timer delenda est

[manary]

In a similar example, we won a game at this SCT by timing out the bonus to ensure a victory by +10 or something else close. We did not, contrary to the moderator's belief, purposely give a vague answer to run out the timer. The bonus went ... 5sec - Strauss - prompt ... jr - prompt...timer ends. There were still 2 parts left after Strauss.

Point being, I didn't feel bad about using the clock there to our advantage, but I would have liked to not have to. 20/20 a round is very doable. 26/26 would take that much longer, and slow readers would take 45 minutes, and then everyone would complain.

[Steve Watchorn]

Since it is an ancillary issue to the timer, and because it has been mentioned in passing several times, perhaps this is the best place for me to ask about tossup question length. It sounds like there is a general feeling that tossup length was pretty good in both DI and DII. However, in DI, it was still the case that some tossups were systematically shorter than others, due to variations in how different questions got into the set. Did DI players (or DII players, for that matter) find an issue with the length of a significant number of tossups?

[Important Bird Area]

However, in DI, it was still the case that some tossups were systematically shorter than others, due to variations in how different questions got into the set. Did DI players (or DII players, for that matter) find an issue with the length of a significant number of tossups?

I'm fine with classifying this as an outright mistake on our part caused by lack of time to edit. Ideally, we'd have time and energy to make sure that all of the tossups were of consistent length. However, there were a small number of tossups at this SCT written to the pre-2009 425-character limit, and I at least was willing to leave a few of them if the structure of the question was suitably pyramidal as it stood. (Compare older tossups with difficulty cliffs in them, large numbers of which we restructured and rewrote during the editing process.)

[theMoMA]

I wouldn't say that the length issue is settled. It seems to me that NAQT still has an issue with length, though it's not inherently because of question length. Let me elaborate. Too many questions act as though there is room to place an unhelpful 1.5-line description that no one in the tournament will buzz on in the leadin of a question with a 500-character limit. There is not room for this. There is a premium on question space in short questions, but many NAQT tossups are content to waste early space, which leads to monstrosities like the Joseph Conrad tossup that goes straight from fifth-tier titles to "The Horror."

Short tossups are frustrating when they go from very hard to very easy clues with no buzzable middle clues. NAQT claims that short tossups are supposed to make the games exciting, but as it currently stands, many questions only contain a line and a half of useful clues. This is not exciting, unless watching a room full of players screaming obscenities as yet another question has gone from an opaque description to something that everyone in the room knows is what really gets your blood racing.

[grapesmoker]

Yeah, you can keep a reasonable character limit on the questions as long as you make efficient use of that space. By the way, am I correct in assuming that pronunciation guides do not count towards the character limit?

[cvdwightw]

Yeah, you can keep a reasonable character limit on the questions as long as you make efficient use of that space.

I think this is the most important issue to arise out of NAQT. I personally have no problem with 500-character tossups and indeed enjoy them more than nine/ten line tossups. The problem is that many questions do not use those characters efficiently, and because of the length limits, every poor or non-unique clue stands out that much more.

Think of the corollary to the Litvak Perception Hypothesis (timed games and short questions give the appearance of a tournament being easier than a similar-difficulty tournament with untimed games and long questions, because the effect of dead tossups is magnified): misplaced or substandard clues in short questions give the appearance of the questions being poorer than similarly misplaced or substandard clues in longer questions, even though the questions themselves have the same problem, because the effect of poor clues is magnified.

I have complete faith that NAQT writers and editors can produce a well-written tournament with 500-character tossups and minor, if any, tweaks to the current distribution. However, I think that a lot of NAQT writers (and perhaps editors as well) do not realize that how much effort it takes to craft a good 500-character tossup. It's been said that writing good short stories is much harder than writing good novels, because every word in the story must have a purpose. It's the same way with writing short questions - every word in the tossup and especially every clue must have a reason for being included.

[Important Bird Area]

By the way, am I correct in assuming that pronunciation guides do not count towards the character limit?

Yes.

Fully support what everyone has just said about avoiding difficulty cliffs in 500-character tossups and the importance of having solid middle clues; I'll be paying (even closer) attention to this as I read the early drafts of ICT.

[Steve Watchorn]

I wasn't meaning to fault the editors with my previous comment. It was inspired by realizing that, looking at my questions which made it in the set, and perusing those of others, I found that the 500-character tossups were by and large pretty ok. But several of especially my 425 character ones seemed steep in difficulty. The limit, for myself, that I would always have liked to see for tossups, based on a fair amount of NAQT writing, is 600 characters. I think that would be an excellent balance between length and content. So I was thinking of the possibility of increasing the 425/500 limits to 500/600. That way, even the shorter questions had a better chance to be at least adequate in terms of content and pyramidality. The absence of a clock (which I am not sure how many invitationals even use anymore) would make such a change easier to manage.