The Quizbowl Resource Center

tiwonge

Thank you for taking the time to give feedback on our questions. It was unexpected, and the comments were very helpful!

tiwonge

Congratulations to UCLA who went undefeated at 9-0 to win the tournament! Shreyank from UCLA edged out Charlie from UC Boulder for the top scorer, 78.89ppg to 75.56ppg. Full stats are here: https://hsquizbowl.org/db/tournaments/6670/stats/stats/ Thanks to all the teams for coming, and especially to ...

tiwonge

I staffed the tournament and didn't play, but there were still some things I particularly enjoyed. I enjoyed the bonus on Native American art, and the native clues (particularly the Navajo monster slayer twins clue) in the spider myth question. (Also the Mississippian culture question.) Thank you fo...

tiwonge

Idaho Quiz & Academic Teams will be sponsoring a mirror of SUN for the northwest and California circuits. This will will be held on (Sunday) Nov. 22, 2020, the Sunday before Thanksgiving. More details about the set can be found at https://hsquizbowl.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=23049 . Log...

tiwonge

Thanks!

tiwonge

Is there a place where there are sample packets in this format? I checked the NAQT website, and the sample packets on the NAQT site that I checked were still in the old format where the tossups and bonuses were separate.

tiwonge

I noticed that several questions used "them" as a gender-neutral pronoun instead of "he" or "she," but this was not consistent. Was this the result of specific writers, or some specific packet submission? Is this something writers might consider for the future? (Was the...

tiwonge

It's likely that BSU will come. I'll have Spenser or somebody contact you.

tiwonge

One of our students is taking the semester off because of COVID, but says he plans to return for the spring semester. I know that in the reverse case (taking classes in the fall but not the spring), players are generally eligible to play in the spring. Is there any way we can petition for an exempti...

tiwonge

The American Quiz Bowl League will be hosting a Pacific Northwest mirror of the ERIS set via Discord on Sunday, September 13th, 2020. DATE AND TIME: The tournament will take place on September 13th, 2020, from 9 am EST to around 4 pm EST. All players and spectators should be logged onto the server ...

tiwonge

At the suggestion of Chris Chiego and PACE VP of Outreach, David Reinstein, we've spent the last few months putting together a middle school novice set. Samir Sarma (Eden Prairie High School) and I wrote the bulk of the five-packet set, with other questions written by Benjamin McAvoy-Bickford, Dhruv...

tiwonge

What's the logic behind including Idaho along with the "Mountain" circuit? Idaho teams (such as Boise State) play just as often, if not more, at UW and West-Coast sites, than at "Mountain" tournament sites. Teams from Washington and Oregon also attend tournaments in Idaho somewh...

tiwonge

Mike and Tejas have looked over the set. Mike says that he thinks it meets PACE standards, and Tejas gave us a bunch of corrections (thank you!). I think I want to print out copies of the packets tomorrow just to look over a printed version and see what it looks like. Other than that, I think it's d...

tiwonge

By the way, if you haven't heard, a small group of high school students and I have been writing a 5 packet set along these lines that should be released soon. We playtested it with some non quiz bowl middle school students (although, generally, they were smart kids), and for the most part, there was...

tiwonge

Is the bonus rule going to change the formatting of packets? If bonus 1 is paired with TU 1, then would you print the packet so that each bonus is printed under the tossup? This would avoid having to shuffle papers between the set of tossups and the set of bonuses.

tiwonge

We were playtesting our novice set for some families in Apple Valley, MN, and one mother asked about doing this as an activity. Is there an active middle school circuit in that vicinity? (I know that now, with online tournaments, there are lots of possible middle school tournaments that teams can pl...

tiwonge

This set is almost completely written. (I'm waiting for one tossup.) Looking for people (especially middle school students or teachers) interested in playtesting it or looking it over. (This is strictly an introductory set, and will not be released as a tournament, so there's no need to worry about ...

tiwonge

I don't see anything about the date in the post. Maybe I missed it, but can you clarify when it is?

Edit: Nevermind, it was in the first sentence. June 14.

tiwonge

Today, or Friday? Today is just Thursday.

Edit: oh, I guess "until Friday" means not on Friday?

tiwonge

I'll add more later, but regarding transportation, the Pacific Northwest has the additional challenge of the winter being a dangerous time to travel by car. The Cascade mountain passes often require chains during winter due to snow. People are often not comfortable driving in these conditions. In t...

tiwonge

Re: travel - I think more can be done to help newer clubs find sources of funding. Travel is a pain because funding is relatively hard to come by (in the case of UW, our school's student organization travel fund literally ran out in December, so we couldn't use it to fund trips to Regs and ICT (rip...

tiwonge

Distance: This is the most obvious one. Colleges are just further apart out west, so a student needs to be more committed before they're willing to attend a tournament. This makes it significantly harder to retain people and grow clubs. Transportation: Similar to, but distinct from the distance iss...

tiwonge

SCOP Novice Online will take place on SUNDAY, April 19, 2020, from 9 AM to 4 or 5 PM. Online registration opens at 8:15 AM. All players and coaches should be logged onto the server by 8:45 AM. Eastern time? 6 AM for California teams? Log in by 5:45 AM PDT? (Just asking for clarification. I realize ...

tiwonge

I'll be overseeing the Middle School Novice Tournament. If you'd like to be a part of it, please let me know, either by forum PM or e-mail. (I have some people who said they'd be interested, and I'll probably be sending them an e-mail soon.) This is just meant to be an intro to quiz bowl, so it diff...

tiwonge

Can you re-post this, but with a link that doesn't expire?

tiwonge

Animal Farm, To Kill a Mockingbird, Gift of the Magi I'm trying to avoid answers like these. It's true that some 6th graders can get those, but that's not who this set is for. Those answers will go dead too often if they are asked to novice middle schoolers. I wouldn't even toss up Orwell. I still ...

tiwonge

Animal Farm, To Kill a Mockingbird, Gift of the Magi I'm trying to avoid answers like these. It's true that some 6th graders can get those, but that's not who this set is for. Those answers will go dead too often if they are asked to novice middle schoolers. I wouldn't even toss up Orwell. I still ...

tiwonge

The other thing I'm thinking right now, is that if I come up with 4/4 (the median of the number of packets suggested) answerlines for each tossup, are there any categories where I'm scraping to get appropriate questions, or any categories where I feel like I'm leaving out a lot of good questions?

tiwonge

Some work is going to go into this project this weekend. Please critique the following distribution: Literature 1/1 (include children's and young adult fiction) US History 1/1 Non-US History 1/1 Biology 1/1 Physics & Chem 1/1 Math 1/1 Other Science 1/1 Music 1/1 (focus on instruments and scales...

tiwonge

Response from Jeremy McNinch I am the coach of our high school Knowledge Bowl team, and one of the league coordinators for the Pierce County (WA) Knowledge Bowl league. We have regular competitions weekly from December through February. It really is a lot of fun. I was not aware that Academic Hallma...

tiwonge

Because the format of Knowledge Bowl includes written questions, quiz bowl questions aren't going to be a perfect substitute, unless somebody wants to write written questions, too. But that's not too say that they might not be interested in a substitute product.

tiwonge

Some people to contact, maybe. I don't know if all of these organizations used Academic Hallmarks, so I don't know if they're looking for a new question provider. I don't know where else Academic Hallmarks produces questions for. Washington: Nancy Menard, Administrative Assistant [email protected].org (...

tiwonge

So, I'm going for something that might suggest quiz bowl questions as well-written, well-produced alternatives. One of the most important parts of running Knowledge Bowl or other scholastic or academic competitions is finding a source for good, high quality questions. In the quiz bowl community, the...

tiwonge

I see your point. I'll write a different pitch emphasizing stability and professionalism of question providers when I get to a computer later today.

tiwonge

My quiz bowl pitch. Feel free to comment, add, or edit this. This is just a first draft, based on what I often describe to new schools. Pyramidal quiz bowl may be a little different than what you're used to. The tossup questions are longer--a few sentences long. They questions start with hard clues,...

tiwonge

I was talking to Chris Chiego recently, and he said that Academic Hallmarks, which has supplied questions for Knowledge Bowl competitions, is getting out of the business. This means that current Knowledge Bowl circuits will be looking for new question providers, or possibly will be open to new forma...

tiwonge

UW finished 7-1 to win the tournament. BSU A was 2nd at 5-3. Kaden from UW was top overall scorer. Final stats: https://hsquizbowl.org/db/tournaments/6302/stats/prelims/ Thanks to everybody who came. I think that it was a great experience for all the teams. This was Montana State's first-ever tourna...

tiwonge

Six teams have signed up. I'll end the signup period on Friday, so if you're still interested, please go ahead and sign up by then.

tiwonge

QuizCo was a local buzzer system company that went out of business several years ago. A lot of local high schools have their buzzers, although I don't know how many are still around. When the INL sponsored science bowl, I think one of their electrical engineers built a custom buzzer system for them ...

tiwonge

No. The intent is to give novice college players experience, especially in areas where there aren't many tournaments. For that reason, I want to restrict it to new college teams and players.

High school teams should have plenty of local tournaments to play in.

tiwonge

At a middle school tournament we just ran, the book prizes we gave away were gifted me by a previous player who had graduated and passed on her book collection. There were a lot of graphic novel versions of classics, and the players (even the high school players who were staffing) seemed to really l...

tiwonge

QuizCo was located in Boise (and is, as best as I can tell, out of business), and there are a few schools that have those buzzer systems. I can check and see if any of them aren't using them or have spare parts, but I think your best bet is just to get a new system.

tiwonge

In the Northwest, we have a lot of distance between our schools, so Idaho Quiz and Academic Teams is hosting an online mirror of Delta Burke on January 18 (MLK weekend) to give newer and less experienced teams a chance to play each other without having to travel long distances. We're opening up the ...

tiwonge

I am a member of the group. I'd be fine with loaning my Yahoo password if somebody who wants to archive it needs access. (I don't really use it for anything.)

tiwonge

One thing I used to do is buy slightly more prizes than there were top scorers (so if I wanted to give out prizes to the top 8 scorers, common in my day, I would get like 10-11 books). This way if some book was truly of no interest to anyone, nobody would get stuck with it. I was often surprised at...

tiwonge

As far as that last point goes, if you enjoy quiz bowl, there are multiple roles for you, even if you don't feel that you're a good player and don't enjoy playing. Staffing tournaments can still provide a solid connection to an activity you enjoy, and if your school hosts tournaments (especially col...

tiwonge

BYU will be hosting a tournament on Saturday, Nov. 23.

We hope that this can be the start of a decent circuit in the SLC metro area.

We sent out letters and are e-mailing schools now. One school has already registered, and we're getting some interest from a few other schools.

tiwonge

First, more established members of the quizbowl community should reach out to new teams' leadership and strike up a relationship so that you can check in and help them overcome obstacles like organizational or funding issues. This would also be useful in planning for leadership transitions and for ...

tiwonge

As one of the mentioned circuits, I don't think we'd have had a better turnout for EFT had it been something easier like ACF Fall. There's not really any other teams out there who might come for an easier tournament. (If we had more stronger high school teams, that might be a possibility, but it's a...

tiwonge

UW and Colorado clubs both have more than one member. They just didn't have more than one person willing to make the trip. Matt and Vikshar (and Daniel) all flew to Boise on their own dime. I don't know to what extent these clubs get support from their university to help fund such trips, but it's no...

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