I posted recently about how I think quizbowl answerlines have gotten a bit out of hand in recent years, so I figured it would be best to expand on my thoughts a bit. It has become common practice for answerlines in common link questions to accept any of individual titles/names/etc that are clued in the question. This is mostly a good quality-of-life change, as it prevents some annoying negs for giving a full title out of habit, or a more specific but still correct answer. However, I think these can go too far, becoming overly generous or even counter-productively confusing, when they go too far past the old principle of "clear knowledge equivalents". To illustrate, here are three tossups from 2024 ACF Nationals.
14. In a novel by an author with this surname, a eugenicist lectures his Singaporean secretary Naden about the coming “United States of Mankind” while on an Anthropological Mission in Malaya. An Auckland literary don with this surname was posthumously portrayed as the narcissistic philanderer “Karl” in his daughter Charlotte Grimshaw’s memoir The Mirror Book. A novel by an author with this surname ends with a girl nicknamed “Little Womey” and “Looloo” fleeing Spa House in Annapolis after “Mothering” drinks a cyanide-laced cup of tea. Randall Jarrell’s “An Unread Book” is an introduction to a novel by an author with this surname, in which the alcoholic Henny is tormented by the bizarre baby talk of her husband, the civil servant Sam Pollitt. For 10 points, the Australian author of The Man Who Loved Children had what surname and the first name Christina?
ANSWER: Stead [accept Christina Stead; accept C. K. Stead or Christian Karlson Stead]
This answerline is eminently reasonable. It is obvious that "Christina Stead" is a clear-knowledge equivalent of "the surname Stead". If you wanted to be really strict, you could prompt, but Christina Stead is a normal English name, knowing that her surname would therefore be Stead is trivial information.
17. Note to moderator: Read the answerline carefully. A donor portrait is included in a panel centering on these objects in a bronze door by Filarete (“fee-la-RET-ay”). Along with the writings of Thomas Aquinas, these objects are held in the central panel of a painting by Orcagna (“or-KAHN-yuh”) for the Santa Maria Novella’s Strozzi (“STROAT-see”) Chapel. A boat is docked at the edge of a Raphael cartoon in which these objects are held by a kneeling man in blue and yellow robes. These objects rest on marble steps to the right of a turbaned prisoner of war in Titian’s Pesaro Madonna. A fresco titled for these objects features the Tribute Money and Stoning of Christ in its middle ground, and compares Sixtus IV with Solomon in two inscriptions on Arches of Constantine that flank an idealized octagonal temple. For 10 points, a Sistine Chapel fresco by Perugino centers on what gold and silver symbols of papal authority held by a gray-haired saint?
ANSWER: Saint Peter’s keys [or the Keys of Heaven; accept Christ Giving the Keys to Saint Peter; accept Peter the Apostle, San Pietro, Simon Peter, Cephas, Petrus, Petros, Shimoun Bar Younahin, or Šīm‘ōn bar Yōnā in place of “Saint Peter”; accept chiave or chiavi in place of “keys”; prompt on keys, chiavi, chiave, Delivery of the Keys, or Consegna delle chiavi by asking “which keys?”; reject “Simon” or “Keys to the Vatican”]
This answerline is a bit more complicated, but still fine. "Saint Peter's Keys" are a well-defined topic in iconography, and appear in the titles of the works clued. Most of the alternative answerlines are giving alternative names of Peter or original-language versions of the titles. (I question somewhat if it's necessary to include so many alternative names that are extremely unlikely to be given as answers, but that doesn't affect gameplay in any meaningful way).
20. Translations or word forms acceptable. The Sufi sultan Ibrahim II punned on terms for “learning” and this concept to tout his city’s scholarship, like Stars of the Sciences. The siris tree symbolized this concept, which titles a eulogy of Prithviraja Chauhan. A king of Ruhuna took a name from this concept and then rebuilt Polonnaruwa. In the Mahāvaṃsa, an exiled prince named for this concept marries the yakṣī Kuveni and founds the ruling house of Tambapaṇṇī and Anurādhapura. This concept named the capital of the ‘Ādil Shāhī sultans and a city that was said to uphold Virupaksha’s dharma to repent for its founding brothers’ conversion to Islam. Ferishta recorded the Bahmani Sultanate’s siege of a city named for this concept where Bukka and Harihara built the temples of Hampi. For 10 points, a late medieval Hindu empire was based in what concept’s namesake Carnatic city, or “nagara”?
ANSWER: victory [or vijaya or vaagai or vaakai; or triumph or winning or synonyms; accept Vijayanagar, Vijayanagara, Bijanagar, Bisnegar, Vijayapura, Bijapur, Vijapur, Vjayabāhu I, Vijayarajapura, or Prithviraja Vijaya; prompt on Hampi or Hampe or Pampapura until “Hampi” is read by asking “what was it renamed?”] (Ibrahim ‘Ādil Shāh II addressed Bijapur as Vidyapur, or “city of knowledge,” for works like the Nujum-ul-Ulum.)
This answerline goes well beyond accepting only clear knowledge equivalents. The fact that vijay means victory in Hindi, or that the Vijayanagara Empire is specifically named after the word vijay, is decidedly non-trivial knowledge (especially when Vijayanagara was known by many different names in different sources). This question not only violates the basic principle that each question should have a single unambiguous answer, but actively rewards the "freshman method" of saying the first possible answer that comes to mind. A player who buzzes on the first clue they recognize and says "Vijayanagara" would receive points, despite it being obvious that the city of Vijayanagara is not named after the
concept "Vijayanagara".