Announcement: Boilermaker Spring Novice (March-April 2022)

[quynh mccool]

The Purdue University Quiz Bowl Team is happy to announce Boilermaker Spring Novice, a successor to last year’s Spring Novice written by current and former members of Purdue Quiz Bowl, intended for playing in Spring 2022. This tournament will match the style and difficulty of previous Spring Novice sets, with the same goal of introducing new players to college quiz bowl.

Hosting
This tournament will be available for hosting March 19-April 23.

If you are interested in hosting, please contact me at [email protected] by January 15. The hosting fee will be $40 per team, and the recommended fee structure is as follows:

• $80 per team
• -$30 for teams new to quiz bowl (defined as having not played a tournament in the 2019-20 or 2020-21 seasons)
• -$15 per trained staffer with a functioning laptop
• -$10 per working buzzer set with at least 8 working buzzer
• -$10 per 200 miles traveled one-way. Distances decided via Google Maps

With a minimum fee of $50. Hosts will not have to pay any hosting fee for teams that qualify for the “new to quiz bowl” discount, i.e. hosts will make more money from new teams. We strongly encourage hosts to reach out to new schools and less-active clubs and will be happy to assist with such outreach.

We will also accept bids for high-school-only mirrors; if you would like to host a mirror for high school teams, please note that in your email. We would like to emphasize that these questions are not harder than regular high school difficulty.

Hosts and Tentative Regions

• Northeast (ME/NH/VT/MA/RI/CT)
• Upper Mid-Atlantic (NY/NJ/DE/Eastern PA)
• Lower Mid-Atlantic (MD/VA/NC/DC)
• Southeast (TN/KY/GA/AL/SC/FL)
• Great Lakes (MI/OH/WV/Western PA)
• Midwest (IL/MO/IN): Purdue
• North (MN/IA/WI)
• South Central (TX/LA/OK/KS)
• Mountain West (CO/UT/WY)
• California
• Northwest (WA/OR/ID/BC)
• Eastern Canada (ON/QC)
• UK

These regions are subject to change based on demand and hosting availability.

Eligibility
This tournament is intended for players with no or very little quiz bowl experience. Players with extensive quiz bowl experience are encouraged to help staff.

You are not eligible for this tournament if you meet any of the following criteria:

• You have ever scored more than 60 points per game at a quiz bowl tournament (excluding middle school tournaments).
• You have made the playoffs at HSNCT or top 32 at NSC.
• You have played ICT (DI or DII) or ACF Nationals.

If you meet one or more of these criteria but believe you still fit the intended audience of this tournament, email me at [email protected] to request an eligibility exemption.

Question Set
The tournament set will have 12 packets of 24 tossups and 24 three-part bonuses each worth 10 points each. Tossups will be between 6-7 lines in 10pt Times New Roman font, and bonuses will be length-controlled to ensure a quick-moving tournament experience. As of now, the Purdue University Quiz Bowl Team plans to write and edit all the questions in-house.

As this tournament is intended for novice quiz bowl players, difficulty will be strictly controlled, and questions will be written assuming the players have little prior familiarity with the quiz bowl canon. To reference other sets, the target difficulty will be easier than 2021 ACF Fall and similar to last year’s Spring Novice.

Each packet will have the following distribution of questions (X/Y indicating X tossups and Y bonuses):

• 4/4 Literature
  • 1/1 Novels
  • 1/1 Poetry
  • 1/1 Drama
  • 1/1 Short Stories and Miscellaneous
  Note: literature questions will also be distributed across geographic areas and time periods
• 4/4 History
  • 1/1 American History
  • 1/1 European History (including British Isles)
  • 1/1 World History
  • 1/1 Other History (including ancient history, British commonwealth, historiography, and cross-category)
• 4/4 Science
  • 1/1 Biology
  • 1/1 Chemistry
  • 1/1 Physics
  • 1/0 or 0/1 Mathematics
  • 1/0 or 0/1 Computer Science, Earth Science, and Astronomy
• 3/3 Fine Arts
  • 1/1 Painting and Sculpture
  • 1/1 Classical Music
  • 1/1 Other Arts (including but not limited to architecture, jazz, opera, dance, fashion, and film)
• 3/3 Beliefs and Legends
  • 1/1 Philosophy
  • 1/1 Practices
  • 1/1 Stories
  Note: “Stories” refers to legends and folklore from various cultures and religions, while “Practices” refers to rituals and observances. To reference distributions from other sets, “Stories” is mostly correlated to “Mythology” and “Practices” is mostly correlated to “Religion”
• 2/2 Social Science
  • 1/0 or 0/1 Economics
  • 1/0 or 0/1 Psychology
  • 1/1 Other SS (including but not limited to anthropology, sociology, linguistics, political science, international relations, and law)
• 2/2 Popular Culture
  • Evenly distributed between pop music, video games, movies, TV, sports, and other/miscellaneous
• 2/2 The World
  • 1/1 Geography
  • 1/1 Current Events

[DavidB256]

Who are the editors for this set?

[quynh mccool]

Who are the editors for this set?

The editing duties will be split between Sarah Benner, Lalit Maharjan, and myself.

[nicole.]

Will this set be open to high school only mirrors?

[Sean]

Will this set be open to high school only mirrors?

Answered in the OP:
“ We will also accept bids for high-school-only mirrors; if you would like to host a mirror for high school teams, please note that in your email. We would like to emphasize that these questions are not harder than regular high school difficulty.”

[Zealots of Stockholm]

[*]4/4 Literature

• 1/1 Novels
• 1/1 Poetry
• 1/1 Drama
• 1/1 Short Stories and Miscellaneous

I would personally not recommend asking 1/1 drama at this level. In general, other sets using a genre-based distribution tend to ask a little under 1/1 drama in favor of having a little more than 1/1 long fiction, which is probably the most popular genre. Off the top of my head I can't say if 1/1 drama would really press a set of this difficulty for ideas in terms of accessibility, but I think upping the amount of long fiction is the way to go in terms of improving playing experience.

[lpierson]

Hello, I am the president of Quiz Bowl at Tulane University and I was wondering how to sign up for the actual tournament. I do not see a host for our region, south central, nor do I see anywhere to sign up for the tournament and any help would be appreciated.

User was reminded to enable a signature. --Mgmt.

[Pyrotechnik]

Hello, I'm the president of the quiz bowl team at South Dakota Mines, will there be any hosts in the Mountain West region (or could we play online)?
We'd love to participate in this competition, but we're probably not able to travel all the way to Purdue, if they are really the only host for this.
Also, I have the same question as the person above: where can we sign up?

[Cosmas's Tabernacular Earth]

I sent an email asking about hosting this a couple weeks back and still haven't heard anything back. What is the current timeline for the editors to announce hosts?

[L.H.O.O.Q.]

Sorry for the huge delay on replying to hosting bids! We sent out emails a couple days ago to the teams that offered, and as they get back to us confirming, we'll update the list of sites. Right now, we have confirmation from six sites:

Eastern Canada (ON/QC): Toronto
Florida (FL): Florida
Great Lakes (MI/OH/WV/Western PA): Ohio State
Lower Mid-Atlantic (MD/VA/NC/DC): James Madison
Northwest / West Coast (WA/OR/ID/BC/possibly CA): British Columbia
Southeast (TN/KY/SC/AL/GA): Georgia
Upper Mid-Atlantic (NY/NJ/DE/Eastern PA): RIT

And, of course, Midwest (IL/MO/IN): Purdue

More to come, soon! And there are still plenty of sites with no hosting bids, so if you are thinking of hosting a mirror, please reach out to quizbowlspringnovice at gmail as soon as possible. We are accepting late offers!

[jaegermeister_07]

Just writing to ask whether there are any teams in the DC-to-NYC corridor that would consider hosting a mirror of this set; getting to either RIT or JMU is no small trip for a lot of schools in the Upper Mid-Atlantic region, Lehigh included. If a more-accessible site were announced, we would likely send at least one team!

[PetriD]

Just writing to ask whether there are any teams in the DC-to-NYC corridor that would consider hosting a mirror of this set; getting to either RIT or JMU is no small trip for a lot of schools in the Upper Mid-Atlantic region, Lehigh included. If a more-accessible site were announced, we would likely send at least one team!

CUA is also in a similar quandary. We're a new school in the quiz bowl world, so we can't travel too far outside DC. A closer mirror would be greatly helpful for us! :)

[benchapman]

This tournament will run on Boilermaker Spring Novice, a set meant to be challenging, but not overwhelming for players without much experience.

Purdue are now claiming that this set is supposed to be "challenging" for inexperienced players. However,

This tournament will match the style and difficulty of previous Spring Novice sets, with the same goal of introducing new players to college quiz bowl.

We would like to emphasize that these questions are not harder than regular high school difficulty.

Which is the case? With the set (presumably) written, has this set turned out harder than first advertised?

[Amazingguysofguys]

I was wondering if there is a planned high school mirror of this set?

[nicole.]

I was wondering if there is a planned high school mirror of this set?

Yep I'm running it, just have been a bit lazy in getting the announcement up. Update: here it is: viewtopic.php?p=388885#p388885

[L.H.O.O.Q.]

This tournament will run on Boilermaker Spring Novice, a set meant to be challenging, but not overwhelming for players without much experience.

Purdue are now claiming that this set is supposed to be "challenging" for inexperienced players. However,

This tournament will match the style and difficulty of previous Spring Novice sets, with the same goal of introducing new players to college quiz bowl.

We would like to emphasize that these questions are not harder than regular high school difficulty.

Which is the case? With the set (presumably) written, has this set turned out harder than first advertised?

Hi Ben. I don't think these two statements are at odds with each other. Quiz bowl questions are, and ought to be, challenging to their target audience. My own assessment is that the set runs easier than ACF Fall and is comparable to last year's Spring Novice, and I do not think the set has come out more difficult than we intended or advertised.

We ran an intramural tournament on the first few packets a couple weeks ago (on a player base that overwhelmingly did not play competitive or pyramidal QB in high school) and found that the majority of players achieved at least one power, and that teams averaged around 12-16 points per bonus.

[benchapman]

Ok, thanks for the clarification.

[lpierson]

So Louisiana is in the south central region and as of right now nobody is hosting this region and since our team (Tulane) has only just begun to go to tournaments again after 4 years we cannot host it (do not know how). Is there any chance we can play in the southeast region and go to the mirror in Georgia?

[jordan.davidsen]

So Louisiana is in the south central region and as of right now nobody is hosting this region and since our team (Tulane) has only just begun to go to tournaments again after 4 years we cannot host it (do not know how). Is there any chance we can play in the southeast region and go to the mirror in Georgia?

Not that it really matters, but the University of Florida is also hosting this tournament and is marginally closer to Tulane. Here's the link to their tournament: viewtopic.php?p=388574&hilit=boilermake ... ce#p388574.

[Protean]

Hello, I'm the president of the quiz bowl team at South Dakota Mines, will there be any hosts in the Mountain West region (or could we play online)?
We'd love to participate in this competition, but we're probably not able to travel all the way to Purdue, if they are really the only host for this.
Also, I have the same question as the person above: where can we sign up?

Just writing to ask whether there are any teams in the DC-to-NYC corridor that would consider hosting a mirror of this set; getting to either RIT or JMU is no small trip for a lot of schools in the Upper Mid-Atlantic region, Lehigh included. If a more-accessible site were announced, we would likely send at least one team!

CUA is also in a similar quandary. We're a new school in the quiz bowl world, so we can't travel too far outside DC. A closer mirror would be greatly helpful for us! :)

So Louisiana is in the south central region and as of right now nobody is hosting this region and since our team (Tulane) has only just begun to go to tournaments again after 4 years we cannot host it (do not know how). Is there any chance we can play in the southeast region and go to the mirror in Georgia?

If any of your schools (or anyone else reading this) are still looking, Toronto's mirror will be run online and while preference will be given to Canadian teams, we would be happy to accommodate any non-Canadian teams we can if they can't find a host close enough to them/don't mind a Zoom tournament. (Please note that our eligibility restrictions are slightly more stringent than those suggested by Purdue - see our announcement post for more details).

For more western time zone schools, UBC's mirror will also be online but I can't speak to their policy on non-regional teams so you'll have to get into contact with them.

[L.H.O.O.Q.]

So Louisiana is in the south central region and as of right now nobody is hosting this region and since our team (Tulane) has only just begun to go to tournaments again after 4 years we cannot host it (do not know how). Is there any chance we can play in the southeast region and go to the mirror in Georgia?

Yes. You can play in any region, really; the demarcated regions were more so we could make sure every region was served by a mirror. Unfortunately, we haven't had any suitors anywhere near Texas. You are free to play at either Georgia or Florida, or at the online mirrors hosted on either coast.

Hello, I'm the president of the quiz bowl team at South Dakota Mines, will there be any hosts in the Mountain West region (or could we play online)?
We'd love to participate in this competition, but we're probably not able to travel all the way to Purdue, if they are really the only host for this.
Also, I have the same question as the person above: where can we sign up?

As mentioned above, we currently don't have any mirrors in central or mountain time, online or otherwise, so it looks like your best bet for now would be to play the online mirror hosted by British Columbia.

[dreamchaser]

With a minimum fee of $50. Hosts will not have to pay any hosting fee for teams that qualify for the “new to quiz bowl” discount, i.e. hosts will make more money from new teams. We strongly encourage hosts to reach out to new schools and less-active clubs and will be happy to assist with such outreach.

Is there a minimum fee of $50 per team or for the tournament overall? Also, it first says "-$30 for teams new to quiz bowl (defined as having not played a tournament in the 2019-20 or 2020-21 seasons)" but also "Hosts will not have to pay any hosting fee for teams that qualify for the “new to quiz bowl” discount, i.e. hosts will make more money from new teams." If all teams quality for the "new to quiz bowl" discount, is the tournament effectively free or do you still have to pay $50 at minimum?