NSC 09 question discussion

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NSC 09 question discussion

Post by Matt Weiner »

All Saturday questions may be discussed after everyone is done playing on Saturday. Sunday questions may be discussed after the conclusion of the tournament. Certain people may be authorized to liveblog the championship final, with answers revealed, but only for that game.

You may use this thread for NSC 09 question discussion in accordance with the above schedule.
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Re: NSC 09 question discussion guidelines

Post by ... and the chaos of Mexican modernity »

Okay so what did everybody think of the questions?
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Re: NSC 09 question discussion guidelines

Post by Down and out in Quintana Roo »

Slightly easier and more accessible than last year's set (we've been using PACE 2008 at our practices, so we have a recent memory). A couple too-easy first clues (i.e. not crazy hard), but well i guess it's going to happen when you're reading to Hunter, etc. at times. I think the bonus questions are superbly written except for a few also too-easy parts, but overall they're quite good, accessible to the just-pretty-good teams here but still appropriate for the elite ones. The "hard" parts have been consistently tough without being of the "screw you" difficulty.

So from just my first judgment of reading some and scorekeeping some rounds, i give the questions a thumbs up. Looking forward to more good ones tomorrow.
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Re: NSC 09 question discussion guidelines

Post by at your pleasure »

They were good overall. The one complaint that sticks in my mind is the Remington TU in round 15, which seemed rather transparent.
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Re: NSC 09 question discussion guidelines

Post by Kouign Amann »

Anti-Climacus wrote:They were good overall. The one complaint that sticks in my mind is the Remington TU in round 15, which seemed rather transparent.
Of the few rounds I actually got to play, round 15 seemed the weakest. I thought it suffered from a little too much bonus difficulty fluctuation.
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Re: NSC 09 question discussion guidelines

Post by Adventure Temple Trail »

This set was, overall, of the right hard difficulty and quality, so thanks to Andrew and the other editors for your hard work. It definitely seemed harder than the 2008 NSC, as it needed to be.

Regardlesss, some issues stick out in my mind.

-Sometimes, I felt as though the answer space became so expanded from the usual high school canon that teams (up to and through Maggie Walker vs. us) ended up buzzer-racing on the giveaways when they dropped easy titles. (Example from memory: I'd heard the plots of zero Lillian Hellman plays before this tournament, and both of them were only gotten after the giveaway in our rooms.) It's hard to make these judgments when writing the hardest national tournament ever written, I know, but it seemed like an uncomfortable number of tossups devolved into buzzer races at the last title.

-"Operas by Smetana" was a poor answer line, especially given that "novels by Dryden" caused issues at the ICT, which the editors presumably played - just write about "Smetana" and only mention operas!

-If PACE continues to use the traditional NSC format, percentage guidelines need to be decided about how many teams should convert a given Category Quiz bonus part. The widest fluctuation seemed to be in these, which varied from easy 15s for any team to answers like "Tonnies" at the upper end.

I'll have more comments when I'm not falling asleep and the set is available, because I've forgotten some thoughts I had while playing. Sorry if this sounds unintentionally angry.
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Re: NSC 09 question discussion guidelines

Post by at your pleasure »

-"Operas by Smetana" was a poor answer line, especially given that "novels by Dryden" caused issues at the ICT, which the editors presumably played - just write about "Smetana" and only mention operas!
"x kind of work by y creator" tossups are usually bad ideas. Although understandable when read, they tend to be confusing to play.
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Re: NSC 09 question discussion guidelines

Post by Nine-Tenths Ideas »

Prof.Whoopie wrote: Of the few rounds I actually got to play, round 15 seemed the weakest. I thought it suffered from a little too much bonus difficulty fluctuation.
I agree with this. It was something like 0/2 Jazz, right? Still a good set in a tournament of great sets, though.
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Re: NSC 09 question discussion guidelines

Post by Kouign Amann »

Johannes Climacus wrote:
Prof.Whoopie wrote: Of the few rounds I actually got to play, round 15 seemed the weakest. I thought it suffered from a little too much bonus difficulty fluctuation.
I agree with this. It was something like 0/2 Jazz, right? Still a good set in a tournament of great sets, though.
In addition to 0/1 "Screw you"-level Armenian genocide and 0/1 middle school architecture, there was indeed 0/2 jazz.
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Re: NSC 09 question discussion guidelines

Post by Kechara »

Prof.Whoopie wrote:
Johannes Climacus wrote:
Prof.Whoopie wrote: Of the few rounds I actually got to play, round 15 seemed the weakest. I thought it suffered from a little too much bonus difficulty fluctuation.
I agree with this. It was something like 0/2 Jazz, right? Still a good set in a tournament of great sets, though.
In addition to 0/1 "Screw you"-level Armenian genocide and 0/1 middle school architecture, there was indeed 0/2 jazz.
To be fair, the Armenian genocide issue has come up a few times in the Washington Post recently, which may have tricked the writer into thinking more people know about it.
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Re: NSC 09 question discussion guidelines

Post by ClemsonQB »

Kechara wrote:
Prof.Whoopie wrote:
Johannes Climacus wrote:
Prof.Whoopie wrote: Of the few rounds I actually got to play, round 15 seemed the weakest. I thought it suffered from a little too much bonus difficulty fluctuation.
I agree with this. It was something like 0/2 Jazz, right? Still a good set in a tournament of great sets, though.
In addition to 0/1 "Screw you"-level Armenian genocide and 0/1 middle school architecture, there was indeed 0/2 jazz.
To be fair, the Armenian genocide issue has come up a few times in the Washington Post recently, which may have tricked the writer into thinking more people know about it.
Well, a lot of these questions were written before October of last year, so that may not be the case.
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Re: NSC 09 question discussion guidelines

Post by at your pleasure »

I think Article 301 is one of those things that people know about, but not by name. "Insulting Turkishness" would have been a better bonus part. I've forgotten the rest of the bonus, although I would think that "name this ethnic group that the Ottoman turks prerpetrated a massive genocide against during WWI" is reasonable for NSC.
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Re: NSC 09 question discussion guidelines

Post by The King's Flight to the Scots »

While I realize that most people won't care too much about this, I will commend whoever wrote the trash questions. "Gunblade" is certainly not an answer I've heard before (thank you, trolling Gamefaqs).

This may be just me, but it seemed like a few lit questions weren't giving titles as they went along and just gave a bunch of plots, followed by titles in the giveaway. I don't remember the Vergil tossup too well, but if I recall correctly, it went "Blah Blah Latin stuff...more Latin stuff...more Latin stuff...the Rutuli and Turnus." If the works referred to in the opening were things like the Eclogues, Georgics, and Culex, it would probably be best to mention their titles before the giveaway, since those titles are less commonly known than the antagonists in the Aeneid. Feel free to correct or disregard me, since A. I only played 5 matches and B. I may have misheard/readers may have mispronounced.

Overall, though, a good set. Definitely an appropriate difficulty level for nationally-ranked teams.
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Re: NSC 09 question discussion guidelines

Post by BuzzerZen »

By the way, thanks to Aidan and Matt for showing up on Sunday. They were going to keep score, but when we needed them to fill in for a team that had left, they happily jumped in.
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Re: NSC 09 question discussion guidelines

Post by Kouign Amann »

BuzzerZen wrote:By the way, thanks to Aidan and Matt for showing up on Sunday. They were going to keep score, but when we needed them to fill in for a team that had left, they happily jumped in.
No prob. We like quizbowl.
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Re: NSC 09 question discussion guidelines

Post by DumbJaques »

In addition to 0/1 "Screw you"-level Armenian genocide
I am unsure whether you mean the 30-point Armenian genocide bonus, as I suspect you do, or the Turkey/301 bonus, as other people seem to think you do.

If you mean the 301 bonus, I think 301 is a poor thing to ask for since, while it's something of the appropriate difficulty for a hard part in theory, pulling random numbers like that is kind of hard. I had originally written that part as Ocalan, which was changed because he was mentioned somewhere else. When Andrew asked me if I thought that was ok, I became similarly confused over which bonus he meant, and think I may have indicated it was; I apologize, I would rather it not have been the answer line, but it's still nowhere near the hardest 10% of answers or anything.

If you mean the Armenian Genocide bonus, I do not agree that it's "screw you" level. The Armenian genocide is not only a tremendously important and well-known thing in world history, but it's something you're likely to encounter in current events, which makes it even more likely that people would know it. The first part of the bonus asked for an event in which a certain ethnic group was massacred in Turkey; if you think that is too hard for an NSC semi-final round, I dispute your interpretation of the difficulty metric. The middle part asked for Abdul Hamid, which probably should have been a hard part, but he's fairly well-known as the last Ottoman ruler to hold real power and is centrally important to the founding of Turkey, etc. The Adana massacres was probably one of the most difficult answers at this tournament and should have been changed, but that's the only part of that bonus I really see as being over the top in terms of difficulty. As the author of the bonus, I certainly was not tricked into thinking people know about the Armenian genocide - I simply expect that you should.
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Re: NSC 09 question discussion guidelines

Post by Maxwell Sniffingwell »

DumbJaques wrote:
In addition to 0/1 "Screw you"-level Armenian genocide
stuff
Abdul Hamid as the middle part of a bonus at a high school level is too hard.
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Re: NSC 09 question discussion guidelines

Post by Nine-Tenths Ideas »

My teammate knew who was Abdul Hamid was, and almost gave him as an answer before changing his mind and going with someone else. This may be because his name is Abdul Hameed, but still...
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Re: NSC 09 question discussion guidelines

Post by TheKingInYellow »

Maybe its just State College, but we spent some time on Abdulhamid in history, and given any basic knowledge of the Ottoman Empire he's not that hard to pull
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Re: NSC 09 question discussion guidelines

Post by DumbJaques »

Abdul Hamid as the middle part of a bonus at a high school level is too hard.
Thank you for enlightening us. Also, that's exactly what I acknowledged in my previous post ("stuff"). I maintain that it's not utterly unreasonable, and that Armenian genocide is an easy part. I remain apologetic for the Adana part, which was obscene.
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Re: NSC 09 question discussion guidelines

Post by Cheynem »

Abdul Hamid I knew in high school because of this book about Notable People in History of which I read the first few pages of the first chapter ("A"), so there was a time in high school, when I had excellent knowledge of Peter Abelard, Joseph Addison, and Abdul Hamid.
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Re: NSC 09 question discussion guidelines

Post by btressler »

I think what made this bonus stick out so much was that it was right next to the one with answers "Rock and Roll Hall of Fame", "I.M. Pei", and "Louvre".
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Re: NSC 09 question discussion guidelines

Post by master15625 »

Um, does anyone know when we can expect the questions to be posted online?

I remember watching the finals live from the computer and I was somewhat surprised at Quantrill going dead. He may not be relatively famous to others, but he is important.

But those powers in the stretch round were pretty impressive. Lagos and Heaney among a few.

I thought S Waves was a little bit transparent, because by saying "does not travel through the Gutenberg Discontinuity" essentially that is saying S Wave cannot travel as far as P Wave, so we know it is S Wave.
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Re: NSC 09 question discussion guidelines

Post by wexs883198215 »

I'm not sure how that would make it transparent. Sounds like just a bad early clue to me.

EDIT: What I mean is, other than longitudinal vs transverse, the other thing most people know about p-waves vs s-waves is that one can go through anything and the other can't, so I think this is a matter of clue placement, not transparency
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Re: NSC 09 question discussion guidelines

Post by aestheteboy »

I thought the prelim rounds were really well-edited, although the bonus seemed somewhat too easy for nationals level. It felt like the bonus got slightly harder for playoff rounds, but statistic suggests otherwise; it may simply have been because of difficulty fluctuation, which was much more pronounced in the last few rounds. Overall, I'm fine with accessible bonus, but I really do wish finals (I assume round 18 was written as the second game of finals) were harder - Charter and SC would have converted things anyway.

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Re: NSC 09 question discussion guidelines

Post by master15625 »

wexs883198215 wrote:I'm not sure how that would make it transparent. Sounds like just a bad early clue to me.

EDIT: What I mean is, other than longitudinal vs transverse, the other thing most people know about p-waves vs s-waves is that one can go through anything and the other can't, so I think this is a matter of clue placement, not transparency
I don't know what transparent really meant, I thought it was synonymous with bad clue placement. But I thought it was placed early.
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Re: NSC 09 question discussion guidelines

Post by at your pleasure »

For the record, Daniel managed to pull Abdulhamid. Looking at those two bonuses, it would have made more sense to change the hard part of the Turkey bonus and use a more gettable version of Article 301 as a replacement for the Adana massacre. The bonus would still skew kind of hard, but would be pretty reasonable for an NSC semi-final round.
I don't know what transparent really meant, I thought it was synonymous with bad clue placement. But I thought it was placed early.
Transparency, to my mind, is a special sort of bad clue placement where the answer becomes obvious too early for reasons other than a specific misplaced clue.
For instance, a NSC-level tossup on Bellow with Henderson the Rain King too early and no other issues is not transparent. A Bellow tossup that makes it obvious from the first few clues that this is a guy who wrote a bunch of novels set in Chicago is transparent, since someone who doesn't know any of the clues could still figure it out.
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Re: NSC 09 question discussion guidelines

Post by JackGlerum »

Back in the Chi, slightly less exhausted.

A fantastic tournament indeed. Quality of questions and level of organization were high. I had a blast playing against great competition and was thoroughly satisfied with the moderating. It's stuff like this that makes quizbowl awesome.

I do have a couple criticisms, most of which are small.

First off, I'd rather play normal 20/20 tossup-bonus matches. I don't think the NSC format accomplishes much other than longer rounds (I think?) and being somewhat gimmicky. This isn't a criticism of the questions themselves, just the way in which they are delivered.

Secondly, the food situation was puzzling. I admit I probably don't know the whole story, but this is what I gathered: Evan said something to the effect of "Please try not to go to the GMU food court for lunch" for whatever reason in Lecture Hall before the games started. I didn't think much of it... I was thinking about quizbowl. Then, the fifth round ends, and my team and I are thinking "we have an hour to eat, we don't have transportation, and we were told not to go to the food court". Of course, we ended up going to the food court, because it was across the way and we had no other options. Thus, for both days, we were limited to Chinese Food, Indian Food, and a General Store (not that it was an issue, I'm just pointing out that summer college campus options are slim). Basically, I was left wondering what we were expected to do for lunch. I bring my own sack lunch to every tournament, but didn't get around to it in Fairfax. If that's what we were expected to do, fine. I just wasn't aware of that beforehand, whether it's my fault or not. I enjoyed my lunch on both days, it just didn't make sense to me logistically.

I have only a few complaints about the editing. These are the ones that I do have.
-I think Marmara and Medea came up twice. Hardly a big deal for a tournament this size.
-According to my notes, round twelve had tossups on Midas, Achilles, and Orestes and bonuses on Uranus-Giants-? and Orion-Triton-Sarpedon. I'm a big Greek classics fan, but it seemed excessive for one round.
-Along the same lines, I have down that Pachelbel, Peter Grimes, Messiaen, and Tosca were all answers to tossups in round seven. So, same issue just with music stuff. If I'm wrong about these "heavy categories", please tell me. The only reason I bring them up is because my team came out of those rounds saying "Jeez, there was a lot of x"

Questions I enjoyed: Randy Marsh, Napoleon (art clues), Beastie Boys, Herrick, Ingres, Theodoric, Wainwright Building, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird, Darkness at Noon, Brownian Motion, and buying Alaska. Also, the econ was memorably excellent.

Lastly, though I didn't participate, I thought the liveblogging/tweeting was a nice touch, especially for the finals.

Thanks to all who made this happen.
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Re: NSC 09 question discussion guidelines

Post by TheKingInYellow »

As just an addendum to what Jack said, I found the mythology overwhelmingly Greek. Aside from toss-ups on Thor and Canopic Jars, I don't think there was any Norse or Egyptian (I'm probably forgetting something, but still...)
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Re: NSC 09 question discussion guidelines

Post by master15625 »

Dang, the first six qusetions in the stretch round were powered...only because Quantrill came in the way. 8 out of 10 questions were powered total.

What was the answer to the "superlubricity" question that Monica got? I cannot understand it well. Is it graphite?
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Re: NSC 09 question discussion guidelines

Post by Tower Monarch »

master15625 wrote:What was the answer to the "superlubricity" question that Monica got? I cannot understand it well. Is it graphite?
yes. Notably not what I was thinking off the first (or second, I really have no memory before fifteen minutes ago) clue: martensite (that would be a fun NSC finals TU!).
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Re: NSC 09 question discussion guidelines

Post by Lapego1 »

RE: S waves. Yeah I agree listening to it now, what finally appeared in the set was probably a little transparent (S waves don't travel as far, etc.). I ended up doing some clue shuffling on that one, and somehow that sentence ended up as the second clue...agree it could've probably used a different second sentence. Plus, I learned earth sci independently, so I'm never really sure how much people know at this level.

I hope people found the science accessible. I also tried to make the computation actually doable in the time frame for a change, so I hope that showed.
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Re: NSC 09 question discussion guidelines

Post by Bananaquit »

TheKingInYelliow wrote:As just an addendum to what Jack said, I found the mythology overwhelmingly Greek. Aside from toss-ups on Thor and Canopic Jars, I don't think there was any Norse or Egyptian (I'm probably forgetting something, but still...)
I remember a bonus on Egyptian goddesses, several Celtic myth answers, a couple Chinese things (Eight Immortals for sure), a Norse bonus including Tyr, a TU on Marduk, and an Aztec bonus including Quetzalcoatl and Tlaloc and someone else.

But still, unless I've forgotten a lot of answers, that isn't much, especially at a national tournament.

I thought this set was really well-written and of appropriate difficulty, and I had fun playing it.
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Re: NSC 09 question discussion

Post by The Atom Strikes! »

Don't forget-- the final featured MULTIPLE Celtic myth questions.
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Re: NSC 09 question discussion guidelines

Post by Kouign Amann »

Bananaquit wrote:several Celtic myth answers
Fionn mac Cumhaill did indeed come up in one of the rounds I got to play.
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Re: NSC 09 question discussion guidelines

Post by at your pleasure »

I think Vioarr(sp?) came up as a CQ answer, and I remember a mostly non-western common link tossup about Moon deities which definitely included "one of these is chased by Hati".
I just wasn't aware of that beforehand, whether it's my fault or not. I enjoyed my lunch on both days, it just didn't make sense to me logistically.
My guess was that they thought it was a bad idea to have 256 people going to two medium-sized food court restraunts at about the same time. Presumably, the idea was that people would eat at restraunts in Fairfax.
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Re: NSC 09 question discussion guidelines

Post by Down and out in Quintana Roo »

Anti-Climacus wrote:
I just wasn't aware of that beforehand, whether it's my fault or not. I enjoyed my lunch on both days, it just didn't make sense to me logistically.
My guess was that they thought it was a bad idea to have 256 people going to two medium-sized food court restraunts at about the same time. Presumably, the idea was that people would eat at restraunts in Fairfax.
Jack's point was that there wasn't nearly enough time to do that... considering many of us parked no closer than a 5-10 minute walk away and then had to figure out where to go to for eating as well.
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Re: NSC 09 question discussion

Post by Terrible Shorts Depot »

This tournament was memorably awesome. I had a super time and I'd like to thank everyone who had a part in this weekend.

The questions were mostly really good. There was a boatload of music, though. Also, there were a few tossups that were absurdly hard (Albrecht Altdorfer comes to mind). The IRA tossup was not ideal, because, IIRC, Bobby Sands got mentioned earlier in the tournament. The openly gay head of state clue was way early in the Iceland question. I'll be able to say more when I get a look at the questions.

I did really enjoy some of the tossups, notably the Decembrist Revolt, the Mahdi, Napoleon, red, Brideshead Revisited, and Courbet.
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Re: NSC 09 question discussion

Post by AlphaQuizBowler »

Will the set be up soon?
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Re: NSC 09 question discussion guidelines

Post by TheKingInYellow »

Bananaquit wrote:
I remember a bonus on Egyptian goddesses, several Celtic myth answers, a couple Chinese things (Eight Immortals for sure), a Norse bonus including Tyr, a TU on Marduk, and an Aztec bonus including Quetzalcoatl and Tlaloc and someone else.

But still, unless I've forgotten a lot of answers, that isn't much, especially at a national tournament.
Yeah, I wasn't thinking of bonuses, just tossups. The Celtic myth was good, that should come up more often, but yeah, even with Marduk, Deirdre, Finn McCool, Thor, and canopic jars, that's five questions across 16 rounds, which seems absurdly small (I'm not counting common link)

EDIT: I is count good
Last edited by TheKingInYellow on Tue May 26, 2009 1:39 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: NSC 09 question discussion

Post by Mechanical Beasts »

As to the Medea problem, one was a tossup on the play, the other on the character; I think a lot of the clues ended up being pretty different. (You certainly didn't get a leadin about the Robinson Jeffers adaptation in one of them!)
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Re: NSC 09 question discussion guidelines

Post by The King's Flight to the Scots »

TheKingInYelliow wrote:
Bananaquit wrote:
I remember a bonus on Egyptian goddesses, several Celtic myth answers, a couple Chinese things (Eight Immortals for sure), a Norse bonus including Tyr, a TU on Marduk, and an Aztec bonus including Quetzalcoatl and Tlaloc and someone else.

But still, unless I've forgotten a lot of answers, that isn't much, especially at a national tournament.
Yeah, I wasn't thinking of bonuses, just tossups. The Celtic myth was good, that should come up more often, but yeah, even with Marduk, Deirdre, Finn McCool, Thor, and canopic jars, that's five questions across 16 rounds, which seems absurdly small (I'm not counting common link)

EDIT: I is count good
Don't forget the various questions on religion and Arthurian myth. For the former, I remember at least transubstantiation (probably another), and for the latter, I remember Lancelot and Merlin. There was also one on Maui, bringing us to about 10. Admittedly, that's still not many.
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Re: NSC 09 question discussion guidelines

Post by Kechara »

Anti-Climacus wrote: My guess was that they thought it was a bad idea to have 256 people going to two medium-sized food court restraunts at about the same time. Presumably, the idea was that people would eat at restraunts in Fairfax.
The biggest issue, I think, was that there was another major conference on the campus over the weekend...I'm guessing they wanted to avoid the nightmare of 500-some people descending on the food court at once. I was not in on the decision for how long to give for lunch, and my perspective on it was of course skewed by having meals in house, so I defer to the teams on judgment for how much more time they think they needed for lunch.
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Re: NSC 09 question discussion

Post by Mike Bentley »

I think the decision also had something to do with the fact that it was Memorial Day weekend and the assumption was that not everything would be open, further adding to the congestion. This might not actually be true though, I only have this information second hand.
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Re: NSC 09 question discussion

Post by Nuclear Densometer Test »

First off, i would like to say that it was an excellent tournament. The questions were very well written and the organization was great.

Tossups/Bonuses i liked:
The Trial, 13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird, Veblen, The Dumbwaiter, Gunter Grass, Arcade Fire, Calvino, the Philosophy of Right, Night bonuses

Tossups i didn't like:
Albrecht Altdorfer--a bit too hard; Operas by Smetana--It may just be a personal thing, but i dislike tossups of the x by y sort; Haber-Bosch--The stock 1% world's energy clue; Rubens--Great idea for a tossup but Decent from the Cross on power?; The Cherry Orchard--again, good tossup idea but it was too-easily frauded within power. Russian names + "namesake estate"...
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Re: NSC 09 question discussion

Post by at your pleasure »

My problem with Atdorfer is that's he's got one well-know work (The Battle of Issus) and is otherwise obscure.
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Re: NSC 09 question discussion

Post by The Atom Strikes! »

On one hand, I loved that "Operas by Smetana" tossup because it was the only time that I'll ever get a high school outlet for my "The Brandenburgers in Bohemia" knowledge. On the other hand, I think that the vast majority of high school players probably don't know any Smetana operatic works other than "The Bartered Bride"...
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Re: NSC 09 question discussion

Post by Adventure Temple Trail »

A.B.C.D E.F. Godthaab wrote:On one hand, I loved that "Operas by Smetana" tossup because it was the only time that I'll ever get a high school outlet for my "The Brandenburgers in Bohemia" knowledge. On the other hand, I think that the vast majority of high school players probably don't know any Smetana operatic works other than "The Bartered Bride"...
On another other hand, a virtually identical tossup on Smetana that only mentioned operas would have offered you the same outlet...

One more negative thing that sticks out before I see the set and refresh my memory of positives and negatives: "This duckweed-infested body" is one of the worse leadins I've encountered anywhere this year. Deep duckweed knowledge should never be rewarded with TWENTYYYYYYYY.
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Re: NSC 09 question discussion

Post by btressler »

My vote for worst lead-in was:

The one of these at Itaipu....

If I'd been playing I probably would have had that deer in the headlights look instead of actually buzzing.

(but on balance I thought 95%+ of the questions were good.)
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Re: NSC 09 question discussion

Post by Nuclear Densometer Test »

RyuAqua wrote:
A.B.C.D E.F. Godthaab wrote:On one hand, I loved that "Operas by Smetana" tossup because it was the only time that I'll ever get a high school outlet for my "The Brandenburgers in Bohemia" knowledge. On the other hand, I think that the vast majority of high school players probably don't know any Smetana operatic works other than "The Bartered Bride"...
On another other hand, a virtually identical tossup on Smetana that only mentioned operas would have offered you the same outlet...
I actually wouldn't mind a tossup on Smetana that mentioned multiple forms of his work, it's just the required "operas by Smetana" and the reference to that one specific kind of work that i disliked.
Bad Boy Bill wrote:My vote for worst lead-in was:

The one of these at Itaipu....

If I'd been playing I probably would have had that deer in the headlights look instead of actually buzzing.

(but on balance I thought 95%+ of the questions were good.)
I remember that one. It may have been in a round against one of your teams...
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