The Geography Front - Discussion

Elaborate on the merits of specific tournaments or have general theoretical discussion here.
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castrioti
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The Geography Front - Discussion

Post by castrioti »

The Geography Front in-person tournament at Northwestern and the Online Mirror are complete and packets 1-5 used for the events are posted https://collegiate.quizbowlpackets.com/2687/. We still have Rounds 6-18 to go through (in subsequent events TBA shortly), but a forum for discussion is in demand, and I want to give players of both events a chance to discuss the questions and the tournaments so far, before we get too far out.

I'll start by congratulating the winners of the events, Stephen Eltinge (at Northwestern) and Ashish Subramanian (Online Mirror). Your trophies have been sent for engraving today, and have a 10-day lead time, plus shipping.

You are all great players, and astonished me how fast you annihilated my questions, quite a few of which were definitely not easy.

I'll continue by apologizing for what I felt worked least well: the stone age scorekeeping. After trying Yellow Fruit, SQB and other formats and failing to get them to work for a shootout with rounds, I tried using Excel, and we ended up spending way too much time fixing column swap and overlap errors. I didn't want to use Buzzin.Live due to the lack of interrupts and inability to record which questions were answered by whom. If anyone has a good program for this, my mind is open. This has to be better, and for rounds 6-18, I will hire a scorekeeper in addition to implementing others' good ideas.

Specifically for the mirror, there were some audio-quality issues with mics breaking up or cutting out during answer delivery. In a few cases they led to me not realizing a correct answer had been given (the Monterrey question) or my illegal prompting on Nagpur when Chota Nagpur was actually said, leading to the Deccan question getting thrown out.

I also replaced the Strait of Ormuz question because of ambiguity in "passage" and where Operation Praying Mantis actually took place (I can find sites saying both: the Strait of Ormuz and the Persian Gulf). Looking at maps, some of that did indeed happen well into the Persian Gulf and some in the strait. Sea boundaries are somewhat gradational, which appears to be why sources don't agree exactly.

Prompting in geography is a topic: when to do it, when not to, especially when boundaries are ambiguous. Based on comments during the Exhibition Match back in April, I went back and made sure it was clear what was being asked for, and added lots of prompts for overlapping regions (what is a region? Could be ecological, geological, political, historical, etc). You have to be versatile and anticipate what people could say (experiences are legion), or else adapt quickly during the game. This mostly worked out OK, but I could see problems if I gave a few questions to a non-geography player to moderate (the Ambergris Cay question comes to mind--"landmass" is also potentially ambiguous). Regions aside, the Online Mirror benefitted from a prompt that should have been there at Northwestern for the Aokigahara question. Accepting or prompting colloquial answers adds another few shades of gray.

My purpose in writing a tournament like this back in 2007 was to demonstrate that geography flows like the river that it is through, and nourishes, all the other things we like to know and write about across the distribution. It could stand on its own, but the more clues from outside of geography I added, the more its relationship with other important disciplines seemed evident (my favorite along these lines was the Mt. Greylock question). I think throwing a few non-geographical clues helps (and this is now routinely done, so nothing revolutionary there). Anyway, discussion is open.
Wesley Mathews
Indiana University 2006
Occidental College 2001
The Altamont School 1997
Putnam Magnet 1993

"I have not brought you liberty, I have found it here among you" --George Castrioti, upon returning to Kruje, 1443
Karan_GeoHP
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Re: The Geography Front - Discussion

Post by Karan_GeoHP »

Any chance there will be a geo tourney in 2022?
Karan Menon
University of Southern California Quiz Bowl President(2019-present)
John P. Stevens High School Quiz Bowl President(2017-2019), Coach(2020-present)
[email protected]
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