The Quizbowl Resource Center

RexSueciae

If these questions are going to be used in the future, you should not discuss them here. Is there accepted protocol, then, for discussing theory and advice? It seems as if providing an example is complicated by this standard. Post questions that you're not planning on selling, or hire a set editor.

RexSueciae

I write things and crochet socially.

RexSueciae

This leads me to my ultimate question: what difficulty should I be writing high school questions, the average high schooler or the average high school quizbowler? The latter, but you misunderstand what that means. When writing, your benchmark shouldn't be "would I, an intellectually curious yo...

RexSueciae

I haven't posted on alternatehistory.com in probably at least a year.

But yes.

RexSueciae

Consider that the high school question business is absolutely huge, with housewrites from both high schools and colleges (with varying results), not to mention NAQT basically printing money and HSAPQ steady with its sets for state-sponsored competitions. Consider also that there are considerably mor...

RexSueciae

Would posting questions I intend to use for a high school tournament be kosher? Given how strict the community seems to be about leaking questions I'm hesitant. If a question is going to be used a tournament do not post it in an open forum. There is no way to control who would see it and you would ...

RexSueciae

Would "Italy defecting to the allies" be okay for the Italy entering WW1 tossup? When modding, I counted it as a neg because I wasn't sure if Italy necessarily "defected" or simply joined, but after reading the relevant history I think it's equivalent to "Italy declares for...

RexSueciae

Before anybody else cites my post for rhetorical weight, I'd like to reiterate that I think it'd be an exaggeration to state unequivocally that Penn really needs to do Penn-ance, and I'm not out for anybody's head on a pike and that my points dealt specifically with logistical issues at the main sit...

RexSueciae

Notes: I'm not an editor by a long shot, just copying these questions into here for discussion. "Suicide" and "absinthe" were both first-lined in my room, and neither are purely obscure academic references since a few other people in the room seemed to post-buzz recall where the...

RexSueciae

Three main points: - difficulty on both tossups and bonuses fluctuated considerably, especially across categories (literature drove hard to the obscure on occasion, history to a lesser extent with answerlines like "Air America," other things that would've been helped considerably by a comp...

RexSueciae

May I see the religion tossup on killing one's self? I remember a lead-in about how practitioners of the mountain-dwelling sect Shugendo sometimes do this (paraphrased), which to me seemed odd because 1) Shugendo practitioners do a lot of things, and 2) the practice of suicide via starvation is not ...

RexSueciae

After a bit of an adventure, UVA's finally home, so I can make this post (I'll be saying other set-specific things in the discussion forum, this'll just be for logistics and stuff at the main site): Personally, I'm not disappointed over not getting our promised 13 rounds. For most events, a guarante...

RexSueciae

Please note that this is not a literal novice tournament -- it is open to ringers, seniors, high school students of any age . The use of the word "novice" is just to convey a sense of the new knowledge and new frontiers that the players are sure to enjoy. ...could you please explain this ...

RexSueciae

From a look at Harry White's search tool, Radford and Longwood have showed up to events hosted by Liberty on NAQT's IS-C sets this year and the year previous. Both of their last regular-difficulty events appear to be the 2014 SCT, which both attended. Southern Virginia University attended the 2014 S...

RexSueciae

I don't see a "general discussion" thread so let me just say at the start that this question set met or exceeded every expectation of mine and as a result I had great fun. I would like to personally thank the writers who wrote questions on cool things. Specifically, I was very happy seeing...

RexSueciae

Throughout my career, I have watched opponents chug energy drinks, pop pills, and perform all sorts of pregame rituals in order to amp themselves up. I have completely foregone all such measures. This is why opponents may have occasionally witnessed me falling asleep during a game due to fatigue or ...

RexSueciae

Congratulations to all teams who attended, and to Duke, who beat Virginia A after a two-game advantaged final! Teams played a 9-game round robin, followed by another round for placement purposes (except for the top two teams who obviously played two). I hope that everybody had a good time at this ev...

RexSueciae

UVA is strongly considering hosting an event on NAQT's Collegiate Novice set sometime in the fall semester. Persons with plans to host a novice event elsewhere in the state of Virginia should probably drop us a line in order to hammer out geographical details and the like. A forum announcement will ...

RexSueciae

I think you are referring to: 14. This country was the site of the first wartime use of herbicides, including a Trioxone mixture that was virtually identical to Agent Orange. Forced resettlement in what is now this country displaced many ethnic Chinese families who were moved to New Villages under t...

RexSueciae

I had fun writing! If anybody has specific feedback on the Asian history (of which I wrote everything but the question on the Meiji Restoration) -- or, for that matter, my part of the European history, the Xhosa question, the Lord Byron question, I forget what else -- let me know! The hardest questi...

RexSueciae

Read a book, then read another. This goes faster if you're genuinely interested in the subject. Develop a canon list of important things to learn. For example, go through every American president and note the important things that happened during each administration, or divide a topic into time peri...

RexSueciae

Is there a final deadline by which the packets are being compiled, or are submissions open until the Side Event Weekend(s)?

RexSueciae

To be blunt on the geographic expansion principle, I don't see the value of IHBB and its work. At best, you've created islands in the metaphorical sea which might or might not grow a self-sustaining community (but limited by factors like extreme distance from the nearest quizbowl or NHBB region, a d...

RexSueciae

The nominating committee consisted of Niki Peters, Raynell Cooper, and David Madden. And it's the National QUIZBOWL Awards? Kind of confused on how the nominating committee of NHBB folks extends to the entire realm of quizbowl, but ok. Combined, Raynell, Niki, and I have over 25 years of involvemen...

RexSueciae

I'd presume you'd want the people running the tournament to be, you know, running the tournament instead of responding to this thread. It has now been a full week since the incident in question. ACE has more than enough time to provide a response. We've passed the two-week mark with no official res...

RexSueciae

I'm not sure I agree with your logic there, Vasa - what the ACE folks are claiming is just that Hypothetical Solo Eric Xu isn't within the definition of "team." I don't think anyone objects to the idea of eligibility rules in general... certainly, an elementary school team with Jeff Hoppe...

RexSueciae

Teams of significantly smaller numbers of players --- even solo teams --- have been known to win competitions. (See: Eric Xu clearing the field solo at VCU's 2014 MUT while still in high school.) The central tenet of quizbowl is to crown a winner among a field of X number of teams, where the winner ...

RexSueciae

We enjoyed writing and hosting the tournament using this set so much that we have decided to do it all over again!! FONS II will be available for schools to mirror for the 2016-17 school year. More details to come. Let me start by saying that I'm glad for your enthusiasm, and I'm very happy that ev...

RexSueciae

Someone remind me to write a packet for this.

RexSueciae

I, for one, look forward to another incarnation of Tricon, provided decent packets get written and a not-unfunny distribution is created. I can write for any packet-submission event or kick in whimsical freelance questions to people as needed. Someone suggested last year doing some sort of event whe...

RexSueciae

Thank ye kindly to Paul Kirk-Davidoff for the poetry book "Transbluesency" by Amiri Baraka!

RexSueciae

My partner should be receiving their gift...right about now, actually.

RexSueciae

I should have finished the packet I've been writing about the life and times of W. H. Auden. Featuring absurd difficulty and, at this point, 5 out of a planned 20 or so questions.

RexSueciae

Vasa Clarke vasa.rex.sueciae[at]gmail.com 1. Something with a tangential relationship with quizbowl knowledge 2. A nice book of poetry (besides the complete works of Auden, Cummings, Larkin, or Plath, which I've already got) 3. Foodstuffs, confections, or ingredients Nothing much interesting happens...

RexSueciae

The documentary series China: A Century of Revolution is on YouTube in its entirety. It's in three parts (1911-1949, 1949-1976, and 1976-1997), and it's got plenty of stuff that will get you deep knowledge on modern China. There's some other stuff that my professor mentioned in class, but that one's...

RexSueciae

Yeah, NAQT-specific stuff isn't really stuff you can study for, especially since whatever's in popular culture or the national headlines tends to change from year to year. Your best bet is just to read stuff and play packets like you would for any other quizbowl event. The question sets whose names ...

RexSueciae

The South Africa tossup that used non-deep clues is a perfect example - is anyone here really knowing anything about Breyten Breytenbach outside of those who have been with QB for a while? According to the TV show Spitting Image , Breyten Breytenbach is the only person who could've been called a &q...

RexSueciae

This set was decent. Most of the questions were pretty cool, solid answer choices and difficulty was alright. Nothing really out of left field. There were a few things that I thought were kinda weird - there were some repeats, if I'm remembering correctly (and even when an answerline is used in two ...

RexSueciae

You can attend any tournament you want--I should think that nobody will actively prevent you from travelling long distances in order to play an event that's really far away. If there's a more local site for that particular set of questions, though, it'd be advisable to just go there, since you'd sav...

RexSueciae

Some programs might use their A-team members to corset largely novice teams in order to introduce large numbers of new players to quizbowl with one or more experienced players alongside them to give direction. Individual tournament directors are free to do as they wish, but I don't see any need for ...

RexSueciae

You know, this brings up a tangential theory point I've always wondered about when writing questions. I technically have to agree with the people saying not to prompt--"divine wind" is definitely not a "word." But I've also always held that if you can demonstrate you know within...

RexSueciae

Not to take this off-topic (although the thread seems to be verging in that direction), but on the specific subject of what constitutes "fun," I think the following quote from the 2012 thread for Ridgewood's abortive 3 Day Summer Invitational is pretty relevant, given the circumstances: So...

RexSueciae

In the interest of clarifying things, I've made a few comments on most of the points made above. Beyond what people have already mentioned, I can guarantee you that the number of people who have connections to a community who actively are on Facebook in any given day (and are thus in a position bett...

RexSueciae

Public Facebook pages for quizbowl organizations are a good thing. They provide visibility and quick publicity--also, when one's team does well at some competition, there's something about sharing [congratulatory post from impressive-sounding organization] that appeals to that grandmother who finall...

RexSueciae

Out of curiosity, how many packets have been completed for this event? Right now, the answer should be "more than one," because I just emailed mine.

RexSueciae

I pretty much agree with everything that Charlie said, with the note that (like any other kind of question) finding uniquely identifying and interesting clues should be a priority instead of doing a "let's pack more diversity into this question by mentioning that the author was gay without any ...

RexSueciae

If anyone's planning another tournament for the fall, I volunteer my mediocre writing services.

RexSueciae

So this question might have an obvious answer, but where do books like "The Columbian Exchange" by Alfred Crosby or books like "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" fit in the distribution. I am just wondering because I just finished reading the latter and thought both due to the mate...

RexSueciae

Santa Claus wrote:
RexSueciae wrote:Andrew Huang from Arcadia
That's Andrew Leung, not Andrew Huang; Andrew Huang is from High Tech.

Whoops. The wrong Andrew is currently listed in the IHO field thread.

RexSueciae

To make the field you'd have to qualify in the top 50% at NHBB or an IHBB or win a regional/state bee. Also, with the American competitors, you have JV stars like Alex Schmidt and Luke Tierney, senior studs like Ben Koppel, and of course the bee champion himself Bruce Lou. These are four players, b...

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