The Quizbowl Resource Center

I doubt results will ever be put online, so the following is based only on what I've heard or recorded. The tournament was yet again tossup only with one point per tossup answered and 24 tossups asked. The prelims consisted of 10 rounds for 12 teams, although at least 1 team was missing. The seeding going into the playoffs was Wayzata A (10-0), I believe Wayzata B (9-1), Minnetonka A (8-2 or 7-3), and Armstrong A. Minnetonka A beat Wayzata B, and Armstrong A defeated Wayzata A 13-11. The consolation match "took place" with Wayzata A winning 12-0, as Wayzata B skipped out early, as did half of Wayzata A. In the finals, Armstrong A pulled out the upset, winning 10-8 as the fourth seed against Minnetonka A. This made for an exciting tournament, although I obviously wish it could have been a little less exciting. The tossups were alright, and the play was competitive as there was no powering nor negging. As for my team, we were without Chris Heffner, which hurt us as he is our captain and bringer of jollity.

I played my first ever MN Knowledge Bowl meet tonight. Now I understand. I could go on for hours about bad questions, bad moderators, general disorganization, bad use of time, bad distribution, and hour long rounds of 45 2-line tossups. I won't, but I can't say I am looking forward to more of those funn tournaments.

Finally, another Knowledge Bowl participant with some actual sense, but let's just remember, this is a Quizbowl forum (though I'm guessing you could actually discuss it here).

cdcarter wrote:I played my first ever MN Knowledge Bowl meet tonight. Now I understand. I could go on for hours about bad questions, bad moderators, general disorganization, bad use of time, bad distribution, and hour long rounds of 45 2-line tossups. I won't, but I can't say I am looking forward to more of those funn tournaments.

2-line tosups are not innately "wrong," provided they attempt to put in 2-3 clues, aren't hoses, and fit some sort of distribution.

STPickrell wrote:

cdcarter wrote:I played my first ever MN Knowledge Bowl meet tonight. Now I understand. I could go on for hours about bad questions, bad moderators, general disorganization, bad use of time, bad distribution, and hour long rounds of 45 2-line tossups. I won't, but I can't say I am looking forward to more of those funn tournaments.

2-line tosups are not innately "wrong," provided they attempt to put in 2-3 clues, aren't hoses, and fit some sort of distribution.

The best possible 2-line tossups are still terrible quizbowl.

STPickrell wrote:

cdcarter wrote:I played my first ever MN Knowledge Bowl meet tonight. Now I understand. I could go on for hours about bad questions, bad moderators, general disorganization, bad use of time, bad distribution, and hour long rounds of 45 2-line tossups. I won't, but I can't say I am looking forward to more of those funn tournaments.

2-line tosups are not innately "wrong," provided they attempt to put in 2-3 clues, aren't hoses, and fit some sort of distribution.

You've clearly never seen knowledge bowl...

Canadajin wrote:Finally, another Knowledge Bowl participant with some actual sense, but let's just remember, this is a Quizbowl forum (though I'm guessing you could actually discuss it here).

There's no problem discussing Knowledge Bowl on these forums. Quiz bowl is quiz bowl, even if it's "bad" quiz bowl.

theMoMA wrote:

STPickrell wrote:2-line tosups are not innately "wrong," provided they attempt to put in 2-3 clues, aren't hoses, and fit some sort of distribution.

You've clearly never seen knowledge bowl...

I've heard KB violates all those rules.

On the other hand, given that a VHSL round can get through 30 5-line tossups and 20 directed questions in about 45 minutes -- an hour to read 45 two-line tossups??

Well,

There are 3 teams in a room.
You get 15 seconds to confer time per buzz.
If a moderator is interrupted, he/she has to re-read the question from the beginning if the answer given by the team is wrong.

That all adds up to the suckyness of the format![/list]

I've never heard of a KB round lasting an hour; I expect he's either exaggerating or the round/reader was an anomaly. Also, I'm not sure that KB meets the definition of QB. Discussing it's fine by me, but in actuality it isn't like QB at all.

sam.peterson wrote:I've never heard of a KB round lasting an hour; I expect he's either exaggerating or the round/reader was an anomaly. Also, I'm not sure that KB meets the definition of QB. Discussing it's fine by me, but in actuality it isn't like QB at all.

I was keeping time, one of the rounds I played was an hour, one was 50, the other two were 30-45 minutes. Perhaps I just had bad rooms/rounds...

Hey gang,

Invites and announcements have been sent to all your coaches, but I wanted to tack on a plug on this thread.

The 2nd Annual EPIC (EdenPrairie PopCulture Invitiational Championship) will be held on Saturday, 2/23! I put an announcement in the "tourney announcements" section on this site.

More info here:
http://www.naqt.com/mqba/epic/2008/announcement.html

I PROMISE you that this year's tourney will be much better written that last year's -- I handled the bulk of the question writing and I intentionally tried to make some more "knowledge bowl-ish" as I was hoping to get more KB-focused teams there. This year, questions will be written by many very talented writers (all of which frequent this forum I am sure) so I think it will be much better. And it's following NAQT format for the most part.

We'd love to see you all there -- it will be a blast!

cdcarter wrote:

sam.peterson wrote:I've never heard of a KB round lasting an hour; I expect he's either exaggerating or the round/reader was an anomaly. Also, I'm not sure that KB meets the definition of QB. Discussing it's fine by me, but in actuality it isn't like QB at all.

I was keeping time, one of the rounds I played was an hour, one was 50, the other two were 30-45 minutes. Perhaps I just had bad rooms/rounds...

It's a mix of the two. With really good teams that know that it's worthless to use all 15 seconds and can buzz in early, it's not too long. However, KB also bases itself around slow moderation and questions that penalize people for knowledge and an ability to buzz in early. Ergo, each question in a good room should take 40 seconds, which makes the ideal length 30 minutes. Add in score checks (dude, they put it on the BOX) and you get another 5 minutes. Add in people failing at answering questions when they're the only ones left in and it can take up to an hour.

Any predictions for SnowCAT? I'm going to go out on a limb and say EP gets first (barring the possibility that any players were involved in the red cup scandal). After that, I would guess Chaska, then Wayzata, then Minnetonka A/Orono A/EP B/Wayzata B. I'm glad that this tournament will be run on a non-A series set, which will be the first real such tournament for Wayzata. Our A team might be a bit different, as Mitu is adamant about not playing as an alternate, so he'll likely be on B team with Chris Thompson on our A team. I don't know how well this will work, but Chris T. was on our A team last year at SnowCAT and we did fine then.

Quick results:
1. Eden Prairie A
2. Chaska
3. Minnetonka A
4. Wayzata B
5. Wayzata A

Road stories/reactions:

1. Tom Sullivan has gone through seven months of HARD living since he graduated from St. Thomas. He looks like Charles Manson on low amounts of sleep, a little THC, and after laser tattoo removal... in a good way.

2. If Igor brings anything more distracting than a straw to a meet ever again, we won't let him go to Nationals. Or to college. Or to life.

3. People making EP Facebook jokes are really annoying. Seriously, stop them before one of us snaps and punches you in the face.

4. The closest thing to a surprise of the day was when Wayzata B beat Wayzata A. I say closest thing because I was not stunned at all. I think it's a mistake to continually relegate Noah Rosenthal to a B team at every tournament, and today proved that in my mind. He was easily the strongest person on their team when we played them, and it wasn't the packet talking.

5. That was a really wonky set. The distribution seemed really screwed up when it came to trash and European literature. I haven't read the final four questions per packet, but there were definitely sets where the trash was 2/1 and some where it was 6/4. It was so bad that even I complained about them.

6. High school tournaments should not last until 6:15 when the announcement says it'll be done around 3:30. Seriously, WTF. Rounds were really oddly staggered due to teams being fast and slow, but realistically rounds should take around 30 minutes each for 20 tossups. Do that times 12 rounds and add in an hour for lunch/stat compiling and that makes a seven hour tournament. We get out at around four and everything's all happy and smiley faced. EP left at 6:15, potentially ruining our coach's and parents' evening plans.

All that aside, we're content with how we did, particularly in the playoffs. Congrats to Chaska A for giving us one of the best matches we've played this year in the finals.

In regards to your reactions:
3. Sorry

4. Look at the season stats. We've always beat our B team by a couple hundred points (or 9 points on a different format). Yesterday just turned out differently for us, as I'm sure was your feeling at GINVIT. My best excuse would be the 5 tossups in a row that went Geo/Geo/Bio/Geo/Geo. Noah is the best geography player at our school and Mitu only got the bio thanks to that specific topic being pounded into him at QB camp. I've verified this weird distribution by looking at the packet once again. I believe that we had the lead 180-160 with 6 questions left when their run started.

5. See 4.

6. Agreed

So these 4 teams made the playoffs (all 'A' teams):

Eden Prairie: 12-0
Chaska: 11-1
Edina: 9-3
St. Thomas Academy: 9-3

A pretty cool thing happened in one of the TV rounds tonight -- both Burnsville and Edina swept their respective lightning round... I don't suppose that happens all that often, so it was cool to see.

Best of luck to those in the North and East regions!

Does anyone know if the results to the 2008 Snow CAT are going to be posted online? There was no mention of it on the info page about the Snow CAT, so I'm guessing the answer is no, but I figured I would ask here to see if anyone knew. ;)

Jarn wrote:Does anyone know if the results to the 2008 Snow CAT are going to be posted online? There was no mention of it on the info page about the Snow CAT, so I'm guessing the answer is no, but I figured I would ask here to see if anyone knew. ;)

Stats are located at the following link.

http://www.naqt.com/stats/tournament-te ... nt_id=2465

Thank you. :)

To any interested parties in this Minnesota forum:

The EPIC Pop Culture tournament is reaching critical mass, so if you have not registered yet, please encourage your coach to do so ASAP!

Here's a link to the website to explain more about the tourney.
http://www.naqt.com/mqba/epic/2008/announcement.html

Also you can post a message here saying "hey, hold our spot, we really want to come!" if you'd like. The team I'm particularly concerned about is Wayzata, and I know you guys (Mitu and Carsten) check in here a lot, so feel free to let us know.

klwalton33 wrote:To any interested parties in this Minnesota forum:

The EPIC Pop Culture tournament is reaching critical mass, so if you have not registered yet, please encourage your coach to do so ASAP!

Here's a link to the website to explain more about the tourney.
http://www.naqt.com/mqba/epic/2008/announcement.html

Also you can post a message here saying "hey, hold our spot, we really want to come!" if you'd like. The team I'm particularly concerned about is Wayzata, and I know you guys (Mitu and Carsten) check in here a lot, so feel free to let us know.

Hey do you guys plan on releasing the questions from this tournament? I would be interested in seeing them.

We absolutely would. We've actually talked about selling them, but since this is the first year we've considered this and we want to ensure it's an awesome product, we might just offer them up to see if people would be interested in running a tourney off them.

At the very least, we'll put them up on the Stanford site.

I also have last year's questions available if you'd like them... but keep in mind, they were written in large part by me, several of my buddies, and a few coaches in town. They didn't follow any particular format (some short, some very long) and a couple were inadvertent hoses too. I think people enjoyed them for the most part, but this year's will be MUCH better and more consistent.

OH -- on that note, we've purged most of the MN-centric sports questions and made them MUCH more universal. So those of you in, say, Maryland don't need to brush up that hard on, say, the 1987 Minnesota Twins' World Series run.

I can tell you that we're planning on going, our coach is just sort of notoriously slow on signing up teams. We'll have at least two with a max of three teams, unless something changes significantly from what we said at practice last Thursday. Hopefully, Mitu can correct any mistakes I've made in this post if necessary and next time I see Mrs. Hagen I will tell her of your concerns.

Much appreciated Carsten -- I will mark you down for two teams now if you don't mind.

With that we are at 40... that's the max we had planned on. So I now need to go try and get more rooms. Holy cow this filled up quick!

So SAVANT on Saturday. I'm a little sad it's on A series and not on IS, because our team seems to miss all normal IS tournaments. But anyway, Predictions?

Wayzata will be a little mixed up, as Chris Heffner and Noah Rosenthal can't make it. This means our A team will be our normal 5 but now without an alternate. This is also somewhat the case for playoffs next Thursday, which neither Noah nor Chris H. can attend.

As for predictions, I'd put, assuming all teams attend as expected, EP in first, Chaska second, and I'm not sure after that. I'm hopeful that Wayzata can get in third, but I'm not sure how well we'll do without our bringer of jollity.

When I left EP was playing Chaska, and I think Wayzata was playing Edina?

It was well run, but the set was pretty shoddy. A lot of questions that were "too easy" to the point where you didn't dare buzz because it can't be that. And there wasn't very much Lit at all. E.g. in the first packet, in the first 20 tossups, I count 2 lit tossups. A third one comes a bit later, but we only played 20 tossups since it was untimed.

Final Standings:
1. EP
2. Chaska
3. Wayzata
4. Edina

I agree that the questions weren't that great. I also agree with the lack of lit sentiments. Somehow 73A made me look forward to the questions at Thursday night's playoffs. As for playoffs, Wayzata is in disarray, as I know about 6 people who all think they're playing on Thursday night, although I wouldn't put it past our coach to have us play with two alternates.

Wayzata has a rather propitious spot in the playoff bracket.

Their spot might better be described as agathokakological.

Is anyone planning on attending the tournament at Roseville? I was just browsing the MQBA site and saw the tournament announcement up, but I had not heard of any tournament being hosted there.

The announcement went up yesterday.

I'm not sure if Chaska will send any teams. I'll be taking the SAT, unfortunately. At the most, I'd make it to the playoffs.

SAVANT stats at: http://naqt.com/stats/tournament-teams. ... playoffs=1

Good luck at the playoffs tomorrow.

Is it just me or is March just void of tournaments? We have the RATRACE thing but then the next tournament is the U's in April.

Speaking of which, there will be a tournament at the U in the middle of March, as well, to be held on the PACE early spring qualification set. The set will be written by Minnesota, Brown, and Matt Weiner. I believe that Saturday, the 16th will be the date. Announcement to follow shortly.

We will also hold our April 5 tournament, which will feature noted #1 team in the country Dorman. The questions will be written by Minnesota, Maryland, and Vanderbilt. Announcement is here for more details.

Please get your registrations in, or tell your coaches to get your registrations in, for both. The best way is to email Rita Otto at ottox131 ----at----- UMN dot edu

Andrew

Andrew,

Gautam told me about the April tourney last night. How'd you hook Dorman? The allure of Minneapolis in April?

EP will definitely be at the April tourney. Not sure about the March one as we're probably well over our budget as it is and I need to show some fiscal restraint (not my strength). But we can't pass up the chance to see Dorman.

Looking forward to EPIC on Saturday! The questions everyone has written are absolutely outstanding.

KW

Well, if it is one of those decision making factors, I am looking into coming up for the March 15th tournament to play solo. If Eden Prairie goes then that significantly increases my desire to come. I would come to Chitin Classic but it's not over my break and that sme day is another tournament for me to go to.

For the interested, MNHSQB League results:
1. EP
2. Orono
3. Minnetonka
4. Wayzata
5-8. DeLaSalle, St. Thomas, Simley, St. Anthony
9-16. Rosemount, Chaska, Benilde, Irondale, Armstrong, Edina, St. Paul Central, and St. Louis Park

The West division had 3 of the top 4 teams, showing how unbalanced divisions were. Orono was the "upset" special of the night, coming in as the West 3 seed and beating Chaska (South 2 seed), DeLaSalle (North 1 seed) and Wayzata (West 2 seed). As for Wayzata's placing, there are numerous reasons that we lost to Tonka by 5 points when we should have won by 5 or more, most of which have to do with my bad answering.

Score of the final match: 685-225

Canadajin wrote:Score of the final match: 685-225

Certainly credit needs to be given to Orono -- they are a very good team, coached very well, and it wasn't THAT surprising to see them do well. When the brackets came out, I figured the Chaska - Orono tilt would definitely be the best first round match. And it didn't disappoint. They played well the final match too -- the score seems a bit lopsided but it was tied for the first quarter of the match.

I thought St. Louis Park was really good tonight too. In all I was really impressed by a number of teams tonight and have been all season.

Big kudos to Robert and the NAQT crew -- the MNQB circuit has been so wel run the past two years -- they've done an outstanding job and it's been a lot of fun to be a part of.

Great job to all teams tonight. We'll look forward to seeing many of you on Saturday at EPIC.

I don't know if this is of interest to anyone, but Chaska's upcoming knowledge bowl tournament will feature short NAQT questions as well as prompting. When Lenius told me the news I thought it was too good to be true... Hopefully this will eliminate a lot of the frustration inherent to KB (at least for this tournament).

sam.peterson wrote:I don't know if this is of interest to anyone, but Chaska's upcoming knowledge bowl tournament will feature short NAQT questions as well as prompting. When Lenius told me the news I thought it was too good to be true... Hopefully this will eliminate a lot of the frustration inherent to KB (at least for this tournament).

Will there be an announcement?

What frustration??? That KB questions are too easy or too hard?

Will Run PACE for Reese's wrote:What frustration??? That KB questions are too easy or too hard?

That they are too unfortunate.

Will Run PACE for Reese's wrote:What frustration??? That KB questions are too easy or too hard?

That they are the epitome of awful quizbowl.

EPIC went really well. Everyone we talked to, including ourselves, liked the set and had a lot of fun. The schedule also worked out very well, there wasn't very much waiting around for us.

The set was really good, minus a few repeats, and my only problem with it was a lack of Pepsi Blue tossups.

Quick stats for those interested:
1. St. Thomas A
2. Orono A
3. Wayzata A
4. Armstrong C
5,6. Armstrong A/B, I don't remember the order or actual names

I thought the tournament was well-written, well-run, and even exceeded my high expectations that came from knowing the people working on it. The repeats didn't create any real problems, and the matching system worked out pretty well. I wish we could have played more close matches, as only twice did we have intense games, and both of those we lost on the last tossup. I would say that I was most disappointed by a lack of Dr. Tran, which made me want to go to the Toy Cack to feel better.