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Journey to the Planets wrote:An easy part SHOULD be 10 free points to anyone awake.

Dr. Isaac Yankem, DDS wrote:I also personally loved the easiness of the "easy" bonus questions... i believe you can never have "too easy" questions.

After seeing these comments in the DAFT discussion, I'm wondering if this is indeed the direction that high school questions are heading. It seems bizarre to me that an "easy part should be 10 free points to anyone awake." Why not just give a team 10 points to start a bonus? And, at the high school level, can you really "never have 'too easy' questions?" I don't think this is true at all. I understand that accessibility is important, but is it possible we are overcorrecting?

In my opinion, it should go:
Easy: 75%
Medium: 50%
Hard: 25%

Arsonists Get All the Girls wrote:In my opinion, it should go:
Easy: 75%
Medium: 50%
Hard: 25%

Well, I don't know if having 25% of the field getting 0 PPB would be ideal. I use to believe in those percentages you listed, but I've been convinced by others that even the bottom teams should be getting at least the easy part.

I'm fairly certain that the standard convention is that 90% of teams should be able to get the easy part of a bonus, 50% the medium part, and 10% the hard part.

Huang wrote:

Arsonists Get All the Girls wrote:In my opinion, it should go:
Easy: 75%
Medium: 50%
Hard: 25%

Well, I don't know if having 25% of the field getting 0 PPB would be ideal. I use to believe in those percentages you listed, but I've been convinced by others that even the bottom teams should be getting at least the easy part.

That's assuming the same 25% of the field gets 0 every time (and can't get the medium and hard parts). Because each team has different subject stregths, the effect is spread out.

I'm fairly certain that the standard convention is that 90% of teams should be able to get the easy part of a bonus, 50% the medium part, and 10% the hard part.

Okay, but the question I'm asking is, is that the right direction to be headed in (toward near-100% conversion on easy parts)? Also, there's a difference even between 90% and 100% or "Nothing's too easy."

I think this discussion is relevant.

I also brought up the same issue again here: http://hsquizbowl.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=6675

The reality of the situation is that sets need to be written to their audience, and regular season sets will meet teams that are just not very good. Therefore, easy parts on bonuses at this level should be quite easy. Don't forget that for every State College, Maggie Walker, Thomas Jefferson, Other Historically Awesome Team, there is at least five Bumblebee Tuna C teams out there. If you want to write questions that satisfy all of these teams, easy parts must exist.

Let's take an example of two extremes for the same tournament set. NAQT IS-86 it was used at the Richard Montgomery tournament (stats). Four teams averaged at least 20 ppb, and 3 more averaged 17 or more. The lowest ppb was 9.65.

At University High School (WV)'s tournament (stats), the highest ppb was 18.10, which would be 5th in the Richard Montgomery field. The second highest was 14.64, which would be 10th at RM. 6 of the 11 teams at University had a worse ppb than the worst team at RM.

Tournaments that are expected to be used at multiple sites to multiple talent levels of teams must be written to be accessible to the worst of teams. They can not and should not be written so that teams of the lowest talent level are incapable of scoring points.

Sure an easy part should be converted by 90% of teams there- but some in the Dunbar set trended towards 100, and the bonuses that did that tended to go "Here, have ten points, now here are two unanswerable questions." For example, there was one current events bonus that asked two pretty-to-very hard questions followed by "name a country, here are a wealth of clues about said well-known country."
I guess what I'm saying is, don't use really easy parts as excuses for too-hard hard and medium parts.

Yeah, I agree with Isaac, I think an easy part should be one answered by most teams but it is not an excuse to just write super hard crap for the other two parts. This is why I generally dislike the concept of writing a bonus where like one part is "This is the language they speak in France!" and the other two parts on super hard French books or something.

A good easy part should instead be something that rewards a basic foundation in an important discipline. For instance, I don't have any problem at a high school level handing out 10 points for identifying the author of Huck Finn or that the president during World War I is Wilson. Those are important facts that if written in an interesting and clear manner, reward knowledge and perhaps teach something new at the same time.

Cheynem wrote:Yeah, I agree with Isaac, I think an easy part should be one answered by most teams but it is not an excuse to just write super hard crap for the other two parts.

I notably did not write easy parts just so I could write two super hard parts. If there were two super hard parts, it was due to a lack of editing.
In regards to the topic, I support Fred's premise.

There were at least 5 instances of this bonus in DAFT:

DAFT09 wrote:[10] Something about work
ANSWER: Work
[10] Something about author of work
ANSWER: Author
[10] The capital of the author's native country
ANSWER:Country

To me (and to Mr. Chrzanowski, in this post), the cross-disciplinary clues were irritating and accentuated the "free points" instead of "easy points" issue that this thread discusses.

JackGlerum wrote:There were at least 5 instances of this bonus in DAFT:

DAFT09 wrote:[10] Something about work
ANSWER: Work
[10] Something about author of work
ANSWER: Author
[10] The capital of the author's native country
ANSWER:Country

To me (and to Mr. Chrzanowski, in this post), the cross-disciplinary clues were irritating and accentuated the "free points" instead of "easy points" issue that this thread discusses.

Bonuses asking for countries of authors already have inherent cross-disciplinary clues in them. When you hear a name, you're getting a linguistic clue. So you're already starting off talking about a question with cross-disciplinary clues. I certainly understand it's not ideal in the sense that good quizbowl requires questions to not be cross-disciplinary. But for the audience playing this set, I think it's at least somewhat acceptable. I do not have a solid opinion on this though. I changed those bonuses to what you described above as a reaction to comments I heard while playtesting.

Huang wrote:

JackGlerum wrote:There were at least 5 instances of this bonus in DAFT:

DAFT09 wrote:[10] Something about work
ANSWER: Work
[10] Something about author of work
ANSWER: Author
[10] The capital of the author's native country
ANSWER:Country

To me (and to Mr. Chrzanowski, in this post), the cross-disciplinary clues were irritating and accentuated the "free points" instead of "easy points" issue that this thread discusses.

Bonuses asking for countries of authors already have inherent cross-disciplinary clues in them. When you hear a name, you're getting a linguistic clue. So you're already starting off talking about a question with cross-disciplinary clues. I certainly understand it's not ideal in the sense that good quizbowl requires questions to not be cross-disciplinary. But for the audience playing this set, I think it's at least somewhat acceptable. I do not have a solid opinion on this though. I changed those bonuses to what you described above as a reaction to comments I heard while playtesting.

Yeah, but there's a difference between "Name this country, home to author Kenzaburo Oe" and "Name this country with capital Tokyo, home to Kenzaburo Oe." Sure, you can liguistically fraud the author's name in the first one, but it's not a certainty unless you actually know the author's country of origin. On the other hand, you can certainly get the second type without any lit knowledge whatsoever. At some point, you have to realize that if nobody knows any literature from, say, Romania, you can't write a Romanian lit bonus with the justification "Oh, if I throw in 'These authors are from this country with capital Bucharest.'"

AlphaQuizBowler wrote:

Huang wrote:

JackGlerum wrote:There were at least 5 instances of this bonus in DAFT:

DAFT09 wrote:[10] Something about work
ANSWER: Work
[10] Something about author of work
ANSWER: Author
[10] The capital of the author's native country
ANSWER:Country

To me (and to Mr. Chrzanowski, in this post), the cross-disciplinary clues were irritating and accentuated the "free points" instead of "easy points" issue that this thread discusses.

Bonuses asking for countries of authors already have inherent cross-disciplinary clues in them. When you hear a name, you're getting a linguistic clue. So you're already starting off talking about a question with cross-disciplinary clues. I certainly understand it's not ideal in the sense that good quizbowl requires questions to not be cross-disciplinary. But for the audience playing this set, I think it's at least somewhat acceptable. I do not have a solid opinion on this though. I changed those bonuses to what you described above as a reaction to comments I heard while playtesting.

Yeah, but there's a difference between "Name this country, home to author Kenzaburo Oe" and "Name this country with capital Tokyo, home to Kenzaburo Oe." Sure, you can liguistically fraud the author's name in the first one, but it's not a certainty unless you actually know the author's country of origin. On the other hand, you can certainly get the second type without any lit knowledge whatsoever. At some point, you have to realize that if nobody knows any literature from, say, Romania, you can't write a Romanian lit bonus with the justification "Oh, if I throw in 'These authors are from this country with capital Bucharest.'"

This is exactly true, and to a lesser extent I feel that letting teams get bonuses on cross-disciplinary clues such as capitals of countries for a lit bonus does not effective promote the learning of author's home countries, but makes "Umbrella High School" feel that they don't have to learn where authors are from because well, the capital is just gonna be there for easy pickings.

Huang wrote:I certainly understand it's not ideal in the sense that good quizbowl requires questions to not be cross-disciplinary. But for the audience playing this set, I think it's at least somewhat acceptable

MoCity02 wrote:they don't have to learn where authors are from

No one is advocating for this to happen. If I had my way, these bonuses wouldn't exist.

JackGlerum wrote:
"There were at least 5 instances of this bonus in DAFT:

DAFT09 wrote:[10] Something about work
ANSWER: Work
[10] Something about author of work
ANSWER: Author
[10] The capital of the author's native country
ANSWER:Country
To me (and to Mr. Chrzanowski, in this post), the cross-disciplinary clues were irritating and accentuated the "free points" instead of "easy points" issue that this thread discusses."





As a contributor to the set, I am definitely guilty of some of the problems stated above. As clarification, we wrote this tournament as an attempt to bring even more pyramidal quizbowl to Kentucky, and honestly, some of the teams who will come to our tournament this weekend had little, if any, exposure to pyramidal questions. I would like to know how you would suggest fixing the bonus while still have an easy enough part because we would like to fix it before this Saturday if possible.

You can keep the country, but make the clue the easiest possible author from said country if that's not the answer to the second part.

To add a late addition to giving away the origin of an author by the captiol, there is a big difference between "hmm, this author's name sounds Japanese" and "hmmm, this authors nationality has a capitol at Tokyo."

Doink the Clown wrote:You can keep the country, but make the clue the easiest possible author from said country if that's not the answer to the second part.

I eagerly await the single digit bonus conversion rates..

Doink the Clown wrote:You can keep the country, but make the clue the easiest possible author from said country if that's not the answer to the second part.

Thanks. I will see if that'll work, but more than likely we need something else because either we already used said author or it'll still be too hard.

Huang wrote:

Doink the Clown wrote:You can keep the country, but make the clue the easiest possible author from said country if that's not the answer to the second part.

I eagerly await the single digit bonus conversion rates..

Dude, if you're really worried about conversion rates, I'd work on trying to fix a good number of bonuses where the relative difficulty of the parts didn't allow for more than 10 for most teams. Also, there were things tossed up at this tournament, especially in the later rounds, that shouldn't be tossed up in high school, ever. I don't get the vibe that this set was written with brand-new Kentucky teams in mind.

Edit: Oops, this should probably be in the Dunbar discussion thread. But I want wanted to respond to Sandy's above comment.

Prof.Whoopie wrote:

Huang wrote:

Doink the Clown wrote:You can keep the country, but make the clue the easiest possible author from said country if that's not the answer to the second part.

I eagerly await the single digit bonus conversion rates..

Dude, if you're really worried about conversion rates, I'd work on trying to fix a good number of bonuses where the relative difficulty of the parts didn't allow for more than 10 for most teams. Also, there were things tossed up at this tournament, especially in the later rounds, that shouldn't be tossed up in high school, ever. I don't get the vibe that this set was written with brand-new Kentucky teams in mind.

The later rounds were poorly conceived and then written before I playtested the first few rounds. If you know which ones in particular for the later rounds, let me know. I've fixed several that have been mentioned to me already.

For regular season high school tournaments, the easy part of the bonus should be the closest thing possible to "10 free points for anyone awake." I say the closest thing possible, because going out of the way to allow very bad teams to convert points ("John Steinbeck was a writer from this West Coast state, with capital Sacramento") is something you want to avoid. But easy parts should always have the most famous things about the part in question (within the confines of regular difficulty high school, this is a must). If you're writing that Steinbeck bonus, then please say that he wrote The Grapes of Wrath. I've noticed sort of a trend that writers don't do this, and I'm certainly guilty of it myself.

Huang wrote:

Doink the Clown wrote:You can keep the country, but make the clue the easiest possible author from said country if that's not the answer to the second part.

I eagerly await the single digit bonus conversion rates..

I did kind of assume that the second-most famous author from a country would be converted at acceptable rates for a middle bonus part and that the most famous author would be enough of a clue for a easy part. If that's not the case, it's probably a sign that the literature of said country is too hard for a bonus.

jpn wrote:For regular season high school tournaments, the easy part of the bonus should be the closest thing possible to "10 free points for anyone awake." I say the closest thing possible, because going out of the way to allow very bad teams to convert points ("John Steinbeck was a writer from this West Coast state, with capital Sacramento") is something you want to avoid. But easy parts should always have the most famous things about the part in question (within the confines of regular difficulty high school, this is a must). If you're writing that Steinbeck bonus, then please say that he wrote The Grapes of Wrath. I've noticed sort of a trend that writers don't do this, and I'm certainly guilty of it myself.

Yeah. To clarify - the Dunbar bonuses indeed did name the most famous work if that's any consolation.

Doink the Clown wrote:

Huang wrote:

Doink the Clown wrote:You can keep the country, but make the clue the easiest possible author from said country if that's not the answer to the second part.

I eagerly await the single digit bonus conversion rates..

I did kind of assume that the second-most famous author from a country would be converted at acceptable rates for a middle bonus part and that the most famous author would be enough of a clue for a easy part. If that's not the case, it's probably a sign that the literature of said country is too hard for a bonus.

Or, you know, your field just isn't familiar with where authors like Octavio Paz and Carlos Fuentes came from? I wrote a tournament recently where I anticipated that problem, though since it was a tossup, there wasn't anything I could do (I just assumed people would fraud it linguistically and left it as a difficulty outlier).

Some, hopefully not a majority, of the field definitely will have problems with that. They might guess Colombia or something. I mean, if you've got no idea, then Paz and Fuentes could be from any of the Latin American countries. (Maybe not Brazil)

Charbroil wrote:

Doink the Clown wrote:

Huang wrote:

Doink the Clown wrote:You can keep the country, but make the clue the easiest possible author from said country if that's not the answer to the second part.

I eagerly await the single digit bonus conversion rates..

I did kind of assume that the second-most famous author from a country would be converted at acceptable rates for a middle bonus part and that the most famous author would be enough of a clue for a easy part. If that's not the case, it's probably a sign that the literature of said country is too hard for a bonus.

Or, you know, your field just isn't familiar with where authors like Octavio Paz and Carlos Fuentes came from? I wrote a tournament recently where I anticipated that problem, though since it was a tossup, there wasn't anything I could do (I just assumed people would fraud it linguistically and left it as a difficulty outlier).

That true, and it's something I hadn't considered. Prehaps the easy part could be the language and the clue the most famous author/work in that language(say, "Octavio Paz wrote in this language, also the language in which Cervantes wrote 'Don Qixote' ", which I just made up off the top of my head)?

Doink the Clown wrote:

Charbroil wrote:

Doink the Clown wrote:

Huang wrote:

Doink the Clown wrote:You can keep the country, but make the clue the easiest possible author from said country if that's not the answer to the second part.

I eagerly await the single digit bonus conversion rates..

I did kind of assume that the second-most famous author from a country would be converted at acceptable rates for a middle bonus part and that the most famous author would be enough of a clue for a easy part. If that's not the case, it's probably a sign that the literature of said country is too hard for a bonus.

Or, you know, your field just isn't familiar with where authors like Octavio Paz and Carlos Fuentes came from? I wrote a tournament recently where I anticipated that problem, though since it was a tossup, there wasn't anything I could do (I just assumed people would fraud it linguistically and left it as a difficulty outlier).

That true, and it's something I hadn't considered. Prehaps the easy part could be the language and the clue the most famous author/work in that language(say, "Octavio Paz wrote in this language, also the language in which Cervantes wrote 'Don Qixote' ", which I just made up off the top of my head)?

That seems like a good idea, I mean, if you can't fraud off of the name, then something's wrong. Thanks.

In writing high school questions where the answer is a country to try and maximize conversion, I usually try to find a way to link the capital (most accessible clue, often) to whatever the topic is. So if you were asking about Oe's country, you might say "Oe is an author from this country, and he set his novel "A Personal Matter" in its city Tokyo." There are lots of ways to pull in a capital the same way, and I think it makes the argument about how its a cross category clue somewhat weaker since I just made the obvious link between Tokyo and Oe's literature.

Jeremy Gibbs Free Energy wrote:In writing high school questions where the answer is a country to try and maximize conversion, I usually try to find a way to link the capital (most accessible clue, often) to whatever the topic is. So if you were asking about Oe's country, you might say "Oe is an author from this country, and he set his novel "A Personal Matter" in its city Tokyo." There are lots of ways to pull in a capital the same way, and I think it makes the argument about how its a cross category clue somewhat weaker since I just made the obvious link between Tokyo and Oe's literature.

I like this guy right here.

FredMorlan wrote:

Jeremy Gibbs Free Energy wrote:In writing high school questions where the answer is a country to try and maximize conversion, I usually try to find a way to link the capital (most accessible clue, often) to whatever the topic is. So if you were asking about Oe's country, you might say "Oe is an author from this country, and he set his novel "A Personal Matter" in its city Tokyo." There are lots of ways to pull in a capital the same way, and I think it makes the argument about how its a cross category clue somewhat weaker since I just made the obvious link between Tokyo and Oe's literature.

I like this guy right here.

I mean, in premise, i agree with this... but i still think we need to be really careful about just throwing in random geography clues there, even if they're covered in the text of the book. Perhaps some culturally significant clue from the text instead... i.e. mentioning apartheid from a bonus about South African writers. I know then that's bordering on a history clue but, i dunno, it's just a thin line we're crossing here. I love easy clues, but if and only if they're something from that exact topic covered in the question.

Well, since we're going down the cross-category path with this, why exactly do you dislike them? I honestly don't have much of an opinion on them.

I think that each question (tossup or bonus) should ask about one solid topic... history, geography, economics, biology, etc. It shouldn't start to stray to something else. This is why we don't like history tossups that just throw the capital city at the end for no good reason. Or religion questions that have some pop culture reference in them (as the Dunbar set did on Saturday, with a pop culture answer actually as the third part of the bonus). That's not good. That doesn't test knowledge of that religion, it tests knowledge of you watching TMZ or Entertainment Tonight.

Dr. Isaac Yankem, DDS wrote:I think that each question (tossup or bonus) should ask about one solid topic... history, geography, economics, biology, etc.

Well, why? That doesn't conform to the way that people learn about most of these subjects, or to their real-world significance, or to anything except some ancient doctrine of over-specialization that someone once decided, probably incorrectly, was the best way to win at quizbowl -- and which certainly isn't the way to get the most out of it! Admittedly, even academia has become a lot more specialized in the last century or two than it used to be (and you'll find no shortage of thinkers complaining about it), but lots of interdisciplinary projects and departments exist, and most good professors I've had make a serious effort to link their subject with others. History and geography is a pretty blatant example -- you'd be hard pressed to find a college history major who hasn't been map-quizzed to death.

I like interdisciplinary clues a lot, so long as they're pretty well balanced in terms of the distribution. The problem that's happened in the past is that people have used cross-category clues to reduce the number of, e.g. science clues, and increase the number of, e.g. trash and geography clues, from what the distribution would otherwise be. That sort of subterfuge is not a good idea. But interdisciplinary clues do not necessarily reduce to this, I suspect, in the hands of a competent editor.

In the specific case of this tournament, I think asking about the capitals of countries where authors hail from (preferably using Dees' method) is probably a good idea once or twice, and can probably be balanced out by, e.g. using lit clues in geography or history bonuses.) Doing it five times in a tournament, though -- or whatever the precise number is -- is a bad idea, and is difficult to make up for in the distribution. In addition, it's rather boring, which even easy quizbowl does not have to be.

I dislike cross-distributional stuff when it strains making sense. Like, an academic bonus shouldn't have a trash component because that just seems dumb. However, Tokyo as related to Oe is incredibly important--yeah, it could be a geo clue, but it's important to his work and you learn something about him as an author if you didn't know it. A strained cross-distributional bonus might be this:

[10] Name author from works
[10] Name a work
[10] This author lives next door to this country, with capital ___

See the difference? In this case, that bonus is stupid because the third part has nothing to do with the author or his works.

FredMorlan wrote:The reality of the situation is that sets need to be written to their audience, and regular season sets will meet teams that are just not very good. Therefore, easy parts on bonuses at this level should be quite easy. Don't forget that for every State College, Maggie Walker, Thomas Jefferson, Other Historically Awesome Team, there is at least five Bumblebee Tuna C teams out there. If you want to write questions that satisfy all of these teams, easy parts must exist.

Let's take an example of two extremes for the same tournament set. NAQT IS-86 it was used at the Richard Montgomery tournament (stats). Four teams averaged at least 20 ppb, and 3 more averaged 17 or more. The lowest ppb was 9.65.

At University High School (WV)'s tournament (stats), the highest ppb was 18.10, which would be 5th in the Richard Montgomery field. The second highest was 14.64, which would be 10th at RM. 6 of the 11 teams at University had a worse ppb than the worst team at RM.

Tournaments that are expected to be used at multiple sites to multiple talent levels of teams must be written to be accessible to the worst of teams. They can not and should not be written so that teams of the lowest talent level are incapable of scoring points.

I agree with this whole-heartedly. To add another data point, check out the stats of Crete Monee A and B from Earlybird and Ultima. They come knowing that they will be cannon fodder, but still come to good tournaments.

Dr. Isaac Yankem, DDS wrote:

FredMorlan wrote:

Jeremy Gibbs Free Energy wrote:In writing high school questions where the answer is a country to try and maximize conversion, I usually try to find a way to link the capital (most accessible clue, often) to whatever the topic is. So if you were asking about Oe's country, you might say "Oe is an author from this country, and he set his novel "A Personal Matter" in its city Tokyo." There are lots of ways to pull in a capital the same way, and I think it makes the argument about how its a cross category clue somewhat weaker since I just made the obvious link between Tokyo and Oe's literature.

I like this guy right here.

I mean, in premise, i agree with this... but i still think we need to be really careful about just throwing in random geography clues there, even if they're covered in the text of the book. Perhaps some culturally significant clue from the text instead... i.e. mentioning apartheid from a bonus about South African writers. I know then that's bordering on a history clue but, i dunno, it's just a thin line we're crossing here. I love easy clues, but if and only if they're something from that exact topic covered in the question.

I disagree with the last sentence (and agree with everything else quoted), for a very simple reason.

The setting of a book is often important to understanding its plot and its message. You can take the same general story (and heck, even the same plot), change the setting, and get something completely different as a result. Think of all the adaptations of Shakespeare plays that have been set other than in places the original play was set. The plot is in many cases the same, but the social and cultural aspects of the new time and place give it a different meaning than the original. Imagine a British Holden Caulfield, a German Raskolnikov, or a French Werther. Imagine Toru Okada wandering the streets of Dublin. When you make that link between a book's setting and its plot/themes/etc., then there is a strong case for geography and literature being intertwined.

cvdwightw wrote:

Dr. Isaac Yankem, DDS wrote:

FredMorlan wrote:

Jeremy Gibbs Free Energy wrote:In writing high school questions where the answer is a country to try and maximize conversion, I usually try to find a way to link the capital (most accessible clue, often) to whatever the topic is. So if you were asking about Oe's country, you might say "Oe is an author from this country, and he set his novel "A Personal Matter" in its city Tokyo." There are lots of ways to pull in a capital the same way, and I think it makes the argument about how its a cross category clue somewhat weaker since I just made the obvious link between Tokyo and Oe's literature.

I like this guy right here.

I mean, in premise, i agree with this... but i still think we need to be really careful about just throwing in random geography clues there, even if they're covered in the text of the book. Perhaps some culturally significant clue from the text instead... i.e. mentioning apartheid from a bonus about South African writers. I know then that's bordering on a history clue but, i dunno, it's just a thin line we're crossing here. I love easy clues, but if and only if they're something from that exact topic covered in the question.

I disagree with the last sentence (and agree with everything else quoted), for a very simple reason.

The setting of a book is often important to understanding its plot and its message. You can take the same general story (and heck, even the same plot), change the setting, and get something completely different as a result. Think of all the adaptations of Shakespeare plays that have been set other than in places the original play was set. The plot is in many cases the same, but the social and cultural aspects of the new time and place give it a different meaning than the original. Imagine a British Holden Caulfield, a German Raskolnikov, or a French Werther. Imagine Toru Okada wandering the streets of Dublin. When you make that link between a book's setting and its plot/themes/etc., then there is a strong case for geography and literature being intertwined.

You make a good case, Dwight. Most likely, then, i would probably be okay with the quasi-geography-literature crossover clues. But only in moderation.

I think that you keep it in moderation by restricting these cross disciplinary clues to easy parts of bonuses. Also, they should vary so that you don't have a bonus part in half the matches or more that consists of naming the country from the capital. To use the Oe example, many of his works are set on Shikoku, which is the smallest of the four major islands that make up his home country. If you wanted to keep it within literature, you also have the option of dropping Tale of Genji or the names of other Japanese authors.

Cheynem wrote: [10] Name author from works
[10] Name a work
[10] This author lives next door to this country, with capital ___

See the difference? In this case, that bonus is stupid because the third part has nothing to do with the author or his works.

I know, or at least hope, Mike wasn't referencing a bonus that was in the Dunbar set.
But just to clarify - No bonus in the Dunbar set contained "This author lives next door to this country, with capital ___"
I like Dees's suggestion. If given the appropriate amount of time, I will fix up bonuses to what he described. Though, obviously, it's not really a big difference. But I certainly agree it makes the bonus better.

I wasn't referring to anything in the Dunbar set, I was just offering a hypothetical example to as to the limits of cross-disciplinary things.