2021 ACF Winter - Specific Question Discussion

Elaborate on the merits of specific tournaments or have general theoretical discussion here.
Post Reply
tpmorrison
Lulu
Posts: 82
Joined: Tue Jan 06, 2015 6:01 pm

2021 ACF Winter - Specific Question Discussion

Post by tpmorrison »

This thread is for discussing specific questions from 2021 ACF Winter, which should be available on the packet archive soon.
Tim Morrison
UChicago '20
Stanford '25ish
User avatar
buffaloz1331
Wakka
Posts: 114
Joined: Sun Feb 23, 2020 10:19 pm

Re: 2021 ACF Winter - Specific Question Discussion

Post by buffaloz1331 »

I really liked the set overall! This was a great first collegiate in-person playing experience for me. A few questions stood out to me:

The tossup on the Alps in what I believe was Editors 1 was for me the most unfortunate/annoying tossup of the set to play. The tossup used the indicator "this natural region," which turned the tossup into a bit of a mind reading exercise on the player's part—I recognized/knew almost every clue in this tossup from beginning to end but was frustratingly unable to buzz because what the tossup was asking for was exceedingly unclear. I would hear a clue and be like "huh, this is about Roman Switzerland/lower Germany/Austria/"western central Europe along the Danube," which to me did not point to a clear answer. This is made even more frustrating by the fact that the answerline did in fact accept things that were not "natural regions," including distinctly manmade areas like Switzerland, Austria, or any other number of countries or geographic subdivisions thereof. I ended up buzzing in and saying "Helvetia," having no other idea of what to say. The answerline makes provisions for this kind of answer, but does so by accepting "Helvetica" instead of "Helvetia," which, as far as I can tell, is an adjectival form of the regional name, Helvetia (neither of which, in my understanding, are actual provincial names for the geographic area being described). I might be totally off-base here in which case feel free to tell me that I am wrong and that I should be quiet, but this tossup stood out to me in particular as a bad one to play.

Other minor quibbles were with the Jain monks tossup in Packet M, which seems like a hard word to ask for in English when you don't accept any synonymous religious figures? And in general, the last two or three lines of the tossup seemed to apply to all Jains. Ours can't be the only room where this went dead after people couldn't figure out the prompt chain on Jains --> ? This is small but it also seemed like part of a larger trend of this set overasking minor religions in comparison to more prevalent/popular ones that didn't really get their due, at least in the packets we played (Islam, Hinduism, and Christianity all seemed relatively lacking from what I remember). Something similar seemed to be happening with the history in places (asking about Andorra, Kuwait, Macedonia?) which was cool but also sometimes played hard. I loved the Packet H bonus that went Olga Tokarczuk/Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead/Bigfoot but it did stick out as pretty hard for the set in retrospect and in discussions afterwards. Last minor quibble is that the inclusion of a clue about the Bonferroni correction in the tossup on null hypotheses seemed very insider baseball and odd (unless my impression that this is a relatively minor technique that has blown up primarily in the forums-reading quizbowl community over the Terrapin Open cheating controversy is mistaken).

Unfortunately, raving takes up less space than complaining (sorry), but there were some really great questions that I thought were cool throughout the set—the Walcott tossup in Packet L, the tossups on "beat" and on Celts/druids in Packet K, the papyrus and salmon tossups in Packet I, the Minoan art tossup in Packet E, the birdwatching and Maori myth tossups in Packet E, the bonus that clued the Combahee River collective in Packet F, and the bonus on lost Cupids in Vermeer's art in Packet G were all fun and great questions (and there were a lot more awesome questions that I do not remember!)

Thank you to the editors and to everyone who worked on this set for putting together such a great tournament, and to the Brown team for running such an efficient tournament!
Arthur Delot-Vilain
GDS '21
Yale '25
black lives matter
tpmorrison
Lulu
Posts: 82
Joined: Tue Jan 06, 2015 6:01 pm

Re: 2021 ACF Winter - Specific Question Discussion

Post by tpmorrison »

buffaloz1331 wrote: Mon Nov 08, 2021 1:44 am Last minor quibble is that the inclusion of a clue about the Bonferroni correction in the tossup on null hypotheses seemed very insider baseball and odd (unless my impression that this is a relatively minor technique that has blown up primarily in the forums-reading quizbowl community over the Terrapin Open cheating controversy is mistaken).
Thanks a lot for all the great comments. I will say that this clue was very much not chosen in any sort of “insider baseball” way. The Bonferroni correction is a pretty fundamental topic in statistics and in hypothesis testing more specifically. It’s covered at Stanford in the intro stats classes for non-majors, for instance.
Tim Morrison
UChicago '20
Stanford '25ish
User avatar
DavidB256
Lulu
Posts: 83
Joined: Sun Nov 04, 2018 7:37 pm
Location: Baltimore, MD

Re: 2021 ACF Winter - Specific Question Discussion

Post by DavidB256 »

buffaloz1331 wrote: Mon Nov 08, 2021 1:44 am Last minor quibble is that the inclusion of a clue about the Bonferroni correction in the tossup on null hypotheses seemed very insider baseball and odd
I disagree with this statement. The Bonferroni correction and other methods derived from it are common in biostatistics, especially in the context of genetics (e.g. GWAS). Additionally, it is taught in pretty much any higher-level class on regression because it is often used when performing Wald's test on multiple coefficients of a regression model.
David Bass (he)
Johns Hopkins University
University of Virginia '23
Jamestown High School '19
Member, PACE
User avatar
Important Bird Area
Forums Staff: Administrator
Posts: 6112
Joined: Thu Aug 28, 2003 3:33 pm
Location: San Francisco Bay Area
Contact:

Re: 2021 ACF Winter - Specific Question Discussion

Post by Important Bird Area »

buffaloz1331 wrote: Mon Nov 08, 2021 1:44 am birdwatching tossup
:party: :party: :party: :party: :party: :party: :party: :party: :party: :party: :party: :party: :party: :party: :party:
Jeff Hoppes
President, Northern California Quiz Bowl Alliance
former HSQB Chief Admin (2012-13)
VP for Communication and history subject editor, NAQT
Editor emeritus, ACF

"I wish to make some kind of joke about Jeff's love of birds, but I always fear he'll turn them on me Hitchcock-style." -Fred
bkmcavoybickford
Wakka
Posts: 138
Joined: Tue May 15, 2018 6:40 am

Re: 2021 ACF Winter - Specific Question Discussion

Post by bkmcavoybickford »

buffaloz1331 wrote: Mon Nov 08, 2021 1:44 am I really liked the set overall! This was a great first collegiate in-person playing experience for me. A few questions stood out to me:

The tossup on the Alps in what I believe was Editors 1 was for me the most unfortunate/annoying tossup of the set to play. The tossup used the indicator "this natural region," which turned the tossup into a bit of a mind reading exercise on the player's part—I recognized/knew almost every clue in this tossup from beginning to end but was frustratingly unable to buzz because what the tossup was asking for was exceedingly unclear. I would hear a clue and be like "huh, this is about Roman Switzerland/lower Germany/Austria/"western central Europe along the Danube," which to me did not point to a clear answer. This is made even more frustrating by the fact that the answerline did in fact accept things that were not "natural regions," including distinctly manmade areas like Switzerland, Austria, or any other number of countries or geographic subdivisions thereof. I ended up buzzing in and saying "Helvetia," having no other idea of what to say. The answerline makes provisions for this kind of answer, but does so by accepting "Helvetica" instead of "Helvetia," which, as far as I can tell, is an adjectival form of the regional name, Helvetia (neither of which, in my understanding, are actual provincial names for the geographic area being described). I might be totally off-base here in which case feel free to tell me that I am wrong and that I should be quiet, but this tossup stood out to me in particular as a bad one to play.

Other minor quibbles were with the Jain monks tossup in Packet M, which seems like a hard word to ask for in English when you don't accept any synonymous religious figures? And in general, the last two or three lines of the tossup seemed to apply to all Jains. Ours can't be the only room where this went dead after people couldn't figure out the prompt chain on Jains --> ? This is small but it also seemed like part of a larger trend of this set overasking minor religions in comparison to more prevalent/popular ones that didn't really get their due, at least in the packets we played (Islam, Hinduism, and Christianity all seemed relatively lacking from what I remember). Something similar seemed to be happening with the history in places (asking about Andorra, Kuwait, Macedonia?) which was cool but also sometimes played hard. I loved the Packet H bonus that went Olga Tokarczuk/Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead/Bigfoot but it did stick out as pretty hard for the set in retrospect and in discussions afterwards. Last minor quibble is that the inclusion of a clue about the Bonferroni correction in the tossup on null hypotheses seemed very insider baseball and odd (unless my impression that this is a relatively minor technique that has blown up primarily in the forums-reading quizbowl community over the Terrapin Open cheating controversy is mistaken).

Unfortunately, raving takes up less space than complaining (sorry), but there were some really great questions that I thought were cool throughout the set—the Walcott tossup in Packet L, the tossups on "beat" and on Celts/druids in Packet K, the papyrus and salmon tossups in Packet I, the Minoan art tossup in Packet E, the birdwatching and Maori myth tossups in Packet E, the bonus that clued the Combahee River collective in Packet F, and the bonus on lost Cupids in Vermeer's art in Packet G were all fun and great questions (and there were a lot more awesome questions that I do not remember!)

Thank you to the editors and to everyone who worked on this set for putting together such a great tournament, and to the Brown team for running such an efficient tournament!
Thanks for your comments on the religion! The Jain monks tossup does not have any clues that apply to the laity. The Digambara and Svetambara schools are by and large distinguished by monastic practices, including renunciation of clothing, which is only performed by Digambara monks. Using a broom to sweep the ground is also a monastic practice; nothing I can find indicates that laity have done it. The last clue explicitly states that they are ordained members. My guess as to what you mean by not being able to figure out what answer is wanted after a prompt chain is a reference to answering with Jain priests; this is my fault and I should have had an explicit direction on that (probably a prompt). I did accept other answers besides monks (ascetics, nuns, renunciates), but it’s not a term that is unambiguously used to refer to Jain monks. Rather, it seems as it is infrequently used in older sources to refer to monks, but other sources insist that Jains have no priests. Sorry about that. I’ll address your points about minor religion in my general discussion post soon.
Benjamin McAvoy-Bickford.
User avatar
SirMrGuy
Lulu
Posts: 39
Joined: Tue Sep 26, 2017 10:50 pm

Re: 2021 ACF Winter - Specific Question Discussion

Post by SirMrGuy »

Continuing the trend from last year (and I do hope that it becomes a trend), here is a non-exhaustive list of the submissions within my categories I particularly liked.

Of the questions that got used in some form, I especially enjoyed reading the questions on the strong CP problem (MIT A), Hermitian operators (Illinois A), Pauli exclusion principle (Florida B), rapidity (Stanford A), London equations (Purdue A), fluid velocity (Texas B), index of refraction (Georgia Tech A), representation theory (MIT B), neutron stars (Berkeley A), and Flynn’s taxonomy (Purdue A). These questions were excellent bases to work off of, and really helped to push the science over the finish line.

Many, many submissions were quite good in their own right but got bumped for one reason or another, and are worth giving some time to shine as well. Maryland A’s tossup on observation in quantum mechanics was excellent but came too late for me to shift things around to make space for it. UNC A's tossup on massless particles would have been usable nearly as-is if I hadn’t already slotted in a tossup with the same answerline elsewhere. Though they’re probably not workable at this difficulty, MIT A’s tossup on the word spectrum in math, Cornell A’s tossup on France in computer science, and Rutgers A’s tossup on the Mach number would have been fun questions to play at higher levels. Various other honorable mentions include Illinois A’s bonus on graphs across several areas of computer science, Cambridge A’s bonus on integer multiplication algorithms, Georgia Tech A’s tossup on pixels, and UNC C’s bonus on sample return.
Steven Liu

Cedar Drive MS '15
High Tech '19
MIT '23
I do mathy stuff for Groger Ranks.

"I'm going insane because I miss Steven so much" -Michael Li
cwasims
Wakka
Posts: 118
Joined: Fri Mar 31, 2017 5:16 pm

Re: 2021 ACF Winter - Specific Question Discussion

Post by cwasims »

Continuing from Steven, here's my non-exhaustive list of questions I appreciated in my categories, starting with the ones that got used (and there were others that provided some inspiration for questions that ultimately looked fairly different):
MIT A's tossup on kidney exchange, which was turned into the tossup on organs, McGill A's tossup on pragmatics, MIT B's tossup on Carmina Burana, Claremont's tossup on horns in Brahms's music and bonus on Donizetti operas, Rutgers A's bonus on Haitian anthropology, UBC A's tossup on Orientalism and bonus on Bluebeard's Castle that I turned into the opera tossup on Hungary, WM A's bonus on Ruth Benedict, Indiana A's tossup on Janáček, Northwestern B's bonus on Mozart chamber music, Kentucky A's bonus on world systems theory, Stanford A's tossups on Rigoletto and violence, Texas B's tossup on masses, Carleton College A's bonus on difference-in-differences, ISU A's tossup on second language acquisition, GT B's bonus on Introduction and Rondo Cappricioso, UNC B's tossup on Scheherazade, UNF A's tossup on Russia in psychology, Texas A's tossup on Berlioz, VT A's bonus on children in psychology, Northwestern A's tossup on Japan, Warwick A's tossup on Albert Bandura and JHU A's tossup on ambiguity.

And of the ones that I didn't get to use for various subdistributional and difficulty reasons, I appreciated:
CWRU A's tossup on The Magic Flute, Gettysburg A's tossup on Russian composers and bonus on classrooms in psychology, NCF A's bonus on Hungarian music, WUSTL A's tossup on the Navajo language, CWRU B's tossup on Napoleon Chagnon, Kenyon A's tossup on Philip Glass, WM A's tossup on string quartets, Berkeley A's tossup on the flute, Florida B's tossup on decision-making, ISU A's tossup on the hurdy-gurdy, UNC A's tossup on Rachmaninoff, Chicago A's tossup on place, UNF A's tossup on Bernstein, VT A's tossup on Chopin études, Warwick A's tossup on Lucia di Lammermoor, Waterloo A's tossup on Schubert symphonies, Yale A's tossup on the Arabian Nights and McMaster A's tossup on verbs.

While I'm thinking about the process of picking which submissions to use, I would say that I was much more likely to pick tossups that had well-chosen early clues and bonuses that had a clear sense of cohesion. At this difficulty, many of the middle to late clues in a tossup will be fairly standard, so a question that only gets those "right" doesn't tend to be especially helpful in the editing process if new early clues need to be found. There's more flexibility with bonuses generally, but I would try to keep the theme pretty tight since having a bonus that spans a lot of topics can be awkward in terms of avoiding repeats.
Christopher Sims
University of Toronto 2T0
Northwestern University 2020 - ?
User avatar
Ehtna
Lulu
Posts: 77
Joined: Sat Dec 23, 2017 3:25 pm

Re: 2021 ACF Winter - Specific Question Discussion

Post by Ehtna »

Riding the bandwagon, here were my favorite submissions of the many, many that I looked through and enjoyed.

Of the ones that ended up getting used to some degree: WUSTL A's fairy tales bonus, UNC B's Penguin Island tossup that got bonusified, Minnesota B's Brothers Karamazov tossup, Liberty A's Ivan Tsarevich tossup, Claremont Colleges's Oceanian myth tossup, Texas B's Leviathan tossup, UNF's tossup on mountains in Chinese mythology, Cornell A's intuitionism tossup that was bonusifieid, Berkeley A's sophism tossup, Texas B's philosophy tossup on Isaac Newton, Chicago A's bonus on The Owl at Dawn, and Queens A's absolutely based tossup on indigenous epistemology that was turned into a bonus. There were many more submissions that got worked into the final set, and I'm sorry I can't mention them all here!

Of the questions that couldn't make it in for some reason, here are some of my favorites:
New College of Florida A's Gogol tossup was almost perfect right out of the bag and I regret not using it. SIUE A's Hungary bonus based around Laszlo Krasznahorkai was very fun and ultimately ended up partially inspiring the concentration camps tossup in the final set. UBC A's bonus on legal positivism was interesting and a very different field of philosophy than what is normally incorporated into sets like these. UNC D had a Raymond Queneau tossup that was fun but unfortunately just a little too hard for the tournament. Stanford A had a great mythology tossup on drums that unfortunately couldn't make it in for various reasons. Minnesota A's bonus on All the Light We Cannot See was very creative that unfortunately I couldn't use for geographical reasons. Penn State A's Zizek tossup that clued the Taco Bell Quesarito was blessed, but had to be edited enough that took away its whimsy. Iowa State A's philosophy bonus on Nikolai Berdyaev was very whimsical but unfortunately had other packet conflicts. UNC A's bonus on the Vanek plays of Vaclav Havel was a really good idea that I just couldn't quite get to work with the rest of the set. Georgia Tech B's bonus on stoic conceptions of suicide was a very creative idea. Northwestern A's philosophy tossup on recognition was a great concept that was a little too hard for this tournament. And finally, shoutouts to Florida A's Euro literature tossup on France that had this as the giveaway: "For 10 points, name this country home to the author of Penguin Island, Anatole France."
Ethan Ashbrook [he/him]
Uni Lab 2020
Minnesota 2024
User avatar
Zealots of Stockholm
Tidus
Posts: 622
Joined: Fri Jul 10, 2015 3:28 am
Location: Atlanta, GA

Re: 2021 ACF Winter - Specific Question Discussion

Post by Zealots of Stockholm »

In packet D, the extra bonus on Japanese literature claims that the protagonist of Oe’s The Silent Cry is fired from his job as a teacher for vomiting due to being hungover. This happens in A Personal Matter.
Chandler West
Staff, Emory
Vanderbilt University '22
Auburn University '20
Good Hope High School (Cullman, AL) '16
Full Member, ACF; Member, PACE
Writer/editor, ACF, PACE, IQBT
bkmcavoybickford
Wakka
Posts: 138
Joined: Tue May 15, 2018 6:40 am

Re: 2021 ACF Winter - Specific Question Discussion

Post by bkmcavoybickford »

As promised, here’s a post of an incomplete list of the submitted questions that I liked. There were a lot of really great submissions and I definitely can’t include all of them, particularly in geography where almost every submission had some interesting clues.

One of the first submissions I received was Claremont’s bonus about Japanese Christians, which made me excited for all the future submissions. In that same batch there was a good Norway tossup, which unfortunately didn’t make it into the set, and a good Shavuot bonus, which did, from MIT B. Illinois A also submitted a great tossup on the Book of Daniel, which there were also quite a few other submissions on. CWRU B sent in an intriguing bonus on gemstones that was turned into the Pennines bonus. I also wanted to use a Georgia Tech A tossup on marijuana that was an incredibly creative idea but raised some slight fraud concerns, while Georgia Tech B had a wonderfully bizarre bonus on mubahila (or mubahalah) and one on the disappearance of the Aral Sea, neither of which I was unfortunately able to use. There were two absolutely wonderful food geo tossups- one on the USA from Haverford (not used) and one on the Philippines from UNC B (used). NYU A had a nice bonus using the Dead Sea Scrolls as a connection. I sadly wasn’t able to use a UNC A tossup on farmer protests because I had already written one on farmers or a Kazakhstan tossup from Waterloo A. Texas B wrote wonderful questions that I ended up using on the Rio Grande and bris, both of which required only minimal editing. Iowa State A had a great bonus on Mount Athos.

This is definitely missing a lot of good submissions, particularly from packets that were sent in right towards the end; sorry if I forgot to recognize some of the other great questions which were submitted.
Benjamin McAvoy-Bickford.
User avatar
AGoodMan
Rikku
Posts: 372
Joined: Sat Dec 20, 2014 10:25 pm

Re: 2021 ACF Winter - Specific Question Discussion

Post by AGoodMan »

I just saw the Bahai tossup, which says
Packet H, TU 19 wrote:The book The Dawn-Breakers describes this religion’s eighteen "Letters of the Living."
I must admit much of my Bahai knowledge comes from Wikipedia, but it seems like the Letters of the Living refer to the first 18 followers of the Bab, whose religion is closely tied to the Bahai faith but is still distinct. I think it would be good to add an "accept Babism or Babi Faith" or amend the wording of the clue and then prompt on those answers.
Jon Suh
Wheaton Warrenville South High School '16
Harvard '20
rdc20
Lulu
Posts: 48
Joined: Fri Jan 19, 2018 5:42 pm

Re: 2021 ACF Winter - Specific Question Discussion

Post by rdc20 »

2021 ACF Winter, Packet B wrote:12. A paper on this concept featured implausible data like an almost-uniform distribution of car miles driven over several years, according to an August 2021 exposé. For 10 points each:
[10h] Name this concept, which is the subject of a 2012 paper co-authored by Dan Ariely that was recently retracted from PNAS. Ariely also wrote a bestselling book on the “truth” about this concept in the same year.
ANSWER: dishonesty [accept The Honest Truth About Dishonesty; prompt on lying or not telling the truth or equivalents]
I think that "honesty" should have been an acceptable answer for the first part of this bonus. It is fair to say that the purported goal of the Ariely paper was just as much to increase honesty as it was to decrease dishonesty. In particular, the paper claims that "signing before reporting promoted honesty, whereas signing afterward was the same as not signing at all."

If the question's final sentence is trying to point specifically to dishonesty and rule out honesty by referencing a book's title, I don't think it does this successfuly. If players' answers need to match a title's wording, it is much more player-friendly to write that the book is "titled for the 'truth' about this concept." Relying on quotation marks to signal that a title is being referenced (and that a highly specific answer is needed) is not good practice, since moderators have a wide range of reactions to quotation marks in questions, from not making any change in their intonation to physically signalling the quotation marks with their fingers. While the question text does say that the books is on the truth about dishonesty, the formulation "the truth about" is generic enough that players may not realize that the question is referencing a title.
Robert Condron
Strake Jesuit 2020
University of Chicago 2024
cwasims
Wakka
Posts: 118
Joined: Fri Mar 31, 2017 5:16 pm

Re: 2021 ACF Winter - Specific Question Discussion

Post by cwasims »

rdc20 wrote: Tue Nov 16, 2021 1:58 pm
2021 ACF Winter, Packet B wrote:12. A paper on this concept featured implausible data like an almost-uniform distribution of car miles driven over several years, according to an August 2021 exposé. For 10 points each:
[10h] Name this concept, which is the subject of a 2012 paper co-authored by Dan Ariely that was recently retracted from PNAS. Ariely also wrote a bestselling book on the “truth” about this concept in the same year.
ANSWER: dishonesty [accept The Honest Truth About Dishonesty; prompt on lying or not telling the truth or equivalents]
I think that "honesty" should have been an acceptable answer for the first part of this bonus. It is fair to say that the purported goal of the Ariely paper was just as much to increase honesty as it was to decrease dishonesty. In particular, the paper claims that "signing before reporting promoted honesty, whereas signing afterward was the same as not signing at all."

If the question's final sentence is trying to point specifically to dishonesty and rule out honesty by referencing a book's title, I don't think it does this successfuly. If players' answers need to match a title's wording, it is much more player-friendly to write that the book is "titled for the 'truth' about this concept." Relying on quotation marks to signal that a title is being referenced (and that a highly specific answer is needed) is not good practice, since moderators have a wide range of reactions to quotation marks in questions, from not making any change in their intonation to physically signalling the quotation marks with their fingers. While the question text does say that the books is on the truth about dishonesty, the formulation "the truth about" is generic enough that players may not realize that the question is referencing a title.
You're right that "honesty" should have been acceptable here as well and I would've supported accepting it on a protest. I guess in my defense, it's not every day that both the answer and its opposite are acceptable...
Christopher Sims
University of Toronto 2T0
Northwestern University 2020 - ?
User avatar
Muriel Axon
Tidus
Posts: 729
Joined: Wed Mar 21, 2012 12:19 am

Re: 2021 ACF Winter - Specific Question Discussion

Post by Muriel Axon »

bkmcavoybickford wrote: Mon Nov 08, 2021 7:22 pmThanks for your comments on the religion! The Jain monks tossup does not have any clues that apply to the laity. The Digambara and Svetambara schools are by and large distinguished by monastic practices, including renunciation of clothing, which is only performed by Digambara monks. Using a broom to sweep the ground is also a monastic practice; nothing I can find indicates that laity have done it. The last clue explicitly states that they are ordained members. My guess as to what you mean by not being able to figure out what answer is wanted after a prompt chain is a reference to answering with Jain priests; this is my fault and I should have had an explicit direction on that (probably a prompt). I did accept other answers besides monks (ascetics, nuns, renunciates), but it’s not a term that is unambiguously used to refer to Jain monks. Rather, it seems as it is infrequently used in older sources to refer to monks, but other sources insist that Jains have no priests. Sorry about that. I’ll address your points about minor religion in my general discussion post soon.
As one of the few Certified (Raised) Jain quizbowl players (perhaps the only one?)—I can't vouch for the first two clues of this tossup, which seem a bit obscure, but the rest is indeed all specific. Some of these practices (using a broom to sweep away insects, wearing a muhapatti) are things that shravaks and shravikas may do when temporarily assuming the habits of a sadhu/sadhvi, but certainly don't do in ordinary life.

This might be uncharitable, but I would never think to describe Jainism as having priests and I wouldn't accept or prompt on it myself.
Shan Kothari

Plymouth High School '10
Michigan State University '14
University of Minnesota '20
User avatar
naan/steak-holding toll
Auron
Posts: 2514
Joined: Mon Feb 28, 2011 11:53 pm
Location: New York, NY

Re: 2021 ACF Winter - Specific Question Discussion

Post by naan/steak-holding toll »

While browsing some questions today, I had a quibble with one of this set's tossups:
8. Note to players: The answer is a political office, not an occupation like “soldier” or “painter.” A text on this
office’s “Installation” was illustrated with its characteristic white robes for its holder Rekhmirē. A holder of this
office visits the “House of the Nets” and receives an omen from a god in the inscription on the Famine Stela.
Stepping stones to this higher office held by Hemiunu included “High Steward” and “Fan-bearer on the Right Side
of the King.” Later wisdom texts were often credited to a 27th-century BCE holder of this office, who was identified
with Asclepius after his deification as a physician. This office, which included mayorship of Thebes, was held by an
Old Kingdom high priest of Ra who was the likely architect of Djoser’s Step Pyramid and was named Imhotep. For
10 points, medieval Muslim empires adopted what title for the pharaoh’s top official?
ANSWER: vizier [or wazīr or vazīr or djat or tjati; accept Grand Vizier; accept Chancellor; accept mayor of
Thebes before read; accept Installation of the Vizier; accept Egyptian Head Minister or equivalents; prompt on
ministers or administrators or overseers or advisors or bureaucrats or officials or courtiers or governors or treasurers
or mayors or similar; prompt on Iry-pat or Idnw; do not accept or prompt on “pharaoh”]
This tossup's giveaway at best doesn't make sense and at worst is factually inaccurate. The word "vizier" is not of Egyptian origin at all; it's an Arabic word which historians usually apply to denote the Egyptian office of djat or tjati (both of which the question accepts, to its credit). So, to say that medieval Muslim empires "adopted" the title from Egyptians is quite bizarre; they certainly would have adopted it from the earlier Umayyads/Abbasids, who in turn likely adapted the role (but not the name) from earlier Sassanid imperial titles, almost none of which have origins in Egypt.

I'd have to think carefully about how to word the giveaway to this question, but I think "give this title of the top royal official in ancient Egypt" is probably sufficient and avoids using a lengthy construction. (EDIT: for a lengthier construction, perhaps "what title commonly denotes the top royal official in ancient Egypt, as well as similar officials in medieval Muslim empires?")

I know this is really pedantic, but writers should be careful when talking about Egyptian history. A lot of words we use to refer to various Egyptian functions aren't Egyptian at all, but rather taken from various other areas of history and applied to Egypt so that it's conceptually easier to for people understand this extremely distinct and long-lasting civilization which is, in many ways, quite alien to what came after it. "Vizier" is a pretty good and accurate example of this and I think it's completely reasonable to write a tossup on Egyptian viziers which accepts the answer "vizier."
Will Alston
Dartmouth College '16
Columbia Business School '21
User avatar
Chimango Caracara
Wakka
Posts: 151
Joined: Mon Jan 09, 2012 11:29 pm
Location: Madison, WI

Re: 2021 ACF Winter - Specific Question Discussion

Post by Chimango Caracara »

naan/steak-holding toll wrote: Tue Feb 01, 2022 3:42 pm While browsing some questions today, I had a quibble with one of this set's tossups:
8. Note to players: The answer is a political office, not an occupation like “soldier” or “painter.” A text on this
office’s “Installation” was illustrated with its characteristic white robes for its holder Rekhmirē. A holder of this
office visits the “House of the Nets” and receives an omen from a god in the inscription on the Famine Stela.
Stepping stones to this higher office held by Hemiunu included “High Steward” and “Fan-bearer on the Right Side
of the King.” Later wisdom texts were often credited to a 27th-century BCE holder of this office, who was identified
with Asclepius after his deification as a physician. This office, which included mayorship of Thebes, was held by an
Old Kingdom high priest of Ra who was the likely architect of Djoser’s Step Pyramid and was named Imhotep. For
10 points, medieval Muslim empires adopted what title for the pharaoh’s top official?
ANSWER: vizier [or wazīr or vazīr or djat or tjati; accept Grand Vizier; accept Chancellor; accept mayor of
Thebes before read; accept Installation of the Vizier; accept Egyptian Head Minister or equivalents; prompt on
ministers or administrators or overseers or advisors or bureaucrats or officials or courtiers or governors or treasurers
or mayors or similar; prompt on Iry-pat or Idnw; do not accept or prompt on “pharaoh”]
This tossup's giveaway at best doesn't make sense and at worst is factually inaccurate. The word "vizier" is not of Egyptian origin at all; it's an Arabic word which historians usually apply to denote the Egyptian office of djat or tjati (both of which the question accepts, to its credit). So, to say that medieval Muslim empires "adopted" the title from Egyptians is quite bizarre; they certainly would have adopted it from the earlier Umayyads/Abbasids, who in turn likely adapted the role (but not the name) from earlier Sassanid imperial titles, almost none of which have origins in Egypt.

I'd have to think carefully about how to word the giveaway to this question, but I think "give this title of the top royal official in ancient Egypt" is probably sufficient and avoids using a lengthy construction. (EDIT: for a lengthier construction, perhaps "what title commonly denotes the top royal official in ancient Egypt, as well as similar officials in medieval Muslim empires?")

I know this is really pedantic, but writers should be careful when talking about Egyptian history. A lot of words we use to refer to various Egyptian functions aren't Egyptian at all, but rather taken from various other areas of history and applied to Egypt so that it's conceptually easier to for people understand this extremely distinct and long-lasting civilization which is, in many ways, quite alien to what came after it. "Vizier" is a pretty good and accurate example of this and I think it's completely reasonable to write a tossup on Egyptian viziers which accepts the answer "vizier."
You're right, that statement is extremely misleading; I'm sorry about that. I was aiming to concisely get across that the title is used for both ancient Egypt and Muslim empires, since I thought people would have likely encountered it in that context, but I should have been more precise about the wording.
buffaloz1331 wrote: Mon Nov 08, 2021 1:44 am The tossup on the Alps in what I believe was Editors 1 was for me the most unfortunate/annoying tossup of the set to play. The tossup used the indicator "this natural region," which turned the tossup into a bit of a mind reading exercise on the player's part—I recognized/knew almost every clue in this tossup from beginning to end but was frustratingly unable to buzz because what the tossup was asking for was exceedingly unclear. I would hear a clue and be like "huh, this is about Roman Switzerland/lower Germany/Austria/"western central Europe along the Danube," which to me did not point to a clear answer. This is made even more frustrating by the fact that the answerline did in fact accept things that were not "natural regions," including distinctly manmade areas like Switzerland, Austria, or any other number of countries or geographic subdivisions thereof. I ended up buzzing in and saying "Helvetia," having no other idea of what to say. The answerline makes provisions for this kind of answer, but does so by accepting "Helvetica" instead of "Helvetia," which, as far as I can tell, is an adjectival form of the regional name, Helvetia (neither of which, in my understanding, are actual provincial names for the geographic area being described). I might be totally off-base here in which case feel free to tell me that I am wrong and that I should be quiet, but this tossup stood out to me in particular as a bad one to play.
Sorry that I didn't reply to this earlier. I'm sorry that this tossup didn't work for you, despite having knowledge of the clues, and I can see that "natural region" was perhaps misleading, but I'm going to explain why I chose to word it that way. I think that this question presented some thorny issues for choosing a good indicator.

The point of this question (at least in the early clues) was to reward knowledge of parts of the Roman empire that aren't discussed much in quizbowl, but should still be familiar to people who have engaged with ancient Roman history (for example, the popular History of Rome podcast had an episode about the various provinces of the empire), and also to explore some interactions between Rome and various Celtic peoples outside of Gaul, in a reasonably accessible way.

Although nearly all of the clues are about modern-day Switzerland and Austria, I couldn't pick one and say "modern-day country" because the capital of Raetia was Augusta Vindelicorum (modern-day Augsburg, Germany). Furthermore, Hannibal's invasion through the Alps obviously crossed the borders of several countries, and it would be difficult to write accessible ancient history clues specifically about those countries at this level.

I chose to say "natural region" because ancient history questions that say "this region" almost always mean an ancient province or satrapy or similar, and I didn't want players to think that the answer was "Gaul" or "Germania" (although Germania was included as a prompt since, e.g., part of the Roman province of Germania Superior was located in modern-day Switzerland). And I did accept Switzerland (as well as Austria) since "Swiss Plateau" was an acceptable natural region, and it seemed pedantic to accept that and reject "Switzerland," and I thought that if a player gave one of those answers, they clearly knew what the clues were about so they should receive points.

Obviously, saying "this mountain range" would have alleviated most of these issues, but it would have been transparent unless I hid the fact that it was part of the Roman empire, which would have defeated most of the purpose of the question in my mind.

Overall, I thought that it would be a fairly obvious leap to go from recognizing a clue about modern-day Switzerland to figuring out that the Alps are the natural region that covers most of that country, but I can see that it may not have been intuitive (in part because it was an unusual answerline). I chose not to include a "note to players" that a modern-day country would be acceptable, in part to avoid people answering with "Germany," but, in retrospect, I probably should have, so I'm sorry again.
Last edited by Chimango Caracara on Wed Apr 20, 2022 9:11 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Nick Jensen
UC Davis Microbiology Graduate Group 2017-2022
Dartmouth College 2011-2015
User avatar
naan/steak-holding toll
Auron
Posts: 2514
Joined: Mon Feb 28, 2011 11:53 pm
Location: New York, NY

Re: 2021 ACF Winter - Specific Question Discussion

Post by naan/steak-holding toll »

You're right, that statement is extremely misleading; I'm sorry about that. I was aiming to concisely get across that the title is used for both ancient Egypt and Muslim empires, since I thought people would have likely encountered it in that context, but I should have been more precise about the wording.
On the flip side, I think the rest of the clues here are good and this is a great question idea; I think a lot of folks have some basic knowledge of Egyptian history and contemporary research is uncovering more all the time. This question serves well to reward these.

For the "Alps" question, I think that's a great concept but suffers from the playability issues that Arthur talked about. That said, Nick's transparency concern is spot-on as well. I think asking about the Alps as "this natural feature" and changing to "this mountain range" late in the question could work, but you'd have to be pretty careful to make sure there's nothing else that's precise for the individual clues. Alternatively, focusing the question a bit further east and asking about the Danube river would also work.
Will Alston
Dartmouth College '16
Columbia Business School '21
Post Reply