2020 MWT Specific Questions and Errata

[CPiGuy]

This thread is for discussion of specific questions.

[Santa Claus]

my notes

rd 1
crypts are also in tonsils
fiddling is very hard
french too hard
greg of tours namedropped to early
1972 bonus hard
eakins slightly hard

rd 2
pessoa hard
kombu glacier (?!) - green boots already hard
cut second part of mobius bonus part
WHAT WWI THEY SHALL NOT GROW OLD
unreasonably difficult fossil bowl
difficulty cliff at wittgenstein
singular clue for a plot detail of norwegian wood?
tango hard

rd 3
jamaica kincaid lmao
already said property in property bonus
hm the pronoun for converting to judaism kinda gives it away a little
tokugawa is really easy
says iron chloride used in EAS but I'm pretty sure that's just any Lewis acid
song of seikalos (?) too hard
ymir seems too hard for this difficulty
naming school of contemporary econometrics is uh
off shell too hard
spirocete bonus has two hard parts and like a medium part

rd 4
nukes cliffs at retaliatory
reading genesis hard
I don't think its clear how the geology clues for orogeny exclude subduction
intra-guild predation >:(
armory too easy
cliff at freud

rd 5
beringia needs directed prompt
gulag might have to take concentration camp as not all the clued camps are explicitly gulags
destroy bast
leyland rather notably commisioned the peacock room from whistler - you should probably do more to exclude that
montserrat hard

rd 6
chess is not academic
linguistics bonus full of confusing descriptions
1936 winter olympics!?
rogue wave norway clue is not useful
really shouldn't have both IR and Raman

rd 7
geertz
charon is perhaps the worst idea I've ever seen for a tossup
knot is too hard
too much cohomology
no-communication is incredibly hard to dinstinguish from no-broadcast, no-cloning, and no-teleportation, especially given the clue
bindi hard
the first name in the fugard tossup can't be winston ntshona

rd 8
thomas mann comes up twice
why is one expected to know the type of specific genetically modified plants

rd 9
two hard parts in the hebrew lit bonus
glad to have sushi bonus that asks about sushi no one eats and randomly asks about foxes in shinto
pornography and prostitutes and pinups
bonus on porn is like a million lines long
writing a tossup on "novels by members of this family" narrows the answer space super fast and super narrow - why not just stick to "a novel by an author with this surname"
at best the river clue for alaric is misleading and at worst its just wrong
could you just explicitly not say it's china when saying there's a portuguese-derived egg dessert
whitehead came up already
the hard part of the slavic myth bonus is too hard
tahitian kingdown is a stupid idea

[Votre Kickstarter Est Nul]

Round 1:
I agree Greg of Tours is namedropped too early, my bad.
1972 too hard: for what it's worth, Humphrey was converted in 4/5 rooms. I think Muskie serving as Humphrey's VP candidate in 1968 is fine for a middle.

Round 2:
WWI: big old mea culpa on my part for the early drop of They Shall Not Grow Old. I'm an idiot, didn't get the reference, and because it's a newer doc, assumed it shouldn't be too late (similar to my rationale for putting slave play in the first line of the slaves tu). I was (as Evan predicted) wrong.

Round 3:
jamaica kincaid lmao: not my category, but my Q; it's bein' fixed lol
tokugawa: I will happily make this harder. It was originally, but I was worried it was too tough. Was it too clear early on it was an eastern country pursuing isolationist policies? I tried to make sure that didn't come out too early.

Round 9:
scotus porn stuff: yup, it'll be fixed
at best the river clue for alaric is misleading and at worst its just wrong: So everything in the question, unless I'm missing something, is correct. Seeing a note in the doc, I presume this could be a hose for Huns? If so, I apologize; that's something I didn't see while researching. From what I understand, the diverting of a river is a legend for Atilla's death, which means that save the Busento River namedrop, the clues sound pretty similar. This probably just makes this a suboptimal clue, so I'll look into replacing it.
Tahiti: why is this stupid?

I can't really speak for the rest, but thanks for all the comments!

[Zealots of Stockholm]

Thanks for the feedback Kevin!

Fiddling will be made easier, Another middle clue will be added to the Bacon tossup, and UK will probably be changed to just PRB (though I don't think Leyland is a hose for Whistler in that context).

[cwasims]

I didn't take quite as many notes as I probably should have, but here are some of mine:

Kangxi seems like quite hard medium part (especially without mentioning the dictionary) and the clues for Dzungar were pretty difficult.

The flag tossup seemed to mention falling from the sky very early when this is an extremely famous clue about the Danish flag.

The bonus on The Musical Offering struck me as quite difficult, with what I thought were essentially two hard parts.

I thought it was a bit strange to have the very last clue in the copper tossup be on the atomic number as opposed to the symbol or just "combined with zinc to make brass" or something.

I agree with the previously mentioned comments on Dawson City being dropped way too early and the WW1 tossup having a very easy first line.

[Asterias Wrathbunny]

I think the Dadaist bonus is too easy and most teams will 30 it
I think the first clue for Notre Dame is too easy
I'll have more opinions once we get packet access

[Deepika Goes From Ranbir To Ranveer]

I wanted to respond to the question on bindis, which it sounded might get cut for being hard / vague. I would like it to stay -- I think it does a good job of asking about a very simple religious practice that has extremely widespread adoption. Religion questions (or at least Hindu questions) can sometimes feel very "serious", discussing scripture and solemn rituals, without discussing more everyday aspects of "being Hindu". I liked the question about "ringing a bell" in Hindu temples at PennBowl for this reason, and I like this question for being 50% religion, 50% cultural fashion.

I also think the clue about Gomez does a good job of bringing up topics of cultural sensitivity that have been recently(ish) discussed. It's fine if people only get it because of that clue. Regarding that clue, however...

In response to Selena Gomez's “Come and Get It” music video (*)​ , Hindu leader Rajan Zed stated that these things are
"not meant to be thrown around loosely for seductive effects or as a fashion accessory.

This sentence makes it sound like Gomez wears the bindi in the Come & Get It music video, which she doesn't. She did, however, do so at a million live performances. Also, on the least important note ever, the song is stylised "Come & Get It".

[sbraunfeld]

Some scattered comments.

Packet 2
Language- The first two clues should either be tightened up or replaced. The Kripke quote is not about the private language argument but the rule-following argument, so "rule following" and "meaning" are probably both better answers at this point. Also, I'm not sure what thought experiment you're referring to. Based on your answerline, you presumably realize that the second clue is very non-unique (and other answers, e.g. "pragmatics", should be included). But an expansive answerline doesn't fix the fact that if people are unsure what you want, they probably just won't buzz. In play, I won a buzzer race against Chris Sims, who I believe is quite a good philosophy player, on the picture theory clue.

Packet 3
Is Apep an easy part?

Packet 4
The cardinality of the reals need not be aleph_1; this should be 2 to the aleph-naught instead. You should also include the rationals in your answerline.
Nude descending staircase bonus seemed easy.
There should be a pronunciation guide for dhow (our reader said dough), since this is the meat of the clue.

Packet 6
Norway- Should "Jotunheim" be in the middle of this tossup? I know nothing about Norwegian geography, but nearly buzzed here from low-level Norse myth knowledge.

Packet 8
Perhaps just "qua" should be required, instead of "quaquaquaqua" (unless you think the number of repetitions is particularly important)?

Packet 9
"Acute sets" seems impossibly difficult. Maybe something about recent progress on the chromatic number of the unit distance graph of the plane would be more reasonable?

Packet 10
This Slavic myth bonus seems quite hard.

[1992 in spaceflight]

Packet 8
Perhaps just "qua" should be required, instead of "quaquaquaqua" (unless you think the number of repetitions is particularly important)?

I don't, so it's been changed to just require one "qua."

[Asterias Wrathbunny]

How did the Massachusetts geography tossup go at the Playtest? The clues within power are very difficult, but then right outside power (where it mentions Fall River and New Bedford) is really easy.

[Considered Harmful]

(originally mistakenly posted this in the general discussion thread)

Bonus 9 from pack 13:

9. Answer the following about memory management in C++ [​ “C-plus-plus”​ ], for 10 points each:
[10] In C++, these objects are defined with an asterisk before their name and are de-referenced by using an ampersand. These
objects are useful for memory allocation as they store the address of a variable.
ANSWER: ​ pointer​s [accept word forms such as null pointer]

The asterisk is used for dereferencing, rather than the ampersand. Ampersands are used for taking the address.

[10] Dynamic memory is allocated to this data structure using the "malloc" keyword in C and C++. When using the "new" keyword
in a definition, memory is allocated from this tree-like data structure.
ANSWER: ​ heap

A few issues with this one.
- the heap isn't really what we conventionally think of as a data structure. It'd be better defined as an area of memory
- malloc is a function from the standard library, not a keyword
- nitpick: "new" doesn't have to be used in a definition. Might be nicer to say "in an expression", although it's not technically wrong so it's probably fine to leave as-is
- the heap isn't tree-like and it's not generally implemented using a tree-like data structure. This was probably written with the other, unrelated computer science meaning of a "heap" in mind
- this should accept "free store" as an alternate answer, since that's generally used interchangeably with "heap" when referring to the area of memory

No real issues with part 3.


Pack 13, bonus 11: "Elixir of Life" -> should be "Elixir of Love"

Pack 14, bonus 2

[10] The Ganghwa Treaty was signed during the reign of King Gojong, who ruled the country after the fall of the Joseon Kingdom.

Should be "this country"

[Protean]

I’m not a particularly critical player, I just listen to questions and don’t really think about them, but I also usually don’t play such an early mirror so I thought I’d put down some thoughts. I’m also really bad at judging difficulty and what people know so comments on difficulty may be entirely unhelpful but here they are.

Round 2
For this level, Munro seems like a slightly tough answerline and cocaine / disulfiram / mydriasis seemed fairly hard
First of some feng shui stuff – Zora Neale Hurston here, Their Eyes Were Watching God later. The clues are different and I don’t really think having the same things come up in different categories is a problem per se, but it was something that did seem to keep happening, or at least enough that I noticed it.

Round 3
The rhyme scheme in the limerick bonus is wrong, as my teammate caught in-game - limericks are AABBA, not ABBAA.
Another feng shui thing about having two of the Four Great Novels come up, albeit one as a bonus part (All Men Are "Brothers") and one as a tossup (Dream of the Red Chamber)

Pack 4
The Vargas Llosa bonus part mentions the “Dominican dictator Rafael Truijillo” and pack 10 later goes on to toss up the Dominican Republic. Trujillo isn’t mentioned by name until the end of the tossup but this still strikes me as suboptimal.

Round 5
A Moveable Feast / iceberg / Paris seems like two mediums and an easy
I really liked the style of the Nrf2-KEAP1 bonus in that it talks about a cool and important pathway while asking about things that are actually answerable

Round 6
This is probably a product of me having approximately negative art knowledge, but the Campbell’s soup can question felt pretty fraudable to me – what notable art items are featured in a series that is contemporary enough to be the subject of an Esquire cover?
The Native American basketball bonus was cool

Round 10
More feng shui. Massachusetts comes up again after the bonus part on the Provincetown Players.

Other notes
It was nice to see some genre fiction come up, especially aside from just science fiction (Poirot, Book Thief)
It felt like there was a lot of Egyptian myth? It didn’t help that it was clustered into the first half of the tournament (Semen/Osiris/Min in pack 1, weighing the heart against the feather/Shu/Apep in pack 3, Nile in pack 5)

[Cody]

Some of the less involved specific comments I noted while reading below. I made better notes (highlighted more things) as the day went on, so the earlier packets are less comprehensive. Don't put much stock in the bolding / underlining on the question reference line, as I added that without looking at the packets to create more of a visual break between comments. Format is:

• Question Reference
  Question text subject to comment (optional)
  => Comment

• Packet 2, TU#17, ans: language
  A philosopher noted criticized the idea of “meaning as use.” in study of this concept and differentiated between “derivative” and “explicated” meaning.
  => word salad
• Packet 2, TU#18, ans: endometriosis
  This disease is treated with GnRH analogues like Lupron and the SPRM danazol, It can also be treated by surgically removing (*)​ implants and adhesions.
  => word salad
• Packet 3, B#5, ans: opera
  Ya Hua has been influenced by this art form
  => Yu Hua is misspelled and likely needs a pronunciation guide.
• Packet 4, TU#17, ans: college athletes
  => alternate answers insufficient. I accepted "NCAA athletes".
• Packet 7, TU#15, ans: Delhi
  A ruler who ruled from city lost a decisive 1526 battle when the (*) ​sound of cannons scared his elephants; that ruler, Ibrahim Lodi, lost the 1526 Battle of Panipat.
  => "who ruled from this city"
• Packet 7, TU#15, ans: Delhi
  This city's walled city included the Red Fort, which became an Empire's capital following the move away from Agra.
  =>"Its walled city"
• Packet 7, TU#18, ans: bamboo
  => no alternate answers, needs more instructions. I did not accept "wood".
• Packet 7, B#15, ans: God Save the Queen
  Clementi's composed his 3rd symphony
  => "Clementi"
• Packet 7, B#19, ans: vampires
  => prompt begins "Name these beings."; reword
• Packet 8, TU#18, ans: Simone de Beauvoir
  This author criticized Engle's idea that the oppression of women emerged after the discovery of bronze.
  => "Engels's"
• Packet 8, B#2, ans: la folia
  Though many forms exist, a common version of this musical motif begins with a i-V-i-bVII [​"minor one, major five, minor one, major flat seven"​] progression.
  => There is no reason to write this in technical notation and use a pronunciation guide. Write it out instead.
• Packet 8, B#4, ans: Braganza
  => prompt begins "Name this dynasty."; reword
• Packet 8, B#6, ans: Eleusinian Mysteries
  These rituals represent the abduction and return of Persephone in a cycle with three phases.
  => "Name these rituals that …"
• Packet 8, B#9, ans: Tullia Minor
  The resulting revolt overthrew his last Queen of Rome, who trampled her father’s body with a chariot.
  => "this last Queen of Rome"
• Packet 8, B#19, ans: Baghdad
  Earlier, Hülegü Khan’s had Al-Musta’sim trampled while rolled up in a carpet after his siege of this city.
  => "Hulegu Khan"
  => diacritics in languages that aren't well known are distracting and should be removed
• Packet 8, B#20, ans: OPERA
  It was intended to observe oscillations between muon-tau neutrino oscillations.
  => "It was intended to observe oscillations between muon and tau neutrinos."
• Packet 8, B#21, ans: London
  prompt begins "Name this city."
• Packet 8, B#22, ans: "​Mississippi Goddam​"
  Another civil rights era protest song is this song, which says …
  => This other civil rights era protest song says …
• Packet 9, TU#4, ans: conjugation
  => alternate answer of conjugate is not bolded and underlined
• Packet 9, TU#5, ans: Khmer
  Zhou Daguan wrote a first person account of these people's mpire, including a description of its once gold-covered temple at (*)​ Bayon.
  => "these peoples's empire" or "this people's empire"
• Packet 9, TU#19, ans: Tezcatlipoca
  => none of the pronunciation guides are formatted properly
• Packet 9, B#12 & #20, ans: N/A
  => two Tanzania in this packet. no problem but I noticed it so I thought I'd mention it.
• Packet 9, B#20, ans: Democratic Republic of the Congo
  => answerline formatting is hard to deciper, don't do this. do ANSWER: DRC [or Democratic Republic of the Congo]
• Packet 10, TU#1, ans: baptism of Jesus Christ
  Daniel Harrington claimed that this event was “among the most certain” events in the New Testament to have actually happened, because it assumes a “dependence” of Jesus on another man and was unlikely to have been invented. The person who performed this action claimed that he was unworthy to untie the sandals of its subject, whom he described as “the one who comes after me”. Matthew uniquely describes how the person who performed this action initially (*)​ objected and asked that it be performed ​on ​ him instead. A voice from the heavens proclaiming its subject was one "with whom I am well pleased" followed this event, after which the Spirit of God descended like a dove. For 10 points, identify this event in which the Son of God was dunked in the Jordan River.
  => The first line mentions Jesus but the answerline says to prompt if Jesus isn't said. Also the giveaway tries to hide that it's Jesus for some reason? Needs some rethinking.
• Packet 10, TU#12, ans: logic gates
  ​An SR latch is made from two for these objects, as is a half-adder.
  => "two of these"
• Packet 10, TU#21, ans: Dvorak
  The cymbals only used for a single three measure appearance in the final movement of this man's final symphony.
  => "The cymbals are only used" ?
• Packet 10, TU#21, ans: Dvorak
  This man refused to let Hanuš Wihan ​[​“Han-ush vi-han”​]​ write his own cadenza in a piece written while he is serving as the director of the (*)​ National Conservatory; that piece is his Cello Concerto in B minor.
  => word salad
• Packet 10, B#1, ans: Bruce
  => prompt begins "Name this family."; reword.
• Packet 10, B#1, ans: Bruce
  Roger Mortimor was sent to Ireland to fend off an invasion by a member of this family who died at the Battle of Faughart [​“fah-heart”​].
  => "Mortimer"
• Packet 10, B#3, ans: Romance languages
  .. the word for 100 in most of this family's languages starts either with an /s/ sound or a /tʃ/ [​"ch"​] sound ..
  => just write these out -- "s" sound or a "ch" sound
• Packet 10, B#3, ans: Romance languages
  => cento pronunciation guide isn't formatted properly
• Packet 10, B#6, ans: Caprivi strip
  => FTPE is put in the first bonus prompt instead of at the end of the leadin.
• Packet 10, B#7, ans: Yehudah Amichai
  In one poem, this poet repeatedly mentions locations such as a “modern museum” and “my very heart.”
  => Why so coy? Just name poem. Use of "one" is incorrect in any case, you mean "a". See also: https://www.qbwiki.com/wiki/Quizbowlese#Stupid_lingo
• Packet 10, B#15, ans: animal sacrifice
  => prompt for "what is being sacrificed" but answerline does not mention specific animals such as "ram" which was given in my room.
• Packet 10, B#17, ans: capuchin monkeys
  In one notable experiment, de Wall studied how these primates responded to being compensated unequally when giving grapes versus some other food.
  => "de Waal". No need for "In one notable experiment" prefix, delete.
• Packet 11, TU#2, ans: Baruch Spinoza
  This philosopher rejected Carteisan dualism by instead positing that there is only substance in a work which develops prepositions about reality only from axioms and definitions.
  => "Cartesian"
• Packet 11, TU#4, ans: Farewell symphony
  The F-sharp major adagio of this symphony's final movement feature oboe and horn solos and is marked with the words "nichts mehr", or "no more," and ends with a muted violin duet.
  => subject-verb agreement, should be "features"
• Packet 11, TU#6, ans: South Korea
  This wife of this country’s President was targeted in the unsuccessful Blue House Raid; that leader of it was later shot by the head of the KCIA.
  => This wife is incorrect. Can be simplified greatly to "The wife of this country’s president was targeted in the unsuccessful Blue House Raid, whose leader was later shot by the head of the KCIA."
• Packet 11, TU#15, ans: Potomac River
  The Joint Committee on the Conduct of War was established after a battle during which Union troops had to cross this river. In that Edward Baker became the first sitting US Senator to die in battle.
  => second sentence is missing words. can overall be greatly simplified to something like "The Joint Committee on the Conduct of War was established after a battle in which Union troops had to cross this river and Edward Baker became the first sitting US Senator to die in battle."
• Packet 11, TU#20, ans: Roman roads
  A system which utilizing on these structures is depicted on Peutinger's Table, which belongs to a class of maps depicting them called ​itinerarium.
  => "A system using these structures …"
• Packet 11, B#2, ans: Oliver Otis Howard
  This general accepted the defeat of another leader who surrendered saying "I will fight no more forever."
  => another doesn't refer back to anything. you mean "accepted the defeat of a leader".
• Packet 11, B#4, ans: Goethe
  => The Sorrows of Young Wether is not italicized and the pronunciation guide is on the wrong side of the period.
• Packet 11, B#7, ans: peptidoglycan
  The sugar component of this polymer consists of alternating residues of NAG and N-acetylmuramic acid.
  => choose to abbreviate (NAG and NAM) or spell out, don't mix the two
• Packet 11, B#7, ans: macrolides
  This class of antibiotics, the first of which was erythromycin, are mainly used to treat infections caused by Gram-positive bacteria and work binding to the P site of the 50S subunit of the bacterial ribosome
  => "work by binding"
• Packet 11, B#12, ans: International Monetary Fund
  => answerline formatting is hard to deciper, don't do this. see DRC comment Packet 9 B#20.
• Packet 11, B#13, ans: marriage
  Jan van Eyk's most famous painting is believed to depict the Arnolfinis engaging in one of these events.
  => "Jan van Eyck's"
• Packet 11, B#15, ans: Vietnam War
  => prompt begins "Name this conflict."; reword.
• Packet 11, B#16, ans: Madness and Civilization
  Name this book, which linked the opening of the Hopital General with "The Great Confinement".
  => any reason not to translate Hopital General => General Hospital?
• Packet 11, B#16, ans: Madness and Civilization
  The author described how water and its title concept are "deeply rooted in the dream of the Western man" in the first section, ​Stultifera Navis ​ .
  => "in its first section"
• Packet 11, B#16, ans: Foucault
  Madness and Civilization​ was written by this French philosopher, whose other analysis of psychiatry include ​The Birth of the Clinic​. Other books by this philosopher include ​Discipline and Punish and ​The Order of Things.
  => subject-verb agreement "includes". why not make this one sentence and say "by this French philosopher, whose other books include Discipline and Punish, ​The Order of Things, and another analysis of psychiatry The Birth of the Clinic"?
• Packet 11, B#17, ans: Angelou
  A subgroup of it, the Harlems Writers Guild, included this author of ​I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.
  => "Harlem Writers Guild"?
• Packet 11, B#20, ans: Gladstone
  => prompt begins "Give this last name."; reword
• Packet 11, B#20, ans: London's sewer system
  Another payout recipient Evelyn Bazalgette, whose nephew, Joseph, designed this system in response to the Great Stink of 1858.
  => "Another payout recipient was"
• Packet 12, TU#5, ans: Lu Xun
  For 10 points, what early proponent of vernacular Chinese wrote "Kong Yiji" and "A Madman's Diary?”
  => don't put the question mark in the quotation marks, this is why American-style quotes are bad for quizbowl.
• Packet 12, TU#7, ans: birth control
  According to a Papyrus document from Kahun, mixing honey, saltpeter, and crocodile dung would create a substance with this purpose.
  => "papyrus"
• Packet 12, TU#13, ans: money
  JJ Goux ​[​"go"​]​ applied the Saussurean linguistic idea of how ideas can be related to things of the same nature to objects of this kind.
  => rephrase to avoid linguistic idea of how ideas?
• Packet 12, B#1, ans: false positive
  Bayes’s Theorem can be used to calculate this rate, which is the probability of a type I (​one​) error given that the observed B is true. This rate is plotted on the horizontal axis for the ROC curve.
  => just write type one out.
• Packet 12, B#4, ans: Luo
  The Kikuyu Wambui Otieno married a S.M. Otieno, a man of this ethnicity, whose death caused a court case over customary law when Wambui fought with members of this tribe over his burial place.
  => "married SM Otieno"
• Packet 12, B#6, ans: Kahlo
  => painting titles not italicized
• Packet 12, B#7, ans: floods
  An actual instance of this kind of event around the Black Sea may have inspired the myths of this kind of event survived by Utnapishtim in the Epic of Gilgamesh and Noah in the Book of Genesis.
  => "An instance of this kind of event around the Black Sea may have inspired the myths of Utnapishtim in the Epic of Gilgamesh and Noah in the Book of Genesis." (also, italics ?)
• Packet 12, B#9, ans: Hugo
  => "and" between two Hugo titles is italicized
• Packet 12, B#10, ans: al-Baqarah
  => Give the most common title as the main answerline, don't bury it in the alternate answers. Missing the word surah in the answerline. Don't need to say both English and Arabic are acceptable.
• Packet 12, B#12, ans: von Caprivi
  The Agrarian League formed in opposition to this leader’s. He pursued the “New Course” under Kaiser Wilhelm II.
  => this leader's ...?
• Packet 13, TU#3, ans: lute
  In his ​Harmonie universelle, Marin Mersenne wrote about the "transcribing the riches and beauties" of this instrument onto the grand staff.
  => remove the "the" after "wrote about"
• Packet 13, TU#4, ans: Constantine I
  => put the most common answer (Constantine the Great) as the main answerline
• Packet 13, TU#6, ans: DNA repair
  Mutations in another pathway responsible for this process cause HNPCC; that pathway contains the proteins MutL, MutS, MutH.
  => missing "and"
• Packet 13, B#1, ans: elephants
  => prompt begins "Identify this animal."; reword
• Packet 13, B#2, ans: Wisconsin
  => prompt begins "Name this Midwestern state."; reword
• Packet 13, B#10, ans: Seidel / two / Omaha
  => don't switch back and forth between World Series of Poker and WSOP, change once or be uniform the whole way
• Packet 13, B#14, ans: Democratic Republic of the Congo
  => answerline formatting is hard to deciper, don't do this. see DRC comment Packet 9 B#20.
• Packet 13, B#15, ans: Ys
  => Ys ["ees"] is how you should do the pronunciation guide
• Packet 13, B#16, ans: Paganini
  => prompt begins "Name this composer."; reword
• Packet 13, B#16, ans: Schumann
  This other German composer composed a set of piano etudes based on the Paganini caprices before both Brahms and Liszt, his opus 3.
  => other doesn't seem to refer to anything, odd phrasing here, something like this would be better: "This German composer's piano etudes based on the Paganini caprices predate those of Brahms and Liszt."
• Packet 13, B#20, ans: homolysis
  => alternate answers are not bolded and underlined.

[Cody]

14. Due to favorable state laws within California, this type of health plan started to become popular on the West Coast first. For 10 points each:
[10] Name this type of health plan that is similar to an EPO. Since the 1990s, it has increased in popularity due to its increased flexibility and ability to see doctors outside the network. However, there is often a high deductible.
ANSWER: PPO [or Preferred Provider Organization]
[10] Commonly, people can purchase a PPO plan at some of the healthcare exchanges set up due to this 2010 piece of legislation. Gold, silver and bronze-tier plans are set up on the subsidized exchanges created by this legislation which also expanded Medicaid.
ANSWER: Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act [or Obamacare, or the ACA, or the PPACA]
[10] This Oakland, California-based health consortium, founded by an American shipbuilder, was among the first to offer companies a PPO. A family foundation named for the same man frequently publishes research and news in health policy.
ANSWER: Kaiser Permanente [also accept Kaiser Family Foundation] <Bunker, Other Academic>

This bonus has two quite hard parts imo. I have been choosing health insurance for 7 years, have been offered a PPO several times, and could never come up with the answer to the first bonus part. Part of the problem is that I don't know how unique the clues are -- I am currently on a POS plan that sounds mighty similar and is apparently a hybrid of a PPO and a HMO plan, but those sorts of terms are mostly irrelevant to choosing a plan. The other part of the problem is I don't now what demographic is supposed to be able to answer this. For the Kaiser part, there just doesn't seem like much to latch onto. (I've heard of them but know nothing about them.)

The Hamiltonian for one model of these materials has a kinetic energy term parameterized by the hopping integral and a second term corresponding to electron repulsion. By accounting for bound states formed when screened fields are strong enough to invalidate the tight-binding model, the Hubbard model predicts the existence of one variety of these materials exemplified by (*) nickel oxide. Puncture arcs and flashover arcs are failure modes of these materials. The Mott variety of these materials, which have associated breakdown voltages, have very large band gaps. Examples of these materials include paper, teflon and other plastics and rubbers. For 10 points, identify these materials in which low amounts of current can flow.
ANSWER: insulators [accept specific forms such as Mott insulators] <Bunker, Physics>

This is way overdone and needs a rest (not your fault) because there aren't many clues and they're all always used. (See quizdb.) If kept it needs easier clues -- at least one more after Mott and hopefully more. The list of examples is a bit much, I would trim it to plastics and rubber. The Mott sentence is incorrect, Mott insulators notably do not have very large band gaps because their band gap is small enough that they are supposed to conduct electricity under basic band theory. The appositive "which have associated breakdown voltages" is ambiguous because it could refer to Mott insulators ("Mott variety of these materials") or insulators ("these materials"); the latter is the correct association, and likely needs to be moved into the following sentence to be clear. "one model" and "one variety of these materials" is quizbowlese, you mean "a model" and "a variety".

One implementation of this operation must satisfy a condition where for a pair of different Ks, only one product of two different K modulo N is 0, and has a computational complexity of big O of N log N. It’s not addition or factoring, but one algorithm for this operation relies on highly-composite numbers, can sometimes be solved in polynomial time with the help of Shor's algorithm, and is named for Cooley and (*) Tukey. When one applies this operation to a random variable, one obtains its characteristic equation. The integral of the square of a function is related to the coefficients generated by this process by Parseval's identity. For 10 points, name this operation where a function is turned into a linear combination of sine and cosine terms.
ANSWER: Fourier transform [accept fast Fourier transform, quantum Fourier transform, discrete Fourier transform; prompt on "multiplying larger numbers or integers" by asking "what operation or algorithm is used by the computer to do that?"] <Bunker, Other Science>

This tossup needs a complete rewrite because it has many problems. Starting backwards, the giveaway (sentence 5) does not describe a Fourier transform, but rather a Fourier series (Fourier analysis) which is a different thing (i.e. I would throw this tossup out if protested). The conventional description would be that the Fourier transform (implicitly being the continuous time FT) takes (transforms) a time-domain signal to the frequency domain. The formulation of Parseval's identity formulated in the pre-FTP sentence (sentence 4) is a formulation for Fourier series, not the Fourier transform. According to my VCUO 2013 mathematics-specific tossup on the Fourier transform: "The integral over the reals of the squared modulus of a function f is equal to the integral over the reals of the squared modulus of this operation applied to f, which is equivalent to the fact that this operation is unitary, according to Parseval's relation." That tossup, which was pretty darn hard and for a Regs+ tournament, dropped Parseval's relation (after description) 69% of the way into the tossup while this one doesn't drop it until 85%. If you were to use it as a clue, it would be a good leadin and at minimum you would want at least ~two easier clues between it and the giveaway. As someone who spent a lot of time working with signals and random variables, sentence 3 is far too hard. Sentence 2 is mostly useless aside from the Cooley & Tukey drop which was fairly stock in my day. Sentence 1 is a fine description (iirc) and leadin.

Models which try to predict this quantity may assume a Weibull distribution where the alpha parameter determines increasing or decreasing hazard. The output of those models, which measure this quantity, is equal to the variable's PDF divided by one minus its CDF. In model selection where this quantity is an independent variable, the partial (*) ACF function can help find parameters sometimes labeled p and q. This quantity is the target of survival models. This variable changes for each term in an auto regressive or moving average model. Stock or financial data is usually visualized with this quantity on the horizontal axis. For 10 points, what variable is seen in its namesake "series" form of data and is typically measured in days or seconds?
ANSWER: time [accept just t or big T or duration or survival time] <Bunker, Mathematics>

I think the first ~half of this question needs a serious rewrite to be bring down in difficulty and provide buzzable clues. The clues about the Weibull distribution are odd. It's super hard, yet it's 35% of the tossup. It seems like the first two clues are about survival time, but the Weibull distribution is specifically known for its use in modeling the time-to-failure in my experience. Perhaps quizbowlers are more likely to know about its use to model survival time, but I rather suspect they don't know about it at all. Different texts use drastically different terminology, so alpha parameter is pretty useless -- it's also termed beta or k. You should use the terminology for the parameter in the context of the continuous probability distributions -- "shape parameter". The second sentence is pretty useless. The 3rd sentence is supposed to be, what, the autocorrelation function in the context of AR/MA models? Seems nearly impossible to buzz on as written to me.

[Ciorwrong]

14. Due to favorable state laws within California, this type of health plan started to become popular on the West Coast first. For 10 points each:
[10] Name this type of health plan that is similar to an EPO. Since the 1990s, it has increased in popularity due to its increased flexibility and ability to see doctors outside the network. However, there is often a high deductible.
ANSWER: PPO [or Preferred Provider Organization]
[10] Commonly, people can purchase a PPO plan at some of the healthcare exchanges set up due to this 2010 piece of legislation. Gold, silver and bronze-tier plans are set up on the subsidized exchanges created by this legislation which also expanded Medicaid.
ANSWER: Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act [or Obamacare, or the ACA, or the PPACA]
[10] This Oakland, California-based health consortium, founded by an American shipbuilder, was among the first to offer companies a PPO. A family foundation named for the same man frequently publishes research and news in health policy.
ANSWER: Kaiser Permanente [also accept Kaiser Family Foundation] <Bunker, Other Academic>

This bonus has two quite hard parts imo. I have been choosing health insurance for 7 years, have been offered a PPO several times, and could never come up with the answer to the first bonus part. Part of the problem is that I don't know how unique the clues are -- I am currently on a POS plan that sounds mighty similar and is apparently a hybrid of a PPO and a HMO plan, but those sorts of terms are mostly irrelevant to choosing a plan. The other part of the problem is I don't now what demographic is supposed to be able to answer this. For the Kaiser part, there just doesn't seem like much to latch onto. (I've heard of them but know nothing about them.)

The Hamiltonian for one model of these materials has a kinetic energy term parameterized by the hopping integral and a second term corresponding to electron repulsion. By accounting for bound states formed when screened fields are strong enough to invalidate the tight-binding model, the Hubbard model predicts the existence of one variety of these materials exemplified by (*) nickel oxide. Puncture arcs and flashover arcs are failure modes of these materials. The Mott variety of these materials, which have associated breakdown voltages, have very large band gaps. Examples of these materials include paper, teflon and other plastics and rubbers. For 10 points, identify these materials in which low amounts of current can flow.
ANSWER: insulators [accept specific forms such as Mott insulators] <Bunker, Physics>

This is way overdone and needs a rest (not your fault) because there aren't many clues and they're all always used. (See quizdb.) If kept it needs easier clues -- at least one more after Mott and hopefully more. The list of examples is a bit much, I would trim it to plastics and rubber. The Mott sentence is incorrect, Mott insulators notably do not have very large band gaps because their band gap is small enough that they are supposed to conduct electricity under basic band theory. The appositive "which have associated breakdown voltages" is ambiguous because it could refer to Mott insulators ("Mott variety of these materials") or insulators ("these materials"); the latter is the correct association, and likely needs to be moved into the following sentence to be clear. "one model" and "one variety of these materials" is quizbowlese, you mean "a model" and "a variety".

One implementation of this operation must satisfy a condition where for a pair of different Ks, only one product of two different K modulo N is 0, and has a computational complexity of big O of N log N. It’s not addition or factoring, but one algorithm for this operation relies on highly-composite numbers, can sometimes be solved in polynomial time with the help of Shor's algorithm, and is named for Cooley and (*) Tukey. When one applies this operation to a random variable, one obtains its characteristic equation. The integral of the square of a function is related to the coefficients generated by this process by Parseval's identity. For 10 points, name this operation where a function is turned into a linear combination of sine and cosine terms.
ANSWER: Fourier transform [accept fast Fourier transform, quantum Fourier transform, discrete Fourier transform; prompt on "multiplying larger numbers or integers" by asking "what operation or algorithm is used by the computer to do that?"] <Bunker, Other Science>

This tossup needs a complete rewrite because it has many problems. Starting backwards, the giveaway (sentence 5) does not describe a Fourier transform, but rather a Fourier series (Fourier analysis) which is a different thing (i.e. I would throw this tossup out if protested). The conventional description would be that the Fourier transform (implicitly being the continuous time FT) takes (transforms) a time-domain signal to the frequency domain. The formulation of Parseval's identity formulated in the pre-FTP sentence (sentence 4) is a formulation for Fourier series, not the Fourier transform. According to my VCUO 2013 mathematics-specific tossup on the Fourier transform: "The integral over the reals of the squared modulus of a function f is equal to the integral over the reals of the squared modulus of this operation applied to f, which is equivalent to the fact that this operation is unitary, according to Parseval's relation." That tossup, which was pretty darn hard and for a Regs+ tournament, dropped Parseval's relation (after description) 69% of the way into the tossup while this one doesn't drop it until 85%. If you were to use it as a clue, it would be a good leadin and at minimum you would want at least ~two easier clues between it and the giveaway. As someone who spent a lot of time working with signals and random variables, sentence 3 is far too hard. Sentence 2 is mostly useless aside from the Cooley & Tukey drop which was fairly stock in my day. Sentence 1 is a fine description (iirc) and leadin.

Models which try to predict this quantity may assume a Weibull distribution where the alpha parameter determines increasing or decreasing hazard. The output of those models, which measure this quantity, is equal to the variable's PDF divided by one minus its CDF. In model selection where this quantity is an independent variable, the partial (*) ACF function can help find parameters sometimes labeled p and q. This quantity is the target of survival models. This variable changes for each term in an auto regressive or moving average model. Stock or financial data is usually visualized with this quantity on the horizontal axis. For 10 points, what variable is seen in its namesake "series" form of data and is typically measured in days or seconds?
ANSWER: time [accept just t or big T or duration or survival time] <Bunker, Mathematics>

I think the first ~half of this question needs a serious rewrite to be bring down in difficulty and provide buzzable clues. The clues about the Weibull distribution are odd. It's super hard, yet it's 35% of the tossup. It seems like the first two clues are about survival time, but the Weibull distribution is specifically known for its use in modeling the time-to-failure in my experience. Perhaps quizbowlers are more likely to know about its use to model survival time, but I rather suspect they don't know about it at all. Different texts use drastically different terminology, so alpha parameter is pretty useless -- it's also termed beta or k. You should use the terminology for the parameter in the context of the continuous probability distributions -- "shape parameter". The second sentence is pretty useless. The 3rd sentence is supposed to be, what, the autocorrelation function in the context of AR/MA models? Seems nearly impossible to buzz on as written to me.

Given that I wrote every one of these questions, I might have more to say later but the tossup on time is very real. Survival models are incredibly important in insurance for example and ARIMA models are one of the pinnacles of modern time series analysis. As it stands, the tossup is not very canonical but I disagree with the contention that some of the clues are unbuzzable. People who study time series know what PACF function is and the definitions of hazard function is often taught in second semester undergraduate statistics courses. I get that statistics in quizbowl is often super lame tossups on "this distribution," but all this stuff is important. For some reason, quizbowlers eschew statistics courses for more theoretical courses like complex analysis and group theory which are both more difficult conceptually and obscure to the general population. I don't see the issue cluing the most important variable in modern quantitative finance and insurance research. If any actuaries or stats people played this question, I'd appreciate the feedback.

The Kaiser Family foundation is probably the most notable source of health policy news and research in the United States. While the bonus part is difficult, people who are abreast of what is going in health policy should be aware of them. The PPO bonus part is not clued perfectly but the demographic concern seems odd. It's a Modern World bonus. Educated people should be aware how health insurance operates on some basic level regardless if they have to buy it for themselves. The difficulty might be too hard but I don't have the empirics to say this one way or the other.

Unfortunately, Penn Bowl scooped us to the insular tossup and that's unfortunate. It's not a great tossup and for that I apologize. Fourier transform has been edited a lot and appears to have lost much of its original character so we will try to work on that. I think the original version I wrote was like four lines on FFT but that was said to be too hard.

[Cody]

Given that I wrote every one of these questions, I might have more to say later but the tossup on time is very real. Survival models are incredibly important in insurance for example and ARIMA models are one of the pinnacles of modern time series analysis. As it stands, the tossup is not very canonical but I disagree with the contention that some of the clues are unbuzzable. People who study time series know what PACF function is and the definitions of hazard function is often taught in second semester undergraduate statistics courses. I get that statistics in quizbowl is often super lame tossups on "this distribution," but all this stuff is important.

It's not about realness, canonicity, or importance, but difficulty. Everything can be argued as important, so importance is not an argument relevant to difficulty – especially for a 2-pip Regs- tournament. I'll retract the bit about the first half being unbuzzable – I forgot in the moment that it's usually used to mean that clues are formulated so poorly that they can't be buzzed on. I meant it in the sense that essentially no one playing this tournament is going to buzz on those clues.

I studied time series as an undergraduate in the context of systems & signals / communications systems / digital signal processing (3+ semesters worth) and the PACF function was not mentioned because it's not relevant to what we did. Keep in mind we are talking about the ~middle 20% of the question (35%-55% of the question text), which requires you to know PACF in the context of ARMA models cold (without a namedrop on the latter).

The hazard function may be taught in second-semester undergraduate statistics courses, but is it that memorable? Even so, that doesn't change my opinion of the second sentence, which I called "pretty useless" because I think it is more difficult than the preceding sentence and doesn't provide any extra information capable of producing buzzes among anyone who wasn't clued in by the leadin. In other words, I think you've taken up 35% of the tossup on what's really one buzzable clue. "Models of this quantity use the PDF over one minus the CDF to define the hazard function." is a perfectly fine leadin and uses 1/3 of the space.

edit: (forgot about the first sentence when writing that: you can still include Weibull in the clue while taking up ~1/2 the space as previously)

For some reason, quizbowlers eschew statistics courses for more theoretical courses like complex analysis and group theory which are both more difficult conceptually and obscure to the general population. I don't see the issue cluing the most important variable in modern quantitative finance and insurance research. If any actuaries or stats people played this question, I'd appreciate the feedback.

I did not, and wrote a ton of applied math (including statistics) in my time. I do not have a problem with statistics in the context of quantitative finance & insurance appearing in the math distribution, and so I am not offering this critique as cover for an ideological tilt against such topics. I am saying the execution isn't good and that you've stacked leadins 55% into this tossup.

The Kaiser Family foundation is probably the most notable source of health policy news and research in the United States. While the bonus part is difficult, people who are abreast of what is going in health policy should be aware of them. The PPO bonus part is not clued perfectly but the demographic concern seems odd. It's a Modern World bonus. Educated people should be aware how health insurance operates on some basic level regardless if they have to buy it for themselves. The difficulty might be too hard but I don't have the empirics to say this one way or the other.

I agree that Kaiser is important, but is "California-based health consortium most likely named for a dude that also names a health policy think tank" that substantial of a clue for people to get on board and come up with an answer? That's ultimately your call, but it didn't seem that way to me. In terms of raw answerline difficulty, it's not the worst outlier by itself (plasma wakefield accelerators being a prime contender).

educated person
aware of how health insurance operates on some basic level (more than 90+% of people who will see this set, I'd guess)
don't buy it for myself (because I get it through an employer)
was on a PPO OA plan for several years and am currently on a POS OA plan that matches the description
could answer PPO

There are plenty of basic health insurance things that do get talked about a lot – HMOs, the scourge of deductibles and high-deductible health plans, the concept of in-network and out-of-network costs, maybe HSAs or FSAs, etc. Those are all examples of topics that you might expect an educated person to have engaged with or at least heard about (though still hard parts in many cases!), but when was the last time you saw e.g. a news piece on PPOs? I would not expect an educated person who understands the basics of health insurance (and then some) to know the fine details of EPO, PPO, or POS plans.

Unfortunately, Penn Bowl scooped us to the insular tossup and that's unfortunate. It's not a great tossup and for that I apologize. Fourier transform has been edited a lot and appears to have lost much of its original character so we will try to work on that. I think the original version I wrote was like four lines on FFT but that was said to be too hard.

I agree that four lines on FFT was too much for this difficulty level.

[Mike Bentley]

I thought Kaisier was perfectly fine to ask about. I struggled to get PPOs in part because my work offers something similar that's called an "HSA Plan".

[1992 in spaceflight]

[*]Packet 10, B#7, ans: Yehudah Amichai
In one poem, this poet repeatedly mentions locations such as a “modern museum” and “my very heart.”
=> Why so coy? Just name poem. Use of "one" is incorrect in any case, you mean "a". See also: https://www.qbwiki.com/wiki/Quizbowlese#Stupid_lingo

I honestly don't remember why I didn't namedrop the poem originally (I think I thought it was too easy of a title or something?), but this has been fixed to read like this now:

"This author repeatedly mentions locations such as a “modern museum” and “my very heart” in his 'Endless Poem.' For 10 points each:"

[Cody]

• Packet 10, TU#21, ans: Dvorak
  The cymbals only used for a single three measure appearance in the final movement of this man's final symphony.
  => "The cymbals are only used" ?

Thought about this more, and I'd suggest another revision: move "this man's final symphony" to the beginning of the sentence because it's the first sentence of the tossup. This could also be worded a tiny bit more elegantly; the mix of "only used" and "single ... appearance" sounds weird to me. e.g.

"In this man's final symphony, the cymbals make a single, three-measure appearance in the final movement."
"In this man's final symphony, the cymbals are only used for three measures in the final movement."

[The Story of a Head That Fell Off]

Realized I haven't posted here yet but most of the suggestions in regards to music have been implemented (esp. what Cody wrote).

Tango is being kept though.

[Justice William Brennan]

In the tossup about fire in belief, I buzzed in with “light” after the clue about Brahma and Vishnu’s race to the end of Shiva’s pillar of ‘this substance.’ I was negged, but as far as I can tell the pillar is referred to as a “pillar of light” more often than not—particularly in reference to the origin of the Jyotirlingas (“jyoti” means light!), which is the story I’m familiar with.

My protest ended up not mattering, but I was a bit miffed when I was negged because I was telling a teammate the story of the pillar of light and the jyotirlinga on the train ride in the morning.

[naan/steak-holding toll]

PPOs are very important to what I do professionally and are a great thing to ask about. The bonus part is a test of health industry knowledge, as opposed to "have I been on a PPO" or anything like that - perhaps unfortunately, an awful lot of the reason health industry experts are valuable is because these things are complicated and not always understood by their participants.

[Heteronym]

Just wanted to offer thoughts about some lit questions that I felt stood out in suboptimal ways:

The South: I think this tossup was very well written, but the answerline felt sort of fraudable. I didn't get it until late, but I was ready to buzz on the South early on. This would probably work better as a bonus, with a difficult Why I Live at the P.O. clue standing in as the hard part.

Charles II: Strongly disliked the conceit of the question, but maybe that's just me. I don't know much about books like Oroonoko, but although it seems to indict slavery as a royal institution, its specific connection to Charles II doesn't feel worth asking about.

Pennsylvania: The firstline seemed kind of interesting; I kinda want to know where that's from. The quote in the secondline started with "you could wake up tomorrow," which ostensibly leads into the thing about jobs being outsourced to Mexico. Cluing from Sweat at this level isn't a bad detail, because I think it's a play that warrants more attention. However, the quote being clued was identical to the quote used in the secondline of a PIANO tossup. It's a concise way to clue about a crucial detail of the play that isn't characterbowl, but I think it could be clued slightly differently (for instance, if someone recognizes the quote before it finishes, they can buzz earlier than someone who needs to hear the Mexico detail).

Fugard: That "spending remainder of bus fare to play Sarah Vaughan" clue comes up a non-trivial amount. At this level, I think a deeper Master Harold cut would be fair. Can't comment on the Ntshona placing, but it should come later for sure. Maybe a clue about The Island firstline could work, but then the wording would have to sound like a philosophy or science tossup ("this is the alphabetically first author").

The difficulty control felt a bit loose as well. The Waiting for Godot bonus felt way easier than the super cool Bra Willie bonus or the also super cool Amiri Baraka bonus. Given that "qua" is the hard part, mentioning Beckett makes it a bit too gettable without knowing the play to the degree that should warrant converting a Godot hard part at this level, in my opinion.

Overall, I thought the literature was generally very well written, devoid of stock and often engaging with interesting works in interesting ways. I just think that a few answerlines could be tweaked a bit.

[Zealots of Stockholm]

Just wanted to offer thoughts about some lit questions that I felt stood out in suboptimal ways:

Pennsylvania: The firstline seemed kind of interesting; I kinda want to know where that's from. The quote in the secondline started with "you could wake up tomorrow," which ostensibly leads into the thing about jobs being outsourced to Mexico. Cluing from Sweat at this level isn't a bad detail, because I think it's a play that warrants more attention. However, the quote being clued was identical to the quote used in the secondline of a PIANO tossup. It's a concise way to clue about a crucial detail of the play that isn't characterbowl, but I think it could be clued slightly differently (for instance, if someone recognizes the quote before it finishes, they can buzz earlier than someone who needs to hear the Mexico detail).

Not my category, but my TU, so I'll note that the leadin is from Quira Hudes' Water by the Spoonful. As for the second clue, its unfortunate that the exact same quote was used in PIANO (probably would have tweaked a bit if I had noticed), but in general I (and several of the other writers/editors, I think) didn't really mind if someone playing this set got something because it had been clued in any set above regs difficulty.

Also I agree with your commentary on the Fugard leadin (didn't write or edit this).

[excessive dismemberment]

In the tossup about fire in belief, I buzzed in with “light” after the clue about Brahma and Vishnu’s race to the end of Shiva’s pillar of ‘this substance.’ I was negged, but as far as I can tell the pillar is referred to as a “pillar of light” more often than not—particularly in reference to the origin of the Jyotirlingas (“jyoti” means light!), which is the story I’m familiar with.

My protest ended up not mattering, but I was a bit miffed when I was negged because I was telling a teammate the story of the pillar of light and the jyotirlinga on the train ride in the morning.

So I looked it up and in multiple sources I see it described as a pillar of fire and when it's a pillar of light it's described as "fiery". I sympathize with this neg though since you're absolutely right about the literal translation, and I might cut the clue or change it to make it less ambiguous because I think all the other clues are explicitly fire.

[The Sawing-Off of Manhattan Island]

Just wanted to offer thoughts about some lit questions that I felt stood out in suboptimal ways:

The South: I think this tossup was very well written, but the answerline felt sort of fraudable. I didn't get it until late, but I was ready to buzz on the South early on. This would probably work better as a bonus, with a difficult Why I Live at the P.O. clue standing in as the hard part.

Charles II: Strongly disliked the conceit of the question, but maybe that's just me. I don't know much about books like Oroonoko, but although it seems to indict slavery as a royal institution, its specific connection to Charles II doesn't feel worth asking about.

100% agree with comments on the South - I buzzed on "this region" and "Fourth of July" because I can't really imagine any other region of the US being tossed up at this diff. I don't think Charles II is a bad conceit (the idea being that everything was related to Restoration Comedy, I think?) but I think that that jump is much too hard for this level. Is there a reason this wasn't on, say, the _Restoration_ as a time period?

I also thought a few clues in this set were misordered internally - the clue about being both closed and open in the middle of the closed tossup, for instance, felt like it should have been reordered so that you didn't have to wait / guess on the first half which was wanted. Similarly, I thought the referrent in the aharonov-bohm clue could have been first. There are probably a couple more such clues, but those stuck out (possibly because I negged both of them by not waiting, oops)

Quite a bit of the thought in the tournament seemed to be on stuff Harris talks about in discord. Bonuses on Taleb, libertarianism, clues on deleuze, etc (more stuff I'm forgetting) are all things I'd definitely have on a "Harris thought bingo card." I don't know that I was specifically helped by any one thing, but the authorship of these questions felt very obvious; not that any of these questions are bad or these topics are taboo, but I don't think its a great look for so many bonuses to be on what I consider fairly predictable themes from the editor.

Can I see the tossup on "dynamic programming?" I thought that that cliffed quite a bit at memoization, but I don't quite remember the early clues now. Also, I was mildly confused by the bonus part on DOM (incl. the pronoun "this interface;" though the internet does call it an API, I don't know that people would really identify it as such except super technically). It's probably overall fine since the rest of the clues got me there, but I thought that having a clearer clue (e.g. "JQuery manipulates this entity" or something along those lines) might help a lot, and the mention of JQuery could probably help nail down the second part a bit more specifically.

[Ciorwrong]

Just wanted to offer thoughts about some lit questions that I felt stood out in suboptimal ways:

The South: I think this tossup was very well written, but the answerline felt sort of fraudable. I didn't get it until late, but I was ready to buzz on the South early on. This would probably work better as a bonus, with a difficult Why I Live at the P.O. clue standing in as the hard part.

Charles II: Strongly disliked the conceit of the question, but maybe that's just me. I don't know much about books like Oroonoko, but although it seems to indict slavery as a royal institution, its specific connection to Charles II doesn't feel worth asking about.

100% agree with comments on the South - I buzzed on "this region" and "Fourth of July" because I can't really imagine any other region of the US being tossed up at this diff. I don't think Charles II is a bad conceit (the idea being that everything was related to Restoration Comedy, I think?) but I think that that jump is much too hard for this level. Is there a reason this wasn't on, say, the _Restoration_ as a time period?

I also thought a few clues in this set were misordered internally - the clue about being both closed and open in the middle of the closed tossup, for instance, felt like it should have been reordered so that you didn't have to wait / guess on the first half which was wanted. Similarly, I thought the referrent in the aharonov-bohm clue could have been first. There are probably a couple more such clues, but those stuck out (possibly because I negged both of them by not waiting, oops)

Quite a bit of the thought in the tournament seemed to be on stuff Harris talks about in discord. Bonuses on Taleb, libertarianism, clues on deleuze, etc (more stuff I'm forgetting) are all things I'd definitely have on a "Harris thought bingo card." I don't know that I was specifically helped by any one thing, but the authorship of these questions felt very obvious; not that any of these questions are bad or these topics are taboo, but I don't think its a great look for so many bonuses to be on what I consider fairly predictable themes from the editor.

Can I see the tossup on "dynamic programming?" I thought that that cliffed quite a bit at memoization, but I don't quite remember the early clues now. Also, I was mildly confused by the bonus part on DOM (incl. the pronoun "this interface;" though the internet does call it an API, I don't know that people would really identify it as such except super technically). It's probably overall fine since the rest of the clues got me there, but I thought that having a clearer clue (e.g. "JQuery manipulates this entity" or something along those lines) might help a lot, and the mention of JQuery could probably help nail down the second part a bit more specifically.

Deleuze showed up twice: in the Spinoza tossup and in the tossup on Schizophrenia which both seem reasonable. Unfortunately, the Spinoza tossup was written before the CO tossup on Ethics which mentioned the same clue or else I wouldn't have mentioned the Deleuze work. Taleb is someone I meme on a lot but no content in that bonus could have been answered based things I post about. Likewise, was anyone converting Bastiat based on control F'ing one of the hundreds of posts I have made? As a matter of aesthetics, I don't really see the issue with having questions be easily ascertainable to one particular author. Was there any doubt who was writing the plurality of American History questions or writing the majority of econ questions? I wrote about 80/80 for this set so of course some people I talk about in, again, literally hundreds of posts are going to come up. I would hope that I would get some benefit of the doubt that I'm not spoiling clues, etc. I've been told that I have a specific flair from writing which actually is part of what is discouraging me from working further sets because it seems this flair is unpopular. This is one of the last sets I'll ever work on so if people don't like my bad posting or my shitty Deleuze questions, they'll be glad to know this my writing career is near its end.

Clearly, this isn't' an issue where someone can read my Goodreads profile and find out what book's I've been reading and thus likely to write about. Somehow, none of the approximately 20/20 science I wrote or whatever got these comments. This is an invitational, regular season tournament. If, I ever get the privilege of writing for a set like ACF Fall or Regionals, (incredibly unlikely) I would hope people would think I could try to reign in the "Harris content." Just like how we should be able to experiment with the distribution at this level, I don't see an issue with questions having flair as long as long as writers aren't spamming group chats with clues they are to use for upcoming tournaments. Is having cookie cutter tossups on Spinoza preferable to including literally one clue about Deleuze? Group chats and insularity are part of the reason I'm stepping away from the game but I remain unconvinced this is a serious issue.

Purely as an aside: I really, really dislike the bad umbrella term of "thought." The categories of linguistics, economics, and ancient philosophy are taught in completely different departments and the knowledge is not exactly shared even if there are some edge cases where individual thinkers intersect (e.g. philosophy of language, Hayek tossup on quantitative social science.) "Thought" is an imprecise term that has frankly little business being used in serious discussion. Philosophy/Social Science or even PSS are more precise and show that two subjects are distinct.

[rahulkeyal]

Deleuze showed up twice: in the Spinoza tossup and in the tossup on Schizophrenia which both seem reasonable. Unfortunately, the Spinoza tossup was written before the CO tossup on Ethics which mentioned the same clue or else I wouldn't have mentioned the Deleuze work.

It's quite concerning to me that a tossup in a open tournament intended to be Nationals+ difficulty would have any bearing on how you approached writing questions that are intended to be EFT difficulty, at which questions should be accessible to beginner quizbowlers. I feel like this indicates a fundamental lack of understanding of how questions writing should be approached at lower difficulties. While a significant portion of this tournament was good and enjoyable (major props to all the editors and writers!), I do think a non-negligible number of questions approached questions in a way that often seemed to be informed by / taking cues from tournaments of harder difficulties (e.g, the Pennsylvania tossup above). While this approach can be successful when applied judiciously, I think it usually produces questions that are inappropriate for the intended audience of this tournament and disfavorably rewards players who have read the most packets.

[Ciorwrong]

Deleuze showed up twice: in the Spinoza tossup and in the tossup on Schizophrenia which both seem reasonable. Unfortunately, the Spinoza tossup was written before the CO tossup on Ethics which mentioned the same clue or else I wouldn't have mentioned the Deleuze work.

It's quite concerning to me that a tossup in a open tournament intended to be Nationals+ difficulty would have any bearing on how you approached writing questions that are intended to be EFT difficulty, at which questions should be accessible to beginner quizbowlers. I feel like this indicates a fundamental lack of understanding of how questions writing should be approached at lower difficulties. While a significant portion of this tournament was good and enjoyable (major props to all the editors and writers!), I do think a non-negligible number of questions approached questions in a way that often seemed to be informed by / taking cues from tournaments of harder difficulties (e.g, the Pennsylvania tossup above). While this approach can be successful when applied judiciously, I think it usually produces questions that are inappropriate for the intended audience of this tournament and disfavorably rewards players who have read the most packets.

Given that I didn't change the content of the Spinoza tossup one iota after hearing the CO Tossup, this comment is unfounded. It is my personal opinion, and others can disagree here, that Deleuze's commentary on Spinoza need not show up in quizbowl twice in a calendar year. In an ideal world where a central planner wrote every single philosophy tossup, I can't imagine the planner would repeat this particular clue if he chose to have a tossup at Spinoza at MWT where there are a wealth of other Spinoza clues and scholars available to clue from. Further, it is unrealistic to allege that higher difficulty tournaments not at least subconsciously affect how one would approach writing a lower difficulty tournament. Tournaments are not written in a vacuum and writers are not in hyperbolic time chambers (ala Dragon Ball Z) during the writing process where they can completely ignore outside quizbowl influence be it from harder nor easier tournaments.

Alleging that we took clues from harder tournaments without serious thought is a heavy claim and one I do not take lightly. Do you mean to suggest that Chandler heard the PIANO tossup and decided to rework to fit an easier tournament? Chandler even admitted:

As for the second clue, its unfortunate that the exact same quote was used in PIANO (probably would have tweaked a bit if I had noticed),

so any similarity to the PIANO tossup was either subconscious (inevitable and I think kinda obviously not a big deal) or incidental.

Again, my Spinoza tossup was written before CO happened so Chicago Open had literally no bearing on the content I included or did not include/cut. While I don't disagree that the character of this particular set was more similar to say Sun God or Spartan Housewrite (though empirically easier in difficulty!) than reason iterations of EFT or EMT 2017, I do not think this was because we purposely tried to model out questions from tournaments that are far harder than this one. On our writing staff, only a handful of players ever heard or attended Chicago Open 2019, and as stated in other threads, I do not see an issue of tournaments of a single difficulty band differ in style, distribution, question length, etc. On the whole, we are pretty happy with the difficulty of this particular set and I'd urge people who played it to post about questions which seemed way too hard or easy. I take question revision and improvement seriously and the other members of the writing team do as well.

Every writer and editor is different but, in my eyes, it is not unreasonable to use a database or past advanced stats to inform difficulty benchmarks. Looking at the past is much better than a simple "I feel this bonus structure is going to get 10/50/90 conversion." Likewise, if your first clue out of power at a MET-difficulty event if a power clue at Chicago Open, your tossup is far too hard in all likelihood. I don't think this particular view is controversial, and I can certainly claim that other writers and editors I respect use past questions and statistics to inform difficulty opinions.

[1992 in spaceflight]

Just wanted to offer thoughts about some lit questions that I felt stood out in suboptimal ways:

Charles II: Strongly disliked the conceit of the question, but maybe that's just me. I don't know much about books like Oroonoko, but although it seems to indict slavery as a royal institution, its specific connection to Charles II doesn't feel worth asking about.

Fugard: That "spending remainder of bus fare to play Sarah Vaughan" clue comes up a non-trivial amount. At this level, I think a deeper Master Harold cut would be fair. Can't comment on the Ntshona placing, but it should come later for sure. Maybe a clue about The Island firstline could work, but then the wording would have to sound like a philosophy or science tossup ("this is the alphabetically first author").

The difficulty control felt a bit loose as well. The Waiting for Godot bonus felt way easier than the super cool Bra Willie bonus or the also super cool Amiri Baraka bonus. Given that "qua" is the hard part, mentioning Beckett makes it a bit too gettable without knowing the play to the degree that should warrant converting a Godot hard part at this level, in my opinion.

Overall, I thought the literature was generally very well written, devoid of stock and often engaging with interesting works in interesting ways. I just think that a few answerlines could be tweaked a bit.

So I'd like to respond to the part of the literature that I edited.

I'm going to take another look at the Fugard leadin, but that Sarah Vaughan clue has come up exactly three times since my days as an active collegiate player, according to the aseemsdb search I did (which ended in the spring of 2014), so I'm not sure that's too easy for a leadin.

The Charles II tossup is all about things very important to the Restoration period. In fact, most of the things clued in the tossup came up in my Restoration and 18th Century British Literature class in college. Making the answer on Charles lets us clue Aphra Behn and John Wilmot in a way that makes the answer easy to get to.

Also, I don't think you are correct about difficulty control being lose, at all. I certainly didn't remember the Lucky speech until I relooked it up, and I've read the play several times and have seen it performed. I think you just know things about the play, dude.

[The Sawing-Off of Manhattan Island]

Deleuze showed up twice: in the Spinoza tossup and in the tossup on Schizophrenia which both seem reasonable. Unfortunately, the Spinoza tossup was written before the CO tossup on Ethics which mentioned the same clue or else I wouldn't have mentioned the Deleuze work. Taleb is someone I meme on a lot but no content in that bonus could have been answered based things I post about. Likewise, was anyone converting Bastiat based on control F'ing one of the hundreds of posts I have made? As a matter of aesthetics, I don't really see the issue with having questions be easily ascertainable to one particular author. Was there any doubt who was writing the plurality of American History questions or writing the majority of econ questions? I wrote about 80/80 for this set so of course some people I talk about in, again, literally hundreds of posts are going to come up. I would hope that I would get some benefit of the doubt that I'm not spoiling clues, etc. I've been told that I have a specific flair from writing which actually is part of what is discouraging me from working further sets because it seems this flair is unpopular. This is one of the last sets I'll ever work on so if people don't like my bad posting or my shitty Deleuze questions, they'll be glad to know this my writing career is near its end.

Clearly, this isn't' an issue where someone can read my Goodreads profile and find out what book's I've been reading and thus likely to write about. Somehow, none of the approximately 20/20 science I wrote or whatever got these comments. This is an invitational, regular season tournament. If, I ever get the privilege of writing for a set like ACF Fall or Regionals, (incredibly unlikely) I would hope people would think I could try to reign in the "Harris content." Just like how we should be able to experiment with the distribution at this level, I don't see an issue with questions having flair as long as long as writers aren't spamming group chats with clues they are to use for upcoming tournaments. Is having cookie cutter tossups on Spinoza preferable to including literally one clue about Deleuze? Group chats and insularity are part of the reason I'm stepping away from the game but I remain unconvinced this is a serious issue.

I'd definitely agree that this would be an issue at regs or fall - I guess it's weird to me that mwt would be separated significantly in writing standards from flagship events but to each their own. Again, I don't think any individual clue or bonus part is wrong, but I think that the conjunction of many such bonus parts and clues really made me think that the distribution was somewhat expectable. I think flair is problematic if it's not broad enough (compare "Will Alston history" to "writing about Pedro Paramo" eg) and I think this set's pss falls somewhere on that spectrum, tho I'm not interested in litigating exactly where.

Re Charles II: Would Charles II given "king during the restoration" be an easy part at this tournament? Im mildly skeptical (maybe I'm wrong!) but this seems a non-trivial gate for lit players to jump through, especially at a tournament with a newer audience.

Re: "qua": I'm in agreement with Darren. This line is fairly memorable bc of how repetitive it is and if you've heard q's about waiting for Godot or luckys speech or similar recently I imagine this is something you'll remember - it certainly seems much less of a barrier of knowledge than the other parts Darren mentioned.

[rahulkeyal]

Deleuze showed up twice: in the Spinoza tossup and in the tossup on Schizophrenia which both seem reasonable. Unfortunately, the Spinoza tossup was written before the CO tossup on Ethics which mentioned the same clue or else I wouldn't have mentioned the Deleuze work.

It's quite concerning to me that a tossup in a open tournament intended to be Nationals+ difficulty would have any bearing on how you approached writing questions that are intended to be EFT difficulty, at which questions should be accessible to beginner quizbowlers. I feel like this indicates a fundamental lack of understanding of how questions writing should be approached at lower difficulties. While a significant portion of this tournament was good and enjoyable (major props to all the editors and writers!), I do think a non-negligible number of questions approached questions in a way that often seemed to be informed by / taking cues from tournaments of harder difficulties (e.g, the Pennsylvania tossup above). While this approach can be successful when applied judiciously, I think it usually produces questions that are inappropriate for the intended audience of this tournament and disfavorably rewards players who have read the most packets.

Given that I didn't change the content of the Spinoza tossup one iota after hearing the CO Tossup, this comment is unfounded. It is my personal opinion, and others can disagree here, that Deleuze's commentary on Spinoza need not show up in quizbowl twice in a calendar year. In an ideal world where a central planner wrote every single philosophy tossup, I can't imagine the planner would repeat this particular clue if he chose to have a tossup at Spinoza at MWT where there are a wealth of other Spinoza clues and scholars available to clue from. Further, it is unrealistic to allege that higher difficulty tournaments not at least subconsciously affect how one would approach writing a lower difficulty tournament. Tournaments are not written in a vacuum and writers are not in hyperbolic time chambers (ala Dragon Ball Z) during the writing process where they can completely ignore outside quizbowl influence be it from harder nor easier tournaments.

Ah OK, it's possible I misinterpreted your intentions with this statement. It seems like you're suggesting you would have avoided the clue solely for aesthetic reasons, rather than any concerns with playability, which seems reasonable to some extent.

Alleging that we took clues from harder tournaments without serious thought is a heavy claim and one I do not take lightly. Do you mean to suggest that Chandler heard the PIANO tossup and decided to rework to fit an easier tournament? Chandler even admitted:

As for the second clue, its unfortunate that the exact same quote was used in PIANO (probably would have tweaked a bit if I had noticed),

so any similarity to the PIANO tossup was either subconscious (inevitable and I think kinda obviously not a big deal) or incidental.

To clarify, I was not accusing any members on the writing staff of plagiarism. It's possible I'm suffering from availability bias, but my feeling was that this tournament disproportionately rewarded players more familiar with the upper canon. To return to a concrete example, I think a tossup on American drama set in _Pennsylvania_ need not three sentences of clues about authors less widely read than August Wilson at this difficulty, when one sentence could give you more room to probe deeper knowledge of Fences or The Piano Lesson. I can understand where the urge to write these types of questions comes from, questions that test more surface-level knowledge of difficult material (that one might be more likely to encounter in more difficult tournaments), but I think this needs to be carefully balanced with questions that tread deeper into more widely familiar content for a tournament of this difficulty. I agree with you that there are multiple valid approaches to writing questions at this level - in isolation, the Pennsylvania tossup is reasonable. However, I personally think this tournament, and other tournaments of this difficulty, would be improved by erring on the side of a greater number of questions digging deeper into core content, so I thought I would highlight that sentiment.

[Votre Kickstarter Est Nul]

Deleuze showed up twice: in the Spinoza tossup and in the tossup on Schizophrenia which both seem reasonable. Unfortunately, the Spinoza tossup was written before the CO tossup on Ethics which mentioned the same clue or else I wouldn't have mentioned the Deleuze work.

It's quite concerning to me that a tossup in a open tournament intended to be Nationals+ difficulty would have any bearing on how you approached writing questions that are intended to be EFT difficulty, at which questions should be accessible to beginner quizbowlers. I feel like this indicates a fundamental lack of understanding of how questions writing should be approached at lower difficulties. While a significant portion of this tournament was good and enjoyable (major props to all the editors and writers!), I do think a non-negligible number of questions approached questions in a way that often seemed to be informed by / taking cues from tournaments of harder difficulties (e.g, the Pennsylvania tossup above). While this approach can be successful when applied judiciously, I think it usually produces questions that are inappropriate for the intended audience of this tournament and disfavorably rewards players who have read the most packets.

Given that I didn't change the content of the Spinoza tossup one iota after hearing the CO Tossup, this comment is unfounded. It is my personal opinion, and others can disagree here, that Deleuze's commentary on Spinoza need not show up in quizbowl twice in a calendar year. In an ideal world where a central planner wrote every single philosophy tossup, I can't imagine the planner would repeat this particular clue if he chose to have a tossup at Spinoza at MWT where there are a wealth of other Spinoza clues and scholars available to clue from. Further, it is unrealistic to allege that higher difficulty tournaments not at least subconsciously affect how one would approach writing a lower difficulty tournament. Tournaments are not written in a vacuum and writers are not in hyperbolic time chambers (ala Dragon Ball Z) during the writing process where they can completely ignore outside quizbowl influence be it from harder nor easier tournaments.

Ah OK, it's possible I misinterpreted your intentions with this statement. It seems like you're suggesting you would have avoided the clue solely for aesthetic reasons, rather than any concerns with playability, which seems reasonable to some extent.

Alleging that we took clues from harder tournaments without serious thought is a heavy claim and one I do not take lightly. Do you mean to suggest that Chandler heard the PIANO tossup and decided to rework to fit an easier tournament? Chandler even admitted:

As for the second clue, its unfortunate that the exact same quote was used in PIANO (probably would have tweaked a bit if I had noticed),

so any similarity to the PIANO tossup was either subconscious (inevitable and I think kinda obviously not a big deal) or incidental.

To clarify, I was not accusing any members on the writing staff of plagiarism. It's possible I'm suffering from availability bias, but my feeling was that this tournament disproportionately rewarded players more familiar with the upper canon. To return to a concrete example, I think a tossup on American drama set in _Pennsylvania_ need not three sentences of clues about authors less widely read than August Wilson at this difficulty, when one sentence could give you more room to probe deeper knowledge of Fences or The Piano Lesson. I can understand where the urge to write these types of questions comes from, questions that test more surface-level knowledge of difficult material (that one might be more likely to encounter in more difficult tournaments), but I think this needs to be carefully balanced with questions that tread deeper into more widely familiar content for a tournament of this difficulty. I agree with you that there are multiple valid approaches to writing questions at this level - in isolation, the Pennsylvania tossup is reasonable. However, I personally think this tournament, and other tournaments of this difficulty, would be improved by erring on the side of a greater number of questions digging deeper into core content, so I thought I would highlight that sentiment.

Hey Rahul! I hope most of the literature (that I wrote/edited, I suppose I can't speak for the rest) and history didn't fall into this category, since I agree with you, generally speaking, about what is worthwhile to probe at a lower level tournament. I considered cluing less from Sweat in the PA TU, but I found the clues interesting enough and thought that most of the Am. Lit was pretty canonical so I figured I could have PA in there without worrying to much. If that isn't true, I apologize. (Also, thanks for the post-playtest feedback in PMs it was very helpful and appreciated)

[Votre Kickstarter Est Nul]

Just wanted to offer thoughts about some lit questions that I felt stood out in suboptimal ways:

The South: I think this tossup was very well written, but the answerline felt sort of fraudable. I didn't get it until late, but I was ready to buzz on the South early on. This would probably work better as a bonus, with a difficult Why I Live at the P.O. clue standing in as the hard part.

The difficulty control felt a bit loose as well. The Waiting for Godot bonus felt way easier than the super cool Bra Willie bonus or the also super cool Amiri Baraka bonus. Given that "qua" is the hard part, mentioning Beckett makes it a bit too gettable without knowing the play to the degree that should warrant converting a Godot hard part at this level, in my opinion.

Overall, I thought the literature was generally very well written, devoid of stock and often engaging with interesting works in interesting ways. I just think that a few answerlines could be tweaked a bit.

Hey Darren! Thanks for the feedback. I'll respond to a bit of it here (since the other stuff seems to be being talked about). As for the South, you, Vishwa, and Rahul have all mentioned something to me. I think I'm guilty of kinda enjoying my original tossup and holding on to it too long. It doesn't seem like it's playing too well, so I apologize for that.

I agree with you on the qua part and will go cut Beckett. I hadn't read the play until last week, so I wrote this based on reading Summertime and didn't know how widely known it was. I'm glad you enjoyed the Bra Willie and Baraka content.

[Zealots of Stockholm]

Just wanted to hop in this thread and defend the PA tossup some more. The latter half of the tossup is entirely about the plays of August Wilson. While one could write a tossup on PA just cluing from Wilson, or just write on Wilson or Fences or whatever, this tossup gets into super core canon material pretty early. The first clue after the Sweat clues is a quote from Fences that I remember pretty vividly from reading the play.

Also, to defend the inclusion of Water by the Spoonful and Sweat further, I would like to note that both of them won the Pulitzer for Drama. These are important and widely read (though certainly not as widely read as classics like Fences) contemporary plays, and there isn't a ton of room to ask about contemporary literature at this difficulty level, so I'm plenty comfortable giving half of a tossup to contemporary drama.

[Carlos Be]

Steve Biko's book is called I Write What I Like, not I Will Write What I Want.

Also, the first two clues in the knot tossup seem like they could be lead-ins at most levels, unless you're supposed to just be buzzing on "complements" in the second clue.

The tossup on conjugation seems to conflate many different operations that happen to have the same name. Perhaps make the indicator "an operation with this name"?

Did Jean Bodel write his classification in a chanson? I can't find any sources that specify where he actually wrote that. The new phrasing that explicitly rules out "romance" was a good idea.

I don't see the justification for having half of a tossup on Italian poetry be on Leopardi at this level, particular when not so long ago the author was shocked to see it as a PACE hard part. (I can't attach the screenshot, but it says "holy fuck Giacomo Leopardi was once a PACE hard part lmfao")

When we played the Beckett bonus, we did convert qua, but it didn't occur to me that it would have played easy. I don't see how anyone would convert that if they haven't close-read Lucky's speech. To me it seemed like a good and interesting way to ask about a core play. If it's too easy, perhaps don't give the author, or ask about some other detail from the speech.

I think that that jump is much too hard for this level. Is there a reason this wasn't on, say, the _Restoration_ as a time period?

Re Charles II: Would Charles II given "king during the restoration" be an easy part at this tournament? Im mildly skeptical (maybe I'm wrong!) but this seems a non-trivial gate for lit players to jump through, especially at a tournament with a newer audience.

If the Restoration is tossupable at this level, then surely it's fair to expect that players know the most fundamental fact about it. I expect that it played hard because lit players tend to eschew learning important historical context, but quiz bowl doesn't need to accommodate that bias.

Every writer and editor is different but, in my eyes, it is not unreasonable to use a database or past advanced stats to inform difficulty benchmarks. Looking at the past is much better than a simple "I feel this bonus structure is going to get 10/50/90 conversion."

I think it is troubling to conflate past questions and past detailed stats as simply "the past." Detailed stats tell you how many teams converted a clue. Past questions tell you what some earlier writer thought. You may be able to gauge difficulty somewhat based on previous questions, but it is often wildly inaccurate. Additionally, relying too much on past questions can lead to clues being considered famous simply because they have come up, rather than because the target audiences will know them.

[naan/steak-holding toll]

Yeah I see nothing wrong with that Pennsylvania drama tossup - it's a little trendy in the sense that these have been floating around the upper level canon for a solid couple of years, but in a positive way, hitting on some important stuff from contemporary theater that people care about, thus continuing a generally beneficial writing trend. Potential worries about difficulty creep aside, complaining that one of its clues also happened to come up in PIANO is a bit silly.

Fugard comes up all the freaking time in quizbowl too, possibly in excess of his importance (though I'm not educated enough on the topic to definiteively pronounce upon it) so complaining that some of the clues have come up once or twice before is also odd. If this were a case of "every Fugard tossup has this leadin" then yeah, that would be bad, but that's clearly what's not going on here.

Finally, as a history-first player I'm also super biased, but I am inclined to agree with Justine that "literature-first" players often show a bit too much concern when important clues about literary context, i.e. "why I might care if I'm not a textual scholar / what I would read about in a brochure before the performance of the play / how I might learn about this topic from another angle." Literature classes touch on these sorts of things a lot too. I think there's potential for it to be a bit overwhelming in a writer's style, and I personally try to check this tendency in my own writing, but it seems like a minor ask to identify Charles II - he's absolutely an easy part at this difficulty, and if you don't know what the "Restoration" is in "Restoration Drama" then it seems like you're missing the point.

Without commenting on the quality of the questions in particular, I see nothing wrong with Harris asking about topics he likes in a reasonably limited way and think writers should be encouraged to explore their own interests, as long as they get a good balance of topic coverage. Naturally, writers should try to be a bit discreet about what specific topics they really like, and being able to "make a laundry list of topics that X writer is going to cover" and be successful based on this is not good. But just to take one example - clearly Harris likes Taleb, but hey I like Taleb too, and we've both clued him a couple of times in different ways. He's simply one of the most important (and controversial) authors in business and finance today and gets discussed in both academic and popular contexts - The Black Swan for instance has nearly 10,000 citations despite being a bit over a decade old - and he's prolific enough that you can mine a ton of different clues (hell, I went for The Bed of Procrustes at EFT). Having a question talk about him, a question on influential anarchists, and foundational libertarian thinkers - these are all important and worthwhile topics, and I like the fact that someone with genuine intellectual interests in them is trying to put questions out there and share them with the community / educate people / etc. There were questions from all throughout the social science and philosophy disciplines!

As Vishwa correctly points out, the whole thing falls a bit on the spectrum from "yeah, you're gonna get some distinct approaches and wacky shit from Will Alston, Ike Jose, etc" to "whoops Pedro Paramo again" (and that's not really worth harping on much either because Justine has clearly learned since and continued to be a good, productive writer). What's worrying to me, though, is the potential for discourse to dissuade people from writing on topics they enjoy - particularly when it's applied to somebody whose political and philosophical leanings perhaps aren't aligned with the quizbowl mainstream. I enjoy a community where each person contributes their own ideas into the melting pot and, provided that the questions are good and the writer isn't predictable in a completely mechanical manner, I would very much like to encourage more people to contribute based on their particular interests.

[The Sawing-Off of Manhattan Island]

Without commenting on the quality of the questions in particular, I see nothing wrong with Harris asking about topics he likes in a reasonably limited way and think writers should be encouraged to explore their own interests, as long as they get a good balance of topic coverage. Naturally, writers should try to be a bit discreet about what specific topics they really like, and being able to "make a laundry list of topics that X writer is going to cover" and be successful based on this is not good. But just to take one example - clearly Harris likes Taleb, but hey I like Taleb too, and we've both clued him a couple of times in different ways. He's simply one of the most important (and controversial) authors in business and finance today and gets discussed in both academic and popular contexts - The Black Swan for instance has nearly 10,000 citations despite being a bit over a decade old - and he's prolific enough that you can mine a ton of different clues (hell, I went for The Bed of Procrustes at EFT). Having a question talk about him, a question on influential anarchists, and foundational libertarian thinkers - these are all important and worthwhile topics, and I like the fact that someone with genuine intellectual interests in them is trying to put questions out there and share them with the community / educate people / etc. There were questions from all throughout the social science and philosophy disciplines!

As Vishwa correctly points out, the whole thing falls a bit on the spectrum from "yeah, you're gonna get some distinct approaches and wacky shit from Will Alston, Ike Jose, etc" to "whoops Pedro Paramo again" (and that's not really worth harping on much either because Justine has clearly learned since and continued to be a good, productive writer). What's worrying to me, though, is the potential for discourse to dissuade people from writing on topics they enjoy - particularly when it's applied to somebody whose political and philosophical leanings perhaps aren't aligned with the quizbowl mainstream. I enjoy a community where each person contributes their own ideas into the melting pot and, provided that the questions are good and the writer isn't predictable in a completely mechanical manner, I would very much like to encourage more people to contribute based on their particular interests.

Re: Pedro paramo: totally agree - that was simply the first example that popped into my mind and I didn't mean any disrespect (sorry Justine!)

It's probably a fair point that the reason the social science especially stuck out to me was bc a lot was on topics qb doesn't normally cover - I probably took an overly aggressive tone about this in my initial post. I think it's still worth discussing how much "personal brand" is too much in tossups, but I may have overstepped some here, so sorry, Harris.

[Evan Lynch]

Since I haven't posted here yet - firstly, thank you to everyone who has offered feedback; I've been following quite closely and implementing many of the suggested changes after each mirror. Special thanks to Cody and Kevin and the others who took the time to break down feedback by packet - this makes it especially easy to go through.

Conor and the others asked me to come on board with this set to oversee difficulty as a head-editor, so any quibbles you have with perceived difficulty mismatches are my responsibility. As the set evolved through production it felt like we were aiming for something on the harder end of EFT level (think 2018) and fairly similar to some other tournaments that have aimed for that "below-Regionals" niche over the last few years (at least specifically before Regs jumped a bunch circa 2018). I think this is highly appropriate for a midseason tournament, especially since there hasn't really been another set at this sort of level so far this year. If you do have such quibbles, bear in mind that I've reviewed each question multiple times over the course of set production and discussed them with the subject editors, and whilst my judgement definitely isn't perfect, we might just disagree.

There are certain questions which haven't played optimally - which is to be expected for a set of approaching 700 questions. I've had various amounts of feedback both here and privately which I've considered. To discuss a few specific questions mentioned here:

Despite some of the criticisms levelled here, I'm actually a big fan of the Charles II tossup. His actions as king specifically influenced the entire Restoration movement - such as granting patents for theatres like Drury Lane and making Poet Laureate an official position within the court when appointing Dryden to it. His interactions with Rochester and employing Aphra Behn as a spy were also very related to the literature those authors produced. Given his relationship to every literary figure and work mentioned in the tossup, if you don't know that Charles II is the guy that was restored to the monarchy then that's on you, not the question. Obviously I'm somewhat biased as being notably British, but this really doesn't strike me as a hill worth dying on.

Similarly with the Pennsylvania tossup - I was pleased enough with the theme (four plays set in PA that won the Pulitzer for Drama) and that a significant portion is about Wilson that I was happy to let this stay in the set. Is it harder than some of the other tossups? Probably. But I also think the literature distribution did a good job of asking about plenty of the core canon (partially in this tossup, let's be real) to allow some freedom to explore other areas (within reason) in the remainder.

With regards to Bodel's chanson - I have the quote about the three Matters as originating from the Chanson de Saisnes; if we are labouring under a misapprehension then please let us know.

Vishwa - thanks for the suggestion re the DOM bonus part; we were struggling to calibrate that set a little and I'll take a second look at it. Regards your comments on the thought distribution - I think you're going to always get that "oh of course they would write about that" moment from anyone whose preferences you're familiar with. It certainly happens to me when I play tournaments written by people I know - but crucially I don't think it actually makes that much difference to the playability, especially when it's well in the minority of questions. The examples you suggest also are eminently askable in any tournament of this level regardless of the author, so I don't think four or five questions across the 2/2 that Harris edited in a 15-packet set (not to mention his Stakhanovite work across the rest of the set) is really too significant.

Rahul - if you have any further comments about how some questions in this set favour people familiar with the upper canon I'd love to hear them, either here or privately. It's something I'm conscious to avoid when editing, but also it can be easy to include certain clues early in tossups when writing for a lower difficulty level. Some of that is purely clues percolating down through the canon, though. I think we avoided it generally quite well, but if you have some more examples we can take a proper look at them.

[The Sawing-Off of Manhattan Island]

Some other random things I remembered-

Is there a reason concentration camps were outright accepted for gulags? I imagine most people buzzing with that answer aren't thinking of gulags but rather nazi concentration camps (which is what I'd have done) - seems like it should be a prompt at best.

I thought universal Healthcare in the UK probably deserved a directed prompt (or outright accept) on "British Healthcare" - imo most people buzzing with that answer would know it's universal but it was a bit confusing to be prompted like that on a description acceptable tu

I was quite a fan of the "you must change your life" and (in retrospect) "qua" - both extremely cool hard parts.

Apartheid and fugard were in the same packet, which felt unideal feng shui wise

[1992 in spaceflight]

Some other random things I remembered-

Is there a reason concentration camps were outright accepted for gulags? I imagine most people buzzing with that answer aren't thinking of gulags but rather nazi concentration camps (which is what I'd have done) - seems like it should be a prompt at best.

I thought universal Healthcare in the UK probably deserved a directed prompt (or outright accept) on "British Healthcare" - imo most people buzzing with that answer would know it's universal but it was a bit confusing to be prompted like that on a description acceptable tu

I was quite a fan of the "you must change your life" and (in retrospect) "qua" - both extremely cool hard parts.

Apartheid and fugard were in the same packet, which felt unideal feng shui wise

It was deliberate, we had a lot of instances in the playtest of people buzzing in with answers but not saying gulag after being prompted. Evan and I decided to accept concentration camps after a bit of discussion because we don't want players to have to read the mind of the question writer.

(While the term concentration camp is certainly mostly associated with the Nazi movement, it actually originates in the Boer War, as I remembered when we discussed it after the playtest mirror)

Whoops on Apartheid and Fugard. One of these will get moved.

[1992 in spaceflight]

Just wanted to offer thoughts about some lit questions that I felt stood out in suboptimal ways:

The South: I think this tossup was very well written, but the answerline felt sort of fraudable. I didn't get it until late, but I was ready to buzz on the South early on. This would probably work better as a bonus, with a difficult Why I Live at the P.O. clue standing in as the hard part.

The difficulty control felt a bit loose as well. The Waiting for Godot bonus felt way easier than the super cool Bra Willie bonus or the also super cool Amiri Baraka bonus. Given that "qua" is the hard part, mentioning Beckett makes it a bit too gettable without knowing the play to the degree that should warrant converting a Godot hard part at this level, in my opinion.

Overall, I thought the literature was generally very well written, devoid of stock and often engaging with interesting works in interesting ways. I just think that a few answerlines could be tweaked a bit.

Hey Darren! Thanks for the feedback. I'll respond to a bit of it here (since the other stuff seems to be being talked about). As for the South, you, Vishwa, and Rahul have all mentioned something to me. I think I'm guilty of kinda enjoying my original tossup and holding on to it too long. It doesn't seem like it's playing too well, so I apologize for that.

I agree with you on the qua part and will go cut Beckett. I hadn't read the play until last week, so I wrote this based on reading Summertime and didn't know how widely known it was. I'm glad you enjoyed the Bra Willie and Baraka content.

After talking with Emmett about it a little bit, we decided to make the first part of the bonus read like this now:

In J.M. Coetzee's [“coat-zee-uh's”] Summertime, John quotes the speech this word appears in, then repeats this word, before Carol gives up on getting a story about America; for this reason, Coetzee thanked the author’s estate. For 10 points each:
[10] Give this short Latin word, repeated in a compound word that follows the words "personal God" and "with white beard" in a speech from a play that also discusses the “Acacacacademy of Anthropopopometry.”

[Carlos Be]

Some other random things I remembered-

Is there a reason concentration camps were outright accepted for gulags? I imagine most people buzzing with that answer aren't thinking of gulags but rather nazi concentration camps (which is what I'd have done) - seems like it should be a prompt at best.

I thought universal Healthcare in the UK probably deserved a directed prompt (or outright accept) on "British Healthcare" - imo most people buzzing with that answer would know it's universal but it was a bit confusing to be prompted like that on a description acceptable tu

I was quite a fan of the "you must change your life" and (in retrospect) "qua" - both extremely cool hard parts.

Apartheid and fugard were in the same packet, which felt unideal feng shui wise

It was deliberate, we had a lot of instances in the playtest of people buzzing in with answers but not saying gulag after being prompted. Evan and I decided to accept concentration camps after a bit of discussion because we don't want players to have to read the mind of the question writer.

I might have been one of those negs. However, I buzzed with "concentration camp" because I thought the answer was "Nazi concentration camps," not because I knew what was going on. I was confused when prompted because it didn't even occur to me that "concentration camps" would be a promptable answer for "gulags."

[t-bar]

Overall, this set was fairly easy to read, so I'd like to thank the writers and editors for a decent proofreading job. There were a couple of classes of errors that seemed more prevalent than usual, though, and I'd like to note them for future revisions.

My loose impression was that there were more misspelled proper nouns than usual. These are the only three examples I can recall right now, but it might be worth doing a sweep for other errors:
packet 2 T13 (psychoanalysis): "Jacque Lacan"
packet 2 B16.2 (Devonian period): "which followed the Sillurian"
packet 10 B13.2 (California): "Cohens v. ​California"

For a particular question, the most likely answer should be the very first thing that the moderator sees on the answerline, with other acceptable answers following in roughly decreasing order of likelihood. In my opinion, the following questions did not adhere to this rule:
packet 5 T1 (Beringia): many answers here but there's no way that Beringia is the most likely one to be given. I would probably place Bering land bridge first.
packet 6 B20.3 (executions): should explicitly accept capital punishment; the directive "accept any answer related to an ​execution​ or administration of the death penalty" should bold and underline death penalty so it's easily picked out by the moderator.
packet 9 T13 (adhan): the most likely answer ("Islamic call to prayer") is the fifth one listed.
packet 9 B16.1 (shepherding): the most likely answer is the unmodified "shepherd," not the word form "shepherding." I imagine most moderators would accept this, but you can decrease their cognitive load by only underlining shepherding.

Other issues with answerline construction and other alternate answers:
packet 2 B13.1 ("the ​preface​ to ​Leaves of Grass​"): needs to be "the ​preface​ to ​Leaves of Grass​," otherwise people are going to accept just "preface" and not even see your later directive of "prompt on ​preface​ or introduction with 'to what work?'"
packet 4 B1.1 (uncountability of the reals): this was answered in my room with "there are multiple sizes of infinity" and protested on the grounds that the question did not specify the precision of description that was needed to be acceptable.
packet 5 T2 (gulags): adding to the anecdotes regarding this question, it was answered confidently with "concentration camp" in my room, and I doubt the player was using a deliberately non-standard term for gulags.
packet 5 T9 (invading Ireland): what to do with an answer of "conquering Ireland"? I accepted it in my room.
packet 8 T2 (ending apartheid): given that some clues are about advocating for an end to apartheid, while some clues are about the negotiations of the ending-apartheid process, what to do with an answer of "anti-apartheid"? I accepted it in my room.
packet 8 T13 (bindis): should descriptive answers be acceptable? This was answered in my room with something like "a dot on your forehead....bindi." The pause was long enough that in a contentious situation I would have felt the need to rule on the first answer without considering the amended second answer.

Miscellaneous comments:
packet 3 B17.2 (Garmisch-Partenkirchen): a six-syllable city with a population of 27,000 is not going to play as an acceptable hard part at this level (or possibly any level), especially when its only notable clue is trivia.
packet 6 B6.1 and B8.2 both ask for women as an answer.

[Evan Lynch]

Miscellaneous comments:
packet 3 B17.2 (Garmisch-Partenkirchen): a six-syllable city with a population of 27,000 is not going to play as an acceptable hard part at this level (or possibly any level), especially when its only notable clue is trivia.

Thanks for the feedback, Stephen - we'll make the appropriate changes and probably rethink a couple of questions. I do want to push back on this suggestion that population is the arbiter of a place's notability though - Garmisch-Partenkirchen is a former host of the Winter Olympics (all of which are eminently askable by any reasonable metric) and also remains important in the realm of winter sports: it's an annual feature in the Four Hills tournament and was part of the Munich bid for the 2018 Olympics (in the same sense as how you'll start to see questions on Cortina d'Ampezzo sooner or later). It's not straightforward by any means, but I'm not especially uncomfortable with its inclusion.

[zeebli123]

It might be worth noting that Mimi's real name in La boheme is Lucia, not Mimi

[1992 in spaceflight]

packet 9 B16.1 (shepherding): the most likely answer is the unmodified "shepherd," not the word form "shepherding." I imagine most moderators would accept this, but you can decrease their cognitive load by only underlining shepherding.

I changed it to do just that, thanks!

packet 5 T2 (gulags): adding to the anecdotes regarding this question, it was answered confidently with "concentration camp" in my room, and I doubt the player was using a deliberately non-standard term for gulags.

Evan and I are going to discuss this some more to see if we need to adjust the acceptable answers.

[1992 in spaceflight]

packet 5 T2 (gulags): adding to the anecdotes regarding this question, it was answered confidently with "concentration camp" in my room, and I doubt the player was using a deliberately non-standard term for gulags.

Evan and I are going to discuss this some more to see if we need to adjust the acceptable answers.

We've decided to prompt on concentration camp with a directed prompt; the prompt will be for the moderator to ask "the camps were administered by what country?"

[Santa Claus]

Garmisch-Partenkirchen is a former host of the Winter Olympics (all of which are eminently askable by any reasonable metric) and also remains important in the realm of winter sports: it's an annual feature in the Four Hills tournament and was part of the Munich bid for the 2018 Olympics (in the same sense as how you'll start to see questions on Cortina d'Ampezzo sooner or later).

The Winter Olympics is the best-known and most prestigious championship for many winter sports and even then the idea that any previous host city is fair game as bonus part (not to mention at this difficulty) is far-fetched. Besides, there's no trash in this tournament, so I don't see why being the second most famous location in the Four Hills tournament deserves any merit as a clue.

[scorrevole]

1. Incomplete sentence "A Pope of this name and Henry IV during the Investiture Controversy." in Packet 9, tossup 11 (Gregory). There were some other grammatical things scattered throughout - will update this post with them if I remember where they are.
2. A player buzzed on the Liouville's Theorem clue in the "harmonic" question with "holomorphic," and protested saying that the clue applied to holomorphic functions - the protest didn't end up mattering, but a cursory ctrl-F on the wikipedia page for Liouville's Theorem does have a lot of results for "holomorphic" and no results for "harmonic."
3. A lot of people at our site negged the "China" question with "North Korea" on the lights clue - I'm sure that that's completely invalidated by "NBS" and the clues before that, but given common knowledge of things like this I'm wondering if maybe that wording there is kind of a hose anyway [Update: this happened again at the March online mirror!]. Not my category, so could be wrong about that.
4. Something noticed by the readers and some players at our site was that there was a LOT of Indian content in the packets we read (the first 11) - Kauravas (Round 2), Carnatic music bonus (Round 3), India/Pakistan bonus answerline (Round 4), yoga bonus (Round 4), India tossup (Round 6), Sikh / Bose bonus (Round 6), Delhi (Round 7), Narasimha (Round 7), Jainism bonus (Round 7), bindis (Round 8), fire in Hinduism (Round 8), Jhumpa Lahiri (Round 9), Indian dancing tossup (Round 10), Vishnu tossup (Round 11), India in econ (Round 11). Mild repacketizing especially around rounds 6-8 might help.
5. A female player expressed to me that the Egyptian myth bonus in Round 1 was kind of bizarrely explicit about masculine sexual stuff (semen as one of the answerlines, the bonus saying "penis" like three times) and discomforting to hear. Several members of the Harvard team agreed with me that, despite containing what I'm sure are important clues in Egyptian mythology, the common link was rather sophomoric and the bonus just felt uncomfortable to read, especially to newer quizbowl players. Not sure if there's an easy way to reword the bonus since the link does just seem to be "describing Egyptian penises."