The Quizbowl Resource Center

Announcing tournaments with alacrity seems to be very in vogue these days, so I figured I'll throw this out there. I'm pleased to announce the eventual existence of The Experiment II: Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej Devours Your Children. That subtitle's still pending.

There's been talk of making this a side-event to FICHTE, probably on Saturday night. I'm particularly interested in the Illinois mirror of FICHTE, as I hear rumors that the field there might be super-awesome (though I may allow mirrors at my discretion).

Just like the previous Experiment, this tournament will be ungodly hard and full of canon-busting flavor. The format will be a bit different. Each packet will consist of 30 tossups. 15 of the tossups will be just like the previous Experiment - full-length questions which allow you to score 20 points, 15 points, or 10 points depending on where you buzz. The other 15 tossups in the packet will be akin to Andrew Hart's Impossible Speedcheck set - much shorter tossups - these tossups will allow you to score either 15 points or 10 points depending on where you buzz. No negs. The current plan is to alternate between full tossups and speedcheck tossups within the packets. I'd do my best to make sure every typical mACF subject gets a fair shake in the distribution, in terms of overall representation and as between speedcheck tus and full tus. If you have opinions on the format or related things, you can post...who knows, there might be some other twists and turns along the way, though certainly no wheel of fish.

Entry fee will probably be 15 bucks per person. Unless we happen to have over 24 players, I'd like to do what I did for the previous Experiment - assign 6 captains and allow them to draft teams in some sort of snake-like fashion and then play a double round robin with the resulting 6 teams.

Also, for anyone who won't be playing, if you want to help write some stuff in the following subjects for the tourney, that would be great: Biology, Physics, Math, Computer Acience, or Astro. Come on, it's your chance to write about that super-important thing that you've always wanted to, but were afraid it would make Matt Weiner's head explode if you submitted it to Penn Bowl! Drop me a line at [email protected] or post here, or whatever.

If it does happen at the Illinois FICHTE mirror, I'd be happy to read.

Hey, I want to bump this and say that it will indeed happen at the Illinois FICHTE mirror, assuming everything goes as planned for that event...Speaking of which, it's not been announced yet for whatever reason - am I correct in assuming that it will definitely happen on March 21? I just want to be clear here, since it's getting fairly close, and nothing much has been said.

Post here or email me ([email protected]) if you're coming to Illinois and will play this event - I just want a rough estimate of number of people interested, so I can approximate teams. Again, it'll be deathly insanely hard, but you'll be drafted onto teams, and it should be a fun way to get introduced to all sorts of awesome things.

Also, let me once again call (to anyone who won't be playing) for help with math and computer science - if you'd like to write some biology or physics, that'd be great too, but math and comp sci is absolutely necessary or else there simply won't be any of that in this event.

Yes please.

I really hope this will be mirrored at the VCU site.

DumbJaques wrote:I really hope this will be mirrored at the VCU site.

seconded

Yeah, it can be mirrored at VCU.

I'm planning on flying out to Illinois and playing FICHTE and The Experiment II, as well as leading a seminar about Sutton E. Griggs.

oh man i better get down there then

I am signing up to play this event. It should be pretty awesome.

Quizbowl!

MaS

If you're looking for a scientist who can get some other stuff, feel free to contact me by whatever means.

Gautam

I'll be getting off my fool ass and playing this time.

Ukonvasara wrote:I'll be getting off my fool ass and playing this time.

Me too, man. This is worth paying for.

Quiz bowl beats homework and sleeping.

As I'm about to post to the appropriate fora, we have switched the dates of Fake TRASHionals and Fake ICT at VCU (the former will be on Saturday, March 21; the latter on Sunday, March 22). This will, among other things, allow us to run The Experiment II on Saturday evening after trash. I believe that the expected length of FICHTE and the fact that I don't expect people to stay very late on a Sunday make this the best approach. Once I confer with Ryan on how this will work I will have a third announcement for this mirror, but for now please plan to be in Richmond by 5:30 PM or so on March 21 if you want to play our mirror of The Experiment II.

I will take any excuse to stay at the Super 8 in Rantoul. I just need to decide whether to stay in the Tahitian or Caesars Suite this time.

wd4gdz wrote:I will take any excuse to stay at the Super 8 in Rantoul. I just need to decide whether to stay in the Tahitian or Caesars Suite this time.

Rantoul!!!

I'll start an updating list of people playing/staffing at the Illinois Experiment. Depending on the eventual size of the field, I may need one more staffer. And, of course, I'll need laptops too...not that those are ever in short supply.


Present playing field:

Jon Magin
Mike Sorice
Brendan Byrne
Gautam Kandlikar
Rob Carson
Bernadette Spencer
Andrew Hart
Mike Cheyne
Billy Beyer
Matt Lafer
Jerry Vinokurov
Ike Jose
Jason Loy
Andrew Watkins
Dallas Simons
Bruce Arthur
Ted Gioia
Charlie Dees
Rom Masrour
ABT alums, possibly.
Chicago people, presumably.


Staffing:

Donald Taylor
Bryce Durgin

I'll play this, despite the depressing knowledge that the tournament's subtitle probably means there won't be any questions on Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej.

I'll probably be able to staff this.

I know that I'm interested, that Dallas is, and I assume Ted is.

Yeah, I'm playing this.

I certainly hope there's a mirror of this at the UCLA site.

Ryan, contact Trygve, Donald and myself if you're looking for some staff. We can probably hook you up. Also, there will be some ABT alums in town who may well want to play.

MaS

In that case, I'll play if I'm not needed to staff.

Count me in.

I would like to toss one of my complimentary motorsports hats into this ring, too. With this much interest, these doubles/triples could become triples/quadruples, etc.

Happy Fat Tuesday,
Rom Masrour
CPS/UIC

If I finish the brunt of this soon, which seems possible, I'm fiddling with the idea of adding one-part bonuses. They would be one-part and probably connected with each of the tossups, in some humorous lateral kind of way.

So, come on, Eric Mukherjee...you want to jump on that plane!

Looks like I will be playing this.

Okay, I think what I'm gonna do is eight teams, so we can have a full round robin and then a split bracket RR on ten packets. You don't have to notify me here if you want to play - you can just hang around after FICHTE. But, I think the eight-team ideal means I'll have to cap the number of players at 32 (if this becomes an issue - I suppose we could move up to 40 if there were enough five-buzzer systems available and people really wanted to do that). I'd like to have as many people play as possible, but I don't think it's wise to go over eight teams.

Also, I've abandoned the idea of bonuses, they don't really accomplish the effect I wanted. But, there are still lots of ridiculous tossups which I hope people enjoy.

Results from Illinois site:

The team consisting of Seth Teitler, Mike Cheyne, Tom Soderholm, and Trevor Davis won with a record of 7-2-1; Brendan Byrne, Will Turner, Bruce Arthur, and Rom Masrour came in second with a 6-2-2 record.

Detailed statistics can be found here: http://www.tc.umn.edu/~kand0028/quiz_bo ... dings.html

Andrew, do you mind if I put those stats at the Illinois ABT site also?

I was waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting for a discussion thread to be made about this event, but there hasn't been one yet, and I need to get something off my chest:

This tournament ruled. It was the most fun I've had at a quizbowl event in a long time. It blew Gaddis I out of the water, and I am no Gaddis I detractor. I do hear that science players enjoyed it far less than did I, but I'd like to thank Ryan for this wonderful event.

Ugh, home at last...so, yeah, I or someone else can start a thread to discuss this set if people want (feel free to comment on whatever - including my relative success or failure in pretending I have enough science knowledge to write questions). For now, let me just thank everyone who helped out - Ray Luo/Bryce Durgin/Evan Silberman/Dan Passner for writing a few questions, Donald Taylor/Bryce Durgin/Minnesota people/anyone else who offered to moderate/scorekeep and Donald Taylor in particular for his always-appreciated skill at running events like these, Andrew Hart/Brendan Byrne for putting up stats on the event, and anyone else I'm missing.

I have a lot of fun writing these kinds of events and I hope people enjoy playing them, both as legitimate knowledge-testing quizbowl and as vanity-esque events replete with nutty/perverse humor. I'm always impressed by the clues that people know and can buzz on, and it was a great time watching the very talented field at Illinois play these questions.

How may we procure these questions, assuming any mirrors that occurred are finished?

Wow, high praise. I can't wait to see the set.

No Rules Westbrook wrote:Ugh, home at last...so, yeah, I or someone else can start a thread to discuss this set if people want (feel free to comment on whatever - including my relative success or failure in pretending I have enough science knowledge to write questions). For now, let me just thank everyone who helped out - Ray Luo/Bryce Durgin/Evan Silberman/Dan Passner for writing a few questions, Donald Taylor/Bryce Durgin/Minnesota people/anyone else who offered to moderate/scorekeep and Donald Taylor in particular for his always-appreciated skill at running events like these, Andrew Hart/Brendan Byrne for putting up stats on the event, and anyone else I'm missing.

I have a lot of fun writing these kinds of events and I hope people enjoy playing them, both as legitimate knowledge-testing quizbowl and as vanity-esque events replete with nutty/perverse humor. I'm always impressed by the clues that people know and can buzz on, and it was a great time watching the very talented field at Illinois play these questions.

Thanks for the kind words. If we run an event like this next year, you are more than welcome to run this again. It is my hope that we can secure a better room than the Armory.

Jonah, feel free to host the stats, but please use the ones located here: http://limozeen.googlepages.com/theexpe ... dings.html

They correctly give points to Mike Sorice's team in the first round, and also enable round report.

This was extremely extremely enjoyable. I admit I blanched when the price went from fifteen to twenty dollars (NOTE: I AM KIDDING), but it was well worth the price. I quote my teammate Brendan Byrne: "I would have paid hundreds of dollars to play this."

theMoMA wrote:Jonah, feel free to host the stats, but please use the ones located here: http://limozeen.googlepages.com/theexpe ... dings.html

They correctly give points to Mike Sorice's team in the first round, and also enable round report.

Thanks. For your own reference, they're at this address.

HKirsch wrote:Wow, high praise. I can't wait to see the set.

I have the questions separated into different rounds (the original set had all 10 in one big file.) If Ryan grants permission, I will release a link to them.

Also, I have the scoresheets for this event (I couldn't find Ryan when were leaving). If other people notice errors in the stats, you can post here or e-mail me, and I can see what's up.

This was a pretty fun event; thanks to Ryan for all his hard work. I wouldn't go so far in my praise as Bruce did (which isn't to say that I don't think this was an exciting set) because I thought some of the answer selections, particularly in science, tended to be of the "named thing no one has heard of" variety. On the other hand, a tossup on Edmund Gettier's paper was very exciting. Overall, very enjoyable and pretty much made up for the utter disappointment that was FICHTE.

It doesn't make a difference in the overall standings, but just for accuracy's sake, Andrew and Selene's individual stats from the last round (round 10) were switched.

Sure, Donald, anyone who has the set can post it.

On the other note, I wish I had the science knowledge to do anything else except pick a named thing that seems academically important and construct a pyramid for it. I just don't know enough to be as creative in writing science as I can be in writing things like history or literature - to explore conceptual tossups, innovative ideas, etc. I did try really hard to pick important-looking things like spin glasses and understand them enough to write an informed question on them. I was particularly interested in making sure the longer questions concerned important and interesting topics; you'll have no problem convincing me that a few short questions like Geiger-Nuttall or Sabine Formula fit the model of "not terribly important named thing" but I kind of planned it that way.

The set can be found here. If the link doesn't work, let me know.

No Rules Westbrook wrote:On the other note, I wish I had the science knowledge to do anything else except pick a named thing that seems academically important and construct a pyramid for it. I just don't know enough to be as creative in writing science as I can be in writing things like history or literature - to explore conceptual tossups, innovative ideas, etc. I did try really hard to pick important-looking things like spin glasses and understand them enough to write an informed question on them. I was particularly interested in making sure the longer questions concerned important and interesting topics; you'll have no problem convincing me that a few short questions like Geiger-Nuttall or Sabine Formula fit the model of "not terribly important named thing" but I kind of planned it that way.

I should say that noted condensed matter physicist Will Turner seemed to like the spin glasses question; I can also say that you wrote some good orgo, too. I think that's the only reason that Gaddis (for me) was a slightly better experience; Magin recruited enough other writers to have some great science come out. The Experiment II had some pretty good science and some lackluster science (and 50% science I don't know enough about to judge; for example, you managed to overestimate both me and Mike Sorice by at least one density functional theory), and since that's 90% of what I know, it fell short of Gaddis for me.

That said, it's both silly to assume that this tournament ought to be compared to one other tournament specifically, and I certainly won't pretend that you didn't include some fantastic topics (Sharpless, Keep the Aspidistra Flying, Atrus, George Crumb, and more).

I apologize that I didn't look over the science Jerry. I will make sure I include more fluid mechanics questions next time

Yeah. Building off of what Mike Cheyne said, this tournament was super awesome, and there were tons of great questions and answers.