MEKONS: a rock music audio tournament (online, 12/17/23)

[Pilgrim]

This is an announcement for MEKONS (Musical Evaluation of Knowledge on Ordered Noise Segments), an audio tournament entirely written by myself, Trevor Davis. The main mirror is happening on Discord on Sunday December 17. To register, please fill out this form. If there is interest, another mirror or casual packet reading will happen in the spring. If you would like the packets for an in-person mirror, contact me with your plans and we can work something out.

Up to date list of registered players is here.

The subject matter of this tournament is rock and "rock-adjacent" music, with a focus on critically acclaimed and historically important artists. This can be considered a vanity tournament to the extent that clues from (major) artists that I like will be used in multiple questions, whereas artists I dislike may not come up at all. That being said, I have made an effort to include a wide variety of styles and subgenres. This tournament should have something for anybody who likes rock.

This set contains 8 packets of 20 tossups each. The questions are similar in style to previous audio tournaments, but are significantly longer: the typical question includes 10 clues of 15-20 seconds each. Some questions have very difficult early clues, but by the end everything should be accessible; almost nothing went dead in playtesting with a few friends.

There is no set distribution for the questions. With most questions finalized, the chronological distribution of clues is roughly:
pre-1960: 1-2%
1960s: 12%
1970s: 26%
1980s: 18%
1990s: 15%
2000s: 15%
2010-present: 12%

The breakdown of question types per packet are roughly:
9 song common links
4 artists (including single album questions)
4 artist common links
1 album common link
1 songwriter or cover songs
1 film soundtrack

[Cheynem]

I really love the idea of this, but a shootout singles format doesn't appeal to me--to me, it heavily rewards guessing and also, unless there's a field cap, really punishes people who only have middling knowledge, who otherwise might still get buzzes in individual matchups or in smaller fields. (I suppose, of course, I could just play at a smaller mirror.)

[Pilgrim]

The exact format will depend on how many people are interested, but what I'm thinking is a number of smaller shootout rooms (around 6 people each if the numbers work), either as completely separate rooms (maybe a "serious" room(s) and a "casual" room(s)) or with a ladder system where some people move to a higher or lower room after each round. My concern with a teams format is that the long questions could lead to very long rounds, but if general consensus prefers playing as teams, I'm open to it.

The only part of the format that's definite is that I'll be "reading" the packets live, as I don't much care for asynchronous quizbowl. Past that, any suggestions are welcome.

[Dantooine is Big!]

For what it's worth, I'm super excited to play these questions, and would also much prefer a teams format / some sort of actual tournament format over the singles format you outlined. I'm figuring the questions are generally 2 minutes long, as opposed to the more typical (given previous audio question sets) 1 minute? I don't think that'll be a huge barrier to running a full tournament, but it'll be good to be aware of the longer question length if you end up going with a teams format so people are aware of the potential (longer) length of the event. If you have any doubt about how many people would actually want to play a teams tournament, I'd recommend sending out a poll — I, personally, feel confident you would get more than enough interest. :)

[Cheynem]

The separate rooms/6 singles players cap/ladder format all seem fine to me. I also wouldn't mind doubles if you could get enough staff. I just didn't want like some 20-player shootout horror.

[mrtyrmystry]

Exciting!

The date poll is a sort of-functional headcount. If there's a lot of people interested (I think there will be), you could more strongly consider teams. A shootout seems simpler.

[Habitat_Against_Humanity]

I really like the idea of playing this. However, given the timing (over the holidays), I don't know that I'll have the availability to devote a minimum of ~6-ish hours to playing this with teams. I'd actually prefer some sort of singles, Festivus-like event where I could pop in and out if needed.

[Pilgrim]

Sunday December 17 is currently leading in the poll (by one vote). If that's still true in about a week, I will lock in the date and open up registration. Again, if you're interested in playing, please vote in the poll. If none of the date options work but you would be interested in a mirror at some later date, feel free to post in the thread or message me.

I'm figuring the questions are generally 2 minutes long, as opposed to the more typical (given previous audio question sets) 1 minute?

The questions are over 3 minutes long (probably not an ideal length for a tournament, but I originally wrote them for friends to play as a shootout, one packet at a time). I think a room of strong players will breeze through them, but just a single room with nobody buzzing can grind everything to halt. I'm still leaning toward a singles format unless more people express a preference for teams. Singles has the added advantage that it's easy to adjust the number of rounds on the fly if things are going slower than expected.

[Pilgrim]

The main mirror of this tournament is happening Sunday December 17 on Discord. It will be free to play. To register, please fill out this form. The format will be singles with some small number of players per room (looking like 2-3 rooms). In the registration form, I'm asking players to vote between a few options for how rooms are assigned:

• A randomly assigned seeding round, followed by a ladder system: each round the 1-2 highest scorers in a room move up, the 1-2 lowest move down. Final rankings are based on score in highest room. Probably the best format for selecting a winner, but it could be slow, and ties on who moves up/down will have be broken randomly.
• Randomly assigned rooms for prelims (probably 4 rounds), then fixed playoff rooms based on prelim performance. Can have pretty uneven strength of schedule for prelims.
• Just split into separate rooms with no movement. The fastest option, but means playing the same opponents each round. I will probably only consider this if the "competitive" room option is chosen by a good number of people for a single room.

If there's enough interest, I'll hold another mirror or question reading later in the spring.

[Cheynem]

Do you know what time this tournament will be?

[Pilgrim]

Do you know what time this tournament will be?

My current thought is start at 11am EST. If anyone has constraints, let me know and I'll try to accommodate.

[Pilgrim]

Reminder that this is happening in less than a week. There are 12 players registered so far: field update. If you don't see your name, you haven't submitted the registration form. Please register ASAP if you want to play.

[Dantooine is Big!]

Reminder that this is happening in less than a week.

Did you ever decide on a format?

[Pilgrim]

We're going to be doing a ladder system with three rooms. The first round will be used for seeding to sort people into a top, middle, and bottom room. After each subsequent round, the top 1-2 players in each room will move up and the bottom 1-2 will move down. Final standings are based on total score in the top room.

I just sent an email including a discord invite. If you registered but didn't receive the email, please send me a message.

We still have room for additional players; if you want to play, fill out the registration form or message me directly.

[Pilgrim]

Congrats to Ali Saeed for winning this tournament in a close race over Victor Pavao.

Scores for the top room were:

Code: Select all

Ali Saeed 560
Victor Pavao 525
Taylor Harvey 200 (in 3 rounds)
Michael Wu 200 (in 7 rounds)
Matt Lafer 195 (in 4 rounds)
Ryan Rosenberg 155 (in 5 rounds)
Austin Woods 30 (in 1 round)
Mazin Omer 15 (in 1 round)
Dan Puma 0 (in 1 round)

(with apologies to Jeffrey Hill, who should have been in the top room for the last round, but we started without him to finish quicker)

Scores for all rooms are tabulated here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... sp=sharing

There will be some sort of future reading of these questions, so the tournament is not clear - please don't discuss answers publicly.