The Quizbowl Resource Center

A note on Mr. Tyson: He was, I believe, serving as principal of Thurgood Marshall HS in DC last year. However, this year he holds an administrative intern position at Thomas Jefferson. I'm not exactly sure what his job is, but I can assure you he's at TJ (I was surprised to see him in the hall the f...

The ACF website, which is linked to from stanford, had some decent high school tournament sets last time I checked. If you're feeling adventurous, acf fall tournaments might be a very challenging and higher quality alternative to most of the stanford packets. If the acf site is up; not bothering to ...

bigtrain wrote:My coach told us that assuming both teams make it, WJ would be playing TJ in the third round...how fun

TJ making it to the third round? That's quite an assumption.

Picking one is tough. I voted NAQT, basically for reasons of consistency. NAQT readers are rather consistently great, and NAQT also has more consistent and unambiguous questions. These factors boost NAQT a hair over PACE despite the trash and a few inconceivable leadins ("It begins in the fores...

Hosing is a different thing. I define hosing as the early use of an essentially uniquely identifying clue in a question about something else. "A compatriot of his tutor, Aristotle, Alexander the Great conquered much of the mediterranean and west asia. What was the name of his horse?" Chip-...

In quiz bowl yes, guessing is as important as knowledge. That is one of the great faults of current questions, one which I try to remedy when I write questions or have my team write them. It is not a skill that should be rewarded, although it is often found in players with a good knowledge base as w...

I understand that the purpose of the camp is to improve competitive skills, which do entail crap formats, but still a lot of that seems to be missing the point of the game, which is to encourage knowledge and learning. When I "study," I get books and do in depth research on topics that in...

I'll only echo the praises already stated and thank the tournament staff, writers and moderators for an excellent tournament. The questions were truly hardcore, and for the most part very well written. Congratulations to all teams, especially Gov for one of the most impressive comebacks I have witne...

wampus04 wrote:they missed Russian and Ludmilla by Glinka...

Glinka was the founder of Russian musical nationalism, but he was not that blatant. It's Ruslan. Sorry to quibble, but perhaps I am saving someone out there from an unfortunate neg by doing so.

Everyone expects DCC to dominate, which I take it has not occurred this year, and whether you have peaked or not is not discernible on the basis of one performance. Congratulations, nonetheless, and I am glad to see you entered this forum in a blaze of maturity.

Biology 4, Chemistry 2.5, Earth science 2, Physics 1.5 The science questions for vhsl (at least states) were quite good, but I am vexed as to why physics got such short shrift. I know most tournament distributions with which I am familiar have about one tossup for each of the big three (physics bio ...

there are plenty of test centers in the houston area. it's theoretically quite possible to take one or two tests and be back to prelims with only 1 or 2 rounds missed. also, if you don't foresee making playoffs, you could pretend that you're orthodox jewish or seventh day adventist or something and ...

It is disturbingly sad in practice, when we may read a few rounds of NAQT invitational sets, and have a combined score of 700-800 or more, with powers on a good third of the questions. Shift to acf style (we've been reading terrapin; I'm not sure how good/difficult that is) and combined score defini...

This should mean something. Kindly only respond if you have played hs qb within the current era of PACE, NAQT, ASCN, QU, and PAC.

I would submit that Fidelio is one of the most consistently overused clues or answers in high school quizbowl. It just plain pisses me off to hear "Beethoven opera" anywhere before the end of the question.

I dare say anyone who has tried to purchase more than one cd of beethoven symphonies is likely to have seen creatures of prometheus. I think most people with more than a casual interest in classical music may fit that description.

I always get beethoven ballet music and incidental music mixed up. I believe he composed more than one suite of ballet music, though. However, I am an avid reader of deutsche grammaphon cd labels, so I probably know more than your average joe about classical, but I would say for college that mention...

The rankings don't look to have changed that much. I like the idea of a poll, and I think a panel of regionally selected coaches or people active in high school qb is the way to go, but 6 people is just ridiculous.

In VA, there are a few teams who have both beaten and lost to each other in semifinal and final rounds. St. Anne's Belfield, Maggie Walker Gov, and Thomas Jefferson seem to be jockeying for hegemony at every tournament. Langley, Princess Anne, and Oakton seem to be consolidating their power as well....

I'd have to say Yale, although I hear it wasn't up to par this year (we had to miss it because of regionals). UMD always has great tournaments. Good questions and good administration. Swiss pairings really is the way to go.