Chicago Open thanks and discussion

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Chicago Open thanks and discussion

Post by grapesmoker »

Thanks to everyone who came out to play Chicago Open yesterday. It was a bit of a slog at times, but you were all real troopers, and I hope everyone had a good time. Before the discussion gets under way, I'd like to recognize the people who helped make all this happen.

First, shoutout to my fellow editors: Jonathan Magin, Eric Mukherjee, Rebecca Maxfield, Aaron Rosenberg, and Rohith Nagari. They all put in a tremendous amount of work to get this tournament done. Jonathan edited the American, British, and world literature, as well as a good deal of the social science, art, and "other academic" distributions. Eric covered half of the science (bio and chem), American and world history, mythology, and parts of religion, social science, and "other." Aaron handled the music and much of the visual arts as well as a good deal of the religion. Rebecca contributed to music and to "other arts" as well as to literature. Rohith contributed to the biology and the chemistry. Lastly, I covered the non-British European literature, European history, physics, other science, and philosophy, plus various contributions to "other academic." In addition to all that, we had a few guest appearances from Ezequiel Berdichevsky and Marshall Steinbaum, who each pitched in a few questions in their bailiwicks. Thanks to all of these folks for their hard work on this set; it was a real pleasure working with all of them.

Next, a great big thanks to all of the people who came out to moderate and scorekeep at CO. Please give a slowclap.gif to all of these fine people: Alex Damisch, Adam Black, Josh (I'm sorry, I didn't get your last name), Noah Prince, Mike Laudermith, Mik Larsen, and Sudheer Potru. These folks generously donated their time and effort to keep the tournament clicking, and we can't thank them enough for it. Special thanks goes to Jonah Greenthal, who did ace work on stats; he's a real mensch. If I have left anyone off this list, it's only because I'm still recovering from the final editing sprint.

And speaking of recovery, I guess this is as good a time as any to say that, with probability asymptotically approaching unity, this was my last editing involvement with an academic tournament. It's been a great ride, but towards the end of this last effort (and the few that preceded it) I found myself getting very close to burning out. That's a feeling I really don't like, and since I don't really have much left to do that I haven't done as an editor, I figure this is a good point to call it a career. I'll still be showing up to read various events and play opens, but as far as editing goes, this was my last rodeo. I hope you enjoyed it; despite the fatigue, I had a good time bringing this tournament into existence and I'm happy with going out on this note. Feel free to discuss the set to your hearts' content.
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Re: Chicago Open thanks and discussion

Post by Mike Bentley »

I found the tournament a lot of fun to play. It was probably the most enjoyable CO I played. I appreciated the difficulty control on the set. Thanks to the editors for their hard work.
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Re: Chicago Open thanks and discussion

Post by Good Goblin Housekeeping »

This was oodles of fun. Thanks to all of the editors for their work on this set

EDIT: Oh, I should also thank Will, Richard, and Jason for being super fun to play with
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Re: Chicago Open thanks and discussion

Post by Wynaut »

I'd like to thank everyone who worked on this set, as well as Stephen, Doug, John Lawrence, Jeff Hoppes, and others for working on their respective side events and making my first Chicago Open a blast. Also, thanks to the teammates I played alongside for the first time this weekend (Mike Bentley, Ben Zhang, Chris Grubb, Will Alston, Andrew Wang, Auroni Gupta, Jason Zhou, and Evan Adams) for just being all-around great.
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Re: Chicago Open thanks and discussion

Post by naan/steak-holding toll »

I liked the set a lot and also appreciated how it definitely felt more controlled than previous iterations of CO (though even the team with two Matts on it could not break 20 PPB!) This was great and if it's Jerry's last work, it's definitely an excellent note to go out on. Thanks should go to Andrew, Richard, and Jason for being great teammates at the main event.
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Re: Chicago Open thanks and discussion

Post by women, fire and dangerous things »

I enjoyed this tournament a lot, and don't have many complaints about the questions, but I do want to discuss a protest resolution (apologies if this should be a separate thread, in which case a moderator can move it).

The tossup on Shavuot led in with a clue to the effect of "The John Doe-like placeholder name Ploni Almoni comes from a book read on this holiday." One of our opponents buzzed in before the word "this" and said "the Book of Ruth," which of course would have been correct had the clue ended "...this book." He was negged, and we picked up the tossup. They protested, and the protest was ruled in their favor.

To me it seems like this should not be protestable. If you buzz in before the first pronoun, you haven't been given a clue, so the tossup cannot be ambiguous up to that point (so for example, rule 4.2 from the ACF rules wouldn't apply). By buzzing in before the first pronoun, you take on a risk (although you are also free to blitz, reducing that risk). Pertinently, one of my teammates knew the clue but was going to wait until the pronoun to buzz, so he got beaten to the tossup.

Even if this situation were protestable, the tossup shouldn't simply be given to the protesting team (which is what happened, if I understand correctly, since we never played a replacement tossup). That's because we don't know whether the player would have gotten "Shavuot" had he been prompted (in this case, I have absolutely no doubt that he would have, but the point is that in principle we don't know).

I'm curious if other players have been in similar situations. If so, how was the protest resolved?
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Re: Chicago Open thanks and discussion

Post by Sima Guang Hater »

I also want to thank Rohith Nagari for several excellent contributions to the bio, chem and mythology. If you are looking for someone who can edit those categories to a high degree of polish, he's your guy.
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Re: Chicago Open thanks and discussion

Post by Lagotto Romagnolo »

women, fire and dangerous things wrote: The tossup on Shavuot led in with a clue to the effect of "The John Doe-like placeholder name Ploni Almoni comes from a book read on this holiday." One of our opponents buzzed in before the word "this" and said "the Book of Ruth," which of course would have been correct had the clue ended "...this book." He was negged, and we picked up the tossup. They protested, and the protest was ruled in their favor.
Apologies for the confusing wording of this. It would have been better to write that as "A book read on this holiday is the source of the John Doe-like placeholder name Ploni Almoni." I had actually considered altering the word order as such, but thought that might make the sentence harder to process (it's already a second-order clue). But no, it really is critical to put the pronoun as early as possible.
ACF Rules Section H wrote: 4. The following potential errors, and only the following, are protestable:
..........................
4.2. The question or answer was ambiguous, so the answer given by the player should be accepted since it fits all the clues given in the entire question text, or all the clues up to a significantly deep point in the question.
I suppose in this case it would depend on whether the player buzzed before the word "book" or between "book" and "this"?

Grammatical clarity aside, though, I was really impressed by this submission: it was actually a good high-level question on a Jewish holiday. Rather than just spitting out names of songs for leadins like run-of-the-mill Jewish holiday tossups, this one tested knowledge of liturgical customs, so it's not just "receive 15 points if you are Jewish." Perhaps this has to do with the fact that Shavuot's customs are more obscure, but that doesn't diminish from the quality of the clues.
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Re: Chicago Open thanks and discussion

Post by Aaron's Rod »

women, fire and dangerous things wrote:I enjoyed this tournament a lot, and don't have many complaints about the questions, but I do want to discuss a protest resolution (apologies if this should be a separate thread, in which case a moderator can move it).

The tossup on Shavuot led in with a clue to the effect of "The John Doe-like placeholder name Ploni Almoni comes from a book read on this holiday." One of our opponents buzzed in before the word "this" and said "the Book of Ruth," which of course would have been correct had the clue ended "...this book." He was negged, and we picked up the tossup. They protested, and the protest was ruled in their favor.

To me it seems like this should not be protestable. If you buzz in before the first pronoun, you haven't been given a clue, so the tossup cannot be ambiguous up to that point (so for example, rule 4.2 from the ACF rules wouldn't apply). By buzzing in before the first pronoun, you take on a risk (although you are also free to blitz, reducing that risk). Pertinently, one of my teammates knew the clue but was going to wait until the pronoun to buzz, so he got beaten to the tossup.

Even if this situation were protestable, the tossup shouldn't simply be given to the protesting team (which is what happened, if I understand correctly, since we never played a replacement tossup). That's because we don't know whether the player would have gotten "Shavuot" had he been prompted (in this case, I have absolutely no doubt that he would have, but the point is that in principle we don't know).

I'm curious if other players have been in similar situations. If so, how was the protest resolved?
So, I was the moderator in this instance (which I don't think has to be anonymous). I distinctly remember stopping just before reading "read on this holiday." My impression was that since I had said "a book" and not "this book," that the question indicated it was looking for something other than the book itself. As Aaron has already conceded, the wording was definitely not ideal, and perhaps I was a little harsh in expecting a player to be able to parse that minute difference. If prompting had been appropriate in this instance, I certainly would have done so.

I don't disagree with the ultimate ruling on the protest, but it is unfortunate that Will's team lost out on that tossup.
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Re: Chicago Open thanks and discussion

Post by grapesmoker »

As the person who made the ruling on the protest in question, I'm happy to explain my reasoning. According to the sheet I was handed, the buzz occurred after the two-word quote in the first line, somewhere around "a text." At that stage, I do believe that rule 4.2 does come into effect; substantive information was given (enough to identify the Book of Ruth, or Ruth herself), despite the pronoun not having been given yet, and the answer given was clearly correct up to that point. Obviously, I do not agree with Will's reasoning that "if you haven't been given a pronoun, then you haven't been given a clue." First, I think it's simply empirically incorrect, as demonstrated by the fact that the player who made the buzz obviously did consider the information given to be a clue; second, there is no official definition of what constitutes a "clue" and certainly no definition of same that demands that a pronoun be given before a clue can be considered complete. So my view is that this is in fact protestable under 4.2, and since all the information given up to that point corresponds to the Book of Ruth, it is considered correct. As for what other people may or may not have been thinking at the time, I would hope it's clear that that cannot be a factor in protest resolution; we can't take into account possible mind-states of non-buzzing players when deciding these questions. I agree that the question is probably suboptimally worded, but that is also not a factor that can be considered when resolving protests.
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Re: Chicago Open thanks and discussion

Post by women, fire and dangerous things »

To be clear, I agree that the fact that one of my teammates also knew the clue is not relevant to protest resolution.

What I disagree about is that you can have a clue without a pronoun. I agree in general that it is content, not syntax, which is relevant to whether something or not is a clue; thus a noun phrase like "this winner of the Battle of X" is a clue even though it's not a whole clause. But we give points for correct answers, and I don't see how an answer can be judged to be "correct" or "incorrect" based on something which isn't even truth-apt. A phrase like "Ploni Almoni" by itself isn't truth-apt - if it's considered a clue, then I could buzz on a lead-in starting "The Battle of X" and say the name of the winning commander, the losing commander, the conflict in which it took place, the country where it took place, or any number of things which are related to said battle, then protest and be given points. That seems like an unwelcome consequence to me.
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Re: Chicago Open thanks and discussion

Post by grapesmoker »

women, fire and dangerous things wrote:To be clear, I agree that the fact that one of my teammates also knew the clue is not relevant to protest resolution.

What I disagree about is that you can have a clue without a pronoun. I agree in general that it is content, not syntax, which is relevant to whether something or not is a clue; thus a noun phrase like "this winner of the Battle of X" is a clue even though it's not a whole clause. But we give points for correct answers, and I don't see how an answer can be judged to be "correct" or "incorrect" based on something which isn't even truth-apt. A phrase like "Ploni Almoni" by itself isn't truth-apt - if it's considered a clue, then I could buzz on a lead-in starting "The Battle of X" and say the name of the winning commander, the losing commander, the conflict in which it took place, the country where it took place, or any number of things which are related to said battle, then protest and be given points. That seems like an unwelcome consequence to me.
I don't know how to precisely adjudicate issues like this except on a case-by-case basis, so I'm reluctant to offer a general response. I think you just have to know whether some really substantive information has been given or not; I'm not sure I've seen anything that looks like "Battle of X" case that you present; the one thing I can think of is back either a year or two ago, there was a tossup on Heidegger at CO that began with a description of, I believe, a Heideggerian argument by Hubert Dreyfus. It was the same sort of thing, where the pronoun hadn't come yet, but a ton of stuff describing what the answer should be had, and I buzzed very quickly with the intent of giving "Dreyfus" as the answer, and saying "What Computers Can't Do" if prompted, because I think that was the work being described. Fortunately for me, there was a bit of bleedthrough between my buzz, enough to indicate that this was actually Dreyfus' argument drawing on Heidegger, so I was able to give the right answer by pure luck. Still, there was obviously enough substance in the question, in my view, for it to be considered a clue; if there hadn't been, I wouldn't be buzzing. I think this is a very analogous situation. If, in some hypothetical future tournament, a particular battle maneuver is described that could potentially identify either the general who performed it or the battle or war in which it took place, then I would accept those things if given as answers before the pronoun. Keep in mind that this highly unusual situation can, by definition, only arise on the first clue (since by the second clue the pronoun has already been given), and also that to be correct, the answerline has to match all of the preceding clues. Therefore, in order to buzz at that point correctly, the player has to have significant knowledge of the answer; I don't see anything to be gained by forcing a person who knows the information and what it refers to to wait.

The solution to various degenerate cases of this sort is to write questions that aren't susceptible to them, and also for people making judgments about protest resolution to make a reasonable determination about whether a player is trying to game the system with the protest and whether the information given constitutes a substantive clue. I didn't have any reason to believe that anyone was doing anything with this question other than giving the answer that they believed best matched the information provided, and I stand by my reasoning.
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Re: Chicago Open thanks and discussion

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I enjoyed this tournament. Thanks to everyone who helped put it together!
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Re: Chicago Open thanks and discussion

Post by women, fire and dangerous things »

I think your rationale is a reasonable one, Jerry, even though I have a philosophical disagreement with it, and it's certainly not the case that the player was trying to game the system or anything like that. I think if people in general agree with that rationale, then it should be codified in the rules, just so people know what to expect. For example, my teammate could have buzzed in with confidence before the pronoun as well if he had known that there was no risk, which is why I mentioned it in my original post.
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Re: Chicago Open thanks and discussion

Post by hftf »

The Superfluous Man wrote:
women, fire and dangerous things wrote: The tossup on Shavuot led in with a clue to the effect of "The John Doe-like placeholder name Ploni Almoni comes from a book read on this holiday." One of our opponents buzzed in before the word "this" and said "the Book of Ruth," which of course would have been correct had the clue ended "...this book." He was negged, and we picked up the tossup. They protested, and the protest was ruled in their favor.
Apologies for the confusing wording of this. It would have been better to write that as "A book read on this holiday is the source of the John Doe-like placeholder name Ploni Almoni." I had actually considered altering the word order as such, but thought that might make the sentence harder to process (it's already a second-order clue). But no, it really is critical to put the pronoun as early as possible.
I should be the one apologizing for the word order. I wrote it at the last minute when Brian asked for help to finish his CO packet with a religion TU; the deadline happened to be right around Shavuot. I’m somewhat surprised the question made it in only subtly edited.
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Re: Chicago Open thanks and discussion

Post by grapesmoker »

I guess since there's not a whole lot of discussion happening anyway, it won't derail it for me to briefly offer some opinions on the submitted packets.

Overall, I thought the quality of submissions was quite high. There were a lot of teams that obviously took their question writing seriously and even if the questions weren't 100% usable as-is, they were still pretty solid attempts. In particular, I was delightfully surprised at the overall high quality of the science submissions in my categories. It was great that people were trying to write legitimately good questions on interesting topics rather than resorting to multiply-eponymous-effect-bowl. That was great and you should keep that up!

The flip-side of the submissions was that, in about half the cases, they were just too damn hard. There were things like the mentioned-by-me-in-another-thread tossup on "The Main Currents of Marxism." There was a tossup on a Tolkien essay that wasn't "The Monster and the Critics." There was a packet full of tossups that were so brutal that forcing people to play them might have constituted the quizbowl equivalent of a war crime. There were very many hard bonuses across pretty much all categories that had to be revised downward in their difficulty.

I would say that the overwhelming amount of editorial effort was spent on replacing questions that we thought were just too difficult. The problem with those tossups is that usually it's hard to rework an impossible tossup into a useful one; it just has to be replaced straight up, and that takes a lot of time. Most of the time we tried to keep the original spirit of the replaced question if possible (e.g. Kolakowski, Tolkien, etc.), unless that was impossible, in which case we just wrote a random replacement.

I don't know that there are general lessons to be extracted from this beyond "don't write crazy packets," but I thought it was worth commenting on at least. As I said in the announcement, I was largely happy to let the field's submissions dictate difficulty, but even with that stipulation, I wouldn't (and didn't) allow in a packet where 10 tossups might go dead in a round. I'd say that according to my very scientific estimates, the CO you played was roughly 1.5 times easier than the CO you submitted.
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Re: Chicago Open thanks and discussion

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grapesmoker wrote:The flip-side of the submissions was that, in about half the cases, they were just too damn hard. There were things like the mentioned-by-me-in-another-thread tossup on "The Main Currents of Marxism."
Am I the only one who thinks "Kolakowski" is actually a tougher answerline? I sat through the last five lines of that tossup trying to remember the name of the guy who wrote "Main Currents." Anyway, I really enjoyed the set overall, except for that wince-inducing Reddit bonus.
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Re: Chicago Open thanks and discussion

Post by Fado Alexandrino »

This was my first CO as a player and it was plenty of fun! I don't think it was too hard and was a reasonable step ahead of ACF Nationals.
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Re: Chicago Open thanks and discussion

Post by minusfive »

I'd like to echo everyone else and say this was an enjoyable tournament. Thank you to the tireless editors and staff! Although I suppose I take issue with the hardness of a few TUs (some were pate-scratchingly easy for CO), on the whole it was a pleasant and gruelling experience.
Congrats to the winners, and a huge thanks to my redoubtable teammates Chris, Ryan, and Billy for being awesome company and putting up with me.
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Re: Chicago Open thanks and discussion

Post by grapesmoker »

minusfive wrote:I'd like to echo everyone else and say this was an enjoyable tournament. Thank you to the tireless editors and staff! Although I suppose I take issue with the hardness of a few TUs (some were pate-scratchingly easy for CO), on the whole it was a pleasant and gruelling experience.
Congrats to the winners, and a huge thanks to my redoubtable teammates Chris, Ryan, and Billy for being awesome company and putting up with me.
There were certainly some answer lines in the tournament that were on the easy side, but we did our best to dig up deep clues for those answers.
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Re: Chicago Open thanks and discussion

Post by Ike »

I liked this tournament a lot. The only complaints I had were that some of the easy answers clued in material that was too easy. The Edgar Allan Poe and Socrates tossup struck me as egregious - the Poe TU used some relatively easy clues from Usher very early - that's like serving a three dollar scotch (gasoline) to a group of people who are willing to pay $10,000 for a bottle of wine. I don't mind keeping answers accessible, but if you're going to do that, bring out the good stuff - there are a ton of things that people read by Poe.

My other complaint is the head editor's delusion that he's somehow done editing. Jerry, I forbid you from ever not ever editing a tournament again.

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Re: Chicago Open thanks and discussion

Post by grapesmoker »

Ike wrote:I liked this tournament a lot. The only complaints I had were that some of the easy answers clued in material that was too easy. The Edgar Allan Poe and Socrates tossup struck me as egregious - the Poe TU used some relatively easy clues from Usher very early - that's like serving a three dollar scotch (gasoline) to a group of people who are willing to pay $10,000 for a bottle of wine. I don't mind keeping answers accessible, but if you're going to do that, bring out the good stuff - there are a ton of things that people read by Poe.
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My other complaint is the head editor's delusion that he's somehow done editing. Jerry, I forbid you from ever not ever editing a tournament again.
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Re: Chicago Open thanks and discussion

Post by Lagotto Romagnolo »

I will also suggest a possibly repulsive change for next year: move the packet deadlines forward by a week. As long as CO continues to follow the giant round-robin format (which I still support), we can't combine packets. Even the packets that come in 2 weeks before the tournament must be edited. If four packets come in on that date, and they all require significant editing/rewriting, that's a huge burden on the editors. Now, I'm a firm believer that Chicago Open's magic largely stems from diversity of question authorship and style. The downside of this is that you can't spend 9 months planning and writing 10 editors packets like with ACF nationals, but I think its a worthwhile trade-off. So, I think the best way to maintain this diversity AND quality is to give the editors more time.
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Re: Chicago Open thanks and discussion

Post by Captain Sinico »

Thanks a lot to the editors and writers for such an enjoyable tournament! Though my feelings on losing are well known, I loved this set and the supreme level of competition all weekend, and especially on Saturday. I especially liked how it was just on the right side of crazy hard in the median, and wasn't afraid to vary difficulty of answers, such that you needed a good team to do well, but you could do well with a good team.

I'm unsurprised to hear that a lot of editing went toward toning down submissions to make the difficulty the way it was. I hope that's something that other editors and writers can learn from, whatever your feelings about your own play on any couple given answers.

As someone involved in the aforementioned protest as well, I'll weigh in to say that I think throwing out that tossup and re-playing a new one would have been the best decision. The player who buzzed (with a great buzz) took a calculated risk knowing no "this" had happened yet, and perhaps knowing that someone else could know that clue; I took a calculated risk not buzzing knowing no "this" had happened yet, and hoping that the other team wouldn't make such a great buzz (and quite possibly getting out-buzzed in my slow-ass dotage anyway.) In light of all that, it seems like ruling that the tossup hadn't had a fair hearing for either team is the best judgement. Note that my knowing that one clue doesn't change matters per se, but is noted to illustrate the fact that it's possible that the other team knew the same clue and drew the opposite conclusion as to what to do.

All that said, the resolution reached is not unfair or unreasonable and does rely on a judgement call. I think everyone agrees that a better question gets to a "this" before such a substantive clue; that this particular question should have prompted on the given answer if we accept that a "this" can't come before that clue; and furthermore that, Ismailian gun to the head, we'd all conclude the given answer was the most likely one given the clues to the point buzzed at.
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Re: Chicago Open thanks and discussion

Post by suds1000 »

While I haven't read for an ACF or mACF tournament in several years, I'll have to say I enjoyed moderating this set for the most part, although there's no question it was very difficult. I was very impressed with the quality and caliber of many of today's top players, who had early buzzes on many topics that I've never heard of, given how long I've been away from active quizbowl participation. CO is a difficult tournament even if you have an excellent team, and while I likely wouldn't have done particularly well on this set, I was glad to see that many did.

The only complaint I do have as a reader was the length of the questions. Perhaps this is just a trend in quizbowl these days, but I noticed that there were many, many tossups >10 lines and bonus parts > 3 lines in length, which seems like a bit much to me, even for a very difficult open tournament intended for the particularly hardcore on the quizbowl circuit. All of us staff kept things moving about as fast as we conceivably could, and I read like it was an NAQT tournament (trying to go as quickly as possible while still maintaining some clarity), and the tournament still didn't end until close to 10 pm. So that's just something for both writers and editors to consider for next year when thinking about the length of your questions.

One more thing to note: we probably ended at 10 PM because we started at 9 AM, so while it doesn't sound like that long of a day, a 12-13 hour tournament ending at 8 or even 9 PM is certainly better than one ending at 10 PM, even if the difference is only psychological. So for a 17-round tournament full of very very long and difficult questions (many TUs of which inevitably go all the way to their 12-line end in certain rooms), it may be better to start earlier in the day for next year, depending on what everyone decides/appreciates.

Just my thoughts. Kudos to Jerry, Eric, and the rest of the editing team on a fantastic set from which I certainly learned a lot of interesting things.
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Re: Chicago Open thanks and discussion

Post by Sima Guang Hater »

Now that the finals packets have been read, feel free to discuss them here. I would especially appreciate any commentary on my questions.
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Re: Chicago Open thanks and discussion

Post by That DCC guy »

When will the set be posted?
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Re: Chicago Open thanks and discussion

Post by touchpack »

Will there be an IRC reading of the finals packets? I'd love to hear more of this tournament.
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Re: Chicago Open thanks and discussion

Post by gyre and gimble »

touchpack wrote:Will there be an IRC reading of the finals packets? I'd love to hear more of this tournament.
I would partake.
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Re: Chicago Open thanks and discussion

Post by Sima Guang Hater »

I'm not free this week but perhaps one of the other editors is?
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Re: Chicago Open thanks and discussion

Post by Doga (Dog Yoga) »

I can read the last 3 packets over IRC/skype/whatever. How does 5 PM eastern on Saturday 8/15 sound?

EDIT: This is happening on Sunday 8/16 at 5 PM eastern in #cofinals. See you there.

EDIT 2: Actually this'll be at 8 PM eastern tonight instead, sorry for the inconvenience
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Re: Chicago Open thanks and discussion

Post by samus149 »

Has the set been posted yet?
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Re: Chicago Open thanks and discussion

Post by grapesmoker »

samus149 wrote:Has the set been posted yet?
I just uploaded it, here.
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Re: Chicago Open thanks and discussion

Post by grapesmoker »

Or, I tried to. I don't see the packets being shown on the right hand side.
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Re: Chicago Open thanks and discussion

Post by Unicolored Jay »

I just approved the packet upload, so they should show up now.
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