The Quizbowl Resource Center

No Rules Westbrook

Yeah, I actually think it's a fantastic idea to have one room at Nats (and other important events) always be video recorded. That's something that maybe we can make a point of emphasis going forward. It's not like it would take a ton of effort.

No Rules Westbrook

In a shocking turn, Matt Lafer and I will play this on the same team.

No Rules Westbrook

Has anyone in the last three days tried to send me a packet? If so, I haven't received any. As most of QB knows, my inbox was apparently hacked and it's been acting wonky lately (I've tried sending myself messages and they don't appear). CORRECTION - I've received packets from Columbia, MIT A, and M...

No Rules Westbrook

Just popping in to say that there's still somewhere in the neighborhood of 21 Teams who have yet to submit their packet. Hopefully, we get a very high percentage of those by the upcoming Sunday deadline.

No Rules Westbrook

I have received the following packets for the early deadline of February 1st, 2015: Ottawa VCU A Harvard Minnesota WUSTL Illinois A McGill Penn A Penn B UCF Rice Berkeley A Dartmouth Received by second deadline of February 15 2015: Penn C Waterloo William & Mary Washington Received by third dead...

No Rules Westbrook

The only packet that I see in my inbox for the Sunday, March 1st deadline is Toronto. Please let me know if anyone out there believes they have sent me a packet, and it isn't reflected in the list of packets received in this thread. There are obviously a lot of teams out there, especially many of th...

No Rules Westbrook

Hey, I think I'm gonna be kicking around on Sunday. So, if anyone needs a barely-useful teammate for this, let me know. Or I'm happy to moderate, if needed.

No Rules Westbrook

Above post is now updated to reflect all early-deadline packets that I received. Make sure your name is on the list, if you submitted one.

No Rules Westbrook

I have received the following packets for the early deadline of February 1st, 2015: Ottawa VCU A Harvard Minnesota WUSTL Illinois A McGill Penn A Penn B UCF Rice Berkeley A Dartmouth Received by second deadline of February 15 2015: Penn C Waterloo William & Mary Washington Received by third dead...

No Rules Westbrook

I'd like to see 1/1 world lit included in every submitted packet, but nobody will be penalized if they do 1/0 or 0/1, using the traditional ACF rubric.

No Rules Westbrook

Will - The people set to edit Nats are myself as head editor with a team of Rob Carson, Ike Jose, and Billy Busse.

No Rules Westbrook

In any event, we're talking about dollars here, not tournament space. Why would you seek to punish a person who is forced to play on a team with less than four players? The only way I could justify that is if, in order to allow your shorthanded team to play the tournament, I literally had to pay som...

No Rules Westbrook

Everyone knows that I support open tournaments (for anything besides novice events and official ACF events) and have supported them since the beginning of time, so I won't spend my internet breath arguing about that. I do think it's obviously fair to charge tournament fees on a per-player basis inst...

No Rules Westbrook

If you submit a packet at the first deadline, you are simply taking a slight risk that you may not be selected to attend the tournament. I think the risk at this point is quite slight (because I think that demand has a very low chance at being large enough to make it a factor), but obviously, I can'...

No Rules Westbrook

It appears I haven't joined a team for this. I'll be around....so if a sixth team is needed, whatever works.

No Rules Westbrook

I'm also willing to play any events on either Saturday evening or Sunday morning.

No Rules Westbrook

To liberally quote Brendan Byrne, I'll pay hundreds of dollars to play this tournament. I would like it if it will occur on the same day as Westbrook's super secret side event as well And, I'll try to progress so I ensure that this happens, because I think this event and the event I have in mind wou...

No Rules Westbrook

I'd be willing to travel to any given site if there were a half-decent field (west coast seems like a fun idea). I am working on a project for quizbowl right now, but it won't be ready in time for this, so I can't offer any help in terms of writing or editing (other than writing part of a packet, if...

No Rules Westbrook

I support Jerry's post, with the caveat that I do make judgments about the amount of effort that an editor or writer puts into a packet or a tournament. That's a separate question from whether the question-writing philosophy is one that I share. I think it's not too difficult to gauge the amount of ...

No Rules Westbrook

Also, that's a really good post by Ted up there. Between that and Andrew Hart's metaphor that we need to "create a place at the table" for specialists and non-specialists to have input on the content of questions in a realistic manner (one that wrestles with the actual process of editing/w...

No Rules Westbrook

I've always been about fostering agreement in the community, and I think the one thing we agree on in this case is that the Coral Castle tossup was immaculate. I mean, just immaculate. Chock full of new and fresh clues on the Coral Castle...evocative ones too. I know I felt like I was there when I w...

No Rules Westbrook

Just on a note, Ryan was saying this last night, and I will reiterate: it's very hard to do a packet search sometimes, particularly on packets that are never publicly posted, like ICT. The cynic in me will also note that while they are assuredly available elsewhere, the following 2013-2014 tourname...

No Rules Westbrook

To build on what Matt Jackson just said, one thing that I often do as an editor is to look up someone's leadin or second clue - and if there's a way that I can make it more descriptive, I'll do that. If I can take a very simple description and flesh it out by adding some details, I figure that gives...

No Rules Westbrook

No, Jacob, my point is precisely that it's not superfluous for people to comment on areas on which they don't have specialist knowledge. What I'm decrying is this phenomenon where everyone acts like only the experts are able to act as any kind of authority on how questions should be written. That's ...

No Rules Westbrook

I'm being a little facetious. And, I had no part in editing that volatility question, so I have no dog in this fight. But, it does seem pretty weird to me that noted economics-lover Marshall originally made the point about not even being sure what to say at the end. "Volatility smile" sure...

No Rules Westbrook

Or maybe it's not quite that dire. Maybe the specialists are just the ones who care so much that they write the tomes and have the arguments, and you get a disproportionate amount of their voice in the discourse of the QB zeitgeist.

No Rules Westbrook

That volatility tossup had clues right in the middle about the "volatility smile" in the Black-Scholes model - that term has been a fixture of the upper-level canon for forever! How can you claim that it was unclear what to say even at the end? Wait, what am I talking about - the "Can...

No Rules Westbrook

I intended Albert the Bear to be the middle part, since I thought "animal epithet" would trigger enough peoples' memories, but I suppose I was wrong; good call. Eh, I think I intended Albert and Wittelsbach to be fairly close in difficulty. Both the type of "reasonable 20-30s" t...

No Rules Westbrook

Plus, I'll say this generally - I think it's hard for writers to imagine their questions being played. When you sit there in front of the bonus you just wrote, it's easy for you to think "oh, teams will get that part, no problem...what an easy 20!" - because you just wrote it, and you're a...

No Rules Westbrook

Will - my thoughts on those are: I thought Maerten Tromp (the replacement hard part for Roberts) was a more historically-important person from that time period, and I already wrote my own bonus on pirates (hooray,Calico Jack!). It wouldn't have killed me to have kept Roberts; the clues do seem a lit...

No Rules Westbrook

Would all of the editors be open to writers asking for feedback on their specific submitted tossups? I'm fine with that, Tanay. Just post the tu or bonus answers you want feedback on here. If it has to be private for some reason, you can give me your email too - and I'll send it by email. But, othe...

No Rules Westbrook

I don't know that this is in dispute, but it's obvious that my questions have a very different aesthetic than you see from many writers today. Increasingly, I see people writing questions today that try to sink "buzzpoints" further and further down in the question in favor of more vague, c...

No Rules Westbrook

To follow on what Jerry said, not only is it "triage mode", but at some point you have to respect that this is a submission tournament and you can't go around completely re-writing 75% of the submitted tossups to deal with sub-distributional irregularities (nor would I do so, even if time ...

No Rules Westbrook

This tournament had a disturbing number of buzzer races in pretty much all of our games. It would have benefited from more middle clues. I wasn't really seeing this in most of the games that I moderated. I thought there was a fairly high percentage of "clean buzzes" as opposed to "bu...

No Rules Westbrook

The Hungarian Soviet Republic seems to me doomed from the start as a poor answer choice. First of all, it doesn't have a very defined answer line - it is sometimes called the "Hungarian Soviet" or the "Hungarian Council" or a bunch of other things - and it's begging for people to...

No Rules Westbrook

First off, congratulations to Virginia and especially Matt Bollinger for exhibiting some of the highest level of skill that we've ever seen in this game. I was personally quite happy with how this set turned out. It was a lot of fun watching people play this weekend; the primary reward of writing th...

No Rules Westbrook

I have a ton of positive things to say about this weekend, which I'll post tomorrow, including congratulations to Virginia for a peerless performance. The war room was made aware of the Dartmouth situation immediately, so that's not the issue. And, I'm not inclined to throw any blame on Will Alston ...

No Rules Westbrook

Will play Chicago Open. Can write questions. Not science ones, though.

No Rules Westbrook

To clarify - I have some sympathy for the Bentley "remote locations" rationale, but UNC and Dartmouth are hardly remote. I can see myself sitting in a rocking chair at age 40, coming on this forum to remind people of the olden days where we used to actually go to tournaments. We drove uphi...

No Rules Westbrook

Split from the Cane Ridge Revival thread --Mgmt.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. This "online quizbowl tournament" trend is a pernicious beast that needs to be nipped in the bud. Nipped in the bud.

No Rules Westbrook

Addressing Cheyne's history point, I'm of the opposite mind. I think quizbowl history lately has been tilting way too far in favor of modern history, including many topics that are on the blurred line between current events and history. (I'm not necessarily referring to Arrabal, since we all agree i...

No Rules Westbrook

I guess I should mention - as Jerry mentions in the email he sent out to people, this event will probably take place on Saturday evening right after Arrabal.

No Rules Westbrook

I didn't say anything about powermarking, so I'm going to assume no powers. Please remember to bring your questions in hard form if at all possible (with at least 5 copies - see instructions in the first post) I think we'll probably have around 12-14 5/5 packets, if everyone who's told me they'll wr...

No Rules Westbrook

Reminder - please email your 5/5 packets to Mike Cheyne.

And, if there's anyone who is going to write stuff for this and isn't on the sign-up sheet, please put your name on the sign-up sheet.

No Rules Westbrook

yeah, Jerry, no problem...I assumed that would be your role here. Marshall should buy plenty of beer for you.

No Rules Westbrook

Yeah, we can fiddle with the format as people please. Another possibility would be to have three-person teams and 15/15 packets, which would mean missing less questions....but retain a format more like actual tossup-bonus quizbowl.

No Rules Westbrook

Up above, I've added a sign-up sheet for people to add their name to, if you agree to commit to writing 5/5 for this event. I've also added some directions to the first post for how to bring your 5/5 - I think it would be most efficient and most awesome if people would physically print out the pages...

No Rules Westbrook

I've been thinking that it might be nice to have a side event for Arrabal, which will presumably be a rather short event and we'll all be hanging out in Pittsburgh anyway. So, people attending the Pittsburgh site of Arrabal (and other people interested in the following)... Do you have any interest i...

No Rules Westbrook

The only thing that irks me is when a moderator chooses not to say something like "got something?" or "answer please?" - he just says "time" and refuses to let me answer, or he just says the answer outright. If you do prompt with some phrase, and the player doesn't resp...

No Rules Westbrook

I'm sure there was the general sense that they were very good teams/players that would have little problem qualifying for Nationals through playing Regionals or putting forth subjective stats that could meet the proper criteria. Cheyne is obviously right. I've taken a look at the top fifteen teams ...

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