The Quizbowl Resource Center

conker

I wrote the "recording the Goldberg Variations" tossup. Glad to hear that people thought it was a good idea. I should point out that Rosalyn Tureck's recording *is* excruciatingly slow, far from being par for the course (her recordings come in at over 90 minutes, compared with 70 minutes f...

conker

This symphony's finale uses a theme derived from its composer's setting of the song "Nora Creina." Its first movement opens with a poco sostenuto introduction and moves to a vivace in 6/8 time. Its second movement uses a quarter-eighth-eighth-quarter-quarter ostinato and uses a double var...

conker

"Funny Girl" was completely fair, IMHO. Our team didn't do well on that bonus (pretty much the only thing I know about "Funny Girl" is that Barbara Streisand was in it), but in hindsight it's something that we should know. On the other hand, I don't like certain trash about curre...

conker

I really enjoyed this year's SCT set on the whole. I liked the creative answer lines (e.g., "anvil" as a musical instrument), and I appreciated that the trash in this tournament were mostly about TV shows that people actually watch (e.g. Arrested Development, Breaking Bad, Community). [On ...

conker

Div 1, Packet 2, Tossup 11: Gangsta's Paradise
The quote from the song is slightly off. Perhaps someone tried to write this question from memory?
"we've been living most of our lives" => "we've been spending most our lives, living"

conker

This needs to be emphasized. One of the most basic lines of defense (besides question security) that quizbowl has against cheaters is the people who might know the cheaters the best--their teammates. I'm not advocating a witch hunt here, but if your teammate who can barely get a few TUs in practice...

conker

Out of curiosity, what were the warning signs about Andy that made people suspicious in the first place? As his teammate on one of the ICT teams, I hadn't the faintest idea that he was cheating, but of course by that point I was already mostly out of the quiz bowl loop.

conker

This is unrelated to the tournament, but I figured that the TJ team members would read this thread, so it would be appropriate to post it here. You left your buzzers at Harvard. I have tried e-mailing Billy and Naren, but both e-mails bounced back. How would you like us to get your buzzers back to y...

conker

For the past few days, when I visit the main hsquizbowl.org page, my virus scanner pops up saying that it has blocked several scripts from executing, among them JS/Downloader-AUD from hsquizbowl.org. It also attemps to connect to mymoonsite.net (NOTE: DON'T VISIT!), which contains several browser ex...

conker

Oh yeah, I know you did a playoff round robin, but it's kind of lame to have teams with basically the same record (the canceled Dorman game not withstanding) and declare one the winner because their win in the 2-game series between those teams occurred in the second round robin. I'm sure the tourna...

conker

Stats for the prelims and top bracket will be posted soon. The other brackets might take a little longer.

conker

Is it like the Microsoft Word text-to-speech device, or is it better? Because I have tried having that read packets back to me, and it doesn't work all too well...

conker

Thanks to MIT for a great tournament. It was smoothly run and well moderated. There was significant lag in some of the brackets for whatever reason, but I think that was more because of some teams arriving late than because of the moderators. Seriously, there should be a "we'll start without yo...

conker

Thank you everyone for your prompt responses. Our field is now full. However, we are still accepting teams on the waitlist (these will probably mostly be schools in the region and alternate teams from schools that are already attending the tournament).

conker

Hi Naren,

I just marked TJ down for 2 teams. However, because the field is almost full, the third team would have to come as standby.

Dennis

conker

Just to let everyone know that we are capping the field for this tournament at 32. We already have 27 confirmed teams, and we would like to give as many different schools the chance to participate as possible. Registration will be handled on a first come, first serve basis. Teams that are interested...

conker

The tournament is in two weeks, and it's time for a field update! Since the last update, we have also managed to bring the enigmatic Shanghai American School on board... Allentown Central Catholic Bromfield Concord-Carlisle Dorman E.O. Smith (2) Edgemont Half Hollow Hills (2) Hunter Kellenberg (2) M...

conker

As Kyle mentioned, we have already heard from several competitive teams not only in the New England/Mid-Atlantic region, but throughout the East coast and beyond. We would like to encourage all teams, including those not within driving distance, to at least consider attending our tournament, and as ...

conker

Results from the Harvard mirror of the WIT are now up:

http://free.9cy.net/harvard_wit/index_standings.html

conker

At this point, for many top players, "fresh packet from Stanfords" is an oxymoron. It'd be very nice to get a fresh packet as a tournament, but the Stanford Archive is not the place to stage any form of competition. Obviously it would not be a real competition, and getting a fresh packet ...

conker

I've played on the bot a few times, and I must say that t's very very good. However, it's obvious that some people have already seen all the questions, and even for the people who haven't played it that much, there are repeats. :grin: I think that maybe one of these weekends you guys could organize ...

conker

I absolutely cannot stand the treatment of Chinese names in quiz bowl. I agree that both Wade-Giles and pinyin forms should be acceptable, but practice often strays from theory. I was looking at a bonus question from a past tournament, and "Chiang Kai-Shek" was the only answer listed for a...

conker

The Friedan thing should NOT have happened. The rules are pretty clear that a pronunciation need only be phonetically correct. Friedan could be pronounced any number of ways phonetically and they should all be accepted. NAQT needs to make this clear to all - even the most elitist - of their moderat...

conker

Matt, I know many phpBB forums actually have a time frame after the post during which posts can be edited. In other words, users will be able to make small changes like fixing typos, formatting, etc. right after they've made the post, but if they wanted to erase their post (Ã la gtn) an hour later,...

conker

The power on August Wilson was also very generous. I was very surprised when I still had power after "Joe Turner's Come and Gone."

conker

Seriously. If this kid plays in any college tournaments someone in the Northeast needs to first blow him out in a match and then kick him in the face repeatedly while yelling "Who's aggravated now, you whore?!" I watched him play. He has a broad knowledge base, and he's fast with the buzz...

conker

I like how this article tries to reinforce the notion that qb players are nerdy, cloistered douches filled with random academic knowledge but absolutely no awareness of the outside world. I have to say that there's not much the newspaper can do if he really can't name two Britney Spears songs or De...

conker

I wanted to buzz in with Fenway Park. Thankfully our captain beat me to it and said Green Monster. I think Fenway Park should at least have been prompted. To whoever asked, the question mentioned something about Pesky's Pole in the beginning, and that's all I can remember from it. It didn't mention...

conker

After going 2 for 21 in the 1981 World Series, George Steinbrenner--

Ans: Dave Winfield

conker

When I think I've gotten in first, even on buzzer races, I have almost all the time. Therefore, if I think I got in first and the buzzer says I didn't, I'm checking it for sure. I agree with this. If you listen to the podcast of our match against TJ A, you'll notice that I stopped the game when I t...

conker

I don't have time to address all the points (although I agree with most of them), but I would like to respond to one comment: But the last is just a ridiculous hose that could be so easily avoided. What if you know the poem? Nope! The question was about the author. Any good quiz team player should k...

conker

Dennis -- If you want questions that test critical thinking AND actual knowledge, that's exactly what NAQT does. I know your school's situation, and that really sucks, but that has no bearing on the relative badness of NAC. Riddle questions that test (at most) only trivial knowledge do not belong i...

conker

It's probably not relevant to this discussion (I'm too lazy to read it all), but I can see why someone would hold off on buzzing on that clue out of concern that one might be forgetting an interim governor. There was no interim governor in this case, but I'd have been tentative about buzzing as wel...

conker

On this point, I agree. There were positive aspects of this tournament (though you and I may not agree with them, and that's OK). No national tournament (except for PACE) has a sense of history like this one does ..... and that establishment of a "tradition" helps make the tournament a dr...

conker

Isn't quizbowl supposed to be about learning? About expanding one's knowledge base, grasping new ideas, and then answering questions about what you've learned? Failing that, maybe it's about growing, making the jump from high school to adulthood by knowing more about the world, doing what college d...

conker

I don't mind a question that requires a little bit more thinking vs. jsut being straightforward layering, but this is not, IMO, an exampe of such. I will even contend that this question is not even a buzzer beater in the traditional sense. Even a buzzer beater requires some knowledge that you;ve st...

conker

So, you're saying it's a good tournament because it's a bad tournament? Did Chip send you to the Ministry of Love or something? Again, I think it's a bad tournament overall, but a bad tournament can have a few good questions. And in this case, I didn't even say the question was good--only that the ...

conker

Okay, where do I start? It doesn't test any sort of real knowledge. Damn near all of quizbowl players (and, in fact, some large segment of the population at large) are going to know which four former Presidents aren't dead and that non-dead people aren't buried. Those are things one learns in grade...

conker

The lowlight of the day (and there were a few) was the following "question". "Which four former presidents are not buried in the continental United States?" Now I actually sat there for a moment contemplating ......"Hoover...NO NO, he's in Iowa...." then one team buzze...

conker

Our favorite single question from the 2006 competition follows ... and it represents the first time ever that we've asked a question about one of the competing high schools. "Brother Kenneth Hoagland called off what event at Roman Catholic Kellenberg Memorial High School for what he calls the ...

conker

There is one aspect of the schedule I hope they'd consider changing. After seven matches everyone was placed into groups of eight for the final three rounds. The top group had a 7-0 and seven 6-1's. Someone had to go 0-3 in that pool. Now I know who that honor went to: Brookwood. Wow...I guess we h...

conker

How aggressive do you recommend your team be on tossups? I think what hurt us most at NAQT was our lack of experience with real competition. We only had one competition this year with non-pyramidal tossups and very random activities, such as building a tower out of marshmallows and "Amazing Rac...

conker

E.T. Chuck wrote:The process finishes after all the tryouts for a season are complete. Usually they tell people who the chosen ones are about a month before a taping (maybe a bit less) by sending them the fed ex package.

So the pre-test and interview at HSNCT constitutes a complete a tryout?

conker

insaneindian wrote:we had 2 from A team and 2 from B team

Wow, and they all made it past the pre-test? That's pretty impressive! When do you all find out whether you made it past the interview (whatever that is...I'm not too familiar with the whole Jeopardy tryout process)?

Did you make it, by the way?

conker

Wait--you mean that wasn't Shanghai's strongest team? From talking to them in our poker games, I gathered that the underclassmen were taking exams and weren't allowed to come that weekend. Thus, only seniors were on the HSNCT team. They said some of the underclassmen were better though. I'm guessin...

conker

I say keep computer science in quiz bowl. It is an AP course at most schools, and students who have a deep knowledge of computer science should be rewarded. And this is coming from a person who has never taken Comp Sci in high school. How hard is it to add quicksort and bubble sort, etc. to one's qu...

conker

I politely disagree. I was reading the tossup on the paper as I was scorekeeping, and he started over at the beginning of the sentence he had started when Lisgar took the strategic neg. The concept of the International Cup is a good one. If the international schools are at the HSNCT next year, and ...

conker

Just wanted to point out that Mr. Harvey is no longer our coach, so he doesn't have much control over whether we are able to return to Chicago in the future. :cool: He is in Abu Dhabi now...hopefully he will be able to bring his team to NAQT in a few years (although they have an even longer flight t...

conker

While cocktail parties are a bad justification for anything, quiz bowl distributions included, I do not consider a question on Olympia Snowe to be trash. She will be irrelevant in 100 years, but she is a powerful person in the world we live in--this week alone, her opposition to the Constitutional ...

conker

In response to the comment on the increase in politics, current events, and "trash," I did notice that as well, but having thought about it, isn't cultural literacy important in the REAL WORLD? I know quizbowl is far from that, but when you talk with people in the office, or at a cocktail...

The Quizbowl Resource Center

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Re: Question-specific discussion: 2016 DI ICT

Re: Question-specific discussion: 2015 Division I SCT

Re: Trash

Re: 2015 SCT general discussion

Re: 2015 SCT Errata

Re: NAQT security review: three more cases

Re: NAQT Security Discussion

Has the HSQB Main Page been compromised?

Re: Quizbowler in the New York Times

Re: Quizbowler in the New York Times

Aggressiveness