The Quizbowl Resource Center

Discuss specific questions here. I'll post questions at request if you give me a reason that you want to see them.

I understand that the question on the Fuggers did not refer to them as "this family" within power to avoid transparency, but multiple people in my room were confused by the reference to them as "this group".

That's unfortunate, but you've precisely identified the reason we didn't say "this family."

I was personally wondering if I could get some feedback on a number of specific questions that I wasn't totally sure about my cluing for or which I was trying to be especially innovative with:

All of the ANE content (Nabonidus, Sumerians, Hittites)
Japan (in historiography)
New Guinea
same-sex marriage
Greeks (in India - my favorite question of the tournament)
gardens (in Rome and the Near East)
Thessaly
Etruscan (language)
Chinese (in New Zealand - I understand I didn't use a great giveaway here)
Appalachia
Smithsonian

I don't know how many people have seen Finals 2, so I'm not revealing answers from that packet yet in case people want to play it.

If I heard and understood the Hittites tossup properly then I remember going 'huh that sounds a lot like the Edict of Telepinu' but also feeling like buzzing would have been a bad idea because it wasn't very concrete. This is very probably because I was tired and had heard a lot of quizbowl already and so missed something substantive in the clue, but I suppose that is worth checking.

Short-beaked echidna wrote:If I heard and understood the Hittites tossup properly then I remember going 'huh that sounds a lot like the Edict of Telepinu' but also feeling like buzzing would have been a bad idea because it wasn't very concrete. This is very probably because I was tired and had heard a lot of quizbowl already and so missed something substantive in the clue, but I suppose that is worth checking.

You're right that it was referring to the Edict of Telipinu. This is the clue:

SHEIKH Round 8 wrote:The biography of a sickly king of these people is well known because of a document detailing his construction of a temple to a war goddess and marriage to a priestess of that deity, a document called his “Apology.” After lamenting royal assassinations, the last paragraph of an edict issued by a ruler of these people establishes a patrilineal line of royal succession. This people’s weak “Middle Kingdom” period was an era of constant assaults by the Hayasa-Azzi, Kaska, and (*) Arzawa peoples; their negotiations with the former resulted in the oldest known recorded treaty. These people were also the northern party to a treaty recorded on the Temple of Amun that was concluded after a battle in which their forces hid behind a city and attacked the isolated Ra division. For 10 points, identify these people whose king Muwatalli II fought the Battle of Kadesh.
ANSWER: Hittites

As I learned in a documentary I watched on YouTube, the edict itself contains a lament about how the Hittites' succession had been marred by constant violence and assassinations after the death of Mursili II. Only the last paragraph talks about succession, though indeed that's the most famous bit; the document itself is an important source on other events as well.

Japan (in historiography)

A thing I know about! This tossup was good - I don't know anything about the Thomas Smith book in the lead-in, but everything else here looks important and well-pyramidalized (though I don't have good perspective on John Whitney Hall - he was a Yale person, so I've seen his name plastered everywhere). I was pleased to see Fukuzawa Yukichi appear - he's an important dude.

Also, FYI, we had a packet-order disaster at the Michigan site in which Finals 1/2 were read in place of regular packets 1/2 in some rooms, so none of the packets are fully blind to people at the Michigan site.

Excelsior (smack) wrote:Also, FYI, we had a packet-order disaster at the Michigan site in which Finals 1/2 were read in place of regular packets 1/2 in some rooms, so none of the packets are fully blind to people at the Michigan site.

Two notes here:

Tournament / side event writers: number your packets so they are in the proper order. You should do "Packet 09 (Finals 1)" and "Packet 10 (Finals 2)" to avoid this kind of confusion. (or zFinals 1 as some MUTs do)
Moderators: seriously guys, it says "Finals 1" AND "Finals 2" right on the tin. Pay attention!

Yeah, I'm going to go ahead and fix the packet-order thing ala Cody's suggestion so that doesn't get messed up in the future.

Periplus of the Erythraean Sea wrote:All of the ANE content (Nabonidus, Sumerians, Hittites)
Japan (in historiography)
New Guinea
same-sex marriage
Greeks (in India - my favorite question of the tournament)
gardens (in Rome and the Near East)
Thessaly
Etruscan (language)
Chinese (in New Zealand - I understand I didn't use a great giveaway here)
Appalachia
Smithsonian

We didn't get the "same-sex marriage" tossup until Obergefell v. Hodges, but that just owes to my team's lack of knowledge on judicial U.S. history.
New Guinea was converted at the mention of Guns, Germs and Steel.
I liked the "Greeks in India" one (Collin Parks answered with Greco-Bactrians and got it). I've always wanted to write a tossup on that.
The Appalachia tossup was somewhat confusing, but it got converted.
I reacted similarly to Joey Goldman on the Hittites tossup.
In an ill-advised decision, negged Nabonidus with "Cyrus the Great" on the leadin. Speaking of which, can I see that Nabonidus TU again?
I can't really say much about the other tossups, but a lot of them were definitely great takes on frequent quizbowl subject matter.

I don't know how many people have seen Finals 2, so I'm not revealing answers from that packet yet in case people want to play it.

I'd be down for playing this. Well, actually, I might have already played it due to the aforementioned packet screwup. Never mind.

To me the Appalachia tossup was a really good example of a question with a clear, buzzable first clue.

Excelsior (smack) wrote:

Japan (in historiography)

Also, FYI, we had a packet-order disaster at the Michigan site in which Finals 1/2 were read in place of regular packets 1/2 in some rooms, so none of the packets are fully blind to people at the Michigan site.

The same thing happened at Berkeley; Packet 1 was read to one room but Finals 1 was read to the other.

Nabonidus:

SHEIKH Round 3 wrote:6. This king’s reparation of the Ziggurat of Egishnugal is described on four cylinders named for him discovered in Ur. A priestess from Harran was mother to this king, whose namesake chronicle says that he campaigned in Edom and other unnamed western locations early in his reign. The priesthood became frustrated with this king because he promoted the worship of the moon god Sîn over all others and because the Akitu festival could not be celebrated after this king fled to the oasis town of Tayma, leaving the capital in the control of his son (*) Belshazzar. The loss of this king’s forces at the Battle of Opis led to his capital city being captured by Cyrus the Great. For 10 points, name this final king of the Neo-Babylonian empire.
ANSWER: Nabonidus [or Nabû-naʾid]

I knew this was going to be one of the hardest questions in the set, but I felt comfortable enough including it since we had plenty of easy answers and, after the first two sentences, I used the most famous clues I could think of while maintaining a pyramid of some sort.

I can understand the Cyrus neg because of the famous Cyrus Cylinder, but the question says "four cylinders" (not one) and refers to totally different things than what the Cyrus cylinder refers to.

The Nabonidus tossup was totally fine; I whiffed on the guy's name, but he's notable. The clue about him loving Sin comes up a bit if I recall.

Excelsior (smack) wrote:

Japan (in historiography)

A thing I know about! This tossup was good - I don't know anything about the Thomas Smith book in the lead-in, but everything else here looks important and well-pyramidalized

Smith's Agrarian Origins book is excellent and well worth reading.