NEWT (2021-2022)

[1992 in spaceflight]

This is the announcement for the New Enterprising Writers’ Tournament (NEWT), a high school regular plus difficulty set for the 2021-22 season.

Set Details:
The set is intended to be for high school audiences. The intended difficulty of the set is regular plus high school difficulty. Tossups will range from 500-650 characters (about 5-7 lines of Times New Roman 10 font). We will not enforce a character cap on bonuses, but they will not exceed 10 lines of TNR 10 font. There will be 14 packets of 20/20, with an additional 10/10 in an extras packet, to be used as replacements. Tossups will be power marked, and bonuses will have three parts, each worth 10 points.

Our target difficulty is BHSAT, specifically the 2020 edition of the tournament.

We intend for this set to be ready for mirrors in the first weekend of December.

Distribution:
The distribution will be as follows:
4/4 Science (1/1 Biology, 1/1 Chemistry, 1/1 Physics, 1/1 Other)
4/4 History (1/1 American, 1/1 World, 1/1 Euro, 1/1 Ancient/Classical)
4/4 Literature (1/1 American, 1/1 Commonwealth, 1/1 Euro, 1/1 World/Other)
3/3 Fine Arts (1/1 Visual, 1/1 Auditory, 1/1 Other)
1.5/1.5 Geography/CE (1/1 Geography, 0.5 CE)
1/1 Religion
1/1 Mythology
0.5/0.5 Philosophy
0.5/0.5 Social Science
0.5/0.5 Pop Culture

Writers/Editors:
This set will be written by newer high school writers, under the guidance of an experienced editing team. Our idea for this is to train newer high school writers and allow them to grow their writing skills in an environment where they can receive useful criticism and feedback.

Writing and Editing Team:

Writers (FINALIZED):

Elie Aoun (CWRU)
Vikshar Athreya (University of Washington)
Giifti Benti (Carbondale)
Veer Bhatt (VMI)
Aalok Bhattacharya (Staples)
Aatreyo Bhattacharyya (Mira Loma)
Ben Chapman (University of Toronto)
Bo Chi (NCSSM)
Rohan Ganeshan (Buffalo Grove)
Shourjo Ganguli (Beavercreek)
Tasis Gemmill-Nexon (Georgetown Day)
Kaushik Gollamudi (Barrington)
Elizabeth Grace (Raffles)
William Groger (Columbia)
Umme Hani Bootwala (Clarke)
Sam Henshaw (Wando)
Tegan Kapadia (Georgia Tech)
Sol Kim (Phillips Academy)
Anish Kodali (Great Valley)
Joseph Krol (Cambridge)
Louis Li (Brown)
Grant Maiorana (Solon)
Eric Mukherjee (Formerly Penn)
Ava Parikh (Solon)
Aditya Patel (Hamilton)
Danny Peelen (Cedar Crest)
Vishal Rameshbabu (James Clemens)
Vishal Sareddy (Lambert)
Nathan Sheffield (MIT)
Aditya Sivakumar (Mira Loma)
Anurag Sodhi (Centennial)
Ananya Tadigadapa (Northeastern)
Shiva Tegulla (Stanton College Prep)
Samuel Wang (Pitt)
Chandler West (Vanderbilt)

Editors:

Head Editor: Jacob O'Rourke [formerly Truman State]
Science: Eric Mukherjee [formerly UPenn]
History & Geography/CE: Govind Prabhakar [Georgetown]
Literature: Karsten Rynearson [Phillips Academy]
Fine Arts: Chandler West [Vanderbilt] (Visual), Ethan Strombeck [Stanford] (Auditory)
Religion/Myth: William Groger [Miami Valley]
Philosophy/Social Science: Vivian Malouf [UC Berkeley]
Pop Culture: Ben Weiner [UMN]

Our mirror fee is $15 per team, including any house teams that play the set.

If you’re interested in mirroring the set, please email me (Jacob O’Rourke) at jacob.orourke.7 [at] gmail.com with NEWT somewhere in the subject line.

[1992 in spaceflight]

Mirrors:

-Vanderbilt ABC (October 30th, 2021)-contact Sharath Narayan [vandyquizbowl at gmail.com] for more details. Statistics from this tournament can be found here.
-Minnesota Online League (starting November 14th, 2021) - contact Owen Riley [oriley1201 at icloud.com] for more details. Statistics from this tournament can be found here.
-MOQBA Fall Championship (December 11th, 2021) - contact Jeff Hill [fall at moqba.org] for more information. Statistics from this tournament can be found here.
-Mahoning County League (starting January 5th, 2022) - contact Greg Bossick [greg.bossick at gmail.com] for more information. Statistics from this tournament can be found here.
-Darien Spring Tournament (March 5th, 2022) - contact Darryl Wang [wangd at darienps.org] for more information. Statistics from this tournament can be found here.
-PettiWarz V at Pettisville Schools [OH] (March 5th, 2022) - contact Andrew Switzer [aswitzer at pettisvilleschools.org] for more information. Statistics from this tournament can be found here.
-Protean Challenge (March 19th, 2022) - contact Owen Riley for more information. Online mirror via Zoom. Statistics from this tournament can be found here.
-MINEWT Waltz (March 26th, 2022) [Online tournament for MI schools] - contact Aalok Bhattacharya (aalokquizbowl at gmail.com) for more information. Statistics from this tournament can be found here.
-ReKT V at Westview High School [San Diego CA] (March 26th, 2022) - contact the Westview team (wvhsqb at gmail.com] for more information. Statistics from this tournament can be found here.
-Spring League Showdown
-MOYA II [online, hosted by Mira Loma HS] (April 23rd, 2022) - contact Arjun Gonuguntla (gonuguntla.arjun at gmail.com) for more information.
-Great Valley (Postponed) - contact Bernard McCauley [bmccauley at gvsd.org] for more information.

[1992 in spaceflight]

This set will be available for mirrors at the beginning of November. If you're interested in mirroring this set, please email me.

[1992 in spaceflight]

We're also seeking playtesters for this set. If you are interested in playtesting this set, please fill out this form.

[1992 in spaceflight]

We're going to start playtesting this set next week, so please fill out the form if you haven't yet already! If you have, you can expect an email on Thursday with logistics information.

Edit: To clarify, I mean next week as in "the week starting on October 10th/11th"

[1992 in spaceflight]

We're seeking mirrors. I'm going to send out some inquiries over the next few weeks, but we'd love to hear from you if you're interested in hosting a mirror in your area.

[adhvaithr7]

What packets would be most similar to NEWT, just for preparation purposes?

[1992 in spaceflight]

What packets would be most similar to NEWT, just for preparation purposes?

I'd say past BHSATs or other set of similar difficulty, since our target difficulty was 2020 BHSAT.

[1992 in spaceflight]

Once it is approved, the packets from the set will show up here.

Thanks to all of our hosts for using the set and to all of the teams who played it!

I also plan on using some of my free time to finish converting scoresheet data into conversion stats from this tournament. You can find this data here.