Spartan Housewrite: Specific Question Discussion

[1.82]

Bonus 4 - Xhosa, if you aren't doing a click, is pronounced with a hard k, not an h.

Alright, I didn't actually know the standard for this (I actually produce the click but obviously don't expect the mods to do so). Thanks!

Here is a blog post on the subject.

So, summing up, the best tentative rule I can offer Jongseong is: to anglicize a click, ignore the velaric (click) component, and pronounce the rest, which is necessarily some kind of velar pulmonic consonant. Voiceless clicks become k, voiced ones ɡ, and nasal ones ŋ. But in initial position (which is where clicks are usually found), the last-mentioned obviously becomes n.

[ivanilyich]

-'The Trials of Arabella' is a bit memey for Atonement, but it's probably fine.

What does this mean?

It means that the clue is often used, and that particular little bit of the novel has become somewhat 'iconic', finding its way into a majority of Atonement tossups, and becoming known by people who otherwise have very little knowledge of the topic.

Also, please always introduce Derek Walcott as 'this hater of V. S. Naipaul'.

I'm assuming this is facetious?

No. I mandate that Walcott forever be introduced that way.
(For context, that line was used to introduce Walcott in a bonus part.)

[Beast Mode]

First, a nitpicky piece of feedback after skimming the set:

Research has shown that a significant proportion of Ashkenazi Jews are descended from [the Khazars].

Unless there's some recent bombshell study that I missed, this lead-in should be reworded. I've learned in multiple classes that the Khazar theory isn't mainstream, and the first result of a search for "ashkenazi jews khazars" in Google Scholar, Columbia's library, and Michigan's library is a 2013 paper by Behar et al. titled "No Evidence from Genome-Wide Data of a Khazar Origin for the Ashkenazi Jews." You could refer to the theory as a theory, name-drop whatever researcher(s) you're referring to, or drop Koestler's Thirteenth Tribe.

Now, responding to comments on questions I wrote:

Round 5
...
Did you intentionally not mention diaphragm in Goodbye, Columbus?
...

Roth hard part seems too hard, but that's probably just a UK/US divide.

I intentionally didn't mention the diaphragm because Goodbye, Columbus was supposed to be the hard part, but I certainly wouldn't object to the editors' adding a mention of it if I overshot.

Round 7
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William I assassination might be a bit early
...

I don't remember where I originally had this in the tossup, but in the January 19 packets Harris posted it's the first clue out of power, so I guess the editors addressed this.

Packet 2 -
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TU15 - "aerial bombardment in this war" followed by a Spanish named bridge should not be in power.
...

I agree with you on the Spanish Civil War

Looking at this tossup now: yep. When I wrote it I guess Rentería didn't scream "Spanish" to me, but that's why I almost never linguistically fraud stuff.

A+ for the Canterbury Tales bonus.

Cheers.

...there were tossups that would not have been out of place in a regular high school set (Robert Frost...Wordsworth...)

I'm not a literature player, and I'd be glad for more opinions on these tossups (which probably were among the easiest lit), but I disagree with "regular high school."

Packet 11 TU 4...Cutting off the high priest’s servant’s ear seems like it should be out of power. But then again I did go to catholic school and learned this stuff.

Do you think the clue should be moved later in the tossup, or just that the powermark should be moved back? (As someone who's obviously had far more dealings with the Old Testament than the New, I thank you for the feedback.)

EDIT: Messed up the quoting.

[cruzeiro]

16. For 10 points each, answer the following about the historical works of the Comte de Volney in 19th century literature:
[10] In one novel, Felix De Lacey teaches Safie, a woman from this modern-day country, French using Volney's ​Ruins of Empires.​ Another woman from this country, Haydee, helps engineer Fernand Morcerf's downfall in ​The Count of Monte Cristo​.
ANSWER: ​Turkey

(bolding mine)

I don't know the first novel referred to here, but it says modern-day country, and then stuff about Haydée in Monte Cristo. Haydée is not Turkish, she is a Greek from Epirus. Yanina is in Greece, not Turkey. Dumas constantly describes her as a Greek: for instance, ch. 49 (Haydée) "The young Greek, as we have already said, occupied apartments wholly unconnected with those of the count"; "“Do you remember your father, Haydée?” The young Greek smiled." [source: the version of Monte Cristo on Gutenberg]

The most you can say about her is that she is from the Ottoman Empire, in which case saying modern-day country in the other clue of this bonus part is a hose. Needless to say, I said Greece and was extremely confused to be told I was wrong.

[A Dim-Witted Saboteur]

16. For 10 points each, answer the following about the historical works of the Comte de Volney in 19th century literature:
[10] In one novel, Felix De Lacey teaches Safie, a woman from this modern-day country, French using Volney's ​Ruins of Empires.​ Another woman from this country, Haydee, helps engineer Fernand Morcerf's downfall in ​The Count of Monte Cristo​.
ANSWER: ​Turkey

(bolding mine)

I don't know the first novel referred to here, but it says modern-day country, and then stuff about Haydée in Monte Cristo. Haydée is not Turkish, she is a Greek from Epirus. Yanina is in Greece, not Turkey. Dumas constantly describes her as a Greek: for instance, ch. 49 (Haydée) "The young Greek, as we have already said, occupied apartments wholly unconnected with those of the count"; "“Do you remember your father, Haydée?” The young Greek smiled." [source: the version of Monte Cristo on Gutenberg]

The most you can say about her is that she is from the Ottoman Empire, in which case saying modern-day country in the other clue of this bonus part is a hose. Needless to say, I said Greece and was extremely confused to be told I was wrong.

That's my bad for conflating Turkey with the Ottoman Empire. I'll fix that for future editions of the set.

[Votre Kickstarter Est Nul]

Packet 12, bonus 19 incorrectly states that Marc-Andre Hamelin finished second at the 2015 International Chopin Piano Competition; it was Charles Richard-Hamelin who finished second.

[A Dim-Witted Saboteur]

Packet 12, bonus 19 incorrectly states that Marc-Andre Hamelin finished second at the 2015 International Chopin Piano Competition; it was Charles Richard-Hamelin who finished second.

Good eye; that'll be fixed in future editions.

[cruzeiro]

Pack 11, Bonus 16 doesn't tell me what to do if I'm given the K number for the Piano Sonata (this happened today reading through remaining packets).

[Ciorwrong]

Pack 11, Bonus 16 doesn't tell me what to do if I'm given the K number for the Piano Sonata (this happened today reading through remaining packets).

This and the error in the Chopin competition bonus have been fixed for this coming mirror.

[Bhagwan Shammbhagwan]

Could I see the Utah tu? The clue about “Vermillion Cliffs” seemed a bit ambiguous to me and could refer to something in Arizona.

[Ciorwrong]

Could I see the Utah tu? The clue about “Vermillion Cliffs” seemed a bit ambiguous to me and could refer to something in Arizona.

This is the most up-to-date version of the tossup used at the March 2nd mirrors.

7. One natural area in this state contains an escalating series of different-colored cliffs, including the Chocolate Cliffs, Vermilion Cliffs, Gray Cliffs, and Pink Cliffs. A region of this state nicknamed "Dixie" is the namesake of a national forest in this state. This state's Newspaper Rock is one of the United States' largest collections of petroglyphs. Many of this state's national parks are famed for their "hoodoo" rock formations. The (*) Wasatch Range is located East of most of this state's population centers, and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument is located south of this state's city of Moab. This For 10 points, name this state home to Bryce Canyon, Canyonlands, and Zion National Parks, most of which are located south of the Great Salt Lake.
ANSWER: Utah

[AustinlSmith]

For packet 1, Bonus 10, our team answered "Adonis" and were told this answer was not acceptable for "Adunis". I believe that should be an acceptable alternate answer.

[Carlos Be]

If you don't answer with "أدونيس‎" you don't deserve points.

(More seriously, Poetry Foundation and several other sources list him as "Adonis.")

[a bird]

A middle clue for the _action_ question read:

The (*) Euler-Lagrange equations can be derived from this quantity's integral along with the requirement that the integral be stationary under small perturbations.

My understanding is that the ELE's come from finding the stationary points of the action not an integral of the action, so I buzzed with Lagrangian, since the ELE's are derived from the action, which is an integral of the Lagrangian. Most of my confusion on this toss up was caused by missing a few words due to discord connectivity issues, but I want to point out the high potential for confusion, since the action and Lagrangian are such closely related quantities.

[warum]

Questions I especially enjoyed: Imagined Communities, Annales School, Vivaldi's Four Seasons
I enjoyed the gamma distribution tossup. It was on a relatively hard answerline, but clued straightforward things that people learn in a probability class, so the overall difficulty of the tossup was fine.

A-flat major seemed too hard for this set with the clues you used. Also, I was confused that some of the clues seemed to be describing F minor (I think I heard "subdominant minor of C"); if you're going to do that you should say "key signature" throughout instead of just "key." (maybe you did say this and I didn't catch it though)

I agree with a lot of James Lasker's comments on the science in the General Discussion thread.

For the "Utah" geography tossup, some of the cliffs mentioned are also in Arizona, and maybe in Nevada and New Mexico too. You could specify that you're looking for the unique state that contains ALL of those cliffs, but it seems like that would result in awkward phrasing that is hard to parse at game speed. Better yet, say that the state contains a national monument named after the formation containing all the cliffs (i.e. describe Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument without naming it).

[warum]

TU12 - This is a good example of the possible answer being narrowed down rapidly in the first line or so. The first name is very clearly Ethiopian, we are looking for a "structure" rather than a building, and one that can be built on some falls - there's not much else it could be after 1 and a half lines. Dropping both Asyut and especially Philae in power, famous Egyptian places on the Nile, is not great either.

I had a similar experience on this tossup. On the first clue, I recognized the name as Ethiopian and guessed that the clue referred to the Renaissance Dam since it was talking about an engineered structure, even though I was unfamiliar with the specific incident the clue described. After that I was just waiting to see if you wanted "dams in Africa" or "dams on the Nile" or something else like that.