ACF Fall UK at Warwick 03/11/2012

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ACF Fall UK at Warwick 03/11/2012

Post by ashaw »

I’m pleased to announce that Warwick will be holding the UK mirror of ACF Fall on the 3rd of November 2012. We aim to start the first match at 10 a.m sharp, so please arrive by 9.45 at the latest. The questions will be briticised by Kyle Haddad-Fonda and John Lawrence. Due to our unique circumstance (not using dollars),and contrary to the official announcement, payment will be made to us on the day and we will take it from there. We’ll announce prices nearer the day so we can use up to date exchange rates.

To register for the tournament please email us at [email protected] AND fill in this form http://tinyurl.com/9fpqgge.
We will send you more travel information by email as well, but the main thing to note as regards travel is that we are NOT in Warwick, but in Coventry.

The original announcement is here viewtopic.php?f=8&t=13156 and is copied in part below.

Packet Submission
As per the ACF submission rules, any team with at least one person on it who played a regular, collegiate, academic quizbowl tournament prior to September 1, 2011 is required to submit a packet in order to participate in an ACF tournament in 2012-2013. This includes ACF Fall. As of a recent rule change, high school players are now included in this definition and are subject to the same discounts and penalties as college teams. Teams required to submit packets who do not submit one by the final deadline will be dropped from the tournament.

Please submit packets to [email protected] and use “ACF Fall 2012: [Team Name]” in the subject line.

Fees:

Base fee: $120 for one team from a school, $240 for two teams from a school, etc.
Buzzer systems: -$5 each No discount for broken buzzers; no maximum.
Staffers: -$10 each No maximum.
Laptop: -$5 each Maximum 1 per team.
Travel: -$10 per 200 miles traveled one way
International: -$20
For teams representing schools located in a different country than the tournament host.
New ACF teams: -$25
For schools who did not send a team to ACF Fall, Regionals, or Nationals between September 2010 and August 2012, and have no one on the team(s) claiming this discount who played those tournaments for another school.
New quizbowl teams: -$75
For schools who did not send a team to any regular collegiate academic tournament since September 2010, and have no one on the team(s) claiming this discount who played those tournaments for another school. May be combined with new ACF team discount for a total new-team discount of $100.

This year’s submission schedule is:

Packet submitted before 11:59 PM eastern time on:
October 7, 2012: No penalty (-$25 for teams not required to submit packets)
October 14, 2012: +$25
October 21, 2012: +$50
After Oct. 21, 2012: The editors may grant one or more 24-hour extensions at an additional penalty of $10 per day.

Packet Penalties
Teams will incur penalties for the following offenses:
*Incorrect formatting: Please take a moment to review the ACF Packet Guidelines on formatting to make sure you format your packet correctly.
*Plagiarism: Please do not attempt to plagiarize. It is often very easy to catch. People caught plagiarizing will be subject to large fines and public shaming.
*Writing specific types of forbidden questions: Types of questions prohibited at ACF events include spelling questions, binary matching bonuses, and 5-10-15 bonuses.
Please see the additional packet penalties section for more info.

Friendly Reminders
Please refer to the ACF Packet Guidelines document for more detailed explanations of packet submission and fee-related information.

If you are sending multiple packet writing teams, PLEASE make sure you don’t collaborate on your packets or talk about their contents.

The difficulty level of ACF Fall 2012 is the same as it has been for the past four years, such as can be seen in ACF Fall 2009 and ACF Fall 2010. These tournaments can be found on collegiate.quizbowlpackets.com. Remember above all that the tournament is supposed to be accessible to new teams who have never played quizbowl before, in both your answerlines and your selection of clues. If you suspect one of your answer choices may be too hard, it probably is.

If you have any other questions about ACF Fall itself, please contact Matt Bollinger at [email protected].

If you have any questions about our mirror in particular, then please email us at [email protected].
Andrew Shaw
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Re: ACF Fall UK at Warwick 03/11/2012

Post by ashaw »

Confirmed Field:

Warwick (3)
Manchester
Open University
Sussex
Oxford (5)
Cambridge
Oxford Brookes (2)
Last edited by ashaw on Thu Nov 01, 2012 8:43 am, edited 3 times in total.
Andrew Shaw
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Re: ACF Fall UK at Warwick 03/11/2012

Post by Kyle »

Oxford is probably in for about five teams, but, since it's only 1st week and we don't finish separate practices for the new people until the end of 3rd, Jonathan et al aren't going to know more definitive numbers until the week before the tournament. I suppose it would be nice if they would communicate this fact to you directly.
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Re: ACF Fall UK at Warwick 03/11/2012

Post by Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN) »

lol british people writing dates
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Re: ACF Fall UK at Warwick 03/11/2012

Post by ashaw »

Due to the unexpectedly high interest and lack of buzzer sets, we are unfortunately going to have to cap the field at around 14 teams. We're working on tracking down more sets, so the number for the team cap will be confirmed once we find out if we've been successful or not. Therefore, if you are yet to register please wait to do so until after the team cap has been confirmed. If you have any queries, please email the society at the address in the first post. Thank you.
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Re: ACF Fall UK at Warwick 03/11/2012

Post by Kyle »

Hey, Andrew, can you post a field update?

EDIT 2: See Andrew's field post above.
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Re: ACF Fall UK at Warwick 03/11/2012

Post by SmallerMegalomaniacalPandaOnAbsinthe »

Hey guys. I wanted to ask about what exactly 'briticising' the set involves. Less US history, or are there other changes to the distribution..?
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Re: ACF Fall UK at Warwick 03/11/2012

Post by ThisIsMyUsername »

SmallerMegalomaniacalPandaOnAbsinthe wrote:Hey guys. I wanted to ask about what exactly 'briticising' the set involves. Less US history, or are there other changes to the distribution..?
Questions that Kyle and I think will be poorly converted because they are on American topics that are not well-known in the UK (primarily within History and Lit, but also Fine Arts and Trash) will be replaced with questions on British content. This is not going to be done by a per-packet general distribution change, but rather on a needs basis. In other words, we plan to edit the set as little as possible, replacing only those questions would be aberrant in a British set of this difficulty.
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Re: ACF Fall UK at Warwick 03/11/2012

Post by Kyle »

Broadly speaking, we'll make the British history a bit harder and make sure there is more of it, mostly at the expense of the more difficult American history. Then we'll just swap out a couple of American literature questions and maybe arts on things that British people won't know for extra British literature. I think our goal is to write about 8/8 history, 4/4 literature, 2/2 arts, and maybe a little trash depending how much ends up being in the set.

British people can be counted on to get questions about mainstream American authors like Hemingway or Steinbeck or Fitzgerald, but people who are strongly associated with the literary traditions of a particular region or race are by and large not going to be convertible. I've seen high school-level tossups on Willa Cather, Flannery O'Connor, and Langston Hughes go dead in games with several players who are in general very well read. We certainly won't replace all of this sort of literature, but we'll pick out the hardest examples and replace them with something British.

One of the things about low-level American quizbowl questions on British history is that they tend to focus on the central government and which king did what or said what. Aside from the fact that these questions are mostly too easy for people who grew up in the UK, they also neglect a large amount of history that happened outside London, all of which is fair game over here.
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Re: ACF Fall UK at Warwick 03/11/2012

Post by Adventure Temple Trail »

I've been curious to see the product of a Briticization process. Might there be a possibility of including the newly-added British questions in a file along with the set when it's released?
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Re: ACF Fall UK at Warwick 03/11/2012

Post by Important Bird Area »

Kyle wrote:One of the things about low-level American quizbowl questions on British history is that they tend to focus on the central government and which king did what or said what. Aside from the fact that these questions are mostly too easy for people who grew up in the UK, they also neglect a large amount of history that happened outside London, all of which is fair game over here.
RyuAqua wrote:I've been curious to see the product of a Briticization process. Might there be a possibility of including the newly-added British questions in a file
... that could be read at Minnesota Open, perhaps?
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Re: ACF Fall UK at Warwick 03/11/2012

Post by Kyle »

Matt, I just emailed you last year's ACF Fall. I'll see what I can do regarding the extra questions from this year's.
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Re: ACF Fall UK at Warwick 03/11/2012

Post by Kyle »

14 teams came to the tournament. They were divided into two brackets of seven teams each. After the initial round robin, it had become clear that four teams were the class of the field: Oxford B and Oxford D were both undefeated, while Oxford A and the two-man team from the Open University each had one loss. Those four teams, along with Oxford C, were all within 1.5ppb of each other.

In the playoffs, things started to get interesting. Oxford A beat Oxford B, but then lost to the Open University at the same time Oxford B was beating Oxford D. That left the records in the top bracket as follows:

Oxford B 9-1
Oxford D 9-1
Oxford A 8-2
Open University 8-2
Oxford C 5-5
Oxford E 5-5
Warwick A 3-7
Cambridge 3-7

Edmund then moderated a one-game final between Oxford B and Oxford D. Oxford D was leading for most of the game, but Oxford B stormed back in the end to clinch the victory on the 19th tossup.

Oxford D, which was composed of three freshmen and a junior, was the top UG/D2 team. Can we count on three freshmen who made it to the final of their first tournament to be good in years to come? I suspect so.

Tris Cole from the Open University was the leading scorer, followed by Ketan Jha (who played solo) and Hugh Bennett. The top scorer from a four-person team was Zachary Vermeer from Oxford B; Zachary buzzed in 54 times over the course of 11 games and never negged.

Warwick did a fantastic job hosting, and I am certain that everybody in attendance had a great time. Special thanks to Andrew Shaw and Sumukh Kaul from Warwick for their work on this tournament and to Edmund Dickinson and John Lawrence for coming to moderate.

Prelims: http://www.hsquizbowl.org/db/tournament ... s/prelims/
Playoffs: http://www.hsquizbowl.org/db/tournament ... /playoffs/
Kyle Haddad-Fonda
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