2014 BELLum Omnium Contra Omnes Seeking Mirrors

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2014 BELLum Omnium Contra Omnes Seeking Mirrors

Post by Alejandro Buendia »

Bellarmine College Preparatory of San Jose, California is pleased to announce its first tournament set, BELLum Omnium Contra Omnes (BELLOCO), which is seeking mirrors for spring 2014. We plan to have this set available for mirrors by the end of Christmas break in early January. The head editor is Sameer Rai, and the set will be further looked over by experienced Bellarmine alumni.

This set is regular high school difficulty level with some amount of nonstandard answer line selection. We seek to reward players for knowledge of concepts rather than names of works, particularly in philosophy and social science questions.

This set contains twelve preliminary packets and two finals packets. Each packet includes 21 pyramidal tossups (including one tiebreaker tossup on literature, history or science) without power marks and 20 three-part bonuses. Tossups range from five to six lines, with few questions exceeding six lines, and few bonus parts exceed two lines. The 20/20 distribution is as follows:

4/4 Literature
  • 1.25/1.25 European Literature
  • 1.25/1.25 British Literature
  • 1/1 American Literature
  • 0.5/0.5 Other Literature
4/4 History
  • 1.5/1.5 European History
  • 1/1 American History
  • 1/1 World History
  • 0.5/0.5 British History
4/4 Science
  • 1/1 Biology
  • 1/1 Chemistry
  • 1/1 Physics
  • 1/1 Other Science
3/3 Fine Arts
  • 1/1 Visual Arts
  • 1/1 Music
  • 1/1 Other Art
3/3 RMPSS
  • 1/1 Religion
  • 1/1 Mythology
  • 0.5/0.5 Philosophy
  • 0.5/0.5 Social Science
2/2 Miscellaneous
  • 1/1 Current Events, Trash
  • 0.5/0.5 Geography
  • 0.5/0.5 Civics, Miscellaneous Academic
The mirror fee is $10 per team attending. Prospective mirror hosts or anyone with questions about the set should contact me (Alejandro Buendia, [email protected]) via email or PM.
Last edited by Alejandro Buendia on Sun Aug 18, 2013 1:49 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: 2014 BELLum Omnium Contra Omnes Seeking Mirrors

Post by Adventure Temple Trail »

Hi, guys. If you don't mind a bit of friendly advice, I would caution you against deciding to write 1/1 social science per round for a regular high school tournament; I found from my personal experience (which is similar to the observations of other experienced quizbowl organizers) that it's very difficult to write more than about 7/7 or 8/8 accessible social science across a whole tournament without resorting to much more difficult answer lines and/or disciplines that most high school teams are unlikely to know much about. If you reduced social science to .5/.5 a round (in keeping with every NAQT set and other well-received tournaments such as LIST), you free up more space for geography, current events, or miscellaneous questions that more teams are likely to convert.

I have similar reservations about world literature and philosophy (speaking as someone who loves philosophy, studies it academically, and tried to fill 1/1 gettable philosophy with "conceptual" stuff for past BHSATs, I would caution you that it's not worth the effort; neither NAQT nor HSAPQ writes a full 1/1 for world lit or philosophy as it is). How much literature per round do you plan to commit to world literature, and how much of the RMP distribution will go towards philosophy?

Best of luck!
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Re: 2014 BELLum Omnium Contra Omnes Seeking Mirrors

Post by Alejandro Buendia »

Thank you for the advice.

The 4/4 Literature includes 1.5/1.5 European Literature and 0.5/0.5 World Literature.

The 3/3 RMP includes 1/1 Philosophy. As mentioned in the previous post, some of the philosophy answer lines will be nonstandard yet still accessible to most teams.

The 1/1 Social Science also includes civics (i.e. political science).
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Re: 2014 BELLum Omnium Contra Omnes Seeking Mirrors

Post by Adventure Temple Trail »

Alejandro Buendia wrote:The 3/3 RMP includes 1/1 Philosophy. As mentioned in the previous post, some of the philosophy answer lines will be nonstandard yet still accessible to most teams.

The 1/1 Social Science also includes civics (i.e. political science).
Almost no high schools teach philosophy (though many touch on philosophical works of importance in history classes or the occasional Socratic dialogue in English class, IB students get TOK, etc.). Very few high schoolers have an organic interest in learning philosophy, and there aren't many high school-level resources out there to help the few who are. For those reasons, there is a very limited number of philosophy topics that work well as tossups, easy parts, or middle parts in regular-difficulty high school quizbowl. Questions that stray too far beyond that limited answer space predominantly reward teams that are already studying lots of packets, and just go dead outside that select group of teams that really know what they're doing. There just isn't enough high-school-accessible material in the category to make 14/14 doable across a regular high school tournament; I can tell you this because I have tried to make 1/1 phil work in a high school tournament as recently as 2012, and it had the result I mentioned above (lots of dead tossups). I understand that accessible concept-questions can get you part of the way; I've written and edited several such concept tossups myself (e.g. "justice" in BHSAT 2012, "truth" in BHSAT 2013). I can tell you from my experience that "nonstandard" answers alone will not get you all the way there or stretch out the category enough to get you 14/14 worth of questions with good conversion among non-elite fields. Neither NAQT (0.3/0.2 per 24/24 packet) nor HSAPQ (.5/.5 per 23/21 packet) attempts to fill out this much philosophy per set, based at least in part on their experience with conversion percentages.

A similar situation is true in the social sciences. Many kids will get basic or AP-level psychology and economics (or "civics" I guess if you're counting that as a social science rather than miscellaneous), but you're quickly into much harder material beyond that small range (though some languages, basic linguistics, basic concepts from other discplines make it into the realm of accessibility too). That's a more detailed explanation of why I have my doubts here, and why I urge future housewriters to err on the side of caution and cut both philosophy and social science down to .5/.5. Charlie is right in the thread I linked above - in college, 1/1 of either category seems to play well, but in high school it really does not.
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Re: 2014 BELLum Omnium Contra Omnes Seeking Mirrors

Post by Alejandro Buendia »

After further considering the advice presented in this thread, Bellarmine has decided to alter its distribution. The original post has now been edited to reflect Bellarmine's specific and final distribution for this set.
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Re: 2014 BELLum Omnium Contra Omnes Seeking Mirrors

Post by Alejandro Buendia »

Centennial High School will be hosting a mirror on March 15.
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Re: 2014 BELLum Omnium Contra Omnes Seeking Mirrors

Post by pajaro bobo »

Alejandro Buendia wrote:Centennial High School will be hosting a mirror on March 15.
Which Centennial?
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Re: 2014 BELLum Omnium Contra Omnes Seeking Mirrors

Post by Alejandro Buendia »

AlexLiu wrote:
Alejandro Buendia wrote:Centennial High School will be hosting a mirror on March 15.
Which Centennial?
Centennial in Roswell, GA
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Re: 2014 BELLum Omnium Contra Omnes Seeking Mirrors

Post by Alejandro Buendia »

The date of Centennial's mirror, ATTACK III, has been changed to March 1.
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Re: 2014 BELLum Omnium Contra Omnes Seeking Mirrors

Post by Alejandro Buendia »

UC San Diego will be hosting a mirror on February 1 (Triton Winter).
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Re: 2014 BELLum Omnium Contra Omnes Seeking Mirrors

Post by Schroeder »

Bellarmine will be hosting this tournament on February 22.
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Re: 2014 BELLum Omnium Contra Omnes Seeking Mirrors

Post by Alejandro Buendia »

Richard Montgomery High School of Maryland will be hosting a mirror on March 29.
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Re: 2014 BELLum Omnium Contra Omnes Seeking Mirrors

Post by Alejandro Buendia »

Kaneland High School of Illinois will be hosting a mirror on February 1.
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Re: 2014 BELLum Omnium Contra Omnes Seeking Mirrors

Post by pajaro bobo »

Will there be a discussion forum set up for this?
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Re: 2014 BELLum Omnium Contra Omnes Seeking Mirrors

Post by Alejandro Buendia »

There is now a private discussion forum set up for this set.
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Re: 2014 BELLum Omnium Contra Omnes Seeking Mirrors

Post by Schroeder »

This set has been deemed exemplary by PACE! We will be extending mirrors into next semester (fall 2014).
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Re: 2014 BELLum Omnium Contra Omnes Seeking Mirrors

Post by Alejandro Buendia »

The Missouri Quizbowl Alliance will be hosting a series of mirrors across Missouri in mid-November. Specific dates and sites to follow.
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Re: 2014 BELLum Omnium Contra Omnes Seeking Mirrors

Post by Alejandro Buendia »

Vanderbilt University will be hosting a mirror on October 4.
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Re: 2014 BELLum Omnium Contra Omnes Seeking Mirrors

Post by crbirdx »

1
Last edited by crbirdx on Wed Nov 12, 2014 6:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: 2014 BELLum Omnium Contra Omnes Seeking Mirrors

Post by Alejandro Buendia »

crbirdx wrote:We are interested in hosting a mirror on Saturday 3.21.15
Please check your inbox regarding this.

As a reminder to everyone: The set will be retired to the archive after fall 2014, meaning the last possible mirrors can be hosted in December 2014.
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Re: 2014 BELLum Omnium Contra Omnes Seeking Mirrors

Post by crbirdx »

We have a date of 11.15.14 at Olentangy HS in Powell, Ohio
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Re: 2014 BELLum Omnium Contra Omnes Seeking Mirrors

Post by Alejandro Buendia »

The mirrors in Missouri are as follows:
November 15 - Fort Osage High School
November 22 - Centralia High School
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Re: 2014 BELLum Omnium Contra Omnes Seeking Mirrors

Post by Alejandro Buendia »

The date of Fort Osage's mirror has been postponed to December 13.
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Re: 2014 BELLum Omnium Contra Omnes Seeking Mirrors

Post by Alejandro Buendia »

Lisgar Collegiate Institute will be hosting a mirror on December 6.
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Re: 2014 BELLum Omnium Contra Omnes Seeking Mirrors

Post by Schroeder »

I have just uploaded the set to the database. It should be publicly viewable soon.

EDIT: link
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