The Clarke Memorial Tournament will be entirely written and edited by Vasa Clarke, which is to say, myself.
This question set will consist of 15 packets of 20/20. Tossups are strictly length-controlled at 500 characters. Bonuses have no specific character limit, but will be kept to a reasonable length.
The subject distribution is as follows:
4/4 Literature
- 1/1 American Literature
- 1/1 British Literature
- 1/1 European Literature
- 1/1 World / Other Literature
- 1/1 American History
- 1/1 European History
- 1/1 World History
- 1/1 Other History
- 1/1 Biology
- 1/1 Chemistry
- 1/1 Physics
- 1/1 Other Science
- 1/1 Visual Art
- 1/1 Auditory Art
- 1/1 Other Art
- 1/1 Religion
- 1/1 Thought (Philosophy / Social Science)
- 1/1 Other Religion / Myth / Thought
1/1 Popular Culture
Some notes on the difficulty and distribution:
My intention was to write a question set akin to "the sort of average tournaments that teams simply played in the 2000s without thinking too hard about their difficulty." [x]
That said, if you would like to compare difficulties, I would label this as "three-dot" difficulty and suggest Division I SCT as a rough comparison. ACF Regionals appears to be the more standard archetype for the "three-dot" difficulty level, but I have taken measures (most notably the length limit) to consciously imitate the kind of NAQT questions I can vaguely recall playing, years ago.
Each packet has at least 1 question on world literature. Each packet has at least 1 question on Commonwealth history. Each packet has at least 1 question on ancient or classical history (mostly in Other History although there are a few that were packetized as World History). The "Other Religion / Myth / Thought" category is distributed more or less evenly, according to my whim.
Other Academic will be questions on things that fall outside of the rigid subject categories, interdisciplinary questions, general knowledge, common links, and main subject extras.
Popular Culture will be diverse, whimsical, and hopefully not stupid.
Some notes on logistics:
The Clarke Memorial Tournament will be an excellent question set for teams looking to brush up on their college-level NAQT skills in preparation for SCT in the spring semester! I hope to mirror this site in every circuit worldwide where SCTs are held.
The mirror fee for this event will be $60 per team at your site (excluding house teams). I will not be collecting mirror fees. Instead, I request that every host pay their fee by making an equivalent donation to a local hunger relief nonprofit. My preferences lean towards organizations like regional food banks and community fridge projects. Please confirm with me before you make any payment of "mirror fees." I reserve the right to reject a proposed beneficiary for any reason. Mirror fees must be paid within two weeks of each event, with documentation forwarded to me. If you are unwilling or unable to make such a donation, you can Venmo me your mirror fee and I will donate it to a local hunger relief nonprofit.
This is intended to be a closed-eligibility event. Tournament hosts are not required to follow every detail of NAQT eligibility rules, but those rules should be good guidelines. Any obvious departure from community norms (e.g. a pseudonymous team) should be cleared with me before the mirror date. The general rule of thumb is that teams must be composed of players enrolled at the same educational institution. It is my opinion that high school teams should be explicitly permitted to play this event if they so choose. Apart from that, I have no strong opinions which deviate from common practice.
I do not wish to put my signature to any document; if your institution requires any paperwork for independent contractors, fill it out yourself and don't bother me about it.
This question set may be mirrored from September 2024 to January 2025; the last date this set will be available for mirrors is two weeks before NAQT's scheduled SCT dates for Spring 2025. Upon that date (or earlier if there are no further mirrors pending and none expected), I will publicly upload the questions to the quizbowl packet archive.
I will update this thread as I make decisions about how exactly this thing is gonna shake out. If I need to postpone or cancel, I will make a public announcement no later than August 2024.
