Spring Undergraduate Novice 2020 (Easy Difficulty)
Posted: Thu Aug 08, 2019 11:23 pm
I am pleased to announce 2020’s edition of the Spring Undergraduate Novice tournament. I hope this can become a yearly tradition. I was motivated to work on this tournament after reading Chris Chiego’s excellent thread here.
This tournament is the unofficial successor to the Florida Spring Tournament of the last two years.
Edited by: Harris Bunker, Taylor Harvey, Chris Sims, Mike Cheyne
Written by: The Editors and Lalit Maharjan, William Grossman, James Zhou, Bradley Kirksey,
Zachary Knecht, Montagu James, Roman Madoerin, Vishal Puppala, Eve Fleisig,
Rebecca Thomas, Spencer Oung, Charles Dees, Abhinav Karthikeyan, Jack Edmondson,
Karsten Rynearson, Jason Lewis, Zach Foster and Chandler West
Difficulty: We are shooting for the Level 1 or “Easy” difficulty as determined by Ophir’s very helpful scale. This means we are aiming for this set to be no harder than the modal ACF Fall. That said, this set is written for a college audience and will draw from a different canon than the typical high school set for example. Hard parts and powers will reward deep engagement with the material but will not be “extra-canonical” in any sense. We want several teams playing this set to easily break 20 ppb and want the average team to score around 15 ppb. In general, I will be instructing editors to try to get tossup conversion to 90 percent or higher. At this level, I feel dead tossups are particularly unappealing.
EDIT: I neglected to mention, but our length cap is 700 characters or approximately 7 lines of Times New Roman 10 before powermark.
Target Audience and Eligibility: This tournament will be written for college players with limited quizbowl experience. This does not mean that only freshmen or sophomores may play, but I would recommend that people who score above 35 ppg at ACF Fall or feel comfortable at ACF Regionals difficulty or higher to let their less-experienced teammates play this set without them. Former “high school superstars” who were in top 25 in scoring at either HSNCT or PACE NSC are not the target audience from this set. I entrust local TDs to set transparent and fair eligibility policies that fit their circuit. Please direct any questions to me.
Mixed, “chimera”, or open teams are strictly banned from this event. High schoolers are welcome to host their own mirror of this set (possibly for a reduced fee—email me) but TDs of college sites are allowed to split the high school and collegiate fields if they wish. (This means, that if say 10 college teams and 6 high school teams register, the college teams could do a round robin and the high school teams can do a double round robin and then a final.)
Distribution:
We will be producing 13 packets of 20/20 powermarked questions and a half packet used for tie breakers.
LITERATURE 4/4
American Lit 1/1
British Lit 1/1
European Lit 1/1
World Lit/Mixed and Classical Lit 1/1
HISTORY 4/4
American History 1/1
European History 1/1
World History 1/1
Other History (More World, Commonwealth History, Historiography and Classical History) 1/1
SCIENCE 4/4
Biology 1/1
Chemistry 1/1
Physics 1/1
Mathematics (mix of pure and applied) 0.4/.4
Astronomy 0.2/.2
Computer Science 0.2/.2
Earth 0.2/.2
FINE ARTS 2.75/2.75
Painting and Sculpture 1/1
Classical Music 1/1
Other Fine Arts (split equally between auditory and visual OFA) .75/.75
RMPSS 3.5/3.5
Religion 1/1
Mythology 1/1
Philosophy 0.5/.5
Social Science (Chiefly economics, psychology, sociology, political science, linguistics and “criticism”) 1/1
Geo/Trash/CE/Other Ac 1.75/1.75
Geography 0.5/.5
Trash 0.75/.75
Current Events 0.25/.25
Other Academic 0.25/.25
This distribution is pretty standard aside from the .5/.5 Philosophy and the slightly increased trash. which I feel is more appropriate for a novice audience I tried to craft this distribution to be as novice-friendly as possible while still providing a good semblance of what collegiate quizbowl is.
Mirroring and payment:
This tournament can be mirrored from March 1 until the end of the academic year. Potential mirrors occurring during the summer will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis.
The mirror cost of this event is $40 per team. However, if a host successfully brings in a collegiate team that did not attend a tournament outside of NAQT Novice, ACF Fall and SCT DII in the last academic year (i.e. September 2018 – May 2019), the mirror fee for that school is $30/team. This is to encourage outreach to less-experienced or “plugged-in” teams. As I indicated earlier, high school-only mirror fees may be negotiable but I am unwilling to go below $17/team because I feel strongly that high school mirror fees are far too low.
If you wish to mirror the event, email me at harrisbunker AT gmail.com and indicate your school, a rough estimate of the expected field and a contact email if it’s different than yours. Additionally, please provide information on how you are going to pay me promptly and in full. A simple sentence like “We need your address and an invoice in order to send you a check” should suffice. I would much prefer that all teams pay or start processing payment within a month of their event. The only form of payment I will expect at this point is a Venmo payment to me, Harris Bunker or a check made out to me mailed to my address. I reserve the right to change this payment policy at my discretion but prices will not change.
If there is interest, we can have a closed Discord mirror for high school or collegiate teams. I will aim to playtest all the questions in the set to interested experienced players at a later date. I applaud how the FST writing crew did this last year and I aim to emulate their playtesting approach.
I feel tournaments of this difficulty are much needed in all circuits and I look forward to teams playing the event! Please email or comment with questions or concerns. Additionally, I would love if this set was mirrored in the Canada or the United Kingdom. If you are part of either of these circuits and would like to help excising and replacing the the hardest American content, please contact me and you can be compensated for your work.
EDIT (March 24, 2020): this set will be available to mirror in person for Fall 2020. Let me know during the summer if this is possible for your region. Additionally, I have updated this post with a more accurate and up-to-date list of writers and editors.
This tournament is the unofficial successor to the Florida Spring Tournament of the last two years.
Edited by: Harris Bunker, Taylor Harvey, Chris Sims, Mike Cheyne
Written by: The Editors and Lalit Maharjan, William Grossman, James Zhou, Bradley Kirksey,
Zachary Knecht, Montagu James, Roman Madoerin, Vishal Puppala, Eve Fleisig,
Rebecca Thomas, Spencer Oung, Charles Dees, Abhinav Karthikeyan, Jack Edmondson,
Karsten Rynearson, Jason Lewis, Zach Foster and Chandler West
Difficulty: We are shooting for the Level 1 or “Easy” difficulty as determined by Ophir’s very helpful scale. This means we are aiming for this set to be no harder than the modal ACF Fall. That said, this set is written for a college audience and will draw from a different canon than the typical high school set for example. Hard parts and powers will reward deep engagement with the material but will not be “extra-canonical” in any sense. We want several teams playing this set to easily break 20 ppb and want the average team to score around 15 ppb. In general, I will be instructing editors to try to get tossup conversion to 90 percent or higher. At this level, I feel dead tossups are particularly unappealing.
EDIT: I neglected to mention, but our length cap is 700 characters or approximately 7 lines of Times New Roman 10 before powermark.
Target Audience and Eligibility: This tournament will be written for college players with limited quizbowl experience. This does not mean that only freshmen or sophomores may play, but I would recommend that people who score above 35 ppg at ACF Fall or feel comfortable at ACF Regionals difficulty or higher to let their less-experienced teammates play this set without them. Former “high school superstars” who were in top 25 in scoring at either HSNCT or PACE NSC are not the target audience from this set. I entrust local TDs to set transparent and fair eligibility policies that fit their circuit. Please direct any questions to me.
Mixed, “chimera”, or open teams are strictly banned from this event. High schoolers are welcome to host their own mirror of this set (possibly for a reduced fee—email me) but TDs of college sites are allowed to split the high school and collegiate fields if they wish. (This means, that if say 10 college teams and 6 high school teams register, the college teams could do a round robin and the high school teams can do a double round robin and then a final.)
Distribution:
We will be producing 13 packets of 20/20 powermarked questions and a half packet used for tie breakers.
LITERATURE 4/4
American Lit 1/1
British Lit 1/1
European Lit 1/1
World Lit/Mixed and Classical Lit 1/1
HISTORY 4/4
American History 1/1
European History 1/1
World History 1/1
Other History (More World, Commonwealth History, Historiography and Classical History) 1/1
SCIENCE 4/4
Biology 1/1
Chemistry 1/1
Physics 1/1
Mathematics (mix of pure and applied) 0.4/.4
Astronomy 0.2/.2
Computer Science 0.2/.2
Earth 0.2/.2
FINE ARTS 2.75/2.75
Painting and Sculpture 1/1
Classical Music 1/1
Other Fine Arts (split equally between auditory and visual OFA) .75/.75
RMPSS 3.5/3.5
Religion 1/1
Mythology 1/1
Philosophy 0.5/.5
Social Science (Chiefly economics, psychology, sociology, political science, linguistics and “criticism”) 1/1
Geo/Trash/CE/Other Ac 1.75/1.75
Geography 0.5/.5
Trash 0.75/.75
Current Events 0.25/.25
Other Academic 0.25/.25
This distribution is pretty standard aside from the .5/.5 Philosophy and the slightly increased trash. which I feel is more appropriate for a novice audience I tried to craft this distribution to be as novice-friendly as possible while still providing a good semblance of what collegiate quizbowl is.
Mirroring and payment:
This tournament can be mirrored from March 1 until the end of the academic year. Potential mirrors occurring during the summer will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis.
The mirror cost of this event is $40 per team. However, if a host successfully brings in a collegiate team that did not attend a tournament outside of NAQT Novice, ACF Fall and SCT DII in the last academic year (i.e. September 2018 – May 2019), the mirror fee for that school is $30/team. This is to encourage outreach to less-experienced or “plugged-in” teams. As I indicated earlier, high school-only mirror fees may be negotiable but I am unwilling to go below $17/team because I feel strongly that high school mirror fees are far too low.
If you wish to mirror the event, email me at harrisbunker AT gmail.com and indicate your school, a rough estimate of the expected field and a contact email if it’s different than yours. Additionally, please provide information on how you are going to pay me promptly and in full. A simple sentence like “We need your address and an invoice in order to send you a check” should suffice. I would much prefer that all teams pay or start processing payment within a month of their event. The only form of payment I will expect at this point is a Venmo payment to me, Harris Bunker or a check made out to me mailed to my address. I reserve the right to change this payment policy at my discretion but prices will not change.
If there is interest, we can have a closed Discord mirror for high school or collegiate teams. I will aim to playtest all the questions in the set to interested experienced players at a later date. I applaud how the FST writing crew did this last year and I aim to emulate their playtesting approach.
I feel tournaments of this difficulty are much needed in all circuits and I look forward to teams playing the event! Please email or comment with questions or concerns. Additionally, I would love if this set was mirrored in the Canada or the United Kingdom. If you are part of either of these circuits and would like to help excising and replacing the the hardest American content, please contact me and you can be compensated for your work.
EDIT (March 24, 2020): this set will be available to mirror in person for Fall 2020. Let me know during the summer if this is possible for your region. Additionally, I have updated this post with a more accurate and up-to-date list of writers and editors.