ANNOUNCEMENT: VETO 7/18/2009 in Vancouver, Hamilton, Ottawa
Posted: Fri Jun 05, 2009 2:06 am
Eleventh Annual VANCOUVER ESTIVAL TRIVIA OPEN
plus Ontario mirrors in HAMILTON and OTTAWA
SATURDAY, JULY 18, 2009
The Vancouver Estival Trivia Open (VETO) is the nation's longest-running annual quiz bowl tournament. There will be two mirrors in Ontario: one at McMaster University in Hamilton, and the other at the University of Ottawa. For up-to-date information, check the web page http://caql.org/events/veto09.html and the weblog http://veto.caql.org
There will be a bit of a departure from the "guerrilla" style of previous years. If you participated in VETO in the past few years, you'll recall that each team brought copies of its own original packet of questions, for use during one round of games, and this packet was not edited or seen by anyone else associated with the tournament.
What's new this year is that each team that is considered to be relatively inexperienced at quiz bowl writing will be paired off with a team that has one or more members who are more experienced in writing quiz bowl questions for Canadian players; the more experienced team will edit the less experienced team's packet. This means, of course, that each of these inexperienced teams will have to finish a packet and send it to its assigned editor by a deadline, which is Sunday, July 5.
Other than that, VETO will run the same as before:
* each team must bring copies of an original packet of questions, which will either have been edited by members of one other team, or will not have been seen by anyone else at the tournament;
* participants must moderate and keep score during rounds when they aren't playing.
Since there are three sites, every team must e-mail its packet to some assigned counterparts at the other sites a couple of days before the tournament. Some teams will also be asked to bring copies of packets to be received through e-mail from the other sites.
Check the CAQL results page for links to detailed reports of VETO in previous years.
COSTS
This event is FREE of charge for those playing at any site.
WHO CAN PLAY
VETO is an "open" tournament in the sense that we don't exclude anyone because of age, student status, degrees obtained or not obtained, nationality, etc. However, recognizing that people come to VETO with vastly different levels of experience, we'd like to give priority to those who have a history of providing good questions in the tossup/bonus format.
When you tell us who will be on your team, we'll decide whether to assign an editor to your packet. If you do get assigned an editor, your editor will be someone who will be playing in VETO at a different site from yours. (This is in order to allow everyone at your site to play on your packet.)
A team can have any number of players, but no more than four can play at a time. If you don't have a full team of four, we can match you up with other players. Solo teams are OK, too: we'll set the schedule so that other teams will have byes and you won't have to staff more than one room by yourself.
WHEN
Saturday, July 18, 2009, from about 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. local time.
For quiz bowl tourists, here is how VETO fits into the North American summer weekend quiz calendar:
* July 11: Sun 'n Fun at the University of South Florida in Tampa, with mirrors at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities and the University of Maryland, College Park
* July 18: VETO
* July 25 - 26: Chicago Open
* August 1 - 2: Paléogénies XI, a francophone tournament in Rivière-du-Loup, Quebec
* August 8: VCU Open at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond
If you would like to participate in VETO, please notify us by Canada Day, July 1, 2009.
VANCOUVER LOCATION
We're hoping to return to downtown Vancouver and play at Simon Fraser University at Harbour Centre, but rooms haven't been confirmed yet.
HAMILTON LOCATION
In Hamilton, VETO will be held at McMaster University.
McMaster is about 45 minutes' drive from either downtown Toronto or Pearson International airport, which is Canada's busiest.
It's also about an hour's drive from Niagara Falls.
OTTAWA LOCATION
In Ottawa, VETO will be held at the University of Ottawa, which is just 1 kilometre from Parliament Hill.
FORMAT
Each team is responsible for a question packet, which may be edited by another assigned team as described above. The tournament will also be staffed by players. We'll play at least a full round-robin, as many rounds as packets from the two sites, likely ending in a site final (which some may consider an unfair format).
Games will be conducted according to NAQT rules, except that matches will be untimed, with 20 tossups per round, and there will be no 15-point "power" tossups.
QUESTION PACKETS
Detailed question guidelines are on a separate web page which includes a section with many, many useful reference links categorized by subject.
Rounds will be untimed, with 20 tossups played in each. But you will have to write more than 20 tossups and 20 bonuses, because you may need tie-breaking questions, or you may end up having to throw out some questions because of game errors or because they ask for information that already came up in somebody else's packet.
So your packet should include (at least):
* 24 tossups, each worth 10 points -- no 15-point "powers";
* 22 bonuses, each worth 30 points -- but no single-part, single-answer questions.
Use the following subject distribution for both tossups and bonuses:
Science, Math, Technology 3 -- 4
History 3 -- 4
Literature 3 -- 4
Geography 2 -- 3
Current Events 2 -- 3
Fine Arts 1 -- 2
Religion, Philosophy, Mythology 1 -- 2
Social Science 1 -- 2
Popular Culture, Games, Sports 1 -- 2
General Knowledge 0 -- 3
Canadian content quota:
Of the first 20 tossups, at least 4 must refer to Canadian people, places, things, events, and created works. The same goes for the first 20 bonuses. But overall, don't exceed 50% Canadian content in your packet. Your Canadian questions should also cover diverse subject areas and not be clustered in Geography or Literature, etc.
Tossups should include at least two separate clues, preferably at least four. Multiple-choice bonuses should be used sparingly, if at all, and should provide at least four choices.
In order that we can keep to a reasonable schedule, questions must not be too long:
* No tossup question, and no part of a bonus question, should exceed 6 lines if using a fixed-width font with 79 characters per line.
* No bonus question should ever require more than four separate team conferrals.
To promote fun and variety, teams are encouraged to bring multimedia questions (visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory, gustatory). These tend to work better as bonuses than as tossups. Let us know if you plan to have any audio questions, so that we can arrange enough of the proper equipment to play them.
Every packet must contain at least one multimedia question: It can be as simple as presenting a printout of a picture you found through Google and asking a few questions about the picture.
For our further amusement, we encourage rounds with hidden themes. In the past four years, we've had:
* a packet in which every tossup answer was also the name of a school that had participated in the SmartAsk TV game show;
* a packet in which every answer contained the name of an animal;
* a packet in which every answer contained the syllable "NI";
* a packet in which every tossup answer began with the letter T, and every bonus had either answers beginning with the letter B or a theme that began with the letter B;
* a packet in which every tossup answer had some connection to the number two, and every bonus had some connection to the number three;
* a packet in which the answer to every tossup contained the number of the tossup.
The Stanford archive contains most of the question packets used at VETO in 2002 through 2008.
We've taken the list of answers that have come up in VETO in 2005 through 2007 and categorized them by subject. Try to write about things that are not on this list.
PRIZES
The leading individual scorer at VETO in Vancouver will take over the title of West Coast Dominatrix of Relevant Knowledge (WC-DORK).
The leading individual scorer at VETO in Hamilton will take over the title of Nerd Of The East (NOTE).
Anyone may sponsor a prize and select a winner according to any criteria. In the past, we've had up to 22 prizes awarded to invididuals and teams in a single VETO.
CONTACT
If you are interested in participating, please contact the appropriate site coordinator by Canada Day, July 1, 2009.
Vancouver: Peter at [email protected] (pmcc at alumni.sfu.ca)
Hamilton: Jay at [email protected] (senator_jay at hotmail.com)
Ottawa: Ben at [email protected] (uotrivia at yahoo.ca)
Updates will be posted on the web page http://caql.org/events/veto09.html
"A lot of Imperialist ladies asked me to tea to meet schoolmasters from New Zealand and editors from Vancouver, and that was the dismalest business of all."
- John Buchan, The Thirty-Nine Steps
plus Ontario mirrors in HAMILTON and OTTAWA
SATURDAY, JULY 18, 2009
The Vancouver Estival Trivia Open (VETO) is the nation's longest-running annual quiz bowl tournament. There will be two mirrors in Ontario: one at McMaster University in Hamilton, and the other at the University of Ottawa. For up-to-date information, check the web page http://caql.org/events/veto09.html and the weblog http://veto.caql.org
There will be a bit of a departure from the "guerrilla" style of previous years. If you participated in VETO in the past few years, you'll recall that each team brought copies of its own original packet of questions, for use during one round of games, and this packet was not edited or seen by anyone else associated with the tournament.
What's new this year is that each team that is considered to be relatively inexperienced at quiz bowl writing will be paired off with a team that has one or more members who are more experienced in writing quiz bowl questions for Canadian players; the more experienced team will edit the less experienced team's packet. This means, of course, that each of these inexperienced teams will have to finish a packet and send it to its assigned editor by a deadline, which is Sunday, July 5.
Other than that, VETO will run the same as before:
* each team must bring copies of an original packet of questions, which will either have been edited by members of one other team, or will not have been seen by anyone else at the tournament;
* participants must moderate and keep score during rounds when they aren't playing.
Since there are three sites, every team must e-mail its packet to some assigned counterparts at the other sites a couple of days before the tournament. Some teams will also be asked to bring copies of packets to be received through e-mail from the other sites.
Check the CAQL results page for links to detailed reports of VETO in previous years.
COSTS
This event is FREE of charge for those playing at any site.
WHO CAN PLAY
VETO is an "open" tournament in the sense that we don't exclude anyone because of age, student status, degrees obtained or not obtained, nationality, etc. However, recognizing that people come to VETO with vastly different levels of experience, we'd like to give priority to those who have a history of providing good questions in the tossup/bonus format.
When you tell us who will be on your team, we'll decide whether to assign an editor to your packet. If you do get assigned an editor, your editor will be someone who will be playing in VETO at a different site from yours. (This is in order to allow everyone at your site to play on your packet.)
A team can have any number of players, but no more than four can play at a time. If you don't have a full team of four, we can match you up with other players. Solo teams are OK, too: we'll set the schedule so that other teams will have byes and you won't have to staff more than one room by yourself.
WHEN
Saturday, July 18, 2009, from about 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. local time.
For quiz bowl tourists, here is how VETO fits into the North American summer weekend quiz calendar:
* July 11: Sun 'n Fun at the University of South Florida in Tampa, with mirrors at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities and the University of Maryland, College Park
* July 18: VETO
* July 25 - 26: Chicago Open
* August 1 - 2: Paléogénies XI, a francophone tournament in Rivière-du-Loup, Quebec
* August 8: VCU Open at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond
If you would like to participate in VETO, please notify us by Canada Day, July 1, 2009.
VANCOUVER LOCATION
We're hoping to return to downtown Vancouver and play at Simon Fraser University at Harbour Centre, but rooms haven't been confirmed yet.
HAMILTON LOCATION
In Hamilton, VETO will be held at McMaster University.
McMaster is about 45 minutes' drive from either downtown Toronto or Pearson International airport, which is Canada's busiest.
It's also about an hour's drive from Niagara Falls.
OTTAWA LOCATION
In Ottawa, VETO will be held at the University of Ottawa, which is just 1 kilometre from Parliament Hill.
FORMAT
Each team is responsible for a question packet, which may be edited by another assigned team as described above. The tournament will also be staffed by players. We'll play at least a full round-robin, as many rounds as packets from the two sites, likely ending in a site final (which some may consider an unfair format).
Games will be conducted according to NAQT rules, except that matches will be untimed, with 20 tossups per round, and there will be no 15-point "power" tossups.
QUESTION PACKETS
Detailed question guidelines are on a separate web page which includes a section with many, many useful reference links categorized by subject.
Rounds will be untimed, with 20 tossups played in each. But you will have to write more than 20 tossups and 20 bonuses, because you may need tie-breaking questions, or you may end up having to throw out some questions because of game errors or because they ask for information that already came up in somebody else's packet.
So your packet should include (at least):
* 24 tossups, each worth 10 points -- no 15-point "powers";
* 22 bonuses, each worth 30 points -- but no single-part, single-answer questions.
Use the following subject distribution for both tossups and bonuses:
Science, Math, Technology 3 -- 4
History 3 -- 4
Literature 3 -- 4
Geography 2 -- 3
Current Events 2 -- 3
Fine Arts 1 -- 2
Religion, Philosophy, Mythology 1 -- 2
Social Science 1 -- 2
Popular Culture, Games, Sports 1 -- 2
General Knowledge 0 -- 3
Canadian content quota:
Of the first 20 tossups, at least 4 must refer to Canadian people, places, things, events, and created works. The same goes for the first 20 bonuses. But overall, don't exceed 50% Canadian content in your packet. Your Canadian questions should also cover diverse subject areas and not be clustered in Geography or Literature, etc.
Tossups should include at least two separate clues, preferably at least four. Multiple-choice bonuses should be used sparingly, if at all, and should provide at least four choices.
In order that we can keep to a reasonable schedule, questions must not be too long:
* No tossup question, and no part of a bonus question, should exceed 6 lines if using a fixed-width font with 79 characters per line.
* No bonus question should ever require more than four separate team conferrals.
To promote fun and variety, teams are encouraged to bring multimedia questions (visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory, gustatory). These tend to work better as bonuses than as tossups. Let us know if you plan to have any audio questions, so that we can arrange enough of the proper equipment to play them.
Every packet must contain at least one multimedia question: It can be as simple as presenting a printout of a picture you found through Google and asking a few questions about the picture.
For our further amusement, we encourage rounds with hidden themes. In the past four years, we've had:
* a packet in which every tossup answer was also the name of a school that had participated in the SmartAsk TV game show;
* a packet in which every answer contained the name of an animal;
* a packet in which every answer contained the syllable "NI";
* a packet in which every tossup answer began with the letter T, and every bonus had either answers beginning with the letter B or a theme that began with the letter B;
* a packet in which every tossup answer had some connection to the number two, and every bonus had some connection to the number three;
* a packet in which the answer to every tossup contained the number of the tossup.
The Stanford archive contains most of the question packets used at VETO in 2002 through 2008.
We've taken the list of answers that have come up in VETO in 2005 through 2007 and categorized them by subject. Try to write about things that are not on this list.
PRIZES
The leading individual scorer at VETO in Vancouver will take over the title of West Coast Dominatrix of Relevant Knowledge (WC-DORK).
The leading individual scorer at VETO in Hamilton will take over the title of Nerd Of The East (NOTE).
Anyone may sponsor a prize and select a winner according to any criteria. In the past, we've had up to 22 prizes awarded to invididuals and teams in a single VETO.
CONTACT
If you are interested in participating, please contact the appropriate site coordinator by Canada Day, July 1, 2009.
Vancouver: Peter at [email protected] (pmcc at alumni.sfu.ca)
Hamilton: Jay at [email protected] (senator_jay at hotmail.com)
Ottawa: Ben at [email protected] (uotrivia at yahoo.ca)
Updates will be posted on the web page http://caql.org/events/veto09.html
"A lot of Imperialist ladies asked me to tea to meet schoolmasters from New Zealand and editors from Vancouver, and that was the dismalest business of all."
- John Buchan, The Thirty-Nine Steps