write.

Hey, so I submitted a packet for TIT last year, but since it didn't run last year, that packet was never used...do I still have to submit a new packet this year if I want to submit a team (either at Maryland, or at any potentially closer mirror)?

Yes, unfortunately. I'm looking into the unused packets from last year but for now you should try to submit a new one.

Apologies if this has already been mentioned somewhere, but how many packets have been submitted?

The University of Washington will be hosting a delayed open online mirror of this tournament. I'll try to get an announcement posted this weekend.

I don't think we'll be able to get a well-done pack into you in time at this point then, considering that it is midterms/spring break/working on packets for another, closer tournament happening the week before. It's not a big deal, at this point it's looking like the only person for sure wanting to go to this from Mac is me anyways...

Apologies if this has already been mentioned somewhere, but how many packets have been submitted?

I'll start a running list in the original post, as of now, 3.

Is this tournament going to be powermarked? Also, what other packets have you received?

The +50 deadline has passed. At this point, if you can still submit a packet and play this tournament but please send me an email letting us know if you're planning to submit a packet and when you think that might happen. My email is [email protected]

Did you receive the packet from Texas A&M that we sent in on Saturday? It isn't listed in the initial post, and I have not received any other confirmation from you.

evilmonkey wrote:Did you receive the packet from Texas A&M that we sent in on Saturday? It isn't listed in the initial post, and I have not received any other confirmation from you.

We did. I'll ask Arun to update the original post.

Here is the field at the Maryland site as of now:
UMD House team (consisting of Chris Ray and whomever he recruits to play with him)
VCU (two teams)
UVA (one team)
Penn (one team)
Blair (one team)

edit: took out GMU, put in Blair

I don't see the packet I wrote in the packet list.

How is this tournament coming? I have heard some dispiriting rumors about the editing staff for this tournament undergoing a bit of a turnover and would like to get a confirmation on what is happening.

How is this tournament coming? I have heard some dispiriting rumors about the editing staff for this tournament undergoing a bit of a turnover and would like to get a confirmation on what is happening.

Well as far as I can tell, there really hasn't been anyone added to the project besides me. I've been on the project for the last two weeks or so. I've been editing literature, mythology, philosophy and social science. By Thursday or Friday, I should be done with that, pending more packets arriving. After that I will be moving on to whatever categories I feel need more editing (which mostly includes science then history.)

Ike wrote:Well as far as I can tell, there really hasn't been anyone added to the project besides me. I've been on the project for the last two weeks or so. I've been editing literature, mythology, philosophy and social science. By Thursday or Friday, I should be done with that, pending more packets arriving. After that I will be moving on to whatever categories I feel need more editing (which mostly includes science then history.)

So basically, you are editing all of Terrapin because at most one other "editor" has done anything.

December 2, 2012 wrote:22:19:54 <@WorstQEvr> a poorly planned terrapin left in the hands of people with little experience organizing the editing of tournaments ends up getting cancelled after severe communication delays and bad scheduling decisions?
22:19:58 <@WorstQEvr> like, who could ever conceive of such a thing
22:20:01 <@WorstQEvr> it's fanciful

Well, at least this one wasn't cancelled, the work was just all off-loaded onto someone else. (Thanks in advance for at least attempting to save the tournament, Ike).

SirT wrote:Well, at least this one wasn't cancelled, the work was just all off-loaded onto someone else. (Thanks in advance for at least attempting to save the tournament, Ike).

Yeah, that's not a super-accurate characterization of what's happening right now, as people from Maryland are still putting work in on this tournament.

I have a radical proposal which I believe would help solve a lot of problems. Take it or leave it.

Right now, it seems as though 11 to 15 teams will get to play the Terrapin set this spring. (6 at the main site, 2 at each of the mirrors which are tottering on the brink of cancellation, and 5 on Skype.) This seems to me like a waste of effort – in other words, as things stand, your effort will result in very few teams playing the set, very few teams enjoying the hard work of whoever is still putting hard work in, and very little money netted for Maryland (especially considering that they now have to send an amount of their mirror fees to Ike commensurate with the proportion of total editing work that Ike does). Many regions, such as mine, didn't get a mirror together at all because it was too late to realistically expect that teams could submit enough packets to yield a decent field. Ike has ten days to fix up thirteen submitted packets and the indeterminate number of editors' packets on top of those thirteen - a pretty insane task which will leave little time for proofreading or editing even if there's magically enough time to make every packet good. Regardless, there's at least 13 submitted packets in some state of existence, and a full, high-quality set only needs two or three more beyond that.

Radical proposal: Why not postpone the use of this set until the fall? Rescheduling "Terrapin / Illinois Closed" for October would kill several birds with one stone.

For one thing, it would allow every region to establish and recruit teams for a well-run, well-attended mirror, bringing in a much larger amount of revenue to Maryland and Illinois and allowing dozens more teams to play the set.

For two, it will give Ike and whoever still counts at Maryland a much larger amount of time to edit questions, combine packets where appropriate, write replacements, get editors packets into tip-top shape, playtest with other experienced editors, proofread, and finalize 14 to 16 excellent, consistent, well-controlled packets of questions, rather than forcing them to rush and complete a mediocre product.

For three, all that extra editing time will help restore consumers' faith in the quality of this set. (To be frank, I didn't push the Northeast to mirror this set because I didn't think three first-time editors would make a set worth the effort. And now we don’t even know who, if anyone, is still working on this at Maryland. The going rumor, to clarify, is that Arun and Chris dropped out entirely but "Brian" is still on board; the community still needs confirmation about exactly who is left rather than a nebulous promise from Isaac that "people from Maryland" still care.)

For four, it helps solve the impending fall "scheduling reform" discussion/crisis/problem by ensuring that we have one regular set ready to go in the fall, to which another could readily be added. It’s often hard to get teams together to write enough sets during the year, and having one available immediately will be a good thing.

I only see two problems with this proposal. The first is that many teams submitted packets already, and there are some fairness issues when it comes to dealing with this fact. Reopening packet submission is unfair to teams who did it right the first time, and penalizing teams for submitting a packet in March while not requiring any in October seems unfair. I think this is rather easily resolved by giving every team that submitted a packet for the March tournament a decent discount – something like “minus $50” – for their trouble and not requiring any further packets from anyone else. The second possible is that it might suck for a few people in the current fields if the tournament were moved to the fall (GMU has some seniors, the eldest Tamil Tiger Mothers will have changed affiliation). But I'd estimate that about two hundred to three hundred more people will get to play the set in the fall than would get to play now (myself included!) and that huge benefit outweighs the losses. You could even offer a narrow exception to the "closed teams only" rule for the set of people who would have gotten to play in the spring but are no longer in school in the fall, to solve this problem.

So, what are people’s thoughts? On the whole, a move would probably be hugely beneficial to this set and the whole quizbowl community.

I would strongly support that proposal and would (assuming noone else wanted to) still be willing to host at MSU, as long as noone minded us picking a date that doesn't conflict with a home football game.

Your tournament has just been MATT JACKSOND!!@!!#@$(

WONED IN TEH FASE!!!*!@$(

RyuAqua wrote:Radical proposal: Why not postpone the use of this set until the fall? Rescheduling "Terrapin / Illinois Closed" for October would kill several birds with one stone.

Penn Bowl 2013: Penn-ance II wants the big October date, and we've already started writing.

RyuAqua wrote:I only see two problems with this proposal. The first is that many teams submitted packets already, and there are some fairness issues when it comes to dealing with this fact. Reopening packet submission is unfair to teams who did it right the first time, and penalizing teams for submitting a packet in March while not requiring any in October seems unfair. I think this is rather easily resolved by giving every team that submitted a packet for the March tournament a decent discount – something like “minus $50” – for their trouble and not requiring any further packets from anyone else. The second possible is that it might suck for a few people in the current fields if the tournament were moved to the fall (GMU has some seniors, the eldest Tamil Tiger Mothers will have changed affiliation).

This sounds like a huge pain. Besides those reasons, I've also already made travel arrangements with work (including moving up my grant applications) and I'm sure that this isn't unique to me. 10 days just isn't enough time.

The Quest for the Historical Mukherjesus wrote:

RyuAqua wrote:Radical proposal: Why not postpone the use of this set until the fall? Rescheduling "Terrapin / Illinois Closed" for October would kill several birds with one stone.

Penn Bowl 2013: Penn-ance II wants the big October date, and we've already started writing.

Isn't there room in the first semester for two regular tournaments, and wouldn't some other group have to step up and write a full tournament if this one weren't available, whereas they wouldn't have to step up if this one were available? Think of early October if Fall stays put, or early November if Fall moves. (Or November 9 through 30 if Minnesota Open isn't in the picture again.)

The Quest for the Historical Mukherjesus wrote:

RyuAqua wrote:I only see two problems with this proposal. The first is that many teams submitted packets already, and there are some fairness issues when it comes to dealing with this fact. Reopening packet submission is unfair to teams who did it right the first time, and penalizing teams for submitting a packet in March while not requiring any in October seems unfair. I think this is rather easily resolved by giving every team that submitted a packet for the March tournament a decent discount – something like “minus $50” – for their trouble and not requiring any further packets from anyone else. The second possible is that it might suck for a few people in the current fields if the tournament were moved to the fall (GMU has some seniors, the eldest Tamil Tiger Mothers will have changed affiliation).

This sounds like a huge pain. Besides those reasons, I've also already made travel arrangements with work (including moving up my grant applications) and I'm sure that this isn't unique to me. 10 days just isn't enough time.

How many days is enough time? (Perhaps 24 days, if Ike's claim that he's been working on this unannounced for two weeks is correct?) Most tournaments are cancelled with even less notice without rescheduling at all. Again, it may suck for a few individuals now, but I think that numerically, hosting when 200+ more people can play across the country and thousands more dollars can be made is a relatively sound idea, if a bit too utilitarian for specific people's taste.

It's a good idea Matt, but too late. UVA has also made plans based on the announcement, and notice is way too short at this point.

VCU also feels that it is far too close to the tournament to cancel it.

Considering that most Terrapin hosts are probably running it at a loss (including us), I think it would be wise to wait a few months and actually get a decent amount of teams (as Matt suggests). I don't have a strong personal opinion on this, but I think there are plenty of teams that for whatever reason (skepticism about quality, disorganization, eligibility confusion, lack of nearby sites) can't/won't attend TIT in a week and a half, but would be able to given a few months.

A few things:

1. Arun has a medical issue and is currently unable to work on the tournament.

2. Everyone previously stated to be working on the tourney is doing so. Chris Manners, Arun [not right now, but in general], Brian, Sohan Vartak, and myself are writing it. Ike Jose has graciously volunteered and has been a great help, but he has not "hijacked" the tournament. He is helping with it.

3. This tournament is going to happen on the 24th. It's too late to change or cancel it.

Since we made the decision to write a packet for this tournament instead of WIT, Texas A&M (and probably Rice as well) would also favor this tournament actually happening.

Courvoisier Winetavius Richardson wrote:A few things:

1. Arun has a medical issue and is currently unable to work on the tournament.

2. Everyone previously stated to be working on the tourney is doing so. Chris Manners, Arun [not right now, but in general], Brian, Sohan Vartak, and myself are writing it. Ike Jose has graciously volunteered and has been a great help, but he has not "hijacked" the tournament. He is helping with it.

3. This tournament is going to happen on the 24th. It's too late to change or cancel it.

In that case, some more straightforwardness in communication would be appreciated. We need to know if you will allow our site (or all sites) to accept 1) teams that were supposed to write a packet but didn't, and 2) open teams in general, or high school open teams in particular.

If we don't get an answer to these questions in a day or two, we may have to cancel. We can't run a two-team tournament.

EDIT: My concerns have been resolved. Thanks Brian!

It sure would be nice to know what time and where this tournament was happening.

I guess that's kind of an important detail. The tournament will be at 9:00 at Jimenez, the usual place.

You should also probably e-mail teams to that effect, per standard procedure (and also the lateness with which the information is coming out). I presume the usual place is 0105?

Also, I've heard rumors of you trying to get a 7th team. I think this is a bad idea; you could easily run a double RR with the current field (dropping Chris Ray for the first RR if you want byes). I'm not sure if people would truly want more games after that, but whatever, you can surely devise some playoff format.

Actually, we can't. We don't have enough packets to do so without doing byes.

Courvoisier Winetavius Richardson wrote:Actually, we can't. We don't have enough packets to do so without doing byes.

SirT wrote:you could easily run a double RR with the current field (dropping Chris Ray for the first RR if you want byes).

Actually you do--you have 14 packets, you could easily run a double RR with the house team for 10 rounds in 10 packets; that leaves 4 packets. Only 3 teams coming to this mirror submitted a packet according to your first post, therefore you have enough packets for a tiebreaker and advantaged final (although, realistically, only Penn & maybe UVA are going to be in contention after the end of a double RR).
More importantly, there is my emphasis above. I always lobby for more games, but even I'd be fine with 9 games in 10 rounds at this point. Plus, what format could you possibly do with 7 teams anyway--you only have 14 packets, so your only choice is a RR followed by 4/3 split, which gives the bottom bracket teams only 8 games in 10 rounds. That's terrible.

With new information about Chris Ray writing a packet, here is a perfectly plausible packet schedule for a double RR for 6 teams with no byes (given how expect it to shake out). The non-RR packets can be switched around liberally--if there is a team ahead in the standings by one game and there is a tie for second place, their packet is used. The packets of the two teams not involved in the finals are used for any finals. I'm not really sure what happens in a three-way tie for first, but if it can be resolved who goes into the final with one full/two half packet(s) then you're fine as it's a one game final (I'm pretty sure it can and this won't happen). Obviously you need to password protect the packets so that the wrong one isn't read.

Anyway, I really hope you are not considering a 7 team tournament because the only option I can see is what I said above: 7 team RR to 4/3 split, giving the bottom bracket only 8 games. I categorically refuse to pay you any money for our B team if they are only getting 8 games.

Yeah, we'll be sticking with your very reasonable 6 team schedule, as no one got back to us about a 7th team, anyway.

Up to date stats can now be found here.

UVA and Penn split games in the prelims, and so a one game final was held. It went to a thrilling overtime, with UVA pulling out the win. Congrats to UVA and Penn, and thanks to everyone who came.

Also, it would be nice if we could have a discussion forum for the set set up.

I realize Maryland is not particularly great at many aspects of running a tournament, including keeping stats, but did you guys really not figure out that it was Chris Ray who went 8/2 in Round 7 against Penn and not Adam? Do you just blindly put in scoresheets?

Courvoisier Winetavius Richardson wrote:Also, it would be nice if we could have a discussion forum for the set set up.

This is ready to go and Brian will approve requests. Find "Terrapin 2013 Discussion" in the user groups interface and apply to join.