The Quizbowl Resource Center

Hi all,

A couple of weeks ago, Edmund Dickinson, Emma Laslett, George Corfield, David Knapp and I put together a question set called MKULTRA* for UK audiences. The set consists of questions of around MUT difficulty, 6-7 lines in length, and a quite heavily British focus. The distribution is a bit different from normal:
3/3 of each of History, Literature, Science, RMPSS, and Trash
2/2 of each of Fine Arts and Misc
1/1 Geography

Since we had a spare 13-packet set, we were wondering if anyone would be interested in running an online mirror for American audiences, for whom this set should still be clean.

If anyone's interested in organising or playing such a thing, drop us a line below.

*Barely any LSD was involved in the production of this event

It's a quizbowl set. I'm sure there will be people interested in playing it. I'll sign myself up pending the date.

I'd play this over Skype as long as it's on a free weekend.

Would enjoy playing this

Granny Soberer wrote:

Craise Finton Kirk Royal Academy of Arts wrote:I'd play this over Skype as long as it's on a free weekend.

Me too.

Speaking on behalf of the nation of Canada, we're interested in doing a physical mirror of this. Details to come, likely from Meghan Torchia.

How does this compare to those "British-ized ACF Fall" questions that have been read in the States at times by Marshall? Those are usually insanely hard for Americans.

Cheynem wrote:How does this compare to those "British-ized ACF Fall" questions that have been read in the States at times by Marshall? Those are usually insanely hard for Americans.

I think it would play fine for the most part. A quick glance through the tossups from half of the packets left me with only two or three that I think would probably go dead in most American-only rooms. A lot of the categories one would expect to be more problematic for non-British audiences (i.e. trash/CE) turned out to have a fair amount of American content reflecting your culture's infection of Britain's youth.

Short-beaked echidna wrote:

Cheynem wrote:How does this compare to those "British-ized ACF Fall" questions that have been read in the States at times by Marshall? Those are usually insanely hard for Americans.

I think it would play fine for the most part.

Agreed - the experience would probably be similar to ours going the other way, when playing unedited packets. There will probably be a few questions in each packet (perhaps 2/2 or so) that will seem a bit too easy or a bit too hard.

The first seven packets are edited from packet submission and the last six were written by us - in both cases the content reflects our interests and idiosyncrasies, but overall tries to achieve a balanced distribution. Ewan's characterisation of a "heavily British focus" feels like an overstatement to me. While the UK:US ratio will naturally be a bit higher in topics like history and trash, and some answer lines may be a bit more intractable, there was certainly no deliberate intent to make this set particularly British.

Marshall's tournaments were based on the collation of only the questions written to fill specifically British needs, which gave an (intentionally) overwhelming experience when read consecutively without the other 80+ % of a normal packet.

Depending upon the weekend, I am interested in playing this.

Very interested

Since there are only three non-novice tournaments scheduled for the fall as of right now (ACF Fall, Penn Bowl, and MO) it seems it'd be a good idea to Americanize the few questions or so per packet that would need such a treatment and easily create a fourth fall tournament. I don't know if anybody's willing to do that (I've certainly got plenty of other things on my plate already) but I'd certainly like more physical tournaments to play in the fall, and so would a lot of people. Since this would (hopefully) be open, you'd probably get a wide audience and plenty of revenue to split as appropriate between the "Americanization" team and the set's writers.

I'd probably play this if it happened online, but I'd certainly like the chance to play more than one in-person tournament this fall since I don't plan on playing ACF Fall.

I'd be willing to help with Americanizing any topics if we decide to make this the fourth fall tournament.

The fact that this is currently 3/3 Trash might stand in the way of it being played as a mainstream tournament. Or maybe not. I don't know.

Xochiquetzal wrote:The fact that this is currently 3/3 Trash might stand in the way of it being played as a mainstream tournament. Or maybe not. I don't know.

I'd personally prefer someone write 1/1 of each of the Big Three to replace the trash, but I think most people are perfectly willing to play a tournament with 3/3 trash.

I'd play this, and wouldn't mind keeping it Britishized.

Assuming I was free that day, I would love to play this set too.

I would also love to play this set.

So any word on this online mirror?

If this hasn't taken place yet, I'd be happy to join in.