MUSES III: Select Difficulty

[Father of the Ragdoll]

Hello everyone! I am extremely excited to officially announce MUSES III: Select Difficulty. This set is the latest sequel in the ongoing MUSES franchise and we aim to continue to implement whimsy and novelty in high difficulty and high quality questions. We are currently planning for this to be finished for summer of 2022.

Like MUSES II, this set will consist of packets of 20 powermarked tossups. We will be producing ~9 packets (subject to change based on how many ideas we come up with). The writing and editing team will consist of Will Alston, Ethan Ashbrook, William Golden, Matthew Lehmann, Caroline Mao, Mitch McCullar, Jonathen Settle, and myself with freelanced contributions from some prior MUSES contributors (in this vein if you would like to contribute some questions to MUSES III let me know and we can discuss it).

We are considering doing "super-powers" (aka powers worth more than 15 points) but this is TBD. We are also open to alternative scoring systems since we believe that whimsical events like this are among the better places to experiment with formatting and scoring. Once the set production is more underway we will make a final decision on this. We will be utilizing super powers and a 30:20:10:-5 scoring system.

If you are interested in mirroring this set, please let me know at bamclai AT utexas DOT edu.

The distribution will once again take on 2 tossups for each of the nine title Muses plus 2 tossups from the mythology of the greater Mediterranean. As with last time, the distro has been tweaked to maintain viability and to allow for the authors to indulge our worst ideas explore lesser asked areas.

The distro will specifically be:
2 Calliope (Epics)

• .66 ancient and national epics
• .66 literary epics
• .66 other epic content or more of the above

2 Clio (History)

• 1 Greco-Roman history from before ~500 CE
• 1 non-Greco Roman history from before ~500 CE

2 Euterpe (Music)

• 1 Classical/western art music
• .5 Other art music or "world" music
• .5 Pop music

2 Urania (Astronomy)

• 1 Science
• .5 Pre-modern astronomy (such as astrology, archaeoastronomy, etc)
• .5 Cultural depictions of astronomy/outer space

2 Polyhymnia (Hymns)

• 1 Liturgy/religious hymns (broadly construed)
• 1 Poetic/non-religious hymns (broadly construed)

2 Thalia (Comedy)

• 1 Drama
• 1 Other comedy or more drama

2 Melpomene (Tragedy)

• 1 Drama
• 1 Other tragedy or more drama

2 Erao (Love Poetry)

• 1 Love poetry
• 1 "other love" (essentially depictions of romance in film/drama/etc) or more poetry

2 Terpsichore (Dance)

• 1 Western art dance
• .5 "World" or folk dance
• .5 Pop culture dances

2 Mythology

• 1 Greco-Roman
• 1 Myth from the greater Mediterranean region

[Aaron's Rod]

I love this song!!! Please bring back superpowers and/or linked bonuses!

[excessive dismemberment]

[Father of the Ragdoll]

A somewhat late update on this: the set is nearing completion and will be ready for mirrors starting August 13th.

We have elected to utilize "superpowers" in the set and will be utilizing a 30/20/10/-5 scoring system (ie 30 points for a superpower, 20 for a power, and 10 for a typical get, and -5 for negs).

We currently have a mirror scheduled for Minnesota's Side Event Weekend on August 20th. We would love to have more in person mirrors across the country (or globe if there's interest in Canada, Britain, or anywhere else!) so please email me if you have an interest in that! We will keep the set available for mirrors for as long as there is interest, meaning if people want to play it the day after an open tournament this fall that is completely fine as well.

We will also be scheduling at least 1 online mirror of the set. A date poll for that should be up by the end of this week. If there is sufficient interest we will host multiple such events.

We are looking forward to folks playing this event!