2024 ACF Winter: Global Announcement (November 16, 2024)

[cwasims]

This is the official announcement for 2024 ACF Winter, which will be held on November 16th, 2024. Like previous Winters, this set will target a difficulty halfway between ACF Fall and ACF Regionals. The tournament will be head edited by me, Chris Sims. The subject editors are as follows:

Anuttam Ramji – American Literature, Philosophy
Rachel Ezrielev – British Literature
Richard Niu – European Literature, Chemistry
Raymond Chen – World Literature, Biology
Vikshar Athreya – American History, Religion
Jonathan Tran – European History
Sky Li – World History, Other History, Mythology, Computer Science
Ben Chapman – Physics, Other Science (except Computer Science)
Eric Gunter – Auditory Fine Arts, Other Fine Arts (Auditory)
Henry Atkins – Visual Fine Arts, Other Fine Arts (Visual), Other Academic, Popular Culture
Joseph Chambers – Social Science
Chris Sims – Geography, Current Events

HOSTING:

If you are interested in hosting a mirror of ACF Winter, fill out this form before 11:59 p.m. PT on Saturday, September 14, 2024. Mirrors of this tournament may be held in-person or online. If you have any questions about hosting, please email ACF’s Site Coordinator at [email protected]. Hosts must abide by ACF’s Hosting Guidelines.

REGISTRATION:

Teams will be able to register using a central ACF registration form once host sites have been chosen. This form will go live on September 25, 2024. Registration will close on November 6, 2024.

DISTRIBUTION:

The subject distribution is listed here.

FEES:

Fees and discounts for this tournament are structured as follows:

Base fee per team: $150
Shorthanded discount (teams of 1-2 players): -$75
Buzzer: -$10/functional system
Staffers: -$25 per staffer with functional laptop. Staffers must register with ACF in advance.
Travel discount: -$10 per 200 miles traveled one-way
Packet submission discounts/opt-out fee: As noted below
New to quizbowl discount: -$100

The new-to-quizbowl discount is for schools that have not sent a team to any regular collegiate academic tournament (exclusively Novice tournaments do not count) since September 1, 2023, and have no one on the team(s) claiming this discount who played those tournaments for another school.

Host sites will bill teams as soon as possible after the teams register. Teams should pay their host sites by whatever method is convenient for the hosts, who will in turn pay ACF by check, cash, or PayPal.

PACKET SUBMISSION:

Note: Please read this section carefully as packet submission guidelines have changed for 2024 ACF Winter.
Any team with at least two people on it who played a regular, collegiate, academic quizbowl tournament* (either as a college student or high school student) prior to September 1st, 2023, is required to either (a) submit a half-packet, or (b) pay an opt-out fee. ACF is introducing an opt-out fee this year to reduce the number of late submissions received. High school teams attending a high school-only mirror are exempt from this requirement.

Please email [email protected] if you are unsure whether your team is required to submit a half-packet. A team that is not required to submit a packet may submit an optional half-packet by September 29, 2024 for a $50 discount.

*For these purposes, all ACF tournaments, NAQT SCT (Division I or Division II), NAQT ICT, and typical college-level academic invitationals count as regular collegiate academic tournaments. Pop culture or “hybrid” tournaments, HCASC, and tournaments played on NAQT’s Collegiate Novice series sets do not.

Here is the submission schedule:
August 25, 2024: -$50
September 1, 2024: -$40
September 8, 2024: -$30
September 15, 2024: -$20
September 22, 2024: -$10
September 29, 2024: -$0
October 7, 2024: +$10
October 14, 2024: +$20
October 21, 2024: +$30

The opt-out fee is $50. If a team does not submit a half-packet by October 21, 2024 and is required to submit per the criteria above, they must instead pay the opt-out fee; submissions will not be accepted following this date.

PACKETS RECEIVED:
-$50 deadline:
Arizona State A
Cambridge A
Cambridge B
Central Oklahoma A
Chicago B
Claremont A
Georgia Tech A
Georgia Tech B
Johns Hopkins A
Johns Hopkins B
LSE A
North Carolina A
Rutgers B
Sheffield A
Virginia Tech A
Washington A
Washington B
Waterloo A
Waterloo B
Waterloo C
WUSTL B

-$40 deadline:
Claremont B
McGill B
SIUE A
Toronto A

PACKET DISTRIBUTION AND AUTHORSHIP:

If your team is planning on submitting a half-packet, email [email protected] to request a distribution. All finished packets must be sent to that email before 11:59 PT on the day listed to meet the deadline. Please format the half-packet in .doc or .docx before sending it. The email subject line should list the name of the school, the team number (if applicable), and the words “half-packet.”

Your assigned half-packet may request questions from more specific categories within the distribution. For instance, instead of being assigned an “American Literature” tossup, you might be asked to write a question on 20th-century American poetry, or an Economics bonus instead of “Social Science/Philosophy.”

If a team wishes to outsource part of its packet to a player not expected to play on that team (e.g., a student who has graduated), it must first receive approval from the head editors. Non-playing students are welcome and encouraged to help their newer club members write, but it's useful to know the contributors for both credit and logistical reasons.

If multiple teams from one school are submitting packets, they should NOT be aware of each others’ questions. Any roster changes that entail an author for one packet playing for another (e.g., if a player on Team B moves to Team A) should be flagged to the TD and to [email protected].

TIPS AND GUIDELINES:

- Please make sure your questions are harder than questions in ACF Fall and easier than at ACF Regionals. 2019 EFT and 2020 ACF Winter are good difficulty targets. A majority of your tossup answers should conceivably be a tossup answer at ACF Fall.
- Questions should be written in 10-pt Times New Roman with one-inch margins. Tossups will be capped at seven lines for the tournament, although you may submit longer questions. Each bonus part should be a maximum of three lines in length, with the majority being one or two lines long.
- Tossup answerlines should generally emphasize playability over creativity; aim for creative and interesting clues with straightforward answerlines. Especially if you are submitting for one of the later deadlines, the frequency of topic clashes means that broad common-link questions are unlikely to be used.
- When writing bonuses, aim for the easy parts to have 90% conversion, medium parts to have 50% conversion, and hard parts to have 10% conversion.

More information can be found in ACF’s packet submission guidelines.

MIRRORS:

Mirrors will by default be regional. ACF reserves the right to move teams and staffers between sites. ACF intends to mirror 2024 ACF Winter in the following regions:

Northeast:
Upper Mid-Atlantic:
Upstate NY:
Lower Mid-Atlantic:
Southeast:
Florida:
Great Lakes:
Midwest:
North:
South Central:
Pacific Northwest/Mountain West:
Northern California:
Southern California:
Eastern Canada:
United Kingdom:
Overflow (online):

If you have any other questions or concerns, please email [email protected].

[DubiousHandles]

A reminder that hosting bids are due in two weeks, on September 14, 2024 at 11:59 p.m. Pacific Time. We are still looking for bids in quite a few regions. Please fill out the host bid form if your school is interested in hosting a mirror of ACF Winter.