ACRONYM at PACE NSC (Friday night)

[InvadErGII]

Based on feedback and some IRC discussions, I'd like to put together an informal mirror of ACRONYM VIII as a side event of an upcoming nationals tournament. Update: This will be happening at PACE on Friday night. I will post a signup sheet shortly. Other future updates will presumably end up here as well.

I'll implement an In Rainbows-style entry fee for this - pay whatever you want. If you want to play for free, that's cool too. I am currently in need of a room or two to play this in, and possibly an extra buzzer or two depending on how many teams sign up. This will be open to whoever - students, coaches, staffers (as long as it's within PACE's rules), and innocent bystanders.

UPDATE: You can sign up for this right here!

[UlyssesInvictus]

I'd love to play and/or staff this at NSC, though I'm not very familiar with the schedule of side-events at NSC.

[1992 in spaceflight]

I think Feynman's Bongos is the only side event for PACE, but I'm not 100% sure.

[Tejas]

HSNCT is pretty full, but I'd play this if it was at NSC.

[ahuff]

A St. John's team would play if it was mirrored at PACE, and our coach would like to know if he could play with us.

[Harpie's Feather Duster]

I'll play this at SSNCT or NSC, barring BONGOS conflict.

[heterodyne]

Most of my team is going to be interested in playing this, hopefully at PACE.

[InvadErGII]

A St. John's team would play if it was mirrored at PACE, and our coach would like to know if he could play with us.

I definitely have no problem with this.

It looks like PACE is the runaway preference for this, so I'm comfortable saying that this will happen at some point that weekend. I will add updates as I figure them out.

[ryanrosenberg]

For reference, this is the official PACE policy on NSC side events.

Hey, just a reminder for those who are planning on playing this at NSC: like how YMIR was run in 2012, PACE cannot provide any buzzers or rooms for this tournament, including staffer hotel rooms.

NSC control room staff (i.e. staffers whose duties are not "reading and/or scorekeeping"), are forbidden to play this or any other NSC side event. All other staffers may participate as they wish.

I'm glad to see a strong slate of NSC side event shaping up! It's unlikely I will be at NSC, but if I am, and I'm not one of the above-referenced control room staff, I'd like to play this.

[1992 in spaceflight]

Could someone ask Will how long he expects BONGOS to take? If it's expected to take most of Saturday night, perhaps running this on Friday night after the coaches' seminar would be ideal?

(BTW, I'd like to play this at NSC, assuming scheduling works out)

[InvadErGII]

Could someone ask Will how long he expects BONGOS to take? If it's expected to take most of Saturday night, perhaps running this on Friday night after the coaches' seminar would be ideal?

(BTW, I'd like to play this at NSC, assuming scheduling works out)

I have reached out to Will regarding scheduling. I definitely don't want to interfere with BONGOS, so Friday sounds plausible.

[InvadErGII]

Updated the OP to reflect that this will indeed be happening on Friday night at PACE. I should have a couple of buzzers on hand, but will need to figure out a room (or rooms) in which to play it. If you'd like to volunteer yours or would like to help out in any other way, let me know!

I will have a signup sheet ready soon, probably tonight.

[InvadErGII]

Sign ups are now open! The link is right here and in the OP.

[hokieDoubleE]

People not involved with the pace tournament can compete right?

[Andre97]

My team and I are interested in playing. My only question is about what time is it going to run until. 12? 1?

[InvadErGII]

People not involved with the pace tournament can compete right?

I don't see why not.

My team and I are interested in playing. My only question is about what time is it going to run until. 12? 1?

In the interest of preserving valuable sleeping time, I'd be in favor of wrapping up around midnight. I'm not certain when the coaches' meeting will wrap up, so someone correct me if this isn't realistic.

[1992 in spaceflight]

People not involved with the pace tournament can compete right?

I don't see why not.

My team and I are interested in playing. My only question is about what time is it going to run until. 12? 1?

In the interest of preserving valuable sleeping time, I'd be in favor of wrapping up around midnight. I'm not certain when the coaches' meeting will wrap up, so someone correct me if this isn't realistic.

The schedule says it'll wrap up at 9 PM.

[InvadErGII]

9-midnight wouldn't be enough to get through the entire set, but we could work our way through 6 or so packets as long as everything goes smoothly. I suppose the Friday rounds could be used as seeding for some playoff rounds on Saturday (assuming there's time and it doesn't interfere with BONGOS).

Those who are playing, what would you prefer? When would you like to wrap up on Friday? Would you play some more on Saturday?

[heterodyne]

From our team's perspective, we would prefer splitting it if we can't finish around midnight on Friday, since sleep is good and competition is the next day and stuff.

[ahuff]

Us too. Sleep is good.

[1992 in spaceflight]

If we can't wrap up on Saturday before BONGOS, I'd be ok with just playing the first six rounds on Friday.

[Andre97]

Ending by 12 on Friday would be good for us too. We'd be good for more games on Saturday if it doesn't conflict with anything.

[InvadErGII]

This is coming up on being two weeks away, and the field is shaping up to be pretty great. However, I am still entirely bereft of rooms and generally low on staffers. I still expect to have a couple of buzzers, but we may need more of those as well. I have added a 'rooms' field to the signup sheet, so if you have a non-PACE room we can use, let me know!

[InvadErGII]

Hey everyone!

We're currently about 48 hours away from the scheduled start of this tournament and while I think we're now likely good on buzzers, I still don't have any rooms. If you're part of a team that is playing in this, please consider making your room available. With just a couple of rooms we could still split into groups and play the tossups or something like that. Failing that, this will probably be canceled or turned into some sort of online thing.

[Harpie's Feather Duster]

I would be down for dissolving teams and making this shootout-style if rooms are an issue: round 1 could be a "seeding round" and we could do something similar to what Gorilla Lit did last summer. This would let us fit 10 people per room, which would make lives slightly easier.

[InvadErGII]

I sent this info in an email to those who provided one when signing up, so this is for everyone else (or the people I emailed if you're reading this first):

Thanks once again for your interest in playing ACRONYM tonight. I am hopeful that we will end up with 3 rooms, so assuming that happens I'd like to split the players evenly into those rooms and play one round of tossups for seeding purposes (there'll be no teams for this - it's every player for him-or-herself). From there, the top third of each room will go to the "top room" (info below) with the middle and bottom thirds going to those respective rooms.

From there, each room will play rounds 2 through 4. After round 4, the bottom third of the 'middle' and 'bottom' rooms will move up, Premiere League style, to the next room. The bottom third of the 'top' and 'middle' rooms will move down in a similar fashion. We'll then play round 5-7 and then repeat for rounds 8-10. If all goes smoothly, everyone will have heard all of the set's tossups before midnight (though if we don't, we're still shutting down at that time).

To get started, let's meet somewhere near the check-in desk on the second floor. I will be there starting at 8:15 or so making sure we have everything we need. We'll get started as soon as we can after 9:00. I'll be the guy in the Mega Man 2 shirt. Please let me know if you have any other questions and I will see you tonight!

IMPORTANT EDIT - If people want to play in groups of 2 instead of as individuals, that's fine too. The format given above will remain the same.

[InvadErGII]

A (hopefully) last update before this starts - we're still short on rooms (and possibly staffers), so please speak up if you can contribute on those fronts. The less scrambling we have to do, the better it will be for everyone.

I am situated at a desk outside Grand Ballroom B or so (a few tables down from the staff check-in). If you have nothing better to do and would like to convene and discuss logistics, come say hello! This will also be our meeting place for whenever we start.

[InvadErGII]

Thanks to everyone who came out to play ACRONYM last night. I had a lot of fun reading to a whole bunch of you. It sounds like each room ended up doing things a little differently, but in my room the superteam to my left (dubbed Left Shark) defeated team Right Shark 1530-540 across all of the tossups.

As this was the last "mirror" of the set, the questions should be posted online shortly.