The Quizbowl Resource Center

Will H-M and I (Jacob Reed) are happy to announce VICO: Very Intense Conceptual Open/The New SCIENCE, a tossups-only side tournament to go with 2015's VCU Open and its mirrors. Our target difficulty is "Oppen-minus."

The subject matter is "thought," but not just in the narrow sense of "philosophy and social science." Instead, we're making the distribution roughly mirror the current quizbowl distribution, and asking about the "thought" in most major academic disciplines:

2 "Literature" (literary criticism and theory, essays, "general nonfiction," "thought in literature")
2 "History" (historiography, "history of ideas" that isn't in any of the other categories)
2 "Science" (philosophy of science, "philosophy in science," history of science in the "history of ideas" sense)
2 "Arts" (history, criticism, and theory. I promise no music theory questions whatsoever.)
3 Philosophy (including theology)
6 "Social Science" (roughly: 2 "social thought"—sociology and anthropology included—, 1 each psychology and economics, 2 other or more of the above)
1 Miscellaneous (area/___ studies, cross-category questions)
2 Trash (the infinite is possible. the unattainable is unknown)

This distribution will likely be subject to some tweaking. We promise not to subject you to Sun-'n-Fun-style endless tossups on French 20th-century thinkers, nor in fact too many people or works as answerlines.

I'm personally inclined towards doubles, but if anyone thinks that's not a good idea (and has a better format suggestion), they should feel free to post about it.

vinteuil wrote: I promise no music theory questions whatsoever.

Boo to this.

But hooray to the rest of the proposed distribution. I look forward to playing this.

We promise not to subject you to Sun-'n-Fun-style endless tossups on French 20th-century thinkers, nor in fact too many people or works as answerlines.

Boo to this. I am super excited for this tournament though!

Just to be clear, it's not like we won't be asking a lot about important thinkers and their works, but we'll definitely be at least trying to emphasize the content of their thought/works. We're trying to make this tournament accessible to people who have studied things (not just philosophy and social science) in an academic context in ways that quizbowl might not usually reward.

Whoa. This announcement is potentially sufficient to change my summer vacation plans.

I'm excited.

How cruel of you to hold this at a tournament to which I (probably) can't come! I'd love if there were a Skype mirror at some point.

I'll play the shit out of this and probably only get trash because I'm bad at thought questions.

Muriel Axon wrote:How cruel of you to hold this at a tournament to which I (probably) can't come! I'd love if there were a Skype mirror at some point.

What this guy said. Hopefully I will have learned more things by the time this hypothetical Skype mirror happens, but I'm sure I'll enjoy it either way.

This sounds like a great time. I'd love to play this wherever it's being held.

Periplus of the Erythraean Sea wrote:

Muriel Axon wrote:How cruel of you to hold this at a tournament to which I (probably) can't come! I'd love if there were a Skype mirror at some point.

What this guy said. Hopefully I will have learned more things by the time this hypothetical Skype mirror happens, but I'm sure I'll enjoy it either way.

Yeah, I think I would enjoy this side event much more if I were playing it in a more leisurely setting rather rather than during a long weekend of quizbowl. Would pay a premium to play this on skype.

As this apparently isn't being run at the VCU Open Richmond site, is it correct to assume that the nearest site to DC at which this might be played is Ann Arbor?

UPDATE: If there is interest, I will figure out how to host a mirror of VICO in DC on August 15th, 22nd, or 29th. It would have to have a field cap of like eight teams, unless one of the UMD players can get us rooms there or something. Please post here if you would be interested in that. If this somehow gets off the ground, I promise one of my famous quizbowl barbecues in the evening.

Would love to play. Later in August is preferable.

Tees-Exe Line wrote:UPDATE: If there is interest, I will figure out how to host a mirror of VICO in DC on August 15th, 22nd, or 29th. It would have to have a field cap of like eight teams, unless one of the UMD players can get us rooms there or something. Please post here if you would be interested in that. If this somehow gets off the ground, I promise one of my famous quizbowl barbecues in the evening.

I think this can happen if there's interest.

EDIT: and I'm interested

Brian McPeak wrote:

Tees-Exe Line wrote:UPDATE: If there is interest, I will figure out how to host a mirror of VICO in DC on August 15th, 22nd, or 29th. It would have to have a field cap of like eight teams, unless one of the UMD players can get us rooms there or something. Please post here if you would be interested in that. If this somehow gets off the ground, I promise one of my famous quizbowl barbecues in the evening.

I think this can happen if there's interest.

EDIT: and I'm interested

Yep. Worse come to worst if we had to do a shootout in a single room with a lower cap (12ish people) I could host a reading, with some fee per person to cover mirroring and food.

Tees-Exe Line wrote:UPDATE: If there is interest, I will figure out how to host a mirror of VICO in DC on August 15th, 22nd, or 29th. It would have to have a field cap of like eight teams, unless one of the UMD players can get us rooms there or something. Please post here if you would be interested in that. If this somehow gets off the ground, I promise one of my famous quizbowl barbecues in the evening.

I'll be out of the woods of New Hampshire by then, I think

Tees-Exe Line wrote:UPDATE: If there is interest, I will figure out how to host a mirror of VICO in DC on August 15th, 22nd, or 29th. It would have to have a field cap of like eight teams, unless one of the UMD players can get us rooms there or something. Please post here if you would be interested in that. If this somehow gets off the ground, I promise one of my famous quizbowl barbecues in the evening.

I would play this if I don't play it somewhere else first.

Update: This tournament is going to have eight rounds, and is a little over two-thirds written. Jacob and I would like to playtest some/all of the written questions soon, so if you're not planning to play the set this summer and are interested in doing that, shoot me a PM/email.

I'll be playtesting some questions today from 6-8pm—PM or email me if you want to do that and haven't already let me know.

How much will the entry fee be?

theMoMA wrote:How much will the entry fee be?

$20 per two-person team.

Based on last week's playtesting, I strongly encourage anyone at any of the VCU Open sites to play this event. Even if you don't consider yourself a strong "thought" player, I think there's something in this for everyone.

The teams at the Michigan site are four person teams--should we just do $10 per person?

Cheynem wrote:The teams at the Michigan site are four person teams--should we just do $10 per person?

Yeah, I don't know why I didn't just say that in the first place.

EDIT: Also, the set is ~90% written, and we're already editing. Hopefully, the finished product will be reasonably polished.

EDIT 2: We seem not to have mentioned this anywhere, but there is one (academic) tiebreaker tossup per packet.

Periplus of the Erythraean Sea wrote:The set's been fully written and packetized - we're just making minor changes at this point. If you're planning on hosting this weekend, email me and I'll send the packets along Friday evening.

We're at this stage as well.

A private discussion forum for VICO has been set up!

There will be an online mirror of VICO after the online mirror of SHEIKH. Signup information available in the SHEIKH online thread: viewtopic.php?f=8&t=17553

As the online mirror has been finished, will the set be uploaded soon?