2020 Masonic/Reinstein set discussion

[Stained Diviner]

I'm happy to get any and all feedback on the questions. Anything not related to the questions probably is best made in public.

I wrote all the questions. Jonah made the questions better. I had final say, so any problems are my fault. Comment away.

[Stained Diviner]

Feel free to comment on Sectionals questions if you remember anything interesting. The only two players or coaches who have joined this forum play for Stevenson and Chicago Christian, so the rule for Saturday is that you can post content in this thread if you know that Stevenson and Chicago Christian have finished the round it is in.

[MLaudermith]

Great questions again, David!

Some of the Lit definitely played hard. I read games in which Piers Plowman, Malamud, Whittier, Millay, and the entire James Franzen teamwork question went dead. In the case of the last one, both teams indicated they were unfamiliar with any of the three answers.

I don't recall which packet (definitely one of the prelims), but there was a tossup section that had TUs on two different rivers. This wasn't a problem per se since one question was history and the other was geography, but it did strike me as odd.

[Stained Diviner]

Mike and I were both reading for the large schools and had many good teams in our room. I had the same experience with Piers Plowman, Millay, and the entire James Franzen teamwork question, though there were decent buzzes on Malamud and Whittier, and I think Whittier might have been a buzzer race before the giveaway. Peter Shaffer and Carson McCullers went dead in my room. I don't remember whether somebody got Infinite Jest at the end or whether it went dead. I also don't remember whether somebody got Henry Fielding or Robert Penn Warren or whether those teamwork questions went completely dead.

I didn't even notice the river issue during the match, but you're right. The Rio Grande and St. Lawrence were both tossed up in the first section of Round 4, so that's two rivers that form U.S. boundaries.

In general, the set played more difficult than I wanted it to. The teams were good, so that's my fault. It wasn't so difficult that it was a complete disaster, but it was more difficult than it should have been. We'll never get PPB data, but my guess is that Stevenson was around 20, and that was significantly better than any other Class 3A school.

I don't know how much of an impact that will have on the Reinstein Set, since only about half of the Masonic State questions were used, and I tried to avoid using the most difficult ones. Most of that set is Masonic Sectionals questions, which are not as difficult.

[MLaudermith]

Shaffer went dead in my room as well, though McCullers was answered by Stevenson. I have seen questions on Shaffer go unanswered at multiple tournaments over the past few years. Is Equus just not considered part of the high school canon? What about Amadeus?

[Stained Diviner]

Please archive this thread.