The Quizbowl Resource Center

No Rules Westbrook

If you guys need any help staffing for the tournament, I can swing over.

No Rules Westbrook

Matt Lafer and I will be playing. We can sometimes get humanities questions if they drone on long enough to get to the one thing we still remember about the answer, provided that I don't neg it first by buzzing on a thing that I thought I remembered about the answer. Science, classical music, or any...

No Rules Westbrook

In fairness to Andrew on that Elkhorn Tavern mixup, it was late in the game and he was trying to make my middle answer choice of Sterling Price easier. (probably not a bad idea)

No Rules Westbrook

Yeah, pre-colonial African history is a quagmire. Different scholars disagree on what was or wasn't an empire, and there's so much intermingling and fluidity. I'm sympathetic to people who said Fulani, or even Sokoto.

No Rules Westbrook

If any teams out there still need teammates, feel free to hit me up.

No Rules Westbrook

I just sent my packet in to Fred.

No Rules Westbrook

I'll have a packet to you on 8/4 before that time, Fred.

No Rules Westbrook

Jordan's post on cross-purposes is interesting, followed up by Bollinger's post looking at the same sort of dichotomy. As I read Bollinger's post, he's advocating more in favor of the "gradual canon expansion" model that I've always used as my baseline for writing (at least, as opposed to Ike's impu...

No Rules Westbrook

I don't have the time or desire to write a long post right now, but I may compose one later. Ike brought me onto this tournament explaining from the start that he wanted it to be his "final flourish," his goodbye manifesto to mainstream quizbowl writing, and that (because of Ike's interests and inte...

No Rules Westbrook

I think this has been a problem for years now. Basically, the only evaluation you see after a set nowadays is either: (1) arguments about clues in a handful of specific questions that a certain poster was nonplussed with (usually in predictable categories like classical music or science where there'...

No Rules Westbrook

Look, I'm not going to come close to agreeing with you namby-pamby PC millenials. (for those too young to know what I'm about, I have absolutely no patience for restricting or modifying speech based on people's feelings...which is, of course, what we're contemplating). And, at least once in a blue m...

No Rules Westbrook

We don't need censorship. Moderators were given a choice about what to say, which is the standard gesture. I'll go a step further on the Earl Butz quote and say that the clue is interesting precisely because of the quote itself and the context in which it occurred - changing the quote or paraphrasin...

No Rules Westbrook

Dylan and Mike Sorice have joined Lafer and myself on a team.

No Rules Westbrook

Matt Lafer and I have registered as a team. Please shoot one of us an email if anyone is looking for teammates.

No Rules Westbrook

I didn't get around to seeing and replying to the Facebook post, but I can probably offer you a packet for this.

No Rules Westbrook

It may just be my particular approach to writing and editing, but I believe ACF Nats would be immensely more work for a team of editors if it were not packet submission...and would probably be lower quality overall as a result. I don't think that packet sub increases or warps difficulty at all - if ...

No Rules Westbrook

I'm in to play this. I fucking suck even more than all the other old people in this thread pointing out how much they suck.

I may have a hard side tournament for people to play at this event, if there's time in the schedule, and if I finish writing it.

No Rules Westbrook

I'll happily play this tournament.

No Rules Westbrook

Good lookin' out, Rob.

No Rules Westbrook

I have no interest whatsoever in restricting the field size, especially not on the criterion of who is the best team. I'd like to see as many teams as possible play. I love the trend of seeing very young freshman/sophomore based teams willing to come out to CO (with no expectation of the tournament ...

No Rules Westbrook

When I've done incentives like this in the past, I've tried to factor in the "experience of the team writing" into my holistic evaluation of the packet. Grade on a curve in some cases, essentially. But yeah, I'm pretty sympathetic to Eliza's viewpoint here. The number of people willing to play CO se...

No Rules Westbrook

Speaking as one of the two other co-editors of this CO (hope that's not a spoiler), my major concern is with the regressive nature of this scheme. I like the motivation behind the scheme (even if I share Jerry's skepticism about its efficacy). CO attendance is at an all-time high, and even when the ...

No Rules Westbrook

Someday, I'm gonna get around to reading this thread.

Not today, but someday. I hope it's the same day I finish my JRPG tournament.

No Rules Westbrook

Sounds like Stephen Liu is asking for more contract law in quizbowl. Peppercorns for everyone!

No Rules Westbrook

They existed, but I'd say they were much more rare. The thrust of my longer post above was that, back in the day, you could often sit around and wait until the last couple clues of a question - especially if it was a fairly hard question - because there weren't as many specialists around ("hyper" on...

No Rules Westbrook

Yeah, I support this post a lot. I'd also say that it's fine to joke around a little bit, which is something that seems like it's going out of style. I enjoy that Ike puts references to being "cuckoo for Okonkwo puffs," and throws out asides like mentioning the appearance of a quote in the game The ...

No Rules Westbrook

I agree with Andrew Hart, but let's not forget that we have much deeper fields at Nats now than we had from 2005-2010. It's not nearly as "top-heavy" as it used to be - there are lots of okay players who can make solid buzzes (again, no doubt due to the democratization effect of having all the past ...

No Rules Westbrook

A couple of things about this post strike me as amusing for discussion purposes. First, I love the line about old Michigan being a team full of players who would "be buzzing by the end of almost any question," because it reminds me that there used to be a certain type of player that really isn't aro...

No Rules Westbrook

You don't need to wait for the set to be posted to start writing your Chi Open tossups on PBS Pinchback.

No Rules Westbrook

presented it in a way that wasn't so brutal on the players.

I called my tournament FIST for a reason.

No Rules Westbrook

The Anti-Canonist Movement wants to turn all question into audio/visual mosaics that speak in code to people who have taken the right class or read the right textbook, while excluding people who have learned clues on their filthy flashcards (at least until post-FTP - where those filthy dogs can have...

No Rules Westbrook

I just wanna say that Punt tossup sucked balls. The whole thing was basically screaming "this sure sounds like a magical place where Egyptians went and got cool stuff!" - but that's because there really are not many other clues for Punt. The examples that people give are always funny to me - that An...

No Rules Westbrook

I'm sorry, I rather purposely derailed this thread by making a pointed ideological comment. I've always felt that quizbowl at its best is something sui generis - and that it doesn't need to rely upon, or have continual reference to, a concept of an academic curriculum in order to maintain a reasonab...

No Rules Westbrook

Yeah, I'm a pretty big fan of asking about crusty old dudes like Lester Ward and Patrick Geddes who have very limited relevance to actual study in the modern sense (or easier examples like Henry George or William Graham Sumner). I realize that's not everybody's cup of tea. I think the "quizbowl as a...

No Rules Westbrook

Ike's not kidding when he says this Nats was his baby. He put in such a massive amount of work all across the set, and was a fantastic editor to work with throughout. On social science, I'd say the amount of both anthro and econ was probably a bit on the low side - with a slightly heavier focus on p...

No Rules Westbrook

It does, but you're still 9 karma points short, and thus will remain in the Bracket of Death

No Rules Westbrook

Matt Lafer and I are seeking teammates for CO. Science and music players welcome.

No Rules Westbrook

I'd like to sign up for WANG, the visual porn event at this year's CO.

No Rules Westbrook

Rob Carson's acceptably 21st-century email address, rob.f.carson@gmail.com.

This post is reserved for Ryan Westbrook to defend his AOL Mail account, and other forms of absurd Luddite behaviors.

No Rules Westbrook

Eric's spreadsheet doesn't show that my packet has been received - but Jerry's post does and a couple editors have told me it has - so I assume it's typo

No Rules Westbrook

I'll probably be around for this - anybody out there looking to form another team?

No Rules Westbrook

Jake, I fully intend to write a fan sequel to this tournament (maybe I'll call it Crimson Echoes). For now, I think I'd like to take a try at just writing it myself - after spending a lot of time to play through the games I don't know very well. Perhaps we'll combine forces at some point, or perhaps...

No Rules Westbrook

Just like Miranda and Alonso above, this tournament was fantastic. Thanks for putting it together, guys.

No Rules Westbrook

I will likely be able to play this.

No Rules Westbrook

Naturally, I've been flippantly overstating my position in the last couple posts, as I think people can sense. You should absolutely not be content with just reading packets on its own, but rather use those packets as a guide to do your own research - which you have to do if you're writing questions...

No Rules Westbrook

It isn't trolling at all. The free throw analogy is adept - packet reading builds your "canon mastery" stat, and that's something that I absolutely think this game should require players to demonstrate in order to be dominant players. To the extent that qb writing is moving away from making players ...

No Rules Westbrook

I'm not sure you can write a good "sacks of Rome" question for a tournament above ACF Fall level. And, 100 hours of packet reading!? That's just crazy. You should be doing way, way more packet reading than that. Packet reading is the equivalent of a basketball player practicing their free throws. Ge...

No Rules Westbrook

Oh, to be clear, I don't mean this as any sort of charge against MJack, and I don't think anyone is deliberately "colluding." But, it does seem that certain books can covertly "make the rounds" in quizbowl at certain times, and magically appear as clues in questions after they do - my only issue is ...

No Rules Westbrook

Also, this is a good thread because Jerry, in his initial post, has quite eloquently defined the differences in two identifiable styles that appear in this game. I think he's defined it in a way that makes sense to more people - we usually just use loaded terms like "transparent" or "real knowledge"...

No Rules Westbrook

I think answerlines of "plebeian secessions," "Rome" based on clues about plebeian secessions in Rome, and "plebeians" are all hideously awful ideas for a tossup. I think they'd all be very hard to write without various degrees of transparency, and all of them would play poorly in most instances. I ...

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