The Quizbowl Resource Center

magin

OK, I'm planning to read this packet on the Discord at 9:00 PM EST tonight. If you'd like to play this packet but would prefer a different time, please let me know.

magin

I'm in the process of writing an extremely difficult vanity packet all about John Milton. There will be at least 20 tossups; hoping to have it ready by the first or second week of April.

magin

I'm only speaking for myself here, not ACF. I sympathize with people bringing up concerns about the current packet submission model for Fall, and I'm sure that ACF members are open to changes to ensure a better experience for writers and editors, much like the way ACF moved to half-packets from full...

magin

This post was prompted by my experience at Michigan's Penn Bowl mirror this past weekend, but my intent isn't so much to call them out as to raise this issue more broadly: that was far from the first time that I've seen a selection of books that frankly nobody wants handed out as "prizes." Don't do...

magin

The only criticism is that the lit bonuses seemed much more difficult than any other subject (to be fair we did not have a lit player, but even at this difficult level we all have pretty much a basic knowledge of author’s names or main characters). My teammates have commented on the music and my kn...

magin

If any teams are interested in receiving feedback on their CO literature questions, please shoot me an email at jonathan.magin AT gmail.com.

I'll try to respond as promptly as I can.

magin

I edited literature for CO, with the help of Wonyoung Jang (who wrote and edited the tossups on playing tennis, characters with the first name Mildred, Szymborska, Spring Awakening , Leonora Carrington, Medea , ghazals, Russia from eatly 20th century poetry, Laura Esquivel, British authors with the ...

magin

In theory, it's OK to increase difficulty in the finals because the teams are better. In practice, I think it's almost always a bad idea and encourages set editors to write sadistically hard questions. I've seen finals between good teams that turned into brutal endurance tests, and they didn't seem ...

magin

I'm much more skeptical that competitiveness is toxic, or that in-game passion is a symptom of an abuser, or that well-known players are more likely to offend than more anonymous players. Matt, I don't see anyone saying these things. I think Tamara is correct that we still tend to place far too muc...

magin

I'm looking to play this tournament. I'm not bad at sports and good at frauding pop culture questions from academic knowledge.

magin

I am really unhappy with how some people in the collegiate/open community act towards each other, especially on the forums and sometimes on the Discord. After several instances of privately getting people to modulate their public behavior-–sometimes successfully–I’m finally pissed--off about it eno...

magin

I like powers as a player, but I think there are a few issues with powers from a set editing perspective that haven't been mentioned in this thread. Although all tossups in a set ideally gradate difficulty the same way, in practice, that doesn't happen most of the time. Powers exacerbate any issues ...

magin

Congrats, Mike. This award is incredibly well-deserved.

magin

I think it would be interesting for writers to get a sense of the questions that quizbowl players enjoyed the most and why. So, what is your favorite question that you didn't write? I'm hoping that people don't just respond with questions that they got good buzzes on, but ones that were executed so ...

magin

I'm extremely excited for this tournament and would pay a large sum of money to play it at Chicago Open this year.

magin

I'm planning on writing a hard packet of at least 20 tossups on weird, esoteric Americana.

Edit: My packet is now done.

magin

Jarret, that's fantastic to hear. I've talked to the other editors, and we're very pleased the field at your site seemed to enjoy the set so much. Thanks for letting us know! Also, Will, I understand your issues with past ACF Falls, but I think you're missing a bit of perspective here. If ACF Fall i...

magin

The ACF Fall editors will be providing feedback for submitted packets upon request. If your team is interested, please email [email protected].com and let us know you'd like feedback on your packet. If we get many requests, it may take longer to provide feedback to everybody, but we will make sure we ...

magin

Thanks, Bruce. I'm honored and touched. I'm not exactly sure how to respond to Will's post, but I would like to clarify a few things. First, the editors attempted to keep difficulty down, but we still left in some tossups on harder material that we thought enough teams would know--Francis I, Ursula ...

magin

Here's some data for ACF Fall for your perusal:

ACF Fall Stats

Conversion Data for Maryland ACF Fall Site

magin

I'm sorry for the proofreading errors which were in the final set--as a former professional proofreader, I'm pretty annoyed that I didn't fix them before the set went out. They should all be fixed in the final set now, but that's still too late. I'd also like to talk more broadly about the goals the...

magin

I was happy to see some of Auburn's questions included on our first attempt at submitting. Thanks to the editors for putting this tournament together, even if it did have some flaws. Does ACF still do its writer feedback program? The editors will be providing feedback for submitted packets upon req...

magin

Welcome to the discussion thread for ACF Fall 2017. I hope you all enjoyed playing the tournament; all the editors are looking forward to hearing everyone's thoughts and reactions. Our editors were: Ryan Rosenberg: American literature, European literature, world/genre/other literature, social scienc...

magin

Here are some difficulty guidelines to help you write your ACF Fall half-packets: * Try to keep tossup answers accessible to new teams. If you want the Fall editors to use your questions, err on the side of easier answers that many players can get by the end. * Late clues and giveaways in tossups an...

magin

At harder college tournaments, even the best players will not know a vast majority of the clues and some of the answers. It's sort of like baseball: the best hitters still make outs around 60 percent of the time. We all spend most tournaments spending most of our time not knowing things and hearing ...

magin

Yeah, this was a blast. My favorite questions by far were the tossups on well-known answers like Frost and Melville, which I greatly appreciated. Thanks to all the writers for producing a fun set!

magin

I'm interested in signing up. Put me on the waitlist.

magin

I just discovered that I can make CO this year, so if you want a humanities player and/or need someone to write a bunch of questions for your packet, shoot me an email.

magin

I'd like to play. If you know world literature and/or modernist poetry, I'm interested in teaming up with you.

magin

In the late 20-aughts and into the start of this decade, it was orthodox, or at least common, to have challenging finals packets at nearly every tournament that specifically designated finals. Although I haven't done a scientific survey of this, my recollection is that these tournaments typically e...

magin

I don't know anything about mythology, but this thread is interesting to me. Although I don't have anything to contribute about the specifics of writing great myth questions, I have two more general points I think are germane here. 1) If you have some expertise in an area and want to see quizbowl qu...

magin

Thanks Jon(and Jacob), that's some really useful advice. I definitely agree that good/playable questions are better than no questions, and that not every question has to be perfect or even close to it. Reading excerpts is definitely something I've utilized before and will definitely continue, espec...

magin

This is a really good thread. It's very hard to write a great question on a work of literature you haven't read, but it's much easier to write a good, non-awful question. And while there's nothing like playing a really great question, I think most literature players would be thrilled to play a tourn...

magin

Putting ideas down beforehand: When I'm working on tournaments, I usually list out my subdistributions well ahead of time and fill them in with ideas (elaborated upon with comments indicating clues I want to use) as they come to me, such that I'll often have some idea listed a couple months before ...

magin

Putting ideas down beforehand: When I'm working on tournaments, I usually list out my subdistributions well ahead of time and fill them in with ideas (elaborated upon with comments indicating clues I want to use) as they come to me, such that I'll often have some idea listed a couple months before ...

magin

I'm writing a packet also.

magin

the miscellaneous tossups on Woody Guthrie. What all were the clues in this one? We were looking for the lyricist, right? That tossup had the room in knots. I was thinking Guthrie the whole time, but I finally risked the neg on This Land is Your Land because I was pretty sure he had a hand in writi...

magin

I thought Eddie Kim did a great job as head editor for this set, and I think it's as good, if not better, than the first two Imaginary Landscapes. Eddie and Rebecca wrote almost all of the classical music/opera for this set, although I contributed the tossups on Borodin, Ives, Karl Jenkins, Lyric Pi...

magin

Ben, Glad you liked the tournament. I wrote the Karl Jenkins tossup, I apologize for the Benedictus clue causing a huge buzzer race; I didn't think it was famous, and during playtesting, no one answered the tossup until the Palladio clues. Certainly would have put it later if I thought that might ha...

magin

Cody, when have you scheduled the remaining CO packets? Also, do people want to just hear the tossups, or to split into teams and play the packets that way?

magin

Is there any interest in playing the three remaining CO packets at this site, like what Jerry is running in Michigan? I just found out that I'll be able to come to VCU, and I'd like to read them, either in some sort of draft format or just to interested players.

magin

I was going to post something about difficulty in the CO thread, but now that this one exists, I'll do it here. First of all, I've always strongly believed that editors should strongly control the difficulty of tournaments. Even at hard opens like CO, if you don't exercise strict discipline over you...

magin

I think the "send in easier questions if you want easier questions" argument is a bit of a copout. Yes, in some sense the submissions guide how the tournament will look, and you want to reward teams for writing good questions by altering them as little as possible. But if you're an editor for a nat...

magin

I think the "send in easier questions if you want easier questions" argument is a bit of a copout. Yes, in some sense the submissions guide how the tournament will look, and you want to reward teams for writing good questions by altering them as little as possible. But if you're an editor for a nati...

magin

In response to Mike's thread about people's lowest point, I thought it would be interesting for people to share how they became a part of the larger quizbowl community, what encouraged or discouraged them along the way, and anything that might have sped up or smoothed the process had it occurred. I ...

magin

I'd like to play this tournament.

magin

I realized I forgot to post links to the packets, so here they are: Packet 1: https://app.box.com/s/9cjrh6f96um752scc4vk Packet 2: https://app.box.com/s/apg3kusvq0iiqfvcwfj9 Packet 3: https://app.box.com/s/l66tytwjmejq7pzi1ukj Packet 4: https://app.box.com/s/2w2ztx8ze9x6jvu5u67f Packet 5: https://ap...

magin

Imaginary Landscape no. 2 is now clear for discussion. I'd especially like to thank my co-writers: Dave Letzler, Rebecca Maxfield, and Jacob Reed. They came up with many good ideas and provided great feedback on many questions, and really improved the tournament. The distribution was: 5 Composers 4 ...

magin

This will be held Saturday, in case that wasn't clear.

Also, if you are not Will Nediger and would like to mirror this set, please email me at [email protected] and I will send you the set tomorrow.

magin

I think there's an erroneous premise here about what NASAT is -- the "intended audience" is "people playing at the level of an ACF Regionals type set." It's a tournament played by high schoolers, but not a "high school tournament" in the way most high school sets are. It's not intended to be a clon...

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