TRASH Regs general discussion

[Coelacanth]

I think all sites have finished now, so the set should be open for discussion, right? If not I'm sure someone will come down on this thread like a ton of bricks.

In general, I agree with most of the comments that have appeared on the various regional threads: this was a pretty good set. Of course, my thoughts are tempered by the fact that I only got to hear 6 rounds. I would love to get my hands on the rest of the questions (help me out, TRASH folks!).

Positives:
Most noticeable was a general improvement in the quality and accessibility of the music. Fewer niche stuff that nobody'd ever heard of.
Sports was generally good.
Overall, distribution-wise, this felt about right for a trash tournament

Opportunities:
A few tossups had a real pyramidality problem, with giveaway clues appearing early in the question.
It felt like there was a hole in the movies distribution; everything was pre-1960 or post-2000.
Still too many "name the TV show character" tossups. Fewer, but still too many (more than zero is too many) "name the album" questions.
There was a lot of inconsistency in bonus difficulty. We played one round where our opponents got 2 or 3 easy 30s in a row, and then we were struggling to get 10. Some of this is due to our relative strengths in the categories being asked, but some bonuses simply had no recognizable "hard" part. Maybe this is asking too much of an early-season tournament.
Some of the tossups had very convoluted and confusing syntax, making it difficult to understand what was being asked.
In general, I thought a lot of the questions were needlessly wordy. The tossups just needed an overall tightening up, and many bonus parts were of the form "here's an overly wordy clue for this very easy bonus part. Now here's another full sentence with still more information in case you didn't get that first part." Our rounds averaged 45 minutes in length, and while some of that was due to moderator inexperience with the format, that's just too long.

Thanks to the folks at TRASH for all their hard work.

[Cheynem]

I enjoyed this tournament a great deal.

Some general comments (if this is NOT clear for discussion, delete this obviously):

*The question writers must really like The Avengers, as it came up in a bonus (the John Hollis common link one), plus it provided the lead-ins for the John Cleese TU and the "Knight" TU. I got the Cleese TU based on knowing the show, and I should have gotten the Knight one (if it had just said her maiden name, I would have).

*Yeah, there were a few "Name this TV Character" questions. For the most part, I thought they were okay, although again, it is galling to recognize very early on who they are talking about, get to the end, and still not be able to say anything because you don't remember Jane Krakowski's character name on 30 Rock.

Questions I Liked: Lucy Ricardo, the University of Minnesota (heh), Bikini, Wiffleball (I spent all summer playing it), Kryptonite, "Gleason," Surfin' Bird, Scrabble, The Blob, Sweet Valley High

*Some problematic questions:
-"Milkshake" could pretty easily be lateraled, especially when there was a clue about "a mixer" in a restaurant before the Daniel Plainview reference.
-The Doonesbury toss-up was very difficult to figure out what they wanted, as it just listed plots. Don't write toss-ups this way.
-I have a hard time judging comic book questions because I'm a dork, but it seemed like the Cyclops question was really easy.
-Similarly, I like old-timey video games, so again it's hard to judge, but it seemed like Donkey Kong was really easy too.
-I need to see it on paper, but I thought the Bill Self question was terrible pyramidally as a reference to him being Kansas' basketball coach seemed to come before "For ten points."
-The Pauline Kael TU was very transparent--you're talking about a woman who writes about film...wonder who that could be. It's like saying "Finnish composer."

*Bad Negs:
-"Richard Belzer" for "Mo Rocca," based on the SVU reference
-"Gandhi" for "Sunday, Bloody Sunday" based on the Daniel Day-Lewis lead-in

Stealth Academia:
-Samuel Beckett reference for Buster Keaton
-Not really needing to know anything about the film to get The Remains of the Day

*My favorite moment:
-Getting High Noon based on the fact I had seen the documentary in question described in the lead-in.

[Mike Bentley]

Yeah this tournament seemed an improvement from last year, but there are still a good number of things that need fixing.

First off, thanks for getting rid of the 5-10-20-30 bonus structure that pervaded last year's set.

Bonus difficult fluctuated mainly due to the problem of "name these three types of X" where X itself was a pretty difficult subject. X could include things like soap opera characters, winners of CMAs for best duets, etc. These bonuses would be much better served by varying the type of thing they were asking for. Instead of having to name 3 soap opera characters, how about the easy part be General Hospital or something.

Some of the common link tossups drifted dangerously close to list tossups. The most notable example was the Doonesbury tossup, which just confusingly listed a lot of incidents before saying "pulled by editors". Other tossups weren't as bad as this, but many listed many titles in a row with no real context data, rewarding speed or list type knowledge.

In regards to specific questions:

Radar Scope is a relatively easy clue to be in the leadin for Donkey Kong, although I don't know how many people besides me got it there. That bonus on that PC space sim seemed really hard, I'd be surprised if many teams got more than 10 points on it. I also question whether anyone really cares about characters from the Crash Bandicoot universe, but that was less egregious.

I also agree with the tossup on Jenna from 30 Rock. I knew precisely who the character was after the clue where she ate 30 slices of pizza a week, but I couldn't remember her name for the life of me. In my opinion this tossup would have been better served if it was on a more recognizable character from 30 Rock, such as Liz or Tracy or maybe even Kenneth.

More tossups than I would have liked were capable of being figured out. The most notable example was probably the CPR question, which clearly indicated it was an operation done a lot (presuamly medical) that people did wrong and had a rhythm to it. There were several others in this same category but I can't remember them off hand.

Overall, though, this tournament was an improvement over last year's set.

[Cheynem]

Oh yeah, I forgot the CPR toss-up. That would have benefited from giving more specific examples instead of talking about it in generalities...I knew they were talking about a procedure that can hurt you if done wrong and when they started describing the motions, yeah, that was buzzable.