2020 ACF Winter: Global Announcement (November 7)
Posted: Sun Aug 09, 2020 2:39 pm
This is the official announcement for 2020 ACF Winter, which will be held on November 7th, 2020. (Note that this is two weeks earlier than the original date.) It will target a difficulty halfway between ACF Fall and ACF Regionals. The tournament will be head edited by me (William Golden) and subject edited by Ganon Evans, Nick Jensen, Vishwa Shanmugam, Bryanna Shao, Christopher Sims, Jaskaran Singh, Andrew Wang, and Chandler West. Andrew will also provide science oversight.
FORMAT:
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, ACF Winter will be held entirely online this year. ACF will coordinate with host schools to hold mirrors using an online platform (to be announced later), and will work to create the most authentic and engaging quizbowl experience possible under these circumstances.
PACKET SUBMISSION:
Any team with at least two people on it who played a regular, collegiate, academic quizbowl tournament* (either as a college student or high school student) prior to September 1, 2019, is required to submit a half-packet, unless it is a high school team attending a high-school-only mirror. Please email [email protected] if you are unsure whether your team is required to submit a half-packet. A team that is not required to submit a packet may submit an optional packet by the no-penalty deadline for a $50 discount.
* For these purposes, all ACF tournaments, NAQT SCT (Division I or Division II), NAQT ICT, and typical college-level academic invitationals count as regular collegiate academic tournaments. Pop culture or “hybrid” tournaments, HCASC, and tournaments played on NAQT’s Collegiate Novice series sets do not.
Here is the submission schedule.
September 6th, 2020: -$50
September 25th, 2020: -$25
October 4th, 2020: no penalty
October 18th, 2020: +$25
October 25th, 2020: +$50
If teams required to submit a half-packet have not submitted by November 1st, they will be dropped from the tournament, with no exceptions.
If your team is going to submit a half-packet, whether required or not, email [email protected] to request a distribution. All finished packets must be sent to that email before 11:59 PDT on the day listed to receive the discount or penalty. Please format the half-packet in .doc or .docx before sending it. The email subject line should list the name of the school, the team number (if applicable), and the words “half-packet.”
REGISTRATION:
Fill out the central 2020 ACF Winter registration form with all relevant information. The form is here. The field for each site can be found here.
If possible, teams should register for the site that is geographically closest to them and/or is in the region they would normally attend. The field cap for all sites is 18, after which teams will be placed on a waitlist or potentially assigned to another site. Please register by November 2, 2020.
DISTRIBUTION:
The subject distribution is listed at this link. Winter will be using the same distribution as Regionals.
FEES:
Base fee per team: $120
New to quizbowl discount: –$80
Shorthanded discount (1-2 players): –$60
Staffers: –$25 per staffer with functional laptop. Staffers must register with ACF in advance.
The new to quizbowl discount is for schools that did not send a team to any regular collegiate academic tournament (exclusively Novice tournaments do not count) since September 2019, and have no one on the team(s) claiming this discount who played those tournaments for another school.
Host sites will bill teams as soon as possible after the teams register. Teams should pay their host sites by whatever method is convenient for the hosts, who will in turn pay ACF by check, bank transfer, cash, or PayPal.
TIPS AND GUIDELINES:
- Please make sure your questions are harder than questions in ACF Fall and easier than at ACF Regionals. 2019 EFT is a good difficulty target. A majority of your tossup answers should conceivably be a tossup answer at ACF Fall.
- Questions should be written in 10-pt Times New Roman with one-inch margins. Although you may submit longer questions, tossups will be capped at seven lines for the tournament. Each bonus part should be a maximum of three lines in length, with the majority being one or two lines long.
- When writing bonuses, aim for the easy parts to be converted by around 90% of teams. The giveaways for tossups should also conceivably be answered by the majority of teams. While creative questions are great, don’t sacrifice playability for novelty.
More information can be found in ACF’s packet submission guidelines .
HOSTS:
If you are interested in hosting an online mirror of ACF Winter, fill out this form. If you have any questions about hosting or about the form, contact ACF’s Mirror Coordinator, Margaret Tebbe, at [email protected]. Hosts must abide by ACF’s Hosting Guidelines, which will be revised to reflect requirements for online tournaments.
Mirrors will by default be regional. One benefit of online tournaments, however, is that smaller sites can be condensed without creating transportation barriers. ACF reserves the right to move teams and staffers between sites. ACF intends to mirror 2020 ACF Winter in the following regions:
Northeast: Yale
Upper Mid-Atlantic: Rutgers
Lower Mid-Atlantic: UMD
East Coast Overflow: TBD
Southeast: Vanderbilt
Great Lakes: Ohio State
Midwest: Alex Damisch
North: Iowa
South Central: UT Austin
Mountain West + Northwest: Washington
California: Southern California
Eastern Canada: Toronto
UK: Warwick
High school only: High School
HIGH SCHOOL MIRRORS:
ACF Winter will be available for high school mirrors. If you want to host a high school mirror of Winter, please email [email protected]. High school mirrors are restricted to high school teams; no college teams can participate.
If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to email [email protected].
PACKETS RECEIVED:
-$50 deadline:
Berkeley A
Cambridge A
Florida A
Florida B
North Carolina A
North Carolina B
Princeton A
Princeton B
UCSD A
-$25 deadline:
McGill A
Nebraska A (-$50)
NYU A
NYU B
Oxford A
Purdue A
Purdue B
Rutgers B
-$0 deadline:
Boise State A
Bowdoin A
Carleton A
Columbia A
Cornell A
Cornell B
Depaul A
Duke A
Georgia Tech A
Georgia Tech B
Harvard B
Iowa B
Liberty A
Liberty B
McMaster A
MSU A
MSU B (-$50)
MSU C (-$50)
NYU C (-$50)
Rutgers A
SIU-Edwardsville A
Virginia A (-$50)
USC A
Yale A
+$25 deadline:
Brown A
Claremont A
Colorado A
Harvard A
Illinois A
Iowa A
Minnesota A
Minnesota B
MIT A
MIT B
Michigan A
Oxford B
Penn A
Penn B
Penn State A
Rice A
VCU A
Warwick A
+$50 deadline:
Auburn A
Carnegie Mellon A
Colgate A
Colorado B
Columbia B
Illinois B
Southampton A
Swarthmore A
WUSTL A
WUSTL B
WUSTL C
+$80 deadline:
Amherst A
FORMAT:
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, ACF Winter will be held entirely online this year. ACF will coordinate with host schools to hold mirrors using an online platform (to be announced later), and will work to create the most authentic and engaging quizbowl experience possible under these circumstances.
PACKET SUBMISSION:
Any team with at least two people on it who played a regular, collegiate, academic quizbowl tournament* (either as a college student or high school student) prior to September 1, 2019, is required to submit a half-packet, unless it is a high school team attending a high-school-only mirror. Please email [email protected] if you are unsure whether your team is required to submit a half-packet. A team that is not required to submit a packet may submit an optional packet by the no-penalty deadline for a $50 discount.
* For these purposes, all ACF tournaments, NAQT SCT (Division I or Division II), NAQT ICT, and typical college-level academic invitationals count as regular collegiate academic tournaments. Pop culture or “hybrid” tournaments, HCASC, and tournaments played on NAQT’s Collegiate Novice series sets do not.
Here is the submission schedule.
September 6th, 2020: -$50
September 25th, 2020: -$25
October 4th, 2020: no penalty
October 18th, 2020: +$25
October 25th, 2020: +$50
If teams required to submit a half-packet have not submitted by November 1st, they will be dropped from the tournament, with no exceptions.
If your team is going to submit a half-packet, whether required or not, email [email protected] to request a distribution. All finished packets must be sent to that email before 11:59 PDT on the day listed to receive the discount or penalty. Please format the half-packet in .doc or .docx before sending it. The email subject line should list the name of the school, the team number (if applicable), and the words “half-packet.”
REGISTRATION:
Fill out the central 2020 ACF Winter registration form with all relevant information. The form is here. The field for each site can be found here.
If possible, teams should register for the site that is geographically closest to them and/or is in the region they would normally attend. The field cap for all sites is 18, after which teams will be placed on a waitlist or potentially assigned to another site. Please register by November 2, 2020.
DISTRIBUTION:
The subject distribution is listed at this link. Winter will be using the same distribution as Regionals.
FEES:
Base fee per team: $120
New to quizbowl discount: –$80
Shorthanded discount (1-2 players): –$60
Staffers: –$25 per staffer with functional laptop. Staffers must register with ACF in advance.
The new to quizbowl discount is for schools that did not send a team to any regular collegiate academic tournament (exclusively Novice tournaments do not count) since September 2019, and have no one on the team(s) claiming this discount who played those tournaments for another school.
Host sites will bill teams as soon as possible after the teams register. Teams should pay their host sites by whatever method is convenient for the hosts, who will in turn pay ACF by check, bank transfer, cash, or PayPal.
TIPS AND GUIDELINES:
- Please make sure your questions are harder than questions in ACF Fall and easier than at ACF Regionals. 2019 EFT is a good difficulty target. A majority of your tossup answers should conceivably be a tossup answer at ACF Fall.
- Questions should be written in 10-pt Times New Roman with one-inch margins. Although you may submit longer questions, tossups will be capped at seven lines for the tournament. Each bonus part should be a maximum of three lines in length, with the majority being one or two lines long.
- When writing bonuses, aim for the easy parts to be converted by around 90% of teams. The giveaways for tossups should also conceivably be answered by the majority of teams. While creative questions are great, don’t sacrifice playability for novelty.
More information can be found in ACF’s packet submission guidelines .
HOSTS:
If you are interested in hosting an online mirror of ACF Winter, fill out this form. If you have any questions about hosting or about the form, contact ACF’s Mirror Coordinator, Margaret Tebbe, at [email protected]. Hosts must abide by ACF’s Hosting Guidelines, which will be revised to reflect requirements for online tournaments.
Mirrors will by default be regional. One benefit of online tournaments, however, is that smaller sites can be condensed without creating transportation barriers. ACF reserves the right to move teams and staffers between sites. ACF intends to mirror 2020 ACF Winter in the following regions:
Northeast: Yale
Upper Mid-Atlantic: Rutgers
Lower Mid-Atlantic: UMD
East Coast Overflow: TBD
Southeast: Vanderbilt
Great Lakes: Ohio State
Midwest: Alex Damisch
North: Iowa
South Central: UT Austin
Mountain West + Northwest: Washington
California: Southern California
Eastern Canada: Toronto
UK: Warwick
High school only: High School
HIGH SCHOOL MIRRORS:
ACF Winter will be available for high school mirrors. If you want to host a high school mirror of Winter, please email [email protected]. High school mirrors are restricted to high school teams; no college teams can participate.
If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to email [email protected].
PACKETS RECEIVED:
-$50 deadline:
Berkeley A
Cambridge A
Florida A
Florida B
North Carolina A
North Carolina B
Princeton A
Princeton B
UCSD A
-$25 deadline:
McGill A
Nebraska A (-$50)
NYU A
NYU B
Oxford A
Purdue A
Purdue B
Rutgers B
-$0 deadline:
Boise State A
Bowdoin A
Carleton A
Columbia A
Cornell A
Cornell B
Depaul A
Duke A
Georgia Tech A
Georgia Tech B
Harvard B
Iowa B
Liberty A
Liberty B
McMaster A
MSU A
MSU B (-$50)
MSU C (-$50)
NYU C (-$50)
Rutgers A
SIU-Edwardsville A
Virginia A (-$50)
USC A
Yale A
+$25 deadline:
Brown A
Claremont A
Colorado A
Harvard A
Illinois A
Iowa A
Minnesota A
Minnesota B
MIT A
MIT B
Michigan A
Oxford B
Penn A
Penn B
Penn State A
Rice A
VCU A
Warwick A
+$50 deadline:
Auburn A
Carnegie Mellon A
Colgate A
Colorado B
Columbia B
Illinois B
Southampton A
Swarthmore A
WUSTL A
WUSTL B
WUSTL C
+$80 deadline:
Amherst A