2014 SCT: general discussion

[Important Bird Area]

This is your general discussion thread for the 2014 NAQT SCT.

I would like to thank Andrew Hart and Seth Teitler, whose dedication to writing and editing made this tournament possible.

[ThisIsMyUsername]

I thought this was by far the best of the five iterations of SCT that I have played (the others being 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2012), and a very good tournament overall. Thank you to the editors for an enjoyable day of quizbowl. And I hope this standard can be upheld at future iterations.

[setht]

Hey,

I hope everyone enjoyed SCT. If you have any feedback, I'm sure all of the people involved in writing and editing the sets would love to hear it. One thing that would be helpful is if people could note in their initial posts what division they played in.

Thanks,
-Seth

[touchpack]

So this isn't actually about the SCT questions, but it involves SCT question content, so I'm posting it here. If a moderator believes that this discussion merits a new thread, feel free to split it off.

Twice in our games at the Chicago mirror, a moderator made a mistake regarding acceptable answers.

1) When we were playing Chicago A, someone gave the response of "cosmic measurements of distance" to a tossup whose answerline was "cosmic distance ladder. Their answer was accepted even though it is not correct, and thus the results of the game were altered in a way that the players cannot realize and attempt to fix by lodging a protest. (in this case, even though the win/loss outcome was not affected, D-values were affected)

2) During our game vs Northwestern, we gave the answer of the "mead of knowledge" in a tossup on the mead of poetry. Again, this was not listed as acceptable or promptable by the answerline, but it was accepted. Again, our opponents did not realize anything was amiss since they could not see the written questions, and could not lodge a protest.

So why do I bring this up here? It isn't really relevant to discussion of this SCT at all. Well, two reasons:

1) I believe that this phenomenon is more likely to happen at NAQT than other tournaments due to the timed format. The moderator is under pressure to get through all the questions (or as many questions as possible), and thus is more likely to misread/fail to properly read something during skimming.
2) Illinois experienced a similar incident at the 2013 ICT (am I allowed to talk about question content? I won't unless someone from NAQT says it is ok). In this case, this actually altered an outcome of a game in a way which eliminated Illinois from the tournament. If the moderator had properly read the answerline, Illinois still would have been in the running for 1st place. I didn't complain about this earlier since I didn't want to seem like a sore loser and I didn't think it was likely we would actually win, but after seeing this happen again at this SCT it makes me angry that I lost a chance at a title due to a moderator's mistake.

I don't know what the solution to this is (actually, I do know the solution. Remove the timers. However I don't expect NAQT to do this.), since moderators are people, and people make mistakes, but I think NAQT should do something, even if it is just a couple of sentences spoken during the staffer meeting before ICT, to try to prevent this from happening again.

[ThisIsMyUsername]

Since I presume that NAQT is not going to abolish the clock, I think the solution is (during the staff meetings) to encourage moderators to pause the clock as needed, in situations in which they need to read long prompt/accept instructions, so that they don't feel pressured by the clock to skim those instructions haphazardly, thus misreading them. (Most of the more experienced moderators already seem to do this.)

[Important Bird Area]

at the 2013 ICT (am I allowed to talk about question content? I won't unless someone from NAQT says it is ok).

Please feel free to share the question content; the 2013 ICT is clear for public discussion.

[Adventure Temple Trail]

Since I presume that NAQT is not going to abolish the clock,

I see no reason not to open the abolition of the clock up for actual discussion. The clock is more or less universally hated among active players, since it drastically changes play style for two events a year. It certainly negatively impacts the number of schools which are willing to host SCT by effectively doubling the number of required staff to include mandatory scorekeepers in each room. It makes results less fair, in that it sub-20-tossup games possible, and encourages moderators to screw up more. It holds up the 2-second timing rule for answering tossups, whose selective and inconsistent enforcement has been an issue in the past. I'm in favor of having a serious, actual discussion in which NAQT considers eliminating the clock from the college game (or a similar measure, such as making the clock optional on a site-by-site basis, or instituting a 20-tossup minimum for all games even if the clock runs out before tossup 20 in the second half), rather than assuming for the nth year in the row that "eh, it'll never happen". If we need a split thread for that, so be it.

If it turns out that the clock is non-negotiable, John's halfway measure is a great one and it'd be very productive to add that to as many of NAQT's official documents as it can.

EDIT: In case people are curious, I thought this tournament was fine; it wasn't substantively better or worse than last year.

[Important Bird Area]

[not speaking for NAQT]

I have, as many of you know, been on board the abolish-the-clock bandwagon for some time now.

(SCT and ICT only; HSNCT and MSNCT need to keep it due to the large size of those tournaments)

[Auks Ran Ova]

I enjoyed this tournament! It had some bad questions (Racine, endless law that no one was really converting, etc.), but overall it was a lot of fun, on par with last year's or better in nearly all areas. A+++++ would play again.

[The King's Flight to the Scots]

Overall I liked the tournament; the literature in particular seemed very good. Writers made good use of the limited question space by avoiding un-buzzable clues, which have been a stumbling point in some earlier NAQT sets. The history sometimes went too far in the other direction by leading off with pretty easy clues - the tossups on the Abbasids and Louis Philippe both had fairly easy first lines - but I very much support the trend towards a smoother pyramid.

The current events questions in this set seemed less well-written than those in last year's SCT. Was there a change in editorship?

[Important Bird Area]

The Abbasid leadin probably was easier than most of the history at SCT (it indicated both time and geography pretty quickly).

For Louis-Philippe, I think this information is fine for this level:

This man's first of two exiles at Twickenham came five years after he deserted the army with Charles-Fran\,cois Dumouriez. During his reign, one President of the Council was "Party of Resistance" leader Casimir Perier. "Reform Banquets" opposed this king, who imprisoned...

If you know that stuff, please go ahead and collect your 15 points.

[naan/steak-holding toll]

I thought this tournament was both harder and substantially better/more enjoyable than last year's SCT. As mentioned, most clues seemed very buzzable and the short length of questions didn't lead to very many frustrating situations in game, like they sometimes did last year. I enjoyed the questions in the subjects I like, and thought the questions in other subjects were pretty good in general, though the physics and math seemed to have an awful lot of tossups on people and fewer tossups on concepts.

Like Matt said, a lot of the history lead-ins were pretty easy, but this didn't really lead to too many problems in the games I witnessed/played despite our field being fairly strong. That being said, such questions it may not have panned out as well elsewhere (I'd hate to see that Abbasid leadin in a UVA-UMD match).

We had a great time playing this set as a team, and had a lot of close and exciting matches against other top teams in the region despite missing half our "regular" A-Team/regular difficulty players. I'm definitely looking forward to next year's iteration of the set.

[Corry]

The Abbasid leadin probably was easier than most of the history at SCT (it indicated both time and geography pretty quickly).

For Louis-Philippe, I think this information is fine for this level:

This man's first of two exiles at Twickenham came five years after he deserted the army with Charles-Fran\,cois Dumouriez. During his reign, one President of the Council was "Party of Resistance" leader Casimir Perier. "Reform Banquets" opposed this king, who imprisoned...

If you know that stuff, please go ahead and collect your 15 points.

I'm assuming "Dumouriez" was the easy-ish part of the first line that Matt Bollinger was referring to.

Dumouriez is not actually very well-known in reality. However, all four tossups on Louis Philippe in Quinterest currently mention his name somewhere in the first few lines. Had I played on Division I yesterday, I would certainly have buzzed on Dumouriez, and to be honest, I'm not sure I would've actually deserved the 15 points. I guess this is a case of something being "quiz bowl famous", if not necessarily famous in general.

[Adventure Temple Trail]

The Abbasid leadin probably was easier than most of the history at SCT (it indicated both time and geography pretty quickly).

And the morpheme "Abbas."

[jagluski]

Since I presume that NAQT is not going to abolish the clock, I think the solution is (during the staff meetings) to encourage moderators to pause the clock as needed, in situations in which they need to read long prompt/accept instructions, so that they don't feel pressured by the clock to skim those instructions haphazardly, thus misreading them. (Most of the more experienced moderators already seem to do this.)

Speaking for myself, this is exactly what readers should do. I had to stop the clock a handful of times over the weekend to try to see if a given answer was acceptable in those long answer lines.

[setht]

The current events questions in this set seemed less well-written than those in last year's SCT. Was there a change in editorship?

There was no change in CE editorship. Do you have more specific comments on what seemed better last year/worse this year?

-Seth

[The King's Flight to the Scots]

The current events questions in this set seemed less well-written than those in last year's SCT. Was there a change in editorship?

There was no change in CE editorship. Do you have more specific comments on what seemed better last year/worse this year?

-Seth

The world current events questions seem pretty good, so kudos on that, but the US CE focused more on weird, difficult political trivia than last year's did. For the sake of example, the John McCain and Amy Klobuchar tossups were pretty weak. The McCain tossup leads off with a funny, but not super notable quote from over a year ago that expressed a position held by many Republicans. The next clue is that he didn't support a filibuster on Chuck Hagel even though he gave Hagel trouble during the confirmation hearing, which is also true of Lindsay Graham and others. Your first realistically buzzable clue is his tweet comparing Ahmadinejad to a space monkey. The whole tossup seems like a stream of random details about John McCain that don't really test whether people follow current affairs.

The Klobuchar tossup has a similar problem. I'm told that somebody at the Minnesota site powered it, so at least the clues were useful for Minnesotans, but for the rest of us the clues about how she "released a 2014 report on income inequality" and "wants to strengthen sex offender laws" were pretty dubious, sounding a whole lot like Kirsten Gillibrand unless you know that the not-yet-passed bill she's sponsoring (along with three co-sponsors!) is called the "Stop Exploitation Through Trafficking Act." "Sex trafficking" or "immigration reform" might have been better answerlines for these questions. To its credit, the set did go that route a couple of other times, even if the two tossups on fossil fuels were excessive.

[Bartleby]

The current events questions in this set seemed less well-written than those in last year's SCT. Was there a change in editorship?

There was no change in CE editorship. Do you have more specific comments on what seemed better last year/worse this year?

-Seth

The world current events questions seem pretty good, so kudos on that, but the US CE focused more on weird, difficult political trivia than last year's did. For the sake of example, the John McCain and Amy Klobuchar tossups were pretty weak. The McCain tossup leads off with a funny, but not super notable quote from over a year ago that expressed a position held by many Republicans. The next clue is that he didn't support a filibuster on Chuck Hagel even though he gave Hagel trouble during the confirmation hearing, which is also true of Lindsay Graham and others. Your first realistically buzzable clue is his tweet comparing Ahmadinejad to a space monkey. The whole tossup seems like a stream of random details about John McCain that don't really test whether people follow current affairs.

This was my exact problem with this exact question, for what it's worth.

[Important Bird Area]

1) When we were playing Chicago A, someone gave the response of "cosmic measurements of distance" to a tossup whose answerline was "cosmic distance ladder. Their answer was accepted even though it is not correct, and thus the results of the game were altered in a way that the players cannot realize and attempt to fix by lodging a protest.

For the record, "the moderator accepted an answer which we believe is not correct" is a perfectly valid grounds for lodging a protest.

(Consider the case of a rogue moderator who hears a tossup ending "For 10 points--name this Elizabethan playwright who wrote ~The Tempest~ and ~Hamlet~", then accepts _ 4-methylcyclohexanemethanol_ from a player.)

[Steeve Ho You Fat]

1) When we were playing Chicago A, someone gave the response of "cosmic measurements of distance" to a tossup whose answerline was "cosmic distance ladder. Their answer was accepted even though it is not correct, and thus the results of the game were altered in a way that the players cannot realize and attempt to fix by lodging a protest.

For the record, "the moderator accepted an answer which we believe is not correct" is a perfectly valid grounds for lodging a protest.

(Consider the case of a rogue moderator who hears a tossup ending "For 10 points--name this Elizabethan playwright who wrote ~The Tempest~ and ~Hamlet~", then accepts _ 4-methylcyclohexanemethanol_ from a player.)

That's quite a bit different than the situation Billy described, where a player says something that seems reasonable and that the other team would have no way of knowing is incorrect.

[ThisIsMyUsername]

1) When we were playing Chicago A, someone gave the response of "cosmic measurements of distance" to a tossup whose answerline was "cosmic distance ladder. Their answer was accepted even though it is not correct, and thus the results of the game were altered in a way that the players cannot realize and attempt to fix by lodging a protest.

For the record, "the moderator accepted an answer which we believe is not correct" is a perfectly valid grounds for lodging a protest.

(Consider the case of a rogue moderator who hears a tossup ending "For 10 points--name this Elizabethan playwright who wrote ~The Tempest~ and ~Hamlet~", then accepts _ 4-methylcyclohexanemethanol_ from a player.)

Jeff, I think the problem is that, in both this case and in the ICT 2013 case that Billy is talking about, the players on the opposing team (i.e. the one not doing the answering) realized that the accepted answer was incorrect only once they got to see the set and saw what the written answer-line actually was. Such situations are quite difficult, since (by my understanding of NAQT rules as to when a protest should be lodged) the opposing team will almost always make the discovery that the accepted answer-line was wrong only after it is too late to protest on those grounds.

[theMoMA]

I'm not really sure what's the best way to legislate against this. I also don't think it's purely an NAQT problem (although the clock may exacerbate it). I know that at ACF Regionals long ago, we played a team that answered "Cetshwayo" for "Shaka" and was given points, and none of us knew anything about it at the time (and we didn't figure it out for nearly a year, when we played the packet in practice, if I recall correctly).

[Sima Guang Hater]

Stuff about a chemistry question

On top of that, the actual clues throughout the question were not really exclusive to one answer or the other. As a somewhat tangential point, I think the "accept [answer1] until *" construction should be used as sparingly as possible. It's often unnecessary and especially in a timed format it makes the moderator's job much harder. I try to almost never use it, instead just saying to accept the other answer throughout unless it's outright mentioned in the question, since people may be having a delayed reaction (that is to say, a reaction with a smaller rate and/or rate constant) to an earlier clue.

[Cody]

Accepting wrong answers is a moderator problem that I don't think will be fixed by abolishing the clock - c.f. the well-known NSC 2011 incident with Diana Gerr's heroics or the MO 2010 round I experienced where a moderator accepted TWO (very) wrong answers from the opposing team. This is likely to happen at any tournament not staffed entirely by very competent people and the only way to prevent it is to have TDs cover it with moderators beforehand.

[jonah]

This is likely to happen at any tournament not staffed entirely by very competent people and the only way to prevent it is to have TDs cover it with moderators beforehand.

And it is possible (albeit less likely) to happen at any tournament at all; no one is competent, let alone expert, in every discipline. There is no way to completely prevent it, although moderators should never accept an answer not on the page unless the answer line advises the moderator to use discretion; other answers can be established as correct via a protest.

[setht]

Stuff about a chemistry question

On top of that, the actual clues throughout the question were not really exclusive to one answer or the other. As a somewhat tangential point, I think the "accept [answer1] until *" construction should be used as sparingly as possible. It's often unnecessary and especially in a timed format it makes the moderator's job much harder. I try to almost never use it, instead just saying to accept the other answer throughout unless it's outright mentioned in the question, since people may be having a delayed reaction (that is to say, a reaction with a smaller rate and/or rate constant) to an earlier clue.

Sorry, I'm a bit lost here. What is this referring to?

-Seth

[Sima Guang Hater]

Stuff about a chemistry question

On top of that, the actual clues throughout the question were not really exclusive to one answer or the other. As a somewhat tangential point, I think the "accept [answer1] until *" construction should be used as sparingly as possible. It's often unnecessary and especially in a timed format it makes the moderator's job much harder. I try to almost never use it, instead just saying to accept the other answer throughout unless it's outright mentioned in the question, since people may be having a delayed reaction (that is to say, a reaction with a smaller rate and/or rate constant) to an earlier clue.

Sorry, I'm a bit lost here. What is this referring to?

-Seth

It was a question in ICT 2013, whose answer we can't say in this forum because we're unclear about whether that set is clear. If it helps, you were reading the game between us and Minnesota at the time and it was the chemistry question.

[Lightinfa]

It was a question in ICT 2013, whose answer we can't say in this forum because we're unclear about whether that set is clear. If it helps, you were reading the game between us and Minnesota at the time and it was the chemistry question.

at the 2013 ICT (am I allowed to talk about question content? I won't unless someone from NAQT says it is ok).

Please feel free to share the question content; the 2013 ICT is clear for public discussion.

[Stained Diviner]

I wrote a lot of the CE for this set, including the McCain and Klobuchar tossups. Sorry about that.

In January 2013 this {senator} criticized Barack Obama's immigration plan by asking, "Which is more important: LGBT or border security?" In February he said that he would not support a {filibuster} against Chuck Hagel, a week after demanding that Hagel state whether Hagel was right about the Iraq Surge. This senator was also criticized for comparing (*) Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to a "space monkey." For 10 points--what author of ~Faith of My Fathers~ and former {prisoner of war} is the senior senator from Arizona?

I wrote the McCain tossup a year ago about stuff that was current at the time, though it's a fair criticism that even a year ago it was focused on a few odd things McCain said rather than substance. It was used this year and hadn't aged well.

This vice chair of the Congressional Joint Economic Committee has proposed tax credits for research institutions through the Innovate America Act and released a 2014 report on income inequality. She also wants to strengthen sex offender laws through her Stop Exploitation Through Trafficking Act. This former Hennepin County attorney defeated Mark Kennedy to win her seat in 2006, replacing Mark (*) Dayton. For 10 points--name this Democratic-Farmer-Labor senator from Minnesota.

For the Klobuchar question, I tried to stick to important issues she was working on in the senate for the first half of the question. It sounds like the uniqueness of those clues was a bit too nuanced and/or obscure, so the question didn't play well.

[ThisIsMyUsername]

Stuff about a chemistry question

On top of that, the actual clues throughout the question were not really exclusive to one answer or the other. As a somewhat tangential point, I think the "accept [answer1] until *" construction should be used as sparingly as possible. It's often unnecessary and especially in a timed format it makes the moderator's job much harder. I try to almost never use it, instead just saying to accept the other answer throughout unless it's outright mentioned in the question, since people may be having a delayed reaction (that is to say, a reaction with a smaller rate and/or rate constant) to an earlier clue.

Sorry, I'm a bit lost here. What is this referring to?

-Seth

It was a question in ICT 2013, whose answer we can't say in this forum because we're unclear about whether that set is clear. If it helps, you were reading the game between us and Minnesota at the time and it was the chemistry question.

How could this possibly still be confidential? The actual game that involves the moderator mistake is a public podcast on NAQT's own website for goodness' sake (http://domcgak56kpgg.cloudfront.net/pod ... ict/12.mp3)! Without anyone telling me about this incident, I heard and noticed it for myself when I first listened to this clip nearly half a year ago! (The tossup in question is 17:22-17:45)

[Tees-Exe Line]

For the record, what I actually said was "cosmic distance model," which I assume was accepted because "model" and "ladder" have the same meter or something. It was not an intentional Daichi and I had no idea the distance "ladder" was a concept so I didn't think I'd gotten away with anything.

[touchpack]

For the record, what I actually said was "cosmic distance model," which I assume was accepted because "model" and "ladder" have the same meter or something. It was not an intentional Daichi and I had no idea the distance "ladder" was a concept so I didn't think I'd gotten away with anything.

I too had no idea there was something called the distance "ladder," and whether or not your answer should have been prompted, accepted, or negged is certainly debatable. (the question text provides no instructions for different answers) However, this is something that should be done through the protest system, not on the fly by a moderator who is unlikely to have perfect knowledge of the material.

I also agree with Eric about the "accept X before clue Y" model being something to try to avoid. In the specific 2013 case, the major problem with the question is while there are clues that specifically do not apply to the rate constant, after those clues, the question says "written in terms of a constant," and then goes on to use clues about the rate constant--but at that point the answer of rate constant isn't acceptable, which is nonsensical. (as you can note by listening to the game, Ashvin buzzed at the word "constant.") Additionally, the question cliffs from advanced reaction kinetics to "stuff you learn in high school" inside the powermark... for a division I ICT question "stoichiometry-derived exponents" is fine for a pre-FTP clue--the middle clues of this question were rather lacking.

In a plot of this quantity versus friction, Kramers' turnover connects the energy- and spatial-diffusion limits. The pre-equilibrium approximation can be used to find its overall value. This quantity is calculated with stoichiometry-derived exponents for one-step processes. It is typically written in terms of a constant whose temperature dependence is given by the (*) Arrhenius equation. For 10 points - name this quantity that matches for forward and reverse chemical processes at equilibrium.
answer: reaction rates (accept reaction rate constants before "exponents")

I will note here that I harbor no ill will towards the moderator of the game or to the members of the Yale team, but I regret the existence of this question and how poorly it played out in such an important game.

[Excelsior (smack)]

For the record, I had literally no idea that this kerfuffle occurred, have no recollection at this time of answering this question, and was not even aware that you were talking about your match with us until you explicitly pointed it out just now. Looking at the question now, though, that's pretty lousy.

[Holla!]

The McCain tossup leads off with a funny, but not super notable quote from over a year ago that expressed a position held by many Republicans. The next clue is that he didn't support a filibuster on Chuck Hagel even though he gave Hagel trouble during the confirmation hearing, which is also true of Lindsay Graham and others. Your first realistically buzzable clue is his tweet comparing Ahmadinejad to a space monkey.

In January 2013 this {senator} criticized Barack Obama's immigration plan by asking, "Which is more important: LGBT or border security?" In February he said that he would not support a {filibuster} against Chuck Hagel, a week after demanding that Hagel state whether Hagel was right about the Iraq Surge. This senator was also criticized for comparing (*) Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to a "space monkey." For 10 points--what author of ~Faith of My Fathers~ and former {prisoner of war} is the senior senator from Arizona?

For what it's worth, McCain pretty notably grilled Hagel in his hearings, something to the effect of asking him "Were you correct in your assessment of the war?" That's where/why I buzzed in that question, though perhaps having the direct quote may have more effectively identified McCain.

[AKKOLADE]

I read a round where I think someone buzzed in off that lead-in and powered it, so I dunno. (Note I didn't write or edit this question, so I'm not defending my own work here)

[dxdtdemon]

Was it just me, or did there seem to be a whole lot less world literature than there's been at various tournaments I've volunteered at in recent years? It seemed like there was less than there is even in an IS-A set.