David Dennis, whom I work with on a regular basis coaching the Washington High School team, edited all of the science (with a few comments/some oversight by Eric)
i never see pigeons in wheeling wrote:This was mirrored yesterday for the Varsity division of Cal Cup 1, which contained a fair number of pretty casual teams. I liked the fact that when the set erred, it generally erred easier instead of more difficult. This is a trend that I think really worked with CALI and that needs to continue to provide a good competitive experience for teams from the entire field. I thought it had a good variety of answerlines that provided a good test of team knowledge in all distributions (there was a feng shui issue in one packet where both American history questions were on judicial history). I generally liked the set.
i never see pigeons in wheeling wrote:That said, there were points at which this set seemed to not know when it would be a novice set or a regular difficulty set. The staffers at the tournament yesterday all generally agreed that the tournament was way too generous with power marks, including have a tossup on the Divine Comedy where Virgil was in power (???), various bonuses that seemed to have multiple easy parts (see: the bonus on the Doppler Effect) contrasted heavily with certain very difficult bonuses (the bonus on stages with the Globe Theater was an easy part; there were other bonuses where something as difficult as the Globe Theater might have been a harder-than-medium part). Though the quality of individual questions was often high, the difficulty variation meant that the teams might have had to rely a bit too much on the luck of the bonus. More of a unifying vision of the set between individual editors could help iron out these kinks.
Also, another thing that some of the staffers wanted to point out was that many of the pronunciation guides were outright incorrect.
Packet 1 wrote:In this work, the narrator encounters a tree spirit that killed itself as a human because of the jealousy of Frederick II’s court. The narrator of this work learns the story of Paolo and Francesca and is assisted by Geryon. In this poem, Virgil guides the narrator through the nine(*) circles of hell. The narrator of this poem passes through an entrance, where he reads an inscription that proclaims “abandon all hope, ye who enter here.” For 10 points, name this epic poem by Dante Alighieri that is divided into sections called Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso.
ANSWER: The Divine Comedy [or La Divina Commedia; or the Inferno before it is read] <Wenzer Qin>/<ed. Jacob>
AKKOLADE wrote:One thing I did not like was that I think this whiffed pretty notably on difficulty, in general and in one category specifically. This was supposed to be a regular difficulty HS set, but it definitely read like something at or even easier than an A set. Tossups had clues in the 2nd or 3rd lines that I was used to seeing used as giveaways, or at least pre-FTP clues. Bonuses often almost all had two easy parts and then an actual hard part, with no middle part.
However, within this set, there was one category that was a clear outlier: pop culture questions. These questions were more specific, read like an actual regular difficulty tossup, and rarely had true easy parts on the bonuses. These questions that were randomly much harder than their surrounding could have a serious effect on the results in games played on these set. For a close game, randomly getting the bonus that's the very specific pop culture one for the packet could very well mean a loss of 20 or 30 points.
I will note that, on my last point, I was reading for the national division of a tournament that did a split bracket. It could be that given how rarely I'm able to attend tournaments and that the last few I've been to have been high school national difficulty or higher, my viewpoint of what is difficult could have been affected.
Final point I'll make right now: power marks were incredibly generous, but at the same time this was consistent throughout the set. This isn't a complaint so much as it's as a remark upon an interesting decision you made, which I'm not saying was inherently wrong.
The Two Hearts of Kwasi Boachi wrote:Re: Trash. Easy parts for each trash bonus were: Rubik's cube; Tiger Woods; Benedict Cumberbatch; Wall Street; LEGO Star Wars (the issue with this one was noted in the question-specific thread); French Toast Crunch; Minecraft; Moving screen; Tom Cruise; Motown; Fenway Park; Netflix; Air Force One; Nemo. If there was an issue with the easy parts of the trash, my guess is that it was with the clues that were given.
2013 in amusement parks wrote:The Two Hearts of Kwasi Boachi wrote:Re: Trash. Easy parts for each trash bonus were: Rubik's cube; Tiger Woods; Benedict Cumberbatch; Wall Street; LEGO Star Wars (the issue with this one was noted in the question-specific thread); French Toast Crunch; Minecraft; Moving screen; Tom Cruise; Motown; Fenway Park; Netflix; Air Force One; Nemo. If there was an issue with the easy parts of the trash, my guess is that it was with the clues that were given.
The Martin Sheen (Wall Street) and basketball bonuses struck me as particularly difficult. I'm a good sports player, and I 20'd the basketball bonus missing "moving screen." Most people who haven't played organized basketball won't know what that is.
In the set overall, I thought the tossups were fairly easy and led to many early buzzer races (I was in the nationals division at Columbia, so you have a bunch of top-10 to 25 teams playing this set), while bonuses were more inconsistent. I was not expecting something closer to an a-set, so I think this could have been advertised better, but it was a very good set for less talented quiz bowl teams, especially those looking to improve -- it would have been very valuable to me my freshman and sophomore years thanks to its accessible and canonical subjects. I did enjoy playing this set on Saturday.
The Two Hearts of Kwasi Boachi wrote:2013 in amusement parks wrote:The Two Hearts of Kwasi Boachi wrote:Re: Trash. Easy parts for each trash bonus were: Rubik's cube; Tiger Woods; Benedict Cumberbatch; Wall Street; LEGO Star Wars (the issue with this one was noted in the question-specific thread); French Toast Crunch; Minecraft; Moving screen; Tom Cruise; Motown; Fenway Park; Netflix; Air Force One; Nemo. If there was an issue with the easy parts of the trash, my guess is that it was with the clues that were given.
The Martin Sheen (Wall Street) and basketball bonuses struck me as particularly difficult. I'm a good sports player, and I 20'd the basketball bonus missing "moving screen." Most people who haven't played organized basketball won't know what that is.
In the set overall, I thought the tossups were fairly easy and led to many early buzzer races (I was in the nationals division at Columbia, so you have a bunch of top-10 to 25 teams playing this set), while bonuses were more inconsistent. I was not expecting something closer to an a-set, so I think this could have been advertised better, but it was a very good set for less talented quiz bowl teams, especially those looking to improve -- it would have been very valuable to me my freshman and sophomore years thanks to its accessible and canonical subjects. I did enjoy playing this set on Saturday.
For the Martin Sheen bonus, are you saying the easy part was difficult? I just want to make sure I know what you're saying there.
On the basketball bonus: I see a moving screen get called all the time and talked about in the NBA (thanks to Draymond "moving screen" Green). I might think of a different hard part for that bonus, though-I'll see how it played at other sites.
I already explained the marketing thing after Fred's post, but I had some things submitted to me during the process that made me hesitate to label it "somewhere between regular IS and an A-set." Next year, I will definitely market it like this; for this year, my bad. Was there a specific place in the tossups where the buzzer races happened at your site?
Thanks for your feedback, and I'm glad to hear you enjoyed playing the set!
R10 T14 wrote: ... The cities of city in Morocco is within this range, as is most of northern Algeria. ...
R10 B11c wrote: [10] Chinese horseshoe bats were found to be are the carriers of the coronavirus that causes this disease related to MERS. This respiratory disease had a near pandemic in late 2002.
jonpin wrote:I understand the sense of wanting to be generous with powers, but some of those decisions were over-the-top. I noted a 6-line tossup where power stretched onto the fifth line, and many tossups would have more than half the question in power.
Was there any editing or fixing of the set done after its first use? Because there were multiple grammar errors, some of which were easily glossed over, but some of which made it difficult to tell what the question was trying to say. For instance, from the round I read at practice yesterday:R10 T14 wrote: ... The cities of city in Morocco is within this range, as is most of northern Algeria. ...R10 B11c wrote: [10] Chinese horseshoe bats were found to be are the carriers of the coronavirus that causes this disease related to MERS. This respiratory disease had a near pandemic in late 2002.
jonpin wrote:R10 T14 wrote: ... The cities of city in Morocco is within this range, as is most of northern Algeria. ...R10 B11c wrote: [10] Chinese horseshoe bats were found to be are the carriers of the coronavirus that causes this disease related to MERS. This respiratory disease had a near pandemic in late 2002.
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