The Quizbowl Resource Center

setht

Selene and I have moved to Columbus, Ohio. I'm hoping I'll be able to help out sometimes at tournaments in the area (or maybe even play if there's an open event).

-Seth

setht

NAQT has announced its new payment rates for 2017-18. Writers will be able to make up to $7.25 per tossup and $5.45 per bonus in the coming year, beginning on July 1. (Each payment depends on question difficulty and writer experience; contact me at andrew.hart@naqt.com or NAQT at applications@naqt....

setht

The slightly more detailed answer is the same as the short answer, but with an added note that various other proposals have been bandied about in this thread, and it doesn't seem clear (to me, at least) that my proposal has widespread support. I like your proposal a lot, but didn't want to post bec...

setht

So when can we expect any movement on Seth's proposals, he asked with resigned trepidation The short answer is "not until June at the earliest"; we're really busy with getting things ready for MSNCT, and then we'll be really busy getting things ready for HSNCT. The slightly more detailed ...

setht

So when can we expect any movement on Seth's proposals, he asked with resigned trepidation The short answer is "not until June at the earliest"; we're really busy with getting things ready for MSNCT, and then we'll be really busy getting things ready for HSNCT. The slightly more detailed ...

setht

let's have a conversation among the community and with NAQT, figure out what the costs/concerns are about going to some sort of free (or at the very least, e-copy) model for the two collegiate sets only, and see if we can figure out a solution that's better for the community. I wanted to check back...

setht

-NAQT posts the SCT and ICT sets publicly, for free, in early June Would you also post sets from prior years, or would you only start with this year? I'm not sure. Posting sets from prior years magnifies the projected revenue losses, which might be a major problem. The projected loss of revenue is ...

setht

let's have a conversation among the community and with NAQT, figure out what the costs/concerns are about going to some sort of free (or at the very least, e-copy) model for the two collegiate sets only, and see if we can figure out a solution that's better for the community. What I am about to say...

setht

the third part of the stat mech bonus in round 2 might be clearer if you explicitly state that you want an answer in terms of Z and N. As an aside, I thought the Z^N/N! was a great hard part and the only part that was confusing about it was that I wasn't quite sure if the description outlined wheth...

setht

I'd like to acknowledge my fellow set editors Seth and Andrew, Ike and Billy for providing feedback and edits on large swaths of the set, and Matt Jackson, Will Alston, Austin Brownlow, and Zeke Berdichevsky for their writing. I want to add that on top of their valuable DI set editing help, Ike and...

setht

Also I don't think anyone is claiming that the distribution is perfectly normal, or should be. Okay, I'm in agreement with this part (i.e. I don't think the distribution is perfectly normal, and I don't think writers/editors should be trying to get a perfect normal distribution for easy parts or ha...

setht

The difficulty of easy (and medium and hard) parts forms a bell curve. Has anyone collected data on this, or is this a piece of statistical received wisdom? Personally, I would be astonished if easy parts (aggregated by category, or over a whole set, or whatever) generally have a normal distributio...

setht

The difficulty of easy (and medium and hard) parts forms a bell curve. Has anyone collected data on this, or is this a piece of statistical received wisdom? Personally, I would be astonished if easy parts (aggregated by category, or over a whole set, or whatever) generally have a normal distributio...

setht

I can join an 8th team for this, but I need to leave around 5 pm.

Hopefully we can get a couple more people to fill out the team.

-Seth

setht

I agree that getting 2 bids for 2 editors felt a little bit much, and maybe NAQT did too, which is why we didn't get a hosting bid. In any case, we've requested to have the second DI bid converted to a DII waitlist slot anyway, since we thought we would be able to choose which bids went where. Some...

setht

NAQT stuck with a single guest editor (and a single editing autobid) for a couple years--with some gaps where there was no guest editor--then moved to a two-guest-editor/two-editing-autobids arrangement starting with the 2015 SCT. (In 2016 one of the guest editors chose not to go for an autobid, so...

setht

Regarding hotels vs. not-hotels: I believe the 2006 ICT almost imploded because the UMD administration double-booked the rooms that had been reserved for ICT (and I guess the group that came in partway through the day to claim their rooms had more clout than NAQT). I know that it's hard to line up g...

setht

Could I see the text of the "old age" in art tossup? I buzzed in on the first line with "prudence" on the depiction of the lion, which the tossup says was actually a depiction of old age; I was under the impression that the wolf on the left of the painting below the old man was ...

setht

Make sure your seatbelt is fastened wrote:Round 2, tossup 8: I believe Fjalar and Galar killed the dimwitted Gilling, rather than his somewhat more intelligent son Suttung.

This has been corrected, thanks for reporting it.

-Seth

setht

More importantly, my understanding is that the current model of ACF Fall is to recruit and nurture new editors. For any given tournament I think it's possible to focus on nurturing new writers, or it's possible to focus on nurturing new editors, but trying to do both in the same tournament is madne...

setht

I'm going to disagree with various people here and suggest that ACF Fall should not move to a PADAWAN model. I agree that there's a lot of untapped writing talent out there, and that a PADAWAN model would be better suited than the current ACF Fall model to identifying and nurturing those talents. I'...

setht

I don't know much about this but I want to understand something: it seemed like dehydration synthesis could be argued to ( vacuously ) fit the clues of the second sentence. I highlighted vacuously here because I'm assuming that what you're trying to say is: It's a vacuous truth to say "If a de...

setht

Could someone involved please explain the reasoning behind the condensation reactions protest? Thanks. Sure. For reference, here's the text of the question as it was read at HSNCT: The saponification of animal fats to form soaps is an example of this class of reaction. For 10 points each-- A. In wh...

setht

The saponification of animal fats to form soaps is an example of this class of reaction. For 10 points each— A. In what class of reactions does water break apart a chemical bond? answer: hydrolysis or hydrolytic reaction (accept hydrolyzing or hydrolyze ) B. The formation of a peptide bond is one o...

setht

We're going to be in Boston for a year, starting in a couple weeks. I might be able to help staff some events in the area, or I might extend my "don't show up to anything" streak.

After that, perhaps we'll finally live in a city not named for a classic rock band.

-Seth

setht

To be clear, Jonah okayed the "the-not-this" experiment with R. and myself. I figured it wouldn't affect gameplay and might turn out to be a stylistic tweak players liked. If it did affect gameplay I apologize. If we get positive feedback we'll consider continuing; if we don't, we won't. -...

setht

The specific issue I had with the Catalan numbers tossup was the instruction to not prompt on trees, which is pretty bad considering that there are plenty of kinds of trees other than binary ones the Catalan numbers count (see http://www-math.mit.edu/~rstan/ec/catadd.pdf). Here's the tossup: The nu...

setht

Unless I'm mistaken, Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso is one of the most famous violin showpieces in the repertoire, and it's placement was a tad early. Also, the tossups on Ficciones and Binary Trees had lead-ins that where unambiguous in the extreme if I recall correctly. To elaborate on the la...

setht

"Prefrontal cortex" should at the very least be promptable for "frontal lobe" before the bilateral damage part is read in the lead-in clue. The Wisconsin Card Sorting Task is used to assess function in both the frontal lobe and specifically the prefrontal cortex due to the PFC's...

setht

Within this technique, one may use Sargan's test of overidentifying restrictions and the Pagan-Hall test of heteroscedasticity ["hetero"-skeh-dass-TIH-sih-tee]. Its exclusion restriction may have been violated in a 2004 analysis of civil conflict that utilizes rainfall (*) variation to ex...

setht

Our Lady Peace wrote:I don't have the set in front of me, but a tossup on Galicia led in with "this region" and a reference to a Roman-era event, leading to Jordan buzzing with "Hispania" and being negged. This was suboptimal.

The lead-in has been changed to "This modern region..."

-Seth

setht

The Lady Gregory tossup's second sentence began with "This man" and proceeded to describe, I think, Cathleen ni Houlihan , leading to a neg with "Yeats," the only male author of that play. This one has been fixed (changed "This man" to "This writer"). John Wi...

setht

I'd love to see/know who wrote the bonus... Just so we're all clear: NAQT's writers and editors are always free to reveal their own roles, but are also free to ignore any attempt to call people on the carpet. If anyone requires a focal person for complaints, kindly direct them to me. I am available...

setht

Within this technique, one may use Sargan's test of overidentifying restrictions and the Pagan-Hall test of heteroscedasticity ["hetero"-skeh-dass-TIH-sih-tee]. Its exclusion restriction may have been violated in a 2004 analysis of civil conflict that utilizes rainfall (*) variation to ex...

setht

Unless I'm mistaken, Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso is one of the most famous violin showpieces in the repertoire, and it's placement was a tad early. This also happened in DI. The Motown tossup also had similar issues (dropping Holland-Dozier-Holland AND Hitsville USA in power, even though the...

setht

EDIT: Jeff beat me to posting the California ballot propositions question.

setht

In Romanian, this word form is inflected identically to, and often equated with, the conditional form. The New Testament expression "me genoito!", often translated "by no means!", is in this form, which is rare in Koine [koy-nay] but often occurs after the words "eithe"...

setht

In 1960 this national leader accused the U.S. of complicity in the explosion of the French vessel ~La Coubre~ [koo-BRAY]. ~New York Times~ reporter Herbert Matthews interviewed this man when he was a guerrilla in the Sierra Maestra [see-"AIR"-uh "my"-AY-struh] mountains. He and ...

setht

For 10 points each--answer the following about the academic study of culture: A. This anthropologist defined culture as "personality writ large" in her pioneering study of Native American societies, ~Patterns of Culture~. answer: Ruth (Fulton) _Benedict_ (accept Ruth _Fulton_) B. Richard ...

setht

Hey, Seth might drop by later for a full rundown, but I just wanted to say thanks to a couple people who deserve it. Matt Bollinger served as a set editor this year, and it was great to have his input. Ike went through the set and offered helpful comments on difficulty. Seth put in a ton of work as...

setht

ezubaric wrote:The bigger problem with Chicago Open is that we're optimized for hard questions on easy things (e.g., HSNCT-level), but we're hoping to expand its cannon in the near future.

I just want to remind everyone that you really do not need heavy artillery for Chicago Open.

-Seth

setht

The tossup on Diane Arbus struck me as transparent, as it told you quite quickly that it was a female photographer who took pictures of strange people. Could somebody post that, please? Susan Sontag stated that the true subject of this person's work is "the unhappy consciousness" in "...

setht

I'm not sure this will fully address people's concerns with J.13.d, but I wanted to note that rules J.13.a-c apply at all points in a tossup, not just after the first sentence. As a result, if a player hears a clue that they think uniquely picks out a particular answer, they can buzz, then lodge a p...

setht

what the hell is this? If it is determined that a moderator improperly rejected a response to a tossup question that should actually have been prompted, the moderator will read a replacement tossup to the affected team off the clock. Any player on the affected team may answer the replacement tossup...

setht

Here's another example of why I think the rule is bad. There was a tossup on parity at the 2012 ICT where the question was written such that it was impossible to tell if the sentence was over! The sentence was "Its namesake operator has eigenvalues plus and minus one,(&) and corresponds to...

setht

Here's another example of why I think the rule is bad. There was a tossup on parity at the 2012 ICT where the question was written such that it was impossible to tell if the sentence was over! The sentence was "Its namesake operator has eigenvalues plus and minus one,(&) and corresponds to...

setht

I wanted to offer a few thoughts on rule J.13.d We understand there could be situations where the application of this rule will feel wrong to players, but "first sentence" was the best clear and objective measure we could come up with for "before this point we won't consider protests ...

setht

With the signup of the Sethlene team, there are 7 teams officially signed up. If the Andrew/Nolan/Kurtis team officially signs up, then the field will be at a 8 teams, which is a perfect number. There are also two free agents (Noah Prince and Casey Bindas) and two open spots on the aforementioned t...

setht

We've got Regenstein 205 reserved from 7-10 pm tonight. (Note that this is Regenstein, our normal meeting place, not Crerar where we met last Friday.) Now that CO has passed we'll go back to reading questions at a mix of levels. Maybe also some rounds of subject-specific stuff, or trash, or whatever...

setht

It looks like I won't make it to any of the VCU Open sites you cannot fool me seth teitler So yeah, I can write a packet if some enterprising chemist and/or biologist would like to team up with me. Can we get a definitive yea or nay on whether this is happening? The stuff I wrote after quoting Jerr...

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