The Quizbowl Resource Center

Ewan MacAulay

I'll jump on the Terrapin 2016 train - a really solid regular-difficulty set which still managed to feel fresh. Penn Bowl 2015 was another fun set, although alas the last PB set that have remembered that time difference means that UK sites need packets earlier than American ones. On either side of r...

Ewan MacAulay

Hi Paul, Very sorry to hear about Cambridge's lack of response - I think a few of our club officers are in the middle of their final exams right now so have been cutting back on the quiz. If you're still interested in hosting a mirror, do please drop me a line on at emacaulay106 [AT] google's e-mail...

Ewan MacAulay

I think a Spring tournament that tries to have a more "NAQT" distro should be a regular part of the schedule (I'm thinking of that one that Will did a few years ago and FICHTE [but don't be like FICHTE]). Cambridge would probs be interested in collaborating on this for the foreseeable future. Past ...

Ewan MacAulay

Adam and Billy have said most of what I was going to mention, but I'll spiel on anyways. This set was pretty fun, and it seems that it benefitted from the week of work after the first mirror. That said bits of it did feel a bit off, and the chemistry could have used a bit more time and care. The car...

Ewan MacAulay

Any thoughts on running an open playtest mirror like EFT and EMT? This is a possibility; if it happens, it will likely be held a week before for a relatively small field. More details will be announced in the future. Would it be possible to make the UK mirror this early test mirror? Cambridge would...

Ewan MacAulay

To my knowledge, all the planned mirrors of CamO have now been completed. If you were planning on holding another mirror, please drop me a line as soon as possible with details, otherwise we'll clear the set this week, set up a discussion thread, and properly get some handbags out. Thanks to everyon...

Ewan MacAulay

Hi all, Thanks for playing our set, and hope that at least some of it was enjoyable - sorry to hear that it didn't quite meet with the universal acclaim we'd hoped for. I've requested a private discussion forum, but in the meantime I'd be very grateful for any comments either in general or on the sc...

Ewan MacAulay

While trying to go to ACF Fall this year my train hit three cows on the line just outside Melton Mowbray. We then had to wait two hours for the fire brigade to come and cut the cows out from underneath the front carriage. Eventually made it to Warwick four hours late, and wasn't even compensated by ...

Ewan MacAulay

Cambridge will write a regular difficulty mNAQT set in late February/early March slot. Drop me a line if you'd be interested in helping put it together/ adapt it for the Atlantically-challenged

Ewan MacAulay

- Optional packet-submission tournaments, with relaxed submission requirements (ala WAO) should be more of a thing. These allow people to write on areas that they prefer, without being slapped with having to write a subject they may possess no knowledge of whatsoever (particularly more difficult on...

Ewan MacAulay

This tournament happened. Oxford A went unbeaten through the round robin, with Cambridge A on one loss, forcing an advantaged final. Cambridge A won the first final by five points when Oxford were unable to get more than 10 on the last set of bonuses, taking it to a second final. Although Cambridge ...

Ewan MacAulay

Aaron Manby (ironmaster) wrote:
Aaron's Rod wrote:Will Nediger is Canadian.
Will Nediger is the only person to have won ICT, ACF Nationals, and Reach for the Top Nationals. Has anyone come close to winning all three of ICT, ACF Nationals, and University Challenge?

We're backing Jason Golfinos to do the triple next year

Ewan MacAulay

heterodyne wrote:
Oo-kamakiri wrote:Alston spends 26 minutes jerking himself off about how good he is at philosophy.
hey man I just needed a break from hearing about the 2013 international linguistics olympiad

Cambridge feel your pain

Ewan MacAulay

CPiGuy wrote:
setht wrote:
CPiGuy wrote:However, it's important to note that there are tournaments that use the SCT and ICT sets after the SCT and ICT main events run. (Including a national championship!)
What national championship is this?

British nationals are run off SCT D1 in May

Ewan MacAulay

I've already mentioned this in the "Scheduling Reform" part of the forums but posting here to improve visibility. Cambridge University Quiz Society have finished the 2017 Cambridge Open set. The set was generally well-received at the UK mirror ("Magnificently quirky" - Ben Salter, 2017), and we've b...

Ewan MacAulay

The Cambridge University Quiz Society is delighted to announce that it will be hosting the UK mirror of EMT on Saturday the 6th of May. The tournament will take place in the Chancellor's Center at Wolfson College, Cambridge (CB3 9LY). Registration will begin at 9:30 am with the aim of starting play ...

Ewan MacAulay

Canada is interested in a mirror of Cambridge Open, possibly in the near future. What would the mirror fee be for Cambridge Open and whom could I contact to further discuss a mirror of it? Hi Isaac - great to hear you guys are interested. We're setting the mirror fee at £25 per team. If you'd like ...

Ewan MacAulay

Cambridge are writing a 14-packet set for the 11th of March that is intended to land around college regular difficulty. We'd be happy to offer it up for transatlantic mirrors if there's interest. Caveat: some of the history and literature as currently written will probably not play well among Ameri...

Ewan MacAulay

Also yeah the whole of the Changi sentence in the Singapore TU seems a bit out of place. The entire theme of this geography tossup was about the Draconian measures / homogenous culture of Singapore. The clue might be a bit easy - indeed 50% of the rooms at the main site powered it, but I don't thin...

Ewan MacAulay

The chemistry and physics in this tournament were very good - solid answerline and clue selection all through, with plenty of fresh stuff. Apart from all my negs, my greatest regret from the day was not being able to play the gold nanoparticles TU in the finals packet (though the sting is softened b...

Ewan MacAulay

As far as the current status of the Cambridge set goes: The British history and literature are essentially finished, in case there's a wish to start Americanising this set. It would also be mostly playable unamericanised - that's the approach we take with everything regular and above in the UK, and...

Ewan MacAulay

I was going to post all the things I negged and complain that they were bad clues, though upon reading through the set I'm realising that I'm just bad at listening. This was a pretty solid set on the bits of science that I cared about - nice job finding fresh leadins for acetic acid and formaldehyde...

Ewan MacAulay

Cambridge are writing a 14-packet set for the 11th of March that is intended to land around college regular difficulty. We'd be happy to offer it up for transatlantic mirrors if there's interest. Caveat: some of the history and literature as currently written will probably not play well among Americ...

Ewan MacAulay

I really enjoyed this set. It hit the difficulty target right on the nose and strikes me as a very good model of what regular should look like if the goal of easing it up marginally is carried forward. This set was very good. There seemed to be more South Asian content than normal, but deffos the m...

Ewan MacAulay

Our team negged the "decryption" tossup with "factorisation" on the clue about Shor's algorithm - could the clue made more specific? The first clue of the elimination tossup sounded a hell of a lot like catalytic Riley oxidation. Maybe could be rephrased as "In a reaction of this type hydrogen perox...

Ewan MacAulay

I would like to apologize to the Oxford and Georgia mirrors, however, particularly the Oxford one, for not sending out the packets on time. We were working as quickly as we could Friday and Saturday morning, but we should have made preparations ahead of time to avoid having to send the packets out ...

Ewan MacAulay

St Trinians features a buzzer quiz presented by Stephen Fry and is also just generally a great movie.

Ewan MacAulay

Some results seemingly not yet up on the searchable tournament database thingy: BSQC 2016 , MUT Cambridge mirror , Varsity 2016 (I can't seem to find full results for this in any of the obvious places - will edit in link when one is available) Varsity results: Ox Committee 230-320 Cam Committee Ric...

Ewan MacAulay

So this happened. Cambridge A beat Cambridge B in the final to claim overall victory. Joey Goldman was top-scorer with 110.5 PPG, while Daoud Jackon and Ben Salter both put up impressive individual stats with over 50 PPG. Full stats here: http://www.hsquizbowl.org/db/tournaments/3700/stats/all_games...

Ewan MacAulay

Is there any possibility that someone will be live streaming/blogging/tweeting the final like for HSNCT?

Ewan MacAulay

Cambridge University Quiz Society will be hosting a mirror of MUT on the West Cambridge Site of Cambridge University on the 30th of April. The entry fee will be £40 per team, with a £5 discount for bringing a working buzzer set, and a £10 discount for travelling more than 200 miles one-way. Further ...

Ewan MacAulay

I'm in the UK in July, so will be up to contribute questions for/edit CO chemistry, physics and chemistry-ish bits of bio if that'll help.

Ewan MacAulay

So yeah, all the mirrors of this are probably done, but I thought that in the question on the ideal gas constant, saying that the slope of the logK vs 1/T plot is "inversely proportional" to it doesn't really make sense since R is a constant. Might be better to say that it gives a plot where the gra...

Ewan MacAulay

Gautam wrote:Packet 1 TU 13 on "Nitrogen": the leadin refers to a "compound". Please fix so that it does not say "compound", which nitrogen is not.

Sorry that's my bad - was meant to say "molecule".

Ewan MacAulay

I think this set did a great job (better than any set I can think of since DRAGOON) of keeping middle parts almost uniformly within range, and most of the tossup answerlines were similar. (I did notice a lot of very hard parts in chemistry in particular, and the middle parts were often a bit harder...

Ewan MacAulay

Hi all, A couple of weeks ago, Edmund Dickinson, Emma Laslett, George Corfield, David Knapp and I put together a question set called MKULTRA* for UK audiences. The set consists of questions of around MUT difficulty, 6-7 lines in length, and a quite heavily British focus. The distribution is a bit di...

Ewan MacAulay

It's very possible that we'll be able to offer Oxford Open as a regular-minus set for the early December slot this year. The target difficulty is around that of WIT 2013/MUT 2015 if people would be interested in mirroring that.

Ewan MacAulay

Field:
Oxford A
Oxford B
Oxford C
Warwick A
Warwick B
Warwick C
London
Southampton
Oxford Brookes
Sheffield
Cambridge

The field is now full at 11 teams

Ewan MacAulay

Oxford Open will happen again next year, probably on the 30th of January. We hope to continue the upward trend of the past two years in question quality.

Ewan MacAulay

Next year I'll be heading to Cambridge to start a PhD in Nanotechnology. I'll hopefully be around to play/staff most UK events.

Ewan MacAulay

I'd just like to say that I don't think there's been a set in existence with better chemistry than this one Yeah, the science (especially the chemistry) in this tournament was really well done. Tossups on the electrical double layer and water treatment were particular highlights. Thanks to all the ...

Ewan MacAulay

If I'm running the UK mirror of this in late May but haven't received the packets yet then I'm still eligible for this right?
If so, I'd like to play. I can do chemistry and fraud other science and myth, and owing to time difference I'll be basically useless after round 7.

Ewan MacAulay

Oxford University Quiz Society will be hosting a mirror of MUT at Oxford University on the 2nd of May 2015. The entry fee will be £35 per team, with a £5 discount for bringing a working buzzer set, and a £10 discount for travelling more than 200 miles one-way. The editors have kindly allowed first-y...

Ewan MacAulay

So this finally happened. After 10 rounds of hard-fought quizzing, the UK's only home-grown tournament once again ended in a Chicago A vs Chicago B final. It was a classic. Going into the final tossup, Chicago B were 20 down. Chicago B's James Lasker got the final tossup, and they pulled the first a...

Ewan MacAulay

cwRsync wrote:
Ndg wrote:For what it's worth: Based on my experience this past weekend, I would discourage people from using the Oxford Open set, in its current state, for tryouts.
In this vein, has there been an Oxford Open discussion group set up yet?

Yep, it's been set up.

Ewan MacAulay

I wrote the physics, chemistry, other science and the non-classical myth. I also wrote the tossups on The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and on Turandot. If you spotted any factual errors please drop me a line here. Also, this was one of my first tournaments writing and editing any significant quantity o...

Ewan MacAulay

First off, thanks for playing Oxford Open! I'm sure the other editors will have more substantive comments and threads of their own, but drop us a line here if you have any feelings on the set as a whole. I've got a load of people to thank for this: First to Kyle Haddad-Fonda, who originated the idea...

Ewan MacAulay

Will teams have to be comprised of players from a single university?

Ewan MacAulay

Sorry if this isn't the right place to ask, but will there be an online mirror of Regionals this year? I don't think there'll be sufficient interest for a physical mirror in the UK, especially with Oxford Open the next weekend, and it'd be nice to have a go at this set.

Ewan MacAulay

Just going to echo Dwight a bit and say that easier events such as MUT, MFT, and BSQC (run off ICT D2) have been fantastic in keeping people involved in quizbowl in the UK. The difficulty seems to be just right that it represents a noticeable step up from fall, but still is fun and doable for people...

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