The Quizbowl Resource Center

Posted: **Wed Apr 17, 2019 10:50 pm**

I am pleased to announce MUSES (Mythologically United Subjects in an Exceptional Set), a 12-packet open-level tournament with a distribution roughly corresponding to the nine Muses as defined in Hellenistic Era writings. There will be 20 tossups and linked 2 part bonuses (à la Listory or Skype Lit). A team consisting of myself, Mitch McCullar, Iain Carpenter, Ethan Ashbrook, Bryan Lu, Tim Cho, and Govind Prabhakar will be writing this. For the purposes of this set, ancient will refer to anything before 500 CE and non-ancient to everything post 500 CE. The whimsy content on this set will be fairly high and the categories will be loosely interpreted as needed to keep this playable. The set will contain powers and “superpowers.”

2/2 Calliope - epic poetry (1/1 Ancient, 1/1 Non-Ancient) - will also include folk-epics and historical epics.
2/2 Clio - history (1/1 Greco-Roman, 1/1 non-Greco Roman. All pre 500 CE)
2/2 Euterpe - music (1/1 Classical, .75/.75 “other,” and .25/.25 whimsical)
2/2 Erato - love poetry (1/1 English language, 1/1 non-English language)
2/2 Melpomene - tragedy (1/1 pre-1900, 1/1 post-1900; primarily drama, may include some film)
2/2 Polyhymnia - hymns (1/1 Ancient, 1/1 Non-Ancient)
2/2 Terpsichore - dance (1/1 “academic,” 1/1 “other”)
2/2 Thalia - comedy (1/1 pre-1900, 1/1 post-1900; primarily drama, will include some other things that can be called “comedy”)
2/2 Urania - astronomy (1/1 “science,” 1/1 “astronomy and culture”)
2/2 Mythology (1/1 Greco-Roman, 1/1 Other Near East/greater Mediterranean area.) Mythology will be primarily drawn from myth systems which co-existed or pre-dated classical mythological sources.

We will have this set ready for mirroring during summer side event open events. We will be charging hosts $10 per participant.
If you are interested in mirroring this, please email bradsleftfoot AT gmail.com.

Mirrors:
July 20: Illinois Side Event Weekend
July 28: GUERILLA NYC Summer Open
August 10: UT Austin
August 17: Toronto (tentative)
Date TBD: Online

Posted: **Thu Apr 18, 2019 12:55 am**

Illinois Admin wrote: ↑Wed Apr 17, 2019 10:50 pm 2/2 Polyhymnia - hymns (1/1 Ancient, 1/1 Non-Ancient)
2/2 Terpsichore - dance (1/1 “academic,” 1/1 “other”)

dude

Posted: **Thu Apr 18, 2019 12:56 am**

Illinois Admin wrote: ↑Wed Apr 17, 2019 10:50 pm
2/2 Mythology (1/1 Greco-Roman, 1/1 Other Near East)

yes.

Posted: **Thu Apr 18, 2019 1:10 am**

Illinois Admin wrote: ↑Wed Apr 17, 2019 10:50 pm 2/2 Polyhymnia - hymns (1/1 Ancient, 1/1 Non-Ancient)

Really looking forward to how this fills out in a 12 packet tournament

Posted: **Thu Apr 18, 2019 8:29 am**

YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Posted: **Thu Apr 18, 2019 8:36 am**

Posted: **Thu Apr 18, 2019 8:38 am**

Illinois Admin wrote: ↑Wed Apr 17, 2019 10:50 pm 2/2 Urania - astronomy (1/1 “hard science,” 1/1 “other astronomy”)

Does this mean 1/1 "hard science (within astronomy)" plus 1/1 "other astronomy (not hard science?)," or is the first 1/1 "hard science, which need not be astronomy at all"?

Posted: **Thu Apr 18, 2019 8:55 am**

Will there be an online mirror?

Posted: **Thu Apr 18, 2019 11:14 am**

The Abydos Helicopter wrote: ↑Thu Apr 18, 2019 8:36 am Yes.

Posted: **Thu Apr 18, 2019 2:08 pm**

UlyssesInvictus wrote: ↑Thu Apr 18, 2019 1:10 am
Illinois Admin wrote: ↑Wed Apr 17, 2019 10:50 pm 2/2 Polyhymnia - hymns (1/1 Ancient, 1/1 Non-Ancient)
Really looking forward to how this fills out in a 12 packet tournament

This is one of the categories where we will use the "loosely interpreted" clause and common sense to not create a slog of boring and hard questions.

setht wrote: ↑Thu Apr 18, 2019 8:38 am
Illinois Admin wrote: ↑Wed Apr 17, 2019 10:50 pm 2/2 Urania - astronomy (1/1 “hard science,” 1/1 “other astronomy”)
Does this mean 1/1 "hard science (within astronomy)" plus 1/1 "other astronomy (not hard science?)," or is the first 1/1 "hard science, which need not be astronomy at all"?

The goal here is to have 1/1 of real (sciencey) astronomy, and 1/1 of more whimsical "astronomy as the ancients saw it" (eg alchemy and astrology) as well as cultural depictions of astronomical features and events. I've changed the wording to make that more clear.

theclassicsguy wrote: ↑Thu Apr 18, 2019 8:55 am Will there be an online mirror?

We do not currently have one planned but I imagine that we will not have any issue setting one up if there is interest.

Posted: **Thu Apr 18, 2019 2:12 pm**

Illinois Admin wrote: ↑Wed Apr 17, 2019 10:50 pm 2/2 Euterpe - music (1/1 Classical, .75/.75 “other,” and .25/.25 whimsical)

To be perfectly clear, does "classical" here mean western art music, or music from classical antiquity (I'm assuming the former)?

Posted: **Thu Apr 18, 2019 2:15 pm**

Milhouse wrote: ↑Thu Apr 18, 2019 2:12 pm
Illinois Admin wrote: ↑Wed Apr 17, 2019 10:50 pm 2/2 Euterpe - music (1/1 Classical, .75/.75 “other,” and .25/.25 whimsical)
To be perfectly clear, does "classical" here mean western art music, or music from classical antiquity (I'm assuming the former)?

Have now checked, yes it is classical in the sense of western art music.

Posted: **Thu Apr 18, 2019 6:02 pm**

Would definitely be interested in an online mirror of this.

Posted: **Wed May 22, 2019 4:39 am**

Illinois Admin wrote: ↑Thu Apr 18, 2019 2:15 pm
Milhouse wrote: ↑Thu Apr 18, 2019 2:12 pm
Illinois Admin wrote: ↑Wed Apr 17, 2019 10:50 pm 2/2 Euterpe - music (1/1 Classical, .75/.75 “other,” and .25/.25 whimsical)
To be perfectly clear, does "classical" here mean western art music, or music from classical antiquity (I'm assuming the former)?
Have now checked, yes it is classical in the sense of western art music.

Additionally, the "classical" section does not include opera which will fall into the "non-classical" distribution for this set.

Posted: **Wed May 22, 2019 5:07 am**

username1 wrote: ↑Thu Apr 18, 2019 6:02 pm Would definitely be interested in an online mirror of this.

Posted: **Wed May 22, 2019 1:53 pm**

I would definitely be interested in playing in in-person mirror of this.

Posted: **Mon Jul 22, 2019 10:54 am**

This set was super fun and people should play it!

Posted: **Mon Jul 22, 2019 4:20 pm**

Agreed; I really enjoyed this, highly recommend playing it, and am looking forward to finishing the finals series

I also thought the linked two-part bonuses were a pretty good compromise to avoid the larger time commitment of a full tossup/bonus format.

Posted: **Mon Jul 22, 2019 4:24 pm**

I enjoyed this set--I especially liked having a lot of drama.

I might suggest in the future for these kinds of sets only doing one-part bonuses--in almost every question, of the two parts, one of the parts was still a typical quizbowl easy part, which in an open setting, is frequently superfluous. (The other parts were interesting and felt like you were being rewarded for knowledge, though.)

Posted: **Sun Jul 28, 2019 2:12 pm**

Are there any plans to mirror this online? Would love to play at some point - thanks!

Posted: **Mon Jul 29, 2019 1:23 pm**

Periplus of the Erythraean Sea wrote: ↑Sun Jul 28, 2019 2:12 pm Are there any plans to mirror this online? Would love to play at some point - thanks!

We are discussing this now and should have some more concrete info in the next week.

Posted: **Thu Aug 01, 2019 12:04 pm**

Online mirror announcement is up

Posted: **Tue Aug 06, 2019 3:41 pm**

We have a discussion forum up, which you can add via your user control panel.

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