2012 SCT individual question discussion
Posted: Sat Feb 04, 2012 7:08 pm
This is your thread to talk about the details of specific questions.
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Done.Smuttynose Island wrote:It would probably be prudent to add "Second" to the answerline so that such a thing doesn't happen at future mirrors.
It's not and I should have switched one of those. My apologies.Bartleby wrote:having TUs on both the U2 incident and the Bay of Pigs in the same pack didn't seem entirely prudent to me.
It was one of the pieces of siege equipment the Germans moved from Sevastopol to Leningrad. I should have clarified the sentence structure to explicitly mention that and avoid this neg.Monocle wrote:I thought the Schwerer Gustav clue for Leningrad was either neg bait for Sevastopol or outright incorrect. It's certainly more famous for busting several forts of the Crimean port and seems to either not have been used or barely used during Leningrad before the Germans had to retreat.
It was first discovered in Sanskrit, so that's presumably what you were thinking of. I don't think Slavic should be accepted or anti-prompted, though, because it doesn't apply only to Slavic; it also applies in Indo-Iranian and some other satem languages.Distance model wrote:The Indo-European question would probably benefit from some kind of prompt/anti-prompt, as well as one of those little explanations you sometimes get in answer lines. The first answer given in my room was either "Slavic" or "Balto-Slavic"; I forget which. I hesitated because I thought the Ruki rule was a Sanskrit thing; I guess I was confusing it with some other Sanskrit sound law that's called by an acronym (I'm not an Indo-Europeanist, that's for sure). The answering player's interpretation of this was to basically anti-prompt himself and explain it, so it was fine, except that I feel like I made him waste a bunch of clock time and if I'd had a thing that said "accept/anti-prompt 'Slavic' until X", it would have been better because I could have just accepted it.
Also, I wrote the Finnish composers tossup, but it was two years ago.
As the one who answered in that way, my reasoning for that was, and remains, as follows: if the statement "The ruki rule occurred in Slavic languages" is true, than not to anti-prompt on the clue (whose wording I don't exactly remember, but which I think made reference to "many languages in this family") would be extremely uncharitable.women, fire and dangerous things wrote:It was first discovered in Sanskrit, so that's presumably what you were thinking of. I don't think Slavic should be accepted or anti-prompted, though, because it doesn't apply only to Slavic; it also applies in Indo-Iranian and some other satem languages.Distance model wrote:The Indo-European question would probably benefit from some kind of prompt/anti-prompt, as well as one of those little explanations you sometimes get in answer lines. The first answer given in my room was either "Slavic" or "Balto-Slavic"; I forget which. I hesitated because I thought the Ruki rule was a Sanskrit thing; I guess I was confusing it with some other Sanskrit sound law that's called by an acronym (I'm not an Indo-Europeanist, that's for sure). The answering player's interpretation of this was to basically anti-prompt himself and explain it, so it was fine, except that I feel like I made him waste a bunch of clock time and if I'd had a thing that said "accept/anti-prompt 'Slavic' until X", it would have been better because I could have just accepted it.
Also, I wrote the Finnish composers tossup, but it was two years ago.
I guess the analogy would be answering a question starting "Many cities in this polity..." with Scotland, when the clue refers to a characteristic of cities throughout the UK. I don't have very strong intuitions about whether that should be anti-promptable, so I'm fine with whatever the consensus is.Sir Thopas wrote:As the one who answered in that way, my reasoning for that was, and remains, as follows: if the statement "The ruki rule occurred in Slavic languages" is true, than not to anti-prompt on the clue (whose wording I don't exactly remember, but which I think made reference to "many languages in this family") would be extremely uncharitable.women, fire and dangerous things wrote:It was first discovered in Sanskrit, so that's presumably what you were thinking of. I don't think Slavic should be accepted or anti-prompted, though, because it doesn't apply only to Slavic; it also applies in Indo-Iranian and some other satem languages.Distance model wrote:The Indo-European question would probably benefit from some kind of prompt/anti-prompt, as well as one of those little explanations you sometimes get in answer lines. The first answer given in my room was either "Slavic" or "Balto-Slavic"; I forget which. I hesitated because I thought the Ruki rule was a Sanskrit thing; I guess I was confusing it with some other Sanskrit sound law that's called by an acronym (I'm not an Indo-Europeanist, that's for sure). The answering player's interpretation of this was to basically anti-prompt himself and explain it, so it was fine, except that I feel like I made him waste a bunch of clock time and if I'd had a thing that said "accept/anti-prompt 'Slavic' until X", it would have been better because I could have just accepted it.
Also, I wrote the Finnish composers tossup, but it was two years ago.
DI SCT round 7 wrote:In many languages from this family, the alveolar fricative became a post-alveolar or velar fricative after "r," "k," or "u" according to the Ruki law. Those languages from this family are known as the "satem" languages, part of the division of this family based on words for "one hundred." Tocharian and (*) Anatolian are extinct branches of this family, whose Hellenic and Celtic languages survive. For 10 points--name this language family that includes Sanskrit, Russian, French, and English.
DI SCT round 8 wrote:This country's cabinet meets at Bute House. It is only guaranteed two seats on the supreme court that rules on its laws. Its opposition is led by Ruth Davidson, a member of its Conservative and Union Party. This country has a keen interest in the West Lothian question and is wrangling with (*) David Cameron over whether to ask one or two questions on a referendum on furthering devolution or even independence. For 10 points--name this portion of the U.K. led from Edinburgh.
I agree that this lead-in was too easy. In fact, it's the only clue I personally know from that question before "Yale".Bad Boy Bill wrote:As a reader in Div I, there were two questions that were big buzzer races on the first clue in my room. The one was "this city rejected black firefighter test scores" -- it's pretty much the only thing I remember about Sotomayor other than the "wise Latina" remark, and apparently others remember that too.
These are both also examples of what I was talking about before: almost everyone in my room buzzed on "more weight," and we also had a pretty big buzzer race when Okun's law was mentioned quite early. I don't remember the exact wording so I can't comment on the acceptability of employment, but I went with unemployment just because "Okun's law = whichever of unemployment or GDP they haven't said yet" is kind of a stock clue even in high schoolWhat is it like to be a Batman? wrote:Most egregiously, the first buzzable clue in the tossup on Arthur Miller was about Giles Corey asking for "more weight." That led to, like, a five-way buzzer race in my room, and not against one of the better teams at the site, either.
Also, this is probably just sour grapes, but for the tossup on unemployment, I think "employment" should've been acceptable -- or at least prompted -- early in the question. I buzzed in with that answer after the clue on Okun's law and got negged; while it's true that Okun's law relates the unemployment rate to output, it relates the concept of employment to output, as does the Phillips curve, and I don't believe there was anything that early in the question to distinguish the two.
Did you seriously just complain about "stock clues" in the DII set? Are you attempting to parody circa-2009 era high school stars? At least they could back it up!Plan Rubber wrote:These are both also examples of what I was talking about before: almost everyone in my room buzzed on "more weight," and we also had a pretty big buzzer race when Okun's law was mentioned quite early. I don't remember the exact wording so I can't comment on the acceptability of employment, but I went with unemployment just because "Okun's law = whichever of unemployment or GDP they haven't said yet" is kind of a stock clue even in high schoolWhat is it like to be a Batman? wrote:Most egregiously, the first buzzable clue in the tossup on Arthur Miller was about Giles Corey asking for "more weight." That led to, like, a five-way buzzer race in my room, and not against one of the better teams at the site, either.
Also, this is probably just sour grapes, but for the tossup on unemployment, I think "employment" should've been acceptable -- or at least prompted -- early in the question. I buzzed in with that answer after the clue on Okun's law and got negged; while it's true that Okun's law relates the unemployment rate to output, it relates the concept of employment to output, as does the Phillips curve, and I don't believe there was anything that early in the question to distinguish the two.
I would not buzz on this, although I think he may have been in an ACF Fall tossup I edited, don't remember. Anyway this is perfectly fine for a lead-in in DII.George Rappelyea
Number of times Okun's law has ever appeared in NAQT IS sets through 2011: one. (round 1 of IS #69A)Plan Rubber wrote:"Okun's law = whichever of unemployment or GDP they haven't said yet" is kind of a stock clue even in high school
In my defense, I've always opposed making high school questions more difficult. My argument here is that I would expect this to be more difficult than a high school tournament; if consensus disagrees, as it seems to, that's fine. As Chris Ray pointed out, I obviously won't be playing DII next year, and if future audiences would be better suited by a set that's not any harder than this year's was, great, I'll gladly write questions for it that are around the level of difficulty of this year's (if I haven't written a decent number at the right level by a few weeks before this, someone from NAQT remind me, assuming I can if I play DI). For Okun's law specifically, apparently I was wrong about it in NAQT sets, though the Torrey Pines database shows it coming up multiple times in high school and introductory college sets in the last few years, and I was able to buzz on it despite never having discussed it in an economics class or researching it, indicating that I learned it from hearing it in questions. If I'm wrong and it's not a stock clue, fine, but since the team we were playing was buzzing too (I don't remember who it was, but it wasn't one of the top four at our site) I figured that indicated that it was at least better known than one normally wants a lead-in to be.Cernel Joson wrote:Did you seriously just complain about "stock clues" in the DII set? Are you attempting to parody circa-2009 era high school stars? At least they could back it up!Plan Rubber wrote:These are both also examples of what I was talking about before: almost everyone in my room buzzed on "more weight," and we also had a pretty big buzzer race when Okun's law was mentioned quite early. I don't remember the exact wording so I can't comment on the acceptability of employment, but I went with unemployment just because "Okun's law = whichever of unemployment or GDP they haven't said yet" is kind of a stock clue even in high schoolWhat is it like to be a Batman? wrote:Most egregiously, the first buzzable clue in the tossup on Arthur Miller was about Giles Corey asking for "more weight." That led to, like, a five-way buzzer race in my room, and not against one of the better teams at the site, either.
Also, this is probably just sour grapes, but for the tossup on unemployment, I think "employment" should've been acceptable -- or at least prompted -- early in the question. I buzzed in with that answer after the clue on Okun's law and got negged; while it's true that Okun's law relates the unemployment rate to output, it relates the concept of employment to output, as does the Phillips curve, and I don't believe there was anything that early in the question to distinguish the two.
DI SCT round 4 wrote:A 2001 CD contains a reconstruction of parts of this man's four-movement ~Salve intemerata Mass~, which is based on a motet of the same name, and a work written for eight five-part choirs. A 2007 CD was the first to record the third of his tunes for ~Archbishop Parker's Psalter~, "Why fum'th in fight"; it also included the (*) 1910 work for string orchestra that tune inspired. For 10 points--name this Tudor composer of ~Spem in alium~ who inspired an eponymous fantasia by Ralph Vaughan Williams.
Musical details of Spem in Alium are perfectly appropriate as lead-in material. This is a non-issue.Thingee wrote:I think the leadin* that mentioned "eight choirs of five voices" may have been misplaced for the Thomas Tallis tossup. I'm not speaking as a particularly qualified source on music, but I thought one of the better-known things about Spem in alium was the forty voices. It certainly seemed more immediately helpful than a lot of the later clues, and Joey from Stanford (a fantastic music player) and maybe one or two others in my room played chicken for a couple of lines after that clue, to whatever extent that might actually be declarable.
*EDITED: It's actually the first sentence, not really the leadin clue.
That's precisely what I was saying.ThisIsMyUsername wrote:I think his point is not so much that that clue is too easy to be a lead-in at this level, but rather that it is easier than the clues that follow it, thus making the tossup unpyramidal. I would agree with him.
Hey dude, that's just too bad for you. The clues were nice and buzzable (although satem was probably a bit easy at that point). You can try and game the packets all you want, but you can't complain that you couldn't buzz until a clue that you actually knew came up.Sun Devil Student wrote:At ASU, we only played the first 9 packets. Three tossups stick out in my mind from the SCT set:
1) "Indo-European" (language family) really screwed with the minds of both ASU teams, we were all sitting there thinking "it can't be that easy? surely at this level 'language family' *doesn't* automatically mean 'Indo-European'?"
DII SCT round 11 wrote:In one play by this man, Old Ekdal is allowed to fire guns in the attic to relive his past as a great hunter. He created Thea Elvsted and the alcoholic Ejlert Lovborg in another play about the search for a "beautiful death." A third play relates how Nils (*) Krogstad blackmailed Torvald Helmer's wife, Nora. For 10 points--name this playwright born in Christiana who wrote ~The Wild Duck~, ~Hedda Gabler~, and ~A Doll's House~.
DII SCT round 6 wrote:In one play by this author, Dany is murdered in the Radiant City. Another of his plays ends with the protagonist declaring, "I will not capitulate" after Daisy gives in. This author of ~The Killer~ wrote a play in which the Smiths and Martins host the Fire Chief at a dinner party. He also created (*) Berenger, who refuses to turn into a rhinoceros. For 10 points--name this Romanian absurdist who wrote ~The Bald Soprano~.
This question is fine. I've never read the Wild Duck, which is why I was confused.bt_green_warbler wrote:DII SCT round 11 wrote:In one play by this man, Old Ekdal is allowed to fire guns in the attic to relive his past as a great hunter. He created Thea Elvsted and the alcoholic Ejlert Lovborg in another play about the search for a "beautiful death." A third play relates how Nils (*) Krogstad blackmailed Torvald Helmer's wife, Nora. For 10 points--name this playwright born in Christiana who wrote ~The Wild Duck~, ~Hedda Gabler~, and ~A Doll's House~.
Can I see the bonus in question?Andrew Jackson's Compatriot wrote:Bonus 13 in Packet 9: It was on sports players that changed their name.
Was it just me or was this either your getting 30 points or none?
Yeah, I didn't play this packet, but it probably would have been better to shift around a clue. The one about Joe Keller selling faulty airplane parts would probably have been a better lead-in for this.Plan Rubber wrote:What is it like to be a Batman? wrote:Most egregiously, the first buzzable clue in the tossup on Arthur Miller was about Giles Corey asking for "more weight." That led to, like, a five-way buzzer race in my room, and not against one of the better teams at the site, either.
Also, this is probably just sour grapes, but for the tossup on unemployment, I think "employment" should've been acceptable -- or at least prompted -- early in the question. I buzzed in with that answer after the clue on Okun's law and got negged; while it's true that Okun's law relates the unemployment rate to output, it relates the concept of employment to output, as does the Phillips curve, and I don't believe there was anything that early in the question to distinguish the two.
I wasn't a fan of this one, just in that it begins with "In one play by this man, [Norwegian-sounding name]." It's very vulnerable to fraud*.MickeyR0urke wrote:This question is fine. I've never read the Wild Duck, which is why I was confused.bt_green_warbler wrote:DII SCT round 11 wrote:In one play by this man, Old Ekdal is allowed to fire guns in the attic to relive his past as a great hunter. He created Thea Elvsted and the alcoholic Ejlert Lovborg in another play about the search for a "beautiful death." A third play relates how Nils (*) Krogstad blackmailed Torvald Helmer's wife, Nora. For 10 points--name this playwright born in Christiana who wrote ~The Wild Duck~, ~Hedda Gabler~, and ~A Doll's House~.
That's a fair sentiment. I mean, they could have said, "in one play by this man, the title character commits suicide after being blackmailed by Judge Brack" or something like that. That would have prevented people frauding it (maybe).cornfused wrote:I wasn't a fan of this one, just in that it begins with "In one play by this man, [Norwegian-sounding name]." It's very vulnerable to fraud*.MickeyR0urke wrote:This question is fine. I've never read the Wild Duck, which is why I was confused.bt_green_warbler wrote:DII SCT round 11 wrote:In one play by this man, Old Ekdal is allowed to fire guns in the attic to relive his past as a great hunter. He created Thea Elvsted and the alcoholic Ejlert Lovborg in another play about the search for a "beautiful death." A third play relates how Nils (*) Krogstad blackmailed Torvald Helmer's wife, Nora. For 10 points--name this playwright born in Christiana who wrote ~The Wild Duck~, ~Hedda Gabler~, and ~A Doll's House~.
*Yes, I suppose, Strindberg. But still, wouldn't it be better to lead with a plot clue first before a such a tempting-to-fraud character name?
No, I can't. It should have been, and the version of the question I uploaded as subject editor said to accept Archimedes; I guess it got changed in set editing.The Motley Eye wrote:The polar graphs bonus in packet 12 of DII:
One of the parts had an answer of Archimedean, but said explicitly not to accept "Archimedes."
Can you please explain why the latter was unacceptable?
If I had this one back, I might have cut out one of the early middle clues--probably the Prins reaction clue--to make room for easier stuff. That said, an organic chemistry undergraduate definitely runs into the Baylis-Hillman reaction and probably runs into Prins. Could probably have used more later clues, sure.2012 DI SCT packet 14 wrote:These compounds react with DABCO [DAB-koh] and electron-poor {alkene}s to give allylic [uh-LIH-lik] alcohols in the {Baylis-Hillman reaction}. An alkene or {alkyne} forms 1,3-diols or allylic alcohols upon reaction with one of these compounds in the {Prins reaction}. Pyridinium [PIH-rih-DIN-ee-um] salts react with secondary {amine}s to, upon aqueous workup, give the (*) Zincke type of these compounds. Some {ester}s can be reduced to these compounds using DIBAL. For 10 points--name these compounds with terminal {carbonyl} groups.
I disambiguated that one by specifically saying what carbon is bonded to (two O-alkyl groups and two carbons/alkyl groups). So I guess I probably should have prompted on ketals, but saying acetals doesn't demonstrate enough knowledge to get the question.The Quest for the Historical Mukherjesus wrote:Also, acetals should be acceptable for ketals, as in the IUPAC notation ketals are considered a subset of acetals and saying acetals would demonstrate knowledge.
For the record, I also sat on this past the Ruki rule clue, since I wasn't sure if they wanted Indo-Iranian or some other specific branch. (I then proceeded to sit on this all the way to 'Tocharian', but that was just me being stupid.)Sir Thopas wrote:Hey dude, that's just too bad for you. The clues were nice and buzzable (although satem was probably a bit easy at that point). You can try and game the packets all you want, but you can't complain that you couldn't buzz until a clue that you actually knew came up.Sun Devil Student wrote:At ASU, we only played the first 9 packets. Three tossups stick out in my mind from the SCT set:
1) "Indo-European" (language family) really screwed with the minds of both ASU teams, we were all sitting there thinking "it can't be that easy? surely at this level 'language family' *doesn't* automatically mean 'Indo-European'?"
I mean, yeah, I did a similar thing (as I described upthread). In an ideal world (a) any of the satem branches would have been acceptable there and (b) this would have been somehow communicated, but this seems pretty impossible, unfortunately.Atlee Hammaker wrote:For the record, I also sat on this past the Ruki rule clue, since I wasn't sure if they wanted Indo-Iranian or some other specific branch. (I then proceeded to sit on this all the way to 'Tocharian', but that was just me being stupid.)Sir Thopas wrote:Hey dude, that's just too bad for you. The clues were nice and buzzable (although satem was probably a bit easy at that point). You can try and game the packets all you want, but you can't complain that you couldn't buzz until a clue that you actually knew came up.Sun Devil Student wrote:At ASU, we only played the first 9 packets. Three tossups stick out in my mind from the SCT set:
1) "Indo-European" (language family) really screwed with the minds of both ASU teams, we were all sitting there thinking "it can't be that easy? surely at this level 'language family' *doesn't* automatically mean 'Indo-European'?"
DII SCT round 9 wrote:For 10 points each--to what did these professional athletes legally change their first name?
A. Boxer Marvin Hagler in 1982?
answer: _Marvelous_ (accept _Marvelous Marvin Hagler_)
B. Basketball player Lloyd Bernard Free in 1980?
answer: _World_ (accept _World B. Free_)
C. Baseball pitcher John Paul Bonser in 2001?
answer: _Boof_ (accept _Boof Bonser_)
Yeah that's a really absurd bonus, particularly when you have people like Cassius Clay and Lew Alcindor kicking around. Especially for DII. A boxer who hasn't fought in twenty-five years, a man who's greatest accomplishment was probably his name change, and Boof Bonser? It's bonuses like this that get people's haunches up about NAQT trash.bt_green_warbler wrote:DII SCT round 9 wrote:For 10 points each--to what did these professional athletes legally change their first name?
A. Boxer Marvin Hagler in 1982?
answer: _Marvelous_ (accept _Marvelous Marvin Hagler_)
B. Basketball player Lloyd Bernard Free in 1980?
answer: _World_ (accept _World B. Free_)
C. Baseball pitcher John Paul Bonser in 2001?
answer: _Boof_ (accept _Boof Bonser_)