2019 Terrapin speciifc question discussion and requests

[wcheng]

Please comment on specific questions and post your requests to see questions in this thread.

[Carlos Be]

I appreciated the Nezahualcoyotl content and the tossup on African adaptations of Ancient Greek plays.

The tossup on The Garden of Forking Paths cliffed enormously; it went straight from quotes to namedropping major characters. I'm all for cluing memorable quotes from well-read works but you gotta put something to smooth out the cliff. (Borges has also written enough stuff that you could ask about other stories that might not be so well-mined.)

I'm going to guess that the French tossup cluing Romanian literature did not play well, although I don't think this is the fault of the tossup. I negged it, but it's my fault that I didn't know what language Tzara wrote in, since the language of a work is pretty fundamental to the work. (On the other hand, if it weren't for the language tripping people up, The Gas Heart is probably too easy for a lead-in.)

The lit had a noticeable amount of common links, and a few of those (Inquisition, gold rush, courtroom) felt like they didn't really work well. British Fascism seemed like a good idea in terms of content, but I feel like it could have been transparent. I powered it by asking "what's a roughly mid-20th century ideology that would be mocked in British literature" and not by actually recognizing the clues. Quite a few of the bonuses were connected by sketchy links. I thought "cane field" was a good bonus part.

Jumping subjects, I have never seen a good tossup on continuity and I don't believe that it is possible to write one. Splitting fields was a good bonus part.

[AGoodMan]

I wonder if there will be multiple first buzzes at the “Fear of the Lord” clue for the wisdom tossup.

[wcheng]

I wonder if there will be multiple first buzzes at the “Fear of the Lord” clue for the wisdom tossup.

Looking at the buzz statistics, your intuition is correct. There were a cluster of first buzzes around there. Do you think that clue was too early? There hasn't really been a tossup on this before, and I don't have a traditional churchgoing background, so it's pretty hard for me to evaluate clues like this. The remainder of the buzzes are spread out well over the next few sentences, though.

[Carlos Be]

A few minor things:

I'm not sure why Chaucer / Marlowe were under "World/Other." 1/1 British literature is plenty.

In the tossup on Ulysses, I think I remember it saying that the quote "hope your road is a long one" is addressed to Odysseus. I don't think this would significantly affect gameplay, but there's no reason to assume that "Ithaka" is addressed to Odysseus. The final line "you’ll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean" suggests that Ithaka is not the literal Ithaca from Greek myth.

[warum]

I really liked the violin sonatas bonus and the Chopin etudes and Vivaldi tossups. I thought the tossup on "I think, therefore I am" was kind of transparent.
Can I see the GPU tossup?

[wcheng]

General-purpose APIs for these things, like CUDA, let developers define functions called “kernels” that are executed in parallel by several different threads when called. The cuDNN library is used with these things to implement deep neural networks and accelerate frameworks like Tensorflow. These devices execute a kind of program with “fragment” and “vertex” types called a (*) shader. Shaders are executed as part of a pipeline in which these devices perform rasterization and output color information to framebuffers. The open-source API OpenGL is used to interface with these devices; another such API is Microsoft’s DirectX. For 10 points, name these specialized processors manufactured by companies like AMD and Nvidia, used to render images for display.
ANSWER: GPUs [or graphics processing units or GPGPU; accept video cards or graphics cards; prompt on processors]
<WC, Other Science: Computer Science>

[Bosa of York]

I think the second sentence of the Alexandria tossup saying that a "king of this city" commissioned the Septuagint is somewhat misleading; Ptolemy II was pharaoh, or perhaps King of Egypt, but to my knowledge neither he nor anyone else was ever "King of Alexandria." It might be better to say "a king from this city" or "a ruler of/from this city" so people don't get confused in that way.

Also, I think that putting the name of Norte Chico in the first sentence of the Peru tossup is ill-advised (link has audio).

[wcheng]

I think the second sentence of the Alexandria tossup saying that a "king of this city" commissioned the Septuagint is somewhat misleading; Ptolemy II was pharaoh, or perhaps King of Egypt, but to my knowledge neither he nor anyone else was ever "King of Alexandria." It might be better to say "a king from this city" or "a ruler of/from this city" so people don't get confused in that way.

Also, I think that putting the name of Norte Chico in the first sentence of the Peru tossup is ill-advised (link has audio).

A philosopher from this place coined the phrase “sober intoxication” to describe divine possession in On Flight and Finding; that philosopher also allegorically interpreted scripture in On the Creation. A king of this place is traditionally credited with commissioning 72 scholars to translate the Septuagint. In a biblical narrative, a man hid a silver cup in his youngest (*) brother’s sack to frame his brothers for stealing, after they had come to this place to buy grain during a famine. According to that narrative, the “land of Goshen” in this place was settled by the Jews after this place’s ruler was given advice to prevent a famine by Joseph, who had been sold into slavery in this place by his brothers. For 10 points, name this place where, according to the Bible, the Jews lived in captivity prior to the Exodus.
ANSWER: Egypt [accept Alexandria until “silver” is read, and anti-prompt afterwards; prompt on North Africa] (The philosopher in the first line is Philo of Alexandria.)

It calls Egypt "this place" throughout the question, but early on Alexandria is a reasonable answer so it is acceptable.

[Amizda Calyx]

In the question on "women (in Islam)", I think the name "Hafsa" is mentioned pretty early. This is a relatively common extant female name, which gave me the impression the question was asking for a more specific subset of women. I think these kinds of answerlines can be really tough for players to decisively buzz on unless every clue is pointing to something inherent about *being* [the answerline]. The clue "the only one of these people mentioned in the Qur'an..." was where everyone buzzed in my room since I think a lot of people were waiting for clarification on the breadth of the answer — although I'm not knowledgeable enough on Islam to really say that this was lacking in the earlier clues.

Overall I think the set played really well though.

[Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN)]

The question on Iblis should be revised - it refers to him as a person when he is emphatically NOT a person, but a jinn.

[ezekiel]

Can I see the rest of the Garden of Forking Paths tossup? Curious to see the mentioned memorable quotes and/or cliff.

[wcheng]

Can I see the rest of the Garden of Forking Paths tossup? Curious to see the mentioned memorable quotes and/or cliff.

8. This story’s narrator remembers meeting an Englishman who spoke as well as Goethe (“GUR-tuh”) wrote. Upon seeing a bird fly above him, this story’s protagonist imagines it becoming an airplane and sending a “rain of bombs” under it before exclaiming “I must flee.” This story’s narrator recollects some advice about always turning left en route to the Ashgrove residence of a man who is revealed to share the name of a French (*) town in the story’s last paragraph. The “horse-faced” MI6 agent Richard Madden stalks this story’s narrator, whose Chinese ancestor wrote a complex novel that also serves as an infinite labyrinth. For 10 points, name this story in which the sinologist Stephen Albert is regrettably killed by Yu Tsun, written by Jorgé Luis Borges (“HOR-hay loo-EES BOR-hess”).
ANSWER: “The Garden of Forking Paths” [or “El jardín de senderos que se bifurcan”]

[setophaga]

Can I see the Schumann tossup? The clue that mentioned Bunte Blatter seemed a bit awkward to me at game speed.

[Carlos Be]

Can I see the rest of the Garden of Forking Paths tossup? Curious to see the mentioned memorable quotes and/or cliff.

8. This story’s narrator remembers meeting an Englishman who spoke as well as Goethe (“GUR-tuh”) wrote. Upon seeing a bird fly above him, this story’s protagonist imagines it becoming an airplane and sending a “rain of bombs” under it before exclaiming “I must flee.” This story’s narrator recollects some advice about always turning left en route to the Ashgrove residence of a man who is revealed to share the name of a French (*) town in the story’s last paragraph. The “horse-faced” MI6 agent Richard Madden stalks this story’s narrator, whose Chinese ancestor wrote a complex novel that also serves as an infinite labyrinth. For 10 points, name this story in which the sinologist Stephen Albert is regrettably killed by Yu Tsun, written by Jorgé Luis Borges (“HOR-hay loo-EES BOR-hess”).
ANSWER: “The Garden of Forking Paths” [or “El jardín de senderos que se bifurcan”]

I think the reason the early clues in this were unsuccessful is because many of them were quite minor. The Englishman who spoke as well as Goethe wrote is just some random deviation somewhere near the beginning of the story. Similarly, the name of "Ashgrove" is only mentioned three times.

Additionally, the clue about having the same name as a French town is unevocative. It'd work better if it gave more context, such as "a man who is killed because he shares his name with a French town" or "a man who is killed to signify what town is to be bombed, since he shares his name with a French town."

[Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN)]

In fast-paced gameplay I found it very easy to hear the clues about the jacket design of Fernando Pessoa's recent edition of "The Book of Disquiet" and instead buzz in with "Ulysses," a work that has also had a recent reprinting, and which often uses images of James Joyce wearing round glasses (sometimes with an eye patch, reminiscent of the clues given about Pessoa's eye), or simply a stylized image of the glasses. I understand that I buzzed in with a factually incorrect answer because I don't know any of the plot clues before, but this falls into the category of "unfun moments trying my damnedest to play the questions" using my own real knowledge of book design.

[TaylorH]

I took notes throughout this tournament in the hopes of giving some minute-to-minute thoughts on the questions as they were played. I would take most of these difficulty judgements with a grain of salt: I can be a bad judge of what is easy and hard, especially in the heat of playing. Hopefully the writers and editors find this kind of thing helpful!

R1

-Should ‘Spanish Inquisition’ be acceptable for ‘Inquisition’?
-Denmark question was good
-NMR question felt like it went on forever, did it have more clues than other questions around it?
-de Andrade seems kind of hard for this level
-Question on ‘saving’ felt a little cliffy: specific studies followed by straight forward definition?
-I liked the Eleatic school question
-Kesey bonus felt kind of tough
-Fort Caroline seemed too early for ‘Huguenots’
-Bonus about whaling was really cool
-Did Hinduism bonus call money a ‘substance’? I may have misheard this
-neutrino TU seemed transparent (like most things to neutrinos. Ha!)
-turning into a bird was a neat idea
-Journalism bonus seemed a bit too easy/ lacking a true hard part
-China TU was cool
-Parasitism question was excellent
-QM bonus seemed easy. You could have 30ed pretty much from reading past QM bonuses and not really understanding anything
-WPA TU kind of transparent: sounded like a New Deal agency that did arts stuff from first clue
-Heaney bonus seemed either like a 10 or 30 for most teams: Mid Term Break and Blackberry Picking are both kind of equally well known I think
-Caravaggio TU and Honthorst in a bonus seems like bad Feng Shui

R2
-on Knowledge question it was kind of hard to parse whether the question wanted ‘knowledge’ or ‘justified true belief’ on the Gettier clues; this is probably okay
-I liked the women in Civil War bonus
-One of my teammates liked the Melville TU a lot
-Thus Spoke Zarathustra question was really good
-IR bonus seemed pretty generic: I felt like I had heard the same question in previous tournaments
-Ship poetry bonus lacked true hard part
-player on UF C powers Madagascar and notes that a word in lead in sounded ‘phonetically Malagasy’ which I thought was funny
-Hebrew poetry TU felt like a nats level question
-Women in Islam bonus felt both transparent and, as noted above, hard to tell how specific an answer was needed
-diode question seemed transparent: ‘felt like’ diode instantly even though I did not know the specific clues
-I wrote ‘flying bonus seemed easy’ though I do not remember this bonus now while transcribing this
-Chavez question was great
-puppet TU seemed cliffy: pretty hard clues followed by mention of Gamelan in power, which I think is decently well known at this point
-cool question on Italy from Mann works
-Troy myth question was superb
-Bonus part on Esterhazy felt like it went on for a bit long
-‘Ping Pong’ mechanism should not be in power for enzyme
-Raymond VII seemed like a really hard hard part, but I could be ignorant

R3
-Newspaper lit question was great: I am finally rewarded for reading Bright Lights, Big City
-the slaves TU was a bad case of ‘how specific is this answer line’: does it want slaves, maroons, people from a specific country, etc
-Investiture of the Gods felt a hard hard part
-film/male gaze bonus felt like it lacked a hard part
-Zazie in the Metro felt like a hard hard part
-Day of the poisons was pretty hard
-I liked the Lanka TU but that answerline seems tough
-The Parma TU seemed hard: should that book be tossed up at this level?
-Hemingway bonus felt a bit easy to 30
-Power should probably end before beginning of (*) what you see is all there is phrase on Kahneman TU
-Mexico religion TU seemed fraudable: indicated early that you were dealing with a Latin American country where mystical Christianity stuff happened
-Blue Rider bonus was good
-Nietzsche bonus was good and had a spicy hard part
-North Korea question was good and had a creative theme

R4
-Watermelon stomach felt like an easy power clue
-Jewish bonus felt like two hard parts
-Chaucer TU was tough, though I get it was mostly cluing from his lesser known poems
-Vietnam bonus felt a tad hard
-I liked the British Fascism TU
-on the Bull TU I neg with cow: I felt a bit cheated with this. I understand that the clues probably refer unambiguously to bulls, but many people do use the word ‘cow’ to refer to the both male and female livestock bovines. I feel cow could be promptable and cattle flat out acceptable. I think 3/4 of the rooms at our site had negs on this question even though the player mostly knew what was going on
-Staircase bonus was cool
-Munich Massacre may need expanded answerline. Player on UGA B buzzes and basically describes Munich Massacre in a sentence but is negged because he doesn’t say whatever is in answerline. Could ‘Munich” be answerline instead?
-Lichtenstein TU was great
-Chomsky mentioned a second time
-Bird In Space being referred to as a series was a little confusing even if it technically is one
-bonus on Australia geography felt hard

R5

-The Nutcraker TU in lit(?) was weird but I kind of liked it
-Overlook Hotel clue in power for Colorado seemed both easy and fraudable
-GPU question was cool, though my smart computer scientist teammates told me it was really easy.
-Was Great Zimbabwe an easy part? That's a harder easy part if so. I missed parts of this bonus though.
-'mu' in power for koans seems a bit easy
-Beethoven question was great
-AOC probably should be flat out accepted
-My teammate insists first line of Manet question is a hose for Millais because of this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubbles_(painting)
-Guitar bonus seemed on the hard side
-Three lines of exposition for easy part on 'double helix' felt like a bit much

R6

-I dig the Odysseus poetry TU
-Sioux TU seemed easy: mentioning Minnesota second line maybe not so good because it tells you immediately where the tribe was based and people can fraud from there
-I wrote 'Music bonus felt lacking of an easy part' but I don't remember what question this refers to.
-Supreme court bonus felt on the easier side.
-Pollock question was neat.
-Hey, Iceberg Slim came up! I have been waiting for that for 5 years.
-CE Virginia TU was good.
-Moog question seemed a bit easy, but maybe not since its less canonical.
-Farming Econ question was a good idea but was a tad transparent.
-Chomsky comes up a third time

R7

-Pure Food and Drug act bonus felt easy-easy-hard
-I liked the Canada lit question
-Wishing tree for Yoko Ono seemed like a easy leadin: I think that is one of her most famous art things?
-Chamber music bonus felt hard
-Chem. bonus felt easy
-Bodies on the gears speech felt like a difficulty cliff for California
-I think the religion TU and bonus this round were both Judaism. Bad feng shui.
-I found it weird that La Brea was not the giveaway for tar pits.

(I start getting tired and write down less as the day goes on)

R8

-Railroads question was confusing: I knew what was going on but the pronoun felt funny so I couldn't buzz until later than I wanted.
-Should USA be a prompt for New England?
-Human physical archaeology bonus was on the hard side: could have used another clue for Taung child if that was medium part.

R9

-Astro bonus felt pretty easy
-Thomas Hardy comes up a second time?
-Plays set in courthouses TU was pretty hard

R10

-David Foster Wallace comes up a 2nd time.
-Bardo probably should not be in power for Tibet.
-Religion TU and bonus were both Buddhism? Bad feng shui.
-Spain question had some confusing wording in the middle
-Cool TU on Nat Turner!
-Hamilton Fish is kind of a hard medium part?
-Noam Chomsky came up a fourth time. I get he is important but he certainly does not need to come up in every linguistics question.
-Wow I negged 5 times this round

We shot out packets 11-13 informally after the main tournament. I did not keep notes on these packets, but I remember liking most of the lit, FA, and RMPSS in these too. The Dickinson question I remember enjoying. 'Norte Chico' probably shouldn't be in the first line for Peru.

[Borrowing 100,000 Arrows]

-Noam Chomsky came up a fourth time. I get he is important but he certainly does not need to come up in every linguistics question.

Maybe, but otherwise I would have to resort to writing dumb tossups on languages or whatever. Chomsky's work basically invented everything in modern linguistics. I think there is a case that his work should come up multiple times in every tournament.

[1.82]

R4
-Munich Massacre may need expanded answerline. Player on UGA B buzzes and basically describes Munich Massacre in a sentence but is negged because he doesn’t say whatever is in answerline. Could ‘Munich” be answerline instead?

This is not an attempt to refute the point being made here, but for what it's worth, as the moderator for this round, I negged the player in question because he said "Berlin" and not "Munich"; that is to say, a simplified answerline would not have helped in this case.

[AGoodMan]

Description answerlines were accepted for me. I buzzed in with something like "terrorist attacks during the Munich Olympics" and was accepted.

[TaylorH]

R4
-Munich Massacre may need expanded answerline. Player on UGA B buzzes and basically describes Munich Massacre in a sentence but is negged because he doesn’t say whatever is in answerline. Could ‘Munich” be answerline instead?

This is not an attempt to refute the point being made here, but for what it's worth, as the moderator for this round, I negged the player in question because he said "Berlin" and not "Munich"; that is to say, a simplified answerline would not have helped in this case.

Ah, that is good to know. I must have misheard him.

[Duckk]

Could you post the tossups on "knowledge" and "meaning"?

I found these questions hard to parse at game speed since they seemed to just be lists of semanticists and their various (dense) definitions of the given concept (this claim could be factually incorrect, but it was my impression). I ended up negging both with adjacent answers: "belief" (knowledge and belief are treated quite similarly in my experience with modal logic and modality) and "truth" (the tossup seemed to allude to truth conditions, but asked for a "property", so it was a bit unclear to me what the answer was supposed to be).

I'm glad to see semantics being discussed, but the execution of these tossups didn't sit well with me.

[wcheng]

R4
-Munich Massacre may need expanded answerline. Player on UGA B buzzes and basically describes Munich Massacre in a sentence but is negged because he doesn’t say whatever is in answerline. Could ‘Munich” be answerline instead?

This is not an attempt to refute the point being made here, but for what it's worth, as the moderator for this round, I negged the player in question because he said "Berlin" and not "Munich"; that is to say, a simplified answerline would not have helped in this case.

Ah, that is good to know. I must have misheard him.

The original answerline was:

ANSWER: Munich massacre [or equivalents indicating a terrorist attack in Munich; accept Munich Summer Olympics; accept 1972 Summer Olympics until “1972” is read; prompt on Black September attack]

[Borrowing 100,000 Arrows]

Could you post the tossups on "knowledge" and "meaning"?

I found these questions hard to parse at game speed since they seemed to just be lists of semanticists and their various (dense) definitions of the given concept (this claim could be factually incorrect, but it was my impression). I ended up negging both with adjacent answers: "belief" (knowledge and belief are treated quite similarly in my experience with modal logic and modality) and "truth" (the tossup seemed to allude to truth conditions, but asked for a "property", so it was a bit unclear to me what the answer was supposed to be).

I'm glad to see semantics being discussed, but the execution of these tossups didn't sit well with me.

It’s not necessity, but Jaakko Hintikka (“YAWK-ko HEEN-teek-kaw”) modeled this concept as the operator box in the modal logic S4, which controversially includes the positive introspection axiom. The lottery paradox is used to argue that this sort of norm governs the speech act of assertion. David Lewis argued that ascriptions of this concept are context-dependent in a paper whose title calls this concept “elusive.” Alvin Goldman’s causal (“CAUSE-al”) account of this concept struggles to explain (*) “fake barn cases.” A 1963 paper imagines a job applicant who believes that a man with ten coins in his pocket will get the job in order to challenge the definition of it given in Plato’s Theaetetus (“thee-uh-TEE-tuss”). Gettier (“GETTY-er”) cases illustrate why this concept cannot be defined as justified true belief. For 10 points, name this concept studied in epistemology.
ANSWER: _knowledge_

The leadin is uniquely identifying, and also describes a very important fact. Epistemic logicians almost universally treat S4 as the logic of knowledge, whereas KD45 is used as the logic of belief. That said this might be a little confusing at game speed since both include the positive introspection axiom.

In Irene Heim’s dissertation, this property is equated with a file change potential. Ray Jackendoff’s “Mentalist Postulate” holds that this property resides in “lexical conceptual structures.” This property is represented as a set of namesake postulates in an intensional logic in Montague (“MON-tuh-gyoo”) grammar. For an entire sentence, this property is simply a function of its constituents’ values, according to the principle of (*) compositionality. Noam Chomsky noted that the sentence “colorless green ideas sleep furiously” lacks this property, even though it is syntactically well-formed. A single lexical item corresponds to more than one of these properties in polysemy (“puh-LISS-uh-mee”) and homonymy. For 10 points, give this term for the expressive content of a word or sentence, studied in semantics.
ANSWER: _meaning_s

I can see where you could be led to neg with truth-conditions on the principle of compositionality (though, I would argue, that answer is still wrong because you might think that meaning is not truth-conditional and yet still think that meaning is compositional). I'm not sure about your criticism about the early clues being just "dense definitions." Everything except the Jackendoff stuff was clued right out of a graduate semantics course I took last semester, and the Jackendoff stuff is important in its own right.

[Duckk]

The seeming list of definitions must have just been a gameplay artifact then. I agree that the clues refer to very important ideas. So I must have just mis-parsed something along the way. I will say that when I heard the knowledge question, “box operator” and “positive introspection” stuck out rather than “S4” or “Hintikka” (“ok, this is a semantics question”), which are what disambiguate the answer from something about doxastic logic. Maybe others felt it was fine.

[Borrowing 100,000 Arrows]

The seeming list of definitions must have just been a gameplay artifact then. I agree that the clues refer to very important ideas. So I must have just mis-parsed something along the way. I will say that when I heard the knowledge question, “box operator” and “positive introspection” stuck out rather than “S4” or “Hintikka” (“ok, this is a semantics question”), which are what disambiguate the answer from something about doxastic logic. Maybe others felt it was fine.

Yeah, I agree. It might be wise to just remove "positive introspection" from the tossup.

[A Dim-Witted Saboteur]

I'll co-sign on all of Seth's posts regarding the linguistics; Chomsky-centricity is a real problem with the way QB asks about linguistics that I'd like to see something done about. He is an influential figure, yes, but not influential enough that he should be coming up in half of all questions. Also, I realize I'm often guilty of this myself, but one thing I often wonder is whether the prevalence of Ray Jackendoff in QB questions is more because of his actual significance or the fact that he has a funny name.
Going through my notebooks, here are some other comments I have.
The Italian literature tossup was cool
Especially for a tournament without a trash distro, the mingling of "trash" or borderline films with more "arty" ones was odd to me. You could see that in tossups like Django and Belgium especially. This was an interesting editorial decision that I'm not sure should be emulated.
On the Parasitism tossup, my teammate buzzed with "co-nesting" on the Cuckoo clue and was negged. Instructions for such answers should perhaps be included, especially since it's a bit difficult to parse what the question is asking for there.
Asking about Dutch artists in Rome was a cool angle
"Publishing" is an odd way to describe Miss Lonelyhearts' profession; it's a bit of a stretch to describe him as being in the "publishing industry" given his job as an advice columnist whose editor/publisher is also a major character. A bunch of "accept" lines were included, which was good, but the choice of primary answerline was strange. I have not read any of the other novels that were clued before that, but if generalizing that much is necessary, it's probably a bit of a forced common link.
The Melies/Lumiere/Nickelodeon bonus did not have an easy part.
As I noted in the other thread, asking for Zazie in the way that was done (and even possibly with significantly more detail) is significantly out of pocket for EFT difficulty.
Popper and Weber both seemed rather transparent as answerlines.
The khanates of Kazan and Astrakhan (I don't remember which one was clued) should not be in power for Ivan the Terrible.
While pretty cool, Wiley, the FDA poison guy, is likely too hard for a hard part.
This tournament made me want to look up Anish Kapoor's Gangnam Style parody right after it happened. I was not disappointed. Even so, the world's pinkest pink clue may have been a bit too early.
As noted above, the Shaytan tossup struck me as very transparent; the things you're describing seem very "satan-y" from the outset. I don't know how you'd fix this.
"Reverse Cannae" in power for Scipio Africanus seems generous
Could someone who knows about science explain why "crystal" could not be accepted for "lattice"?
The Nahuatl bonus part was really cool
The Galapagos tossup struck me as transparent: "where is this island group in South America that has a bunch of biodiversity?"
I heard from one of our readers that a bonus on Aztec deities was given without a pronunciation guide; this is odd given that that's almost the canonical example of where you should have one.
A pronunciation guide for the Rime movement would be good, since it's not terribly clear to an outsider that the second syllable should be stressed.
I realize I'm being incredibly nitpicky here; on the whole this was quite a well-polished set, and the things I disagreed with all seemed to be conscious editorial choices. My notes end after I believe packet 10, so I may have more to say once I get access to the remaining ones. Thank you to the editors!

[VSCOelasticity]

explain why "crystal" could not be accepted for "lattice"?

A lattice is a mathematical representation of a crystal. It can be applied to other things, and I think s ome of the earlier clues were talking about abstract models that represent stuff as lattices, but I really don't think there is a big enough distinction to not accept it.

[John Ketzkorn]

Could someone who knows about science explain why "crystal" could not be accepted for "lattice"?

Yeah, I thought this was a neat idea, but perhaps a bit hard for players less familiar with solid-state physics. The tossup began by describing some terminology that uses "lattice" in it (neither of which I've heard of), and then switched to "these mathematical structures." Maybe "mathematically patterned structure" in the prompt for crystal instead of just "structure" would help, but it's quite difficult to expect players to know that crystals and lattices aren't exactly the same thing since quiz bowl doesn't do a good job of teaching this -- meaning people have to have encountered the more mathematically rigid idea of "lattices" outside of quiz bowl and if they have, they probably know about Brillouin zones and Reciprocal spaces. I don't think I would have been able to identify the correct answer was "lattice" if I hadn't seen some of the math in part of a solid-state physics textbook (which means this tossup is probably very difficult -- maybe some "lattice energy" clues towards the end?)

[Jet Fuel Can't Melt Steel Dreams]

Unless the tossup has been changed since 3/4, the problems with the lattice tossup extend far beyond minor answerline issues.

The first two answerlines of the tossup (as of 3/4) are: Superfluid condensates can become Mott insulators as a potential described by this term is ramped on.
Retro-reflected laser beams can create a potential described by this term through the AC Stark shift; that
example of these systems is used in strontium-based atomic clocks.

Both these clues are regarding optical lattices, the former regarding how if you increase the potential well depth of an optical lattice with a Bose Einstein condensate it in, you'll get a phase transition to Mott insulator, the latter is regarding how modern atomic clocks are based off strontium atoms trapped in the potential well. The problem here is that "lattice potential" isn't an actual, reified term/quantity that has been defined by scientists and has a well-understood and commonly-used meaning, meaning that even if one realize that these clues are referring to optical lattices, one will be very confused at what the tossup is looking for as an answerline.

[Cody]

I can't speak to the execution, but you would not accept or prompt on crystals for lattices because they are distinct concepts. It would be quite hard to write a tossup or bonus part that engendered confusion between the two concepts. (My understanding and recollection is that this distinction is often taught in high school chemistry / AP chemistry, so I don't think it's as hard as is being stated.)

For example, in this bonus from VCUO '15, "crystal" does not apply to any of the clues.
[10] The Brillouin zone is the Wigner-Seitz primitive cell in the reciprocal one of these structures. In three dimensions, there are fourteen Bravais examples of these structures, which consist of infinitely repeated unit cells.
ANSWER: lattices [do not accept: “crystals”]

[John Ketzkorn]

I believe the lattice tossup was effectively the same as of 3/16. I was not taught this distinction in my high school chemistry course and I can't remember anything in the AP material I studied before the exam teaching it either. I find it hard to believe that high schoolers are learning this distinction. Even so, that means the answerline is nearly inaccessible to non-science major College students if you didn't have a chemistry course to teach this dinstiction (assuming you have no solid-state physics background).


---

While I liked the science in this set overall (especially the diodes tossup cluing you in on protection circuits), I think there were some things that could've been made less transparent.

In particular:
Coloring graphs -- this felt extremely obvious as soon as you said "this process -- graph -- four" in the first line while I love snarks, this maybe should be tweaked (perhaps chromatic index, graphs, or something else as the answerline would be less transparent).

CMBR -- not sure on the specifics of this one, but you literally tell players its a phenomenon that persists everywhere and has a spectrum near the second or third line.

Translation -- This told you a 5' cap and UTR (untranslated regions) were involved first or second line. Most people learn about maturation of RNA in high school biology, so this is very easy to figure out.

---

I'll add more to this when I get the time to go through them.

[a bird]

Jakob and Mike are probably right that the _lattices_ question was a bit too hard for this difficulty. I'm sure the question was frustrating for some people since QB doesn't always emphasize the distinction between lattices and crystals. Still, there is real distinction between the two concepts, and I think a question like this would be fine at a harder tournament.

I think the early clues were probably too hard, but I'll stand by their validity. Responding to Geoffrey's criticism, I would argue that "optical lattice potential" is an "actual," reified term. The first superfluid-Mott insulator paper uses those exact words to describe their experiment. Maybe my wording confused some people, but I think I used the terminology as it's normally used in the field.

Mike is right about the other questions being easier or transparent, and I apologize for not smoothing the difficulty further.

[sephirothrr]

I heard from one of our readers that a bonus on Aztec deities was given without a pronunciation guide; this is odd given that that's almost the canonical example of where you should have one.

I brought this up at the time because I found (and still find!) it hilarious that "Bough" had a pronunciation guide but five words later "Chicomecōātl" did not (though one could argue that it's fairly straightforward when just broken into syllables).

That said, the rest of the bonus had appropriate guides, so it just seems like that missing one was an chance oversight.

[Borrowing 100,000 Arrows]

I often wonder is whether the prevalence of Ray Jackendoff in QB questions is more because of his actual significance or the fact that he has a funny name.

Sorry I just saw this, Ray Jackendoff is a super important semanticist.

[Amizda Calyx]

For example, in this bonus from VCUO '15, "crystal" does not apply to any of the clues.
[10] The Brillouin zone is the Wigner-Seitz primitive cell in the reciprocal one of these structures. In three dimensions, there are fourteen Bravais examples of these structures, which consist of infinitely repeated unit cells.
ANSWER: lattices [do not accept: “crystals”]

Would you not have accepted "crystal lattice" for this? I've learned about reciprocal lattices (and Brillouin zones, Bravais lattices, etc.) exclusively in the context of x-ray crystallography, where different diffraction methods rely on manipulating reciprocal space in order to get patterns. I get that people don't explicitly call Bravais lattices "Bravais crystal lattices", but that seems like a pretty harsh line to draw.

[halle]

Can I see the "turning into birds" question? I recall there being a clue along the lines of "this has nothing to do with drowning," which I found confusing and almost led me to rule out turning into birds as an answer, since I believe that clue was a story where people were turned into birds so they would not drown.

I also had a very frustrating neg of "church" on the "Tintern Abbey" TU (which led to a very muddled protest situation); I'd suggest doing more to indicate that a specific location is wanted, not just the type of place (yes, it says "this place" rather than "one of these places," but the question is also structured as though it was going to common link multiple poems, so it did not feel entirely clear that the general sort of place would not be acceptable or promptable).

In general, I really liked this set! The philosophy questions were particularly excellent and, as a philosophy major, I felt they rewarded engagement with my classes more than any other set I've recently played. I also really enjoyed the visual and other arts--most of what came up was both cool and important, and the clues and answerlines were well chosen, which made the questions fun to play. The one exception to this is the Francis I tossup: it went dead in my room despite myself and at least one of my teammates recognizing that it was asking about the guy who commissioned the salt cellar fairly early on. I'm inclined to think that needing to know who commissioned the salt cellar is too hard for this difficulty; perhaps asking for France as the answer could get across the idea that the era in question is notable because lots of Italian artists had been invited to the French court, without skewing as difficult as this tossup did. I could also be wrong that this question was particularly hard, though, since my history knowledge is particularly weak compared to my art knowledge.

[Cody]

For example, in this bonus from VCUO '15, "crystal" does not apply to any of the clues.
[10] The Brillouin zone is the Wigner-Seitz primitive cell in the reciprocal one of these structures. In three dimensions, there are fourteen Bravais examples of these structures, which consist of infinitely repeated unit cells.
ANSWER: lattices [do not accept: “crystals”]

Would you not have accepted "crystal lattice" for this? I've learned about reciprocal lattices (and Brillouin zones, Bravais lattices, etc.) exclusively in the context of x-ray crystallography, where different diffraction methods rely on manipulating reciprocal space in order to get patterns. I get that people don't explicitly call Bravais lattices "Bravais crystal lattices", but that seems like a pretty harsh line to draw.

Yes, crystal lattice is a normal alternate term and should be an acceptable answer for "lattices" (as crystal lattices).

[Smuttynose Island]

The one exception to this is the Francis I tossup: it went dead in my room despite myself and at least one of my teammates recognizing that it was asking about the guy who commissioned the salt cellar fairly early on. I'm inclined to think that needing to know who commissioned the salt cellar is too hard for this difficulty; perhaps asking for France as the answer could get across the idea that the era in question is notable because lots of Italian artists had been invited to the French court, without skewing as difficult as this tossup did. I could also be wrong that this question was particularly hard, though, since my history knowledge is particularly weak compared to my art knowledge.

Could we see this tossup? There are several great clues for Francis I outside of his patronage of Cellini. It be interesting to see which ones were used.

[1992 in spaceflight]

I also had a very frustrating neg of "church" on the "Tintern Abbey" TU (which led to a very muddled protest situation); I'd suggest doing more to indicate that a specific location is wanted, not just the type of place (yes, it says "this place" rather than "one of these places," but the question is also structured as though it was going to common link multiple poems, so it did not feel entirely clear that the general sort of place would not be acceptable or promptable).

To the writer of this question: Halle's experience playing this question is exactly why I think the tossup should have used either "title location" or, even, "poem" as the pronoun. The most important thing about writing questions is to make sure players can play it well, without the question influencing how it plays.

I also had some issues with the social capital tossup. I think this should have been a tossup on one of the promptable answers (such as relationships). In more than a few rooms at WUSTL, teams said a promptable answer and then negged it. This tossup is one that should have gotten some further thought about how it would play.

Those were the only two tossups I had a major issue with. Thanks for writing the set, guys!