Winter Closed 2022 - Question-Specific Discussion

[Kino Noir]

Discuss specific questions here.

[caroline]

hi, here are my somewhat overdue notes from the playtest mirror!

so, I really liked this set. (+ the mirror was very well-run and went smoothly, which is important in itself, so thanks for that.) Some things I particularly thought were good about this set’s literature:
- I thought overall it was very polished and there was a lot of attention paid to each question—i.e. where it saw an opportunity to be better or more interesting instead of just "functional" (or even "sort of interesting" -> "more interesting"), it took that opportunity. Lead-ins were largely unique, fun, and well-fleshed out rather than just being “a factually correct and reasonably difficult thing about the answerline,” easy parts were given a lot of care (writing an easy part that achieves its basic functions is, well, easy; writing an interesting easy part which still has relevance to the rest of the question is very hard) and attention to wording was very careful such that when possible it added to the theme of the question or was just generally more interesting, even when the clue was very late/easy (e.g. noting Sartre turned down the Nobel for Eurocentrism reasons, as I’d known he turned down the Nobel but didn’t know that was why).
- Questions with themes were generally very well-themed and discussed a wide variety of themes: gender, religion, death, sexuality, language/diction, so on and so forth. Bonus parts were well-connected and I liked how many of them had 2+ themes going on / secondary / tertiary themes. (this post makes it sound like I am really obsessed with theming which I am, but also less themed questions still had very interesting clues and themed questions had clues which were often interesting in complete isolation from the rest of the question, which is quite important too)
- I liked the variance in answerline types, particularly in bonus parts: “fog” in Dickens instead of just another difficult Dickens novel/character, Anne Carson’s square brackets instead of Sappho/another Sappho poem/quote, “Caribbean Sea” instead of another Walcott TU.

some more specific notes (notes get sparser by packet because I'm lazy, not because packets got worse over time; sorry if anything is outdated/things in the packets have already been changed):
Packet A
- What’s the rationale for using “these things” on the letters tossup? Not saying it’s bad because there does seem to be some sort of reason, I just can’t tell what it is
- I enjoyed the clues focused on death/afterlife in the Jane Eyre TU
- Enjoyed seeing “Happy Endings” clued since Atwood’s non-long fic doesn’t get clued enough
- Nice job on keeping the nonlinear plays in British drama bonus tightly themed
- Praise poetry was fun
- Is La Llorona very literary? Also, I have read “Woman Hollering Creek” and I didn’t find the quote given important or memorable (I mostly just went off knowing the title references her and the protagonist thinks about her a bunch). The link is fun though!
Packet B
- Fun theme/clues on Melville TU
- Liked the commonwealth bonus part, it’s a cool way to ask about a controversial topic in literature
Packet C
- Green tu is v cool!! I normally don't care about Shakespeare but the Shakespeare in this set is fun. I really liked the way the green tu threads together multiple important things about Shakespeare (major quotes, Shakespeare criticism, etc) into this sort of unified whole idea, instead of just focusing on one of his works
- Caribbean Sea tu is a very cool way to link together Walcott’s work
- I liked the alliteration bonus, I don’t care about old English poetry much but I usually stan literary techniques
- Medea/Argentina bonus was cool! I’ve been waiting for Cherrie Moraga to come up
- Nitpick but is the phrase "national book award-winning" in the Erdrich bonus really…doing anything?
- The white savior bonus is cool but I really didn’t realize it was an H—I thought it was an M until I got to the actual M and was just very confused. Then again I don’t think I would have actually put it together without Taylor
Packet D
- Flowers in Imagist poetry though I feel like “petals” should be accepted outright for the “In the Station of a Metro” clues until read—I’d feel a little confused since the poem 1) doesn’t explicitly mention flowers and 2) does mention the petals as part of a different, larger object (the bough).
- The burney/butler/woolf bonus is very well threaded together
Packet E
- The green hair clue in the hair in African-American lit bonus is fun
- Troubadours tu fun
Packet F
- Have complained about the Mina Loy lead-in in the futurism TU already but while the specific quote might be about Futurism, she was associated with a lot of different movements (modernism, dada, surrealism, etc) (also she's extremely hard and the mentioned quote is not even from her most famous poem). I like the rest of the clues in the TU though
- Shaw's Shakespeare criticism is also another fun Shakespeare content approach
- What to do for answer of “letters to Higginson” in the Master letters bonus? (I knew about the letters, that she addressed him as Master, etc. but didn’t realize they were explicitly known as the master letters) also cool lead-in
- American Sonnets is more famous than Lighthead for Terrance Hayes, unless the intention is to make the Hayes part harder? But he’s hard enough even with his easiest clues
Packet G/H (I spaced out a bit so forgot which packet was which)
- PRB tu is cool, I enjoyed that the choices of literary movement answerlines (PRB, Futurism) are somewhat atypical / not usually associated with literature but very important in literature nonetheless
- Unsure how I feel about the Masks lead-in on the Aoi TU because my brain kinda went "oh it's by a Japanese lady and these further clues all sound very Japanese so it's probably some important Japanese woman in lit" and I couldn't think of anybody besides Aoi so I just sat there because I don't know anything for real, just vibes. Then again 1) I have a limited imagination and also 2) biased by knowing Rahul has written about Aoi before lol
- Really enjoyed the Hottentot Venus bonus as a way to talk about some important contemporary poetry
Packet I
- got confused by the Romance Sonanmbulo clues since I would have said sleepwalker, honestly I didn't know what collection that poem was from (I recognize that is a gap in my knowledge) - apparently the title means "sleepwalking ballad" but some translations call it like, "sonamnbulist ballad?" since in the poem it's noted the girl is dreaming, I always assumed she is doing the title sleepwalking and thus a sleepwalker
- Did not play the son in Virginia Woolf TU but it’s a fun idea, good X from Y type q—it can be hard to pull those off so that it's immediately clear what it's wanted / often I figure out the work but am like "So how do I solve for X???" but it was pretty obvious to me in this case
- Liked the bonus part on fog in Dickens. I don't care about Dickens but it's a cool angle / fun to learn Important New Motifs about his work
- The square brackets bonus part <3 Grant said I'm weird because I think "these punctuation marks" is one of the most exciting pronouns to ever hear in a literature question but that's ok because he's a hater
Packet L
- Don't really like the road not taken clue—honestly I’ve never really thought of it as set in the woods since I considered it, you know a metaphorical road, but I'm aware that's on me (I know it literally says “two roads diverged in a yellow wood” but it’s kind of the road that’s important here; maybe being more precise, e.g. a poem which begins by mentioning one of these places?)
- Clarify Durang play is inspired by the Chekhov play so it’s clear it’s a Chekhov-specific character?
Packet M
- The second line clue about Black Orpheus in the Sartre tu feels early/transparent to me, if only because I really can name zero other African journals titled for essays by tossup-able writers at this level.
- I like the palettes TU, don’t have a lot of feelings about VFA Qs normally but it does appeal to the ex-art major in me
- Puzzled by what we’re supposed to get the Japan middle part off of in the Poe world lit bonus — I mostly guessed because Japan has a lot of ghost stories and also I know Edogawa Ranpo exists but nothing about him. Is “The Tattooer” that famous? A quick aseemsDB search informs me it has come up a bunch but mostly pre-2010.
Packet N
- Liked the Gilman clues about her opinions/life, she’s so interesting
TBs
- “Begins with this word” doesn’t really seem like the ideal descriptor/pronoun on the variations bonus part, but also I admit I don’t really have a better idea. I feel like it’s still fine as an H if you remove that the poem is inspired by WCW and use a more specific pronoun

[tpmorrison]

Thanks for the detailed comments, Caroline! Glad to hear you enjoyed the category overall.

- What’s the rationale for using “these things” on the letters tossup? Not saying it’s bad because there does seem to be some sort of reason, I just can’t tell what it is.

I’m a bit confused, is there a different indicator you think would be better? “Things” struck us as pretty inoffensive and clear, but if it was confusing that’s good to know.

- Is La Llorona very literary? Also, I have read “Woman Hollering Creek” and I didn’t find the quote given important or memorable (I mostly just went off knowing the title references her and the protagonist thinks about her a bunch). The link is fun though!

I agree this part is probably less likely to be gotten from pure literature knowledge, but given the importance of the content in the context of the bonus I thought that’d be fine.

- Nitpick but is the phrase "national book award-winning" in the Erdrich bonus really…doing anything?

Not really. I feel like awards and such are fairly common ways to insert color into a question, but no harm in cutting it.

- What to do for answer of “letters to Higginson” in the Master letters bonus? (I knew about the letters, that she addressed him as Master, etc. but didn’t realize they were explicitly known as the master letters) also cool lead-in

I think that should be rejected since part of the notability of the Master letters is that their intended addressee is unclear (Higginson being one of many popular theories). She also wrote more than three letters to Higginson.

- American Sonnets is more famous than Lighthead for Terrance Hayes, unless the intention is to make the Hayes part harder? But he’s hard enough even with his easiest clues

That wasn’t the intention, there just wasn’t that much space and I figured they’re roughly equal in fame. I’ll see if I can squeeze them both in, thanks.

- got confused by the Romance Sonanmbulo clues since I would have said sleepwalker, honestly I didn't know what collection that poem was from (I recognize that is a gap in my knowledge) - apparently the title means "sleepwalking ballad" but some translations call it like, "sonamnbulist ballad?" since in the poem it's noted the girl is dreaming, I always assumed she is doing the title sleepwalking and thus a sleepwalker

This is a good point, I’ll see if that can be pinned down more

- Don't really like the road not taken clue—honestly I’ve never really thought of it as set in the woods since I considered it, you know a metaphorical road, but I'm aware that's on me (I know it literally says “two roads diverged in a yellow wood” but it’s kind of the road that’s important here; maybe being more precise, e.g. a poem which begins by mentioning one of these places?)

This definitely should’ve prompted on “roads,” my bad there. I do think the clue is fair though since the woods setting is pretty famous/important to the poem.

- Puzzled by what we’re supposed to get the Japan middle part off of in the Poe world lit bonus — I mostly guessed because Japan has a lot of ghost stories and also I know Edogawa Ranpo exists but nothing about him. Is “The Tattooer” that famous? A quick aseemsDB search informs me it has come up a bunch but mostly pre-2010.

I was worried this may be a bit tough, my bad. Lafcadio Hearn is probably the easiest of the clues, but I hoped they'd sum to a medium part. I’ll look into nudging it easier.

[DavidB256]

Grateful for the math. I loved the complex analysis tossup on the natural logarithm, the tossup on "tangent," the functional analysis bonus, and the part on queueing theory in the potty parity bonus. I am glad to see the delta method get clued—it was heavily emphasized in my second mathematical statistics class. I have been guilty of this offense myself, but I did not appreciate the full definition of prime ideals in the algebraic geometry bonus; I believe that writers commonly overestimate how comprehensible definitions and equations are when presented verbally. I answered with "ideals" based entirely on (paraphrasing here) "these subsets of rings," but was unable to parse the rest of the clues sufficiently to realize what type of ideal was being asked.

The CS was super fresh; I don't remember any algorithmic programming. Tossups on shells and IP addresses and cybersecurity bonus were cool.

Bonus on Dizzy Gillespie's presidential run was hilarious. Allele frequencies tossup was an excellent and fresh way of asking population genetics. Social science (?) tossup on "control" was well-asked. It was awesome to hear Gee's Bend get clued; Smarthistory's recent video on Gee's Bend quilts is great. I'm always appreciative of deep cuts into Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. I'm not a Tolkien fan, but the Tolkien lore tossup seemed rad. QAnon bonus was a blast. Historiography (?) of Ada Lovelace was awesome. Euler in fluid mechanics (?) was cool. Semiotics tossup on skull and crossbones was fun.

Overall, loved this set. It's up there with ARCADIA and 2021 Penn Bowl for me. The only thing that made me feel squeamish was negging the tossup on competition with "predatory-prey relationships" at the words "differential equations."

[dni]

I enjoyed the XOR and intermediates tossups. The alkyl halides tossup was also very well-executed.

I made the same neg as David on the competition tossup. I also think using the indicator "these interactions" from the very beginning narrowed down the answer space way too much. I personally was only considering competition and predator-prey the entire tossup, even though I didn't recognize any clues.

The plate theory clue in the beams tossup was pretty fraudable.

This may be by design, but the protons biochem tossup mentioned something along the lines of "two of these species being lost in the conversion of [some alcohol] to [some ketone]" pretty early, which seems like something many orgo students would be able to figure out without actually knowing what the clue is talking about.

I disliked the chromatography peaks tossup, as it was pretty clear to me early on you wanted something like "the things you see in chromatography" or "signals on a chromatogram", except those things take a different form between different types of chromatography, e.g. in TLC they're spots, in column chromatography they're bands. I personally feel all the same knowledge could've been tested if the tossup was just on chromatography, but I do recognize and appreciate the effort put into creative answerlines like this.

I think the tilling tossup should anti-prompt on specific methods of tilling, e.g. digging, raking, etc.

Unless I misheard the correct answer, the heterojunction bipolar transistor bonus part should prompt on BJT.

[caroline]

- What’s the rationale for using “these things” on the letters tossup? Not saying it’s bad because there does seem to be some sort of reason, I just can’t tell what it is.

I’m a bit confused, is there a different indicator you think would be better? “Things” struck us as pretty inoffensive and clear, but if it was confusing that’s good to know.

Oh, I was expecting "these objects"? Since it implies something more concrete and substantial, whereas I've always thought of "these things" as a pronoun used to encompass stuff that could be interpreted as more abstract (or just otherwise not an object), IDK if that's just me.

- What to do for answer of “letters to Higginson” in the Master letters bonus? (I knew about the letters, that she addressed him as Master, etc. but didn’t realize they were explicitly known as the master letters) also cool lead-in

I think that should be rejected since part of the notability of the Master letters is that their intended addressee is unclear (Higginson being one of many popular theories). She also wrote more than three letters to Higginson.

:O TIL, didn't know that

Thanks for the responses to my comments—glad it was helpful!

[VSCOelasticity]

The CS was super fresh; I don't remember any algorithmic programming. Tossups on shells and IP addresses and cybersecurity bonus were cool.

I enjoyed the XOR and intermediates tossups. The alkyl halides tossup was also very well-executed.

The plate theory clue in the beams tossup was pretty fraudable.

This may be by design, but the protons biochem tossup mentioned something along the lines of "two of these species being lost in the conversion of [some alcohol] to [some ketone]" pretty early, which seems like something many orgo students would be able to figure out without actually knowing what the clue is talking about.

I disliked the chromatography peaks tossup, as it was pretty clear to me early on you wanted something like "the things you see in chromatography" or "signals on a chromatogram", except those things take a different form between different types of chromatography, e.g. in TLC they're spots, in column chromatography they're bands. I personally feel all the same knowledge could've been tested if the tossup was just on chromatography, but I do recognize and appreciate the effort put into creative answerlines like this.

I think the tilling tossup should anti-prompt on specific methods of tilling, e.g. digging, raking, etc.

Unless I misheard the correct answer, the heterojunction bipolar transistor bonus part should prompt on BJT.

(Quotes edited to include only feedback pertaining to questions I was responsible for.)

This is a little delayed, but thank you David and Dan for the feedback on the science questions!

Regarding the CS and lack of algorithms content, I subdistributed the CS as:

2.5/2.5 total

1.5/1.5 Core Topics
0.5/0.5 Data Structures & Algorithms
0.5/0.5 Computer Architecture/Organization
1 additional question from either Operating Systems, Software Engineering, or Machine Learning

1/1 Other Topics: Programming Languages, Networking, Security & Cryptology, Analysis of Algorithms/Theory of Computation, Quantum Computing, anything else

So, I put a little less emphasis on CS in general and specifically data structures and algorithms within CS. This may be too much of an overcorrection from my time playing quiz bowl when such material was overemphasized. However, I will say that CS is a very broad field, and I want to cover that breadth as much as possible without clogging the other science distribution. Data structures and algorithms tend to to get the short end of the stick.

Re: beams tossup, no one else buzzed on the plate theory clue that I can see. This doesn't mean it wasn't fraudable (given that plates are commonly used items and well adding another dimension in one's imagination does give a beam-like object), and people were clued in but just waited to buzz. There were no other comments about, so I think you just had a good buzz.

Re: protons tossup, that's a fair criticism, but unless the mirrors so far have had a dearth of orgo knowledge, not many people have figured it out there. I had intended it to indicate reduction/oxidation, and I didn't think people would immediately get to proton from it (and only one person successfully buzzed there besides you).

Re: (chromatography) peaks tossup, I agree it's a little suboptimal, especially later on in the tossup. I think just tossing up "chromatography" wouldn't be able to test the type of knowledge this tossup did, though such a tossup would play better. It's always a balance between novelty and playability when going for less standard answer lines, and I apologize that this tossup is less on the playability side than is ideal. I have extended the answer line over the course of the mirrors, but I know that doesn't really alleviate player confusion while playing the tossup.

I've addressed the answer lines for plowing/tilling and heterojunction bipolar transistors. Thanks for catching those, Dan!

[Gene Harrogate]

I don't know whether this set will have any more mirrors, but I'll leave some specific question comments:
-Like that consciousness tu
-Balmoral Castle feels a bit early for Victoria now, for reasons entirely outside your control
-moment is an interesting way to ask about that stuff
-The literature ins for La Llorana feel too difficult for a medium part, meaning that this bonus felt like it wanted players to guess something extra-literary from a description. I actually like breaking category boundaries in literature, but I think that the desired conversion rate should come mostly from literature knowledge.
-Stanislavski tossup is cool
-Waste Land clues felt relatively fresh and good
-Poland tossup feels like it could afford to be a bit harder in the back half for three dot difficulty (I imagine the majority of teams are getting it by "deluge")
-Those Mevlille clues are cool and good
-Getting "pornography" from "medium that objectifies women" feels like one of those easy parts that relied on folks to make the obvious guess without giving them a concrete easy clue to go off of. To my mind, these sorts of easy parts don't discriminate between levels of knowledge but artificially achieve a 90% get rate by relying on people to occasionally fumble. In this case, I can imagine a lot of media that objectify women and I don't think Dworkin's specific argument is an easy part.
-4 line easy part for Atari feels gratuitous
-Yeah that green tossup is great
-Amazing Grace is a really fun/real way to approach a religion tossup. I generally liked this set's RMP quite a bit.
-Pischke is also an author on Mostly Harmless Economics
-Alliteration feels a good deal easier to me than the other lit hard parts in this set
-The restoration of Notre Dame bonus was such a cool angle to take to ask about gothic architecture!
-I like that this set asked about things like Killers of the Flower Moon
-I like the Nina Simone tossup, though I'm a bit curious as to why it ended up in Other Academic? Feels like a straightforward Other Arts topic to me.
-Other tossup in Amhist is neat. This tournament had a lot of fun "objects and words" kind of tossups like that (and the moment tu above, and the red tu later)
-That Southern Ocean tu is a really good way to write geo
-Tolkien tu was one of my faves
-I thought the troubadour tu was excellent, though a bit unfortunate in how it overlaps with other content in the set (like the Waste Land tu)
-M and H labels switched in the Coleridge bonus?
-moon/collodion/Blue Marble is another cool and non-traditional other arts topic
-NCAA tossup was cool
-Absolutely love the Joyce tossup
-The angle used for the literature tossups on Futurism and Pre-Raphaelites is cool, though it felt like a bit much to do that twice
-Yeah Shaw v Shakespeare is a good topic choice
-Packet F appears to have 3 lit bonuses in the first 6 questions
-Bonuses like the Monsters Inc. one definitely gave the set a unique feel that I, for one, enjoy in a housewrite
-I like the set's emphasis on historiography, like the Michel-Rolph Trouillot bonus
-It seemed like teams had trouble getting to the right answer on "underground" from Invisible Man
-Amazon tossup is cool though suffers I think from a lot of sets having done very similar questions in the last
-Glass tu is fun
-I just want to say I appreciate the questions labelled <Parameswaran> especially for being quick for readers
-portraits is interesting, I like the art questions that take more of a macroscopic approach like that
-What would we do without zinc
-I'm really unsure how I feel about this Roma question. I get not wanting to accept a slur, but the question is also effectively asking the player to do that by asking for the "title people" from Romancero Gitano. I feel like there should be a directed prompt there, an outright accept, or just don't write that particular commonlink.
-Ada Lovelace feels like a good use of the other academic slot
-"This president prided himself on never tipping his barber, and the first statewide anti-tipping law was passed during his term. This man is better known for tipping the scales as America’s heaviest president." Best bonus in the set.
-Knots bonus is another good use of other academic
-Great Alien tossup
-Rivers tossup is another other arts banger

[tpmorrison]

Lots of great stuff

Thanks for the detailed comments Henry! Glad to hear you liked a lot of the questions and appreciate the constructive notes, which have been quite helpful.

-Packet F appears to have 3 lit bonuses in the first 6 questions

Bonuses 1 and 7 are both lit, but that's it for the first half. Not sure if you're maybe thinking of the James Agee bonus, which is classified as film.

[Gene Harrogate]

Bonuses 1 and 7 are both lit, but that's it for the first half. Not sure if you're maybe thinking of the James Agee bonus, which is classified as film.

For the posted packets, bonus 1 is on Shakespeare, 4 is on Pablo Neruda, and 6 is on Dickinson. Not sure if that got switched for the current working version.

[Mahavishnu]

I thought the set was really, really good. Here's some commentary on the first five packets, I'll probably provide more later.

Packet A
- Georgetown TU was fantastic
- I liked the percussion tossup. I got a bit confused by the first-line (assuming you wanted a specific percussion instrument that was featured in part of - Higdon’s concerto), so perhaps an introductory note of some type could be given? In either case the answerline should probably accept a wider range of the instruments used in the concertos or at least the ones that readers may not know are percussion instruments.
- The Rijksmuseum tossup shouldn’t have a name as Dutch as “Gerrit” in the second sentence.
- Really liked the Seoul TU
- Jane Eyre TU might be too easy too early; I haven’t read the book but the description of the Red-Room punishment (which was evocative and well-written) seemed a bit early for that clue
- “Digital” was a cool idea although I’ve never heard of almost any of it
- I was aware of Thomas Ewing’s involvement in cross-border fighting between Kansas and Missouri, but couldn’t remember which of the two he had fought for. Depending on what level of knowledge was intended to be tested, the geographic clue given (“in the north of this state”) wasn’t particularly useful for me due to the roughly west-east relation of Kansas and Missouri. If it’s judged to be appropriate for the first-line perhaps this could be changed to “northwest”?
- Moment TU was a great idea, as was amniotic fluid
- Name of the Rose bonus seemed a little tough
- I get that its in the Lit distro, but La Llorona as written is too hard without some more information nailing it down
- Liked the Kishinev bonus

Packet B
- Stanislavski was written really well
- It didn’t stop me from buzzing, but perhaps the Louis XIV TU could be clearer that Louis XIV was actually dancing in the Royal Ballet de la Nuit; it seems to point towards the composer right now
- Looking it up now, the first line of the Catholic Church TU refers to an assassinated priest who is not Oscar Romero. However, that line coupled with the other power clues certainly helped me Gettier my way into getting the question right; unclear if that should be addressed
- Really liked the halides TU even though I’m a buffoon
- Waste Land TU seemed fresh
- I understand that houses and villas are not the same thing. Even if I wasn’t really buzzing on context clues more than knowledge, I’m not sure I wouldn’t have said villas anyway because when “Roman residential building” has been established to the player “house” seems like an answer that isn’t going to be sufficient; given that you accept residences perhaps description acceptable could help here
- Luxe, Calme et Volupté seems pretty hard for a middle part
- Peanuts seems a bit easy for a middle in the jazz bonus. Doubt it can be re-ordered well, but perhaps if “food” is replaced with something less pointed it could work
- Liked the Popul Vuh clues

Packet C
- Thank you for cluing Robert Greene
- Chirality question had good clues
- Don’t doubt the “realness” of the congestive heart failure TU, but it seems too real for the majority of people playing this set; would be interested to see buzz curve on this one
- “Amazing Grace” was a good idea
- Pizzicato seemed fraudable to me, but there are probably enough possible answers where this is a me problem
- I liked the hobo bonus

Packet D
- Voodoo initiation was well-written
- Although the clues are cool, I thought the Southern Ocean TU was pretty easy to fraud, given it being a body of water that is 1) large, 2) recently defined, and 3) near or touching another sea that is named for a Russian person
- There was a general consensus among history players at the FSU site that Seven Years’ War was too easy too early
- I negged Pessoa out of brain-death but the clues are really good
- I think compared to other science questions, the power mark on the altitude TU should be moved up; a straightforward description of the lapse rate seems really generous for power in this set
- “Songlines” seems a bit out of pocket to establish Aboriginals as a middle part in an other arts bonus given most people’s familiarity with that topic in relation to native spiritual practices
- Compared to other hard-parts Muisca seems a bit soft; I imagine removing the direct naming of Colombia would probably be enough
- Really cool Pegasus hard part
- Not a big deal but the Colombia bonus is really close to the Muisca bonus
- Pseudo-Dionysus has [II] instead of a difficulty marking

Packet E
- Me and another player thought the five in jazz TU dropped clues too early (the self-referenced “greatest ever” concert in jazz seems easy for a first-line) and didn’t really have a really wide answerspace
- I liked the Peter the Great TU
- Really wasn’t a fan of the tilling TU, which me and the player who got it were both thinking it seemed very obvious by the second line
- Red TU was really good, as was the Concorde TU. Back-to-back bangers
- Me and a philosophy major weren’t major fans of the motion TU; to me the third line seems guessable (although I wasn’t familiar with the terms of art used) while it just really cliffs hard at the Heraclitus clue
- Truman in the Middle East was a cool theme
- qPCR bonus seemed tough all around, and dilution easy part should probably be more straightforward in the second sentence; “in general, this action involves adding another liquid to lower the concentration of one species” or something because as written it confused players in multiple rooms

[Hot Soup]

I had a great time playing this set; thank you to the writers and editors for their hard work. For bio, I really enjoyed the TU on allele frequency and heart failure, two topics very close to my heart that seems underasked at this difficulty. In no particular order, I also enjoyed the TUs on lights (from mythology), Catholic Church (cluing liberation theology), Seoul, and Vonnegut as the character. The TU on alkyl halides was also a very good idea even though I messed up in answering it.

A couple of nitpicky comments: I was not a huge fan of cluing Rb in the first half of retina tossup, as the lateral thinking required to figure out that the question is asking for the retina based on the name of the gene seemed a bit tough to pull off at game speed. The other bio player on our team also recognized the Rb clues early on but couldn't connect it to the "structure" being asked for. The mention of "sarira" in the second line of the Buddha tossup seemed a bit too early to me, although I enjoyed the general theme of asking about Buddhist relics.

[Ehtna]

Reserving any thoughts for other questions in this set, the worst question we heard by far was the tossup on the Roma focusing on Garcia Lorca's poetry and here's why:

1. Certainly feel free to disagree with me here, but I don't think the answerline is very obvious/specific given some of the clues. As Caroline pointed out above (and apologies if this did end up getting changed between when they played and when I played and as such this point is moot), the middle part of the question's reliance on clues from "Romancero Sonambulo" points much more towards a sleepwalker or somnambulist than more generally a Romani person. I know earlier clues point much more directly towards the correct answer, but seeing as the "Romancero Sonambulo" area is where most teams are likely buzzing, that feels rather unideal.
2. I don't understand the motivation behind this specific commonlink. Sure, I can be convinced that Garcia Lorca's Romani identity and the Romani community had an impact on his writing and is worth testing knowledge on. But this question would have been perfectly fine as a tossup on Garcia Lorca himself without any of the potentials issues that present themselves. This question ended up feeling like one of the main offenders of this set trying to be cute that I wrote about in the general discussion thread.
3. Respectively, this is a tossup where the main answerline is a slur. Every quote and title mentioned in the question uses the pejorative to refer to the Roma. I don't have any problem with Garcia Lorca using the term (especially given that he was Romani, to the best of my knowledge), but I do take issue with this set-up meaning that the first answer teams are going to think to say is the slur. The fact that the slur isn't the main answerline implies to me that the writers and editors recognized this issue, but were still okay with following through on the tossup.
4. Because the "real" answerline of this tossup is a slur, you're effectively compelling people to give the slur as an answer. In our game, I believe most of the literature players knew this was a Garcia Lorca-themed question at the "Green, how I want you green" line, but essentially all had the following throught process:
"Okay, this is Garcia Lorca" --> "They're asking for a people Garcia Lorca wrote about with a collection titled for them?" --> "Well, he did write a poetry collection titled [pejorative] Ballads" --> "Surely there's no way they'd toss that up???"
Someone eventually got the question at that line, but we all had very similar reactions of initial hesitancy to buzz, followed by disbelief afterward as to what we just heard. And I know our experience probably wasn't the universal experience, but frankly I'm shocked that this question got all the way to the final mirror without some issues raised about its playability and reasonableness as a tossup answerline.

I don't want to rag on the people who wrote this question and looked over it, but to me, this question was a very bad idea that kind of put the nail in the coffin about my opinions of this set. The way I interpret it, there's no reason this couldn't have been a Garcia Lorca question. But in this instance, the writing team ended up favoring this strive for creativity over playability to an uncomfortable degree. Do better.