2008 Housh Classic (01/12/08) at TJHSST (Alexandria, VA)

[maxemuschs]

I would have to agree with most of the critiques of the bonuses so far, though other than the focus on the millitary aspect of ancient history, I really liked the variety and distribution of the questions. More science is always a good thing. Having difficult pyramidal questions is also excellent as it descreases the number of buzzer races, which brings me to my complaint:
tossups with distorted pyramids. Some of the tossups were very difficult and obscure throughout, up until the end where they completely flattened out and turned into suprise buzzer races.
A few tossups also began entirely too generally; the kabutops question ("related to the trilobite") was "incorrectly" answered by a teammate with "horseshoe crab" before it got to clues exclusive to pokemon.

Overall, I found the tournament to be tremendously fun; in addition to the good distribution, there was a real breadth of knowledge present in some of the questions/bonuses.

[Arian Fathieh]

A few tossups also began entirely too generally; the kabutops question ("related to the trilobite") was "incorrectly" answered by a teammate with "horseshoe crab" before it got to clues exclusive to pokemon.

Ah yes, I was in that match. After I got Kabutops, I only got 1 of the bonuses, despite being a self-proclaimed video game addict. I still know pokemon numbers 1 through 251 in order, but the new pokemon threw me off, and they seemed to be the focus of the questions. I still haven't played Diamond or Pearl; I have Diamond unwrapped in my drawer still. The Mudkip clue was hilarious.

I agree with that assessment of the question. After your teammate buzzed, I thought in my head "good buzz, horseshoe crab has to be right", so I was surprised when he got it wrong too. There were a few other questions like that. Most notably, there was a question whose answer was the Peloponnesian War but my teammate buzzed and said the "Delian League fleet". The whole question seemed to be asking what was the name of the Athenian's fleet, it even used the words "this fleet", but it wasn't until the last sentence that it said "what war". In fact, the whole reason we were struggling with the question was we were wondering what the name of Athens' fleet was; we all knew that the clues described were in the Peloponnesian War.

But, I think this thread is critiquing the questions a bit too much. They were generally pretty good, and I am sure all the teams enjoyed themselves regardless.

[dschafer]

TJ has had a 1/1 sports per tournament distribution for years. Apparently I somehow managed to impress the importance of this policy on my successors.

They said that the sports questions were written... just that they might have been a bit too crazy writing the sports questions.

Of course they may have interpreted things to mean 1/1 for THE ENTIRE TOURNAMENT.

I suspect that is exactly what Evan meant. I would also guess that 1/1 per tournament was exactly 1/1 per tournament more than Evan would have had if the sport fans on TJ hadn't demanded at least some representation.

Basically I looked at how many wins (on average) each card would have and then I paired teams with equal (or as equal as possible) records. I recalculated the number of wins teach team would have, and then repeated until round 7.

Thanks.

[The Atom Strikes!]

Anyone who got the Xanatos tossup is a hero.

I managed this, thanks to lots of time wasted on the TV Tropes Wiki

[Blackboard Monitor Vimes]

Anyone who got the Xanatos tossup is a hero.

Next to beating Gonzaga, that question was the single awesomest moment of my day. Gargoyles was my favorite animated show in elementary school, even more so than Invader Zim (*points to avatar/username*). Late 90s/early 2000's animation is so underrepresented in pop culture questions...

[flylikeaneagle]

I keep hearing that the tournament was great but it's always on the second weekend in january, which means i'm restricted to my room, studying for midterms. If a week later is possible next week, I would love to come!!!!!!!!!!