Missouri Open Question-Specific Discussion

[Panayot Hitov]

Hey Paul, what is it that makes you think that the Republic of Ezo is too easy as a leadin for the Tokugawa Shogunate? The only thing I could find in a quick search on the database is that it was used as a clue in one NASAT, which is much harder than this was intended to be.

I think this was also in a NHBB tossup or two, but I guess that I thought that Ezo was a lot more well-known than in reality. Besides that, I think that the clue does really narrow the answers down even if one has no clue of its (not very great) significance, as Asian name + word "Republic" = very few options.

What was lame about the trash?

I thought the music in it sucked. This is actually serious: For rap questions, you choose a 2-year old song from Flo Rida along with the two most irritating songs of 2012? I know Schoolboy Q and DOOM may not be the most accessible, but why not some Kendrick, Pro Era, Rick Ross, or even Asap? I would bet that way more people would know "Swimming Pools" or "Bugatti" than "Good Feeling", and your conscience would be cleaner than it is now after letting loose another Gangnam Style question onto the world. Think of the children.

[AKKOLADE]

I thought the music in it sucked. This is actually serious: For rap questions, you choose a 2-year old song from Flo Rida along with the two most irritating songs of 2012? I know Schoolboy Q and DOOM may not be the most accessible, but why not some Kendrick, Pro Era, Rick Ross, or even Asap? I would bet that way more people would know "Swimming Pools" or "Bugatti" than "Good Feeling", and your conscience would be cleaner than it is now after letting loose another Gangnam Style question onto the world. Think of the children.

[hydrocephalitic listlessness]

I don't know that we need to be tossing up "Swimming Pools," but burning trash questions on unavoidable cultural phenomena like "Gangnam Style" and "Thrift Shop" isn't very exciting. I liked the "Sherlock" tossup, though.

I'll also second the Saramago tossup criticism--"The Elephant's Journey" came way too early.

[Make sure your seatbelt is fastened]

I hope everybody enjoyed the set at the three mirrors that happened yesterday. I apologize for the lack of fixes between last weekend and this weekend; I've been busy moving and have not had access to my normal computer. I will soon make the revisions for the upcoming mirrors-- Texas, and two potential mirrors: Seattle and Penn State. All feedback is welcome!

[Steeve Ho You Fat]

On the whole, this set was fun for what it was, but it had a few problems. One of the biggest, which could have been solved through more playtesting, was that it was very fraudable, and I don't just mean the clues were easy. For example, to pick the moment of inertia tossup as something I noticed at the time that's been brought up here already, I don't know what Routh's rule is, I've never used it. But when you use phrases like "principal axis", that's a big tipoff that it's something to do with rotation. Similarly, the Kenya tossup really early states that it's a country that's south of Somalia and has attachments to Britain. While that kind of thing is impossible to totally avoid, you have to make sure you're looking at all the words in the question to make sure none of them unintentionally allow players to narrow the possible answer space to one or two things too early.

[wd4gdz]

I have all the scoresheets from the Valencia mirror. In the upcoming days/weeks, I will be posting some tossup and bonus stats that could be useful in making minor edits to the set for upcoming mirrors.

Round 1
No one powered the tossups on Taurus, Russia, Los Angeles, or The Potato Eaters.
The tossup on Prufrock was powered in every room.
The hardest bonus was #3 (Lenz, Faraday, Maxwell), which averaged 11.25 ppb.
The easiest bonus was #5 (Beer Hall, Mein Kampf, Lebensraum), which averaged 22.5 ppb.

Round 2
No one powered the tossups on blue (art), Mali, Solzhenitsyn, Browning, urea cycle, or phloem.
Only half the rooms converted the urea cycle tossup. It was definitely a good tossup, just maybe a little hard for this level.
There doesn't seem to be any bonuses that were too hard in this packet. Every bonus had at least a 15ppb conversion.
The easiest bonuses were #8 (Robespierre, Jacobin, Marat), which had a conversion of 25ppb, and #9 (clavier, Beethoven, harpsichord), which had a conversion of 28.75 ppb.

Round 3
No one powered the tossups on Andy Bernard, supernova, Richard III, Ellis Island, or Golgi.
The only tossup that might have been too hard was the Andy Bernard, since that converted in only 5 of 8 rooms.
The tossups on Black Plague and Australia (lit) were both powered in 6 of 8 rooms.
I wasn't a fan of bonus #2 (Alaska, Mount McKinley, Alexander Archipelago. It was 20'd in every room. I imagine every team got the first two parts, and missed the last.
There were a couple of hard bonuses in this packet that were 10ppb or less: #16 (paper chromatography, retention factor, amino acids) and #18 (continuous distribution, CDF, and chi-sqaured). I thought that math one was one of the hardest in the entire set and would definitely consider revising it. Maybe get rid of CDF and put in Gauss/normal instead?

Round 4
No powered the tossups on Middlemarch, Jews, or Wounded Knee.
The physics tossup on "stable" was only converted in 2 of 8 rooms. I would definitely consider replacing it.
Bonus #13 (transpose, symmetric, Hermitian) is definitely too hard. It had a conversion of less than 10. I would definitely consider changing one answer to something easier, such as "matrix" or "determinant."
Bonus #15 was 20'd in every room. I'm relatively confident everyone got Aristophanes and The Clouds, and that no one answered Ecclesiazusae.

Round 5
No one powered the Holbein, Onion News, Turgenev, Mekong, or clavicle tossups.
The tossup on musical conductors was powered in every room.
Tossups on Pinter and V. Seth individually are okay, but having them both come up in the same round might be pushing it a tiny bit in terms of lit difficulty.
A couple of bonuses in this packet had a relatively low conversion of 10-12 ppb: #4 (speed of sound, density, 0.6), #7 (sorting, quicksort, n log n), #8 (Xia, Shang, Sui), and #17 (viola, Hindemith, Telemann).

Round 6
No one powered the tossups on specific heat, British Columbia, Whiskey Rebellion, Cuban missile crisis, and Brecht.
The tossup on Munch was powered in 6 of 8 rooms.
The bonus with the lowest conversion was #8 (Paz, Sun Stone, and The Bow and Lyre).
Every room 20'd bonus #12 (Our Town, Wilder, Theopilus North)
None of the bonuses stuck out as being overall too easy.

Round 7
No one powered the granite, Lady Chatterly, integration, and leaves.
The tossups on doves (religion), horses (art), and Vicksburg were all powered in at least 6 of 8 rooms.
Quite possibly the hardest bonus in the entire set was #5 (Allegri, Palestrina, and Rome), with a conversion of just 7.5 ppb.
A couple that were probably too easy include #9 (Jamestown, Starving Time, Croatoan), #14 (Tale of a Tub, eat them, Swift), and #16 (sukkot, shofar, Western Wall). Those bonus had a conversion between 24-26 ppb. The sukkot bonus would have had an even higher conversion if alternatives for sukkot (such as booths or tabernacles) were accepted.

Round 8
No one powered the tossups on titanium, potential energy, Good Feeling, or Mt. Rainer
The tossup on "Good Feeling" was only answered in 1 out of 7 rooms. This tossup definitely has to go. Please consider replacing it with a tossup just on Flo-Rida.
Bonuses #8 (Henry VIII, Catherine of Aragon, and Clement) and #10 (West Germany, Checkpoint Charlie, and Adenauer) might have both had a slightly too easy middle part based on the ~23 ppb conversion of them.
Bonus #9 (Allegory of Prudence, Venus of Urbino, and Titian) had a conversion of ~11 ppb, so that one is definitely too hard for this level.
Bonus #17 could probably use an alternate answer of "One Fine Day" for the "Un Bel Di" bonus part.

Round 9
No one powered the tossups on New Zealand, Day of the Locust, Anatomy Lesson, Hugenots, triple bond (see below), or Athens.
There was an error in tossup #16. The tossup states "One of these bonds is created through the use of the platinum-containing Lindlar catalyst." The answer given is triple bond, but the answer to that specific clue would be double bonds. (alkynes --> alkenes).
Bonus #5 (hydrogen bonds, F/O/N, bifurcated) had a conversion of just 10ppb, so probably a little too hard.
Bonus #8 (sine, Taylor, Laurent) was 20'd in every room.
Bonuses #10 (Heaney, Beowulf, Hrothgar) #12 (arthritis, Crohn's disease, thyroid) and #15 (Tefnut, Isis, cat) all had a conversion of >24 ppb, so a little on the easy side.

Round 10
No one powered the tossups on Hellman, Wife of Bath, Sorcerer's Apprentice, Hegel, pressure, Sleeping Beauty, or Mongol invasions of Korea.
The Wife of Bath tossup *might* have been a tad too hard, but the one on Handsome Jack definitely was (only answered in three rooms).
Bonus #2 (unique factorization domain, fundamental theorem of algebra, Euclid) had a 0 ppb conversion. That is not a typo. Euclid could definitely be an easy part, but not with the clues given.
Bonus#10 was 20'd in every room. I'm guessing no one answered A Pair of Blue Eyes.

Overall, a pretty good tournament. Some of the music was uneven, and some of the math was too hard though.

The End

[mithokie]

Tossup #9 from packet 7

The Japan art toss-up appears to have an error, but it might be a translation that I could not found. The English title I could find for Hiroshige work mentioned in the lead-in was Great Bridge, Sudden Shower at Atake, instead of Great Bridge, Sudden Storm.

[Frater Taciturnus]

I don't know that we need to be tossing up "Swimming Pools," but burning trash questions on unavoidable cultural phenomena like "Gangnam Style" and "Thrift Shop" isn't very exciting. I liked the "Sherlock" tossup, though.

You know, as opposed to those OTHER unavoidable cultural phenomena.