Florida Spring Tournament (FST) 2018 General Discussion

[TaylorH]

This is the general discussion for the FST 2018 tournament. Many thanks to all of our writers, editors, and hosts. This tournament was a lot of fun to write and edit, and we are very grateful to everyone who was willing to give the tournament a shot and play. Leave your general thoughts and feeling s about the tournament here.

[tiwonge]

Oops, posted this in the wrong place.

There were a few things that we observed.

The teams commented that there were a lot of repeats in answerlines. Lincoln, Mexico, Japan and China were some of the answers used a few times, and lobster seemed strangely popular (although I think that there was only one answerline with it, but it was in at least two questions as a clue). (I think there was one that was even repeated in the same packet? Ah, here it is. Japan was a tossup answer twice in packet 4: Q1 (literature) and Q17 (current events?)) This isn't a huge problem if they're in different distributions (although I think red may have been used at least twice in art and once in history?), but it was noticed and commented on. Jim Jones and Alex Jones both were answers in the 1st packet. Not a problem, but funny.

I found the trash distribution a bit hard, but I'm not the target audience for trash, I guess, and I don't know that I'm the best judge on that.

From a moderator's perspective, the answerlines were a bit short. There weren't a lot of comments on what to prompt on or accept or not accept. (There were also almost no pronunciation guides, which isn't a huge problem for experienced moderators, but may cause problems if any site had inexperienced moderators.) As for editing, though, there were almost no places where the grammar or sentence construction caused me to go back and re-read it, so it was great for that.

Some places where I think there should have been instructions on answer acceptability (just going through some notes, so in no particular order):
Round 10, the bonus part on icon, the answer of idol should be predictable (especially given the graven images clue in the first part). Accept? Prompt? Not accept?
Round 3, bonus 13, the division of labor part. Is specialization the same thing? Should it be prompted? I'm not sure. (I don't know how predictable that is as an alternate answer, but it would have been easier had I been given instructions on that answer)
In general, I noticed that the answerlines were pretty sparse in what to accept or prompt for.

I think that the tournament hit its target difficulty--a lot of our novice players were able to get some good buzzes on it. There were occasional bonus questions where the easy part was really easy or the hard part was pretty hard, but I think that was within reason.

Edit to add:
In packet 9, there were two dance questions, and both mentioned time signatures. (In my room, somebody negged on the first with waltz, only for waltz to come up as a clue for 3/4 time. In fact, I may have mentioned to him when he negged on the first that a waltz is in 3/4 time, not at all expecting that to come up later in the tournament, much less the same packet!)

[tiwonge]

Also, I was amused when alternate answers to foreign work titles were given in Kanji or using the Greek alphabet.

[CPiGuy]

I agree with Colin that this tournament did a good job of hitting its target difficulty.

There was, however, one incredibly bizarre property it had, and that was the preponderance of questions on "this animal". I think there were at least two per packet, and it got to the point that many people would remark on it whenever an animal question happened.

This is not a bad thing per se, but it was very weird.

[VSCOelasticity]

The teams commented that there were a lot of repeats in answerlines. Lincoln, Mexico, Japan and China were some of the answers used a few times, and lobster seemed strangely popular (although I think that there was only one answerline with it, but it was in at least two questions as a clue). (I think there was one that was even repeated in the same packet? Ah, here it is. Japan was a tossup answer twice in packet 4: Q1 (literature) and Q17 (current events?)) This isn't a huge problem if they're in different distributions (although I think red may have been used at least twice in art and once in history?), but it was noticed and commented on. Jim Jones and Alex Jones both were answers in the 1st packet. Not a problem, but funny.

Yeah, the answer line selection should have been done better to avoid these conflicts (or even just better packetization). I hope they didn't affect play too much. I've moved the Japan toss ups so that they are not in the same packet at least.

There was, however, one incredibly bizarre property it had, and that was the preponderance of questions on "this animal". I think there were at least two per packet, and it got to the point that many people would remark on it whenever an animal question happened.

Speciesism in action.

More seriously, I'll chalk this up to to quirks in the editor's/writer's interests. We are all for animal content, but we will tone it down in future tournaments so it's not happening so much in a given packet.

From a moderator's perspective, the answerlines were a bit short. There weren't a lot of comments on what to prompt on or accept or not accept. (There were also almost no pronunciation guides, which isn't a huge problem for experienced moderators, but may cause problems if any site had inexperienced moderators.) As for editing, though, there were almost no places where the grammar or sentence construction caused me to go back and re-read it, so it was great for that.

Some places where I think there should have been instructions on answer acceptability (just going through some notes, so in no particular order):
Round 10, the bonus part on icon, the answer of idol should be predictable (especially given the graven images clue in the first part). Accept? Prompt? Not accept?
Round 3, bonus 13, the division of labor part. Is specialization the same thing? Should it be prompted? I'm not sure. (I don't know how predictable that is as an alternate answer, but it would have been easier had I been given instructions on that answer)
In general, I noticed that the answerlines were pretty sparse in what to accept or prompt for.

The short answer lines and lack of pronunciation guides are definitely shortcomings of the editor team. Looking at the set, there are a good bit of science words that I see readers could use help with. We hope to improve on this in our future efforts. I'm glad the grammar was easy to follow! I appreciate that because I (and probably others) spent a lot of time staring at my sentences to make sure they would read okay at game speed.

I'll go through and improve on the instructions in answer lines (especially the ones you mentioned) before the next mirror.


Thank you both for your comments and feedback! It's good to hear that it was an appropriate difficulty for newer players.

[csheep]

Could someone post or PM me the passwords for the packets?

[The Story of a Head That Fell Off]

While there are some suspicious early clue drops ("____ in the Bardo", "Mandarin has four of these", "Falling Man"), the set is generally solid. Enjoyed playing it immensely, but there are some random bursts of difficulty - the bonuses on various regiments and one on chain restaurants come to mind.

Still, this was an immensely fun set to play - the animals quirk was a fun flare for me.

Thank you for writing a fairly fun set! Really enjoyed playing this solo.

[Hip Hop Since Nineteen Seventy-Eight]

Could someone post or PM me the passwords for the packets?

PM'd you