The Quizbowl Resource Center

tpmorrison

I really enjoyed this set! Of the ICTs I’ve played, this one struck me as adhering most to modern writing practices (in a good way). Matt Bollinger mentioned in the other thread that the history distribution was updated, which I noticed and enjoyed even as a non-history player. At the same time, the...

tpmorrison

Congratulations to team Free Agents (Jason Golfinos, Stephen Liu, Justine French, Eric Chen) for clearing the field. Stats are available here. Thanks to everyone for coming to play, and thanks to Eve and Ethan for staffing!

tpmorrison

We've confirmed rooms in the Sapp Center. Please be sure to add your name to the team formation spreadsheet if you'd like to play and to email me when your team is finalized. Also, if you're listed as tentative to attend, please clarify soon. I'll assign any remaining free agents to teams later in t...

tpmorrison

This is an announcement for Stanford’s open mirror of ESPN , which will be on March 9th, 2024. Payment: The fee structure for each team is the following: - Base fee: $140 USD - Buzzer discount: -$10 / working buzzer set - Approved moderator discount: -$15 / staffer with laptop - Travel discount: -$1...

tpmorrison

I’ve seen a few bold manifestos like this one crop up recently, and while I admire the passion they demonstrate (and, in this case, think Arya did a great job as an editor), I tend to find these things rather overstated. Quizbowl is, fundamentally, an academic trivia game. I hold it in very high est...

tpmorrison

For what it’s worth, both of the Regionals that I’ve worked on (2021 and 2023) have had seven-line tossup caps. When questions pushed beyond this, it was almost always either because proofreaders extended the wording a bit for clarity or because pronunciation guides added a line or so.

tpmorrison

Thanks to everyone for all of the interesting responses so far. Echoing some others, I must admit that I find the “art film vs. non-art film” question to be a bit overblown. Quiz bowl relies on distinctions of this sort — tethered in general critical consensus and with some inherent degree of judgme...

tpmorrison

For as long as I’ve been playing quiz bowl (and especially these days), I have never understood why film comes up as infrequently as it does. A standard collegiate tournament will usually have around 3/3 or 4/4 film in it; ACF Nationals had about this many in the 20 or so packets I heard. Both of th...

tpmorrison

I really enjoyed this tournament; much thanks to all involved! I think my favorite aspects of the set were playability things already mentioned a few times — length control, buzzable but still challenging early clues, willingness to write interesting cross-category questions. Hard sets can sometimes...

tpmorrison

I edited British Literature, Math, and Philosophy for Regs this year. It was my first time editing the latter, so apologies if anything was rough around the edges. A big thanks to the entire editing team, all the playtesters, and the other ACF affiliates who chipped in to improve both my categories ...

tpmorrison

I think that some combination of length limits (e.g. 8-line tossups), earlier submission deadlines, and full packet submissions would be helpful, particularly the latter two. I’m not interested in editing (except math/stats if that’d be helpful), but I’d be happy to freelance some questions across t...

tpmorrison

Winter Closed has been uploaded to the archives and is available here. Thanks to everyone who played and/or staffed!

tpmorrison

Lots of great stuff Thanks for the detailed comments Henry! Glad to hear you liked a lot of the questions and appreciate the constructive notes, which have been quite helpful. -Packet F appears to have 3 lit bonuses in the first 6 questions Bonuses 1 and 7 are both lit, but that's it for the first ...

tpmorrison

Congratulations to Claremont Colleges, who defeated Berkeley Bleen in the first round of an advantaged final. Final stats are available here. If you see a stats error, feel free to send me an email and I'll fix it.

Thanks again to all the teams and staffers for coming!

tpmorrison

Here are the packets from the 10/1 mirrors. Do not distribute them until the set is clear.

tpmorrison

Thanks for the detailed comments, Caroline! Glad to hear you enjoyed the category overall. - What’s the rationale for using “these things” on the letters tossup? Not saying it’s bad because there does seem to be some sort of reason, I just can’t tell what it is. I’m a bit confused, is there a differ...

tpmorrison

Thanks so much to everyone who played Winter Closed! There was some editorial shuffling during the production timeline, but Tejas Raje and I ended up as co-head editors, and the subject editors were: Literature: Tim Morrison History: Hari Parameswaran (US + Euro) and Tejas Raje (World + Other) Scien...

tpmorrison

Stanford will be hosting the NorCal mirror of Winter Closed on Saturday, October 22nd. The tournament will take place in person in Thornton Center. More information about the set can be found here . If you would like to register, please send me an email at tpmorrison98@gmail.com. Your registration s...

tpmorrison

I had a lot of fun playing this set. Whenever I knew anything about a topic, I thought it was very well-written, and the remaining 95% of the time the questions were still fun to listen to because of the humor and interesting clues. I also like the academic bent of much of this set, which I think is...

tpmorrison

We’re recruiting a few science writers for Winter Closed. We have availability in all four subcategories besides math/CS. Writers are expected to contribute at least 5/5 questions. Past writing experience is encouraged but not required. If you are interested, please email me at tpmorrison98@gmail.co...

tpmorrison

The 2021 ACF Winter editors have offered to give feedback on packet submissions, and a Google form for requesting feedback has been emailed out to everyone who sent in a submission to Winter (using the email under which the team registered for Winter). We hope teams will find this useful! If you su...

tpmorrison

The 2021 ACF Winter editors have offered to give feedback on packet submissions, and a Google form for requesting feedback has been emailed out to everyone who sent in a submission to Winter (using the email under which the team registered for Winter). We hope teams will find this useful! If you sub...

tpmorrison

Last minor quibble is that the inclusion of a clue about the Bonferroni correction in the tossup on null hypotheses seemed very insider baseball and odd (unless my impression that this is a relatively minor technique that has blown up primarily in the forums-reading quizbowl community over the Terr...

tpmorrison

This thread is for discussing specific questions from 2021 ACF Winter, which should be available on the packet archive soon.

tpmorrison

This is the general discussion thread for 2021 ACF Winter. Thanks so much to everyone who played the tournament, and thanks especially to all the staffers who volunteered their time to make this weekend a success. By my rough count, we had 182 teams play ACF Winter and 78 submit half-packets, both v...

tpmorrison

Reminder that the final deadline is this Sunday, October 31st, at 11:59 PM Pacific. Any team that is packet-required and has not submitted a half-packet by then will be dropped from the tournament, with no exceptions.

tpmorrison

I really enjoyed this set! Can I see the tossup on probability density functions? 16. Approaches to estimating this function often seek to minimize the mean integrated squared error. The Parzen–Rosenblatt window is a common non-parametric method used to estimate this function using kernels. This fu...

tpmorrison

I really enjoyed this set! Can I see the tossup on probability density functions?

tpmorrison

Reminder to email me at [email protected] if you would like to playtest the set next week. I'll be sending out a link to the Discord server this weekend.

tpmorrison

Reminder that the +$50 packet deadline is this Sunday, October 24th, at 11:59 PM Pacific. There will be an additional $10/day penalty for each day after October 24th. If teams required to submit a half-packet have not submitted by October 31st, they will be dropped from the tournament, with no excep...

tpmorrison

Playtesting for ACF Winter will start on Monday, October 25th and will last until Saturday, October 30th. It will occur over Discord. Please email me at winter@acf-quizbowl.com if you are interested in participating. You must no longer be in school to join. Playtesters cannot discuss question conten...

tpmorrison

Reminder that the +$25 packet deadline is this Sunday, October 17th at 11:59 PM Pacific.

tpmorrison

Reminder that the third packet deadline is this Sunday, October 3rd at 11:59 PM Pacific. Get your packets in by then if you don't want a penalty!

tpmorrison

Reminder that the -$25 packet deadline is in three days, September 19th, at 11:59 PM Pacific! The -$25 deadline has been extended to 11:59 PM Pacific on Friday, September 24th. Please send your packets in, and make sure to request a distribution if you haven't already! Today is the last day to subm...

tpmorrison

tpmorrison wrote: ↑Thu Sep 16, 2021 10:06 pm Reminder that the -$25 packet deadline is in three days, September 19th, at 11:59 PM Pacific!

The -$25 deadline has been extended to 11:59 PM Pacific on Friday, September 24th. Please send your packets in, and make sure to request a distribution if you haven't already!

tpmorrison

Reminder that the -$25 packet deadline is in three days, September 19th, at 11:59 PM Pacific!

tpmorrison

tpmorrison wrote: ↑Sun Aug 29, 2021 12:47 pm Reminder that the -$50 packet deadline is a week from today, September 5th, at 11:59 PM Pacific!

The -$50 deadline is tomorrow, September 5th, at 11:59 PM Pacific

tpmorrison

Reminder that the -$50 packet deadline is a week from today, September 5th, at 11:59 PM Pacific!

tpmorrison

I’m not his teammate anymore, but Matthew Lehmann is an eminently delightful person and would be well-deserving of some “nicest person in quiz bowl” votes if that ever happens again. Ben Miller, Grant Li, and Alston Boyd were an exceptionally fun group of people to play with last year, and I of cour...

tpmorrison

This is the official announcement for 2021 ACF Winter, which will be held on November 6th, 2021 . Like last year’s set, this set will target a difficulty halfway between ACF Fall and ACF Regionals. The tournament will be head edited by me (Tim Morrison). The subject editors will be: Ethan Ashbrook: ...

tpmorrison

Referring to Sandi as her half-brother in the Wide Sargasso Sea tossup kind of threw me off, since Antoinette refers to him as her cousin throughout the book. I'm not entirely clear on their exact relation, but it seems like from a quick command+f in the book that he's the son of Alexander Cosway, ...

tpmorrison

Could I see the tossup on Pangloss? I buzzed second line with Candide because Candide also goes with Pangloss to see the dervish and participates in the conversation with him. (The Wikipedia summary makes out Candide to be the most involved in that conversation, though admittedly in the book he onl...

tpmorrison

I, and at least a few other people I've spoken to, found the Turing tossup confusingly worded. My teammate buzzed and negged with Searle at the same place I would have, shortly before Searle's name was said. I had just studied the Chinese Room thought experiment with what I thought was a reasonable...

tpmorrison

In addition to the ones Jaimie already mentioned, here is a non-exhaustive list of some of my favorite submissions (not all of which were edited by me): Berkeley A: tossup on Homer (in the works of Derek Walcott), bonus on translations of Yeats MIT A: tossup on millers in The Canterbury Tales UNC B:...

tpmorrison

I really enjoyed this set! Echoing some previous posts, I was a big fan of the expanded Math/CS/Stats/etc. distribution and would love to see more sets go in that direction. I’m sure I’m forgetting some stuff, but the questions on ensemble classifiers, the Dartmouth workshop, web scraping, numerical...

tpmorrison

I really enjoyed this tournament - thanks so much to John, Wonyoung, and Noah for all their hard work! The questions were lots of fun to play, and even the ones I knew nothing about were interesting to listen to. The daily format was a fantastic idea and kept me a lot more excited about the tourname...

tpmorrison

Even as someone who basically just twiddled my thumbs during the classical questions (which I’m sure were great), I had a really fun time playing this set, so thanks a lot to Wonyoung for all his hard work! My main nitpick was the album issue, which Wonyoung already brought up. I guess the biggest t...

tpmorrison

I'll be starting a Stats Ph.D at Stanford and plan to continue playing there

tpmorrison

Robyn - Dancing on My Own vs. Kendrick Lamar - m.A.A.d. City

Kanye West (ft. Pusha-T) - Runaway vs. Frank Ocean - Pyramids

tpmorrison

Robyn - Dancing on My Own vs. LCD Soundsystem - dance yrself clean Daft Punk (ft. Pharrell Williams & Nile Rodgers) - Get Lucky vs. Kendrick Lamar - m.A.A.d. City Kanye West (ft. Pusha-T) - Runaway vs. Alvvays - Archie, Marry Me Courtney Barnett - Pedestrian at Best vs. Frank Ocean - Pyramids

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