Masonic

[dtaylor4]

Thank you very much to the Masons, Mr. Reinstein and Mr. Taylor, and Springfield High School. I enjoyed myself thoroughly. Congrats Loyola! Peoria Christian, Elmwood, and Cumberland are all great teams and played very well.

I'll add that the Class A final was the closest match I've ever been a part of. No team was ever ahead by more than 20 following a single tossup or teamwork pair.

Also, if anyone has any issues with the questions, let Reinstein and I know.

As to the Thousand and One Nights tossup: I neglected to fully list acceptable answers. If you got negged for "Arabian Nights," my bad. I know it was taken in some rooms, and negged in others, but ultimately it's my mistake.

[remake20]

Just out of curiosity, how long on average does it take you guys to write a deck of questions?

[Stained Diviner]

A typical question probably takes me about 20 minutes to write. Counting everything (including replacement questions and emergency rounds for Sectionals and State), I wrote 336 questions and Donald wrote 320. Donald also spent a few hours playtesting his questions. I spent several hours getting all the questions into those boxes you see when you read the set. We both did most of the writing over the summer. The Sectional questions were sent on November 1, and the State questions were sent December 1.

[Emil Nolde]

Congratulations to Loyola and Litchfield for their impressive performances, and thanks to the Masons, SHS, and Mr. Reinstein and Mr. Taylor. The tournament was a very positive and enjoyable experience for me.

A few technical questions I had:
-Are the questions supposed to get harder in the afternoon? I was definitely going a bit deeper in the later rounds. For example, that Thoth question was really challenging, probably the hardest myth question in the set. Bonuses also seemed to step up a grade, but that was largely in the math and science, which I have little business in critiquing.
-Are parallel bonuses supposed to be the same difficulty? There were a couple of times when a rather 'gimme' sort of bonus was paired with something that really was off of the beaten path. The clearest example was in our Round 1 match versus Fremd. Two FA bonuses, both thirty'd by each team. The difference was, their bonus ran Swan Lake/Tschaikovsky/Manfred Symphony, while ours ran Bach/fugues/passacaglias. That may have been the hardest thirty I've ever gotten.

Also, a format question. One of our moderators said something akin to 'rebounding team may not converse between the start of the controlling team's answer and/or the calling of time and the submission of the rebounding team's answer'. Is this true? I was convinced that under the current rules, rebounding teams can converse at any point during the reading of the part, during the controlling team's answer time, and for three (or five, forget the exact number) additional seconds after the controlling team misses it, during which time any answer you have must be submitted.

Overall, this tournament, in my opinion, couldn't have gone better.

[Stained Diviner]

Litchfield and Loyola absolutely had impressive performances. I wish I could have seen the matches, but there is no doubt that they beat some very good teams.

I did make the questions a bit harder in the last two rounds. You have to be careful when you do that, because you don't want a bunch of tossups going to the end or going dead, and you don't want a bunch of team questions that nobody could possibly answer. However, the level of the average team changes when you go from 30 teams to the final 8, so the questions go with that. There were few questions written with the idea that they needed to be so difficult that they could only be used in the last few rounds, but the questions that tended towards more difficult generally were placed there.

I tried to pair up questions that were even in difficulty, but that's difficult to do perfectly, especially since when it came to placement I was just going with my own personal sense of which questions seem to be about equal. The Tschaikovsky bonus compared to the Bach bonus is probably harder to 20 and easier to 30. If you can get Swan Lake without Tschaikovsky, then you have real music knowledge, and if you can get Manfred, then you have deep music knowledge worthy of 30 points. While passacaglia obviously is a difficult part, you got the first 20 for some straightforward knowledge.

I don't have the rule document handy, so I don't know the situation with that. If there were any rules that made gameplay difficult or unpleasant, post about them or email me. I don't get any final say at all in such things, but I can talk to the people who do.

[dtaylor4]

When I wrote my teamwork questions, I simply tried to make the parts somewhat uniform. Looking back, there are certain questions that did stick out to me as too hard.

One example of the "swing" that stuck out to me was the geography pairs in the final. On the second bonus (Angola/DRC/Namibia), DRC was meant to be a hard part, but a sentence was added that (to me) made it a second easy part.

I am making these assumptions based on my observations, but in the near future there will be NAQT-like conversion data for State. Given the volume, I may try to do the same for sectionals, but it will likely be much further in the future.

[mrgsmath]

I am the moderator being referenced and the issue had been discussed prior to the matches with Mr. Thayer. According the Masonic rules, once time is called by the time keeper, communication is to stop. The players have 3 seconds to give materials to their captain, and for the captain to start his or her answer.
The Masonic addendum only provided an exclusion to to allow for communications during the reading of a question. It did not change the time frame for communications in general.

As revised in the addendum the rule in question was:

20.3.1.4. When the team in control calls time, the opposing team must cease verbal conferring.

[mrgsmath]

I should also add that in all cases, I instructed the teams of the rule, but issued no penalties for violations. I understood that many teams were unaware of the rule and the actions were not intentional to gain an advantage, but simply acting in a manner they felt was allowed. Only once was I a bit frustrated when I gave the instruction in the same round for the same team for the fourth time, (This was not Carbondale, who I felt accepted the direction and adjusted quite well).

[dtaylor4]

James,

Could you email me about what you found challenging with the Thoth tossup?

[remake20]

One example of the "swing" that stuck out to me was the geography pairs in the final. On the second bonus (Angola/DRC/Namibia), DRC was meant to be a hard part, but a sentence was added that (to me) made it a second easy part.

The one that stood out to me was the 3rd part of the Brothers Karamazov bonus about Jesus. The last clue made it very gettable.

[dtaylor4]

One example of the "swing" that stuck out to me was the geography pairs in the final. On the second bonus (Angola/DRC/Namibia), DRC was meant to be a hard part, but a sentence was added that (to me) made it a second easy part.

The one that stood out to me was the 3rd part of the Brothers Karamazov bonus about Jesus. The last clue made it very gettable.

That was intended to be the easy part, with Karamazov the middle.

[remake20]

My bad. That makes sense now that I really look at it.

[Emil Nolde]

When I wrote my teamwork questions, I simply tried to make the parts somewhat uniform. Looking back, there are certain questions that did stick out to me as too hard.

One example of the "swing" that stuck out to me was the geography pairs in the final. On the second bonus (Angola/DRC/Namibia), DRC was meant to be a hard part, but a sentence was added that (to me) made it a second easy part.

I am making these assumptions based on my observations, but in the near future there will be NAQT-like conversion data for State. Given the volume, I may try to do the same for sectionals, but it will likely be much further in the future.

The DRC part would've been hard had it not been for the instruction to 'be careful about its name'.

One example of the "swing" that stuck out to me was the geography pairs in the final. On the second bonus (Angola/DRC/Namibia), DRC was meant to be a hard part, but a sentence was added that (to me) made it a second easy part.

The one that stood out to me was the 3rd part of the Brothers Karamazov bonus about Jesus. The last clue made it very gettable.

That Brothers Karamazov bonus was pretty hard, imo.

I tried to pair up questions that were even in difficulty, but that's difficult to do perfectly, especially since when it came to placement I was just going with my own personal sense of which questions seem to be about equal. The Tschaikovsky bonus compared to the Bach bonus is probably harder to 20 and easier to 30. If you can get Swan Lake without Tschaikovsky, then you have real music knowledge, and if you can get Manfred, then you have deep music knowledge worthy of 30 points. While passacaglia obviously is a difficult part, you got the first 20 for some straightforward knowledge.

My argument was that Tschaikovsky bonus was straight up QB knowledge, while the with Bach bonus it was straight up QB knowledge for one part, easy music theory knowledge, hard music theory knowledge. I don't really think identifying Swan Lake without the composer clue is really a decent middle part. Perhaps a part on Odette.

[dtaylor4]

I am making these assumptions based on my observations, but in the near future there will be NAQT-like conversion data for State. Given the volume, I may try to do the same for sectionals, but it will likely be much further in the future.

I have the scoresheets in my possession. As Crete-Monee and Southwestern did not send in the scoresheets as required, there will be no data for them.

Obviously, there will be no individual stats.

[dtaylor4]

Sectionals are done, and I'm working on uploading the HTML files for the 28 sites.

I'll be working on State this week, now that I'll have time.

[dtaylor4]

All the stats are entered, and the Sectional stats are posted at ihssbca.org.

The prelims and playoffs are not separated due to a bug in the Mac version of SQBS.

I attended a meeting of the Masonic Bowl committee on April 28. Things that will likely change:

1) Dress code. It will likely be tightened up with regards to the number of exceptions.
2) Points. Tossups will likely go to 10 points each.
3) Distribution. Mythology will likely be dropped to 4/2, with bumps to the big 3 lit categories.

Other tidbits:

Riverton will be looked into as a possible site for 2015 and possibly 2014.
As the rules are writ, there is no consistent procedure for how to handle the situation when a player who did not ring in gives an answer. This will likely be straightened out.
There were issues with hosts not checking emails and still trying to enforce old rules (including blurt rule).
At the Mendon Unity sectional, the wrong team was awarded 4th place. As soon as I discovered this, I pointed it out to Dale. It was discussed at the meeting, and the consensus was that the onus was on the coach to square this up if the tournament organizers do not discover the error.