Lexington's LIMIT seeking mirrors for 2015-2016 season!

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Halved Xenon Stinging
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Lexington's LIMIT seeking mirrors for 2015-2016 season!

Post by Halved Xenon Stinging »

Hello everyone! The Lexington (MA) High School quizbowl team is excited to announce that Lexington's Inaugural Minuteman Invitational Tournament (LIMIT) will be available for mirrors in the 2015-2016 competition season, with the set being available for use from October 19, 2015 to May 21, 2016 (the weekend before HSNCT). The tournament is a collaboration between experienced players and writers of Hinsdale Central and Lexington, and Rohan Nag of Vanderbilt along with Jarret Greene of the University of Vermont will be overseeing set production.

Each tossup will be 5-6 lines long with 10 point Times New Roman font. Tossups will be powermarked, and bonus parts will not exceed 2 lines. LIMIT will be regular difficulty and the final set will contain 14 packets of 22 tossups and 21 bonuses. Tiebreakers will be drawn from any academic category, i.e. not trash. The questions themselves may not be modified by hosts, though we are certainly open to hosts using slightly different formats, such as bouncebacks. Any rule modifications must be cleared with us.

The set will cost $10 per non-house team to mirror. Checks can be made out to “Town of Lexington”. If you are interested in mirroring LIMIT, please email me at [email protected]. In the occurrence of multiple bids from the same region, we will select the host who has demonstrated a history of running tournaments with fair formats. We reserve the right to deny a mirror.

DISTRIBUTION
4/4 Literature (1/1 American, 1/1 British, 1/1 European, 1/1 World/Ancient/Common Link)
4/4 Science (1/1 Biology, 1/1 Chemistry, 1/1 Physics, 1/1 Other, with a significant emphasis on math)
4/4 History (1.5/1.5 American, 1.5/1.5 European, 0.5/0.5 World, 0.5/0.5 Ancient)
3/3 Fine Arts (1/1 Painting, 1/1 Concert Music, 1/1 Other (includes jazz, architecture, sculpture, and film)
1/1 Religion
1/1 Mythology
1/1 Geography
.5/.5 Philosophy/Social Science
.5/.5 Current Events
1/1 Trash

MIRRORS
South Range High School (OH)- October 30, 2015
Marist School MSFIT (GA)- November 14, 2015
Lexington (MA)- December 5, 2015 [main site]
New Kent High School (VA)- January 9, 2016
Hinsdale Central (IL)- date TBD
Rambowl @ Ramapo H.S. (NJ)- February 6, 2016
Vanderbilt University (TN)- date TBD for spring ABC tournament
Last edited by Halved Xenon Stinging on Tue Dec 22, 2015 10:32 pm, edited 3 times in total.
Devin Shang
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Halved Xenon Stinging
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Re: Lexington's LIMIT seeking mirrors for 2015-2016 season!

Post by Halved Xenon Stinging »

Hey folks, please keep those mirror registrations coming in! The set is coming along nicely, as we are in the final stages of production. We hope to register mirrors in as many circuits around the country as possible, so if your region does not have a LIMIT mirror site and you plan on hosting a tournament, please consider our set for use. Thanks!
Devin Shang
Lexington High School Co-Captain '16
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Re: Lexington's LIMIT seeking mirrors for 2015-2016 season!

Post by Halved Xenon Stinging »

If you would like to provide some feedback on the set, please join LIMIT's private discussion forum. To enter, go to User Control Panel, click on Usergroups, click on "2015 LIMIT Discussion" and hit "Join Group."
Devin Shang
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Bosa of York
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Re: Lexington's LIMIT seeking mirrors for 2015-2016 season!

Post by Bosa of York »

Will this set be posted? Are any future mirrors planned?
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Re: Lexington's LIMIT seeking mirrors for 2015-2016 season!

Post by Halved Xenon Stinging »

Hinsdale Central may mirror this set in the near future, so we are waiting for them.
Devin Shang
Lexington High School Co-Captain '16
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Re: Lexington's LIMIT seeking mirrors for 2015-2016 season!

Post by Maury Island incident »

The set has now been uploaded, pending approval.
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Re: Lexington's LIMIT seeking mirrors for 2015-2016 season!

Post by AKKOLADE »

So what do you all think happened to cause you to miss your difficulty goal?
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Re: Lexington's LIMIT seeking mirrors for 2015-2016 season!

Post by Rufous-capped Thornbill »

AKKOLADE wrote:So what do you all think happened to cause you to miss your difficulty goal?
I can only accurately speak for myself and my own work on the set, but I don't think it was any specific thing we did, just a general tendency to choose the interesting or creative choice (which usually drift towards the difficult) when we probably should have stayed safer; I think this was especially true regarding the hard parts of bonuses. I will add, however, that the sites that ended up playing LIMIT were a bit weaker than anticipated.
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Re: Lexington's LIMIT seeking mirrors for 2015-2016 season!

Post by Cody »

Rufous-capped Thornbill wrote:
AKKOLADE wrote:So what do you all think happened to cause you to miss your difficulty goal?
I can only accurately speak for myself and my own work on the set, but I don't think it was any specific thing we did, just a general tendency to choose the interesting or creative choice (which usually drift towards the difficult) when we probably should have stayed safer; I think this was especially true regarding the hard parts of bonuses. I will add, however, that the sites that ended up playing LIMIT were a bit weaker than anticipated.
I have not seen LIMIT and likely will not. Choosing interesting and creative choices is a great way to keep difficulty down when done well. Let's dispel this fiction that creative => difficult.

I suspect the problem is that it was written by high schoolers and good players who do not have limitless experience in question writing and thus were not prepared to properly clamp down on difficulty, as is required for an endeavor of this sort.

Strong writers and editors are not built overnight and this is a major argument against many high school housewrites (but not all). LIST is perhaps the only tournament I can think of in the past 8 or so years that was written by high schoolers for the first time (i.e. not GSAC or Prison Bowl) and really paid attention to difficulty and did it well.

edit to clarify that Jarret Greene is obviously not a high schooler!
Cody Voight, VCU ’14.
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