2024 ARGOS (Set Announcement)

[Serpentine284]

I am proud to announce the 2024 Autumn-Ready Global Open Set (ARGOS), available for mirrors starting in fall of 2024. This is an open set (meaning teams playing are not required to be all from the same school) targeting 4 dots on Ophir's difficulty scale. The set will be head-edited by Clark Smith, and I will be handling logistics. Tossups will be roughly 850 characters, with bonuses at 8 lines (not including answerlines). The set will follow standard mACF rules with 15 point powers and -5 point negs.

Our editors include myself, Daniel Ma, Mitch McCullar, Richard Niu, Vivek Sasse, Raymond Wang, Forrest Weintraub, Geoffrey Wu, Andrew Zeng, and Nathan Zhang. Additionally, our writing team includes Iain Carpenter, Aayush Goodapaty, Arya Karthik, Owen Mimno, and Rosa Xia.

Distribution:

The set will consist of 14 packets with 22/22 questions each. The distribution for each packet, along with the subject editors, is as follows:

4/4 History:

1/1 American History (Andrew Zeng)
1/1 European History (Amogh Kulkarni)
1/1 World History (Amogh Kulkarni)
1/1 Ancient/Other History (Andrew Zeng)

4.5/4.5 Science:

1/1 Biology (Geoffrey Wu)
1/1 Chemistry (Geoffrey Wu)
1/1 Physics (Vivek Sasse)
1/1 Mathematics/Computer Science (Geoffrey Wu (Mathematics), Richard Niu (Computer Science))
0.5/0.5 Other Science (Geoffrey Wu (Earth Science, Engineering), Forrest Weintraub (Astronomy))

4/4 Literature:

1/1 American Literature (Mitch McCullar)
1/1 British + CN + AU/NZ Literature (Mitch McCullar)
1/1 European Literature (Mitch McCullar)
1/1 World Literature (Raymond Wang)

3.5/3.5 Fine Arts:

1/1 Visual Fine Arts (Nathan Zhang)
1/1 Auditory Fine Arts (Daniel Ma)
1/1 Other Visual Fine Arts (Raymond Wang)
0.5/0.5 Other Auditory Fine Arts (Forrest Weintraub)

4/4 RMPSS:

1/1 Religion (Clark Smith)
0.5/0.5 Mythology (Clark Smith)
1/1 Philosophy (Nathan Zhang)
1.5/1.5 Social Science (Amogh Kulkarni)

2/2 Other:

1/1 Geography (Daniel Ma)
0.5/0.5 Current Events (Andrew Zeng)
0.5/0.5 Other Academic (Andrew Zeng)

Hosting:

We are looking for hosts in regions of the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. If you would like to host a tournament on this set, please e-mail me at [email protected]. Mirror fees will be $60 per team. The set is currently 27% written, and we anticipate to have the set completely written and edited by October 1, 2024.

Thank you, and we hope you enjoy the set!

[Serpentine284]

Apologies for the lack of updates on this set. We will be pushing the starting mirror dates for the set to November 16 in order to ensure that the set is complete. Once again, we apologize for the inconvenience.

[Serpentine284]

Confirmed Mirror Sites (will continue to be updated):

Canada: McMaster University (11/17/24)
Midwest: University of Chicago (11/23/24)
Upper Mid-Atlantic: Columbia University (11/23/24)
UK: Cambridge University (12/14/24)
Lower Mid-Atlantic: VCU (12/21/24)
California: Stanford University (2/22/25)
Online Mirror: Online (3/23/25)
Northeast: Brandeis University (3/22/25)

If there is additional interest in hosting a mirror in a region not listed above, feel free to email us at the email in the initial forums post. Additionally, if there is enough interest, we may host a second online mirror for those unable to attend their region's mirror/those in regions not listed above.

[Serpentine284]

If anyone wishes to playtest the questions for this set prior to the first mirror (including only for specific categories), feel free to fill out this Google form within the next two weeks.

[Serpentine284]

We're going to begin playtesting in the next week, so if anyone still wishes to playtest ARGOS, I would recommend filling out the form linked above by tomorrow night.

[Serpentine284]

A couple of quick announcements:

The Brandeis mirror of ARGOS will be held sometime in 2025 due to the packed fall schedule. We're still looking for hosts in the Lower Mid-Atlantic region and the UK, so please don't hesitate to reach out if your university is interested in hosting our set.

We will also be officially adjusting the difficulty of the set. While writing the set, we realized that many of our ideas would be better served in a firmly 4-dot set, so we decided to make the set 4-dot. The original post has been updated to reflect this decision.

[Santa Claus]

The Brandeis mirror of ARGOS will be held sometime in 2025 due to the packed fall schedule.

As we enter the new year, do we have any details on when this mirror is slated to happen?