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Commissioners Academic Challenge

Posted: Sun Dec 28, 2008 6:46 pm
by kayli
Being a Floridian, I have the opportunity to attend the Commissioner's Academic Challenge (CAC). In my opinion, this is probably the purest academic tournament around. For those who have experienced the Panasonic Academic Challenge (PAC) now known as the National Tournament of Academic Excellence. It might be harder to implement in other places, but I truly think that this would be a welcome format for any region, state, whatever. If you're curious about it, you can read the format here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commission ... ent_Format

Although it's already mentioned in the article, the topics covered in the tournament are quite varied and deep. The questions cover things completely unseen in NAQT such as music and art identification. Also, a common complaint with NAQT is their overabundance of trash, current events, and geography. With CAC, there is absolutely no trash (unless you consider Broadway musicals or jazz trash) and there is no current events. Geography is present however it is not nearly as abundant as in NAQT. Also, the math in CAC is challenging and often requires tools above the arithmetic that NAQT seems to love. Calculus makes a welcome visit with problems that involve such things as trigonometric substitution. Also, there is a good deal of chemistry and physics calculation questions. As for science in general, the questions are deep but not ridiculous as much of the material is covered in an AP or IB curriculum and those that are not can be learned without too terribly much effort. The literature present in CAC is also surprisingly diverse. With NAQT, you get a good number of questions that are almost guaranteed to come up (i.e. Hemingway, Dickens, and Austen works) with little regard to other significant writers. Although I haven't had too terribly much experience with NAQT, I've noticed that works such as The Tin Drum or The Moon and Sixpence are never the answer to any of the tossups. Rather, NAQT seems to be obsessed with spamming the same fifty so works which often times can often be guessed (because, if the question says "This Goethe work", ninety-nine times out of one hundred the answer will likely be Faust and not The Sorrows of Young Werther or some other work). In addition, the social science questions are deep and even culturally diverse. Usually, NAQT doesn't care too much about the gamelan or the national epic of Finland. Also, the questions asked show true knowledge of a field. For example, in NAQT, Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act is likely just a build-up for Hoover or something whereas, in CAC, Smoot-Hawley is an entity in-and-of itself. Art and music, shunned by NAQT, are welcomed in CAC with verbal questions and questions based upon visual art and auditory music.

This long digression is basically just advocating this format of a tournament. It'd be great to see tournaments like these around the country, and I'd think it'd help to revive quizbowl. I encourage looking into buying a question set or looking at the sample question set. Just go to the link below.
http://www.polk-fl.net/students/academi ... efault.htm
Also note: due to the slowing economy, Panasonic has stopped sponsoring the Panasonic Academic Challenge so it has digressed to its former name. It seems that this type of tournament might be slowing or ([insert deity] forbid) dying. So I encourage helping out this type of tournament in some sort of way so that Floridians like me can look forward all year to going this one tournament.

Re: Commissioners Academic Challenge

Posted: Sun Dec 28, 2008 7:04 pm
by Matt Weiner
Looking at those sample questions, I have to say they are among the worst I have seen in quite some time. Most people don't even consider the CAC/PAC format to be quizbowl at all, as the large amount of nonstandard questions such as matching, one-liner tossups, and poorly conceived audiovisual questions (just asking someone to identify a piece of music does nothing to sort teams by levels of knowledge) combine with the very unusual game format involving multiple teams playing at one time and tossups being killed after one guess to produce something that really doesn't resemble any other format. I would suggest that this format be allowed to die off and the two-team-at-a-time formats centered around pyramidal academic formats that predominate in other states be allowed to replace it.

I sympathize with some (though not all) of your objections to the NAQT high school product; I'll remind you that it is not the only thing out there in terms of tossup/bonus quizbowl.

Re: Commissioners Academic Challenge

Posted: Sun Dec 28, 2008 7:22 pm
by Important Bird Area
Some of those things (eg, The Moon and Sixpence) don't come up as NAQT tossups because NAQT believes they are too difficult for a high school tossup answer.

Others of those things that "never come up as NAQT tossup answers" have, in fact, appeared as NAQT tossup answers: Smoot-Hawley tariff, Kalevala, Tin Drum. As recently as the 2007 HSNCT we asked for the latter two in the same tournament.

Yes, Hemingway, Dickens, and Austen come up more often. That's for the very good reason that they are more likely to be answered by the average high school player.

Re: Commissioners Academic Challenge

Posted: Sun Dec 28, 2008 7:36 pm
by Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN)
If you want to purely reward depth of knowledge of academic topics, the Panasonic format is not the way to go. Its questions all basically turn into buzzer races that become nothing more than luck for their rewarding of people's knowledge. Many of them are intentionally written to force a buzzer race, with their rules about how you have to match exactly what the given answers are on the page during matching questions (so if you get a questions about "match the authors to these books" and buzz in and give their last names only, there is a good chance you will be counted wrong if they included their first name on the paper). If you are disillusioned by the distribution or writing flaws in NAQT's product, I might suggest you check out the sets on quizbowlpackets.com or HSAPQ's product. These questions strongly reward depth, and adhere to a somewhat different distribution than NAQT's along with often longer, more clue dense questions. As it is, there is a whole myriad of flaws in the Panasonic format that make it unacceptable quizbowl, and I would strongly encourage nobody to take kidaace's suggestion about spreading this format. There is a reason that year after year the top teams have been abandoning Panasonic, including the ultimate example I can imagine, Illinois not returning to defend their title. Can you explain why it is if the format is so superior, so many top teams have been dropping?

Re: Commissioners Academic Challenge

Posted: Sun Dec 28, 2008 7:44 pm
by Cheynem
I only played Panasonic once and that was in 2002 but I will agree with Charlie. First, my team represented Michigan because two other, superior teams had turned it down. Secondly, the matches were cumbersome and unwieldy (multiple teams at once, one buzzer per team, one buzz kills question). I remember multiple times where one team negged really early with a foolish guess rendering an entire question moot. While the format may have improved in terms of questions, I found some questions entirely random or only vaguely academic (there was one segment where we watched a clip, had to remember things like "color of woman's dress" or "number of times the word two was said," and then answer in a foreign language).

On the plus side, I found the organization and personnel to be very solid and they certainly gave you a packed experience (free food, free Disney World trip, banquet dinner). I mean, I think this tourney could and should continue with some tweaks in format. In terms of logistics, the people there certainly seemed to know what they were doing.

Re: Commissioners Academic Challenge

Posted: Sun Dec 28, 2008 9:37 pm
by at your pleasure
This long digression is basically just advocating this format of a tournament. It'd be great to see tournaments like these around the country, and I'd think it'd help to revive quizbowl. I encourage looking into buying a question set or looking at the sample question set.
Huh? You mean it would be a good idea to promote a format that uses mind-numbingly terrible questions whose only advantage(a sensible academic distribution) is present in many, many other tournaments that use better questions?

Re: Commissioners Academic Challenge

Posted: Tue Dec 30, 2008 1:33 am
by kayli
Personally, I find the format better because it's more team-oriented. It has a good organization, and it is free from many of the flaws of NAQT. I think that most people don't like the format because they haven't played on it before. The sample questions are quite terrible (after looking at them). But I still believe that the question distribution and quality of the questions are good. NAQT seems to be based on trivia and not real academic things. I'm probably not as familiar with other formats because we don't see them around here... or we just don't know about them. *Shrug.* I think that the questions are really not that bad once you get to think about them. It's a unique tournament in that the brevity of the questions is often coupled with the difficulty of the same questions. It also involves a different strategy when working with more than just two teams which is another reason why it seems cumbersome. Also, by making it only one buzz per questions, it makes for more conservative game play and strategy. When bad teams neg and kill the questions, people do get aggravated; but that just leaves room for planning some strategy against such. I think that the audio/visual aspect of the tournament is really enjoyable. Anyone can regurgitate knowledge about music; but when confronted with the actual piece, they might not be able to even get close to identifying it. Is this real knowledge about music? I think not. The same goes for art. I think that it's a little unfair to discard the format entirely. CAC is an almost completely team oriented tournament whereas normal quizbowl is less so. The questions are odd because they're different. A lot of teams are not familiar with this type of tournament outside of Florida. Consequently, I think they are prone to discard the format because it's a lot more different than they are used to. The tournament is fun and enjoyable once you get used to it, and there's a good reason why it's been going on for 22 years.

Re: Commissioners Academic Challenge

Posted: Tue Dec 30, 2008 12:10 pm
by at your pleasure
Mr.Li, may I note that such things as HSPAQ questions, Ageis questions,ACF fall questions and the sets produced by all of the houswrites that are praised on this board all combine the virtues of academic knowledge with correct application of the basic principles of good question writing. Therefore, I think it is reasonable to conclude that you are wholly unaware of quizbowl beyond your local format and NAQT and I advise you to swiftly remedy that deficency. HSPAQ has a set posted on its website, and many of the aforementioned houswrites that people like can be found on quizbowlpackets.com. If you wish to examine other sets, many fine collegiate sets are available for your perusal at the Stanford Archive.

Re: Commissioners Academic Challenge

Posted: Tue Dec 30, 2008 1:06 pm
by kayli
Thank you for such kind words. I will look into them. Nonetheless I still think that CAC and PAC are good if not different forms of quizbowl.

Re: Commissioners Academic Challenge

Posted: Tue Dec 30, 2008 1:10 pm
by Stained Diviner
Doug means HSAPQ.

Re: Commissioners Academic Challenge

Posted: Tue Dec 30, 2008 1:49 pm
by First Chairman
Kay,

My own opinions (no one else is represented) to add to what has been said.

If I were to list some of the positive things that CAC/NTAE does well over 10 years ago, it is the ability to have some interesting multimedia questions such as music and art-excerpt-based questions. In the early days of PACE NSC and other non-standard academic competitions I have been involved with, such questions are more frequent. There are even foreign language-translation questions that I'll admit were fascinating. The minute to do math calculations was certainly welcome as opposed to the usual 3-5 seconds to buzz in for math calculation tossups. I will admit I fancy consulting tossups on occasion though it is distracting if I were a player who was not used to that. Part of me would like to return to multimedia questions, but I also know how really difficult it is to write very good questions that are not too difficult for many people for whom such exposure to fine arts is limited thanks to budget cuts.

The problem is that there are certain peculiarities of the format that really do not reward deep knowledge. I'll just start with procedure first: matching questions in which one must respond in the exact form of the question as listed on the readers' sheet penalizes players/teams who really know the answers. If you had a question matching a title of a book with an author, you HAD to listen to all the choices and say "1-C, 2-A, 3-B, 4-D" rather than "1-Twain, 2-Cooper, 3-Hemingway, 4-Steinbeck" or even, "Twain, Cooper, Hemingway, Steinbeck." I don't know if the rules have changed significantly since then, but it is my impression that it has not. It's good the game has a "one-shot-only" buzzer format for scoring to help deal with protests, but it really does not give a very accurate demonstration of deep academic knowledge when everyone is going after the same question within fractions of seconds. In a mindset that "good quizbowl should make good TV", it doesn't even meet that standard to me... too many possible people could buzz in, and you cannot follow that easily if you were a director in a control room. Even visual or audio identification questions are really speed-checks if you happen to play the right measure or phrase. If you play the first four notes of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, how many buzzes come in by the third note? To use a pop culture reference, how many people could probably recognize "Benny and the Jets" by Elton John after the first chord of the song (as he remarks with truth in his appearance on "The Actor's Studio")?

The tournament format is interesting enough that under usual circumstances, teams that make the "playoffs" of the semifinals usually have one victory already in-hand. It's interesting there is the repechage stage. But I have no clue how the initial draws for the field were made. It would make more sense if it were done in a seeded fashion like the FIFA World Cup competitions. But since no one else really does this format, there's really no data for such a draw to take place... but history should tell us not to put certain states together in the same first-round room (at least guarantee that last year's final six never are paired together in the first round). I have more than enough times heard complaints about that; it already biases the outcome of the final champion too much if that draw is not somehow or another modified.

Finally, the tournament is not free. It may be free for you being in Florida and having most expenses paid for by the county school board. But I had to think how to justify a $4000 trip for six people from North Carolina (different schools when proposed) to attend Panasonic. That doesn't always include travel. Someone pays for the rooms and the conference facilities, and believe me, it's not Panasonic (anymore) or Publix.

It is a nice show, it's a great vacation. I can argue that it's the best-planned national championship tournament out there (at least because I know when they'll host the national two to three years ahead of time... because they HAVE to book the facilities that far ahead of time). But is it a national championship for quizbowl? I would argue only for the state coaches associations which send teams there. That's probably the only other reason that I could justify such an event. But that is not a strong reason for me to say it is better quiz bowl than what is already being offered.

Re: Commissioners Academic Challenge

Posted: Tue Dec 30, 2008 2:11 pm
by Matt Weiner
kldaace wrote: I think that the audio/visual aspect of the tournament is really enjoyable. Anyone can regurgitate knowledge about music; but when confronted with the actual piece, they might not be able to even get close to identifying it. Is this real knowledge about music? I think not. The same goes for art.
This is an interesting point; please see viewtopic.php?p=101469#p101469 for a brief discussion of implementing multimedia questions in a collegiate context. Needless to say, I disagree with your blanket assertion that knowing linguistically expressible facts about visual art and music is not real knowledge, but I sympathize with your implied premise that familiarity with what these works actually look and sound like is a critical part of said knowledge and is not tested in quizbowl to the full extent that perhaps it could be.

However, I do not think the particular way that the CAC/PAC format implements these multimedia questions is the way to go about it. The main problem is the lack of a pyramidal tossup structure or equivalent means of distinguishing the teams by knowledge level beyond the binary "knows the piece/doesn't." This is of paramount importance even in the normal one-team-versus-another-team format, and when you have up to six teams playing at the same time, as you do in CAC/PAC, it actually becomes even more crucial to consider. You would need to do something such as play six or seven increasingly more familiar excerpts from an important work, or play two or three such excerpts from second-tier works by a composer followed by giving more traditional clues about him.

As Tom alludes to above, more mainstream quizbowl formats have tried implementing multimedia questions: several early PACE NSCs, as well as (if what I am told is correct) the first NAQT ICT. Even though the people in charge of both of those groups are both big fans of art and music and very willing to try experimental ideas, both groups ultimately abandoned multimedia questions because of [my own interpretation of the motives of other people follows:] the challenge of constructing them well, combined with the technical difficulties of presenting them to a large tournament, and the feeling that traditional linguistic tossups and bonuses on art and music can test knowledge sufficiently if written properly. CAC/PAC has no similar quality control mechanism for responding to player feedback or evaluating the success of its experiments, because it operates according to no standards whatsoever and doesn't connect in the slightest to quizbowl in general, so it just keeps plodding along with these fundamentally flawed questions.

Empirically, I think it is the case that people with vast knowledge of music based on listening to and playing a wide classical repertoire do tend to get most of the music questions in ACF, PACE, and even NAQT. So, I don't think your construction of some quizbowl savant memorizing his way to the top over a person with external real knowledge of music matches up with the actual facts of the situation.

Please feel free to look through last year's PACE NSC questions at http://quizbowlpackets.com/archive/pace_nsc/2008/, some HSAPQ questions at http://hsapq.com/sample.html, some ACF questions at http://acf-quizbowl.com/archive.php, or some NAQT questions at their sample page http://www.naqt.com/samples/ or in any archives your coach might have, and tell the board or the writers in question how the art questions may, if at all, be improved to better reward real knowledge. This is a primary concern to any writer worth his salt, and I think many people would in fact like to hear your opinions on this topic as long as they cite relevant evidence from the packets that you are discussing.
I think that it's a little unfair to discard the format entirely. CAC is an almost completely team oriented tournament whereas normal quizbowl is less so. The questions are odd because they're different. A lot of teams are not familiar with this type of tournament outside of Florida. Consequently, I think they are prone to discard the format because it's a lot more different than they are used to.
I don't see how one person is less likely to dominate the CAC/PAC format if he knows many categories than he is in any other format; any variance in scoring patterns can easily be attributed to the fact that CAC/PAC is played by all-star teams, whereas no all-star tournament yet exists for normal formats. It's also not true that non-Floridians don't know the format; thanks to the nationwide penetration of the PAC, the top players in every state know all too much about the format. They reject it not because it is unfamiliar, but because it is based on compliance with arbitrary rules and on speed-check one-fact questions, rather than on properly constructed game formats that reward depth of knowledge.

Re: Commissioners Academic Challenge

Posted: Tue Dec 30, 2008 2:31 pm
by David Riley
Until recently, I was one of the lone holdouts in Illinois supporting NTAE. In addition to what's been said above:

When I first became aware of PAC/CAC (c. 1996), I thought the questions were head and shoulders above anything we saw in Illinois at that time, save for the now extinct TRIAD questions. Since then, serious quizbowl has gone in a different direction: questions that are pyramidal and reward depth of knowledge are becoming the norm; PAC has remained static. With a little tweaking/updating, I would give it another chance. But the vagaries of the format are now such that strong teams who are familiar with ACF, PACE, etc. find it an anachronism at best. When all was said and done, Illinois decided not to send a team this year because our all-stars have moved on to greener pastures, so to speak, and lacked interest.

I agree that the logistics and personnel were always top-notch. But with Panasonic's lack of sponsorship and Peggy Harrod's retirement (no offense to Lisa), how long can NTAE continue? Again, it needs to be tweaked and updated if it is to have a future.

Re: Commissioners Academic Challenge

Posted: Tue Dec 30, 2008 7:28 pm
by First Chairman
I'd be interested in the question of what you would want to see done with CAC/NTAE to significantly improve the tournament. I think most people on this board would want complete wholesale changes such as one-vs.-one team matchups, individual scoring (rather than the four people on one buzzer business), and more depth-of-knowledge questions. But I also suspect that there are some changes that cannot be done due to logistics or lack of staffing or scheduling. I can conceive of some changes if we were just to change the question format and distribution, but I'd want to know what else could be done.

Re: Commissioners Academic Challenge

Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2008 12:54 am
by Kyle
There was at one point a post on this board that I liked (although presumably Matt wouldn't since he doesn't like sports analogies) comparing the various tournaments to tennis. I can't find it, though. Anyway, somebody said that the NAQT HSNCT was like Wimbledon and the PACE NSC like the French Open — played a little differently, but both still legitimate and good teams try to win both. PAC, according to this poster, was like a tournament where six people run around on the same court with tennis rackets trying to hit a wiffleball while a dog runs around on the court trying to get the ball. I thought it was funny.

Re: Commissioners Academic Challenge

Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2008 1:03 am
by Whiter Hydra
Kyle wrote:There was at one point a post on this board that I liked (although presumably Matt wouldn't since he doesn't like sports analogies) comparing the various tournaments to tennis. I can't find it, though. Anyway, somebody said that the NAQT HSNCT was like Wimbledon and the PACE NSC like the French Open — played a little differently, but both still legitimate and good teams try to win both. PAC, according to this poster, was like a tournament where six people run around on the same court with tennis rackets trying to hit a wiffleball while a dog runs around on the court trying to get the ball. I thought it was funny.
Found it
Matt Weiner wrote:The more apt analogy in tennis is if there were one good grasscourt tournament and one good claycourt tournament, as well as two other tournaments where you hit softballs with canoe paddles and sometimes the line judge throws a second ball onto the court because he doesn't like you. In addition, there's a tournament where twenty-four players are running around with six rackets trying to hit the ball into a golf hole, as well as a series of minor-league tournaments attached to specific country clubs that don't even publicize their own existence.

Re: Commissioners Academic Challenge

Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2008 2:15 am
by Kyle
I told you it was funny. What happened to the dog who runs around the court? That was my favorite part!

Re: Commissioners Academic Challenge

Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2008 2:21 am
by Mechanical Beasts
Kyle wrote:I told you it was funny. What happened to the dog who runs around the court? That was my favorite part!
The more recent rebuttal-to-a-sports-analogy had to do with college basketball and was even better.

Re: Commissioners Academic Challenge

Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2008 4:12 am
by Whiter Hydra
everyday847 wrote:
Kyle wrote:I told you it was funny. What happened to the dog who runs around the court? That was my favorite part!
The more recent rebuttal-to-a-sports-analogy had to do with college basketball and was even better.
You mean this guy?

Re: Commissioners Academic Challenge

Posted: Thu Apr 23, 2009 3:44 pm
by Kwang the Ninja
Also being a Floridian I also had the (gulp) privilege of attending this tournament. I was, however, less than impressed with the format. There are several things that need to be addressed before this format even comes close to comparing to NAQT in my mind.
The questions they had either turned out to be buzzer races ("Fill in the blank: Bret Harte's Outcasts of _________ ________";"Name the writer of the play Our Town") or went way too deep into knowledge that high school quiz bowlers should not be expected to have (Finding the angle of curvature of a mirror). Also, they seemed to rely heavily on the "matching" method of question writing, in which they would give four people or terms and match them with their definitions or accomplishments, etc. While this is an effective way to test a lot of knowledge at the once, it also allows for someone who has a very limited knowledge of a subject to guess and get points over someone who may have a more in-depth grasp of the subject. It also seems that a lot of the multiple choice questions are not meant to test the range of knowledge as much as create more buzzer races. They give a question, then read the choices, and when everyone hears the choice that they know is right, the first one to hit the buzzer wins. However, if someone has actual knowledge of the subject and knows the answer before the choices are given, they are penalized. For exmaple, during the recent tournament, our lit guy buzzed on a question that said "Give the group that Jack Kerouac-" and said Beat writers. They talked it over and said that that was an incorrect response, because they had been looking for "Beat generation".

I'm as much for a buzzer race as the next guy, but it seems that a team with a great depth of knowledge should not have to be racing for answers against a team that knows a bare minimum.

And this isn't just bitter ranting from a losing competitor. I was on the Division III champion Jackson County team. I was selected to team Florida. I just think there has to be a better way.

Re: Commissioners Academic Challenge

Posted: Thu Apr 23, 2009 11:16 pm
by Not That Kind of Christian!!
I came to this thread kind of late, but Kay, as someone who grew up in Florida and participated in CAC, I can tell you that playing mACF or NAQT is far, far superior. I have to admit, I was intimidated by it during my first, say, two weeks at college, but it's a much better way of demonstrating knowledge.

I personally found the "team-based" format that you like rather frustrating; the one-buzzer thing promotes accidental reflex negs (I definitely twitched at some point during a game, causing the person whose hand was next to mind to twitch and buzz in response), and the one-buzz lockout can promote a strategy by which a team that is far ahead kills questions so as to ensure a victory. That's not so rewarding, and it's pretty obnoxious to boot. ACF and NAQT might restrict conferring to bonuses, but that's as much teamwork as any CAC "tossup."

Basically, I'm not going to go on a mad rant against your preferences, but I would highly, highly encourage you to experience some mACF gameplay if you can during high school, and if not, try it out in college. The breadth and depth of answer choice is much better, and it's overall a better way to learn interesting things about any given topic. Plus, you can forget that really awful banquet food they serve you at the state competitions.

Re: Commissioners Academic Challenge

Posted: Wed Apr 29, 2009 1:21 am
by Jesus vs. Dragons
I too participated in the CAC last week, and I must admit that after being pampered with NAQT-style questions, these questions were not well written at all. Being the "lit guy" alluded to in an earlier post by Dallin, it is frustrating to have actual knowledge of an area and be penalized for not using the correct noun. The biggest complaint I have with this format is what makes it unique. The matching, fill in the blank, and audio/visual elements are simply annoying. I know this sounds like I am just beating a dead horse, but this format should be taken out back and put to sleep. 98 percent of quiz bowler's know the Thornton Wilder Wrote "Our Town," but how many know about "Bridge of San Luis Rey" or "The Skin of Our Teeth?" The pyramidal element of NAQT is what makes it great. The range of the questions went from overly simple "Who meditated under a bow tree and formed a religion" to overly complex, such as upper level calculus, physics, and chemistry. I participated in the Early Admission's program with Chipola College and I got to go to the FCCAA state dhampionship (blue team, not the eventual champion gold team) and the questions at the community college level were actually easier than the high school questions (on average, and again in my opinion.) Another factor that takes away from the CAC is the amount of teams which compete at one time. Having a team which is below average but not afraid to buzz being in a competition against superior teams who, do to the fact that any one question can eliminate any hopes of a victory, have to wait for the question to finish or have to wait for a question they are one hundred percent sure of. How fair is it to the superior teams to be eliminated from answering a question ie Who wrote All Quiet On the Western Front?" and the below average team buzzes in and says Hemingway, obviously wrong but if two superior teams are competing for the victory, how is it fair to take away a possible 5, 10, or even 15 points from the team who actually knows the answer? I know this post sounds like a rant, but having competed in the CAC this year, I can honestly say that the format is horrible, the questions are worse, and the amount of buzzer races are simply ridiculous.

Re: Commissioners Academic Challenge

Posted: Fri May 08, 2009 11:54 pm
by kayli
Back after a long absence (because this forum is so inviting)...

This past CAC, I started to notice what everyone was complaining about... I agree that the matching is dumb and should be ended and that a lot of questions ended up being buzzer races (horrendously annoying). I believe that the format could be improved with harder questions and less speed... I think it had a good idea going but it could definitely improve by having pyramid style questions.

Well, I've sort of become disillusioned with CAC now. It could be because this year was the only year I got significant playing time but whatever.


Disregard my previous comments. I no longer wish to be assaulted. Go pick on someone else. Close this topic. Don't archive it.

Re: Commissioners Academic Challenge

Posted: Sat May 09, 2009 1:39 am
by AKKOLADE
I see nowhere in this thread where people were picking on you. Your ideas were refuted; no one personally attacked you. There's a difference.

Re: Commissioners Academic Challenge

Posted: Sat May 09, 2009 12:02 pm
by kayli
Can we just end discussion?

Re: Commissioners Academic Challenge

Posted: Sat May 09, 2009 12:05 pm
by Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN)
Someone knows how internet forum discussions work!