EMACS (computer science side event, 2023)

[anderson]

(I edited this post on 7/6 to include finalized details about this tournament.)

Hi everyone,

This is an announcement for EMACS (Event Mainly About Computer Science), a computer science/culture side event scheduled for summer/autumn 2023. It will be available for mirrors from July 22 tentatively through the end of the year or so. The set is edited by me and includes contributions from Brian Chen, Benji Nguyen, Wayne Zhao, Josh Xiong, Ryan Gossiaux, and Ryan Rosenberg.

The difficulty mostly ranges from regionals to nationals level (3-4 dots on the college quizbowl calendar difficulty scale) - I'd say the theoretical content is pretty consistently nats difficulty, while the rest has a wider range. A small portion (~5%) of the questions have very difficult answerlines that would be considered tough even at Chicago Open, while the rest would likely be fine at a regs-nats level or below. Despite the difficulty, I believe that most (~60-70%) of the questions will be approachable to anyone interested in computers or technology, even if they e.g. don't know how to code.

There will be powers. Questions are generally around 8 lines (about 850-900 characters) before powermarking.

The set has 8 packets of 20 tossups each, with the following distribution (a handful of questions cross multiple categories, in which case I tried my best to pick one):
3 theoretical CS (e.g. algorithms and data structures, complexity theory)
6 “applied” CS (technical topics outside of theoretical computer science, such as software engineering, hardware, security, etc.)
6 culture/modern world (this is very broad, but could contain basically any non-technical content related to computers - I'm imagining that many questions could fit in one of Mike Bentley’s technology tournaments)
3 “miscellaneous” (computer-adjacent topics that don’t necessarily fit anywhere above - this could be anything from computational linguistics to electronic music)
2 “trash” (things that are not actually computer science, like literature, movies/TV, Internet culture, etc.)

The fee is $10 per player, part of which will be donated to charity. Please let me know (PM, e-mail, Discord all fine) if you're interested in mirroring this set or have any questions.

[VSCOelasticity]

Excited for this (even as a Vim user)!

[Fado Alexandrino]

Maybe I shouldn't have dropped out of grad school.

Excited regardless.

[AlexLi]

Really looking forward to this. Thanks for your effort!

[Mike Bentley]

Is this tournament still happening?

[anderson]

Yep, this is still happening.

To give a general status update, the tournament is currently 40% written (and I'm very exited to share the questions we've been working on!). I've recently been ramping up writing and am going to make a push over the next couple months to finish by early July, ideally. In particular, I'm interested in running this at Chicago Open and could have it ready by then if there's enough interest.

That said, I understand there's still a lot of work left, and have been considering bringing in 1 or 2 more people to spread out the effort. So, while I'm making this post, I might as well add: if anyone reading this wants to help write and/or playtest questions, feel free to contact me on Discord or e-mail.

[anderson]

This tournament is now a little under 70% finished. I'm sufficiently confident in the set being ready by mid-July, and it's looking very likely that I'll be playing CO, so I want to check if there's sufficient interest in running this on CO Sunday.

Per Young's suggestion, I've made a sheet for gauging interest, so if you would like to play this at CO, please put your name down. If it looks like there's enough for at least ~6 teams of ~3 players, I'll ask about fitting this into the side event schedule (and if not, I'll still run an online mirror sometime).

Similarly, if anyone wants to run this event at other side event weekends, please let me know!

Also, now that a big chunk of the set has been written, here's some details on what it's looking like:

• We're sticking with the distribution in the original announcement, though unsurprisingly there are a bunch of questions that cross multiple categories. I've made a concerted effort to cover a variety of subfields, though I wouldn't be surprised if some bias towards the areas I'm familiar with leaked through.
• The difficulty is looking closer to nats on average, but it's pretty hard to judge - e.g. I've been testing questions with non-quizbowl friends interested in CS and they've been doing well.
• I'm hoping that, despite the difficulty, most of the tournament will still be accessible to a general audience. Right now, I'd say that almost all of the "non-technical" content and a decent but small portion of the "technical" content is approachable to people with a general interest in computers and technology, even if they haven't taken a CS course or know a programming language.
• I'll solicit playtesters when the set is closer to being done, which should give a better sense of the difficulty and approachability. (and as in the previous post, feel free to contact me if you'd be interested in this)

[mehatamm]

Is there an estimated date when an online mirror would be happening? I'm very excited for this set!

[anderson]

My best guess would be sometime in August/September - I'll set up a date poll when I have a better idea.

[anderson]

One last progress update: this tournament is now more than 90% written and edited, and I'm hoping to start playtesting next weekend - I'm still looking for a couple more playtesters, so please reach out if you're interested!

This set should be ready for mirrors starting the weekend of July 22, and I'll make a thread sometime next month with more details about an online mirror.

[VSCOelasticity]

One last progress update: this tournament is now more than 90% written and edited, and I'm hoping to start playtesting next weekend - I'm still looking for a couple more playtesters, so please reach out if you're interested!

This set should be ready for mirrors starting the weekend of July 22, and I'll make a thread sometime next month with more details about an online mirror.

I can playtest if you need people still.

[Adventure Temple Trail]

There are a bunch of unteamed free agents still on the field sheet, with six duos and three staffers registered -- any thought of expanding to triples?

[anderson]

Now that the online mirror is done, I plan to post the packets soon, but I'll wait a bit just in case anyone else is interested in running a mirror. If I don't hear anything in the next few weeks, I'll put the packets up on the archive.

[voicedvelarnasal]

is this going to get posted to the archive soon?

[anderson]

Sorry for the long delay, but EMACS is clear and has been posted to the archive here. I've also put together buzzpoint stats here (thanks Jordan!) for those who are interested.

I've also requested to archive the private forum, but in the meantime, feel free to join the usergroup if you want to read it or add any discussion.

Thanks to everyone who played!