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Re: 2011 HSNCT discussion

Posted: Tue May 31, 2011 12:10 pm
by kayli
That walkway at the Chicago Hyatt was one of the worst things I have ever had to deal with in a competition. You had to sprint to there from the main hotel to get to a match at times, and if you had a bye when your matches were there, it pretty much ensured that you couldn't go back to your room. I don't recall any of our rooms being too small or having a leaking ceiling sprinkler, so I can't address that but this venue had so much more than the other one. The best thing about the hotel was that it was so close to restaurants and attractions. The Hyatt at Rosemont had nothing to do within walking distance, and there were very few restaurants which meant that people were lined up outside the McDonald's for lunch. Bad times. I really hope NAQT either keeps this venue or switches for one that is similar to it. I don't many people would appreciate a switch back to the Hyatt in Rosemont.

Re: 2011 HSNCT discussion

Posted: Tue May 31, 2011 12:37 pm
by Rufous-capped Thornbill
The leaking sprinkler was in the room I was reading in, and it was distracting for several teams.

I didn't mind the Atlanta Hyatt, but the elevator problems and the fact that the hotel had more stories than the one in Rosemont made me really feel stranded in parts of the hotel, especially on Saturday. That wasn't much of a problem once all of the elevators were fixed, but I still prefer the one in Rosemont.

Re: 2011 HSNCT discussion

Posted: Tue May 31, 2011 1:10 pm
by jonah
Inkana7 wrote:The leaking sprinkler was in the room I was reading in, and it was distracting for several teams.
The chances of the hotel finding out about that and fixing it when you post that information here are pretty miniscule; letting your control room know as soon as you became aware of that situation would probably have gotten it fixed expediently.

Re: 2011 HSNCT discussion

Posted: Tue May 31, 2011 1:42 pm
by mujason
Might as well post the list of questions I wrote.

packet 1: (Billy Bathgate, Snow Falling on Cedars, The Hours); (Mercury, Aphrodite, Circe); (Vulgate, King James, NIV); Cape Verde; Tom Joad; Nadine Gordimer; Don River.
packet 2: USS Arizona; (monarch, zebra swallowtail, Kamehameha); (Jonas Brothers, Camp Rock, Demi Lovato); Thetis.
packet 3: (George Allen, Harry Byrd, John Tyler); (Dustin Hoffman, Jessica Lange, Geena Davis); (Sean O'Casey, Shadow of a Gunman, Abbey Theatre); Lake Ladoga.
packet 4: (Jupiter, Amalthea, Io); (Oe, MIshima, Abe); (Teddy Roosevelt, Debs, Marshall); Gerard Butler; The Iceman Cometh.
packet 5: Carson McCullers; Powhatan; (Beloved, Milkman, Florens); Singapore; (Abel, Seth, Enos).
packet 6: (Maldives, Comoros, Seychelles); (Irish Sea, Strait of Dover, The Wash); (Galilee, Jairus, water to wine); (Henry Clay, Maine, 36 30); Carl Sandburg.
packet 7: Kandinsky; Wagner Act; (Houston, San Jacinto, Galveston); (Louisbourg, Wolfe, Plains of Abraham); Confessions of an English Opium Eater; (vitamin A, riboflavin, vitamin E); (Barry Sanders, Frank Robinson, Gary Payton).
packet 8: (Aida, Radames, Amonasro); (Hayes, Tilden, Blaine); (Crime and Punishment, Possessed, The Double); (The Music Lesson, Delft, yellow); trilobite.
packet 9: (Ireland, Munster, Cork); Vientiane; Chicago Blackhawks; (Orion, Betelgeuse, Bellatrix); Upton Sinclair; (Pantheon, Trajan's Column, Baths of Caracalla); (Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Glass Menagerie, The Rose Tattoo); (Gabon, Libreville, Bight of Bonny).
packet 10: Oman; V. S. Naipaul; (The Right Stuff, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Bonfire of the Vanities); (New Guinea, Torres Strait, Queensland); (Tim Lincecum, Roy Halladay, Chris Carpenter); Dylan Thomas; (Riemann, Diophantine, continuum).
packet 11: Battle of Brandywine; Beauty and the Beast; (speedskating, Apolo Ohno, Bonnie Blair); (Robert Lowell, confessional, Elizabeth Bishop); (Dupin, Legrand, Montresor).
packet 12: George McClellan; Alvar Aalto; (Haymarket, Chicago, Spies); (Belgrade, Sava River, Iron Gates).
packet 13: (Arcturus, Bootes, Spica); Moliere; (Armenia, Mount Ararat, Iran); Daniel; (Patrick Ewing, Walt Frazier, Willis Reed).
packet 14: Charles Evans Hughes; (Ratatosk, Sleipnir, Fenris Wolf); (Rolling Stones, Phil Collins, Def Leppard); (Aaron, Levi, almonds); (Severn, Bristol Channel, Avon); (Lake Chad, N'Djamena, Sahel).
packet 15: Carrie-Anne Moss; (New York Times, First Amendment, Montgomery); (Long John Silver, David Balfour, Master of Ballantrae); Steven Jackson (St. Louis Rams running back); Jeremiah.
packet 16: (David Copperfield, Bob Cratchit, Gradgrind); (Operation Overlord, Utah, Rommel); (Eugene O'Neill, Anna Christie, Mourning Becomes Electra).
packet 17: (D. H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers, Women in Love).
packet 18: (Thomas Jefferson, Sacagawea, Charbonneau); (Boromir, GoldenEye, Flightplan); The Comedy of Errors; John Jay.
packet 19: (Ostia, Tiber River, Tyrrhenian Sea); (Brown v Board of Education, Gideon v Wainwright, Griswold v Connecticut); (Frollo, Javert, Hans of Iceland).
packet 20: Mount Rushmore.
packet 21: Urban Meyer; (St. Helena, Angola, Tristan de Cunha); (Puget Sound, Olympic Mountains, Palouse).
packet 22: (Fairbanks, Platt, Lodge); Michael Chabon; Jonah Hill.
packet 23: Waiting for Lefty; (Phillies, Mike Schmidt, Valdez); Livin' on a Prayer; (Benin, Niger, Togo).
packet 24: Nolan Ryan; (Brokeback Mountain, Donnie Darko, The Good Girl); (Rhine River, Moselle River, Lake Constance); Rh factor.
packet 25: Jean Genet; Song of Myself; Valley Forge; (Lake Superior, Isle Royale, Apostle Islands); (Bolero, Daphnis and Chloe, Scheherazade); (Citizen of the World, She Stoops to Conquer, The Vicar of Wakefield); (Tammi Terrell, Marvin Gaye's father; Let's Get It On); (John Kyl, Dick Durbin, Chuck Schumer).
packet 26: The King's Speech; (The Village Blacksmith, Song of Hiawatha, The Courtship of Miles Standish); Marcel Proust; Gabriel; John Hersey.
packet 27: morphine; (identity, commutative, ring); (Grimm, f, Indo-European); E. A. Robinson; Acts of the Apostles; (Jason, Eurydice, Calliope); (Massachusetts, Provincetown, Woods Hole); Alf Landon.

Re: 2011 HSNCT discussion

Posted: Tue May 31, 2011 1:49 pm
by Steeve Ho You Fat
mujason wrote:packet 6: (Irish Sea, Strait of Dover, The Wash)
Why wasn't Pas de Calais acceptable for the Strait of Dover? It's the same thing, just like "La Manche" would be acceptable for the English Channel.

Re: 2011 HSNCT discussion

Posted: Tue May 31, 2011 1:54 pm
by Marble-faced Bristle Tyrant
I was in the room with the leak (935, unless there was more than one) for playoff scrimmages and tried telling a housekeeping person, but she only spoke Spanish and my skills have accumulated so much rust that I couldn't even begin to synthesize something resembling a useful sentence. Oy. However, I think one of the players from the first round had better luck talking to her.

Re: 2011 HSNCT discussion

Posted: Tue May 31, 2011 2:00 pm
by AKKOLADE
mujason wrote:packet 26: The King's Speech
This was a replacement question I wrote.

Re: 2011 HSNCT discussion

Posted: Tue May 31, 2011 2:08 pm
by sacagawea
mujason wrote: packet 1: (Billy Bathgate, Snow Falling on Cedars, The Hours)
Our team found this bonus particularly difficult. Granted, our team is not the best out there at Literature, but usually when we miss a bonus part, someone on the team conveys something along the lines of "Oh yeah! I've heard of that." Well, on this bonus, we got the Doctorow, but no one had even heard of the other two works.

Any bonus asking for Billy Bathgate from plot summary as the supposed "easy part" seems very difficult to me, even for the level of competition.

Re: 2011 HSNCT discussion

Posted: Tue May 31, 2011 2:18 pm
by Auroni
I think that The Hours was intended to be easier, since it was made into a famous movie, and the writer thought that many high school kids had read Snow Falling on Cedars for class. It definitely ended up being way too hard though.

Re: 2011 HSNCT discussion

Posted: Tue May 31, 2011 5:22 pm
by Angry Babies in Love
mujason wrote: packet 12: Alvar Aalto
packet 15: Carrie-Anne Moss
So it was you...
These tossups were the two that stuck out to me as ridiculously hard for this tournament. My teammate Arun knew Aalto, but I've honestly never seen him come up in anything ever at the high school level. Maybe I'm wrong, but this seemed like it was way out there in terms of difficulty. As for Carrie-Anne Moss, this goes in the "old but not classic trash" pile. She hasn't been a true "star" in any significant movie, and I'm sure that most of the people at this tournament, who weren't really culturally alert at the the time the Matrix was released had never heard of her.

Re: 2011 HSNCT discussion

Posted: Tue May 31, 2011 6:19 pm
by Connie Prater
Khanate wrote:the walkway seemed to add a dimension to the tournament.
I seem to remember that walkway being very inexplicably hot...

The sprinkler situation seems to be an isolated incident most likely caused by the construction. In the three rooms I staffed in throughout the weekend, not much went wrong other than that weird fire alarm thing, also probably a result of the construction. The parade was annoying, but I take it that the readers were able to read over it without a problem. It seems that most of the complaints with the Atlanta venue were with construction, so basically, we just had back luck that weekend. As a venue, it was centrally located to everything that anyone would want to see in Atlanta, unlike Rosemont, which is really rather far from downtown Chicago. It has food other than a McDonald's (a 20 minute walk and an even longer wait in a really long line) and places that would cost everyone far more than they'd want to pay within walking distance, which, when you're running a tournament that large, is probably really important. Like Rosemont, it had very easy access to the airport through public transportation. Whether or not HSNCT stays in Atlanta, I think it's important that NAQT chooses somewhere with a lot of the positives the Atlanta site had (many food options, located near many of the main attractions of the city, easy and fast public transit).

Re: 2011 HSNCT discussion

Posted: Tue May 31, 2011 6:25 pm
by Rufous-capped Thornbill
Wurzel-Flummery wrote:
mujason wrote: packet 12: Alvar Aalto
packet 15: Carrie-Anne Moss
So it was you...
These tossups were the two that stuck out to me as ridiculously hard for this tournament. My teammate Arun knew Aalto, but I've honestly never seen him come up in anything ever at the high school level. Maybe I'm wrong, but this seemed like it was way out there in terms of difficulty. As for Carrie-Anne Moss, this goes in the "old but not classic trash" pile. She hasn't been a true "star" in any significant movie, and I'm sure that most of the people at this tournament, who weren't really culturally alert at the the time the Matrix was released had never heard of her.
Aalto comes up from time to time, but he's too hard for a tossup.

Re: 2011 HSNCT discussion

Posted: Tue May 31, 2011 6:59 pm
by Flash Bomba
I remember one room we played in (I think it was Chicago E with Jeff reading) had the most annoying ticking/buzzing noise throughout our round due to the construction on the floor above, which was easily the lowlight of the tournament for me.

I definitely agree that the Atlanta site was better than the Chicago site (an actual break for lunch, not run-eat-run back), and that the construction probably caused most of the issues with the venue.

Re: 2011 HSNCT discussion

Posted: Tue May 31, 2011 7:02 pm
by jonpin
Wurzel-Flummery wrote:As for Carrie-Anne Moss, this goes in the "old but not classic trash" pile. She hasn't been a true "star" in any significant movie, and I'm sure that most of the people at this tournament, who weren't really culturally alert at the the time the Matrix was released had never heard of her.
Oh god, you're right.
La Maga wrote:
Khanate wrote:the walkway seemed to add a dimension to the tournament.
I seem to remember that walkway being very inexplicably hot...
[buzz] Greenhouse effect!

Seriously, I walked through that tunnel a total of I think three times the one HSNCT that I was there, and that was enough to convince me that it was awful. Someone considered that a positive?

Re: 2011 HSNCT discussion

Posted: Tue May 31, 2011 7:16 pm
by Marble-faced Bristle Tyrant
jonpin wrote:
Wurzel-Flummery wrote:As for Carrie-Anne Moss, this goes in the "old but not classic trash" pile. She hasn't been a true "star" in any significant movie, and I'm sure that most of the people at this tournament, who weren't really culturally alert at the the time the Matrix was released had never heard of her.
Oh god, you're right.
Hah, yeah, I was sitting there wondering "argh why aren't they buzzing?"

Re: 2011 HSNCT discussion

Posted: Tue May 31, 2011 7:28 pm
by centralhs
t3hr0xx0rz wrote:I remember one room we played in (I think it was Chicago E with Jeff reading) had the most annoying ticking/buzzing noise throughout our round due to the construction on the floor above, which was easily the lowlight of the tournament for me.
I was the scorekeeper for Jeff in Chicago E and, yeah, that was the room with the ticking/buzzing noise. Fortunately, though, the ticking and buzzing only occurred in about 3 of the 16 rounds played on Saturday. Other than the occasional annoying noises, everyone seemed to love that room with its cushy, comfy white chairs and boardroom-style setup.

Re: 2011 HSNCT discussion

Posted: Tue May 31, 2011 9:31 pm
by cvdwightw
NAQT claims the following questions of mine made it into the set, so you know who to blame if things went terribly wrong:

Round 1: tossup on dwarves
Round 3: tossup on ozone
Round 6: tossup on carbon dioxide, bonus on egg biology
Round 8: bonus on codons
Round 10: tossup on mice (please complain if the "third ear" clue was too early)
Round 13: tossup on C. Wright Mills, tossup on Hooke's Law (I'm aware of the giant difficulty cliff)
Round 22: bonus on karst
Round 23: bonus on thermal inversion
Round 26: tossup on hearing
Round 27: bonus on jazz groups (this was apparently hastily edited from my packet of sample questions and plugged in)

I'm just hoping that none of those tossups ended up with an 0/4/25 conversion line or whatever it was for that disproportionation tossup in 2009.

Re: 2011 HSNCT discussion

Posted: Tue May 31, 2011 9:41 pm
by Rufous-capped Thornbill
Isn't C. Wright Mills a little hard to be tossing up? I mean, he's cool and all, but still very hard for even this level.

Re: 2011 HSNCT discussion

Posted: Tue May 31, 2011 9:45 pm
by Flash Bomba
I remember a lot of people (I didn't get to play that packet) complaining about a tossup on relegation in sports leagues. Could I see that question?

Re: 2011 HSNCT discussion

Posted: Tue May 31, 2011 9:50 pm
by jmannor2
I thought the question on The Strokes had a very easy lead in. Isn't "Juicebox" like their second most popular song? Can someone post the question on Black and Yellow?

Re: 2011 HSNCT discussion

Posted: Tue May 31, 2011 9:58 pm
by Down and out in Quintana Roo
t3hr0xx0rz wrote:I remember a lot of people (I didn't get to play that packet) complaining about a tossup on relegation in sports leagues. Could I see that question?
I consider myself a pretty avid sports fan, but i have to admit ignorance on this one as i have no idea what "relegation" is, or at least i didn't until i just looked it up 15 seconds ago.

Re: 2011 HSNCT discussion

Posted: Tue May 31, 2011 10:00 pm
by AKKOLADE
jmannor2 wrote:I thought the question on The Strokes had a very easy lead in. Isn't "Juicebox" like their second most popular song?
I wouldn't consider it as famous as Last Nite, and I'd put Under Cover of Darkness before it due to how recent its release is. But you might have a point.

Re: 2011 HSNCT discussion

Posted: Tue May 31, 2011 10:01 pm
by BlueDevil95
-Can someone post the tossup on salat ( I think this was round 2)?

- Also, can the tossup on Cat's Cradle be posted? I think Honniker was in power, which is strange. Isn't he the one that discovered Ice-9 in the book? I also think power on Ikemefuna on the Achebe tossup was generous.

Re: 2011 HSNCT discussion

Posted: Tue May 31, 2011 10:10 pm
by nadph
Could you post the text of the Hooke's Law question? I'm not sure if we got to the difficulty cliff or not in our round.

Also, I found it interesting that there was a tossup on Cauchy in the first round of the final, a tossup on Hooke's law which may have mentioned Cauchy (not sure), and a tossup on anagrams with Hooke's law as a clue (though I don't think there was overlap between any of these).

Re: 2011 HSNCT discussion

Posted: Tue May 31, 2011 10:13 pm
by Down and out in Quintana Roo
Was a survey given to teams again this year? Will results (vague or specific) of the results, if given, be released in some form as well? I'm curious to see if math calculation in bonus questions is an idea many players/coaches are disliking more as time goes on.

Re: 2011 HSNCT discussion

Posted: Tue May 31, 2011 10:14 pm
by Flash Bomba
I consider myself a pretty avid sports fan, but i have to admit ignorance on this one as i have no idea what "relegation" is,
I think it's mostly in European soccer, which is at least where I'd heard of it before. The people (who were very big sports fans) that I talked to said they were able to get it, but only at the very end, and complained it was unclear on what it wanted/pretty obscure anyway.

Re: 2011 HSNCT discussion

Posted: Tue May 31, 2011 10:20 pm
by FreeGravity
Inkana7 wrote:Isn't C. Wright Mills a little hard to be tossing up? I mean, he's cool and all, but still very hard for even this level.
I think it's difficult, but not "too difficult". The team I'm on went 5-5 and we got it. It'd be interesting to see some of these conversion stats, though.

Re: 2011 HSNCT discussion

Posted: Tue May 31, 2011 10:23 pm
by Rufous-capped Thornbill
t3hr0xx0rz wrote:
I consider myself a pretty avid sports fan, but i have to admit ignorance on this one as i have no idea what "relegation" is,
I think it's mostly in European soccer, which is at least where I'd heard of it before. The people (who were very big sports fans) that I talked to said they were able to get it, but only at the very end, and complained it was unclear on what it wanted/pretty obscure anyway.
I don't follow soccer at all, but all of the relegation stuff with the European leagues happened very recently, and most of the early clues dealt with that.

Re: 2011 HSNCT discussion

Posted: Tue May 31, 2011 10:25 pm
by Steeve Ho You Fat
t3hr0xx0rz wrote:
I consider myself a pretty avid sports fan, but i have to admit ignorance on this one as i have no idea what "relegation" is,
I think it's mostly in European soccer, which is at least where I'd heard of it before. The people (who were very big sports fans) that I talked to said they were able to get it, but only at the very end, and complained it was unclear on what it wanted/pretty obscure anyway.
Yeah, this is one of two trash tossups I got all weekend, because a lot of my friends are really obsessed with football to the point where, when we had to teach the class something in our school's public speaking class, one of them did "How European football works."

Re: 2011 HSNCT discussion

Posted: Tue May 31, 2011 10:35 pm
by Khanate
La Maga wrote:
Khanate wrote:the walkway seemed to add a dimension to the tournament.
I seem to remember that walkway being very inexplicably hot...

The sprinkler situation seems to be an isolated incident most likely caused by the construction. In the three rooms I staffed in throughout the weekend, not much went wrong other than that weird fire alarm thing, also probably a result of the construction. The parade was annoying, but I take it that the readers were able to read over it without a problem. It seems that most of the complaints with the Atlanta venue were with construction, so basically, we just had back luck that weekend. As a venue, it was centrally located to everything that anyone would want to see in Atlanta, unlike Rosemont, which is really rather far from downtown Chicago. It has food other than a McDonald's (a 20 minute walk and an even longer wait in a really long line) and places that would cost everyone far more than they'd want to pay within walking distance, which, when you're running a tournament that large, is probably really important. Like Rosemont, it had very easy access to the airport through public transportation. Whether or not HSNCT stays in Atlanta, I think it's important that NAQT chooses somewhere with a lot of the positives the Atlanta site had (many food options, located near many of the main attractions of the city, easy and fast public transit).
I really couldn't find a good way to describe why I liked the walkway. Its more of the increase in chaos that I found exciting - it's probably just me. But that was not my point. I remember Rosemont had a much more open area for the conference/meeting rooms rather than the closed off hallway in which this Atlanta venue had. Also, I recall Rosemont had a few additional elevators, and I believe that the conference/meeting rooms were bigger (correct me if i'm wrong).

Honestly, although it would probably increase costs for more teams, it would be interesting if HSNCT was held somewhere on the West coast next year.

Re: 2011 HSNCT discussion

Posted: Tue May 31, 2011 11:00 pm
by Angry Babies in Love
t3hr0xx0rz wrote:
I consider myself a pretty avid sports fan, but i have to admit ignorance on this one as i have no idea what "relegation" is,
I think it's mostly in European soccer, which is at least where I'd heard of it before. The people (who were very big sports fans) that I talked to said they were able to get it, but only at the very end, and complained it was unclear on what it wanted/pretty obscure anyway.
I don't think it's too hard, all it would take is a pretty basic knowledge of how soccer anywhere outside of America works to be able to get that question pretty early. I had a bye, but I was watching this game and I would have gotten it (assuming I didn't neg with something else earlier--which I probably would have). Though I go to a school with hundreds of big European soccer fans, so I may be at an advantage.

Re: 2011 HSNCT discussion

Posted: Tue May 31, 2011 11:01 pm
by sir negsalot
The relegation tossup was transparent, so basically if one knew what it was, it could be powered, but if not, it would be hard to answer at all. Overall, an interesting tossup choice. I would like to see the reapportionment tossup from I think packet 1 because it seemed very odd.

Re: 2011 HSNCT discussion

Posted: Tue May 31, 2011 11:23 pm
by Important Bird Area
Carangoides ciliarius wrote:Was a survey given to teams again this year? Will results (vague or specific) of the results, if given, be released in some form as well? I'm curious to see if math calculation in bonus questions is an idea many players/coaches are disliking more as time goes on.
Yes, there was a survey, and yes, the results will appear on naqt.com.

Re: 2011 HSNCT discussion

Posted: Tue May 31, 2011 11:35 pm
by Important Bird Area
The music video for this song features "90210" and "bored" written in chalk. The singer of this song "remembers pickin' on the boy" who (*) hit him "with a surprise left" and that the title figure drew "pictures of mountain tops with him on top." This song's title figure's father "didn't give affection" and he was "something that mommy wouldn't wear." For 10 points--name this Pearl Jam song whose title figure "spoke in class today."

answer: _Jeremy_
This method of entering the Football League Championship awaited two of the five teams, including Blackburn and Wolves, that were separated by just one point entering the final weekend of 2011 play. Avram Grant was fired after (*) West Ham United clinched this consequence of finishing in the Premier League's bottom three. For 10 points--the "pyramid system" of English soccer is made possible by what opposite of promotion?

answer: _relegation_ (prompt on "demotion")
This song's artist says that his "super clean" and "super mean" car looks "unapproachable." In this song the artist also raps "when I pulled out of the lot, that's stuntin" and that he is "reppin' my town when you see me you know everything." This song references the (*) colors used by the professional sports teams in Pittsburgh. For 10 points--name this song by Wiz Khalifa, named after two colors.

answer: _Black and Yellow_
This act involves ritual sequences of raka'as, requires a barrier called the sutrah in front of one performing it, and can lead to a zabiba. According to the Qur'anic surah Hud, it should be performed "at the two ends of the (*) day and the beginning of the night," and it includes the Fatihah, or first surah. For 10 points--hadith is the source for the other two daily times for what ritual, performed facing Mecca?

answer: _prayer_ (or _salat_ or _namaz_)
One character in this novel insists that everyone call her "Mom," while another character had an affair with a Russian spy. On his way to an interview with Philip Castle, the narrator meets Newt Hoenikker, a midget whose father helped develop the first atomic bomb. Papa Monzano, the dictator of San Lorenzo and a practitioner of (*) Bokononism, commits suicide using ice-nine in--for 10 points--which novel by Kurt Vonnegut?

answer: _Cat's Cradle_
In three dimensions, constitutive relations obey a generalized form of this law, which involves a six-by-six compliance matrix and its inverse, the stiffness matrix. More generally, this law generalized by Cauchy states that a (*) restoring force is proportional to the distance from equilibrium. For 10 points--name this law that governs the motion of springs and is often written F equals negative k x.

answer: _Hooke_'s law

Re: 2011 HSNCT discussion

Posted: Wed Jun 01, 2011 12:05 am
by Kyle
bt_green_warbler wrote:
This act involves ritual sequences of raka'as, requires a barrier called the sutrah in front of one performing it, and can lead to a zabiba. According to the Qur'anic surah Hud, it should be performed "at the two ends of the (*) day and the beginning of the night," and it includes the Fatihah, or first surah. For 10 points--hadith is the source for the other two daily times for what ritual, performed facing Mecca?

answer: _prayer_ (or _salat_ or _namaz_)
Is it really fair to say that "prayer includes the Fatihah"? I mean, you say the Fatihah when you pray. But "includes" is a terribly vague verb to choose, isn't it? The Qur'an, more than prayer, is what really "includes" the Fatihah, isn't it? Quizbowl questions, especially in formats that impose tight character limits, can sometimes seem like mere lists of proper nouns strung together in a somewhat vague and haphazard way. Here, for instance, the fact that the whole "pray five times every day" thing is a combination of two sources of Islamic law is a meaningful and important clue that is somewhat obscured by the way it is written. At the very least, it's that some hadiths are the source of the requirement that you pray a total of five times per day. But that adds a lot of words. Perhaps a better choice of clues could have indicated that, according to the ahadith in question, Moses helped Muhammad get the number of prayers reduced from fifty to five during the mi'raj?

Re: 2011 HSNCT discussion

Posted: Wed Jun 01, 2011 3:02 am
by samer
Kyle wrote:
bt_green_warbler wrote:
This act involves ritual sequences of raka'as, requires a barrier called the sutrah in front of one performing it, and can lead to a zabiba. According to the Qur'anic surah Hud, it should be performed "at the two ends of the (*) day and the beginning of the night," and it includes the Fatihah, or first surah. For 10 points--hadith is the source for the other two daily times for what ritual, performed facing Mecca?

answer: _prayer_ (or _salat_ or _namaz_)
Is it really fair to say that "prayer includes the Fatihah"? I mean, you say the Fatihah when you pray. But "includes" is a terribly vague verb to choose, isn't it? The Qur'an, more than prayer, is what really "includes" the Fatihah, isn't it? Quizbowl questions, especially in formats that impose tight character limits, can sometimes seem like mere lists of proper nouns strung together in a somewhat vague and haphazard way. Here, for instance, the fact that the whole "pray five times every day" thing is a combination of two sources of Islamic law is a meaningful and important clue that is somewhat obscured by the way it is written. At the very least, it's that some hadiths are the source of the requirement that you pray a total of five times per day. But that adds a lot of words. Perhaps a better choice of clues could have indicated that, according to the ahadith in question, Moses helped Muhammad get the number of prayers reduced from fifty to five during the mi'raj?
On a more fundamental level, it should also read "may require a sutrah" in lieu of "requires."

Re: 2011 HSNCT discussion

Posted: Wed Jun 01, 2011 5:53 am
by Down and out in Quintana Roo
Players on State College (and now LASA) continue to make a mockery of individual statistics by using aliases or stupid fake names, ans possibly even altering their names as the tournament continued through the weekend. 1) Why is this allowable? 2) Doesn't this effectively make individual statistics by other players worth less (or worthless?) as well?

Once again i ask that this practice be barred from national tournaments.

Re: 2011 HSNCT discussion

Posted: Wed Jun 01, 2011 6:28 am
by Ondes Martenot
I'm not sure how accurate this is, but some teams alternate fake names during a tournament to place complete emphasis on winning games and not have individuals be obsessed with their stats.

Re: 2011 HSNCT discussion

Posted: Wed Jun 01, 2011 6:51 am
by Down and out in Quintana Roo
Ondes Martenot wrote:I'm not sure how accurate this is, but some teams alternate fake names during a tournament to place complete emphasis on winning games and not have individuals be obsessed with their stats.
I know, we've had this discussion before (see multiple threads). My point is that it ruins stats for everyone else that does care about them because it basically makes them incorrect. Or, at least, if i were on a team coming to this tournament for the first time (and didn't have a lot of experience with quizbowlese or the quizbowl world here) and my team had a player place in the top 100 or so, then went home to see that "Janet" from State College and "Halcyon" from LASA were above me (and that their scores essentially were pointless and incorrect), i might be a little upset and/or confused.

Re: 2011 HSNCT discussion

Posted: Wed Jun 01, 2011 9:03 am
by Kyle
Carangoides ciliarius wrote:I know, we've had this discussion before (see multiple threads). My point is that it ruins stats for everyone else that does care about them because it basically makes them incorrect. Or, at least, if i were on a team coming to this tournament for the first time (and didn't have a lot of experience with quizbowlese or the quizbowl world here) and my team had a player place in the top 100 or so, then went home to see that "Janet" from State College and "Halcyon" from LASA were above me (and that their scores essentially were pointless and incorrect), i might be a little upset and/or confused.
Really? This "ruins" the stats for you? You have players who would finish 82nd or 93rd and then actually get upset about who is placed ahead of them? I think using pseudonyms is kind of dumb, but I really fail to understand how it's as harmful a practice as you and other anti-pseudonym partisans seem to think. That stats for this tournament aren't ruined, nor are they pointless, nor are they actually incorrect.

Re: 2011 HSNCT discussion

Posted: Wed Jun 01, 2011 9:10 am
by Cassian
I'm not sure how it's confusing or upsetting to anyone to know that Graham or Monica or Benji or Thomas are good at quiz bowl. I can't speak for State College, but Aaron's comment about placing complete emphasis on team goals and winning games is accurate for LASA. My guys didn't use pseudonyms to be cute or for obfuscation, they used them to promote team unity. I will continue to allow this for my teams until it is prohibited by HSNCT or whatever tournament we happen to be attending.

Re: 2011 HSNCT discussion

Posted: Wed Jun 01, 2011 9:29 am
by Down and out in Quintana Roo
Kyle wrote:
Carangoides ciliarius wrote:I know, we've had this discussion before (see multiple threads). My point is that it ruins stats for everyone else that does care about them because it basically makes them incorrect. Or, at least, if i were on a team coming to this tournament for the first time (and didn't have a lot of experience with quizbowlese or the quizbowl world here) and my team had a player place in the top 100 or so, then went home to see that "Janet" from State College and "Halcyon" from LASA were above me (and that their scores essentially were pointless and incorrect), i might be a little upset and/or confused.
Really? This "ruins" the stats for you? You have players who would finish 82nd or 93rd and then actually get upset about who is placed ahead of them? I think using pseudonyms is kind of dumb, but I really fail to understand how it's as harmful a practice as you and other anti-pseudonym partisans seem to think. That stats for this tournament aren't ruined, nor are they pointless, nor are they actually incorrect.
They indeed are ruined, pointless, and incorrect if players switch names/pseudonyms in the middle of tournaments, as has been the practice of several teams in the past, and play as multiple names throughout the day. I suppose that adopting a name is in itself not a harmful thing to statistics, just a silly one.

I'll just quote Mike in the previous massive "Let's talk about pseudonyms again" thread from before:
Cheynem wrote:The idea of people changing pseudonyms every round, even if the names remain stable, is terrible! It screws up the individual stats and while you may not personally care about a prize, maybe someone does, and thus "Scrappy Doo" having the stats of four different people across the day is not a good thing.

Seeding for local tournaments can be just as important as national tournaments. If I were a Minnesota TD trying to decide where to seed St. Thomas, I would naturally turn to old tournament results. My life would be a lot easier if I could get a sense of what their usual roster was.
Perhaps it doesn't mean as much at nationals since obviously "seeding" is over by the time it starts, but it doesn't change the fact that it's still "not a good thing."

Re: 2011 HSNCT discussion

Posted: Wed Jun 01, 2011 9:49 am
by Cheynem
In this context, just to be clear, I was talking about people who change aliases every game or in fact, rotate aliases between each other. While I think using constant aliases is pretty dumb, the objections of "screwing up stats" and "screwing up seeding" I suppose no longer apply, although certainly the PACE seeders might be curious.

Re: 2011 HSNCT discussion

Posted: Wed Jun 01, 2011 10:00 am
by Important Bird Area
Field guide to State College pseudonyms:

Brittney = Christoph
Farrah = Monica
Janet = Graham
Vanessa = David

LASA never appeared in my room; perhaps someone else can supply a similar list for them?

Re: 2011 HSNCT discussion

Posted: Wed Jun 01, 2011 10:17 am
by Cassian
LASA A rotated Halcyon, Houndstooth, Bennu and Epoch throughout the course of the day. Feel free to be offended as you see fit.

Re: 2011 HSNCT discussion

Posted: Wed Jun 01, 2011 11:27 am
by Whiter Hydra
Cassian wrote:LASA A rotated Halcyon, Houndstooth, Bennu and Epoch throughout the course of the day. Feel free to be offended as you see fit.
That has got to be the most obscure theme for a set of pseudonyms I've ever seen in a tournament.

Re: 2011 HSNCT discussion

Posted: Wed Jun 01, 2011 11:29 am
by Mechanical Beasts
I suppose it screws up the stats if it is especially meaningful whether a team has, printed up on the ranking, four players all with approximately the stats of "average LASA A player" or four players with their true scores. It's worth mentioning that the former circumstance will make it more likely that one of those offended parties will get a scoring award, not less.

Re: 2011 HSNCT discussion

Posted: Wed Jun 01, 2011 11:50 am
by Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN)
I can't believe at a national championship that NAQT has not banned pseudonyms (much less rotating pseudonyms) when it is so important to people to have accurate All-Star information. You may not care about such things, but it damages the professionalism of the event and can affect awards (for instance, in 2007 I think that "River" from State College got an award that used inaccurate personal statistics because a moderator or two decided it was inappropriate to accept a pseudonym at a national championship and thus 2 of Alison's games were entered as a separate person). I also don't understand why, out of an entire season of events you have the ability to choose from to use rotating pseudonyms, you suddenly would decide to do it at one of the most important events of the year for people to have accurate statistics. Lastly, it completely screws with the stats people and is pretty disrespectful to them if you make the information they enter meaningless (and worse if they enter multiple different names for the same person, as has happened often with teams at NAQT Nationals such as that River thing). I certainly hope that in the future NAQT develops a standardized policy of only accepting real names for players in order to maintain more integrity in their event.

Re: 2011 HSNCT discussion

Posted: Wed Jun 01, 2011 11:59 am
by Down and out in Quintana Roo
In other news, Charlie Dees and i are actually agreeing on something (though he, as usual, illustrated his point in a much better way than i did).

Perhaps the world really is coming to an end.

Re: 2011 HSNCT discussion

Posted: Wed Jun 01, 2011 12:14 pm
by Cassian
As previously discussed in another thread, LASA A used rotating pseudonyms at HFT / Delta Burke as well. They would have used them all year, but it was a little more problematic in Texas where all the mods know the guys' names. Had any LASA A player been up for an individual award at this tournament (or any other for that matter), I would have explained to the tournament organizers the situation and had the award given to the next person in the individual standings. I have a great deal of respect for Charlie, who is certainly one of the greatest individual players of the last decade, but I'm pretty sure LASA A (or any other team) using rotating pseudonyms isn't going to be the death of quiz bowl as we know it. Also, while the individual stats for the LASA A team players may be obscured, our team stats will be as accurate as the record keeping at HSNCT will allow, just as they were at HFT / Delta Burke.