2022 ACF Regionals - Specific Question Discussion

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2022 ACF Regionals - Specific Question Discussion

Post by TaylorH »

Discuss specfic questions from 2022 ACF Regionals here. The editors need a bit of time to correct some errata, but I hope to have the set up on the archive within the next few days. You may ask for certain questions to be posted here before the entire set is posted if you like.
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Re: 2022 ACF Regionals - Specific Question Discussion

Post by Lake Winnipesaukee Mystery Stone »

Could you post the myth question on Mycenae? - I believe that at the point I buzzed in the first line (Inachos) the TU equally refers to Argos, and in Pausanias, Strabo, and a range of other ancient authors the river/river god/culture hero/mythical king is always associated with Argos and the Argolid.
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Re: 2022 ACF Regionals - Specific Question Discussion

Post by Inscrutable Fox »

Lake Winnipesaukee Mystery Stone wrote: Sun Jan 30, 2022 1:57 pm Could you post the myth question on Mycenae? - I believe that at the point I buzzed in the first line (Inachos) the TU equally refers to Argos, and in Pausanias, Strabo, and a range of other ancient authors the river/river god/culture hero/mythical king is always associated with Argos and the Argolid.

While describing this city, Pausanias related that the nearby river Inachus dried up after siding with Hera over Poseidon in a dispute. This city was founded by a hero who exchanged the throne of Argos for that of Tiryns, at a site where that figure encountered a mushroom. During a contest for rule over this city, one man presented a golden fleece given to him by Aerope, while another claimed the Sun would rise in the west and set in the east to demonstrate Zeus’ favor. The winner of that contest murdered his brother’s children and fed them to him, but was later killed by Aegisthus. In the aftermath of the Trojan War, a king of this city was murdered by his wife Clytemnestra. For 10 points, Atreus and Agamemmnon were kings of what Greek city?
ANSWER: Mycenae
I apologize for the frustrating neg. It was an oversight on my part, as I misunderstood the source when I was reading it, and will be making corrections before the set gets posted to the archive.
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Re: 2022 ACF Regionals - Specific Question Discussion

Post by Lake Winnipesaukee Mystery Stone »

Inscrutable Fox wrote: Sun Jan 30, 2022 2:06 pm
Lake Winnipesaukee Mystery Stone wrote: Sun Jan 30, 2022 1:57 pm Could you post the myth question on Mycenae? - I believe that at the point I buzzed in the first line (Inachos) the TU equally refers to Argos, and in Pausanias, Strabo, and a range of other ancient authors the river/river god/culture hero/mythical king is always associated with Argos and the Argolid.

While describing this city, Pausanias related that the nearby river Inachus dried up after siding with Hera over Poseidon in a dispute. This city was founded by a hero who exchanged the throne of Argos for that of Tiryns, at a site where that figure encountered a mushroom. During a contest for rule over this city, one man presented a golden fleece given to him by Aerope, while another claimed the Sun would rise in the west and set in the east to demonstrate Zeus’ favor. The winner of that contest murdered his brother’s children and fed them to him, but was later killed by Aegisthus. In the aftermath of the Trojan War, a king of this city was murdered by his wife Clytemnestra. For 10 points, Atreus and Agamemmnon were kings of what Greek city?
ANSWER: Mycenae
I apologize for the frustrating neg. It was an oversight on my part, as I misunderstood the source when I was reading it, and will be making corrections before the set gets posted to the archive.
Thanks - we've all done it at some point when writing - really enjoyed the myth otherwise!
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Re: 2022 ACF Regionals - Specific Question Discussion

Post by Ehtna »

My knowledge of biology and genetics isn't the best, but can I ask what the reasoning was behind having "this phenotype" as the indicator for the death tossup? A lot of people I talked to at our site were really confused by that question, since it seemed like a fairly obtuse way to ask for "death."
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Re: 2022 ACF Regionals - Specific Question Discussion

Post by Shahar S. »

Ehtna wrote: Sun Jan 30, 2022 2:48 pm My knowledge of biology and genetics isn't the best, but can I ask what the reasoning was behind having "this phenotype" as the indicator for the death tossup? A lot of people I talked to at our site were really confused by that question, since it seemed like a fairly obtuse way to ask for "death."
I can't speak for Nick, but from what I could tell the idea behind that tossup was that it was talking about genes that would cause an organism to die and how to work around it so that those organisms either don't die or can be studied before dying (i.e. through balancer genes). In that sense it is something observable in an organism directly caused by the organism's genetics, which makes it a phenotype. Some of the clues also referred to effects that had "lethal" in the name (i.e. embryonic lethal).
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Re: 2022 ACF Regionals - Specific Question Discussion

Post by caroline »

Hi, overall I had a fun time playing this set and really appreciated all the effort that so many people put into it! Much thanks to the editors for their hard work. Most of my comments are on the literature since that's all I know, but I enjoyed the Snow White TU and learning that Shel Silverstein collaborated with David Mamet. Also, I am terrible at computer science, but it is still my major and I enjoyed hearing it, and usually I don't, so that's good. Note I only played 8 packets at my site.

Stuff I thought was cool / fun / etc:
- London in various diasporic-ish lit, Athena in Greek drama, finally someone clued Simone de Beauvoir's Inseparable!
- liked learning some of the modern intertextual clues, like Iris Murdoch's adaptation of the Green Knight, Zadie Smith's play about the Wife of Bath, etc. - generally I really like these sorts of clues threading together different eras in history
- liked the bonus parts on being sent to Australia in Dickens, dignity in Remains of the Day, Yeti in the Stalin bonus as answers that were pretty novel but easy to convert if you know the content asked about
- in terms of more Themed stuff I liked the classical-ish clues on the Housman TU (I think? I did not listen that closely), the race angle on the Mailer TU, pigs in Animal Farm, and the Cervantes bonus themed around his satires

A couple individual questions I have issues with:
- I read The Three-Body Problem a few years ago, I've written a tossup on it, and I only converted the easy part. The book did occur to me when hearing the first part because I was like, "yup sure sounds like a Chinese sci-fi book," but I think because I knew it so well (or, uh, thought I knew it so well), I convinced myself it couldn't be that. Other teams did not seem to suffer from this problem, though, so my memory may just be abysmal.
- Contra the opinions of some others, I was not a fan of the tossup on "the asteroid from The Little Prince." I heard the first couple sentences, immediately recognized the book, thought about what settings in the book were really important, and decided it was either the desert the narrator lands in, or the asteroid/planet. I went with the first, the moderator prompted (I think because he (fairly) thought maybe the desert was a location on said planet), then switched my answer to the planet after the prompt. I feel very bad for Berkeley, who protested (as they should have, since I was wrong, and I regret that I didn't just say I was wrong since I was aware they're two different places), but the protest wasn't resolved since it didn't impact the outcome. Anyway, I definitely should have listened to the clues more closely to figure out what was wanted, but it requires a lot of context placing and both settings are really important to the book—the whole story of the little prince is told in the desert!! In a sense, the whole book is set there.

I also felt like there were a few clue drops that were very early. I am abysmal at sensing how far into a tossup I actually am, so "this is early" comments may be rather off-base and maybe it actually came up late and I didn't realize it, but a few that stuck out to me were the Eroica Symphony clue in the McCullers TU, the Vinteuil clue in the Proust TU, and the gravestone clue in the scarlet letter TU (that last one particularly stuck out to me).

I might be overestimating the preponderance of these, but I did not really enjoy the bonuses with character name medium parts (although hey, at least they're better than character name hard parts lmao, since at least they're usually somewhat important), e.g. Lord Darlington, Kate in the Goldsmith bonus; the not-very-literary easy parts (blues, St. Theresa, 1700s, 1619 project - I really enjoyed that bonus's theming, although Ward seems like a tougher medium), but these are kind of just nitpicks since I think the bonuses were well-clued and difficulty-appropriate, which are the most important things to get right.

EDIT: I also want to add that while I don't really know enough to comment on how much real estate they should be taking up in questions (e.g. the Whitehead TU seemed pretty hard), I thought in terms of choosing authors/books, the contemporary literature was quite well-done - it seems like it all picked out stuff that was important "in the real world" and difficulty-appropriate, instead of just choosing books the writer/editor liked reading. This is more of a general comment than about this set specifically, but I do think we could collectively stand to give Olga Tokarczuk a rest for a bit.

--

In terms of difficulty control overall, I thought the answerlines were all reasonable, and bonus difficulty was pretty well-controlled - all the hard parts were (if not things I converted) things I knew were very important, and besides the above complaints, the clues were evocative and easy to buzz on without requiring a lot of "figuring stuff out." Thank you for putting together a good set of questions!
Last edited by caroline on Sun Jan 30, 2022 5:21 pm, edited 4 times in total.
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Re: 2022 ACF Regionals - Specific Question Discussion

Post by DavidB256 »

I do not like the indicator "these artworks" for movie posters. "These artworks" implies that the answerline is a collection of related works, and not an entire medium.

I loved all three math tossups that I got to play: Taylor series, real numbers, and the Law of Large Numbers.

Can I please see the tossup on cloning and the bonus on Proofs from THE BOOK? Thanks!
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Re: 2022 ACF Regionals - Specific Question Discussion

Post by efleisig »

Thanks everyone for putting together a great set! Many questions, particularly in literature, did a great job of combining a wider range of original clues with gettable answerlines.

Some I particularly liked:
- The Arundhati Roy tossup with a greater focus on Ministry of Utmost Happiness, the Housman tossup, the Ishiguro bonus, the bonus with Jesmyn Ward, and the diaspora lit in London tossup
- The Tiye bonus and women in the Han dynasty tossup

There were a few questions where it felt like the answer was the most obvious possibility, leading to multiple players sitting on the question because they weren't sure it could be that--the gold and cheese tossups come to mind.

Could I please see the tossup on Orlando? As I recall, there's also a Nick Greene in the discussion of Shakespeare's sister in A Room of One's Own, and I wasn't sure if that was disambiguated.

Seconding Caroline that the cross-era clues on Iris Murdoch and Zadie Smith were very interesting and enjoyable!
Last edited by efleisig on Sun Jan 30, 2022 5:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: 2022 ACF Regionals - Specific Question Discussion

Post by VSCOelasticity »

DavidB256 wrote: Sun Jan 30, 2022 3:58 pm I loved all three math tossups that I got to play: Taylor series, real numbers, and the Law of Large Numbers.
:) I'm glad to hear it!

DavidB256 wrote: Sun Jan 30, 2022 3:58 pm Can I please see the tossup on cloning and the bonus on Proofs from THE BOOK? Thanks!
Packet M wrote: 11. An outdated type of this technique forms two arms and a stuffer. This technique is visualized in silico on SnapGene. In this technique, Rop (“ropp”) proteins promote “stringent” rather than “relaxed” control and partitioning causes incompatibility. Directional topo kits aid in this technique, which may use giant BACs (“backs”), PACs (“pack​s”), or cosmids instead of small, high-copy “shuttles” like pUC (“puck”) or pBR322. This technique is easier with minipreps but harder when type II enzymes that recognize a polylinker’s “multiple sites” exhibit star activity. Self-ligation frustrates this technique, which creates replicons by using selectable markers and restriction sites on DNA vectors. For 10 points, what process of isolating and propagating recombinant DNA shares its name with the common term for somatic cell nuclear transfer that created Dolly the sheep?
ANSWER: ​molecular cloning [or word forms like preparing a clone; accept multiple cloning sites; accept making recombinant DNA before read; accept DNA assembly; prompt on preparing a cDNA library; prompt on restriction digest or isolating plasmids or preparing vectors or gene expression or DNA replication by asking “as part of what specific task in molecular biology?”; reject “homologous recombination”]
<Biology>
Packet J wrote: 13. A 1998 Springer text written by Martin Aigner and Günter M. Ziegler made this concept real. For 10 points each:
[10h] Name this concept conceived of by a mathematician who called children “epsilons” and compared giving oral exams to torturing his students. God maintains the perfect proofs of theorems within this concept.
ANSWER: “The Book” (of Paul Erdős) [accept Proofs from THE BOOK; reject answers that specify “book” but attribute it to someone other than Paul Erdős]
[10m] Paul Erdős (“er-dush”) and Alfréd Rényi’s (“REE-nee’s”) probabilistic method for this type of proof closes Aigner and Ziegler’s Proofs from THE BOOK. This type of proof, which can be constructive or nonconstructive, demonstrates the correctness of a logical statement written with a backwards E quantifier.
ANSWER: existence [accept existential proof]
[10e] Proofs from THE BOOK includes Roger Heath-Brown’s proof that every prime of the form “4m plus 1” can be written as the sum of two of these numbers. The product of an integer with itself is one of these numbers.
ANSWER: perfect square numbers
<Other Science>
Editors' Note: The PG for PACs is not ("packets"), but forums are "correcting" it from the Canadian Word. [sorry about that, gave it a workaround --staff]
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Re: 2022 ACF Regionals - Specific Question Discussion

Post by Heiliger Dankgesang »

Thanks so much to the editors for putting together this year's Regs! I had a blast playing it, and one of the things I really liked about it was that it felt especially fun to play/hear the questions in categories that aren't as much in my wheelhouse.

I apologize if this is pedantic but one thing that I think is worth noting is the following clue from the Robert Schumann tossup in Packet K. (N.b., I got the tossup on this clue; this is not a complaint about negging.):
Packet K wrote:This man’s ambitions as a pianist were dashed when the use of a mechanism meant to separate his fingers left him
with a permanent injury.
While the proposed finger-separation device is the popular explanation for Schumann's hand injury, it has been disputed, and as far as I'm aware, it was never corroborated by Clara. What I learned in Music History III last year is that scholarship has found that Schumann was (foolishly) taking mercury in an attempt to treat his syphilis and that consequently, mercury poisoning is what screwed up his hand. Other sources even point to Schumann potentially having dystonia and that being the root of his hand problems. The gist of this is that even if it's a minor quibble, it doesn't seem right to definitively say that the contraption is what permanently ended Schumann's ambitions to be a concert pianist. Please don't let that take away from this set's classical music / auditory arts in general, though–– I still had fun playing it.
Last edited by Heiliger Dankgesang on Mon Jan 31, 2022 11:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: 2022 ACF Regionals - Specific Question Discussion

Post by Zealots of Stockholm »

caroline wrote: Sun Jan 30, 2022 3:51 pm I also felt like there were a few clue drops that were very early. I am abysmal at sensing how far into a tossup I actually am, so "this is early" comments may be rather off-base and maybe it actually came up late and I didn't realize it, but a few that stuck out to me were the Eroica Symphony clue in the McCullers TU, the Vinteuil clue in the Proust TU, and the gravestone clue in the scarlet letter TU (that last one particularly stuck out to me).
Thanks for all the feedback and kind words about several questions in my categories! Since two of these were in American lit, I thought I would respond. The McCullers clue I can agree might be early, though I wanted a clue from The Heart is a Lonely Hunter that players could buzz on before a basic description of The Member of the Wedding. Perhaps I should've chosen a harder clue, but I tried to not be afraid of third clues being things that have come up before in general. The gravestone clue in the scarlet letter tossup I'll defend, because from searching I don't think it has actually come up that much, and playtesters had the same impression. It is a memorable scene from a widely-read novel, though.

As far as non-literary easy parts, I would argue the 1619 project clearly shows the literary importance of the project, that blues literature is certainly a literary subgenre (and that part clues Hughes' "The Weary Blues"), but I certainly agree that with more time finding a more literary easy to replace the 17th century part would've been ideal.
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Re: 2022 ACF Regionals - Specific Question Discussion

Post by yeah viv talk nah »

I did not play the set since I was serving as a TD, but I had a few thoughts on some of the questions:
  • There were some really fun answerlines in bonuses that stood out to me: licking an envelope, shaking hands, and bodybuilding.
  • The confession tossup was really cool. I (maybe naïvely) wasn't aware that confession was practiced in other religions/cultures apart from Catholicism so it was quite interesting to learn about that. Coincidentally, just today I encountered the 42 "negative" declarations in a video about ancient Egyptian bread!
  • Similar really unique questions on world culture I enjoyed were the bonus on Irish music, the tossup on quinceañeras, surfing in Hawaiian culture,
  • The literature bonus on Flannery O'Connor's suffering from lupus was also very interesting and well-written. Same with the hilarious bonus mentioning John Cage's love of mushrooms.
  • I felt the use of the pronoun "this ethnicity" was misleading for the tossup on Indians in Caribbean history. The answerline is definitely very clear on accepting specific ethnic groups from the Indian subcontinent, but if I had been playing the question I probably would have hesitated to give any of those out of uncertainty about the exact ancestry of each of the politicians of Indian descent (since many Indo-Caribbean people have ancestors who were all from India but from different parts of the country). My suggestion would maybe be to have made the answerline "India" and used the phrase "heritage from this country", but that would have resulted in a longer question so I can see why the editors made the decision to use "ethnicity" instead.
  • I think the question on "colored powder" should have outright accepted rice, or at the very least given a prompt; my mother and family often use a mixture of both whole rice grains and rice flour/powder to make muggu (kolam/rangoli). I believe there were a few instances of players being negged occurring across the sites for giving this answer. Apart from this small thing, I think the idea for the question was great!
DavidB256 wrote: Sun Jan 30, 2022 3:58 pm I do not like the indicator "these artworks" for movie posters. "These artworks" implies that the answerline is a collection of related works, and not an entire medium.
I agree. Also, I felt this question was really hard despite having well-written clues. All of the movie posters mentioned are quite famous, but mainly due to the choice of the pronoun "these artworks" rather than something like "artwork of this type," I wasn't thinking anywhere near the world of movies by the time I had read Saul Bass's name. I didn't play the question but I would be interested to hear if anyone who did had thoughts on how they felt this question played.

On the whole, I really enjoyed reading through the questions a lot. Thank you to the editors for putting together a great set!
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Re: 2022 ACF Regionals - Specific Question Discussion

Post by Krik? Krik?! KRIIIIK!!! »

I hope everyone enjoyed the set! I have a post with some of my thoughts I'll add later this week. If you'd like specific feedback on submissions or anything, feel free to message me.
DavidB256 wrote: Sun Jan 30, 2022 3:58 pm I do not like the indicator "these artworks" for movie posters. "These artworks" implies that the answerline is a collection of related works, and not an entire medium.
Thanks for the feedback! In the past, I've found personally that "artworks" and "medium" have been used somewhat interchangeably. I searched aseemsdb and I see that 2021 PACE, 2021 NASAT, 2020 Terrapin, 2020 TAPIR, 2020 STASH, 2020 Saturnalia, and more all use "these artworks" to describe works in a medium like a tattoo, caricature, etc. Regardless of this, if the consensus is that this wording was confusing, then for future projects, I'll use "this medium" more strictly to be clearer. I apologize if this complicated the question at all.
yeah viv talk nah wrote: Sun Jan 30, 2022 7:44 pm I think the question on "colored powder" should have outright accepted rice, or at the very least given a prompt; my mother and family often use a mixture of both whole rice grains and rice flour/powder to make muggu (kolam/rangoli). I believe there were a few instances of players being negged occurring across the sites for giving this answer. Apart from this small thing, I think the idea for the question was great!
You know, my 5 AM intrusive thought the tournament morning was "Man, did I add something with 'tumeric' to the answerline?" And I saw that I did!...but I also didn't have a few other substances such as rice, ash, etc accounted for. :shock:

I knew this question was a bit ambitious, but I apologize if it played poorly and especially since it snubbed your own traditions I was trying to clue! I think it could have been better focused on perhaps just around Holi or with "Holi" as the answerline, as that's what inspired me to write it. It's a good reminder to be a bit more careful with clue selection to account for as many traditions as possible (and if that's not possible, then to find a new way to ask the question).
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Re: 2022 ACF Regionals - Specific Question Discussion

Post by rhn26 »

May I see the tossup on Haydn cluing works dedicated to him? I believe the first line was referring to Beethoven's first piano sonata (op. 2 no. 1), but I couldn't recall the dedicatee, and I had already forgotten that aspect of the question when the Dissonance quartet was score-clued and negged with Mozart. It was definitely an interesting question asked in a way that wasn't too common, but I didn't parse it very well.

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Re: 2022 ACF Regionals - Specific Question Discussion

Post by haytoft »

yeah viv talk nah wrote: Sun Jan 30, 2022 7:44 pm
I felt the use of the pronoun "this ethnicity" was misleading for the tossup on Indians in Caribbean history. The answerline is definitely very clear on accepting specific ethnic groups from the Indian subcontinent, but if I had been playing the question I probably would have hesitated to give any of those out of uncertainty about the exact ancestry of each of the politicians of Indian descent (since many Indo-Caribbean people have ancestors who were all from India but from different parts of the country). My suggestion would maybe be to have made the answerline "India" and used the phrase "heritage from this country", but that would have resulted in a longer question so I can see why the editors made the decision to use "ethnicity" instead.
From the player side, I also felt it was confusing when the question was being read. I knew that the question was about people with Indian heritage, but like you I thought it was referring to a specific ethnic group. I remember there being a clue in Penn Bowl about Gujarati immigrants to New Jersey, for example, so I thought this question would be along the same lines.
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Re: 2022 ACF Regionals - Specific Question Discussion

Post by TaylorH »

rhn26 wrote: Tue Feb 01, 2022 12:01 am May I see the tossup on Haydn cluing works dedicated to him? I believe the first line was referring to Beethoven's first piano sonata (op. 2 no. 1), but I couldn't recall the dedicatee, and I had already forgotten that aspect of the question when the Dissonance quartet was score-clued and negged with Mozart. It was definitely an interesting question asked in a way that wasn't too common, but I didn't parse it very well.
An F minor work dedicated to this person begins with a two-measure Mannheim rocket that is then repeated in the dominant; that opening was the first example used by Arnold Schoenberg (“SHERN-berg”) to define a musical sentence. A chamber piece dedicated to this person opens with the cello sustaining a C, before being joined by other instruments holding rising A-flat, E-flat, and A. This composer’s brother likely inspired the fugal finale beginning C-D-F-E in a younger composer’s final symphony. This composer was supposedly called “Papa” by a composer who included “Dissonance” in a set of string quartets dedicated to him. The oldest member of the First Viennese School, for 10 points, name this brother of Michael and mentor of Mozart, who wrote the Surprise Symphony.
ANSWER: Joseph Haydn [or Franz Joseph Haydn]
<Classical Music>
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Re: 2022 ACF Regionals - Specific Question Discussion

Post by Chimango Caracara »

haytoft wrote: Tue Feb 01, 2022 3:00 pm
yeah viv talk nah wrote: Sun Jan 30, 2022 7:44 pm
I felt the use of the pronoun "this ethnicity" was misleading for the tossup on Indians in Caribbean history. The answerline is definitely very clear on accepting specific ethnic groups from the Indian subcontinent, but if I had been playing the question I probably would have hesitated to give any of those out of uncertainty about the exact ancestry of each of the politicians of Indian descent (since many Indo-Caribbean people have ancestors who were all from India but from different parts of the country). My suggestion would maybe be to have made the answerline "India" and used the phrase "heritage from this country", but that would have resulted in a longer question so I can see why the editors made the decision to use "ethnicity" instead.
From the player side, I also felt it was confusing when the question was being read. I knew that the question was about people with Indian heritage, but like you I thought it was referring to a specific ethnic group. I remember there being a clue in Penn Bowl about Gujarati immigrants to New Jersey, for example, so I thought this question would be along the same lines.
I'm sorry that this question was confusing. I agree that "ethnic group" was not a perfect indicator, but, in the context of the Indo-Caribbean diaspora, it seemed like the least bad option to me.

Saying "nationality" or "modern-day country" would also not be totally accurate because all of the clues are about South Asians who were either born outside of South Asia or emigrated prior to the existence of India as an independent country. Additionally, some of the migrants came from areas that are part of modern-day Pakistan (hence the tossup accepting Sindhis and Punjabis, as well as "Pakistanis," even though the latter isn't really an ethnic group). I could have gone the country route and accepted multiple countries (like I accepted Bangladesh for the tiebreaker tossup on WWII-era India), but it also would not have been ideal and I expect some players would have been dissatisfied with that as well.

Obviously, South Asia is polyethnic, but I thought that, at least in the context of countries like Guyana and Suriname, some of the nuances of South Asian ethnicity are less salient than they would be in South Asia itself, since, as Ani said, many Indo-Caribbean people have ancestry from multiple parts of India and therefore there is more of a socially constructed "Indo-Guyanese" identity than there would be for those people in India (for example, one of the clues was about Cheddi Jagan, who received much of his support from Indo-Guyanese people, in contrast to the many Afro-Guyanese supporters of Forbes Burnham). To me this is similar to calling "Chinese-Americans" an ethnic group, even though it elides differences that might be salient elsewhere (such as between Hakka and Cantonese people, though that isn't exactly the same as conflating different South Asian ethnic groups since people from both groups might just consider themselves Han Chinese).

I think that this is obviously a complex issue and there are definitely cases where it doesn't make sense to lump together peoples from different geographically related ethnic backgrounds in the diaspora like this (for example, if the question were about Sikh Punjabi-Americans who immigrated to the US before other South Asian peoples in the 19th century, or if there were a question about how the transatlantic slave trade differentially affected Fon and Akan people). This is why I said "nationality" for the Filipino-Americans question at ACF Winter 2020, but that case was more clear-cut since there was only one country it could apply to.

While I could have said something like "this broad ethnic group," I thought that it might be a little transparent. I could also have said "this group," which would have been unacceptably vague. My expectation was that players who recognized the clues as referring to people of Indian descent would either just say "Indians" or "desi" or give a specific ethnicity covered by the answerline, but I can see that it wasn't so simple for some players, so I'm sorry about that.
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Re: 2022 ACF Regionals - Specific Question Discussion

Post by naan/steak-holding toll »

I really like the idea behind this Haydn tossup's clues, reflecting him being a towering figure among contemporaries, including the other leading Germanic composers of the era. That being said, I think there are a couple of issues:

1) Evasiveness. Ophir's guide on this topic is instructive here. Is there a particular reason that the first clue can't say "piano sonata" instead of "work" or the second clue can't say "string quartet" instead of "chamber piece?" I think adding those details doesn't exactly make things transparent (since at that point the question just says "this person") and also helps people who may know of the existence of these pieces, but can't interpret more technical musical terms; it also helps give players as much context as possible to parse out the score clues.

2) Clues that require drawing multiple strings together without appropriate context to tee them up. Here, I'd draw attention to "This composer’s brother likely inspired the fugal finale beginning C-D-F-E in a younger composer’s final symphony." Looking at this question, it's reasonable to parse out what we're going for here - Mozart is generally thought to have borrowed the C-D-F-E motif (which predates the Haydn brothers) from Michael Haydn's masses. But on the fly, you just get "younger composer" (could be anyone) and "final symphony" (again, could be anyone) - sure, you can make an inference about the period we're talking about since "Mannheim rocket" was mentioned in the first clue, but we're already a couple sentences away from that.

To a lesser extent, this also applies to the Schoenberg clue, which requires you to go "oh, so that's the musical sentence from Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 1 -> that piece is dedicated to Joseph Haydn." I have no idea how big of a deal it is that the piece is dedicated to Haydn, but it's worth noting that this is an extra level of cognitive load.

Ultimately, I think this Michael Haydn clue is still useful, because given that you mentioned Mannheim rockets, a decent player can parse this as "this is a Classical-era composer with a brother who is also a notable composer." That's a pretty big hint towards one of the Haydn brothers, or one of the later Bachs (who probably aren't going to be answers at this tournament except maybe CPE). But I think it could be improved:

"This composer's brother wrote [specific piece] with a "C-D-F-E" motif, which was likely borrowed to open the fugal finale of the last symphony by one of this composer's mentees."

While longer, I think this sentence is an improvement because it offers an additional specific (albeit hard) buzzpoint in a piece by Michael Haydn (since "this composer's brother inspired" doesn't explicitly tell the player that it's a piece by this composer's brother). It also gives people a more explicit hint at Haydn's role as a mentor to younger composers, which is a common interpretation of his relationship with Mozart. Finally, a longer sentence can be helpful to tee up context for players parsing things at game speed, especially for a sentence that is drawing connections between three different people. So even if you don't know the specific notes from the Jupiter symphony, you can buzz from knowing basic details of Jupiter (its finale is fugal) and "Haydn mentored Mozart." This is made even easier to do if you know of the existence of Michael Haydn.

Music writing is hard and I don't mean to be excessively pedantic here, but I think adding context helps people a lot when interacting with music questions - especially for the large body of players who don't have the skills needed to parse score clues at game speed, but do have an interest in classical music and the relationships between its major figures.
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Re: 2022 ACF Regionals - Specific Question Discussion

Post by Chimango Caracara »

Shahar S. wrote: Sun Jan 30, 2022 3:21 pm
Ehtna wrote: Sun Jan 30, 2022 2:48 pm My knowledge of biology and genetics isn't the best, but can I ask what the reasoning was behind having "this phenotype" as the indicator for the death tossup? A lot of people I talked to at our site were really confused by that question, since it seemed like a fairly obtuse way to ask for "death."
I can't speak for Nick, but from what I could tell the idea behind that tossup was that it was talking about genes that would cause an organism to die and how to work around it so that those organisms either don't die or can be studied before dying (i.e. through balancer genes). In that sense it is something observable in an organism directly caused by the organism's genetics, which makes it a phenotype. Some of the clues also referred to effects that had "lethal" in the name (i.e. embryonic lethal).
Shahar is correct. All of the clues before the giveaway were about genetic screening/manipulation and lethal mutations. Since such a mutation might disrupt any number of processes, I thought that it would be less intuitive for knowledgeable players to say something like "a mutation that cause this process"; most of the clues are about what a geneticist would look for in a screen (i.e. an observable phenotype). This question is talking about death in a fairly distinct way from, say, a question about apoptosis, which is a normal cellular process.

Although I know that some people were frustrated by this question, I have to say that it was my favorite biology submission*, because I thought it was a great way to ask about fundamental genetic concepts that don't come up much.

*from Rutgers A, specifically Joelle Smart, who also submitted two other great questions that I used (the arginine biochemistry tiebreaker and the bonus on chromosome conformation capture).
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Re: 2022 ACF Regionals - Specific Question Discussion

Post by csa2125 »

Chimango Caracara wrote: Tue Feb 01, 2022 5:36 pm
Shahar S. wrote: Sun Jan 30, 2022 3:21 pm
Ehtna wrote: Sun Jan 30, 2022 2:48 pm My knowledge of biology and genetics isn't the best, but can I ask what the reasoning was behind having "this phenotype" as the indicator for the death tossup? A lot of people I talked to at our site were really confused by that question, since it seemed like a fairly obtuse way to ask for "death."
I can't speak for Nick, but from what I could tell the idea behind that tossup was that it was talking about genes that would cause an organism to die and how to work around it so that those organisms either don't die or can be studied before dying (i.e. through balancer genes). In that sense it is something observable in an organism directly caused by the organism's genetics, which makes it a phenotype. Some of the clues also referred to effects that had "lethal" in the name (i.e. embryonic lethal).
Shahar is correct. All of the clues before the giveaway were about genetic screening/manipulation and lethal mutations. Since such a mutation might disrupt any number of processes, I thought that it would be less intuitive for knowledgeable players to say something like "a mutation that cause this process"; most of the clues are about what a geneticist would look for in a screen (i.e. an observable phenotype). This question is talking about death in a fairly distinct way from, say, a question about apoptosis, which is a normal cellular process.

Although I know that some people were frustrated by this question, I have to say that it was my favorite biology submission*, because I thought it was a great way to ask about fundamental genetic concepts that don't come up much.

*from Rutgers A, specifically Joelle Smart, who also submitted two other great questions that I used (the arginine biochemistry tiebreaker and the bonus on chromosome conformation capture).
Veering off from more philosophical questions regarding the definition of "phenotype," and granting that "death" is a "phenotype," this specific question seems to illustrate a larger issue with indicator choice more broadly, but which certainly was an issue at this tournament. Even if X is a Y in a technical sense, X may not be a Y in a colloquial sense, a "common sense" sense, nor a "quizbowl sense," and very often not in a "game speed sense" or at game speed parseable as such.

Indicator ("this X") / pronoun choice is key to a successful question to such a grave degree that we may want to construct better community guidelines about what we mean when we, say, ask for an "entity" (Quran TU), object (the scarlet "A" from The Scarlet Letter TU), ask for "this source" (pulsar TU), ask for a concept (where we often run into philosophical problems of the sort of differentiating, e.g., "the concept of mind" from "the things we call minds"), and then collate these guidelines into a single, concise document.

For the above examples, I would personally have used the following:
Quran -> this thing
Scarlet Letter -> this thing / this symbol [iirc, the embroidered letter is made of cloth, but I don't believe the letter on the tombstone is that very cloth "A," which adds to confusing by treating it as a single "this object"]
pulsar -> this object, this type of radiation source [at game speed, it seemed somewhat like a single radiation source such as "Sagittarius A Star" was wanted, as opposed to "black hole"; where "this type of source" or "these sources" would prevent such confusion]
death -> this trait ["being dead"]

Any thoughts from anyone on the above suggestions specific, or the creation and collation of a "pronoun guideline doc?"
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Re: 2022 ACF Regionals - Specific Question Discussion

Post by VSCOelasticity »

csa2125 wrote: Tue Feb 01, 2022 5:56 pm Indicator ("this X") / pronoun choice is key to a successful question to such a grave degree that we may want to construct better community guidelines about what we mean when we, say, ask for an "entity" (Quran TU), object (the scarlet "A" from The Scarlet Letter TU), ask for "this source" (pulsar TU), ask for a concept (where we often run into philosophical problems of the sort of differentiating, e.g., "the concept of mind" from "the things we call minds"), and then collate these guidelines into a single, concise document.

For the above examples, I would personally have used the following:
Quran -> this thing
Scarlet Letter -> this thing / this symbol [iirc, the embroidered letter is made of cloth, but I don't believe the letter on the tombstone is that very cloth "A," which adds to confusing by treating it as a single "this object"]
pulsar -> this object, this type of radiation source [at game speed, it seemed somewhat like a single radiation source such as "Sagittarius A Star" was wanted, as opposed to "black hole"; where "this type of source" or "these sources" would prevent such confusion]
death -> this trait ["being dead"]

Any thoughts from anyone on the above suggestions specific, or the creation and collation of a "pronoun guideline doc?"
I'm not sure why the pulsar TU was confusing, since it used the plural. Was there another astro TU that was confusing?
Packet C wrote: 6. An upper bound on preferred-frame effects has been obtained by analyzing a unique binary system of these sources discovered by Marta Burgay. Three citizen scientists made the first major discovery of the
Einstein@Home (“Einstein-at-home”) project by finding one of these sources in Arecibo (“ah-reh-SEE-boh”) data. Signals from these sources are un-smeared using the dispersion measure. Dale Frail and
Alexander Wolszczan (“volsh-chahn”) used one of these sources now called Lich to find the first extrasolar planets. The first of these sources to be discovered was dubbed Little Green Men by Antony Hewish and Jocelyn Bell Burnell. Due to their radiation pattern, these sources are likened to lighthouses. For 10 points, name these periodic emitters of radiation, most of which are neutron stars.
ANSWER: pulsars [prompt on neutron stars before “neutron”] (The lead-in refers to PSR J0737-3039A/B.)
<Other Science: Astronomy>
I am not sure what such a resource would look like, but it is an interesting and potentially very useful resource. I suppose it could mainly be on judged "good pronouns" and why they are better than alternatives.
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Re: 2022 ACF Regionals - Specific Question Discussion

Post by csa2125 »

VSCOelasticity wrote: Tue Feb 01, 2022 6:22 pm I'm not sure why the pulsar TU was confusing, since it used the plural. Was there another astro TU that was confusing?
Packet C wrote: 6. An upper bound on preferred-frame effects has been obtained by analyzing a unique binary system of these sources discovered by Marta Burgay. Three citizen scientists made the first major discovery of the
Einstein@Home (“Einstein-at-home”) project by finding one of these sources in Arecibo (“ah-reh-SEE-boh”) data. Signals from these sources are un-smeared using the dispersion measure. Dale Frail and
Alexander Wolszczan (“volsh-chahn”) used one of these sources now called Lich to find the first extrasolar planets. The first of these sources to be discovered was dubbed Little Green Men by Antony Hewish and Jocelyn Bell Burnell. Due to their radiation pattern, these sources are likened to lighthouses. For 10 points, name these periodic emitters of radiation, most of which are neutron stars.
ANSWER: pulsars [prompt on neutron stars before “neutron”] (The lead-in refers to PSR J0737-3039A/B.)
<Other Science: Astronomy>
I am not sure what such a resource would look like, but it is an interesting and potentially very useful resource. I suppose it could mainly be on judged "good pronouns" and why they are better than alternatives.
Seems to have been on my end then, or something weird going on with the reading in our room. Teammates express dislike / confusion with the pronoun, but that's possibly just due to not being used to be asked about this topic in this manner; to my knowledge, "source" is a pretty common way of speaking about such astro content, so don't believe there's the sort of academic/amateur divide on this terminology as I discussed above--this definitely seems fine now that I'm reading it; thanks!
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Re: 2022 ACF Regionals - Specific Question Discussion

Post by VSCOelasticity »

csa2125 wrote: Tue Feb 01, 2022 6:36 pm Seems to have been on my end then, or something weird going on with the reading in our room. Teammates express dislike / confusion with the pronoun, but that's possibly just due to not being used to be asked about this topic in this manner; to my knowledge, "source" is a pretty common way of speaking about such astro content, so don't believe there's the sort of academic/amateur divide on this terminology as I discussed above--this definitely seems fine now that I'm reading it; thanks!
Yeah, that's a good point, and the standard "these (astronomical) objects" would've been clearer to more people.
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Re: 2022 ACF Regionals - Specific Question Discussion

Post by Fado Alexandrino »

Pulsar stands for “pulsating radio source” so there should at least have some sort of answerline directive if someone answered “radio source”.
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Re: 2022 ACF Regionals - Specific Question Discussion

Post by eygotem »

"These sources" has the advantage of not ruling out things like neutron star mergers, x-ray bursters, etc. I personally don’t think it impacted understanding of the question.
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Re: 2022 ACF Regionals - Specific Question Discussion

Post by Cody »

csa2125 wrote: Tue Feb 01, 2022 5:56 pm
Chimango Caracara wrote: Tue Feb 01, 2022 5:36 pm
Shahar S. wrote: Sun Jan 30, 2022 3:21 pm
Ehtna wrote: Sun Jan 30, 2022 2:48 pm My knowledge of biology and genetics isn't the best, but can I ask what the reasoning was behind having "this phenotype" as the indicator for the death tossup? A lot of people I talked to at our site were really confused by that question, since it seemed like a fairly obtuse way to ask for "death."
I can't speak for Nick, but from what I could tell the idea behind that tossup was that it was talking about genes that would cause an organism to die and how to work around it so that those organisms either don't die or can be studied before dying (i.e. through balancer genes). In that sense it is something observable in an organism directly caused by the organism's genetics, which makes it a phenotype. Some of the clues also referred to effects that had "lethal" in the name (i.e. embryonic lethal).
Shahar is correct. All of the clues before the giveaway were about genetic screening/manipulation and lethal mutations. Since such a mutation might disrupt any number of processes, I thought that it would be less intuitive for knowledgeable players to say something like "a mutation that cause this process"; most of the clues are about what a geneticist would look for in a screen (i.e. an observable phenotype). This question is talking about death in a fairly distinct way from, say, a question about apoptosis, which is a normal cellular process.

Although I know that some people were frustrated by this question, I have to say that it was my favorite biology submission*, because I thought it was a great way to ask about fundamental genetic concepts that don't come up much.

*from Rutgers A, specifically Joelle Smart, who also submitted two other great questions that I used (the arginine biochemistry tiebreaker and the bonus on chromosome conformation capture).
Veering off from more philosophical questions regarding the definition of "phenotype," and granting that "death" is a "phenotype," this specific question seems to illustrate a larger issue with indicator choice more broadly, but which certainly was an issue at this tournament. Even if X is a Y in a technical sense, X may not be a Y in a colloquial sense, a "common sense" sense, nor a "quizbowl sense," and very often not in a "game speed sense" or at game speed parseable as such.

Indicator ("this X") / pronoun choice is key to a successful question to such a grave degree that we may want to construct better community guidelines about what we mean when we, say, ask for an "entity" (Quran TU), object (the scarlet "A" from The Scarlet Letter TU), ask for "this source" (pulsar TU), ask for a concept (where we often run into philosophical problems of the sort of differentiating, e.g., "the concept of mind" from "the things we call minds"), and then collate these guidelines into a single, concise document.

For the above examples, I would personally have used the following:
Quran -> this thing
Scarlet Letter -> this thing / this symbol [iirc, the embroidered letter is made of cloth, but I don't believe the letter on the tombstone is that very cloth "A," which adds to confusing by treating it as a single "this object"]
pulsar -> this object, this type of radiation source [at game speed, it seemed somewhat like a single radiation source such as "Sagittarius A Star" was wanted, as opposed to "black hole"; where "this type of source" or "these sources" would prevent such confusion]
death -> this trait ["being dead"]

Any thoughts from anyone on the above suggestions specific, or the creation and collation of a "pronoun guideline doc?"
I agree that the answerline referrent is of critical importance, but I find two of these strange.

I fail to see a clear difference between entity and thing. It is a lateral move that offers no additional specificity or conception of what the answerline might be. There are a variety of more specific answerline referrents that can be used here depending on the clues.

If this source presents a problem, then the same applies to this object -- except it is also far more common and less specific. The answerline referrent must be in agreement with the answerline, and pluralization is widely used to encompass a category of things, so these sources is the perfect choice.

Generally, this type of specification falls under the umbrella of a style guide. For example, HSAPQ forbid the use of "this work" in literature questions, instead requiring that the answerline referrent be more specific (e.g. novel, book, poem, etc.). Answerline referrents should be as specific as possible without introducing transparency, but too many writers (including myself, of course) err on the side of being far less specific than they could be.
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Re: 2022 ACF Regionals - Specific Question Discussion

Post by CPiGuy »

Can I see the bonus part that clued a naval engagement in Orleans, Massachusetts?
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Re: 2022 ACF Regionals - Specific Question Discussion

Post by VSCOelasticity »

CPiGuy wrote: Tue Feb 01, 2022 11:39 pm Can I see the bonus part that clued a naval engagement in Orleans, Massachusetts?
Packet H wrote: American neutrality during this war prevented the SMS Cormoran from creating a German port; when the Americans entered the war, the Germans decided to scuttle the ship instead. For 10 points each:
[10e] Name this war that the United States entered in part due to unrestricted submarine warfare used by German U-boats, such as during the sinking of the Lusitania.
ANSWER: World War One [or the Great War; or WWI; or the First World War]
[10h] The Perth Amboy was attacked by a U-boat during an offensive off the coast of this state’s town of Orleans; that attack on this state was the only attack on the continental United States during its involvement in World War I.
ANSWER: Massachusetts [or MA]
[10m] The wreck of the Cormoran lies next to a ship sunk during Japan’s occupation of this island in World War II. Henry Glass captained the Charleston during a bloodless capture of this island in the Spanish-American War.
ANSWER: Guam [or Guåhan]
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Re: 2022 ACF Regionals - Specific Question Discussion

Post by CPiGuy »

VSCOelasticity wrote: Tue Feb 01, 2022 11:42 pm
CPiGuy wrote: Tue Feb 01, 2022 11:39 pm Can I see the bonus part that clued a naval engagement in Orleans, Massachusetts?
Packet H wrote: American neutrality during this war prevented the SMS Cormoran from creating a German port; when the Americans entered the war, the Germans decided to scuttle the ship instead. For 10 points each:
[10e] Name this war that the United States entered in part due to unrestricted submarine warfare used by German U-boats, such as during the sinking of the Lusitania.
ANSWER: World War One [or the Great War; or WWI; or the First World War]
[10h] The Perth Amboy was attacked by a U-boat during an offensive off the coast of this state’s town of Orleans; that attack on this state was the only attack on the continental United States during its involvement in World War I.
ANSWER: Massachusetts [or MA]
[10m] The wreck of the Cormoran lies next to a ship sunk during Japan’s occupation of this island in World War II. Henry Glass captained the Charleston during a bloodless capture of this island in the Spanish-American War.
ANSWER: Guam [or Guåhan]
<American History>
Thanks!

a) This was a cool bonus!

b) I had asked to see it because I thought that the second part was false when I heard it at game speed but, in fact, your wording was accurate -- while German operatives did bomb a bridge in Maine in 1915, that was not during the US's involvement in World War I. I appreciate the precision!
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Re: 2022 ACF Regionals - Specific Question Discussion

Post by Zealots of Stockholm »

csa2125 wrote: Tue Feb 01, 2022 5:56 pm
Chimango Caracara wrote: Tue Feb 01, 2022 5:36 pm
Shahar S. wrote: Sun Jan 30, 2022 3:21 pm
Ehtna wrote: Sun Jan 30, 2022 2:48 pm My knowledge of biology and genetics isn't the best, but can I ask what the reasoning was behind having "this phenotype" as the indicator for the death tossup? A lot of people I talked to at our site were really confused by that question, since it seemed like a fairly obtuse way to ask for "death."
I can't speak for Nick, but from what I could tell the idea behind that tossup was that it was talking about genes that would cause an organism to die and how to work around it so that those organisms either don't die or can be studied before dying (i.e. through balancer genes). In that sense it is something observable in an organism directly caused by the organism's genetics, which makes it a phenotype. Some of the clues also referred to effects that had "lethal" in the name (i.e. embryonic lethal).
Shahar is correct. All of the clues before the giveaway were about genetic screening/manipulation and lethal mutations. Since such a mutation might disrupt any number of processes, I thought that it would be less intuitive for knowledgeable players to say something like "a mutation that cause this process"; most of the clues are about what a geneticist would look for in a screen (i.e. an observable phenotype). This question is talking about death in a fairly distinct way from, say, a question about apoptosis, which is a normal cellular process.

Although I know that some people were frustrated by this question, I have to say that it was my favorite biology submission*, because I thought it was a great way to ask about fundamental genetic concepts that don't come up much.

*from Rutgers A, specifically Joelle Smart, who also submitted two other great questions that I used (the arginine biochemistry tiebreaker and the bonus on chromosome conformation capture).
Veering off from more philosophical questions regarding the definition of "phenotype," and granting that "death" is a "phenotype," this specific question seems to illustrate a larger issue with indicator choice more broadly, but which certainly was an issue at this tournament. Even if X is a Y in a technical sense, X may not be a Y in a colloquial sense, a "common sense" sense, nor a "quizbowl sense," and very often not in a "game speed sense" or at game speed parseable as such.

Indicator ("this X") / pronoun choice is key to a successful question to such a grave degree that we may want to construct better community guidelines about what we mean when we, say, ask for an "entity" (Quran TU), object (the scarlet "A" from The Scarlet Letter TU), ask for "this source" (pulsar TU), ask for a concept (where we often run into philosophical problems of the sort of differentiating, e.g., "the concept of mind" from "the things we call minds"), and then collate these guidelines into a single, concise document.

For the above examples, I would personally have used the following:
Quran -> this thing
Scarlet Letter -> this thing / this symbol [iirc, the embroidered letter is made of cloth, but I don't believe the letter on the tombstone is that very cloth "A," which adds to confusing by treating it as a single "this object"]
pulsar -> this object, this type of radiation source [at game speed, it seemed somewhat like a single radiation source such as "Sagittarius A Star" was wanted, as opposed to "black hole"; where "this type of source" or "these sources" would prevent such confusion]
death -> this trait ["being dead"]

Any thoughts from anyone on the above suggestions specific, or the creation and collation of a "pronoun guideline doc?"
So I asked in discord of the scarlet letter question mentioned here confused anyone else, and it seemed like the consensus was no, though some said this could be because others have tossed it up as an object before too.

I would reject both of your suggestions as in my opinion, "thing" is too vague, and as Caroline Mao (and maybe others?) pointed out in discord, symbol seems a little transparent and also perhaps suggests something more abstract that's just read as a literary symbol. I will cop that its not necessarily the exact scarlet letter that's on the tombstone they share, but iirc the novel doesn't exactly specify that she wears a single scarlet letter for the rest of her life, so in theory it could be swapped out every so often. Anyways, I don't really see this as confusing since its a clear physical object in literature, and it really didn't cross my mind that this could be a confusing indicator. I am sorry if it caused anyone uncertainty when playing.
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Re: 2022 ACF Regionals - Specific Question Discussion

Post by Gene Harrogate »

Zealots of Stockholm wrote: Wed Feb 02, 2022 1:30 am
So I asked in discord of the scarlet letter question mentioned here confused anyone else, and it seemed like the consensus was no, though some said this could be because others have tossed it up as an object before too.

I would reject both of your suggestions as in my opinion, "thing" is too vague, and as Caroline Mao (and maybe others?) pointed out in discord, symbol seems a little transparent and also perhaps suggests something more abstract that's just read as a literary symbol. I will cop that its not necessarily the exact scarlet letter that's on the tombstone they share, but iirc the novel doesn't exactly specify that she wears a single scarlet letter for the rest of her life, so in theory it could be swapped out every so often. Anyways, I don't really see this as confusing since its a clear physical object in literature, and it really didn't cross my mind that this could be a confusing indicator. I am sorry if it caused anyone uncertainty when playing.
I didn't really pick up that there a consensus--my feelings were along the line of "I only knew what they wanted because I had heard previous questions use it." Object is a little confusing because: 1) like Clark pointed out, none of the clues I heard were talking about the specific scarlet letter, but other appearances of the letter A in the novel; 2) even when referring to a specific letter, "object" isn't a very colloquial way to refer to a piece of text. If I asked you what that object was embroidered on the front of your Gap sweatshirt, you might raise an eyebrow.

I don't actually intuitively see why "thing" is too vague. The scarlet letter is much more intuitively "that thing" to me than "that object." Sure it's good to avoid less specific indicators when unnecessary, but I think anything more specific ends up unsatisfying or misleading here.
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Re: 2022 ACF Regionals - Specific Question Discussion

Post by eygotem »

VSCOelasticity wrote: Tue Feb 01, 2022 11:42 pm
Packet H wrote:
[10h] The Perth Amboy was attacked by a U-boat during an offensive off the coast of this state’s town of Orleans; that attack on this state was the only attack on the continental United States during its involvement in World War I.
ANSWER: Massachusetts [or MA]
It technically wasn't an "attack" on the U.S., as the shells hit the mainland U.S. by accident after they missed the Perth Amboy.

(This isn't really an issue, it didn't impact comprehension of the question at all.)
Last edited by eygotem on Wed Feb 02, 2022 12:45 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: 2022 ACF Regionals - Specific Question Discussion

Post by eygotem »

About the type Ia supernova tossup - I could tell that the clues were pointing toward a specific kind of supernova, but I feel like it should clarify what it's looking for by saying "these specific events" somewhere at the beginning. That would eliminate the danger of someone buzzing on "supernova" without knowing the specific type (and thus failing the prompt, or perhaps guessing it right).
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Re: 2022 ACF Regionals - Specific Question Discussion

Post by VSCOelasticity »

eygotem wrote: Wed Feb 02, 2022 12:44 pm About the type Ia supernova tossup - I could tell that the clues were pointing toward a specific kind of supernova, but I feel like it should clarify what it's looking for by saying "these specific events" somewhere at the beginning. That would eliminate the danger of someone buzzing on "supernova" without knowing the specific type (and thus failing the prompt, or perhaps guessing it right).
If the qualifier "specific" was added to the pronoun, I'd still have to prompt on correct but less specific answers because an editor can't rely on players reading an editor's mind as to how specific an answer is. There is an inherent danger to buzzing on context from clues without knowing the clues.

In addition, I already think it was clear that "these events" was applying to a specific type of supernova, or else the clues would have used the pronoun "one type/kind/variant of these events." As you said yourself, you could tell the question was asking for a specific kind of supernova.
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Re: 2022 ACF Regionals - Specific Question Discussion

Post by Chimango Caracara »

csa2125 wrote: Tue Feb 01, 2022 5:56 pm For the above examples, I would personally have used the following:
Quran -> this thing

...

Any thoughts from anyone on the above suggestions specific, or the creation and collation of a "pronoun guideline doc?"
Although I didn't write the Quran question, in the context of that question (in which it was fairly clear from the beginning that it was about Islamic theology), I think that "entity" is a better choice because it doesn't rule out an answer like "God"; I think a question describing God as "this thing" would be unusual.

In the abstract, I think that there are cases for which it would be good to have a standard pronoun. For example, I think it would be very useful to have a way to say "state-level subnational administrative division" in a way that could theoretically be a province, state, voivodeship, etc. while communicating that the question is looking for a political region rather than a geographical region like the Llanos.
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Re: 2022 ACF Regionals - Specific Question Discussion

Post by warum »

VSCOelasticity wrote: Wed Feb 02, 2022 1:58 pm In addition, I already think it was clear that "these events" was applying to a specific type of supernova, or else the clues would have used the pronoun "one type/kind/variant of these events." As you said yourself, you could tell the question was asking for a specific kind of supernova.
I think expecting players to know what level of specificity the question wants solely based on the pronoun is overly ambitious. Different players will have different qualitative senses of what is an "event."
The supernova question seemed fine to me though. I got a sense that very specific phenomena were being described by the clues, regardless of what pronoun was being used, so I was mentally prepared for the answer being more specific than just "supernovas." (although I didn't buzz because I don't know the differences between types of supernovas well enough)
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Re: 2022 ACF Regionals - Specific Question Discussion

Post by Protean »

2022 ACF Regionals Pack A wrote: 16. In this city, the one-eyed Simeon Brown falls in love with the Holocaust survivor Maria in the novel The Stone Face. Life is described as “occurring underwater” in a location in this city with windows painted white in lieu of curtains. A novel set (emphasize) primarily in this city opens with the narrator describing “the night which is leading [him] to the most terrible morning of [his] life.” At the end of a novel, a character who lives in this city asks a woman, “Isn’t it pretty to think so?” A character who titles a novel primarily set in this city strangles his former boss after a gay affair with the American man David ends. This city is the primary setting of James Baldwin’s novel Giovanni’s Room. For 10 points, name this city that Ernest Hemingway described in his memoir A Moveable Feast.
ANSWER: Paris, France (The Stone Face is by William Gardner Smith. “Isn’t it pretty to think so?” is a quote from Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises.)
It seems suboptimal to clue a notable event that occurs very specifically not in the city the question is asking for. I'm aware that I should be listening more carefully to the question and that I don't know enough about Giovanni's Room or The Stone Face to know where they're set, but recognizing where Jake actually is when he says the quote getting clued and saying "Madrid" is a bit of a hard neg to take at game speed.

As an aside, there also seemed to be a lot of "city" tossup answerlines in lit but this may be from packetizing since the first three packets each had one (Paris, Havana, London) and is a very minor nitpick anyway. I don't have a ton of specific things to point out but echoing earlier comments in the thread that I thought that overall the literature in this set did its job really well - the difficulty was very well-controlled with reasonable answerlines and some very interesting theming. In particular I thought the bonuses were very enjoyable, especially the Ishiguro bonus asking for dignity, the bonus on Vietnamese novels, and the Jesmyn Ward bonus.
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Re: 2022 ACF Regionals - Specific Question Discussion

Post by naan/steak-holding toll »

eygotem wrote: Wed Feb 02, 2022 12:44 pm About the type Ia supernova tossup - I could tell that the clues were pointing toward a specific kind of supernova, but I feel like it should clarify what it's looking for by saying "these specific events" somewhere at the beginning. That would eliminate the danger of someone buzzing on "supernova" without knowing the specific type (and thus failing the prompt, or perhaps guessing it right).
I don't really think adding "specific" clarifies what the question is looking for. "Specific" with regards to what? How can we be sure players will always interpret this phrasing the way you want, as opposed to a hyper-specific description like "supernovas observed using [XYZ instrument]" which could, hypothetically, be correct for a clue about a given observation?

Personally, I prefer using "specific" in quizbowl questions when you're looking for exactly one (1) instance of an individual thing from a given class, i.e. "This specific instrument (ANSWER: Wanamaker Organ)" from this past year's CO. But even then, there could just be better words. In retrospect, "This individual instrument" would probably be better for that example. And so on.

Sometimes you have a tossup on mass spec that clues time-of-flight, sometimes you have a tossup on time-of-flight mass spec. That's how the game goes and that's what prompts / complete answerlines are for; sometimes, you wait to be confident, sometimes you go in, and that's one of the fundamental trade-offs of this game. I guess time-of-flight is a more "specific" form of mass spec, but mass spec is "specific" with regards to the class "analytical techniques." I know nothing about mass spec, but I wouldn't be surprised if there's yet another more specific form of time-of-flight mass spec.

I think it's generally understood that, as you go up in difficulty, more specific subclasses of a given class can be asked. So ultimately, I'm not sure "specific" is really going to be a reliable helpful identifier and could just as easily confuse players.
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Re: 2022 ACF Regionals - Specific Question Discussion

Post by Red Panda Cub »

Just some quick comments about the first packet.

I think the Lili'uokalani tossup conflates the 1881 world tour taken by Kalakaua (during which time she was regent), with her own 1887 trip to London. The latter doesn't seem to have been a world tour, but was a smaller trip largely owing to Victoria's jubilee.

The description of the splitting of Huang Gongwang's Dwelling in Fuchun Mountains seems to conflate two different parts of the work's history, though not in a particularly misleading way. Best I can tell, the splitting was an incidental rather than deliberate result of the burning?

I can't find what this sentence in the Jacob Riis tossup is referring to: "This photographer frequently titled photos for their costs in cents, such as one of a man sleeping on a mattress on top of two barrels." As best I can tell, that photograph is just titled descriptively (which is also the case for pretty much every Riis photo on the ICP website, too). The Riis photographs I could find that include prices (e.g. "Five Cents a Spot", where the price refers to the illegal cost of a bed) also don't seem to fit the description.
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Re: 2022 ACF Regionals - Specific Question Discussion

Post by jzlau2 »

Can I see the science tossup on dynamo theory and the geo(maybe ss/anthropology?) tossup on pastoralism in Africa?
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Re: 2022 ACF Regionals - Specific Question Discussion

Post by Sean »

jzlau2 wrote: Thu Feb 03, 2022 3:22 pm Can I see the science tossup on dynamo theory and the geo(maybe ss/anthropology?) tossup on pastoralism in Africa?
Quite astutely, 2022 ACF Regionals Packet F wrote: 14. Vaĭnshteĭn and Zel’dovich modeled these systems using cycles of stretching, twisting, and folding. The intensity
and shape of a phenomenon (emphasize) generated by one of these systems is predicted by the Glatzmaier–Roberts
model. The SOHO (“soh-hoh”) project provided further evidence that one of these systems is located in a
tachocline, a region where solid body rotation gives way to differential rotation. In the Babcock–Leighton model of
one of these systems, active regions decay to create a surface poloidal field. Eleven-year cycles are evident when
plotting the intensity of the phenomenon produced by one of these systems at different latitudes on Maunder’s
butterfly diagrams. For 10 points, name these self-sustaining systems of electrically conducting fluids that generate
magnetic fields.
ANSWER: dynamos [accept solar dynamo; accept geodynamo; prompt on magnetohydrodynamic fluids or MHD
fluids or plasmas before “fluids” by asking “as a component of what systems?”; prompt on the Sun or stars or Earth
or planets by asking “what system inside those bodies?”]
<Physics>
Similarly, not withholding any punches, 2022 ACF Regionals Packet J wrote: 20. Nderit ware is found with evidence of this practice at sites like Hyrax Hill from the Elmenteitan and Savanna
phases of its namesake period of the Neolithic in the Great Rift Valley. The (emphasize) most recent rock art at
Twyfelfontein depicts a men’s game with this practice, which was abandoned by the Strandlopers, estranging them
from other Khoekhoe (“koy-koy”). Acacia was used to build bomas for this practice similar to the kraals on Nguni
homesteads, which held anga that supplied material for oval shields. Trypanosomiasis and rinderpest limited the
spread of this practice, which led to disputes that divided the Dinka and Nuer (“noo-air”). Selective pressure from
this practice caused the Fulani and Maasai to evolve lactase persistence. For 10 points, what practice of nomadic
African peoples involved raising fatty-humped zebu for hides, meat, and milk?
ANSWER: herding [accept raising cattle or oxen or cows or bulls; accept herding sheep or goats or caprines;
accept pastoralism or transhumance; accept drinking milk or eating dairy before “milk”; accept raising livestock
or animal husbandry; prompt on nomadism; prompt on farming or agriculture or subsistence; prompt on raising
animals]
<Other History>

These are also already posted on the online question database, as well as on Aseemsdb too, so that's nice.
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Re: 2022 ACF Regionals - Specific Question Discussion

Post by justinduffy »

The tossup on pomegranates erroneously states that Ascalaphus was turned into a lizard. He was actually turned into an owl; in an unrelated myth, the character Ascalabus is turned into a lizard.
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Re: 2022 ACF Regionals - Specific Question Discussion

Post by Inscrutable Fox »

justinduffy wrote: Thu Feb 03, 2022 3:43 pm The tossup on pomegranates erroneously states that Ascalaphus was turned into a lizard. He was actually turned into an owl; in an unrelated myth, the character Ascalabus is turned into a lizard.
I apologize for the inaccuracy, and thank you for catching it!
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Re: 2022 ACF Regionals - Specific Question Discussion

Post by Chimango Caracara »

Sean wrote: Thu Feb 03, 2022 3:42 pm
Similarly, not withholding any punches, 2022 ACF Regionals Packet J wrote: 20. Nderit ware is found with evidence of this practice at sites like Hyrax Hill from the Elmenteitan and Savanna
phases of its namesake period of the Neolithic in the Great Rift Valley. The (emphasize) most recent rock art at
Twyfelfontein depicts a men’s game with this practice, which was abandoned by the Strandlopers, estranging them
from other Khoekhoe (“koy-koy”). Acacia was used to build bomas for this practice similar to the kraals on Nguni
homesteads, which held anga that supplied material for oval shields. Trypanosomiasis and rinderpest limited the
spread of this practice, which led to disputes that divided the Dinka and Nuer (“noo-air”). Selective pressure from
this practice caused the Fulani and Maasai to evolve lactase persistence. For 10 points, what practice of nomadic
African peoples involved raising fatty-humped zebu for hides, meat, and milk?
ANSWER: herding [accept raising cattle or oxen or cows or bulls; accept herding sheep or goats or caprines;
accept pastoralism or transhumance; accept drinking milk or eating dairy before “milk”; accept raising livestock
or animal husbandry; prompt on nomadism; prompt on farming or agriculture or subsistence; prompt on raising
animals]
<Other History>
It looks like at some point the "s" in "Sanga" got deleted and I didn't catch it, so I'm very sorry if that typo threw anyone off.
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Re: 2022 ACF Regionals - Specific Question Discussion

Post by Krik? Krik?! KRIIIIK!!! »

Red Panda Cub wrote: Thu Feb 03, 2022 7:19 am I can't find what this sentence in the Jacob Riis tossup is referring to: "This photographer frequently titled photos for their costs in cents, such as one of a man sleeping on a mattress on top of two barrels." As best I can tell, that photograph is just titled descriptively (which is also the case for pretty much every Riis photo on the ICP website, too). The Riis photographs I could find that include prices (e.g. "Five Cents a Spot", where the price refers to the illegal cost of a bed) also don't seem to fit the description.
Gah, this was a mistake in editing. The photo of the guy on the barrel I refer to in the second part of the sentence is a Riis photo, but isn't one of the ones that titled for their cost in cents, so I apologize for that.

As for prices across the whole in Riis' work, a few sources described how the titling of photos in cents had a double meaning of not only describing what the cost of the goods in the photos were, but also the implied "value" of the people in the photos. That was something Riis was keen on in his writing accompanying the photographs in How the Other Half Lives.
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Re: 2022 ACF Regionals - Specific Question Discussion

Post by Zealots of Stockholm »

Protean wrote: Wed Feb 02, 2022 6:40 pm
2022 ACF Regionals Pack A wrote: 16. In this city, the one-eyed Simeon Brown falls in love with the Holocaust survivor Maria in the novel The Stone Face. Life is described as “occurring underwater” in a location in this city with windows painted white in lieu of curtains. A novel set (emphasize) primarily in this city opens with the narrator describing “the night which is leading [him] to the most terrible morning of [his] life.” At the end of a novel, a character who lives in this city asks a woman, “Isn’t it pretty to think so?” A character who titles a novel primarily set in this city strangles his former boss after a gay affair with the American man David ends. This city is the primary setting of James Baldwin’s novel Giovanni’s Room. For 10 points, name this city that Ernest Hemingway described in his memoir A Moveable Feast.
ANSWER: Paris, France (The Stone Face is by William Gardner Smith. “Isn’t it pretty to think so?” is a quote from Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises.)
It seems suboptimal to clue a notable event that occurs very specifically not in the city the question is asking for. I'm aware that I should be listening more carefully to the question and that I don't know enough about Giovanni's Room or The Stone Face to know where they're set, but recognizing where Jake actually is when he says the quote getting clued and saying "Madrid" is a bit of a hard neg to take at game speed.

As an aside, there also seemed to be a lot of "city" tossup answerlines in lit but this may be from packetizing since the first three packets each had one (Paris, Havana, London) and is a very minor nitpick anyway. I don't have a ton of specific things to point out but echoing earlier comments in the thread that I thought that overall the literature in this set did its job really well - the difficulty was very well-controlled with reasonable answerlines and some very interesting theming. In particular I thought the bonuses were very enjoyable, especially the Ishiguro bonus asking for dignity, the bonus on Vietnamese novels, and the Jesmyn Ward bonus.
Oof, apologies for this. Internal and external playtesters did think it was fine to test this bit of knowledge, though I can understand how that's a frustrating neg.

More broadly, I think your complaint of city tossups is likely a result of packetization/packet ordering. I wrote two for american lit (Chicago, the Paris tossup above), both of which I would argue have a coherent theme and are therefore defensible. London from immigrant literature and the Havana tossup both seem rather defensible as well, though I would agree that if each 1/1 of literature had 2 city tossups (I don't think this is the case), that would be a bit excessive and unideal.

EDIT: after checking, there aren't more tossups on cities, but there are also four tossups on countries: Hungary, Nigeria, New Zealand, and America, sort of (I say since it was asking about it as a concept/location in the poetry of Whitman and not in the "an author from this country" way). Hopefully this doesn't seem like an overuse of literature tossups on geographic locations.
Red Panda Cub wrote: Thu Feb 03, 2022 7:19 am Just some quick comments about the first packet.

I think the Lili'uokalani tossup conflates the 1881 world tour taken by Kalakaua (during which time she was regent), with her own 1887 trip to London. The latter doesn't seem to have been a world tour, but was a smaller trip largely owing to Victoria's jubilee.

The description of the splitting of Huang Gongwang's Dwelling in Fuchun Mountains seems to conflate two different parts of the work's history, though not in a particularly misleading way. Best I can tell, the splitting was an incidental rather than deliberate result of the burning?
You're right, as the intention of the burning was to destroy the artwork. I did have a longer, more contextual leadin originally but cut it down for more accessible middle and easy clues. I don't think the leadin as is should throw anyone with good knowledge of that painting off, though.
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Re: 2022 ACF Regionals - Specific Question Discussion

Post by Aaron's Rod »

I'm going to quote something from the General question discussion thread.
cwasims wrote: Mon Jan 31, 2022 10:45 pm In particular, I found there was an overabundance of questions on contemporary (often American) classical music
I agree here.
cwasims wrote: Mon Jan 31, 2022 10:45 pm Similarly, there were some questions that I found a bit uninspired, like the tossup on "A" in music theory - I'm really not a fan of these questions in part because they're entirely generic: you can literally switch the note values each clue and make the tossup on a completely different answer line. The recurring problem in music theory is also that a huge number of the clues are of essentially equal difficulty or are on things that I think are of dubious real-world significance (Neo-Riemannian theory). I don't really have a solution for how to ask good music theory: I think the "seven" tossup I wrote for 2020 ACF Winter covered a lot of theory stuff in a fairly good way, but I essentially didn't include a music theory tossup in this pasts year's iteration for largely these reasons.
But I strongly disagree here. I share Chris Sims' distaste for, for example, asking about a shared key common across several pieces (I don't have perfect pitch and, with a few exceptions, don't care about such things). I find those questions to be incredibly boring and frustrating; pick random moments from pieces in a given key and string them together.

You may dislike this tossup, but "uninspired" is the last thing I'd call it:
In neo-Riemannian theory, an R transformation on a major triad built on this note results in an F-sharp minor triad. In E minor, this pitch is the bass note of a 4/2 (“four-two”) chord whose root is the dominant. In the major key with a tonic on this note, the Neapolitan chord would be a B-flat major chord. A plagal cadence that begins on a D major resolves to a chord with this note as its root. This note is directly across from E-flat in the circle of fifths. Playing the Aeolian (“ay-OH-lee-in”) mode beginning on this note on a piano would result in the playing of no black keys. C major is the relative major of this note’s minor key. The most common concert pitch used today uses an oboe playing this 440-hertz note as a reference. For 10 points, the minor key with a tonic on what note has no sharps or flats?
ANSWER: A [accept A-440 or A4]
When I read this tossup (after the fact, i.e. I didn't read it to teams at my site) I was so taken aback by it that I had to talk several different people's ears off about it. The first half of this is essentially a computational music theory tossup. You do sometimes get bonuses that test applying music theory knowledge in similar ways, but I had to do some digging to find a recent tossup remotely like this. Sure, you could switch out the first three clues for something a half step higher and make it on B-flat, but the way this question was asked—actually asking players to do music theory in a tossup—was mind-bending for me. In terms of difficulty, was it a wise idea at this level? I dunno. But I definitely found the way it was asked to be inspired.

[Edits for typos]
Last edited by Aaron's Rod on Wed Feb 09, 2022 4:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: 2022 ACF Regionals - Specific Question Discussion

Post by ThisIsMyUsername »

So, I didn't write this tossup on "A" (although I had a hand in adding and tweaking a clue or two) and I don't normally comment much on individual questions any longer. But I think a couple of remarks from me in response to both Chris and Alex are warranted:

If Alex's analysis of the current state of common-link-writing (in music) is true--that these sorts of theory clues have become uncommon outside of NAQT tournaments, where they are still relatively common--then we have an excellent example of the casualties produced by the thirst for tightly-themed tossups. (I was most pleased to see Taylor doing this sort of cluing again.)

There are two charges of "arbitrariness" that are generally levelled against the kind of tossups we are dealing with--such as this tournament's tossup on the pitch class "A." The first is that the connection between any clue and its answer is arbitrary (e.g. Chris's statement that "you can literally switch the note values each clue and make the tossup on a completely different answer line"); the second is that the connections among the clues are arbitrary (e.g. Alex's example of pieces that are in certain keys).

In response to the first of these charges: Naturally, a common-link on the pitch class "A" is never going to be really about testing knowledge of the pitch class "A." It is going to use "A" as a vehicle to test other forms of historical or theoretical knowledge. The important questions, however, are this: Is the knowledge being tested valuable and worth testing? And can this knowledge be tested as effectively in a more tightly themed tossup? In the case of this tossup on "A," the answer to the first question is yes (indeed, this theory knowledge is much more common among college-educated musicians than the ability to process score clues is); and the answer to the second question is no. I would hate to see such knowledge go untapped, due to what is essentially an aesthetic (rather than pragmatic) prejudice.

This answer can be extended to the second charge: Common-links on pieces in certain keys are a way to reward knowledge about particular pieces in ways that a tossup on a composer generally cannot. Like Alex, I do not have perfect pitch. But contra Alex, I generally do not find it difficult to remember what key a piece is in, although I have never attempted to memorize this for quizbowl purposes. This is because what key a piece is in is, at least before the mid-nineteenth or early-twentieth centuries, generally significant. And many musicians refer to certain pieces by their keys rather than their numbers, precisely because the former seem easier to remember.

Two closing thoughts in response to Chris: (1) The clues in the "A" tossup are ordered roughly according to when in a standard college music theory curriculum a student might encounter a particular concept. Although not a perfect measure of "difficulty," I think this is one of the most effective ways of organizing a music theory tossup. (2) Although Riemannian theory is not widely taught outside of Europe, Neo-Riemannian theory is not of "dubious real-world significance." It is arguably one of the most important and widely taught 21st-century theory methodologies in North America, and whether one agrees with or not, it is rare to study certain repertoires (Wagner, film music, etc.) without being asked to employ it.

EDIT: Typos
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Re: 2022 ACF Regionals - Specific Question Discussion

Post by cwasims »

Thanks to Alex and John for the comments on my post – I think it’s useful to try and figure out the best ways to ask about music theory. To be clear, I don’t think this tossup is too “unthemed”: drawing all the clues from music theory certainly makes it thematically coherent (unlike if, say, it decided to also clue some pieces in A major or something). Although I would agree that the clues here are pyramidal, I would still maintain that all of them except the neo-Riemannian theory first line are really pretty easy: from the RCM Music Theory syllabus, inversions of dominant seventh chords are taught contemporaneously with Grade 7 piano (which many people would take at roughly Grade 7 age), Neapolitan chords are tougher (ARCT level) but pretty commonly encountered before then, and then everything else is lower than Grade 7. In other words, this tossup is primarily on material that music pupils, at least in Canada, would be expected to learn in elementary school, which hardly seems ideal for a tournament like ACF Regionals. Furthermore, in my experience, these sorts of clues are extremely common in music theory common links (which are probably also the most common type of theory question), meaning it is in practice a subcategory that draws on material that is substantially easier than probably any other subcategory.

I should defer to John when it comes to the significance of Neo-Riemannian theory – my claim was based primarily on the fact that I have literally never heard anyone mention it outside of QB (including in the music analysis videos I watch sometimes). Aside from its academic importance, though, it seems to come up with very high frequency in the first lines of music theory tossups in my personal experience, which is probably not ideal and to some extent reinforces some of my concerns with the kinds of clues used in many music theory questions.

At the end of the day, I think these sorts of questions are eminently justifiable at high school and low college difficulty, but at the Regionals level and higher I think music theory presents a lot of challenges as a subcategory. There have been some attempts to write different kinds of music theory questions (“parallel” at Terrapin Open comes to mind) which I think should be experimented with a bit more going forward. There may also be ways to incorporate some more music theory-based clues throughout the music distribution, although those may also prove quite difficult in many cases.
Christopher Sims
University of Toronto 2T0
Northwestern University 2020 - ?
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