Where to Cry "Fraud!"

[Tale of Mac Datho's Pachycephalosaur]

So I've been reading through my team's drafted questions for ACF Fall and through some questions my club has written for fun, and I've noticed a couple of instances (in my questions and in others') where a clue points towards the correct answer in a manner that clearly rewards "real knowledge," but not in the category of the question.

For example, take a painting question on a mythological subject: is it necessary to separate a player's knowledge of the myth in question from a player's knowledge of the work of art. And if so, how does a writer accomplish this without resorting to difficulty cliffs and abstract clues that are much harder to follow?

Or, should a writer choose to not write about such topics, pre-empting the problem in the first place?

Long story short, is frauding also a problem within the academic subjects, and should writers try to head off that possibility by discriminating choice of answerlines? What's the conventional wisdom on this? Thanks

[Kenneth Widmerpool]

It is always acceptable to use academic clues in academic questions.

[Mechanical Beasts]

It is always acceptable to use academic clues in academic questions.

True, but that doesn't entirely answer the question, because it relies on a presupposed idea of academic clues that you don't elucidate and that the poster is confused about.

So I've been reading through my team's drafted questions for ACF Fall and through some questions my club has written for fun, and I've noticed a couple of instances (in my questions and in others') where a clue points towards the correct answer in a manner that clearly rewards "real knowledge," but not in the category of the question.

For example, take a painting question on a mythological subject: is it necessary to separate a player's knowledge of the myth in question from a player's knowledge of the work of art. And if so, how does a writer accomplish this without resorting to difficulty cliffs and abstract clues that are much harder to follow?

It's inevitable that if you mention a figure holding a head people are going to go for something involving Judith/Holofernes or Perseus/Medusa, rather than, I don't know, Kali/Horus, because two of those happened and one isn't even possible. In Renaissance painting, there are also kind of standard scenes that are painted, it's my understanding. So it's even tougher--not even character combinations but entire events are easily "betrayed" in that manner. They're all valuable academic clues and legitimate ways to approach the art--some of my old myth books had the Cellini Perseus/Medusa in them.

Frauding is a problem in academic subjects--it's best not to drop a lot of Finnish-sounding names early, or whatever--but the fact that the world is more cross-disciplinary than quizbowl categorizes it to be isn't a problem. After all, our distribution is arbitrary. Much as NAQT groups lit and myth, what if ACF-2 were to group all the humanities together as a top-level category? Then it would be far less a crime, just because of renumbering.

[Frater Taciturnus]

If Andy Watkins Buzzes.

[Weighted Companion Cube]

If Andy Watkins Buzzes.

Hey, he just wanted to have real knowledge of the questions.