The Quizbowl Resource Center

adamsil

(To further clarify my stance on the original question to Ike): It's easier for me to write a very hard question on something "real" that I know than a very hard question on something "fake" that I don't. That's a natural consequence of having specialists write quizbowl questions...

adamsil

(Before I ramble: I take full blame for the questions in these categories, and it's not like people were submitting questions with these perceived "barbarisms". I'm not exaggerating when I say that re-wrote every submitted question in my categories, with the exception of a single bonus in ...

adamsil

several science questions that seemed to be on unnecessarily hard answerlines for the material ("specific volume"). I think a lot of the difficulty of this tournament came from the science. My impression was that the "engineering slant" (I'm not saying that every question was wr...

adamsil

Pichia was really hard. It's not even mentioned in the 1500+-page Alberts textbook (which talks about S. pombe -- what Eric and I negged with -- multiple times), or even on the Wikipedia list of model funguses... It's mainly used in pretty specific circumstances for protein expression, more like a ...

adamsil

I want to thank Matt and John for giving me the opportunity to work on this set. Editing CO is a blast just for the opportunity to ask about a lot of things that you simply can't do at an ACF tournament. Also, many thanks to Shan for his invaluable advice on the non-molecular bio, and to my brother ...

adamsil

The Superfluous Man wrote:Combined stats are here but the scoresheet for the round 15 game between "Just what is it" and "Golgari Glenn Ross" is missing. Did anyone pick it up, or keep their own score during that game?

I've got it--emailing it to you now.

adamsil

As I understand it, both the mothers and children were classified as secure and insecure, but the mothers were placed in the room with the one-way mirror. I'd have to do more research to confirm that, but I distinctly remember adding that clause at the end of the sentence to make the answer more spe...

adamsil

It appears to be up on the archive now.

adamsil

In the fall, I will be starting a one-year medical laboratory science program on the North Shore of Chicago, and do not intend to return to Georgia. I look forward to witnessing Illinois high school quizbowl firsthand. Continuing the Georgia to Illinois exodus--I'm starting a PhD in Chemical Engine...

adamsil

We've finished our last planned mirror for the semester. I'll leave this announcement up for another week or so in case anyone is still interested in planning a late-semester tournament, and if not, I'll submit the set to the archive.

adamsil

I'm not sure they're exactly the same thing, since the crash happened over multiple days, but that should have been acceptable, my apologies.

adamsil

I thought this was a really solid set. I thought it did a few things really well, and just had a couple suggestions for improvement: --The choice of answerline was done well. I liked that you wrote interesting tossups on "WWI" using clues from the Eastern Front or "WWII" using mi...

adamsil

Just a couple of complaints that I heard from the Centennial mirror: The amino acid bonus part didn't work very well. The clue said something like "these compounds are named for having a singly-bonded nitrogen", and I had a team say "amine" in response to that clue, then protest ...

adamsil

Fair enough--those are easy changes to make (and for the ones you've sent me elsewhere, thanks!). European History is definitely my weakest Big 4 category in QB and I wrote almost all of it this year, which is why it probably turned out too hard. I will admit to being outrageously stubborn on the &q...

adamsil

I'm fairly certain that 16 of them are killed by assassins instantly, one survives, but then gets assassinated some time later. But I no longer own a copy of the book so I can't easily check that. I haven't found anything online to suggest that one survives the duration of the novel.

adamsil

Hey could I see the tossup on Moby Dick? I was listening to the question, and there seemed to be a ton of chapter titles. I personally didn't like this tossup, as it wasn't as rewarding for someone who had read it. I don't know about most people, but I don't really internalize chapter titles like p...

adamsil

Hey, I'm not our team contact anymore, but is there info about time/place for tomorrow? Emma has been having trouble posting here and is wondering if she missed an email somewhere along the line. Thanks!

adamsil

I completely agree, Ankit. I don't think this is at all a good set for newbies--it isn't forgiving on hard parts of bonuses, the distribution is pretty academic, and the questions are long and often filled with clues I wouldn't expect new teams to buzz on. I appreciate your kind words, though, and I...

adamsil

I hope everyone enjoyed this tournament. Please access the private discussion forum from your User Control Panel if you'd like to offer feedback on the 2015 BISB set, or feel free to send me an email. Thanks!

adamsil

Fair enough, I'll swap those clues for the mirrors after tomorrow. This is certainly not an area of history that I'm willing to die on a hill for. (Though, Vercingetorix did

)

adamsil

During a siege in this campaign, a general formed a circumvallation surrounded by a contravallation, using sharp pikes called cippi. An eight-book history of this conflict begins with some Swiss men burning down their houses and emigrating. The losing commander of this conflict, a member of the Arve...

adamsil

That was a moderator mistake; the answerline said to accept any answer that mentioned a war in Ukraine. Sorry--I'm not sure how that was negged. EDIT: Here's the text of the tossup; I could see a moderator getting potentially lost in the answerline, so I'll apologize for that, but I'll certainly add...

adamsil

That's fair; I don't think it would be outright acceptable for any of the clues in the tossup, but I'll add it in as a prompt. Sorry about that!

adamsil

We've got a private usergroup set up for set discussion now; you can join it from your User Control Panel. Feedback is much appreciated!

adamsil

We've got a private usergroup set up for BISB set discussion now; you can join it from your User Control Panel. Feedback is much appreciated!

adamsil

Go ahead and request any questions that you'd like to see reproduced here, ideally with a rationale (potentially incorrect clue, poor clue placement, mishearing clues, wanting to see earlier/later clues, anything like that). I'll do my best to respond in a timely fashion. I haven't yet been told of ...

adamsil

Hi all, First off, I'd like to thank my co-authors: Brady Weiler wrote a large portion of the Fine Arts (including all the music), as well as around half the American history, and some literature, social science and trash questions to boot. It's been a pleasure to work with him for the past three ye...

adamsil

I've sent a couple requests to get a private usergroup for the set arranged, but until that happens, please email me at adsilverman at bellsouth dot net if you've got any immediate general criticisms/fact-checks/requests to see a specific question. Thanks!

adamsil

Betsy: I've sent a couple of messages to Enloe with no response, and I haven't heard anything from them since we started the calendar over the summer. I'll assume if we don't hear anything by the end of this weekend, the tournament on September 26th is not happening. I received an email from Celia ...

adamsil

The set is completely written, edited, and packetized. We'll be working on playtesting it for the next few weeks. Still looking for mirrors, particularly in New England; shoot me an email if you're interested.

adamsil

This set is now 80% complete, so we are right on track to finish in early August. The questions will be extensively play-tested during August and early September as well. We don't have too many interested mirrors this year compared to previous years. I encourage you, if you're hesitating on which se...

adamsil

List of mirrors to be updated here: September 19, Germantown HS, Germantown, TN (contact Keith Mattix) September 26/October at Enloe HS, Raleigh, NC (contact Celia Rowland) October 10: Earlybird at UIUC, Champaign, IL (contact Tristan Willey) October 24: California Cup 1, Varsity Division, UC Berkel...

adamsil

The Brookwood Scholar's Invitational Bowl is once again seeking mirrors for the 2015-2016 school year. As last year, the set will be written and edited by members of the Georgia Tech Academic Team, and by guest Yellow Jacket Brady Weiler. For use of these questions, we will charge $10 per team that ...

adamsil

I wrote only science for this set--including probably the majority of the chem and physics, but I'd appreciate any feedback on the stuff I wrote. These aren't all the questions that I wrote, but a few that I was most curious about: Stuff that wasn't chemistry or physics: restriction digest (this may...

adamsil

Not at all--and this was certainly not directed at you--organic chemistry in HS quizbowl is a subject I've given a lot of thought, since I've written hundreds of chemistry questions for high school tournaments over the last few years.

adamsil

I was very disappointed by the lack of organic chemistry throughout this set. From what I gather, the main argument against its inclusion is that it's "too hard" or whatever for high schoolers, but I don't see how replacing it with the uncommon answerlines you mentioned above makes things...

adamsil

Just to clarify upthread--I didn't edit any of the biology, but I did edit (and write) the chemistry, and would greatly appreciate any feedback on those questions. I believe my questions ended up being a fair bit harder than the rest of the science--or at least harder to power--but I did see a coupl...

adamsil

Slipped my mind. Sent it tonight.

adamsil

PACE has certified Yale's BHSAT as a Satisfactory set. We're still looking for sets--you should have gotten an email from me if you've posted in the other forum, so if you're interested in participating please let me know!

adamsil

Farrah, it's Ford (ES&T). As the point contact at GT, I can provide directions to teams as needed.

adamsil

As far as I'm aware, the last mirror of this set happened yesterday. I'll give it another week in case there are any interested parties looking for a set, but after that I'll get it posted to the database.

adamsil

Sorry about the delay; somehow half the stats got overwritten, so I had to manually enter Rounds 6-10 again. A few input errors also got fixed.

They're up now, corrected. http://www.hsquizbowl.org/db/tournament ... ned_fixed/

adamsil

We're missing hundreds of bonus points in both games against South Carolina I will fix this in the morning. I did have a question why is Clemson listed as playing 12 games, which is more than teams in the final and tiebreak in DII ? Clemson played two half-packet tiebreakers, so it got entered as t...

adamsil

Stats: http://www.hsquizbowl.org/db/tournament ... /combined/

adamsil

In DI, Georgia Tech ran the board in the double round robin to take first place, and Vanderbilt got second with a 7-3 record. In D2, undefeated UGA A won the first game of an advantaged final over Wofford A. Stats will be up later tonight. Thanks to all the staffers who came out today to help; the t...

adamsil

Right now we've got 5 DI teams and 12 D2 teams. I've added a house DI team to fill six, since there's no good way to deal with 5 teams, but if there's any teams out there still looking to get in, or any D2 teams that would like to play up, I'd appreciate it if you could switch, since it's easier to ...

adamsil

To be fair, the intent was for the bonus to be Spanish/English/German, since there was a pretty big hint in the "going to" piece of the "future tense" part that was made as an easy part. But yes, point taken; I'm not sure I'd write a bonus of this sort again without giving it a f...

adamsil

As a midseason update--PACE is continuing to certify housewrites for this year. If you are writing a set and are interested in our feedback, but haven't yet been contacted by me, please shoot me an email ASAP.

PACE has certified GSAC as a Satisfactory set. Keep them coming in!

adamsil

Let's say the week before for practical purposes right now, and depending on the field size that may go closer to the date of the tournament. Earlier registration is better, of course!

adamsil

Apologies--he nearly dies there, then dies a bit later after telling Marius about what a great guy Thenardier is, of course. :)

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