At Prison bowl we played four games against other top teams (3 against Dorman and one against Charter.) In these games we heard 7 author tossups and one country tossup.Captain Scipio wrote: The original point was essentially that buzzer races are often created whenever a title is mentioned, which is, for one, an issue of simple non-pyramidality or bad clue selection where it occurs and, for two, not in my opinion such a problem as has been claimed, even among the very best teams.
If I recall correctly there were buzzer races on:
The encantadas (melville)
the edible woman (atwood)
of love and shadows(allende)
pinch runner memorandum (kenzaburo oe)
There may have been a buzzer race on a Camus work, but I'm not sure.
Unrelated to titles, there was a buzzer race on the description of Ellison's "King of the Bingo Game"
There were no buzzer races on E.E. Cummings or Spain.
The fact that out of 8 non-work literature tossups in the close games we played, at least 4 of them ended in buzzer races on titles seems like a pretty big problem. Obviously top teams are tough to distinguish. But the fact that only 2 or 3 literature non-work questions clearly differentiated the teams is pretty worrisome.
EDIT: Also note that 3 of the buzzer races were on the first title, which was mentioned after only 1 plot description.