The Set
As stated, I will be head-editor. Will will have less of a contributing effort than previous years, but as always we want to maintain difficulty-appropriate and high quality questions. This set is targeted at the core high school "canon," but I personally have a desire to see questions used which accurately reward knowledge learned in the classroom and with "real world" significance. Answerline difficulty will vary, with most being comparable to a NAQT Invitational Series set, but some may be easier, and some (i.e. fewer rather than more) will be HSNCT difficulty. As with previous years, there will be 15 power-marked rounds, with the last two rounds being finals packets of slightly higher difficulty. The vast majority (95%) of questions will be 5-6 lines Times New Roman 10 point font. The distribution is as follows:
4/4 Literature (1/1 American, 1/1 European, 1/1 British, 1/1 World/Ancient/Misc)
4/4 Science (1/1 Biology, 1/1 Chemistry, 1/1 Physics, 1/1 Math/CS/Earth Science/Astro/Other)
4/4 History (1/1 American, 1/1 World, 2/2 European/British/Ancient)
3/3 Fine Arts (1/1 Painting/Sculpture, 1/1 Classical Music, 1/1 Other Arts)
1/1 Social Science / Philosophy
1/1 Religion
1/1 Mythology
1/1 Geography/Modern World
1/1 Popular Culture
Notes:
-A tiebreaker tossup and bonus will be provided for each round coming from one of the "Big Three" categories (literature, history, or science), in addition to some emergency backup questions.
-Some subdistributions will not be precise, to allow for heightened presence of more "important"/high school appropriate answers (e.g. math) and decreased presence of traditionally difficult high school topics (e.g. world literature or social science).
-This year a popular culture (i.e. "Trash") category has been added. This category will be focused primarily on film, television, sports, and music, and an effort will be made to provide answerlines that have a strong presence in the US popular conscience, or even academic importance.
Fee and Mirrors
The fee is $15 per non-host team present at your mirror site. This fee is negotiable to lower amounts for special events, such as solo sites, sites with low team attendance (< 8 teams), or sites with significant team attendance (>40 teams). This negotiability is completely at my discretion and is in no way set in stone.
If would you like to mirror this set, please contact me at raynorkuang AT college DOT harvard DOT edu. If I don't respond in a convenient time, definitely email me again. A running list of mirrors and desired geographic sites will be maintained in the post below. When the mirror period is over, I will personally upload the set immediately. If there are conflicting regional requests, consideration will be made for attendance size, quality/consistency of program (i.e. I'd prefer not to have the mirror evaporate the day before), and first-come first-serve.
Other Comments
I'm personally very excited to be editing this set, and hope you're excited to mirror/play it! As this set is entering the 10th year
of the HFT tradition, I have big hopes for the set. If you have any questions or comments at all about mirroring the set, such as fee, logistics, content, and/or what you are/are not allowed to do with the set, please contact me, and I will endeavor to be as helpful as possible (questions about playing it should probably go in the main site thread, which will be posted as soon as we get some more logistical details sorted). Looking forward to hearing from you!
