The Quizbowl Resource Center

Fucitol

Astro (the only subject that I’m really qualified to give an opinion on) was really solid. Loads of real stuff early and answerlines that should be gettable by the end. One exception is the clue on abundance matching which isn’t strictly used for luminosity but it usually is so it’s not that bad. In...

Fucitol

Thanks to Andrew for running a very good tournament.

Having not played solo since Early Autumn Collegiate Novice in 2010, I probably would have been mentally finished by the middle of the day if there was logistical bullshit to contend with.

Fucitol

I am very ready to get thoroughly embarrassed on what is supposed to be one of my better categories.

Fucitol

22. Chicago C (projected roster: Halle Friedman, Ian Baram, Edgar Lin, Wonyoung Jang) Placing any C team, even Chicago C, in the top 25, is a dicey proposition. There are plenty of questions about team composition and members' levels of competitiveness, but compared to the teams below them, Chicago...

Fucitol

Hey, so I wrote what was (as far as I can tell) the hardest science tossup in the set, judging from me asking around on the day of - the tossup on oozes , which made it in unedited from our team's submission. I intended for the tossup to link disparate pieces of knowledge about ocean science that I...

Fucitol

Science history: What we did: We had a science history question (tossup or bonus) like once every two packets. Did that shit work?: Eh. I was more mixed on this. I still think this IDEA is very good - science history belongs in the distribution, and it belongs in the science distribution. It's repr...

Fucitol

This is now the Bill Buckner memorial packet

Fucitol

Cheynem wrote: ↑
Mon May 27, 2019 10:55 am
No one will enjoy this.

You already said the packet was about the mets.

Fucitol

This is my time to shine.

Fucitol

Everyone already knows this but the Yale ACF Nats placement in the spreadsheet should mention the lack of "not that bad at quizbowl" person Jacob Reed.

Fucitol

TeammateShilling.exe Halle Friedmann is really good at visual arts. Underrank her at your own peril especially if you're playing CO, she will still be able to get things ahead of you there. Olivia Kiser knows a shit-ton of random myth and history things. I recall at one point Olivia told me that he ...

Fucitol

Cody wrote: ↑
Thu Apr 18, 2019 3:09 pm

Fucitol wrote: ↑
Thu Apr 18, 2019 2:48 pm
http://hsquizbowl.org/db/tournaments/57 ... no_finals/
Can you implement divisions (Upper/Lower)?

Divisioning and finals will be done when I'm back in Chicago (read: post easter)

Fucitol

http://hsquizbowl.org/db/tournaments/57 ... no_finals/

Fucitol

Because sets (not counting ACF Nationals 2019) have 1/1 math and usually more. Math that normal people usually care about is clued in almost every science tossup (and as you pointed out logic-based philosophy/thought TUs and probably some SS/Econ). There is no need for 1/1 "Content that is taught b...

Fucitol

For starters, people who want a tournament with 1/1 math should feel free to write tournaments with 1/1 math! There is no one "correct" distribution. Not to beat this dead horse again, but do that at something like Lederberg or WAO or Sun God or Terrapin, not ACF Nationals 2019. At least not until ...

Fucitol

Are stats going to be posted for this, or are they a casualty of the paper scoresheets / bad hotel internet? The google spreadsheets for stats are completed for everything up to finals. Someone in the editors groupchat has entered all of the games but one that I missed into SQBS, not sure what the ...

Fucitol

Going to SMU for a postdoc working on the DESI experiment. I will probably be around the Dallas area to staff things if asked and am always open to join open teams looking for some science help.

Fucitol

Because sets (not counting ACF Nationals 2019) have 1/1 math and usually more. Math that normal people usually care about is clued in almost every science tossup (and as you pointed out logic-based philosophy/thought TUs and probably some SS/Econ). There is no need for 1/1 "Content that is taught by...

Fucitol

A word of warning: April 13th is the night of "Spring Fling," which, for the uninitiated, is a concert at franklin field that leads to large numbers of drunken and otherwise intoxicated students running around campus with no regard for anything, often vomiting in random places. Probably best to avoi...

Fucitol

mtebbe wrote: ↑
Tue Apr 09, 2019 12:14 pm

Of course, Wawa (38th and Spruce) is also always an option. There are also food trucks along both Spruce and Walnut that are good options for cheap, fast food.

This is the one true philly lunch advice.

Fucitol

A couple more reminders: I'm working on stats tonight. Should be up tonight or maybe tomorrow if I find motivation to do actual work. Thanks to everyone who venmo-ed me already. Please Venmo me $15 dollars if you haven't yet. I got physical payment from Sorice and Seth, and will track the remainder ...

Fucitol

Well, with regards to logistics, of all the tournaments that ever happened, this was one of them. Sorry for the issues that caused what should have been maybe a 4 hour tournament into a nearly 6 hour hellscape. Thanks to everyone who came to play the tournament. I hope you all were able to enjoy it....

Fucitol

Schedule is attached. Dylan et al, you were warned. Seth is optimistic about using game rooms. The chance of us using game rooms goes up if you come to the staff check-in table at 6 and help set up rooms so please do that. See you all soon. EDIT: Meet in the lobby at 6:30 so we can start the tournam...

Fucitol

I just Facebook messaged all of the people who volunteered a room in the spreadsheet. In the event that the game rooms that Seth spoke of don't materialize, we will need one more room to run this tournament. Please let me know if you have a room that would be available tonight from 6-9:30PM Also we ...

Fucitol

Okay, after talking with Joel, here's the deal: 1) we can start at 6:30, but we'll need to break around 7:30 so that staffers can check in and help with set-up. 2) teams providing buzzers to ICT need to check in their buzzers before starting in on the side event. Team buzzers can be checked in star...

Fucitol

I have not attempted to find a team because I was unsure of whether we'd be in Chicago on time; if it turns out we will be (which looks reasonably likely); is the TD amenable to allowing five-member teams? We really want to get to 12 teams since that makes a really easy schedule with no byes that a...

Fucitol

Oh and if your team doesn't have a name, I'm going to give you the stupidest name I can think of. So do that before I make schedules late thursday night/Friday morning.

Fucitol

Hey everyone, with five days left before the tournament, here's some updates and additional requests. 1. We have 207/240 questions edited for this set, and are well on pace to finish 2. We have 10 teams signed up, and enough free agents to cover two more teams. Please form two more teams ASAP. 3. J...

Fucitol

Now that we know when and where CO will be, the plebeians can start forming teams and writing packets. I'm looking for some teammates. I'm not good at anything, but can one-clue tossups on "Miss America." I write questions for a living so I'm comfortable writing a packet fast. I'll try not to pass ...

Fucitol

Sure would be nice to know if I’m able to play this tournament in time to write a packet for it.

Fucitol

Courtesy of Matt: Teams may not object to the specific replacement question which gets read unless it is an exact repeat (See C.13). (In particular, players have no basis for expecting that a replacement question be from the same category as a question which was thrown out, or for expecting that th...

Fucitol

FYI to future tournament directors, if you are replacing a physics tossup, use a physics tossup.

If you don’t have a physics tossup, use some other science tossup.

If you don’t have some other science tossup, apologize to the teams and yell at the editors before sending some other question.

Fucitol

Am i the only one who’s going to graduate between July 20 and August 2?

I guess I’ll play anyway but I should be writing/editing my thesis then.

Fucitol

Nearly a year has passed since Ryan's original post in this thread, and this year's SCT is fast approaching. Have any steps been taken to tweak the strength-of-schedule metric in the D-value calculation, in response to the flaws that Ryan demonstrated? Doubly noted. As someone who has been personal...

Fucitol

Five days out from the date of the tournament, it would be nice to know if there is more interest in this tournament than the 3 free agents in the google doc.

Fucitol

wcheng wrote:I'd be completely unable to attend this tournament if it was moved to any later of a date, so I'm hoping it can stay where it is.

I can also only attend this date and have already booked travel for this date.

Fucitol

If anyone is interested in going to Fenway Sunday night (8PM*) to see the Yankees play the Red Sox on Sunday Night Baseball, DM me. It looks like there are still some reasonably priced tickets available directly through the red sox website. *Assuming that there won't actually be any side events runn...

Fucitol

I’m aware we are the big evil cabal, but as far as I know there’s still only one Chicago institution.

Fucitol

I emailed you a while back to register my team (Tamara Vardomskaya, Mike Cheyne, Sam Bailey, and me) for the tournament. Did you get the registration? It appears that we are not included in the field in the first post.

Fucitol

Now that I can access the "color" question from Editors one, I can confirm my suspicion that the first two clues are nearly unbuzzable and if you do buzz on them you are either a) the Eric Weisstein's world of astronomy page that the clue was taken from or b) about to neg with "Infrared" because in...

Fucitol

Now that I can access the "color" question from Editors one, I can confirm my suspicion that the first two clues are nearly unbuzzable and if you do buzz on them you are either a) the Eric Weisstein's world of astronomy page that the clue was taken from or b) about to neg with "Infrared" because inf...

Fucitol

Shameless Chicago promotion time: Matthew Lehmann and Luke Tierney are both freshmen who scored over 20 PPG in the ACF Nationals top bracket and led their team to it's first top 10 finish in at least the last 5 years (and probably more than that). If they aren't both in your ballot for rookie of the...

Fucitol

For the jazz, I did my best to be innovative, including writing on things like jazz practice (the bonus on fake books) and education (the bonus part on Stan Kenton). As a former, and hopefully future, jazz musician, this was noticed and appreciated although our team did not get to answer either bon...

Fucitol

Researchers in 2007 observed the effect of sudden changes in this variable in the upregulation of alpha crystallins, or sHSPs, in the eggs of zebrafish. Saccharomyces mutants sensitive to this variable were used by Hartwell to figure out the role of cyclins in cell division. This variable is observ...

Fucitol

It would necessitate rewriting a bunch of clues and the answerline, but "this variable" or "these reaction conditions" might work better. I hate tossups using “this variable” in bio and reaction chem since that immediately narrows it to an answer space of 3 or 4. “These reaction conditions” might b...

Fucitol

I should also note that while Aseem claims that the balance of the other science was due to some form of mistake, I think the balance of the other science was better than any tournament I've played in a while. Math doesn't really deserve to have one or even more than one question per packet and I do...

Fucitol

I don't think anyone has brought this up yet, but the bonus leadins were oppressively long in many cases. This caused my team to question at several points to wonder if the moderator was accidentally reading a tossup. The exhausting effect of this was only compounded by the fact that the bonuses usu...

Fucitol

Marmaduke van Swearingen wrote:There were two too many questions on cryptocurrencies.

Given what is currently in the news, your acceptable number of cryptocurrency-related questions is at least one too low.

Fucitol

The first clue in the pendulum TU seems to me like it would be true for every SHO but that’s based on distant memories of sophomore physics. The first clue in the exoplanet tossup is taken almost directly from Wikipedia and the second half of it basically describes what an echelon spectrograph dies ...

Fucitol

Regarding point 3, while obviously you want every moderator in a top playoff bracket to be good, in my experience, the bottom brackets also especially require good moderators. I realize this sounds stupid--you want good moderators in every room if possible--but sometimes it's natural for staffers t...

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