The Quizbowl Resource Center

Red Panda Cub

Interested to hear that the "one hand up" system has worked effectively in the UK. My initial impression about that is that it's (a) exhausting depending on how you're doing it and (b) likely to lead to a lot of accidental non-compliance which leads to the norm of people not doing it. At the same t...

Red Panda Cub

I don't understand why this has not been adopted as standard outside of the UK yet, but there is an incredibly easy way, when cameras are on, to make sure people aren't cheating. Just require players for whom it is possible to do so to keep one hand on screen at all times. You can keep the other han...

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I think the same process that goes into "understanding" a poem goes into writing it. It goes without saying that you should read the poem first, but the "reading" of the poem is of course greatly enhanced by getting context, since most readers won't be able to get every allusion or reference in the...

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I wonder if there is much marginal gain from this system over the easy to implement system I prefer. Namely: just require players to have at least one hand visible on their webcam during live questions. It's pretty hard to google stuff quickly typing with one hand, and most players can show a hand w...

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[N.B. This post is not about a quizbowl tournament, but discussion with a forum mod led to the conclusion that this subforum was nevertheless the most appropriate venue for it] Mimir's Well: What is it? Daoud Jackson, George Charlson and I have started an online trivia league, which we think should ...

Red Panda Cub

Will bonuses at this event be able to distinguish teams particularly well? I'm wondering if this would be more appropriate as a tossup-only mirror. For most teams involved, I take it that this is mainly going to be buzzer practice for fun, and most bonuses will get quickly 20d or 30d. I would be in...

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Red Panda Cub

Assessing difficulty of questions is notoriously difficult, especially when the material covered is novel or under-asked. Even if the thing being asked about has come up before, without combing over tournament discussion or making use of only recently available advanced stats, it can still be hard t...

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I really liked this tournament, and don't have much to say by way of overarching criticism beyond two little things. I think this did echo some of the PIANO complaints where tossups may have been made a little bit worse by the drive to improve convertibility. One that immediately comes to mind (I di...

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I think it is basically just, under the influence of Kyle Haddad-Fonda, the UK circuit that has much interest in the Deep Bench format. He likely introduced it at as a way to make up for the fact that at most tournaments Oxford comprised about 1/4 of the teams, so finding a format where the balance ...

Red Panda Cub

What time is this likely to start/end? Am interested in playing, but being 5-8 hours ahead means my window of availability is shifted.

Red Panda Cub

People worth considering from this side of the pond, some of whom didn't get much exposure in virtue of not playing Nats this year: Joseph Krol -- strong on lit, fine arts, maths and basically everything else. Extremely conservative on the buzzer, but that doesn't stop him from buzzing a lot (betwee...

Red Panda Cub

Stock Clues remains the best quizbowl tournament.

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I want to elaborate on two main goals that I wanted to achieve while editing the tournament. First, I wanted to align CO, an emblem of the very highest level of quizbowl, with the conversations that have been taking place throughout this year about how to make the game more inclusive and welcoming ...

Red Panda Cub

Yogesh is obviously the best, but we have several very good players in the UK. The top three are probably Oliver Sweetenham, Charlie Clegg and Jonathan Gibson, but Mark Grant and Tris Cole are also really good.

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It is an honour to announce the renewal of the Early Fall Tournament for autumn 2018 . I shall be head-editing the tournament, with subject assistance from Alex Damisch, Ewan MacAulay, Dylan Minarik, Tejas Raje, Ramapriya Rangaraju and Ryan Rosenberg. Will Alston and Rob Carson will be providing an ...

Red Panda Cub

that bonus on artists from some poet writing about them (Vermeer / Reubens / Breugel the Elder) was bad, and very very hard. Contrary to this I thought this bonus was a lot of fun and a nice way to ask the questions, and wasn't at all out of place difficulty wise. The Vermeer part included a full d...

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The string TU's answer line should probably have something to say about how to deal with someone buzzing and saying "bracelet". I was delighted to hear Harry Frankfurt's super excellent book on Descartes clued in the 'Meditations' tossup, but that clue, because of the title, really lends itself to f...

Red Panda Cub

I actually quite enjoyed this set, especially the lit, VFA and history. The lit and VFA I thought did a really good job of clueing things that people engage with organically and things were generally described well. On the one hand, the lit clueing was perhaps on the hard end. On the other hand, I t...

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We used this at Oxford yesterday and most rooms didn't have two moderators and the tournament ran to schedule. Many people (including me) preferred using this system to paper scoring, and I think it is probably faster. I don't think anyone but me had used it before, and no one looked at how to use i...

Red Panda Cub

This was the most fun I've had playing a quizbowl tournament. Thank you so much to John and Max for putting it together. I really hope someone else writes another food tournament soon.

Red Panda Cub

Periplus of the Erythraean Sea wrote: Cambridge gains Jason Golfinos

Cambridge also loses Evan Lynch, who top scored for them at ACF Nationals and BSQC. Evan will be at Southampton for a PhD, making them a threat on the UK circuit.

Red Panda Cub

I wonder which three post-Blair PMs will be tossed up.

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In 1990 this country's Cighid orphanage became notorious for its terrible conditions. This country banned abortion and contraception in Decree 770. In 1989 mass protests in Timisoara led to the fall of this country's longtime Communist leader, who was (*) executed on television alongside his wife E...

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Muriel Axon wrote:Meanwhile, Americans will be conducting the "most stereotypically British-sounding name" poll, in which Oliver Sweetenham is an early favorite.

Quite French, actually. He's literally named after the character from Le Chanson de Roland.

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Tornrak wrote:
Short-beaked echidna wrote:I'm writing an extremely hard packet about early church history, available from Sunday.
Was this finished? Is anyone else interested in playing this?

Sorry, it got put on the backburner due to finals. I'll write it for early summer.

Red Panda Cub

Am free to write/edit lit/phil/VFA for anything regular difficulty or harder. If you enjoyed my WAO work feel free to PM or FB me to discuss.

Red Panda Cub

The only person who beat George to bio at Nationals this year was Eric, and, as Will said in the player poll thread, we had 26ppb on bio at Nats, so I think George deserves a look-in here. He also got the chemistry tossup in every playoff game except those against Stanford (who have a chemistry PhD ...

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I'm writing an extremely hard packet about early church history, available from Sunday.

Red Panda Cub

We came 8th at Nats and Berkeley A came 9th, not the other way around.

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Athena Kern and I are teaming up for this.

Red Panda Cub

Yeah, the Oates bonus--those are pretty memorable last words but it's very, very hard to pull the exact verbiage. I might have asked for a portion of the words ("Oates said he was just going outside and he may be what?") or given the words and asked for the situation. Amusingly, at the UK site, thi...

Red Panda Cub

Well, I assume they're going to get more specific in the private discussion forum, but I also think that this sort of drive-by mockery isn't exactly productive. I thought the set wasn't perfect, but it was enjoyable and particularly in some areas was really very strong. I agree my comment is unnece...

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Perhaps I'm a prig, but this set's sense of humour seemed to be that of an 11 year old boy. A good way to study would have just to look for instances of the words "cock" or "butt" in various categories. Also, many of us at the UK site felt that there was some racially careless language used, which s...

Red Panda Cub

The accordion bonus said it was a wind instrument with a keyboard, and I don't think many people are going to anything other than guess accordion when they hear that description.

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"It will adhere very closely to the difficulty and stylistic feel of last season's critically-acclaimed "stanford housewrite" set."

ummm

Red Panda Cub

There's not much point in saying this, for obvious reasons, but you can impute whatever motivations for that first post you want, but it really had nowt to with demonstrating some weird sense of superiority, whatever that means. The fact that that accusation seemed so off-base to my is why I thought...

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Having had some time to think I'm going to reframe much of what I said. I'll recant all the points about things not being philosophy, or whatever, since that's clearly stylistic and coursework based, and the point about the interdisciplinary nature of the edges of philosophy is a good one. I'll chal...

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I haven't seen all the packets so didn't realise there was a narrative TU on a platonic dialogue. Had I known you can rest assured it would have been listed in my syllabus of errors, too.

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I'll reply tomorrow to this very mean spirited post, but for now will point out that "Meanwhile, quizbowl (and the rest of the world!) has long treated Taoism as an important branch of Eastern philosophy, and George Santayana is a guy who is famous as fuck, important at least historically, and certa...

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Philosophy commentary (with assistance from Alston Boyd). The causes of the perception described above here were of a very different and much more explicable sort than in lit and phil, which is why I'll make this post first. I will do my best to read the other categories through soon and try to work...

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I appreciate the points made by you, Andrew and Stephen, and I have no disagreement with you in principle, and while reading your list of clues/answers here it looks reasonable. Nevertheless I cannot shake the sentiment I had (one that was echoed by other players at the site, and apparently other pe...

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I have rather mixed feelings about this tournament. I thought the history, visual OFA, myth and religion were overall well executed, and people at my site seemed to enjoy the chemistry. However, the literature, painting and philosophy did not feel quite up to snuff, perhaps largely for reasons idios...

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I extremely do not have a horse in this race, but the replies to John seem to rather miss the mark in ways demonstrated most clearly by Fred's odd post: The onus is on NAQT, not on the teams. If you earn a bid to a tournament, you should be able to accept it without criticism of that action. What is...

Red Panda Cub

I moderated at the UK site of this tournament and it was an awful lot of fun. The set is filled with a lot of great ideas and whimsy, so I strongly recommend people mirror it!

Red Panda Cub

Cheynem wrote:Charlie is from Kansas City; I assume he happened to be home when SCT was running. I also have thoughts on this topic, but I'll wait for a full thread.

Would the St. Louis site not have been twice as near, in that case?

Red Panda Cub

Are there any significant differences between the Oxford and Cambridge sets? The Oxford one has been entirely written and already used for a tournament, while the Cambridge won't be used for its first mirror for about a month. Edit: Oxford one is 20/20 with 6 line TUs, Cambridge is 24/24 with 5 lin...

Red Panda Cub

Yeah, I'm not sure what evidence is being (or could possibly be) adduced for the claim that "middle parts seem to have been chosen with the philosophy that anything that comes up at hard tournaments is fair." Of the things pointed out in my categories, I think a lot more of it is about a misjudgment...

Red Panda Cub

I noticed there was an usually large amount of ethics tossups. It was an interesting break from the more text-focused or thinker-focused tossups most people write to hear harder questions on things like compatiblism, even if that meant I got less questions or negged (which I did a lot of). Ummm, wh...

Red Panda Cub

The tossup on sausage, which I assume was Geography or Other, did not accept or prompt on "bologna" despite including a clue on Lebanon bologna. The answerline actually said to accept specific types of sausage, so that's down to moderator error. As a very enlightened vegetarian, I did not know unti...

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