The Quizbowl Resource Center

Club Quiz Bowl at Central Michigan University is pleased to announce our first annual fall high school tournament, the C.W. Thornthwaite Memorial Tournament, will be held at the Mount Pleasant campus on Saturday, November 10, 2012.

Rounds will be untimed and consist of 20 toss-ups and the requisite number of bonuses, with packets written in-house using a distribution somewhat similar to that of ACF. The exact tournament format will depend upon the final field size, but all teams should expect to play at least 8-9 games. The field is tentatively capped at 24 teams.

Fees are as follows:

First team: $50
Each additional team: $40
Working buzzer system: -$10
Competent moderator: -$10
Travel discount (over 100 miles one way per Google Maps): -$10
Minimum per team: $30

Payment should be made on the morning of the tournament; if you need some sort of alternate arrangement, please let us know and we can try to work something out.

To register, or for more information, please contact us at [email protected].

I'm very excited to see Central Michigan hosting a high school tournament as I think there are a lot of regions in Michigan with a lack of good quizbowl (whither Western Michigan?). I might politely inquire for more details about the housewritten set; it's difficult to write high school sets, and I wonder for (presumably) a relatively new program if it would be easier to use an existing question provider.

Cheynem wrote:I'm very excited to see Central Michigan hosting a high school tournament as I think there are a lot of regions in Michigan with a lack of good quizbowl (whither Western Michigan?). I might politely inquire for more details about the housewritten set; it's difficult to write high school sets, and I wonder for (presumably) a relatively new program if it would be easier to use an existing question provider.

Questions are being primarily written by myself with some contributions from the rest of the team; this will be the ninth housewritten high school set I've played at least some role in producing, although first at CMU, obviously. Toss-ups are generally five to six lines long and have power marks; bonuses are all 3x10 format with a conscious (but not always successful) attempt to keep each part below two lines. Here is the distribution I'm using at the moment (note this is 24/22; since the plan is for tiebreakers to be sudden death, I figured four extra bonuses were overkill):

Science, excluding Math/CS: 5/4
Math/CS: 1/1
Literature: 5/4.333
History: 5/4.333
Fine Arts: 2/2
Geography: 1.333/1.33
Other Social Science: 0.667/0.667
RMP: 1.5/1.5
Current Events: 0.5/0.5
Trash: 1/1
Anything: 1/1.333

Within packets, questions are first ordered by a computerized randomization routine, then I go back and hand shuffle to ensure the following criteria are met:

1. There are at least two questions from each "Big 3" category in the first ten toss-ups, the second ten toss-ups, and the first half (ie. eleven) of the bonus questions.

2. No more than one question from any category falls within toss-ups #21-#24.

3. Questions from within the same category are a reasonable distance (typically at least three intervening questions for "Big 3" categories, more for others) apart.

4. The Trash toss-up is never #20 or #21 (ie. the final toss-up of regulation or the first tiebreaker).

The plan is currently for thirteen total packets; as a whole the set is ~65% written.

That's about all I can think of at the moment, if you have any further questions, feel free to send me an email.

Nicholas, do you have any idea as to schools currently in the field? We're considering making the trip up with a team from the Cleveland area. Thanks!