The Quizbowl Resource Center

Mike Bentley

Score clues are easier than I think many people give them credit for. I’ve noticed this most prominently when reading trash questions with score clues, where my generally non-musical teammates can get very good buzzes from a string of pitches. I would be shocked if at a typical trash tournament (wh...

Mike Bentley

In 2020, there was lots of discussion about how to best run online tournaments. One thing that I think has gotten a little buried is that it really needs to be a hard requirement for any moderator to have an external microphone. I've played a few online tournaments recently where this isn't the case...

Mike Bentley

Not the TD but looks like there are 7ish teams right now which is not usually a good number. Bumping to remind people this mirror exists this weekend.

Mike Bentley · Re: CMST II @ Maryland (12/3/22) I'm looking for teammates for this.

I'm looking for teammates for this.

Mike Bentley

Here's a link to the packets: https://1drv.ms/u/s!Ag6r4laHo3wdkLNNAWq ... Q?e=xnDKbs

I'll work on getting these linked from the question archive soon (along with some of the older sets not on there).

Mike Bentley

If you are interested in mirroring this set, please contact me this week. Otherwise, I'll be releasing it publicly.

Mike Bentley

Congrats to Jordan and Daniel for clearing the field. Prelim, Combined and Combined with Crossover stats are here: https://hsquizbowl.org/db/tournaments/7632/

Thanks to everyone who played and big thanks to the moderators for making this event happen!

Mike Bentley

A few tournaments (including mine) recently have used the 20/15/10/-5 point structure. As far as I can tell, this isn't natively supported by YellowFruit. Any chance this can be added?

Mike Bentley

Is it intentional that "what weekends won't work for you" is single select?

Mike Bentley

Looks like we have enough staff and interest to get to 10 teams. I'll be assigning free agents by tomorrow. Assuming we end up with 10 teams, we'll split into 2 brackets for 4 prelim games + 1 cross-bracket game. Top 3 teams from each bracket will play the top 3 teams from the other bracket for 7 gu...

Mike Bentley

The tournament is about a week away. I'm going to close registration on Monday. Right now, we're at 8ish teams, which works well for the number of packets we have. We could potentially expand to 10 but that will require a few more sign ups and at least 1 more moderator. If we stay around the current...

Mike Bentley

Thanks Ryan for organizing this, it was a lot of fun!

Mike Bentley

Here's a link to a Discord discussion server: https://discord.gg/2yhH9HbN

Mike Bentley

For Eyes, we split into two rooms. Scores for the top bracket: Stephen Liu / 12 / 28 / 20 / 25 / 735 Aseem Keyal / 5 / 9 / 13 / 10 / 315 Natan Holtzman / 8 / 4 / 11 / 13 / 265 Taylor Harvey / 5 / 6 / 6 / 7 / 215 Tim Morrison / 1 / 2 / 6 / 7 / 75 Tejas Raje / 1 / 2 / 5 / 6 / 70 PC / / 1 / / 2 / 5 Bot...

Mike Bentley

Yeah, this was fun. I can't remember how hard FLopen was but this did seem like a pretty challenging set, more so than I remember an open tournament being. Still worth playing but keep in mind that there's some stuff that's going to be pretty tough.

Mike Bentley

The tossups on specific historical moments (e.g. the Draft Eisenhower movement, the funeral of Napoleon , the crossing of the Rhine ) were very entertaining, but I'd be surprised if the field had the depth of knowledge tested by some of them. I liked these questions. To me, at least, it's easier to...

Mike Bentley

The set is now mostly done. There are 8 packets of 20 tossups, plus some tiebreakers. This year's set has both super powers (20 points) and regular powers (15 points).

Mike Bentley

Can I see the Corsica question? That was one of those questions that seemed to have a somewhat questionable protest resolution in our game.

Mike Bentley

I also think that requiring teams on bye to staff would have been the right move. That would have ensured full double-staffing (since 3 teams on bye, those 3 staffers can pair with the remaining single staffers). I do think this has the potential for slowing down rooms as you deal with people switc...

Mike Bentley

The tournament also made a lot of kind of weird and imo bad distributional choices. For example, it's already questionable to have two Indian philosophy tossups, but it's wayyy more questionable to have two Indian phil tossups on the same exact time period in back-to-back rounds. Another glaring ex...

Mike Bentley

Overall, this was a fun set that exceeded my expectations. I enjoyed the slightly lower difficulty and would like future COs to stay around this level. Thanks to all the editors for their hard work! The CS tossups were nice and straightfoward enough that even I could track what was going on througho...

Mike Bentley

Tournament will take place on Monday, September 5th (Labor Day).

Mike Bentley

My team is now looking for a fourth player.

Mike Bentley

Also, if you already want to register, you can do so by emailing me at [email protected].

Mike Bentley

I will be holding an online mirror of Eyes That Do Not See XI (see https://hsquizbowl.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=26094 for details) on MONDAY September 5th, 2022. Note that this is Labor Day so hopefully most players will have the day off. The tournament will start around 12 PM Eastern. Will probabl...

Mike Bentley

Any chance you can nail down the events earlier than August 5th? I'm theoretically interested in attending this but it's heavily dependent on what events get scheduled and when they're run. Two weeks isn't a ton of runway for booking a flight.

Mike Bentley

Online doubles is the clear winner.

I should have the set ready by late August. I'll post a date poll soon.

Mike Bentley

After a few years off, I'm working on another Eyes That Do Not See. This is a visual tournament on visual arts, meaning you'll see the clues in a PowerPoint presentation. Traditionally, this tournament has been a shootout on 100 tossups. After playing JAVA last year, I'm a little more inclined to go...

Mike Bentley

Any reason you all are targeting 15 packets? That seems a recipe for like 90 percent of teams not hearing at least 4 of them except at practice or in a shootout. Why is the fact that most teams don't play them a relevant point? This is guaranteed to happen to 2 packets with an advantaged final, no ...

Mike Bentley

Any reason you all are targeting 15 packets? That seems a recipe for like 90 percent of teams not hearing at least 4 of them except at practice or in a shootout.

Mike Bentley

Rahul's team cleared the field to win the tournament. Stats are here: https://hsquizbowl.org/db/tournaments/7556/.

There's a discussion forum you can join that will have a link to the packets (although I think this is the last mirror so they will eventually be posted publicly).

Mike Bentley

There's one open spot for a free agent on Kurtis's team tomorrow. If you're interested, let me know.

Mike Bentley

In the interest of getting some more formal discussion, I've created a Discord discussion server: https://discord.gg/eFhK5hYK

Mike Bentley

By the way, we could still use a couple more staffers. Email me at [email protected] if you're available. Thanks!

Mike Bentley

Reminder this is happening next weekend. We have 7 teams signed up and enough free agents for an 8th team. We probably won't expand beyond 8 teams unless there's a lot of interest between now and Sunday when I'll at least tentatively lock down the field.

Mike Bentley

Thanks Ryan! Regarding "adaptation clues," you do see from this data that some of the literature questions that leaned heavily into that had poor power rates (Native Son, Red Badge and Great Gatsby, all with <= 2 powers). But other more conventionally clued tossups like Alexander Pope, Fal...

Mike Bentley

What's the process for creating a packet / tournament on this platform? Is that something that's going to be open for anyone to do independently? Unless I'm mistaken, this capability isn't offered by Qblitz either. I do think it would be cool if some platform made it super easy to create such a set....

Mike Bentley

I've updated the posted packets with a few small fixes and also added docx versions.

Mike Bentley

Thanks to everyone who made the NSC happen this year! The editors for this year's set were: Mike Bentley - European and Cross History; Visual Fine Arts; Social Science; Geography; Current Events; Other Academic Hari Parameswaran - American and World History Joseph Krol - Physics; British and World L...

Mike Bentley

Thanks everyone, hope you all enjoyed the set! Packets are posted here: https://hsquizbowl.org/db/questionsets/2786/. Will likely post a slightly fixed version later in the week, along with docx files.

Longer post coming soon.

Mike Bentley

Live stream will start in about 30 minutes here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjPjiM ... kOJDsXaxOw

Mike Bentley

Hi, I'm also looking for a few proofreaders who are available to work today and tomorrow morning. Please email me at [email protected] if you're interested. Thanks!

Mike Bentley

Hi everyone, in answer to a question on the Discord, here's the distribution for the tournament and the list of editors: 4/4 History (1/1 American, 1/1 European, 1/1 World, 1/1 Cross, Historiography and Misc.) - Hari Parameswaran and Mike Bentley 4/4 Literature (1/1 American, 1/1 British, 1/1 Europe...

Mike Bentley

Wave 2 playtesting will start somewhat soon. It would be great to get a few more people signed up for this. Please email me at [email protected]. (Also email me if you've already signed up and didn't receive the mail I just sent with details.)

Mike Bentley

I'm having a hard time finding an actual example (my search for "by asking" and equivalents on aseemsDB doesn't get many results) but I'm almost positive I've seen directed prompts that basically give you free points by prompting on a somewhat generic answer and then giving an instruction ...

Mike Bentley

I'd personally love more events to livestream more than just the finals. I understand that question security does make this challenging. But I personally would like the option of a 30 minute delay or something rather than recordings that get posted much later. (As someone who has made a lot of recor...

Mike Bentley

As we hit the home stretch in set production, it'd be great to bring on board a few more writers interested in producing biology and chemistry questions. Email me at mbentleypace@gmail.com if you're interested. I'm also looking for volunteers for any of the following roles on the set: -Second round ...

Mike Bentley

Big fan of length caps, glad to see they were strictly enforced. Agree with Will that those questions on Rastafarianism, wood and nuclear subs were cool. As I've mentioned elsewhere, it's hard to provide an objective assessment of a set as a playtester. But was glad to see the editors treating playt...

Mike Bentley

I'll be organizing a Zoom mirror of Illinois Open on Saturday, June 25th. Tournament will start at 10 AM EDT. This is an open set so expect things to go pretty late. An informal sign-up sheet is here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/152tQeVs1OQEetFdN8r0w56lt_u4AsV8DVQfF8ckXZSY/edit?usp=sharin...

Mike Bentley

What's on the slate for summer tournaments this year? For academic-ish sets, here's what I saw announced: Chicago Open NASAT MUSES WOOLF JAVA THING This seems below average compared to previous years. Are there any missing sets or ones not announced yet? As I mentioned on the Discord last night, I h...

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