The Quizbowl Resource Center

Posted: **Wed Jun 01, 2011 12:16 pm**

It's not the death of quizbowl as we know it, it's just kind of an obnoxious thing to do.

Posted: **Wed Jun 01, 2011 12:27 pm**

Oh, I remember what other question I thought was asinine beyond belief: that bonus on decibels. Is there any coherent reason why you wouldn't just use numbers? Teams don't expect to be giving answers in terms of algebra in the middle of a quiz bowl tournament, and rather than saying a sound is T decibels and expecting the answer "T+10", why not say the original is 40 decibels and require the answer "50"?

Re: pseudonyms. I'm against them as silly and pointless, and I feel they inhibit discussion and hurt quiz bowl's status as a social activity.

Posted: **Wed Jun 01, 2011 1:10 pm**

Jeremy Gibbs Freesy Does It wrote: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.

Just in case everyone here is not already aware, NSC does explicitly ban them. Learned this while brushing up on rule changes from last weekend to next.

PACE NSC rules wrote:6.2. The official rosters must use legal names or recognized abbreviations thereof ('real names') in order for tournament staff to enforce eligibility, substitution, and scheduling rules. Players must use their real names while competing for purposes of compiling statistics. Aliases are not permitted.

Posted: **Wed Jun 01, 2011 4:34 pm**

IIRC, State College had to settle with using their middle names last year at PACE.

Posted: **Wed Jun 01, 2011 5:07 pm**

Here's a good article about George Mason's victory in the Small School Championship last weekend.

http://www.fcnp.com/news/9332-mason-aca ... nship.html

Posted: **Wed Jun 01, 2011 9:26 pm**

Mr. Flowers, did any of those coffee shops help sponsor your team, or did they just get some inadvertent free advertising?

Posted: **Wed Jun 01, 2011 11:15 pm**

So using fake names promotes team unity and thereby helps advance the game overall? Why not... it worked for the XFL!

Posted: **Wed Jun 01, 2011 11:54 pm**

List of wrestling-based comic books wrote:Just remembered: it's not as important as other things going on on Sunday, but teams not in the playoffs should have been told not to watch the first playoff round if they wanted to play scrimmages. Or maybe they were told that and some teams didn't get the message: we had that issue in at least two rooms in our group. Obviously it's not nearly as vital an issue as making sure the playoffs proper run smoothly, but it's still something to consider.

I can't speak officially for NAQT, but this is on my personal list of things to improve if they ask me to organize consolation matches again next year. The weekend's format sheet did invite teams to play consolation games "on playoff questions," which at least hints that hearing any playoff questions would be detrimental to playing consolation rounds, but I think we can be clearer about that. Next year I also plan to be more upfront about collecting data on which teams heard which packets that morning so that at least we can send out teams that have not heard the first packet without making them wait for the second, etc.

For the record: to maintain question security, NAQT always runs the consolation games 1 round behind the playoffs - we won't run consolation games on packet 17 until all scoresheets for playoff games on 17 have been received and checked in the control/stats room.

Edit: spelling.

Posted: **Thu Jun 02, 2011 12:02 am**

Hey Nathan,
I think you have done a great job the last few years I have been at the HSNCT organizing both the practice rounds on Friday and also the consolation rounds on Sunday but you have a good idea about the corrections that need to be made about making sure that teams haven't heard a packet before they play.

Posted: **Fri Jun 03, 2011 4:30 pm**

Stats are up on the NAQT website, if anyone's wondering. That was some quick work, by the way!

It's not that important, but is it possible to change my name to "Mostafa Bhuiyan" (Norcross)? I've seen it messed up as Mustafa or Mastafa a lot.

Posted: **Fri Jun 03, 2011 5:38 pm**

BlueDevil95 wrote:It's not that important, but is it possible to change my name to "Mostafa Bhuiyan" (Norcross)? I've seen it messed up as Mustafa or Mastafa a lot.

You got it.

Posted: **Fri Jun 03, 2011 6:18 pm**

Thanks so much!

Posted: **Fri Jun 03, 2011 11:36 pm**

some of the match-ups were mixed up. Apparently, we (Novi) played Adair County in Round 22, 4 rounds after they were knocked out.

Posted: **Fri Jun 03, 2011 11:39 pm**

Seven Lakes had a pretty incredible bonus conversion. Is that the highest for any pyramidal high school nationals team?

Posted: **Fri Jun 03, 2011 11:46 pm**

Carangoides ciliarius wrote:Seven Lakes had a pretty incredible bonus conversion. Is that the highest for any pyramidal high school nationals team?

2005 Thomas Jefferson had a higher bonus conversion rate at HSNCT.

Posted: **Fri Jun 03, 2011 11:52 pm**

Looks like they may not have had that, unless Seven Lakes did score 480 bonus points in seven tossups in round 20.

Posted: **Fri Jun 03, 2011 11:59 pm**

Yikes. Yeah, 68.57ppb is pretty silly. Didn't see that one.

Posted: **Sat Jun 04, 2011 12:08 am**

Taking a closer look at the stats here, Novi's run to t-8th is pretty interesting.

Certainly they had a nice tournament and some nice wins (two against Dunbar and one against Cistercian), but their bonus conversion is lower than every other team in the top 21. So i looked to see how they got to where they got.

I think it's fascinating to note that Novi DID NOT play any of these teams in the tournament: State College, LASA, Bellarmine, Stevenson, Centennial, Maggie Walker, Richard Montgomery, DCC B, Seven Lakes, Thomas Jefferson B, or DuPont Manual. In other words, never in the entire tournament did they play a team that ended up ranking the same or better than them to finish the weekend.

I wonder how often this sort of thing happens.

Posted: **Sat Jun 04, 2011 12:11 am**

Carangoides ciliarius wrote:Taking a closer look at the stats here, Novi's run to t-8th is pretty interesting.

Certainly they had a nice tournament and some nice wins (two against Dunbar and one against Cistercian), but their bonus conversion is lower than every other team in the top 21. So i looked to see how they got to where they got.

I think it's fascinating to note that Novi DID NOT play any of these teams in the tournament: State College, LASA, Bellarmine, Stevenson, Centennial, Maggie Walker, Richard Montgomery, DCC B, Seven Lakes, Thomas Jefferson B, or DuPont Manual. In other words, never in the entire tournament did they play a team that ended up ranking the same or better than them to finish the weekend.

I wonder how often this sort of thing happens.

The stats for round 22 were wrong. We played State College A in our final round (22). We also lost to Seven Lakes A in the playoffs

Posted: **Sat Jun 04, 2011 1:05 am**

Ha, wow. Okay. Thanks for clearing that up!

What else in the stats seems to be incorrect?

Posted: **Sat Jun 04, 2011 1:52 am**

Seven Lakes A has 68.57 ppb in their playoff match against GDS, which is probably not right.

EDIT: I'm an idiot, I didn't see that Coach Chrzanowski posted this above. Please ignore me.

Posted: **Sun Jun 05, 2011 7:54 am**

In order to put things into packets for the BSQC, I have been going through the set from the "distribution" page of the NAQT admin website and then using the question numbers to find the corresponding questions in the set. This process affords me certain insights into how the set is compiled vis-à-vis the distribution. For example, I just stumbled across this "mixed pure academic" tossup:

One work by this composer includes a soft pizzicato “traveling” theme and cantabile “Russian” and “Eastern” themes. He angered colleagues by composing two string quartets, and one of his operas—later adapted into the musical Kismet—includes the (*) Polovtsian Dances. An alternate namesake for the Hunsdiecker reaction is—for 10 points—what Russian chemist, the composer of In the Steppes of Central Asia and Prince Igor?

answer: Alexander (Porfiryevich) Borodin

This mentions the fact that he was a chemist; therefore it is classified as "mixed." But I don't think this is mixed. I think this is just classical music. Now, this isn't actually a problem -- nobody could possibly object that a mixed question got dumped in favor of an extra music question. But what one might term "miscellaneousization" seems to have affected certain subjects disproportionately. In particular, this "mixed" question is just straight-up geography:

It was formed by the collapse of Mount Mazama. For 10 points each—
A. Name this Oregon landmark previously known as Blue Lake and Lake Majesty.
answer: Crater Lake
B. Crater Lake is this type of volcanic feature whose name comes from the Latin for “cooking pot.”
answer: caldera (prompt on “cauldron”)
C. The term “caldera” was introduced by German geologist Leopold von Buch during a visit to this archipelago that contains the Caldera de Taburiente on the island of La Palma.
answer: Canary Islands (or Islas Canarias)

And so is this "mixed" question:

This country is home to the world's tallest skyscraper, the Burj Khalifa. For 10 points each—
A. Name this Persian Gulf country, whose seven constituent members include Umm al-Quwain and Ajman.
answer: United Arab Emirates or UAE
B. The Burj Khalifa is in this second-largest emirate in the UAE.
answer: Dubai
C. This emir of Dubai also serves as the prime minister of the UAE.
answer: Sheikh Muhammad bin Rashid al-Maktum

And also this "mixed" question:

For 10 points each—answer these questions about Cape Cod:
A. Cape Cod is part of what state on the Atlantic coastline?
answer: Massachusetts
B. Eugene O'Neill was in what group of “Players” named for the town at the tip of Cape Cod in which their works were performed?
answer: Provincetown (accept Provincetown Players)
C. What town on the southwest part of Cape Cod is home to a namesake Oceanographic Institution and Research Center?
answer: Woods Hole

(I'm also part of a similar problem; I wrote the "architecture" tossup on Beijing that, in the process of editing, became more of just a geography question -- of course, had I submitted it as a geography question, it never would have made the set, but that's a topic for another discussion entirely)

People complain a lot about "mixed impure academic," but maybe not enough about "mixed pure academic." I think there is a lot of potential to write some really cool questions that incorporate different subjects, and thus that NAQT's distribution should continue to save room for miscellaneous questions. But for each tournament I have seen since I became an NAQT writer (in particular, the ICT, the MSNCT, and the HSNCT), the miscellaneous categories were filled last, and often (as the days wore on) by increasingly surreal and stupid things -- this is, after all, the category that allowed us to have an HSNCT bonus about official butterflies.

So I guess the point of this post is that people should take the "mixed pure academic" part of the distribution more seriously. They should write questions for it earlier and perhaps most importantly they shouldn't write "mixed" questions that are in fact just more geography questions. And if over time this category just keeps getting filled last, then maybe we should cut the number of "mixed" questions in half?

Posted: **Sun Jun 05, 2011 8:00 am**

I agree with Kyle's overall conclusion. I will mention that the Borodin tossup was originally half chemistry and half music—it was truly a mixed question, but it was also not a very good question, so it got changed in set editing to what you see above. For various uninteresting reasons, recoding it wasn't a possibility at the time.

Posted: **Mon Jun 06, 2011 9:59 pm**

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 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_

Eh, I kinda was a little disappointed that the power mark for the Jeremy question was so early relative to the power mark in Black and Yellow, and also considering the fact that the majority of the clue before the power mark talked about subliminal messages in the music video while that wasn't the case for Black and Yellow.

Posted: **Mon Jun 06, 2011 11:50 pm**

Stop talking about powermarking.

Poster was notified that this post violates board rules 9 and 13. --Mgmt.

Posted: **Tue Jun 07, 2011 1:31 am**

This is an entirely appropriate thread in which to talk about power-marking.

Posted: **Tue Jun 07, 2011 12:27 pm**

One question that I thought was cool was the Tajikistan toss up. Could you please post that one?

Posted: **Tue Jun 07, 2011 9:53 pm**

Much of this nation's southern border lies along the Panj River. Khorugh, the capital of its autonomous province of Gorno-Badakhshan, lies on the (*) Pamir Highway, and the Anzob Tunnel connects its second-most populous city, Khujand, with its capital. The western end of the Ferghana Valley lies in this nation between Uzbekistan and Afghanistan. For 10 points--name this former Soviet republic with capital Dushanbe.

Posted: **Tue Jun 07, 2011 10:27 pm**

DrCongo wrote:One question that I thought was cool was the Tajikistan toss up. Could you please post that one?

bt_green_warbler wrote:
Much of this nation's southern border lies along the Panj River. Khorugh, the capital of its autonomous province of Gorno-Badakhshan, lies on the (*) Pamir Highway, and the Anzob Tunnel connects its second-most populous city, Khujand, with its capital. The western end of the Ferghana Valley lies in this nation between Uzbekistan and Afghanistan. For 10 points--name this former Soviet republic with capital Dushanbe.

What is cool about this question? To me, this just looks like a shotgun shell was loaded with place names and fired at the page. This isn't an attempt to troll -- all geography questions sound like that to me, and I'm wondering what's in there that's interesting because it might help me figure out what makes a good or bad geography question.

Posted: **Tue Jun 07, 2011 10:32 pm**

I'm definitely not one to say what geography questions are easy, "regular", or hard. I just thought it was intriguing (Maybe a better word?). I don't know anything about Tajikistan other than where it is in the world and its capital, so hearing a bunch of stuff about a country I don't know much about simply intrigues me.

Posted: **Tue Jun 07, 2011 10:40 pm**

Can you post the Community question? I wonder if there was a clue on Magnitude.
POP POP

Posted: **Tue Jun 07, 2011 11:27 pm**

theflyingdeutschman wrote:Can you post the Community question? I wonder if there was a clue on Magnitude.
POP POP

One character in this show named Alex is often referred to as "Star-burns." In this show, Craig Pelton unveils a statue of Luis Guzman, and meeting LeVar Burton leaves Troy Barnes, the football team's quarterback, a sobbing mess. Other characters on this show include the meta-referencing (*) Abed and Chevy Chase's Pierce Hawthorne. For 10 points--name this television show set at a junior college.

Posted: **Wed Jun 08, 2011 12:29 am**

styxman wrote:
DrCongo wrote:One question that I thought was cool was the Tajikistan toss up. Could you please post that one?

bt_green_warbler wrote:
Much of this nation's southern border lies along the Panj River. Khorugh, the capital of its autonomous province of Gorno-Badakhshan, lies on the (*) Pamir Highway, and the Anzob Tunnel connects its second-most populous city, Khujand, with its capital. The western end of the Ferghana Valley lies in this nation between Uzbekistan and Afghanistan. For 10 points--name this former Soviet republic with capital Dushanbe.
What is cool about this question? To me, this just looks like a shotgun shell was loaded with place names and fired at the page. This isn't an attempt to troll -- all geography questions sound like that to me, and I'm wondering what's in there that's interesting because it might help me figure out what makes a good or bad geography question.

While it wasn't brought up in this tossup, one of the great intriguing ironies of the Ferghana Valley is that one of the paths of the former Silk Road went through it, while it is actually the place where a large fraction of the world's cotton is produced.

Posted: **Wed Jun 08, 2011 7:30 am**

quantumfootball wrote:While it wasn't brought up in this tossup, one of the great intriguing ironies of the Ferghana Valley is that one of the paths of the former Silk Road went through it, while it is actually the place where a large fraction of the world's cotton is produced.

There are tons of really interesting things that you could say about the Ferghana Valley, but this question didn't.

Posted: **Wed Jun 08, 2011 12:36 pm**

Newsteinleo wrote:
Carangoides ciliarius wrote:Taking a closer look at the stats here, Novi's run to t-8th is pretty interesting.

Certainly they had a nice tournament and some nice wins (two against Dunbar and one against Cistercian), but their bonus conversion is lower than every other team in the top 21. So i looked to see how they got to where they got.

I think it's fascinating to note that Novi DID NOT play any of these teams in the tournament: State College, LASA, Bellarmine, Stevenson, Centennial, Maggie Walker, Richard Montgomery, DCC B, Seven Lakes, Thomas Jefferson B, or DuPont Manual. In other words, never in the entire tournament did they play a team that ended up ranking the same or better than them to finish the weekend.

I wonder how often this sort of thing happens.
The stats for round 22 were wrong. We played State College A in our final round (22). We also lost to Seven Lakes A in the playoffs

I'm pretty sure it would be impossible for us to not play someone who finished ahead of us (at least in the playoffs) unless we finished first, just because whichever team eliminates us will have advanced to at least 1 more round. So the team that team that beat us the second time will have placed ahead of us, so this sort of thing doesn't happen. For some reason, the stats originally credited Adair County with knocking us out instead of State College, not sure why.

Don't know where to post this, so I'll just add it onto here. Its not that big of a deal, but the stats say George Mason put up 72.5 ppb against us.

Posted: **Wed Jun 08, 2011 12:39 pm**

According to the Sunday spreadhseet, Novi did in fact play Seven Lakes and State College (and lost to both).

Posted: **Wed Jun 08, 2011 12:48 pm**

A Barehanded Telethon Mirth Gun wrote:According to the Sunday spreadhseet, Novi did in fact play Seven Lakes and State College (and lost to both).

Then what the

is going on with the stats?

Posted: **Wed Jun 08, 2011 1:18 pm**

Carangoides ciliarius wrote:
A Barehanded Telethon Mirth Gun wrote:According to the Sunday spreadhseet, Novi did in fact play Seven Lakes and State College (and lost to both).
Then what the is going on with the stats?

Its fixed now.

Posted: **Wed Jun 08, 2011 3:18 pm**

The individual stats for this tournament are still clearly wrong, as teams like George Mason have over 70ppb in a game, and notable other weird things. This is because the team is only credited with 4 tossups in a game they won, which obviously doesn't make any sense.

Are these things going to be fixed too?

Posted: **Wed Jun 08, 2011 6:36 pm**

bt_green_warbler wrote:
Much of this nation's southern border lies along the Panj River. Khorugh, the capital of its autonomous province of Gorno-Badakhshan, lies on the (*) Pamir Highway, and the Anzob Tunnel connects its second-most populous city, Khujand, with its capital. The western end of the Ferghana Valley lies in this nation between Uzbekistan and Afghanistan. For 10 points--name this former Soviet republic with capital Dushanbe.

I really want to know how this question would differentiate between those who know something about Tajikistan's geography and those who don't know anything about it. Honestly, Panj River, Khorugh, or Gorno-Badakhshan could be after power while Pamir Highway could be in power, and it wouldn't make a difference IMO. Do we know how many times this question was answered in power?

Posted: **Wed Jun 08, 2011 7:02 pm**

PennySalem wrote:
bt_green_warbler wrote:
Much of this nation's southern border lies along the Panj River. Khorugh, the capital of its autonomous province of Gorno-Badakhshan, lies on the (*) Pamir Highway, and the Anzob Tunnel connects its second-most populous city, Khujand, with its capital. The western end of the Ferghana Valley lies in this nation between Uzbekistan and Afghanistan. For 10 points--name this former Soviet republic with capital Dushanbe.
I really want to know how this question would differentiate between those who know something about Tajikistan's geography and those who don't know anything about it. Honestly, Panj River, Khorugh, or Gorno-Badakhshan could be after power while Pamir Highway could be in power, and it wouldn't make a difference IMO. Do we know how many times this question was answered in power?

I actually disagree with this particular point. The Pamirs are a pretty famous mountain range, whereas all of the other features are pretty much unknown and probably of the same level.

Posted: **Wed Jun 08, 2011 9:09 pm**

Kyle wrote:They should write questions for it earlier and perhaps most importantly they shouldn't write "mixed" questions that are in fact just more geography questions. And if over time this category just keeps getting filled last, then maybe we should cut the number of "mixed" questions in half?

A whole lot of the issues with NAQT writing and editing relate to that last theorem, or more general forms of it.

I wrote about half of the Miscellaneous questions in this year's HSNCT set, and about two thirds of the Current Event questions, almost entirely because so many questions in particular categories remained unwritten. (So for purely pragmatic reasons I'd support a sharp reduction in the CE and Misc. quotas.)

Nothing about that timetable would excuse poor question quality -- I'd like to think that we generally avoided clunkers this year, largely thanks to good subject and set editing, but of course there are many well-placed criticisms in this thread, including the level of geography in the miscellany (even moreso in the CE, as it turns out).

(While I'm here, the relegation tossup was mine. Based on the feedback here, I sharply overestimated how many people would be familiar with relegation despite not actively following European football. It was admittedly quite transparent to those who do follow Premier League, but most other topic choices here either would be similarly crushed by such players (for example the world needs fewer Manchester United questions), or would get too many blank stares in rooms where none of the eight players were into soccer.)

Many of my Misc. or CE tossups had place names as answers, as the easiest way to make those questions broadly accessible and well-converted. In what I uploaded I strove to avoid geographic giveaways, much less other substantive geographic content, but one of the problems with over-reliance on place name answers (or on any other type of answer) is that one will wind up seeing capital giveaways (or analogously suboptimal types of giveaway) far more than one expected.

Some specific examples, from Misc.
The Round 3 tossup on Romania had clues from Dorothy Parker to Ceausescu to Nadia Comaneci; the only geographical reference is "Iron Curtain." But the Round 6 tossup on Warsaw had "capital of Poland" giveaway after the Singer/Chopin/Curie references. The Round 7 tossup on Malaysia was largely geographic after the Tunku reference. The Round 13 Saint Anthony common-link tossup went from Anthony of Padua to the Bosch painting to San Antonio geography.

In rounds 17-21, the tossups on Montana, Uruguay, and Lisbon were cut from the same cloth: Literature clues segued into history clues, with much more of a geographic giveaway ("Big Sky Country"; "Oriental Republic between Argentina and Brazil"; "capital of Portugal") than would have been ideal.

On the plus side, I'm relieved that my Heloise tossup (round 25) was set-edited to 100% Abelard's lover from 50/50 "Hints from."

CE tossups whose answers were place names, all by me unless otherwise noted:
Round 1 - Guatemala ("and which borders Belize and Mexico?")
Round 1 - Nevada ("in which Sharron Angle lost a 2010 campaign to Harry Reid.")
Round 2- Tennessee ("in which 2000 presidential candidate Al Gore resides just outside of Nashville.")
Round 3- Oklahoma ("Bible Belt state that bills itself as 'Native America.'")
Round 4 - New Jersey ("Newark Public Schools and Rutgers University." - question about the Zuckerberg donation /Clementi suicide)
Round 5 - Thailand ("nation led by Rama IX ['the 9th'] that has recently fought with Cambodia." - earlier reference to Preah Vihear)
Round 5 - California ("home state of Senator Barbara Boxer and ex-governor Arnold Schwarzenegger." - no geography)
Round 6 - Eritrea ("what rival of Ethiopia?" - but "pull troops back from its border with (*) Djibouti" straddles the power)
Round 7 - New York ("state that counts Peter King and Charles Rangel among its 29 House members.")
Round 7 - Mumbai ("took credit for a terrorist attack on what most-populous city in India?")
Round 8 (not by me) - Finland ("--for 10 points--what neighbor of Russia and Sweden?")
Round 9 - Poland ("name this nation where John Paul II was born.")
Round 10 - Haiti ("because of a January (*) earthquake in--for 10 points--what Francophone Caribbean country?")
Round 10 - Arizona ("home state of Gabrielle Giffords and John McCain.")
Round 11 - Tibet ("mountainous state whose government-in-exile includes the Dalai Lama?")
Round 12 - Yemen ("led by Ali Abdullah Saleh since its 1991 unification.")
Round 12 (not by me) - Missouri ("state where Jay Nixon governs in Jefferson City?")
Round 13 (not by me) - Nigeria ("Goodluck Jonathan leads--for 10 points--what most-populous country in Africa?")
Round 13 - Montana ("Brian Schweitzer to step down in--for 10 points--which 'Big Sky' state?") (@!#$, "Big Sky" was the giveaway twice)
Round 15 - Washington, D.C. ("seat of the U.S. federal government.")
Round 16 - Illinois ("Cairo [KAIR-oh] is threatened by floodwaters in what state that saw the 2009 impeachment of Governor Rod Blagojevich [blah-GOY-eh-vihch]?")
Round 17 - Sudan ("Omar al-Bashir is president of what nation governed from Khartoum?")
Round 17- Massachusetts ("no Republican between Edward Brooke and Scott Brown had been elected to the Senate from what New England state?")
Round 18 - Myanmar ("Southeast Asian country that recently beseeched a U.S. diplomat to stop calling it Burma.")
Round 21 - Greece ("large deficits in--for 10 points--what Balkan nation led by George Papandreou [pah-pahn-DRAY-oo]?")
Round 25 - North Carolina ("name this home state of Kay Hagan, Elizabeth Dole, Richard Burr, and John Edwards.")
Round 26 - Peru ("are competing to succeed Alan Garcia in--for 10 points--what South American country whose capital is Lima?")
Round 27 - China ("The world's largest (*) exporter is--for 10 points--what Asian country that is still a one-party Communist state?")

Posted: **Thu Jun 09, 2011 1:15 am**

Sir Thopas wrote:
PennySalem wrote:
bt_green_warbler wrote:
Much of this nation's southern border lies along the Panj River. Khorugh, the capital of its autonomous province of Gorno-Badakhshan, lies on the (*) Pamir Highway, and the Anzob Tunnel connects its second-most populous city, Khujand, with its capital. The western end of the Ferghana Valley lies in this nation between Uzbekistan and Afghanistan. For 10 points--name this former Soviet republic with capital Dushanbe.
I really want to know how this question would differentiate between those who know something about Tajikistan's geography and those who don't know anything about it. Honestly, Panj River, Khorugh, or Gorno-Badakhshan could be after power while Pamir Highway could be in power, and it wouldn't make a difference IMO. Do we know how many times this question was answered in power?
I actually disagree with this particular point. The Pamirs are a pretty famous mountain range, whereas all of the other features are pretty much unknown and probably of the same level.

Guy's post is pretty much why I put the powermark where I did in this question. If I were going to move something into the power zone, it might be the Anzob Tunnel, which may be the hardest clue in this tossup. I considered moving some of these things around and adding description, but it would have required wholesale change to the sentence structure of the tossup, and there were dozens of other questions that needed my time more.

Posted: **Sun Jun 12, 2011 6:37 pm**

Having just played this set, heavily adapted by Kyle Haddad-Fonda, in the UK British Student Quiz Championships, I would first like to say that I enjoyed it very much. That said, I am a very long way from being the high schooler it was written for.

I have one specific gripe that doesn't seem to have been mentioned. There was a "for five points each" last part of a Pauli exclusion principle bonus set which asked "what would be the filled shell 'noble gases' if electrons had no spin". The answers expected were H and B. I can just about see why those answers came out (we have assumed one fewer quantum number to play with, so only one electron per orbital). But then if electrons had no spin, they wouldn't have to obey the Pauli exclusion principle, which only applies to fermions. They would obey Bose-Einstein statistics and could just all happily sit in 1s unless they were hot.

So the question is absurd. It doesn't matter that the reason it's absurd probably exceeds a high-school student's grasp of the science behind the Pauli principle. I can see absolutely no justification for writing "what if" questions in science (or any) bonus because they are: a) confusing to actual science specialists; b) pedagogically harmful; c) likely to contain contradictions which make them ambiguous to unanswerable.

Posted: **Sun Jun 12, 2011 6:44 pm**

Yeah, I don't particularly like that bonus part in retrospect. It plays a bit on the purely semantic distinction between "no spin" i.e. "zero spin, and so they're bosons" versus "the spin quantum number isn't a thing, and so only one electron per orbital." It isn't helpful or interesting, and I'm sorry I didn't eliminate it from the set.

Posted: **Mon Jun 13, 2011 11:34 am**

Crazy Andy Watkins wrote:"the spin quantum number isn't a thing, and so only one electron per orbital."

I think what you are really testing is: do you know the atomic numbers of H, He, B and Ne? Which is no bad thing to ask, but a different approach is required!

Posted: **Thu Jun 16, 2011 12:17 am**

I wasn't aware of how popular the new Strokes album got. Also, was it Richard Montgomery that wore the shirts that said Swag on them? Those were dope.

Posted: **Thu Jun 16, 2011 2:47 pm**

jmannor2 wrote:I wasn't aware of how popular the new Strokes album got. Also, was it Richard Montgomery that wore the shirts that said Swag on them? Those were dope.

It was! Thanks so much!
Re: Strokes tossup: I was kinda surprised by "Is This It" being in power, considering how popular of an album that was.

Posted: **Fri Jun 17, 2011 9:05 pm**

(I'd hate to do this again because I know this is like the 5th time but I'll go ahead)

Can you post the Gordimer, Nehru, Stephen Jackson tossups and the "NFL Clergyman" bonus?

Posted: **Fri Jun 17, 2011 10:13 pm**

HSNCT round 1 wrote:This author wrote about the interracial relationship between Ann Davis and Gideon Shibalo, while in another work, a dead body is found on a farm by Jacobus, causing Mehring to rethink his morals. In addition to ~An Occasion for Loving~ and ~The (*) Conservationist~, she wrote a novel focusing on the Smales family. For 10 points--name this South African author of ~July's People~.

HSNCT round 16 wrote:This man's narrative of mankind is titled ~Glimpses of World History~ and he came to power with his ~Tryst with Destiny~ inaugural address. He signed the Five Principles of Peaceful Co-Existence with China and commissioned the Bhakra Dam. He coined the term (*) non-aligned movement and with Sukarno was one of the Asian founders of the group. For 10 points--name this man known as the Pandit, the first prime minister of India.

HSNCT round 15 wrote:This running back was the MVP of the 2003 Las Vegas Bowl while at Oregon State. In 2006, he led the NFL in yards from scrimmage and in 2009 was second to Chris Johnson in rushing yards. In 2010, he became his franchise's all-time leading rusher by surpassing Eric (*) Dickerson. A former backup to Marshall Faulk, he now receives handoffs from Sam Bradford. For 10 points--name this running back for the St. Louis Rams.

HSNCT round 2 wrote:For 10 points each--name these men known for athletic, rather than ecclesiastic, accomplishments:

A. This defensive end claims he would hold the single-season sack record if it had been officially tracked while he played for the Rams from 1961 to '71.

answer: (David) Deacon _Jones_

B. When he retired in 2007, this running back held Kansas City Chiefs franchise records for rushing attempts, rushing yards, and rushing touchdowns.

answer: Priest (Anthony) _Holmes_

C. This Washington Redskin, a relative of the composer of "'Round Midnight," was the only player to have 100 receptions in a season prior to 1990 rule changes that helped the passing game.

answer: (James Arthur) Art _Monk_ [He is a relative of Thelonious Monk.]

The Quizbowl Resource Center

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