QUAOAR [Novice set, 2023-24]

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CPiGuy
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QUAOAR [Novice set, 2023-24]

Post by CPiGuy »

This is an announcement for QUAOAR (QUestions, Academic, Oriented At Rookies), a middle school / novice high school tournament set to be available for mirrors starting October 2023 through the end of the 2023-24 school year. The set is head-edited by me, Conor Thompson, with several deputy editors, and written by a large group of writers. The set includes twelve packets of 20/20 tossups/bonuses, plus an additional partial packet of replacements. Tossups are powermarked, and bonuses follow the standard 10-points-each, three-parts-of-varying-difficulty standard.

Difficulty and length
The set is intended to be suitable for both middle school and novice high school audiences. As such, care is being taken to ensure that both tossup answerlines and bonus parts are accessible to brand-new quizbowl players. This tournament will probably be similar in difficulty to this past year's MAKEMAKE set, or ERIS from 2020-21. Tossups will be capped at 450 characters; this is slightly more than the maximum length of an NAQT IS set. Bonuses will not have a hard character cap, but bonus parts exceeding two lines will be rare.

Distribution
The distribution will be as follows:
5/5 Science (including 1/1 non-computational math; there will be zero computational math)
4/4 History
3/3 Literature
1.5/1.5 Geography
1.5/1.5 General Knowledge / Other Academic (including “mixed impure academic”)
1/1 Fine Arts
1/1 Religion
1/1 Mythology
1/1 Popular Culture and Sports
1/1 Philosophy, Social Science, Civics/Government, and Current Events

Writers and editors
I am the head editor. The following categories have one or more subject editors:
Literature: Andrew Gao, Danny Peelen
History: Sam Macchi, Neev Sahgal, Lukas Koutsoukos
Physics/biology/chemistry/math: Aatreyo Bhattacharyya
Earth/space science: Sam Macchi
Visual fine arts: Lukas Koutsoukos, Tanay Bodducherla
Auditory fine arts: Fierro Grey, Tanay Bodducherla
Religion and mythology: Gregory Zeldovich
Geography: Andrew Gao, Neev Sahgal
Popular culture: Neev Sahgal

The set is written by the editors and a large group of writers.

If you would like to write for this set, contact me! No particular experience is required, just a willingness to incorporate feedback and put in effort.

Fees
The mirror fee for QUAOAR is $12 per team, including house teams. This is the same for both middle school and high school mirrors. If you have specific financial circumstances (such as outreach to low-income schools) and would like to negotiate an exception to this fee, you are invited to contact me.

If you are planning on using the set for a non-standard format (for example, by having more than two teams play per match, or reading only the first two parts of bonuses, or by introducing housewritten lightning rounds or worksheets), you must clear this with me in advance of receiving the set.

Contact
If you would like to use QUAOAR for your tournament, or you have any other questions about the set, please contact me at [email protected]. We are open to having this set used by both traditional one-day tournaments and by leagues or conferences in need of a set.

Mirrors

See the post in the MS section about this set for an updated list of mirrors.
Conor Thompson (he/it)
Bangor High School '16
University of Michigan '20
Iowa State University '25
Tournament Format Database
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