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RexSueciae

Finally, the Star Wars prequel memes bonus was absolutely wonderful. I spent the entire tournament waiting for a prequel memes question, and now I find out not only was there one in the tournament, but one in the packets played at the site I was at?!? Ironic. Can someone please post it so I can yel...

RexSueciae

Hey, starting Wednesday, I'm going to get in touch with recent hosts about specifics with mirror fees and all that business -- forgot to mention this before, let me know if you'd like an invoice.

Also, if you've played EMT, there's a discussion forum for that that you can totally join.

RexSueciae

As the weeks keep barreling along, we are still open to additional mirrors whenever in any of the still-unclaimed regions (although yeah, I get that a lot of people are busy and some circuits are just at a low ebb this year). If we get through our last mirror and there is no further interest, the pa...

RexSueciae

If somebody wants to write / edit a whole question set to the tune of the former VCU Open (good luck), the easiest source of questions seems to be Oxford's or Cambridge's sets. Since they're both complete, it might actually be easier to Americanize them by amalgamating them, which would allow for su...

RexSueciae

Followup edit: Will there be a discussion thread for this tournament soon? There is now! We'd love to hear from people who participated in the Skype playtesting (as we already have) and are in the process of polishing this question set for our first in-person mirrors. Thank you again to everybody w...

RexSueciae

This is the specific question discussion thread for the Eisenhower Memorial Tournament.

As an aside, thank you to our players for all the feedback we've heard so far, as we'll be making updates all the way through our first in-person mirrors.

RexSueciae

This is the general discussion thread for the Eisenhower Memorial Tournament. A broad overview of authorship credit runs something like the following: Literature was written by Charles Hang and Gabe Guedes. History was written by Jacob O'Rourke and myself (with several contributions by Charles). Bio...

RexSueciae

Mini-update to the above, we are now also looking for a Kentucky mirror (or thereabouts) for teams wishing to play this set in that region. (Alternately, Kentucky teams can travel the couple hundred miles to our sites at OSU or WUSTL.)

RexSueciae

Updating as another month rolls by, and our first mirrors are nearly upon us! Well, in a couple weeks. If you have questions about a specific mirror site, feel free to contact the hosting team or myself for more details. Thanks to everybody looking to host or play, by the way, you guys are swell. We...

RexSueciae

One of my favorite threads since 2013 was the Making Interesting Geography Questions thread of 2014. I remember this, actually, because I've been consulting it as part of my writing for EMT. Even discounting the discussion, it's a pretty great thread for "things what ought to come up besides na...

RexSueciae

Omitting Northmont, a set with which I am not familiar, my best guess for this is something like:

Terrapin, ACF Fall, VTACO, HFT, SSNCT, Delta Burke, GSAC, Columbia, WHAQ, BASQT, LIST, SCOP, SMART, Penn Novice, HSAPQ Novice, A Set, MSNCT16

RexSueciae

I had fun.

On the subject of philosophy, could someone please post the tossup on "utilitarianism"? I am not in fact a philosophy player but am curious about modern variants of that school.

RexSueciae

Writing on this continues apace, and we've already got a bunch of mirror sites. If you'd like for this set to be played in your region, sign up to host a mirror! The list of regional mirrors are listed in the main post, of course, but we're still seeking college hosts in several very active quizbowl...

RexSueciae

Said person posting on the forums is hardly a secondhand account. Naveed continues to be in the right here. Will Alston posting on the forums is not a secondhand account either. Independent of everything else, Will Alston posting about how people told him that what he did was cool and good is, like...

RexSueciae

In an amusing case study of the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon, I have since encountered multiple references to Air America over the intervening months, among them being /r/TodayILearned and an episode of Archer where they're introduced as his transport to some mission to some place, I forget which one. ...

RexSueciae

I really, really don't think anybody was buying plane tickets and flying out to other sites for the specific purpose of winning isolated SCT sites, regardless of the effects of people from schools outside the region playing quizbowl in a different region where they happen to be located at that momen...

RexSueciae

Overestimating one's own intelligence is hard to guard against, which was a pretty big reason why I specifically avoided pretending that I am in a position to directly judge the set. I can, however, offer empirical observations of the set's apparent quality (i.e. what I learned from people who know ...

RexSueciae

Stats! Congratulations to Maryland A (DI) and Delaware (DII), who won their respective divisions! We had book prizes for individual scorers and for the winning teams. We were not able to get Delaware their book prizes. If Delaware folks are in the area at some point in the future, I can give them t...

RexSueciae

Um. I'm no arts player (hence why I was the guy presenting the questions at both UVA's WAO mirror and in practice later on) -- but that is the opposite of the impression I got, considering the reactions of everybody present. There were a few jokes tossed around, especially in the early clues of cert...

RexSueciae

WAO final stats will be uploaded shortly. In the meantime, here's the final stats for the shootout we played on Eyes That Do Not See, which lasted for six full rounds until we got kicked out of our room. Matt B: 6 / 6 / 6 / 120 Tommy C: 1 / 1 / 2 / 15 Chris M: 2 / 3 / 3 / 45 Ria W: 5 / 11 / 6 / 155 ...

RexSueciae

I much prefer the IRC to Skype when playing questions online. I would like the IRC to stick around for that reason, at least. I'm a bit busy to hang around chatting these days, but if there's a scheduled event I'd probably be able to join.

RexSueciae

Is the lack of Current Events intentional? Good point, the distribution should've said "Geography / Current Events" and "Popular Culture / Other." I've amended this. (Current Events will indeed make an appearance.) EDIT: Also, Alex Dzurick has joined us, and will be writing ques...

RexSueciae

I am pleased to announce that the Eisenhower Memorial Tournament , a regular-minus undergraduate question set, will be ready to run in Spring 2017, starting from the approximate date of March 25. This tournament's writing staff, at present, includes the following brave souls: Alex Damisch, Ryan Hump...

RexSueciae

I've heard from five or six people who are very keen on writing, and whom I think can put out a quality product. Once I hammer things out, I think I'll get everybody together, make a forum post, all the stuff that usually happens with producing a question set. Mark the calendars, there will be a lat...

RexSueciae

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...

RexSueciae

Also, forcing another regular difficulty tournament into January (especially since everybody is being reminded that it's being thrown together on short notice) seems like an odd allocation of quizbowl energy. I meant for another tournament to be written for spring, MUT-style. Not January -- what wi...

RexSueciae

So we've got WAO, Regs, SCT, This Tournament is a Crime, aaand nothing else until nationals. That's two (!) regular-difficulty events in the spring semester and zero below regular (discounting delayed mirrors of sets from months in the past) (I guess DII SCT is below regular but nobody really plays ...

RexSueciae

This thing?

RexSueciae

Your proposed distribution is alright with the proposed amount of literature, history, science, geography, and trash (I trust that the distribution within categories is standard as well), and fine arts is okay (1 visual, 1 auditory?) but 2 social science per round is very difficult at the high schoo...

RexSueciae

It might be a good idea to push SCT back a week or so to give teams time to actually register, make travel plans, etc. -- this probably shouldn't go too far on account on ICT, ACF Regionals (Feb 28th), and This Tournament Is A Crime, but since this semester already has about one fewer regular-diffic...

RexSueciae

It's a real shame that both EFT and Terrapin aren't eligible for discussion in this thread since both, to the best of my knowledge, are not yet clear. (Side note: come on, lads, it's an early fall tournament and we're now in early winter , d'you see?) They had some good questions. Then there's quest...

RexSueciae

For posterity, the score for my Festivus packet looked something like this:

kenji 10 davidseal 10 avp 10 sambrochin 30 themoma 10 lafer 10 FestivusMaximus 30 Victor -5 csheep 10 gettysburg11 10 FestivusTrumpus 10 Dylan 10

RexSueciae

Nah, the order gets improvised.

RexSueciae

Amazon claims my gift was delivered Friday, but my partner has not responded, suggesting there was a problem with delivery or something. Since madness is doing something twice and expecting a different result, it should arrive again on the 28th. It's possible that they've been busy or something. If...

RexSueciae

RexSueciae wrote:I will probably have finished at some point a packet on "fictional characters in popular music."

Without a doubt, this is still happening.

RexSueciae

Go to mibbit.com and load up the client. On the drop-down list that says "Connect: Mibbit", select Slashnet instead. Type in a nick (your name, your forum username, something not stupid) and type "#quizbowl" into the space for the channel. Press the button that says "Connect...

RexSueciae

We won't -- people will add their names to the scheduling doc, hop onto the IRC #quizbowl channel, and engage in feats of strength.

If anybody's looking for a good IRC client and not keen on installing stuff, I recommend Mibbit.

RexSueciae

I remember when a number of people (including myself) had the bright idea that world literature was an important thing that people ought to ask about more in high school quizbowl, regardless of difficulty, how well they'd play, or how well the community at large would take this development. Can some...

RexSueciae

I'd almost agree with you, but Stranger to Stranger has a fighting chance in my book.

RexSueciae

Okay, so for these questions the number-one thing is, "does [clue] apply to only one reasonable answerline?" For example, I have no doubt that the police are testing proprioception when they make you touch your nose, and that this is to identify [alcohol] intoxication in humans, but police...

RexSueciae

All twenty-one of you ought to have received an email titled "Your SMV Partner" fairly recently. I have begun to undergo semantic satiation from sending these emails by hand. Go wild! Find a thing and mail it. Or email it, I guess, it's the 21st century. Exercise your radical freedom! http...

RexSueciae

Assignments will be going out no later than tomorrow, 6PM. That's after an exam I'm taking, for which I am currently studying. Best of luck to anybody out there who's in a similar situation.

RexSueciae

I'm only going to comment on the questions in subjects that I'm deeply familiar with: I like the Italy in religion tossup, and I think the clue progression is good (Bonfire of the Vanities is probably placed correctly given the intended audience) although I admit that when I think of Trent, I don't ...

RexSueciae

If anybody's signed up and hasn't gotten an email from me asking for your mailing address, let me know!

You will receive your assignment once I get addresses from, like, four people, including some whom I've just emailed.

RexSueciae

Right, so we have 8 people so far, which is...less than a third of last year. But it's also December 10th. I'm going to extend the deadline by one day, so if anybody wants to jump in at the last minute you've now got an additional 24 hours to do so. Also, I'm going to start emailing everyone current...

RexSueciae

There's nothing that says an ACF or a housewrite editor has to listen to feedback or even read criticism. I'll be honest, when you post mathematics or computer science complaints I just skip it over. Other editors are starting to do the same for your complaints in other categories. And you know wha...

RexSueciae

I suggest asking them about it.

RexSueciae

One should not give a poisoner medicine, A conjurer fine apparatus, nor A rifle to a melancholic bore. This is our tenth year of "Secret Santa," renamed after everyone's favorite formerly really angry quiz bowler. (For those of us who aren't dinosaurs, the original title of that acronym i...

RexSueciae

I will probably have finished at some point a packet on "fictional characters in popular music."

RexSueciae · Re: Terrapin XXIX @ UMD (11.19.16) Terrapin went really well. I had great fun.

Terrapin went really well. I had great fun.

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