POMMSS A HS regular difficulty housewritten packet set
Posted: Wed Dec 28, 2016 6:06 pm
Hello,
The MSU Academic Competition Team is pleased to announce POMMSS (Packet of Michigan, Michigan State Students)—a high school regular difficulty question set. We want POMMSS to be mirrored across the quizbowl world and the questions will be used at the Michigan State Tournament this year. This means that the State Tournament will be running pyramidal questions for the first time in several years.
The set will be head-edited by myself with assistance from Dillon Edwards and copy editing from Sarah Wrase. Questions were written by myself, Dillon Edwards, Trent Koch, Sarah Wrase, Austin Foos, Lucas Weingartz, Siddhant Dogra, Erik Bubolz and Dominic Aluia.
Difficulty: POMMS is meant to be a high school, regular difficulty tournament. There will be powers. Tossups will be capped at 6 lines Times New Roman 10 before powermarking. When writing 20 packets, there will be a wide range of answerlines, but this set will be heavily difficulty controlled and bonus hard parts will be reasonable. That said, powers and 30s on bonus are supposed to show exemplary knowledge on a topic. We are aiming for a similar difficulty as Harvard Fall Tournament or BHSAT. These questions should be an excellent warm up for HSNCT or PACE for teams attending those events.
Distribution: Each packet will consist of the following 20 tossup/20 bonus distribution. There will be 2 extra tossups per packet from the Big Four categories of Literature, History, Science and Fine Arts and 1 extra bonus per packet from those same categories.
Literature 4/4- 1/1 American, 1/1 British, 1/1, .5/.5 World .5/.5 Literature from any of above categories with emphasis on American, British literature
History 4/4- 1/1 American, 1/1 European, 1/1 World, 1/1 British/Ancient/Miscellaneous questions that transcend geographical categorization and more American, European and World. Teams should expect a British and Ancient history question at least once every other packet.
Science 4/4 -1/1 Biology, 1/1 Chemistry, 1/1 Physics, 1/0 or 0/1 Non-computational Math, 0/1 or 1/0 Other Science (Astronomy, Comp. Sci., Geology & Earth Science)
Fine Arts 2.5/2.5- 1.25/1.25 Visual Fine Arts including approximately 1/1 Painting/Sculpture .25/.25 Architecture/Film/Photography/more Sculpture, 1.25/1.25 Auditory Fine Arts including 1/1 Classical music and .25/.25 Jazz/Opera/Musicals/more Classical music
Mythology 1/1
Religion 1/1
Philosophy .5/.5
Social Science .5/.5
Geography .75/.75
Current Events .75/.75
Pop Culture .75/.75
Misc. Academic .25/.25 overflow category and includes questions that don’t neatly fit into one of the above.
Mirroring: We are writing 20 packets for the State Tournament in April but will not have 20 packets written and edited for some time due to the sheer volume. For 13 packets, we will be charging a mirror fee of $10/team attending. Mirrors can occur after February 1 for the 13 packet set. Mirrors are free to play with or without the powers in the set. If a mirror needs more packets, we are willing to offer more but will discuss specifics and prices with the host., Mirrors can occur throughout the spring and I’m willing to let some occur over the summer and into the fall if there is interest. Please email me at [email protected] and CC [email protected] if your schools is interested in mirroring. We’d appreciate comments and constructive criticism from schools mirroring our set and can provide the first few packets if requested by a potential host.
No mirror at this time is allowed to host teams from the state of Michigan because the questions will be used at the State Tournament.
Writing: Because we are writing such a large amount of questions in over 400 tossups and 400 bonuses, we are still in need of some experienced writers. If you are an experienced writer or are willing to offer some editing advice especially in the categories of biology and chemistry, we would very much appreciate it. (We are primarily interested in writers who can write questions in Literature/History/Science and Fine Arts because those are the biggest categories.) Experienced writers or editors can get paid by the MSU Academic Competition depending on how much they write. Please email or PM me ASAP if you are interested in writing.
Edit: Because of the difficulty of writing 90/85 literature questions, some of the .5/.5 other lit questions will be genre fiction such as classic science fiction and modern (like past 20 years) novels. There will be no trash lit like Harry Potter or the Hunger Games though.
The MSU Academic Competition Team is pleased to announce POMMSS (Packet of Michigan, Michigan State Students)—a high school regular difficulty question set. We want POMMSS to be mirrored across the quizbowl world and the questions will be used at the Michigan State Tournament this year. This means that the State Tournament will be running pyramidal questions for the first time in several years.
The set will be head-edited by myself with assistance from Dillon Edwards and copy editing from Sarah Wrase. Questions were written by myself, Dillon Edwards, Trent Koch, Sarah Wrase, Austin Foos, Lucas Weingartz, Siddhant Dogra, Erik Bubolz and Dominic Aluia.
Difficulty: POMMS is meant to be a high school, regular difficulty tournament. There will be powers. Tossups will be capped at 6 lines Times New Roman 10 before powermarking. When writing 20 packets, there will be a wide range of answerlines, but this set will be heavily difficulty controlled and bonus hard parts will be reasonable. That said, powers and 30s on bonus are supposed to show exemplary knowledge on a topic. We are aiming for a similar difficulty as Harvard Fall Tournament or BHSAT. These questions should be an excellent warm up for HSNCT or PACE for teams attending those events.
Distribution: Each packet will consist of the following 20 tossup/20 bonus distribution. There will be 2 extra tossups per packet from the Big Four categories of Literature, History, Science and Fine Arts and 1 extra bonus per packet from those same categories.
Literature 4/4- 1/1 American, 1/1 British, 1/1, .5/.5 World .5/.5 Literature from any of above categories with emphasis on American, British literature
History 4/4- 1/1 American, 1/1 European, 1/1 World, 1/1 British/Ancient/Miscellaneous questions that transcend geographical categorization and more American, European and World. Teams should expect a British and Ancient history question at least once every other packet.
Science 4/4 -1/1 Biology, 1/1 Chemistry, 1/1 Physics, 1/0 or 0/1 Non-computational Math, 0/1 or 1/0 Other Science (Astronomy, Comp. Sci., Geology & Earth Science)
Fine Arts 2.5/2.5- 1.25/1.25 Visual Fine Arts including approximately 1/1 Painting/Sculpture .25/.25 Architecture/Film/Photography/more Sculpture, 1.25/1.25 Auditory Fine Arts including 1/1 Classical music and .25/.25 Jazz/Opera/Musicals/more Classical music
Mythology 1/1
Religion 1/1
Philosophy .5/.5
Social Science .5/.5
Geography .75/.75
Current Events .75/.75
Pop Culture .75/.75
Misc. Academic .25/.25 overflow category and includes questions that don’t neatly fit into one of the above.
Mirroring: We are writing 20 packets for the State Tournament in April but will not have 20 packets written and edited for some time due to the sheer volume. For 13 packets, we will be charging a mirror fee of $10/team attending. Mirrors can occur after February 1 for the 13 packet set. Mirrors are free to play with or without the powers in the set. If a mirror needs more packets, we are willing to offer more but will discuss specifics and prices with the host., Mirrors can occur throughout the spring and I’m willing to let some occur over the summer and into the fall if there is interest. Please email me at [email protected] and CC [email protected] if your schools is interested in mirroring. We’d appreciate comments and constructive criticism from schools mirroring our set and can provide the first few packets if requested by a potential host.
No mirror at this time is allowed to host teams from the state of Michigan because the questions will be used at the State Tournament.
Writing: Because we are writing such a large amount of questions in over 400 tossups and 400 bonuses, we are still in need of some experienced writers. If you are an experienced writer or are willing to offer some editing advice especially in the categories of biology and chemistry, we would very much appreciate it. (We are primarily interested in writers who can write questions in Literature/History/Science and Fine Arts because those are the biggest categories.) Experienced writers or editors can get paid by the MSU Academic Competition depending on how much they write. Please email or PM me ASAP if you are interested in writing.
Edit: Because of the difficulty of writing 90/85 literature questions, some of the .5/.5 other lit questions will be genre fiction such as classic science fiction and modern (like past 20 years) novels. There will be no trash lit like Harry Potter or the Hunger Games though.