East Coast Summer Open: Crime on Goat Island @ CMU

[grapesmoker]

I'm pleased to announce that the East Coast Summer Open: Crime on Goat Island will take place on June 24th at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA. This is an open packet submission tournament that will be edited by myself and whoever else is interested in editing.

Eligibility: It's an open tournament! Everyone can play, whether you're a freshman or a crusty old dinosaur who hasn't picked up a buzzer in years, as long as you write a packet.

Packet specs: The target difficulty is around the level of ACF Regionals, though feel free to go a little easier. Save the hardcore stuff for Chicago Open. The actual distribution is posted below. The ideal target length of tossups is about 6 lines, and you shouldn't exceed 7 lines in any case.

4/4 lit
4/4 history
4/4 science
3/3 religion, myth, philosophy [1/1 of each]
3/3 fine arts
1/1 social science
1/1 more big three
2/2 your choice
1/1 trash
1/1 geography

The "your choice" category may include questions from any of the other categories except the big three (though no more than 1 question from any individual one) or just miscellany that doesn't really fit anywhere else. The formatting should be the same as that for ACF Nationals. Examples:

Text of tossup.
Answer: Answer to tossup

Bonus leadin.
[point value] Bonus part.
Answer: Answer to bonus part

et cetera.

As always be diverse in your answer choices, yada yada. I trust you all know what you're doing, but if you have any questions, do contact me.

Fee schedule:
Base fee: $80
Packet in by May 20th: -$30
Packet in by May 28th: -$15
Packet in by June 11th: no penalty
Packet in by June 18th: +$15
Packet in after June 18th: +$30, plus bonus glaring from me

Mirroring: I understand that people in both Texas and California have expressed interest in mirroring. If you want to mirror, you must provide AT LEAST two packets. There will be no exceptions to this rule.

If you want to register for the tournament, please email Paul Litvak at plitvak at andrew dot cmu dot edu, and cc me at jerry_v at brown dot edu. All packets should be sent to me at the above address.

Thanks,
Jerry

edit: no mirror in Texas, apparently.

[Romero]

-d

[grapesmoker]

So far, the following teams have registered for ECSO:

Chicago (3, 2 packets submitted)
Maryland (1, submitted packet)
Matt Lafer, Adam Kemezis, Ryan Westbrook, and Leo Wolpert
Matt Weiner?
A high school team (send me an email, please)
Pitt

We also have the following free agents:

Roger Craig
Jason Keller

The deadline to submit your packet and get a $15 discount is this Sunday, May 28th. I would also like to remind people of the $10 discount available for submitting their packet online at qbdb.ath.cx:8000/index.php

[grapesmoker]

The no-penalty deadline for submitting ECSO questions is coming up this Sunday. So far, I have 2 packets from 3 Chicago teams, 1 packet from Maryland, and various rumors floating around of other teams possibly attending, as well as of packets coming from the West Coast mirror. Please get your packets in as soon as you can so that Eric and I have time to edit them; particularly Eric, since he will be out of town starting next week and won't be able to work on the questions as much.

[AuguryMarch]

Here an update on teams,

Chicago + the indefatigable Will Turner (3)
Maryland
Michigan Alums
Shadyside Academy
U Pittsburgh
Kent State Alums
JasonKellerProxy
Weiner and the Jets

I think that's it... I'll email directions and parking info and such as the time gets closer. For those that know about these things, the tournament will be on the second floor of Baker/Porter. Jerry and Eric know about the packet situation, so presumably there will be some.

Paul

[grapesmoker]

I have so far received 2 packets from the various Chicago teams, one packet from Maryland, and...

So please submit your packets as soon as you can. Also, I'd appreciate it if you could register online at http://qbdb.ath.cx:8000/index.php even if you don't plan on submitting online. This makes question management much easier for me.

[Birdofredum Sawin]

In short: Michigan won. Chicago B was second, Chicago A third, VCU fourth.

I will refrain from commenting on the questions until I've had a lot more to drink.

Andrew

[AuguryMarch]

Now that all the hungover people have left my apartment, I can post some things. First, I want to congratulate Michigan for winning. Second, I want to send out some hearty thanks to the people who came out to read, Ezequiel Berdichevsky, Greg Hanneman (and double shoutout to you for doing stats as well!), and Ryan Scranton. I would also like to thank the editors of this tournament, Jerry and Eric, who I know worked very hard on this set.

So here are the stats:
http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/plitvak/ ... dings.html

I believe Jerry wants to give the questions away, so as soon as he confirms that, I will post a copy of the packets to my website as well.

thanks everyone for coming out, and I hope to see many of you at future CMU tournaments.

Paul

[grapesmoker]

Thanks to the teams that played yesterday. I want to encourage discussion of this question set, and I'll start by saying that unfortunately it was not up to the standards that I'd set for it. I think logistical issues that I didn't anticipate may have prevented Eric from doing as much work as he'd liked, and as a result, the question quality turned out uneven. Primarily, this is my fault as the initiator of the tournament; if I had suspected that we would run into these issues, I would have found a third person to work on the set with us.

Anyway, I want to have your feedback, either personally to me or on these boards. Please be specific in your criticism; I would like to avoid in future tournaments whatever mistakes I've made in this one. Paul, feel free to post the question set.

[AuguryMarch]

Questions are now online at:

http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/plitvak/ ... O/Packets/

Paul

[MLafer]

Questions are now online at:

http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/plitvak/ ... O/Packets/

Paul

Can you please change the file name on "my" packet from "Lafer" to "Michigan"...I only wrote 1/4 of the questions. Also, "Lit 4/4" should be removed from the top of the packet

[AuguryMarch]

No.

[MLafer]

well i tried

[Mike Bentley]

Just distribution wise, I only remember hearing 3 computer science questions in the opening 9 packets (the graph theory bonus in round 5, the compiler bonus, and the NTFS question which is pretty borderline CS). Astronomy seemed well represented, there seemed to be almost 1/1 astronomy per packet. IMO these two should be more balanced, but it's also probably a result of how the questions came in.

I'm sure you're already aware of things like the Plessy v. Furgeson repeat, Round 6 (or whatever one started off with Raft of the Medusa) being much easier than the others, and some of the weaker bonuses in the round 7 (I think) packet, so it's not really worth going into detail about them.

Overall it seems that things went pretty well considering how late packets came in.

[recfreq]

Sorry for mentioning Amelia Grimaldi in a bonus that asked
for Amelia Grimaldi; needless to say, it was a 3 AM effort,
actually it coincided with finals, not good timing.

My only complaint is the abrupt decline in bonus quality
in the middle of the bastard packet and having to say "THE
father" "THE Mother" "THE Child" "THE Social Contract"
etc for the answers, also at that pt, the 30-20-10 on "Bat
Out of Hell II" came in as did states from nicknames, college
from alumni, country from authors, etc. Other than that
single part of the particular packet, the questions seem to
me to be good in general.

Thank you to Jerry and Eric, and to Charles and Jay on this
end for editing / organizing. Appreciate it.

[BobGHHS]

My only complaint is the abrupt decline in bonus quality
in the middle of the bastard packet and having to say "THE
father" "THE Mother" "THE Child" "THE Social Contract"
etc for the answers, also at that pt, the 30-20-10 on "Bat
Out of Hell II" came in as did states from nicknames, college
from alumni, country from authors, etc. Other than that
single part of the particular packet, the questions seem to
me to be good in general.

I'll take the blame for that -- we had absolutely no idea how to write ACF style questions, even looking at old ACF packets -- we tried, but it was as expected for anyone with no experience in it.

I had a good time, and after getting bitchslapped all day, I figured out why I never played college quiz bowl.

Thanks to Paul for putting on the show, and I'm glad I finally got to meet Matt, Andrew and everyone else I've talked to on here for a few years and never met personally before.

BK

[salamanca]

I just wanted to thank the various teams for coming, especially Bob and his crew... in light of the recent discussions about transitioning from HS to college and the ways in which both levels of quizbowl can and should learn from one another I applaud you all's willingness to see how the other half buzzes. Hopefully you'll come out to some open tourneys again when the logistics are a little more formalized and the packets are much tighter.

Btw, for a first attempt at an ACF-style packet I thought you all were right on target. Writing [and editing] questions is a skill set that takes a while to develop and is something I think all levels of the game should respect more than we do.

Later,
Ezequiel