MUT 2013 Specific Question Discussion Thread

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MUT 2013 Specific Question Discussion Thread

Post by Auks Ran Ova »

Please discuss specific questions from the 2013 Minnesota Undergraduate Tournament here.

Here's a rough breakdown of who worked on what.

Rob: most of the literature, all of the painting, all of the myth, some of the trash
Mike: all of the history, some of the trash
Andrew: all of the music, all of the social science, some of the other fine arts, some of the religion, a little literature and trash
Gaurav: all of the biology, all of the chemistry, all of the non-math/CS other science, some of the other fine arts, many tiebreakers in various subjects, a couple of religion questions
Matt: all of the physics, all of the math/CS
Bernadette: all of the philosophy, some of the religion
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Re: MUT 2013 Specific Question Discussion Thread

Post by TulaneKQB »

Thanks for putting this together again this year; the Tulane team had a great time playing it. A minor point:

The Robert Louis Stevenson question in Round 7 lists Brom Bones as a character in Treasure Island. Brom Bones is a character in The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Billy Bones is Flint's first mate and a character in Treasure Island.
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Re: MUT 2013 Specific Question Discussion Thread

Post by Auks Ran Ova »

Oh dear. Good catch; I will fix that posthaste.
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Re: MUT 2013 Specific Question Discussion Thread

Post by Fado Alexandrino »

I found an awkward clue pack 3 question 19. "The fourth and final movement of the fourth composition...". Firstly, the clue refers to he 41th (or the last) of these pieces (his fourth symphony only had three movements). Secondly, I felt like like "fourth and final" referred to the answer line, and this would have hosed someone into saying Brahms symphonies because he famously had four.
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Re: MUT 2013 Specific Question Discussion Thread

Post by cruzeiro »

In packet 11, tossup 3 on France refers to the country having a right-wing movement (the Front national) led by Jean-Marie Le Pen - in 2011 he gave up the leadership and it is now held by his daughter, Marine Le Pen.
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Re: MUT 2013 Specific Question Discussion Thread

Post by Cheynem »

Correct--that should have been "This country had a right-wing movement formerly led by..." My mistake, although I hope this didn't confuse anyone.
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Re: MUT 2013 Specific Question Discussion Thread

Post by Auks Ran Ova »

All of the above errors have been fixed for the March 30 mirror.
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Re: MUT 2013 Specific Question Discussion Thread

Post by Excelsior (smack) »

packet 1, tossup 19 wrote:For 10 points, give this term whose additive kind is given by negative one and whose multiplicative kind is the reciprocal.
"negative one" is not in any sense the "additive identity inverse" of anything besides the number one.

Packet 1, bonus 9: What in the almighty fuck is "Ushas"? I have never heard of it, and neither have my parents, who are (or at least were) practicing Hindus. Maybe this actually exists in the Rigveda or whatever, but it sure as fuck shouldn't be in MUT.
packet 1, bonus 12 wrote:Normal vertebral columns contain 33 total vertebrae, which are divided into three regions. The upper and lower portions are the cervical and sacral zones; name either two of the other groups.
Last I checked, there were four regions (not three), as this bonus goes on to claim.
packet 2, tossup 3 wrote:For 10 points, name these massless nuclear particles that have a negative charge.
Charged massless particles? A Nobel Prize for you!
(By the way, electrons are not "nuclear" either!)
packet 2, tossup 6 wrote:The effect of this type of enzymes is reversed by phosphodiesterases.
Shouldn't this be phosphatases, not phosphodiesterases?
packet 2, bonus 4 wrote:ANSWER: particle in a box [prompt on “infinite square well”, “infinite cubic well,” or “infinite potential well”]
There is no good reason to prompt on "infinite square well" instead of accepting it outright. I think the same holds true for "infinite potential well".

Packet 4, tossup 13: It's kind of weird that you have the entire description of the de Broglie wavelength in power but whatever.

Packet 4, bonus 4: A "do not accept `Raijin`" note might be nice in the Ryujin part.
packet 5, tossup 2 wrote:An iron-based catalyst is used in the industrial production of this compound, which has a tetrahedral shape.
While it is true that ammonia is "tetrahedral", this might not be the best way to word that, given that in VSEPR/whatever, ammonia would be described as "trigonal pyramidal".
packet 5, tossup 18 wrote:For a natural number n and zero, this value is n and for two relatively prime numbers, this value is one.
Is GCF even defined when one of its arguments is zero? Even if there is some technical sense in which this is valid, I think it might just be confusing for it to show up so late in the question as a clue, since it might confuse people.

Packet 5, bonus 2: man, this was hard.
packet 6, tossup 12 wrote:this holiday celebrates the triumph of Prahlada over his father
This is literally why Holi is a thing and it is in the first line of the question. There's no way that this is less well-known than e.g. the fact that "n some places, offerings of delicious Puran Poli are made to Agni during this holiday".

Packet 6, bonus 14: there seems to be an aberrant indentation here.

Packet 7, tossup 16: this is probably my favorite trash tossup since ever.

packet 7, bonus 4 wrote:Enantiomerism and diasteriomerism are class of what type of property?

Typos, grammar, etc.

packet 8, tossup 13 wrote:One partial differential equation named for this man states that the square of the Laplacian is equal to the negative square of the wavenumber.

The Helmholtz equation is "del squared plus k squared equals zero". i.e. "the Laplacian [not its square] is equal to the negative square of the wavenumber".

ibid wrote:One quantity named for this scientist is equal to negative KE times the natural log of (*) Boltzmann’s constant

I'm confused by this. You can't take the log of Boltzmann's constant since it's unitful, and in any case, this doesn't resemble anything I'm aware of from thermodynamics. A quick skim over the Wikipedia article doesn't reveal anything similar either.

ibid wrote:and can also be calculated as internal energy minus the product of temperature and energy

"product of temperature and entropy"

Packet 8, tossup 19: I'm under the impression that "confinement" and "asymptotic freedom" are easier (or at least quizbowl-easier) than SU(3) / etc.

packet 9, tossup 9 wrote:ANSWER: electromagnetic induction [prompt on “inductors” or “inductance”]

I don't think there's really any reason to prompt on the latter two things instead of accepting them outright. I know that "inductor" isn't a phenomenon, but as a general principle, being lenient with word forms of common nouns is generally a good idea and certainly won't let somebody without sufficient knowledge sneak by.

packet 9, tossup 17 wrote:The equilibrium of a class of compounds containing this metal is named for Schlenk.

I haven't been nitpicking particular clues for non-factual-accuracy reasons for the most part, but man this is stock

packet 9, bonus 15 wrote:ANSWER: proteosome

"proteasome"

packet 10, tossup 8 wrote:Descriptions of trends in this quantity are always subject a Malmquist bias.

"subject to a"
Also, I'm not sure in what sense the Malmquist bias affects "descriptions of trends in luminosity" - this wording seems to imply that there is some sort of change-over-time involved, which isn't really what's going on in general. Also also, this clue could equally well apply to "apparent magnitude".

ibid. wrote:The apparent (*) magnitude of an object is the value for this quantity as observed from Earth.

Magnitudes and luminosities are not the same thing, though.

Packet 10, tossup 12: people (including me) seemed to think this was kind of a bizarre tossup, what with the mixing of Eastern/Western philosophical notions and all.

packet 11, tossup 6 wrote:An Ice/Ground-type Pokemon that resembles a cross between one of these animals and a boar evolves from Piloswine

1. This was very amusing
2. It would be nice to reword this as "a cross between a boar and one of these animals" because somebody in my room negged with "pig" when that clue came up.

packet 11, tossup 12 wrote:A type of these particles named for Majorana are their own antiparticle and are contrasted with ones named for Dirac.

To the best of my knowledge, this clue also applies specifically to neutrinos (since they could be Majorana) but no other fermions, since all other fermions are known to be Dirac.

packet 11, tossup 15 wrote:To ensure that this compound remains the limiting reagent, care is always taken to add this compound into (*) water rather than water into it; that precaution must be taken because the hydration of this compound is very exothermic.

This clue applies to literally all acids of any reasonable strength (and likewise for bases!). There is a reason the saying goes "Always Add Acid" rather than the more-specific "Always Add Sulfuric Acid But Don't Bother For Nitric Acid".

Packet 11, bonus 11: Edward Tufte! That's awesome!

Packet 11, bonus 13: The Feynman tossup (packet 6, tossup 18) mentions "Caltech physicist" and "namesake diagrams".

Finals 1, tossup 3: "splitting water" is actually a really interesting idea for a tossup and is real-world important and all, but it seemed to have confused people. Had I been playing, I imagine that after wherever in the tossup I figured it out, I would've spent some time trying to figure out if this is a thing with a name. (Also, this Tossup has Random capitalized words in It.)

finals 1, tossup 12 wrote:which produces their “beta keto” variety of these

"the "beta keto" variety of these"
Also from earlier in that tossup, malonic esters are kind of well-known, I thought.

Finals 1, tossup 20: awesome tossup.

Finals 1, bonus 18: just like the last time this topic came up on the forums (after MAGNI), there is no reason to demand the species name of Arabidopsis when scientists who work on it refer to it as just "Arabidopsis".

There were also a reasonable number of grammar/etc errors (mostly missing words), but I didn't make a note of where any of them were, so you may want to do another sweep for that.

Also: your jokes about "Wikipedia claims that..." are, for the most part, not funny.
Last edited by Excelsior (smack) on Mon Apr 01, 2013 12:28 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: MUT 2013 Specific Question Discussion Thread

Post by Cody »

Contra Ashvin, I will take the stance that one shouldn't accept or prompt on either of those things (and I'm always particularly annoyed at it when it appears in answer lines). Just like capacitors are not capacitance and shouldn't be prompted or accepted, inductors and inductance are not electromagnetic induction and should not be prompted or accepted. Words forms are fine, but completely different things are not.
Excelsior (smack) wrote:
packet 9, tossup 9 wrote:ANSWER: electromagnetic induction [prompt on “inductors” or “inductance”]
I don't think there's really any reason to prompt on the latter two things instead of accepting them outright. I know that "inductor" isn't a phenomenon, but as a general principle, being lenient with word forms of common nouns is generally a good idea and certainly won't let somebody without sufficient knowledge sneak by.
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Re: MUT 2013 Specific Question Discussion Thread

Post by Auks Ran Ova »

Thank you for your comprehensive post, Ashvin! We will endeavor to fix these problems where possible. A couple of notes from stuff in my areas:

-I learned about Ushas while reading various stories about Indra, though I'm given to understand Vedic mythology is not too important to contemporary practicing Hindus. That said, there was some discussion among the writers about whether it was too hard, and if no one's getting it there's certainly no harm in toning it down a bit.

-Glad you liked the snowmen tossup.

-I will stop making Wikipedia jokes when you pry the keyboard from my cold dead hands.
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Re: MUT 2013 Specific Question Discussion Thread

Post by Adventure Temple Trail »

I was doing stats all day so I was largely skimming over the packets all by my lonesome and didn't catch things that a reader or player would catch, but these things stood out:

-The architect of DC was Pierre L'Enfant, not Charles L'Enfant.

-Can the phrase "do not accept 'freezing point'" be added to the melting point answer line? We had a game-deciding protest hinge whether solids can logically have a freezing point, being, y'know, already frozen, but as far as I know it's the same point on a phase diagram and the term "freezing point depression" is more common than "melting point depression," so it's probably worth forcing people to say the right one.

-The moderation tossup was pretty unsalvageably terrible. I'm too ignorant to know things about the first three lines, but nothing about the phrase
MUT wrote:One book that advocates this practice argues that the highest goal of human existence is (*) eudaimonia.
uniquely refers to "moderation," whatever that is. Depending on how much you like Aristotle or what part of the Nicomachean Ethics you read, the answer here could be "being virtuous," "the contemplative life," "the political life," "virtue ethics," or any of the specific virtues Aristotle talks about ("being courageous," "sophrosune,"...), and at least in my course work the "golden mean" was explicitly taught as a concept NOT to be confused with "all things in moderation". I would at minimum prompt on any answer involving the words "virtue" or "arete", which could possibly steer someone in the right direction, if you really want to fix this question. But as is this tossup looks really ridiculous and worthy of being scrapped outright.
Last edited by Adventure Temple Trail on Sun Mar 31, 2013 6:12 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: MUT 2013 Specific Question Discussion Thread

Post by Cheynem »

It's Pierre Charles L'Enfant, I think, is where the confusion came from.

I use the Wikipedia thing not because I think the phrase "according to Wikipedia" is funny, but that I think what's being quoted on Wikipedia is funny and I want to indicate that it is probably not true. I might start using the Wikipedia-esque phrase "Some say..."
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Re: MUT 2013 Specific Question Discussion Thread

Post by naturalistic phallacy »

Yeah, Matt, I agree that the moderation tossup was quite bad. It was written on a whim and never really quite worked. I have another extra philosophy tossup that is far less terrible, so it will be replaced.

My philosophy instructor for N Ethics was quite the opposite of yours, apparently. He argued that the result of magnanimous behavior was moderation in everything but virtue. Then again, he was quite old and eccentric, so his interpretation could be way off. If you have any resources you recommend for this, could you email me? I would love to learn more.
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Re: MUT 2013 Specific Question Discussion Thread

Post by Notably Not Pierre »

Ashvin, thanks for catching the errors with the science. I only wrote the science and the math, but it looks like I was responsible for at least my fair share of the mistakes.
Excelsior (smack) wrote:
packet 1, tossup 19 wrote:For 10 points, give this term whose additive kind is given by negative one and whose multiplicative kind is the reciprocal.
"negative one" is not in any sense the "additive identity inverse" of anything besides the number one.
It looks like the words "multiplying by" got eaten here.
Excelsior (smack) wrote:
packet 2, bonus 4 wrote:ANSWER: particle in a box [prompt on “infinite square well”, “infinite cubic well,” or “infinite potential well”]
There is no good reason to prompt on "infinite square well" instead of accepting it outright. I think the same holds true for "infinite potential well".
Agreed.
Excelsior (smack) wrote:
packet 5, tossup 18 wrote:For a natural number n and zero, this value is n and for two relatively prime numbers, this value is one.
Is GCF even defined when one of its arguments is zero? Even if there is some technical sense in which this is valid, I think it might just be confusing for it to show up so late in the question as a clue, since it might confuse people.
The GCD is certainly defined when one of its arguments is zero, and a basic and important fact about the GCD is the one described in the question gcd(n,0) = |n|. This isn't some definition that is made as a convention; it's just a consequence of the definition of gcd as "the largest number which divides both of the given numbers," since everything divides 0.

It's definitely true that the way 0 interacts with divisibility rules is sort of strange if you've never thought about it before, so this clue may be harder than its place in the tossup would suggest. On the other hand, it does provide very helpful circumstantial evidence for what kind of thing the answer must be, so I was reluctant to put it earlier. I guess I can't speak to whether or not this clue appearing at this point in the tossup is confusing to people, but I can't really imagine it would lead people to buzz with something else, or refrain from buzzing with the right answer when they had knowledge. (I guess I could have made the clue a few words longer to disambiguate between "gcd" and "sum".) I'll think about a way to make this clue fit in with the rest of the tossup.
Excelsior (smack) wrote: Packet 8, tossup 19: I'm under the impression that "confinement" and "asymptotic freedom" are easier (or at least quizbowl-easier) than SU(3) / etc.
Ok. You could be right. I was under the opposite impression and thought that SU(3) was stock for QCD/strong force but still important enough to go into the tossup. Do you think that the SU(3) sentence is hard enough to be in power or should the sentence that says "confinement and asymptotic freedom" should come after the SU(3) clue?
Excelsior (smack) wrote:
packet 9, tossup 9 wrote:ANSWER: electromagnetic induction [prompt on “inductors” or “inductance”]
I don't think there's really any reason to prompt on the latter two things instead of accepting them outright. I know that "inductor" isn't a phenomenon, but as a general principle, being lenient with word forms of common nouns is generally a good idea and certainly won't let somebody without sufficient knowledge sneak by.
I tend to agree with you in principle, which is why I put in the "prompt" instruction, but Cody is right on this particular point. These aren't really forms of the same word; they're distinct, but obviously related, things. I tried to pick the middle ground on something where I wasn't sure what the conventional wisdom was. On this I think I should defer to someone more steeped in quizbowl tradition and convention than I.
Excelsior (smack) wrote:
packet 11, tossup 12 wrote:A type of these particles named for Majorana are their own antiparticle and are contrasted with ones named for Dirac.
To the best of my knowledge, this clue also applies specifically to neutrinos (since they could be Majorana) but no other fermions, since all other fermions are known to be Dirac.
I'm not totally sure I understand this one. There are Majorana fermions and Dirac fermions (although there might not be any of the former). It's uncertain which of those classes neutrinos fall into, but it's not like there are Majorana neutrinos and Dirac neutrinos. This seemed fine to me when I wrote it and it still does, although it's possible that it's a pedantic distinction and might trip some knowledgeable person up. Do you see a fix?
Excelsior (smack) wrote: Packet 11, bonus 13: The Feynman tossup (packet 6, tossup 18) mentions "Caltech physicist" and "namesake diagrams".
Good catch. I'll try to change these up a little bit so they don't overlap on clues anymore.

Thanks again for catching obvious errors I should have caught earlier and your commentary and advice on the other things I screwed up in more subtle ways.
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Re: MUT 2013 Specific Question Discussion Thread

Post by Excelsior (smack) »

Re: GCD - yeah, you're right; I wasn't really thinking clearly about it.

Re: strong force - I will defer to somebody with more quizbowl experience on this one, because I'm not really sure what the best clue ordering here is, upon further consideration. One possible option might be to find a way of describing SU(3) without naming it and making that the leadin or something. By the way, I also just noticed "the gauge boson of his force" -> "the gauge boson of _this_ force" in that tossup. You also say "the strongest of the four fundamental forces", which is probably a bad choice of wording. Maybe make that "the most powerful" or some other synonym of "strong".
I'm not totally sure I understand this one. There are Majorana fermions and Dirac fermions (although there might not be any of the former). It's uncertain which of those classes neutrinos fall into, but it's not like there are Majorana neutrinos and Dirac neutrinos. This seemed fine to me when I wrote it and it still does, although it's possible that it's a pedantic distinction and might trip some knowledgeable person up. Do you see a fix?
What I mean to say is that somebody in my room buzzed with "neutrinos" after that clue, and I think they would be technically correct in the sense that there is "a type of [neutrinos] named for Majorana" that can be "contrasted with [neutrinos] named for Dirac", even if one or the other only exists in theory. As such, it might be a good idea to put an "anti-prompt" or whatever to ask someone who buzzes with "neutrinos" to be less specific with their answer. (I refer specifically to neutrinos because it is the only fermion for which this is an issue - somebody who buzzes with "electrons" or whatever is clearly wrong because there are no Majorana electrons.)

One more thing - I'd suggest adding a prompt on "free space" to the first part of packet 8, bonus 9 because of "the permeability of ____" (but not accepting because the bonus does go on to say "space which is free of all matter").
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Re: MUT 2013 Specific Question Discussion Thread

Post by touchpack »

Excelsior (smack) wrote:
I'm not totally sure I understand this one. There are Majorana fermions and Dirac fermions (although there might not be any of the former). It's uncertain which of those classes neutrinos fall into, but it's not like there are Majorana neutrinos and Dirac neutrinos. This seemed fine to me when I wrote it and it still does, although it's possible that it's a pedantic distinction and might trip some knowledgeable person up. Do you see a fix?
What I mean to say is that somebody in my room buzzed with "neutrinos" after that clue, and I think they would be technically correct in the sense that there is "a type of [neutrinos] named for Majorana" that can be "contrasted with [neutrinos] named for Dirac", even if one or the other only exists in theory. As such, it might be a good idea to put an "anti-prompt" or whatever to ask someone who buzzes with "neutrinos" to be less specific with their answer. (I refer specifically to neutrinos because it is the only fermion for which this is an issue - somebody who buzzes with "electrons" or whatever is clearly wrong because there are no Majorana electrons.)
You also have to consider that someone (like me, when we were playing the extra packets afterward) can buzz before you say "Dirac" with neutrinos. Upon the antiprompt, I said leptons since neutrinos are also leptons, then was negged (so if this is gonna get played at other sites I would suggest adding an anti-prompt on that).

Also with regards to induction/inductance:

I would not write a question that treats inductance and induction as the same thing--to my understanding, induction is the production of an EMF from a changing MAGNETIC field, where inductance is the production of an EMF from a change in current (a changing ELECTRIC field)

Other science comments:

Packet 1:

Electrons in a plasma can diffuse perpendicular to the B-field in a classical (D proportional to B^(-2) or neoclassical (aka Bohm) (D proportional to B^(-1)) manner. I would've actually given some equations here, although this may be just a complaint about the types of clues I like vs the types of clues other people like.

Packet 2:

"Reduction potentials" as the 3rd clue of an electron tossup seems really easy to me--I learned about what reduction is in my sophomore year of high school, and what curved arrows are in my sophomore year of college.

I think whatever the "Map cascade" is is certainly harder than "serine/threonine ____" fill in the blank.

Packet 3:

The buffers tossup was really cool. Methylation seemed pretty good too.

Packet 4:

I don't think revealing Planck's constant is a constant in the first few words of the tossup is a good idea. I'm also not sure that switching between h and h-bar and calling h-bar "one form of h" is a good idea either. I think the choice of clues was solid though, just the wording made things slightly problematic.

Packet 5:

I found it amusing that you can get 2 powers (and in the same packet, no less) by knowing alternate names for the urea cycle (ornithine, Krebs-Henseleit). As someone who has written a tossup on the urea cycle and thus had to look up such alternate names, this would have played well for me.

I was under the impression that Goldstone bosons were pretty well known and also pretty fake.

Packet 6:

"This phenomenon's namesake frequency" right away seems not very hard.

Packet 7:

The tossup on flagella seemed to have some pretty challenging clues. This isn't a bad thing (the opposite, in fact!), but it seemed considerably more challenging than many of the other science questions in this tournament. (Personally, I would've preferred some harder clues, but I'm obviously not the target audience for these questions)

I also found the snowmen in Calvin & Hobbes tossup delightful.

Packet 8:

A = U - TS, not U - TE

I probably wouldn't have used the word "asymptotically" in the description of asymptotic freedom ("goes to zero," perhaps)

Packet 9:

Schlenk is a stock and boring clue. I would've been mad if I had been beaten to that tossup before I could hear things about NMDA receptors.

Finals 1:
"In one method of conducting this process, the central compound is first reacted with iodine and sulfur dioxide."

I heard this and negged with titration. It would've been nice if the question's wording had prevented me from doing that. (why not just say "in one form of titration" or "it's not titration, but")

Also it wouldn't hurt to accept "electrolysis of water" in the answerline.

A description of the Fries rearrangement is WAY harder than "malonic ____" In fact, the name of the Fries rearrangement also might be harder than "malonic ___," although I think the tossup's omission of this name was good.

Finals 2:

Why "retinol" and "Vitamin A" are in power in a tossup on the retina is beyond me. Also, the tossup is just begging you to neg with various things the whole time. The tossup just says "these structures," a very vague pronoun, but lacks a prompt on eyes, rods (which contain rhodopsin), the macula (which is the location of the cherry-red spot), etc.

Overall, I thought this tournament's science was pretty good. (better than ACF Fall's science, and I can't judge it fairly vs IFT)
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Re: MUT 2013 Specific Question Discussion Thread

Post by PeterB »

I don't yet have the packets in front of me, so I can't point out exactly where these things are, but two music questions that confused me spring to mind, both because the lead-in clue seemed too obvious to be possible.

The first was the Debussy one - it described the most famous feature (the flute solo chromatically descending and ascending) from one of his most quizbowl-famous pieces. As a flautist myself I was racking my brain trying to work out whether there was another possible solo it could refer to, until I heard the word "Passepied" in the next line and figured that had to be Suite Bergamesque, so buzzed there. Equally with the Rachmaninov one - it was very tempting just to buzz on 18th variation, since there didn't seem to be much else it could be, especially with the key change mentioned, but again, I couldn't believe that that would be the first line.

I did, however, enjoy the Schubert 8 toss-up, since it had a very good lead-in that was gettable if you know enough about the piece.

I suspect the Moonlight Sonata might be a bit easy for a middle part, based on the difficulty of some of the other bonuses, but that's just nitpicking. I'd maybe have gone for the Pathetique, and then mentioned the Moonlight in the easy part, but maybe I'm misjudging that.

Also, I played off the Briticised set, and absolutely loved the British trash, so just wanted to say congratulations to the writers of that!
Peter Berry
University of Oxford (Merton) - 2009-13
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