Sun n Fun Discussion

[Megalomaniacal Panda on Absinthe]

I wrote most of the Whitman packet and I'm extremely sorry that people thought the answer choices were so out of line. I actually didn't get to hear its edited incarnation, so I'm not sure what got changed, if anything, but I'm responsible for all of the tossups from our packet that Chris mentioned.

From the acetylcholine question that was posted, it looks like it wasn't edited, so I'm to blame for the poor writing, though I'm still unsure as to what well-known clues I was missing.

I'll defend Vanbrugh - there was an ACF Regionals tossup on it and I wrote it under the assumption that Vanbrugh and Blenheim palace were just generally well known. I thought that, if anything, the tossup would get eaten up on the first line because of the Jeremy Collier bit.

But yeah, I don't know what I was thinking with the Poincare-Hopf index theorem. Most of the packet was written in a span of two days (I have no doubt it shows in its unedited form), so at some point I was just writing about the stuff I'm currently studying under the assumption that if it's prominently placed in a textbook I'm using, then it can't be that ridiculous for an ACF regionals style packet. It's a mistake I'll certainly try to avoid in the future. Ditto with quantum harmonic oscillators, though apparently that was canonical.

I thought imines were a relatively well known functional group; I figured if there was a regionals tossup on amines then imines would be reasonable because the two of them are closely related.

I'm not sure why the bonuses had such low conversion. The bonuses I wrote seemed to me fairly easy to average about 15 PPB on (I didn't write the German field marshals one, and I can't really judge its difficulty), with the plausible exception of one on Akerlof and The Market for Lemons, which I'm not even sure remained in there. Could someone show me examples?

I've read through a good number of ACF packets, but I guess I still have a skewed perception of difficulty. Incidentally, I thought Jerry's packet wasn't difficult at all and veered to the side of ACF fall, if anything.

Again, I'm really sorry the packet had so many problems, and if you guys feel inclined to throw someone under a bus or whatever it is you do, I'm probably an appropriate target.

[grapesmoker]

Again, I'm really sorry the packet had so many problems, and if you guys feel inclined to throw someone under a bus or whatever it is you do, I'm probably an appropriate target.

I don't think you should feel like you deserve to be thrown under the bus; as I mentioned before, I thought your packet was quite good, better than many of the packets submitted by college writers. But yeah, your view of what's canonical is probably a little off, given that you thought my packet was easy (I don't think it was). Things like Poincare-Hopf theorem (do they teach that in high school these days?) are definitely way too hard for any but nationals-level tournaments, but most of the other stuff seemed relatively ok to me.

[Matt Weiner]

When you add up one "this is clearly too hard for a tossup answer in general, but specialists in the field might/did know it so I'll give it a free pass" answer choice after another you end up with a very, very hard packet.

[Stat Boy]

I wrote the other 5/5 from the Whitman packet (3/3 history, 1/1 geography, and 1/1 sports) including the one on German field marshals. I can't at all judge the difficulty of Shantanu's science questions, but, as for the field marshals, Paulus commanded the losing side in the largest battle in history, and Kesselring had command of an entire theater of war, as did Rundstedt, who was in overall command during the Normndy invasion and the Battle of the Bulge. I thought they were canonical or close to canonical, but, if they weren't, chalk that one up to inexperience with college-level questions.

[Captain Sinico]

Hi,
It seems like a lot of what's going on here is people saying "this thing is important to whatever extent in some field (is third in the rank order of post-structuralist French feminists, is the most acerbic literary critic mentioned on Sex and the City, is among the most important Beethoven violin concerti, etc.) Therefore, tossups on it are right and good." However, the importance of a topic (in its field or "the world" or whatever) is only one criterion that a good tossup answer has to meet. Arguing academic importance alone could be used to justify all sorts of things that lead to just not very good quizbowl.
From what I've seen of this tournament, that happened to some extent. If that's what you want to do, I don't think there's anything wrong with that, necessarily, and I don't think it entails putting a beat-down on the editor (haha, yeah right) or cloroxing my brain; it's just not good to say Fall-to-Regionals difficulty and then go nuts on the answers.
Anyway, if you as a writer or editor don't additionally consider to what extent people, especially people who aren't specialists in the given area, know about that topic, you'll wind up with questions that have far too difficult answers. If you as a supporter of a question can only argue that its topic is important in its field, you haven't made a very strong argument at all.

MaS

[Captain Sinico]

When you add up one "this is clearly too hard for a tossup answer in general, but specialists in the field might/did know it so I'll give it a free pass" answer choice after another you end up with a very, very hard packet.

Quoted for truth.

[grapesmoker]

When you add up one "this is clearly too hard for a tossup answer in general, but specialists in the field might/did know it so I'll give it a free pass" answer choice after another you end up with a very, very hard packet.

Tossup answers in that packet: Victor Hugo, Poincare-Hopf, Embarkation for Cythera, Free Officers Movement, Milan Kundera, acetylcholine, Beethoven's string quartets, Batu Khan, Emile Durkheim, iconoclasm, Gerard Manley Hopkins, imines, Vanbrugh, Nathaniel Bacon, W.V.O. Quine, Duino Elegies, quantum harmonic oscillator, Peace of the Pyrenees, Joseph Schumpeter, Great Rift Valley, and spitball.

Of these, Poincare-Hopf is clearly too hard, as are the Free Officers Movement and probably Batu Khan (that borders on the edge of acceptable for me). Every other one of these is well within the range of acceptability. Even QHO has come up in similar-level tournaments, although I would argue that this also may be too difficult for the field.

I think the main difficulty problem of that packet was in the bonuses, where many questions had really difficult third parts, or even two very difficult parts. Looking through it, I think I would have 30d only one bonus (maybe two) in the entire packet, and that's because I'm a specialist. I'm not sure who's getting 15 PPB on that packet, since I'm figuring that most people aren't even picking up those potential 30s, and are also bageling lots of other bonuses.

So yeah, it was a hard packet, made so by the bonuses more than the tossups. I would say the tossups would be mostly appropriate and an ACF Regionals, while the bonuses are probably nationals-level difficulty. Basically, if every one of the hard parts were replaced by a part that was more moderate in difficulty, it would make the packet much better for its intended audience.

[Matt Weiner]

Of these, Poincare-Hopf is clearly too hard, as are the Free Officers Movement and probably Batu Khan (that borders on the edge of acceptable for me). Every other one of these is well within the range of acceptability. Even QHO has come up in similar-level tournaments, although I would argue that this also may be too difficult for the field.

Duino Elegies is something all experienced players have heard, it doesn't mean it's a great tossup answer for a set at this advertised difficulty level. John Vanbrugh is a ridiculous tossup answer choice at nearly any tournament.

Anyway, that wasn't the packet with Cixous in it, and I'm speaking to a general phenomenon where people come up with questionable reasons to include something as the hardest question in a packet, then apply the same logic to multiple answers, resulting in a marked increase in the overall difficulty of the set. E.g. this:

as for the field marshals, Paulus commanded the losing side in the largest battle in history, and Kesselring had command of an entire theater of war, as did Rundstedt, who was in overall command during the Normndy invasion and the Battle of the Bulge

You could come up with similar reasoning for almost anything that's listed in an encyclopedia somewhere. Everything is important and worth knowing in one sense. But in another sense, only serious military history buffs are going to get more than 10 on that bonus, and you can't talk your way out of that fact. It seems like waving those questions through over and over again because you can come up with some "you SHOULD know this" argument is a bad way to produce an accessible question set.

[grapesmoker]

Duino Elegies is something all experienced players have heard, it doesn't mean it's a great tossup answer for a set at this advertised difficulty level.

I see no evidence for this assertion. If any 20th century German literature is askable, surely Rilke's most famous work is. I'm not saying that this is something everyone is going to know cold, but it's something that's easily come up multiple times in many different tournaments, and is definitely the sort of thing people have heard of. I'm curious to know how many people actually playing in this tournament thought that this was an unreasonable answer. If a majority do, I'm perfectly willing to reverse my position on this, but I'd like to hear from those who played on this set.

John Vanbrugh is a ridiculous tossup answer choice at nearly any tournament.

I don't understand why people (specifically you) keep writing this. You're acting as though Vanbrugh is some kind of magically obscure personage of whom only professional historians of architecture have heard. I took AP Art History as a senior and we learned about Vanbrugh. He's one of a number of very famous British architects, and I'm willing to bet that he is mentioned in any survey art history class that touches on architecture; certainly any such class taught out of either Janson or Gardner will have Vanbrugh in it. He's not a marginal figure in architecture by any stretch of the imagination.

Anyway, that wasn't the packet with Cixous in it, and I'm speaking to a general phenomenon where people come up with questionable reasons to include something as the hardest question in a packet, then apply the same logic to multiple answers, resulting in a marked increase in the overall difficulty of the set. E.g. this:

I don't disagree with you that this is a good way to produce an overly difficult packet; I just disagree that many of the examples presented in this thread actually constitute such instances. Cixous does, but Vanbrugh does not.

It seems like waving those questions through over and over again because you can come up with some "you SHOULD know this" argument is a bad way to produce an accessible question set.

Well, quizbowl is a game that's predicated to some extent on what people SHOULD know.

[Matt Weiner]

Well, quizbowl is a game that's predicated to some extent on what people SHOULD know.

As we have seen time and time again, including in this thread, there is a cornucopia of rationales out there as to what the difficulty of answers should be. However, the only correct one is that tossup answers should be easy enough to see an overall conversion of 85% or more by the field without limiting the scope of available answers so much that finding new clues becomes unrealistically arduous, and that bonuses should be of such a difficulty that the worst team in the field converts around 10 for the day, the best 20, and all others in the middle. The writer's sense of what the people who will be playing the tournament know is far more important than his anger about mass ignorance of English architects, and is something whose development we have not really addressed well.

[ValenciaQBowl]

It seems like a lot of what's going on here is people saying "this thing is important to whatever extent in some field (is third in the rank order of post-structuralist French feminists, is the most acerbic literary critic mentioned on Sex and the City, is among the most important Beethoven violin concerti, etc.) Therefore, tossups on it are right and good."

Just to clarify, I in no way advocated for Dr. Cixous as a quizbowl topic being "right and good." Just not silly, especially compared with other things we all are expected to know for the game. I in no way advocate for more Cixous distribution. Really, I was more interested in noting the space between what is QB canon and what is curricular canon (a topic that is really epistemelogically interesting for many reasons--worthy of a long article by someone with lots of time on his hands). I agree with the rationales you iterated for judging canonicity, Mike, as I do with Matt's definition of difficulty above.

PS--just a side note on what people SHOULD know: a recent poll showed that 68% of Americans surveyed could name the Vice President of the US, down ten percent from 20 years ago (and that was Quayle!). Granted, this is not the QB world by any means, but it's nice to visit a place where arguments about whether John Vanbrugh should be common knowledge can be held with a straight face . . .

[No Rules Westbrook]

Like Jerry, by and large, I really don't see a huge difficulty problem with this set as a whole. I'd argue that most of the answers I've encountered in the set so far (have seen about half of the packets) are defensible, even if misguided or slightly difficult (with exceptions like Vinegar Tasters, of course). Big deal. I also agree that the biggest problem here is that the tossups are grammatically tortured and don't contain enough helpful clues to justify their considerable length. I know that people usually want to get done writing as quickly as possible and tend to just shove a bunch of sentences together and call it a question...but it really would help if you all just took a few times to read over your questions to see how it sounds, and then deleted unhelpful flabby portions to make the questions sharper and more fluid and dense. Also, there was some questionable clue placement, but that's to be expected with less experienced writers.

Now, more importantly, I'd like to continue the presumably unproductive trend of this thread where people shout their ideas of what is and isn't hard...The only tossups I see in the Whitman packet, for instance, which seem questionable are Poincare-Hopf and Free Officers. And, of these, I think lots of decent history players know of the Free Officers and I've heard of Poincare-Hopf in passing (the thesis here being that when I've heard about something in math, it can't be ultra-hard). So, big deal there.

The German field commanders - I didn't really think it was all that tough, and my WW2 knowledge is kind of shaky. True, there's no easily gettable 10, but Kesselring is famous enough and I'd probably have gotten Rundstedt (though I may have said Guderian). So, meh. And, since when do Duino Elegies or Batu Khan approach hard? Duino is one of those things that has been tossed up literally to death, no? Make it Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge and Ogedei Khan and I'll agree.

Eh, this concludes Ryan's "stop saying stuff is hard, it's not that hard" moment of the week.

[grapesmoker]

As we have seen time and time again, including in this thread, there is a cornucopia of rationales out there as to what the difficulty of answers should be. However, the only correct one is that tossup answers should be easy enough to see an overall conversion of 85% or more by the field without limiting the scope of available answers so much that finding new clues becomes unrealistically arduous, and that bonuses should be of such a difficulty that the worst team in the field converts around 10 for the day, the best 20, and all others in the middle. The writer's sense of what the people who will be playing the tournament know is far more important than his anger about mass ignorance of English architects, and is something whose development we have not really addressed well.

This is quickly becoming a circular argument. I can't look inside the minds of 85% (or any %) of the players in any tournament to see what they know. So I have to use my best judgement based on what I know people cover in high school and college classes. Those things are covered for various reasons: in the case of the sciences, that's just what the material is, and people who study it know it. In the humanities, there are various reasons why something gets taught, but if it does, there's probably some sort of consensus out there that this is something you SHOULD know. If you're taking a history of art class, then it stands to reason that you should know about the major figures of the material you're studying. If your only exposure to art history is through whatever you see on TV, then we might as well condense the entire art canon to the Ninja Turtles and be done with it.

Just to clarify, I in no way advocated for Dr. Cixous as a quizbowl topic being "right and good." Just not silly, especially compared with other things we all are expected to know for the game. I in no way advocate for more Cixous distribution. Really, I was more interested in noting the space between what is QB canon and what is curricular canon (a topic that is really epistemelogically interesting for many reasons--worthy of a long article by someone with lots of time on his hands). I agree with the rationales you iterated for judging canonicity, Mike, as I do with Matt's definition of difficulty above.

As I've noted before, I don't know what role Cixous occupies in literature departments, but if that was supposed to be a philosophy question, it's still far less representative of what's actually taught in undergrad philosophy classes than Hume is. Looking at Brown's own course offerings, there are many more courses in which Cixous would probably not be taught than there are those in which she would.

The only tossups I see in the Whitman packet, for instance, which seem questionable are Poincare-Hopf and Free Officers. And, of these, I think lots of decent history players know of the Free Officers and I've heard of Poincare-Hopf in passing (the thesis here being that when I've heard about something in math, it can't be ultra-hard). So, big deal there.

Poincare-Hopf is definitely too hard because it's one of those things that only specialists really know about. "I heard this mentioned in passing somewhere" is not really a good gauge of anything, so I don't think your thesis holds.

[SnookerUSF]

So after reading the debate I have a few points that I believe I can take from this to improve the next set:

Namely, extreme vigilance when it comes to allowing non-canonical tossups to stay in the packet. I am all for introducing new information to the canon, and I operate under the assumption that there is still a vast untapped answer-space of accessible, interesting, and worthwhile questions that have not been asked. Perhaps this assumption is wrong?

Solution for next time: Instead of writing full packets, I should write a stock inventory of questions, so that I can more easily swap in questions that are too difficult, too cumbersome to edit, etc.

Also, when it comes to controlling difficulty it seems that I should ask for tournament questions a level easier than I want the final level to be. If I want sub-Regionals I should ask for Fall.

Also, moderate length. I will admit I like long tossups. I will also admit that I find it easier to write smoothly pyramidal tossups when I have more room in the tossup to work with. I will have to get better at becoming efficient with language.

As a sort of side note, do you think it is possible to be an average player (which is what I would consider myself) and a good tournament editor, or is being a good or even great player a necessary but not sufficient qualification?

Thanks again as always,
Ahmad

[BuzzerZen]

I think the hidden message of this discussion is that identifying the Answer Space is an empirical science, not a theoretical one. For every justification of Helene Cixoux, there will be a good player complaining that they've never heard of her. So the thing to do is probably to test the waters of the answer space more cautiously. When most of a packet's tossups are canon, it's legitimate to have a couple tossups that aim to expand the canon.

By way of example, the finals packet from this year's JIAT had tossup on Barnett Newman. Barnett Newman was an important abstract expressionist and color field painter, noted for paintings featuring "zips", vertical lines dividing canvases in half. That tossup went dead in the finals. All sorts of arguments could be made that Newman is an important artist to know--I could make them, as I wrote the question. But when nobody on Gov buzzes in after the giveaway (which indeed mentioned the zips), and Ted Gioia (in a different game) negs, it becomes apparent that Newman is probably too hard for a tossup (at that level). Fortunately, the difficulty hiccup didn't cause any uproar, because the other 19 tossups in the packet were gettable. I won't be asking high school students who Barnett Newman is again anytime soon.

Sun 'n Fun, on the other hand, caused an uproar because, to many, the set had tossups on hard-to-ridiculous things. It does nothing to say "you shouldn't find Helene Cixous hard because X" if people find tossups on Helene Cixous to be hard. It's empirical that good quiz bowl players found them hard, and as such it might be prudent to reconsider their appropriateness as answer choices. When Chris Ray finds half the tossups in a packet (the Cixous one) to be ridiculous, it's an important data point when considering whether those tossups were well-selected. It's not that Chris Ray is a difficulty benchmark, but he makes a better barometer of question difficulty than a hypothetical lit theory grad student who "ought to know who Helene Cixous is." When you combine Chris Ray with other complainers (or compliment-givers) and the tournament statistics, you get a much more helpful guide to how hard your questions were than you do when you look through your questions and guess how hard they are.

[No Rules Westbrook]

Ahmad,

Those are well thought out observations and it's refreshing to see someone who clearly put some work into editing what's thought of today as a decent set of questions (and an effort that I don't think turned out too badly, really). Here's what I would say (this might get long, but I think it's probably worth saying again):

First of all, I think there is one thing you have to know as an editor: the sad truth is that unless your tournament has an incredible field of experienced teams (i.e. which is exceedingly rare, and probably becoming rarer by the minute, even at say CO) - you're not going enough packets with enough usable questions to come even close to what you want, and what you do get will mostly be received in the two weeks (or more likely, one week) before the tournament. It's a good idea to hunt around for experienced people/teams to write freelance packets (ones you can trust will actually be written) and to write a stock of questions yourself in the months/weeks before the tourney whenever you have the chance (and get others to do the same). If you're an editor who doesn't want to take or doesn't have that much time, then I suppose you just have to try to learn to be efficient and attack the biggest problems first and be happy with what's left over. The best minds have deliberated over how to make people write better and more timely questions, and there are things you can do to encourage that (give instructions, announce dates and packet info really early, exhort people, penalize the crap out of them for not doing what you want, etc.), but the fact remains that they usually don't. This is why I just sort of shrug and think "eh, of course" when I see invitationals (even generally well respected/well meaning invitationals) that produce poor sets of questions (not that this set was poor, it wasn't) - the job of piecing together a truly solid set is really quite gargantuan for all but the most experienced people.

Now, the other questions: I don't really think you need "extreme vigilance" for non-canonical tossups (since this was a summer college tourney and not, say, ACF Fall) and I think there is definitely an untapped answer space. Someone like Weiner may have different advice, but like I said, I think the difficulty concerns here were not so bad. Maybe a little more discretion with Vinegar Tasters-esque stuff, but no big deal to me.

As for length, I too like longer questions as do most of the people who have posted here. Eight to nine line tossups in ten point font are fine with me, but what's important is what's in those 8-9 lines. I think you have to ask 1. how many real clues are there in here that allow people to buzz if they know them? 2. how many of these clues will realistically get people closer to the answer? I also think it's perfectly possible to write very pyramidal tossups of 5-6 lines if you're efficient at using language. You don't have to write tossups as breathless chains of clues with no connecting grammar, but there shouldn't be lines that are repetitive or contain vague useless clues...or ones that just confuse people with poor grammar or run-on sentences or buried pronouns, etc.

Your last question is very interesting - I do think you can write a very solid set as an "average player," but honestly, I think you have to be an "average player" with a decent amount of experience, i.e. played on and seen a lot of questions/know what people generally like and dislike with questions, etc.