GHOST (HS-REGS) - Call for writers

[a_noob_bot]

Hello everyone,

Hanover High School is starting to write its set for the 2024 GHOST (Great Halloween Quiz Bowl States Tournament, don't ask me how the acronym came to be) to be hosted on 10/26/2024. We are looking for writers and editors that are able to help us with this endeavor. The set will contain 14 packets of 40 tossups. This is in line with the New Hampshire Quiz Bowl League rules, as the tournament is being held in New Hampshire. There will be powermarks for the tossups. The distribution is as follows:

7 science
7 literature
7 history
4 Fine arts
3 Religion, Mythology, Philosophy, and Social Science
4 Geography
4 Current Events
4 Trash

We are looking for more writers and editors in general. If you would like to help write or edit, please email me at [email protected] or dm me on discord (username is anoobbot). The deadline for questions is June 15.

Thank you for your help,
Chris Chor

[GallatinGOAT2020]

Do you mind sharing where I could find the New Hampshire QB League rules? Are they significantly different than regular NAQT question guidelines?

[Atlashill]

Would you be willing to have another group of writers supply bonus parts so that the set can be used in the standard 20/20 format? With 560 tossups planned, you could end up with separate fall and spring sets available for more prospective hosts. Speaking solely from the perspective of a tournament organizer, having two additional HS-Regs sets available would be a boon for heavily active circuits. (Provided, of course, that there is an interested group of writers willing to write the bonus, the logistics of reimbursing everyone can be worked out, and the combined sets meet quality standards.)

[a_noob_bot]

Currently because we are writing for the tournament and the tournament is an all tossup tournament, the primary focus is on the tossups. If we are ahead of schedule and have the time, I would love to add bonuses. I don't see it being much of a problem, so I will get back to you by March to make that decision. The only things we would need to tweak are the distribution and some current events questions. If you would like to help me organize bonuses, please let me know. Thanks!

Best,
Chris Chor

[3C273]

How long will tossups in this set be?

[a_noob_bot]

Tossups are capped at 7 lines on Arial size 11 font. This includes answerlines. Additionally, there are a maximum of 4 sentences per question.

Hope this helps!


Chris Chor

[3C273]

What is the purpose of having the line count encompass both the answerline and the question itself? I assume that a certain number of questions can fit per page, but it seems like it could be rather variable and potentially restrictive.

[a_noob_bot]

This guideline was meant to limit the length of answerlines, as per request from my coach/advisor. He suggested that metric to try to limit the length of questions based on other sets, such as KICKOFF and IQBT regular season sets.

[Subotai the Valiant, Final Dog of War]

Not that I have any stake in this, but some answerlines simply should be longer than others. For example, an answerline on Beloved (a single word) will inherently take less space than any answer where the original title is long, the answer is a description, the answer is translated from another language and has multiple acceptable original/English language equivalents, etc. Think of an answerline like ANSWER: À la recherche du temps perdu [or In Search of Lost Time or Remembrance of Things Past; accept Du côté de chez Swann or Swann's Way]. If you've only clued things from Swann's Way in such a tossup in the first line or few lines (as is common), there isn't really a way to cut from this answerline without it just being incomplete, and that takes up two full lines of Arial 11. This is obviously an extreme example, but there are many instances where a full answerline will be over one line of Arial 11.

It seems odd to require that such questions have fewer clues to compensate, unless the intention is simply to avoid all questions with such answerlines in the first place (even if otherwise very clear topics to ask about).

[a_noob_bot]

I understand your concern, and looking through the questions that are already written, I am seeing this as a problem in the literature and history questions. As such, I have made changes to accommodate for those answerlines that have to be long and thorough. The tossups will now be capped at 6 lines, and their corresponding answerlines will be capped at 2 lines. I hope this helps to alleviate the concerns. I went through the tossups that have been written and most of them will be in compliance with these new rules.

On a side note, applications for writers are still open, and we are accepting new writers on a rolling basis. Specifically, we are looking for science writers and 2-3 more editors in general. Thank you for helping to make GHOST as good as it can be!

Chris Chor

[DragonSM]

For the reasons DMa went into above, generally answerlines are not capped, because answerlines should be short in the first place (given that there generally isn't a reason to have long answerlines for most questions), but when they are long it is generally because, without the extra length, they will caused headaches for players, moderators, and/or tds/protest committees due to the answerline not sufficiently covering all possible scenarios that could happen in gameplay with a given question. Having a recommendation of trying to keep answerlines concise seems reasonable, but I'd argue that any answerline that is long and already a well-written idea probably needs to be long. All that having a hard cap as opposed to soft cap on answerline length will do is either completely remove some possible answers (like the example DMa gave above) or result in incomplete answerlines for some questions where correct or semi-correct answers aren't accepted/prompted and ends up resulting in extra protests and headaches.

[Subotai the Valiant, Final Dog of War]

For the reasons DMa went into above, generally answerlines are not capped, because answerlines should be short in the first place (given that there generally isn't a reason to have long answerlines for most questions), but when they are long it is generally because, without the extra length, they will caused headaches for players, moderators, and/or tds/protest committees due to the answerline not sufficiently covering all possible scenarios that could happen in gameplay with a given question. Having a recommendation of trying to keep answerlines concise seems reasonable, but I'd argue that any answerline that is long and already a well-written idea probably needs to be long. All that having a hard cap as opposed to soft cap on answerline length will do is either completely remove some possible answers (like the example DMa gave above) or result in incomplete answerlines for some questions where correct or semi-correct answers aren't accepted/prompted and ends up resulting in extra protests and headaches.

Agree on the whole, but I will say that a 2-line cap on answerlines seems pretty reasonable if there is a specific concern about long answerlines/questions that would require them. 95% or more of the potentially excluded answerlines would be "description acceptable," and that's a very reasonable editorial decision to exclude (especially when questions are intended for a local format with teams/moderators likely less used to adjudicating such answerlines). I'm guessing this was the idea behind the answerline cap in the first place; my initial concern was less with the answerline cap in itself and more with tossups arbitrarily losing a line of clues if the answerline needed to be longer, which has been addressed.