COTTAGE Bowl - Global Announcement

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COTTAGE Bowl - Global Announcement

Post by TheRhymeMinister »

It is with the utmost pride and sincerity that I present to you Carleton’s Original Trash Tournament: Almost Good Enough, or COTTAGE Bowl. This is a house written trash tournament by Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. This set is being written by Nick Penner, Joe Su, Duncan Chalmers, Izzy Izumi, Connor Pierotti, Katie MacDonald, Stuart Macdonald, Russell Neesom, Gennesse Walker-Scace et al., with head editing being done by myself, Nick Penner.

What started as a labour of love and a way to keep my mind occupied over the summer, COTTAGE Bowl has now become a full on tournament of high quality trash questions. As someone who likes playing trash a great deal, it only seemed fair to give back and contribute to the production of a tournament. The tossups in this tournament are hard capped at 5 lines (Times New Roman, font size 10) with bonuses hard capped at 2 lines. I've always felt that trash is best when it plays quick, and this tournament reflects that goal.

COTTAGE Bowl is being announced now because it is at a stage where I can guarantee its completion. We currently have 65% of questions written and preliminary packeting done. This tournament will be finished by November 8th. Carleton will be hosting our edition of the tournament on November 9th; that announcement can be seen here.

Distribution
There will be 15 rounds consisting of:
4/4 Sports (3/3 Football, Baseball, Basketball, Hockey; 1/1 Other)
4/4 Music
4/4 Movies
4/4 Television
1/1 Video Games
3/3 Other (Includes things like trash lit, comics, tabletop games, and more)

Mirrors:
The Ohio State University (Go Buckeyes!) on November 8, 2014
Chipola College (Go Indians!) on December 22, 2014
University of Washington (Go Huskies!) on January 31, 2015
University of Maryland (Go Terps!) on February 22, 2015.
University of Florida (Go Gators!) on TBA, 2014


We eagerly anticipate interest in mirroring this set, ideally over the ACF Fall weekend but any time after that as well. If interested, please email CUQTAPresident(at)gmail.com
Last edited by TheRhymeMinister on Mon Mar 09, 2015 7:34 pm, edited 9 times in total.
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Re: COTTAGE Bowl - Global Announcement

Post by TheRhymeMinister »

FAQ:

1. 15 rounds?!?! Are you crazy? Why are you doing that?
If I can go that distance, ya see, and that bell rings, ya know, and I'm still standin', I'm gonna know for the first time in my life, ya see, that I weren't just another bum from the neighborhood.

Also, the extra reward from making those extra rounds is more than worth the extra effort

2. Why aren’t there more subdistributions?
Short answer: we don’t want to pigeonhole ourselves too much. Rest assured, there will still be great variety in those questions.

3. Will this tournament be full of Can-Con?
Given that the writers are Canadian, there may be marginally more Canadian content than in other tournaments. However, this difference should ideally be barely perceptible.
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Re: COTTAGE Bowl - Global Announcement

Post by Fado Alexandrino »

What's the time period distribution of this tournament? Are we looking at somewhere around 50/50 1900s/2000s?
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Re: COTTAGE Bowl - Global Announcement

Post by Deepika Goes From Ranbir To Ranveer »

Wait, I actually have to play ACF Fall now? :grin: :grin: :grin:
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Re: COTTAGE Bowl - Global Announcement

Post by TheRhymeMinister »

pandabear555 wrote:What's the time period distribution of this tournament? Are we looking at somewhere around 50/50 1900s/2000s?
50/50 is a good approximation for the overall distribution between 1990s and 2000s, yes.
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Re: COTTAGE Bowl - Global Announcement

Post by Sima Guang Hater »

TheRhymeMinister wrote:Izzy Izumi
You must be joking.
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Re: COTTAGE Bowl - Global Announcement

Post by Tejas »

The Quest for the Historical Mukherjesus wrote:
TheRhymeMinister wrote:Izzy Izumi
You must be joking.
Finally, a HerculesKabuterimon question!
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Re: COTTAGE Bowl - Global Announcement

Post by TheRhymeMinister »

Even though Maryland was the last scheduled mirror for this tournament, please refrain from discussing the set as we are negotiating with a couple of schools about spring/early summer mirrors.

Likewise, if you're still interested in running a mirror of COTTAGE Bowl and you haven't already spoken to me, please let me know in the next week or two.
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Re: COTTAGE Bowl - Global Announcement

Post by Cody »

TheRhymeMinister wrote:Even though Maryland was the last scheduled mirror for this tournament, please refrain from discussing the set as we are negotiating with a couple of schools about spring/early summer mirrors.
3.5 months passed between the first mirror of this tournament and the Maryland mirror. While I didn't expect this tournament to be good (and it wasn't), I did expect that the text of questions would make sense. Yet, COTTAGE Bowl is one of the worst proofread tournaments I've ever seen, rife with grammatical errors and missing words that render clues confusing or meaningless unless the moderator can fix them on the fly. You shouldn't even be allowed to charge money for mirroring this set in its current state.
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Re: COTTAGE Bowl - Global Announcement

Post by Cheynem »

From what I saw of this set, Cody's point about the grammar and wording is pretty spot-on. The set also suffers from a lot of non-clues and impossible bonus parts. All that said, the set definitely avoids the problems most Canadian trash sets have (I was actually surprised with how little Canadian content is in the set) and a number of the answerlines are pretty fresh.
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Re: COTTAGE Bowl - Global Announcement

Post by theMoMA »

I agree with Mike. This was an occasionally good, overwhelmingly mediocre, and frequently outright bad event. I don't mean to completely trash the writers for creating it, because it was in many ways still a fun event.

The concept of player empathy is still being debated and developed, but it's perhaps worthwhile to discuss its core tenet here: as a writer, put yourself in the shoes of the player, and think to yourself "is this the kind of question I'd want to hear?" At the most basic level, think to yourself "is this question filled with clues that are unique to the answer and worthwhile to know?" In the case of so many tossups in this set, I think the answer would be "no."

For example, I can't imagine anyone would want to hear a question filled with unspecific, non-unique, and downright lazy clues, such as listing three bands who have covered a song with no other context or uniquely identifying info. Using the framework above, put yourself in the players' shoes. If you'd hear the clue and think "this is not unique, and even if it were, who could possibly know or care that three random bands have covered this song?" then you have written a bad clue. Since the point of quizbowl is to reward knowledge of the subject, you should replace it with a clue that is unique and that someone who likes the particular song would care about.

For another example, I can't imagine anyone would want to hear a tossup on an album or artist that lists generic lyrics from minor songs, then the names of those songs, then name-drops very, very famous songs on that album or by that artist. Again, put yourself in the players' shoes. If you'd hear this question and be completely unable to buzz before a very obvious clue, and then would get frustrated by the dropping of the very obvious clue, then you have written a bad question. You should rewrite it.

For yet another example, I can't imagine anyone would want to hear a bonus on a niche topic outside of the popular consciousness, such as minor webcomics or YouTube channels or personal-care product brands, that is constructed as though the topic is actually squarely within the popular consciousness, when in fact the "easy" part is only easy to the small slice of the quizbowl universe who pay attention to such things. Put yourself in the players' shoes. If, as a person outside the niche interest group, you'd hear this question and be completely baffled as to the easy/medium/hard structure, you've written a bad bonus. You should rewrite it.

It was pretty obvious that no such thought processes went into the construction of this set, which was unfortunate, because in many cases, the writers actually had fairly interesting ideas about what to write on.
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Re: COTTAGE Bowl - Global Announcement

Post by Nine-Tenths Ideas »

A lot of what I wanted to say has been said, but this tournament is silly-expensive for what it was. In addition, literally almost everything in the "Internet" distribution was impossible to just about everyone in the field at the mirror, many of whom are regular people who use the Internet very often.
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Re: COTTAGE Bowl - Global Announcement

Post by Deepika Goes From Ranbir To Ranveer »

Cody wrote:You shouldn't even be allowed to charge money for mirroring this set in its current state.
As a testament to how much I enjoyed this set, I will personally match any future funds this set might make from mirrors as a donation to the Grand River All Breed Animal Rescue.

I'm completely serious when I say that this was one of the most fun trash experiences I've ever had. A lot of that has to do with the 2000s slant, and "female-friendly" content, both of which I personally think we should see more of in trash. It might not be everyone's cup of tea, but chances are there'll be someone (or several someones!) at your site that loves it.

I'd urge anyone thinking about mirroring this set to go ahead and do it. Besides, you'll be helping save poor Canadian puppies at my expense, so that's incentive!
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Re: COTTAGE Bowl - Global Announcement

Post by Cheynem »

The content of the set is independent of the many grammatical and sloppy writing mistakes. Those should be fixed before later mirrors.
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Re: COTTAGE Bowl - Global Announcement

Post by silverscreentest »

Since we're an older team, we're disadvantaged when it comes to video games and recent music. We found the Cottage Bowl set to be easier than previous trash tournaments, at least in part because the video game distribution was lower than usual. We added an 18-year-old which also helped. She didn't find the internet questions to be obscure at all.
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Re: COTTAGE Bowl - Global Announcement

Post by DumbJaques »

odin_envy_me wrote:
Cody wrote:You shouldn't even be allowed to charge money for mirroring this set in its current state.
I'm completely serious when I say that this was one of the most fun trash experiences I've ever had. A lot of that has to do with the 2000s slant, and "female-friendly" content, both of which I personally think we should see more of in trash.

What? Are you kidding? Perhaps I'm thinking of different questions than you are, but I actually found the attempts to fill out a "female-friendly" distribution in this set patronizing and dumb.

Like, I get it; there's been (quite legitimate) criticism that trash skews very male-oriented, and a very particular kind of male-oriented. It's admirable that people are hearing that criticism and trying to do something about; that's what should be happening. But this tournament was a great example of how to have good intentions with that but do a pretty terrible job of execution.

I'd invite the editors of this set to end the ban on discussion and itemize what they felt the "female-friendly" questions were (please don't subject anyone else to this tournament over the summer unless you intend to charge a VERY small amount of money). But from what I could see it was mostly just failed attempts to pander to a caricatured sense of "what girls like" or some such bullshit. There was, for instance, a ridiculous 1/1 distribution about a certain "women's" topic, the bonus of which wasn't even really trash, which seemed like the worst kind of someone sitting down, going "what's a thing associated with women?", and writing a terrible question. I don't know or care if these questions were written by a man or woman; they were gender-neutrally terrible. I'm not sure how else to offer feedback here without being able to talk about specific content; I'd be happy to send an email, if someone sends me the set.

Basically though, I'm less concerned that the editors tried and missed the mark (hey, that happens) than I am with the fact that someone is publicly LAUDING this set for addressing gendered trash content. Editors trying and it not working out, I can understand - there are a ton of things to do when editing a tournament, and few questions end up as their platonic ideal. But how on earth did you hear questions on [redacted] and [redacted] and think "man, what a great attempt at bridging quizbowl's gender divide"? Good lord.
I suppose I shouldn't be that surprised, considering you for some reason wish to memorialize your love for this bad tournament by paying for animal feed (and that your choice of team name at MacVanity, assuming you had knowledge of it, demonstrated ATROCIOUS judgment and taste - and that's the most charitable interpretation). But really, come on. It would probably be in everyone's best interest if you stopped supporting terrible things.
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Re: COTTAGE Bowl - Global Announcement

Post by Deepika Goes From Ranbir To Ranveer »

DumbJaques wrote:What? Are you kidding? Perhaps I'm thinking of different questions than you are...
You probably are. I didn't mean the female-personal-hygiene questions when I referred to the "female-friendly" distribution. I was just talking about what I thought was a significantly larger percentage of things more associated with female interests (female singers and musicians, "chicklit", etc.). And of course that isn't to say that only women listen to <insert female popstar here> or that no women watch <insert bro TV show here> or that no men read <insert chicklit title here>. But the fact is that QuizBowl trash tends to lean towards the QuizBowl-community's interests, which happens to be male-dominated. And, in my mind, this set did a good job of rebalancing that. I'll admit I might be biased by having decidedly female-leaning interests myself, when it comes to the world of pop culture.
DumbJaques wrote:Basically though, I'm less concerned that the editors tried and missed the mark (hey, that happens) than I am with the fact that someone is publicly LAUDING this set for addressing gendered trash content. Editors trying and it not working out, I can understand - there are a ton of things to do when editing a tournament, and few questions end up as their platonic ideal. But how on earth did you hear questions on [redacted] and [redacted] and think "man, what a great attempt at bridging quizbowl's gender divide"? Good lord.
I was not publicly lauding the set for its gendered trash content alone. I simply noted that it was a highlight for me that I enjoyed, while also pointing out that it might be the reason that not everyone might have as great a time as I did. Regarding this statement :
A lot of that has to do with the 2000s slant, and "female-friendly" content, both of which I personally think we should see more of in trash.
I'd like to place emphasis on the first half of the sentence...It was really the 2000s-tilt that I appreciated, which is why I also had a great time playing ACRONYM. Again, simply a matter of personal taste.
DumbJaques wrote:I suppose I shouldn't be that surprised, considering you for some reason wish to memorialize your love for this bad tournament by paying for animal feed (and that your choice of team name at MacVanity, assuming you had knowledge of it, demonstrated ATROCIOUS judgment and taste - and that's the most charitable interpretation). But really, come on. It would probably be in everyone's best interest if you stopped supporting terrible things.
I don't particularly appreciate this idea that a tournament, especially a trash tournament, must be agreed upon as being "terrible" or "excellent". I'm not sure why it's hard for you (and some of the other people who didn't have fun playing this tournament), that there might be someone who did enjoy it very much. I can see why people might not love the questions. Can you not see why they might?

I'm not sure what relevance my admittedly very-bad-taste team name at Mac Vanity has to do with the my endorsement of this tournament, but endorse it I will. Since it's come up, I'll also publicly state that I had full knowledge of that name; indeed I was the one who suggested it. My teammates and the organisers of Mac Vanity had little to do with it. And I do apologise for it.

Now are you also unhappy about animals being fed, or are we at least in agreement that that's a good thing?
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Re: COTTAGE Bowl - Global Announcement

Post by Tejas »

odin_envy_me wrote:I don't particularly appreciate this idea that a tournament, especially a trash tournament, must be agreed upon as being "terrible" or "excellent". I'm not sure why it's hard for you (and some of the other people who didn't have fun playing this tournament), that there might be someone who did enjoy it very much. I can see why people might not love the questions. Can you not see why they might?
The tournament isn't being called "bad" just to be mean, but to provide some critical feedback. There's no reason why a trash tournament shouldn't be held to reasonable standards of question writing, and Andrew's post explains what went wrong in this set and what editors can do in the future to avoid the same mistakes. I'm sure everyone who played this tournament, even Chris Ray, enjoyed some of it but there were still a lot of problems and just glossing over them doesn't benefit anyone.
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Re: COTTAGE Bowl - Global Announcement

Post by dxdtdemon »

I only played one packet from this set back in the fall, and what I remember is that the bonuses were ridiculously hard, or at least were missing key words that would've made some of the things easier. When you have a room full of people who are good at trash not having heard of many of the hard parts of the bonuses, that's a problem.
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Re: COTTAGE Bowl - Global Announcement

Post by Fado Alexandrino »

theMoMA wrote: For yet another example, I can't imagine anyone would want to hear a bonus on a niche topic outside of the popular consciousness, such as minor webcomics or YouTube channels or personal-care product brands, that is constructed as though the topic is actually squarely within the popular consciousness, when in fact the "easy" part is only easy to the small slice of the quizbowl universe who pay attention to such things. Put yourself in the players' shoes. If, as a person outside the niche interest group, you'd hear this question and be completely baffled as to the easy/medium/hard structure, you've written a bad bonus. You should rewrite it.
I am curious as to which specific questions of this topic was not well received. I was guilty of writing some portion of the more "niche" topics. How then, do you determine how popular internet phenomena are? How many likes does the facebook page need and how many subscribers should the youtube account have before they can be considered well known? Overall, I think the amount of subdistro dedicated to internet trash should really be increasing as these topics become more and more popular.
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Re: COTTAGE Bowl - Global Announcement

Post by 1.82 »

Perhaps there is some hypothetical number of followers that would be sufficient for a YouTube account to be the subject of a question, but no YouTube account in existence reaches that threshold; I could name none, and as far as I can tell the same is true for the vast majority of the people who played at the Maryland site. When the easy parts of a bonus are so obscure that no player on either team has even heard of the answer after it has been said, there is an obvious problem. Internet culture is exceedingly niche relative to the distributions that are expected to come up in a trash set.

Obviously a trash set needs to have contemporary content to be relevant to people who didn't grow up in the 1980s. Making that contemporary content orders of magnitude more obscure than the '80s ephemera that it might replace does the opposite of solving the problem.

Edit: I missed the request for specific questions that caused a problem. I wouldn't be able to answer that until the set is cleared, because no one question in particular comes to mind, but I recall being dismayed when the Internet distribution showed up on packet after packet, and I was certainly not the only one who felt that way.
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Re: COTTAGE Bowl - Global Announcement

Post by Important Bird Area »

nch wrote:Perhaps there is some hypothetical number of followers that would be sufficient for a YouTube account to be the subject of a question, but no YouTube account in existence reaches that threshold; I could name none, and as far as I can tell the same is true for the vast majority of the people who played at the Maryland site.
I have no idea what specific YouTube phenomena appeared in COTTAGE Bowl, but in general this probably isn't correct.

Compare
2014 NAQT HSNCT wrote:For 10 points each--name these people who have amassed large YouTube followings:

A. This author of Looking for Alaska advises "don't forget to be awesome" on YouTube channels he shares with his brother Hank.

answer: John (Michael) _Green_

B. The Swedish vlogger Felix Kjellberg uses this alias to discuss video games on one of YouTube's most subscribed channels.

answer: _PewDiePie_

C. Another popular YouTube channel is operated by this electronic musician who has released the EP Bangarang and the album Recess.

answer: _Skrillex_ (or Sonny John _Moore_)
29 rooms thirtied this bonus at the 2014 HSNCT.
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Re: COTTAGE Bowl - Global Announcement

Post by Amizda Calyx »

If there's ever a distinction to be made for something "too trashy even for trash", I would think personal hygiene products and horrible YouTube channels like the one hosted by that stupid highly-inappropriate-for-high-schoolers* manchild PewDiePie would be prime candidates.

Aside from that, WTF WAY TO SPOIL A MAJOR PLOT POINT IN AN ONGOING TV SHOW. How is it possible to think it's a good idea to use a clue discussing arguably the biggest event of a current highly-rated show? Not to mention that event occurs in the most recent complete season!

*I don't know if NAQT has a rule about R-rated material in high school sets, but I think if there is one then a YouTube channel as profane (continuous shrieking of swear words and rape jokes in dozens of videos) as PewDiePie's should be similarly sanctioned.
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Re: COTTAGE Bowl - Global Announcement

Post by minusfive »

I haven't played/seen this set, nor do I have anything to do with writing/promoting it. Having said that...
Joelle wrote:If there's ever a distinction to be made for something "too trashy even for trash", I would think personal hygiene products and horrible YouTube channels like the one hosted by that stupid highly-inappropriate-for-high-schoolers* manchild PewDiePie would be prime candidates.
Surely this depends on what the answer lines are, and how the subjects are treated. "Trash" isn't a neutral term; it was coined because the subject matter was considered to be inferior to "real" knowledge. Feminine hygiene products aren't exactly at the top of what I would expect in quizbowl, but feminine-hygiene related questions (such as Courtney Cox's first tv appearance being for a feminine hygiene product, or historic products, or whatever) should be evaluated on a case-by-case basis, like all questions. As for the Youtube channels, I mean, I don't have any inkling of PewdiePie either, but it's legitimate trivia if it's very widespread and part of pop culture. I doubt a Rush Limbaugh question would be challenged despite that man a)not needing any more publicity and b) being a terrible human being.
Joelle wrote:Aside from that, WTF WAY TO SPOIL A MAJOR PLOT POINT IN AN ONGOING TV SHOW. How is it possible to think it's a good idea to use a clue discussing arguably the biggest event of a current highly-rated show? Not to mention that event occurs in the most recent complete season!
Sorry, this is not a valid point. If people are willing to ruin Moby Dick or Death of a Salesman or [gasp] Name of the Rose, then there shouldn't be a double standard. This information is out there and presumably the question-writer doesn't have a crystal ball, so it isn't like the show/movie/whatever hasn't come out and been discussed. Quizbowl spoilers aren't a thing.
Joelle wrote:*I don't know if NAQT has a rule about R-rated material in high school sets, but I think if there is one then a YouTube channel as profane (continuous shrieking of swear words and rape jokes in dozens of videos) as PewDiePie's should be similarly sanctioned.
Discretion is advised, but a) this wasn't a high school set and b) again there's a double-standard here. The number of wtf clues in academic quizbowl (massacres, sexual assaults, especially in lit clues such as The Birthday, The Bluest Eye, and Stieg Larsen stuff, and pyramids of skulls) mean that it's not always good for all ages. I wouldn't really want a bowdlerized set for any adults, although don't we already practise restraint with respect to actual HS packets?
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Re: COTTAGE Bowl - Global Announcement

Post by Unicolored Jay »

On spoilers: I don't think it's a bad thing to hold trash to a different standard regarding them as opposed to literature. Unlike lit, trash relies a fair amount on recently-released/published material, and if you're able to write a good, pyramidal question that plays well to the audience on this ongoing TV show without revealing spoilers of events that aired a few weeks prior to the tournament, I'd suggest doing that. (I have no idea if this tournament did so.) For example, I'm not sure if it would go over well if I wrote a tossup on House of Cards right now and made most of the clues about season 3; on the other hand, I don't believe I'd get many complaints from only using clues from the first two seasons.
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Re: COTTAGE Bowl - Global Announcement

Post by Frater Taciturnus »

Jordan,

If you look up at the post right above Joelle's there is a high school question on PewDiePie.

Also how is spoiling a current, episodic tv show anything like a "ruining the ending" to literally one of the most famous and referenced books ever?
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Re: COTTAGE Bowl - Global Announcement

Post by Cheynem »

The spoiler thing doesn't really hold water to me. If you want to write a question that spoils anything, have at it, if those are appropriate clues and it makes sense. Generally, I doubt you'd be spoiling anything that prominent anyway. I agree that just spoiling something for the sake of spoiling it is kind of dumb, but if you wrote on House of Cards using season three info for HSNCT, by the time of that tournament, the "statue of spoiler limitations" is effectively up. If you wrote on it for a tournament a few weeks after the season was uploaded, well, that would be weird because not enough people probably have been exposed to it anyway. In short, what I'm saying, is use spoiler clues if they make sense, are difficulty appropriate, and work; don't use them if they don't.
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Re: COTTAGE Bowl - Global Announcement

Post by theMoMA »

"No spoilers" is essentially people who haven't seen something (a show, movie, or whatever) telling people who have seen it they can't get points for their knowledge. That seems unfair. If something is so new that the players can't reasonably be expected to have seen it, that's one thing. But once it's out there and people have likely seen it, it's fair game.
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Re: COTTAGE Bowl - Global Announcement

Post by Cheynem »

Apropos of nothing, I like the protestation that Death of a Salesman has anything to spoil.
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Re: COTTAGE Bowl - Global Announcement

Post by Auroni »

The bonus in question was a bonus on The Good Wife that had a major Season 5 spoiler in the text of the hard part, but that didn't make the question any easier with its inclusion. In other words, you could have omitted the second sentence of this bonus part, and it would have been exactly the same difficulty. I think you should carefully consider the utility of including a potential spoiler when writing a question -- obviously if it's a good tossup clue, then go ahead and add it -- but in this case it seems like it was really callously added.
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Re: COTTAGE Bowl - Global Announcement

Post by Cheynem »

That was last year's season, so while I'm sympathetic to Auroni's overall point about it not really helping, it's hardly in the range of "hot off the presses spoilers." I don't even watch that show and had that plot twist spoiled by Facebook, Twitter, and USA Today (!!!) basically days after it taking place.
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Re: COTTAGE Bowl - Global Announcement

Post by Amizda Calyx »

Ok, I might have been hasty in condemning the spoiler question -- however, I still think it's bad form to use clues that end up revealing key plot points of episodes aired within a year when those clues don't even make the question more gettable. Not everyone has access to cable TV or is willing to stream/download things illegally, anyway.

Regarding the YouTube comment: I fully stand by my opinion that disgusting channels that happen to be wildly popular among and accessible to dumb high schoolers are not automatic grounds for inclusion in a high school tournament *if* there are also rules banning R-rated movies for that tournament. Even without those rules, though, it still seems to be incredibly poor taste to ask about things like that.

Feminine hygiene products used as serious clues in or answers to questions may be fine. However, using them to fill some ridiculously pigeonholed "female distribution" sans any historical, contextual significance is insulting.
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Re: COTTAGE Bowl - Global Announcement

Post by grapesmoker »

Cheynem wrote:Apropos of nothing, I like the protestation that Death of a Salesman has anything to spoil.
At the end we learn that Willy Loman was really the Woman in White.
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Re: COTTAGE Bowl - Global Announcement

Post by Deepika Goes From Ranbir To Ranveer »

Auroni wrote:The bonus in question was a bonus on The Good Wife that had a major Season 5 spoiler in the text of the hard part, but that didn't make the question any easier with its inclusion. In other words, you could have omitted the second sentence of this bonus part, and it would have been exactly the same difficulty. I think you should carefully consider the utility of including a potential spoiler when writing a question -- obviously if it's a good tossup clue, then go ahead and add it -- but in this case it seems like it was really callously added.
Maybe we live in wildly different circles, but the spoiler in question was extremely widely circulated. It trended on Facebook and Twitter for nearly 2 days, and the relevant actor appeared on Letterman the next night to talk (almost entirely) about the episode. My point is not that "everybody already knew it", but that it made so much news, that it would be known by a non-viewer, thus serving to make the question easier. I had never watched The Good Wife prior to that episode (I watched the entire thing last summer), and yet would have certainly be able to identify the answer from that clue.
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Re: COTTAGE Bowl - Global Announcement

Post by Auroni »

odin_envy_me wrote:
Auroni wrote:The bonus in question was a bonus on The Good Wife that had a major Season 5 spoiler in the text of the hard part, but that didn't make the question any easier with its inclusion. In other words, you could have omitted the second sentence of this bonus part, and it would have been exactly the same difficulty. I think you should carefully consider the utility of including a potential spoiler when writing a question -- obviously if it's a good tossup clue, then go ahead and add it -- but in this case it seems like it was really callously added.
Maybe we live in wildly different circles, but the spoiler in question was extremely widely circulated. It trended on Facebook and Twitter for nearly 2 days, and the relevant actor appeared on Letterman the next night to talk (almost entirely) about the episode. My point is not that "everybody already knew it", but that it made so much news, that it would be known by a non-viewer, thus serving to make the question easier. I had never watched The Good Wife prior to that episode (I watched the entire thing last summer), and yet would have certainly be able to identify the answer from that clue.
If you have seen any one episode of the show from the first five seasons, or know any character names besides the title character you'll get the hard part. It seems highly unlikely that remembering a generic character name from reading social media or listening to interviews is any easier than that.
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Re: COTTAGE Bowl - Global Announcement

Post by The Schopenhauer Power Hour »

Just to briefly weigh in with general thoughts.

I thought this tournament was fun! However, I do think the set had a few systemic issues:

This has been alluded to in the context of specific answer lines, but in general, I felt like pretty much every bonus part in this set was either easy (often on the "very easy" side) or hard (often on the "very hard" side), with not many middle parts at all. Just anecdotally, I remember that our team had a lot of bonuses that were either zeroed or 10ed, with a few thirties from triple easy parts, but throughout the tournament, I never really felt like I could identify "here is the easy part, here is the middle part, here is the hard part." The 20's that we got on bonuses at this tournament always felt like we were gifted two easy parts and then an absurd hard part, not like we knew easy and middle but not hard.

The second issue I noticed is something that I think tends to happen pretty frequently at trash tournaments (I say with as much authority as I can muster, having not played one in the two years preceding this); namely, tossups on interesting answer lines that are really transparent. I was able to guess my way to a couple buzzes, including on things that are usually way outside my wheelhouse, on the first line or two just by going "well, what else could this possibly be?" The Other distribution covers a huge variety of topics, and I think there are some cool (and funny!) things that can be asked about, but if the first line of a tossup realistically eliminates all possible answers but one, then I think there either need to be drastically different clues, or a different answer line entirely.

The third issue is that a lot of tossups seemed to have massive difficulty cliffs. In some cases, it seemed like the writer wasn't familiar with the answer line, and so they pulled a few obscure details from the Internet or from watching one episode of a show, and then midway through the tossup dropped crucial plot points or character names without realizing how much of a giveaway these were. To be fair, that's not unlike the process I followed for some questions in TERPs 1 and 2 a few years ago, but from experience I think it is definitely important to playtest these sorts of questions, or at least run them by someone who's familiar with the answer line so they can let you know if you drop easy clues too early.

These were frustrating issues, but like I said, I still had a lot of fun at the tournament. Thanks for the set!
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Re: COTTAGE Bowl - Global Announcement

Post by TheRhymeMinister »

As it looks like there will not be any further mirrors of COTTAGE Bowl 2014, I've uploaded the packets here. People can peruse at their leisure, and can also feel free to discuss any specific questions they wish. At the outset, I'd like to make a couple of points:

First and foremost, thank you to everyone in this thread for leaving constructive criticism. This was obviously an imperfect product and a debut effort by a bunch of relatively inexperienced individuals, so there are certainly a number of things we can work on and improve going forward. As far as grammar goes, as head editor the buck stops with me and I take full responsibility for not doing a good enough job at correcting any and all mistakes. In future I will be sure to allot more time and effort to the pure editing process.

On the subject of internet questions/culture, I think it’s foolish to dismiss everything as being too obscure or unknown. It’s always a challenge to find internet figures who are both well-known and represent a diverse swath of the internet. I do think that generally the tournament's internet questions met this criteria and should in no way be impossible to answer.

I take offense to the suggestion that the so-called “girl stuff” questions were patronizing or that they don't belong in Quizbowl. I asked three of our female writers to write the questions that they would enjoy hearing at a tournament, and that was the result. I think it’s incredibly tired and sexist to say things like tampons are a “niche topic”. If women are expected to have a knowledge of areas that are traditionally male dominated interests (such as sports or video games) it isn't unreasonable to ask men to know about makeup or shoes. At the very least, I would expect every person playing, male or female, to have seen enough tampon commercials to hazard a guess at the answer. And if not, hopefully you learned something instead of just dismissing the knowledge as irrelevant or useless. Will everybody like the “girl stuff” questions? No. Will all women like those questions? Definitely not. But there are some that do, and that can't be ignored. I absolutely think that the approximate 1/0 or 0/1 of “girl stuff” per pack helped expand a minority voice that too often doesn’t appear in Quizbowl questions.

Finally, I'm equally offended by the suggestion that this tournament is somehow a negative reflection on Canada, or that local teams need to stop “supporting terrible things”. If you disliked the tournament and want to think less of me personally, I have no problem with that. But attacking a bunch of first time writers for writing a large number of good questions they're interested in? Or admonishing other regional teams for playing this tournament, saying that they enjoyed it, or encouraging other people playing it? That’s where I draw the line. The growing anti-Canadian sentiment has no place in this discussion and simply leads me to believe that there were a number of players who never gave this tournament a fair shake.

In summation, thank you all for playing COTTAGE Bowl. It was a joy to create, and hopefully it will be the first of many!
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Re: COTTAGE Bowl - Global Announcement

Post by Deepika Goes From Ranbir To Ranveer »

Someone at my University, Faith Barrett, requested I post this on her behalf (she was too intimidated by the HSQB registration page to create an account, since she is timid and shy).
I think expanding the quizbowl knowledge base has a huge part to play in why having "girl oriented stuff" is so important. Nick has a good point, in that yeah, we play quizbowl because it has things we're interested in, but the inverse is also true: if things keep coming up in quizbowl, we learn about it. I don't care about Breaking Bad, and I don't care about Ancient Greek philosophy, but quizbowl says they're important, so I know things about them, either through studying or quizbowl itself. Taking part in quizbowl isn't passive; you can control what you know and what knowledge you go into a game with. Yeah, you're always going to be better at the stuff you like, but that doesn't mean we ignore everything else.

Having information on topics that are unusual or new validates people who already hold that information, but it also is a really effective teaching tool. I was the only girl on my team at COTTAGE, but I fully expected the other members of my team to contribute to the "girl-stuff" as well as they would at other times, and I fully expected that they would pay attention and learn for next time. It's really easy for people (especially competitive Quizbowlers) to brush off information they don't already know as irrelevant or <another adjective that belittles the information>, but the moment someone realises they have to learn something, the information becomes important.

In an environment that's male-dominated, everything male takes precedence, and everything male (as opposed to female) seems important. The unfortunate flipside to that is that the environment is dichotomised, and everything female seems useless. The male-domination and the male-precedence aren't necessarily things that *need* to change (for whatever reason, quizbowl is the way it is; maybe it *will* change with more female oriented things, but that's a different discussion), but changing the way information is viewed is so important. From a personal point of view, I was really happy with both types of female-friendly questions, the ones that were "stereotypical female interest" and the ones that were really about living as a woman. It told me that the knowledge I had on those topics was valued, and was important to other people, and would literally help me get ahead; I can only hope it held that message for other people, both men and women.
And though I posted someone else's words there on Faith's behalf, I'll gladly say I agree with everything in that post.
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Re: COTTAGE Bowl - Global Announcement

Post by the third garrideb »

odin_envy_me wrote:Someone at my University, Faith Barrett
That's current president of Waterloo's club, Faith Barrett, mister. x)
I think expanding the quizbowl knowledge base has a huge part to play in why having "girl oriented stuff" is so important. Nick has a good point, in that yeah, we play quizbowl because it has things we're interested in, but the inverse is also true: if things keep coming up in quizbowl, we learn about it. I don't care about Breaking Bad, and I don't care about Ancient Greek philosophy, but quizbowl says they're important, so I know things about them, either through studying or quizbowl itself. Taking part in quizbowl isn't passive; you can control what you know and what knowledge you go into a game with. Yeah, you're always going to be better at the stuff you like, but that doesn't mean we ignore everything else.

Having information on topics that are unusual or new validates people who already hold that information, but it also is a really effective teaching tool. I was the only girl on my team at COTTAGE, but I fully expected the other members of my team to contribute to the "girl-stuff" as well as they would at other times, and I fully expected that they would pay attention and learn for next time. It's really easy for people (especially competitive Quizbowlers) to brush off information they don't already know as irrelevant or <another adjective that belittles the information>, but the moment someone realises they have to learn something, the information becomes important.

In an environment that's male-dominated, everything male takes precedence, and everything male (as opposed to female) seems important. The unfortunate flipside to that is that the environment is dichotomised, and everything female seems useless. The male-domination and the male-precedence aren't necessarily things that *need* to change (for whatever reason, quizbowl is the way it is; maybe it *will* change with more female oriented things, but that's a different discussion), but changing the way information is viewed is so important. From a personal point of view, I was really happy with both types of female-friendly questions, the ones that were "stereotypical female interest" and the ones that were really about living as a woman. It told me that the knowledge I had on those topics was valued, and was important to other people, and would literally help me get ahead; I can only hope it held that message for other people, both men and women.
I couldn't possibly agree more with this, and I think everyone who has posted in this thread is not disagreeing with this in principle either. I didn't play COTTAGE Bowl, so I had to track down this much-maligned feminine hygiene bonus, and in terms of its structure as a quizbowl question, it seems okay. (There is an easy, middle, and hard part; who honestly has never heard of Tampax?) If this was the only female-oriented question in the tournament, that would be weird, but I think as it is, what might be weird or offensive here is mostly the fact that it's about feminine hygiene. Is quizbowl a place to ask about diva cups? Should it be? In one of the first trash tournaments I played, one of my teammates wrote a tossup on jockstraps and no one was weirded out by that, though I personally was surprised by that choice of answerline (and amused). Are jockstraps universally a more "normal" or "comfortable" topic than tampons?

I think female trash (and perhaps female academic topics, too) split into that which is female-associated but has a wider audience (e.g. The Good Wife, Mean Girls, etc.) and that which is consumed primarily by women. The former is readily asked about in quizbowl (partly because quizbowl itself has a wider audience) while the latter when it comes up is usually thought of as "trashy trash". Like I said, I didn't play this tournament, but I would have loved to hear, for example, that tossup on HelloGiggles. I don't go to quizbowl events expecting to hear stuff like that, and whatever issues people might have had with execution in this set, I think the effort to write about things in a way that ignores this idea of "female trash" versus "'stupid' female trash" is laudible.

And, as Faith said, quizbowl tournaments do have this power to assert what is "important" simply through what topics they give space to. If we can be thrilled about uterus questions in academic tournaments, surely we can be less restrictive about what female trash should have a place here as well.
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Re: COTTAGE Bowl - Global Announcement

Post by Auks Ran Ova »

I think people's complaints about the tampon bonus have more merit when they focus on the fact that the clues were rather unhelpful at pointing towards the answers--asking which tampon brand corresponds to which product names seems far more likely to reward lucky guessing than any sort of "real knowledge", and as a result the diva cup part was the only part of that bonus that was specifically answerable in a useful way. Anecdotally, I can tell you that when I watched that bonus get played, the first two parts resulted in zero points for an increasingly angry Athena Kern, who guessed the wrong tampon brand twice.

I remain convinced that there are many, many ways to write diverse questions that please audiences of all genders, and that while it's a little patronizing (for either side of this argument) to suggest that quizbowl is now or would be an inclusive paradise thanks to the introduction of questions on feminine hygiene and fashion, there's much more fertile ground for critique in simply pointing out that a lot of the questions in this tournament were outright bad. People by and large do not know the corporate history of Playtex (Tampax?). Bonus parts on obscure paint brands and even more obscure specific types of house-painting brushes tend to produce nothing more readily than disappointment or scorn.
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Re: COTTAGE Bowl - Global Announcement

Post by Blackboard Monitor Vimes »

Ukonvasara wrote:I think people's complaints about the tampon bonus have more merit when they focus on the fact that the clues were rather unhelpful at pointing towards the answers--asking which tampon brand corresponds to which product names seems far more likely to reward lucky guessing than any sort of "real knowledge", and as a result the diva cup part was the only part of that bonus that was specifically answerable in a useful way. Anecdotally, I can tell you that when I watched that bonus get played, the first two parts resulted in zero points for an increasingly angry Athena Kern, who guessed the wrong tampon brand twice.

I remain convinced that there are many, many ways to write diverse questions that please audiences of all genders, and that while it's a little patronizing (for either side of this argument) to suggest that quizbowl is now or would be an inclusive paradise thanks to the introduction of questions on feminine hygiene and fashion, there's much more fertile ground for critique in simply pointing out that a lot of the questions in this tournament were outright bad. People by and large do not know the corporate history of Playtex (Tampax?). Bonus parts on obscure paint brands and even more obscure specific types of house-painting brushes tend to produce nothing more readily than disappointment or scorn.
Rob has helpfully made the point I was trying to formulate about this bonus. I read this bonus to a team of three women, who zeroed it (guessing wrong on the first two, which I think were super hard to get by any means other than guessing) and recognized diva cups but didn't know what they were called. My major problem with this bonus is that the clues were unhelpful (also I really could've gone without learning about diva cups or having the GW team explain to me that they can go in the dishwasher, but that's independent of the writing). Trying to appeal to more people in trash writing is great in theory; I just don't think asking about brands is the way to do it, since it doesn't work well in practice in most cases.
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Re: COTTAGE Bowl - Global Announcement

Post by Fado Alexandrino »

I helped out with the production of this set somewhere between the levels of that of Nick and the other writers. Looking back on it, I apologize for several of my internet or other questions for being too hard. I should have made easy parts a lot easier, although I think the harder parts were justified in their place.
Ukonvasara wrote: a lot of the questions in this tournament were outright bad.
Several issues in the production of the set led to this, and I apologize for not having done more to deal with many of the issues that have been brought up and that I knew existed in the set. I have discussed and will discuss more with Nick my thoughts on everything that went wrong in order to improve all future editions of this tournament.

Thanks for all the feedback, everyone!
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Re: COTTAGE Bowl - Global Announcement

Post by Amizda Calyx »

Speaking only for myself, not for my gender here: Having now looked through the question set, I think my main issue with the "female-friendly" content was less the idea that there should be a distribution of questions tendered to women and more the abysmal execution of those questions. I find it pretty demeaning to have "my" "knowledge" tested with multiple bonuses on commercial products aimed at women, as if these were things I am genuinely interested in or that preoccupy my mind at all. I don't know about other women, but to be honest I really don't give a thought to the brand of tampon I use—I just mindlessly head for the orange and blue box and put it in the cart. I can tell you what color the paper wrapping is, but I don't have more than a guess at the brand. The idea that tampon commercials somehow make it more accessible to women is also rather insulting, as if it's expected I would perk up and pay more attention to them than a guy would. Again, I only speak for myself, but being quizzed on "what it's like to live as a woman" makes me feel more marginalized than it would to hear a bunch of questions on monster trucks. I would hate for anyone to come away from the tournament thinking that that material tests women's depth of knowledge or that those are the only things women will have better conversion on or that women as a whole are equivalently interested in Playtex as men are in FFXI. How would guys feel if a significant proportion of the so-called "male dominated" categories of sports and video games were replaced with bonuses asking you to name three brands of deodorant based on corporate trivia, or tossups on carburetors (to call on an outdated example of something a stereotypical "man" might be interested in), or a bonus on the most popular RedTube channels?
I think the Lifetime tossup, and probably a couple others, could've potentially been usable if the clues weren't basically just a haphazard list of various programs it airs.

Other criticism:
Like others have said, this set had a ridiculous amount of variability with regards to bonus difficulty, with many hard parts being really, really hard (and/or insignificant). For example, in the first packet:

Bonus 14 (pretty much just three incomprehensible [really, you had over two months to fix these typos!], tenuously-related hard parts ):
For 10 points each, name some subreddits:
[10] The title character cannot into space in this subreddit of user created images with country flags as round objects. Notably, America wears sunglasses, Nazi Germany is a rectangle, and Israel is a cube.
ANSWER: Polandball
[10] This subreddit contains links to articles that could possibly be fake, but unfortunately articles posted on this subreddit are true and were not found on a certain satire news website.
ANSWER: Nottheonion
[10] This subreddit mocks a certain subgroup of microbloggers that the internet calls "Social Justice Workers". This subreddit's description asks if you "Seen a horribly oppressed transethnic otherkin blog their plight?"
ANSWER: Tumblr In Action
Does "SJW" really stand for something different in Canada? Do all Canadian quizbowlers have a mandatory Reddit account, giving them the assumption that everyone is knowledgeable on this material? I will shamefully admit that I sometimes use Reddit, although I'm happy to find out I apparently don't frequent it enough to be able to get even 10 on this bonus.

Similarly, and again repeating what others have voiced, the set also suffered from some ludicrously easy bonuses as well:
Bonus 5, also in first packet (I'm quoting the whole question to demonstrate the clues weren't difficult either):
Created by Richard Garfield, this trading card game has a very expensive set of cards known as the Power Nine. For 10 points each:
[10] Name this game whose central characters include Jace and Chandra and whose iconic valuable card is the black lotus.
ANSWER: Magic: The Gathering
[10] Magic: The Gathering is made by Wizards of the Coast, a subsidiary of this larger gaming corporation based in Rhode Island. This company also produces the My Little Pony series of toys.
ANSWER: Hasbro
[10] Hasbro is also a producer of this puzzle game in which a possible solution might be that Colonel Mustard used a rope in the Hall.
ANSWER: Cluedo
I'm pretty sure most people vaguely familiar with Magic would be able to get 30 on this.

Packet 2, Bonus 13:
For 10 points each, Name some common First Aid techniques and practices:
[10] This technique of structured abdominal thrusts is now recognized as the best method for treating choking. Named for a physician, this technique helps forcibly dislodge objects from the airway.
ANSWER: The Heimlich maneuver
[10] When a patient is suffering from this condition, first aiders lay the patient in a support position on their side. Caused by internal bleeding in the skull, symptoms include numbness on half the body and nausea.
ANSWER: Stroke (antiprompt on Transient Ischaemic Attack or TIA)
[10] This mnemonic is used to remember the 4 elements of treating soft tissue injuries. While numerous extensions and variations exist, this technique is designed to mitigate discomfort and limit swelling.
ANSWER: Rest, Ice, Compression, and Elevation (or RICE)
While also being wildly imprecise (are strokes really the ONLY condition in which EMTs lay a patient on his or her side?) and confusing (bleeding in the skull?), this question is still pretty easy, especially if you're an athlete (for RICE).

I know it's tough to come up with 15 packets worth of engaging, pyramidal, non-trivial material, and once I read through the rest of the set I might come back with some positive criticism--but from what I've seen, this set should have focused more on answer choice and copyediting than on attempting to rectify gendered distribution.
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Re: COTTAGE Bowl - Global Announcement

Post by Cosmas's Tabernacular Earth »

For 10 points each, name some subreddits:
[10] The title character cannot into space in this subreddit of user created images with country flags as round objects. Notably, America wears sunglasses, Nazi Germany is a rectangle, and Israel is a cube.
ANSWER: Polandball
I would like to point out that Nazi Germany is typically represented in Polandball as a ball with the swastika flag. The Reichtangle represents a hypothetical Fourth Reich.


That criticism aside, this was enjoyable (at least the four packets I played)
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Re: COTTAGE Bowl - Global Announcement

Post by adosreme »

Joelle wrote: Bonus 14 (pretty much just three incomprehensible [really, you had over two months to fix these typos!], tenuously-related hard parts ):
For 10 points each, name some subreddits:
[10] The title character cannot into space in this subreddit of user created images with country flags as round objects. Notably, America wears sunglasses, Nazi Germany is a rectangle, and Israel is a cube.
ANSWER: Polandball
[10] This subreddit contains links to articles that could possibly be fake, but unfortunately articles posted on this subreddit are true and were not found on a certain satire news website.
ANSWER: Nottheonion
[10] This subreddit mocks a certain subgroup of microbloggers that the internet calls "Social Justice Workers". This subreddit's description asks if you "Seen a horribly oppressed transethnic otherkin blog their plight?"
ANSWER: Tumblr In Action
Does "SJW" really stand for something different in Canada? Do all Canadian quizbowlers have a mandatory Reddit account, giving them the assumption that everyone is knowledgeable on this material? I will shamefully admit that I sometimes use Reddit, although I'm happy to find out I apparently don't frequent it enough to be able to get even 10 on this bonus.
I thought this was a fair test of "internet subculture." I've been linked to the nottheonion subreddit enough times, despite being a non reddit-user, that I could've gotten this and I've definitely seen Polandball come up enough times on non-reddit media (Facebook feeds, etc.) that it is, in my opinion, a fair easy part. (and props to my wonderful team who pulled TIA when we played this)
Joelle wrote: Similarly, and again repeating what others have voiced, the set also suffered from some ludicrously easy bonuses as well:
Bonus 5, also in first packet (I'm quoting the whole question to demonstrate the clues weren't difficult either):
Created by Richard Garfield, this trading card game has a very expensive set of cards known as the Power Nine. For 10 points each:
[10] Name this game whose central characters include Jace and Chandra and whose iconic valuable card is the black lotus.
ANSWER: Magic: The Gathering
[10] Magic: The Gathering is made by Wizards of the Coast, a subsidiary of this larger gaming corporation based in Rhode Island. This company also produces the My Little Pony series of toys.
ANSWER: Hasbro
[10] Hasbro is also a producer of this puzzle game in which a possible solution might be that Colonel Mustard used a rope in the Hall.
ANSWER: Cluedo
I'm pretty sure most people vaguely familiar with Magic would be able to get 30 on this.
I agree, this seems pretty easy. I'd hazard a guess as to say that Hasbro was the hard part for this bonus.
Joelle wrote: Packet 2, Bonus 13:
For 10 points each, Name some common First Aid techniques and practices:
[10] This technique of structured abdominal thrusts is now recognized as the best method for treating choking. Named for a physician, this technique helps forcibly dislodge objects from the airway.
ANSWER: The Heimlich maneuver
[10] When a patient is suffering from this condition, first aiders lay the patient in a support position on their side. Caused by internal bleeding in the skull, symptoms include numbness on half the body and nausea.
ANSWER: Stroke (antiprompt on Transient Ischaemic Attack or TIA)
[10] This mnemonic is used to remember the 4 elements of treating soft tissue injuries. While numerous extensions and variations exist, this technique is designed to mitigate discomfort and limit swelling.
ANSWER: Rest, Ice, Compression, and Elevation (or RICE)
While also being wildly imprecise (are strokes really the ONLY condition in which EMTs lay a patient on his or her side?) and confusing (bleeding in the skull?), this question is still pretty easy, especially if you're an athlete (for RICE).
I thought this bonus was kind of cool because it test-knowledge on something that a lot of students encounter (first-aid training) through their various college endeavours. I suppose the measure of "easiness" here would be to ask how much you think a non-first-aider could have gotten on this question coupled with how prevalent you think first-aid programs for college students are (I'm not necessarily trying to defend the difficulty of this bonus but am genuinely interested in thoughts)
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Re: COTTAGE Bowl - Global Announcement

Post by Bartleby »

adosreme wrote:
Joelle wrote: Bonus 14 (pretty much just three incomprehensible [really, you had over two months to fix these typos!], tenuously-related hard parts ):
For 10 points each, name some subreddits:
[10] The title character cannot into space in this subreddit of user created images with country flags as round objects. Notably, America wears sunglasses, Nazi Germany is a rectangle, and Israel is a cube.
ANSWER: Polandball
[10] This subreddit contains links to articles that could possibly be fake, but unfortunately articles posted on this subreddit are true and were not found on a certain satire news website.
ANSWER: Nottheonion
[10] This subreddit mocks a certain subgroup of microbloggers that the internet calls "Social Justice Workers". This subreddit's description asks if you "Seen a horribly oppressed transethnic otherkin blog their plight?"
ANSWER: Tumblr In Action
Does "SJW" really stand for something different in Canada? Do all Canadian quizbowlers have a mandatory Reddit account, giving them the assumption that everyone is knowledgeable on this material? I will shamefully admit that I sometimes use Reddit, although I'm happy to find out I apparently don't frequent it enough to be able to get even 10 on this bonus.
I thought this was a fair test of "internet subculture." I've been linked to the nottheonion subreddit enough times, despite being a non reddit-user, that I could've gotten this and I've definitely seen Polandball come up enough times on non-reddit media (Facebook feeds, etc.) that it is, in my opinion, a fair easy part. (and props to my wonderful team who pulled TIA when we played this)
I've largely stayed out of this thread because I haven't played or read this set, and I wanted to reserve any comments I might make until I'd done so. However, if this type of question is similar to others that tested "internet subculture," then I must agree with those who have said that those questions pushed at the bounds of answerability.

Unlike Aaron, I don't at all think that this is a "fair test of 'internet subculture'." Firstly, I would suspect that "nottheonion" is meant to be the easy part of this bonus, as it is the only one of the three answers that is a "default" subreddit. Someone who browses Reddit infrequently (like, say, me!) might be able to pull this answer. The other two are far more specific and require a deeper knowledge of Reddit to pull the answer -- frankly they are both hard parts, with "nottheonion" being somewhere between easy and medium for the average person. Like Aaron, I've seen links to things from "Polandball" on Facebook, but I didn't even know it had a subreddit dedicated to it. And, of course, if "Polandball" was meant to be the easy part, then that opens a whole other can of worms about judging difficulty.
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Re: COTTAGE Bowl - Global Announcement

Post by Deepika Goes From Ranbir To Ranveer »

adosreme wrote:(and props to my wonderful team who pulled TIA when we played this)
YEAH, YOU'RE WELCOME (except it was definitely Xtine who got it)
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Re: COTTAGE Bowl - Global Announcement

Post by grapesmoker »

Disclaimer: I have played like 2.5 trash tournaments in my life, mostly to answer questions about the NBA and old computer games from the 90s.

That said, I'm baffled by the thought process that leads someone to conclude that a question on a tampon brand is somehow "female friendly." I mean, imagine the male equivalent of that question: it might be something like a question on shaving cream brands. As someone who shaves regularly, I couldn't tell you what brand I use; it's whatever Costco sells in bulk quantities so that I don't have to think about buying shaving cream more than once a year. In general, this is how lots of people generally interact with consumer products. You just buy something that will do the job. That's how I shop for detergent, household cleaners, and pretty much any kind of thing that I'm going to use a lot of but I don't care what stamp it has. It makes very little sense to write questions on these things because they aren't really any sort of "interests," they're just various things that you consume to make your life easier; why would anyone spend more than the absolute minimum amount of cognitive effort necessary acquiring any information about these things?

As far as internet subcultures go: questions on individual subreddits are stupid, except maybe as hard parts. Yeah, I get that reddit is a thing; there's also lots of other stuff out there that's a lot more interesting than reddit, much less particular subreddits. That someone wanted to write an "internet stuff" bonus and couldn't think of anything better to write on than subreddits is not an indictment of the field for not knowing the answers but an indictment of the question writer for lacking imagination.
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Re: COTTAGE Bowl - Global Announcement

Post by Deepika Goes From Ranbir To Ranveer »

grapesmoker wrote:Disclaimer: I have played like 2.5 trash tournaments in my life, mostly to answer questions about the NBA and old computer games from the 90s.

That said, I'm baffled by the thought process that leads someone to conclude that a question on a tampon brand is somehow "female friendly." I mean, imagine the male equivalent of that question: it might be something like a question on shaving cream brands. As someone who shaves regularly, I couldn't tell you what brand I use; it's whatever Costco sells in bulk quantities so that I don't have to think about buying shaving cream more than once a year. In general, this is how lots of people generally interact with consumer products. You just buy something that will do the job. That's how I shop for detergent, household cleaners, and pretty much any kind of thing that I'm going to use a lot of but I don't care what stamp it has. It makes very little sense to write questions on these things because they aren't really any sort of "interests," they're just various things that you consume to make your life easier; why would anyone spend more than the absolute minimum amount of cognitive effort necessary acquiring any information about these things?
I think I've actually only played 2 trash tournaments in my entire life, but, at practice and such, I've seen TUs on Windex (that admittedly had music clues), a bonus on orange juice brands, a bonus on methods of shaving, plenty of questions on brands primarily based on commercials, and TUs on Subways, the Quarter Pounder With Cheese, Taco Bell, etc.

Not really seeing a good argument for all of that to be acceptable, but not that one friggin' tampon bonus. There's more thought put into ordering a Quarter Pounder over a Big Mac, than choosing Tide over Ariel, but I don't see that much of a difference.

As a #RecentImmigrant, I don't get most of these questions because I grew up using different brands, but I'm interested enough to hear the questions.

And I spent (and still spend) well over the absolute minimum amount of cognitive effort necessary acquiring information about these things when grocery shopping with my mom, but I'll be the first to admit that that's only applicable to me.
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Re: COTTAGE Bowl - Global Announcement

Post by Cheynem »

Unlike Jerry, I actually have written and played a good deal of trash tournaments.

You can write good questions on any sort of consumer product, but in my experience, they typically tend to feature clues about their usage within popular culture ("In the film Mr. Deeds, the title character goes to this restaurant..."), their advertisements ("In an ad for this product, Megan Mulally wore a tuxedo"), or other interesting sort of trivia ("Chuck Yeager once threw one these products at J. Edgar Hoover"). In general, I think people do not know the history of corporations that make products they make unless it's interesting, and would find it either hard/difficult/uninteresting to just sort of identify products they use based on general descriptions. Writing a question on Subway (or deodorant or even tampons) that uses the above sort of clues seems fine to me, writing a question that asks you to just name types of Subway sandwiches does not, if that makes sense.
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