talk about individual questions here

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Welcome to the 2011 SCT discussion

Post by endersdouble »

DII questions:

I am fairly tilted after this tournament so I'm just going to make two points and save the rest for when I'm a bit calmer.

Please do not set up phrasing like this: "Blah blah blah name this series called Doctor Who. <Doctor Who>. Correct. This spinoff <I interrupt with "Torchwood"> of Stargate..." ESPECIALLY in a timed tournament that's just a way to screw someone with knowledge of various science fiction shows.

Can someone explain why "Jewish prayer shawl" isn't an acceptable interrupt for "tallit?"
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Re: Welcome to the 2011 SCT discussion

Post by grapesmoker »

endersdouble wrote:Can someone explain why "Jewish prayer shawl" isn't an acceptable interrupt for "tallit?"
Things have names. You gotta know those names.
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Re: Welcome to the 2011 SCT discussion

Post by Auks Ran Ova »

endersdouble wrote:Please do not set up phrasing like this: "Blah blah blah name this series called Doctor Who. <Doctor Who>. Correct. This spinoff <I interrupt with "Torchwood"> of Stargate..." ESPECIALLY in a timed tournament that's just a way to screw someone with knowledge of various science fiction shows.
If you deliberately pass up the chance to hear bonus clues (for free!), I don't think I can really sympathize with your plight. It's not the question's job to make you more patient.

(on the other hand, HOROLOGIUM DELENDA EST)
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Re: Welcome to the 2011 SCT discussion

Post by AKKOLADE »

endersdouble wrote:Please do not set up phrasing like this: "Blah blah blah name this series called Doctor Who. <Doctor Who>. Correct. This spinoff <I interrupt with "Torchwood"> of Stargate..." ESPECIALLY in a timed tournament that's just a way to screw someone with knowledge of various science fiction shows.
Sorry, but I don't think you have much of a leg to stand on here. The lead-in was "For 10 points each--name these shows on the SyFy Channel." If you're wanting to guess an answer based solely off the previous answer without listening to the second prompt long enough for a single clue, that's your decision, not an issue with the question in my opinion.

Also, yeah, names.
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Re: Welcome to the 2011 SCT discussion

Post by endersdouble »

grapesmoker wrote:
endersdouble wrote:Can someone explain why "Jewish prayer shawl" isn't an acceptable interrupt for "tallit?"
Things have names. You gotta know those names.
In English, the name is "prayer shawl." Either that, or lots of other tu are incredibly inconsistent. I have given the five Ks as hair/sword/etc, answer lines usually take "prayer" for "salat"...I can't figure out what the consistent rule on foreign language terms is.
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Re: Welcome to the 2011 SCT discussion

Post by endersdouble »

Ukonvasara wrote:
endersdouble wrote:Please do not set up phrasing like this: "Blah blah blah name this series called Doctor Who. <Doctor Who>. Correct. This spinoff <I interrupt with "Torchwood"> of Stargate..." ESPECIALLY in a timed tournament that's just a way to screw someone with knowledge of various science fiction shows.
If you deliberately pass up the chance to hear bonus clues (for free!), I don't think I can really sympathize with your plight. It's not the question's job to make you more patient.
Missing the SyFy leadin was a dumb mistake on my part, sure, but you try not interrupting in a room where you'll be lucky to finish twenty tossups. I'm just saying the question is strictly better as "This Stargate spinoff..." and the little things matter.
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Re: Welcome to the 2011 SCT discussion

Post by grapesmoker »

endersdouble wrote:In English, the name is "prayer shawl." Either that, or lots of other tu are incredibly inconsistent. I have given the five Ks as hair/sword/etc, answer lines usually take "prayer" for "salat"...I can't figure out what the consistent rule on foreign language terms is.
This thing has a proper name in the relevant language, just like "salat" is the correct term for the requirement in Islam to pray. I don't know what's so confusing about this; it has always been the case that describing a thing was insufficient if it had a proper name. I'm sympathetic to the argument that some things which don't really have proper names can be described in order to give acceptable answers (e.g. the riot at the premiere of "Rite of Spring") but this isn't really such a case.
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Re: Welcome to the 2011 SCT discussion

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Division II, round 6 wrote:Wearers of these garments kiss them during the VaYomeir, the third part of the Sh'ma. Parts of these garments are to be looked on as a reminder of the commandments and are wrapped and knotted in khulyot. These may be made into a khuppah, or (*) wedding canopy, and except at Kol Nidre are only worn in the morning. Boys generally start wearing them at the age of 13. For 10 points--name these Jewish prayer shawls.

answer: _tallit_ot or _tallis_os (accept _tsitsit_ before mentioned; prompt on "(Jewish) prayer shawls" or similar answers)
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talk about individual questions here

Post by Important Bird Area »

This is your thread to talk about the clue structure and phrasing of individual questions. I'll post the text of whatever we want to talk about.
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Re: talk about individual questions here

Post by uclajerry »

So I think the div II question on California literature had Gary Soto as the first clue. That's pretty much the whole middle school literature curriculum in this state.
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Re: talk about individual questions here

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round 8 wrote:This state is home to the author of the poetry collection ~The Tale of Sunlight~, Gary Soto. Poet Frank Bidart also came from this state, and named his first book after it. This current home state of Adrienne Rich was the home of a poet who lived at Tor House and wrote ~Give Your Heart to the Hawks~, (*) Robinson Jeffers. It also contains City Lights Bookstore. For 10 points--name this Western state that appears in the title of an Allen Ginsberg poem set partly in a supermarket.
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Re: talk about individual questions here

Post by cvdwightw »

uclajerry wrote:So I think the div II question on California literature had Gary Soto as the first clue. That's pretty much the whole middle school literature curriculum in this state.
Let's chalk that up to, um, regional advantage.

I think we've already exhausted in chat the non-unique clue in the Pan tossup (short version: Britannica, among other sources, says the whole King-Midas-judging-music-contest clue applies to both Marsyas and Pan; people who reflex buzzed off the clue - like me - should have probably been more aware that the early clues didn't make a lot of sense if the answer was Marsyas; question should have had a clue that only appears in the Pan myth of the music contest), but maybe Jeff should post that tossup so it's clear what's being talked about.
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Re: talk about individual questions here

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round 4 wrote:This figure's attempt to seduce Omphale led to his being kicked across a grotto by Heracles, but he did succeed in fathering Iynx on the nymph Echo. On one occasion, he helped Hermes by distracting Delphyne with his fear-inducing shout. He lost a (*) music contest with Apollo despite being preferred by King Midas; in that contest he played an instrument he made after Syrinx turned into a reed to escape him. For 10 points--name this god who was part goat and who typically carried a set of pipes.
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Re: talk about individual questions here

Post by Alejandro »

A couple small issues:

There was a question in DII on the New York World that seemed to reuse the leadin from last year's SCT.
The set bonus has a confusing description for intersection: it says that it is the operation that takes the elements from X and Y, which can also describe union.
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Re: talk about individual questions here

Post by DLSqb10 »

There was a bonus in the DII set about Egypt, it was like Sadat, Mahfouz, ElBaradei. I'm pretty sure that was the same exact bonus from 2 or 3 years ago. There also seemed to be a lot of repeats from round to round, maybe that's just me.
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Re: talk about individual questions here

Post by Kyle »

C. This other board game also requires players to advance their four pawns into a home base. It is notable for its “Pop-o-matic” plastic dome, which contains dice.

answer: Trouble
I am told that Frustration, which also has a Pop-o-matic dome, is the British equivalent of Trouble. People got really upset. NAQT's board game editor should be less parochial.
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Re: talk about individual questions here

Post by Ondes Martenot »

Two minor issues I noticed while reading DII

1. There was a tossup on statins, and then a tossup the next round on cholesterol (I think there was significant clue overlap between the two)
2. One of the rounds had consecutive tossups on Manmohan Singh, India, and Salman Rushdie
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Re: Welcome to the 2011 SCT discussion

Post by tiwonge »

grapesmoker wrote:
endersdouble wrote:Can someone explain why "Jewish prayer shawl" isn't an acceptable interrupt for "tallit?"
Things have names. You gotta know those names.
This question was negged in 2 of the 3 rooms in our region. (It might have been negged in all three, but I wasn't watching the other, and the UW B team had a strong Jewish player who probably would have been able to come up with the Jewish name for it.)

In general, are there guidelines for when a word in a foreign language is required, and when an English translation or description is sufficient? Tallit and "Jewish prayer shawl" here, or zakat and almsgiving, or Pesach/Passover or Shabbat/Sabbath? I've never seen Dakhma required for Pillar of Silence, for example; the latter answer has been acceptable.
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Re: talk about individual questions here

Post by Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN) »

The difference between Towers of Silence and Jewish prayer shawl is that there's no way to construe "Towers of Silence" as anything other than a proper noun. Prayer shawl, on the other hand, is a descriptive term for something that has a name as a proper noun.
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Re: talk about individual questions here

Post by MicroEStudent »

There was a bonus on Shirley Sherrod/Andrew Breitbart/Tom Vilsack in one DI packet and then in the next packet, there was a tossup on Breitbart where the middle clues were exactly the same as the bonus clues, but inaccurate (Huffington Post, not Report, and he no longer works for Drudge).
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Re: talk about individual questions here

Post by Quantum Mushroom Billiard Hat »

The giveaway on the Surprise Symphony tossup seemed misleading, since the "surprise" chord is played by the entire orchestra, not just the timpani, and another famous Haydn London Symphony (Drumroll) takes its name from the timpani opening.
Mit dem Paukenschlag [POW-kin-shlahg] is a common German subtitle for this work, whose second movement has 2/4 [two-four] time and a seven-note theme of homogeneous rhythm. The first section of that movement is played again with pizzicato and pianissimo to set up the start of the second. First performed in (*) London in 1792, it is the second of the 12 “London Symphonies.” For 10 points—name this work by Joseph Haydn best known for a timpani beat that comes rather unexpectedly.
answer: Surprise Symphony (or Haydn Symphony No. 94)
The first half of the Calvin Cycle tossup sounds a huge amount like the pentose phosphate pathway, which makes 4 and 5 carbon sugars and even uses transketolase.
In this pathway first studied using 2-D paper chromatography, a reaction producing four- and five-carbon molecules and one yielding two five-carbon molecules are catalyzed by transketolase [trans-KEE-toh-“lace”]. Its discoverers initially thought one of the initial substrates was a two-carbon molecule, before finding that two molecules of 3PG were formed from carbon dioxide and (*) ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate using the enzyme Rubisco [roo-BISS-koh]. For 10 points—name this cycle that contains the “dark reactions” of photosynthesis.
answer: Calvin(-Benson) cycle or C-3 pathway or reductive pentose phosphate cycle (accept dark reactions; prompt
on “photosynthesis”)
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Re: talk about individual questions here

Post by Auks Ran Ova »

Quantum Mushroom Billiard Hat wrote:The giveaway on the Surprise Symphony tossup seemed misleading, since the "surprise" chord is played by the entire orchestra, not just the timpani, and another famous Haydn London Symphony (Drumroll) takes its name from the timpani opening.
Mit dem Paukenschlag [POW-kin-shlahg] is a common German subtitle for this work, whose second movement has 2/4 [two-four] time and a seven-note theme of homogeneous rhythm. The first section of that movement is played again with pizzicato and pianissimo to set up the start of the second. First performed in (*) London in 1792, it is the second of the 12 “London Symphonies.” For 10 points—name this work by Joseph Haydn best known for a timpani beat that comes rather unexpectedly.
answer: Surprise Symphony (or Haydn Symphony No. 94)
The first half of the Calvin Cycle tossup sounds a huge amount like the pentose phosphate pathway, which makes 4 and 5 carbon sugars and even uses transketolase.
In this pathway first studied using 2-D paper chromatography, a reaction producing four- and five-carbon molecules and one yielding two five-carbon molecules are catalyzed by transketolase [trans-KEE-toh-“lace”]. Its discoverers initially thought one of the initial substrates was a two-carbon molecule, before finding that two molecules of 3PG were formed from carbon dioxide and (*) ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate using the enzyme Rubisco [roo-BISS-koh]. For 10 points—name this cycle that contains the “dark reactions” of photosynthesis.
answer: Calvin(-Benson) cycle or C-3 pathway or reductive pentose phosphate cycle (accept dark reactions; prompt
on “photosynthesis”)
Heh, that Surprise Symphony tossup was kind of unfortunate; I translated the first clue to "with the drum-beat" in my head and immediately negged with Drumroll. Not really the tossup's fault though.

We talked about the Calvin cycle tossup in the chat last night; here's the conclusion that was reached there:
Jeff Hoppes wrote:Text from Matt Keller: "The player was likely going for the generally named pentose phosphate cycle, sometimes called the pentose phosphate shunt, which is an alternate pathway to glycolysis and also involves transketolase. That goes in the other direction as the Calvin cycle, though, so the bit about producing 4 and 5 carbon sugars and two 5 carbon sugars makes the player's answer incorrect."
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Re: talk about individual questions here

Post by Mechanical Beasts »

The Quest for the Historical Mukherjesus wrote:The MG bonus started out great, then took a HUGE turn for the worse. The mercury bonus part isn't relevant in the least. There are several better third parts (end-plate potential, neuromuscular junction, Lambert-Eaton syndrome, ptosis, neostigmine, plasmapheresis, thymus even) that would have rewarded people who have helped cut out thymuses of MG patients.
Yeah, any of those third parts would have been more interesting and more enjoyable. I think that your perception of MG as a middle part is artificial--it's just been used so much in recent years. I intended MG to be the hard part of that bonus, and I was trying to get an easy part that didn't conflict with anything else already in the set--I think that's the last bio bonus that got written, or close to it. (I also think about half those suggestions are too hard for a regular-difficulty hard part.)
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Re: talk about individual questions here

Post by AKKOLADE »

People who are asking for critiques of your questions: I think you and the discussion as a whole would be best served by individual threads. I'll split out the requests that were already made here over the next few minutes.
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Re: talk about individual questions here

Post by AKKOLADE »

Here is George's thread.

Here is Jonah's thread.

Here are general complains that Eric Mukherjee made, which are now in the Jonah thread.
The Quest for the Historical Mukherjesus wrote: More complaints:
Packet 2:
-Trees: Stylistically, it makes more sense to just have a tossup on trees in either Greek or Norse myth, esp when you're character-confined. The Welsh leadin was quite hard if you're someone not named Rob Carson, and it would have created a better gradient if you lead in with the Heliades, maybe go to Melampus, then end with Baucis and Philemon.
-Countee Cullen: Why on earth was "The Ballad of the Little Brown Girl" not in this tossup?
-Periodic: I liked this one. This is not a complaint (ILTO. TINAC)
-Hilbert: For all future reference, just say "He's not Peano, but he names a space-filling curve". Not that this was a problem since you mentioned the axiomatization of geometry before that, which is his second most famous thing.
-Ohio: Why not just make this a tossup on school vouchers? If you've been following that, you'd have heard of Zelman v Simmons-Harris.
-Shahnemah becomes transparent pretty damn fast.
-Phase transitions: Is there any reason to put Ehrenfest classification scheme after order parameter?
-Ortho-para directors are also activating groups, generally speaking (halides are the exception). You could make this way less obtuse by saying "The methyl group directs to these two positions blah blah blah"

Packet 3:
-Norman Mailer: don't clutter up an already short tossup with biographical details. I don't care that he went to Harvard.
-Koch snowflake: You're going to write about the 5th most famous fractal? Who's bright idea was this.
-Cholesterol: ILTO. TINAC
-Rhee: ILTO. TINAC
-Cherokee: I don't know if the point of this was to fulfill a general knowledge distribution. But pretty much everyone's buzzing on Sal.
-Syncretization was not accepted for Syncretism. Fuck you, name-redacted moderator from this match.
-The MG bonus started out great, then took a HUGE turn for the worse. The mercury bonus part isn't relevant in the least. There are several better third parts (end-plate potential, neuromuscular junction, Lambert-Eaton syndrome, ptosis, neostigmine, plasmapheresis, thymus even) that would have rewarded people who have helped cut out thymuses of MG patients.

Packet 4:
-Why is "refrigerator mothers" in power for Bettelheim?
-Babinet's principle is a strange thing to ask about.

Packet 5:
- Round Table: ILTO. TINAC
-Balder: Stupid overdone leadin.
-Circadian Rhythms: Spending a line talking about how they work in Cyanobacteria is worthless. Talking about Benzer, BMAL, or entrainers would have been much more knowledge-rewarding.

Packet 7:
-The Calvin cycle question was an absolute hose for Pentose Phosphate pathway. It doesn't just sound like it, you're actually describing a step in the pentose phosphate pathway.
-You could have mentioned that the M2 protein is inhibited by amantidine. Generally this questions'fine though
-Racemic mixtures: This is completely unpowerable
-You could say that Alpher was on a paper with Bethe and Gamow.

More later.
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Re: talk about individual questions here

Post by SnookerUSF »

This is probably not as contributive to the discussion as a post should be, but that Said clue regarding "aesthetic silence" regarding Mansfield Park I thought was really well executed. I know that the use (overuse) of critical clues regarding works of art are often derided by some here on the board, but that was well placed and should serve as something of a model for the judicious use of such clues (not because what Said said is accurate or valid, nor because Said is an especially renown Austen scholar but the way in which that novel is (mis)understood and interpreted in academic settings in the wake of that comment is significant). Moreover if memory serves me correctly (a repost of the tossup should rectify any errors) it came after clues related to the novel directly, so as to mitigate the claim that close readers of the novel are at a noted disadvantage to those that have (just!) studied it in an academic setting when such clues are used (though why this hierarchy is so rigid is beyond me, but that issue is besides the point of this post).
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Re: talk about individual questions here

Post by Important Bird Area »

Alejandro wrote:A couple small issues:

There was a question in DII on the New York World that seemed to reuse the leadin from last year's SCT.
This is true; these two tossups used one of the same clues (Nellie Bly's circumnavigation).
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Re: talk about individual questions here

Post by The King's Flight to the Scots »

SnookerUSF wrote:This is probably not as contributive to the discussion as a post should be, but that Said clue regarding "aesthetic silence" regarding Mansfield Park I thought was really well executed. I know that the use (overuse) of critical clues regarding works of art are often derided by some here on the board, but that was well placed and should serve as something of a model for the judicious use of such clues (not because what Said said is accurate or valid, nor because Said is an especially renown Austen scholar but the way in which that novel is (mis)understood and interpreted in academic settings in the wake of that comment is significant). Moreover if memory serves me correctly (a repost of the tossup should rectify any errors) it came after clues related to the novel directly, so as to mitigate the claim that close readers of the novel are at a noted disadvantage to those that have (just!) studied it in an academic setting when such clues are used (though why this hierarchy is so rigid is beyond me, but that issue is besides the point of this post).
Eh, I disagree. That clue was much more likely to reward people who know quizbowl clues for Said than it was to reward either close reading or knowledge of criticism.
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Re: talk about individual questions here

Post by Important Bird Area »

round 11 wrote:Lionel Trilling said that this novel lacks its author's "characteristic irony" and claimed that no one likes its heroine, while Edward Said noted its "esthetic silence" regarding a plantation in Antigua. In the end, the main love interest takes over a parsonage from Dr. Grant. Its heroine returns to the (*) title estate after two elopements involving Mr. Yates, Julia, Mrs. Rushworth, and Henry Crawford. For 10 points--name this Jane Austen novel featuring Edmund Bertram and Fanny Price.
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Re: talk about individual questions here

Post by Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN) »

I felt some prompting was insufficient in this set. Things like the tossup on "yo mama" left a lot of new players confused, and in my room a player buzzed in, said "mother," and I decided to deviate from what was on the page and prompt her. I think stuff like that, for a field full of new teams, a better job should be made of filling in proper prompts, because there were a lot of other tossups that struck me as having incomplete answerlines.
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Re: talk about individual questions here

Post by Cheynem »

It didn't really come after clues about the novel either. I agree that the clue is important and actually think within regular difficulty, it's probably fine as a quasi lead-in. I would have probably preferred an actual novel clue instead of another criticism clue (and by preferred, I'm talking in an aesthetic sense, as I don't know anything about that novel).
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Re: talk about individual questions here

Post by grapesmoker »

Cernel Joson wrote:
SnookerUSF wrote:This is probably not as contributive to the discussion as a post should be, but that Said clue regarding "aesthetic silence" regarding Mansfield Park I thought was really well executed. I know that the use (overuse) of critical clues regarding works of art are often derided by some here on the board, but that was well placed and should serve as something of a model for the judicious use of such clues (not because what Said said is accurate or valid, nor because Said is an especially renown Austen scholar but the way in which that novel is (mis)understood and interpreted in academic settings in the wake of that comment is significant). Moreover if memory serves me correctly (a repost of the tossup should rectify any errors) it came after clues related to the novel directly, so as to mitigate the claim that close readers of the novel are at a noted disadvantage to those that have (just!) studied it in an academic setting when such clues are used (though why this hierarchy is so rigid is beyond me, but that issue is besides the point of this post).
Eh, I disagree. That clue was much more likely to reward people who know quizbowl clues for Said than it was to reward either close reading or knowledge of criticism.
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Re: talk about individual questions here

Post by Auroni »

That Said clue was pretty great; it is an important part of his central thesis in Culture and Imperialism. I will type up my thoughts on individual questions later.
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Re: talk about individual questions here

Post by vandyhawk »

Ukonvasara wrote:
Quantum Mushroom Billiard Hat wrote:
The first half of the Calvin Cycle tossup sounds a huge amount like the pentose phosphate pathway, which makes 4 and 5 carbon sugars and even uses transketolase.
In this pathway first studied using 2-D paper chromatography, a reaction producing four- and five-carbon molecules and one yielding two five-carbon molecules are catalyzed by transketolase [trans-KEE-toh-“lace”]. Its discoverers initially thought one of the initial substrates was a two-carbon molecule, before finding that two molecules of 3PG were formed from carbon dioxide and (*) ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate using the enzyme Rubisco [roo-BISS-koh]. For 10 points—name this cycle that contains the “dark reactions” of photosynthesis.
answer: Calvin(-Benson) cycle or C-3 pathway or reductive pentose phosphate cycle (accept dark reactions; prompt
on “photosynthesis”)
We talked about the Calvin cycle tossup in the chat last night; here's the conclusion that was reached there:
Jeff Hoppes wrote:Text from Matt Keller: "The player was likely going for the generally named pentose phosphate cycle, sometimes called the pentose phosphate shunt, which is an alternate pathway to glycolysis and also involves transketolase. That goes in the other direction as the Calvin cycle, though, so the bit about producing 4 and 5 carbon sugars and two 5 carbon sugars makes the player's answer incorrect."
My email to Jeff that made it here was from being on the protest committee; I actually had to step down as bio and chem editor due to lack of free time these days. I will say that I think the question could have been worded a lot better, since as a player I likely would have negged there too. I see a note on it that it was literally the last question written for the set, so perhaps that explains it. By the way, the explanation may make a little more sense if the last clause says "the bit about transketolase producing 4 and 5 carbon sugars..."
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Re: talk about individual questions here

Post by The King's Flight to the Scots »

grapesmoker wrote:
Cernel Joson wrote:
SnookerUSF wrote:This is probably not as contributive to the discussion as a post should be, but that Said clue regarding "aesthetic silence" regarding Mansfield Park I thought was really well executed. I know that the use (overuse) of critical clues regarding works of art are often derided by some here on the board, but that was well placed and should serve as something of a model for the judicious use of such clues (not because what Said said is accurate or valid, nor because Said is an especially renown Austen scholar but the way in which that novel is (mis)understood and interpreted in academic settings in the wake of that comment is significant). Moreover if memory serves me correctly (a repost of the tossup should rectify any errors) it came after clues related to the novel directly, so as to mitigate the claim that close readers of the novel are at a noted disadvantage to those that have (just!) studied it in an academic setting when such clues are used (though why this hierarchy is so rigid is beyond me, but that issue is besides the point of this post).
Eh, I disagree. That clue was much more likely to reward people who know quizbowl clues for Said than it was to reward either close reading or knowledge of criticism.
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Putting that clue there leads to me being able to power that tossup (although Sarah buzzed there first) without actually knowing anything about Mansfield Park or Edward Said. I can believe that it's important if you're interested in criticism, but it's a pretty well-worn clue, not to mention hard to forget once you've heard it. It would be better as a tossup with one relatively fresh critical clue full of deeper clues from the novel.
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Re: talk about individual questions here

Post by Rococo A Go Go »

Jeremy Gibbs Freesy Does It wrote:I felt some prompting was insufficient in this set. Things like the tossup on "yo mama" left a lot of new players confused, and in my room a player buzzed in, said "mother," and I decided to deviate from what was on the page and prompt her. I think stuff like that, for a field full of new teams, a better job should be made of filling in proper prompts, because there were a lot of other tossups that struck me as having incomplete answerlines.
I was wondering about this question as well. I got this question off The Scissor Sisters clue, but I'd like to know what the rest of the question looked like if Jeff could post it. I knew that the song was "Take Your Mama" but I was confused about if they wanted "Your Mama" specifically or if they were just looking for mother, mama, or something in the neighborhood.

EDIT: Corrected the song title.
Last edited by Rococo A Go Go on Sun Feb 06, 2011 4:07 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: talk about individual questions here

Post by Auroni »

Cernel Joson wrote:
grapesmoker wrote:
Cernel Joson wrote:
SnookerUSF wrote:This is probably not as contributive to the discussion as a post should be, but that Said clue regarding "aesthetic silence" regarding Mansfield Park I thought was really well executed. I know that the use (overuse) of critical clues regarding works of art are often derided by some here on the board, but that was well placed and should serve as something of a model for the judicious use of such clues (not because what Said said is accurate or valid, nor because Said is an especially renown Austen scholar but the way in which that novel is (mis)understood and interpreted in academic settings in the wake of that comment is significant). Moreover if memory serves me correctly (a repost of the tossup should rectify any errors) it came after clues related to the novel directly, so as to mitigate the claim that close readers of the novel are at a noted disadvantage to those that have (just!) studied it in an academic setting when such clues are used (though why this hierarchy is so rigid is beyond me, but that issue is besides the point of this post).
Eh, I disagree. That clue was much more likely to reward people who know quizbowl clues for Said than it was to reward either close reading or knowledge of criticism.
YOUR ARE WRONG
Putting that clue there leads to me being able to power that tossup (although Sarah buzzed there first) without actually knowing anything about Mansfield Park or Edward Said. I can believe that it's important if you're interested in criticism, but it's a pretty well-worn clue, not to mention hard to forget once you've heard it. It would be better as a tossup with one relatively fresh critical clue full of deeper clues from the novel.
It being a well-worn clue has nothing to do with its significance to the writings of Edward Said, or to Mansfield Park in general.
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Re: talk about individual questions here

Post by Ethnic history of the Vilnius region »

Jeremy Gibbs Freesy Does It wrote:I felt some prompting was insufficient in this set. Things like the tossup on "yo mama" left a lot of new players confused, and in my room a player buzzed in, said "mother," and I decided to deviate from what was on the page and prompt her. I think stuff like that, for a field full of new teams, a better job should be made of filling in proper prompts, because there were a lot of other tossups that struck me as having incomplete answerlines.
Once I get my hands on the set, I might be able to comment a little more, but yeah, there were a few times as a mod that I felt put into a bind on the prompting/accepting answers side. One tossup that I thought fit this description was the DI one on unemployment benefits. In my room, I had a player buzz in with "unemployment." The answer line said to prompt, so I did, and the player came back with "unemployment insurance." I think I prompted again, and the player couldn't come up with anything, so I negged him. Frankly I don't see why you should have to prompt on "unemployment" in the first place. I mean, if you're unemployed, you draw unemployment. But "unemployment insurance" is definitely what you get when you're unemployed, so why not allow that to be acceptable? Perhaps allow reasonable equivalents to be acceptable.

That said, I seem to remember enjoying that tossup otherwise. Questions on important government programs seem to be an untapped area; I wonder what subject area that came under.
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Re: talk about individual questions here

Post by Blackboard Monitor Vimes »

Cernel Joson wrote:
grapesmoker wrote:
Cernel Joson wrote:
SnookerUSF wrote:This is probably not as contributive to the discussion as a post should be, but that Said clue regarding "aesthetic silence" regarding Mansfield Park I thought was really well executed. I know that the use (overuse) of critical clues regarding works of art are often derided by some here on the board, but that was well placed and should serve as something of a model for the judicious use of such clues (not because what Said said is accurate or valid, nor because Said is an especially renown Austen scholar but the way in which that novel is (mis)understood and interpreted in academic settings in the wake of that comment is significant). Moreover if memory serves me correctly (a repost of the tossup should rectify any errors) it came after clues related to the novel directly, so as to mitigate the claim that close readers of the novel are at a noted disadvantage to those that have (just!) studied it in an academic setting when such clues are used (though why this hierarchy is so rigid is beyond me, but that issue is besides the point of this post).
Eh, I disagree. That clue was much more likely to reward people who know quizbowl clues for Said than it was to reward either close reading or knowledge of criticism.
YOUR ARE WRONG
Putting that clue there leads to me being able to power that tossup (although Sarah buzzed there first) without actually knowing anything about Mansfield Park or Edward Said. I can believe that it's important if you're interested in criticism, but it's a pretty well-worn clue, not to mention hard to forget once you've heard it. It would be better as a tossup with one relatively fresh critical clue full of deeper clues from the novel.
For clarity's sake, I'll note that I decided to buzz on the previous clue because I've read Mansfield Park and fairly passionately hate Fanny Price, but I've never conquered my unfortunate and fairly inexplicable tendency to not always trust leadins to be unique, so I waited til the word "Antigua" made me 100% certain. That's much more a product of my natural hesitancy than any issue with the leadin, which is pretty similar to something my professor said in class. I also have no clue who Said is from quizbowl or otherwise beyond some guy who wrote something that I think is called Orientalism. However, I'd agree that in a TU that short on a novel as long as Mansfield Park I'd aesthetically rather see 1 criticism clue and then something that would actually reward me for reading that entire horrible novel. I feel like, realistically, having two criticism clues doesn't increase the odds of someone who's read the novel getting the TU over someone who hasn't, just because of the sheer volume of criticism that exists. Everyone who's studied Mansfield Park has presumably read it, but not every class covers a lot of criticism.
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Re: talk about individual questions here

Post by Cheynem »

By buzzing on the clue that Said has critiqued the protagonist of Mansfield Park viz. racism, you DO know something about Said and Mansfield Park, regardless of whether or not you picked it up from reading Said or reading Mansfield Park. I buzzed on "Little Miss Marker" for Damon Runyon despite not knowing anything about the story. Sometimes you just remember quizbowl clues. I agree that stacking that tossup with lit crit may not have been optimal, but I would not be torn up if the handful of people who have that clue down cold buzzed on it early. It's not a trivial clue, it's an important one, and it's hardly something that every quizbowler knows near and dear. For a regular difficulty tournament, yeah, it's okay to put that as an early clue.
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Re: talk about individual questions here

Post by grapesmoker »

Cheynem wrote:By buzzing on the clue that Said has critiqued the protagonist of Mansfield Park viz. racism, you DO know something about Said and Mansfield Park, regardless of whether or not you picked it up from reading Said or reading Mansfield Park. I buzzed on "Little Miss Marker" for Damon Runyon despite not knowing anything about the story. Sometimes you just remember quizbowl clues. I agree that stacking that tossup with lit crit may not have been optimal, but I would not be torn up if the handful of people who have that clue down cold buzzed on it early. It's not a trivial clue, it's an important one, and it's hardly something that every quizbowler knows near and dear. For a regular difficulty tournament, yeah, it's okay to put that as an early clue.
StupidDooDooDumb> also, of course mike cheyne is right
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Re: talk about individual questions here

Post by The King's Flight to the Scots »

Cheynem wrote:By buzzing on the clue that Said has critiqued the protagonist of Mansfield Park viz. racism, you DO know something about Said and Mansfield Park, regardless of whether or not you picked it up from reading Said or reading Mansfield Park. I buzzed on "Little Miss Marker" for Damon Runyon despite not knowing anything about the story. Sometimes you just remember quizbowl clues. I agree that stacking that tossup with lit crit may not have been optimal, but I would not be torn up if the handful of people who have that clue down cold buzzed on it early. It's not a trivial clue, it's an important one, and it's hardly something that every quizbowler knows near and dear. For a regular difficulty tournament, yeah, it's okay to put that as an early clue.
I can live with that critique.
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Re: talk about individual questions here

Post by theMoMA »

I think that the clue about Culture and Imperialism and Mansfield Park is somewhat tired at this point. It's a good sort of clue, but in this case, it's come up a lot recently and I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people who don't know much about either Said or the novel itself got fifteen for buzzing there.
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Re: talk about individual questions here

Post by grapesmoker »

theMoMA wrote:I think that the clue about Culture and Imperialism and Mansfield Park is somewhat tired at this point. It's a good sort of clue, but in this case, it's come up a lot recently and I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people who don't know much about either Said or the novel itself got fifteen for buzzing there.
It may not be the optimal clue, but the notion that one could only know about this because of quizbowl is entirely false. This is a case of something that's pretty well-known outside of quizbowl filtering into the game.
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Re: talk about individual questions here

Post by Steve Watchorn »

re: Ethnic History of the Vilnius Region
Once I get my hands on the set, I might be able to comment a little more, but yeah, there were a few times as a mod that I felt put into a bind on the prompting/accepting answers side. One tossup that I thought fit this description was the DI one on unemployment benefits. In my room, I had a player buzz in with "unemployment." The answer line said to prompt, so I did, and the player came back with "unemployment insurance." I think I prompted again, and the player couldn't come up with anything, so I negged him. Frankly I don't see why you should have to prompt on "unemployment" in the first place. I mean, if you're unemployed, you draw unemployment. But "unemployment insurance" is definitely what you get when you're unemployed, so why not allow that to be acceptable? Perhaps allow reasonable equivalents to be acceptable.
Will someone please remind Steve to do a more thorough search for alternative answers to questions?

Unemployment insurance should have been accepted. I chose not to outright accept "unemployment," as that was a colloquialism that actually refers to something else (and was another answer to a tossup I wrote that ended up in this set), though I thought a prompt was warranted. However, unemployment insurance was more than adequate information and should have been acceptable (perhaps under the umbrella of clear-knowledge equivalents), and I sincerely hope the outcome of that match was not severely affected by my error.
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Re: talk about individual questions here

Post by Ringil »

I felt like this was a fine set for NAQT's distribution and stuff. There were some questions that were fairly hard, but cool like Theodoric and Nara. I will mention, for a teammate, that there were no Jewish tossup in the whole D1 set we played. This could obviously be an issue of those questions being late in packets.
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Re: talk about individual questions here

Post by Ethnic history of the Vilnius region »

Steve Watchorn wrote:re: Ethnic History of the Vilnius Region
Once I get my hands on the set, I might be able to comment a little more, but yeah, there were a few times as a mod that I felt put into a bind on the prompting/accepting answers side. One tossup that I thought fit this description was the DI one on unemployment benefits. In my room, I had a player buzz in with "unemployment." The answer line said to prompt, so I did, and the player came back with "unemployment insurance." I think I prompted again, and the player couldn't come up with anything, so I negged him. Frankly I don't see why you should have to prompt on "unemployment" in the first place. I mean, if you're unemployed, you draw unemployment. But "unemployment insurance" is definitely what you get when you're unemployed, so why not allow that to be acceptable? Perhaps allow reasonable equivalents to be acceptable.
Will someone please remind Steve to do a more thorough search for alternative answers to questions?

Unemployment insurance should have been accepted. I chose not to outright accept "unemployment," as that was a colloquialism that actually refers to something else (and was another answer to a tossup I wrote that ended up in this set), though I thought a prompt was warranted. However, unemployment insurance was more than adequate information and should have been acceptable (perhaps under the umbrella of clear-knowledge equivalents), and I sincerely hope the outcome of that match was not severely affected by my error.
Yeah, it didn't impact the match. The team that missed it ended up winning comfortably.
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Re: talk about individual questions here

Post by naturalistic phallacy »

grapesmoker wrote:
theMoMA wrote:I think that the clue about Culture and Imperialism and Mansfield Park is somewhat tired at this point. It's a good sort of clue, but in this case, it's come up a lot recently and I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people who don't know much about either Said or the novel itself got fifteen for buzzing there.
It may not be the optimal clue, but the notion that one could only know about this because of quizbowl is entirely false. This is a case of something that's pretty well-known outside of quizbowl filtering into the game.
It's not so much the quality of the clue itself (which, as Jerry and others have pointed out, is quite high) but the placement that was unfortunate, especially given the presence of another, far less quizbowl-famous criticism clue before it in the question. Perhaps placing this clue right after the powermark and after some clue about the novel itself would have alleviated some of the perceived issues.
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Re: talk about individual questions here

Post by Matt Weiner »

tetragrammatology wrote:
grapesmoker wrote:
theMoMA wrote:I think that the clue about Culture and Imperialism and Mansfield Park is somewhat tired at this point. It's a good sort of clue, but in this case, it's come up a lot recently and I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people who don't know much about either Said or the novel itself got fifteen for buzzing there.
It may not be the optimal clue, but the notion that one could only know about this because of quizbowl is entirely false. This is a case of something that's pretty well-known outside of quizbowl filtering into the game.
It's not so much the quality of the clue itself (which, as Jerry and others have pointed out, is quite high) but the placement that was unfortunate, especially given the presence of another, far less quizbowl-famous criticism clue before it in the question. Perhaps placing this clue right after the powermark and after some clue about the novel itself would have alleviated some of the perceived issues.
Matt and Bernadette are correct, this clue has come up a million times and the likelihood that a buzz on it reflects knowledge of Said or Austen as opposed to knowledge of old packets is dismal. Given that one of the best features of NAQT is that leadins rarely reward the regurgitation of such well-worn quizbowl memes, the placement of that clue stuck out as noticeably poor.
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Re: talk about individual questions here

Post by Important Bird Area »

Hilltopper22 wrote:I got this question off The Scissor Sisters clue, but I'd like to know what the rest of the question looked like if Jeff could post it.
Division II round 12 wrote:A 2004 Scissor Sisters song promises to take this person "out all night and show her what it's all about," although Loggins and Messina insisted that she "don't dance." (*) Kip implies that she "goes to college," and she is often described as "fat," "ugly," or "smelly." For 10 points--name this frequent "snap" subject who is "so dumb, it takes her an hour to make minute rice."

answer: _yo_ur _mom_ma
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