The Quizbowl Resource Center

It begins. As soon as I know that the set is completely clear, there are some "questions" that I would like to discuss. I was hoping for some improvement from last year. I was disappointed.

I read all three rounds at Glenwood (who lost to East Peoria in a tight final). I made a comment after the first half that there would be many more bad questions, and the set did not disappoint.

The math sucked, some of the history questions were holy-mother-of-god hard, and the art had jokes for answer lines.

I almost wanted to pull a Chris Vicich in the finals after two particular tossups.

Basically, same waste of paper, different year.

I seemed to find myself less mad at this year's set, but that was probably just cause I lowered my expectations to a more realistic level. A lot of it was pretty appalling. Perhaps the most frustrating part were the multiple hoses. Math, as always, was pretty questionable.

So this certainly happened. As all regionals are over, I am assuming that as none were postponed I can proceed with question content.

These were some of what my team saw as the more egregious questions:

• Annoying quantum numbers bonus
  Art that isn't art in general, particularly the "old buildings" bonus
  Humphry Davy didn't have any really buzzable clues until "discovered chlorine"
  The "pentatonic" part in the scales bonus didn't give any real clues
  Poetic :capybara:ing justice
  Euclid's technique for GCF???
  A Maya Angelou part that consisted entirely of "writer from St. Louis with this real name"
  the polish person who WASN'T CASIMIR PULASKI (Kościuszko)
  Homeomorphism, at this level?
  Beta-amyloid plaques in the firstline of alzheimers
  Oedipus twice!
  A quite hard Katherine Porter tossup
  Madama Butterfly with no music clues
  Fermat part that just names a bunch of people that he was a contemporary with
  Beige Book
  Even Money
  A famous recent thing about Richard III as SCIENCE???
  That quite hard upper houses of legislatures bonus
  Cevians
  Tennis bonus that had three people I had never heard of
  Self-Reliance leading in with "RWE essay"
  The part asking for the conspirators against Rasputin, which seemed really hard for this level
  Chiasmus!!!
  John Deere
  Category: Science. This ship...
  Don Giovanni bonus devoid of music clues
  Euclid's Formula

These are just the worst of the pack. The set overall was absurd.

A bit generous to even suggest some of the tus had clues

As a more math-oriented player, I'd like to offer some thoughts.
First off, it was of exceedingly variable difficulty (not to mention badly written). Our reader was very slow, thus listening to the bonuses where a triangle was constructed was pretty painful. Aside from comp math being bad itself and ihsa making it worse, the math concepts questions also sucked. The following is a review of each notable tu:

Euclidean algorithm: stated that it can be used to find factors in first line
Euler's identity: transparent first line, following clues were about deriving it, generally really bad clue placement
Factorial: one of the less atrocious, but nonspecific firstline and gamma function dropped early on
Homeomorphism: this is really difficult (I wasn't able to convert it) but it seemed really transparent
Spline: I quinterested this and the only tu that came up was from CO
Cevian: I firstline negged this with line because the tu had nothing about prompting even though the first clue was about lines intersecting a triangle in Menelaus's theorem; also pretty difficult to convert


Sorry for being repetitive but I need to vent


Edit: also I haven't heard a comp math question require units since IESA (or maybe it was just our moderator)

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention the roomwide groans that "you may want to sketch this" elicited.

The RWE essay clue in the firstline is almost as bad as the "Romanian sculptor" clue used to lead into a TU about Brancusi last year. It's good to see that the set has made such groundbreaking improvement.

Except for the fact that it is much more reasonable to buzz on "This Romanian sculptor..." when you are aware that you definitely aren't able to name any other Romanian sculptors than it is to answer with "Self-Reliance" on "This Ralph Waldo Emerson essay..." even though you can probably think of a few other notable essays.

But yeah, today really really sucked. We had the same moderator for all three rounds, and he took 30 points off of our Round 2 score due to a combination of me complaining about the questions and attempting to call time outs.

no ice wrote:Except for the fact that it is much more reasonable to buzz on "This Romanian sculptor..." when you are aware that you definitely aren't able to name any other Romanian sculptors than it is to answer with "Self-Reliance" on "This Ralph Waldo Emerson essay..." even though you can probably think of a few other notable essays.

The only ones that come to mind are Nature and The Oversoul, both of which are way too hard for this difficulty (not that this has stopped the IHSA in the past.) I'd say that on these questions, the buzz you described is a reasonable buzz. I certainly made it, or something close to it once I wrapped my mind around the ridiculousness of the leadin.

The key to playing IHSA is maintaining one's cool. It's too bad that playing it is like having a crawdad pinching on each appendage.

Really working on not making each game into a rendition of Glengarry Glen Ross.

Western Leader wrote:So this certainly happened. As all regionals are over, I am assuming that as none were postponed I can proceed with question content.

These were some of what my team saw as the more egregious questions:

Agreed except on a few counts:

The Humphry Davy tossup wasn't too bad -- they did mention nitrous oxide, which he is known for, and also his hiring Michael Faraday as a lab assistant.

Maybe this is just from my experience, but I think Pulaski and Kościuszko are equally important, and the tossup did mention him building several fortifications (Pulaski didn't do that).

The tennis bonus was not too hard -- I was able to (if I recall correctly) 20 that, and I don't know that much about tennis.

These were the questions I found to be OK (based on my own personal experience), so feel free to correct me if something is wrong.

After sectionals, I only have one word: versine.

Things I enjoyed about IHSA 2k15, a compendium:
The Steinbeck lead-in: striking fruit workers and California (totally not fraudable)
"Huckleberry Finn" is not an acceptable answer (one shudders to think of them tossing up An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations or The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money)
"Hercules killed a number of different animals..."
The intro to versine was "a little used trick function" (little did we know..)
Mythology = Literature
How IHSA does not consider short stories to be a thing (novels Harrison Bergeron and The Open Boat)
"you may want to sketch this figure.."- honestly, I was trying not to laugh through the entire question; it was basically the comic relief question.

Western Leader wrote:

no ice wrote:Except for the fact that it is much more reasonable to buzz on "This Romanian sculptor..." when you are aware that you definitely aren't able to name any other Romanian sculptors than it is to answer with "Self-Reliance" on "This Ralph Waldo Emerson essay..." even though you can probably think of a few other notable essays.

The only ones that come to mind are Nature and The Oversoul, both of which are way too hard for this difficulty (not that this has stopped the IHSA in the past.) I'd say that on these questions, the buzz you described is a reasonable buzz. I certainly made it, or something close to it once I wrapped my mind around the ridiculousness of the leadin.

The American Scholar?

ACantataforLiebowitz wrote:

Western Leader wrote:

no ice wrote:Except for the fact that it is much more reasonable to buzz on "This Romanian sculptor..." when you are aware that you definitely aren't able to name any other Romanian sculptors than it is to answer with "Self-Reliance" on "This Ralph Waldo Emerson essay..." even though you can probably think of a few other notable essays.

The only ones that come to mind are Nature and The Oversoul, both of which are way too hard for this difficulty (not that this has stopped the IHSA in the past.) I'd say that on these questions, the buzz you described is a reasonable buzz. I certainly made it, or something close to it once I wrapped my mind around the ridiculousness of the leadin.

The American Scholar?

It was a speech, despite sometimes being published as an essay.

ACantataforLiebowitz wrote:Mythology = Literature
How IHSA does not consider short stories to be a thing (novels Harrison Bergeron and The Open Boat)

1) Myth is explicitly under the lit distribution.
2) Harrison Bergeron isn't a novel...

dtaylor4 wrote:

ACantataforLiebowitz wrote:Mythology = Literature
How IHSA does not consider short stories to be a thing (novels Harrison Bergeron and The Open Boat)

1) Myth is explicitly under the lit distribution.
2) Harrison Bergeron isn't a novel...

This was Nathaniel's point.

The curiosity is getting the better of me... Being a "downstater" and all.

What happened at the OPRF Sectional to lead to a 1-0 win for Hinsdale Central over UChicago Lab?

mhasquin wrote:The curiosity is getting the better of me... Being a "downstater" and all.

What happened at the OPRF Sectional to lead to a 1-0 win for Hinsdale Central over UChicago Lab?

According to Adam Fine, UC lab can't go to state due to finals

I wasn't at Sectionals, but UC Lab, had they not forfeited, would have had a 530-280 victory.