The Quizbowl Resource Center

Ike

Difficulty is always a tricky thing. I think everyone in quizbowl wants the set to be only as hard as necessary. But sometimes I feel that it's necessary to stretch difficulty in the service of other goals. To bring up something that Olivia astutely pointed out -- the inclusion of women in quizbowl ...

Ike

I, Ike Jose, was the head editor of the set, and also subject-edited all the Literature, Philosophy, "Other Science," Non-Economics Social Science, and some amount of other visual arts. My co-editors were Will Alston (The lion's share of the Fine Arts, World Religion, Economics), Mike Bent...

Ike

This is your thread for discussing the set. The set has not been sent off to the archives yet; mostly, the set will be updated to reflect the resolutions of the protest committee. You are free to request a question for viewing until then. It would be best if you could give a reason as to why the que...

Ike

I would recommend using an identifier such as "This unnamed location" if you're going to write a tossup on something that doesn't have a reified name. It feels much less hacky than saying "description acceptable." All else equal I would think a simple tag like "description ...

Ike

I would recommend using an identifier such as "This unnamed location" if you're going to write a tossup on something that doesn't have a reified name. It feels much less hacky than saying "description acceptable."

Ike

At any rate, this argument doesn't work very well because the whole point we're discussing is what is mandated in quizbowl by means of the distribution. Of course, someone could come along and write a tournament with loads of maths in the "misc" or "other" portion of the distrib...

Ike

I think cutting other categories to add 1/1 Math is an overreaction to this last ACF Nationals. I am not very good at most categories at the ACF Nationals level, usually when I play tournaments at that level I look forward to the Math questions. While I understand the editors' vision of blurting th...

Ike

You're right, sorry we didn't do our due diligence by consulting with a panel of white guys who are extremely into Asian culture. I thought the point of quizbowl was to reward you for being interested in learning about lots of cultures, and that the entire point of this tournament was to try to rep...

Ike

One idea we had was combining religion and myth into a single 1/1 I like this idea. I'd use the resulting extra question to have 1/1 "mathematical sciences" including pure math, math applications, statistics, and CS, and 1/1 "other science" including Earth science, astronomy, en...

Ike

Also, what was the third math question you talked about? I don't remember a third math question in the rounds that most teams heard. Sorry, I miscounted since I didn't know the tournament format exactly. Just to be clear, the math tossups are DAGs, the one in the tiebreaker team packet, Collatz, Pi...

Ike

The tossup on Picard was all (or mostly) stuff you encountered in complex analysis. And yeah the DAGs question has been discussed above, but it is something you cover in graph theory, discrete mathematics, and the clues were drawn from what I encountered in discrete mathematics class I took. Yeah hi...

Ike

Hello all, I was responsible for editing the “other science” in this tournament. That being said, I think this year especially, the questions the product of a team effort. First of all, Alex Damisch was a great freelancer in these categories, so be sure to thank her for some nifty math questions. Se...

Ike

Jacob, I do think this post could have been made in a way that doesn't come have a subtext feels denigrating to Columbia "Congratulations to Columbia, but . . ." No doubt you'll follow up with an apology or clarification here, but I'd question the sincerity of it, since I think it's pretty...

Ike

So I think Jason Thompson did a good job of selecting topics that reflected games as people engage with them today. I know that's a departure from previous ways of writing -- like Mike Bentley's more historically-oriented packets, and that to me is okay to have this variety. There were some tossups ...

Ike

3. I wanted to reward knowledge of sciences that don't come up as much, and to do so creatively. Splitting applied math/data sci, math, and CS in this set allowed this to happen to some extent. Particularly the applied math/data sci was an opportunity to get really creative and bring in application...

Ike

I recall a few years ago that there was a literature tournament that had several questions on letters, with clues in the vein of "one author whose last name started with this letter." There was absolutely nothing wrong with these questions from a technical standpoint; anyone who is famili...

Ike

I just want to say this is the best set of video game questions I have seen a writer (Jason Thompson) produce. There's something in here for everyone that reflects the myriad ways in which people interact with games throughout their history. If anyone is on the fence about the tournament, I suggest ...

Ike

A team submitted an unusually fun bonus for ACF Nationals 2015. It had two hard parts, and I was loathe to cut either since they were both so cool. Rob Carson suggested reviving the 10/10/5/5 structure so we could have the two hard parts-cake and eat it too. 1. This building is currently the tallest...

Ike

I played in exactly one CBI tournament, and if I recall correctly, the tournament staff did not let teams leave the rooms to go to the restrooms until all games of one round were done for reasons due to question security. While the questions themselves were awful, the treatment of the players the st...

Ike

5. By far my favorite anecdote was having to change the IRC password to the writers room, because Ike Jose spoiled it. Since I was learning Irish mythology for nationals at the time, I made it "caladbolg", the sword Fergus Mac Roich used to cut off three hilltops. IIRC the password was Cl...

Ike

Speaking as an old person here who purchased Benet's Reader's Encyclopedia in 2006 -- It's not the most efficient study source. The breadth is great, but a lot of the topics are pretty arcane, even for ACF Nats and CO difficulty (not to mention, it hasn't been updated or a while, so it doesn't touch...

Ike

For the record, I found the advanced stats for this and other tournaments I have worked on to be informative, like Andrew Hart. I too, made a small handful of changes to my questions in this tournament based on the advanced stats. But, I think that advanced stats are useful in getting the big pictur...

Ike

I'm looking at advanced stats for earlier mirrors of EFT and I'm seriously questioning why it was necessary to take them at all. The stats confirm unequivocally things that should have been obvious to the editors: T.S. Eliot was far too easy, the 1400s were far too fraudable, and Winterreise was fa...

Ike

Round 6 The tossup on “data centers” was, for lack of a better word, super jank. I get what it was going for but I know that everyone in my room was rather incredulous, and several of us were sitting on it as a result. This might just be a consequence of how out there the answerline was, but empiri...

Ike

Yeah the sandbars tossup is something I said should be removed "with extreme prejudice" from the tournament during playtesting, I'm surprised it's still in here, and I would priortize it's removal over the giraffe one.

Ike

I think a more accurate complaint is that the bonus as written is very abrupt -- if you do not know those first two paintings, there is nothing to indicate Las Meninas is the next thing being described. Ironically, I think the solution is to be a bit more prolix so we can give a bit more about Velaz...

Ike

Aside from all this debate, I just thought that it was the same type of acceptable tossup as, say, one of those wacky tossups on tangrams in the math category of EFT 2016, except much more buzzable (with a much more fluid distribution of buzzes--every clue in this tossup was buzzed on at one mirror...

Ike

The argument against the question isn't that you don't learn this material from class, but encounter it in a pop culture way. For example, I would buzz on the clue about hearts since I have been to a bar trivia competition with Mike Sorice that includes this fun fact, not because I have read papers ...

Ike

photosynthesis stuff NAQT's correctness guidelines specifically state: In general, a response to a tossup question must be compatible with every clue that has been read (e.g. a response that is correct for the second clue of a question but too specific to be correct for the first clue will be count...

Ike

Yeah, I agree with Jacob -- I don't think this is a counterpoint to really anything sensible, or if there is one, Eric has failed to identify the original point he's countering. Eric, are you perhaps explaining why you thought it was okay to distribute someone else's tournament? In line with Mike an...

Ike

This is a great question to ask, Jacob. But I wish it had been asked with names redacted so that the specific personalities involved wouldn't mask the larger, more important issues. I'm in agreement. This thread, and the recent revival of the Quizbowl and Mental Health thread could have benefited b...

Ike

This is a great question to ask, Jacob. But I wish it had been asked with names redacted so that the specific personalities involved wouldn't mask the larger, more important issues. I'm in agreement. This thread, and the recent revival of the Quizbowl and Mental Health thread could have benefited b...

Ike

As the head editor of the PACE NSC 2019, I would like to encourage all interested writers to take advantage of the mentorship program if there is any desire in contributing to the National Scholastic Championship. This is by far the best way to contribute to the set: there are dedicated editors and ...

Ike

I had fun at this tournament. Thanks to everyone for their efforts. I appreciated the "inclusionary" aspects of the questions in this tournament, but I must confess, I didn't really think much of it. I think a lot of tournaments these days have been asking about a lot of marginalized group...

Ike

I appreciate the metrics on museum, but I think it misses a key point. Even though large portions of art museums are devoted to non-western items, I don't think the audience really has the "eye" to unpack and analyze these pieces in a way that is conducive for quizbowl. To clarify with my ...

Ike

One of the features I love about the NSC is its ability to ask about different material than you would find in college sets -- you can expect high schoolers to pay attention to and know different things than college players. For example, the lit bonus part on Helen Keller from ~The Miracle Worker~ I...

Ike

This literature subdistribution tangent has gotten far afield from the original post. John's analogy about alternate rounds of ICT and Nationals is apt, if not exaggerated -- certainly no tournament in the modern era has been that jarring. The question then is whether the variation is so significant...

Ike

1. A “study” of this kind of science fiction is presented in Gary Westfahl’s book Cosmic Engineers, which examines Hal Clement’s story “Mission of Gravity.” For 10 points each: [10] Give this adjective that describes science-fiction stories that seemingly focus on scientific accuracy rather than ch...

Ike

This could have massively changed the outcome of ICT. So I didn't review this question, but as Seth pointed out I reviewed a lot of the ICT science. I tried my hardest to ensure that teams were given a fair set of questions and that they were free of hoses, negbait, and that they would generate as ...

Ike

I chose to quote that particular example because Illinois 2013 faced a similar situation, wherein this "facilitator" teammate is a cis-hetero male. Many of the roles he played for our team may have been "stereotypically effeminate" but I certainly didn't think so (perhaps because...

Ike

While 2013 Illinois' Nats Run was one of my fondest memories of quizbowl, one of the areas where I could have improved was being more cognizant of the mental health of every member of the Illinois team. I think there were a number of factors for this - I wanted to give ourselves the best chance of w...

Ike

Damn it. It's at my apartment. I'll um send this to the right parties.

Ike

Hi guys, This is the CO discussion thread. First of all, thank you for coming out to play Chicago Open this year. I'd like to thank our tournament staff - Billy Busse, Jason Thompson, Ryan Westbrook, Morgan Venkus, Ramapriya Rangaraju, Alexandra Damisch, Eliza Grames, Halle Friedmann, Saul Hankin, Y...

Ike

Logistics Information: The tournament will be held in Cobb Hall. Registration will open at 8:15am, and Round 1 will begin at 8:30am. The reason for this abbreviated registration is you have all paid, there is no reason to dilly-dally. You will be getting a copy of the prelim schedule and the games w...

Ike

We will be posting schedules and logistics information by Tuesday. Teams should be there by 8am. We are looking to have Round 1 underway by 8:30.

Ike

Ike

Hey friends,

A lot of you have failed to even contact me about payment after you have been invoiced, and I want to politely remind teams that payment is due this upcoming Sunday. Please get in touch with me / respond to the initial email I sent you.

Ike

Ike

The tournament will take place in Cobb Hall. With 18 teams, we will be doing a similar schedule to last year: 2 brackets of 9, followed by a top bracket comprised of the top 5 teams from each bracket - there will then be 5 crossover games for the top bracket and 4 crossover games for the bottom brac...

Ike

Hey folks, I have sent every team an email containing an invoice to each team. Please pay by Venmo or Paypal. I will not be collecting payment at the tournament itself. You are expected to have paid me Sunday, July 16th. Unless you have made arrangements otherwise, please pay as a team. I will not b...

Ike

Personally, my experience with NAQT has been good / great. As Mike Cheyne writes, no job is perfect, but NAQT sure has done a much better job than many other quizbowl organizations. I know that stuff happens, and I can accept the apology for that part and move on. But there's a larger picture here t...

Ike

I have now sent out invoices to every team. I am going to give teams until June 30th - Friday, to let me know that they'll be bringing buzzers. After that, I will begin the payment collection phase.

If you have not emailed about the number of buzzers you are bringing, please do so.

Ike

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