The Quizbowl Resource Center

BuzzerZen

Not many teams have a surplus of timers that they're able to use. Additionally, putting moderators on the clock can result in rounds where only, say, 16 tossups get read if you have some not very speedy moderators. The tournaments go faster, but the rounds get less questions in than they ought to h...

BuzzerZen

Sir Thopas wrote:fourty

You seem to have something against spelling. OH BURN.

BuzzerZen

I'm looking forward to a Caldecott Medal-based tournament myself.

BuzzerZen

There is a reference work called simply Encyclopedia of Religion that I have found extremely useful for myth and religion questions that you may have access to electronically via your library. It's quite excellent.

BuzzerZen

z9R4C3 wrote:
BuzzerZen wrote:I'm writing for this, so I certainly won't be playing. :-P
Oh >.< Anyhow, should we be expecting Hampshire to be bringing teams to the tournament proper?

At least one. We'll see if I scrape up enough people for a B team next semester.

BuzzerZen

z9R4C3 wrote:I'm arbitrarily imposing a field cap of 18 teams, potentially to be expanded later when we find more readers.

We'll also be mirroring the Dwight Science Tournament.

Dwight Science Field:
Mukherjee
Evan S.

I'm writing for this, so I certainly won't be playing. :-P

BuzzerZen

I would totally play this. Places on that list that I might be, in decreasing order of plausibility:
PACE
the CC mirror at MIT
HSNCT
Some east coast mirror of Missouri Open
Chicago Open

BuzzerZen

I have secured room reservations for March 7th. We will have eight classrooms and one lecture hall, so the maximum field size we will be able to stretch to is 18.

BuzzerZen

INDIA: Idiosyncratic New Distribution is Incontrovertibly Awesome?

BuzzerZen

This brings me to a notion with which I have toyed for the past month or so: instead of separate packets (which have the obvious problems of double writing and editing time) for different sections of the field, would it be acceptable to teams not actively seeking Nationals qualification to play on ...

BuzzerZen

I suspect you'd get a better audience for a Sunday mirror of Dwight Science than for this. You might even want to consider running Dwight Science as a recruitment event, considering you're at that crazy MIT place.

BuzzerZen

Meta-discussion split off to reduce clutter. Don't be reading this thread if you plan on participating in Matt's event and don't want to get bludgeoned by a vengeful Matt Weiner when it becomes clear that you have cheated.

BuzzerZen

TJ 2008 wrote:You beat teams like Charter and Dorman by playing basketball instead of practicing when they only study 10 hours a week.

BuzzerZen

It looks like the old tournament database help thread has been locked in the archive section, so you'll have to forgive me for starting a new one. Anyway, my password for updating the results our Pre-Holiday Academic Tournament (http://www.hsquizbowl.org/tdb/tournaments/125) this weekend is current...

BuzzerZen

haha absolutely not trying to make a name for myself. I actually only plan on coming if there are computational questions. If there aren't, I will silently stay out. This is dogmatically wrong-headed. By only attending tournaments with computation questions, you're depriving yourself, and possibly ...

BuzzerZen

Junior Academic kNowledge Invitational at Shady Side Academy Run for Youth?

BuzzerZen

I will write computer science questions for this. Any other contributions I make to the set will be unsystematic.

BuzzerZen

DumbJaques wrote:I see people with cars pretty much everywhere I go

Fixed.

BuzzerZen

Some 32-team, 10-round possibilities: 1) Four brackets of 8; top 2 from each bracket go to single-elim 2) 5 rounds of swiss pair; then top 8 to two playoff groups of 4 which play bracketed RR, winners of brackets play final (extra packet for tiebreakers or for a weighted final if you want to put in...

BuzzerZen

everyday847 wrote:Arnolfini's Getting Hitched, That Player

I am giving this as my answer to Arnolfini questions from now on.

BuzzerZen

warpoet wrote:Fun interrupt from an idiot:

Calling your teammates idiots on a public forum sure is classy!

BuzzerZen

A guide to doing more or less what I have done. Feel free to ask questions.

BuzzerZen

The 21 tossups in Brown's ACF Fall packet have a mean character count of 661 with a standard deviation of 18.98. The shortest tossup is 630 characters, the longest is 699. Now do a regression of char count, and number of lines for this and other packets. That would actually be helpful. You're the o...

BuzzerZen

The 21 tossups in Brown's ACF Fall packet have a mean character count of 661 with a standard deviation of 18.98. The shortest tossup is 630 characters, the longest is 699.

BuzzerZen

Hampshire'd probably come to this! Are teams attending mirrors required to write packets?

BuzzerZen

Independent verification tells me this is wrong. Six lines of "UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU" in size 10 TNR with 1-inch margins yields 384 characters; eight lines is 512, ten lines is 640. Six lines of "UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU" in size 12 TNR with same margins yields 324 c...

BuzzerZen

Also: somebody should study why teams don't subtly promote late submissions. It would seem to me that the cost of having to write more questions is outweighed by the huge extra income that comes with teams that pay late fees. It's not like most quizbowlers would be using the time saved by not writi...

BuzzerZen

Latest in the "Evan likes doing silly things with computers" files: I have successfully leveraged existing tools to be able to transform plain-text ACF-formatted quiz bowl questions into RTFs. Not entirely existing tools, I guess. I slightly modified this thing called pandoc. Anyway, the p...

BuzzerZen

I believe that standard ACF (don't recall NAQT) rules say that if you answer in English for a title that is originally in a foreign language, you have to use a form in which that title has actually been translated and published and not just a plausible reading. Since I get exactly one Google hit fo...

BuzzerZen

I'm not familiar with any of the high school textbooks being mentioned in this thread, but I would be suspicious of any modern textbook as a source for learning quizbowl history. Modern history as taught in schools tends to focus on social history, while quizbowl history is much more about dead whi...

BuzzerZen

NRacademicteam wrote:You can count New Rochelle in, but on one condition:

Will there be computational math/science questions?

You are trying to make a name for yourself, aren't you?

BuzzerZen

BobGHHS wrote:It's amazing that no matter how overused those bad Auk puns are, they're still funny.

No, no they are not. TJ didn't win 7 KMOs in a row by reading puns. We skipped them with extreme prejudice.

BuzzerZen

What's your closest stop on the commuter rail? You cannot get to Amherst via the MBTA commuter rail, not by a long shot. Your only real mass transit options are the wildly overpriced Peter Pan bus or Amtrak, and both of those options would likely require you to depart Friday and spend the night in ...

BuzzerZen

Hampshire Invites Players to Participate In an Event called HIPPIE on March 7th, 2008 . It will be a mirror of the Minnesota Undergraduate Tournament, a submission-optional tournament produced by the UMN team. Registration is now open. Only email registrations sent to me at ejs07@hampshire.edu will ...

BuzzerZen

Here's another thing I did today: I made a Google Custom Search that covers the packet archives of repute, namely Stanford, quizbowlpackets, and collegiate.quizbowlpackets. Enjoy having a marginally easier way to google for questions. Hey, that's cool. Could you add Carlo's ACFDB or Arnav's dealie ...

BuzzerZen

Here's another thing I did today: I made a Google Custom Search that covers the packet archives of repute, namely Stanford, quizbowlpackets, and collegiate.quizbowlpackets. Enjoy having a marginally easier way to google for questions.

BuzzerZen

12-pt Times New Roman, 1-inch margins: 100 characters per line
6 lines = 600 characters
8 lines = 800 characters
10 lines = 1000 characters

10-pt Times New Roman, 1-inch margins: 115 characters per line
6 lines = 700 characters
8 lines = 925 characters
10 lines = 1150 characters

Thank you.

BuzzerZen

Hm, no dice apparently. Carry on. I will, however, avail myself of some ludicrous hot chocolate in Harvard Sq. on Sunday.

BuzzerZen

Anti-Climacus wrote:With respect to the Arnolfini wedding tossup, I would like to submit that every possibe aspect of that painting has been used as a clue. In other words, the problem is that the Arnolfini wedding has been tossed up one hundred million too many times.

Fixed. But otherwise, you're exactly right.

BuzzerZen

If you want to play a couple hours of RMPFest semi-seriously at a Harvard Square coffee-type establishment yet-to-be-determined on Sunday at 11am, post here. If there are three people aside from me who want to do this, and they post here in the next 24 hours, we will do it. If not, oh well. Also loo...

BuzzerZen

Alright: So if anyone is interested in playing RMPFest somewhere in the Harvard Square area on Sunday, November 23, most likely in an informal "shootout" arrangement, please post here. If there is insufficient interest, I will just release the set and open discussion on it. Oooh! Ooooh! Y...

BuzzerZen

Hence, we either need to place additional requirements on tossups beyond having a PBD for them to be considered pyramidal, or we need to place additional requirements on tossups beyond being pyramidal for them to be considered good quiz bowl. Multiple clues of decreasing difficulty, such that each ...

BuzzerZen

Sir Thopas wrote:should the money be willing to be forked over

You're seriously attributing propositional attitudes to money?

BuzzerZen

What the hell Watkins proxy.

BuzzerZen

Ukonvasara wrote:boom shaka laka

you are like my favorite person rob carson

BuzzerZen

grapesmoker wrote:
BuzzerZen wrote:
grapesmoker wrote:Hey, can we get a field update for this?
Sign up, Jerry! I want to lose to you three times in the triple round robin.
I did sign up. Presumably we're not listed as attending because we haven't finished our packet.

Oh, neither have we. Just promised it.

BuzzerZen

grapesmoker wrote:Hey, can we get a field update for this?

Sign up, Jerry! I want to lose to you three times in the triple round robin.

BuzzerZen

who is this Manny

BuzzerZen

If there's not an ANDREW JACKSON MEMORIAL in the way, there is never any excuse for getting lost. Dude, it was the fucking Stonewall Jackson Shrine. Get your own hilarious anecdote right. There was no excuse for us getting lost. There were lots of excuses! Like ambiguous signage and confusion over ...

BuzzerZen

everyday847 wrote:If there's not an ANDREW JACKSON MEMORIAL in the way, there is never any excuse for getting lost.

Dude, it was the fucking Stonewall Jackson Shrine. Get your own hilarious anecdote right.

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