ARCADIA General Discussion

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ryanrosenberg
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ARCADIA General Discussion

Post by ryanrosenberg »

This thread is for general discussion of ARCADIA (i.e. anything not involving analysis of a single question), though I certainly imagine there will be references to specific questions in this thread.

I want to start out by thanking everyone who worked on this set: Annabelle Yang, Ashish Subramanian, Caroline Mao, Daniel Cronin, Eric Gunter, Erik Novak, Grant Peet, Hasna Karim, Henry Goff, Jacob Egol, Jim Fan, Jonathan Shauf, Justin Zhang, Kevin Jiang, Kevin Thomas, Marianna Zhang, Michael Bucknall, Ophir Lifshitz, Payton Schubel, Raymond Wang, Ryan Rosenberg, Vincent Du, and Brandon Weiss. This set had a great collaborative culture, and everyone contributed outside of their own questions by playtesting, proofreading, commenting, and brainstorming.

The editors on this set were all fantastic: Annabelle Yang, Grant Peet, Hasna Karim, Henry Goff, Jacob Egol, Kevin Thomas, Payton Schubel, and Vincent Du. I took a hands-off approach as a head editor because I trusted them to come up with great content for their categories and they delivered and more. Each of them were instrumental in making this set what it is, and I want to recognize them for it.
  • Grant Peet was instrumental in getting this set to completion; not only did he write and edit the most questions in the set, he also spent hours proofreading and fixing feng shui issues in the last week. Oh yeah and his history and current events were consistently playable and interesting. And he wrote great questions outside of his categories (the enthroned madonnas question in Packet 11, the World War II tossup in Packet 1). And he TDed the playtest mirror. An all-around star of a contributor.
  • The dynamic duo of Henry Goff and Payton Schubel took such good care of lit that despite most of my prior editing experience being in the category I barely needed to write anything for it. I particularly enjoyed some of Henry's deep cuts on canonical topics (Stephen Dedalus, Bottom) and Payton's incorporation of widely-read-but-noncanonical books (Hans Christian Andersen, Aesop).
  • Speaking of dynamic duos, Annabelle Yang stood out for her ability to work with others to help improve their questions and hers. Whether it was partnering with Kevin on myth, Jacob on music, Hasna on bio, or really any playtested question she could help out on, Annabelle provided subject matter expertise and a keen sense of how to clue things. She also filled in capably as a other visual fine arts editor in a pinch. Of the categories I can even begin to speak on, I really liked the clues in the Japanese Americans and pregnancy tossups, and the photograms bonus part.
  • Jacob Egol was not initially slated to be the music/auditory fine arts editor, but stepped up when we needed it and did a more than creditable job. Jacob also did this while ably handling overall set logistics, which was a big boost to me as head editor to not have to handle. I particularly liked the musicals content Jacob wrote/edited for the set.
  • Hasna Karim was a consistently-helpful presence in internal playtesting, giving great feedback and generally helping improve questions across a range of categories. She also edited one of the trickier 1/1s to edit, and did it while getting many fewer freelance contributions than other editors got.
  • Kevin Thomas is a never-ending source of, well, Kevin Content: fantastical, probably gory stories and anecdotes about mythology, ancient history, and anything that sounds like it might be mythology or ancient history. You have him to thank for the spitting blood/playing dead/exploding bonus, the ovens tossup, and, in a non-Kevin-Content-but-nonetheless-great idea, the African-American myth tossup.
  • Vincent Du edited chemistry, physics, and philosophy, wrote a good chunk of the social science, and gave lots of feedback on the music. Those are not easy categories to edit at all, but Vincent did it while coming up with lots of great ideas and finishing the physics well ahead of its normal schedule. Even I, a non-science player, could tell that the ferromagnetic transition tossup was brilliant. I, a social science editor, was thrilled to get hard parts on traditional ecological knowledge and soundscapes.
This set was also blessed with excellent freelancers. Ashish Subramanian's extensive linguistics and geography knowledge came in handy both in the form of good questions in those topics (and a v cool glaciers tossup that was classified as earth science), but also excellent pronunciation guides for really any non-science words we could want. Daniel Cronin contributed a variety of solid and interesting tossups across history and art, including the great idea for the Holy Roman Emperor and Pope tossup and the mosaic tossup. You already know what Caroline Mao can do with a lit question, but they also contributed excellent design and fashion ideas (even if I had to correct them calling the NYC subway "the metro"). Like Vincent, Eric Gunter made some key contributions in technical distributions and gave great feedback. Speaking of technical distributions, Michael Bucknall wrote a solid majority of the philosophy in this set and did it at a high level. Jim Fan was a big contributor to the really record-breaking amount of early progress we made on the physics questions, and contributed interesting world lit as well.

I didn't really have any overarching goals for this set: my two main thoughts were "produce interesting questions" and "don't get in others' way." In my categories, the first manifested either as tossups that drew deeply from canonical texts (first arrival of slaves in America bonus, "men" tossup) or from underexplored areas (policymaking, oil industry, the Census). I tried in particular to stay away from hard clues that people could osmose simply by playing the previous few years' hard tournaments, and tried to encourage others to do the same. I'm very happy how the first thought turned out, and somewhat happy with the second; I think I did a good job of letting people produce the interesting questions, and now is time to get in their way a bit to ensure the questions are maximally playable for future mirrors.

Thank you again to everyone who worked on this set, and thank you to the playtesters for the feedback you've already provided and the feedback in this forum. I suppose I should also thank the WORKSHOP editors for their work given the number of ARCADIA writers who have written for it (note: definitely do WORKSHOP if it makes you as good as these writers).

I look forward to hearing your thoughts!
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Re: ARCADIA General Discussion

Post by cwasims »

Thanks to the writers and editors for putting on a great tournament! It was a very nice break from a pretty busy start to the quarter for me.

One more general comment (and certainly not something I would expect to be fixed for this tournament): I think it makes a lot more sense to group classical music and opera in the same 1/1 along with whatever else is necessary to complete fill out the 1/1 given other distributional constraints. As far as I can tell, one of the main functional points of having consistent question distributions across rounds is to facilitate specialization so that specialists have guaranteed questions in their category each game. Given that I'm sure there's a much higher correlation between classical music and opera specialists than between classical music and jazz or world music specialists, this would give classical/opera specialists close to (or exactly, depending on the specifics) one tossup per round as opposed to sometimes having zero tossups and sometimes having two.
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Re: ARCADIA General Discussion

Post by vydu »

Hi everyone, thank you for playing ARCADIA. I edited chemistry, physics, philosophy, and some of the other sciences (the math, the atmospheric/environmental science questions).

Some people I want to thank: Michael wrote the majority of this set’s philosophy. He wrote questions that engaged meaningfully with a wide range of traditions, reflecting his deep appreciation of the entire breadth of the history of philosophy, and also conscientiously clued underrepresented thinkers. Justin wrote nearly all of this set’s organic chemistry, an area that I have substantially less knowledge in, and explored class material, lab knowledge, and current research in a way that I would not have been able to. Jim and Eric wrote many of the set’s strongest physics bonuses and chemistry tossups, and were incredibly helpful playtesters. Jonathan, Brandon, and Henry wrote wonderful questions in my categories. Hasna generously helped me finish the chemistry in crunch time, and was generally an inspiration to work with throughout. Ashish, Jacob, Annabelle, Ryan, Kevin T, Ophir, Vittal, and everyone at the playtest mirror (especially Jonathen -- thank you) gave valuable feedback on my questions. And finally, a sincerest thank you to everyone who worked on the set, who made the working atmosphere such a delight -- you were all so energetic and encouraging, and I learned so much from all of our conversations and your questions.

I drew heavy inspiration for my goals in this set from Stephen Eltinge’s goals for last year’s ACF Regionals: explore a healthy variety of topics, ask about the work of women and minority scientists, and maintain accessibility. Let me know how these went! Some other thoughts/questions I had:
  • Subdistributionally, I tried especially to explore applications in analytical chemistry and polymer/materials chemistry, and clue some topics in statistical physics that I think are underrepresented (ferromagnetic transition and lattice models, Langevin/Fokker-Planck dynamics, non-equilibrium things like detailed balance and Prigogine’s work)
  • I suspect that a number of bonus parts sacrificed some playability for excitement, including some of the ones with more involved answerlines (e.g. single molecule, low Reynolds number, drug delivery, on-a-chip, routing + non-point source pollution), which I apologize for. If any of the questions along these lines were particularly confusing to play, let me know
  • I’d be curious to hear how the science felt for non-science players -- I and my fellow writers tried to write some of our questions (e.g. Oak Ridge, underwater mining, rocket propulsion, superglue stuff, animal defense mechanisms, teeth, etc.) to be of more general interest, so I’m wondering whether they felt engaging/educational even if you weren’t sure what was going on
Any thoughts on any of this stuff or feedback on individual questions/answerlines that need improvement would be appreciated! Thanks everyone!
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Re: ARCADIA General Discussion

Post by mico »

I was responsible for editing European history, World history, British/Commonwealth history, and geography/current events/other academic.

First of all, I want to thank Ashish Subramanian for writing nearly every geography question, large portions of the current events, and other questions mixed into my categories. It was a big help to have you thinking of fun, important ideas for those categories, allowing me to focus more on shaping the history distribution to my liking. Some instances of great questions written by Ashish: reductions / printing press / peninsulares+criollos, glocalization / blues / McDonalds, tourists / heritage / theme parks, type 2 diabetes / supermarkets / Diamond. To the extent that I remained relatively hands-off in the geography distribution, I did make an effort to make the category reflect what information is important to collegiate geography courses. That boils down to less questions testing knowledge of physical locations because they exist, and more testing knowledge of why certain locations are important to geographers. As an example, the geography question on place / favelas / Auge (or in later mirrors place / soccer / France) may feel more like social science, but it's reflective of what geographers study and I believe that it has place in the geography distribution in Quizbowl.

I also want to thank Daniel Cronin for the number of great (medieval) European history questions he provided. Some of my favorite ideas in the set, like Holy Roman Emperor/Pope TU, were his. He also did a fantastic job at writing British history (Henry II, Synod of Whitby / Gregory / Bede, Llewelyn the Last / marches / Edward I), which was much appreciated since I do not have the capacity to write an entire serving of British history myself. With the European and British history (and to a lesser extent the World history), I wanted to move away from the recent trend of having tons of physical/political locations as answerlines. Oftentimes in Quizbowl writing, historical events are shoehorned into various regions or countries whose identities did not exist at the time. I preferred to ask either about specific rulers, who would have had more identity-forming power than certain locations, or about social/political movements. My strongest area of understanding these intricacies is in postwar Europe, so I hope people enjoyed new spins on classic questions (1989 and rearmament of West Germany / Adenauer / NATO stand out to me).

Even though neither of them wrote any history, I'd like to thank both Caroline Mao and Hasna Karim for their efforts in pushing the set in the right direction with regards to underrepresented groups. History has a notoriously old and white subject matter, so it required conscious thoughts to represent women and people of color. Without their pushing me, and other editors, in that direction, it would have been easy for me to forget about making that conscious effort. I won't say I did a perfect job at including diversity in the history, but there are questions that I'm happy with (Philip II, Paris Commune, India, Louis XIV / Savoy / Casa Pia) and I've learned a ton to build upon in future sets.

As our resident "experienced editor," Annabelle Yang was always there to give me general editing advice that I'm grateful for and that really helped push me over to line to finish the set. Vincent Du and Henry Goff always told me when my questions were good and when they were bad. Kevin Thomas constantly challenged my set vision for the history by, at times, having seemingly the opposite visions himself. At the end of the day however, I'm proud of the history in this set that we wrote together, and I think our writing compliments each other well and leaves everyone happy. Of course, I'm also grateful for everyone else who wrote good questions I got to edit, Jim Fan (Buddha / stupa / seasons) and Jonathan Shauf (Westerners / Satsuma / Bakumatsu) both wrote cool ideas.

Through the first time I've edited anything, I discovered what I think makes a good Quizbowl question and where I think we should take the history distribution. It was a great experience and I'm glad to have gotten to interact with everyone that I did. I hope everyone enjoyed playing ARCADIA and if you enjoyed the European and other history (and also the mythology Annabelle edited), be sure to play regs.
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Re: ARCADIA General Discussion

Post by henrygoff »

I hope everyone enjoyed playing the British and World Literature! As a first-time editor, working on this set was a labor of love, but it was labor nonetheless; as such, I want to thank some people who made my job easier.
    -I was incredibly lucky that the writing team included Caroline Mao and Raymond Wang, whose submitted questions were always very cool and never required much editing--they’re two of the most talented lit writers in the game, and anyone would be lucky to have them on a set. You can thank Caroline especially for also providing a ton of invaluable feedback that helped make my questions a lot more playable (and that’s not even to mention how much I learned from them during WORKSHOP!).
      -Beyond Caroline and Raymond, a ton of people wrote excellent, interesting questions that were an absolute joy to edit--I especially loved Hasna’s bonus on the Desais, Annabelle’s bonus on marrying tigers, Michael’s bonus on Middle English poetry, and Ashish’s bonus on Jose Craveirinha.
        -It was very reassuring to see Payton Schubel do such a fantastic job editing American and European literature--her consistently outstanding work encouraged me in times of frustration that ours wasn’t an impossible task.
          -His overall awesomeness on this set has been espoused elsewhere, but Grant Peet was the one who originally encouraged me, and so many others from UNC and Duke, to write questions more regularly; I’m positive that without his influence, ARCADIA wouldn’t exist.

          As for my actual editing philosophy, I didn’t have any overarching goals or novel aims for my 2/2, other than what any editor strives for: namely, trying to make each question interesting to hear; choosing representative and memorable clues; and giving adequate attention to the different subgenres and areas of each distribution. Functionally, I tried to be generous with my power-marking, and I did my best to make medium parts more gettable than not, and avoid find-your-ass easy parts. Because of my frequent inability to curb my habit of writing on things that interest me, my categories ended up skewing a bit more modern than they do in most sets, and my equally uncurbable habit of occasionally prioritizing “creative” ideas meant that I ended up with more challenging answerlines than I originally intended. If these trends were noticeable, or you otherwise felt like the British and World lit was more difficult or frustrating than you were expecting, please let me know!
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          ryanrosenberg
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          Re: ARCADIA General Discussion

          Post by ryanrosenberg »

          We've set up a discussion server, which can be joined here: https://discord.gg/pWGDMVSzhv
          Ryan Rosenberg
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          Re: ARCADIA General Discussion

          Post by buffaloz1331 »

          I really appreciated the freshness of ARCADIA—even when tackling well-trod areas it did a good job of bringing in new approaches, new cuts, and the conscious effort to bring in the work of people who are typically underrepresented in quizbowl and in the broader sense of the "canon." The bonus on Mozambican literature and the tossup on Fight the Power exemplified this for me and were some of my personal favorites. That said, I also thought this tournament went too hard in the direction of what I'll call "academization" or "secondary source bowl" at times. There were a lot of clues that followed the format of "according to [x 2011 book by y and z authors]," or "a 2021 [museum] exhibit," or some variation which is fine in moderation, but it felt like this kind of approach was everywhere in this set. It is true that I do not know much about the academic relevance of much of the writings that were clued in this way but I felt like this set largely rewarded a kind of knowledge that was not necessarily knowledge about the answerline in question (I'm mostly thinking in terms of history and literature right now, so apologies if that doesn't make a whole lot of sense for other categories. In general though, there were a number of very interesting tossups, including the ones on climate change denial and Palestinian Liberation that brought out important ideas and concepts that people know things about but that seem to not come up in quizbowl as often as they deserve.
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          Re: ARCADIA General Discussion

          Post by pnora527 »

          I may be a little late to the forum, but I hope you've all enjoyed playing ARCADIA! I had a lot of fun editing the American/European Literature for the set. I wanted to thank all of the amazing editors and writers who helped and supported me as a first-time editor.
          • Henry Goff was the other half of my literature team, and he really stepped up the plate in not just his categories but mine as well. When I had a personal matter, Henry stepped up to edit some of the European Literature on top of his own workload, and the set is better for the inventive ideas he added (ex: Vowels in French Poetry bonus). Thanks again, Henry!
          • Caroline Mao was my first ever mentor when writing WORKSHOP, and part of the reason I got into set production. Not only were they the most prolific writer in my categories, but they consistently wrote really exciting questions that got me excited to read what they had written about (ex: Spanglish literature bonus) and took on common topics in new ways (ex: Emily Dickinson TU). Additionally, their support and feedback on the literature in this set is why it's at the quality it is.
          • There was a lot of awesome literature written for this set beyond Caroline's and Henry's. I really enjoyed getting to edit Raymond's earthquakes TU, Jim's Karamazov TU, Ryan's rhyme TU, and Ashish's Chicago poetry TU (yay Chicago!).
          • I also want to thank Annabelle Yang, who's mentorship and advice about handling the editing workload was invaluable, as well as Grant Peet, who, beyond writing some really fun literature, also put in an absolutely insane amount of time making sure this set was logistically sound, packetized well, and organized in production.
          Since this was my first time editing, I was mostly focused on creating good quality questions that would be fun to play while trying to emphasize authors/works that I thought were interesting but maybe come up less than they should. I also tried to let the writers' interests try to guide the set as much as possible, because I think that questions are generally better and more fun to play when people write what they're interested about. Let me know what you think!
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          Gene Harrogate
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          Re: ARCADIA General Discussion

          Post by Gene Harrogate »

          This was a great tournament, and I'm very happy I got to play it.

          General Impressions
          Overall, I felt this tournament was a model of difficulty for sub-regionals. Bonuses were challenging but by-and-large gettable and tossups were generally good, clear ideas. I especially appreciate that the writers were willing to put recognizable clues in power. I think often it's easy to see that a clue has come up before for The Brothers Karamazov, The Magic Mountain, Moby-Dick, etc. and decide it can't go in power. The writers and editors here avoided that. I could tell that players felt rewarded for topics they had deep knowledge in, without having their buzzes cheapened in any way.

          Superb job keeping bonuses under control in length. I didn't once feel like I was sifting through 5 lines of esoteric information, only for the bonus part to end "with capital Beijing." Similarly, I could tell the editors put a lot of effort into keeping bonus sentences clear and evocative. It was rare for us to lose the thread of the sentence and miss the identifier/clue.

          There was some variance in medium parts and a few hards felt a bit out there, but honestly not any more than the typical good tournament.

          I enjoyed the fine arts questions quite a bit, but it sounds like there was some packetization that led to our site only hearing one pure painting tossup. I think some people left with the sense that tossups were rewarding knowledge of contemporary art, sculpture, etc. while history of painting was bonus material. These tossups were good and creative, but I don't think it hurts to have a straightforward Rembrandt question every few packets.

          Questions I liked in particular
          • Nigera and United States: Open City!
          • World War II: excellent idea
          • Good Friday bonus
          • The sun in Hinduism
          • Old men
          • Highways bonus
          • Bonus on British Isles cats
          • Qipao bonus
          • Shakespeare family
          • Cabaret
          • British Empire: neat idea, even if some clues felt tough to associate with the exact answer (Mahan for instance)
          • Several literature tossups on single-work links: i.e., whales, Karamazov family
          • Sierra Club
          • Men, even though I negged it with "man"
          • Mosaics
          • 1989: don't listen to year haters
          • Fight the Power: terrific tossup. Love it.
          • Rhyme: my other favorite tossup, just great. Every tournament should have a technical literature tossup like this one.
          • Throat singing
          • Luncheons
          Technical Things
          There were some sentences with internal structures likely to produce negs. For instance, "During the Antinomian controversy, Puritan leaders exiled Anne Hutchinson to this state" gives you three buzzable clues associated with Massachusetts before the question specifies it wants the state to which Anne Hutchinson was exiled. Similar thing with saying we're in Assyria then beginning a sentence with "A lion-hunt scene on one of these objects," which produced a race in my room to neg with the Lion Hunt of Ashurbanipal. Really not a gigantic deal, but a good thing to be careful of in the future IMO.

          The tossup on declaring War on Germany was creative, but I don't think all the clues were very well pinned. For instance: "Tosatisfy the Megali Idea, Eleftherios (*) Venizelos supported the taking of this action and exiled the dissident Ioannis (“yoh-AHN-nis”) Metaxas." My neg here was "dissolving the Ottoman Empire." I guess that doesn't line up exactly chronologically with Metaxas' exile, but it (along with most policy actions Greece took in this period) matches "things Venizelos wanted in order to expand Greek territory." I guess my takeaway is that for these sorts of questions, it's good to comb through each clue with a good deal of player empathy and expand the answerline with prompts.

          Again, nice tournament, with a unique feel that didn't stray into vanity material. I hope I get to play more like it in the future.
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          Re: ARCADIA General Discussion

          Post by Heiliger Dankgesang »

          I suppose it’s not the ~ideal~ time to make an editor’s post in a discussion forum with only two mirrors of this set left, but I’ve been able to collect my thoughts and put them in writing, and for the sake of completeness (and posterity), here we are.

          It was early March of last year—not more than just over a month after writing for WORKSHOP 2021 was complete—when a handful of us sat down after a weekly joint UNC/Duke zoom practice and decided to bring ARCADIA to life (although it didn’t have that name just yet). I was exhausted and I wasn’t sure how much I was going to be able to contribute, and at that time, I especially wasn’t confident in editing anything after having worked on a set just once. To be quite honest, at that time I wasn’t sure how much I wanted to write for another set at all. But sometimes, well, you just get thrust into things unexpectedly… Editing ARCADIA was one of my favorite experiences of 2021, and I am extremely thankful that I was a part of it. I had an absolute blast, and going to bed at 1 or even 2 am on certain nights after working on this set was absolutely 100% worth it!

          Having become an editor fairly late during set production, my goal with the auditory arts and the opera (and the one film tossup that I was responsible for) was mainly to maximize playability with an eye toward keeping things fresh. For me, the tossup on Napoleon comes to mind, focusing on some better-known Beethoven music (i.e., the Emperor Concerto and the Eroica Symphony) from an angle that hasn’t been explored all that often in quizbowl (at least to my knowledge). On the harder side of things, the incidental music tossup also comes to mind as an example of a perhaps less well-trodden answerline concerning pieces that are known well in quizbowl (Grieg’s music for Peer Gynt and Mendelssohn’s music for A Midsummer Night’s Dream), the exception being Richard Strauss’s music for Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme (which I was fortunate enough to play last summer). (Indeed we did keep some things personal. After all, we managed to clue all three of the pieces that Annabelle played on her senior recital (Granados’s “Fandango by Candlelight,” Bartók’s Romanian Folk Dances, and Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto) within this set.) I also like to keep things current, focus on real-world experience, and clue performance practice in my writing when possible. (E.g., the bonus on tech/virtual elements of classical music pieces/concerts.) I hope that all of this was enjoyable and fun to play.

          The other main point of my categories was—perhaps controversially—to include jazz and world music with western classical music in an “auditory arts” distribution. In this respect, my editing philosophy was to distribute based on whether things are strictly visual, strictly auditory, or multimedia. (John Lawrence referenced this setup in the main Discord a few weeks ago.) As a classically-trained cellist, I personally would not mind having a distribution solely comprised of classical music questions, as that is my forte (pun intended). But at the same time (and I may be reading into this fairly literally), world music and jazz also have important traditions within music history, and I feel like classifying them as “other” auditory art relegates them to a level that is secondary to Western classical music. Besides, aspects of non–Western classical musical traditions have influenced Western classical musical traditions. The Sinfonía India/Aztecs/Boston bonus (which I put into a classical music slot within “auditory arts”) exemplifies this fusion, even if its easy part may not be gettable as much off of music knowledge. On the flip side, the panpipes bonus clues Bartók and I put that bonus in a “world music” slot; this set shows that the classical – world music boundary can be fairly fluid. I understand how classical music and opera are more likely to have the same specialists, however. To avoid having some packets without a classical question and others with one, I think a solution worth trying in the future if the visual/auditory split is used could be to packetize opera questions in packets without classical auditory arts questions so that classical/opera specialists are guaranteed at least one question per packet. In hindsight, that is probably something that this set should have implemented.

          I’ll additionally note that I also guest-edited the two Judaism practice questions: the seders tossup and the “Your life as a sofer” bonus (kosher/mikveh/Amalek). I hope you enjoyed those too!

          I would be remiss without some thank yous:
          • Thank you Ryan Rosenberg for being a great headitor. Even if your approach was more “hands-off,” I appreciate all that you did to make this set the best that it can be.
          • Thank you Annabelle Yang for always being willing to share your editing expertise and advice, for your thoughftul, constructive feedback on everyone’s questions, and for your extremely creative ideas, all while also working on Winter Closed and stepping up to edit myth again for Regs! I aspire to write questions as novel and outstanding as yours. Thank you also for being such a great leader and role model for Duke Quiz Bowl. We miss you in Durham!
          • Thank you Grant Peet for being a superstar and the heart and soul of this set! ARCADIA would not have existed without you. You went above and beyond to keep everyone in line and make sure everything was running on time, all while writing the most questions for this set, shaping the history and current events distributions to your liking, and crusading against Kevin Content in the process. And on that note, thank you Kevin Thomas for adding said Kevin Content, which never fails to amuse me. Your humor and surreal imagination are great touches.
          • Thank you Ashish Subramanian for assisting me with logistical matters and making every pronunciation guide for this set, on top of writing some insane questions in many categories. Your geography and linguistics knowledge is unparalleled, and I live in awe of your ability to geofraud and lingfraud so effortlessly.
          • Thank you to Vincent Du, Eric Gunter, Annabelle, Ashish, Justin Zhang, Raymond Wang, and Brandon Weiss for writing really fun and interesting questions in my categories. My distributions are not just mine– they are yours too. I am grateful for your contributions, for your ideas, and for lending your voices to my categories and working so spectacularly in others, too.
          • Thank you Ophir for being my mentor as the person who was originally slated to edit my categories, for your valuable advice and feedback, and for being a logistics whiz for almost every tournament. You truly don’t get enough credit. Speaking of mentors, I’ll also thank Wonyoung Jang for being my writing mentor during WORKSHOP 2021. Even if I was stressed out at times trying to think of ideas that could satisfy your high standards, I would not be where I am today as a writer/editor without that experience.
          • The list goes on… Thank you to EVERYONE who worked on this set, for making it such a collaborative and supportive environment, and for being a real pleasure to be around. I am really going to miss ARCADIA! (Shall we do it again soon?)
          I welcome any thoughts that you have. Thank you all again for playing ARCADIA!
          Jacob Egol
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          Re: ARCADIA General Discussion

          Post by Borrowing 100,000 Arrows »

          I forgot to post this earlier, but I thought this set was extremely good. It reminded me a lot of 2016 Terrapin. Thanks for everyone who made it happen.
          Caleb K.
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          Re: ARCADIA General Discussion

          Post by Votre Kickstarter Est Nul »

          I played this online, and a bit embarassingly (given my desire for big ole forums discussions to come back) did not do the things I would normally do to comment confidently (keep score, take notes, etc.); so if anything is a bit underjustifiable, I apologize. While I am looking back at the packets, it may well still be hard to quantify certain things.

          For instance, it felt like there was more fashion/fashion-adjacent content than I am used to (I remember the Cartier bonus, the Comme des Garcons logo design bonus, there was definitely a tossup at some point but i can't remember). This was great. I gather this was the work of Caroline from the introductory post. I enjoyed it all.

          The lit seemed to have alot alot of short story content. My teammate Darren also noticed this. Sorry that this is obviously a very vague sort of claim, and I'm happy to be told I'm wrong if someone has some sort of quantifiable stuff. Just our impression.

          The current events and such seemed interesting. I chuckled at the bitcoin mining question and enjoyed the ambulances tossup.

          I enjoyed the history for the most part. But here, a few questions I enjoyed:
          • Uranium was well done.
            Treating TB! Wild ride, I was completely lost. Very cool stuff.
            (not history but) Fight the Power! sick.
            Argentina
            HBCUs
            schools / i cant remember / Zitkala-Sa (what a last part! really cool stuff)
            India
            Sierra Club
            Olympics
            There were definitely more, but I didn't take notes, so it's a bit harder to remember what struck me.
          Sorry I can't figure out how to properly bullet that list.

          A few thoughts related to specific questions, which I'll try and make broader points with, since the set is clear and things can't be changed:

          I agree with Henry about the Venizelos clue (though I buzzed at "action" before the mention of exile, so my comments come from that place). I negged with annexing Cyprus, which, I think, is reasonable given "to support the Megali Idea, Velezelos supported taking this action." I think answers like mine or Henry's are closer to direct answers to that clue, whereas entering WWI is a bit more roundabout; as in, entering WWI is later in the logic chain than annexing [insert "greek" land]/breaking up the Ottoman Empire (as I see it, it goes: Venizelos supported uniting Greek lands under the Megali Idea --> he wanted to annex those lands --> the Greeks stood to gain some of that land if they won WWI --> so he supported entering WWI). In general, with clues that ask the player to go a line further in the logic chain, I think it needs to be phrased more exactly to be workable. Cool question overall, just thought that clue needs to be more specific.

          I think decade questions should rely on stronger thematic reasoning than the 1970s in France TU. I'm no expert, so if the link is stronger than I think, apologies. Without super strong thematic reasoning, I think it can lead to clues that, while correct, aren't necessarily importantly linked with that decade. The death penalty clue, for instance: The last execution did of course take place in the 70s, but the death penalty was outlawed early the next decade. As far as I know, it's not super important that it was actually in the 70s. The more important distinction during this period seems to me that VGD was pro-death penalty, but Mitterand was not. VGD was in power until '81, and when in his tenure he happened to execute his last prisoner seems a bit trivial for a fact that straddles the end of a decade. This is why, on the contrary, a TU on the '80s including a clue about France ending the death penalty seems fair game to me: Mitterand comes to power in the '80s, this is one of his first acts. If someone, buzzing in knowing France outlawed it in '81, said the 80's, assuming the last execution happened shortly before the ban, has the question really accomplished something in denying that person points? For what it's worth, I buzzed here and got it right, but I'm not sure that my having known it was the late 70's is a big jump in knowledge from someone who knows the VGD-Mitterand distinction on the issue but thought the last execution was in the early 80s. It just doesn't strike me that it happening in the 70s is emblematic of anything larger.

          That lack of anything larger seems borne out by the rest of the question, which jumps from trains to death penalty back to trains to abortion, and doesn't hint at any theme (things under VGD, but not after the turn of the decade, I think). I also think that's why the giveaway ends up a bit gimmicky (it's basically asking the player to do 1945 + 30 = 1975 is in the 1970s). There's no seminal, thematic moment in 1970s France at this difficulty for the question to point to. I hope this doesn't come off too harshly (especially if it's in service of a maybe banal point about decades TUs). I generally like questions that test timing knowledge, but I think those questions should avoid clues where the exact year is minutiae (I would contend, for instance, that, broad strokes, our understanding of French death penalty history would not be greatly affected had Djandoubi been executed in 1980). 1989 does a better job in these regards.

          A quick note that isn't a general point: I think "All men are created equal" got to the point way too fast with line 2 telling you Jefferson used a phrase famous enough to be tossed up that notably excludes a group.

          Also, a quick question since I'm finding it hard to google, but what's the link between Walpole being called the "screenmaster general" and the expansion of the British Empire? All the sites I found seem super vague ("saving pols from punishment" "being a slippery maneuverer" things like that). I have no doubts the clue is right, I'm just curious.

          I hope these critiques aren't pointless. I'm far from a great editor, but insofar as they are right about some things, I hope they're helpful to any of the editors (or future people reading).

          EDIT: messed around a bit with this clunky prose.
          Thanks for the set yall!
          Emmett Laurie
          East Brunswick '16
          Rutgers University '21
          gyre and gimble
          Yuna
          Posts: 765
          Joined: Tue Feb 17, 2009 2:45 am

          Re: ARCADIA General Discussion

          Post by gyre and gimble »

          This was a fun set and rightly praised for its creative ideas. (For me, the tossup on the Shakespeare family comes to mind as a really great question).

          But I'd like to make a cautionary point about "overdoing" creativity in question writing. Others in this thread have praised the "Fight the Power" question, but it stood out to me as a good example of "overdoing" it. I don't see a particularly compelling reason why this same tossup, using the same clues, wasn't a question on Do the Right Thing. (Maybe you have to cut the lead-in, but as far as I can tell that is not a film clue anyway.)

          Sure, you could make the argument that the song itself is an important aspect of the film, and that knowledge of such artistic choices should be tested. But I don't think that level of specificity is warranted for a tournament at this difficulty. It seems to me that differentiating knowledge of the film Do the Right Thing should have been enough.

          But setting difficulty aside, there's a separate issue here. In practice, no player is going to recognize the song directly from the clue. Every player who converts this question before the end is going to recognize the film first, and then make an association between the song and the film. This additional association step seems more suited for bonuses than tossups. In other words, when you convert a tossup on X into a question on a detail about X, you're flattening the pyramidality and playability of the tossup. Knowledge of the clues themselves becomes secondary to knowledge of the association between X and the detail about X.

          Of course, like most things, this is not an absolute rule. Sometimes, the association between X and a detail about X should (or at least could) be the basis for rewarding knowledge. If you think about it, even the title Do the Right Thing is a "detail" about the film Do the Right Thing. But some associations are far more fundamental than others. It's a question of degree. And the weaker or less fundamental the association, the flatter the tossup.

          I understand and generally applaud the effort to be creative and find new ways to ask about well-worn topics. Like I said to open this post, this set generally did a great job with that. But I would also encourage writers to think carefully about whether their "fresh takes" are actually warranted, and how they might affect gameplay.
          Stephen Liu
          Torrey Pines '10
          Harvard '14
          Stanford '17
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