The Quizbowl Resource Center

This is a formal announcement for Minnesota Open V, to take place on the weekend of November 17-18, 2012.

Logistics

We're hosting in Blegen Hall (269 19th Avenue S, Minneapolis). Registration will last from 8am until 8:25. Rounds will start promptly at 8:30. Don't be late.

Editing

The editors will be Auroni Gupta, Gaurav Kandlikar, and me. We are looking for someone to edit physics; it will require availability to write 10/10 physics over the summer and edit all submitted physics questions for the tournament. Email me at [email protected] if you're knowledgeable in physics and interested in contributing.

Eligibility and team requirements

This is a true open. Anyone can play; teams can consist of up to four players with no same-school requirement.

Packet-writing requirements

We will be writing 10 editor packets. We will accept approximately six submitted packets as laid out below. Teams may play the tournament without writing a packet.

Target difficulty

Similar to past years, with a conscious effort write tossups with field-appropriate clues on answers ranging from easy to difficult.

Target length

Please submit questions seven lines or longer in 10-point Times New Roman font, with one inch margins [note: one inch is not always the default]. The more material we have to work with, the better. Final questions will be capped at eight lines in length, with most questions at seven or eight lines.

Powers

There may or may not be powers. In any event, do not powermark your submissions.

Formatting

Please use the standard ACF style. This means "for 10 points", not "FTP" or "for ten points." Ten point, Times New Roman font with 1-inch margins. Please do not use other fonts--they are icky. Please lump together all questions of a certain part of the distribution, preceded with "5/5 Literature" or whatever the heading may be.

Distribution

24/24 total:

15/15 Big Three
5/5 Literature [at least 1/1 World, American, European, and British; vary reasonably by time, and include a mix of poetry, drama, and novels]
5/5 History [at least 1/1 American, European, and World and at least 1 British; vary reasonably by time, limit military history to 5 or fewer total questions]
5/5 Science [at least 1/1 Chemistry, Physics, Biology, and Other Science (Astronomy, computer science, earth science/geology, math, paleontology); no science biography; no more than 1 of any given "other science"]

3/3 RMP
1/1 Mythology [at least 1 non-Greco-Roman myth]
1/1 Philosophy [maximum 1 ancient philosophy; feel free to write on pre-Socratics, but only in an interesting way]
1/1 Religion [at least 1 J/C/I is encouraged but not mandated; I'd like to see some inventiveness here since minor religion bowl can get kind of old]

3/3 Fine Arts
1/1 Painting [vary reasonably by time; try to include mostly works-based clues]
1/1 Non-opera Music
1/0 or 0/1 Other visual arts [sculpture, architecture, justifiably-fine-arts film, installation art]
1/0 or 0/1 Other musical arts [opera, ballet, dance, or jazz]

2/2 Social Sciences + Geography + Current Events
1/1 Social Sciences [includes law, anthropology, sociology, psychology, economics, game theory; no more than one question on each discipline]
1/0 or 0/1 Geography or Current Events
0/1 or 1/0 Additional Social Sciences, Geography, or Current Events [no more than one geography question and one CE question in packets, please]

1/1 Your Choice
1/1 pop culture, sports, general knowledge, or additional/fringe academic [no more than one question on any given topic, trash is fun, but try some accessible creative ideas here]

Submitting packets

Send them to me at [email protected].

Packet submission, costs, and discounts

This tournament is a limited packet submission event. Because we are writing 10 editor packets, we need six submitted packets to get to our target of 16 total. The first six usable packets we receive will receive a discount based on the following table. The remaining teams will not need to submit a packet. The packet deadlines are early because of my limited editorial time starting in October. Teams attending mirrors should contact me before sending packets. This post will be updated once sufficient packets are received.

The first six teams that contact me before August 1 and tell me that they're writing a packet (and the deadline they plan to submit for) will receive the stated base fee if they do actually submit their packet on the stated day, regardless of how many packets have been submitted to that point.

EDIT: To address scenarios where we receive extra good packets on a deadline submission date, here is an addendum: I'll take (and use, in some fashion) all packets (and give all relevant discounts) up to the deadline before or at which I receive packet number six. After we get six and the present (if we get #6 at a deadline) or next (if we get #6 before a deadline day) deadline passes, packet submission will be shut down.

Discount/penalty schedule:
$60 base fee: packet by August 11, 2012
$80 base fee: packet by August 25, 2012
$100 base fee: packet by September 2, 2012
$120 base fee: packet by September 16, 2012
$160 base fee: no packet

Packets with a usable 20/20 needing very little editing will receive an extra -$20 discount.

Packets must be received in whole by the time I check my email for the first time on the subsequent morning. No partial submissions or prorated discounts.

Other discounts

Buzzer (max 4): -$5
Moderator: -$20

Mirrors

We're looking for mirrors. Contact me at [email protected] if you're at a school that's sufficiently far away and you're interested in mirroring the set. Mirror fee will be whatever it was last year (EDIT: $35).

Side events

* Mike Cheyne's Vanity Side Event (Saturday evening)
* Mike Bentley's Eyes That Do Not See IV (Saturday over lunch)
* Quizbowl basketball (Friday).

Depending on Sunday plans, we may have room for other side events.

This post reserved for packet and field updates.

Field update:

Seth, Selene, Jeff, Jon Pennington?
Illinois (Ike, Aaron, Billy, Austin)
Rob, Bernadette, Matt Hayes, Richard Yu
Mike, Mike, Mike, (Cheyne, Bentley, Hausinger), and Carsten
Connor Teevens, Shan Kothari, Ryan Dillon, Joe Nutter
Robin, Srijay, Peter, Eliza (Minnesota house)
Lay-fir-brook and Brendan
Chicago (Marshall, Sam, Matt, Douglas)
Chicago B (Charles Tian, Nolan Winkler, Ben Chametzky, Connie Prater)
Chicago C
Michigan (Libo, Kurtis, Will, Bryan)

Expected packets:

Seth Teitler & Co. (August 11)
Illinois (August 11)
Connor, Joe, etc. (August 11)
Rob, Jerry, Gautam, Bernadette (August 11)
Chicago

Gautam Kandlikar and I are playing this and are searching for teammates.

theMoMA wrote: Packet submission, costs, and discounts

This tournament is a limited packet submission event. Because we are writing 10 editor packets, we need six submitted packets to get to our target of 16 total. The first six usable packets we receive will receive a discount based on the following table. The remaining teams will not need to submit a packet. The packet deadlines are early because of my limited editorial time starting in October. Teams attending mirrors should contact me before sending packets. This post will be updated once sufficient packets are received.

The first six teams that contact me before August 1 and tell me that they're writing a packet (and the deadline they plan to submit for) will receive the stated base fee if they do actually submit their packet on the stated day, regardless of how many packets have been submitted to that point.

Discount/penalty schedule:
$60 base fee: packet by August 11, 2012
$80 base fee: packet by August 25, 2012
$100 base fee: packet by September 2, 2012
$120 base fee: packet by September 16, 2012
$160 base fee: no packet

So the seventh and beyond team to contact you regarding packets has to pay $160 to play this tournament? Holy Fucking Shit.

Ukonvasara wrote:Gautam Kandlikar and I are playing this and are searching for teammates.

oh hay

So what if you get emailed 8 good packets? How are teams supposed to know whether or not they're going to just burn all that effort for nothing?

Maybe this is kinda crazy, but I think it would actually make sense to require everyone to write and take all submissions? It's not like good packets are super easy to come by or anything...

I will likely be playing this.

I'll probably try and play this.

I'll take (and use, in some fashion) all packets (and give all relevant discounts) up to the deadline before or at which I receive packet number six. After we get six and the present (if we get #6 at a deadline) or next (if we get #6 before a deadline day) deadline passes, packet submission will be shut down. As I already mentioned, people are welcome to email me and promise a packet by a certain deadline to lock in their fee, assuming they actually turn in their packet at that deadline; one person has already done this. The fee structure is set up this way because I want six good packets that we can edit early, and I don't want a bunch of packets that are essentially useless to us by virtue of coming in at a time when I cannot edit them.

And yes, players on the teams that do not write will have to pay an extra $10 per person to play the tournament over the typical base fee, which seems eminently fair given that most tournaments require packets and penalize you mercilessly if you miss the last deadline. I don't have the packet info from last year, but my estimation is that we'll have 12-15 teams and the average cost per player will be about $30-33, which is probably lower than it was the last time I calculated discounts at MO (when several teams incurred +$100 penalties). Teams or players for which this non-packet base fee may be a hardship can talk to me and we'll figure something out.

The result of this fee table will probably be a lower average fee for players in general, as I have pointed out above. If people are really up in arms about paying $10 not to write a packet, we can discuss this further.

I do not like this fee system for two major reasons.

For one, it requires people to form teams many months in advance, which isn't such an easy prospect considering this is an open tournament and one can't just round up teammates from your school. And, if one hasn't figured out their teammates far enough in advance, they'll have fewer people to write their packet and be potentially fucked over by my next point.

For two, and this is my chief objection, it means that anyone who has started work on a packet, or may even by quite near completion, is completely fucked over when the sixth packet is submitted. At the absolute least, you should take all packets from teams who tell you they are writing a packet by your deadline and submit it by your last deadline.

P.S. no one got more than a +$25 packet penalty last year, as I recall.

Illinois is sending one team to this.

I will likely play this at any East Coast mirror of this.

grapesmoker wrote:

Ukonvasara wrote:Gautam Kandlikar and I are playing this and are searching for teammates.

oh hay

let's do it

SirT wrote:P.S. no one got more than a +$25 packet penalty last year, as I recall.

The highest packet penalty last year was Chicago B's $99.60.

SirT wrote:For two, and this is my chief objection, it means that anyone who has started work on a packet, or may even by quite near completion, is completely fucked over when the sixth packet is submitted. At the absolute least, you should take all packets from teams who tell you they are writing a packet by your deadline and submit it by your last deadline.

This, however, I certainly agree with.

Andrew, I'm not convinced that this production structure makes sense for anyone involved, and I'd seriously encourage you to make some more changes, which i think would make it more conventional and more manageable, at least for the prospective competitors.

-I urge you to consider whether having five editors write ten Nationals-level packets, basically in June and July, is actually an achievable goal. On top of that, you're going to have to write lots of replacement questions no matter how usable the submitted packets are - some questions in even the best packets are going to be unusably hard or repeats or quasi-repeats. Since this is an open, it will be much harder to draw on more people outside the editing team to help finish out the gaps. Seven or eight seems much more manageable, and would mean more packets can come in from outside.

-You're not really making every good team (and let's face it, the good teams are the ones you want to submit good packets) declare itself by August 1 in order to submit a packet, are you? That's a really absurdly early date - schools are going to be out of session, careers will be in flux, etc. etc. Many people won't know their entire calendar for the fall yet - which means a lot of packet-submitting teams could have someone drop a month later (two and a half months before the tournament) and then not be able to reconfigure. Given your October constraint, the packet sub deadlines are still very, very early, and I'm not sure how people in the open quizbowl audience will feel about doing a packet for a deadline two months early with no financial reward for it. After all, it's not the most punctual group. At minimum, I hope the East Coast and West Coast mirrors are set well in advance of August 1, so people can plan in all applicable circuits.

-Cutting off the packet submissions at packet six is a bad idea which you should drop outright - even with the accomodation i place, I really don't think any editor should be refusing possibly good questions, period. Why is six the number? Is that the approximate number of usable packets there were in previous years? Furthermore, what happens if a team is working on a good packet, can't submit for one of the early deadlines, and finds out that their packet won't be used as they are still midway through it? Would you accept what they finished by the shutdown point, even if it's not a full packet? What happens if a team submits a month earlier than you thought they would, bumping off another team which rightly expected a discount for the work they put in? This six-packet limit causes way more trouble than it's worth and should be canned.

- Similarly, you shouldn't be charging people a $160 base fee - effectively a penalty for not writing a packet early enough, regardless of the locked-out team's intentions - unless all teams, not just the six, are eligible to write packets. This in-between just isn't how base fees work, and it does make a real financial difference for a lot of teams. Though

Andrew wrote:most tournaments require packets and penalize you mercilessly if you miss the last deadline.

, there are lots of teams here who will be penalized for finding out they can play after the August 1 packet-announcement deadline, or for being locked out of the writing process before they can reliably join it (saying you get six packets on the first deadline). That's not the same as the scenario you outline at all, and it's not a fair one. If you're accepting a limited number of packets, teams that don't get to write a packet should pay $120, as is the case for non-packet sub events where people aren't punished at all for doing something that isn't expected. Alternately, you could keep all fee structure as is and just remove the six-packet submissions cap, which solves the problems from the previous bullet point and removes the fairness issue, since everyone who doesn't write has to pay more. Obvioulsy, I prefer this Alternate.

-Andrew, I'd also like some assurance that Collegiate Novice, in some ways the best innovation the college circuit has seen in a while, won't get sidelined or squeezed out by this huge project. In order for Collegiate Novice to work the way you want it to, new writers are going to need a lot of feedback and their questions are going to need a lot of editing, at the exact same time when these MO packets are (ideally) going to start coming in and the huge number of editors' packets are being created. You've made clear you want to do more, not less, editing and feedback on EACN this year, and last year you weren't an editor for MO. Can you do both? Can you do this, given that you might have none of October free?

Cody, hopefully my above post eliminates most of your concerns; we'll still accept packets up to whichever deadline fills up the tournament, so no one should be sitting on more than a couple questions. If teams are in a weird position with a nearly complete packet, I'll be reasonable if they contact me about a partial submission. Additionally, people are free to email me and lock in their packet by whichever deadline they choose.

This is not some attempt to make people bend over backwards or to bilk the quizbowl populace. Getting early submissions and using the summer to write a bulk of the tournament is the only way I can promise my availability, and the packet-submission deadlines are in place to incentivize teams to write the quality the packets that we need to put on this tournament. If the timetable doesn't work for you, play the tournament without writing a packet. If there's some financial hardship, talk to me.

Ukonvasara wrote:Gautam Kandlikar and I are playing this and are searching for teammates.

Are you looking for a fourth to round off the team?

I'm playing with Cory Haala and possibly others...further news pending.

Any rumors of an east coast mirror yet? Maryland? Penn? GMU? NYU?!

I would like to play this; let me know if you are looking for a teammate.

Skepticism and Animal Feed wrote:Any rumors of an east coast mirror yet? Maryland? Penn? GMU? NYU?!

Currently negotiating with a site that should be central for both the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast regions. Stay tuned.

Please contact me if you don't plan on playing this and want to playtest some science questions!

I'd like to run Eyes That Do Not See IV at this tournament this year.

Mike Bentley wrote:I'd like to run Eyes That Do Not See IV at this tournament this year.

Noted; we'll reserve a spot for you on either Saturday or Sunday.

This is a more general question (and perhaps people don't have their schedules planned out well enough to answer) but what would people like to see from MO Sunday? In the past, we've had a full-length trash tournament (and possibly side events after/during, if memory serves) and we've also had a half-day of side events. I don't think a trash tournament is in the mix for this year, but I'm interested to hear how late people are willing or able to stay for side events, and how many they'd like to play. I'm also interested to hear whether people would rather all MO events were wedged into Saturday if possible.

Now that I'm no longer living in the Cities, I'd prefer side events be clustered more on Saturday. I don't mind staying late to play things on Saturday. I also was pretty much happy with MO last year which really only had that one side event.

Cory, Mike Bentley, and I have formed a team--looking for one more teammate.

The League of the Three Mikes plus one (Bentley, Hausinger, Cheyne, Haala) has reformed for this. If history is any indication, the non-Mike player will score the most points and we will defeat Rob Carson's team.

Looking for two teammates for this.

Just for clarification, Joe Nutter is going to be our fourth player.

Hey, I've received word that Shan Kothari and others are working on a five-packet classical music side event (tossups and bonuses) that they'd like to run either at KABO or here. It would likely have to be on Sunday morning. Would this be something that MO players would be interested in playing on Sunday?

This is the same tournament that was announced here: viewtopic.php?f=8&t=13089

It was also brought up in the CO side event thread, where several people already expressed interest.

theMoMA wrote:It would likely have to be on Sunday morning

I'd be interested.

Columbia might host the East coast mirror, unless that's already being done.

Are the rumors I heard at KABO true about VCU wanting to host? Does it make sense to have two East Coast sites if they'd be that far apart or not? It'd be nice to figure this out - it doesn't make sense for anyone on the East Coast to write a packet until the site is laid down, and it's already not possible to get the maximum discount for doing so.

I'm just finalizing hosting arrangements with Columbia, so that site is happening for sure. I'm still thinking about a second site at VCU, but I'm leaning toward having a single East Coast site.

Can we get a packet update after the first deadline?

I have packets from Seth Teitler's team, Joe Nutter's team, and Ike's team. I have a partial packet (Gautam's stuff) from Rob's team. Chicago has said that they'll write a packet.

theMoMA wrote:I'm just finalizing hosting arrangements with Columbia, so that site is happening for sure. I'm still thinking about a second site at VCU, but I'm leaning toward having a single East Coast site.

Any word on a potential VCU mirror site? I know that UVA's attendance at a mirror of this relies heavily on it being at VCU. I also doubt that hosting this at VCU would cut into Columbia's field by that much if at all (I guess UMD would probably go to VCU over Columbia).

Smuttynose Island wrote:

theMoMA wrote:I'm just finalizing hosting arrangements with Columbia, so that site is happening for sure. I'm still thinking about a second site at VCU, but I'm leaning toward having a single East Coast site.

Any word on a potential VCU mirror site? I know that UVA's attendance at a mirror of this relies heavily on it being at VCU. I also doubt that hosting this at VCU would cut into Columbia's field by that much if at all (I guess UMD would probably go to VCU over Columbia).

Yeah, all the DC-area schools would and that's why I think it would be sorta shitty to have another East Coast mirror. Charlottesville is very significantly closer to NYC than, e.g., Chicago to Minneapolis or Missouri to Minneapolis. Just tell David Seal to man up and get some orange-vomit-inducing trucker speed for the drive.

(I have absolutely no role within the Columbia team except as someone who has half-assedly played the last two years. Maybe the team itself would be fine with a diluted field so don't think of this as an official pronouncement.)

I never cease to be amused at how long-distance averse east coast teams are.

Historically, we've had approximately 10 teams at one east-coast mirror for MO. I'm not sure if splitting into two fields will drum up three more teams at each site or just yield two 5-team mirrors. I'm inclined to say that the latter is more likely and one mirror is the best way to go. If that's the case, New York seems like a fine central location for that mirror. But anyone with a reasoned explanation of why I'm wrong is free to convince me otherwise.

Is Minnesota Open still looking for a sixth submitted packet?

RyuAqua wrote:Is Minnesota Open still looking for a sixth submitted packet?

Yes, I believe we are. Send me an email if you're interested. Thanks!

With Eliza's trash thing no longer happening, is there any room on the docket for an additional side event? I've got an idea for something that I could probably put together before this if there's any room for it.

Cheynem wrote:With Eliza's trash thing no longer happening, is there any room on the docket for an additional side event? I've got an idea for something that I could probably put together before this if there's any room for it.

Sure, some kind of shorter length event for Sunday morning/early afternoon that could accommodate travel plans would be welcome.

On an unrelated note, my team needs a new fourth player, preferably one named "Mike," so let me know if you're interested.

Cheynem wrote:On an unrelated note, my team needs a new fourth player, preferably one named "Mike," so let me know if you're interested.

I should note that the player not named Mike has historically put up above average numbers. Thus, if you've always wanted to win that used copy of The Annotated Works of Sidney Lanier awarded to the 8th individual scorer at the Minnesota Open but have been stuck in the 20th doldrums, now is your chance to seize the day.

I too am forced to put out the call for teammates: Gautam forgot he'll be on a different continent that weekend, so we're looking for a fourth. Please contact me if you're interested--your part of the packet has already been taken care of.

Alex Gerten is our new fourth.