2023 ACF Nationals Specific Question Discussion

[Krik? Krik?! KRIIIIK!!!]

This thread is for discussion of specific questions of 2023 ACF Nationals. The editors are correcting grammar and other minutiae before posting the packets later this week. However, we can copy and paste questions until then. A thread about general discussion of the set and tournament can be found here.

[Adventure Temple Trail]

Could I see the answer lines for "shear stress", "liquidity preference," "abolition of slavery in Brazil", and the public health-y tossup on "indigenous people"? From what I gathered in tournament-hallway conversations, these questions (and a few other examples that don't coming to mind immediately) rejected relatively common shorthand answers that many players would expect to be accepted or prompted -- and had those shorthand answers accepted/prompted/rejected in a non-standard manner by different moderators in different rooms. That's not great for fairness.

I also found it confusing that the question on the month of Muharram seemed to be about the day of Ashura for almost its entire length and then swerved (though it did accept Ashura until mention as far as I know). Could I see the text of that question? Did any clues before the word "Ashura" refer to other observances at other times in Muharram?

[VSCOelasticity]

ANSWER: shear stress [accept shear force or shear load until “force” is read; prompt on stress; prompt on load or force until “force” is read]

ANSWER: liquidity preference [accept demand for money or monetary demand or demand for cash; accept “Liquidity Preference as Behavior Towards Risk”; prompt on liquidity]

ANSWER: abolition of slavery in Brazil [or Brazilian anti-slavery movement; or ending slavery in Brazil; or equivalent descriptions, such as emancipation of slaves in Brazil or manumission of Brazilian slaves; accept descriptions of ending the slave trade to Brazil; prompt on abolition of slavery, anti-slavery, manumission, emancipation, or equivalents by asking “in what country?”] (The first sentence refers to Francisco José do Nascimento, or “Dragão do Mar.” Luiz Gama wrote about Luisa Mahin’s participation in the Malê revolt.)

ANSWER: Native American people [or First Nations people; accept Indigenous Americans; accept more specific answers like Gitxsan people or Havasupai people; accept Navajo or Diné people until “Navajo” is read; accept Indigenous Peoples Council on Biocolonialism]

I believe those are the answer lines, with the bolding and underlining properly transferred.

I apologize for not prompting on just "shear". That was an oversight.

[knife emoji]

With regard to the question on Indigenous people since Jon's posted the answerline: I tried to flesh out the answerline to accept the common equivalents the editors could come up with and each of the more specific groups clued in the question, but of course it's possible I may have missed some likely answers. I'd be curious to hear which shorthand answers the answerline failed to account for that people gave in rounds, and I apologize for the oversight there.

With regard to the Muharram question, here's the text:

During this observance, Sakineh’s voice narrates much of the nowheh (“NO-heh”) poetry performed by girls. A central voice in poetic narrations during this observance is that of a woman who became the spiritual “conqueror of Damascus” after she addressed its court after the Night of the Dispossessed. Women’s gatherings during this observance occur in places called zaynabiyyeh. Vocalizing during this observance displays solidarity with a historical jihad, so an imam will intercede on the Day of Judgment for the people, often women, who ritually weep during it. Ta’ziyeh are reenactments of the event commemorated by this observance, which also involves matam, or chest-beating. The permissibility of tatbir, or self-flagellation, during this observance is contested. For 10 points, Āshūrā’ takes place on the tenth day of what month-long observance, during which Shias mourn the martyrs of the Battle of Karbala?
ANSWER: mourning of Muharram [accept Azadari; accept Sogvari; accept Aza-e-Hussain; accept Āshūrā’ until read; prompt on grieving Husayn or commemorating Husayn or remembering Husayn or similar answers; until “Karbala” is read, prompt the dead from Karbala in place of “Husayn”]
<Religion>

The clues in this tossup refer to rituals practiced through of the entirety of the month of Muharram (including, but not limited, to on the day of Ashura, though perhaps most famously so) in various Iranian and South Asian Shia contexts.

[Adventure Temple Trail]

I think a team was summarily negged for saying "aboriginal peoples", which is a term that some do use for people outside Australia.

Thanks for the clarification on Muharram. It was probably the right call to just accept Ashura outright rather than try something like "this multi-day observance/time period". (By contrast, I wonder if something like "this multi-word term" might have kept people on track for answers like "shear stress" or "liquidity preference".)

[halle]

I’ll share some thoughts, including some things that aren’t that major, but which have been nagging at me since, so they feel worth saying if only to stop them from nagging at me. My impressions of the set are largely positive, in the sense that I was trying to keep myself in the moment by not dwelling too much on questions once they were over, and not very much was frustrating enough to linger beyond the end of the round, and several questions were delightful enough that I did keep thinking about them for the rest of the weekend.

First of all, and possibly the question I think was the most objectionable in the set, was a bonus part in the finals that asked teams to identify the largest planet in the solar system. I didn’t notice this at the time, because I wasn’t paying that much attention to bonuses outside of my categories in a game that I wasn’t actively playing, but I was reading the packets to a staffer who’d missed hearing the finals, and we were both struck by the absurdity of being able to get points at a collegiate nationals-level tournament for knowing which of the planets is the really really big one. Was this intended to balance out the seemingly insanely difficult hard part? I don’t think giving away free points is the way to create balance on a bonus (I am aware that you can absolutely get confused and say the wrong planet is the largest one, but you can get confused and say the wrong thing on any question, so that doesn’t excuse making your bonus something you learn by 2nd grade at the latest).

The rest of these thoughts will be in roughly the order of what I heard/noted at the time. By the end of the first round, I had already made a note wondering why Indonesia had come up more than once. I can’t actually see from my notes where the second Indonesia mention is besides the bonus part entirely on Indonesian history, so maybe I got confused on some Mauritius clues, but there were two more tossups on Indonesia in the rest of the set, with answerlines of Java (which was an answerline in the first bonus) and Indonesia. Indonesia is a large country where a lot of things happened and continue to happen, but 1/1 of the same answerline within 5 rounds doesn’t feel ideal, and is certainly enough to make people hesitate to buzz when the same country comes up again the next day as an answer, as well as possibly some other scattered clues in the many other SE Asia questions.

I didn’t run up against any answerlines where I felt I knew the answer but didn’t know what to say (except the buzzes where I was 100% sure it was “the one who wrote Fun Home” and “Jackson Pollock’s wife” and simply could not produce more specific information to say, lol, also shame on me for thinking of Krasner as “Pollock’s wife”) and being allowed to say “so, like, Irish Unionism(?), or like where they don’t want to leave or be separate from the UK? The opposite of Irish independence” without being prompted for a more precise term was greatly appreciated. That was also just a fun question in general.

I don’t know much about the specifics of 1960s American history but the giveaway of the 1967 tossup seemed to basically say “this is the year before the really important one that you were probably thinking of first, so if the other team negged, subtract a year from their answer.” This seems like a somewhat unkind conceit for a question—you want to reward players who know things, but knowing the exact year that some of the early clues happened in isn’t necessarily better knowledge than knowing that the thing happened between 1965 and 1970 and that the most plausible year in that range to toss up is 1968, depending on how you feel about the importance of the metagame.

I thought that the female late-20th century photographers bonus was super fun, but I hesitated a bunch over the second two parts because the first elided Goldin’s name in a way that suggested I would have to identify the artist of The Ballad of Sexual Dependency for the second part, and then that part didn’t start with “name this other artist,” so I took the full five seconds trying to figure out if she did some things that sounded a whole lot like things Arbus is famous for. The description of the photograph in the lead-in also mentioned a cigarette if I’m not mistaken, which made me hesitate to direct that answer for the third part. I’m extremely, extremely happy to see this content come up, though. Also Issey Miyake and Elsa Schiaparelli content. That’s always appreciated in a similar “oh it’s my fave” kind of way.

I’d be interested in seeing the exact wording of the “Fallopian tubes” tossup clue about endometriosis. Endometriosis’s whole thing is that it happens all over the place and fucks things up, so I’m not sure how well ovaries or other reproductive or abdominal organs were ruled out by the wording (I think it said something like “occluded” which did suggest a passage?).

An early clue in the “vaginal microbiome” tossup made me start to write down “wouldn’t it be funny to toss up a microbiome as an ecosystem” before I realized that I’d identified that early clue correctly and had to buzz and say that. This made it one of the more rewarding buzzes of the day for me, but my initial thought that calling a microbiome an ecosystem would be a good joke might indicate that this was not the optimal indicator for this question. I’m not sure if there’s a way to ask for the microbiome specifically that won’t confuse people who just know these are things happening in the vagina, but I think I land on the side of appreciating the attempt, because rewarding people who know that the vagina has a microbiome that is important seems very worthwhile.

I really did not like the Ottonian art tossup. Medieval, Western European art is essentially a 500+ year progression of minor developments of the exact same motifs, and I don’t think this tossup did much to rule out the periods on either side of the Ottonian era. “A cross shaped artwork with a crucifixion scene on it” and “a figure surrounded by the four evangelists” are perhaps the most popular motifs in that entire 500 year span, and I think another work was highlighted for having an extremely geometric background, which is pretty much something you could say about most art from the Middle Ages. I'm aware that there were more specific details mentioned in addition to these general descriptions, but I still had a lot of difficulty ruling other things out. Part of this is that I’m salty that I didn’t convert this tossup when I spent most of my week studying for a memorization-based final exam for a graduate-level survey course on the art of the Middle Ages in Western Europe which focused on identifying which era various artworks are from, but this question not being convert-able by someone who did that isn’t ideal! I didn’t even have that hard a time with the material on the exam! I’d love to reread this question to see if I missed some information that should’ve been more recognizable to me and that I’m jumping to conclusions based on poorly processing the clues at game speed. To end on a positive note, I was extremely gratified when I could convert the bonus part on Augustine, the 6th century missionary to the British, since I learned a whole bunch about his gospel book. There are a whole lot more positive memories of the set that I could mention, but they're mostly along the lines of "I got a good buzz and therefore think the question was dope," and I could spin that into statements along the lines of "I think the film in this set was really tuned into what people who take art film seriously are likely to have encountered," and I plan to when I get around to a general discussion post, likely after reviewing some of the packets.

[mico]

I don’t know much about the specifics of 1960s American history but the giveaway of the 1967 tossup seemed to basically say “this is the year before the really important one that you were probably thinking of first, so if the other team negged, subtract a year from their answer.” This seems like a somewhat unkind conceit for a question—you want to reward players who know things, but knowing the exact year that some of the early clues happened in isn’t necessarily better knowledge than knowing that the thing happened between 1965 and 1970 and that the most plausible year in that range to toss up is 1968, depending on how you feel about the importance of the metagame.

I can address this one. I knew that this answerline was going to play out how you mentioned in some of the rooms. The early clues make it abundantly clear that these are all events that happened in the context of the later part of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. For many people, 1968 is the first "go-to" as a potential answer. My angle for this question, which was similarly conveyed in the wonderful submission from Harvard, was to probe knowledge of the "long, hot summer" of 1967 in which race riots spread across the United States partially in response to police brutality in urban areas. The giveaway would have been more tightly-themed if it had stuck to the "long, hot summer," but I thought it needed a bit more context and added in the "assassination of Martin Luther King Jr." clue accordingly. I apologize if it made your, or anyone's, experience worse because it made the question feel gimick-y and less important or reduced fairness. I'll attach the question for context:

4. In this year, Arnold Hess agreed to stay on the Board of Education to prevent opposition to his tapped successor. In this year, opposition to a planned medical school using funds from the “Model Cities” Program amplified an incident at the William P. Hayes Homes. A warning of forthcoming violence if “America don’t come around” was given in Cambridge, Maryland, in this year by H. Rap Brown. In response to prior events during this year, Walter Headley announced a tough-on-crime policy for so-called “young hoodlums” summed up as “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.” The Kerner Commission probed events during this year that culminated with one in which a bullhorn-wielding John Conyers attempted to quell protests later dealt with by George Romney. For 10 points, name this year in which the Detroit Riot spotlighted a “long, hot summer” one year before the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
ANSWER: 1967 [prompt on ’67] (Newark Mayor Hugh Addonzio was set to appoint white councilman James Callaghan, who did not possess a post-secondary education, over City Budget Director Wilbur Parker, the first Black public accountant in New Jersey. Taxi driver John Smith was arrested near the Hayes Homes in Newark.)
<American History>

[knife emoji]

Here's the text of the Fallopian tubes tossup:

These structures are the most common location of Walthard nests. A serous (“SEER-us”) carcinoma called STIC that arises in the stem-like peg cells of these structures may be the true origin of high-grade serous carcinomas of [emphasize] another organ. Interaction with these structures’ epithelium capacitates the CatSper channels of certain rheotactic cells, allowing them to move up these structures’ temperature gradient. The documentary The Bleeding Edge highlights the failures of the deprecated Essure procedure, which occluded these structures by inserting metal coils into them. A contrast leak during an HSG indicates these structures’ patency. Occlusions of these structures, like those caused by a hydrosalpinx or endometriosis, account for 20 percent of female infertility cases. For 10 points, finger-like projections called fimbriae terminate what paired structures that carry eggs from the ovaries to the uterus?
ANSWER: Fallopian tubes [or uterine tubes; or oviducts; accept salpinges or salpinx until “hydrosalpinx” is read; prompt on uterus; prompt on tubes] (HSG stands for hysterosalpingography.)

I take your point about endometrial tissue being widely disseminated in endometriosis, but I hope the wording of the clue, which first lists hydrosalpinx and only uses endometriosis as a possible example of the cause of an occlusion, rules out other sites.

Regarding the vaginal microbiome: to the best of my knowledge, the vaginal microbiome has not been an answerline in quizbowl before, but the gut microbiome has. Those questions used the pronouns "community," "system," and "habitat"; Adam, Jon and I felt that "ecosystem" was probably a better and more accurate pronoun, but I'd love to hear others' suggestions for better ones if people have any. I'm glad you appreciated the attempt, in any case!

[Cheynem]

As someone who has negged questions on the 1967 Detroit Riot by saying the "1968 Detroit Riot," I'm sympathetic to, as what Bugs Bunny says, "year trouble," but that's a fine question. The giveaway perhaps makes it sound cheaper because it was undoubtedly added to boost conversion and make it easier, but the Long Hot Summer, a perfectly valid topic to ask about at Nationals, was in 1967. i realize that globally 1968 is the more significant year (and there certainly are super major things in the U.S. as well), but 1967 is certainly fair game. My only quibble is the lead-in; if the footnote explaining what the clue means is like 1.5 lines...well, I question if players are going to have enough context to figure out what that means. All the other clues I recognize and are good (although I'd almost also certainly say 1968 like a moron too for a good chunk of the question).

[VSCOelasticity]

First of all, and possibly the question I think was the most objectionable in the set, was a bonus part in the finals that asked teams to identify the largest planet in the solar system. I didn’t notice this at the time, because I wasn’t paying that much attention to bonuses outside of my categories in a game that I wasn’t actively playing, but I was reading the packets to a staffer who’d missed hearing the finals, and we were both struck by the absurdity of being able to get points at a collegiate nationals-level tournament for knowing which of the planets is the really really big one. Was this intended to balance out the seemingly insanely difficult hard part? I don’t think giving away free points is the way to create balance on a bonus (I am aware that you can absolutely get confused and say the wrong planet is the largest one, but you can get confused and say the wrong thing on any question, so that doesn’t excuse making your bonus something you learn by 2nd grade at the latest).

I'm a bit baffled that this was "the most objectionable [question] in the set." Maybe I'm just an oaf, but I definitely did not care about solar system facts at all for most of my life, and I did not learn this in 2nd grade (or at least I had forgotten it before learning astro for qb). I did not think this was insultingly easy at all. And it certainly wasn't made easier to make up for "an insanely difficult hard part," which is not how I construct questions.

[Borrowing 100,000 Arrows]

I really liked the conceit/content of the 1967 tossup, but I'm not a huge fan of year tossups because they're very easy to fuck up at game speed. For example, I buzzed right at Kerner Commission which I knew was about the 1967 Detroit riot and the other riots that summer, but I also knew it wasn't released until 1968 which is the more famous year; so, I went with the latter and got negged. I kinda feel like a lot of other people knew what was going on, and negged for similar reasons.

[Serpentine284]

Seconded on the 1967 tossup. Both myself and my teammate realized from the third line that it was cluing the long, hot summer, but neither of us seemed to remember if it was in 1967 or 1968 (and I did eventually neg with 1968). I'm not sure how well it would have played, but perhaps just tossing up the "long, hot summer" as "this period" and having anti-prompts on specific events during then would have worked better?

[halle]

First of all, and possibly the question I think was the most objectionable in the set, was a bonus part in the finals that asked teams to identify the largest planet in the solar system. I didn’t notice this at the time, because I wasn’t paying that much attention to bonuses outside of my categories in a game that I wasn’t actively playing, but I was reading the packets to a staffer who’d missed hearing the finals, and we were both struck by the absurdity of being able to get points at a collegiate nationals-level tournament for knowing which of the planets is the really really big one. Was this intended to balance out the seemingly insanely difficult hard part? I don’t think giving away free points is the way to create balance on a bonus (I am aware that you can absolutely get confused and say the wrong planet is the largest one, but you can get confused and say the wrong thing on any question, so that doesn’t excuse making your bonus something you learn by 2nd grade at the latest).

I'm a bit baffled that this was "the most objectionable [question] in the set." Maybe I'm just an oaf, but I definitely did not care about solar system facts at all for most of my life, and I did not learn this in 2nd grade (or at least I had forgotten it before learning astro for qb). I did not think this was insultingly easy at all. And it certainly wasn't made easier to make up for "an insanely difficult hard part," which is not how I construct questions.

I should've worded this in a less dismissive manner, but I do think that not knowing that Jupiter is the biggest planet is extremely uncommon. I think of Jupiter as "the biggest one" in the same way as I think of Mars as "the red one," and I think this is pretty common, given that the two middle school tossups on Jupiter that I can find on aseemsdb both have "this largest planet in the solar system" as the post-FTP giveaway, and it is the clue given in the easy part of a middle school bonus part on Jupiter. I really do apologize for the severity of my language, wording like "does not excuse" is definitely inflammatory, and I didn't mean to insinuate that there was a tendency to create swingy bonuses--while I'm no expert judge of science difficulty, there wasn't anything else that struck me as self-evidently out of place in the set, and the reason I was so careless in my dismissal of this particular bonus part was because of how much it stood out from the quality of the rest of the set.

In response to Grant and MIke: upon rereading the question, I see there are fewer clues about the lead-up to later events than I remembered, and having learned that the Long, Hot Summer is a Named Thing, this does seem appropriate. I will now feel slightly less guilty about my teammate converting this off the other team's neg.

[naan/steak-holding toll]

Seconded on the 1967 tossup. Both myself and my teammate realized from the third line that it was cluing the long, hot summer, but neither of us seemed to remember if it was in 1967 or 1968 (and I did eventually neg with 1968). I'm not sure how well it would have played, but perhaps just tossing up the "long, hot summer" as "this period" and having anti-prompts on specific events during then would have worked better?

Hard disagree. I think "this period" for "long hot summer" would have way too many prompt issues - maybe a player buzzes with 1960s, 1967, Civil Rights era, and doesn't know what to say on a prompt, for example, or says a specific month of the summer, or whatnot.

Maybe I'm mean but it's on the player if they don't know when these things happened, and the era being clued is so famous that it's not an unreasonable ask. Sure it's less famous than another year, but not all our Chinese emperor tossups are on Qin Shi Huang either. Sometimes your hunches are wrong and that's part of the game.

[TaylorH]

The rest of these thoughts will be in roughly the order of what I heard/noted at the time. By the end of the first round, I had already made a note wondering why Indonesia had come up more than once. I can’t actually see from my notes where the second Indonesia mention is besides the bonus part entirely on Indonesian history, so maybe I got confused on some Mauritius clues, but there were two more tossups on Indonesia in the rest of the set, with answerlines of Java (which was an answerline in the first bonus) and Indonesia. Indonesia is a large country where a lot of things happened and continue to happen, but 1/1 of the same answerline within 5 rounds doesn’t feel ideal, and is certainly enough to make people hesitate to buzz when the same country comes up again the next day as an answer, as well as possibly some other scattered clues in the many other SE Asia questions.

I apologize if this bit of country-cluster caused any unfortunate gameplay outcome (perhaps the odd Nusantaraphile in the player base went on an early tear), however I don't think 5 or so questions on or partially on the 4th largest country in the world is at all unreasonable. I suspect the average 15 packet set has 1-3 Indonesia-related questions, so I think a 1.5 multiplier for this set's size on that topic is okay. I will point out that all the mentions I can think of (Buru Quartet, Bubat bonus, Myth TU, Java TU in anthro, ... I might be missing one or two?) are all in different categories. And the Java TU was a late replacement for a TU on a related topic that would have likely played much more poorly.

The early clustering on the topic is a quirk of 1) This being a packet submission tournament and 2) unfortunate last-minute shuffling of prelim packet order. Putting together submission packets for this set was tough because we had an effective limit on how many teams we could combine together for scheduling reasons and so many of the submissions were quite late. Because this ends up being a 30-dimension optimization problem of picking worthy questions and editing them, sometime emergent things like "lots of Indonesia" will happen. On top of this, the editors planned an intended order for the first 8 prelim packets that did not happen in the actual tournament (due to a production-hell related miscommunication that is my fault). Thus, pretty much all the prelims were heard out of "intended" order, which magnified this issue in particular by clustering this content together.

[TaylorH]

I really did not like the Ottonian art tossup. Medieval, Western European art is essentially a 500+ year progression of minor developments of the exact same motifs, and I don’t think this tossup did much to rule out the periods on either side of the Ottonian era. “A cross shaped artwork with a crucifixion scene on it” and “a figure surrounded by the four evangelists” are perhaps the most popular motifs in that entire 500 year span, and I think another work was highlighted for having an extremely geometric background, which is pretty much something you could say about most art from the Middle Ages. I'm aware that there were more specific details mentioned in addition to these general descriptions, but I still had a lot of difficulty ruling other things out. Part of this is that I’m salty that I didn’t convert this tossup when I spent most of my week studying for a memorization-based final exam for a graduate-level survey course on the art of the Middle Ages in Western Europe which focused on identifying which era various artworks are from, but this question not being convert-able by someone who did that isn’t ideal! I didn’t even have that hard a time with the material on the exam! I’d love to reread this question to see if I missed some information that should’ve been more recognizable to me and that I’m jumping to conclusions based on poorly processing the clues at game speed. To end on a positive note, I was extremely gratified when I could convert the bonus part on Augustine, the 6th century missionary to the British, since I learned a whole bunch about his gospel book. There are a whole lot more positive memories of the set that I could mention, but they're mostly along the lines of "I got a good buzz and therefore think the question was dope," and I could spin that into statements along the lines of "I think the film in this set was really tuned into what people who take art film seriously are likely to have encountered," and I plan to when I get around to a general discussion post, likely after reviewing some of the packets.

I'm sorry this question didn't work out so well. I'll admit that I am not super knowledgeable about this area and that I probably didn't end up using the most buzzable clues. This question originally used the "a ruler with this name" throughout, but several playtesters sniffed the theme out quite early and ended up telling me it was far too transparent with "ruler + medieval sound artworks". I changed the indicator to "a person with this name" and clued artworks both from the Ottonian period and only those named for an Otto early. I suppose the indicator change-up opened up the answerspace too wide. I certainly agree with your point about the entire medieval period using similar motifs and mediums, so I should have been more wary in pinning that down. I guess my approach was sort of a "contextually narrowing" by implying more and more that this was a person depicted in medieval art that was a male person of prominence and that there were several people with the same name, but I could see how this approach to pyramid could be frustrating for someone with a lot of Type 1 knowledge like yourself. I'd be interested to hear if any alternative clues would have pinned the answer down better, or if the conceit itself just doesn't really work.

I'm glad you like the Krasner and the OFA questions you mentioned: those were some of my favorites too.

[meebles127]

I’d be interested in seeing the exact wording of the “Fallopian tubes” tossup clue about endometriosis. Endometriosis’s whole thing is that it happens all over the place and fucks things up, so I’m not sure how well ovaries or other reproductive or abdominal organs were ruled out by the wording (I think it said something like “occluded” which did suggest a passage?).

Here's the text of the Fallopian tubes tossup:

These structures are the most common location of Walthard nests. A serous (“SEER-us”) carcinoma called STIC that arises in the stem-like peg cells of these structures may be the true origin of high-grade serous carcinomas of [emphasize] another organ. Interaction with these structures’ epithelium capacitates the CatSper channels of certain rheotactic cells, allowing them to move up these structures’ temperature gradient. The documentary The Bleeding Edge highlights the failures of the deprecated Essure procedure, which occluded these structures by inserting metal coils into them. A contrast leak during an HSG indicates these structures’ patency. Occlusions of these structures, like those caused by a hydrosalpinx or endometriosis, account for 20 percent of female infertility cases. For 10 points, finger-like projections called fimbriae terminate what paired structures that carry eggs from the ovaries to the uterus?
ANSWER: Fallopian tubes [or uterine tubes; or oviducts; accept salpinges or salpinx until “hydrosalpinx” is read; prompt on uterus; prompt on tubes] (HSG stands for hysterosalpingography.)

I take your point about endometrial tissue being widely disseminated in endometriosis, but I hope the wording of the clue, which first lists hydrosalpinx and only uses endometriosis as a possible example of the cause of an occlusion, rules out other sites.

Note: I'm only speaking from my experience reading far too much of this book and others, and would like to comment on how cool this question is.

I always love seeing reproductive health questions in quizbowl, especially when they contain such deep cuts.

I absolutely love the usage of the Essure clue, especially insofar as it rewards knowledge of a (semi) widely used medical device that people my age are generally too young to know about (I only know about this because of Blueprints and my general obsession with OBGYN).

Clueing the Hysterosalpingography test is also very fun and I appreciate that inclusion.

Hasna is absolutely correct about the clue with endometriosis ruling out other potential sites. I understand how the endo clue could be confusing for those who were only half-paying attention and/or have not spent a Friday night at University with their nose in an OBGYN textbook.

EDIT: I want to make it very clear that this comment was not directed towards Halle. The comment regarding "lack of knowledge" was meant in the direction of the (unnamed) male quizbowl player that complained to me about the question, as well as quizbowl men in general, who sometimes complain when questions that concern the other half of the population are written.

Honestly this question is just so fucking cool and I deeply appreciate the inclusion of a question that rewards deep knowledge in this way.

Now if you really wanna learn about some crazy shit that endo can do, go ahead and read this paper.

[Hot Soup]

I was extremely pleased to see that there were 2 (!) human/quantitative genetics content TUs in this set, and I want to thank the writers/editors on writing questions on what I think is a sadly under-asked topic in QB. In particular, the TU on "heritability" was one of my favorite tossups of all time and did a great job highlighting important concepts in the field (e.g. "missing heritability problem" and GCTA).

On the other hand, I have very mixed feelings about asking about "Native Americans" in human genetics. Although I appreciated the TU's mention of the Silent Genome project, the way that question is written unfortunately conflates Native Americans in the biological ancestry sense (e.g. potassium channel mutation restricted to a founder population of Native American ancestry) and Native Americans in the ethnic/racial group sense (e.g. individuals identifying as Native Americans being underrepresented in genomic biobanks), with the answerline suggesting the intent was to ask about the latter. The TU also contains a clue on identifying genetic risk factor of alcoholism in certain Native American ancestry subpopulation, which to my knowledge has not only been a fruitless endeavor but also inappropriately suggests that Native American race is genetically susceptible to alcoholism. There's been an active shift in the human genetics field to disentangle the two in order to discourage the notion of race essentialism, and most human genetics papers now make a careful distinction between the two (e.g. "African ancestry" population as determined by admixture analysis vs. "Black" population that may be recruited for a study). I am wary of criticizing this question too much because it does highlight an extremely important movement to increase diversity of human genetics studies; it is also possible that I am misremembering this question and being uncharitable for no reason, and I apologize in advance if I am doing so.

I recall Lederberg 2 had a similar question on "Whites" cluing entirely founder mutations in European ancestry populations that I did not appreciate for similar reasons. If writers want to write human genetics questions like this in the future, I would recommend writing entirely on biology of specific genetic ancestry groups or a "culture/history of science" questions on specific racial groups, but not both simultaneously.

[Subotai the Valiant, Final Dog of War]

With regard to the question on Indigenous people since Jon's posted the answerline: I tried to flesh out the answerline to accept the common equivalents the editors could come up with and each of the more specific groups clued in the question, but of course it's possible I may have missed some likely answers. I'd be curious to hear which shorthand answers the answerline failed to account for that people gave in rounds, and I apologize for the oversight there.

It would be nice if the tossup as a whole could be posted, in part because I'm geuninely curious about the specific clues used. I really enjoyed this content and concept!

But I don't think it worked as a tossup. The fact that simply "indigenous" (with no geographical limitations) would have been an acceptable answer indicates to me that the clues drew from too nebulous a pool of distinct acceptable answers.

It felt very apparent to me early on that the answer would be indigenous people of some form, and I then spent the majority of the tossup trying to figure out what subset or region of indigenous people was wanted, ultimately being really puzzled and deciding to just guess "uncontacted tribes" (which was obviously quite wrong). To be fair, I am potentially doing a degree in medicine and/or Native American history within the next few years, so this may not have been as apparent to others. This tossup frustrated me because even though I knew roughly was was going on, it was hard to pin down what the question wanted... while, as it turns out, it was also extremely fraudable since the broadest possible answer besides "humans" would have been acceptable.

[knife emoji]

Glad to hear you liked the heritability tossup, Paul—I want to shout out UMN B for submitting that question, which was well-constructed and I didn't change very much at all.

Regarding the question on Indigenous Americans, here's the text of the question:

Laura Arbour’s research with a group of these people revealed a novel KCNQ1 mutation responsible for long-QT syndrome. This broad group of people is served by a BioData Consortium founded by Krystal Tsosie. The idea of “DNA on loan” informs a collection of these people’s genetic data curated by the Silent Genomes project. In 2004, a group of these people received damages for research on inbreeding performed under false pretenses. The Human Genome Diversity Project and the Genographic Project aimed to collect genetic data from theoretically [emphasize] unadmixed, isolated members of this broad group but came under fire by the IPCB for “vampiric” research practices. Attempts to use genetics to explain this broad group’s prevalence of alcoholism have been criticized for ignoring colonialism’s harms. For 10 points, generic research underrepresents what broad group that includes the Navajo?
ANSWER: Native American people [or First Nations people; accept Indigenous Americans; accept more specific answers like Gitxsan people or Havasupai people; accept Navajo or Diné people until “Navajo” is read; accept Indigenous Peoples Council on Biocolonialism]

Paul, I think you make a good point about conflating Native American people in the biological ancestry sense with the ethnic group sense, and that the tossup in question wasn't careful enough about disentangling those notions. I chose to work with both the Laura Arbour study and the biobanking work in the same question because in the writing I've read on Native genomic data sovereignty, Arbour's work is often cited as a culturally-appropriate way to perform community-based research in partnership with Native communities, which is the goal of Tsosie's Native BioData Consortium and other similar projects. I failed to consider that the biobanking projects' goal of reaching Native Americans [the broadly-defined ethnic group] was a conceptually distinct endeavor than Arbour's work or, say, the research conducted on the Havasupai tribe's blood that I also clued, and I apologize about that oversight.

However, I do want to stress that I'd intended the clue you point out about alcoholism in Native American populations to make a similar point to the one you're making here, though the constraints of tossup writing definitely made it difficult to get at that in a clear and nuanced way. What I meant to get at there is that quite a few people have criticized genetic explanations for alcoholism in Native communities as blatantly ignoring social factors (e.g. historical trauma) that are involved in alcoholism—though, if I'd had space, I would've also added that the other part of those criticisms is that based on the data available, genetic explanations for alcoholism in Native communities are also almost certainly untrue. In reading this clue back, I do think that like a couple of the others in the question, it doesn't do enough to clarify that Native American populations aren't one genetic monolith, and your point is well-taken there.

Thanks to both Paul and Daniel for sharing your thoughts on this question, and sorry again that it was frustrating to play. I knew it was going to be conceptually tricky to pull off properly, and while I'm sad to see I didn't quite hit the mark, I appreciate your thoughts on how it could've worked better!

[Hot Soup]

Thanks for posting the question, Hasna; as I suspected, the tossup was much more carefully constructed than I remembered. I understand that it's difficult to fully capture these kind of nuances in a 150 word TU, and again I fully applaud you writing creative questions to ask about important and underasked topics in QB (an effort that was evident throughout the entire bio distro as pointed out by the others). Thank you (and the other writers/playtesters) for your hard work on the set!

[DavidB256]

I found the tossup on time series to be extremely confusing. I am currently taking a graduate-level class titled "Applied Time Series," but failed to connect my knowledge of the Durbin–Watson statistic and ARMA models to the indicator "these things," which I suspected was asking for a more specific statistical phenomenon. I think that this question could be improved by changing the indicator to "this type of data" or changing the answerline to "time series analysis."

[touchpack]

Regarding the vaginal microbiome: to the best of my knowledge, the vaginal microbiome has not been an answerline in quizbowl before, but the gut microbiome has. Those questions used the pronouns "community," "system," and "habitat"; Adam, Jon and I felt that "ecosystem" was probably a better and more accurate pronoun, but I'd love to hear others' suggestions for better ones if people have any. I'm glad you appreciated the attempt, in any case!

I didn't think about this very carefully when looking over the question in the playtesting server (mea culpa), but I think, with the identifier "this ecosystem", the only exactly correct answer is "vagina" (though "vaginal microbiome" would still be acceptable for giving more information that is compatible with the information given in the tossup). When we talk about, say, rainforests and the diverse fauna contained within, we don't use the word "ecosystem" to describe the "set of fauna in the rainforest", we say that the rainforest itself is the ecosystem. Since the term "microbiome" / "microbiota" / etc usually refers to the *community* of microorganisms (only biotic factors!) while an ecosystem also includes abiotic factors (in this case, stuff like the mucosal secretions and the low pH), the answer "vagina" is exactly correct, moreso than "vaginal microbiome". While "ecosystem" is a fine choice, it has the side effect of, perhaps accidentally, making the tossup on a significantly easier answer which should have had much higher end-conversion (again, my bad for not noticing this when looking over this question!).

[The King's Flight to the Scots]

I found the tossup on time series to be extremely confusing. I am currently taking a graduate-level class titled "Applied Time Series," but failed to connect my knowledge of the Durbin–Watson statistic and ARMA models to the indicator "these things," which I suspected was asking for a more specific statistical phenomenon. I think that this question could be improved by changing the indicator to "this type of data" or changing the answerline to "time series analysis."

In the rounds I played, I felt like I heard "these things" and other vague identifiers used somewhat more than usual. (A less egregious example would be "WoW players" as "these people," which doesn't confuse you as much but doesn't point you much in the right direction either). I really think "these things" should only be used as an absolute last resort, when any other identifier would give the answer away.

[Krik? Krik?! KRIIIIK!!!]

(A less egregious example would be "WoW players" as "these people," which doesn't confuse you as much but doesn't point you much in the right direction either).

By nature, the phrasing of this question was tricky just because of how odd it was. I like questions that will give a slightly more specific indicator at the beginning ("people of this sort" is one I've seen recently that just transitions into "people"). I could have perhaps had an early indicator pointing to the fact that they were study by anthropologists and sociologists, but I also feel like that could have lead people into a more traditional direction versus where it ended up. I couldn't change the answerline to just be "World of Warcraft" because that would be tricky too to clue things that happen in game without calling it a game or using phrases like "In this world" which point to it being fictional/digital or "In this location" which is similarly vague.

TL;DR depending on the scope of the idea, indicators are hard and its definitely something I'll consider in editing and playtesting more. My gut says that if an indicator is too long and hard to parse, its a good idea to check the answerline to see if it's viable.

[elyne road]

first of all, i wanted to thank the writing and editing teams for making such a thoroughly enjoyable set! i definitely have lots of music, film and reading recommendations to get through as a result of my playing this set.

off the top of my head, there is one question i wanted to ask about in this thread, which was the tossup in editors 9 about "sufi saints." i buzzed on this tossup with the answer of "qalandar," which i thought should be accepted, but there seems to be no guidance about what to do with it in the answerline. i could be wrong but my understanding was that it is as much of a title as "saint" would be and it is mentioned as such in many qawwalis.

once again, thanks for the effort y'all put into the set! i think arya put it best in the discord when they said that it felt like there was "a little something for everyone" this year.

[knife emoji]

Regarding Sufi saints: Lal Shahbaz Qalandar was a notable Sufi saint, and you're right that the first line in the tossup refers to a qawwali about him (there are one or two other less notable saints who also have the name Qalandar, but they're less-frequently invoked). Qalandar is, however, just a given name, and any references you hear to "Qalandar" in qawwali (such as in "Lal Meri Pat" or Zain Zohaib's "Qalandar") are calling on the saint by name, not by title, unlike references to a "khwaja" or a "hazrat." I think in hindsight, it may have been kinder to provide a directed prompt to the effect of "what was his spiritual position?" for "Qalandar" since I clued him, and I'm sorry I overlooked the possibility of someone answering with Qalandar's name.

[Quinctilius Varus]

I thought that the female late-20th century photographers bonus was super fun, but I hesitated a bunch over the second two parts because the first elided Goldin’s name in a way that suggested I would have to identify the artist of The Ballad of Sexual Dependency for the second part, and then that part didn’t start with “name this other artist,” so I took the full five seconds trying to figure out if she did some things that sounded a whole lot like things Arbus is famous for. The description of the photograph in the lead-in also mentioned a cigarette if I’m not mistaken, which made me hesitate to direct that answer for the third part. I’m extremely, extremely happy to see this content come up, though. Also Issey Miyake and Elsa Schiaparelli content. That’s always appreciated in a similar “oh it’s my fave” kind of way.

Apologies for the ambiguity in that bonus. I wrote the Ballad of Sexual Dependency part as a last-second replacement for the previous hard part, and didn’t stop to think about using the word “smoking” in the lead-in. The “cigarettes” part only clued Sally Mann and Richard Prince, but that’s suboptimal regardless. The intended bonus theme revolved around photographs of relatives, but I can see how it wasn’t obvious (in fact, our Editor-in-Chief told me to make the connection more explicit, but I was at the length cap and didn’t want to cut any clues to add that information. Sorry Nick!) I’m glad you liked the fashion content!

[elyne road]

Regarding Sufi saints: Lal Shahbaz Qalandar was a notable Sufi saint, and you're right that the first line in the tossup refers to a qawwali about him (there are one or two other less notable saints who also have the name Qalandar, but they're less-frequently invoked). Qalandar is, however, just a given name, and any references you hear to "Qalandar" in qawwali (such as in "Lal Meri Pat" or Zain Zohaib's "Qalandar") are calling on the saint by name, not by title, unlike references to a "khwaja" or a "hazrat." I think in hindsight, it may have been kinder to provide a directed prompt to the effect of "what was his spiritual position?" for "Qalandar" since I clued him, and I'm sorry I overlooked the possibility of someone answering with Qalandar's name.

this explanation makes sense--thanks for taking the time to write it! i lodged a protest on this tossup during a game because most of my engagement with qawwalis was through Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan (who my parents had the pleasure of seeing live when they were in graduate school), and not as someone brought up directly with the traditions of Islam or Sufism. this was a good learning opportunity, so thank you for understanding.

edit: i think part of my confusion is that nusrat in particular performed songs referring to multiple people as qalandar, but that was probably just other people who have that name. however, the (rather superficial) wikipedia page https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qalandar_(title) does list both Rābiʿa Basri and Lal Shahbaz as saints bestowed with the title of qalandar. for matters like these, where citations are sparse, i'm inclined not to trust wikipedia or quora or other sites as a source, but hopefully this explained my confusion.

[Adventure Temple Trail]

A few very small things I was reminded of when glancing over the packets:

> In the Woodrow Wilson tossup, I found this sentence quite confusing:

This person created an organization headed by a Colorado senator that employed “Four Minute Men” to influence public opinion.

It's largely on me for not knowing the prior clues, but since that organization is typically known as the Creel Committee and "created" is rather ambiguous, I ended up negging with "Creel." I don't remember processing the "Colorado senator" part at the time, but now that I see it, I also don't believe Creel was a Colorado senator, so I don't know what that's doing there or who it refers to.
(As an aside, the early clues about his work formalizing the field of public administration and his educational reforms at Princeton are quite interesting!)

> I found it confusing that the Río de la Plata question had a clue beginning “This river’s estuary” -- as I undersand it, the Río de la Plata just is an estuary, namely the estuary of the Paraná river and the Uruguay river (and maybe some other smaller ones). I ended up sitting and trying to work backward to a river that flowed into it.

> Re: the Union Pacific tossup: The Mulligan Letters concerned Blaine’s dealings with the Little Rock and Fort Smith Railroad, which as far as I can tell was unaffiliated with Union Pacific.

[Majin Buu Roi]

Regarding Sufi saints: Lal Shahbaz Qalandar was a notable Sufi saint, and you're right that the first line in the tossup refers to a qawwali about him (there are one or two other less notable saints who also have the name Qalandar, but they're less-frequently invoked). Qalandar is, however, just a given name, and any references you hear to "Qalandar" in qawwali (such as in "Lal Meri Pat" or Zain Zohaib's "Qalandar") are calling on the saint by name, not by title, unlike references to a "khwaja" or a "hazrat." I think in hindsight, it may have been kinder to provide a directed prompt to the effect of "what was his spiritual position?" for "Qalandar" since I clued him, and I'm sorry I overlooked the possibility of someone answering with Qalandar's name.

this explanation makes sense--thanks for taking the time to write it! i lodged a protest on this tossup during a game because most of my engagement with qawwalis was through Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan (who my parents had the pleasure of seeing live when they were in graduate school), and not as someone brought up directly with the traditions of Islam or Sufism. this was a good learning opportunity, so thank you for understanding.

edit: i think part of my confusion is that nusrat in particular performed songs referring to multiple people as qalandar, but that was probably just other people who have that name. however, the (rather superficial) wikipedia page https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qalandar_(title) does list both Rābiʿa Basri and Lal Shahbaz as saints bestowed with the title of qalandar. for matters like these, where citations are sparse, i'm inclined not to trust wikipedia or quora or other sites as a source, but hopefully this explained my confusion.

It's a really understandable confusion, but I may be able to help out a little here. The term "qalandar" really referred to a given sufi's manner devotion and general lifestyle, and when given as a title it referred to that sort of reputation. A Qalandar was defined by 1) an itinerant lifestyle and b) disregard for outward pieties to the point of trouble-making or social deviance verging on anti-nominianism (they're often likened to the christian "holy fool" in secondary literature). A sufi at any point in their path or position in a brotherhood, not just a saint, could be a Qalandar. You'll actually notice that one of the citations in that wikipedia article does not actually support the article but instead describes qalandar as a free-floating title that a sufi saint could independently gain.

https://books.google.com/books?id=CoceA ... &q&f=false
Also from the secondary literature's proverbial book on Sufism, by the same author incidentally
https://archive.org/details/mysticaldim ... 9/mode/2up

[mico]

A few very small things I was reminded of when glancing over the packets:

> In the Woodrow Wilson tossup, I found this sentence quite confusing:

This person created an organization headed by a Colorado senator that employed “Four Minute Men” to influence public opinion.

It's largely on me for not knowing the prior clues, but since that organization is typically known as the Creel Committee and "created" is rather ambiguous, I ended up negging with "Creel." I don't remember processing the "Colorado senator" part at the time, but now that I see it, I also don't believe Creel was a Colorado senator, so I don't know what that's doing there or who it refers to.
(As an aside, the early clues about his work formalizing the field of public administration and his educational reforms at Princeton are quite interesting!)

> Re: the Union Pacific tossup: The Mulligan Letters concerned Blaine’s dealings with the Little Rock and Fort Smith Railroad, which as far as I can tell was unaffiliated with Union Pacific.

I apologize for the "Four Minute Men" clue. This issue cropped up in playtesting, so I tried to give more information that made it clear that this clue wasn't referring to Creel. Unfortunately, I just managed to make it worse since I can see how "created" is ambigious and then you're correct that he was not a Colorado senator; I have no idea where I decided on that being true.

With regards to the Union Pacific clue, that was another victim of subpar wording. The intention of the clue was that the Mulligan Letters detailed Blaine's dealings with Thomas A, Scott, the president of Union Pacific, in which bonds of the Little Rock and Fort Smith Railroad were sold at an inflated price to Union Pacific through Blaine. Obviously, that intent was not conveyed in the question at all and it was conflated with the Fisher Letters, and I apologize for that.

I'm glad you still enjoyed the other clues in the Wilson tossup, and I hope the AMerican History was enjoyable as a whole!

[Krik? Krik?! KRIIIIK!!!]

> I found it confusing that the Río de la Plata question had a clue beginning “This river’s estuary” -- as I undersand it, the Río de la Plata just is an estuary, namely the estuary of the Paraná river and the Uruguay river (and maybe some other smaller ones). I ended up sitting and trying to work backward to a river that flowed into it.

Yeah that was silly phrasing on my part. The sentence was specifically: "This river’s estuary is separated from the Atlantic by a line that runs from Cabo San Antonio to Puna del Este." The Río de la Plata is an estuary through and through, widens vastly as it goes out along Uruguay, which is what this clue is referring to. Something more like "This river/body of water's extent is a line that runs..." could have worked better. In retrospect, I started using "body of water" in first drafts then changed to river, but perhaps "body of water" was more correct all along. I apologize if this caused confusion!

[Serpentine284]

For the Hans Holbein the Younger tossup in finals, what painting is the third line cluing? I've been looking through all of Holbein's portraits and I can't seem to find one with a green tapestry decorated with griffins.

[The King's Flight to the Scots]

Minor note on the Morricone tossup:

In a piece by this composer, the English horn, and later Edda Dell’Orso’s wordless soprano vocals, play a theme with the notes “short A, long C, short E, long C.

Is this intended as a description of the opening of "The Ecstasy of Gold"? Bc that track opens A-E-G-E, not A-C-E-C.

[TaylorH]

For the Hans Holbein the Younger tossup in finals, what painting is the third line cluing? I've been looking through all of Holbein's portraits and I can't seem to find one with a green tapestry decorated with griffins.

One of the portraits of Erasmus. The one in profile in which he is writing.

[Serpentine284]

One of the portraits of Erasmus. The one in profile in which he is writing.

Ah, I see, thank you!

[vydu]

Seconding S.A. that I have a ton of music to check out now - thank you to William and Sameer! Two minor notes: 1) I thought the Waterfall etude bonus part could have been a bit more clear that the 27 etudes weren't all part of one set - was a bit confused there, and 2) A teammate of mine pointed out that Lise Davidsen's premiere at the Bayreuth festival was actually in 2019, not 2021

[mazinomer]

A minor note re: the manganese tossup in Prelims 6. Heusler compounds can contain any transition metal. While it's true that the first Heusler alloy discovered contained manganese at its center, that first clue is not true of Heusler alloys in general.

[adamsil]

A minor note re: the manganese tossup in Prelims 6. Heusler compounds can contain any transition metal. While it's true that the first Heusler alloy discovered contained manganese at its center, that first clue is not true of Heusler alloys in general.

Thank you for that correction (and for your submission on them -- I wound up learning a lot!). Somewhere along the line a word must have been dropped, my apologies.

[setophaga]

1) I thought the Waterfall prelude bonus part could have been a bit more clear that the 27 preludes weren't all part of one set - was a bit confused there

This issue did come up in playtesting. I think we changed this from "first of a set of 27", which is, as you say, incorrect, to "first of 27," and we all agreed this was a fair way to present it. I can see it being confusing at game speed though, so sorry about that.

[linpaws]

Really enjoyed the math in this set. However there were a few errors that I will point out.

Playoffs 1: the bonus part on ideals is wrong

Playoffs 7: the third clue on “symplectic” has to say what the Lie derivative is with respect to (eg a Hamiltonian flow); it is not 0 for a general vector field. So the wording could say “certain Lie derivatives” or something. Eg the Lie derivative of dx wedge dy with respect to x*d/dx is dx wedge dy. (Also it was nice to see a straight up math tossup in the physics distribution.)

Also Prelims 5 has a math bonus that is way too easy (conformal, Möbius, angles).

[modernhemalurgist]

To elaborate on the ideals bonus part, there are two points that are slightly off: first, it should say that ideals are closed under multiplication by elements of the ring (all subrings are closed under multiplication). Second, whether ideals are subrings depends on whether you require rings to have an identity element. They traditionally aren't required to, so I think saying they're subrings is arguably fine, but since it is increasingly fashionable to require rings to have an identity element, anyone taught this definition may reasonably be confused. This could perhaps be solved by replacing the word "subrings" with "subrngs," which ideals unambiguously are.

[VSCOelasticity]

Really enjoyed the math in this set. However there were a few errors that I will point out.

Playoffs 1: the bonus part on ideals is wrong

Playoffs 7: the third clue on “symplectic” has to say what the Lie derivative is with respect to (eg a Hamiltonian flow); it is not 0 for a general vector field. So the wording could say “certain Lie derivatives” or something. Eg the Lie derivative of dx wedge dy with respect to x*d/dx is dx wedge dy. (Also it was nice to see a straight up math tossup in the physics distribution.)

Also Prelims 5 has a math bonus that is way too easy (conformal, Möbius, angles).

To elaborate on the ideals bonus part, there are two points that are slightly off: first, it should say that ideals are closed under multiplication by elements of the ring (all subrings are closed under multiplication). Second, whether ideals are subrings depends on whether you require rings to have an identity element. They traditionally aren't required to, so I think saying they're subrings is arguably fine, but since it is increasingly fashionable to require rings to have an identity element, anyone taught this definition may reasonably be confused. This could perhaps be solved by replacing the word "subrings" with "subrngs," which ideals unambiguously are.

Sorry about the ideals bonus part. I know the definition of an ideal/it is easy to look up on multiple sources. In order to meet the character limit, the second sentence that defined ideals had to be very brief and cut some corners. Hopefully it didn't confuse anyone.

Also thank you for pointing out the issue with the Lie derivative clue. I'm not well versed in that field, just having read a bit because of it's connection to physics, and I didn't realize that needed to be specified. I considered it a physics question despite being almost half pure math, because as far as I'm aware the main motivation for it is physics. At least that's how I've encountered symplectic geometry (hence the giveaway).

The conformal maps bonus went through a few revisions after internal and external feedback, and I'm sorry the difficulty didn't end up right. That's on me. I tried to err on the easy side rather than the hard side when writing this set, and that bonus ended up too far on the easy side.

Glad to hear you enjoyed the math, Swapnil!

[The King's Flight to the Scots]

A couple of odds and ends:

- I felt like the Painting/Sculpture tossups were harder than the tossups in other categories. It seemed like that category had a larger number of difficult outliers (The Hunt in the Forest) and tossups with very difficult clues (the Otto tossup with a minor Dieric Bouts painting pretty late).

- More generally, it seemed like some of the outlier tossups were awfully difficult, even for "4"s. I'm thinking especially of the tossup on the Book of Joel here. If the conversion stats indicate lots of people got that one, I'll stand corrected, but that really felt more like a hard CO tossup to me than a hard ACF Nationals tossup. It feels out-of-place for me when a Nationals tossup answer goes noticeably beyond what would be appropriate difficulty for a Nats middle part.

- To commit the cardinal sin of quizbowl discussion, fixating on a single question: the tossup on Christianity (from Nietzsche clues) was a bit frustrating to play. Nietzsche makes very similar criticisms of other "systems," such as socialism, morality, democracy, Judaism (sometimes), etc. I ended up waiting for a while on that one and then buzzing with what I figured was the most likely answer.

[women, fire and dangerous things]

- To commit the cardinal sin of quizbowl discussion, fixating on a single question: the tossup on Christianity (from Nietzsche clues) was a bit frustrating to play. Nietzsche makes very similar criticisms of other "systems," such as socialism, morality, democracy, Judaism (sometimes), etc. I ended up waiting for a while on that one and then buzzing with what I figured was the most likely answer.

What else is Specific Question Discussion for?

I'm never quite sure how to write about Nietzsche in tossup form - tossing up concepts can run into the issue you identify, tossing up specific texts runs into similar issues because he makes similar arguments across texts, and making "Nietzsche" the answerline doesn't usually work because his style is so distinctive. Ultimately, I think that you generally have to take one of the first two approaches but choose clues that are memorable/knowable enough to be buzzable - I hoped that quotes like "Christianity is the metaphysics of the hangman" and the ending of The Antichrist were well-known enough to make this viable at Nats, but I wouldn't be surprised if I misjudged.

[Quinctilius Varus]

Minor note on the Morricone tossup:

In a piece by this composer, the English horn, and later Edda Dell’Orso’s wordless soprano vocals, play a theme with the notes “short A, long C, short E, long C.

Is this intended as a description of the opening of "The Ecstasy of Gold"? Bc that track opens A-E-G-E, not A-C-E-C.

It is, and that's an embarrassing mistake! I apologize and hope that didn't throw anyone off.

Seconding S.A. that I have a ton of music to check out now - thank you to William and Sameer! Two minor notes: 1) I thought the Waterfall etude bonus part could have been a bit more clear that the 27 etudes weren't all part of one set - was a bit confused there, and 2) A teammate of mine pointed out that Lise Davidsen's premiere at the Bayreuth festival was actually in 2019, not 2021

You're right about the year Davidsen debuted at Bayreuth - it's been ages since I wrote this question, but I believe that was a mistake caused by condensing some of the wording. Thank you for the catch!

[kevinyyyyy]

I really liked the physics and thought it was very well written overall. Favorites are spin-statistics and Gell-Mann tossups, though I only knew Gell-Mann off the physics clues. One small and one larger nitpick; firstly I think universality as a QC hard part (Editors 6) seems a bit easy. I quite like the qubit rotations part though, and it's probably on the harder side for a medium part so maybe it balances out.

Secondly, in the E-field tossup (Prelims 4, TU 2) I think the clue that states Jefimenko's equation ends up being quite anti-pyramidal: the "rho over r-squared, all times r-hat" term is by far the most recognizable and most buzzable part of the equation, since it's just the formula for E field from electrostatics. That part of the equation is easier than the field strength tensor clue and most likely easier than the mobility clue as well. I think cluing Jefimenko is a great idea, but at this point in the question that particular term should be omitted somehow, perhaps by only mentioning the correction terms ("rho-dot over 'c times r,' all times r-hat, minus j-dot over 'c-squared times r'").

Also, I want to mention the Hartree-Fock clue in the tossup for "basis sets" (Editors 8, TU9), which says that "Coefficients in these expressions are computed through variational methods like Hartree–Fock." It was my understanding that Hartree-Fock uses a given basis to compute the coefficients for LCAO-esque expressions. If that's correct, then the way this clue is phrased seems a bit misleading, since it seems like it's not talking about the basis, but rather the object that results from taking a linear combination of the basis.

[adamsil]

Also, I want to mention the Hartree-Fock clue in the tossup for "basis sets" (Editors 8, TU9), which says that "Coefficients in these expressions are computed through variational methods like Hartree–Fock." It was my understanding that Hartree-Fock uses a given basis to compute the coefficients for LCAO-esque expressions. If that's correct, then the way this clue is phrased seems a bit misleading, since it seems like it's not talking about the basis, but rather the object that results from taking a linear combination of the basis.

Thanks for pointing this out. I agree that a different preposition like "for" or "of" would have been better here to adhere better to the linear algebra analogy. That said, my understanding is that a basis set is the linear combination of basis functions that represent a orbital, so the (undetermined) coefficients are typically included in its definition.*

*I am not a quantum chemist so I am open to the possibility that this isn't how it's usually described in practice by the field. (Moreover, the question's giveaway conflates basis sets and basis functions somewhat for the sake of conversion, which maybe isn't ideal.)

[warum]

Prelims 2, TU 18 on "ferns" says "“Allies” of this lineage include lycophytes and horntails." I'm pretty sure it should say "horsetails," not "horntails."