2023 ACF Nationals Favorite Buzzes and Moments

[Krik? Krik?! KRIIIIK!!!]

This is a fun thread for discussion of your favorite things that happened at 2023 ACF Nationals.

I'll start!
- Toronto A muttering "That's a good band" after getting the part of U(1). Toronto A versus Minnesota A was also my favorite game of the tournament to moderate: two great, fun, and positive teams that had good competition.
- Almost accidently clocking Matt Bollinger in the head with a very very chalky eraser during Finals 1 - fumble fingers strike again
- Moderating with Pranav Arunandhi. Pranav is a member of MIT's club and was staffing Nationals for the first time. We switched off and he did incredibly! Love meeting new people like that.
- Watching people demolish my content. I asked Ashish Subramanian about his geography record after like every round. I was exhilarated that not one but two people first lined the Des Moines TU off gymnastics content! Matt Jackson getting an incredible buzz on the Chamber of Commerce TU stunned me.

[Heiliger Dankgesang]

I really really enjoyed this year's Nats! With the outstanding set plus Duke's club-record-breaking performance, I don't think I could've imagined a better last tournament to play as an undergrad.

I may have more to add to this list later when my mind is fresh, but for now, here are some memorable questions/moments from the weekend:

1. My goal about classical music tossups in this year's Nats program was meant to be a joke, but I amused myself by coming pretty darn close to accomplishing it! (Also, the "colorized photo" made me crack up-- thanks Ashish for sneaking it in.)
2. I love when I can convert classical music questions off of real knowledge, but I think that the following experience is one of the best moments I've had in this regard. One of my cello friends at Duke played Martinů's "Variations on a Theme by Rossini" on her senior recital in March (which was coincidentally the day before my own recital). If she hadn't mentioned then that Martinů actually based that piece on a fantasy by Paganini that is itself based on a theme by Rossini, I doubt I would've gotten the Rossini tossup in round 8 as early as I did. I made sure to thank her today for that buzz-- I owe her for it.
3. I also enjoyed the bio, and I particularly had a lot of fun answering the bonus on Intestinal crypts and paneth cells! It was also fun to hear three questions that clued Duke biologists (Kathleen Pryer, Anne Yoder, and Emily Bernhardt–– I hear that Shan wrote all three questions), even if I couldn't remember that the Pryer Lab works with ferns (thankfully that didn't impact the outcome of the game).
4.

I was exhilarated that not one but two people first lined the Des Moines TU off gymnastics content!

I am absolutely not one of the people referenced here, but I don't think I will forget Ganon's expression when I got excited about the butter cow clue, confidently and proudly buzzed with "Iowa!," and was awarded a neg .

[Muriel Axon]

3. I also enjoyed the bio, and I particularly had a lot of fun answering the bonus on Intestinal crypts and paneth cells! It was also fun to hear three questions that clued Duke biologists (Kathleen Pryer, Anne Yoder, and Emily Bernhardt–– I hear that Shan wrote all three questions), even if I couldn't remember that the Pryer Lab works with ferns (thankfully that didn't impact the outcome of the game).

oops! not intentional, I swear!

(it's been a big year for Duke Biology in quiz bowl, since I think John Marvin also clued Justin Wright's work in a CMST II tossup)

[Heiliger Dankgesang]

it's been a big year for Duke Biology in quiz bowl, since I think John Marvin also clued Justin Wright's work in a CMST II tossup

He did! Although I think the paper that he clued is from when Justin Wright was a grad student.

[Adventure Temple Trail]

This isn't really a gameplay moment, but: Being able to follow other brackets/games on Harry White's live results page definitely amped up the sense of possibility and excitement as the chaos unfolded. When we saw on our phones that Chicago B had just upset Cornell A in their prelim bracket, we started dashing through the labyrinthine hallways from building 4 to 12 to 26 to 36 so we could find them and hug/congratulate them before our next round started. When we tried to retrace our path, we realized we had briefly gone outside through a door that was locked! Thankfully, a kindly MIT student happened to be playing a miniature piano that was in the hallway beyond the door for some reason (?) and let us back in with enough time to spare to start our next game.

Drawing on a class I took eleven years ago to 30 a neuroscience bonus in front of the audience was pretty cool.

[Bhagwan Shammbhagwan]

I was pleasantly surprised to see a decently-large amount of India content in this year's ACF Nationals. Some of my favorite questions included (even if I didn't buzz on them) were:
- the literature tossup on "Dalits"
- the Urdu poetry question cluing Bahadur Shah Zafar's poetry
- the Coke Studios bonus. I hope Coke Studios and similar content continues to come up in quiz bowl questions, as it's a great way of asking about how traditional styles are incorporated into modern music.

[Mahavishnu]

I will likely post similar things for the playoffs eventually.

Questions/events from the prelims that brought me joy:
- The bonus part on the fur-bearing trout
- The tossup on Fulani jihads, after club-member Qingyu had stated the previous day that the Fulani jihads should come up more
- The “Dark Tower” tossup although I failed to get it
- The akashic records bonus part
- Converting the part that mentioned Margaret Hamilton by looking up forum avatars
- Although we didn’t hear it, the Speyer bonus
- The edited version of my Patrick O’Brian question being made far better with the inclusion of the line “You have debauched my sloth!”
- Saying Bernicia instead of Deira, which was enjoyable because it occurred on our bye round and not during a real game
- Krusenstern coming up
- Leo guessing “rejoice” on the Falklands bonus
- The tossups on Latins
- The question on Jean Dubuffet which had me reeling
- The shipwrecks tossup cluing ancient Greek novels
- 30ing successive bonuses on expressivism and Georgian history
- Tossups on “The Gentleman from San Francisco” and the Lamb shift
- Getting Amanita through knowledge of Super Smash Bros. Melee
- The bonus on writers named Fanny
- Charles Yu coming up
- The African myth tossup on iron
- Nujabes
- The bonus on fast radio bursts

Questions I enjoyed getting wrong:
- Mauritius (based on the existence of the similarly challenged Samoan flying fox)
- Saying something stupid like Francetown or France City for the hard part of the Gabon bonus and almost being right
- Saying boxane for cubane

[cwasims]

I would just like to express my appreciation to the editors for having written no less than 5 science tossups I could get despite not being a science player and playing on what I imagine was one of the best science teams at the tournament. Although getting the cardinality and estimators tossups was perhaps expected for someone who has had to sit through economics Ph.D. Math Camp, I was very pleasantly surprised that the Gell-Mann tossup included a clue on his late-in-life work in linguistics, garnering me my first physics tossup in years.

[vydu]

this did happen unfortunately