New Mobile App -- Tycho: Play Quizbowl and Science Bowl

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ashwin99
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New Mobile App -- Tycho: Play Quizbowl and Science Bowl

Post by ashwin99 »

Pleased to announce Tycho: Play Quizbowl and Science Bowl! Tycho is a free app for both iOS and Android to help teams study and read packets for quizbowl and science bowl while on the go or during practice. Originally, Tycho was an app released in Jan. 2017 to help science bowl teams practice better, but we recently decided to add in quizbowl questions. Questions are provided from the database of QuizDB, which in turn come from the Quizbowl Resource Center.

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What makes Tycho different?

- All questions (80,000+ quizbowl tossups and all science bowl sample questions) are available offline; so this app works well for teams on the go.
- There is an audio mode that utilizes text-to-speech to allow tossups to be read out loud.
- Currently, you can select a specific set and packet to read -- so, think of it like a mobile, offline version of quizbug and/or quizbowlpackets.com. Searching by category / terms are a feature that will be added soon.
- Allows teams to practice both for quizbowl and science bowl, and possibly more competitions in the future.
- This app is under active development and open to feedback or criticisms the community may have. We've just recently branched out to quizbowl, so we'd welcome any feedback!

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Give it a try! Learn more about it at our website: http://outplayedapps.com/science-bowl/

Also, as Tycho is a hybrid app made using Ionic (HTML and Angular), you can also use Tycho online: http://tycho.outplayedapps.com/ I haven't worked much on it so some things such as text-to-speech will need to be reimplemented and the design may need to be changed to make it better use the desktop's larger screen size, but it's there.

Note: The app is developed in Ionic 2, a cross-platform development platform to make both iOS and Android apps, and the source code is available on Github.
Last edited by ashwin99 on Mon Jan 15, 2018 6:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Ashwin Ramaswami
Communications Director, ACF (2018-2019)
Stanford University (2017-2021), Chattahoochee High School (2013-2017)


Try this free mobile app Tycho: Play Quizbowl and Science Bowl to study or read packets while on the go.
Subotai the Valiant, Final Dog of War
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Re: New Mobile App -- Tycho: Play Quizbowl and Science Bowl

Post by Subotai the Valiant, Final Dog of War »

I tried this app, and it is a great improvement to Protobowl mobile (which requires high quality equipment and very good WiFi to work). I really enjoy the highly stratified difficulty rankings and the ability to read specific packets just like if I printed packets from online.
I highly suggest the app to anyone who reads this post (and I'll be telling all of my friends). Great job!
Daniel, Hunter College High School '19, Yale '23
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Re: New Mobile App -- Tycho: Play Quizbowl and Science Bowl

Post by A Dim-Witted Saboteur »

minor quibble: on longer questions, it would be nice if you could somehow make the text not run over the "buzz" button by lowering the font size or something like that. Otherwise, great app.
Jakob M. (they/them)
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Re: New Mobile App -- Tycho: Play Quizbowl and Science Bowl

Post by The Real Master of Flémalle »

Will we see the ability to mix difficulty levels at some point? I like to practice on open and college questions simultaneously so that I can learn things but also not feel godawful at the game.
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Re: New Mobile App -- Tycho: Play Quizbowl and Science Bowl

Post by Jasconius »

The Real Master of Flémalle wrote:Will we see the ability to mix difficulty levels at some point? I like to practice on open and college questions simultaneously so that I can learn things but also not feel godawful at the game.
Like this, it would be nice if we could mix questions from different tournaments, so we can just read questions with a certain category.

It would also be great to be able to change the speed that the app reads words.

I really love this app (it's so much better than Protobowl). Like Daniel, I will be recommending this app to my team.
Matthew Siff
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Yale University '25
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tksaleija
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Re: New Mobile App -- Tycho: Play Quizbowl and Science Bowl

Post by tksaleija »

I've already recommended this to my team, it's an excellent app. The suggestions made by the user above are ones I'd like to reflect, but I'm also wondering if there are any plans to add new questions sometime in the near future.
Aleija Rodriguez
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Re: New Mobile App -- Tycho: Play Quizbowl and Science Bowl

Post by monty »

Any chance of instead of selecting by set, one can also select by category?
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ashwin99
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Re: New Mobile App -- Tycho: Play Quizbowl and Science Bowl

Post by ashwin99 »

monty wrote:Any chance of instead of selecting by set, one can also select by category?
I'm working on it and some other improvements.
Ashwin Ramaswami
Communications Director, ACF (2018-2019)
Stanford University (2017-2021), Chattahoochee High School (2013-2017)


Try this free mobile app Tycho: Play Quizbowl and Science Bowl to study or read packets while on the go.
iarehavethestupid
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Re: New Mobile App -- Tycho: Play Quizbowl and Science Bowl

Post by iarehavethestupid »

So I downloaded the app, and when I buzz on a question, nothing happens except the timer starts counting down.

Is that it? I was thinking you were supposed to type your answer or something like that.
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Re: New Mobile App -- Tycho: Play Quizbowl and Science Bowl

Post by A Dim-Witted Saboteur »

iarehavethestupid wrote:So I downloaded the app, and when I buzz on a question, nothing happens except the timer starts counting down.

Is that it? I was thinking you were supposed to type your answer or something like that.
Yep; that's it!
Jakob M. (they/them)
Michigan State '21, Indiana '2?
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gimmedatguudsuccrose
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Re: New Mobile App -- Tycho: Play Quizbowl and Science Bowl

Post by gimmedatguudsuccrose »

Given that QuizBug is now defunct, are there any plans to create an online/desktop version of this app?
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Re: New Mobile App -- Tycho: Play Quizbowl and Science Bowl

Post by cthewolf »

It's already a website: http://tycho.outplayedapps.com/.

The audio doesn't seem to be working on the website though. Do you know what happened to Quinterest?
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