2015 STIMPY: Question-Specific Discussion

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2015 STIMPY: Question-Specific Discussion

Post by Bloodwych »

Post any question-specific comments you have here. I'd be happy to paste some questions at your request; we do not plan on giving the set out for now, as there are mirrors scheduled for the next month and a half.
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Re: Question-Specific Discussion

Post by Wynaut »

Could I see the "whistling" TU? That was probably my favorite question of the set, and since the last words I heard before buzzing in were "Otis Redding," I want to see what the rest of the TU looked like.

In addition, could I see the TUs on "Hindu pilgrimages" and "Nunavut"? I negged with "bathing" on the Kumbh Mela clue, and Will negged with "Quebec" because the TU called Nunavut a province (we successfully protested this at the UIUC site).

Also, it seemed that some things were a little early to be in power -- Sid power-vulched the "drag" TU on "Stokes' Law," and I got the "dating" TU in power even though it took me one more sentence to realize what Willard Libby's famous for.
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Re: Question-Specific Discussion

Post by Mnemosyne »

Our site also had a neg and a near-protest (unnecessary due to game result) regarding Nunavut not being a province.
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Re: Question-Specific Discussion

Post by Bloodwych »

We caught the issue with the Nunavut question at our site and changed it to "territory" immediately. Sorry about that.

Here it is with the text replaced (the original had "province" instead of "territory"):
Illinois A/VCU A wrote:10. Photosynthetic organisms called hypoliths are found in large quantities on this territory’s Devon and Cornwallis Islands. The medieval Dorset culture flourished in this modern day territory, whose northernmost point lies south of the Lincoln Sea. The Belcher Islands are a part of this territory, whose highest point is Barbeau Peak. The northernmost permanently inhabited place in the world, (*) Alert, is located on an island in this territory. The cities of Whale Cove and Rankin Inlet are located in this territory, which includes most of the western shore of the Hudson Bay. This territory, which includes Ellesmere Island, has a capital that lies between two peninsulas on Frobisher Bay. For 10 points, name this most recently incorporated and primarily Inuit Canadian territory, whose capital is Iqaluit.
ANSWER: Nunavut
Whistling:
Virginia A/Kentucky A wrote:5. Bon Iver used this technique to produce the ghostly dissonance at the end of the instrumental track “Team.” Billy Joel’s “The Stranger” repeats the opening piano melody with a version of the melody played with this technique. Because Otis Redding died in a plane crash before he could sing the last verse, this technique is still the ending to “Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay.” The J. Geils Band’s “Centerfold” ends using this technique to (*) repeat the chorus theme. Instances of this sound follow every hook on a song whose rapper says, “I’m betting you like people / and I’m betting you love freak mode;” that song’s hook says, “You just put your lips together / and you come real close.” For 10 points, identify this musical activity that titles a suggestive Flo Rida hit.
ANSWER: whistling
Pilgrimages:
Penn A wrote:17. People carrying out this action in Sabarimala must first observe a 41 day vratham. The Ganga Jal is carried during the Kanvar Yatra in one of these actions. Dharamshalas are created to aid those involved in this action. A spilled pot filled with the liquid of immortality names a festival that occurs concurrently with this action; that is the (*) Kumbha Mela festival, the largest one of these. This action is performed in the Sapta Puri, which includes the sites of Ayodhya and Mathura. People carrying out this action may visit the Jyotirlingam in the Kashi Vishwanath Temple in Varanasi. For 10 points, name this action that in its most famous form involves bathing in the Ganges, in which people travel to religious sites.
ANSWER: Hindu pilgrimage [accept yatra before mentioned]
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Re: 2015 STIMPY: Question-Specific Discussion

Post by sephirothrr »

The _pi_ question in the WUSTL A - Ottawa packet contains an incorrect clue.
Packet 11 wrote:Euler proved that the sum “one over one-squared, plus one over two-squared, plus one over three-squared” and so on converges to this number over six.
That proof actually shows that the sum is pi^2 / 6, which caused a neg and protest in a room at our site. While it didn't affect the outcome of that match, this should probably be fixed for future mirrors.
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Re: 2015 STIMPY: Question-Specific Discussion

Post by vinteuil »

sephirothrr wrote:The _pi_ question in the WUSTL A - Ottawa packet contains an incorrect clue.
Packet 11 wrote:Euler proved that the sum “one over one-squared, plus one over two-squared, plus one over three-squared” and so on converges to this number over six.
That proof actually shows that the sum is pi^2 / 6, which caused a neg and protest in a room at our site. While it didn't affect the outcome of that match, this should probably be fixed for future mirrors.
That's really bad; sorry about that!
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Re: 2015 STIMPY: Question-Specific Discussion

Post by naan/steak-holding toll »

From my notes:

The tossup on gamma ray bursts was extremely confusing to an astronomy "amateur/non-expert" like me who knows a reasonable amount of subject matter about astronomy, but may not be necessarily familiar with technical terminology. I recognized one of the early clues as referring to GRBs, but I heard the question use the phrase "these objects" after having said "these events" and was confused into not buzzing until near the end of the tossup. "Objects", while perhaps a techincally correct identifier for GRBs (at least as explained to me by Jacob Reed), is not a particularly intuitive one. I think that it's better for writers to use consistent identifiers that are intuitive for most people as well, because quizbowl is a game of amateur as well as "expert" or classroom-based knowledge - including in the sciences, as Matt Jackson would be more than happy to tell you.

The same thing happened with the tossup on "games" - the question used the word "phenomena" throughout. While there's nothing technically wrong with that identifier, it's not particularly intuitive and made me not understand what the question wanted me to give as an answer, even though I was familiar with the subject matter the question was talking about.

This is probably due to not a lot of folks being up on specifics about the environmental movement, but both the players on MIT B and I didn't think the Greenpeace question played out particularly well. The question seemed to indicate relatively early that the organization was concerned with the environment (fine) but that meant it turned into a buzzer-race on the first clue that remotely sounded like it could refer to the Nazca lines. I'm not sure if there's really any way to fix this, though, and it could just be peculiar to our teams.

"Frost at Midnight" and Desire Under the Elms seem like quite difficult answerlines, though admittedly they're by super-important authors. I guess they were just part of the editors' decision to have a pretty reasonable number of outlier tossups, which seems like a fine editorial decision. I'm also bad at literature, so there's that.

In typical quizbowler fashion, I didn't really write down many things to single out and praise; apologies for that. (EDIT: I remembered the /h/ tossup; that tossup was AWESOME and had some really cool linguistics clues)

EDIT: Also, to add another example, my extreme Civil War buff teammate was confused by the identifier used in the "blockade of the Confederacy" tossup because it was referred to as a "policy." I'm not really sure what's a good way to refer to that answer, though - "strategy" doesn't seem a whole lot better, and "policy" is certainly less egregious than "phenomena" for "games."
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Re: 2015 STIMPY: Question-Specific Discussion

Post by Wynaut »

Periplus of the Erythraean Sea wrote:This is probably due to not a lot of folks being up on specifics about the environmental movement, but both the players on MIT B and I didn't think the Greenpeace question played out particularly well. The question seemed to indicate relatively early that the organization was concerned with the environment (fine) but that meant it turned into a buzzer-race on the first clue that remotely sounded like it could refer to the Nazca lines. I'm not sure if there's really any way to fix this, though, and it could just be peculiar to our teams.
I was responsible for writing that tossup, and I was surprised that it, and not, say, my submitted tossup on The Fall, was kept in the final version. I had those same concerns while writing the tossup -- I was unsure whether or not the video mentioned in the tossup was famous enough (it was briefly taken down -- for copyright reasons, not for criticizing Shell) to be something buzzable.
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Re: 2015 STIMPY: Question-Specific Discussion

Post by naan/steak-holding toll »

I forgot something: I was pretty unhappy that the only economics question I heard in all ten rounds was a tossup on "Harvard" that was personally frustrating because I recognized the Reinhart-Rogoff clue, but didn't know which university they were from. Sure, that's me not knowing stuff, but I think it's worth asking the people who wrote the question: why is it particularly worth testing the knowledge that Reinhard, Rogoff, Sen, and Summers all happen to be associated with Harvard in some manner? That seems completely tangential to the academic work they did, since it's not like there is a specific "Harvard School" of economics or anything that's particularly influencing their work like working at Chicago alongside Friedman and Stigler would. Furthermore, I'm not sure you can really say that Amartya Sen is an economist "from Harvard" specifically, since he's also a fellow at Oxford and Cambridge and did most of his most famous work while not at Harvard (for example, he wrote Poverty and Famines while at Oxford).
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Re: 2015 STIMPY: Question-Specific Discussion

Post by UlyssesInvictus »

I thought the set was pretty great, had a lot of fun playing it. I didn't have any overwhelmingly specific concerns, but I want to echo the concerns about tossups like games, pilgrimage, and Greenpeace that felt a little too transparent. I guess I felt like they used real clues, so you were rewarded if you solidly knew the questions and didn't have to play chicken--like, for the Greenpeace tossup, I remember buzzing on a substantive event that wasn't the Nazca lines--but otherwise it was easier and more rewarding to take a chance than wait for a certain clue (especially for games, which was obviously game theory, but I didn't recognize just wanted "games").

And also, at the time I thought the whistling tossup was really stupid--"put your lips together," really...--but now seeing the full tossup I think it was fine at rewarding PC knowledge.
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Re: 2015 STIMPY: Question-Specific Discussion

Post by a bird »

The mannerism bonus in packet 5 (Illinois/VCU) referenced Pontormo's deposition (Capponi Chapel) in its second part. This seemed a little odd to me since the work is specifically identified as his Pietà in Janson's (8th ed.) (the Wikipedia Article on the other hand only calls it a deposition). I think it's quite reasonable to call the work Pontormo a deposition, but since its often also called a pietà, the question could be quite misleading. The bonus part would definitely be misleading to players which only knew about the Pontormo work.

In general, I'm trying to say that we shouldn't use rely on Wikipedia too much and that editors should try to check multiple sources, especially in situations with ambiguous names or terms.

Edit: Also, in looking further at Janson's, it seems like _Rosso_ should be acceptable for Rosso _Fiorentino_, in the third part of that bonus.
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Re: 2015 STIMPY: Question-Specific Discussion

Post by Gonzagapuma1 »

a bird wrote:The mannerism bonus in packet 5 (Illinois/VCU) referenced Pontormo's deposition (Capponi Chapel) in its second part. This seemed a little odd to me since the work is specifically identified as his Pietà in Janson's (8th ed.) (the Wikipedia Article on the other hand only calls it a deposition). I think it's quite reasonable to call the work Pontormo a deposition, but since its often also called a pietà, the question could be quite misleading. The bonus part would definitely be misleading to players which only knew about the Pontormo work.

In general, I'm trying to say that we shouldn't use rely on Wikipedia too much and that editors should try to check multiple sources, especially in situations with ambiguous names or terms.

Edit: Also, in looking further at Janson's, it seems like _Rosso_ should be acceptable for Rosso _Fiorentino_, in the third part of that bonus.
I guess I agree with your general point, but that has pretty much only ever been called a Deposition in quizbowl. Tournaments that called it a deposition: ACF Regionals 2013, BELFAST 2010 and EFT V.
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Re: 2015 STIMPY: Question-Specific Discussion

Post by naan/steak-holding toll »

Gonzagapuma1 wrote:
I guess I agree with your general point, but that has pretty much only ever been called a Deposition in quizbowl. Tournaments that called it a deposition: ACF Regionals 2013, BELFAST 2010 and EFT V.
While the ideal world where quizbowl is infallible would be a nice one, that's not the world we live in, so this seems like a rather specious argument. Also, what if a player doesn't read old packets and never played before 2014 - does that mean it's okay for them to be completely screwed because they didn't know "quizbowl only calls it this"? (FWIW, I also answered "Pieta" on that question - I guess I do read old packets and I definitely played Regionals 2013 but back then I never paid attention to painting questions and I never read the other tournaments)
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Re: 2015 STIMPY: Question-Specific Discussion

Post by Amizda Calyx »

This was actually a pretty fun tournament to play after not having played anything in almost a year. I especially enjoyed that somehow quite a few tossups aligned with aborted questions I've attempted in the past. Never thought writing a couple clues on "doors" or "grapes in poetry" would get me points! The lit overall seemed quite good, although a little hard in some places.

However, I was not pleased with the bio in this set. There were a lot of ambiguous, unhelpful, and misordered clues. I'll give more details once I have access to a computer.
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Re: 2015 STIMPY: Question-Specific Discussion

Post by Eddie »

I noticed a small factual error in the first part of Round 6, Bonus 20, which reads:
Round 6, Bonus 20 wrote: [10] Name this female warrior, the rival of Aife. A hero later killed Connla, the son he had with this woman.
ANSWER: Scathach [or Skatha]
Connla is the son of Aoife, not Scathach.

EDIT: There's another confusion in the third part of Editors Round 2, Bonus 5, which reads:
Editors 2, Bonus 5 wrote: [10] The Bistones ruled by King Diomedes got very angry when Heracles stole their cattle, so Heracles had to flee, leaving the cattle to this man. Unfortunately, this guy was murdered by the horses, so Heracles named a city after him.
ANSWER: Abderos [or Abderus]
If I recall correctly, the entirety of Heracles's eighth labour concerns the Mares of Diomedes, and not any cattle.
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Re: 2015 STIMPY: Question-Specific Discussion

Post by Ike »

a bird wrote:Edit: Also, in looking further at Janson's, it seems like _Rosso_ should be acceptable for Rosso _Fiorentino_, in the third part of that bonus.
I will have a longer post about this subject later for a general audience, but generally speaking many Renaissance artists are referred to in scholarship by what we are calling their "first names." My professor always called Pierro della Francesca, Piero, and would correct me if I ever called him "della Francesca." In class, we called Rogier van der Weyden by the name of Rogier. Editors and protest-resolvers should be doubly careful about this and generally err on the side of leniency.

Just to be clear, this is not a particular problem with this tournament, just something I want to warn people about.
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Re: 2015 STIMPY: Question-Specific Discussion

Post by vinteuil »

Ike wrote:
a bird wrote:Edit: Also, in looking further at Janson's, it seems like _Rosso_ should be acceptable for Rosso _Fiorentino_, in the third part of that bonus.
I will have a longer post about this subject later for a general audience, but generally speaking many Renaissance artists are referred to in scholarship by what we are calling their "first names." My professor always called Pierro della Francesca, Piero, and would correct me if I ever called him "della Francesca." In class, we called Rogier van der Weyden by the name of Rogier. Editors and protest-resolvers should be doubly careful about this and generally err on the side of leniency.

Just to be clear, this is not a particular problem with this tournament, just something I want to warn people about.
This is something I'm a stickler about for composers, so I'm a bit embarrassed I didn't catch it here.

[EDIT: While I thought I'd put in a note about this for Guillaume Du Fay, I apparently missed that in this tournament, so your post is probably a good reminder for everyone...]
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Re: 2015 STIMPY: Question-Specific Discussion

Post by coldstonesteveaustin »

For the conjugation tossup, I said hyperconjugation and was deemed wrong. I protested this but the score rendered it moot, and to my knowledge it should've been accepted.
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Re: 2015 STIMPY: Question-Specific Discussion

Post by Good Goblin Housekeeping »

Hidehiro Anto wrote:For the conjugation tossup, I said hyperconjugation and was deemed wrong. I protested this but the score rendered it moot, and to my knowledge it should've been accepted.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHHahahahahahahahhahah
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Re: 2015 STIMPY: Question-Specific Discussion

Post by Good Goblin Housekeeping »

Black Miao wrote:
Hidehiro Anto wrote:For the conjugation tossup, I said hyperconjugation and was deemed wrong. I protested this but the score rendered it moot, and to my knowledge it should've been accepted.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHHahahahahahahahhahah
Idk about the STIMPY editors but if I was grand commissioner of quizbowl and you have that protest I'd have just given you like A neg 20 instead for thinking you can do That
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Re: 2015 STIMPY: Question-Specific Discussion

Post by Jason Cheng »

Yeah hyperconjugation is not the same as conjugation

On the other hand, I said "conjugated dienes" in a different room around the "Gilman reagents" part, and then I was given a neg and we lost the game after the protest was reviewed and denied. As far as I know, I was just adding extraneous correct information to the correct answer, which was "conjugated." Can someone explain why a protest like that would be denied?
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Re: 2015 STIMPY: Question-Specific Discussion

Post by Cody »

Jason Cheng wrote:On the other hand, I said "conjugated dienes" in a different room around the "Gilman reagents" part, and then I was given a neg and we lost the game after the protest was reviewed and denied. As far as I know, I was just adding extraneous correct information to the correct answer, which was "conjugated." Can someone explain why a protest like that would be denied?
Your answer doesn't fit under the umbrella of ACF rule G.2, nor does your answer fit all the clues (or even most of the pronouns). This is a case of "attention must be paid".
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Re: 2015 STIMPY: Question-Specific Discussion

Post by touchpack »

Hidehiro Anto wrote:For the conjugation tossup, I said hyperconjugation and was deemed wrong. I protested this but the score rendered it moot, and to my knowledge it should've been accepted.
No, you're wrong. Sorry. These are completely different things.
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Re: 2015 STIMPY: Question-Specific Discussion

Post by Amizda Calyx »

That mollusk/bivalve/foot bonus was so bad guys.
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Re: 2015 STIMPY: Question-Specific Discussion

Post by Good Goblin Housekeeping »

touchpack wrote:
Hidehiro Anto wrote:For the conjugation tossup, I said hyperconjugation and was deemed wrong. I protested this but the score rendered it moot, and to my knowledge it should've been accepted.
No, you're wrong. Sorry. These are completely different things.
While we're at it, PSA to quizbowl people, hyperconjugation is not the same as or a type of conjugation, much like how pineapples are not the same as or a type of apple.
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Re: 2015 STIMPY: Question-Specific Discussion

Post by Bloodwych »

Thanks for your enormously helpful input.
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