(This) Tournament is a Crime - 02/25/17

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(This) Tournament is a Crime - 02/25/17

Post by Auroni »

This is an announcement for (This) Tournament is a Crime, a Nats-minus mid-season open to be written by February 25th next competition year. It will adhere very closely to the difficulty and stylistic feel of last season's critically-acclaimed "stanford housewrite" set.

I will be the head editor of this set, assisted by Eddie Kim, Ike Jose, Andrew Wang, and a prospective history editor Bruce Lou. This announcement doubles as an open call for interested folks to get involved in tournament editing. We have some interest in the history spot, but would like to weigh our options, so please email me at auronigupta AT gmail DOT com if you're itching to write and edit at this difficulty!

In keeping with the spirit of, but ultimately departing from, Adolf Loos's shocking discourse, this tournament will experiment in some ways with the established distribution. Answerability and variety are the primary rationales behind some of these decisions. The following is the distribution that we will be using:

4/4 Literature

1.25/1.25 Long Fiction
1/1 Poetry
0.75/0.75 Drama
0.5/0.5 Short Fiction
0.5/0.5 "Miscellaneous" (non-fiction, literary criticism, literary history, other things that transcend or combine these genres)

For those worried about the possibility that non-western literature will be erased from the set: fear not! I am a judicious editor and will represent a variety of time periods, languages, and regions in these questions.

4/4 History

1.25/1.25 American
1.25/1.25 World
1.25/1.25 European
0.25/0.25 "Other"

"Other" questions encompass historiography, the academic study of history, and transnational aspects of history that do not neatly fall into the geographical categories.

4/4 Science

1/1 Biology
1/1 Chemistry
1/1 Physics
0.5/0.5 Math
0.5/0.5 Other Science

Distribution-wise, probably the most standard set of categories. We will focus on important topics in science, rather than on minor named phenomena.

3/3 RLT

1/1 Religion
1/1 Legends
1/1 Thought

"Thought" is the same as it was defined in the George Oppen set -- major works, theories, and thinkers -- across both the traditional "philosophy" and "social science" domains.

The "Religion" category will encompass beliefs, practices, denominations, exegesis etc. with a large emphasis placed on major world religions.

The "Legends" category will cover both traditional mythology, and the "stories" present in major religious texts and lore. There will be a prudent mixture of the two.

3/3 Arts

1/1 Painting and Sculpture
1/1 Classical Music and Opera
0.5/0.5 Other Visual Arts
0.5/0.5 Other Auditory Arts

I have folded sculpture and opera into painting and classical music, respectively, because there is substantial overlap between those artforms with respect to who created them and how they are talked about. As with the literature distribution above, there is no explicitly enumerated subdistribution within these categories, but the editors will judiciously ensure a fair amount of painting, sculpture, classical music, and opera gets asked about. This also leaves some more room in the "other" arts categories to continue my exploration, as in NASAT, of non-western art forms, and to devote more space to underasked categories such as dance and film.

1/1 Social Science

This is a mixture of various disciplines as they are practiced-- psychology, law, sociology, anthropology, linguistics, etc. Because of the aforementioned "Thought" category, the focus is not so much on great theorists and their works, but instead on these fields in an applied sense.

0.33/0.33 Geography

The intent here is to continue in the great recent writing trend of cultural and human geography, rather than a narrow focus on topological features and landmarks.

0.33/0.33 Current Events

The second-most standard part of the distribution. Emphasis will be placed on major trends in our changing world.

0.33/0.33 Academic Other

Content from academic topics that either blend disciplines or are outside the distributional framework altogether.

Mirror fees: $40 per non-house team will be charged to play this set. Email me at auronigupta AT gmail DOT com if you want to host!

Sites:

University of Michigan - 2/25/17
Harvard University - 3/4/17
University of Maryland - 3/4/17
University of Toronto - 3/12/17
Oxford University - 2/25/17
University of California, Berkeley - 2/26/17
Rice University - 2/25/17
University of South Carolina - 3/25/17
University of California, San Diego - 3/12/17
New College - 4/1/17
Last edited by Auroni on Thu Mar 23, 2017 8:46 pm, edited 21 times in total.
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Re: (This) Tournament is a Crime - 02/25/17

Post by Cheynem »

Looks like a good tournament to resume my midcard quizbowl career at.
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Re: (This) Tournament is a Crime - 02/25/17

Post by Auroni »

With the addition of Bruce Lou from Berkeley, the editing team for this tournament is finalized.
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Re: (This) Tournament is a Crime - 02/25/17

Post by gyre and gimble »

I guess the editors are free to do what they want, but I'm a little confused why Legends gives up 0.25/0.25 to Religion when Legends already incorporates a lot of religious material (a "prudent mixture"). Do we really need over 1.5/1.5 Religion (traditionally defined) in a tournament?
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Re: (This) Tournament is a Crime - 02/25/17

Post by Auroni »

gyre and gimble wrote:I guess the editors are free to do what they want, but I'm a little confused why Legends gives up 0.25/0.25 to Religion when Legends already incorporates a lot of religious material (a "prudent mixture"). Do we really need over 1.5/1.5 Religion (traditionally defined) in a tournament?
This tournament definitely can, and wants to, sustain over 1.25/1.25 Religion as traditionally defined (we're not sure yet how much religious legend will be in the Legends category), because the category has a wealth of unexplored material that can be tapped into without requiring difficult answerlines, a fact that tournament editors are realizing only relatively recently. On the other hand, high difficulty mythology still tends to focus on a basic set of difficult answerlines, with some creative common links here and there, so we were comfortable with the reduction. Bear in mind that questions pertaining to classical Greek, Norse, and Indian texts will be asked about in the literature category.
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Re: (This) Tournament is a Crime - 02/25/17

Post by Auroni »

The main site will run on February 25, 2017.
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Re: (This) Tournament is a Crime - 02/25/17

Post by naan/steak-holding toll »

I'm almost certainly playing at the main site. Message me if you would be interested in teaming up. Teammates who know literature and/or science are particularly welcome.
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Re: (This) Tournament is a Crime - 02/25/17

Post by Auroni »

Now that the announcement for the main site is up, I'd like to remind people to email me if you are interested in mirroring this tournament! It's not spoiling much to say that the appeal of this set will be pretty broad.
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Re: (This) Tournament is a Crime - 02/25/17

Post by Auroni »

Distribution is updated. We've decided to do 1/1 each R, L, and T, and to roll myths drawing from literary texts such as the Iliad and the Eddas back into "legends."
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Re: (This) Tournament is a Crime - 02/25/17

Post by Auroni »

One final distributional change: 1/1 CE/Geo is now 1/1 CE/Geo/Other
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Re: (This) Tournament is a Crime - 02/25/17

Post by Off To See The Lizard »

Any chance there could be a Skype mirror of this?
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Re: (This) Tournament is a Crime - 02/25/17

Post by Slightly Less British »

Will there be a private forum for discussing this tournament?
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Re: (This) Tournament is a Crime - 02/25/17

Post by Red Panda Cub »

"It will adhere very closely to the difficulty and stylistic feel of last season's critically-acclaimed "stanford housewrite" set."

ummm
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Re: (This) Tournament is a Crime - 02/25/17

Post by Belgium »

[EDITED] Tournament, in hindsight, not as bad as I originally thought.
Last edited by Belgium on Mon Mar 20, 2017 4:54 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: (This) Tournament is a Crime - 02/25/17

Post by Eddie »

Thank you for playing (This) Tournament is a Crime! We've set up a private forum (User Control Panel > Usergroups) for you to join and discuss the set.
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Re: (This) Tournament is a Crime - 02/25/17

Post by CPiGuy »

Short-beaked echidna wrote:"It will adhere very closely to the difficulty and stylistic feel of last season's critically-acclaimed "stanford housewrite" set."

ummm
tommykl wrote:(This) Tournament was a Crime.

It...wasn't very good.
Hey, so I get that you probably have very legitimate qualms with this tournament, but I think there are probably better ways to do that then nasty one-liners that don't actually engender any discussion, because I (and, more pertinently, the people behind the tournament) have no idea what you actually had a problem with.

Personally, I think the tournament was quite good, and I really enjoyed its creativity.
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Re: (This) Tournament is a Crime - 02/25/17

Post by Cheynem »

Well, I assume they're going to get more specific in the private discussion forum, but I also think that this sort of drive-by mockery isn't exactly productive. I thought the set wasn't perfect, but it was enjoyable and particularly in some areas was really very strong.
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Re: (This) Tournament is a Crime - 02/25/17

Post by Red Panda Cub »

Cheynem wrote:Well, I assume they're going to get more specific in the private discussion forum, but I also think that this sort of drive-by mockery isn't exactly productive. I thought the set wasn't perfect, but it was enjoyable and particularly in some areas was really very strong.
I agree my comment is unnecessary, but at the same time think it's fair warning for future sites not to expect something that is stylistically "very close" to "stanford housewrite". This is not a comment on the set's quality.
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Re: (This) Tournament is a Crime - 02/25/17

Post by Belgium »

Cheynem wrote:Well, I assume they're going to get more specific in the private discussion forum, but I also think that this sort of drive-by mockery isn't exactly productive. I thought the set wasn't perfect, but it was enjoyable and particularly in some areas was really very strong.
I avoided making a deeper comment so as not to mention any specific question content, which I am saving for the private discussion. Similarly to Joey, my comment was more in relation to the writing style and occasionally glaring editing.
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Re: (This) Tournament is a Crime - 02/25/17

Post by Jem Casey »

tommykl wrote:(This) Tournament was a Crime.

It...wasn't very good.
So, this is wrong. As Mike said, the set wasn't perfect, but had tons of wonderful questions and was competent throughout. If you're on the fence about playing it—say, for example, at the conveniently-located mirror at UMD this coming Saturday—you should definitely sign up.
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Re: (This) Tournament is a Crime - 02/25/17

Post by Fado Alexandrino »

Cheynem wrote:Well, I assume they're going to get more specific in the private discussion forum, but I also think that this sort of drive-by mockery isn't exactly productive. I thought the set wasn't perfect, but it was enjoyable and particularly in some areas was really very strong.
Yeah, this was not a "crime" at all. The only problem we had at my site was that it seemed some rounds were substantially easier than others.
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Re: (This) Tournament is a Crime - 02/25/17

Post by Pilgrim »

Is there a reason this set hasn't been uploaded to the archive yet?
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Re: (This) Tournament is a Crime - 02/25/17

Post by Auroni »

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