Fremd Varsity & Frosh/soph 1/23/10

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Fremd Varsity & Frosh/soph 1/23/10

Post by the return of AHAN »

Here is the most recent list of teams... all 102 of them! Questions by Michael Sacks of Homewood-Flossmoor. A pretty mighty feat if he really wrote 18 rounds of 16/16 all by himself, no?

FROSH-SOPH - 48 TEAMS

Bradley Bourbonnais - 1
Buffalo Grove - 2
Carmel Catholic - 2
Cary-Grove - 1
Conant - 1
Evanston - 1
Fenwick - 2
Fremd - 2
Grayslake Central - 2
Grayslake North - 1
Hersey - 1
IMSA - 1
Kaneland - 1
Lakes Community - 1
Lake Park - 1
Lake Zurich - 2
Latin - 1
Leyden - 1
Libertyville - 1
Lincolon-Way North - 1
Maine East - 2
Marian Central Catholic - 1
Marist - 1
Naperville Central - 1
Naperville North - 1
Notre Dame - 1
Oswego East - 1
Palatine - 1
Rolling Meadows - 1
Romeoville - 1
St. Ignatius - 2
St. Viator - 1
Stevenson - 2
Streator - 1
Timothy Christian - 1
Wheaton Academy - 2
Wheaton North - 1
Wheaton-Warrenville South - 1


VARSITY 54 TEAMS
Barrington - 1
Bradley Bourbonnais - 2
Buffalo Grove - 2
Carmel Catholic - 2
Cary-Grove - 1
Conant - 2
Evanston - 1
Fenwick - 2
Fremd - 2
Grayslake Central - 2
Grayslake North - 1
Hersey - 2
IMSA - 2
Kaneland - 1
Lakes Community - 1
Lake Park - 1
Lake Zurich - 2
Latin - 1
Leyden - 1
Libertyville - 1
Lincolon-Way North - 1
Maine East - 1
Maine South - 1
Marian Central Catholic - 1
Marist - 1
Naperville Central - 1
Naperville North - 1
Notre Dame -1
Oswego East - 1
Palatine - 1
Rolling Meadows - 1
Romeoville - 1
St. Ignatius - 1
St. Patrick's - 2
St. Viator - 2
Stevenson - 1
Streator - 1
Timothy Christian - 1
Wheaton Academy - 1
Wheaton North - 1
Wheaton-Warrenville South - 2
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Re: Fremd Varsity & Frosh/soph 1/23/10

Post by jonah »

That many teams have a craving for bad quizbowl, and can't wait until IHSA Regionals?

Oh well, at least there will be some abusive coaches to keep things hilarious.
Woody Paige wrote:Questions by Michael Sacks of Homewood-Flossmoor. A pretty mighty feat if he really wrote 18 rounds of 16/16 all by himself, no?
It would be more impressive if they were decent questions.
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Re: Fremd Varsity & Frosh/soph 1/23/10

Post by the return of AHAN »

My money is on Stevenson over Fremd @ frosh/soph (4 of the teams in the top pool at D&GT are notably absent... WWS is there but I don't yet have proof they can prevail on computation toss-ups)
and St. Ig over Stevenson @ varsity (though Stevenson's computation abilities could swing this. I don't know how Deveau is on computation, but their fr/so defeated Barrington at this tournament last year, without the services of Mr. Deveau, so....)
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Re: Fremd Varsity & Frosh/soph 1/23/10

Post by jonah »

Woody Paige wrote:I don't know how Deveau is on computation
hahahahahahaha
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Re: Fremd Varsity & Frosh/soph 1/23/10

Post by the return of AHAN »

jonah wrote:
Woody Paige wrote:I don't know how Deveau is on computation
hahahahahahaha
pwnd
:oops:
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Re: Fremd Varsity & Frosh/soph 1/23/10

Post by abnormal abdomen »

Woody Paige wrote: I don't know how Deveau is on computation
He's an absolute destroyer.

I'm surprised at some of the teams that are playing in this. Are these questions supposed to be pyramidal, and the like?
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Re: Fremd Varsity & Frosh/soph 1/23/10

Post by Dan-Don »

Jacopo Robusti wrote:I'm surprised at some of the teams that are playing in this. Are these questions supposed to be pyramidal, and the like?
I'm been told they're "pyramidal" in the sense that all Sacks's academic tossups feature trash clues arranged in order from hardest to easiest. Whatever. At least this year's iteration of Fremd Varsity should be funny rather than infuriating. Is Mr. Palmer welcoming spectators? I kinda wanna see this. Anyways, good luck to my former compadres. (Hopefully this opens some eyes over there.)
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Re: Fremd Varsity & Frosh/soph 1/23/10

Post by jdeliverer »

Does anyone know distribution/format?
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Re: Fremd Varsity & Frosh/soph 1/23/10

Post by the return of AHAN »

Robert, I believe Mr. Sacks is following the IHSA distro and format.
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Re: Fremd Varsity & Frosh/soph 1/23/10

Post by BGSO »

Well, as much of the IHSA format that can be modified to fit 16/16, most likely it will involve 4/4 comp math, 2/2 trash, 3/3 history, 3/3 lit, 1/1 FA, 3/3 Science. Or something to that effect.
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Re: Fremd Varsity & Frosh/soph 1/23/10

Post by rjaguar3 »

BGSO wrote:Well, as much of the IHSA format that can be modified to fit 16/16, most likely it will involve 4/4 comp math, 2/2 trash, 3/3 history, 3/3 lit, 1/1 FA, 3/3 Science. Or something to that effect.
What about the distribution for questions on domestic violence and musicians whose names are the same as geographic terms? :grin:

On a serious note, I basically created the distribution for WN frosh/soph by starting with 153/153 (9 packets of 16/16) and then using 5 new IHSA rounds as the basis (with the exception that the categories for which no good questions can be written like spelling, grammar, vocabulary, etc. are excluded). The round distribution will therefore be 3/3 math, 3/3 science, 3/3 lit, 3/3 SS, 2/2 FA, 1/1 misc., with two additional toss-ups and bonuses in all categories excluding miscellaneous. I would guess Fremd would be the same way.
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Re: Fremd Varsity & Frosh/soph 1/23/10

Post by jdeliverer »

Sweet. I look forward to the interdisciplinary spelling/math comp (which of course was a simple memorization trick that required you to know 7*11*13=1001).

On a more serious note, do we know how many rounds are guaranteed and/or what the playoff structure is like?
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Re: Fremd Varsity & Frosh/soph 1/23/10

Post by BGSO »

Most likely 5 rounds of 16/16 will be played in rigged brackets, followed by a single elimination segment of 16 teams.
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Re: Fremd Varsity & Frosh/soph 1/23/10

Post by the return of AHAN »

Given the adherence of both the varsity and frosh/soph field to a multiple of 6, I guarantee it's pools of 6 with 5 rounds per team. Winner of each pool, plus 7 wild cards advance. Not sure how the wild card will be determined, but I think I recall them using total points in the past, which was also used to seed the teams 1-16. Good luck!
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Re: Fremd Varsity & Frosh/soph 1/23/10

Post by Dan-Don »

I don't know any results but this. Viator went out in the round of 16. It was a close match and came down to Tossup 16, which was in the area of Driver's Education. It was a multiple-choice tossup.

One anonymous attendee (NOT ME) called the tournament a "swill of UNHAPPY OTTER." He proposed that the questions were written by "someone with downs." There was "way too much comp math." Overall, it was a "UNHAPPY OTTERy waste of a Saturday." He called the set the "blurst ever."
Last edited by Mechanical Beasts on Sat Jan 23, 2010 10:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Fremd Varsity & Frosh/soph 1/23/10

Post by jonah »

Dan-Don wrote:It was a close match and came down to Tossup 16, which was in the area of Driver's Education. It was a multiple-choice tossup.
IHSA Terms & Conditions VIII-M-3 wrote:Multiple choice toss-up and bonus questions will not be permitted except in the case of vocabulary (analogy) toss-up questions.
Fantastic. So they can't even stick to the miserable format they're trying to.
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Re: Fremd Varsity & Frosh/soph 1/23/10

Post by Kanga-Rat Murder Society »

Are these questions cleared, because I just literally heard about the funniest tossup ever? I'll just say that the category was Religion-Computation. My source also says the tournament was poorly written, though it did not contain the hoses that have plagued Fremd tournaments in the past.

As for results, I only know WWS beat Wardless BG in the first round of playoffs, and Carmel beat BG in the second round of F/S playoffs.

Oh, and the F/S and Varsity questions had significant overlap (60-70%).

Edit: I'll let somebody in attendance post the actual question, as I do not know the exact wording.
Last edited by Kanga-Rat Murder Society on Sat Jan 23, 2010 7:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Fremd Varsity & Frosh/soph 1/23/10

Post by jonah »

According to an email from Mike Sacks, the writer, there are no mirrors planned.
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Re: Fremd Varsity & Frosh/soph 1/23/10

Post by Dan-Don »

The question was (this set has been cleared, fyi--no mirrors):

For a driver under 17, who gets the ticket for not using a seatbelt?
(A) the driver
(B) the passenger
(C) both
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Re: Fremd Varsity & Frosh/soph 1/23/10

Post by JackGlerum »

Last year, I think I asked him if he would release the set and he said no. If someone gets lucky and does get their hands on it, I'd like to see it.
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Re: Fremd Varsity & Frosh/soph 1/23/10

Post by Dan-Don »

JackGlerum wrote:Last year, I think I asked him if he would release the set and he said no. If someone gets lucky and does get their hands on it, I'd like to see it.
We may be in luck. That's all I'll say on a public forum.
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Re: Fremd Varsity & Frosh/soph 1/23/10

Post by Charley Pride »

I was promised these questions would be better. So glad we didn't go...
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Re: Fremd Varsity & Frosh/soph 1/23/10

Post by Dan-Don »

jonah wrote:
Dan-Don wrote:It was a close match and came down to Tossup 16, which was in the area of Driver's Education. It was a multiple-choice tossup.
IHSA Terms & Conditions VIII-M-3 wrote:Multiple choice toss-up and bonus questions will not be permitted except in the case of vocabulary (analogy) toss-up questions.
Fantastic. So they can't even stick to the miserable format they're trying to.
Ok...they straight-up violated an IHSA rule. What are the consequences, if any?
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Re: Fremd Varsity & Frosh/soph 1/23/10

Post by Monk »

BG MSL Champs wrote:I'll just say that the category was Religion-Computation.
Like the computational Scientology question at Nationals?
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Re: Fremd Varsity & Frosh/soph 1/23/10

Post by Charley Pride »

Dan-Don wrote:
jonah wrote:
Dan-Don wrote:It was a close match and came down to Tossup 16, which was in the area of Driver's Education. It was a multiple-choice tossup.
IHSA Terms & Conditions VIII-M-3 wrote:Multiple choice toss-up and bonus questions will not be permitted except in the case of vocabulary (analogy) toss-up questions.
Fantastic. So they can't even stick to the miserable format they're trying to.
Ok...they straight-up violated an IHSA rule. What are the consequences, if any?
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Re: Fremd Varsity & Frosh/soph 1/23/10

Post by jdeliverer »

Dan-Don wrote:The question was (this set has been cleared, fyi--no mirrors):

For a driver under 17, who gets the ticket for not using a seatbelt?
(A) the driver
(B) the passenger
(C) both

I think it was actually a 17 year old passenger and an 18 year old driver, but if you have the set then you're probably right. Still, thats far from the point. After going to good tournaments, it was astonishing how painful this set was. One of our sophomores first-lined a tossup because he knew Cronus was married to Rhea.

edit: also, tossups that mention no works or descriptions of works and ask for authors are wonderful. See Gauthier's letter.
Last edited by jdeliverer on Sat Jan 23, 2010 8:21 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Fremd Varsity & Frosh/soph 1/23/10

Post by jonah »

Okay, I'll ask. Latin, why the heck did you guys go.
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Re: Fremd Varsity & Frosh/soph 1/23/10

Post by Dan-Don »

jdeliverer wrote:I think it was actually a 17 year old passenger and an 18 year old driver, but if you have the set then you're probably right.
So what's the right answer? And I do not have the set. That would be stealing.
jdeliverer wrote: One of our sophomores first-lined a tossup because he knew Cronus was married to Rhea.
That's not necessarily indicative of how bad the set was. Although you might want to say he "only-lined" the tossup.
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Re: Fremd Varsity & Frosh/soph 1/23/10

Post by jdeliverer »

jonah wrote:Okay, I'll ask. Latin, why the heck did you guys go.
Tradition? But in my (off the record and totally nonbinding) opinion we won't be going again, despite the awesomeness of qualifying for the afternoon with a 2-3 record :lol:

Still, there was one benefit from an IHSA-centric point of view which was practicing computation after not playing with it for months.
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Re: Fremd Varsity & Frosh/soph 1/23/10

Post by Dan-Don »

Monk wrote:
BG MSL Champs wrote:I'll just say that the category was Religion-Computation.
Like the computational Scientology question at Nationals?
I'll just go ahead and post it. I've been told it was # of Jesus' apostles + # of pillars of Islam + # of nights of Hanukkah. (25.)
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Re: Fremd Varsity & Frosh/soph 1/23/10

Post by drose4prez »

Stevenson defeated Fremd 202-175 in the finals of the varsity tournament. The game came down to the final tossup, which was a transparent piece of garbage tu on "don't ask don't tell" that began something like "Name this 4 word phrase. Blah Controversial Military Blah". The finals had 6/6 comp math/science, and the tossup on Diskobolos began "this sculpture by Myron....".

The literature questions at this tourney were particularly awful; there was no uniquely identifying info about novels/works in a single question on an author. It was basically biography lit bowl.
The leadin to a tuberculosis tossup began "This disease is treated w/ antibiotics".
The first "literature" bonus of the day involved naming the authors of Jurassic Park, The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, Jaws, the Da Vinci Code, and something else. Other lit tus included a tossup on the author of "Where the Wild Things Are".
One part of a fine arts bonus asked to identify Miley Cyrus as the person who was on the cover of some magazine with only a bed sheet.
There are plenty other examples like the ones above.
The logistics were terrible; the last F/S matched finished at 2 o'clock despite the rounds only being 16/16, and the coaches meeting was at least an hour.

All aspects of this tournament were terrible, and I'm embarassed that Stevenson was even there.

EDIT: I forgot to mention probably the worst bonus part of the day; The topic was Emily Dickinson.
Here it is(paraphrasing):
C. Emily Dickinson wrote 2000(can't remember the exact number) poems/works. Name the % of them that were published within her life time within 1%.
ANSWER: .4-.8%
This means that a team could have answered "-.4%" and have been technically correct according to the wording of the correction. This bonus did not mention any of her poems, but did ask about her most common punctuation mark(dash).
Last edited by drose4prez on Sat Jan 23, 2010 11:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Fremd Varsity & Frosh/soph 1/23/10

Post by Dan-Don »

drose4prez wrote:One part of a fine arts bonus asked to identify Miley Cyrus as the person who was on the cover of some magazine with only a bed sheet. .
Vanity Fair.
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Re: Fremd Varsity & Frosh/soph 1/23/10

Post by Mechanical Beasts »

Dan-Don wrote:
drose4prez wrote:One part of a fine arts bonus asked to identify Miley Cyrus as the person who was on the cover of some magazine with only a bed sheet. .
Vanity Fair.
To be fair, Annie Leibovitz is a really important photographer. On the other hand, this tournament sounds like the expected abomination.
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Re: Fremd Varsity & Frosh/soph 1/23/10

Post by the return of AHAN »

So, to give my own version of today's happenings; Barrington tied for 5th place out of 54 teams (my way of saying we lost in the quarterfinals), we went 5-2 overall, but undefeated against schools not named for failed U.S. presidential candidates. And, I know some of the players are going to bag on the questions, but really, it wouldn't have mattered if we were using Trivial Pursuit cards. Stevenson was going to beat us as they simply have better breadth and depth of knowledge, and are often faster on computation than us (though I was pleased to see my lesson to Grant re: derivatives of polynomial expressions paid off in that quarterfinal match! OK, so it wasn't Grant who scored it, but Norman was clearly ready for that one).

But I digress...Mr. Sacks did an excellent job of adhering to the published IHSA distribution. However, he really needs a 2nd person to look them over if only to check the readability of the sets. There were numerous instances of words missing, awkward syntax, etc. that I know can arise when you're the only one typing them. I also want to say that I think I have an issue with "paired" toss-ups and bonuses. That is, the TU and bonuses alternate within the packets. I say this because he made an effort (rightfully so), to avoid TU and bonus pairs of the same category. Now, when that happens, and a toss-up on say, "Find the three real roots of 2x^3 - 11x^2 + 4x + 5" goes dead, a non-computational bonus gets scuttled (in this case, chemistry).

At lunch, Sid said, "It seems like a third of this set is computation!" So I check and, in fact, Sid was wrong. Out of the 80 morning TU/bonus questions asked of BHS, 32 of them contained either a computation toss-up or bonus. This is clearly two-fifths, not one-third. :wink: Now, I don't believe this was a concerted effort, but rather a product of the "paired" bonus system. Am I making sense? For the record,I didn't include non-computational math bonuses such as "give the shapes of these graphs" in my count, but did include computations such as "balance the following equation... Sodium Hypochlorite plus Hydrochloric Acid yields water plus sodium chloride plus chlorine gas."

As for the tournament itself, I feel like there could be a better way of keeping things moving in the afternoon. Given that teams had to provide their own moderators, I guess it can't be helped when one frosh/soph room finishes round 5 at 1:40 PM. I mean, some coach is bound to read as though he's auditioning for NPR. But I've come to the conclusion that a mACF format is the only way to make things speedy. When I was reading today, we got through 16/16 in 27-28 minutes, but, just a week ago, I could read 20/20 at D&GT in 22 minutes. At any rate, our round 5 ended at 12:45, which isn't too ridiculous for this format when you consider that round 1 went off at 9:40 AM. I wonder if the 2:45 round 6 start time is simply a function of the fact that there are 102 teams to sort through for awards and seeding for playoff rounds.

There was some curious answer selection, as I don't usually think of 21st century authors as American Literature (I speak of Khaled Hosseini in round 2).
[edit: I'm not a lit expert and my opinion on what makes a good answer line is hardly authoritative.]

Answer of the day... This award goes to a quarterfinal bonus answer given by a certain fair-haired captain of SHS...the question, regarding the late Senator Edward Kennedy: In 1979, leading up to his only presidential run, what question was he asked in an interview with CBS news. Because of his unclear rambling answer, it sent his poll numbers spinning downward.
Correct: "Why do you want to be president?" [Accept similar forms of the question]
Given: "Are you gay?" :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:
Thank God I wasn't moderating; I may have needed an official's timeout!
[note: I post this not to mock Stevenson. They are a great, classy team and I have nothing but the deepest respect for them all!]
Last edited by the return of AHAN on Sun Jan 24, 2010 12:34 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Fremd Varsity & Frosh/soph 1/23/10

Post by Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN) »

There was some curious answer selection, as I don't usually think of 21st century authors as American Literature (I speak of Khaled Hosseini in round 2).
Thomas Pynchon, Philip Roth, Don Delillo, Cormac McCarthy, Amiri Baraka, and Toni Morrison all have published works in the 21st century, and I would be 100% comfortable with using information about those works in questions relating to these figures and distributing them as American literature.
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Re: Fremd Varsity & Frosh/soph 1/23/10

Post by Stained Diviner »

Woody Paige wrote:At lunch, Sid said, "It seems like a third of this set is computation!" So I check and, in fact, Sid was wrong. Out of the 80 morning TU/bonus questions asked of BHS, 32 of them contained either a computation toss-up or bonus. This is clearly two-fifths, not one-third. :wink: Now, I don't believe this was a concerted effort, but rather a product of the "paired" bonus system. Am I making sense? For the record,I didn't include non-computational math bonuses such as "give the shapes of these graphs" in my count, but did include computations such as "balance the following equation... Sodium Hypochlorite plus Hydrochloric Acid yields water plus sodium chloride plus chlorine gas."
This aspect does follow IHSA Rules, which state that the Bonus must be in a different major category than the Tossup. The rules are written that way to avoid a math whiz from nailing a computational tossup and then sweeping a computational bonus for a quick 30 points.
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Re: Fremd Varsity & Frosh/soph 1/23/10

Post by the return of AHAN »

I’ve been asked to give some reactions to the questions, with some specific examples. So here I go…
I noticed that not all of the toss-ups had good, uniquely identifying lead-ins. This, IMO, only fuels the arguments of those who rail against pyramidal toss-ups. Consider this 2nd U.S. History question of the 1st match:
She was born in Massachusetts in 1820, but her family soon moved to New York, where she spent much of her life. While famous for exceptional oration, one of her most famous acts was voting Republican in 1872. Identify this woman arrested and convicted for that act, for the voting itself, not specifically for Republicans.
That first line contains nothing that can be buzzed on. I shouldn’t complain, of course, as Aakash scored it for us upon completion. But did he really have knowledge that allowed him to distinguish Susan B. Anthony from, say, Elizabeth Cady Stanton or Lucy Stone with that information? Or was it just an educated guess? I believe it was the latter.
Jeremy Gibbs Free Energy wrote:
There was some curious answer selection, as I don't usually think of 21st century authors as American Literature (I speak of Khaled Hosseini in round 2).
Thomas Pynchon, Philip Roth, Don Delillo, Cormac McCarthy, Amiri Baraka, and Toni Morrison all have published works in the 21st century, and I would be 100% comfortable with using information about those works in questions relating to these figures and distributing them as American literature.
Fair enough. I guess I’m narrow-minded in that regard then, as I always expect to hear questions about classics. However, Kevin’s criticism about the lit questions often focusing on biography stand. Here is the Hosseini TU;
This author became an American citizen after moving to the U.S. as a teenager. He finished his residency in 1996, but was a doctor for less than 10 years as his 2003 novel sold millions of copies. His success in America has been in part due to interest in foreign current events, as both his first and second novels are set heavily in Kabul. Identify this author of A Thousand Splendid Suns and The Kite Runner.
I’ve noticed that many well-written lit toss-ups offer the chance to learn about something you may not have known, and I suppose this does that. I really knew nothing of the life and times of Khaled Hosseini. But I didn’t learn anything about either novel, other than they use Kabul as a setting (forgive me; I don’t read as much as I should since having kids).

Some noted the earlier multiple choice toss-up on Driver’s Ed, but there was also the following "matching" bonus:
“Write down the following eight animals. Canary, Carp, Centipede, Clam, Coral, Crab, Cuttlefish, Cutworms.
Parts A, B, and C) There are 3 pairs of animals that are in the same phylum. Identify the pairs.
Part D) There are two animals who do not have a pair in the same phylum. Identify either of these animal’s phylums.”
My issue with a question like this is how messing up one pair easily prevents you from getting the rest of them.


Shcool wrote:
Woody Paige wrote:At lunch, Sid said, "It seems like a third of this set is computation!" So I check and, in fact, Sid was wrong. Out of the 80 morning TU/bonus questions asked of BHS, 32 of them contained either a computation toss-up or bonus. This is clearly two-fifths, not one-third. :wink: Now, I don't believe this was a concerted effort, but rather a product of the "paired" bonus system. Am I making sense? For the record,I didn't include non-computational math bonuses such as "give the shapes of these graphs" in my count, but did include computations such as "balance the following equation... Sodium Hypochlorite plus Hydrochloric Acid yields water plus sodium chloride plus chlorine gas."
This aspect does follow IHSA Rules, which state that the Bonus must be in a different major category than the Tossup. The rules are written that way to avoid a math whiz from nailing a computational tossup and then sweeping a computational bonus for a quick 30 points.
Oh, I get that. What I’m saying is that I think the specific pairing (instead of having a list of bonuses and reading the next one) has the unintended consequence of having MORE questions asked about topics that people might be struggling to score.
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Re: Fremd Varsity & Frosh/soph 1/23/10

Post by Geringer »

I hoped that Sachs would have been able to pull this off with some semblance of legitimacy. Wishful thinking I guess...

Although, computational religion is probably my new favorite IHSA category.
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Re: Fremd Varsity & Frosh/soph 1/23/10

Post by jonah »

Oh, I should've pointed that out:
IHSA Terms & Conditions VIII-P-8 wrote:All computational toss-up questions will be from either the math or science categories.
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Re: Fremd Varsity & Frosh/soph 1/23/10

Post by Charley Pride »

Woody Paige wrote:So, to give my own version of today's happenings; Barrington tied for 5th place out of 54 teams (my way of saying we lost in the quarterfinals), we went 5-2 overall, but undefeated against schools not named for failed U.S. presidential candidates. And, I know some of the players are going to bag on the questions, but really, it wouldn't have mattered if we were using Trivial Pursuit cards. Stevenson was going to beat us as they simply have better breadth and depth of knowledge, and are often faster on computation than us (though I was pleased to see my lesson to Grant re: derivatives of ploynomial expressions paid off in that quarterfinal match! OK, so it wasn't Grant who scored it, but Norman was clearly ready for that one).
But I digress...Mr. Sacks did an excellent job of adhering to the published IHSA distribution. However, he really needs a 2nd person to look them over if only to check the readability of the sets. There were numerous instances of words missing, awkward syntax, etc. that I know can arise when you're the only one typing them. I also want to say that I think I have an issue with "paired" toss-ups and bonuses. That is, the TU and bonuses alternate within the packets. I say this because he made an effort (rightfully so), to avoid TU and bonus pairs of the same category. Now, when that happens, and a toss-up on say, "Find the three real roots of 2x^3 - 11x^2 + 4x + 5" goes dead, a non-computational bonus gets scuttled (in this case, chemistry).
At lunch, Sid said, "It seems like a third of this set is computation!" So I check and, in fact, Sid was wrong. Out of the 80 morning TU/bonus questions asked of BHS, 32 of them contained either a computation toss-up or bonus. This is clearly two-fifths, not one-third. :wink: Now, I don't believe this was a concerted effort, but rather a product of the "paired" bonus system. Am I making sense? For the record,I didn't include non-computational math bonuses such as "give the shapes of these graphs" in my count, but did include computations such as "balance the following equation... Sodium Hypochlorite plus Hydrochloric Acid yields water plus sodium chloride plus chlorine gas."
As for the tournament itself, I feel like there could be a better way of keeping things moving in the afternoon. Given that teams had to provide their own moderators, I guess it can't be helped when one frosh/soph room finishes round 5 at 1:40 PM. I mean, some coach is bound to read as though he's auditioning for NPR. But I've come to the conclusion that a mACF format is the only way to make things speedy. When I was reading today, we got through 16/16 in 27-28 minutes, but, just a week ago, I could read 20/20 at D&GT in 22 minutes. At any rate, our round 5 ended at 12:45, which isn't too ridculous for this format when you consider that round 1 went off at 9:40 AM. I wonder if the 2:45 round 6 start time is simply a function of the fact that there are 102 teams to sort through for awards and seeding for playoff rounds.
There was some curious answer selection, as I don't usually think of 21st century authors as American Literature (I speak of Khaled Hosseini in round 2).
Answer of the day... This award goes to a quarterfinal bonus answer given by a certain fair-haired captain of SHS...the question, regarding the late Senator Edward Kennedy: In 1979, leading up to his only presidential run, what question was he asked in an interview with CBS news. Because of his unclear rambling answer, it sent his poll numbers spinning downward.
Correct: "Why do you want to be president?" [Accept similar forms of the question]
Given: "Are you gay?" :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:
Thank God I wasn't moderating; I may have needed an official's timeout!
[note: I post this not to mock Stevenson. They are a great, classy team and I have nothing but the deepest respect for them all!]
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I'm really upset after reading everything, because we were told things would be better. Yes, I didn't believe it, and that's why I vocally opposed our attending. But it's just a travesty that people could be led to think there'd be some improvement, only to see nothing but more regression. I don't know what to say anymore.
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Re: Fremd Varsity & Frosh/soph 1/23/10

Post by Kanga-Rat Murder Society »

I know it is fun to criticize the Fremd tournament, and it is certainly not a beacon of good quizbowl, but those tossups seem much better than anything at the four Fremd tournaments I attended. Also, the brackets were very even compared to the catastrophe that was last year.

Mind you I have also heard some terrible tossups, but this tournament definitely seems to have been better this year than last year. Certainly, if the Khaled Hosseini and Susan B. Anthony tossups are the first complaints that pop into your head, this tournament must have surpassed your expectations. After all, the one round I managed to keep from last year had one literature tossup, with the answer being Thomas Paine, and the lead-in being "This patriot".

So, if you were promised better questions, I say you got better questions. What did you expect, HSAPQ?
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Re: Fremd Varsity & Frosh/soph 1/23/10

Post by the return of AHAN »

BG MSL Champs wrote:I know it is fun to criticize the Fremd tournament, and it is certainly not a beacon of good quizbowl, but those tossups seem much better than anything at the four Fremd tournaments I attended. Also, the brackets were very even compared to the catastrophe that was last year.

Mind you I have also heard some terrible tossups, but this tournament definitely seems to have been better this year than last year. Certainly, if the Khaled Hosseini and Susan B. Anthony tossups are the first complaints that pop into your head, this tournament must have surpassed your expectations. After all, the one round I managed to keep from last year had one literature tossup, with the answer being Thomas Paine, and the lead-in being "This patriot".

So, if you were promised better questions, I say you got better questions. What did you expect, HSAPQ?
True. I concur that Mr. Sacks questions did a better job than Question Bank, without a doubt. I simply think the set could have benefited from a 2nd set of eyes, at the very least to edit them, but to also suggest revisions where needed. And I may be off-base with my math comp distro complaints, but, to give specifics, TU #14 in round 2 was the fifth "computation" toss-up of the round.. What SHOULD we expect the match distro to be?
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Re: Fremd Varsity & Frosh/soph 1/23/10

Post by rjaguar3 »

Woody Paige wrote:What SHOULD we expect the match distro to be?
If we are going to go IHSA format, then I would suggest something similar to the distro I'm doing next week for WN frosh/soph: 3/3 math, 3/3 lit, 3/3 sci, 3/3 SS, 2/2 FA, 1/1 misc, with additional 2/2 (sixteenth qs and replacement) from the five major categories.
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Re: Fremd Varsity & Frosh/soph 1/23/10

Post by Charley Pride »

rjaguar3 wrote:
Woody Paige wrote:What SHOULD we expect the match distro to be?
If we are going to go IHSA format, then I would suggest something similar to the distro I'm doing next week for WN frosh/soph: 3/3 math, 3/3 lit, 3/3 sci, 3/3 SS, 2/2 FA, 1/1 misc, with additional 2/2 (sixteenth qs and replacement) from the five major categories.
What are the merits of 16/16 over 20/20?
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Re: Fremd Varsity & Frosh/soph 1/23/10

Post by rjaguar3 »

Oliver Ellsworth wrote:
rjaguar3 wrote:
Woody Paige wrote:What SHOULD we expect the match distro to be?
If we are going to go IHSA format, then I would suggest something similar to the distro I'm doing next week for WN frosh/soph: 3/3 math, 3/3 lit, 3/3 sci, 3/3 SS, 2/2 FA, 1/1 misc, with additional 2/2 (sixteenth qs and replacement) from the five major categories.
What are the merits of 16/16 over 20/20?
Allows for more matches in IHSA format without the tournament dragging on to eternity (especially with certain coaches reading).
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Re: Fremd Varsity & Frosh/soph 1/23/10

Post by Geringer »

I've been whispering about this for a while, but I'm seriously considering bidding to write next year's Fremd tournament and assembling a small team of writers to produce as quality of an IHSA set as I can. I talked to Mr. Palmer about this on at least two occasions and he seemed to like the idea of lining someone up to write way in advance. The two IHSA packets I wrote with Dan-Don were well-received and although I don't think it's possible to write a hundred rounds of good IHSA format questions, I feel like it's possible to duplicate what some folks are doing to try to improve the State Series. At any rate, this isn't a moneymaking venture for me and I've basically told Palmer I'll undercut any offer he gets from elsewhere. It sounds corny, but I really feel it would even out my karma after whoring two trash sets for the last twelve months.

My reasoning: I hate to write comp math and I can't say that I'm extremely fond of the bonus format either, but I believe that if I write 13 other pyramidal tossups and consistent bonus questions that involve real academic clues, I will expose a large number of teams to pyramidal quizbowl in a more familiar setting. Although Kickoffs and Turnabout try to accomplish the same thing, I've noticed that a lot of players and coaches simply write off these experiences because of the unfamiliar bonus format and I feel like writing a mid-level IHSA style tournament could bring more teams close to joining the circuit. For those of you who don't know, this tournament is enormous and, to my knowledge, is the biggest tournament in the state. I see an opportunity to further expose a lot of teams to better (notice: I'm not saying "good") quizbowl and I think that there is more good to be done than evil as, after all, this tournament is going to happen whether I bid for it or not.

What are all of your thoughts on this plan? I've gotten mixed responses from my peers so I'm even a little leery about posting it here. I am aware that my time could be better spent writing for NAQT or HSAPQ, but I really feel like I can make a difference here in a larger capacity than submitting questions to a large distributor. I, and a lot of others, I imagine, would want to see something like this happen, and I want to make this a reality.
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Re: Fremd Varsity & Frosh/soph 1/23/10

Post by Charles Martel »

The results for Fresh-Soph were
1. IMSA
2. Mt. Carmel
3. Fremd
4. Stevenson

I'm on the IMSA team, and even the math computational questions were pretty bad (though I guess someone from a math and science academy might notice this). There were too many tossups where you could predict when the critical info was coming, and buzz in instantly and figure the answer during the 3 seconds. Also, somehow there are about 1700 hours in January, not 24*31 (We should have swept a bonus, but didn't). Some things, like a inverse matrix, are essentially impossible to calculate in 30 seconds.
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Re: Fremd Varsity & Frosh/soph 1/23/10

Post by at your pleasure »

Macho Man for Expediency wrote:I've been whispering about this for a while, but I'm seriously considering bidding to write next year's Fremd tournament and assembling a small team of writers to produce as quality of an IHSA set as I can. I talked to Mr. Palmer about this on at least two occasions and he seemed to like the idea of lining someone up to write way in advance. The two IHSA packets I wrote with Dan-Don were well-received and although I don't think it's possible to write a hundred rounds of good IHSA format questions, I feel like it's possible to duplicate what some folks are doing to try to improve the State Series. At any rate, this isn't a moneymaking venture for me and I've basically told Palmer I'll undercut any offer he gets from elsewhere. It sounds corny, but I really feel it would even out my karma after whoring two trash sets for the last twelve months.

My reasoning: I hate to write comp math and I can't say that I'm extremely fond of the bonus format either, but I believe that if I write 13 other pyramidal tossups and consistent bonus questions that involve real academic clues, I will expose a large number of teams to pyramidal quizbowl in a more familiar setting. Although Kickoffs and Turnabout try to accomplish the same thing, I've noticed that a lot of players and coaches simply write off these experiences because of the unfamiliar bonus format and I feel like writing a mid-level IHSA style tournament could bring more teams close to joining the circuit. For those of you who don't know, this tournament is enormous and, to my knowledge, is the biggest tournament in the state. I see an opportunity to further expose a lot of teams to better (notice: I'm not saying "good") quizbowl and I think that there is more good to be done than evil as, after all, this tournament is going to happen whether I bid for it or not.

What are all of your thoughts on this plan? I've gotten mixed responses from my peers so I'm even a little leery about posting it here. I am aware that my time could be better spent writing for NAQT or HSAPQ, but I really feel like I can make a difference here in a larger capacity than submitting questions to a large distributor. I, and a lot of others, I imagine, would want to see something like this happen, and I want to make this a reality.
Go for it.
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Re: Fremd Varsity & Frosh/soph 1/23/10

Post by jdeliverer »

drose4prez wrote: The logistics were terrible; the last F/S matched finished at 2 o'clock despite the rounds only being 16/16, and the coaches meeting was at least an hour.
Particularly exciting was our match where the other team's coach read the first 8 questions in about 35 minutes before our coach stepped in to read the second half.
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Re: Fremd Varsity & Frosh/soph 1/23/10

Post by Edward Elric »

jdeliverer wrote:
drose4prez wrote: The logistics were terrible; the last F/S matched finished at 2 o'clock despite the rounds only being 16/16, and the coaches meeting was at least an hour.
Particularly exciting was our match where the other team's coach read the first 8 questions in about 35 minutes before our coach stepped in to read the second half.
Are you serious? You honestly have to try to read that slowly to stretch it out that long.
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