ACF Nationals 2016 Discussion

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Re: ACF Nationals 2016 Discussion

Post by Ike »

ThisIsMyUsername wrote:
Ike wrote:
Adventure Temple Trail wrote:I also really like how prompts in this set were merely underlined (in contrast to acceptable answers, which are underlined and bolded); I would like that to become the new standard for all mACF packets from here on out, since the current waffliness between displaying prompts between "quotes" (much like unacceptable answers) or in bold-and-underline (much like acceptable answers) greatly contributes to moderator error.
Oh yeah, my idea and innovation! I'm going to take credit for this as well.
Then you're going to have to go back and time and stop me from doing it in RILKE first, last summer.
Damn it! You're right, I guess you'll get second billing and we'll call it Jose-Lawrence formatting, just like the way scientific discoveries work in the real world!
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Yeah I don't think anyone is really objecting to the idea of asking about classroomy stuff but Westbrook, rather almost everyone can support the dual approach Rob mentions. However, when said approach involves calling the Symposium "not even really a work of philosophy" and asking for more questions on neo-Fregeans who are only encountered by a small subset of those even practicing philosophy, then yeah it does make the back-to-classroom movement look awful.
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Re: ACF Nationals 2016 Discussion

Post by grapesmoker »

I would like to repeat my semi-regular observation about the irony of Theory Westbrook expressing various crazy opinions that have absolutely nothing to do with what Practice Westbrook does. The Janus-like character of Ryan the Theorist and Ryan the Actual Editor is truly a sui generis quizbowl marvel.
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Re: ACF Nationals 2016 Discussion

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Mike Bentley wrote:
Adventure Temple Trail wrote:I also really like how prompts in this set were merely underlined (in contrast to acceptable answers, which are underlined and bolded); I would like that to become the new standard for all mACF packets from here on out, since the current waffliness between displaying prompts between "quotes" (much like unacceptable answers) or in bold-and-underline (much like acceptable answers) greatly contributes to moderator error.
Yeah I like this. I'm going to add something like this to QEMS2.
I also really liked the underline-sans-bolding strategy for rendering prompt instructions. Mike, it'd be amazing if you could introduce that functionality to QEMS2.
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Re: ACF Nationals 2016 Discussion

Post by Tees-Exe Line »

Snap Wexley wrote:I would like to repeat my semi-regular observation about the irony of Theory Westbrook expressing various crazy opinions that have absolutely nothing to do with what Practice Westbrook does. The Janus-like character of Ryan the Theorist and Ryan the Actual Editor is truly a sui generis quizbowl marvel.
I disagree that there's no correspondence at all there, and were I to comment upon this tournament as a player, I would simply say that I found the history boring on the whole and it's unfortunate that's what the quizbowl community wants to plod through every year for its national championship. While I was glad to note the absence of William Pendleton and his ilk from tossup answer lines this year, I should congratulate Ryan on the coming-to-fruition of his lifelong quest to make the War of Mantuan Succession an answerable bonus part.

EDIT: I'll say one thing for Weiner--he had a way with history questions.
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Re: ACF Nationals 2016 Discussion

Post by naan/steak-holding toll »

Tees-Exe Line wrote:
Snap Wexley wrote:I would like to repeat my semi-regular observation about the irony of Theory Westbrook expressing various crazy opinions that have absolutely nothing to do with what Practice Westbrook does. The Janus-like character of Ryan the Theorist and Ryan the Actual Editor is truly a sui generis quizbowl marvel.
I disagree that there's no correspondence at all there, and were I to comment upon this tournament as a player, I would simply say that I found the history boring on the whole and it's unfortunate that's what the quizbowl community wants to plod through for its national championship. While I was glad to note the absence of William Pendleton and his ilk from tossup answer lines this year, I should congratulate Ryan on the coming-to-fruition of his lifelong quest to make the War of Mantuan Succession an answerable bonus part.

EDIT: I'll say one thing for Weiner--he had a way with history questions.
Since someone else has spoken: I'm going to disagree with Marshall's assessment of the history in that I found a lot of the history questions exciting to play on, though mainly because of their content (i.e. "awesome, only Westbrook ever digs this stuff up" - though I think Matt Bollinger's also done a great job of this in his history work) This includes "boring but notable" things as well as "cool, out of the way exciting things." For example, there was nothing wrong with that War of Mantuan Succession bonus - it actually had a good hard / easy / medium structure and asked about information connected to noted extremely important conflict The Thirty Years' War. You do need some questions on things like these.

Nonetheless, I think I'm going to agree with Marshall's sentiment by saying that, conversely, a substantial number of history questions seemed to not care about what actually might be important,and even more often were frequently calibrated based on an insane standard of difficulty (which, as last year, may well have been "this has come up X times and is therefore a middle part" i.e. that bonus on the Altalena affair which had a hard part that my IDF/Israel history buff friend was baffled by, the bonus on Anne of Kiev, the bonus on cool stuff in ancient Yemen, etc).

Probably the worst example of this was on the question about the Lodi dynasty, which seemed to lead in with two or three lines (one would probably be fine) about a legend about a seed that grew into some random mosque in New Dehli. The next line was about some poetry that (probably) nobody buzzed on. The next clue namedrops the incredibly generically named predecessor dynasty ("Sayyid" simply means "descendant of Muhammad" and there are a tons of dynasties that use that name, including a much more notable one in Oman) - at least it's paired with a clue about a guy people probably won't know either. Nice, over half your tossup is gone. There's a pair of clues that appear to be solid after that (an obscure succession crisis between Ibrahim and his brother, the construction of Agra, naming some rulers). I'm going to go out on a limb and say this ended up being a neg, buzzer race or going dead in most rooms because there's not even a single clue about the thing most people in quizbowl would know about the dynasty for (losing the Battle of Panipat to Babur) until after "For 10 points!"

As in my opening paragraph, I will praise this tournament for going out of its way to dig up a bunch of cool out-of-the-way history topics and keeping a good overall distribution in a way that many other tournaments do not. There were a number of questions that did highlight this (the Toluid civil war question, while it could well have just been on Mongol civil wars, was a good idea for a topic, and the "Punt" tossup was also sweet if a little hard). That said, if the people trying to ask more questions about (really cool) old history topics choose to do so this way, I would understand why people prefer strongly modern questions (beyond the easier ability to study for them and write them).

In addition, it wasn't just Westbrook digging up cool, out-of-the-way stuff - Ike and Rob did some great work in the arts and RMP, or at least the bits that I know. I think the music had some minor subdistribution issues, like having a lot more Baroque content in bonuses and perhaps being a tad light on older stuff overall (at least to my ear) but this wasn't really that objectionable and the questions were quite good in general. As Isaac said, the religion probably could've used more Buddhism but that's also honestly not awful either. Finally, I can't really comment on Billy's science, but I will say that I was extremely excited to be able to get a tossup based on the Mexican hat potential.
Last edited by naan/steak-holding toll on Wed Apr 20, 2016 2:31 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: ACF Nationals 2016 Discussion

Post by Sima Guang Hater »

Will's pointed out two issues with the history that I noticed while editing - namely, a lack of middle clues, really hard bonuses (I don't particularly agree with his example, since the Lavon affair is a pretty important political snafu of that time period), and occasionally way-too-difficult tossup answerlines.
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Re: ACF Nationals 2016 Discussion

Post by naan/steak-holding toll »

The Quest for the Historical Mukherjesus wrote:Will's pointed out two issues with the history that I noticed while editing - namely, a lack of middle clues, really hard bonuses (I don't particularly agree with his example, since the Lavon affair is a pretty important political snafu of that time period), and occasionally way-too-difficult tossup answerlines.
I mean the Altalena affair is easier than the Lavon affair (and I think it's come more up before, though that's not really a good standard) but both are pretty hard. Either is probably acceptable as a hard part, with Lavon likely being more appropriate considering the rest of the set, but the middle part could have easily been Irgun (with maybe the easiest clue withheld, or just giving Altalena and one or two more clues) or something.

Lodi is a hard answerline, but it's definitely one that's doable - you just have to compensate by cluing things that people actually do know or that they probably should know if they've done some reading and cut down on hard anecdote clues. You'd want a couple lines about Panipat or really anything involving Ibrahim's conflict with Babur - you just have to do that to make the question reasonably playable.

EDIT: I think that the prelims history was, in general, better than the playoffs history in this respect.
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Re: ACF Nationals 2016 Discussion

Post by Ike »

Yeah so there is another Buddhism tossup (though, look out!) in the Minnesota packet.

Also, someone asked me where is all the math in the prelims. As it turns out, three math tossups can be found in Minnesota's packet, Chicago A's packet and Oxford's packet. - I use a 25-25-25-25 distribution for math, CS, earth science, astronomy. So, it really sucks that it just happened to work out that the tiebreaker, playin to the finals and a packet that the top bracket didn't get to hear (Oxford's) had all the math (maths in the case of Oxford's packet I guess). I seriously apologize - this is not something I noticed when the packet order was proposed; I'll just advise future editors to be a bit more cognizant about this.

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Re: ACF Nationals 2016 Discussion

Post by wcheng »

For what little it's worth, I have to say that I enjoyed playing this tournament. I thought that most of the history tossups were gettable, if obscure, and that they covered a reasonable selection of topics. My only real gripe from this tournament was the second clue from the Silla tossup about the bell, since during my spring break I visited the Bell Tower in Beijing where I read about a legend of a child being cast into the bell. As described in the clue, the two legends are practically identical.
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Re: ACF Nationals 2016 Discussion

Post by No Rules Westbrook »

I just wanna say that Punt tossup sucked balls. The whole thing was basically screaming "this sure sounds like a magical place where Egyptians went and got cool stuff!" - but that's because there really are not many other clues for Punt.

The examples that people give are always funny to me - that Anne of Kiev bonus was almost certainly too hard. On the other hand, Altalena and Lavon are both very gettable in the qb world (the "canon" justification). On the other other hand - both Dhu Nawas and the Himyarite Kingdom are very notable influential things to people who study that region and time period (the "curriculum" defense). As Jerry suggests, Actual Editor Westbrook has always used both of those approaches in fairly equal measure. The Theorist Westbrook who picks fights in these threads is just struggling against the current for every tournament to become "Eyes That Do Not See" - which is, I think, the goal of many new wave players.

The Lodi Dynasty question is certainly not the highpoint of this tournament, but both Bahlul and Babrak are obvious buzzpoints - I also don't think it's a difficult question at all.


PS. My Chinese history buff panda hates the Toluid Civil War. He only cares about mulberry cultivation in the Late Tang Dynasty.
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Re: ACF Nationals 2016 Discussion

Post by Cheynem »

Young people want to turn quizbowl into well received visual tournaments?
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Re: ACF Nationals 2016 Discussion

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The Anti-Canonist Movement wants to turn all question into audio/visual mosaics that speak in code to people who have taken the right class or read the right textbook, while excluding people who have learned clues on their filthy flashcards (at least until post-FTP - where those filthy dogs can have their beloved binary associations).
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Re: ACF Nationals 2016 Discussion

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Re: ACF Nationals 2016 Discussion

Post by Banana Stand »

I really enjoyed this set, especially the literature. There were a lot of interesting and buzzable clues from works I'd read. This isn't much of a gripe, but for the tossup on Charles X, I remember the Anti-Sacrilege Act being dropped first line which seemed slightly easy, especially compared to most of the other history lead-ins in the set.
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Re: ACF Nationals 2016 Discussion

Post by naan/steak-holding toll »

No Rules Westbrook wrote:The Lodi Dynasty question is certainly not the highpoint of this tournament, but both Bahlul and Babrak are obvious buzzpoints - I also don't think it's a difficult question at all.
As it is used here, the word "buzzpoint" seems to mean absolutely nothing other than "a point at which you can buzz." Yes, those are buzzable clues because somebody could, in fact, hypothetically buzz on them! But how many people are actually buzzing? And you're already six lines into the tossup - seriously, what standard of "obvious" are you using? Just because a clue is something you can hypothetically buzz on does not mean "oh, time to push this way down in my tossup on a hard answerline." You have to assess what you think people might actually know about something in addition to assembling a series of clues in pyramidal order. If the answer is easy you can get away with some unorthodox/tough stuff, but if you're picking a hard answer you really ought to examine "how do I think people will encounter this" in order to construct a good question.

The Punt tossup (from my memories of playing it in a delightful scrimmage with some Stanford and Duke players) actually seemed to do this because it explained a lot of things that were important or interesting about the region in ancient times (when, indeed, a lot of Egyptians went there) but then transitioned to clues about more modern stuff in Puntland, which is something more people will have encountered - especially if they aren't strong ancient history players. And no, there's a lot of "exotic" places old school Middle Eastern people could go to get cool stuff - Saba/Sheba, Dilmun, Nubia, Libya, etc - Punt's within the realm of possibility if you only know the context of "cool exotic-sounding places you can go in the ancient world" but it's certainly not the only option, and making a bold guess-buzz like that isn't going to always work out. So, it's a good tossup because it tells you why the place is important/cool/worth learning about and it employs history-relevant clues that make it gettable.

This isn't really a "schoolwork-based" notion of how history should be done - after all, I've taken exactly one history class in my entire college career and almost all my knowledge is from books, quizbowl, and the Internet. This is a plea to construct questions in a way that actually ask what people might learn/have heard of - especially about if they go about learning history in any way other than reading packets, but really just what they might have heard of at all. I love Ryan's work at bringing in cool, interesting, fresh material into the distribution - I just wished he presented it in a way that wasn't so brutal on the players.
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Re: ACF Nationals 2016 Discussion

Post by Tees-Exe Line »

wcheng wrote:My only real gripe from this tournament was the second clue from the Silla tossup about the bell, since during my spring break I visited the Bell Tower in Beijing where I read about a legend of a child being cast into the bell. As described in the clue, the two legends are practically identical.
If the idea that a Platonic dialogue is not philosophy discredits the "real knowledge" faction, then surely a history question that's ambiguous between two legends does the same to the ancien regime.
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Re: ACF Nationals 2016 Discussion

Post by grapesmoker »

No Rules Westbrook wrote:The Anti-Canonist Movement wants to turn all question into audio/visual mosaics that speak in code to people who have taken the right class or read the right textbook, while excluding people who have learned clues on their filthy flashcards (at least until post-FTP - where those filthy dogs can have their beloved binary associations).
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Re: ACF Nationals 2016 Discussion

Post by No Rules Westbrook »

presented it in a way that wasn't so brutal on the players.
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Re: ACF Nationals 2016 Discussion

Post by Majin Buu Roi »

I know I'm a bit late to this but, oh well. This overall is probably the favorite of all the sets I've ever played. That might be my inexperience with the this difficulty level speaking, but I had a tremendous amount of fun. I'd like to single out the social science for particular praise, on account of the solid balance between questions about concepts and questions about people. I agree with Isaac that anthro was slightly AWOL, but I really loved (perhaps selfishly, given my course of study) the healthy amount of poli sci and linguistics.

I do also want concur that Puntland is not a worthwhile thing to ask about (unlike the Himyarites) for the simple reason that it keeps you from asking about the obscenely fascinating actual history of Ethiopia and Somalia.

Lastly, I think the Torah interpretation tossup might have been my favorite of the tournament, for the simple reason that my crazy English teacher in high school had us apply hevruta methods to everything we read!
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Re: ACF Nationals 2016 Discussion

Post by Ike »

Hello friends,

The set has been sent off for archiving. It will be available shortly. Thank you for your continued patience!

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Re: ACF Nationals 2016 Discussion

Post by No Rules Westbrook »

You don't need to wait for the set to be posted to start writing your Chi Open tossups on PBS Pinchback.
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Re: ACF Nationals 2016 Discussion

Post by Auks Ran Ova »

Here is a pdf version based on the original documents.
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Re: ACF Nationals 2016 Discussion

Post by hftf »

Please be careful when writing clues based on music notation. Here are a few examples of clues where it seems the music notation was incorrectly “translated” into English. While I believe these were really good clues, a few simple mistakes (which I have underlined) made them unsuccessful in practice.
  1. A clue in the impromptus tossup, referring to the beginning of Fantaisie-Impromptu, has a factual mistake:
    Editors 1 wrote:2. A set of four of these pieces was posited to be a "sonata in disguise" by Robert Schumann, since the first and last are in F minor while the second and third are in A-flat major and B-flat major. Another piece in this genre opens with the left hand playing a G-G sharp augmented octave dyad before launching into rising and falling sextuplets, while the right hand plays a sixteenth-note melody. The first piece referred to by this term was composed by Jan Václav Voříšek, who collected six of them in his Opus 7. A B-flat major piece in this genre consists of variations on a theme from the composer's earlier Entr'acte No. 3 from Rosamunde. Schubert wrote two sets of four of these pieces, which are often paired with his Six Moments Musicaux. The melody of the moderato cantabile middle section of another of these pieces was reused in the song "I'm Always Chasing Rainbows". For 10 points, Chopin wrote a "Fantaisie" example of what genre of solo musical composition, whose name suggests extemporaneity?

    ANSWER: impromptus [accept Fantaisie-Impromptu; accept Franz Schubert's impromptus until "dyad"]
    Although there is only one G-sharp in the key signature, any G in any octave on the staff is supposed to be sharp.

    Image

    This can be fixed minimally by changing “G-G sharp augmented octave dyad” to “G-sharp octave.” However, I suggest changing the clue a bit more to say
    “…with the left hand holding a G-sharp octave for two measures before launching into rising and falling eighth note sextuplets, against which the right hand plays a sixteenth-note melody.” I added “for two measures” to emphasize the contrast between measures 2 and 3, and I added “eighth note” and “against which” near the end to emphasize the polyrhythm starting on measure 5 – which I hesitate to call a “melody.” Here, I would prefer something less vague than “melody” that also provides a little more context, such as “repeated passages of sixteenth notes.”
  2. Some clues in the Nuages tossup, referring to the beginnings of Nuages gris and “Nuages”, have some mistakes:
    Finals 1 wrote:6. This noun appears in the title of a short piece that opens with a rising and falling theme in the right hand that goes B, E, A-sharp, high B, G, E before the left hand begins playing a tremolo alternating between B flat and A natural. Two unusual seven-note chords end that Franz Liszt piece, whose title shares this noun with a song whose English lyric adaptation is often called "The Bluest Kind of Blues". A movement with this title features an F-sharp major interlude marked "Un peu anime" that is dominated by flute and harp. That movement with this title opens with a melody played by the clarinets and bassoons before the cor anglais enters playing a theme that begins with a rising triplet starting on G-sharp. A song first recorded in 1940 by the Quintette du Hot Club du France shares this title with a movement that is followed by "Fêtes"and "Sirènes" in an 1899 suite. For 10 points, give this atmospheric name shared by a Django Reinhardt standard and the first of Debussy's Nocturnes.

    ANSWER: Nuages [or Clouds; or Wolken; accept Nuages gris or Trübe Wolken or Gray Clouds or Murky Clouds]
    The author seems to have interpreted the notes from Nuages gris in treble clef, but they are actually in bass clef. (All credit to Jacob for pointing this out.)

    Image

    It’s easy to fix this: “D G C-sharp, high D B-flat G.” The question also confusingly describes the left-hand part, which alternates between (a B-flat octave tremolo) and (an A octave tremolo). This is quite different from “a tremolo alternating between B-flat and A-natural.”

    While the English horn motive from “Nuages” starts at G-sharp as written in the full score, it is actually a C-sharp in concert pitch, since the English horn is a transposing instrument in F. Clues that refer to the same piece, but use different transpositions, can be confusing. (In this case, the English horn motive notably lands on a concert F, which is a tritone away from the primary tone of the piece: B.) One way to notice this is to check a piece’s piano reduction, if available, which should be in concert pitch. In these snippets, spot how the flute is in concert pitch (B minor key signature), but the English horn is not (different key – and time! – signature).

    Image      Image
    Snippet from full score (transposed)                            Snippet from piano reduction (concert pitch)

    I would like to suggest a few more improvements. I studied Debussy’s “Nuages” in class, but could not place the middle clues at all when watching the finals. It’s easy to get lost in a list of instruments (five in a row!) without a little more context. Here, again, I think it would help to be more specific than “melody.” For example, my textbook calls it an “oscillating pattern of fifths and thirds, adapted from a Musorgsky song [in Bez solntsa], that conveys an impression of movement, but no harmonic direction.”¹ I would describe the use of timbre with more detail by saying “two clarinets and two bassoons,” which harmonizes well with a “fifths and thirds” clue. I would further describe the F-sharp major interlude using adjectives like “pentatonic,” “exotic,” “gamelan-like,” or “Asian-style.” I’d include the fact that the flute and harp are in unison: Debussy uses these expressive timbres in an attempt to imitate the sounds of gamelans, etc. And if there were a little more room, I might mention something to the effect that the English horn motive “quickly rises and slowly falls through a segment of the octatonic scale.”² References to the “exotic” scales that Debussy was fond of mixing together – octatonic, pentatonic, Dorian mode, etc. – can also help narrow down the answer. I believe these carefully considered “extra” bits of information enhance the question a lot, increasing the buzzability and clue density at the cost of a small number of words.

    Here’s one way, though maybe not the best way, to put together these Debussy clues:
    In a D-sharp Dorian interlude from a movement with this title, a flute and harp play pentatonic tunes in unison. In that movement with this title, an octatonic cor anglais-only motive in 4/4, which quickly rises from C-sharp to F-natural then descends slowly, punctuates the Musorgsky-inspired opening 6/4 passage in which two clarinets and two bassoons oscillate fifths and thirds.
Finally, adding a little more context not only improves these kinds of clues, but also serves as a sort of “error correction” mechanism. That is, the entire clue doesn’t become useless in case part of the clue is wrong – or if the player mishears a few words, due to a cranky moderator who doesn’t enunciate, or for whatever other reason. To use a real example, a bonus part asking for the musical mode that consists of the white notes starting from “B,” but doesn’t say much else of help in the remaining 36 words, may flop in practice if a player mishears the name of the note. If the question had provided several different ways to “get to” the answer, that problem is not likely to arise. I don’t think it will be that time consuming once authors get into a habit of making sure to “nail down” their clues.

I do not intend to pick on anyone. Again, I honestly thought these clues were very well chosen, and overall, that the music was very good. I appreciate the authors’ effort and care and look forward to more questions by them. I just wanted to share a few constructive suggestions and a note of caution, and hope that these can assist future authors.


TL;DR: Double-check clues based on music notation for factual accuracy – key signatures and clefs are easy to miss. For descriptions of music, try to incorporate context clues beyond a direct delineation of what is happening. Explore sources and focus on what exactly makes the music so important, interesting, and unique.

____
¹ Burkholder, Grout, and Palisca, A History of Western Music, 9th ed., 795.
² Ibid, 796.

Edited to fix typos, tweak sentences, links to sources about “Nuages,” add remarks about transposition, add a TL;DR.
Last edited by hftf on Tue Apr 26, 2016 4:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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George Corfield
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Re: ACF Nationals 2016 Discussion

Post by George Corfield »

When the impromptus tossup was read in our game, I buzzed on the second sentence description of Fantasie-Impromptu and promptly realised I didn't know whether "Fantasy" or "Impromptu" was being clued. I went with the former and was negged. As far as my probably limited understanding goes, they are musical genres which are very similar (out of interest, are there indeed any concrete differences?) - was my answer deemed wrong because Fantasie-Impromptu is typically grouped with Chopin's other Impromptus?
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vinteuil
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Re: ACF Nationals 2016 Discussion

Post by vinteuil »

George Corfield wrote:When the impromptus tossup was read in our game, I buzzed on the second sentence description of Fantasie-Impromptu and promptly realised I didn't know whether "Fantasy" or "Impromptu" was being clued. I went with the former and was negged. As far as my probably limited understanding goes, they are musical genres which are very similar (out of interest, are there indeed any concrete differences?) - was my answer deemed wrong because Fantasie-Impromptu is typically grouped with Chopin's other Impromptus?
There's no way to know this without some research, but Chopin himself never called the piece "Fantasie"-anything, just Impromptu.
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