The Quizbowl Resource Center

I am happy to announce The Modern Age, a literature and visual arts side event consisting entirely of material from after WWII. This tournament will consist of 7 power-marked packets of 20 tossups(8-10 lines of 10 TNR) and two-part related bonuses, aping Kurtis' format from Listory and Skype Lit. It will be written by Eric Xu and myself, with additional questions from Lawrence Simon. We plan for this to be a part of a "Second Summer Open" weekend with a doubles format. The cost will be $10 per person.

The distribution, subject to slight changes, will be as follows:

10 Literature
3.5 Long Fiction
2 Poetry
1.5 Short Fiction
1.5 Drama
1.5 Non-Fiction/Essays/Criticism/Other

10 Visual Arts
4 Painting/2D Art
1.5 Architecture
1.5 Film
1 Photography
1 Sculpture
1 Other

There will not be specific subdistributions for time periods, but there will be a diversity of answerlines ranging from the post-war period to the contemporary, with a focus on postmodern works and themes in the lit distribution. Difficulty will be somewhere in the Nats+/CO range with an emphasis on important material that students/enthusiasts will be familiar with. Answerline difficulty will have a high ceiling but with the aim that many answerlines would be acceptable at ACF Fall and Regionals. We'd like this tournament to touch upon a lot of contemporary works, authors, and artists that have been under-represented in current tournaments, but will make a conscious effort to moderate the amount of "out-there" answerlines. It should be completed by late July/early August in line with whenever a second summer open would be played.

I'll play. I do not know anything about the Modern World.

I'd play this but I know absolutely nothing about art. I read some modern books though.

extremely interested

I like modern art and don't know much at all about modern lit. Play this with me!

if you want the worst possible teammate for this event I'm your guy

Borel hierarchy wrote:if you want the worst possible teammate for this event I'm your guy

I will play this event for the sole purpose of making this post incorrect

Pretty interested in this at an NYC or adjacent site.

armitage wrote:Pretty interested in this at an NYC or adjacent site.

Seconded.

I know absolutely nothing about Visual Arts.

So after some internal discussion, we've decided to create a more definite answerline difficulty distribution. Said answerline distribution will be as follows:

4 CO-level / Nats+ answerlines
4 Nats- / Nats answerlines
6 Regs-level answerlines
6 Fall-level answerlines

Anyone interested in mirroring this tournament should reach out to me at [email protected]. Keep the interest rolling in; it's tremendously motivating for us to have!

This is also going to be 7 packets, not the 8 from the original announcement. There's a lot of side events going around and we figure 8 packets probably won't be played at any site. I'll echo Eric's sentiment that we're happy people are interested!

What's the status of this tournament (i.e. will it be complete and how many packets will there be?)

(I am simply asking to determine logistics for the summer opens; I do not mean to insinuate that it's not completed)

Cheynem wrote:What's the status of this tournament (i.e. will it be complete and how many packets will there be?)

(I am simply asking to determine logistics for the summer opens; I do not mean to insinuate that it's not completed)

Sorry for the late update to this post; I have been studying abroad since late-May and Jack has been a bit busy with work back in Charlottesville.

We plan on finishing the rough draft of the set by the final week of July, with revisions to come in the following week before its first run-through during the weekend of August 5th. We will be reducing the set length to 6 packets.

Update: due to some personal health issues, we actually will not be able to complete The Modern Age for the 2nd Summer Open. Nevertheless, it was amazing to see everyone's positive responses to the concept of the tournament, and we'll be looking to potentially bring it back at a later date.

Thank you all for your understanding.