General Set Discussion

[AGoodMan]

Similar to years before, please discuss the overall quality of the set here, such as overarching successes/problems. Difficulty and specific question discussion should go in their corresponding threads.

[AGoodMan]

This is my second and (probably) last time head editing HFT. I wrote the majority of history and religion, along with a good deal of visual art and mythology. I also wrote a few questions in literature, science, and social science (In total, I wrote about 30% of the set). Michael Yue wrote much of the auditory arts and contributed greatly in literature, physics, and social science; in many ways, he was the second head editor of the set. Ricky Li wrote and edited a good portion of literature and also contributed across all categories. Kelvin Li and Justin Duffy wrote and edited the majority of science. Justin also wrote about two-thirds of the mythology.

Many others contributed on the set, including Thomas Gioia, Chris Gilmer-Hill, Laurence Li, Jonchee Kao, Peter Laskin, Olivia Murton, Mazin Omer, Alice Sayphraraj, and Kevin Huang.

I would also like to thank Jordan Brownstein, who gave invaluable feedback on much of the literature, history, and arts questions. Stephen Eltinge and Olivia Murton basically read through all of history, literature, science, and trash and gave very helpful feedback. Olivia, especially, proofread much of the set. And lastly, Kelvin Li helped keep the set's production on track. I owe much to these people.

As shown from Groger Ranks adjustments for the 2018-19 season, last year's HFT overshot its difficulty in tossups (specifically, power rate), and was just about right in bonus difficulty. As such, I made a conscious effort to have more generous powermarking in this set while maintaining a similar level of bonus difficulty; I hope this effort translated to reality for players.

[Shahar S.]

As shown from Groger Ranks adjustments for the 2018-19 season, last year's HFT overshot its difficulty in tossups (specifically, power rate), and was just about right in bonus difficulty. As such, I made a conscious effort to have more generous powermarking in this set while maintaining a similar level of bonus difficulty; I hope this effort translated to reality for players.

Powers definitely felt much more accessible than last year from my experience playing the set. I think it may have actually read as too generous at times, but we'd have to see more stats (hopefully from the Texas mirror) to confirm that.

[Ciorwrong]

I'll have more to say later when I go through each packet methodically, but as a reader, this set was very unpolished and was frankly sloppy at times. Many sentences had to be rewritten in my brain before I read them due to poor construction, missing verbs, etc. It felt like some of these questions were never read aloud. It's almost never good to have a four line sentence in quizbowl that is made to be grammatical via a single semicolon. Teams at the UCSD site noticed the lack of polish in the set and were honestly frustrated by the times I stared at answerlines which contained no alternate or insufficient answers (some of which I have already told Jon about such as the night in Islam bonus part.)

I hope these issues are cleared before the next mirror because me and other moderators were quick to notice the lack of polish in the set. The difficulty was still a bit out there at points and some bonuses were way too long for no reason (no one in quizbowl cares about the Borel distribution especially in high school.) This set could have really used a more public call for playtesting or another set of eyes. Overall, it did its job, but teams were genuinely frustrated at points and I felt bad as a moderator when I had to say "sorry this answerline only has one word. I'm not sure if your answer is right so I'm gonna not accept it for now and you can protest." Expansive answerlines are always better. Some answerlines were missing obvious alternate answers such as original language titles.

I also thought the trash was a bit too "memey" at points such as the strange My Hero Academia clue and the Fortnite skin reference but that's probably more due to me being out of touch with what high schoolers know and watch.

[mrmotag]

I also thought the trash was a bit too "memey" at points such as the strange My Hero Academia clue and the Fortnite skin reference but that's probably more due to me being out of touch with what high schoolers know and watch.

Thanks for your constructive feedback, Harris -- I'm sorry that you and other moderators had a frustrating experience with this set. We've identified and edited some issues regarding sentence construction, semicolons, alternate answer lines, and overall readability, so thanks for pointing those out.

I also wanted to explain the thought process behind our trash. This year, we sought to craft an eclectic trash distribution that included both (for lack of a better description) "high art" content like "Hotel California" and "Carole King" as well as content like the "grapes" tossup or my "Fortnite" clue. Other trash writers and I were aware that the latter is often underrepresented in quiz bowl, but I firmly believe that this sort of content is fun, more accessible, and more culturally relevant among high schoolers today. In particular, I'm not sure I agree that the "Fortnite" clue is "memey," given that it continues to be one of the most popular video games in the world. For what it's worth, initial reactions to trash from players have been positive.

Again, thanks for your response, and for moderating our mirror!

[shefna21]

I just wanted to say that I really enjoyed playing this set! I'm not the most knowledgeable about what constitutes good writing in quizbowl, but from the perspective of a player it seemed like the language was straightforward, the question difficulty was fairly homogenous, and the clues were interesting and new without being obscenely hard. I'm sure there's a lot of nitpicking that can be done, and I think it's probably valuable to do, but as a whole I was impressed by how generally well-written it seemed. There were a fair number of things tossed up I'd never seen tossed up before, but that were still not so spicy that people couldn't convert them. The bonuses were fun - I personally love "cute" bonuses (joke lead-ins, surprising common links, etc.), but I'm aware that others don't like their bonï quite as frivolous, and I think this set did a good job of walking that line. I don't have any specific negative criticism, except that the set definitely felt a lot easier this year than last, which from what you've said sounds like it was mostly intentional, so that's not really a problem. Thanks so much for writing this set; I had a ton of fun playing it!