Imaginary Landscape No. 4

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Imaginary Landscape No. 4

Post by ThisIsMyUsername »

This is the announcement for Imaginary Landscape No. 4, an 8-packet set of auditory tossups. As of now, the tentative plan is to mirror this on both HSNCT and NSC weekends. I hope to run one or both of those mirrors myself. This is subject to revision based on logistical considerations.

The overall distribution of the 20 tossups per packet is 13 classical, 4.5 non-classical, and 2.5 miscellaneous:
- The 13 classical questions are broken down chronologically: 2 pre-1750, 3 1750-1830, 4 1830-1914, 3 1914-present, and 1 Misc.
- The non-classical is distributed as 2.5 jazz / musicals / Great American Songbook, 1 film/tv, and 1 rock / pop / and beyond
- Some of the 2.5 miscellaneous will mix classical and non-classical genres. Others will be all classical, but span multiple time periods.
- Additionally, within the classical and miscellaneous distributions, the following genre minimums are guaranteed: 4 orchestral/concertos, 1.5 keyboard/solo instrumental, 1 chamber, 2 opera, 1 non-opera vocal, 1 dance/ballet.

I am seeking a collaborator to write the 8 film/tv questions and the 8 popular questions. If you would like to apply for that job, please contact me. I will write the remainder of the set myself.

Instead of maintaing previous years' concept of the wide-ranging difficulty scale, I am bringing the answer-line difficulty down generally, while still attempting to maintain (or even deepen) the difficulty gradation. I am doing this by increasing the proportion of tossups with composers or easy common-link terms as answers, but "theming" such tossups.

One form of "theming" will be close to those advocated by Jacob Reed in which (e.g.) a tossup on "trombone sextets by Composer X" is rewritten as a tossup on Composer X cluing primarily from his trombone sextets. Another form will be the "two-work" tossup popularized in literature questions by Evan Adams and myself. So, for example, instead of writing a six-clue tossup on Composer Y's Sonata Obscura (that goes dead in half the rooms) or a six-clue tossup on Composer Y's Sinfonia Ubiquitas (for which lead-ins are nearly impossible to find, because it's too well-known), I might write a tossup on Composer Y, with three clues each from Sonata Obscura and Sinfonia Ubiquitas.

Field (16):
Jonathan Magin
Mike Cheyne
Daniel Guo
Alex Damisch
Dylan Minarik
Beverly Fu
David Dennis
Saul Hankin
Ophir Lifshitz
Kai Smith
Ethan Strombeck
Young Fenimore Lee
Joe Su
Jay Misuk
Trevor Davis
Morgan Venkus
Last edited by ThisIsMyUsername on Fri Jun 29, 2018 10:14 am, edited 13 times in total.
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Re: Imaginary Landscape No. 4

Post by Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov »

Will play for jazz.
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Re: Imaginary Landscape No. 4

Post by Ben Salter »

Will the set be available to hold a UK mirror? After the very successful mirror of IL3, I am certain there will be the interest to play this too.
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Re: Imaginary Landscape No. 4

Post by ThisIsMyUsername »

Drew Scheeler has agreed to write the film/tv and pop questions.
Ben Salter wrote:Will the set be available to hold a UK mirror? After the very successful mirror of IL3, I am certain there will be the interest to play this too.
Sure, I'd be happy for there to be a UK mirror. Whenabouts would this be?
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Re: Imaginary Landscape No. 4

Post by ThisIsMyUsername »

Given that Eddie has just ceded his spot at CO 2018 and that there were two other audio tournaments vying for spots at NSC and HSNCT, I would like to move the main site of Imaginary Landscape to CO 2018, with the possibility of running additional post-CO mirrors either on Discord, or at one or more "second summer open" site, or both.
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Re: Imaginary Landscape No. 4

Post by OctagonJoe »

ThisIsMyUsername wrote:Given that Eddie has just ceded his spot at CO 2018 and that there were two other audio tournaments vying for spots at NSC and HSNCT, I would like to move the main site of Imaginary Landscape to CO 2018, with the possibility of running additional post-CO mirrors either on Discord, or at one or more "second summer open" site, or both.
Eddie's tournament was not going to run at CO 2018; he was planning on running it at the "second summer open" (disregard the first post announcing the tournament and read the next few posts).
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Re: Imaginary Landscape No. 4

Post by Cheynem »

This could, though, still run after CO Trash, though, right? Or was there some other event?
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Re: Imaginary Landscape No. 4

Post by ThisIsMyUsername »

He initially announced it for CO 2018, and changed it when informed that there wouldn't be enough time, because of CO Trash.

CO Trash 2016 didn't leave enough time for a normal side event. But it left enough time to play Will's visual film tournament, which we did. So, it seems reasonable enough to assume that Imaginary Landscape, which is similarly much quicker than a normal tournament, could also be run in such a slot, if CO Trash 2018 is of the same length as its predecessor.

But if people prefer, I'm perfectly happy to run this just as part of the second summer open.
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Re: Imaginary Landscape No. 4

Post by magin »

I'm extremely excited for this tournament and would pay a large sum of money to play it at Chicago Open this year.
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Re: Imaginary Landscape No. 4

Post by Fado Alexandrino »

Jay Misuk and I would love to play this at CO so we're not just beating up each other at our second summer open. FWIW I value listening to every question you've written while finishing Sunday at a reasonable hour (so like not last year) for this tournament than the fairest of tournament format.
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Re: Imaginary Landscape No. 4

Post by kwang »

ThisIsMyUsername wrote:Given that Eddie has just ceded his spot at CO 2018 and that there were two other audio tournaments vying for spots at NSC and HSNCT, I would like to move the main site of Imaginary Landscape to CO 2018, with the possibility of running additional post-CO mirrors either on Discord, or at one or more "second summer open" site, or both.
If it matters at all, Ben Xu and I said earlier that we would postpone our auditory set to 2019 on account of Imaginary Landscape being this year, so I think SOUNDTRACK is the only audio tournament running at HSNCT/NSC this year (unless I've missed an announcement somewhere).

Given that the main site is being changed to CO, is there any chance of arranging a mirror at either HSNCT or NSC? I am personally very interested in playing this tournament, and I imagine some other high schoolers might be as well.
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Re: Imaginary Landscape No. 4

Post by Silverman »

kwang wrote:I think SOUNDTRACK is the only audio tournament running at HSNCT/NSC this year
I'd just like to confirm that SOUNDTRACK will in fact be running at HSNCT/NSC this year (we won't need to postpone).
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Re: Imaginary Landscape No. 4

Post by ThisIsMyUsername »

Now that we finally know where we're going to be on CO Sunday (i.e. at Northwestern, because UChicago royally screwed us, and the Northwestern folks generously stepped up to bat), I'm ready to open the field for registration. I will cap this at 24 people for now. Please register by e-mailing me (hit the envelope icon under my profile picture).

This tournament will start directly after CO Trash on Sunday. Andrew Hart has suggested that CO Trash will probably end between 4 and 5 PM depending on the finals situation. So I'm going to end this at 7:30 PM at the latest (however many packets that ends up being), so that as many people as possible can catch their evening flights. (Of course, it is entirely possible that we will get through all the packets well before then, depending on when CO Trash ends.)

I will determine the initial seeding through a non-pyramidal, off-the-buzzer round that I'll either play during one of the lunch breaks or over the Discord. Basically, I'll gather everyone together, play a bunch of short clips and ask people to write down the answer. How many answers you get right determines your initial game room.

After that, this will be played in some sort of ladder format--i.e. one in which (at the end of each round) the top two players from each non-top room move up a room and the bottom two players from each non-bottom room move down a room.

As was the case with RILKE, players' points in all rooms count towards their final totals, but tossups are worth different point values depending on which room you're in. I still have yet to figure out what the multiplication factor should be between rooms. This will depend on how many people register, how many people are in each room, how music knowledge seems like it will be distributed, etc.

There is one other additional gimmick that I'm considering introducing. Although the earliest correct buzz for each tossup is usually in the top room, sometimes it isn't. Rather than powermarking the tossups, I'm planning on awarding "power" whenever someone not in the top room gets the earliest correct buzz. (This is all pending the feasibility of this system.)

One last thing: Drew Scheeler offered to write the trash tossups. But I didn't get a response from him to my PM from a while ago, and I don't have his e-mail address. If anyone here does, please let me know. Thanks.
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Re: Imaginary Landscape No. 4

Post by ThisIsMyUsername »

Since any room-variable scoring system is sensitive to the distribution of player strength, I really should get a diagnosis of the field before I finalize the format. So, here's what I'd like to do:

If you are planning on playing this tournament, please e-mail me to register by 11:59 PM Eastern this Sunday (July 1st). During next week, I'm going to run the seeding packet in the Discord. I'm fully amenable to running this on multiple evenings, to suit people's schedules (it shouldn't take more than 20 minutes).

Once I know the field size and player strength, I'll post the room assignments and scoring system.

By the way, the fee for playing the tournament will be $10 per player.
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Re: Imaginary Landscape No. 4

Post by mhayes »

ThisIsMyUsername wrote:
One last thing: Drew Scheeler offered to write the trash tossups. But I didn't get a response from him to my PM from a while ago, and I don't have his e-mail address. If anyone here does, please let me know. Thanks.
Last I checked, his e-mail was andrew.scheeler (atsymbolhere) case.edu.

Edit: Meant to send as a PM. Edited.
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Re: Imaginary Landscape No. 4

Post by ThisIsMyUsername »

mhayes wrote:
ThisIsMyUsername wrote:
One last thing: Drew Scheeler offered to write the trash tossups. But I didn't get a response from him to my PM from a while ago, and I don't have his e-mail address. If anyone here does, please let me know. Thanks.
Last I checked, his e-mail was andrew.scheeler (atsymbolhere) case.edu.

Edit: Meant to send as a PM. Edited.
Thanks. I should have mentioned, but Drew got into contact with me shortly after my post. He's still the Trash writer for this tournament, and I'm excited about the question ideas that he has proposed.
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Re: Imaginary Landscape No. 4

Post by ThisIsMyUsername »

The field is closed. If you signed up for this tournament, you should have gotten an e-mail from me about an hour ago about playing the seeding packet.
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Re: Imaginary Landscape No. 4

Post by Scipio »

So, is there any way this could be mirrored in East Tennessee on 4 August?
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Re: Imaginary Landscape No. 4

Post by ThisIsMyUsername »

Scipio wrote:So, is there any way this could be mirrored in East Tennessee on 4 August?
Sure, I'm entirely open to such a mirror. Please feel free to e-mail/PM me to co-ordinate that.
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Re: Imaginary Landscape No. 4

Post by UlyssesInvictus »

For scheduling purposes, and since I've never attended/run an audio event before, is it alright if I ask what's your expected play time per round / the "written" length of a question?

(If you'd like to also help me estimate the play time per round given actual players, since I'm not super familiar with the current state of the music mafia, here's a link to our current sign ups: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... 2045819229)
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Re: Imaginary Landscape No. 4

Post by Aaron's Rod »

CO Trash and IL 4 went Extremely Long and Incredibly Late (much like pre-Classical music in the lower room [thinking emoji]) but this set was an absolute blast to play. The set had something for everyone, and we had such an incredibly fun, energetic crowd; that is, we made hilarious faces and cursed at ourselves a lot. Thank you so much to JL and the other writers, and for Adam Silverman for staffing the lower room.

All hail Ethan Strombeck, who predictably annihilated the CO mirror. I'm fairly confident Ophir was 2nd.
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Re: Imaginary Landscape No. 4

Post by Fado Alexandrino »

Aaron's Rod wrote:CO Trash and IL 4 went Extremely Long and Incredibly Late (much like pre-Classical music in the lower room [thinking emoji]) but this set was an absolute blast to play. The set had something for everyone, and we had such an incredibly fun, energetic crowd; that is, we made hilarious faces and cursed at ourselves a lot. Thank you so much to JL and the other writers, and for Adam Silverman for staffing the lower room.

All hail Ethan Strombeck, who predictably annihilated the CO mirror. I'm fairly confident Ophir was 2nd.
^This

Especially the hilarious faces and self cussing. I apologize if any emotion I expressed was overly excessive. Props to Adam and Ashvin for staffing in addition to the accolades pointed out above.
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Re: Imaginary Landscape No. 4

Post by ThisIsMyUsername »

Thanks to those who played the Illinois site. And especially to Adam and Ashvin for staffing.

Congratulations to Ethan for handily winning. Here are the final scores for the 13 players who managed to stick it out for all 8 rounds (bearing in mind that tossups were worth 30 in the top room and 10 in the bottom room):

Ethan Strombeck 1170
Ophir Lifshitz 860
Kai Smith 520
Saul Hankin 430
Daniel Guo 400
Dylan Minarik 340
Beverly Fu 315
Alex Damisch 250
Joe Su 240
Jay Misuk 160
Young Fenimore Lee 95
Tamara Vardomskaya 55
Trevor Davis 20

Any other site that wishes to mirror this tournament sometime in August should contact me soon to let me know. After all physical mirrors are over, we will probably hold an online mirror, which would likely be in September.
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Re: Imaginary Landscape No. 4

Post by ThisIsMyUsername »

The last mirror of this has concluded, and the set has now been posted to the archive.
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