The Quizbowl Resource Center

I am pleased to announce that Oxford has written another edition of the Oxford Open Tournament in 2017 and this year we will be producing an American version which we will dub OAT! This is essentially the same as the Oxford Open Tournament set but we have removed the more arcane british geography and history to make it more playable across the pond.

The American version will be ready for mirrors at the end of February. We are keen that as many people as possible get to play it. Having already played the greatest part of the set the difficulty is regular/regular minus. This set is a lot of fun and contains a lot of fantastic titbits which haven't come up before so I don't think it will be a boring day of quiz for even the most calloused of veteran brains.

The distribution is the standard Quizbowl distribution (4 Lit., 4 History, 4 Science, 3 RMPSS, 3 FA, 1 Geo, 1 Trash/Misc./ Other). There will be 16 packets of power-marked 6 line tossups in packets of 21/20.

If you are interested in mirroring this tournament please message me on this site or email me at [email protected]. The mirror fee will be $40 per team. We of course expect that people will provide relevant discounts.

Mirrors
I am open to mirrors whenever people want the set from the first week of March onward.


Mid-Atlantic:
Northeast: NYU (25th March)
Northern Midwest: Case Western Reserve University (April 15th)
Pacific Northwest:
South:
Southeast: University of Tennessee (April 15th)
Southern Midwest:
Southwest:
West Coast:Stanford (March 19th)
Canada: Carlton (6th May)

Any questions or queries more than welcome.

P.S. There is also the added possibility of one packet or so of hard British content which has been excised from the American version of the tournament which can be played as a fun postprandial packet.

Can we mirror it? What's the mirror fee?

armitage wrote:Can we mirror it? What's the mirror fee?

Richard I have updated the info about the tournament. We'd be more than happy for you to mirror the tournament at the end of March.

Just as a note - the William & Mary mirror is not confirmed as of yet. We are still discussing this but it is in the cards.

I personally want it to happen.

I have updated the post with news of the new Canadian and Californian mirrors!

The Notre Dame mirror is apparently no longer happening. Any Midwest site would be greatly appreciated.

I regret to state that the William & Mary mirror I had proposed isn't happening - too many schedule conflicts.

Æthelred the Unready Steady Cook wrote:Having already played the greatest part of the set the difficulty is regular/regular minus. This set is a lot of fun and contains a lot of fantastic titbits which haven't come up before so I don't think it will be a boring day of quiz for even the most calloused of veteran brains.

So, this tournament seemed to be in pretty rough shape, and I wouldn't recommend it in its current form to American players. The bonus difficulty was the most variable I've seen in many years, as was tossup difficulty, both in clue selection/placement and answerlines. It absolutely was not consistently "regular minus." I guess that the second sentence quoted above was true, though the erratic difficulty of the questions prevented us (by which I mean our whole 4-team site) from fully enjoying the good parts of this tournament.

In particular, Oxford, you guys need to 1) work harder on Americanizing this set, as there were still plenty of things that clearly very few Americans know or care about, which are fine to include, but not as middle parts to bonuses; 2) make sure that easy parts are actually easy, as there were plenty of easy parts where either the answer was easy but the clue obscured what it was asking for, or simply not easy answers at all; 3) do some packet searches to see where certain clues come up in tossups, because there were some egregiously misplaced ones.

I'd be happy to provide some examples of what to fix, but there doesn't appear to be a discussion forum.

Having played at the same site, I disagree about not enjoying the good parts of the tournament. Stephen is absolutely right about the presence of obscure British material and difficulty variability, but I don't think those factors are major drawbacks in a tournament that's purely for fun. I'm quite fine with having a first line buzzer race followed by a dead tossup because I believe it's more exciting when the players are constantly kept on their toes.

Northern Midwest: Case Western Reserve University (April 15th)

Though I have reservations about whether it would be worth a trip to play this in its present state the weekend before Nationals (something like May, or later in April, would be a different story), in general I really want to support the British qb project, which is great for the circuit and has been delightful to get a view of the last couple years.

Unfortunately, I can't find any information about this event; does it in fact exist? Would be cool to know.

We're waiting for the opening of a private discussion forum in order to take in some feedback/criticism. Obviously, we want to make the set better and more generally enjoyable while keeping it fun.

The discussion forum should be good to go; please join it in the usual way.

gyre and gimble wrote:

Æthelred the Unready Steady Cook wrote:Having already played the greatest part of the set the difficulty is regular/regular minus. This set is a lot of fun and contains a lot of fantastic titbits which haven't come up before so I don't think it will be a boring day of quiz for even the most calloused of veteran brains.

So, this tournament seemed to be in pretty rough shape, and I wouldn't recommend it in its current form to American players. The bonus difficulty was the most variable I've seen in many years, as was tossup difficulty, both in clue selection/placement and answerlines. It absolutely was not consistently "regular minus." I guess that the second sentence quoted above was true, though the erratic difficulty of the questions prevented us (by which I mean our whole 4-team site) from fully enjoying the good parts of this tournament.

In particular, Oxford, you guys need to 1) work harder on Americanizing this set, as there were still plenty of things that clearly very few Americans know or care about, which are fine to include, but not as middle parts to bonuses; 2) make sure that easy parts are actually easy, as there were plenty of easy parts where either the answer was easy but the clue obscured what it was asking for, or simply not easy answers at all; 3) do some packet searches to see where certain clues come up in tossups, because there were some egregiously misplaced ones.

I'd be happy to provide some examples of what to fix, but there doesn't appear to be a discussion forum.

Most of the things Stephen says in this post were still true of the set as today. The difficulty of the American content was almost as variant in difficulty as the set as a whole, and there were still a ton of impossible British things. It's not like we didn't expect that though.

This set is plenty playable for an afternoon of fun quizbowl. It's not meant to be a serious championship or Nats Prep/regionals set, so I'd recommend playing it to American players. Just...be prepared for some variance.

If people are feeling generous then I do suggest that they join the private discussion and suggest things which are "impossible British content" because I can then go and manage them.

As far as I know, the Canadian site is still waiting for the packets for our mirror tomorrow and our TD is starting to get worried. If someone could send them to Joe Su, that would very much appreciated.

edit: I've been informed that we now have the set. Thanks, NYU!