General Discussion GSAC XXV

[c*t]

Welcome to the private discussion forum for GSAC XXV. Feel free to give any feedback or request to see specific questions!

[trbenedict]

When I was moderating at the 1/6 mirror at Olentangy Liberty, I caught a few things:

1. Two bonuses lacked answerlines for the third part: the pre-Socratic philosophy bonus in round 5 and the Huntington's bonus in round 6.

2. The science bonus on Bose-Einstein condensates also included a part from the Stendhal bonus earlier in the set in what looked to be a copy-paste error (all three science parts were there, the Stendhal bit just looked like a "fourth part.")

3. The bonus on the Gupta Empire says it will accept either the ancient or modern name for Chandragupta's capital, but the answerline only gives Patna (the modern name) and does not list Pataliputra or Palibothra.

4. Answerlines in general were pretty sparse and could have given moderators more direction on promptability. For example, in the Langston Hughes bonus, I accepted "carrion" for "[rotten] meat" since the question was asking for the foodstuff and not the exact line in the poem, but it would have been helpful to have an "accept clear-knowledge equivalents" or "prompt on answers suggesting animal flesh," etc. For the answerline "Francisco Solano Lopez," I would have liked some instruction on how to handle a partial answer, since at this difficulty level there is still some variance on how sets like to treat compound last names (for example, reading different sets this season, I've been directed to prompt "Marquez," accept "Marquez," and reject "Marquez" as answerlines for the author of One Hundred Years of Solitude). There was also a protest in my room (that did not have to be resolved) as to whether "x-intercepts" or "zeroes" should have been prompted for the answerline of "roots" in one of the math tossups.

5. I usually ignore pronunciation guides, but I have appreciated the recent trend in separating out long science terms into prefixes/suffixes/syllables with hyphens or dots (e.g. "ad-re-no-leu-ko-dys-tro-phy") and think that could have been helpful in some of the questions.

6. The second "Empress Wu" bonus part (answerline "Empress") was, I think, intended to be easy for players, but it seemed to confuse the teams in my room (small sample size).

Overall, I enjoyed reading this set and appreciate all the work that you and the Gov team put into writing it!

[c*t]

I'm really sorry about those errors--I had fixed the the Huntington's, Stendhal, and Patna parts after the Davis mirror but it looks like the pre-fixing word version got used instead of the fixed pdf versions I followed up with. That's my fault because I should have clarified with the TD. I hope those errors weren't too detrimental to the tournament but nevertheless, thanks for pointing these issues out--I'll double check to make sure they're fixed and discuss with the head editor about prompts and pronunciation guides. I'm glad you enjoyed and highly appreciate the feedback!

[csa2125]

I wrote up a few pages of notes about the music questions in this tournament. Don't take that to mean that the music in this set was terrible; it was about on par with what it should be for a high school housewrite, but in general music writing is rather difficult and hence often subpar, so I'd like to share some thoughts on how, generally, music could be written better at the high school level. All those pages are over here, so as to not clog up the board with a wall of text about ~1/20 of the packet:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/19Bz ... sp=sharing

[trbenedict]

In round 7, tossup 8 (answerline Secretary-General of the UN) mentions that Park Geun-hye was impeached as president of South Korea. In that same round, bonus 11 asks players to name the president of South Korea that was just impeached, which seems like a mistake. Moving the bonus earlier in the set would probably solve the issue. (Sorry for jumping back in so late, the players that round did mention that she had come up earlier, but I only just now went back to look.)

[The Sawing-Off of Manhattan Island]

First, I want to mention that I really enjoyed this set and thought it was fun, and it was consistently challenging enough to make us think while also not being too stingy with easy parts - the teams playing also really enjoyed that CPR bonus, which I thought exemplified how the set was both quirky yet focused on real world, application style q's. I did have a couple problems with some tossup first lines being sort of ambiguous in a couple places, though (I don't have a copy of the packet atm so I can't cite specific phrasings or packet numbers atm, sorry)

-I remember the TU on "Parasites" cluing artemisinin and then asking for an organism that caused the associated disease - this seemed to point a lot more to mosquitos than parasites imo.

-The TU on Flynn mentioning him kidnapping the Turkish cleric I similarly negged with "Erdogan" as AFAIK Erdogan ordered that kidnapping; I think adding "was ordered by a foreign head of state to kidnap..." or something along those lines would resolve the ambiguity.

-The tossup on "Plagues" in R12 didn't seem to have alternative answerlines equating the plague with "the Masque of the Red Death" ("The arrival of the Masque of the Red Death" got negged for me after the first line, though iirc that was a more literal answer for "the plague" described by the first line)

Also, could I see the Oe, Angular Momentum, and the Speed of Light tus? I wasn't sure, but I thought that the first had only 1 clue in power and the latter two seemed to have somewhat misplaced lead-ins. To end off on a more positive note, I thought that a lot of the lit and science common-links were very well done, and a lot of the lead-ins were very interesting overall.

[c*t]

I remember the TU on "Parasites" cluing artemisinin and then asking for an organism that caused the associated disease - this seemed to point a lot more to mosquitos than parasites imo.

Artemisinin and praziquantel treat conditions caused by these organisms. The mafia hypothesis describes the behavior of one type of them, and abdominal swelling accompanies schistosomiasis, a disease caused by one of them. Trypanosomiasis, or sleeping sickness, is caused by a (*) protozoan example of these organisms. Their “brood” type manipulates other organisms into raising their young. The Plasmodium genus of these organisms can cause malaria, and their examples include flukes and tapeworms. For 10 points, name this type of organism that benefits at the expense of a host.
ANSWER: parasites

I'll leave Anuj to comment on the science, but I would agree that some of these clues would work for mosquitoes, and that the answerline is thus too sparse.

The TU on Flynn mentioning him kidnapping the Turkish cleric I similarly negged with "Erdogan" as AFAIK Erdogan ordered that kidnapping; I think adding "was ordered by a foreign head of state to kidnap..." or something along those lines would resolve the ambiguity.

Hm, I don't think that the initial WSJ report or any other subsequent publications ever directly accused Erdogan of ordering the kidnapping, since it was only Turkish ministers involved with the meeting. Additionally, "planned to kidnap" would imply Flynn more as opposed to "planned to have [cleric] kidnapped", which would imply Erdogan. He also definitely wasn't ordered by Erdogan to kidnap the guy, but I may change it to "was offered $15 to kidnap.."

The tossup on "Plagues" in R12 didn't seem to have alternative answerlines equating the plague with "the Masque of the Red Death" ("The arrival of the Masque of the Red Death" got negged for me after the first line, though iirc that was a more literal answer for "the plague" described by the first line)

My goal with that TU was to make sure the player knew what the Red Death was in that story (a personification of the plague) and not just equate clues like the ebony clock with the title, but I take your point and will add that to the list of prompts.

Also, could I see the Oe, Angular Momentum, and the Speed of Light tus? I wasn't sure, but I thought that the first had only 1 clue in power and the latter two seemed to have somewhat misplaced lead-ins. To end off on a more positive note, I thought that a lot of the lit and science common-links were very well done, and a lot of the lead-ins were very interesting overall.

One of this author’s characters believes that he will be killed by his village, but instead kills himself after writing “I told the truth.” In another novel, this author described a group of reformatory school boys who are trapped in a plague infected village. (*) Himiko suggests to the protagonist that Bird kill his mentally disabled son and travel to Africa in another novel by this author of Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids. A Personal Matter is by, for 10 points, what Japanese author who wrote about the brothers Mitsu and Takashi in The Silent Cry?
ANSWER: Kenzaburo Oe [accept in either order]

Rotational invariance is the associated symmetry of this quantity by Noether’s theorem. The quantum operator for this quantity equals negative i h-bar times the cross product of radius and the gradient. Torque is equal to the time derivative of this quantity which is equal to the (*) cross product of radius with a similarly named quantity. The conservation of this quantity is often demonstrated through a figure skater pulling in her arms. For 10 points, name this quantity equal to moment of inertia times angular velocity, often symbolized L.
ANSWER: angular momentum

The Lorentz factor equals one over the square root of one minus velocity squared over this quantity squared. The energy-momentum tensor is divided by this quantity raised to the fourth power in Einstein’s field equations. The refractive index of a material is the ratio of this (*) constant to speed, and it is the conversion factor between frequency and wavelength of an electromagnetic wave. This quantity is constant regardless of the observer’s inertial reference frame, and it is equal to approximately three times ten to the eighth meters per second. According to Einstein, for 10 points, energy is equal to mass times what constant squared?
ANSWER: speed of light [accept c]

Let me know if there're any other questions you want to see. I'm glad you enjoyed the set and really appreciate the feedback!

[dwd500]

I spent the day reading this to the lower brackets. It came across (to me) as pretty hard, but with some properly "important hard" parts. To most of the teams I was reading to, it was a slog. Two things about that:

1. When going with harder stuff, please be sure to include information pointing to why the hard part is important. When you're in consolation rounds, and it's 3pm, a high schooler is just constantly thinking "...and why should I care?"

I agree - high schoolers should know Cu Chulainn - but that tossup didn't make the awesomeness of that guy show up, and it was totally missing the salmon of knowledge thing that would have given an extra 15-25% of players a shot at getting it. I don't mean to pick on that one, but it's an example - the set just felt "dry."

2. Keep the really hard stuff away from the tossup answerlines. Round 7 had a lot of this: Summa Theologica, The Prado, July's People, Austerlitz, Rape of the Lock, Doctor Zhivago, and Camp David Accords are all on the tougher end of the high school game. That makes for lot of dead tossups to have in one round, and it makes the day feel like the opposite of fun. They're fine medium-to-hard bonus answers, but as tossups they just beat players down.

PS - I know it's a direct quote, but I really don't appreciate having to read the phrase "bucket of warm piss" to children.

[Amizda Calyx]

I moderated at the Scarlet Knight mirror on 1/27 and had a few notes.
General observations:
*The most consistent problem was the *very* sparse answerlines/alternate answers, especially in science.
*A lot of bonus leadins had two sentences or otherwise-awkward construction.
*While experienced moderators shouldn't have much difficulty reading this set, there were only like two pronunciation guides in the 12 rounds I read, which I imagine would be a huge hangup for people with less experience.
*There was a preponderance of sentences with the "[clue], and/while [completely unrelated clue]" structure.

Packet 1, TU 15 (parasites): This really needs fleshing out. The pronoun used ("these organisms") is not appropriate for the answerline as it implies a clade, not a life strategy. I understand that the intent was to disambiguate parasites from particular examples by dropping both artemisinin and praziquantel before the pronoun, but I think it's unfair to expect someone with a first-line buzz to know those drugs treat different parasitic diseases, rather than conditions caused by the same class of organism (i.e. Plasmodium, or protozoa, or worms), especially when there are zero prompts or alternate answerlines given. I would suggest making the first few clues about parasites from an ecology standpoint and then introduce specific parasites with the pronoun "these types of organisms" or something. The second line "mafia hypothesis ... schistosomiasis" is isn't well-constructed -- brood parasites have nothing to do with schistosomiasis, so conjugating those clues together is just awkward. The abdominal swelling clue for schistosomiasis adds very little unique information -- perhaps replace that with something about snails.
The sentence

The Plasmodium genus of these organisms can cause malaria, and their examples include flukes and tapeworms.

should say "other examples". Also, genera like Plasmodium should be italicized.

Bonus 1 (PET/MRI/gadolinium): I would mention that this is an imaging technique and replace "organisms" with just people.

Bonus 2:

[10] Name this Romantic era composer who wrote primarily for solo piano. His other works include the “Revolutionary Etude” and “Funeral March”.
ANSWER: Frederic Francois Chopin
[10] This twelfth Chopin etude begins with descending runs that form a dominant seventh chord, which one critic called the “crack of creation”. This etude was inspired by a bombardment on Warsaw.
ANSWER: Revolutionary Etude (accept “Opus 10 Number 12”)

Packet 2, TU 14 (Inca): Some serious pyramidality issues -- Manco Capac is dropped in the first sentence (shows up 118 times on aseemsdb) while Lupaka (0 times) and Chimor (<10 times) are at the end of the second sentence; wamani (1 time) appears shortly before the end of power; suyu (~5 times) is right out of power.

Bonus 2 (Weinstein/CK/NYT): NYT is repeatedly mentioned in the first two questions and should not be the answer to the third (also it should've accepted NYT).

Packet 3, TU 6 (CF): The first clue is not unique -- any disorder causing intestinal obstruction will prevent passage of meconium. I would change it to something like "this disorder is the primary cause of meconium ileus due to deficient release of trypsin from the pancreas". The clue about P. aeruginosa should disambiguate from immunodeficiency disorders.

Packet 7, TU 15 (Cambrian): Power isn't very generous -- I would include Ediacara in it and end right before "rapid" or "diversification".

Bonus 5 (penicillin/staph/methicillin): the Staph answerline should include MRSA, not just prompt on it, and should also include the expanded acronym.

Packet 8, TU 2 (X):

Megalocornea 1 and adrenoleukodystrophy are disorders linked to this structure.

Megalocornea 1 is extremely obscure and virtually no one will recognize that it disqualifies "peroxisome" from the answer, so players knowledgeable of ALD will be punished. I would also not drop "this chromosome" in power...

[YungBrownie]

Hello! I'd like to give some of my thoughts on arts, trash, and current events, since those are my best categories.

Current Events:
Good for the most part, barring the minor Flynn/Erdogan mixup. I liked how it felt harder than NAQT CE relative to the rest of the distro.

Trash:
The distro was somewhat skewed towards TV shows, leaving movies and video games (and arguably even sports) a bit sparse. Just like with CE, its difficulty (in which it doesn't feel easier than the rest of the distro) was certainly refreshing.

Arts:
Here's where I have some criticisms.

Auditory: Here I'll just agree with Clark's thoughts above, since he's definitely a smarter Aud FA player than me. There's one thing that struck me as strange: categorizing Appalachian Spring as auditory and using compositional clues doesn't make sense to me, since it is more often considered a ballet and therefore would be better categorized into audiovisual. In other words, the first clues establish the answerline as a musical composition, which Appalachian Spring technically is, but the idea of AS as a composition by Copland rather than a ballet by Copland+Graham is too difficult for HS regs.

Visual: Solid overall. Two complaints:
- Tossing up Masaccio was bizarre. The answerline is too difficult outside of PACE NSC/IMSANITY difficulty, and few people who aren't insanely strong at Renaissance art are gonna power that; not to mention, most teams will be unable to convert even after the giveaway.
- Asking about a specific museum should probably be avoided at HS regs; I kinda had to guess the Prado off the Madrid clue at the end. At HS regs, few people are categorizing works by museums except for the Louvre.

Other FA:
The distro was very skewed towards architecture, which hurt the amount of other arts content. That bonus part on the Ghanaian-English architect was definitely harder than an HS regs hard part. Could I see the Smithsonian bonus? I felt like that one was overly difficult as well, but I don't fully remember it. I also remember Ai Weiwei being a medium bonus part (don't remember what the hard part was), which, once again, is more suited for the likes of PACE NSC.

Also a minor note: the Apocalypse Now tossup mentioned Laurence Fishburne early, which at HS regs narrows it down to just the Matrix and Apocalypse Now (and the very unlikely possibilities of Man of Steel, Contagion, or Just Cause). I don't think this is a big deal at all, but it makes the question mildly fraudable.

Other stuff:
Vishwa forgot to post this, but he asked me to mention that there was an overabundance of Indian history early on. In about four rounds there were tossups on the Caste System and the British Raj, as well as a bonus part on the Sepoy Mutiny. I think there was other Indian stuff as well; I remember a tossup on the Mughal Empire.

I don't want to seem like I'm tearing into the set because Vishwa and I had a lot of fun, and you guys had you turned out a really solid set. I hope minor stuff like the criticism above helps you guys improve the set in the future. Thank you very much for writing it!

[c*t]

I agree - high schoolers should know Cu Chulainn - but that tossup didn't make the awesomeness of that guy show up, and it was totally missing the salmon of knowledge thing that would have given an extra 15-25% of players a shot at getting it.

Cu Chulainn has nothing to do with the Salmon of Knowledge.

[dwd500]

Dangit. I always get him and Fionn confused. Now that's etched in here forever.

[SirMrGuy]

Just a brief observation from playing this at Scarlet Knight Winter, but if I remember correctly, a few answerlines were repeated between rounds (Brazil and gold come to mind, though there may have been more). This isn't really a problem, since the questions were on totally different subjects, but at least to me it felt a bit odd.

(As a side note, in my opinion the second line of the speed of light tossup is harder than the first line)

[Euouae]

Really enjoyed this set when my team played it at Main Site. The questions were definitely a little more difficult than I expected after having read previous GSAC packets, especially with regard to bonuses and power-marking. This wasn't necessarily a bad thing, although I observed many instances where less experienced teams struggled to convert tossups even after the give-away clue. Many of the literature and music questions seemed to focus on characters or motifs rather than dropping the titles of works, which I think rewarded deeper subject knowledge.

There were multiple questions that I think could have used broader prompts or answer lines given the question content. Negging "prison colonies" for "penal colonies" comes to mind, as well as a bonus on Gettysburg where our answer of "Cemetery Ridge" was not accepted for "Cemetery Hill". I don't remember the exact questions, though, so there may have been distinguishing wording that I oversaw. Also, if possible can I see the tossups on Mongol invasions, red giants, and The Philippines and the United States?

Overall, a very well-written set. I personally enjoyed the unusually high frequency of architecture. And kudos for including a Rick and Morty bonus, although to be fair, you needed a pretty high IQ to understand that one.

[CPiGuy]

So, Michigan played the first 8 rounds of this as a scrimmage after our mirror was postponed due to snow. I thought I'd offer some feedback based on what I and other teammates (most of whom were freshmen/sophomores and therefore not far removed from high school) thought:

First of all, the difficulty was a lot higher than what we would have expected from HS regular. It was the opinion of most people on our team that this set was harder than DII SCT. Granted, in general the difficulty was pretty consistent, especially on bonuses -- so good job on that; that's one of the hardest things to get right about a set. However, I think you certainly overshot your target difficulty, and then compounded on that by being stingy with power -- it seemed that power lasted less than half the question on most tossups, so even very good buzzes are often being given 10 rather than rewarded with power. Statistically, this is borne out by the fact that Michigan's power rate on this set was somewhere around 30% -- that seems, uh, pretty low for college students playing a high school set, even if we were not the strongest college students and we may not have been trying super hard on it.

Pronunciation guides exist for a reason. Just from Packet 7, "presbycusis", "cholesteatoma", "Ediacaran", "Prajñāpāramitā" (!!), and "Avalokiteshvara" at the very least probably should have had guides. In general, lengthy scientific terms should be interpuncted or given pronounciation guides, and foreign or foreign-derived words that are either a) long or b) in a language whose pronounciation is not immediately obvious (e.g. Polish, French) should be given pronounciation guides.

As for distributional quirks: was I just hallucinating, or was there pretty much no non-Christian religion, plus most of the Christianity was Bible content? It certainly felt like there were fewer "religious practice" tossups (although there was the Good Friday one), and that there was very little non-Christian stuff.

It also felt like there was a higher than normal incidence of, say, the music tossup and music bonus being tossup 3 and bonus 3 or something. This isn't a huge deal but it can be annoying, and multiple people remarked on it. It's more of an issue with the first few bonuses since those will usually be coordinated.

Anyway, here's some feedback from packet to packet. I won't touch the music since Clark knows way more about it than me and has already given some very detailed feedback. I don't want you to get the impression from this big list that you wrote a terrible set -- many of these things are nitpicky stuff, and overall it was enjoyable to play.

Packet 1

The fact that Garibaldi fought in the Brazil, plus the fact that the Ragamuffin War exists, plus the fact that "Bento Gonçalves and António de Sousa Neto" are both pretty Portuguese names, means that the lead-in on the Brazil tossup is considerably easier than the second line. Switch those two clues and put the non-Garibaldi people first and this will be a quality tossup.

The tossup on "electric field" has a clue that reads "The Poynting vector crosses this quantity’s vector with the (*) H field". This is bad, because I (and presumably other people) know that the Poynting vector relates to magnetism, so I buzzed on "this quantity's vector" with "magnetic field", only to hear that read two words later. In general, if you have some mathematical operation where order doesn't matter, you should give things that aren't the answer first and then the answer, so "The Poynting vector crosses the H-field with this quantity's vector". (Also, to be super duper nitpicky, "the Poynting vector is the cross product of" would be more correct, since it's a vector, not an operation).

"On this day, in the Orthodox Church, the Trisagion is sung while the epitaphios is processed around the outside of the church."
This clue is straight-up wrong: this event happens on Holy Saturday, not Good Friday. Not to mention, there's also a notable procession around the outside of the church with icons (not the epitaphios) on Easter itself -- having myself attended an Easter mass in Cyprus, I buzzed with that (which was probably a bad idea), but you should probably remove this clue anyway since it's factually wrong.

Duluth is too easy for first sentence in a tossup on Minnesota. I like the Somali clue, but it's also probably too late -- the Northwest Angle is more notable.

The tossup on "the Trojan War" should accept things like "the invasion of Troy" and whatnot. This speaks to a general trend of really sparse answerlines. When in doubt, make answerlines less sparse, not more.

"Neruda's odes" is an insane answerline at the HS level. Consider making this a tossup on "Neruda" instead.

The "parasites" tossup should also antiprompt or whatever on "protozoa", since the first clue refers to one.

I really like the tossup on "three".

I thought "water and CO2" was a really cool hard part.

The third part of the Our Town bonus should probably accept people who say Simon -- that's pretty standard for characters from literary and dramatic works. I've seen Our Town, and I think he was called "Simon" throughout the play.

Packet 2

The Danube tossup was neat. You should definitely have alternate answerlines for its name in other languages, though, because they're very much not immediately obvious translations: as a reader if I didn't know that "Duneă" was the Danube I would neg anyone who buzzed with it on the Romania clue. Quizbowl is often played by people who experience works or places in non-English languages, so this is important.

The Inca tossup was cool, but to be nit-picky: "neighboring peoples such as... the Chimor" is not correct: Chimor was the name of their kingdom but the people were called the Chimú (which is also the more common of the two names).

I will actually echo Clark in saying that "mistuned E string" is probably sufficiently hard; I said "mistuned" and couldn't pull it so that's fine, but the answer as you have it is very very hard.

"dephlogisticated air" is an awesome hard part.

Yay, soccer came up! And it wasn't insultingly easy!

Packet 3

Mar Chiquita being out of power for Argentina is one of the most egregiously stingy powers in the set.

There need to be instructions on what to do with a buzz of, e.g. "cold fronts" on the weather fronts tossup. I was reading that round and didn't know what to do.

The "spooky sites" bonus is, at best, two easy parts and a medium part (especially after that Logan Paul brouhaha), but really it's probably three easy parts.

Handmaid's Tale is a very easy middle part, or Atwood is -- I don't really know.

Bonuses on idiosyncratic genres of music -- like the bonus that starts with Khalid Robinson -- should have an easy part answerable by people who don't regularly listen to that genre (the female rappers bonus did that well with Minaj). This bonus does not do so, and will get bageled in a lot of rooms.

Packet 4

"This branch’s liturgical calendar begins on September 1 with feasts centered around Pascha, or Easter" -- As written, this clue states that Easter falls on September 1 in Orthodox Christianity. Please change "with" to "and it also has" to avoid implying this obviously false fact.

If you're accepting "Watch on the Rhine", you need to accept "Wacht am Rhein".

The clue in the salt TU that says "This resource was required for the production of garum in ancient Greece and Rome" is not good. Garum is a fish sauce, and fish is certainly a resource. Please be more specific about in what manner salt was used to make garum.

"roots of unity" is a cool and important hard part.

Packet 5

We need a pronounciation guide for "Bergius" in the coal tossup -- it is very easy to mispronounce as "Burgess", which induced a neg from me of "natural gas" because the Burgess Shale exists.

I liked the inclusion of sports other than basketball, baseball, and football in this tournament.

The Lorentz factor clue for c is easier than the second clue.

I would use "this purpose" rather than "these entities" for the penal colony tossup. Good idea, though!

the Musk leadin is easier than the next three clues because you namedropped the Boring Company.

You should just make the "allotropes of carbon" TU on "carbon", or be very generous with your answerlines -- I said "nanostructures" on the first clue, since I figured "nanotubes" would be too narrow.

"Portugal, The Man" is way too hard for a middle part.

Rubidium was a cool hard part.

The Kirchhoff/voltage/spectroscopy bonus was two easy middle parts and an easy part.

I... was confused as to what the middle part on Byron in the Rosencrantz/Guildenstern tossup actually had to do with the rest of the bonus. I now see that you mentioned Byron in the third part, but I would switch the order of the second and third parts. The Byron part came out of nowhere.

The hard part of "n log n" continues a really cool trend in this tournament of trying to include, like, actual parts of equations and what not as hard parts. I like it.

Packet 6

"Only one of these languages is recognized as an official language of the European Union" -- this is also true of Celtic and North Germanic languages (and Ugric languages, but I don't think anyone is buzzing with that).

This is not a problem exclusive to this set in any way, but can people please start using "Biblical book" as a pronoun? I spent some time trying to figure out what novel shared characteristics with the story of Noah...

Packet 7

Seeing as your Rape of the Lock tossup was pretty much all plot clues, I'd use "this work" as the set of long poems with plots is pretty small, and that makes this tossup more fraudable.

Here's all the pre-power clues for Camp David Accords: " On signatory of this agreement was assassinated by Khalid Islambouli. That leader gave a speech at the Knesset where he argued for the implementation of Resolutions 338 and 242. Resolution 34/65 B was invoked by the"
So, the only things that uniquely identify this treaty are some numbers -- since Menachem Begin signed multiple treaties, including the at-least-as-notable Egypt-Israel peace treaty which he got a Nobel Peace Prize for. That's a super stingy power.

Please, please, please make it clear to moderators that CMBR is an acceptable answer for the CMB. That's inexcusable not to include. Also, I'd say "this region of the electromagnetic spectrum"; we all thought you were asking for, like, a region of the sky?

The pigments tossup has two hard parts and one very easy part.

"separated from Lake Huron by the Mackinac Bridge" -- strictly speaking, it's separated by the Mackinac Strait, as it's not as though they were one lake before the bridge was built... Having said that, this was a fine bonus.

Packet 8

The Kenya tossup seems very hard.

Again, Job should be clued as "book of the Bible".

I... question the decision to have a Thor: Ragnarok bonus and a Norse myth TU in the same packet.

Please give us a pronounciation guide for "Skurge"; I haven't seen the film and assumed it was pronounced skur-guh because Norse.

As I think someone else mentioned, you need to prompt on "Lopez" for "Solano Lopez".


Okay, that's all I have. I don't want you to take this giant wall of text as "this set was terrible" -- it's normal for there to be 3-5 issues per packet, I think. This was a surprisingly high quality set for being written by high schoolers, and got a lot of things right. Thanks for writing!

[SirMrGuy]

Can I see the tossups on charge and glycolysis?

[1992 in spaceflight]

I want to highlight a few issues over the set, as I saw them from the Hannibal mirror.

1. Not consistently using a pronoun during tossups. By far the worst offenders of this were the War of 1812 tossup (Round 1) and the Fourth Crusade tossup (round 3) as they either did not use a pronoun or kept switching between pronouns.

2. Powermarks need to be closer to where you expect a majority of teams to buzz. There were a ton of tossups where the powermark was brutal, especially to the bottom bracket teams.

3. There were a few bonuses with no leadin. Bonus 17 in Round 7 and a bonus in round 11 (I believe) had no leadin.

4. There was an issue with either outright repeats or near-repeats in this set in back-to-back rounds. The British Raj tossup in round 2 and the Sepoy Mutiny bonus in round 3 was quite easily the worst offender for repeats.

5. Relatedly, there were several tossups with answerlines that were way too hard for bottom bracket teams. I have no issue with 1-2 sightly harder tossup answerlines per packet, but tossups on the British Raj and Odes by Neruda are ridiculously hard for bottom bracket teams. (For what it's worth-you could simplify these answerlines by making them tossups on India and Neruda)

6. There was one round where the first half wasn't randomized very well (round 3). It's probably worth taking another look at this round.

The Umayyad tossup in round 3 needs the FTP sentence fixed, as it's not the second Islamic caliphate. The Mead tossup in round 5 has a title wrong and needs the FTP sentence fixed as well. Also, for the Mets bonus in round 6, the Mets play in Citi Field, not Citi Stadium.

Also, if you're tossing up a symphony, just use symphony throughout the tossup. (The New World Symphony tossup in round 5 is what I'm referring to)

[CPiGuy]

One more comment, since it was brought up at our practice yesterday: Sicily is not shaped like a soccer ball!

[c*t]

Hey y'all, sorry for the late response! I had some time today to go through and fix things I thought needed fixing, so thanks if you noted things (esp. Conor and Joelle!). I didn't take every suggestion, nor did I replace any tossups, but I made efforts to make some of the harder tossups more accessible (for example, using "these accords" in the FTP for Camp David Accords, adding "title physician" to FTP of Dr. Zhivago).

I won't respond to everything I disagree with, but I will say that perhaps Clark should have considered spending more time editing FACTS instead of GSAC.

Anyways, questions!:

This newest Smithsonian museum opened on September 24, 2016, for 10 points each:
[10] Wrapped in three layers of aluminum painted a shade of bronze, this building’s outward
tilting panels have a lattice-like pattern meant to resemble the ironwork of slaves.
ANSWER: National Museum of African American History and Culture [accept National
African American History Museum; NMAAHC]
[10] The NMAAHC was designed by this architect, a London-based Ghanaian designer whose
earlier works include the Nobel Peace Center and the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver.
ANSWER: David Adjaye
[10] The NMAAHC is the only non-marble-based or limestone-based building in this area of
Washington D.C. This area is also the home of the Washington Monument and the Capitol.
ANSWER: The National Mall

EDIT: I realized bold/underline obviously won't copy paste and I don't really feel like going through and doing that. But I'm guessing you were wondering what we wanted for the first part. Originally, it required the full name but that's obviously ridiculous so as of now, it requires "African American History".

20. Description acceptable. The Persian historian Wassaf documented deaths during one of
these events in Iraq, as well as a failed one against King Kertanegara. The Battle of Mohi
and the Battle of Legnica marked two of these events in Poland and Hungary. The 1279
Battle of Yaman saw the success of one of these events, which led to the establishment of
the (*) Yuan dynasty. Because of a “divine wind”, the Kamakura Shogunate was able to twice
repel one of these attacks led by Kublai Khan. For 10 points, name these events in which a
nomadic people often led by Khan's attempted to conquer land.
ANSWER: Mongol invasions [accept Mongol conquests, Golden Horde attacks, or obvious
equivalents; accept siege of Baghdad before mention; prompt on siege by the Mongols; prompt
on partial answer; prompt on invasion or conquest of a particular country]

18. Gamma Crucis is the closest one of these objects to the Sun, and less massive examples
of them move from the horizontal branch to their namesake asymptotic branch after core
helium is exhausted. After a helium flash in these stars, three helium nuclei are fused into a
carbon nucleus via the (*) triple-alpha process. When these stars, which populate spectral class
K or M, are created, the first dredge-up occurs. As these stars form when a main-sequence star
exhausts its core hydrogen, the sun will evolve into one in 5 billion years. For 10 points, name
these large stars that have a low-wavelength color and are smaller than their “super” variety.
ANSWER: red giants [do not accept “red supergiants”]

9. Two answers required. Hostilities between these two countries continued for 13 years
after the end of one war due to a sustained rebellion that ended with the Battle of Bud
Bagsak. The advice of the Schurman Commission caused one nation to revoke its promise
of independence to the other. During the conflict between these two nations, the capture of
President Thomas (*) Aguinaldo caused the formation of a temporary Tagalog Republic. For 10
points, name these two countries, a Western republic and an Asian archipelago governed from
Manila, that collaborated against the Spanish in 1898.
ANSWER: The Philippines and the United States [accept Republic of the Philippines and the
United States of America; do not accept or prompt on just one of the countries]

14. A type of this quantity denoted by the letter X relates the baryon number and lepton
number to the weak hyper-[this quantity], denoted Y-sub-w. Integrating the current with
respect to time yields this quantity (*) contained within a surface. The derivative of it with
respect to a surface element is its “density”. The triboelectric effect gives it to materials when
they are rubbed together, and Leyden jars store this quantity. It equals energy transferred over
voltage and also equals current times time. For 10 points, name this quantity, symbolized Q and
measured in coulombs.
ANSWER: electric charge [accept X-charge before “hyper”]

7. In this process, the enzyme triose-phosphate isomerase converts dihydroxyacetone
phosphate into glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate. GPI catalyzes one step in this pathway, and
intermediates of this pathway include PGAL and PEP. Its rate-determining step is
catalyzed by (*) phosphofructokinase, and its first step is catalyzed by hexokinase. Two ATP
molecules are produced through this pathway, whose products are converted into acetyl-CoA and
used in the Krebs cycle. For 10 points, name this metabolic pathway, the first step of cellular
respiration.
ANSWER: glycolysis [accept Embden-Meyerhof-Parnas pathway; prompt on “respiration” or
“cellular respiration”]

The Mead tossup in round 5 has a title wrong and needs the FTP sentence fixed as well.

17. This author of “Blackberry Winter” studied the Tchambuli, Mundugumor, and
Arapesh groups in one of her works, and this person wrote Male and Female, in which she
compared Pacific tribesmen to men and women in the contemporary United States. Derek
Freeman criticized this woman’s (*) Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies,
claiming that natives she interviewed on a Polynesian island lied about their experiences. For 10
points, name this American anthropologist who claimed that adolescence on Ta’u was less
stressful due to fewer sexual norms, in her work the Coming Age of Samoa.
ANSWER: Margaret Mead

It's possible this TU has changed since it was read at your mirror but idts. Blackberry Winter, Male and Female, Sex and Temperament in Three Primitave Societies, and Coming of Age in Samoa are all by Margaret Mead.

Also, just because this irks me: using different pronouns throughout a tossup is deliberate! It can be used to protect a tossup from transparency early on, make a tossup easier after power, or just to make the tossup sound good and not repetitive.

[CPiGuy]

I just read over the new packets and I really like the changes you made! There's only one problem, which is kinda my fault since I made a suggestion without thinking it through, namely this:

I... was confused as to what the middle part on Byron in the Rosencrantz/Guildenstern tossup actually had to do with the rest of the bonus. I now see that you mentioned Byron in the third part, but I would switch the order of the second and third parts. The Byron part came out of nowhere.

You did this, but didn't actually change any of the wording (meaning that Byron gets mentioned in the second bonus part and asked in the third). I would just not mention Byron in the second part and then add something to the third like "Tom Stoppard wrote about this person in Arcadia" to tie the bonus together.

[34 + P.J. Dozier]

I played this set recently at Boston Latin's SPIT but could only play for the prelims, so my comments are not 100% reflective of the set as a whole. That being said, here are some of my thoughts:

This is definitely the best high school housewrite I've played all year. I enjoyed the creative answerlines and, for the most part, well-written questions. The visual arts in this set were very good overall (both in terms of quality and difficulty – for example, cluing the dangling keys in The Burial of Count Orgaz in the first line is definitely a suitable first line clue for HS regs). I thought the "gates" tossup was a little contrived, although that may just be me being dumb. There were obviously some issues here and there, and this tournament was definitely a bit harder than HS regs difficulty. Overall, though, kudos for producing a quality set!

The music in this set was also pretty good, but there are some things that definitely do need to be retooled:

- Rite of Spring is pretty easily frauded in power if you can recognize Russian and ballet terms. I was playing against a friend of mine who is notably not a music player and he literally said he was able to fraud it just from recognizing "khorovod."

- The "ragtime" tossup should DEFINITELY not drop Guest of Honor in the first line. This is also just a weird answerline – why not just make a Joplin tossup instead?

- The hard part in the Saint-Saens bonus was ridiculously hard. Since it was a bye round, I was watching this match, and after multiple prompts, the team with this bonus could not convert despite knowing it was tuned down. Additionally, I have literally played Danse Macabre before and I wouldn't have converted it because I don't play violin and didn't know that it was specifically the E string being tuned down. I would just change the answerline to "tuning down" as a more broad answerline – I think that's a good difficulty for a HS regs hard part (although, again, this set definitely ran a bit over HS regs).

Other than these issues, though, I really enjoyed playing the first half of the set!

[The Hands Resist Him]

Apparently the leadin for the tossup on Olympia was also true for Luncheon on the Grass? (I don't really know fine arts, but my teammate buzzed with Luncheon on the Grass on the leadin and was negged) Also, as a non-violinist who has listened to Danse Macabre a few times, not getting the points because I didn't know which string was mistuned was a little frustrating. On the whole, though, I really enjoyed playing this set, especially with how it managed to incorporate harder content while still remaining accessible to most teams.