Repeats?

[yoda4554]

I'm editing my first tournament (trash, but of course that shouldn't change anything about the editing), and was wondering about repeats. Is there a generally-accepted rule about what constitutes a repeat, or is it something one has to play by ear?

For example, roughly what level of majorness does something have to be to justify two questions at a tournament? Offhand, for academic tournaments, Shakespeare's the only person I can think of who regularly gets more than one question per tournament without people griping, but I suppose there might be others. Is there some kind of a general guideline for that?

Also, is it acceptable to have, say, a tossup on one of a relatively important artist's works, and then a bonus part referencing him? To use an analogus example for a particular thing I'm worrying about, would it be alright to have a tossup on The Mikado, and then a bonus on, say, Ivanhoe that had Arthur Sullivan as an answer (regarding his opera)?

[ValenciaQBowl]

This issue is often a struggle for me in writing my community college tournament, as the canon for such new players (many of whom will be playing competitively for the first or second time at my gig) is small relative to the four-year circuit. So I often expect to have a toss-up on, say, a Shakespeare work and then in some later round a bonus asking to ID characters from lines or to name works from some clue (none of which will be the same as the work answered in the toss-up). But it happens in other fields as well.

In any case, I don't think this is a big problem if one avoids exact replication of clues/works, but I presume that an angry screed condemning the practice may follow this message.

[grapesmoker]

As long as there is no explicit overlap of information, I would say the situation you described is fine. There could be a tossup on a character and then one on a play by Shakespeare, I wouldn't see any problem with that. The situation you described (Sullivan/Mikado) also seems fine to me.

[Captain Sinico]

A good rule to follow is that you'd like to absolutely minimize a team's ability to answer a question using things that you previously mentioned. In your example, if it can possibly be avoided, it would be best not to have one question mention Arthur Sullivan, then another have him as an answer later. However, it would seem alright if those questions came in the converse order.

MaS

[Kilby]

The most important thing is not to repeat the same clue, but I would make one suggestion specific to trash... I would really consider using any one topic only once. I think that in trash you are more likely to run into a person with, for lack of a better term, "crazy-deep" knowledge about a few things and not much knowledge about other things (I know many of these people exist in the academic game as well, but most people with "crazy-deep" knowledge in the academic game have it in many different fields that come up often). For instance, there are many times when I'd love to add a "this was referenced on Family Guy" clue, but if I do that more than once, I'm giving a huge advantage a Family Guy fan instead of those who have deep knowledge about what is being referenced. In general, the wider variety of things that you ask about, the happier the tournament players will be (and again, I would say moreso for trash tournaments because I think that most academic players expect a certain amount of "the usual suspects" in addition to new stuff, while trash players are always looking for stuff they know that hasn't been asked before).

And sorry if I offend anyone with stereotyping academic and trash players... that's just what I've observed so I could be wrong.

[cvdwightw]

Generally, I think that repeating clues is significantly worse than repeating answer choices, although having four questions on Levi-Strauss (as WIT did) is certainly stretching it.

Also, it's fine to have multiple works by the same author/painter/composer, or in the trash vein, multiple television shows or movies starring the same actor/actress, and people won't complain, although if someone's only known for n major things and n-1 of them have already come up, there's a good chance someone will fraud it when it becomes clear a question is looking for the last one.

[Nathan]

the same answer (or a related answer) without any of the same clues is not a repeat. period.

now it's generally considered bad form to have the same answer twice in the same tournament...but there's nothing wrong with having a tossup on an author and then a tossup on a specific work by that author (do watch, however, that information given in the first question doesn't help to make the second question too gettable too quickly -- by narrowing down the field of possible answers). I wouldn't recommend doing this with a relatively minor topic...a tossup on Bazin followed by one on The Cry of the Owl would be too much for one tourney.

[yoda4554]

One of the things I'm concerned about is Kilby's point. There are certain topics with some trash genres where every other team has someone with ridiculous depth. About five of them have managed to appear in 3+ out of 8 current packets, without overlapping clues. How much should I cut down on that?