2021 ACF Fall - Thanks and General Discussion

Elaborate on the merits of specific tournaments or have general theoretical discussion here.
Post Reply
katherine
Lulu
Posts: 57
Joined: Sun Mar 05, 2017 12:12 pm
Location: MD

2021 ACF Fall - Thanks and General Discussion

Post by katherine »

Thank you to everyone who played and staffed 2021 ACF Fall! I want to use this post to thank everyone who had a hand in putting Fall together, and to invite general thoughts and discussion on how the set played. Specific questions and errata can be discussed here.

First, I would like to thank this year’s fantastic editing team, who produced novel, interesting, and well-written questions in a timely manner:
Gov Prabhakar: US History, Euro History, World History, Other History, Geography, Current Events
Mitch McCullar: US Literature, British Literature, Euro Literature, World/Other Literature
Karan Gurazada: Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Other Science
Ethan Strombeck: Painting/Sculpture, Classical Music, Other Fine Arts, Current Events
Ned Tagtmeier: Religion, Social Science/Philosophy
Justin Duffy: Mythology
Sarah Benner: Pop Culture

I would also like to thank Justin Duffy and Matthew Lehmann, who provided invaluable assistance and oversight during set production.

Freelancers contributed more than 15% of the question set. Thank you to writers: Vincent Fan, Jakob Boeye, Sean Farrell, Arjun Nageswaran, Grace Liu, Walter Zhang, Ethan Ashbrook, Arthur Delot-Vilain, Chris Tong, Jason Hong, Hari Parameswaran, Jon Suh, Shahar Schwartz, Angela Lin, and Mazin Omer.

Thank you to all teams who submitted a half-packet; some of the best and most innovative questions in the set came from packet submissions.

Playtesters and proofreaders provided feedback and quality control on questions and organization during set production. Thank you: Matthew Bollinger, Iain Carpenter, Urbas Ekka, Ganon Evans, John John Groger, Auroni Gupta, Taylor Harvey, Ophir Lifshitz, Ed Liu, Brad Maclaine, Tracy Mirkin, Vishwa Shanmugam, Jonathan Shauf, Nathan Sheffield, Kai Smith, and Albert Zhang.

No tournament can be held without readers, scorekeepers, and directors. ACF Fall is the largest collegiate quiz bowl tournament of the year, and I am truly grateful for the hundreds of staffers who volunteered to spend their Saturday or Sunday ensuring that the tournament ran smoothly. I hope everyone enjoyed 2021 ACF Fall, and feel free to put your thoughts here!
Katherine Lei
Montgomery Blair HS '20
MIT '24
User avatar
VelarApproximant
Lulu
Posts: 13
Joined: Mon Apr 12, 2021 6:00 pm

Re: 2021 ACF Fall - Thanks and General Discussion

Post by VelarApproximant »

Whoever may have actually won ACF Fall Minnesota, the true winners were Michigan Tech A.

ACF Fall was a rough time for me personally. My alarm never made a sound and I woke up at 5* to the sound of my teammate and friend entering my dorm to figure out what the heck was wrong. My other teammate had understandably returned to bed after waitintg for me for an hour (something she has forgiven me for but for which I will probably be angry at myself until the day I die). We were already a small team from a new-to-qb school, and we were now a two-person team. Despite my lead foot and disregard for the law, we were late and had to forfeit our first match.

Seeing our low numbers, the captain of Michigan Tech A insisted that only two of their team compete at a time. I made it clear to them several times that that was not standard practice, and shorthanded teams were expected to go head-to-head with full-strength, five-person outfits. They accepted this and played shorthanded anyway (you will see on https://hsquizbowl.org/db/tournaments/7 ... higanTechA that all their members heard but ten tossups).

It was an above-and-beyond gesture of sportsmanship which I will remember for the rest of my life. It was the best thing about that tournament, and I am including in that assessment the two questions on my all-time favorite visual artist (Goya). Thank you, Betty Jo, Sophia, Anthony, Micah, and Mark. From the bottom of my heart. I will forever root for Michigan Tech at any Quiz Bowl tournament, sporting event, and intercollegiate competition of any kind. This is what Quiz Bowl should be like.

*I had intended to wake up at 2:45, meet the team at 3:30, and leave before 4, as Cornell is about 4hrs away from U of M. I was a little over 2 hours behind where I wanted to be.
Luke E. Henson
Colorado Early Colleges Aurora Class of 2021
Cornell College Class of 2025

Jack of all categories, indefatigable Jeopardy! viewer, goonerism spuru
User avatar
benchapman
Lulu
Posts: 63
Joined: Thu Mar 22, 2018 9:17 pm
Location: Toronto, ON

Re: 2021 ACF Fall - Thanks and General Discussion

Post by benchapman »

Bringing this thread back from the dead...

Overall, I thought this set was fun and hit the difficulty target pretty well. While there was the odd misplaced clue and dubious question (like that "eating hot chicken wings" tossup), each question on its own was quite strong and well-edited. However, the feng shui was not good. I remember that there seemed to be a lot of repeated answerlines. More egregiously, there were definitely some questions that repeated or asked for content that had been previously given either earlier in the set or question. There are some examples in the other ACF Fall 2021 discussion thread. That was my main gripe with the set; other than that, I thought it was a good set that was fun to play.
Benjamin Chapman
Hunter College High School '21
University of Toronto '26
itsliz
Kimahri
Posts: 2
Joined: Tue Jun 08, 2021 7:50 am
Location: Michigan, USA

Re: 2021 ACF Fall - Thanks and General Discussion

Post by itsliz »

VelarApproximant wrote: Mon Oct 18, 2021 9:56 pm Whoever may have actually won ACF Fall Minnesota, the true winners were Michigan Tech A.

ACF Fall was a rough time for me personally. My alarm never made a sound and I woke up at 5* to the sound of my teammate and friend entering my dorm to figure out what the heck was wrong. My other teammate had understandably returned to bed after waitintg for me for an hour (something she has forgiven me for but for which I will probably be angry at myself until the day I die). We were already a small team from a new-to-qb school, and we were now a two-person team. Despite my lead foot and disregard for the law, we were late and had to forfeit our first match.

Seeing our low numbers, the captain of Michigan Tech A insisted that only two of their team compete at a time. I made it clear to them several times that that was not standard practice, and shorthanded teams were expected to go head-to-head with full-strength, five-person outfits. They accepted this and played shorthanded anyway (you will see on https://hsquizbowl.org/db/tournaments/7 ... higanTechA that all their members heard but ten tossups).

It was an above-and-beyond gesture of sportsmanship which I will remember for the rest of my life. It was the best thing about that tournament, and I am including in that assessment the two questions on my all-time favorite visual artist (Goya). Thank you, Betty Jo, Sophia, Anthony, Micah, and Mark. From the bottom of my heart. I will forever root for Michigan Tech at any Quiz Bowl tournament, sporting event, and intercollegiate competition of any kind. This is what Quiz Bowl should be like.
Hi - I'm the advisor for Michigan Tech's team and actually didn't know that this happened until right now when a friend sent this link!!! I cannot express what this means to hear from you; I am so proud of the team for being so dang nice and look forward to telling them such. May your quiz bowl days continue to be bright, and hopefully we see you again in the future! :grin:
Liz from Michigan Tech
User avatar
VelarApproximant
Lulu
Posts: 13
Joined: Mon Apr 12, 2021 6:00 pm

Re: 2021 ACF Fall - Thanks and General Discussion

Post by VelarApproximant »

itsliz wrote: Wed Apr 20, 2022 11:41 am
VelarApproximant wrote: Mon Oct 18, 2021 9:56 pm Whoever may have actually won ACF Fall Minnesota, the true winners were Michigan Tech A.

ACF Fall was a rough time for me personally. My alarm never made a sound and I woke up at 5* to the sound of my teammate and friend entering my dorm to figure out what the heck was wrong. My other teammate had understandably returned to bed after waitintg for me for an hour (something she has forgiven me for but for which I will probably be angry at myself until the day I die). We were already a small team from a new-to-qb school, and we were now a two-person team. Despite my lead foot and disregard for the law, we were late and had to forfeit our first match.

Seeing our low numbers, the captain of Michigan Tech A insisted that only two of their team compete at a time. I made it clear to them several times that that was not standard practice, and shorthanded teams were expected to go head-to-head with full-strength, five-person outfits. They accepted this and played shorthanded anyway (you will see on https://hsquizbowl.org/db/tournaments/7 ... higanTechA that all their members heard but ten tossups).

It was an above-and-beyond gesture of sportsmanship which I will remember for the rest of my life. It was the best thing about that tournament, and I am including in that assessment the two questions on my all-time favorite visual artist (Goya). Thank you, Betty Jo, Sophia, Anthony, Micah, and Mark. From the bottom of my heart. I will forever root for Michigan Tech at any Quiz Bowl tournament, sporting event, and intercollegiate competition of any kind. This is what Quiz Bowl should be like.
Hi - I'm the advisor for Michigan Tech's team and actually didn't know that this happened until right now when a friend sent this link!!! I cannot express what this means to hear from you; I am so proud of the team for being so dang nice and look forward to telling them such. May your quiz bowl days continue to be bright, and hopefully we see you again in the future! :grin:
Hi Liz! Thanks for the reply! Sorry it took so long. At this stage it appears I'm about the only one on campus with a great interest in quiz bowl and I've decided to step aside for the purpose of not dying, so I doubt we'll meet at a tournament again, but best of luck going forward, and send my best to your team!
Luke E. Henson
Colorado Early Colleges Aurora Class of 2021
Cornell College Class of 2025

Jack of all categories, indefatigable Jeopardy! viewer, goonerism spuru
Post Reply