The Peter Whiffle Trash Tournament at Chicago 8/5/07

[Matt Weiner]

As part of the Chicago Open weekend, I and Dan Passner will be running The Peter Whiffle Trash Tournament: Texas Blood Money on the Sunday immediately following CO, which is August 5. This will be at a place on the Chicago campus to be announced by Seth, who has already indicated that the weekend's events will "most likely" take place in the Harper building.

The tournament will be written by the two TDs; thus, there is no packet submission. The packets will display the following attractive qualities:

*solid ACF-style writing
*difficulty comparable to last year's post-CO trash tournament
*tossups of no more than 7 lines
*power marks
*absolutely no tossups on the corporate history of particular fast food restaurants

As you no doubt expected given the creators of this tournament, answers and clues will display an emphasis on things that have happened in the last 10 years and on "timeless classics" accessible to anybody. There will be very few questions on little-remembered things from the 1970s that are shrouded in mystery to current collegiate undergraduates. Otherwise, the distribution will look a lot like other trash tournaments including past Chicago Open trash events, though you may notice that some of the less-beloved "miscellaneous" categories (e.g., mystery novel authors and strategy board games) will be replaced by an increase in the quota for comic books and video games.

The cost is $120, with a $10 buzzer discount (max 2). You should email me at weinerm@vcu.edu to register. Make sure to include your amusing team name of choice and your projected team roster in your email.

My personal wish is to allow a field size of up to 14 teams. However, the cap may be lower based on what the room-reservations situation at Chicago is. So, get your registrations in now to assure your spot. The format will probably be a full round robin, but this of course depends on the exact field size.

If you want to mirror the tournament alongside your mirror of the other Chicago Open events, you should get in touch with me about how that might work once you have talked to Seth about your status with CO.

[Matt Weiner]

Hey guys, two things.

If you are planning to come to this tournament or leaning heavily towards doing so, make sure to email me or post here so the Chicago people can get a handle on the level of interest in all the events planned for the weekend.

Also, in the name of openness, this will be the distribution for each 20/20 packet. Dan and I talked for a while about how to rethink subdistributions to make the tournament more balanced and enjoyable, and this is what we came up with:

4/4 sports (1/1 baseball, 1/1 basketball, 1/1 football, 1/1 other)
4/4 movies (1/1 critically praised, 1/1 geek, 1/1 mainstream, 1/1 other)
3/3 music (1/1 stuff that is obviously rock, 1 rap, 3 pop/misc/borderline rock)
3/3 TV (1/1 pre-95, 1/1 95-03, 1/1 03-present)
1/1 video games
1/1 comic books
1/1 more tv, music, and games
3/3 other (Internet culture, food, trash lit including comic strips and magazines, meta qb/recent real lit/academic, cross-category questions, whatever)

[Bentley Like Beckham]

Looks pretty good. It will be nice to go to a trash tournament that I haven't written that consistetly has 1/1 videogames in it for once.

[Frater Taciturnus]

4/4 sports (1/1 baseball, 1/1 basketball, 1/1 football, 1/1 other)
4/4 movies (1/1 critically praised, 1/1 geek, 1/1 mainstream, 1/1 other)
3/3 TV (1/1 pre-95, 1/1 95-03, 1/1 03-present)
1/1 video games
1/1 comic books
1/1 more tv, music, and games

That's the sweetest thing I have EVER seen...my eyes are burning justs from its magnicent glory. This would be the best set ever. Sucks that I probably have no possible way to go

[Captain Sinico]

I'll be there.

MaS

[Birdofredum Sawin]

The cost is $120, with a $10 buzzer discount (max 2). You should email me at weinerm@vcu.edu to register. Make sure to include your amusing team name of choice and your projected team roster in your email.

Obviously people are free to charge whatever the "market will bear" for tournaments. Still, I can't help but notice that Zeke and I only charged $75 a team for last year's Keller (and Subash and I only charged like $60 a team for the Richler two years ago). Has inflation hit so hard? Or were we just giving it away?

[Matt Weiner]

Obviously people are free to charge whatever the "market will bear" for tournaments. Still, I can't help but notice that Zeke and I only charged $75 a team for last year's Keller (and Subash and I only charged like $60 a team for the Richler two years ago). Has inflation hit so hard? Or were we just giving it away?

I have noticed that $100-$120 is now the normal base fee for tournaments. Also, we are planning to provide a few more rounds than you guys did, so I think the work increase is commensurate with the fee increase as long as we can maintain your standards of quality. However, if anyone is being kept away from this event by the cost, let me know.

[Birdofredum Sawin]

I have noticed that $100-$120 is now the normal base fee for tournaments. Also, we are planning to provide a few more rounds than you guys did, so I think the work increase is commensurate with the fee increase as long as we can maintain your standards of quality. However, if anyone is being kept away from this event by the cost, let me know.

I really wasn't trying to say "you guys can't be serious about that price." When I wrote the tournaments with Subash and Zeke, we consciously decided to keep the price low so that the weekend as a whole wouldn't become prohibitively expensive for people. To me, part of the tradition we started with the Richler and Keller was "a low-cost trashy addendum to the Chicago Open." There's no reason that couldn't change, I suppose. And if most people who would want to play these things can afford to pay for travel to Chicago, several nights at a hotel, two full-price tournaments, plus whatever the singles tournaments are going to charge, then great. I just wouldn't want the peripheral tournaments to start overshadowing the Chicago Open, which I hope will remain the flagship event of the summer.

[Matt Weiner]

Hey, so far we have registrations from:

Tulsa people
Maryland people
UIC people
Andrew Hart et al
Truman/other Missouri people
USF people
Kwartler/Vinokurov soccer experts
Lorin Burte et al

Remember to e-mail me to register, and see below for information on the field cap.

[Jeremy Gibbs Freesy Does It]

I'm in. Who wants to be with me? I'm not a horrendous trash player (I powered a "Chain Hang Low" tossup once).

[Jeremy Gibbs Lemma]

I think I powered a Grillz question ........ and Kanye West after 5 words (but both were easy).... I do not expect anything that easy at this one.

And I will play, Chuq... I am sure Brandon and Chittum would play as well ... unless we want to switch up the teams.

If anybody wants to claim me, I know a decent amount of music, movies, and sports... not so much on the comic books (as in none).

[Matt Weiner]

Since odd numbers of teams won't really work at this non-packet-submission tournament, I'm going to close registration after the next (eighth) team registers, unless TWO further teams want to join in after that.

UPDATE: We are now at eight teams, so I will need two more teams to register in order to expand the field. If just one registers, they will be waitlisted pending a second addition.

[Matt Weiner]

Registration is now closed for this tournament. If you will be in the area anyway and would like to be notified if someone drops out (which would screw up the planned format so I sure hope it doesn't happen) then send me an e-mail. I believe there are still free agent spots available as well, so just post here if you are an individual looking for a team, and people will likely contact you.

Seth has posted information about where this event, and all other events during the Chicago Open extravaganza, will take place:

http://www.hsquizbowl.org/phpBB2/viewto ... 6925#56925

I'll see everyone on Sunday for registration by 8:45. Round 1 will start as close to 9 AM as possible, and will likely start without you if you are late, so don't be. The science tournament is happening on Sunday evening and I'd like to move through this event as efficiently as possible in order to allow them to start at a reasonable hour.

[Captain Sinico]

Incidentally, I'm looking for a team. I will try not to neg so very much this time. Anyone have any openings? Is anyone else looking for teammates?

MaS

[Jeremy Gibbs Freesy Does It]

"Team Missouri" certainly is looking for teammates, since we are down from the original 4 to a grand total of 1 - me. I really don't feel like paying all the money, so if we can get this team up to 3 people (4 would kick ass) then team "MO" or whatever it is now will play, if we can't then I will just be another free agent for anyone with an opening. So email me if you're interested (charlie16 at gmail. com)

[jazzerpoet]

It looks as though the Tulsa team is down to two players, so if there are any free agents out there (or teams who want to combine numbers), please let me know. You can either post here or e-mail me.

Thanks.
Angelo

E-mail: angelo-malabanan (at) utulsa (dot) edu

[Rothlover]

I think I know of a Free agent if any teams need one e-mail me and I'll see if hes available as soon as I can get in touch with him.

[Jeremy Gibbs Freesy Does It]

I have just been absorbed into the Tulsa group, so team Missouri no longer exists.

[pappy97]

So what happened with this? Were all the writers just too busy or somethin'?

[Bentley Like Beckham]

The story I heard was that as of Saturday night they were 100 tossups short for some reason. It was decided that they wouldn't be able to get the questions done that night so the tournament was canceled.

Hopefully Weiner will have a much more complete story when he gets back (I think he drove, so it could be a while).

[Birdofredum Sawin]

The story I heard was that as of Saturday night they were 100 tossups short for some reason. It was decided that they wouldn't be able to get the questions done that night so the tournament was canceled.

Hopefully Weiner will have a much more complete story when he gets back (I think he drove, so it could be a while).

One possibility is that he was preoccupied writing next year's ICT, as per this thread:

http://www.hsquizbowl.org/phpBB2/viewto ... c&start=50

He may well be working overtime to insure that he'll be able to "deliver the entire set on March 1, 2008 so there is no worry over whether it will be done in time," which no doubt would have cut into his available question-writing time for this tournament.

[Jeremy Gibbs Freesy Does It]

Yeah, after a great Saturday tournament everything on Sunday kinda blew up. And I loved the 4/4 old west in the replacement games we played from some Trash thing at Wichita State back in the day.

[Jeremy Gibbs Freesy Does It]

Oh, will the replacement set actually happen?

[Rothlover]

The story I heard was that as of Saturday night they were 100 tossups short for some reason. It was decided that they wouldn't be able to get the questions done that night so the tournament was canceled.

Hopefully Weiner will have a much more complete story when he gets back (I think he drove, so it could be a while).

I don't think it was near that much, but I was kind of out of it the whole weekend, so I may have misheard. I'd had some medical stuff a month before that made me back out commitment-wise, Matt could certainly throw me under the bus.

[Matt Weiner]

I would like to emphasize that the collapse of this event was entirely my fault, and I am solely responsible for making restitution for the tremendous waste of time and money that I caused to the attendees. The minimum I think I should do is write a replacement set (which I'll send to someone to verify it exists) and offer free entry at any site where it is run to people involved in this weekend's fiasco, or let attending teams which represented particular schools run the set on their own and keep the profits. If anyone feels that there is something else I can do, please let me know.