ACF REGIONALS 2008
PACKET SUBMISSION DETAILS
Document navigation: Editing team •
Who is required to submit packets • Additional packet penalties • Writing philosophy for this tournament • Additional help with writing • Clues
and answers to avoid • Alternate answers •
Question length • Distribution
• Diversity
• Formatting • Pronunciation
guides • Wikipedia reminder • Plagiarism and recycling
Editing
team: The editors for this
tournament are Matt Weiner, who may be contacted at weinerm@vcu.edu , and Matt Keller, matt.keller@vanderbilt.edu
. All packets should be submitted to Matt Weiner at weinerm@vcu.edu . A good subject line for
an e-mail with your packet submission attached would be “ACF Regionals 2008
Packet Submission: Your team name here.”
Who is required to
submit packets: Any team with at
least one person on it who played a regular, collegiate, academic quizbowl
tournament prior to
Teams who are required to
submit packets need to do so under the following schedule affecting their
tournament fee:
Packet
submitted by
Packet
submitted by
Packet
submitted by
Packet
submitted by
Packet
submitted by
Teams required to submit
packets who do not submit one by February 6 will either be charged +$200 or
dropped from the tournament, depending on local host capabilities and other
factors (such as whether you are a very experienced writer whose packet would
raise the overall quality of the submissions, in which case you must write a
packet in order to play and cannot just pay your way out of doing so).
Teams comprised entirely
of players who did not play a regular collegiate academic tournament prior to
Packet
submitted by
Packet
submitted by
See below for additional, but easy-to-avoid, packet
penalties.
Packets
must be submitted by 11:59 PM Eastern Time on the specified days. Packets
should not be exposed to anyone outside of the specific team that is
writing the packet; in all likelihood, your school’s A team will play on the
packet written by your school’s B team, et cetera, so it is imperative that
questions be kept blind to all competitors.
Formatting:
If
your packet deviates in a major way from the formatting
guidelines (random tabs and page breaks throughout, questions not sorted
by category, every question has answers without the required part being
indicated, etc) you will incur a $30 penalty on top of any other fees or
discounts.
If
your packet has a large accumulation of minor deviations from the formatting
guidelines (ten or more examples of no underlining, bonus parts preceded by
letters or parentheses instead of bracketed numbers, bonus leadins or “for 10
points” not in proper format, etc) you will incur a $15 penalty.
If
your packet has absolute compliance with the formatting guidelines you will get
a $5 discount.
Formatting
packets on the editing end because you chose not to follow the guidelines is
necessary in order to make the packets clear for moderators, but it’s also a
HUGE timesink and there’s no reason you can’t do it properly while writing and
leave me the time to edit the content of your questions instead. Please observe
the formatting guidelines below and don’t make the editor charge you a penalty
for this. A few minor problems with formatting will not incur a penalty—we are
not looking to screw anyone with the formatting penalties, and will reserve
them only for packets that really cause headaches.
Plagiarism:
If
you submit a packet with any question in it that the editors can prove you
plagiarized from an existing source, your packet fee will be +$200, your packet
will not be used, and you will bring shame upon your entire family. Please read
more about plagiarism here.
Prohibited types of
questions:
This
is certainly not intended to penalize new teams for writing weak questions in
general, but rather penalize people for writing specific types of questions
which no one should be writing, ever, and which are specifically prohibited
here.
•If
you write a spelling question, that’s +$25 (no more than one penalty of this
kind will be charged even if you write multiple spelling questions, but you
most certainly should not be doing that). Spelling questions are completely
archaic in quizbowl today and reflect very lazy writing, yet at least one was
submitted to a tournament last year, so I want to remind everyone that there
should never, ever be a question asking people to spell anything.
•If
you write a question with clues or phrasing from Wikipedia that cannot be
verified with any other source, that’s $25 (no more than one penalty of this
kind will be charged even if you write multiple questions out of Wikipedia,
however your packet will likely be returned if you do that; see below).
•If
you write a “given the x, name the y” binary matching bonus with no prose clues
at all, that’s +$5 for each bonus of that kind. This could potentially be
charged for as many as all 24 of your bonuses, but, of course, you can avoid it
by not writing these bonuses. See below for
details on what exactly is meant by this type of question. These questions are
prohibited because they are extremely boring, especially to teams who do not
know the answer. Write bonuses that maintain the attention of all teams and
educate those who do not know about the bonus topic.
•If
you write a 5-10-15 bonus, that’s also +$5 for each bonus of that kind. Once
more, this could potentially be charged for however many bonuses you write in
this way, and once more, you should avoid this penalty by not writing any such
bonuses. 5-10-15s shift the balance of rewarded skills too much towards knowing
“hard parts” and depress scoring in games between teams of average ability, and
should simply be changed to 10-10-10s.
There
is no reason any team should end up being charged a penalty for the above types
of specifically prohibited questions, since this section spells out exactly how
to avoid that. The editor assures you that if you are just an inexperienced
writer submitting bad questions because of said inexperience, we will not try
to gouge you out of money, and indeed will appreciate the effort you put into
writing questions when you are unfamiliar with doing so. The only questions
that will face financial surcharges are the specifically prohibited kinds
above.
In summary:
Major formatting problems: +$30
A
large amount of minor formatting problems: +$15
Perfect
formatting: -$5
Plagiarism
in packet: +$200, packet rejected, elaborate Yiddish curse placed upon you
Any
spelling question in packet: +$25
Any clue with Wikipedia as its only source: +$25
Binary matching bonus: +$5 each
Writing philosophy for this tournament: This is designed to be tournament of regular
difficulty, neither notably hard nor notably easy. THERE IS NO LONGER ANY SUCH
THING AS "ACF REGIONALS DIFFICULTY." As of now, this is the annual
flagship tournament for normal quizbowl,
regardless of what some past incarnations of Regionals were. Difficulty should
be very similar to that of the 2007 Penn Bowl. Newer players should feel
comfortable and should be able to get tossups by the end and get 10 points on
most bonuses, while the tournament should also remain interesting for more
experienced players, with tossups converted on the first one or two clues and
30s on bonuses happening only a few times per game (but not never—try to write
third bonus parts that you can realistically expect someone interested in the
subject to know). To help achieve this balance, you should, simply, write
pyramidal, clue-dense tossups on well known topics, paired with bonuses that
show a clear progression in difficulty from very easy to more challenging
across the three answers, rather than three answers of an equally hard or easy
level. Note, however, that it is not necessary, and in fact may often be
counterproductive, to always arrange your answers in ascending order of
difficulty within the bonus.
Tossups:
Dead
tossups are the enemy of having fun at quizbowl tournaments,
so above all, do not do not DO NOT write tossups on answers that are
obscure. Use easy answers, and make your early-in-the-question clues hard to
provide the challenge, rather than using challenging answers for tossups.
Ideally, there should be almost no tossups in the tournament which go
unanswered at the end. If you want to ask about something harder, use it as one
part of a bonus that also contains two easier parts, not as a tossup answer or
as the subject for an entire bonus. Use clues that are many and interesting throughout
your tossups. Also, please take care when writing tossups on answers that are
widely known for only one clue—e.g., if you write a tossup on Pietro Mascagni,
don’t put in five lines of superhard material followed by “For 10 points, name
this composer of Cavalliera Rusticana.” Either write on something else,
or use the “in one of his operas, such-and-such happens” clue style to provide
useful middle clues. All tossups should have those middle clues, not just a
sudden dropoff in difficulty at the end. In a game between two good teams,
almost no tossups should go past “For 10 points” before someone buzzes.
Bonus questions:
For
bonus parts, prose clues are greatly preferred to abrupt phrases or lists.
Bonuses composed entirely of sentence fragments, such as
the “given the holiday, name the religion in which it is celebrated”
type of bonus questions, are prohibited and will incur penalties (see above). You can write the same bonus as “name these
religions” and work the same clues into some more aesthetically pleasing
complete sentences.
This
is what is meant by a prohibited binary matching bonus:
Name
these Ernest Hemingway works from characters, for 10 points each.
[10]
Santiago, Manolin, a shark
ANSWER:
The Old Man and the Sea
[10]
Margaret, Robert Wilson, a lion
ANSWER:
“The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber”
[10]
Richard Cantwell, The Grand Maestro, Renata
ANSWER:
Across the River and Into the Trees
This
is what you should write instead:
Name
these Ernest Hemingway works, for 10 points each.
[10]
Santiago, who has not caught a fish in eighty-five days, wrestles with an
enormous marlin only to have it eaten by sharks during the trip back to
Havana’s harbor, in this late novella.
ANSWER:
The Old Man and the Sea
[10]
In this short story, a former cosmetics model threatens to leave her husband,
who was revealed as a coward during a lion hunt. Margaret eventually shoots the
title character during an encounter with a buffalo, and Robert Wilson approves.
ANSWER:
“The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber”
[10]
Richard Cantwell shoots ducks on the way to
ANSWER:
Across the River and Into the Trees
See
how the second example teaches something and recaps interesting parts of the
story so that even people who don’t know the answers get something out of the
question? This is what you should write. Notice that you can still incorporate
most or all the clues from the bad bonus in example 1 into the better clues
from example 2, so writing good questions does not have to mean writing harder
questions.
Write
nearly all of your bonus questions as above: 3 parts worth 10 points each, with
one part being no harder than a tossup answer, another being slightly more
challenging, and the remaining part being harder still, though still something
you would expect a person well-read in the subject of the bonus to know in five
seconds. If you are unsure about the difficulty of a particular question, then
you should probably err on the side of easier and write on something else
instead. You may, very occasionally, write a bonus with four parts, two worth 5
and two worth 10, if this seems necessary to you for some reason. The 30-20-10
format and other multi-part, single-answer bonus questions
are not permitted in this tournament, nor is the
Additional
help with writing: Jerry Vinokurov
has put together an article which immerses newcomers in the basic principles of
good writing. It may be found at http://www.acf-quizbowl.com/documents/howtowrite.php
. Last year’s ACF
Regionals may be found at the Stanford Archive (write in that style,
but not at that difficulty); other tournaments to consult as writing models
include the 2006
Michigan MLK (this is about the difficulty we want) and 2005 ACF Fall
(write a little harder than this).
The 2007 Penn
Bowl is the closest existing instance to the style and difficulty
desired for ACF Regionals 2008. Let me
know if you need any help at all with getting started.
Clues
and Answers to Avoid: You may find
it useful to review Subash Maddipotti’s Ten Tips For
Question Writing located here: http://acf-quizbowl.com/documents/subash.php.
Keep in mind this important point from the above document:
You
should omit useless information such as “His intermittent surrealist depictions
and use of vivid color belied the realism and monochromatic pigments that the
public associated with him.” This sort of knowledge is of course very important
to fully understanding whatever painter we’re talking about in a classroom
context, but phrased in that manner, it simply does not help anyone in a match
get the question, no matter how much he or she knows about art. Make sure every
clue in your tossups is a specific, helpful, and uniquely identifying piece of
information about the answer.
Please apply that point to
ALL of your questions and omit useless nonclues like “the protagonist of this
novel is a thoughtful, sensitive man hardened by circumstance” or “this
psychologist graduated from secondary school in
In particular, please do
not tell us where or when someone was born, what their father’s profession was,
or where they went to college. We don’t care and neither do the people who will
be playing your questions—instead, talk about interesting, memorable, and
unique things that this person did in their field of prominence.
Do not put useless phrases
like “from clues” or “from descriptions” in your bonus leadins. For example,
write “name these British novels for 10 points each;” don’t write “name these
British novels from clues for 10 points each.” It is understood that the bonus
will contain clues and that players are not expected to just divine three works
of English literature upon hearing the bonus leadin, so don’t waste time and
space putting in those phrases.
Avoid using words such as
“famously” “well known” or “best” in your questions. These are subjective and
unhelpful terms. Replace them with specific, concrete information about the
answer.
Remember that the first
insance of any pronoun (he, she, it, they) or form of the word “this” in a
tossup must always refer only to the answer, and subsequent pronouns and
demonstrative adjectives should be thoroughly scrutinized for any potential to
mislead players.
Remember to include these
forms of alternate answers:
•the
reverse names for Supreme Court cases; also, in cases where neither party name
is "the United States" or the name of a state, one party name is
sufficient to get the question right, and the underlining should reflect this.
•the
original-language title for any work of literature/art not originally in
English
•the
original-language title for people with descriptive words in their names
•the
birth name of people who are well-known by a pseudonym
•both
formal and native language names for countries as alternate answers (both
Britannica and the CIA
Factbook are quick places to find all the names used for a country)
•both
the Pinyin and Wade-Giles forms of Romanized Chinese names and other Chinese
words
Examples:
ANSWER:
Griswold v.
ANSWER:
Romer v. Evans [accept Evans
v. Romer]
ANSWER:
The Elixir of Love [or L’Elisir d’amore]
ANSWER:
Selim I [or Selim the Grim; or Selim Yavuz;
prompt on Selim]
ANSWER:
John Wayne [or Marion Robert Morrison]
ANSWER:
ANSWER:
Cixi (see-shee) [or Tzuhsi; or Xiaoqin;
or Xianhuanghou]
Question
length: The edited packets will
have tossups of no more than 6 lines and bonus parts of no more than 2 (in
10-point Times New Roman with standard margins). You should submit slightly
longer questions so that we can whittle out excess words or remove a repeated
clue and end up with questions of the desired final length. A few tossups of
4-5 lines are acceptable, but a whole packet of them is probably not deep
enough. Likewise, writing more than a handful of tossups that are longer than 9
lines is pointless, since we will be eliminating a lot of your clues if you do
that to make all tossups a maximum of 6 lines in the final set.
Example tossup
construction:
For
an example of what we mean by interesting and useful clues: a tossup on Henry
VIII should start off talking about his specific relationships to some lesser-known
historical incidents and people, such as:
Agents
of this king executed Richard Whiting at Toe Hill. Earlier, he joined Aragon’s
war with France, winning great popularity when his general, the Earl of Surrey,
defeated a Scottish force at Flodden Field.
The
question should then talk about some material likely to be encountered in an
undergraduate course dealing with Henry VIII but still lesser-known to the
casual person:
Prior
to authorizing the Ten Articles, he sponsored the construction of such ships as
the Mary Rose. He also suppressed the Pilgrimage of Grace and wrestled with
Francis I at the Field of the Cloth of Gold.
Then,
the tossup should go on to hint at what he is best-known for with clues like
He
attempted to persuade Pope Clement VII to intercede against his own violation
of Leviticus, despite earlier using Deuteronomy to win the support of Julius
II.
Finally,
the question should conclude with some names widely associated with Henry and
the giveaway clue:
His
chancellors Thomas Wolsey and Thomas More both fell out of his good graces,
leading to the martyrdom of More during this man’s creation of the Church of
England. For 10 points, name this father of Elizabeth I and husband to
Catherine Parr, Anne Boleyn, and four other women.
This
question rewards deep knowledge and teaches something interesting to those who
didn’t know much about Henry VIII before, yet it is still, ultimately, a tossup
on a very well known answer which presumably every team can get by the last
clue. Such tossups are what we are looking for in your packet submissions. Note
also that the tossup, when put together, is noticeably longer than the 6-line
cap we will be enforcing on the edited questions—again, please submit your
questions this way so that we can edit them into very dense 6-line tossups for
the final packets.
A
question on Henry VIII which relies on things like birth dates or quotations is
very boring and is probably not usable, while a question which starts off
saying something like “He was a longtime rival of the Papacy and finally took
drastic action against it” encourages wild guessing based on minimal knowledge
and does not allow players with deeper knowledge of the subject to get the
tossup first, and is not usable for those reasons. Similarly, literature
questions should rely on plot scenarios and character names first, less so on
rote association of titles with authors, in order to reward people who have
actually read the books. Myth questions that are on traditional topics such as
specific deities should talk about interesting anecdotes involving the figure,
not just be a boring list of stock clues like “his symbol was a hexahedron made
of onyx, his temple was at Rondopolis, his head looked like a badger’s.” If
such clues are the most well known thing about the figure in question, they do
have a place at the end of a tossup, but they should not comprise the whole
question. Similar principles apply to all categories.
Questions
on people have a major place in the tournament but should be balanced by
questions on works, events, concepts, etc.
Distribution: Each submitted packet should
have 24 tossups and 24 bonuses according to the following distribution:
Literature
5/5
History
5/5
Science
5/5
Religion,
Mythology and Philosophy 3/3
Fine Arts
3/3
Social
Science 1/1
Geography
1/1
Trash,
current events, or your choice 1/1
More
specific requirements for each category are as follows.
Literature 5/5
•American
literature: 1/1
•British
literature: 1/1
•European
literature from 500 CE onwards: 1/1
•World
(anything not covered above and not originally written in English): 1/0 or 0/1
•Anything
you want, including ancient European literature, more of any category above, or
combinations of categories above: 1/2 or 2/1
Vary
lit questions across time periods. The editors understand that a lot of
important literature comes from the twentieth century, so feel free to write a
large amount of your questions on post-1900 literature, but do not write every
single one of your questions on that period, and do not write more than 1
question on very recent (post-1990) literature. Please remember to include
several questions on forms other than novels, and include both several
questions on authors' general body of work and several questions on specific works.
History 5/5
•American
history: 1/1 (two different time periods and/or two different historical
approaches)
•European,
Canadian, and Australian history: 3/3 (out of these six questions, 1 should be
on classical history, 1 on British history, and 3 on continental Europe from
three different post-classical time periods. The remaining question can be
another British history question, another continental Europe question, or a
question on Canadian or Australian history. )
•World
history: 1/1 (from two different large areas of the world besides those covered
above)
No
more than 4 of your 10 total history questions should be predominately about
battles, wars, or people known primarily for their military accomplishments.
Please
do not write any tossups on Chinese dynasties. Questions on interesting,
unique, and accessible things from East Asian history are appreciated and
encouraged as replacements for such dynasty questions.
Science 5/5
•Biology
1/1
•Chemistry
1/1
•Physics
1/1
•Math
or computer science: 1 question
•Astronomy,
earth science/geology, or other science not covered above: 1 question
•Any
science: 1/1 (you can write a math question here if you wrote computer science
above, or earth science here if you wrote astronomy above, but don’t
write a second question on any of the “minor” fields. You can also just write
more biology, chemistry, or physics here.)
Questions
on chemical elements, programming languages, and subatomic particles are
prohibited unless you are an experienced writer who has come up with the best-ever
question on one of those things. Within “any science,” a maximum of 1 question
on the history of science is allowed. Good areas to explore here include the
various scientific achievements of important scientists, important discredited
theories from the past, or items and places important to past scientific
discoveries. Questions on famous experiments which focus on the scientific
principles at work are considered straight science rather than science history,
so you should feel free to write such questions for the relevant category.
Questions which straddle the line between biology and chemistry, or chemistry
and physics, should be reserved for the “any science” section of the science
distribution, so that clear-cut answers can be used in the parts formally
marked for the three large branches.
Religion, Mythology
and Philosophy 3/3
•Religion:
1/1 (different religions)
•Mythology:
1/1 (different myth systems)
•Philosophy:
1/1 (different parts of philosophical history)
Questions
on pre-Socratic Greek philosophers are prohibited unless you are an experienced
writer who has come up with the best-ever question on pre-Socratic philosophy.
Please
write between 1 and 2 total questions on distinctly non-Western things for the
overall RMP category.
You
may write about events which straddle the line between history and religion
(e.g., the Council of Chalcedon) for either history or religion, but don’t
write about religious history for both categories. A question which could be
considered either religion or myth (e.g., Brahma) can be counted as one of your
religion questions.
Fine Arts 3/3
•Painting:
1/1
•Classical
music excluding opera: 1/1
•Everything
else: 1/1 (opera, sculpture, architecture, dance, jazz, photography, or other
arts not covered under painting or classical music)
Please
pick one largely visual category and one largely auditory category for your
“everything else” subjects—e.g, pick jazz and photography, or opera and
architecture, but not opera and jazz.
Social Science 1/1
Possible
topics for this category include economics, psychology, sociology, linguistics,
anthropology, political science, and social criticism. The two questions should
not come from the same field of study. Questions on Supreme Court cases go
under history; other law questions should go under “your choice” if written at
all.
Geography 1/1
Do
not write both questions on the same kind of political or physical feature,
such as rivers, bodies of water, mountains, cities etc. Also, please do not
write both questions on the same area of the world. Ethnic groups can be
geography; languages are more likely social science.
Trash, current
events, or your choice 1/1
You
can write anything you wish here except for topics included in the other broad
categories above, or you can write questions which mix categories here. If you
write two trash questions then they should not be from the same general
category (e.g. one should be on sports and one on TV, or one on music and one
on video games; don't write both on visual media or both on sports).
Diversity: There is no overall requirement for a total number non-Western
questions, questions on African-Americana, or other
"underrepresented" topics. However, there are requirements for
non-Western content within several categories (literature, history, and RMP). Additionally,
a packet that does not mention black Americans at all is probably not wide
enough in the scope of its answers. We leave it up to packet authors to
implement appropriate cultural diversity in their answer selection in the
manner they see fit.
Formatting:
Remember that if you don’t meet
these formatting requirements, we will charge you a penalty,
so pay close attention to this section. We are aware that these are very
specific requirements and may seem like overkill, but when multiplied by 10 or
20 packets, any slight variations in formatting become a major distraction from
the kind of work we really need to be doing on the actual content of the
questions, so we would really appreciate everyone following the formatting
guidelines religiously.
Packets must be submitted
as some sort of file that can with certainty be opened properly on any computer
running Microsoft Word 2002 and can support all of the formatting requirements
below. I.e.: submitting them as .doc files, .rtf files, or an exact equivalent
to either is strongly preferred. Packets submitted as Word 2007 .docx files are
NOT acceptable since those files cannot be opened on older versions of Word. If
any of the editors cannot open your packet on the first try, it will be
returned and you will have to fix it before it is considered submitted for fee
purposes. The filename should be the name of your school, with the letter
designating your specific team if your school is sending more than one.
USC.doc, UCLA B.doc, or Irvine A.doc are examples of file names we wish to see.
Everything in your packet
should be in Times New Roman font of size 10. Do not number anything and do not
use any tabs, autoformatting, or page breaks at any point in the document.
At the top of the packet,
put, in boldface, ACF Regionals 2008, followed on the next line by
your school name. Be sure to designate whether it is the A team, B team, etc if
your school is sending multiple teams. This should be followed by the names of
all people who contributed to the packet and/or will be playing on that team.
Thus, the top of every packet should look something like this:
ACF
Regionals 2008
Packet
by Coney Island Community College D Team (Hattie McDoogal, Free Waterfall Jr.,
Lionel Preacherbot, Changstein El-Gamal)
Group questions together
by subject in the exact order that they appear in the distribution above, then
sort within category by question type (tossup or bonus). I.e., literature
tossups come first, followed by literature bonuses, then history tossups, then
history bonuses, and so forth.
Format your tossups
like this:
Toward
the end of its first act, one of the characters sings “I Know You Hate Me”
after being whipped by the protagonist’s wife. A peasant sings “Why Hast Thou
Taught Me” to woo the hand of that wife, who is known as Columbine in Act Two.
After Beppe sings an ode to Columbine, the protagonist confronts Nedda about
Silvio, and when she brushes him off he stabs her, leading Tonio to end the opera
with the line “La Commedia Finita.” For 10 points, name this opera by Ruggierio
Leoncavallo, whose first act ends with the melancholy “Vesti La Giubba” and
whose protagonist is a very sad clown.
ANSWER:
I Pagliacci [or The Clowns]
•Note
that the last sentence begins with “For 10 points” (not FTP or For ten points)
followed by a comma and a space (not by a colon, a dash, or nothing).
•Note
that ANSWER: begins a new line, is in all caps, and is followed by a colon and
a space.
•Note
that the required part of the answer is underlined and emboldened.
•Note
that instructions for prompts, alternate acceptable answers, or other
additional information for the moderator are contained within brackets.
•Note
that the question text DOES NOT begin with a number or an indentation.
•Note
that the titles of overall works such as books, plays, operas, and paintings
are italicized, and the title of works contained within larger collections,
such as short stories, chapter titles, and songs from operas are contained
within quotes.
Format your bonus
questions like these:
It
was a response to the prejudiced selections of the official Salon de Paris. For
10 points each:
[10]
Name this art exhibition which was first held in 1863.
ANSWER:
Salon des Refusés [or Salon of the Rejected]
[10]
One of the prominent paintings exhibited in the Salon des Refusés was this huge
Edouard Manet painting depicting a nude woman sitting between two clothed men
in an outdoor setting.
ANSWER:
Le Dejeuner sur l’Herbe [or Luncheon on the Grass;
or Picnic on the Grass]
[10]
The Salon des Refusés also featured The White Girl, a painting by this American
artist. The painting is also known as his Symphony in White, Number 1.
ANSWER:
James McNeill Whistler
Name
these places that one might see on a peaceful trip down the Danube, for 10
points each.
[10]
The Danube originates in this wooded mountain area in the far southwest of
Germany which extends from Säckingen to Durlach.
ANSWER:
Black Forest [or Schwarzwald]
[10]
Before emptying into the Black Sea, the river passes through this capital of
Slovakia.
ANSWER:
[10]
The Rhine-Main-Danube canal allows continuous travel from the Danube to the
Rhine Delta, which is found on the North Sea at this city, the second most
populous in the Netherlands and the busiest port in the world.
ANSWER:
•Note
that ANSWER: begins a new line, is in all caps, and is followed by a colon and
a space.
•Note
that the required part of the answer is underlined and emboldened.
•Note
that instructions for prompts, alternate acceptable answers, or other
additional information for the moderator are contained within brackets and
separated from each other by semicolons.
•Note
that each bonus part begins on a new line with the numerical point value of
that part in brackets.
•Note
that the titles of overall works such as books, plays, operas, and paintings
are italicized, and the title of works contained within larger collections,
such as short stories, chapter titles, and songs from operas are contained
within quotes.
•Note
that the bonus instruction indicates that the three parts are valued “for 10
points each” and either forms a general instruction for the whole bonus (in
which case it ends with a period) or provides a specific clue pertaining to the
first part of the bonus (in which case it ends with a colon).
Examples of the two different types of bonus
instructions:
Name these novels by Charlotte Bronte, for 10
points each.
Identify these characters from Plato’s Symposium,
for 10 points each.
Name these authors of works set in the Netherlands,
for 10 points each.
He drew a perfect circle to demonstrate his
artistic prowess to the Pope. For 10 points each:
The Longmen Grottoes and White Horse Temple are
among the religious artifacts found here. For 10 points each:
According to Hesiod, she is the daughter of Ceto
and Phorcys. For 10 points each:
If
you write any bonus questions using different point schemes, then make sure to
clearly reflect how the points will be awarded in the bonus instruction. If you
use a “for the stated points” bonus format, then the value of each part should
be indicated both in the brackets and in the text of the bonus parts
themselves, like so:
His
essay “Some Remarks on Logical Form” and a preface he wrote for a dictionary
for elementary schools are collected in his Philosophical Occasions. For
the stated points:
[10]
For 10, name this twentieth-century philosopher of language, whose aphorisms
are collected in such books as Culture and Value and Zettel.
ANSWER: Ludwig Wittgenstein
[5]
For 5, at the end of this first book by Wittgenstein, he asserts that anyone
who has understood the book’s propositions can now discard them as one would
discard a ladder after climbing it.
ANSWER: Tractatus
Logico-Philosophicus
[10]
For 10, Wittgenstein’s most important later book is this work which claims that
concepts denote “family resemblances” between things and argues that there
cannot be a “private language.”
ANSWER: Philosophical Investigations
[5]
For 5, Wittgenstein once threatened this author of The Open Society and its
Enemies and proponent of falsificationism with a fireplace poker.
ANSWER: Karl Raimund Popper
Standardization of
numbers:
To
make all the packets uniform in appearance, please display all point values and
years in questions as digits, but all other numbers as prose words (e.g.
"twenty-two years", "a million dollars" and "fourteen
hundred casualties," but “For 10 points” and “1976.”) Use the BCE/CE
system instead of the BC/AD system for years, and remember to always include
the correct designation alongside the years when there the possibility of
confusion.
Pronunciation guides are
usually a waste of time, to be honest. Put them in only under the following
conditions:
•You
actually know how to pronounce the word and are not just guessing.
•The
pronunciation guide itself is clear.
•There
is a substantial chance that the word will be mispronounced without the guide,
and that the mispronunciation of the word will make it unrecognizable to
players or mislead them into thinking it is a different clue. E.g.., don't put
in guides like "Nabokov (nuh-BAHK-off)"—even though that is correct,
no player is going to be confused if they hear the incorrect pronunciation
"NAH-buh-kov" so you're just wasting everyone's time putting the
guide in.
•Or,
if it's an answer, there's a substantial chance that a moderator will not
recognize the correct pronunciation because it differs substantially from the
appearance of the word on the page. Chinese words transliterated with an
"x" standing for an "sh" sound or a "zh" standing
for a "j" sound are common pitfalls here, and should receive
pronunciation guides in answers.
If you choose to put in a
pronunciation guide under the above circumstances, put it in parentheses, with
phonetic spelling and emphasized syllables in all caps, immediately after the
relevant word, like so:
Arthur
Rubinstein commissioned a Fantasia by this man, who wrote incidental music to
the dramas The Passion and Daybreak. One of his better-known
works contains a famous ritornello in the section “Jota” (HO-tuh). His stage
works include the puppet opera The Tale of Master Pedro...
[etc,
etc]
Wikipedia reminder: Wikipedia is not a reliable source for meeting the
stringent standards of factual accuracy which quizbowl questions must maintain.
We will not accept any questions containing clues whose only source is
Wikipedia. If you use Wikipedia in your question writing process, then you
should cross-check each and every clue gleaned from any Wikipedia article with
an established source. It will probably be more time-efficient for you to avoid
using Wikipedia at all. If you are having trouble finding good places to look
up information for questions, please contact Matt Weiner at weinerm@vcu.edu and he will be happy to
help you.
Packets containing
questions which are determined to have come solely from Wikipedia will be
returned for rewriting and will not count as submitted for purposes of the fee
schedule until such questions have been replaced. You will also be charged $25 on top of your eventual fee for submitting
your revised packet.
Plagiarism and recycling: Plagiarism of any kind in your packet submissions
for this tournament is absolutely unacceptable. In general, anything that is
considered plagiarism for coursework at your school will be considered
plagiarism in your submitted packet. In particular, note that our concept of
plagiarism includes but is not limited to lifting wording directly from
Wikipedia, Britannica, or any encyclopedia, webpage, book, or other reference
source without attribution; and taking questions or parts of questions from previously
existing quizbowl packets.
Teams caught plagiarizing
will have their packets rejected and will not be given the opportunity to write
a replacement. Such teams will be substantially penalized, as per the notice in
the penalties section--i.e., you will either be charged hundreds of dollars, or
kicked out of the tournament. I promise you that I WILL catch you if you are
plagiarizing. Please make sure that every person writing for your packet
is fully aware of the consequences of plagiarism.
Also, your packet may not
include any questions that were previously submitted to any tournament
whatsoever. Even if your previous questions were not used at the other
tournament, you do not know for certain who assisted the editors of the prior
tournament or otherwise may have seen your questions, and thus you cannot
guarantee that the people who saw your questions are not playing in this
tournament. While less serious than plagiarism, question recycling is,
likewise, totally prohibited and will result in bad things happening to you, so
you should take pains to avoid engaging in this practice.
Thank you for your
patience is getting through these long guidelines. They are long and detailed
because we want to put on the best tournament possible, with the best packets
possible. Please contact me at weinerm@vcu.edu
if you have any remaining questions about packet writing for ACF Regionals
2008.