Creator-Creation Rule

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Creator-Creation Rule

Post by cvdwightw »

Suppose the following (quickly-written and too short) question appears in a packet (if it offends your sense of quizbowl aesthetics, just imagine that there are lines about A Fable and "The Bear" at the beginning):
Hypothetical Tossup wrote:One of this author's novels contains a character who refers to his mother as "a fish." That character, Vardaman, is the youngest of the (*) Bundren children. Another novel features Dilsey the cook, as well as Benjy, Caddy, Jason, and Quentin (@) Compson. For 10 points, name this author of As I Lay Dying and The Sound and the Fury.
Suppose a player buzzes in at the (*) mark. Judge the acceptability of the following answers:
A. "Faulkner, As I Lay Dying."
B. "Faulkner, Sound and the Fury."
C. "Faulkner, A Rose for Emily."

Suppose a player buzzes in at the (@) mark. Judge the acceptability of the following answers:
A. "Faulkner, As I Lay Dying."
B. "Faulkner, Sound and the Fury."
C. "Faulkner, A Rose for Emily."

All three major rule sets (NAQT, PACE, HSAPQ/ACF) contain a creator-creation rule, stating that a "blitz" consisting of a creator and a work he/she clearly created is acceptable if (a) the correct answer is either the creator or creation and (b) "the link between creator and created work [is] obvious" (NAQT) or "the [two] items are correctly related" (PACE and HSAPQ/ACF).

Under my unadorned reading of the rules, all three answers are acceptable at both marked points in the question, even answer C which refers to a work that is not even mentioned in the question! Thoughts?
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Re: Creator-Creation Rule

Post by Cheynem »

I think it's okay because the important point of the answer (Faulkner) is clearly stated. I would regard the saying of the title (any title, even a non Faulkner title) as embellishment of the answer which has no bearing on it. However, this is somewhat of a more liberal interpretation of the rules.
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Re: Creator-Creation Rule

Post by Important Bird Area »

I think the "any correctly-paired work is correct" rule is there to avoid punishing buzzes of the form "It's that guy who also wrote ~A Rose for Emily~, William Faulkner."
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Re: Creator-Creation Rule

Post by Dresden_The_BIG_JERK »

Cheynem wrote:I think it's okay because the important point of the answer (Faulkner) is clearly stated. I would regard the saying of the title (any title, even a non Faulkner title) as embellishment of the answer which has no bearing on it. However, this is somewhat of a more liberal interpretation of the rules.
I agree that, as written, those answers are all ok. The intent of the question is clearly an author by the point of the buzz, and I would encourage (outside of the match) not risking giving more info than strictly necessary (i.e. no first names), but as a moderator, I would begrudgingly accept any of the situations presented.
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Re: Creator-Creation Rule

Post by Captain Sinico »

bt_green_warbler wrote:I think the "any correctly-paired work is correct" rule is there to avoid punishing buzzes of the form "It's that guy who also wrote ~A Rose for Emily~, William Faulkner."
Yeah, this is exactly my reasoning and conclusion: we have to grant the respondent the benefit of the doubt, which entails assuming they're saying something along the lines of what Jeff says if they give a work other than the one we're describing.

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Re: Creator-Creation Rule

Post by Cheynem »

What about this scenario:

"William Faulkner, Bernice Bobs Her Hair." In this instance, the respondent has still given the correct answer but has appended completely inaccurate information. Should he/she be punished? I'm actually still not sure because if someone buzzed in and said "It's the dude who wrote Bernice Bobs Her Hair, William Faulkner," that person would be mistaken, but still correct by my interpretation of the rules.
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Re: Creator-Creation Rule

Post by Dresden_The_BIG_JERK »

Cheynem wrote:What about this scenario:

"William Faulkner, Bernice Bobs Her Hair." In this instance, the respondent has still given the correct answer but has appended completely inaccurate information. Should he/she be punished? I'm actually still not sure because if someone buzzed in and said "It's the dude who wrote Bernice Bobs Her Hair, William Faulkner," that person would be mistaken, but still correct by my interpretation of the rules.
This would be incorrect. It's as if the question was "Which US president was killed in 1963" and they answered Ted Kennedy. They gave additional yet incorrect info and the whole answer is discarded.
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Re: Creator-Creation Rule

Post by Mechanical Beasts »

Dresden_The_Moderator wrote:
Cheynem wrote:What about this scenario:

"William Faulkner, Bernice Bobs Her Hair." In this instance, the respondent has still given the correct answer but has appended completely inaccurate information. Should he/she be punished? I'm actually still not sure because if someone buzzed in and said "It's the dude who wrote Bernice Bobs Her Hair, William Faulkner," that person would be mistaken, but still correct by my interpretation of the rules.
This would be incorrect. It's as if the question was "Which US president was killed in 1963" and they answered Ted Kennedy. They gave additional yet incorrect info and the whole answer is discarded.
No, your example is necessary info. You have to provide J (and ideally JF because of Joe) to disambiguate from Bobby, who wasn't president or killed yet, Ted, who wasn't president or ever assassinated, etc. etc.
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Re: Creator-Creation Rule

Post by Stained Diviner »

Cheyne's sample answer is still incorrect, though, according to the rules cited at the beginning of the thread.
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Re: Creator-Creation Rule

Post by Cheynem »

Yeah, it would be, but I'm not certain why exactly that should be. I understand the person is wrong, but he's not wrong regarding the fact the question is seeking knowledge of.
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Re: Creator-Creation Rule

Post by Dresden_The_BIG_JERK »

Crazy Andy Watkins wrote:
Dresden_The_Moderator wrote:
Cheynem wrote:What about this scenario:

"William Faulkner, Bernice Bobs Her Hair." In this instance, the respondent has still given the correct answer but has appended completely inaccurate information. Should he/she be punished? I'm actually still not sure because if someone buzzed in and said "It's the dude who wrote Bernice Bobs Her Hair, William Faulkner," that person would be mistaken, but still correct by my interpretation of the rules.
This would be incorrect. It's as if the question was "Which US president was killed in 1963" and they answered Ted Kennedy. They gave additional yet incorrect info and the whole answer is discarded.
No, your example is necessary info. You have to provide J (and ideally JF because of Joe) to disambiguate from Bobby, who wasn't president or killed yet, Ted, who wasn't president or ever assassinated, etc. etc.
Fair enough. Better example: "Who is president currently" "John Obama"
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Re: Creator-Creation Rule

Post by Irreligion in Bangladesh »

It's entirely possible that someone could have a problem differentiating between two works by two different authors (unfortunately, Faulkner vs. Fitzgerald doesn't give a great example; maybe Edith Wharton vs. Henry James?), and that their train of thought needs them to walk down the wrong path to fix an error before it slips out as official answer. Maybe this train:

"It's either House of Mirth or Ambassadors, they mentioned going to Europe, so it's not House of Mirth, so it's Ambassadors, so it's Henry James."

If they buzz in and mumble "James" or "Ambassadors, James" we give them points. What if they buzz in and mumble "House of Mirth, James"? I say points.
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Re: Creator-Creation Rule

Post by Papa's in the House »

Cheynem wrote:What about this scenario:

"William Faulkner, Bernice Bobs Her Hair." In this instance, the respondent has still given the correct answer but has appended completely inaccurate information. Should he/she be punished? I'm actually still not sure because if someone buzzed in and said "It's the dude who wrote Bernice Bobs Her Hair, William Faulkner," that person would be mistaken, but still correct by my interpretation of the rules.
With the former answer, the person answering has given extra (and incorrect) information intentionally in a form designed to take advantage of an existing rule (the creator-creation rule), such that the answer given can give the player points if the answer is either "William Faulkner" or "Bernice Bobs Her Hair." Since at least one part of their answer is incorrect (Bernice Bobs Her Hair), then it seems as if you should neg the player for blitzing in the "wrong" way.

With the latter answer, the person answering has given extra (and incorrect) information in a form designed to remind themselves of the correct answer to the question (never mind that they happen to have associated the wrong author with Bernice Bobs Her Hair). The extra information was used to jostle the player's memory, not to intentionally get the player points. I could answer the question "With aid from his chancellor Axel Oxenstierna, he was victorious at the Battle of Breitenfeld but soon died at the Battle of Lutzen*" with "it's the guy who was king of Sweden when the Peace of Westphalia went into effect... Gustavus Adolphus" and still be right. While I included extraneous, incorrect information (Peace of Westphalia), the last part of my "blitz" was right and was the answer I intentionally gave.

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Re: Creator-Creation Rule

Post by cvdwightw »

Papa's in the House wrote:
Cheynem wrote:What about this scenario:

"William Faulkner, Bernice Bobs Her Hair." In this instance, the respondent has still given the correct answer but has appended completely inaccurate information. Should he/she be punished? I'm actually still not sure because if someone buzzed in and said "It's the dude who wrote Bernice Bobs Her Hair, William Faulkner," that person would be mistaken, but still correct by my interpretation of the rules.
With the former answer, the person answering has given extra (and incorrect) information intentionally in a form designed to take advantage of an existing rule (the creator-creation rule).
The answer's still wrong (by the rules cited), but I don't think this explanation is right mostly because of the words I've bolded. You can't seriously be arguing that everyone's favorite pair of confused American authors, Upton Sinclair and Sinclair Lewis, are given incorrectly intentionally or to exploit a rule. What about the person whose only knowledge comes from binary lists and he mixes up which F American author wrote what?

The second example you give is more interesting, considering the "you must direct an answer within X seconds of buzzing in" part of quizbowl. I've heard at least one protest regarding whether an incorrect answer should have been counted as directed or regarded as "thinking aloud." If I ring in, say "Bernice Bobs Her Hair..." while trying to think of the answer, then immediately afterward come up with "Faulkner," does that count as a blitz? I wouldn't consider it a blitz as a moderator, but does the player have a right to protest that his directed answer was Faulkner if the moderator does take it as a blitz? Is the hilariously bad answer, "You're describing "Bernice Bobs Her Hair" and the answer's William Faulkner" an embellishment that "makes the response wrong"? If the moderator doesn't know who wrote "Bernice Bobs Her Hair," does the other team get a chance to protest that answer? Do I prompt on "Sonnets from the Portuguese, Browning" if the answer's R. Browning? Is my inexplicable desire to get into the ins and outs of the creation rule starting to make me sound like Ryan Westbrook?
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Re: Creator-Creation Rule

Post by Papa's in the House »

cvdwightw wrote:
Papa's in the House wrote:
Cheynem wrote:What about this scenario:

"William Faulkner, Bernice Bobs Her Hair." In this instance, the respondent has still given the correct answer but has appended completely inaccurate information. Should he/she be punished? I'm actually still not sure because if someone buzzed in and said "It's the dude who wrote Bernice Bobs Her Hair, William Faulkner," that person would be mistaken, but still correct by my interpretation of the rules.
With the former answer, the person answering has given extra (and incorrect) information intentionally in a form designed to take advantage of an existing rule (the creator-creation rule).
The answer's still wrong (by the rules cited), but I don't think this explanation is right mostly because of the words I've bolded. You can't seriously be arguing that everyone's favorite pair of confused American authors, Upton Sinclair and Sinclair Lewis, are given incorrectly intentionally or to exploit a rule. What about the person whose only knowledge comes from binary lists and he mixes up which F American author wrote what?
I'm sorry, I should have been a little more clear; I was applying the "intentionally" portion of my argument only to the case given and my experience with people answering in such a way. When a person gives both an author's name and a work quickly (in the few cases in which I've seen this rule applied), it has always appeared as if that person had forgotten what they were asking for in the question and they were (intentionally) providing more information in order to maximize (exploit) their opportunity to gain points.

If you're answering "Bernice Bobs Her Hair, William Faulkner" in only as much time as it takes to say those words (~2 seconds) using the question Dwight gave in the first post, then you've unfortunately provided incorrect information and should be penalized. If you've just mixed up authors with the same last name (or Upton Sinclair and Sinclair Lewis in Dwight's example above), then you get a neg and you hopefully don't make the same mistake next time. If you're a list player and you've unfortunately associated the wrong F author (Faulkner instead of Fitzgerald) with a particular work, then you don't have complete knowledge of that work and should be penalized. The neg will cause you to go over your list again and associate the correct F author with the work that you were buzzing on. Yeah, you got negged, it sucks, but people forget things or mix things up all the time and have to eat a neg. For example, I was looking at questions I had previously written on both Darius the Great and Thutmose III the night before ACF Winter 2010. Darius the Great came up in one of the first few rounds on the tournament and I buzzed in recognizing the clue, but I could not recall which ruler it applied to because I had jumbled which clues applied to which ruler when studying the previous night and I gave Thutmose III as my answer. Needless to say, I was negged and that mistake ending up costing my team a game. Later I got the Thutmose III tossup because I figured out which clues applied to which ruler and every other time Darius the Great came up that year I got the tossup because of my earlier embarrassment.
cvdwightw wrote:The second example you give is more interesting, considering the "you must direct an answer within X seconds of buzzing in" part of quizbowl. I've heard at least one protest regarding whether an incorrect answer should have been counted as directed or regarded as "thinking aloud." If I ring in, say "Bernice Bobs Her Hair..." while trying to think of the answer, then immediately afterward come up with "Faulkner," does that count as a blitz? I wouldn't consider it a blitz as a moderator, but does the player have a right to protest that his directed answer was Faulkner if the moderator does take it as a blitz? Is the hilariously bad answer, "You're describing "Bernice Bobs Her Hair" and the answer's William Faulkner" an embellishment that "makes the response wrong"? If the moderator doesn't know who wrote "Bernice Bobs Her Hair," does the other team get a chance to protest that answer? Do I prompt on "Sonnets from the Portuguese, Browning" if the answer's R. Browning? Is my inexplicable desire to get into the ins and outs of the creation rule starting to make me sound like Ryan Westbrook?
The last question made me laugh. The world of quiz bowl isn't perfect; different moderators accept different answers or prompt on different things (if you'd like some examples, look at the discussion on the "apples" tossup and the protest that occurred during the final round of ACF Nats 2010) and it doesn't look like that will go away anytime soon. As for more general advice*: 1) try to pay attention to the tossup so you know what the question is asking for; 2) if you're going to "blitz," then try to keep any comments you make to help your train of thought to yourself (cover your mouth when you're talking or something) and try to state something like "the answer is" so everyone in the room clearly knows what you're giving as your answer; and 3) if you don't know an author's/ruler's/etc. full name, try giving only the last name and wait for a prompt. Number 3 above can be given even more generally as "give a general answer and wait for a prompt unless you are absolutely sure that all the clues apply to a more specific answer." These are some of the things I've learned from my mistakes.

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Re: Creator-Creation Rule

Post by Mechanical Beasts »

Papa's in the House wrote:If you're a list player and you've unfortunately associated the wrong F author (Faulkner instead of Fitzgerald) with a particular work, then you don't have complete knowledge of that work and should be penalized. The neg will cause you to go over your list again and associate the correct F author with the work that you were buzzing on.
But the question doesn't care about the author; it doesn't require you to say it, notably. If you were to vomit or shout obscenities or fall asleep or die or do whatever strikes your fancy during those five seconds, in addition to saying the correct answer (the title) then you're golden. What if you say the name of a human being? What if you say "staph, Stephen Hawking, Bernice Bobs Her Hair, bumblebee?" The moderator would have to assume that you intended Hawking as the author of both Brief History of Time and the aforementioned work--after all, he has written books, right? But that's just nonsense. I think that if a string contains no contradictory information and contains the answer, it's right.
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Re: Creator-Creation Rule

Post by Adventure Temple Trail »

My two cents; forgive me if I get my quizbowl history wrong:

As I see it, the creator-created rule was invented at a time when questions were structurally much more likely to hose people. Questions of the form "A 630-foot tall hyperbolic cosine was [x] designed in St. Louis by what Finnish architect?" (at that length, too) used to be much more common, either as tossups or bonuses, and since no identifier pointing to the answer is given until about the [x] mark, people who said "The Gateway Arch, by Saarinen" wouldn't be wrong, even if "The Gateway Arch" wasn't the answer on the paper. In its purest form, creator-created has seemed to me most designed to resolve confusion around whether a leadin refers to an author or a work - by letting players answer with both.

If someone buzzes in and says "Oh, that's As I Lay Dying by Faulkner" at the (*) mark, the question has said "this author" already, making the creator-creation rule less crucial than the example above, but they clearly said the right answer in the right context and get the points. The (@) mark is more nebulous, since by that point it's established that two of this Faulkner guy's novels have been described as separate things, and the player should put forward the guy and not his work. I'd accept "The guy who wrote The Sound and the Fury, Faulkner" or "the guy who wrote A Rose For Emily, Faulkner" as a moderator since some players talk to themselves to help pull information and it's not wrong, but they should be listening and realizing the question was looking for an author long before they buzzed. "Bernice Bobs Her Hair, Faulkner" is just wrong since Faulkner did not write that, it's clearly describing "novels" and not short stories anyway, and the info doesn't lead to that answer before a certain point

The best way to avoid invoking the creator-created rule at all is to do what Dwight and most modern tossup writers did/do: start with "In this novel" or "In one of this author's works" or "This lake" or whatever to specify exactly what's asked for, before real clues occur.
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Re: Creator-Creation Rule

Post by Skepticism and Animal Feed »

I was planning to start a thread on this with several wild scenarios, most of them involving things people say after they buzz in to remember the correct answer.

Some of the interesting scenarios I thought up:

There's a tossup on the Assyrian king Sennacherib. As we all know, Assyrian kings can be memorized by alphabetical order. Somebody buzzes in, taps their first four knuckles as if counting, and says "D is the third letter of the alphabet, so this must be Sennacherib."
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Re: Creator-Creation Rule

Post by Whiter Hydra »

Morraine Man wrote:There's a tossup on the Assyrian king Sennacherib. As we all know, Assyrian kings can be memorized by alphabetical order. Somebody buzzes in, taps their first four knuckles as if counting, and says "D is the third letter of the alphabet, so this must be Sennacherib."
Also, what about the scenario where someone says that as an intentional parody of your post?
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Re: Creator-Creation Rule

Post by cvdwightw »

Morraine Man wrote:I was planning to start a thread on this with several wild scenarios
You mean like the scenario where Nick Polk buzzes in with Vargas Llosa on a Getulio Vargas question, but the interval between "Vargas" and "Llosa" is so long that the moderator awards him the points (note: this actually happened)?
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Re: Creator-Creation Rule

Post by Coelacanth »

RyuAqua wrote:My two cents; forgive me if I get my quizbowl history wrong:

As I see it, the creator-created rule was invented at a time when questions were structurally much more likely to hose people.
Actually, you've got the history exactly right.

Early CBI questions would often begin by describing plot or characters from a novel, and then end with, "FTP who wrote..". The creator/creation rule was thus introduced to avoid penalizing players for having actual knowledge. This rule was extended (on the proto-ACF invitational circuit) to a more all-encompassing "blitz" rule. Under this rule, if the tossup began "Willie Mays was on deck.." the player could ring in and say "Bobby Thomson hit the 'Shot Heard Round the World' off Ralph Branca to complete the 'Miracle of Coogan's Bluff' and Russ Hodges yelled 'THE GIANTS WIN THE PENNANT! THE GIANTS WIN THE PENNANT'" and be fairly certain of hitting the right answer somewhere in there. The idea was to not force players to wait for an actual question to be asked if they have recognized a clue to a high enough degree of specificity.

In both of these approaches, which have synthesized into today's creator/creation rules, the concept of "blitz at your own risk" was inherent. Any incorrect information would invalidate your answer in the same way that giving the wrong first name would be negged even if you had the last name correct (and only the last name was required). Dwight's examples upthread point out the ambiguity inherent in this approach. I think all the suggested answers he gives would be acceptable (the answer line is Faulkner, and those are all works by Faulkner) but the problem comes in when someone says "Faulkner, Of Human Bondage" (or whatever). Now the moderator has to figure out whether the given information is correct.

What's the solution? It's fairly obvious to me. Get rid of the creator/creation rule altogether. It's obsolete. Modern question-writing standards are such that the ambiguities it was designed to address no longer exist. Pretty much all author tossups say "this author" in the first few words; similarly, you will always see "this novel" or "this poem" or "this work". There's no need for the player to give both pieces of information because the question has already made clear which one it is looking for.

If the question is ambiguous enough that someone would need to make use of this rule, then either rewrite the question or put in one of those "accept xxxxxx prior to this point" notes. Problem solved!
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Re: Creator-Creation Rule

Post by Cheynem »

I think in terms of "blitzing" that makes sense--the trick is when the player just says pieces of information not meant as a blitz but just as a sort of stream of conscious answer.
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