2023 ACF Regionals Discussion

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2023 ACF Regionals Discussion

Post by Chimango Caracara »

This is the discussion thread for 2023 ACF Regionals. I know that it’s customary to create two threads, but that seems excessive to me when most recent discussion threads are relatively short. If it gets confusing, we can always split off the specific questions later.

I hope that the set was at least somewhat enjoyable and seeemed like a fair qualifier for ACF Nationals.

Here is a list of the editors:
-Alexandra Hardwick (European Literature, World Literature, Linguistics)
-Nick Jensen (Head Editor, Biology, Religion, Mythology, Geography/Current Events/Other Academic/Pop Culture)
-Rahul Keyal (American Literature, Painting/Sculpture)
-Allan Lee (American History, World History)
-Tim Morrison (British Literature, Philosophy, Math)
-Kevin Park (Other Fine Arts)
-Grant Peet (European History, Other History)
-Graham Reid (Chemistry, Physics, Other Science minus Math)
-Chris Sims (Classical Music, Social Science minus Linguistics)

Alex reprised world literature and linguistics from last year and also took on European literature, combining a strong focus on subtle themes in canonical books (like death in Saramago novels and omens in Gabriel García Márquez’s life and works) with original common links (like schools in Caribbean literature), alongside typically delightful linguistics questions (like color terms).

Rahul wrote tightly themed questions with impeccable clue selection (like mothers in African-American poetry and Jack Kerouac from his writing habits), and also emphasized underasked areas like ancient and medieval art (e.g. wings in ancient sculpture and tempera) while still managing to include accessible late clues.

With admirable time management skills, Tim wrote nearly flawless questions, including fun literature common links (like albatrosses and merchants in Renaissance English drama), original philosophy ideas that proved interesting even for those of us without deep knowledge of the subject (like Négritude and fate), and a good mix of basic and applied math.

Allan proved to be a history editor after my own heart, producing brilliant cultural history questions on topics like the beef industry in South America, the word “Swahili,” Mesa Verde, the Tibetan language, and the Saladoid migrations from the Orinoco to the Caribbean. He also did a good job of balancing the less conventional ideas with interesting spins on staple answerlines like the temperance movement and Six-Day War, and brought in plenty of important legal history.

Grant's questions were a great foil for Allan’s, with a focus on people, ideas, and institutions. I enjoyed Grant's selection of harder tossup answerlines (like Skanderbeg and Lajos Kossuth), religious history (like Gregory and Santiago), and clever approaches to periods that often feel dry (like trenches in WWI and “terror” during the French Revolution).

Kevin wrote and responded to feedback with lightning speed and produced a well-balanced set of other arts questions (from chutney and gospel music to Graciela Iturbide and architecture in Lyon).

Chris brought a deep knowledge base in both music and social science and produced questions that rewarded subject-matter expertise with precise clues from scores, methodology, and seminal scholarship, while still remaining interesting to laypeople. His standout questions included music tossups on Norway and Armenians and social science tossups on production in economics and the theory of war.

Graham showcased a strong knowledge of the physics and chemistry curricula and provided a good balance to my biology questions by focusing mainly on basic answerlines, while still incorporating interesting ideas (like corrosion and peptide bonds).

Regarding my own categories, I would simply like to apologize for their problems. Biology had too many unusual answerlines and difficult clues. Although I tried to make them easier than my questions for 2020 ACF Regionals, which were some of the hardest of that set, religion and mythology still had too many obscure clues and stupid question ideas. Pop culture was too academic and did not do a good job of representing areas like mainstream sports and popular music. I also wrote a handful of questions for other categories; chances are, if you found a question frustrating, it was probably one of mine. I hope that my failures as an editor do not reflect poorly on the excellent work of the other subject editors.

My shortcomings notwithstanding, I would like to thank everyone else who contributed to the set.

Thank you to the proofreaders, Ophir and Ganon Evans. Ophir, in particular, added numerous pronunciation guides, improved the clarity of many phrases, and set up updating page breaks that were a godsend. He saved me and the other editors many hours of work and improved the mechanical aspects of the set considerably.

Thank you to the playtesters (Mike Bentley, Jaimie Carlson, Erik Christensen, Ganon Evans, Henry Goff, Jason Golfinos, Taylor Harvey, Hasna Karim, Aseem Keyal, Evan Knox, Joseph Krol, Emmett Laurie, Young Fenimore Lee, Jonathan Magin, Lalit Maharjan, Caroline Mao, Eric Mukherjee, Tejas Raje, Ryan Rosenberg, and Kevin Thomas). I was happy that we were able to recruit a fairly large playtesting corps and we got a lot of useful feedback that improved the set’s clue placement/selection and difficulty from them.

Jordan Brownstein and JinAh Kim also offered helpful feedback on individual questions. Jordan and Aseem also freelanced a few questions.

Thank you to Matt Bollinger for providing feedback on questions early in the editing process, to Michael Kearney for encouraging me when I felt demoralized about continuing to work as an editor, and to ACF as a whole for giving me a second chance in quizbowl.

Thank you to all the staffers who took the time to read and scorekeep on Saturday, especially at sites with longer schedules.

Thank you to all the writers who contributed to a submitted packet. Even if many final questions barely resemble the originals, your submissions often provided valuable ideas and clues that became key ingredients of the questions derived from them. In many cases, if a question was unused, it was because of issues like overlap with existing questions.

I would like some more time to correct errata (mostly typos and similar errors, not changing packetization as some people expressed fears of in the Discord), so I will probably post the set in a week or so. In the meantime, I’m attaching the version of the set that was played on Saturday. I’m aware that it was posted on QBReader; in the future, I think it would be wise (or at least kind) to ask the head editor before posting a set publicly.

EDIT: Sorry, I wasn't able to attach the packets. It said "the board attachment quota has been reached." Instead, you can view the packets here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... share_link
Last edited by Chimango Caracara on Wed Feb 01, 2023 4:20 pm, edited 4 times in total.
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Re: 2023 ACF Regionals Discussion

Post by liamstarnes27 »

Hello,
Overall I enjoyed playing the set, and I think it was very consistent and well-written.

Unfortunately, there was one question that stood out to me as being extremely misleading (which had major consequences for me and my team): Tossup 11 in packet D, with the answerline of "Billie Jean King." The question reads "This athlete names...a stadium in Flushing Meadows." However, Billie Jean King actually names an entire tennis complex (the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center), and not any individual stadium in Flushing Meadows. According to Wikipedia, the Flushing Meadows complex contains three stadiums, the largest and most notable of which is Arthur Ashe Stadium. Because of this, when I heard "this athlete names... a stadium in Flushing Meadows," I immediately buzzed in and said Arthur Ashe, knowing that he names the main tennis stadium in Flushing Meadows. Of course, I was negged, leading to a heartbreaking narrow loss that directly resulted in us missing the top bracket and probably missing Nationals qualification. I would like to know the reasoning behind that clue, especially why the word "stadium" was used.

This is a much smaller issue, but I am also curious why the answer of "escaped slaves" was not acceptable for question 8 of round 3, given that a large portion of the tossup seems to be describing escaped slaves specifically.

Thanks,
Liam
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Re: 2023 ACF Regionals Discussion

Post by Fisher »

I enjoyed the tournament on the whole, thanks to everyone involved. The difficulty generally seemed consistent and fair, and actually in contrast to the OP, my biologist teammate thought the biology was good, with a more varied and interesting array of questions and answerlines in this tournament.

One general comment is on the lack of directed prompts. There were quite a few times when either our team or our opponents were prompted on an answer but without a direction, it was very hard to know what was even wanted, which was quite frustrating.

On the Billie Jean King toss-up, I was very surprised to see "Philadelphia Freedom" mentioned in the second line, that seemed far too famous to me to mention so early.

Will there be a form sent out to those submitted half-packets to ask for feedback on questions?
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Re: 2023 ACF Regionals Discussion

Post by Halinaxus »

liamstarnes27 wrote: Tue Jan 31, 2023 3:13 am Unfortunately, there was one question that stood out to me as being extremely misleading (which had major consequences for me and my team): Tossup 11 in packet D, with the answerline of "Billie Jean King." The question reads "This athlete names...a stadium in Flushing Meadows." However, Billie Jean King actually names an entire tennis complex (the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center), and not any individual stadium in Flushing Meadows. According to Wikipedia, the Flushing Meadows complex contains three stadiums, the largest and most notable of which is Arthur Ashe Stadium. Because of this, when I heard "this athlete names... a stadium in Flushing Meadows," I immediately buzzed in and said Arthur Ashe, knowing that he names the main tennis stadium in Flushing Meadows. Of course, I was negged, leading to a heartbreaking narrow loss that directly resulted in us missing the top bracket and probably missing Nationals qualification. I would like to know the reasoning behind that clue, especially why the word "stadium" was used.
I made this exact same neg with the same reasoning and have the same complaint.
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Re: 2023 ACF Regionals Discussion

Post by Chimango Caracara »

liamstarnes27 wrote: Tue Jan 31, 2023 3:13 am Hello,
Unfortunately, there was one question that stood out to me as being extremely misleading (which had major consequences for me and my team): Tossup 11 in packet D, with the answerline of "Billie Jean King." The question reads "This athlete names...a stadium in Flushing Meadows." However, Billie Jean King actually names an entire tennis complex (the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center), and not any individual stadium in Flushing Meadows. According to Wikipedia, the Flushing Meadows complex contains three stadiums, the largest and most notable of which is Arthur Ashe Stadium. Because of this, when I heard "this athlete names... a stadium in Flushing Meadows," I immediately buzzed in and said Arthur Ashe, knowing that he names the main tennis stadium in Flushing Meadows. Of course, I was negged, leading to a heartbreaking narrow loss that directly resulted in us missing the top bracket and probably missing Nationals qualification. I would like to know the reasoning behind that clue, especially why the word "stadium" was used.
I'm very sorry about this clue, it was a major oversight on my part and will be fixed before packets are posted. I added that clue rather late after playtesting (in the original tossup, the "Philadelphia Freedom" clue was a line later but I got the impression that it wasn't as well-known as I had thought) and at some point cut "complex" without thinking while trying to finalize my questions. I should have spent more time ironing out the wording to dissuade people from answering with Ashe, who is clearly the logical answer to give for the clue as written.
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Re: 2023 ACF Regionals Discussion

Post by Chimango Caracara »

Fisher wrote: Tue Jan 31, 2023 7:25 am Will there be a form sent out to those submitted half-packets to ask for feedback on questions?
Yes, we will send out a feedback form for submissions.
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Re: 2023 ACF Regionals Discussion

Post by dni »

I thought this set was quite good overall and had lots of interesting ideas! Difficulty seemed to be slightly uneven among categories, but the content being asked about was cool.

I’d like to point out a trend that I’ve noticed when writing score clues in music questions. I think that score clues, when used appropriately, are an important and effective tool in music questions, so it’s important to write them accurately so that they can be parsed correctly by players. I’ve been seeing that errors in transcriptions lately have been transpiring because of reading off the wrong clef and writing notes down as a result. Two examples of this in the 2023 ACF Regionals set:
Packet E wrote:A symphony of this number opens with tremolo violins over the quiet low string theme “G, A-flat, G up to long E-flat, D, long F, E E-flat D,” which Heinrich Schenker likened to “the beginning of the world.”
This is cluing Bruckner’s eighth symphony, upon looking up and referencing the Schenker quote. However, the symphony actually begins with that theme transposed an entire whole step down, starting on F, not G. It seems that the writer mistook the viola’s part for being written in bass clef (it’s written in alto clef) and transcribed the notes from that part; looking at the cello part below it, which is actually in bass clef, reveals that the passage starts on F.

This error may not have been caught because the notes “make sense” in context of the key—the symphony is in C minor, and all the accidentals in the score clue fit in line with that key. However, the following discrepancy seems like it’d be more noticeable:
Packet P wrote:This instrument is the first to introduce the slow “long G, F-sharp G A B-flat” theme during the Introit of Mozart’s Requiem.
The actual notes played by the bassoon here are “long D, C-sharp D E F,” and it seems to be an issue with the clef during transcription also. The bassoon’s part is in fact notated in bass clef, and the notes as written, if written on bass clef, would be correct, but there is a notation in the score that the bassoon’s part starts out temporarily written in tenor clef instead, so we have to read the notes in tenor clef and transcribe them to concert pitch accordingly.

Since the Introit is the opening movement of Mozart’s Requiem, which is synonymous with the key D minor, we’d expect it to be in D minor. However, the clue as written is pointing to a piece in G minor, since all the notes are in the harmonic scale of G minor. Thus, this clue seems like something that would’ve been caught more easily than the previous one.

TL;DR Reading music on its own is difficult, but what makes it even more tricky is that there are multiple clefs that are used to write it, and not everything is written in treble or bass clefs (the clefs used in piano music). Thus, it’s important to ensure the veracity of score clues by checking the clefs.
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Re: 2023 ACF Regionals Discussion

Post by excessive dismemberment »

Chimango Caracara wrote: Tue Jan 31, 2023 2:32 am Regarding my own categories, I would simply like to apologize for their problems. Biology had too many unusual answerlines and difficult clues. Although I tried to make them easier than my questions for 2020 ACF Regionals, which were some of the hardest of that set, religion and mythology still had too many obscure clues and stupid question ideas.
Maybe it's just me and the limited packets I heard, but I actually found the religion and myth to be thoroughly enjoyable
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Re: 2023 ACF Regionals Discussion

Post by superdooku »

excessive dismemberment wrote: Tue Jan 31, 2023 12:21 pm
Chimango Caracara wrote: Tue Jan 31, 2023 2:32 am Regarding my own categories, I would simply like to apologize for their problems. Biology had too many unusual answerlines and difficult clues. Although I tried to make them easier than my questions for 2020 ACF Regionals, which were some of the hardest of that set, religion and mythology still had too many obscure clues and stupid question ideas.
Maybe it's just me and the limited packets I heard, but I actually found the religion and myth to be thoroughly enjoyable
I agree, I had a pretty enjoyable experience with the religion/myth, as well as the geography in this set. I particularly enjoyed the jinn, Sri Lanka, moon, and Pakistan tossups.
Last edited by superdooku on Tue Jan 31, 2023 3:26 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: 2023 ACF Regionals Discussion

Post by Votre Kickstarter Est Nul »

Two caveats before I say some things: I was reading and some of this is less about this regionals and more about what regionals should be overall (and so is not a criticism of this regionals). This set was a ton of fun. Nick content is always wonderful and well-researched. In the categories I know anything about, I found Rahul's Art, Rahul and Tim's US/Brit Lit, Allan and Grant's history, Nick's Other, and Kevin's OFA very fun (I'm sure the rest was great too, but I don't know any of it). I apologize in advance for the hefty repetition from the discord.

Easy parts
It seemed, reading this set, that there was a conscious decision to write more difficult easy parts. This ties in more to what I'll say later about whether Regionals needs to be this hard overall, but there were many rounds where the easy parts felt punishing on the newer teams at the site. This is probably okay given the set's overall vision--I suppose if it's hard overall, the easy parts should distinguish a bit too--and I wish there were advanced stats to look at this, but my guess would be that a solid chunk of weaker teams were consistently 0ing bonuses. For example, is Nuremberg from Der Meistersingers von Nuremburg really a Regs easy? This also occasionally created a bit of set whiplash in my head when something like that Texas art tossup gives you a (probably reasonable, but slightly difficult) art TU before saying Houston at the end despite most of the rest of the set deliberately not giving you the silly, easy tie-in that makes it answerable to almost everyone.

There were also many easy parts that required you to figure your way to the part, which troubled the teams I was reading to greatly. Wigs, for example, seems to give you the words powdered and hair so you can guess wig, since I don't think gache is actually an easy part clue. Same goes for the "cattle" part in the Sotho bonus. The most likely way for a weaker team to get 10 on that bonus is to go "raid, herding," guess it's cattle, rather than knowing about raids on Griqua cattle. Sorry I don't have more examples, since I couldn't really note-take well while reading, but I recalled feeling this a few other times. (these examples were missed in my rooms).

I would guess that both of these trends were responsible for the lower ppbs seen this year, since I think by and large the mediums and hards were well chosen and accessible, and so I don't think this was an issue of the set's bonuses going to hard at each step. Obviously easy parts typically aim for 90-95%, not 100%, but i thought this set hit in the 75-90% range too often.

There were also probably more bonuses with post FTPE second sentences and 2-3 lines in each bonus part than I'd personally prefer, and it definitely wore on over the coarse of the day. This was not a big problem though, and the set was by and large reasonable in length.

History
I think the history--it could be clumped in one area or the other, I'm not quite certain, I remember feeling this mostly in US history--was too hard in the tossups. Part of this came from the reliance on early and (sometimes) middle clues coming from scholarship. I may well be speaking from my own ignorance, and am happy to be told/proven to be wrong on this matter, but I think these generally proved difficult. Admittedly, because I find it hard to estimate what percentage of the field will know these types of clues, I am probably equally useless in estimating how much of the field knows them when someone else clues them (and I'm not going to just use the two team per question sample I have from the games I read). I cannot stress how much you should discard my comments if they're off base. These clues obviously have their place, I just worry that at a tournament as widely played as Regionals, almost all of them go over almost everyone's heads, since there isn't really a canon of recent books on [insert historical phenomenon] (and I'm not convinced undergrads are the main quizbowl demographic that thrives on these clues anyway). I hate saying something as normative as I think a tournament of Regionals difficulty should rely on this cluing style less, since I'm not sure I believe it, but I think many of the potential pitfalls of it are exacerbated by a non-open, widely-played tournament. Because these clues have very often never come up before--and some other clues used in the middle of TUs also haven't (or barely have) (I'm thinking here of middle-late Griles clue in casinos, stuff in the founding fathers and manifest destiny TUs)--the history tossups seemed to go late most of the time. (also I don't mean to pick on the extremely fun US history, it's just the history I know best)

On a different note, I thought the hard part selection was excellent and extremely reasonable. Were I a talented history player playing this set I think I'd have felt that on every bonus whose subject I was reasonably knowledge about, I would have a chance for 30. I also thought the clues were all well-written, well-placed, and evocative.

Pop Culture
I'm going to post more fully in the pop culture thread, but here I'll just say that I thought the pop culture was fun, and I don't think Nick should apologize for missing some of the more "popular" parts of PC. There's probably something to say about having this specific, unified theory of PC at a packet submission tournament, where it's probably more surprising, but I gather Connor has something to say about that, so I'll let them. Working with .5/.5 pop culture, Nick evidently made the decision to reflect PC as he wants to, which is to say a more academic focus in both material and cluing. I find this fun, even if it's less in my wheelhouse. Another approach, which I tried to do in Penn Bowl, was to instead pick the most popular sub categories of the things (in sports: the major ones, in music: a few major genres, etc) and ask something in each of those categories. A blend of these is probably barely feasible at .5/.5. If you switched two questions from each with each other, would we really have felt less of Nick's style here? If the sports had been poker, BJK, and a baseball bonus, I'm not sure it would have felt less like it does now.

Without being presumptuous about the time ACF people have amidst all of their great work, I think it'd be wise to vote before next season on changing the distribution to either 1/1 or 0/0 pop culture. My personal feeling is that you should not be qualifying for nationals on a set that includes a category eliminated from nationals (as mentioned above, a very close, important game was lost on BJK. In other words, someone's nationals chances are being hurt on a question that tells you nothing about their ability to play nationals). But if pop culture stays, which is probably also defensible, I think it should be expanded so it can be more properly subdistributed. If teams have to consider it in their plans to qualify, it sucks for a team with an elite pop music player to hear one rock bonus in the same way bringing your best linguistics player would suck if one year all of the social science was econ.

Does Regionals need to be this hard?
I read a decent chunk of games involving teams between 8-11 PPB, which may be biasing me here (though Ryan Rosenberg posted a graph of ppbs which indicates this year's mean ppb was lower than the last few year's). Do we really need a regionals where one team, Chicago A, is over 20 ppb? I know some other teams, like Brown, GT, Texas, Florida, did not play with their full A teams, but I'm not convinced I'd change my mind if those teams had been in that ballpark too. As I see it, Regionals is both the challenging capstone for most teams season and the nationals qualifier. I'll address the former, but for the latter, it need not be this hard. It doesn't matter, at Regionals, if GT A is upset by Florida because there were buzzer races on middle clues. What does matter is if the set differentiates properly between teams 37 and 43 in true talent, if the cutoff for nationals in team 40. When so many games are decided by some very late tossup buzzes and who can 20 2-3 instead of 1-2 bonuses, it increases variance at the bottom of the field (I'd think, though I'm happy to be proven wrong). Would it really cut into what makes Regionals special if the bottom teams were at 9-11 instead of 7-9, and the teams in the 30-40 range were getting PPBs closer to 16 and 17 than 13 and 14?

Regionals is also one of the best attended events of the year and I think it could stand to be less punishing for lower-level teams. This is not to say don't challenge them--I'm not suggesting changing Regs to a 2 dot tournament like MRNA--just that there's probably considerable room to make questions easier without losing anything. There appears a class of team that attends the major ACF and NAQT events while infrequently attending other events. Obviously outreach can affect that, but in my experience, it's just always easier to wrangle up your whole team and field 3-4 teams at Regionals even if C and D were going to get killed than convincing all of the same people to go to SMT. On some level I think teams will continue to treat Regs like a staple of the schedule which they always endeavor to attend, and I think it's worth considering that in what we aim to do with Regionals. The recurring, institutional nature of ACF tournaments evidently provides some pull. Because Regionals comes early in the spring semester, I don't think it needs to be super hard, as in "you've played Fall, Winter, and these 3 other 2 dot sets, now it's March and we're going to hit you with your season's challenge."

The title for this mini-section is a question on purpose. I genuinely don't know how strongly I feel the things I've said above. I had never had this thought before Saturday, but, reading all of those games and scanning other sites' stats, it occurred to me that a healthy chunk of the teams playing regionals get kinda walloped. I am not even sure I'd want to be a student in the vision I'm describing, since I'd have enjoyed this set very very much. But I think it's worth asking whether an easier vision of this set could accomplish its principle goals while also addressing issues like difficulty drift (or clue drift, I forget what it's called) in a way that, because Regionals is a recurring institution, feels more impactful than if MRNA really nails 2 dot difficulty this year.

Hopefully this post is helpful. I stupidly wrote this on the forums, instead of in a doc first, so it is probably clunkier than it needs to be, but I just want to stress again how enjoyable I found this set. From a mod's experience, Nick's tireless research and work on answerlines was very helpful (I dealt with multiple protests that, based on the specific prompt and rejection chains, clearly had been thought through beforehand). I hope the instances in which I used 1-2 examples aren't frustrating. I was unable to take many specific notes while modding, and I like to think anything I'd say here I could further substantiate with more examples if need be.

EDIT: forgot to note some amusing quirks: I guess this set's editors really like WEB Dubois and cattle? :)
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Re: 2023 ACF Regionals Discussion

Post by Restitutor27 »

Overall Impressions

This was a fun set, many thanks to the writers and editors. I liked how this set didn't have common issues like putting too many hard parts with little context first in bonuses, leaving players hopping around wondering what region/system they are in, and also the common links in this set seemed very coherent and well-themed without being forced.

Specific Categories

I tend to pay most attention to history these days (particularly Euro/Other/Ancient) and I thought this tournament had an interesting and fairly broad range of content. Some early clues seemed (at least at game speed) slightly harder than several previous Regs iterations, as were some of the answerlines (Kossuth for example, and in the context of having seen many previous years of Regs before I still waited a few lines on the Louis XI TU because I thought it might be too hard an answerline). Looking at the packets now, there is more modern than I thought there was at the time, but outside of the World subcategory it didn't feel excessively modern as happens with some sets (a good thing), though the amount of post ~1600 British history appears a tiny bit disproportionate and I'd be interested in what the rationale is in not putting a TU on e.g. Queen Anne in European is when fundamentally the subject matter isn't any different or more cross-boundaries than any other question on a continental European ruler would be (I realise this is nothing new in quizbowl).

I would also be slightly wary of using early clues that describe an event and mention very few proper nouns (while having definitely done this myself a lot in the past) if it's hard for the player to be certain the clue is unique - I buzzed on the mast-climbing clue on the Belisarius TU recognising that this had happened at the siege of Panormus but was very much not certain it couldn't be something else at the time. I had a similar thought about the crisis of the Third Century TU which isn't obviously Roman until Felicissimus (didn't actually remember hearing Thysdrus somehow) where getting the question early/recognising the description, even if you know it, seems to hinge on placing "where we are" with little concrete context. Possibly this purpose is meant to be served by the place name alone?

While I don't know a huge amount at degree level, the science answerlines to me seemed very reasonable for Regs difficulty. One of my teammates got negged a couple of times because of prompts being undirected, saying "fatty acids" and getting prompted several times for the omega-3 question, and there were similar ambiguities with the "peptide" and "corrosion" questions though I can't remember exactly what happened. I think it would be good if quizbowl in general used more directed prompts, to avoid the trap of writing an answerline with a prompt that doesn't mean "more specific" but "that's not exactly what we want, say something similar but read the question writer's mind".

I thought the myth content had an interesting variety of content, and particularly liked the cluing for the Rhine, Etruscan and Akkadian Empire questions (and undoubtedly many others that I don't know enough about to comment) that used a range of concrete sources that are engaged with from many perspectives, and "practice" clues, in contrast to many (mostly Greek) myth questions in older tournaments that mix together contradictory/incoherent stories from random anthologies rather than major primary texts.

Specific Questions and Difficulty

I nitpicked a couple of Winter questions to death and probably shouldn't have so won't do that here, but here are some things I noticed.
18. A former fuller who claimed to be part of this dynasty won a major battle against the praetor Thalna. An alliance
against this dynasty was formed by Chremonides with help from Areus. Lamia of Athens was the mistress of a ruler
of this dynasty who established a claim to Corcyra through a dowry. That ruler of this dynasty was called “the
Besieger” and married Lanassa, the wife of a ruler killed by a roof tile in Argos. Quintus Caecilius Metellus received
his agnomen by defeating this dynasty’s ruler Andriscus at the Battle of Pydna. This dynasty lost the Battle of Ipsus,
ensuring the dissolution of the Argeads’ empire. The founder of this dynasty was nicknamed for his facial injury. For
10 points, what dynasty based in Macedonia fought the Ptolemaic and Seleucid states in wars after the death of
Alexander the Great?
ANSWER: Antigonid dynasty [or Antigonids; prompt on Macedonians until “Macedonia” is read; prompt on
Antigonus I Monophthalmus or Antigonus the One-Eyed] (Demetrius I “the Besieger” had the relationship with
Lamia and married the wife of Pyrrhus of Epirus.)
<Other History>
I really like the early clues in this question (Hellenistic history that goes beyond the immediate successors of Alexander should definitely come up more in quizbowl!) but "the Besieger" is much too early because a) Demetrius Poliorcetes' siege of Rhodes is very famous and b) that siege and the Helepolis towers are what he is best known for by far. I think it'd be ideal (but not essential) to clarify Andriscus was technically a pretender to the Antigonid throne and (maybe) call it the Second Battle of Pydna to avoid any potential confusion when the far more famous one is the 168 BC one involving Perseus (also Antigonid but people might do a double take) but this doesn't really matter.
7. According to Polyaenus, a person with this title was deposed in 496 BCE after minting his own coins. A
“Northern” version of this title was held by Rajuvula, who ruled Mathura in the early 1st century CE. Nectanebo I
and Nectanebo II supported people with this title during their “Great Revolt.” Mitrobates, who held this title, was
supposedly killed by another holder named Oroetes. 26 positions with this title were established around 580 BCE, a
number that later increased to 36 according to the Behistun Inscription. Regions controlled by people with this title
were connected by the Chapar Khaneh postal system and the Royal Road, which linked them to administrative
centers like Sardis and Susa. For 10 points, what title was held by provincial governors in the Achaemenid Empire?
ANSWER: satraps [or satrapy or satrapies; accept Northern Satraps; prompt on local governors or vassal rulers]
<Other History>
Again a really interesting idea (and something I don't think I've ever heard tossed up before, so good for variety).

The 580 BCE is an error and should be more like 530 BCE - a potential issue if someone is already thinking it and then hears a year that entirely predates the Achaemenid empire. Also the positions described are not the same (Northern Satrap is a separate Indo-Scythian title that is different to the Achaemenid position) so “title with this name” would be better.

The tossups on "primary colours" and "trickster figures" both seemed notably transparent and played as a bit of a game of chicken on both occasions. I think it'd take a long time to really comb through bonuses, but most seemed broadly fine, with world history coming across as a bit hard in places. I can't remember any really egregious parts not matching their described difficulty, but would say Josephus and William the Silent both being medium parts on effectively full info is a bit soft for this difficulty. Again, thought it was a very good tournament overall.
Last edited by Restitutor27 on Wed Feb 01, 2023 8:43 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: 2023 ACF Regionals Discussion

Post by tpmorrison »

I edited British Literature, Math, and Philosophy for Regs this year. It was my first time editing the latter, so apologies if anything was rough around the edges.

A big thanks to the entire editing team, all the playtesters, and the other ACF affiliates who chipped in to improve both my categories and the set at large. I’d particularly like to thank Nick, who continues to amaze me with his attention to detail and extremely helpful feedback. Nick also chipped in loads of questions across the set to keep things running on time.

I enjoyed reading Emmett’s post and found it very thoughtful, particularly his discussion of bonus part difficulty. Though I had nothing to do with the category, I really enjoyed the pop culture questions this year, even as I can see why they might not be for everyone. I saw some discussion on the Discord about there being “no pop culture” in this set, which strikes me as an odd claim for a tournament that had tossups on Billie Jean King, poker, and raves, and bonuses on mainstream horror films, mainstream rock music, and weightlifting. My two cents is that, if pop culture is going to continue to be a category in ACF Regionals, it should focus on the cultural relevance of its subjects and/or highlight critically-acclaimed topics, in keeping with the broader ethos of quiz bowl. I thought Nick did a nice job hitting both of these goals, though there are of course other ways to do so (e.g. Emmett’s great work on Penn Bowl).

Finally, I’d like to highlight some submissions that I especially enjoyed. This list is non-exhaustive, and unfortunately not everything here made it into the set.

British Literature:
Sally Rooney TU (Minnesota A)
Graves and Sassoon bonus (UVA B)
Piranesi bonus (UNC A, used in albatross TU)
John of Gaunt bonus (Cornell B)
fame TU (Cornell A)
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead TU (UK A)
Saki TU themed around wolves (MIT A, converted to bonus)
clones in Never Let Me Go TU (NYU A)
Lady Wortley Montagu/Blue Stockings bonus (Michigan A)
Tristram Shandy TU (Florida B)
Charlotte Brontë bonus (Harvard B)

Math:
Möbius TU (UVA A)
Lie groups bonus (Berkeley A)
Sobolev spaces bonus (Warwick A)
optimal transport bonus (Imperial B)
random graphs bonus (Chicago A)
Huffman coding/information theory bonus (RIT)

Philosophy:
Phaedrus TU (Cornell A)
love TU (Minnesota A)
theory TU and Whitehead TU (Chicago B)
Wittgenstein TU themed around mathematics (MIT A)
history in Benjamin TU (Cambridge B)
David Lewis bonus (John Jay)
Gareth Evans bonus (Brown A)
logos TU (Harvard B)
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Re: 2023 ACF Regionals Discussion

Post by EvanKnox »

I played the set in its playtesting form, and in a rather different format than teams would (e.g. I can let the actual good players 30 everything I don't know), but I enjoyed a lot of the questions in the little niches of knowledge I have (e.g. Tim and Graham's statistics and applied math/meteorology, the neuroscience, Christianity). Even outside of those categories, there were questions that were exciting to the unknowledgeable like me, like:

-Myth stretching all the way from Christmas carols to birthstones, the Dyatlov pass incident, and apparent card/video game mainstay orichalcum

-The Coca-Cola in Africa TU (which I now have to scratch off my question ideas sheet)

-t-SNE and other single cell statistical analysis methods in the "cell" biology TU

(Also, an interjection from my teammate Ashish that he was very happy to see Durga tossed up!)

Overall, it seemed like a fun tournament, and I would've had a blast playing it traditionally too!
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Re: 2023 ACF Regionals Discussion

Post by amundhe »

I thought that the Painting/Sculpture content was incredibly cool and did a great job of portraying ancient art as both interesting in its own right and influential on later art, something that the Antonio Canova bonus (with parts Venus/Borghese/Apollo Belvedere) and the Constantine tossup in particular hit well. I also thought that the common-links on "winter," "the Great Wall," and "destroying art" were super well-themed, relevant, and really highlighted the role of particular sub-areas within art while keeping the answers interesting.

In general, I think all the art tossups to me felt either "very old" (ancient/Renaissance/medieval/Baroque) or modern 20th century, with very little in between (by my count, only the Germany and Mont Saint-Victoire tossups). I think that the tossups could have probably been distributed a bit better temporally (unless I'm missing something, the entire 18th century wasn't asked about in tossups), and it felt a bit odd to play knowing that the art tossups I'd hear would be in one of these two (admittedly rather nebulous) categories. However, the bonuses seemed to be well-distributed temporally and maintained the set's high quality in this category.

Overall, I had a lot of fun playing the Painting/Sculpture questions and gained a new respect for both ancient and medieval art because of this set!
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Re: 2023 ACF Regionals Discussion

Post by naan/steak-holding toll »

From playing over this set on QBreader, I generally agree with the comments that the bonuses were on the whole well-thought out and generally had reasonably gettable hard parts. In fact, this set might have been my favorite set of myth bonuses ever.
.
What struck me as negative was how hard a lot of specific tossups were; as a reader, I often got the impression that the questions may have been hard because the writer was trying hard to make a question work without considering difficulty, stick very closely to a theme, or avoid doing something that's been done a few times before. A non-exhaustive list of examples from categories I'm more familiar with:
Precursors of these beings allow a king to breathe underwater anywhere except one monster-haunted lake. In a tale collected by a Swedish-inspired 1935 folklore commission, one of these beings yells that a castle is burning. A boy orders one of these beings not to move his red garter, so it ties identical markers on every ragweed in a field. The name of these solitary beings recalls their practice of cobbling a single shoe. A name that starts with “clur” is given to a rowdy counterpart of these beings, which originally wore red jackets, unlike “trooping” counterparts in green. In 2006, residents of Mobile, Alabama, supposedly saw one of these brogue-making beings, which vanish if you look away from them while you search for their treasure. For 10 points, what sly, tiny fairies are said to hide pots of gold in Ireland?
ANSWER: leprechauns [accept clurichaun or clobhair-ceann; accept luspardan; accept lurikeen; accept lúchorpán or lúchorpáin; accept Mobile leprechaun or Crichton leprechaun; prompt on fairy, fairies, the fey, fair folk, aes sídhe, aos sí, or little people until “fairies” is read; prompt on cobblers or shoemakers until “shoe” is read; reject “elf” or “elves”] (The first line is about Fergus mac Léti.)
Maybe I'm radically off-base here, but I'm guessing that this is a buzzer race near the giveaway for more than half of the teams in the field. The question seems to go out of its way to omit potentially useful context - does saying "trooping fairies" instead of "trooping counterparts" really make this unplayably transparent in the late clues? How many people will know that leprechaun shoes are called brogues? It does seem there's a folk etymology there but I'm not convinced it's so well known that you couldn't say "brogue" a little earlier, and get people familiar with brogues to think about "Irish beings" for a while. And is this Mobile leprechaun siting so famous that we think half or more of our teams might be able to buzz on it?
This plant is spread on the floor at the start of The Dream of Rhonabwy (“ron-AH-bwee”). Robert Graves wrote that Jesus took over for this plant while its counterpart was replaced by John the Baptist in his reading of this plant’s king winning Creiddylad (“CRAY-thuh-lod”) at midwinter by beheading the Oak King. This plant, which was linked to Tinne (“TEEN-yeh”) in the Ogham (“AW-gum”) alphabet due to its use in charcoal, was left uncut in hedgerows to prevent witches from running over them. In Britain, slugabeds on Saint Stephen’s Day were flagellated with this plant of genus Ilex in the outlawed practice of holming. This tree with “a blossom / As white as the lily flower”“bears the crown” in a carol that pairs it with the ivy. For 10 points, a Welsh carol urges listeners to “deck the halls”with boughs of what evergreen that has spiky green leaves and red berries?
Similarly, maybe I'm super off-base here (and this could well be much easier in Britain) but I highly doubt that the audience has so much knowledge of Celtic-influenced Christian practice that this needs to go so long without dropping lines from "The Holly and the Ivy" or "Deck the Halls." I'm guessing well over half of US teams are buzzing on the giveaway or the clue before it.
Nico Declercq found that an outdoor structure on this peninsula created a low-frequency acoustic filter. In 2019, the oldest known human fossil outside Africa was dated from this peninsula’s Apidima Cave. Mesolithic seafaring is evidenced in the Franchthi (“frahnk-thee”) Cave on this peninsula, where a marshy area contains the House of the Tiles built by the Korakou (“koh-RAH-koo”) culture. On this peninsula, a sealstone “combat agate (“AG-ut”)” was left in a possible “Griffin Warrior Tomb” at a “sandy” site where syllabic “oxen tablets” record the palace economy of a wanax. It’s not Anatolia, but a type site on this peninsula contains a Lion Gate built with cyclopean masonry near beehive-shaped tholos tombs. The Morea expedition surveyed this peninsula’s Bronze Age sites of Tiryns and Pylos. For 10 points, what peninsula contains Lerna and Mycenae (“my-SEE-nee”)?
ANSWER: Peloponnese [or Peloponnesus; accept Morea until read; accept Argolid Peninsula or Argolis; accept Mani Peninsula; prompt on Balkan peninsula; prompt on Greek peninsula, Greece, Hellas, Hellenic Republic, or Ellinikí Dimokratía] (The first line refers to the theatre of Epidaurus.)
As far as I can tell, none of the information in the first three sentences of this tossup has ever come up before. I appreciate the exploration of older phases of Greek history, but I don't think you need two lines to sort out people's knowledge of pre-Bronze Age Greece after a very hard lead-in about a structure that I doubt the field has a whole lot of knowledge about. This leaves the clues in the latter part of the tossup in similar places to the Mycenae tossup from this past year's Nationals, which wasn't an easy question by any means!
Two of these beings who are brothers kill each other with maces after being seduced by a dancer in red silk. Two of these beings who arise from earwax are split by a discus after a five-thousand-year battle. They’re not dragons, but after another of these beings is beheaded, he splits into two “shadow planets” that cause eclipses. The name of these beings is a [emphasize] cognate of deities like Apam Napāt and Mithra. A statue near Malaysia’s Batu Caves marks the defeat of one of these beings on Thaipusam at the hands of Murugan. These “antigods” created by Prajāpati, who reject the wine goddess Varuni, include the atypically devout Prahlāda, Raktabīja, and the daityas led by King Balī during the churning of the milk ocean. For 10 points, earthly rakshasas may be considered a type of what demons who oppose the devas?
Awesome idea for a tossup, but does this question really need to obscure details such as the names of Rahu and Kettu? That already seems like a pretty tough clue, at least for the third line of Regionals; keeping out Indian names to stop people from guessing early is understandable, but if the problem is that we don't want players guessing some kind of evil being from Indian myth on the early clues, then maybe it's worth considering alternate clues rather than withholding more information in a tossup on an answer that's pretty challenging for most of the field.
To quell disbelief about cobble and flake tools found at a Pleistocene site in this country, Niède Guidon claimed that they were so deep in a cave, they must have been transported by humans. A 2022 article published in The Holocene countered that stone tools found in those sites in this country were used by small monkeys. The idea that human development in this country languished because of resource-poor environments was the subject of a debate between Betty Meggers and Anna C. Roosevelt. Indigenous peoples in the Javari Valley in this country are protected by FUNAI (“foo-NYE”). The Marajoara (“ma-ra-JWA-ra”) culture built mounds in this country, where pottery shards infuse a fertile soil called terra preta. For 10 points, name this country partially inhabited by uncontacted peoples in the Amazon Basin.
Betty Meggers and Anna Roosevelt are two of the best-known scholars of the Amazon, but it's pretty shocking to me to see their names go from lead-in/second-clue material (e.g. Winter Closed this year) to the second half of a Regionals tossup. Maybe that's justified, maybe not. But even then, terra preta as a pre-FTP also seems very harsh, without giving teams the names of some indigenous Brazilian people or something famous in popular culture like the Lost City of Z before you get to "uncontacted peoples in the Amazon." There's a bunch of weaker teams playing this tournament and I'm sure they could all benefit from a more gentle slope here.

All of these questions are compelling, interesting ideas, but seem substantially harder than similar Regs-level tossups before in ways that I don't think are necessary to differentiate teams. Often, they're either shifting formerly-early clues radically down, removing context from already-obscure information, or not putting in some padding in the pre-FTP to avoid a buzzer race on something everybody knows.

Editors, myself included, are often very concerned about criticism for transparency or use of stock clues and creating buzzer races or "uncreative" questions. I think this concern, taken too far, contributes to an inflation of tossup difficulty and a worse outcome. I wouldn't blame newer players who get frustrated by this - we tell them to read past questions to familiarize themselves with the game and improve, and then we strenuously avoid giving them an early buzz based on reading questions. Maybe we could all stand to be a bit more canonical, or cut to canonical clues more quickly, and not press too hard on our new ideas. The leprechaun should still try to hide from the teams early on, but most of them should be able to buzz before they see the pot of gold.
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Re: 2023 ACF Regionals Discussion

Post by cwasims »

My sincere apologies about this - looking at the scores again, I see exactly how I made these two mistakes - I hope no one was dissuaded from buzzing based on the misspellings. I should have followed my own previous suggestion about looking at the piano transcription (if it exists) as well as the full orchestral score, as that can alleviate some of these issues (and likely would have in this case).
dni wrote: Tue Jan 31, 2023 12:09 pm I thought this set was quite good overall and had lots of interesting ideas! Difficulty seemed to be slightly uneven among categories, but the content being asked about was cool.

I’d like to point out a trend that I’ve noticed when writing score clues in music questions. I think that score clues, when used appropriately, are an important and effective tool in music questions, so it’s important to write them accurately so that they can be parsed correctly by players. I’ve been seeing that errors in transcriptions lately have been transpiring because of reading off the wrong clef and writing notes down as a result. Two examples of this in the 2023 ACF Regionals set:
Packet E wrote:A symphony of this number opens with tremolo violins over the quiet low string theme “G, A-flat, G up to long E-flat, D, long F, E E-flat D,” which Heinrich Schenker likened to “the beginning of the world.”
This is cluing Bruckner’s eighth symphony, upon looking up and referencing the Schenker quote. However, the symphony actually begins with that theme transposed an entire whole step down, starting on F, not G. It seems that the writer mistook the viola’s part for being written in bass clef (it’s written in alto clef) and transcribed the notes from that part; looking at the cello part below it, which is actually in bass clef, reveals that the passage starts on F.

This error may not have been caught because the notes “make sense” in context of the key—the symphony is in C minor, and all the accidentals in the score clue fit in line with that key. However, the following discrepancy seems like it’d be more noticeable:
Packet P wrote:This instrument is the first to introduce the slow “long G, F-sharp G A B-flat” theme during the Introit of Mozart’s Requiem.
The actual notes played by the bassoon here are “long D, C-sharp D E F,” and it seems to be an issue with the clef during transcription also. The bassoon’s part is in fact notated in bass clef, and the notes as written, if written on bass clef, would be correct, but there is a notation in the score that the bassoon’s part starts out temporarily written in tenor clef instead, so we have to read the notes in tenor clef and transcribe them to concert pitch accordingly.

Since the Introit is the opening movement of Mozart’s Requiem, which is synonymous with the key D minor, we’d expect it to be in D minor. However, the clue as written is pointing to a piece in G minor, since all the notes are in the harmonic scale of G minor. Thus, this clue seems like something that would’ve been caught more easily than the previous one.

TL;DR Reading music on its own is difficult, but what makes it even more tricky is that there are multiple clefs that are used to write it, and not everything is written in treble or bass clefs (the clefs used in piano music). Thus, it’s important to ensure the veracity of score clues by checking the clefs.
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Re: 2023 ACF Regionals Discussion

Post by Lake Winnipesaukee Mystery Stone »

7. According to Polyaenus, a person with this title was deposed in 496 BCE after minting his own coins. A
“Northern” version of this title was held by Rajuvula, who ruled Mathura in the early 1st century CE. Nectanebo I and Nectanebo II supported people with this title during their “Great Revolt.” Mitrobates, who held this title, was
supposedly killed by another holder named Oroetes. 26 positions with this title were established around 580 BCE, a
number that later increased to 36 according to the Behistun Inscription. Regions controlled by people with this title
were connected by the Chapar Khaneh postal system and the Royal Road, which linked them to administrative
centers like Sardis and Susa. For 10 points, what title was held by provincial governors in the Achaemenid Empire?
ANSWER: satraps [or satrapy or satrapies; accept Northern Satraps; prompt on local governors or vassal rulers]
<Other History>
I preface my discussion of this question with a note: Handling Achaemenid history is tough, partly because it is still rapidly developing as a relatively young field (i.e. decades old rather than centuries). This often means that some easily available online sources are very out of date, which in this case often means wrong as well if they are drawing on out of copyright/open sources written long before we were reading the Persepolis tablets.

I do love to see a Polyaenus clue in quizbowl - except in this case, the clue is false, because he says nothing about the supposed minting in Egypt by Aryandes - the story (contrary to Wikipedia's claim) is solely found in Herodotus (4.166). Polyaenus only tells us that he faced uprisings in Egypt because of his severe rule (7.11.7).

The existence and extent of the "Great Revolt" is massively contested in Achaemenid scholarship - the majority view (of which I am not part) would see it as a series of disconnected troubles rather than a unified rebellion. Key here is that Nectanebo I was not the motivating force behind Egyptian overseas involvement in the late 360s, but rather his son and co-regent Tachos.

(A stylistic point - there seems like much more could be said about Mitrobates and the ambitious Oroetes rather than a plain x person of this title killed another holder of it)

As Abigail has already noted, the date here is wrong. Enumerating the precise numbers of satrapies is also a matter of intense scholarly debate and argument. What is absolutely wrong here is the claim that there were 26 established in c. 580, and that Bisitun records an increase to 36. Bisitun lists 23 lands, the oldest known list, from 522. On Darius' tomb, and a list of Xerxes, we get 30.

Herodotus' "Royal Road" is a Hellenocentric view of a much more complex system of roads that ran across the empire - so much better to pluralise it! There is, unless I'm mistaken, zero evidence for using the term Chapar Khaneh in the Achaemenid period - the Encyclopaedia Iranica suggests that is an entirely Safavid term - the Greek ἀγγαρήιον from Herodotus and Xenoophon is best matched in the Persepolis Fortification archive with pirradaziš (Old Persian *fratačiš), meaning “express runner, express service”.
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Re: 2023 ACF Regionals Discussion

Post by shmno »

I can only really speak about the science, but some thoughts:

Although PPBs were lower than they have been, I thought difficulty control across the set was fairly good. Tossups seemed relatively accessible, and easy/medium parts seemed consistent. I thought the hard parts seemed to fluctuate in difficulty more though, from "makes sense"/stock parts to seemingly canon-expanding answers.

I liked the biology from this set less than sets in recent memory, but I will say part of that my personal bias on distribution - this set tended toward non-human/macro biology over cell/molecular biology, which may have been an editorial design decision. The "core" biology there was tended to have hard parts that didn't really reflect the ways in which I interact with biology (endocrine disruptors/cadmium/sequiterpenoids/hypomorphs) - I guess I felt like that there was maybe less knowledge base here. I got this feeling most strongly from the "cells" TU, which I found quite clunky as I wasn't able to tell what the question was asking for despite recognizing the drop-seq clue was talking about scRNA-seq and being a frequent user of the K-12 EcoCyc page. Despite this (or possibly because of this), there were some tossups that asked about things in new ways that I thought were creative (media/tongue).

Overall, though, set was fun and I enjoyed myself. Thanks for writing more QB, even if these feedback threads trend towards negative.

TL;DR MD-PhD complains about not enough MD / PhD content
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Re: 2023 ACF Regionals Discussion

Post by eygotem »

Very brief comment but there were a lot of developmental bio tossups in the earlier rounds, with neural, fetus, and asymmetry (and arguably sea urchin) all within a few packets. Also having "these entities" on the fetus tossup seemed needlessly vague; I get avoiding an ontological claim but I question why it was a tossup at all, not least when similar content was already represented.
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Re: 2023 ACF Regionals Discussion

Post by Votre Kickstarter Est Nul »

Oh man I forgot to note how fun the CE and Other was! the nighttime! Ingalls Wilder! landmines! red envelopes! (and many others) Nick has a terrific sense for crafting tossups out of things I wouldn't have thought had enough good, difficulty-gradated clues, and yet the Other/CE was both a ton of fun to read and, small small sample size aside, played well in the rooms I saw.
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Re: 2023 ACF Regionals Discussion

Post by bkmcavoybickford »

I wrote this comment before I saw the one above this.

In general, I thought this was a well-written set, with pretty much only one actual complaint worth mentioning. That's that, although the combined 1/1 of other ac/geo/ce/pop culture was quite well written, the subdistribution, both in terms of what was what category and what was asked about, was extremely odd. This is a bit true for any set, but it was particularly notable in this set, and that's not just due to the fact that we skipped some packets at the mirror. Some of the pop culture being academic-leaning was notable; that seemed fine to me, although most of the "other fine arts" film questions I heard didn't seem any less pop culture than the pop culture questions. The geography mostly felt like geography, although I had to look back at the packets to figure out what geography we actually heard.

However, the current events asked interesting questions about valid topics for quiz bowl, but a lot of them weren't particularly current, although this effect might have been exacerbated by the questions we heard. One or two of these would have been fine, but the overall effect was that the set felt like it didn't have current events. Of the current events questions we played, the first bonus about post-Soviet politics is definitely current events. But every clue after the one about hero rats in the land mines TU comes from the 90s, so it should probably be in history. We didn't play the CE bonus in packet E, but Packet G's violence against women TU mixes a lot of current clues with some less current ones, like one about 2666. Packet H's pop culture question about cheetahs (which was really interesting, by the way) has more recent clues (Saudi women learning to drive, the entire last part) than some of the CE questions. The semiconductors TU is a valid CE question in isolation, but definitely contributed to the feel of the set not having much CE as it had a lot of clues from science. The night question in Packet O feels more like other academic as it mixes an extremely wide variety of clues, including some ones that are not that recent. Other academic had a few similarly misplaced questions- the Wilder family tu is entirely literature clues so should be literature, Coca-Cola doesn't seem significantly less historic than the similar whaling tossup. This was less of an issue, however, because much of the pop culture and current events felt like other academic. I definitely think that sets should occasionally clue non-current but recently relevant things in current events, but this went way too far, especially since the only categories that were subject to this clue mixing were ones that the ACF distribution already has very little of compared to NAQT/even some housewrites.

One tiny nitpick: I already protested this, but the tossup on battles from Irish myth was confusing, as Cuchulainn goes into riastrad for things that aren't exactly battles also.

All in all, this was definitely a well-written set with tons of interesting content, including in the other academic and current events distribution, even if the subdistribution was confusing.
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Re: 2023 ACF Regionals Discussion

Post by mico »

With the European and Other History, the distributions stayed very similar to last year, although there was a more rigid subdistribution by time period and less attention paid to types of history (i.e. social, economic, political, military, etc.).

Last year, I said I wanted to:
form answerlines around, instead of physical/political locations, either social/political movements, or specific rulers. Lots of contemporary countries, or physical locations, in Europe did not constitute a shared identity for the people living within them throughout various periods of European history.
For the most part, I stuck with that aim. When I had answerlines on physical locations, I tried to theme them in a way that would make sense in terms of the location's identity at the time. Some examples are Schleswig-Holstein, the Kingdom of Hungary, and the Dutch Republic.

Compared to last year, the Other History had a more informed subdistribution. Again, it was tightly organized by geographic and temporal boundaries, and included forays into "Ancient World" (think questions on Ancient China or the Americas). Similarly, the goal was to use as many quality submissions as possible, and secondarily ensure an ideal variety in the types of history.

All of the editors I worked with had excellent ideas and fostered a welcoming production environment, and I'd love to work with any of you again. I want to highlight the work that Nick put into this set in particular. It's not reflected in the final product how much of a hand Nick had in every question across every category. Whenever you were stuck with a question that needed 1-2 more clues or balancing, you could post it for feedback and Nick would give a lengthy response touching on all parts of the question and offer multiple clue ideas, sources, alternative phrasings. It's hard to explain how helpful this is to anyone who had never produced a set themselves. For example, the clue on Pleistocene sites in Brazil being attributed to Capuchin monkeys instead of humans came from an article Nick sent to me well after I had written a first draft of the question. That kind of attention to detail and willingness to share makes Nick one of the most helpful head editors I've worked with.

People are free to message me here or on discord for more feedback about submissions, but I would like to highlight a few that I enjoyed reading. Special shoutout to Cambridge A who had 3 (!) useable history questions in their European and Other submission with little editing required!

terror (Brandeis A)
Mit Brennender Sorge / Hitler / youth groups (WUSTL A)
Saxons (Toronto A)
Sicilian mafia (McMaster)

Eamon de Valera (UW B)
Peterloo (Cambridge A)
Canada / residential schools / Pearson (Western A)
writing / Fu Hao / cowrie shells (Toronto A)
Morgan / William the Conqueror / Normandy (Edinburgh)
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Re: 2023 ACF Regionals Discussion

Post by mico »

Restitutor27 wrote: Tue Jan 31, 2023 3:04 pm I tend to pay most attention to history these days (particularly Euro/Other/Ancient) and I thought this tournament had an interesting and fairly broad range of content. Some early clues seemed (at least at game speed) slightly harder than several previous Regs iterations, as were some of the answerlines (Kossuth for example, and in the context of having seen many previous years of Regs before I still waited a few lines on the Louis XI TU because I thought it might be too hard an answerline). Looking at the packets now, there is more modern than I thought there was at the time, but outside of the World subcategory it didn't feel excessively modern as happens with some sets (a good thing), though the amount of post ~1600 British history appears a tiny bit disproportionate and I'd be interested in what the rationale is in not putting a TU on e.g. Queen Anne in European is when fundamentally the subject matter isn't any different or more cross-boundaries than any other question on a continental European ruler would be (I realise this is nothing new in quizbowl).
I made a concerted effort to tossup some answerlines that haven't been tossed up much due to, in my estimation, a difficulty in forming a well-gradated question on them, not because they were too difficult. I was fairly happy with how some of those questions turned out. Examples include Lajos Kossuth as you mention, but also Skanderbeg, Santiago, Schleswig-Holstein, and League of Nations in European.

The temporal split in European was pretty standard of modern quizbowl, although it actually leaned older than many sets (including some I've been responsible for in the past). The split was about 27%/33%/40% respectively for Medieval (to 1450)/Early Modern (to 1815)/Modern. The British history being classed in Other History is a personal choice, and many sets do class it as European. I would not be opposed to classing a question like Queen Anne in European, but for this set, it is what it is. The temporal splits for British history were one question each on the following periods: The Isles through the Norman Conquest, to 1154; Plantagenets and the Hundred Years’ War, 1154–1455; War of the Roses, Tudors, and Jacobean Unrest, 1455–1642; A Country in Turmoil and the Early Georgians, 1642–1795; The Regency and Victorian Eras, 1795–1901; World Wars and Modern Society, since 1901. It's possible that the post ~1600 feels disproportionate, but that could be a factor of what packets were played at which sites, since I think that it was divided relatively non-controversially. Potentially, the reality that all Commonwealth History is modern plays into those kinds of initial feelings.
Lake Winnipesaukee Mystery Stone wrote: Wed Feb 01, 2023 10:03 am As Abigail has already noted, the date here is wrong. Enumerating the precise numbers of satrapies is also a matter of intense scholarly debate and argument. What is absolutely wrong here is the claim that there were 26 established in c. 580, and that Bisitun records an increase to 36. Bisitun lists 23 lands, the oldest known list, from 522. On Darius' tomb, and a list of Xerxes, we get 30.
Thank you both for detailed responses on these questions. I apoligize if they caused any confusion when they were played. I wish I could have caught these errors before last weekend, but it didn't work out that way unfortunately.
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Re: 2023 ACF Regionals Discussion

Post by jmarvin_ »

Without getting deep into the details, I wanted to be sure to say how much I loved this edition of Regs, which I think is, in the categories I feel qualified to judge, the best I've ever played (the fact that I wasn't a strong enough player then to really know how I'd feel now about the mid-2010s editions notwithstanding). I especially want to give props to Tim Morrison - who always does an excellent and carefully polished job perfecting every question he touches - for really killing it on the philosophy questions: never before have I played a quizbowl tournament where the category was handled with exactly the right balance in terms of breadth of topics, and where literally every round consistently rewarded important things I've learned through my career as a philosophy scholar before minutiae from the Wikipedia articles about things that came up in past packets, to put the contrast hyperbolically. I also have to say that I really enjoy what seems to me to be Nick Jensen's signature geographical/cultural/"world" flavor that seasons most categories, which is a sort of synthetic approach to things that I personally love. All involved should feel proud of this set, if you ask me!
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Re: 2023 ACF Regionals Discussion

Post by Sit Quietly, Alone »

This may be a coincidence, but I thought I'd note it here: Upon watching a recent episode of University Challenge (a UK-based, College Bowl Company-affiliated televised quiz show with a tossup-bonus format), I happened upon a bonus very similar to the spa town bonus from Regs. They shared two of three answerlines (Vichy and Belgium) and clued on the same stuff (i.e. clued Vichy on the political history, and Belgium on Spa). I can only assume it's a coincidence, unless there are similar people writing for both packets. I just found it interesting.
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Re: 2023 ACF Regionals Discussion

Post by naan/steak-holding toll »

jmarvin_ wrote: Fri Feb 03, 2023 1:14 pm Without getting deep into the details, I wanted to be sure to say how much I loved this edition of Regs, which I think is, in the categories I feel I also have to say that I really enjoy what seems to me to be Nick Jensen's signature geographical/cultural/"world" flavor that seasons most categories, which is a sort of synthetic approach to things that I personally love. All involved should feel proud of this set, if you ask me!
Since my previous post was fairly negative, I wanted to strongly second this. I'll focus particularly on the geography and current events questions in this tournament - while unfortunately there weren't many of them, they were world-spanning and rewarded a ton of different modes of engagement. I could see a question or two more on US-specific issues, but given this tournament's international audience and the presence of US-relevant clues in tossups, this approach was completely valid.
bkmcavoybickford wrote:However, the current events asked interesting questions about valid topics for quiz bowl, but a lot of them weren't particularly current, although this effect might have been exacerbated by the questions we heard. One or two of these would have been fine, but the overall effect was that the set felt like it didn't have current events. Of the current events questions we played, the first bonus about post-Soviet politics is definitely current events. But every clue after the one about hero rats in the land mines TU comes from the 90s, so it should probably be in history. We didn't play the CE bonus in packet E, but Packet G's violence against women TU mixes a lot of current clues with some less current ones, like one about 2666.

...

The semiconductors TU is a valid CE question in isolation, but definitely contributed to the feel of the set not having much CE as it had a lot of clues from science.
I think the approach of writing the Current Events category as "Current Issues" or "relevant issues to contemporary politics" is one that generally produces more engaging questions. Sure, I could see throwing in some clues about the mines dropped on the front between Azerbaijan and Armenia or whatnot, but writing a whole tossup on land mines with only recent events might get rather flat or cliffy. Nonetheless, it's An Issue that people with broad engagement in contemporary political world issues would probably learn about. Similarly, I can see why someone wouldn't be a huge fan of the 2666 clue, since it does feel like "free points for literature players," but on the other hand most people who bother to read/study the novel end probably up learning about the issue that inspired "The Part About the Murders."

Finally, I couldn't disagree more about the semiconductors question. Looking at its text:
A 2020 book on “deciphering” this industry calls the US a “gray rhino” due to a company’s 2016 sanctions, nominally for shipping to Iran and North Korea. The “war” for this industry titles a 2022 history by Chris Miller. This industry’s demand for ultra-pure water caused a 2021 drought that led the Irrigation Agency to pray to a sea goddess and motivated Hsinchu Science Park’s desalination plant. This industry uses High NA machines invented by the Dutch firm ASML. To reduce reliance on this industry’s TSMC plants in Taiwan, a 2022 act aimed to bolster domestic manufacturing “for America.” Made in China 2025 supports SMIC’s foundries in this industry to compete with fabrication by Samsung and Intel. For 10 points, Moore’s law notes the rising complexity of what devices that are used in microprocessors?
None of the "science clues" require any amount of actual science knowledge to parse at all! In fact, everything that you might call a "science clue" in this tossup is something I learned from either articles and YouTube videos focused on politics. Which is great, that's exactly the kind of knowledge you want to reward in a CE tossup on a prominent industry - relevant facts about the industry that you'd pick up as an engaged political observer.
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Re: 2023 ACF Regionals Discussion

Post by Scone »

A poet of this ethnicity wrote, “I am a refugee. You are too” in Afterland and titled a collection for this ethnicity’s exposure to
toxic “yellow rain.”
In Tossup 18 of Packet H, this line should say "I am refugee. You are too." The "a" should not be there. I don't have a copy of Afterland with me, but online reproductions of Mai Der Vang's poem "Transmigration" note the line as "I am refugee." It's a small thing, but it needs to be noted.
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Re: 2023 ACF Regionals Discussion

Post by rahulkeyal »

I edited Painting/Sculpture and American Literature for this year's Regionals. I hope folks enjoyed those categories, and the set as a whole!

I'll be brief with comments on my approach, which I think is best illustrated by the questions in my categories. In the Painting/Sculpture, I continued the ongoing trends of centering knowledge of art history (e.g technique and medium, common motifs, criticism/theory, patronage and reception of art, curatorship, influence on later artists etc), highlighting minority artists, and taking care to not shortchange non-western and ancient/medieval art. In the American Literature, I was admittedly a bit less unified in my approach, but aimed to write on a good balance of genres, time periods, and themes and similarly emphasizing the contributions of minority authors and figures.

It was such a pleasure to work with Nick. He provided detailed feedback on every question written for the set, and brought a deep and very inspiring passion for knowledge to his own questions, which you could always trust to be engaging, didactic, and impressively-wide ranging. He was also very patient during times when I fell behind schedule, and helped out immensely by freelancing a number of questions in my areas.

The rest of the editors on the set were great to work with, providing lots of valuable feedback and doing impressive work in their categories. In particular, Tim provided many comments on my questions (in addition to writing many questions I was jealous of).

I'd also like to thank my brother Aseem and Jordan Brownstein for pitching in some questions towards the end of the production process. Aseem also helped keep me going at times when my motivation waned, and in general was (as always) a very valuable resource and sounding board. Caroline Mao also gave a lot of helpful feedback/suggestions throughout the process.

Thanks as well to all the playtesters and proofreaders - my questions and the set overall were greatly improved and made much more playable with their feedback.

Finally, thanks to all the teams for submitting questions! It was a joy to receive such a diverse range of ideas and work with them for this tournament. If you're interested in receiving feedback on submissions in American Literature or Painting/Sculpture, feel free to shoot me an email or message me on Discord (rahulk#0529) or Messenger.

Finally, here are but a handful of my favorite submissions, not all of which could make it into the set:

American Literature:

- Columbus in 19th-century poetry bonus [Toronto B]
- Adrienne Rich [UW B]
- silkpunk bonus [UW A]
- David Henry Hwang's authorial self-insertion bonus [Minnesota A]
- _Elizabeth Bishop and Marianne Moore_, (edited into a tossup on their poems' titled "The Fish") [Georgia Tech A]
- the Vietnam War (from poetry by Yusef Komunyakaa) [Brandeis A]
- _Native American_s (in 19th-century poetry) [Toronto B]

Painting/Sculpture:
- fairies in British painting [Cornell A]
- art forgery bonus [Cambridge A]
- Tintoretto [Toronto A]
- Guillaume Apollinaire and Orphism bonus [Georgia Tech B]
- Matisse's studio [Columbia A]
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