2022 NAQT SCT: Division I question-specific discussion

[Important Bird Area]

This is a question-specific discussion thread for the 2022 Division I SCT.

[Tippy Martinez]

I heavily enjoyed the tossup on A Bug's Life. In my mind, this is the type of "trash" that I feel like NAQT should lean more towards: critically acclaimed/cult classic pieces of media that are likely to be interacted with by a large amount of people. I think many times NAQT sets tend to have trash questions that play into the writers own niche personal interests instead, but I thought there was a good amount of content away from this direction as well (the bonus part on "Common People," the bonus on musical connections to Banksy, etc.)

[reindeer]

I thought the bonus on skyscrapers in packet 8 was a masterpiece. The lead-in about a scammer building one that was only X inches rather than X feet tall was great, but the fact that it continued into part 1 with "A much larger skyscraper, the [actual famous building I've forgotten]" elevated it to actual art. Well done.

Uh, more seriously, I enjoyed the linguistics in this, especially the tossup on L. There were several places where I would have liked more comprehensive directions in answerlines, including:

• In packet 2, bonus 17 a team answered scythe where the answer was sickle, which was not considered in the answerline although these terms appear to be used interchangeably in the source story (at least according to wiki).
• In packet 4, tossup 9 a team answered UV where the answer was light (or UV light); UV alone seemed outright acceptable to me but wasn't included in the answerline
• In packet 9, tossup 18 a team answered trauma for stress right after "EMDR"; although trauma and stress are certainly different, this seems like a reasonable enough answer for this clue that it should be explicitly considered in the answerline

[Abdon Ubidia]

There were several places where I would have liked more comprehensive directions in answerlines,

I very much agree with this. Two more examples to me are the tossup from Packet 6 on "paradoxes" which I (and another player at our site) negged with "contradictions" on the Graham Priest clue. Although the paper clued in the tossup does have the word paradox in the title, Priest repeatedly discusses contradictions in it and in the rest of his work, and his dialetheism in general is about using paraconsistent logic to accommodate contradictions. This, and the EMDR clue in the "stress" tossup Olivia mentioned (I was the player who negged with "trauma") are extraordinarily frustrating because protests definitely won't go through since the answer doesn't apply to all the clues read up to that point, but they are answers that a person who knows exactly the information the clue is trying to test will reasonably say. Absent clues pinning down the specific desired answer much more, either answerlines need to be more expansive or protests need to be more lenient. The other, less frustrating, example of an answerline being too small was the bonus part from Packet 3 on the "box-counting" dimension. I answered "box dimension" which was not in the answerline at all, but it is frequently called that (see for example the title of this paper or some places in the wiki page.)

[theMoMA]

There are undoubtedly many cases in which there are slightly different permutations of answers that, despite thorough editor review, simply didn't occur to us to put in the answer line. It's very difficult to imagine everything that people will say, and there are occasionally instances when something that really should be there falls through the cracks. Although it's an incomplete and unsatisfying recourse, the protest resolution process exists to fix these mistakes when they are material to the game outcome. If you review the answer lines in total, I think you'll find that we did put a lot of care into reciting thorough lists of correct and promptable answers, but I apologize for any mistakes we made or instances in which we fell short.

I think those are distinct, however, from related answers (such as "trauma" for "stress") that were not listed specifically as "do not accepts"; it's very difficult to imagine all of the possible not-quite-right answers that someone might give, and by necessity we have to depend on moderators to know that, if something isn't contemplated in the answer line, then it's not a correct or promptable answer. In the case of "trauma," that is an answer that, while it may have some relation to one of the clues, is simply a wrong answer, and I don't think it's possible or desirable to list most responses of that sort expressly in the answer line.

[Abdon Ubidia]

I think those are distinct, however, from related answers (such as "trauma" for "stress") that were not listed specifically as "do not accepts"; it's very difficult to imagine all of the possible not-quite-right answers that someone might give, and by necessity we have to depend on moderators to know that, if something isn't contemplated in the answer line, then it's not a correct or promptable answer. In the case of "trauma," that is an answer that, while it may have some relation to one of the clues, is simply a wrong answer, and I don't think it's possible or desirable to list most responses of that sort expressly in the answer line.

I agree, insofar as the main problem with the "stress" tossup (and the "paradoxes" tossup too) was not the answerline, but the clue itself. The "relation to the clue" is that the answer is basically correct for the clue, not that it is just vaguely related to the answer. The problem with the clue was that it just pointed to PTSD and said give an answer that is part of that disorder and did nothing to specify stress instead of trauma. Because of the way protests work where answers that aren't correct for previous clues never really get accepted even when they are correct for the clue that was buzzed on, the protest system doesn't really resolve this either (FWIW this protest was actually evaluated, because it mattered for playoff seeding, and denied.)

[theMoMA]

I don't think that players buzzing with "trauma" instead of "stress" have experienced an injustice. The clue states: "Work on 'general adaptation syndrome' by Hans Selye ["SELL-yay"] began research into this phenomenon, which is experienced in a disorder that Francine Shapiro first treated with (*) EMDR." Although I wouldn't want every clue or every tossup to require a player to make a distinction such as "the aspect of PTSD being sought is the stress disorder part rather than the instigating trauma," such distinctions are common to quizbowl. For instance, a question on microwave radiation may clue the CMBR, and buzzes with "cosmic radiation" or "background radiation" might be wrong because they fail to contemplate what the clue is asking and how it is situated within the rest of the tossup.

I certainly have felt the sting after making similar buzzes myself, but I think it's part of quizbowl to understand that clues regularly do ask players to distinguish between related responses, and that choosing incorrectly may result in a -5.

[warum]

The clue states: "Work on 'general adaptation syndrome' by Hans Selye ["SELL-yay"] began research into this phenomenon, which is experienced in a disorder that Francine Shapiro first treated with (*) EMDR."

I interpret this sentence as containing two independent clues, neither of which you need to know to buzz on the other:

• Work on 'general adaptation syndrome' by Hans Selye ["SELL-yay"] began research into this phenomenon
• [this phenomenon] is experienced in a disorder that Francine Shapiro first treated with (*) EMDR.

The second clue doesn't disambiguate between "stress" and "trauma" at all. By definition, people with PTSD experience a traumatic event, and they also experience stress after that event. So if this clue is the first clue a player recognizes, it's reasonable to expect that player to buzz with "trauma."

[theMoMA]

I agree that a player who doesn't know the previous clues may make that buzz, and I wouldn't want every question to distinguish related responses in this way. I disagree with the method of splitting a sentence into constituent parts; to me, the issues with this clue are of a degree rather than of a kind, because there are a lot of ways to make a particular answer specific that depend on putting two and two together. This particular clue was inartful and may not have played well across the field, but that has to do with the specific clues and how they are fitted together. And my opinion is that such clue inartful constructions are frustrating and well worth considering and improving on, but not unjust.

[Father of the Ragdoll]

I strongly disagree with this sentiment. With the Shapiro clue, the only way to get to the correct answer is to know a previous clue. But if I, the player, knew that previous clue then I would have buzzed at that previous clue!

All clues should uniquely point to a single correct answer and that Shapiro clue just doesn't, regardless of what the previous clues point to. In fact I would argue that the Shapiro clue is actually more correctly applied to trauma than stress since the characteristic quality of PTSD is the experience (and ongoing re-experience) of the trauma, much more so than the subsequent stress. The term "stress" in PTSD is also used in a much more general sense than the specific phenomenon described in the previous clues as well.

In our room Chris Ray beet me on the buzzer and said "PTSD" and although I don't know what his thought process was, he seemed confused by the clue as well. I was buzzing in not sure if it wanted trauma or stress and was planning to say PTSD as well in order to cover my ass, which hardly seems like an optimal outcome since it rewards throwing the kitchen sink answer out there in response to ambiguity in the question.

So while the clue was certainly unartful, I think it is also very reasonable to say it was just a non-unique (perhaps "unjust") clue that should have been tightened up to make it point uniquely to a single answer.

On a more positive note, I too loved the Bugs Life tossup and am glad to have my years working in childcare and memorizing lines from such movies rewarded with a quick buzz.

[setht]

There were several places where I would have liked more comprehensive directions in answerlines,

I very much agree with this. Two more examples to me are the tossup from Packet 6 on "paradoxes" which I (and another player at our site) negged with "contradictions" on the Graham Priest clue. Although the paper clued in the tossup does have the word paradox in the title, Priest repeatedly discusses contradictions in it and in the rest of his work, and his dialetheism in general is about using paraconsistent logic to accommodate contradictions. This, and the EMDR clue in the "stress" tossup Olivia mentioned (I was the player who negged with "trauma") are extraordinarily frustrating because protests definitely won't go through

For whatever it's worth, the protest committee had decided we should accept "contradictions" for the tossup on "paradox" when we heard that both protests on the question were moot.

[Zealots of Stockholm]

Could I see the "white roses" tossup? I was an unfortunate casualty of the overly strict NAQT timing rules on this tossup.

Before seeing it, I do think it was potentially too "cute." I think a tossup on "roses" could've used basically the same clues.

[Important Bird Area]

This two-word phrase denotes the title object of a novel about Condor Oil by The Treasure of the Sierra Madre author B. Traven. This two-word phrase denotes an object tended "in July as in January" for both a "cruel person" and a "sincere friend." This two-word phrase identifies the object (*) "cultivated" in that Jose Marti poem, which may have inspired Hans and Sophie Scholl's name for a Munich student resistance group in Nazi Germany. The House of York's symbol was—for 10 points—what pale flower?

[eversonrosed]

Could I see the question on Will Shortz?

[Important Bird Area]

In 2009 this editor appeared on Jeopardy! and presented a category drawn from an upcoming work by Brendan Emmett Quigley. In 1998 he made it look like he ran the same item by Alan Arbesfeld on two straight days in an April Fool's Day joke. This (*) editor was featured in a 2006 Patrick Creardon documentary alongside Bob Dole and Bill Clinton, whose names, in an election day item this man edited, were both possible answers to "39 across." For 10 points--who edits the New York Times crossword?

[jmarvin_]

This is a bit of a late post, but I thought it couldn't hurt to make in any case. At our site, an important game came down to a protest on the New Guinea tossup. I answered with "Papua" and was negged, as I should have been based on the answerline as written. Now, to be clear, I'm not going to pretend that answering with "Papua" wasn't some heat of the moment mistake, as it was definitely one of those "saying almost the right thing under pressure" moments - a genuine unforced error from me. I certainly didn't give that answer with the argument I'm about to make in mind; it was just a bungle. The protest was denied, so the ruling stood, as one would expect.

Nevertheless, after thinking about the matter on the day of the tournament and since, I'm not sure why we generally do not accept "Papua" as a valid answer for the island of New Guinea. General quizbowl norms dictate that endonyms are acceptable for geographical regions. "Papua" is and long has been an endonym for the island of New Guinea, specifically in Indonesian, the official language of the western half of the island (one can see this in the way that Indonesia renamed their provinces on the island from "Irian Jaya" and "Irian Jaya West" to "Papua" and "West Papua" (Papua Barat)). A person from the province of Papua would call the island Papua while speaking the official language of Papua, so why do we not consider that to be an acceptable answer? And, if one is the sort of person that is convinced by Wikipedia as giving the official word, notice that "Papua" most commonly refers to the island of New Guinea, on their reckoning.