The Quizbowl Resource Center

Ben Dillon

I'm amazed that no one else has thought of... Ice Sculpture!

Ben Dillon

dtaylor4 wrote:The problem is, the slow readers are already exposed via low TU/round rates.

Not in an untimed tourney with, say 20 tossups. Unless a particular room is always the slow one, a TD can't tell whether the game is slow because of the reader skill or the player skill.

Ben Dillon

It might make more sense to set the number at 20 or 22 rather than 18, though. It could be variable by type of tourney. For regular tournaments, the number could be 18. For tournaments that are state championships/qualifiers, the number could be 20. And for nationals, make it 22. (And for each of t...

Ben Dillon

I picked 18, but feel free to substitute another number of questions as the limit. And of course the reason the later rounds get through all 26 is that the players power more. Combine Matt's question with metsfan's answer: Why end on 26 tossups if Hentzel can get through more than 26? This is the wa...

Ben Dillon

What's wrong with speeding up somewhat? If they're perfectly intelligible, it's good to keep the game and tournament moving along. Keeping the game moving along is definitely within the moderator's control by not veering off the subject; speeding up does help with that but isn't a necessity. Keepin...

Ben Dillon

Brick! Haven't seen you in a while!

Ben Dillon

For purposes of the Byko ratings: The information I have directly from Fishers is that Mango is basically their B team compared to Habanero. Apparently these are the chosen names when they go to restaurants and play trivia, a la NTN. Both teams were decent though. The difference was Habanero (A) had...

Ben Dillon

Something is "fishy" with the seeding of the playoffs. According to the "official" scoresheet outside of the main ballroom, these are the teams making playoffs. 1. SHP 6-0 370 2. Chaska 6-0 287.5 3. Charter 5-1 409 4. Hastings 5-1 347.5 5. Manheim 5-1 320 6. Plano East 5-1 314.1...

Ben Dillon

"What is a Motown Hand?" (silence, both teams have no clue) Beall: "It's a poker hand, with Jacks AND Fives........." I'm afraid it IS actually nicknamed this. I'm not sure if Vince Van Patten coined it on TV, but he does use it. Of course, that doesn't necessarily excuse includ...

Ben Dillon

I. On the issue of Chip's favoritism, I saw just one suspicious act. In a match with a team from Indiana, Chip made a point of recognizing the team's coach beforehand as the gentleman is retiring and has brought teams to NAC for many years. Chip then gave a brief history of Indiana teams at NAC, no...

Ben Dillon

I'll wrap up by saying that one coach noticed me taking notes as Chip conducted a match. He leaned over and asked if I was Matt Weiner. Ask me nicely, and I'll tell you my reply. Anyway, after the gentleman asked if I was Matt Weiner, I replied, "Yes, and which of Chip's pea-brained cronies mi...

Ben Dillon

In one match, during the 60 second round, Chip was (apparently) giving the points to the wrong team. He took about 20 seconds to fix the score on his computer, and only then did he permit the second team to answer the missed parts that the first team missed. Had I been coaching the first team, I wo...

Ben Dillon

Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer?

Ben Dillon

My former team being in the same room to which I was assigned was, to my best knowledge, completely random. They had me moving from room to room every couple of hours to help everyone and to make sure that I got to work with everyone. When the moderator is connected to the team, they can be accused...

Ben Dillon

Good points, Bryce. But I've got to disagree with you on this one: The "not being able to see other Indiana teams" is unfortunate, but at its basest level, QB doesn't need to be a spectator event. Quiz Bowl absolutely needs to be a spectator competition. Not that the spectators are a neces...

Ben Dillon

scquizbowl: Another thing that gets old is the way that the buzzers were done. We got gypped out of several questions because they had to say your school, then your name, and our new player waited for the school, but not his name, and he was marked non-responsive two or three times. Recognizing play...

Ben Dillon

Amen. The close quarters were quite draining, such that it contributed to my players' decision not to stay for the consolation rounds.

Ben Dillon

Two points: 1. I'm not sure the argument about variable bonuses. If you agree that a tossup can be worth variable points, giving powers for deeper knowledge, why the objections to 5-10-15 or 30-20-10? 2. Is computational math less valid than Harry Potter and Starcraft? I don't object to any of them ...

Ben Dillon

I wonder about "late negging", i.e. negging very close to the end of the question. Two rare situations: (1) buzzing a syllable before the end of the question because it's a race (awfully hard to say that those deserve -5 points because of one missing syllable); (2) negging early because a ...

Ben Dillon

The Power Theory thread leads me to think that maybe we should start a parallel discussion about negs. NAC and PACE don't have them whereas NAQT does; not sure about other formats. Question #1: If you accept the theory that should be powers, does that necessitate that there should be negs? Question ...

Ben Dillon

I see that St. Jospeh's is still playing two games at the same time. I am curious how that will be remedied.

I did bring that glitch to Chip's attention. If he isn't able to fix it, at least I have eight players going :)

Ben Dillon

That doesn't sound right to me at all. You have no way of knowing whether your opponent has already negged, powered, or even buzzed in. Knowing what happened to them defeats the purpose of it being a blind match against an opponent. Would knowing about a neg affect whether or not you interrupt? Of c...

Ben Dillon

How will you work negs? I ask because playing against a "goldfish" becomes more strategic than I thought at first. For example, playing against a live opponent, you are aware of whether or not the other team has negged. Since only one team can neg, you can still safely try for power. To wi...

Ben Dillon

Phil, I think you can probably up St. Joe to two teams :)

Ben Dillon

Chiming in on the Indiana ratings: My team, St. Joseph's, is something like 36-5 now, but with only a few games against out-of-state competition, we don't rate a top 25 mention. (On NAQT format, I'd guess us to be the best team in the state.) Culver, however, has several games outside the state, so ...

Ben Dillon

I'm reasonably certain we can't use St. Joe on 2/23. There's a trivia tournament fundraiser for athletics that night, so they'll be doing all kinds of setup and likely won't want any students potentially underfoot :(

Ben Dillon

St. Joseph's will be in for two teams :)

Ben Dillon

Without a shadow of a doubt, I'm completely persuaded by the well-constructed and flawlessly logical argument of the original post. Because of the heinous actions of Mormonism prior to thirty years ago, I immediately and with prejudice sever any ties with NAQT. The connection between the two organiz...

Ben Dillon

Washington is as good as O'Dell. (Think Arnav.) Penn and Adams are also good.

From Duneland, I've only seen Andrean, but they returned almost everyone from last year, so they're solid.

Ben Dillon

The Indiana rankings will likely smooth themselves out once I get all the scores from the Brownsburg tournament to submit to David. There were about 30 teams there, of which about half were B-teams. Few of the B-teams did well, and none did better than their A-teams.

Ben Dillon

I believe David did an update yesterday. All the Indiana rankings are updated, I know.

Ben Dillon

Do we need to cover situations where calculation questions are corrected midstream? Allowing a five-second buffer to correct a math answer defeats the purpose of giving those answers immediately.

Ben Dillon

As for switching teams -- would/should it be permissible to allow a player loaned to a chimera team to play again for that team? E.G. A school brings 9 players on 2 teams. They loan player #9 to a chimera team and both teams make the playoffs. I would be inclined to allow players on a chimera team ...

Ben Dillon

I'll ask him... I should point out that there may be less goodwill than previously because I didn't select his son for varsity this year as a senior.

Ben Dillon

Last year, the parent of one of my players, a EE professor, had his graduate students build a wireless buzzer system for a summer project. It consists of one "master" unit that is wireless from the two "slaves" that control each side. (It's not fully wireless, though; the slaves ...

Ben Dillon

Okay then, what if coaches designated before a tournament whether the tournament would be rated for their teams? I could see a coach saying that their A and B teams were to be counted as "official" and their C team would be "unofficial". This would allow for B and lower teams tha...

Ben Dillon

How feasible/desirable would it be to simply lump together any non-A team results as B? Usually there's enough of a falloff after an A team that other teams are interchangeable, and their players are more likely to change during the year anyway. When the E team beats the D team by a score of 20-10 i...

Ben Dillon

The possibility of players moving between teams, whether through promotion, demotion, attrition, or nefarious design, makes me think that maybe B teams shouldn't even be included in the rankings. For purposes of the rankings, David could take whichever team finishes the highest and designate their r...

Ben Dillon

I guess I'll put my vote in for the "high school curriculum" argument. To me, mathematics should be included as separate from science because it is separate in the curriculum of almost every high school in the nation. I won't go so far as to say that the questions necessarily need to be co...

Ben Dillon

Well, bless my soul... there's an Indiana team? News to me. Plus, it Ben Davis HS, who didn't play in a league this year, IIRC.

Somebody's who there, tell Ben Davis the rest of the state wishes them well!

Ben Dillon

My team finished #16 at NAC this year. Given the level of competition and the teams we've seen/played against during the year, including out-of-state teams like DCC, I think we'd be no higher than #50 in the nation if everyone were to play together at one national tournament instead of four. As for ...

Ben Dillon

We don't have deep pockets. Going to both tournaments has not been an option until recently, when either or both NAC and NAQT were in Chicago, which is close enough to us to commute. If NAC lowers costs next year, going to both will be an option regardless of location. I have been trying to make the...

Ben Dillon

charlieDfromNKC: I really want to know why the 4 quarter format is better? Matt Weiner: It's certainly possible to write four-quarter questions that aren't terrible. Matt said it more succinctly than I did earlier. It's not that I think the four-quarter format is better , it's that my students like...

Ben Dillon

Sigh... I guess this might degenerate into yet another thread of why the tossup/bonus format is REAL quiz bowl and the four-quarter format isn't. I know some of you subscribe to that theory; I simply don't. (My players have played both and prefer the four-quarter format, even though they're arguably...

Ben Dillon

Oh, it's not a depth thing at all; it is entirely a format thing. There's a variety in the four-quarter format (straight tossups, tossups with bonuses, sixty-second rounds) that NAQT does not have (all tossups with bonuses). My team feels the same way, and yet I think they're better at the NAQT form...

Ben Dillon

I'll throw in my congratulations to Harrison and company as well. I've seen them on NAQT format, and they're darn good at that too. But I've rarely ever seen them beaten in NAC format, and never this year. After the close of NAC-Orlando, Harrison's coach said they might branch out next year to do PA...

Ben Dillon

Since I've got little better to do, here goes... :) From White River... Lafayette Harrison: Still the team to beat at the state level. Two of their four top players return, and they were the more dangerous of the two anyway. Plus, they always field an excellent B team. Brebeuf Jesuit: Hard to say ho...

Ben Dillon

In 2003, our diocese wouldn't let us go to nationals in DC. I finally got them to agree by having each family sign a special permission form that said they understood the risk and that the school would not be liable if an incident occurred. In other words, a CYA-because-we're-afraid-of-lawsuits thin...

Ben Dillon

Enlighten me as to the decision made here. If the last time the player's buzzer was working was Tossup #3, why was the game score reset to zeroes? Wouldn't it have made more sense to reset it to the score after #3 and continue play from there? After all, I assume the same decision would not have bee...

Ben Dillon

I'm still wondering why no MVP for DC was named. Yeah, we reward "teams" rather than outstanding individuals... but even mentioning the team roster would be a nice gesture. Maybe that's for the rewrite when the pics of the kids come out after the national championship has been completed. ...

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