I hate the word "rundle"

[Ithaca Cricket Ump]

[split from the discussion of a bad post on a different forum in this thread --mgmt]

ALTERNATE TAKE: "Tch, typical quizbowler, using entirely reasonable context clues together in a sensible way but failing to come up with the right answer." As opposed to...what, exactly?"

Probably as opposed to looking things up on Wikipedia and pretending you're smarter than then person who's answering tons of questions right and stacking mad cash while you post on Jeopardy pretending you're better somehow.

I know the particular guy who made the post you're talking about, and while you would generally be right with your point here, in this particular case the guy making the post is someone (a $500K winner on WWTBAM, 1990s quizbowler, back-to-back third place finishes (out of 3000+ players) in the LearnedLeague Championship and the person in LL with the highest correct answer percentage who can actually duplicate his online performances live, and multiple-time top U.S. scorer in the World Quizzing Championship, including a second place finish in 2014 WQC) who is fully capable of matching up with Matt in any quiz format you might care to name. Including quizbowl, if you gave him six months or so to get up to speed. He is perhaps the only person I have ever met who has a legitimately photographic memory. The only way he ever misses anything is if he simply hasn't come across the fact before.

--Scott

[AKKOLADE]

who is fully capable of matching up with Matt in any quiz format you might care to name. Including quizbowl, if you gave him six months or so to get up to speed.

--Scott

nope

[Ithaca Cricket Ump]

who is fully capable of matching up with Matt in any quiz format you might care to name. Including quizbowl, if you gave him six months or so to get up to speed.

--Scott

nope

Yep. He has every bit as much knowledge as Matt in academic categories, and with the possible exception of Broadway musicals and/or gaming, far more in the stuff that quizbowl doesn't generally cover. I've seen both of them in action. Matt is incredibly impressive, to say the least. Perry is the greatest I've ever seen. Maybe co-greatest along with Yaphe, on second thought. Andrew probably has him slightly beat on academic knowledge, but Steve is better on the non-academic stuff.

[Auks Ran Ova]

The only way he ever misses anything is if he simply hasn't come across the fact before.

I suppose the conclusion to be drawn is that he'd never come across a poorly-thought-out forum post before, then.

[Auks Ran Ova]

Also, as much as I respect Matt Jackson's insane playing ability (and I do!), it's not like he's unbeatable at quizbowl (or like anyone's ever asserted such); regardless, "this guy could totally be as good as this other guy given an arbitrary but small amount of prep time" is such a meaningless, variable-filled assertion that it's probably not in anyone's best interest to make. And it still doesn't have any bearing on the quality of that (bad) jboard post.

[AKKOLADE]

So we're apparently talking about Steve Perry? Who played quiz bowl for UVA in the early 2000s, was only the #1 scorer on his team once and finished tied for 21st at nationals that year?

Jerry Stackhouse is just as good as Kevin Durant, dude. Only if he had 6 months to prepare.

[Ithaca Cricket Ump]

Plus, saying "he would be just as good as one of the ~5 best players of all time with six months of preparation!" is preposterous in any activity with any modicum of history.

You're right. Steve might not even need the six months of preparation. He'd absolutely murder Matt on quizbowl science, Matt would most likely do the same to him on RMP and social science, and everything else would be a good, fair fight. In anything non-academic except Broadway, Matt wouldn't be able to stay with him. It would depend on the exact format, but even in quizbowl, the result of 10 solo matches between the two would most likely be 5-5, or 6-4 one way or the other. It's not, by any means, the mismatch Will implied it would be in his post. Considering that I'm pretty much the one person here who's seen BOTH of these guys play numerous times (in other words, the one person posting here who's actually IN A POSITION TO KNOW), you might want to consider giving a bit of credence to my opinion here. At ACF Nationals, Matt Jackson would be the favorite, but no one blows Steve Perry out of the room in any quizzing format. It just doesn't happen. If it was a format that included any decent amount of non-academic material, Steve is not only the favorite, he's a substantial favorite.

[Cheynem]

Hey, I'm sure in a non academic heavy format, Steve might be the favorite. HELL, I'd be the favorite in such a format over Matt. I'm not sure that really supports your argument though.

[Ithaca Cricket Ump]

So we're apparently talking about Steve Perry? Who played quiz bowl for UVA in the early 2000s, was only the #1 scorer on his team once and finished tied for 21st at nationals that year?

Jerry Stackhouse is just as good as Kevin Durant, dude. Only if he had 6 months to prepare.

You do realize that people can and do improve substantially, right? I went from only tangentially being involved in anything more than occasional Buzztime and pub quizzes to being the LearnedLeague Champion in less than 5 years, and Steve is a far more talented and motivated player than I am. What he was in 2000 is irrelevant. In 2015, he is a beast.

[AKKOLADE]

So we're apparently talking about Steve Perry? Who played quiz bowl for UVA in the early 2000s, was only the #1 scorer on his team once and finished tied for 21st at nationals that year?

Jerry Stackhouse is just as good as Kevin Durant, dude. Only if he had 6 months to prepare.

You do realize that people can and do improve substantially, right? I went from only tangentially being involved in anything more than occasional Buzztime and pub quizzes to being the LearnedLeague Champion in less than 5 years, and Steve is a far more talented and motivated player than I am. What he was in 2000 is irrelevant. In 2015, he is a beast.

And it's well known that Matt Jackson's a ham and egger.

C'mon son.

[Ithaca Cricket Ump]

So we're apparently talking about Steve Perry? Who played quiz bowl for UVA in the early 2000s, was only the #1 scorer on his team once and finished tied for 21st at nationals that year?

Jerry Stackhouse is just as good as Kevin Durant, dude. Only if he had 6 months to prepare.

You do realize that people can and do improve substantially, right? I went from only tangentially being involved in anything more than occasional Buzztime and pub quizzes to being the LearnedLeague Champion in less than 5 years, and Steve is a far more talented and motivated player than I am. What he was in 2000 is irrelevant. In 2015, he is a beast.

And it's well known that Matt Jackson's a ham and egger.

C'mon son.

I never knew that you were such a fan of Ray Bolger.

[AKKOLADE]

So we're apparently talking about Steve Perry? Who played quiz bowl for UVA in the early 2000s, was only the #1 scorer on his team once and finished tied for 21st at nationals that year?

Jerry Stackhouse is just as good as Kevin Durant, dude. Only if he had 6 months to prepare.

You do realize that people can and do improve substantially, right? I went from only tangentially being involved in anything more than occasional Buzztime and pub quizzes to being the LearnedLeague Champion in less than 5 years, and Steve is a far more talented and motivated player than I am. What he was in 2000 is irrelevant. In 2015, he is a beast.

And it's well known that Matt Jackson's a ham and egger.

C'mon son.

I never knew that you were such a fan of Ray Bolger.

I never knew you were a fan of bad posts and being petulant over bad arguments, yet here we are! What a world!

[Banana Stand]

Why is the proposed format a 1v1 competition with non-academic questions? Besides the fact that this entire argument is stupid, I'm pretty sure nobody is arguing that Matt Jackson has a comparable knowledge of trash to this dude. Stick him on a CO team and see how he does. Give him some prep time, too.

[Ike]

Yeah, I mean Albert Einstein could get good at quizbowl if you gave him six months and time traveling expenses.

One thing I will say: the comments that denigrate Matt Jackson's ability from the first poster in this thread and the J-board idiot feel like they are compensating for the intellectual insecurity of the people who make them. After all, no one is really all that interested in whether or not Matt Jackson reads stuff*, and certainly no one in this community gives a hoot about whether or not some J-board person is better than Matt Jackson at science or whatever**.

Grow up, people. Let Matt Jackson live in the moment, and as a community let's be there to support his great run all the way.

*And I can assure you myself Matt reads a lot.
** Well, they might be, if only to show how idiotic the first poster's comments are.

[grapesmoker]

lol this thread

[Skepticism and Animal Feed]

Mr. Perry's primary accusation is that quizbowl players are not good at processing context clues. There's probably some kernel of truth to this: quizbowl is primarily about recalling facts, and memorizing facts is by far the most efficient way of getting good at quizbowl. Quizbowlers rationally neglect the art of becoming good at figuring out context clues in favor of the higher payoff of learning facts.

Except, at the highest levels of quizbowl, when everyone knows a ton of facts, things like using context clues to narrow down answer space ("Yaphe Method" as we call it) do become important and perhaps even decisive. Matt Jackson certainly played at that kind of level, and if I'm not mistaken has made multiple posts on this very set of forums talking about how knowing things is not enough to win quizbowl championships. I also think that, apart from the small sample size of one question at the end of his 14th episode, Matt on Jeopardy showed off not just a lot of knowledge (typical for a quizbowler), but also an almost supernatural ability to play various "figure out what kind of cute this question is trying to be" games to identify things from limited factual clues but rich context clues (atypical for a modern quizbowler). It led me to comment on Facebook that as good as Matt Jackson was at quizbowl in 2010 - 2014, he might have been even better in 1990 - 1994, when that kind of "figure it out" stuff was a much bigger part of the game.

[bmcke]

A relevant issue is that quizbowlers are under-represented at the WQC every year, though many quizbowlers could excel at it. People should try to play that next June, just for easy glory.

[jonpin]

I also think that, apart from the small sample size of one question at the end of his 14th episode, Matt on Jeopardy showed off not just a lot of knowledge (typical for a quizbowler), but also an almost supernatural ability to play various "figure out what kind of cute this question is trying to be" games to identify things from limited factual clues but rich context clues (atypical for a modern quizbowler). It led me to comment on Facebook that as good as Matt Jackson was at quizbowl in 2010 - 2014, he might have been even better in 1990 - 1994, when that kind of "figure it out" stuff was a much bigger part of the game.

I disagree, both that Matt was outstanding at figuring out the cute clues and that his final miss was a rare counterexample. That final was hard and Kennedy Center was a perfectly reasonable conclusion from "1962" and "galaxy gold"; my guess was Cape Canaveral, and I never even would've thought of the Space Needle. So that was a good job of putting the pieces together to try to solve. To contrast, him missing Eleanor Roosevelt on a clue with the mention of "fireside" argued against him excelling in that field. I'm not saying he was bad at it, but that was one clear example (and I feel there were maybe a few others) of not getting a "clever" hint.

A relevant issue is that quizbowlers are under-represented at the WQC every year, though many quizbowlers could excel at it. People should try to play that next June, just for easy glory.

[clicks link] Well, that was the same day as PACE NSC, so... [shrug]

[Auks Ran Ova]

Mr. Perry's primary accusation is that quizbowl players are not good at processing context clues. There's probably some kernel of truth to this: quizbowl is primarily about recalling facts, and memorizing facts is by far the most efficient way of getting good at quizbowl. Quizbowlers rationally neglect the art of becoming good at figuring out context clues in favor of the higher payoff of learning facts.

Except, at the highest levels of quizbowl, when everyone knows a ton of facts, things like using context clues to narrow down answer space ("Yaphe Method" as we call it) do become important and perhaps even decisive. Matt Jackson certainly played at that kind of level, and if I'm not mistaken has made multiple posts on this very set of forums talking about how knowing things is not enough to win quizbowl championships. I also think that, apart from the small sample size of one question at the end of his 14th episode, Matt on Jeopardy showed off not just a lot of knowledge (typical for a quizbowler), but also an almost supernatural ability to play various "figure out what kind of cute this question is trying to be" games to identify things from limited factual clues but rich context clues (atypical for a modern quizbowler). It led me to comment on Facebook that as good as Matt Jackson was at quizbowl in 2010 - 2014, he might have been even better in 1990 - 1994, when that kind of "figure it out" stuff was a much bigger part of the game.

Also, the "One Art"/"Howl" example is a terrible example for Perry's argument--you don't get a concrete fact out of the question, unless by some outlandish chance you happen to have read that specific quote before, but you do get that a critic was remarking on it in 1956 and that it was written by a non-heterosexual. Guessing "One Art" from those clues, while wrong for several reasons (it wasn't written until long after 1956, for one) is exactly the sort of "using context clues to figure out an answer" that Perry inexplicably claims it isn't. Perry's basically just making fun of Matt for having gotten the question wrong and slapping on whatever explanation sounds convenient.

[The Time Keeper]

What really matters is who can bench more

[hokie168]

Plus, saying "he would be just as good as one of the ~5 best players of all time with six months of preparation!" is preposterous in any activity with any modicum of history.

It would depend on the exact format, but even in quizbowl, the result of 10 solo matches between the two would most likely be 5-5, or 6-4 one way or the other. It's not, by any means, the mismatch Will implied it would be in his post. Considering that I'm pretty much the one person here who's seen BOTH of these guys play numerous times (in other words, the one person posting here who's actually IN A POSITION TO KNOW), you might want to consider giving a bit of credence to my opinion here.

I didn't see this thread until today. I'm one person who has played both Steve (while he was at Rhodes and UVA, as well as once in an online contest in the past couple years) and MattJax (Yale, obviously) multiple times- my career had a 14-year gap between undergrad and going back for my teaching certification.

I find the idea that Steve could split 5-5 against Matt at quizbowl after only 6 months of prep to be utterly laughable.

Steve is very talented, certainly- along with John Kenney and Eliot Brenner, he's one of the mid-Atlantic players circa 2000 who immediately comes to mind as being able to do quite well in the modern game given adjustment time. If he were suddenly able to play ACF Nats 2016 as a free agent, I don't think there's a team out there who wouldn't want him aboard (with the possible exception of Michigan, depending on their specialists). But as a friend says, people optimize for the game that they spend the most time on, whether it be quizbowl, Learned League, WQC, pub trivia, or something else. And quizbowl has changed a great deal in the past 10-15 years. People have access to study methods and resources that players in the late-90s could only dream about. On an absolute scale, the top high school players and the average college players are much better.

Most of all, the questions have gotten harder. Have you moderated at ACF Nats (or CO) lately? I don't think it's possible for any player who's been gone for over a decade to dominate with only 6 months of study time. I played against MattJax at ICT and Nats in 2014. While I believe Matt would give a lot of credit to his teammates- Jacob, Grace, and Ashvin are each fine players in their own right- he was clearly the big dog on that team.

Let's take a look at UVA at the start of '13-'14. There's Matt Bollinger, who at the start of the year was already considered the best active player in the game and known for his legendary study binges. The end of the '12-'13 season hit him hard enough that when I heard about his prep for the '14 championship tournaments, I asked him if we were going to see him go Rocky IV and raise his fists screaming "JAAAAACCCKKKKSSSOOOONNNN!!!!" from the top of a snowy mountain. Tommy Casalaspi was the #2 and would have been the #1 seat on almost any other team. Evan Adams, our #3, was the top scorer at ICT when he was at VCU and had gotten significantly better in the three years since. Everyone on that team spent more than six months studying hard for 2014 ICT/Nats. By the time ICT rolled around, I thought that Tommy was probably the #2 science player in the country and that MattBo had potentially hit the highest individual level of absolute skill (as opposed to dominance against contemporaries) that the game had ever seen.

For all that, we beat Yale by a tossup in the ICT playoffs, 5 points in the finals of ICT, and by a roughly 2-tossup margin at Nats. I don't think you realize just how tough the game has gotten in the past few years and how good MattJax and other top quizbowlers are.

If both were motivated, then I would expect that after 6 months on Nats or Nats-minus level questions, a series between the two would more likely end 9-1 in favor of Matt rather than a 5-5 split. I put in the motivation caveat because I believe Matt is taking a lengthy vacation from anything quizbowl after his editing efforts last spring.