The Quizbowl Resource Center

Birdofredum Sawin

There's one general reflection that comes to mind from reading these posts about geography. It's useful to remember that the distributions we have grown accustomed to were created arbitrarily. At some point in the distant past, a handful of people decided that the ACF game should have four times as ...

Birdofredum Sawin

Since I may have initiated this poll with my post about the modified JS Mill distribution, I'll weigh in. First, I should say that one main reason for our excising geography from the tournament was that none of us felt like writing it. In particular, I loathe writing geography tossups, whereas I enj...

Birdofredum Sawin

This is a preliminary announcement of an open tournament which will be held next May in Chicago. The tournament will be written by myself, Seth Teitler, and Selene Koo, and will aim for a difficulty level between ACF Regionals and Nationals. We may make minor modifications in the distribution, whic...

Birdofredum Sawin

The John Stuart Mill Bicentennial Open Tournament will be held on Saturday, May 20. The "Kwartler-edited" theme tournament will be held the next day. There may also be other singles-tournament-type craziness that weekend. Again, all of this fun will be had at the University of Chicago and ...

Birdofredum Sawin

The as-yet-unnamed May masters tournament will be completely distinct from Chicago Open, which will presumably be held in late July/early August. (I won't be writing this year's Chicago Open, but the tournament will happen; whether it will be centrally-written or packet-submission is not known to me...

Birdofredum Sawin

This is a preliminary announcement of an open tournament which will be held next May in Chicago. The tournament will be written by myself, Seth Teitler, and Selene Koo, and will aim for a difficulty level between ACF Regionals and Nationals. We may make minor modifications in the distribution, which...

Birdofredum Sawin

With all due respect, I don't think I can agree. One can act in a manner consistent with civility, and a measure of minimum civility is necessary in any competitive event. Your supposition that suggests that merely being taciturn during an event does not have an effect on other partcipants is simpl...

Birdofredum Sawin

Hello all--- There were, however, players present who didn't seem to be in the right mindset to have fun. One player in particular seemed to be especially spiteful, and seemed poised to spread his attitude of disdain to other players. This player's behavior boiled to an ugly head during Sunday's TR...

Birdofredum Sawin

Eric makes some good points which ought to be considered (rather than drowned out in a barrage of ad hominem nastiness). First of all, let me point out that unlike most people on this board, I've actually written the lion's share of a trash tournament (this summer's Richler Open). I wouldn't have in...

Birdofredum Sawin

The ACF Fall discussion is getting a little wild, so I thought I\'d start this as a separate thread. Some of the comments about tossup length seem to indicate confusion about how the game is played. That is, they seem to assume that every buzz is of the following nature: a player recognizes a clue h...

Birdofredum Sawin

To wade back into the fray ... I think some confusion could perhaps be alleviated if the purpose of ACF Fall were made more clear. This quote will help: I want to note that this year's ACF Fall is the easiest and best written novice tournament I have ever seen. Well, I have to disagree. It's not eas...

Birdofredum Sawin

Although I had no part in editing the literature, the abundance of biography questions in the lit distribution jumped out at me. If I were playing, I would definitely have preferred more tossups on works rather than authors. Too many of the questions, to me, had the feel of being laundry-lists of w...

Birdofredum Sawin

I should add that while outright plagiarism is obviously wrong, it is also not a good idea to submit questions to tournaments that were previously submitted to (but not used at) a different tournament. Even if you are fairly certain that none of the editors for the first tournament will be playing a...

Birdofredum Sawin

I don't want to pre-empt any discussion of ACF fall, but I need to make an announcement regarding this year's submissions. The editors received multiple packets in which questions were plagiarized from packets previously used in other tournaments. In one case, an editor recognized a tossup as one th...

Birdofredum Sawin

There are two problems I've consistently had with the few ACF tournaments I've been to: length and diversity of field. First, length. All three ACF tournaments I've gone to have had problems with running way overtime. This particular tournament promised thirteen rounds; after round 7, there was see...

Birdofredum Sawin

I was planning on posting about this separately, but for now I'll follow up on Seth's message by noting the following. The ACF fall editors would like to offer question commentary to any team that a) wrote a packet or partial packet for ACF fall, and b) would like to receive such commentary. If you ...

Birdofredum Sawin

To expand: Illinois A lost the final game of the playoff round robin to Michigan A, after which the two teams advanced to an ACF-style finals in which Michigan was up one game. Illinois won the next game by 10 to stay alive, and then convincingly won the deciding game (something like 500-100) to win...

Birdofredum Sawin

I haven't really been able to follow most of this discussion, but I have one question and one comment. First, the question. Can somebody explain to a layman what these numbers mean? Does a "slope" of -60 mean you had an absolutely terrible tournament? Should one expect a number of players ...

Birdofredum Sawin

I agree with all the comments about how well-run the Terrapin was. However, I want to cavil about the questions. For the most part, they were really good. The two exceptional packets, though, were really lousy. One was nothing but buzzer races on the opening clues, while the other was rife with awfu...

Birdofredum Sawin

[quote="suds1000"] In agreement, I provide a tossup that I once wrote for the hell of it: Turgenev told him to focus on characters rather than plot, a view he would eventually espouse. His travel writings include A Little Tour in France and Italian Hours, and he wrote the poetic volume The...

Birdofredum Sawin

I guess the part I omitted was that I have not heard Levinas come up in a quizbowl tournament ever. Maybe I've been going to the wrong tournaments or something, but I think his absence at multiple ACF Regionals, Nationals, and Open tournaments corroborates my assertion that he is non-canonical. Min...

Birdofredum Sawin

I don't know when the tradition of performing tournament post-mortems died down, but I've noticed that most circuit tournaments just come and go nowadays without any comment. In any event, I haven't seen any discussion of last weekend's Berkeley tournament, the WIT. I have a few things to say about ...

Birdofredum Sawin

ACF is pleased to announce that the 2006 Nationals will be held at the University of Michigan. As previously announced, the tournament will be on April 1, 2006. More information will be posted in the near future, but in the meantime you can get in touch with me if you have any questions about the to...

Birdofredum Sawin

I just wanted to apprise everyone of an exciting new group of questions which have just been added to the Stanford Archive. To wit, the aptly-named "Pericles Abbasi Is a Big Fat Greek Homo: The Tournament," an in-house theme tournament held at the University of Chicago last spring. Fans of...

Birdofredum Sawin

I'm thinking about running a Manu-like tournament next spring, to fill the time between ACF regionals and nationals. Before committing to anything, I want to get a better sense of how many people would be interested in attending. So, could you email me 1) if you would come to Chicago for such a tour...

Birdofredum Sawin

I was meaning to post about this, but Chris's nice paean to Subash provides a helpful spur. There will, in fact, be a Chicago Open in 2006. There's a small possibility that I will write it myself; a somewhat larger possibility that I will write it in collaboration with others; a perhaps even larger ...

Birdofredum Sawin

Thanks to everyone who showed up on Sunday for the first annual Mordecai Richler Memorial Trash Tournament. The tournament was won by The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (Ezequiel Berdichevsky, Matt Lafer, Paul Litvak, Matt Weiner) who were undefeated in the round robin. The leading scorer was the l...

Birdofredum Sawin

There have already been plenty of literary-critical clues, I think, especially in the last two tournaments. I have no objection to such clues, and in fact, no objection to a little more literary theory. A little more, but not too much more, because after all, the study of literature, in my view, is...

Birdofredum Sawin

Thanks to everyone who noted that we had overlooked NAQT's announcement of April 7-8 as the date for the 2006 ICT. (Curse their confusing web site! They fooled us with great success by hiding the date behind a link marked "2005 SCT Host Call.") In fact, next year's ACF nationals will be he...

Birdofredum Sawin

Music was generally solid, although my annoyance with common link tossups was building up by the end of the day. The tossup on clarinet works was good, but I didn't care for Te Deum's, Second Symphonies, and ballades, especially when considered as elements of a collective set. Since people disagree...

Birdofredum Sawin

In 2006, ACF regionals will be held on February 4. Next year's ACF nationals will be held on April 8. Locations for both tournaments will be announced in the future, as will a date for ACF fall.

Andrew

Birdofredum Sawin

I want to dissent from my esteemed colleague Paul. Until we conduct a scientific poll of the entire community, all we can say for sure is that a few vocal science players have made a habit of denouncing science history questions on this board. Against this, at least one player (i.e. me) likes scienc...

Birdofredum Sawin

I wanted to speak to the complaints about science history. First of all, I should note that I am entirely responsible for the science history in this tournament. I edited or wrote all the questions on it, and I included them in the set despite the complaints of some of my co-editors who also dislike...

Birdofredum Sawin

I don't want to pre-empt discussion of the tournament, but I thought I'd offer a perspective on the issue of difficulty before this whole discussion is swept aside by the perennial post-ICT hullaballoo. Clearly, the bonuses at this year's ACF nationals were hard. In fact, they were much too hard. In...

Birdofredum Sawin

This could probably be two separate posts, but I'll combine them in one. First, I want to thank everyone who helped make ACF nationals possible this year. The set couldn't have been produced without the assistance of my redoubtable co-editors: Jason Paik, Wesley Matthews, Paul Litvak, Matt Reece, an...

Birdofredum Sawin

This year's Carper Award went to Charlie Steinhice, whose renown as an inveterate hoster of tournaments speaks for itself.

Andrew

Birdofredum Sawin

The question set from this year's ACF nationals is now available for purchase. $25 buys you 17 packets, each of which is guaranteed to be chock-full of clues. If you're interested, please email me at adyaphe@gmail.com. Note that the packets will not be made available for free download prior to April...

Birdofredum Sawin

I don't mean for this to pre-empt whatever remarks other people might have about the question set, which is why I've written this post as a separate thread. I wanted to say a few things about question writing and ACF, in the aftermath of editing this year's regionals. First, let me say that I apprec...

Birdofredum Sawin

Complete stats for regionals have been posted at the following URL: http://people.cs.uchicago.edu/~dmp/acf_reg_2005/ACF%20Regionals%202205_standings.html The results are somewhat confusing, as the upper and lower playoff brackets are lumped together. The actual standings were as follows: The upper b...

Birdofredum Sawin

In the final, Michigan A defeated Chicago A. Subash was the leading scorer. Complete results will be posted in a few days.

Thanks to Alice, Mike and Sudheer for moderating, and to all the teams for coming out for what was, I hope, an enjoyable tournament.

Andrew

Birdofredum Sawin

At some point, the editors of this year's ACF tournaments offered to provide constructive criticism on their packet to any team that wanted such criticism. I don't know whether we've mentioned the offer recently, so I'll say it again: If you've written a packet for ACF regionals and you want feedbac...

Birdofredum Sawin

Anybody who wants to save their team $20 can still do so, by submitting an ACF regionals packet before tomorrow's deadline. Remember, those packets should go to Jeff Hoppes at [email protected].

Andrew

Birdofredum Sawin

The first deadline for ACF regionals is almost open us. Teams can still save $30 by submitting their packets (to Jeff Hoppes at [email protected]) by this Friday, January 14.

Andrew

Birdofredum Sawin

As previous posts have mentioned, ACF regionals will be held on February 26, 2005. This year's team of editors consists of Jeff Hoppes, Mike Sorice, and Andrew Yaphe (i.e. me). If you're interested in hosting a regional site, please contact me or Jeff (jthoppes@socrates.berkeley.edu). With the first...

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Re: New masters tournament for May 2006

The date for these May tournaments

New masters tournament for May 2006

Tossup length

Plagiarism in packet submissions

WIT discussion

ACF Nationals Location

New questions available on the archive

A possible spring tournament

Chicago Open 2006

Mordecai Richler Memorial Trash Tournament Results

Revised date for next year's ACF nationals

Dates for next year's ACF regionals and nationals

ACF: thanks and prospects

2005 Carper Award

ACF Nationals: Questions for sale

ACF Regionals comments

ACF Midwest Regionals: results

ACF Midwest regionals: brief results

ACF regionals -- general packet comments

ACF regionals -- second deadline approaching

ACF regionals -- first deadline approaching

ACF regionals announcement -- packet requirements