The Quizbowl Resource Center

This is a somewhat belated announcement for Armstrong’s Conceivably Regular Or Nearly Yearly Meet, hereafter known as ACRONYM VIII, a high school pop culture tournament. Armstrong coach Matt Quinn is the tournament director for this event, and questions are being written by Erik Nelson (that's me), Matt Quinn, the Armstrong quiz bowl team, and other contributors. Editing for the set is being handled by Matt Quinn and I as well.

The Tournament

When: Saturday, February 28th, 2015. Rounds will run between 9:00 am and 4:00pm, with a lunch break after six rounds. A playoff will be held after lunch, while non-playoff teams are welcome (and encouraged) to play scrimmage rounds with the remaining packets.
Where: Armstrong High School 10635 36th ave. N, Plymouth, MN 55441
Cost: $90 per team, $5 discount per buzzer system. $20 discount for bringing a qualified moderator. Please register by 2/20/15 at the latest. Checks made payable to Armstrong High School. All teams will receive a copy of the questions.

To register, contact Matt Quinn at [email protected].

Distribution and Difficulty

This set will contain ten packets with the following distribution:

3/3 TV
3/3 Movies
3/3 Music
3/3 Sports (split evenly between baseball/football/basketball/none of those)
2/2 Video Games/Occasionally other kinds of games
1.5/1.5 Trash Lit/Comics
1.5/1.5 "Trash News" (questions on celebrities who don't do any of the above, questions about actors/musicians with clues unrelated to their creative work)
3/3 Other/Multi-Discipline

This is a high school tournament, so the difficulty will be lower than the average trash set. On that note, approximately 75% of all questions will have answer lines and/or clues related to events of the 2010's, with the rest of the set being earlier. Last year's set often skewed earlier than this, especially in the playoff rounds, which proved to be less than great. So, we're making a point to avoid that this time around.

Field

The field for this tournament is currently full. The field is:

MPA 5 teams
Chaska 5 teams
Cooper 3 teams, 1 buzzer
St. Louis Park 1 team, 1 buzzer
Burnsville 3 teams
Spectrum 1 team-
Minnetonka 4 teams, 2 buzzers
STA- 3 teams, 1 buzzer, 1 staffer
Bloomington- 2 teams, 1 buzzer
Eden Prairie- 5 teams, 5 buzzers, 1 staffer
Mound Westonka- 2 teams, 1 buzzer
Hill Murray- 2 teams
Irondale- 1 team
Orono- 3 teams
Wayzata- 3 teams, 2 buzzers
Chanhassen- 2 teams
Mounds View- 2 teams, 1 buzzer
Red Wing- 3 teams

Mirrors?

Carleton University, 3/1: Link

I would still like to have east and/or west coast mirrors in March/April. If you would like to mirror this or have other questions, please contact me at [email protected].

I am very excited about this tournament and will personally ensure a Canadian mirror happens.

What's the field/staff situation like for this?

Updated the OP to reflect the current field. I believe we have enough staffers, but will make further updates if that ends up not being the case.

What is the possibility of hosting an online mirror of this set?

That seems totally doable. I will work on the details of that.

Congratulations to St. Louis Park, who beat Robbinsdale Cooper A in the finals to win this year's ACRONYM. Stats will follow once I get a hold of them.

Have some stats for the prelims. I'm not positive who most of these people actually were, but I know that the top scorer "Disturbia" was Sujay Rao. I hope to get the full stats up at some point as well.

We are still interested in mirroring this another time or two, particularly for high schools. If you want to be cool and mirror ACRONYM over the next month or two, my contact info is in the OP of this thread.