Anouncement: Missouri Open (06/06/2009)

Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN) · Fri Nov 21, 2008 5:09 am

Hello Quizbowlers,

I am pleased to be able to announce the first ever Missouri Open: Race 4 Ya Pink Slips to be held on Saturday June 6th, 2009. This packet submission event edited by Shantanu Jha, Auroni Gupta, and me (with some potential additions to that list in the future) will be held at the University of Missouri in Columbia, MO. Our distribution will be identical to the ACF distribution, which is

5/5 Literature
5/5 History
5/5 Science
3/3 Religion, Mythology, and Philosophy
3/3 Fine Arts
1/1 Social Science
1/1 Geography
1/1 Trash, Current Events, and “Other”

A more detailed breakdown by subjects can be found here - http://acf-quizbowl.com/documents/packe ... stribution . The tournament will be aiming for that nebulous “between regionals and nationals” difficulty, akin to events like the Illinois Opens, Minnesota Open, VCU Open, or Chicago Open 2007. If you are unsure of how hard to write your packet, consult those events.

Our fees will be as follows:
Base fee per team is $120.
Any packet turned in by January 31st will let your team play for free and I will buy your team a pizza at Shakespeare's.
A $100 discount will be offered for any packets sent by February 28th.
A $50 discount for packets sent by April 4th.
A $25 discount for packets sent by April 18th.
$0 discount for packets sent by May 2nd.
$25 added for packets sent by May 9th.
$50 added for packets sent by May 16th.
And a $5 discount for each buzzer system your team brings.

For packets sent after that, we will come up with some kind of extra fees on a case by case basis, with your team running the risk of not being allowed to play. Any packet that is found to have plagiarism will be returned to the sender to be rewritten if they want to play in the tournament, and will be charged an extra $200. Every team playing must submit a packet. However, if you are not playing but just like writing questions, we would be more than happy to take freelance work, and may offer future discounts in exchange.

Because this is an open tournament, we are interested in running one or two side-events during the weekend. There is a literature singles in the works, and if anyone else is interested in writing some event, please let us know. Another event of note around the date of this tournament is the MSHSAA Academic Competition Advisory Committee meeting, which some people in the past have discussed dropping in on, so what better opportunity! In any case, hopefully there will be multiple events to keep people occupied for the weekend and make the trip worth it.

As a sidenote, we are willing to have this set mirrored pretty much anywhere on the east and west coasts. If your school fits that definition and is interested in mirroring, please contact us.

All emails about this tournament, be it about packet submission, mirroring, or just asking questions, should be sent to [email protected]. I hope you can make it out to Columbia this June.

Post by **Auks Ran Ova** » Fri Nov 21, 2008 7:17 am

Surely Minnesota will send some teams to this.

Skepticism and Animal Feed · Fri Nov 21, 2008 12:57 pm

I'd love to attend this, but Columbia seems really difficult to get to. Is there any possible host in Kansas City, notably served by Southwest Airlines?

Maxwell Sniffingwell · Fri Nov 21, 2008 1:29 pm

Wow, that's late in the year... as this will be probably be a week before finals, that'll be tough. Two weeks earlier or two weeks later would be better.

But I'll sure as hell try to be there.

Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN) · Fri Nov 21, 2008 1:31 pm

There are a grand total of 0 active collegiate programs there, and I don't know of any way to reserve space anywhere in Kansas City, so unless there is a massive clamor for it I probably won't look to deep into that option. Sorry Bruce.

marnold · Post by **marnold** » Fri Nov 21, 2008 1:31 pm

I wish tournaments (especially first-time-ever tournaments) had wackier names.

Mechanical Beasts · Post by **Mechanical Beasts** » Fri Nov 21, 2008 1:41 pm

I may do something insane that finds me attending this tournament.

Auroni · Post by **Auroni** » Fri Nov 21, 2008 2:36 pm

As much as I'd love staffing this thing, it's right in the middle of finals :(

Gautam · Post by **Gautam** » Fri Nov 21, 2008 3:02 pm

Are you sure you want to edit a tournament right in the middle of finals, Auroni?

Unless you get done with the packets a couple of weeks before the tournament (I think this starts converging to 0 probability really quickly; alternatively you can get done with studying a couple of weeks before finals, yeah right.), it might be a really really bad idea to stress yourself with editing a tournament.

If you feel you're capable, go ahead. I'd hate to see you not do well on finals because you had to spend time on a quizbowl tournament.

Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN) · Fri Nov 21, 2008 3:20 pm

Yeah, when we set this up I wasn't aware that these were your finals Auroni. If you want to do something different for editing because of that then let me know.
In any case, do colleges really go that late? Like, everywhere I've looked seems to get out by the middle of May. If like a ton of people are in the middle of finals still then I would be amenable to moving it.

Skepticism and Animal Feed · Fri Nov 21, 2008 3:21 pm

Many schools on the quarter system probably go that late. The University of Chicago certainly goes well into June.

Magister Ludi · Post by **Magister Ludi** » Fri Nov 21, 2008 3:28 pm

Who is tentatively writing the literature event? Is it Auroni?

Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN) · Fri Nov 21, 2008 3:43 pm

Yes, it will apparently be a relatively short world literature singles. I will let Auroni announce it more in-depth when he gets closer. Also, excitingly we have an addition to the slate of side events, with a so-called "Eurofest" to be written by Bruce Arthur. Now with that and free pizza, what could go wrong!

Post by **theMoMA** » Fri Nov 21, 2008 3:48 pm

Jeremy Gibbs Free Energy wrote:Yes, it will apparently be a relatively short world literature singles.

Hey, someone decided to write a tournament about my favorite thing!

OctagonJoe · Post by **OctagonJoe** » Fri Nov 21, 2008 3:54 pm

Carleton has exams from the 6th to the 8th, so this tournament probably won't fly. I'll see if I can produce a packet for this either solo or with my teammates, or I can help in editing by playtesting on the IRC or whatever.

grapesmoker · Post by **grapesmoker** » Fri Nov 21, 2008 4:02 pm

I can almost see myself coming to this. What's the best way to get to Columbia?

Auroni · Post by **Auroni** » Fri Nov 21, 2008 4:32 pm

theMoMA wrote:
Jeremy Gibbs Free Energy wrote:Yes, it will apparently be a relatively short world literature singles.
Hey, someone decided to write a tournament about my favorite thing!

heh, it was actually going to be 6 rounds of 15 question Japanese literature singles written maybe with the help of Daichi Ueda.

Auroni · Post by **Auroni** » Fri Nov 21, 2008 4:33 pm

yeah, I still want to edit this thing.

pray for elves · Post by **pray for elves** » Fri Nov 21, 2008 4:36 pm

grapesmoker wrote:I can almost see myself coming to this. What's the best way to get to Columbia?

Drive. And pick me up on the way.

Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN) · Fri Nov 21, 2008 4:44 pm

For people interested in traveling, Columbia is literally right in the middle of Missouri, so it is almost exactly halfway between St. Louis and Kansas City. I can't promise anything, but there may be a way for us to pick up a carload at one of those airports the day before the tournament. Otherwise, pick whichever of those airports is cheapest and probably carpooling, renting a car, or riding the Mo-X shuttle (about $80 round trip) or a bus in to Columbia would work best to get you in town.

ScoBo · Post by **ScoBo** » Fri Nov 21, 2008 5:02 pm

Jeremy Gibbs Free Energy wrote:For people interested in traveling, Columbia is literally right in the middle of Missouri, so it is almost exactly halfway between St. Louis and Kansas City. I can't promise anything, but there may be a way for us to pick up a carload at one of those airports the day before the tournament. Otherwise, pick whichever of those airports is cheapest and probably carpooling, renting a car, or riding the Mo-X shuttle (about $80 round trip) or a bus in to Columbia would work best to get you in town.

Assuming I am able to go, I would be able to take 2-3 people from KCI to Columbia if necessary. Also, Northwest does have a couple of daily flights between Columbia Regional Airport and Memphis.

Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN) · Fri Nov 21, 2008 5:07 pm

Aah, I didn't know that. If you fly in to Columbia Regional then I'm sure we could get people to pick you up. Something else to consider might be that Amtrak goes through Jefferson City, which is close enough we could presumably also get you to Columbia safely.

grapesmoker · Post by **grapesmoker** » Fri Nov 21, 2008 5:20 pm

Hilarius Bookbinder wrote:
grapesmoker wrote:I can almost see myself coming to this. What's the best way to get to Columbia?
Drive. And pick me up on the way.

You're not even close to being on the way! I guess you could take a bus to Cincinnati or something and then I could pick you up, but I'm not making a 4-hour detour into TN even if I'm insane enough to drive.

mujason · Post by **mujason** » Fri Nov 21, 2008 5:39 pm

I am definitely interested in playing, especially if I can hitch a ride from someone coming from the southwest (I'm just north of Lincoln, less than a mile off Highway 65, about 90 miles southwest of Columbia). Playing or not, I still plan to write a packet and get it in before the first deadline of January 31. Also, I should note that Amtrak in Missouri is terrible and usually way behind schedule due to the passenger train being delayed by freight trains hogging the rails.

Post by **Susan** » Fri Nov 21, 2008 7:04 pm

There's always Megabus!

fleurdelivre · Post by **fleurdelivre** » Mon Nov 24, 2008 11:48 am

Whig's Boson wrote:I'd love to attend this, but Columbia seems really difficult to get to. Is there any possible host in Kansas City, notably served by Southwest Airlines?

Columbia is served by either 1) Northwest Airlines via Memphis or 2) The MO-X shuttle from either St. Louis or Kansas City airports. That said, it's still a pain to get to, being two hours from the nearest real air hub.

Sima Guang Hater · Post by **Sima Guang Hater** » Mon Nov 24, 2008 1:35 pm

So I'm in St. Louis right now, and I got here via Southwest. I think Charlie said its not too bad of a drive from here.

Also, I'd love to come to this.

fleurdelivre · Post by **fleurdelivre** » Mon Nov 24, 2008 1:36 pm

The Quest for the Historical Mukherjesus wrote:So I'm in St. Louis right now, and I got here via Southwest. I think Charlie said its not too bad of a drive from here.

Also, I'd love to come to this.

Not bad, no, but two hours.

Skepticism and Animal Feed · Mon Nov 24, 2008 4:54 pm

Is there any hope of a DC mirror of this? I've figured that since I have to work on Fridays, I can only make the tournament if it is held in DC (as DC is the only place with an active quizbowl circuit nearby that I can fly to overnight). Also, it is a noted fact that pretty much everyone in quizbowl (except me) is from the DC area, or at least from Virginia or Maryland, so I'm sure it will be popular with non-Bruces as well.

Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN) · Thu Dec 04, 2008 3:30 pm

As seen, there are now announcements for Eurofest (here) and an Asian Lit singles (here). I would be amendable to adding another mini-event to the weekend (say, no longer than 6 rounds) to run on Saturday night, or if not, this sounds like a prime opportunity to run a couple novelty packets and have a pretty relaxed open weekend with everyone not having hectic nonstop quizbowl late into the evening. If anyone has something they want to write a packet about, let me know and I'll probably run it.

Cheynem · Post by **Cheynem** » Thu Dec 04, 2008 3:52 pm

Charlie:

I've heard talk of a comic book themed event perhaps around the time of Nationals (written by George Berry?), so I hesitate to suggest this so as not to step on anyone's toes, but I've begun writing a 6 packet (20 TU/Bonus) set of comic book questions. The packets would take an extremely broad view of comic books, including all media portrayals of comic books and an extremely small distribution of "comic-book-like" questions (i.e., questions about superheroes that were not necessarily in comic books). The difficulty would be fairly reasonable--the answers would be fairly well known things based on good clues (i.e., TUs would be more along the lines of "Lois Lane" instead of "Lori Lemaris," bonuses would be obviously tougher). This is meant to make it fairly accessible even to those who are not gigantic comic book fans. I plan on writing this over the holiday break, and I've already got the distribution for each packet down.

So let me know if this would work for you, or if anyone wants to jump in and suggest a better timing/usage of the set (again, sorry if I'm stealing anyone else's thunder--I'm very amenable to pushing this back or forward), let me know.

Mike Bentley · Post by **Mike Bentley** » Thu Dec 04, 2008 9:28 pm

Jeremy Gibbs Free Energy wrote:As seen, there are now announcements for Eurofest (here) and an Asian Lit singles (here). I would be amendable to adding another mini-event to the weekend (say, no longer than 6 rounds) to run on Saturday night, or if not, this sounds like a prime opportunity to run a couple novelty packets and have a pretty relaxed open weekend with everyone not having hectic nonstop quizbowl late into the evening. If anyone has something they want to write a packet about, let me know and I'll probably run it.

I could probably supply a novelty packet or two. I've also had ideas of running a guerilla theme tournament where people write subject packets on things they're interested in. The world could finally see that South African Lit or Computer Science or Bad Religion packet or whatever. Maybe this would be the place for such an event.

Mechanical Beasts · Post by **Mechanical Beasts** » Thu Dec 04, 2008 10:47 pm

Bentley Like Beckham wrote:I could probably supply a novelty packet or two. I've also had ideas of running a guerilla theme tournament where people write subject packets on things they're interested in. The world could finally see that South African Lit or Computer Science or Bad Religion packet or whatever. Maybe this would be the place for such an event.

I can guarantee you that Kyle will be interested in writing a tournament for such a thing.

... and the chaos of Mexican modernity · Thu Dec 04, 2008 10:57 pm

I wanted to attend this event so bad, yet it is the day of my graduation from high school,

Post by **Auks Ran Ova** » Fri Dec 05, 2008 3:25 am

Yeah, I'd be up for writing some sort of novelty packet.

cvdwightw · Post by **cvdwightw** » Fri Dec 05, 2008 4:42 am

Bentley Like Beckham wrote:I've also had ideas of running a guerilla theme tournament where people write subject packets on things they're interested in. The world could finally see that South African Lit or Computer Science or Bad Religion packet or whatever. Maybe this would be the place for such an event.

This is what TTGT11 has always aspired to be, and rarely (never?) been. Perhaps if TTGT11 ends up actually being canceled rather than postponed indefinitely, this can takes its place.

walter12 · Post by **walter12** » Sat Dec 06, 2008 10:20 pm

cvdwightw wrote:This is what TTGT11 has always aspired to be, and rarely (never?) been. Perhaps if TTGT11 ends up actually being canceled rather than postponed indefinitely, this can takes its place.

I seriously doubt that TTGT11 will happen next semester (or ever again, for that matter). I'd much rather see something like this happen every summer, and would be happy to participate.

Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN) · Sat Jan 10, 2009 6:24 pm

In honor of the very first tossup being written for this event, I'm posting to remind everyone that if they are interested in attending, there is still plenty of time to write a packet and get your team a free pizza.

Lagotto Romagnolo · Post by **Lagotto Romagnolo** » Mon Jan 12, 2009 4:30 pm

I may or may not be able to come to this; I'll decide based on my mental state and job status (I wish) as this draws closer.

Cheynem · Post by **Cheynem** » Mon Jan 12, 2009 11:10 pm

Hey, Charlie, it's way early, but any word on potential mirrors? Depending where the east coast mirror is, in the summer, it may be easier for me to get there rather than Missourah.

Post by **DumbJaques** » Tue Jan 13, 2009 3:44 am

I'm about 99% certain that Maryland will be mirroring this on the East Coast, which will hopefully prove to be popular with Bruces and Non-Bruces alike. A couple of people on my team expressed an interest in trying to do a Chris McCray or ASS or whatever trash tournament to go along with it, but I have no idea if that fits into Charlie's plans or if it's even likely to materialize, so it's an outside shot at most. I'm looking forward to the mirror, though (we would of course plan to mirror and side events that run).

Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN) · Sun Jan 18, 2009 4:07 pm

List of packets recieved by various deadlines (to be kept running)
By Pizza deadline:
Jason Mueller's team

fleurdelivre · Post by **fleurdelivre** » Sun Jan 18, 2009 9:40 pm

Jeremy Gibbs Free Energy wrote:List of packets recieved by various deadlines (to be kept running)
By Pizza deadline:
Jason Mueller's team

From the only team to truly understand the worth of a Shake's pie. Nice.

mujason · Post by **mujason** » Mon Jan 19, 2009 12:35 pm

Actually, I'm still in need of transport and three teammates, so if anybody is coming through Lincoln (southwest of Columbia on Highway 65) and wants to play for free, let me know at mujason34nospamatgmail.com.

Lagotto Romagnolo · Post by **Lagotto Romagnolo** » Sun Mar 15, 2009 1:28 am

Well, I can't make it to the main site, but I'd still like to play the set. Are there any plans for a mirror in the mid-atlantic?

Post by **DumbJaques** » Sun Mar 15, 2009 4:16 am

Well, I can't make it to the main site, but I'd still like to play the set. Are there any plans for a mirror in the mid-atlantic?

Yeah, Maryland is going to mirror this. I actually thought there was an announcement up, but apparently not. It's extremely likely the mirror will be held the same weekend, though.

Lagotto Romagnolo · Post by **Lagotto Romagnolo** » Tue Mar 17, 2009 12:30 am

DumbJaques wrote:
Yeah, Maryland is going to mirror this. I actually thought there was an announcement up, but apparently not. It's extremely likely the mirror will be held the same weekend, though.

That's fine; it's more for convenience than anything else.

Jeremy Gibbs Lemma · Post by **Jeremy Gibbs Lemma** » Sun Apr 19, 2009 10:58 pm

Team Missouri, Eff Yeah: Jason Loy, Matt Chadbourne, Kent Buxton, Mystery Fourth (If MF fails to materialize, I will turn this into "seeking a fourth")

Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN) · Sun Apr 19, 2009 11:43 pm

You know you can say "fuck" in the college section, right?

Jeremy Gibbs Lemma · Post by **Jeremy Gibbs Lemma** » Mon Apr 20, 2009 12:30 am

I know, I know. I would say I was self-filtering, but I actually do say "eff yeah" more often.