Why two tournaments?
My original plan was to do one big tournament, evenly split between movies made before and after I was born (1991). However, it turned out that grad school actually kept me busy, so I broke SHAWARMA into two tournaments in order to have something ready for play sooner. SHAWARMA I covers only movies from after I was born; SHAWARMA II will cover only movies from before I was born. (So stay tuned, fellow Turner Classic Movies watchers.)
About the tournament:
-It consists of five rounds (two of which were already played by some people at HSNCT and NSC), each composed of 20 tossups on movies I like and one single-slide tossup on a movie I dislike. (This follows the 20 regulation tossups, and can be used as a very lame tiebreaker if your format of choice requires those.)
-Each round has the following chronological distribution:
- four tossups on movies from 1991-1995
- four tossups on movies from 1996-2000
- four tossups on movies from 2001-2005
- four tossups on movies from 2006-2010
- four tossups on movies from 2011-2015
- one joke tossup on movies from 1991-2015 (The five joke tossups for the tournament are drawn, one apiece, from the five half-decades demarcated above.)
-Gameplay (shamelessly stolen from TAMIL) is as follows:
- Every tossup asks players to "Name the movie."
- Every regulation tossup has eight slides (down from TAMIL's nine); the first three have a sky blue background to indicate power, and the last one has a green background to indicate it's the giveaway.
-Alternate answers and prompts are sometimes more generous than players should expect in an actual tournament setting, and I hereby empower moderators to be even more generous as the spirit moves them, unless there's a "do not accept" directive in the answerline. (For example: a few people have buzzed in early on one particular tossup and replaced the word "and" in the title with "versus." I was so pleased with the buzz that I gave it to them.)
-Spoiler: there are spoilers.
To ask questions about the set, request the set for a mirror, or give feedback:
Email me at saul [dot] hankin [at] comcast [dot] net to request the set. You can also email me with questions and feedback, or post here if your concern is one that others might have (and doesn't spoil answers).