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RESULTS: TIT XXII - 1/19/08 - Maryland

Posted: Sun Oct 28, 2007 10:59 pm
by Mike Bentley
Terrapin Invitational Tournament XXII
Saturday, January 19th, 2008
University of Maryland College Park

ANNOUNCEMENT:

The Maryland Academic Quiz Team is pleased to announce the 22nd annual Terrapin Invitational Tournament for Saturday, January 19th, 2008 to be held at our College Park, MD campus. By reading this message you are "invited" to this "invitational" tournament. This packet-submission "regular season" academic tournament will be using the same questions as the 2008 MLK Tournament being held at the University of Michigan. Also mirroring this tournament is the University of Missouri at Rolla. Any other schools interested in mirroring this tournament should contact Mike Bentley at [email protected].

Jonathan Magin will be the head editor for this tournament, and other editors include Charles Meigs, Ray Luo, Andy Kravis, Mike Bentley and Jeremy Eaton.

Also look out for a forthcoming announcement of the return of the Chris McCray Tournament for Academic Excellence (a pop culture tournament), which will be held on Sunday, January 20th, 2008. That tournament will be a mirror of the Ann B. Davis tournament at Michigan.

PRICING (UPDATED 12/21/07):

+$100 - Base Fee
-$50 - Packet submitted by Saturday, November 24th.
-$25 - Packet submitted by Saturday, December 8th.
+$0 - Packet submitted by Saturday, December 22nd.
+$25 - Packet submitted by Saturday, December 29th.
+$50 - Packet submitted by Saturday, January 5th.
+$100 - No packet submitted.
-$5 - Buzzer discount per school.
-$10 - Competent moderator discount per school (can be applied to Chris McCray tournament on Sunday).
-$20 - Travel discount per team for coming more than 200 miles one way as judged by Google Maps.
+$10 - Formatting penalty for formatting your questions incorrectly (see formatting section below).
-$20 - Prize for the best unedited packet received in general, and by the best Division II (first two years play quizbowl) only team.

Minimum Fee Per Team: $40.

PACKET GUIDELINES:

Distribution (26/26):
5/5 History (1/1 US, 1/1 European, 1/1 Ancient, 1/1 World, 1/1 Your Choice [please do not write both of these on the same subject])
5/5 Literature (1/1 American, 1/1 British, 1/1 European, 1/1 World, and 1/1 Any of the above; try to include at least 1/1 drama, 1/1 novels, and 1/1 poetry)
5/5 Science (1/1 Physics, 1/1 Chemistry, 1/1 Biology, 1/1 Minor Science like Computer Science, Non-Computational Math, Geology, Astronomy, Earth Science, Engineering, etc., 1/1 Your Choice)
1/1 Extra History, Literature, Science (please do not write on the same category for both the tossup and bonus)
3/3 RMP (2/2 Religion and Mythology, 1/1 Philosophy)
3/3 Fine Arts (1/1 Visual Fine Arts like Painting and Sculpture, 1/1 Classical Music, 1/1 Your Choice or other like Architecture, Artistic Film, Dance, Opera or more painting / music.)
2/2 Social Science (Economics, Sociology, Psychology, Anthropology, Linguistics, etc.)
2/2 Your choice (any additional questions above), pop culture, common link, general knowledge, current events, misc.

Please vary all your questions by time period, region of the world (when applicable) and genre. Also vary the type of question you ask. For example, do not write 5 literature tossups on 19th century British novelists. A better literature selection would include tossups on authors, works and characters, on American, British, and World literature, and on fiction, drama, and poetry.

Difficulty:

Please keep your tossups between ACF Fall and ACF Regionals level difficulty (or, at about the difficulty level of last year's Penn Bowl). When in question, err on the easier side. It is not a good idea to explore canon expansion (i.e. writing about things that have never come up at tournaments before) in most of your tossups.

Every bonus should have a clear easy, medium and hard part. Almost every team in the tournament should be converting the easy part of the bonus, while a little more than half of the teams should be converting the medium part. The hard part of a bonus should be able to be answered by those with in-depth knowledge in the field, or approximately one quarter of the teams.

Question Length:

All of the following lengths apply to documents written in Word with 1 inch margins (change these from the default), and a 10 point Times New Roman font.

Final tossups will be between 5.5 and 7.5 lines long. However, we'd prefer that you submit tossups on the long side (or even over the 7.5 line limit), since it's always easier for us to get rid of clues that we don't like than to add additional clues by ourselves.

Bonus parts should be kept within reason. Do not write extremely lengthy leadins or bonus parts (try to keep them under 2 lines). Also do not write extremely short bonuses or list bonuses, as these are typically not very interesting. The vast majority of your bonuses should be 10-10-10. Please do not write any 30-20-10 bonuses, and avoid bonuses with more than four answer parts. Do not write any 5-10-15 bonuses, since making a single part worth half the bonus is less fair than having three parts worth the same amount of points.

Formatting:

Please format your questions in the following matter:

1/1 Unfunny Meta Example Questions:

The person involved in this event is starting a rumor that it was actually a planned occurrence to get himself mentioned in a meta question in Matt Weiner's canceled Chicago Open trash tournament. Immediately after this event occurred, one person was unable to identify Okazaki Fragments. It was preceded by Jeremy Eaton answering a tossup on time dilation. The person responsible for this event blamed not getting enough sleep the night before and the two hour drive to Richmond, but most of all just plain not paying attention. Occurring in a game against South Carolina at the 2007 VCU Open, it is now immortalized in the YTMND page Nude Descending a Gas Chamber. FTP, identify this action wherein Mike Bentley erroneously answered "The Armory Show" for "Auschwitz".
ANSWER: Worst Buzz (also accept Nude Descending a Gas Chamber before mentioned, Mike Bentley's Embarrassing Neg with The Armory Show on the Auschwitz Question at the 2007 Illinois Novice Tournament, and clear knowledge equivalents; do not accept just "Armory Show" or "Auschwitz")

Answer the following about a certain comic strip, FTPE.
[10] Like Chris Ray, the title character of this Dik Browne comic strip has red hair and a big beard, and is also illiterate and bathes only once a year.
ANSWER: Hagar the Horrible
[10] Using Wikipedia might erroneously lead you to believe that Hagar the Horrible was based on this play by Henrik Ibsen in which Sigurd defeats Hjördis by killing her sentinel, a white bear.
ANSWER: The Vikings at Helgeland
[10] If Jonathan Magin had his way, Hagar the Horrible and all other comic strips would be inspired by this Robert Louis Stevenson novel about some Scottish dude and his buried treasure.
ANSWER: The Master of Ballantrae

DO NOT USE ANY AUTOMATIC WORD FORMATTING EXCEPT FOR SMART QUOTES. Specifically, do not use any indentation or automatic numbering in your packets. Submit all packets in .doc or .rtf format please.

If questions are not correctly formatted (at the discretion of the editors), your packet will be returned for you to reformat. If you submit your packet at the deadline and it is rejected for formatting issues, you will be charged a $10 formatting fee (and asked to reformat the packet), but you will not have to pay any additional fees for missing the deadline.

Misc.:

As with all packet submission tournaments, questions must be blind to all other teams attending the tournament. Specifically, if a school is sending more than one team to the tournament, members of different teams should not know of each others' questions.

Please do not plagiarize questions. Do not copy direct passages and phrases from the sources you use to write questions. Additionally, do not write questions directly out of Wikipedia. While Wikipedia can be a useful source in finding preliminary information on a question, we encourage you to use more in-depth, scholarly and peer reviewed sources when writing your questions. Please see various question writing guides such as Jerry's guide for more information on where to find good sources for writing questions.

REGISTERING:

To register, please contact tournament director Mike Bentley at [email protected]. Please indicate how many teams you're brining and what discounts you think you apply for (such as the number of moderators and buzzers you're bringing). For the most part, we'll accept high school, non-affiliated and hybrid teams in additional to traditional college teams, but please contact me first.

Details on where the tournament will be held and when specifically registration will be will be announced closer to the date of the tournament.

Regards,
Mike Bentley and Jonathan Magin
Tournament Directors

Posted: Thu Nov 08, 2007 4:07 pm
by DumbJaques
Could the people running MLK get an announcement up about that? I'd like to lock down details, etc (it's going to be the weekend before, like last year, correct)?

Posted: Thu Nov 08, 2007 7:34 pm
by alkrav112
Presumably. There's nobody left on our team who has been involved with the production of a college tournament (much less an MLK), so I'm getting the necessary information from Dave, last year's editor. We're still working on it, but an announcement should be fairly soon forthcoming.

Re: Announcement: TIT XXII - 1/19/08 - Maryland

Posted: Sun Nov 18, 2007 4:35 am
by Zip Zap Rap Pants
Bentley Like Beckham wrote:(first two years play quizbowl)
Me love you long time, Mike.

Also, I see geography isn't mentioned in the distro., so I assume it's part of "your choice," right? Or are you attempting to get Mark and I to commit assisted suicide on each other/bring down W&M quizbowl? Banning geography would probably succeed in doing that...
:twisted: :chip: :twisted: :chip: :twisted: :arminius:

Posted: Sun Nov 18, 2007 4:43 am
by magin
Yeah, feel free to write geography questions for the "Your Choice" distribution.

Posted: Sun Nov 18, 2007 10:39 am
by Mike Bentley
By the way, this is a reminder that the first deadline is in about a week. We'd very much appreciate any packets submitted by that deadline.

Posted: Fri Dec 21, 2007 9:48 am
by Mike Bentley
Jonathan has persuaded me to get in the Christmas spirit by changing the deadline structure a bit. Basically, you can now submit for a $25 penalty on the 29th and a $50 penalty on the 6th. The announcement has been subsequently updated.

Also, here's a field update current for 1/16:

VCU (1)
William and Mary (3)
Brandeis (1)
Brown (1)
Princeton (1)
Duke (1)
House Teams (1 or 2, so that we have an odd number)

We would certainly like to see more teams sign up for this tournament.

Posted: Fri Dec 21, 2007 11:36 am
by Gonzagapuma1
Bentley Like Beckham wrote: Ted Goia spotted with High School Kids
Thats what it also said on Ted's arrest warrant.

Posted: Sat Dec 22, 2007 10:39 pm
by Mike Bentley
By the way, if any team is not coming for financial reasons or something let me know and we can attempt to work something out.

Posted: Sun Dec 23, 2007 2:42 am
by grapesmoker
Brown will be bringing a team also.

Posted: Sat Dec 29, 2007 9:55 am
by Mike Bentley
Just an update to remind people that there is another submission deadline tonight.

Also, check out the field in the above post, it's been updated a bit.

Posted: Wed Jan 02, 2008 11:27 am
by Mike Bentley
The final deadline for getting a packet in is this Saturday. If for some reason your team is having trouble making this date, please contact me immediately so we can work something out.

I'll also have some more details about registration to post soon.

Posted: Sun Jan 06, 2008 11:18 pm
by Stat Boy
Bentley Like Beckham wrote:About that...

If someone from that high school team playing at TIT can actually confirm with me they're playing, that would be most appreciated.
Shantanu, Dan, and I will be playing on a team with Ted.

Posted: Mon Jan 07, 2008 1:34 pm
by Zip Zap Rap Pants
Stat Boy wrote:
Bentley Like Beckham wrote:About that...

If someone from that high school team playing at TIT can actually confirm with me they're playing, that would be most appreciated.
Shantanu, Dan, and I will be playing on a team with Ted.
Jebus

Posted: Mon Jan 07, 2008 2:45 pm
by Mike Bentley
Stat Boy wrote:
Bentley Like Beckham wrote:About that...

If someone from that high school team playing at TIT can actually confirm with me they're playing, that would be most appreciated.
Shantanu, Dan, and I will be playing on a team with Ted.
Do you know what happened to the packet I heard was like three fourths written a few months ago?

Posted: Mon Jan 07, 2008 4:29 pm
by Gonzagapuma1
Bentley Like Beckham wrote:
Stat Boy wrote:
Bentley Like Beckham wrote:About that...

If someone from that high school team playing at TIT can actually confirm with me they're playing, that would be most appreciated.
Shantanu, Dan, and I will be playing on a team with Ted.
Do you know what happened to the packet I heard was like three fourths written a few months ago?
I thought Ted had already sent that in.... but, I most likely will not be playing in this tournament now that Prison Bowl has been moved.

Posted: Mon Jan 07, 2008 5:20 pm
by DumbJaques
I've heard that Shantanu and possibly Adam won't be playing either. Sadly, Ted Gioia and Friends has lost all of its friends.

Posted: Mon Jan 07, 2008 5:38 pm
by Stat Boy
DumbJacques wrote:I've heard that Shantanu and possibly Adam won't be playing either. Sadly, Ted Gioia and Friends has lost all of its friends.
Confirm. Sorry, Mike--I spoke too soon earlier and wasn't aware of Dan and Shantanu not being able to play. Because of that, I'm also witdrawing to play in the WOQG doubles with Shantanu.

Posted: Sun Jan 13, 2008 11:33 pm
by Mike Bentley
If anyone has room for a free agent, let me know.

Posted: Tue Jan 15, 2008 12:47 pm
by Mike Bentley
Ok, it looks like we're going to have about 11 teams. Unless this number changes, we'll be doing a full round robin of 10 games followed by some sort of playoff structure probably of about 2 games and a final, depending on time.

Registration will be from 8:30-9:00 AM on Saturday in one of the lecture halls in the basement of Jimenez (probably 0105).

I'll send out a more detailed e-mail to everyone registered soon.

Posted: Tue Jan 15, 2008 6:03 pm
by Mike Bentley
Also, we'll be running Ray Luo's music tournament at some point, either during lunch or after the tournament depending on when pepole want to hear it. There will be no cost to enter this tournament. Here is Ray's descrpition of it:

"On the 1st round, I go through each of the "hard" clips, and tell ppl to put down only the name of the work (or a guess); this is worth 2 pts each. On the 2nd round, I go through each of the "easy" clips for the same songs, and ask them for the artist/composer for 1 pt, and (if necessary, revised) work title for another 1 pt. This way, if they get the work initially, it's worth a lot more. I'd do this with paper and pencil, of course turning in the paper after the 1st round and after the 2nd round, and have each other do the grading after. Any how, hope yall have as much fun playing on them as I had in putting them together.
BTW this tourney'd be something like half trash half academic."

Posted: Tue Jan 15, 2008 8:26 pm
by pray for elves
Bentley Like Beckham wrote:"half trash half academic."
This means half classical and jazz, half rock/pop/rap/funk/polka/etc., I assume?

Posted: Tue Jan 15, 2008 11:10 pm
by Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN)
Is this going to be mirrored at MLK as well?

Posted: Wed Jan 16, 2008 11:04 pm
by alkrav112
No. Sorry. Hope the Maryland teams have fun w/this.

Posted: Sat Jan 19, 2008 7:13 pm
by Mike Bentley
Thanks to everyone for coming out to the tournament. We had 8 teams and a house team compete in a 9 game round robin followed by a disorganized two game playoff. Brown had a 9-0 record followed by Princeton with an 8-1 record. I'm not entirely sure what happened in the playoffs, but I think stats might have been kept during the one semi-formal round played so I may have those to post. Full stats will be posted either tonight or tomorrow night.

I'd like to thank everyone who helped make this tournament happen, especially when we were frantically trying to get things finished in the last week beforehand. A big thanks to Ray Luo who also stayed up all night to help finish the science and mix the packets. Also thanks to Eric Mukherjee who also helped out with the science despite also studying for the MCATs, as well as Greg Peterson who did an admirable job with some of the fine arts, especially for this being his first editing experience. Matt Weiner also deserves special thanks for amazingly blasting through a huge part of the RMP, Fine Arts and Social Science. Also thanks to all of the people at the mirror sites who helped write packets, compile packets and deal with the packets getting there really late.

Thanks to all of the teams that submitted packets to the tournament. I apologize that some packets got somewhat buried. We frankly got more packets than we expected, and had to combine many of them in order to get down to a reasonable number. In this process, some perfectly fine questions ended up not being used due to other questions having already been edited.

Finally, thanks to all MAQT members who helped edit the tournament, including Jonathan, Charles, Jeremy, Brittany, and Casey.

I can't remember if Chris was still going to use these packets for his doubles tournament at the Weekend of Quizbowl. If not, I'll post them online tomorrow. If not, you can get them privately from me starting tomorrow by e-mailing me at [email protected].

Posted: Sat Jan 19, 2008 9:26 pm
by Mike Bentley

Posted: Sun Jan 20, 2008 4:16 pm
by cvdwightw
If that 2-11 line for W&M B's Dan against Brown is not actually a typo, I applaud him for his persistence in buzzing in the face of futility.

Posted: Sun Jan 20, 2008 4:50 pm
by Gonzagapuma1
cvdwightw wrote:If that 2-11 line for W&M B's Dan against Brown is not actually a typo, I applaud him for his persistence in buzzing in the face of futility.
hahahahahahahahaha DAN LEIFER

Posted: Sun Jan 20, 2008 5:48 pm
by Zip Zap Rap Pants
I wonder if he set some kind of record for most negs in a game while still trying to get answers.

Posted: Sun Jan 20, 2008 8:16 pm
by Mike Bentley
From what I understand he started going for the neg prize in the second half of the match, and would buzz in after about 3-4 words on every question. Ask Jerry, I think he was playing in that round.

Posted: Sun Jan 20, 2008 9:02 pm
by AKKOLADE
Bentley Like Beckham wrote:From what I understand he started going for the neg prize in the second half of the match, and would buzz in after about 3-4 words on every question. Ask Jerry, I think he was playing in that round.
No longer cool, now just stupid.

Posted: Sun Jan 20, 2008 9:28 pm
by Dennis
He did indeed start negging like crazy. It was pretty damn annoying.

Posted: Sun Jan 20, 2008 9:59 pm
by No Rules Westbrook
Sigh, terrible...if anyone does this kind of stuff on purpose, they should be seriously warned to cut it our or leave. Whoever this is, he's probably lucky he didn't get a bone in the throat from Jerry.

Posted: Sun Jan 20, 2008 10:26 pm
by Zip Zap Rap Pants
Bentley Like Beckham wrote:From what I understand he started going for the neg prize in the second half of the match, and would buzz in after about 3-4 words on every question. Ask Jerry, I think he was playing in that round.
Well usually not 3-4 words, most of the time he waited long enough (anywhere from 1st to 3rd line) till some bell remotely went off in his head, then he'd take a huge risk. I tried to get him not to do it (even though, honestly, it was hilarious at times), but by the second half it was mathematically pointless and he was just going for the neg prize. It was admirable of him to go for broke like that in the first half without regard for personal stats, but in the second half it was getting kind of old.

Posted: Sun Jan 20, 2008 11:58 pm
by DumbJaques
Yeah, I'm still planning on using them. Thanks.

Posted: Mon Jan 21, 2008 1:43 am
by ieppler
Zip Zap Rap Pants wrote:Well usually not 3-4 words, most of the time he waited long enough (anywhere from 1st to 3rd line) till some bell remotely went off in his head, then he'd take a huge risk. I tried to get him not to do it (even though, honestly, it was hilarious at times), but by the second half it was mathematically pointless and he was just going for the neg prize. It was admirable of him to go for broke like that in the first half without regard for personal stats, but in the second half it was getting kind of old.
Even after playing on a team with him for 2 years in high school, I'm still not sure why he thought this was a good idea.

Posted: Mon Jan 21, 2008 9:22 am
by STPickrell
It depends on what was being negged on. Against a talented team like Brown, a strategy of being ultra-aggressive may be your only hope. I wouldn't engage in it unless I talked it over with my teammates, and then we'd split responsibilities depending on where we are best at.

I wasn't there, so I don't know if he was making reasonable guesses in his negs (e.g. Emperor Wu for Cao Cao, after hearing a few lines of 'ancient Chinese person') or unreasonable (e.g. Britney Spears in that very same question.)

Posted: Mon Jan 21, 2008 4:05 pm
by DumbJaques
Emperor Wu for Cao Cao
Technically Cao Cao is (an) emperor Wu. I think you could probably make the case that Britney Spears is among the honorific titles of the Hongwu Emperor, though, since he supposedly had over 20,000.

Anyway, I don't think you go 2-11 just by being aggressive, though I wouldn't have thought you'd get the 2 by buzzing just recklessly while being Dan Leifer either.

Posted: Tue Jan 22, 2008 10:09 pm
by Sima Guang Hater
Out of curiousity, was any of this recorded for the Quizbowl Cast?

Posted: Wed Jan 23, 2008 1:29 am
by Mike Bentley
Yes, some of the rounds were recorded. Expect to see at least one new tournament posted this week. Sorry for being really behind.