Cardinal Classic discussion

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Cardinal Classic discussion

Post by Eärendil »

All mirrors are over with, so feel free to discuss the set below. I'm still waiting to receive the full stats; hopefully they'll be up in the next day or two.
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Re: Cardinal Classic discussion

Post by cdcarter »

Here's the set http://collegiate.quizbowlpackets.com/a ... dclass.zip! Take that, Stanford archive!
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Re: Cardinal Classic discussion

Post by Cheynem »

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Re: Cardinal Classic discussion

Post by Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN) »

So I was somewhat disappointed by what I'll call the laissez-faire editing approach taken by Stanford. There were lots of bad questions, misplaced clues, and things that were inappropriate for the difficulty. When I was moderating on my team's packet, I got to see intimately how the editors really did a lot of just assuming the packets they got were fine and then throwing the questions in. Our packet was definitely the worst of the tournament, and the reason why is that it was the first or second time my teammates had ever written for a packet, and while I did my part in talking them through revisions to improve their writing and stuff like that, it still ended up with about half the questions in our packet needing some form of editing (ranging from just needing to move around a few clues to entirely cutting them, as in the case of the doxology tossup). Many of these questions (even the ones that could have been easily fixed) got thrown in without anything noticeable done. I even sent 2 warning emails to the editors apologizing for submitting a packet that needed so much editing, so I'm confused at how they didn't key in on this stuff.
In any case, this, combined with lots of other problems and variable quality packets, showed me the editing team really didn't do a whole lot to change some big problems, and I am disappointed that the onus for the tournament quality ultimately fell on the teams attending and not the editing team. Other problems that cropped up -
In the Irvine packet, there was a "given two titles, name the author of those works" bonus, which obviously could have been quickly rewritten to be much better.
The tossup on Marlowe claimed "An exact contemporary of Shakespeare, he has been posited as an alternative author for the Shakespearian sonnets" which immediately killed my Marlowe instinct. The theory that Marlowe wrote Shakespeare's works is often discredited because of the fact Marlowe died in 1593, before Shakespeare wrote the vast majority of his plays, which does not fit in with the description of him being an exact contemporary.
The bonus part on "The Second Coming" gave only as clues a very vague statement about how it was inspired by the chaos of WWI, so I guessed "The Irish Airman Foresees his Death." It really needed some quotes, even obscure ones, to make it more legit.
The tossup on Pollack just saying "He liked Navajo sand painting" and then suddenly jumping into what may be his best known work, Lavandar Mist.
The tossup on Eloisa to Abelard, while not terribly written (although I think "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" is by far the most notable thing about that work, but whatever) was way too hard. I remember submitting a tossup on the same thing to CO 2007 and being told afterwards "that's just too hard."
There was definitely some more stuff going on in this set, so I'll open it up to the rest of the world to discuss, and there were lots of good questions too, but it was disappointing that they were based on whether the teams submitted them and not on whether the editing team wrote them in to improve quality.
Last edited by Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN) on Tue Feb 17, 2009 6:18 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Cardinal Classic discussion

Post by Skepticism and Animal Feed »

I saw some evidence of editing. I spoke with the original author of the "Stephen of Blois" TU, and he told me that it was originally a TU on "the anarchy". The editors must have changed that.
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Re: Cardinal Classic discussion

Post by DumbJaques »

I saw some evidence of editing. I spoke with the original author of the "Stephen of Blois" TU, and he told me that it was originally a TU on "the anarchy". The editors must have changed that.
I would certainly hope some editing occurred - as Charlie says, he sees this more as a very lax editing effort rather than no editing effort, and merely illustrated that by pointing to the numerous instances in which editing was not done with his packet (despite his warnings about the new authors). Frankly, I'm inclined to agree with Charlie - this set was tremendously far from polished, had a 2-4 clunker questions per round on average, and was schizophrenic with bonus difficulty. Many bonuses had comically ludicrous third parts, while a significant amount could have been ripped from a high school or fall set. I wonder if, perhaps, Stanford used a team-editing approach for this, resulting in diverging philosophies and levels of effort based on subject areas? Whatever happened, this set was nowhere near as good as the previous year's, despite to my knowledge the editing team being mostly the same, which is disappointing to say the least. I would have been most dismayed had I spent a significant amount of money to travel to Stanford to play this tournament, which I had thought was fast becoming a marquee tournament on the calendar.There is also an unacceptably terrible tiebreaker tossup on "Times New Roman" was left in the Missouri packet, which reads like it's right out of 1996 (which is expected from a first time writer, but not an editing team). Tiebreakers are not expected to be amazing (God knows those at TIT weren't) but they need to be serviceable.

Sometimes events miss their target difficulty or are the subject of limitations based on submissions or other factors. Sometimes inexperienced editors make mistakes. I'm not really sure how to characterize Cardinal Classic, except to say that it was just disappointing. It just seemed like about 25% of every packet (at least) either hadn't really been looked at with any seriousness, or had been evaluated without the application of basic editing principles.

Oh, yeah, the distribution at this event was kind of atrocious (although this is based on the reaction of myself and many people at the UMBC site rather than a statistical tally). MIT's first packet has three chemistry tossups in the first 20, which is just ridiculous (I think two of them were organic chemistry). One of them was on "DNA" and was evidently counted as a bio tossup, but every clue (including the giveaway, about the kind of bonds it has) was firmly chem. This is the kind of stuff that makes people wonder how much attention was really paid to the set.
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Re: Cardinal Classic discussion

Post by cvdwightw »

Yeah, I'd agree that the stuff that was edited was definitely edited for the better, but there were a whole lot of things that just didn't seem edited. Our packet had several major problems, some of which were fixed, but given that we submitted the packet for a discount and not like two weeks before the tournament I expected that there would have been a little bit more of the "hey, this is a problem question, let's fix it" for our packet.

On the whole I had fun playing this set, and I generally think teams kind of ended up where they should have. There were a few really misplaced early clues and some bonus difficulty that was widely inconsistent, but it didn't really detract from my enjoyment.

Also, my tissue engineering class continually referred to those cytoskeleton parts that are made up of actin as "actin filaments." It appears my class is not the only one to refer to these things by this name, e.g. here and here. While I can see how "actin filaments" wouldn't necessarily be acceptable given that "actin" and "filaments" are mentioned in the bonus, I don't think I was prompted on an equivalent answer, which was kind of disappointing.
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Re: Cardinal Classic discussion

Post by grapesmoker »

I more or less enjoyed this tournament. I agree that it wasn't as polished as it could have been; for me, the main annoyance was the large variance in bonus difficulty (at one point we got stiffed with some impossible geography, which induced horrible flashbacks of our finals match against Chicago last year). Some of the tossups looked like they could have used quite a bit more editing; the Missouri and UCI packets in particular jumped out at me as having substantial question structure issues. Here and there you would get questions that began with very obvious clues, which was unfortunate, and some bonus parts seemed pretty coy about what answer was being sought.

On the whole, though, I thought it was a pretty decent set, and I guess I can't complain too much since teams playing at mirror sites didn't even write packets. There were many interesting and enjoyable questions and for the most part bonuses were not terribly insane. In difficulty, I thought it was somewhat easier than last year's edition and about the same in quality.

Thanks to MIT for running yet another logistically superlative event, and especially to Jason, Ylaine, and Seamus, who stuck around to read us half of the science tournament. Thanks also to Bohdan Chmelnicki, Charles Meigs, and the Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect, among many others, for the thoughtful valentines.
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Re: Cardinal Classic discussion

Post by Important Bird Area »

grapesmoker wrote:we got stiffed with some impossible geography
Which questions were these, Jerry? Sorry if I'm the guilty party; Seth's team at least got ten on my bonus and had heard of the middle part.

In general, I thought the history at this tournament was very good. The bonus difficulty was a bit uneven, but that's a fairly minor flaw. I only remember two tossups with real structural problems: a Henry the Navigator tossup that mentioned Sagres a sentence too early, and the tossup on the Congo Free State. (Tossups on the Congo Free State: a good idea to reward knowledge. Tossups on the Congo Free State that have instructions "do not prompt on Congo": a bad idea that punishes knowledge.)

As for editing, the editors didn't make very many changes to what I submitted. The history went through more-or-less unchanged, although some of my tossups were (rightly!) cut for excessive difficulty. I was much more surprised that the 1/1 art I wrote ended up in the packet with only minor changes, since my bonus was a repeat and the thought process behind the tossup approximated "it's 10:30 at night the day of the packet deadline and I can't find anything interesting and answerable in this Renaissance art textbook; eh, let's just write another boring tossup on The Tribute Money."
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Re: Cardinal Classic discussion

Post by Not That Kind of Christian!! »

bt_green_warbler wrote:The history went through more-or-less unchanged, although some of my tossups were (rightly!) cut for excessive difficulty.
This is interesting, considering that Auroni's packet had some very difficult tossups go through just fine.

This was definitely a tournament that could have been vastly improved with heavier editing; the packet quality depended too much on the initial quality of questions submitted. Transparency was sort of the main issue for me, with the tossups on Pathetique, Glinka, Tay-Sachs (hexosaminidase A came very, very early), and coagulation. There were a couple sort of strange difficulty cliffs as well, as with the aforementioned Pollock tossup and the pregnancy tossup.

Overall, though, I definitely enjoyed playing this tournament. Thanks, Stanford!
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Re: Cardinal Classic discussion

Post by Mechanical Beasts »

I'll hop on the bonus variability train. Some bonuses seemed to be high school bonuses with a new "hard" part (36 Views of Mt. Fuju/ Hokusai/ ukiyo-e; note that the hard part here, presumably the first, was a tossup at Penn Bowl (and not a problematic one), and that we were playing Hunter on this bonus, which we thirtied; DON'T DISCUSS ANSWERS FROM SETS THAT ARE STILL GOING TO BE PLAYED!! --the mgmt). (Others of this class would include giving me thirty points for identifying the Detroit Lions, given "they were terrible," their quarterback, and Calvin Johnson. Pretty casual, disinterested fans know Calvin Johnson; some know Orlovsky. ) Others seemed to be pretty close to right on the money (Kohlberg, In a Different Voice, Heinz dilemma; FCC, Bravais lattices, Ewald sphere).

But maybe I just don't know enough about biology, but the bonus on rattites/ostrich/cassowary, for example, seemed unreasonable, as did the bonus on bridges. I don't think they're bad topics, but I don't think it makes sense to make it that hard to get twenty points.
Last edited by Mechanical Beasts on Mon Feb 16, 2009 3:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Cardinal Classic discussion

Post by Theory Of The Leisure Flask »

HKirsch wrote:
bt_green_warbler wrote:The history went through more-or-less unchanged, although some of my tossups were (rightly!) cut for excessive difficulty.
This is interesting, considering that Auroni's packet had some very difficult tossups go through just fine.

This was definitely a tournament that could have been vastly improved with heavier editing; the packet quality depended too much on the initial quality of questions submitted. Transparency was sort of the main issue for me, with the tossups on Pathetique, Glinka, Tay-Sachs (hexosaminidase A came very, very early), and coagulation. There were a couple sort of strange difficulty cliffs as well, as with the aforementioned Pollock tossup and the pregnancy tossup.

Overall, though, I definitely enjoyed playing this tournament. Thanks, Stanford!
I didn't think Pathetique was transparent at all, it just didn't have much hard leadin material. I actually thought it was very, very good, as it somehow managed to describe the third movement in a way that I could confidently buzz on real musical knowledge. Kudos to whoever wrote that.

That being said, the question on lambda calculus was a ridiculously transparent tossup. Also, the vague-to-the-point-of-uselesness bonus part on Yeats' "Second Coming" could've described many of his poems equally well (I guessed "Easter 1916"). Beyond that, yeah, there were some wonky distributions and inconsistent bonus difficulty, but that's all been noted already. And there were many parts of this tournament that were enjoyable, so thanks to Stanford for putting this together.
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Re: Cardinal Classic discussion

Post by Important Bird Area »

HKirsch wrote:This is interesting, considering that Auroni's packet had some very difficult tossups go through just fine.
I can't speak to the other subjects, but Warsaw, William Rufus, and George Pendleton are all substantially easier history tossups than what was chopped out of my submission.
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Re: Cardinal Classic discussion

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everyday847 wrote:the bonus on ratites/ostrich/cassowary, for example, seemed unreasonable
No, this was by a wide margin the best bonus of the tournament.

(Ostrich is the easy 10, cassowary is gettable for 20, and ratites, while very hard, does reward real bird knowledge. What's not to like? Or was I just the only person anywhere capable of producing "ratites" as an answer, and indeed hoping it was the middle part and C. would try asking about tinamous or something?)
Last edited by Important Bird Area on Mon Feb 16, 2009 3:59 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Cardinal Classic discussion

Post by cvdwightw »

everyday847 wrote:as did the bonus on bridges.
I think I literally put down my head on the table and suppressed tears during this one. I did not realize what was up with the left-turn bonus leadin(!) until Dees read us unenlightened ones a Questions Galore packet and every other bonus was like that.
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Re: Cardinal Classic discussion

Post by Mechanical Beasts »

Theory Of The Leisure Flask wrote:That being said, the question on lambda calculus was a ridiculously transparent tossup.
Yeah, this is true. I was a little displeased with its attempt to avoid early conversion, too. If I remember correctly, it used the device of "a certain paradox in this thing, named for some dude and Rosser," I guess just in case Kleene's name is just too distinctive. That said, I don't think it's that useful a device to prevent conversion: at best, you trick a few people who know what the Kleene-Rosser paradox is into waiting, and really, the people who know what the Kleene-Rosser paradox is are precisely those you want to be buzzing on that clue: now you've accidentally sorted people into the classes of "people who knew the Kleene-Rosser paradox and had brass balls" and "people who knew but had no brass balls, plus people who didn't but knew a later clue."

That's independent of whether or not there are sufficient early clues about the lambda calculus to avoid putting a pretty famous, named statement (as far as I know, anyway) early on in the tossup. Jerry didn't seem to think that it came too early, so perhaps this is very dependent on background, but I have taken zero classes in computer science or logic, and I would have buzzed there years ago.
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Re: Cardinal Classic discussion

Post by Skepticism and Animal Feed »

Did "Boniface VIII" strike anyone else as an unusual TU answer? Some freshman on one of the lower Chicago teams powered it against us, so it seems that Boniface VIII knowledge -- and even deep Boniface VIII knowledge -- is out there, but it struck me as being too difficult.
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Re: Cardinal Classic discussion

Post by Mechanical Beasts »

cvdwightw wrote:
everyday847 wrote:as did the bonus on bridges.
I think I literally put down my head on the table and suppressed tears during this one. I did not realize what was up with the left-turn bonus leadin(!) until Dees read us unenlightened ones a Questions Galore packet and every other bonus was like that.
Yeah, I should say that even though I was enormously saddened by bonuses like bridges or the sun bonus that asked me to guess what energy unit the packet wanted me to say (unless there's an astronomical CGS conspiracy that passed me by), it's great that people other than Dees contributed to the Mizzou packet. I'm just disappointed in the editors that they didn't catch what were clearly not fit for competition.
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Re: Cardinal Classic discussion

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Whig's Boson wrote:Did "Boniface VIII" strike anyone else as an unusual TU answer? Some freshman on one of the lower Chicago teams powered it against us, so it seems that Boniface VIII knowledge -- and even deep Boniface VIII knowledge -- is out there, but it struck me as being too difficult.
No, I think it's entirely reasonable- Boniface did enough famous stuff that he's one of the more tossupable medieval popes, and should be fine for a regular-difficulty event.
Last edited by Important Bird Area on Mon Feb 16, 2009 4:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Cardinal Classic discussion

Post by Susan »

Whig's Boson wrote:Did "Boniface VIII" strike anyone else as an unusual TU answer? Some freshman on one of the lower Chicago teams powered it against us, so it seems that Boniface VIII knowledge -- and even deep Boniface VIII knowledge -- is out there, but it struck me as being too difficult.
I think a pretty minimal amount of Inferno knowledge, which many people have, should allow you to buzz on Boniface VIII. Not having read the set, though, I can't say how it compares to the other answer choices.
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Re: Cardinal Classic discussion

Post by Skepticism and Animal Feed »

Ah, so Boniface VIII might be another Battle of Shrewsbury -- things that lit people write when they write history because it is notable in lit.
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Re: Cardinal Classic discussion

Post by cvdwightw »

Boniface VIII if pretty notable for his feud with Philip IV of France; that's where that whole Unam Sanctum thing comes in. I would have gotten it before the FTP if I hadn't reflex buzzed off Nogart with Philip IV, conveniently forgetting that the question had clearly indicated this dude was not from France. He's certainly tossupable at an above-regular difficulty event, which is what I thought this tournament's target was.
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Re: Cardinal Classic discussion

Post by grapesmoker »

Whig's Boson wrote:Did "Boniface VIII" strike anyone else as an unusual TU answer? Some freshman on one of the lower Chicago teams powered it against us, so it seems that Boniface VIII knowledge -- and even deep Boniface VIII knowledge -- is out there, but it struck me as being too difficult.
I would have buzzed on "Ausculata Fili" but I decided to wait since I didn't think the other team would know it that early. Eric then buzzed somewhere in the middle of the question and got it right, so while it can and has been converted, I think it's on the harder end of the answer choices at this tournament. He's pretty famous for his conflicts with Philip IV and for "Unam Sanctum," so people should probably know those things.

I'll go ahead and disagree with Andy about the lambda calculus tossup. First of all, just saying "system" doesn't mean a whole lot to me (the answer could be literally any set of axioms from mathematics, for example). Second, while I'm dimly aware of the Kleene-Rosser paradox, I think if you have that level of knowledge, you should be able to buzz relatively early in the question, so I don't see a problem with rewarding that.
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Re: Cardinal Classic discussion

Post by Schweizerkas »

Well, I'm probably more disappointed by this set than anyone. I don't like to point fingers, but I guess people who played on this set deserve an explanation, and the fact of the matter is that not all of my co-editors finished editing the questions that were assigned them. It wasn't a "laissez-faire" approach, it was just a matter of not everyone finishing their jobs.

We used the same editing approach this year as last year. Although I guess I was called the "head editor," basically we just assigned about a quarter of the distribution to each editor, and my main head editing duties consisted of looking through submitted questions, and letting my co-editors know what tossup answers were too hard, as well as commenting on bonuses I thought were too easy/hard/lame. I think this approach more-or-less worked last year; this year, it didn't.

In hindsight, I wonder whether our writing three editors' packets was a good idea. I was able (barely) to write my questions for the editors' packets and finish editing all my categories, but I think the workload of writing three packets and editing another 12 packets proved too much for some of my teammates. And it turned out, due to Chicago A's dominance, that we didn't even need the two finals packets (did any mirror sites get to play on those?!)

There were also a few mistakes made in compiling the packets. I skimmed over the compiled packets around 4-5 am Saturday morning, and made some quick last-second changes, but it looks like not all of those changes made it into the packet versions used at the tournament. As a specific exampe, I removed the terrible hydrogen-ergs-G2 and bridges bonuses from the Missouri packet in favor of better ones, and deleted the early mention of "Eternal Curse..." from the Puig tossup, but it looks like those changes somehow didn't make it into the version we used at the tournament. Sorry for that.

I'd appreciate any comments on the categories I edited (physics, philosophy, social science, American history - oh, and I guess I wrote the trash questions in the editors' packets, as well). I probably spent about 100 hours on this set, so I hope people liked some of these questions. I was probably slightly more lenient this year in letting in some more challenging tossup answers (Deleuze, George Thomas, nutation, and renormalization come immediately to mind) - did people like these tossups?
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Re: Cardinal Classic discussion

Post by grapesmoker »

Schweizerkas wrote: (Deleuze, George Thomas, nutation, and renormalization come immediately to mind) - did people like these tossups?
I thought these questions were pretty good; I was disappointed with myself for not being able to remember Deleuze's name until after I'd negged the tossup, but it was a cool idea for a question anyway. The renormalization tossup was not great because it began with a mention of regularization, but then I have specialist knowledge. It wouldn't be a good tossup to read in a room with Mike and Seth, I think.
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Re: Cardinal Classic discussion

Post by Important Bird Area »

Schweizerkas wrote:more challenging tossup answers (... George Thomas, ...)
Looking back over my submission, this is clearly the easiest tossup answer in the 4/4 history I submitted. (The others: tossup 21, and two on the cutting room floor). Sorry about that.
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Re: Cardinal Classic discussion

Post by Theory Of The Leisure Flask »

grapesmoker wrote:I'll go ahead and disagree with Andy about the lambda calculus tossup. First of all, just saying "system" doesn't mean a whole lot to me (the answer could be literally any set of axioms from mathematics, for example). Second, while I'm dimly aware of the Kleene-Rosser paradox, I think if you have that level of knowledge, you should be able to buzz relatively early in the question, so I don't see a problem with rewarding that.
The problem was that the question made clear that it was not just a mathematical system, but a system from computer science, which is where the fraudability came in.

Also: I loved the Deleuze tossup, despite absentmindedly negging with Derrida on "Difference and Repetition" and then watching it go dead against VCU.

EDIT: Actually, it probably wasn't all that good, since Deleuze and Guattari's work are so intertwined, you're probably going to have a buzzer race on the other guy's name in many rooms. This is a case where asking for both names ("Deleuze and Guattari" instead of one or the other) might be a better bet.
Last edited by Theory Of The Leisure Flask on Mon Feb 16, 2009 6:37 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Cardinal Classic discussion

Post by waspman23 »

everyday847 wrote:(unless there's an astronomical CGS conspiracy that passed me by)
In general astronomy/astrophysics uses CGS units. It's not a conspiracy, just a standard convention.
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Re: Cardinal Classic discussion

Post by grapesmoker »

waspman23 wrote:
everyday847 wrote:(unless there's an astronomical CGS conspiracy that passed me by)
In general astronomy/astrophysics uses CGS units. It's not a conspiracy, just a standard convention.
That doesn't justify questions about units though.
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Re: Cardinal Classic discussion

Post by Maxwell Sniffingwell »

DumbJaques wrote:There is also an unacceptably terrible tiebreaker tossup on "Times New Roman" was left in the Missouri packet, which reads like it's right out of 1996 (which is expected from a first time writer, but not an editing team). Tiebreakers are not expected to be amazing (God knows those at TIT weren't) but they need to be serviceable.
And here it is:
Missouri wrote:21. A staffer of the Encyclopedia Britannica, Penrose Annual and The Imprint, Stanley Morison is known as the creator of this, which made its debut in London on Oct. 3, 1932 and would go on to leave an indelible mark on history. Other works by its author include Four Centuries of Fine Printing and History of the Times. It is so influential that no regulation Quizbowl packet could be produced without Morison’s contribution to the world. For ten points, name this serif typeface that was designed for The Times of London newspaper.
ANSWER: Times New Roman (Do not accept Times)
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Re: Cardinal Classic discussion

Post by Captain Sinico »

waspman23 wrote:
everyday847 wrote:(unless there's an astronomical CGS conspiracy that passed me by)
In general astronomy/astrophysics uses CGS units. It's not a conspiracy, just a standard convention.
To begin with, that's not even precisely true!

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Re: Cardinal Classic discussion

Post by swwFCqb »

Missouri wrote:21. A staffer of the Encyclopedia Britannica, Penrose Annual and The Imprint, Stanley Morison is known as the creator of this, which made its debut in London on Oct. 3, 1932 and would go on to leave an indelible mark on history. Other works by its author include Four Centuries of Fine Printing and History of the Times. It is so influential that no regulation Quizbowl packet could be produced without Morison’s contribution to the world. For ten points, name this serif typeface that was designed for The Times of London newspaper.
ANSWER: Times New Roman (Do not accept Times)
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Re: Cardinal Classic discussion

Post by cvdwightw »

Missouri Packet, Tossup 21 wrote:It is so influential that no regulation Quizbowl packet could be produced without Morison’s contribution to the world.
I mean, this just makes me want to produce a tournament with everything in a fixed-width font like Courier New or something. I don't think I'm at the point of producing a tournament in Wingdings, but I could conceivably get there. That, and Questions Galore-style meandering bonus lead-ins that are tangentially related to "answer some stuff about..." and are longer than Questions Galore-style tossups. Am I wrong to be so inspired by bad quizbowl?
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Re: Cardinal Classic discussion

Post by Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN) »

Who knew that through the combination of this packet not being very edited and me bringing Questions Galore packets to read after the tournament could have such an impact on the future of quizbowl?
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Re: Cardinal Classic discussion

Post by grapesmoker »

cvdwightw wrote:
Missouri Packet, Tossup 21 wrote:It is so influential that no regulation Quizbowl packet could be produced without Morison’s contribution to the world.
I mean, this just makes me want to produce a tournament with everything in a fixed-width font like Courier New or something. I don't think I'm at the point of producing a tournament in Wingdings, but I could conceivably get there. That, and Questions Galore-style meandering bonus lead-ins that are tangentially related to "answer some stuff about..." and are longer than Questions Galore-style tossups. Am I wrong to be so inspired by bad quizbowl?
Ray Luo actually used to submit packets formatted in Courier New. I don't know if he still does this.
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Re: Cardinal Classic discussion

Post by Down and out in Quintana Roo »

grapesmoker wrote:
cvdwightw wrote:
Missouri Packet, Tossup 21 wrote:It is so influential that no regulation Quizbowl packet could be produced without Morison’s contribution to the world.
I mean, this just makes me want to produce a tournament with everything in a fixed-width font like Courier New or something. I don't think I'm at the point of producing a tournament in Wingdings, but I could conceivably get there. That, and Questions Galore-style meandering bonus lead-ins that are tangentially related to "answer some stuff about..." and are longer than Questions Galore-style tossups. Am I wrong to be so inspired by bad quizbowl?
Ray Luo actually used to submit packets formatted in Courier New. I don't know if he still does this.
HSAPQ uses "Calibri" for their sets for whatever reason.
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Re: Cardinal Classic discussion

Post by Skepticism and Animal Feed »

I believe Matt Weiner once stated that he wanted HSAPQ packets to have a distinctive look, and thus picked a different font.
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Re: Cardinal Classic discussion

Post by grapesmoker »

Seriously, Calibri? That looks awful.
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Re: Cardinal Classic discussion

Post by theMoMA »

grapesmoker wrote:Seriously, Calibri? That looks awful.
Speaking as a private citizen, I find Calibri to be a decent-looking sans serif. There isn't really a great sans serif font out there. When I was designing the BEeS website, I finally settled on Tahoma.
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Re: Cardinal Classic discussion

Post by BuzzerZen »

theMoMA wrote:There isn't really a great sans serif font out there.
Gill Sans? FF Meta? Frutiger? Univers? Futura? Helvetica, even? Presumably you don't actually mean "no sans serif font is good".
theMoMA wrote:When I was designing the BEeS website, I finally settled on Tahoma.
www.beesqb.com/main.css wrote:

Code: Select all

body  {
	font: 100% Helvetica, sans-serif;
}
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Re: Cardinal Classic discussion

Post by theMoMA »

Clearly I get my sans-serifs confused. I don't mean that there aren't good fonts out there, just that there isn't a sans serif that I feel comfortable using in most situations.
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Re: Cardinal Classic discussion

Post by at your pleasure »

Calbiri is fine. However, TNR is just a good all-purpose font.
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Re: Cardinal Classic discussion

Post by Not That Kind of Christian!! »

TNR may be a good all-purpose, but even Helvetica would be better for a tossup. Also, Futura is one of the most suave-looking fonts out there.
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Re: Cardinal Classic discussion

Post by Mechanical Beasts »

theMoMA wrote:Clearly I get my sans-serifs confused. I don't mean that there aren't good fonts out there, just that there isn't a sans serif that I feel comfortable using in most situations.
Trebuchet, in fact, makes Andrew Hart piss his pants.
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Re: Cardinal Classic discussion

Post by Terrible Shorts Depot »

Gentium is really awesome, though I find that TNR is probably the best of the standard fonts. Sans serif fonts are mostly hideous.
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Re: Cardinal Classic discussion

Post by Mechanical Beasts »

On the discussion of Cardinal Classic front, I was not too happy with the tossup on pietas. It got very easy very quickly; most of the reason Ted beat me to it was because I had more trouble coming up with the word "pieta;" if I had been willing to risk it, I'd have said "those works of art where Mary is cradling the dead body of Jesus" pretty early, and I don't think from real knowledge.
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Re: Cardinal Classic discussion

Post by theMoMA »

On the actual CC commentary front, we just started playing these in practice. I found the tossup on "Biotin" somewhat bizarre; B7 isn't really notable other than the fact that you take it as a supplement if you want your hair or fingernails to grow quickly. The tossup also contained a clue that basically told you "this water-soluble vitamin does a lot of important things in the liver," which seems like it would cause a lot of people to at least consider negging with Vitamin C, given its placement. At the very least, it's not a very useful clue because all water-soluble vitamins are stored in the liver, and a lot of them are involved in liver processes like gluconeogenesis. Basically, it just wasn't a very good answer selection.
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Re: Cardinal Classic discussion

Post by Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN) »

Oh, I forgot to point out too that in the leadin to the tossup on pregnancy in our packet (although we didn't write it) the clue "Those with Factor V Leiden are at high risk of clotting during this condition," was given. The problem with that statement is that not only are people with that disease at a high risk for clotting during pregnancy, they are at a high risk for clotting all the time. My grandmother has it, and despite the presumed inability to get pregnant at her age, she has to take decoagulants to make sure she doesn't clot, so if I were playing I would have been insanely confused with that.
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Re: Cardinal Classic discussion

Post by vandyhawk »

theMoMA wrote:On the actual CC commentary front, we just started playing these in practice. I found the tossup on "Biotin" somewhat bizarre; B7 isn't really notable other than the fact that you take it as a supplement if you want your hair or fingernails to grow quickly. The tossup also contained a clue that basically told you "this water-soluble vitamin does a lot of important things in the liver," which seems like it would cause a lot of people to at least consider negging with Vitamin C, given its placement. At the very least, it's not a very useful clue because all water-soluble vitamins are stored in the liver, and a lot of them are involved in liver processes like gluconeogenesis. Basically, it just wasn't a very good answer selection.
To me, the easiest clue is actually the bit about avidin. Anyone who was worked in a mol bio or cellular type lab should know that pretty well. I think biotin is accessible enough to be a tossup answer at an event like this, but if I were writing/editing, I would have a hard time deciding how to order the clues. I think some more specific clues about its role in enzymes would've been good too.
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Re: Cardinal Classic discussion

Post by cdcarter »

Just use a Century family font, guys!
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