DOKTRINE-University of Pittsburgh-4/10

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Geringer
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Re: DOKTRINE-University of Pittsburgh-4/10

Post by Geringer »

Dan-Don wrote:Criticism of the Donohue/Geringer packet would be hugely appreciated as this was sort of a test run for the Trashtastrothree. Send feedback via email to either of us.
I think most of the bonuses are ours but maybe 1/5th of the TUs aren't.
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Re: DOKTRINE-University of Pittsburgh-4/10

Post by journterp »

Any criticism of my packet or the one I co-wrote with Rebecca would also be much appreciated. In the packet I double-bylined, I wrote the following questions:

Tossups
Zooey Deschanel
Florida State
Rugby
Dr. Strangelove
Charlie (Always Sunny character)
John Landis
Pau Gasol
Tennessee Titans
The Fugitive
Tiebreakers: Mississippi Burning, Prince Fielder, The Carol Burnett Show

Bonuses by topic
Mel Brooks
Duke Basketball
Kid's sports movies
Coen Brothers movies
Shockey/Brees/Rivers
Larry Sanders Show
Orioles
Howie Mandel
Forrest Gump
Danny Boyle movies
2010 Olympics
Extras: Naked athlete photos
Jeff Amoros
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Re: DOKTRINE-University of Pittsburgh-4/10

Post by stevebahnaman »

Nicklausse/Muse wrote:Any criticism of the Amoros-Maxfield packet?
These are insanely nitpicky at some points, so please bear that in mind. I am certain I could do this same thing to my packet. You can interpret "good" as high praise.

This is a good packet overall. If I were editing a tournament to which it were submitted I'd have tweaks, but I wouldn't feel bad about asking any of these questions.

Tossups:
1. (Mr. Bean) I wonder if there is anyone else who would be most likely to know Bean from a movie clue; would that have helped?
3. Very good (FSU); I actually love questions like this about college athletics.
5. (Man of La Mancha) One more middle clue maybe; it goes from hard to easy really fast. I have never seen this play so I have no idea what a middle clue would be.
6. (Clint Mansell) This guy seems really, really hard; am I wrong?
7. (rugby) I know a lot about Friends but I think Friends and Meaning of Life as the first two clues are going to lead to a lot of powers here. A lot of people would remember Ross playing rugby, I'd think. Also the use of "first filmed" after Matt Damon makes that piece easier than you probably want too. I like the "sport with pop culture references" question type but this feels nonpyramidal to me.
8. (Dr. Strangelove) The sentence that begins with Muffley and ends with unsuccessful is wordy and not clue-dense.
9. The Decemberists are a band that a lot of people are pretty geeky about. It may be fine to have an EP collection that close to the beginning, but I'd suggest "describe then name" for that. The Obama reference is probably the leadin; who else played at that rally? That could be your clues. You've got too many album names and not enough tracks-before-that or song descriptions.
10. (I Love the World) Hard, right?
11. (Carmen Sandiego) This seems to start a little easy; the clues are in the right order but (a) you could quote the theme song before you say "Rockapella" (which is also fun) and (b) I think you want to start harder than this and have more game-related clues.
12. Any allusion to "this is the most important early gangsta rap album" should not be that early in a Straight Outta Compton question. Even if that's arguable, you get my point. Additionally, there could be some lyrics or other song descriptions rather than just titles in here.
14. I like the John Landis tossup tons.
15. I like the Pau Gasol tossup tons too.
16. (Titans) It's preferred practice to powermark between Derrick (*) Mason, like that. If it's a TV or Movie character probably do it before, but if it's an athlete probably in the middle. If anyone knows that the Liberty Bowl is in Memphis (which tons of people do) they will receive 15 points; that might be a little easy, especially since not very many franchises had as convoluted a move as the Tennessee Oilers.
19. (Fugitive) "Prosthetic arms" is the clue where you transition from stuff you only remember if you saw the movie recently or a lot of times, to stuff that is easy. It's not an early clue like this for The Fugitive. The jump off the dam is the same thing. The Provasic thing, that's an early clue.

bonuses:
1. (Mario enemies) Bowser is a very easy easy part (though I had some very easy easy parts myself). Goomba or something?
2. (Ben and Jerrys) Jerry Garcia is a pretty easy middle part.
4. (Duke 90-91) 30 points for anybody who knows anything about college basketball in the 90s. The UNLV part could be made harder in itself, but points for K and Laettner seems way easy too. (Not to mention I also had a Laettner b-part, but who was supposed to know that except the editor?)
5. Pretty good.
6/7. None of these parts are quite "hard."
8. (Potter music) In stark contrast, all of these parts are hard, especially Celestina Warbeck. While I love giving points for "Weasley Is Our King" which is fun to remember, you need an easier part to replace Warbeck (or Weird Sisters or something)
10. Brees and Rivers are both super-easy, so one of them has to go; "loud-mouthed tight end" makes Shockey something below medium too. Needs extensive rewriting to distinguish between people who know things about sports.
11. (Tainted Love) I think this question is awesome. Gloria Jones is a nice hard part.
12. (Alan Moore stuff) Seems like Moore fans would know Lost Girls, I guess; I'd get 10 points which is probably right.
14. (Jim Palmer) Two Hall of Famers and the team they played for does not include a hard part, especially when you mention Cal Ripken Jr., identifying the O's and allowing someone to get Palmer without knowing much else about him. Good hard parts could include Ken Singleton or catcher Rick Dempsey. Just toss Orioles in as a clue for Palmer and you've got yourself a bonus.
15. (Mandel) Bobby's World is your medium part; needs something harder. What does Marc Summers actually have to do with this?
16, 17, 18. Easy.
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Re: DOKTRINE-University of Pittsburgh-4/10

Post by dtaylor4 »

stevebahnaman wrote:7. (rugby) I know a lot about Friends but I think Friends and Meaning of Life as the first two clues are going to lead to a lot of powers here. A lot of people would remember Ross playing rugby, I'd think. Also the use of "first filmed" after Matt Damon makes that piece easier than you probably want too. I like the "sport with pop culture references" question type but this feels nonpyramidal to me.
I already emailed Jeff about this, but in all, this was a decent tossup. I doubt many got it off the Friends clue. Monty Python was a bit misplaced, as was Matt Damon, but other than that this is fine. I think Alive is a bit early, but part of me thinks this is due to its quizbowl fame. Replace it with "Forever Strong," and it's all good.
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Re: DOKTRINE-University of Pittsburgh-4/10

Post by stevebahnaman »

dtaylor4 wrote:
stevebahnaman wrote:7. (rugby) I know a lot about Friends but I think Friends and Meaning of Life as the first two clues are going to lead to a lot of powers here. A lot of people would remember Ross playing rugby, I'd think. Also the use of "first filmed" after Matt Damon makes that piece easier than you probably want too. I like the "sport with pop culture references" question type but this feels nonpyramidal to me.
I already emailed Jeff about this, but in all, this was a decent tossup. I doubt many got it off the Friends clue. Monty Python was a bit misplaced, as was Matt Damon, but other than that this is fine. I think Alive is a bit early, but part of me thinks this is due to its quizbowl fame. Replace it with "Forever Strong," and it's all good.
So between the two of us we have identified a total of 4 things we think could be improved about clue ordering in this question, only one of which is disputed.
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Re: DOKTRINE-University of Pittsburgh-4/10

Post by mpellegrini »

I didn't go, but I helped to write the Delaware A packet. If anyone has feedback, I'd like to hear it.
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Re: DOKTRINE-University of Pittsburgh-4/10

Post by mcgroth »

As the other writer of the Delaware A packet, I am interested in getting feedback as well.
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Re: DOKTRINE-University of Pittsburgh-4/10

Post by swwFCqb »

I just wanted to thank the Pitt guys for putting this tournament on despite the low attendence. There were definately some issues with the packets, most of which have been discussed, but I don't think any of us came in with any great expectations, so we had a pretty fun time anyway and we found it a fun way to close out the quizbowl year.

One thing that I wasn't a huge fan of were all these tossups on really niche topics, which for some reason seem to always show up in much greater numbers in trash tournaments. Questions that come to mind that fit this bill included Tyrone Prothro (who is semi-notable for only one minor catch) and Ray Drecker (why not just do a tossup on Hung instead?). Another tossup that made me wince was the one on Tom Gola, who was apparently tossed up because he went to the same high school as the question writer (at least according to our reader, who also appeared to be the writer of the question). Perhaps these types of answers are gettable by really knowledgable people (although I've seen every episode of Hung and couldn't pull Drecker out of my ass), but I think people should be focusing on writing on topics that can be converted in a majority of rooms, not on topics that you and one other guy in the whole tournament knows. There weren't too many questions that fit this bill, so it wasn't really a persitent problem throughout the tournament, but I think it's something that should be brought up to remind people that this is something to be avoided, and one of the main reasons why many players are becoming disillusioned with TRASH.

With that said, if anyone feels there were any problems or difficulty issues with the Case packet, feel free to post here or email me. The packet wasn't nearly as good as I'd hoped due to the fact that I had very little time to edit my teammate's questions before they were submitted, and I apologize for any issues that may have caused.
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Re: DOKTRINE-University of Pittsburgh-4/10

Post by stevebahnaman »

Sentiments echoed. I've been much happier with my packets since I tried to stop doing this.
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Re: DOKTRINE-University of Pittsburgh-4/10

Post by stevebahnaman »

mpellegrini wrote:I didn't go, but I helped to write the Delaware A packet. If anyone has feedback, I'd like to hear it.
I'm being nitpicky again, because I am feeding the feedback monkey that lives in my duodenum right now. I ended up just doing tossups.

1. Tobey Maguire - "Describe before you name." There is no description of his characters, his lines, etc. in here with the minor exception of the Sam Raimi clue; "first film role" is almost always easier than "random guest spots," and should come after. I'd like to be able to go "I saw the episode of Blossom where Tobey Maguire was the love interest who turned out to be gay" (or whatever the heck he was) and get the points; otherwise it's not even uniquely identifying. Lists of stuff he performed in has the additional drawback of not being interesting.

2. Houston Cougars - Again, I want *memorable* things to be here; Elvin Hayes, a description of Elvin Hayes or Hakeem Olajuwon before naming them; something about the game they played that was supposed to be the best NCAA tourney game ever before that Duke-Kentucky 1992 thing. These are just suggestions. "Players included so and so" is not only fine but good, especially for leadins to teams from the 60s who nobody remembers the name of except the stars. "Made the Final Four in 67 and 68" also rewards list knowledge in the lead-in, which eww.

3. 2001 Mariners - I lobbied the editor have him leave "2001 Mariners" off and just have the answer be Mariners, and he did that (yay for this increasing trend!) but he forgot to fix the leadin. This isn't a particularly vibrant question, but it's a little better; needs more memorables, more funny, more life. More Mark McLemore?

4. Day at the Races - Put the description of the last track before its title, almost always, unless the story or subject is a great deal more known than the title, which is almost never true of a classic album (or poetry collection, or whatever). I think Night at the Opera should be the last words of the Q.

5. Braid - Seems good, but something like "2008 indie game hit" (or whatever year) feels like it wants to be in the final because I bet someone said Prince of Persia: Sands of Time or something at the end without some guidance as to how old the game is or what system it is for. You don't need to do that for like Donkey Kong or God of War, but Braid is not as major as either of those.

6. Julia - Meryl Streep's debut and Vanessa Redgrave's only Oscar are good trivia (and easy for some people); what was the movie about? Put that first. How did the Eurythmics song go? How does the Beatles song go? ("Final track on side two" is especially rough because of the double-record versus double-CD issue, and it doesn't contain interesting information but rather list knowledge). Make it interesting.

7. Barney Gumble - The LORD PALMERSTON! incident makes me happy! This is a much better question that is made good by the fact that you know what you're talking about. There were however 4 characters (5!) in the Be Sharps, which makes that clue not uniquely identifying if they don't have it yet.

8. Terrell Davis - Did he appear in an *interesting* game while at UGA? Another trivia-question-type clue with "lowest drafted player to gain 1000 yards in his rookie season." I feel like these clues are okay occasionally but they seem to be coming up a lot in your packet. More specificity in general would help in the last 3 lines.

9. Buzz Lightyear - Good!

10. Frankie J - I know nothing about this individual! No comment!

11. Cagney and Lacey - Trivia clue leadin (bunch of Emmys in a row) makes for an easy leadin among the list-knowledge crowd. Any interesting episodes?

12. Ronaldo - clues are in fine order, but are very much a list of stuff he did in a row, yet again. Memorable goal? World Cup success? "He's fat, he's round, he's worth a million pounds! Ronaldo!" Something?

13. Ghost Whisperer - a million producers now vlog commentary about each episode; nothing wrong with naming the producer but these words could be used to greater effect and actually contain a clue. Again it doesn't seem like having seen 5 episodes of the show (which I thankfully have not!) might help me to get it; more describe, less name.

14. I Will Survive - Tony Clifton performs a few songs in that movie. The B-side A-side stuff is boring. "Embellished with a profanity" could be changed to "I should have changed that bleeping lock; I should have made you leave your key" for more specificity. Otherwise it's just "Cake covered it."

15. Go - I don't hate academic clues for trash questions but (a) novels don't win Nobel Prizes themselves and (b) you spend 2 lines on it. Something earlier about the mechanics or strategy of the game would reward people who know Go rather than just knowing stuff about its history.

16. No comment.

17. John Huston - "Born in"? Ew. This is okay...but describe the roles before you name them!

18. Lillywhite Sessions. Hard hard hard hard hard hard hard hard hard. I have this on a burned CD in my car and occasionally listen to it, and as one of the only DMB fans that I know who will still admit to DMB fandom, hard. Also "Summer So Far" was its sort of kind of title on the internet for a while, so that's too early and should be an acceptable answer for a while. But a DMB album that did not actually come out is not TUable. You could have reworked some of this into a tossup on Busted Stuff, which I am STILL not sure is TUable.

19. MTV - Everything in the first sentence after Pittman is noise.

20. I don't know enough about MASH to actually have much input.
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Re: DOKTRINE-University of Pittsburgh-4/10

Post by Nicklausse/Muse »

stevebahnaman wrote:5. Braid - Seems good, but something like "2008 indie game hit" (or whatever year) feels like it wants to be in the final because I bet someone said Prince of Persia: Sands of Time or something at the end without some guidance as to how old the game is or what system it is for. You don't need to do that for like Donkey Kong or God of War, but Braid is not as major as either of those.
FWIW I wrote this tossup. Thanks for the comments on this and other questions.

(On the off chance any of my other questions ended up in other packets, mine were:

I Love the World
Mr. Bean
Cold Case
Clint Mansell
Decemberists
Straight Outta Compton
Tom Lehrer
Combat Rock
Man of la Mancha
Tintin
Left Behind
Braid
Carmen Sandiego

Boston Legal actors
Hulu
Tainted Love
Telephone
Leonard Cohen/Judy Collins
Songs with "the end"
Susan Boyle
Alan Moore
lolcats
Mario enemies
Harry Potter music
Ben & Jerry's)
Rebecca Maxfield
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Why do you picture John of Gaunt as a rather emaciated grandee?

N.B. Do not attempt to answer more than one question at a time.
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Re: DOKTRINE-University of Pittsburgh-4/10

Post by Dan-Don »

As long as we're posting attributions:

Donohue:

Kenneth Parcell
Springtime for Hitler
Beedle the Bard
David Caruso
ChatRoulette
UHF
Gossip Girl
Slumdog Millionaire soundtrack
Guillermo del Toro
DHARMA
2009 Confederations Cup
1 Night in Paris

Hot Tub Time Machine actors
Twelfth Night adaptations
Top Thrill Dragsters miscellany
All About Eve people
Phil Hartman stuff
Miyazaki movies
The Fourth Doctor (Who)
FOX network sketch comedy
Domino's Pizza miscellany
David Duchovny stuff
2010 Masters
cooking shows about cakes

Geringer:

Brock Lesnar
Moving Pictures
German basketball
Cy Young
Andross
North Stars
A Milli
They Live
Death Cab for Cutie

football players in trouble with the law
controversial album covers
Star Trek stuff
2003 Cubs Game 6
Magic the Gathering stuff
Blue (Da Ba Dee) stuff
Insane Clown Posse songs
interdisc. things named Valentine
various metal acts
straight-from-high school NBA draft picks that suck
Led Zeppelin songs
2010 Olympic hockey
serial killers

I really liked this set when I read through it, but there seemed to be a lot of repeats. Anyways, post or email feedback.
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Re: DOKTRINE-University of Pittsburgh-4/10

Post by Cheynem »

I'm glad that neither of you wrote the tossup on Silence of the Lambs: the musical which ended up in your packet! Also, the tossup on the Slumdog Millionaire soundtrack seems like a way to incite negs with MIA albums.
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Re: DOKTRINE-University of Pittsburgh-4/10

Post by swwFCqb »

Cheynem wrote:Also, the tossup on the Slumdog Millionaire soundtrack seems like a way to incite negs with MIA albums.
Yeah, that happened with one of my teammates.
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Re: DOKTRINE-University of Pittsburgh-4/10

Post by btressler »

Can I ask which Delaware player was the top scorer?
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Re: DOKTRINE-University of Pittsburgh-4/10

Post by Bigfoot isn't the pr »

That'd be Matt Groth, if my information is correct. Greg was third and Marisol fifth (so I have been led to believe)
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Re: DOKTRINE-University of Pittsburgh-4/10

Post by Dan-Don »

swwFCqb wrote:
Cheynem wrote:Also, the tossup on the Slumdog Millionaire soundtrack seems like a way to incite negs with MIA albums.
Yeah, that happened with one of my teammates.
Well the clue is specific. So I chalk that up as a fail for those player(s). Yay for rewarding people that have real knowledge of MIA and/or Slumdog Millionaire!
Cheynem wrote:I'm glad that neither of you wrote the tossup on Silence of the Lambs: the musical which ended up in your packet!
I don't think that ended up in our packet.
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Re: DOKTRINE-University of Pittsburgh-4/10

Post by Cheynem »

Yes, sorry about the confusion with the Silence! tossup--that was not in your packet.

I'm sure the clue is specific for the Slumdog Millionaire album, but I'm not sure how optimal it is. It incited negs in the admittedly more informal atmospheres of practice and the IRC when read and according to Steve, did the same in an actual match.
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Re: DOKTRINE-University of Pittsburgh-4/10

Post by mcgroth »

Yeah, Rob, you've got the people and placings right. I would also like to point out the fact that Greg had no negs the entire tournament and that Marisol had more powers (14) than anyone else in the tournament. All in all, I'm pretty happy with how things turned out.
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Re: DOKTRINE-University of Pittsburgh-4/10

Post by Dan-Don »

Cheynem wrote:I'm sure the clue is specific for the Slumdog Millionaire album, but I'm not sure how optimal it is. It incited negs in the admittedly more informal atmospheres of practice and the IRC when read and according to Steve, did the same in an actual match.
Yeah I hear ya. But damn...I wish there were a good way to toss up the Slumdog soundtrack.
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Re: DOKTRINE-University of Pittsburgh-4/10

Post by Cheynem »

I suppose you could have written a tossup on Slumdog using only music clues (maybe too transparent). I do agree that the soundtrack is important--perhaps a bonus might have been a good way to test information about it.
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Re: DOKTRINE-University of Pittsburgh-4/10

Post by Auroni »

Generic Illinois Poster #181 wrote:
Cheynem wrote:I'm sure the clue is specific for the Slumdog Millionaire album, but I'm not sure how optimal it is. It incited negs in the admittedly more informal atmospheres of practice and the IRC when read and according to Steve, did the same in an actual match.
Yeah I hear ya. But damn...I wish there were a good way to toss up the Slumdog soundtrack.
"this soundtrack"
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Re: DOKTRINE-University of Pittsburgh-4/10

Post by Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN) »

I mean, they said it was a remix of that song. Kala has the original on it, and if you, say, listen to that album once or twice you should know that. I don't exactly feel sorry for people who buzzed from a mix of ignorance about the topic and ignoring that obviously important word remix.
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Re: DOKTRINE-University of Pittsburgh-4/10

Post by Frater Taciturnus »

Delaware B’s packet wrote:
10. Founding member Chris Collingwood played for pop-country band Gay Potatoes between 1999 and 2001 while this band was on hiatus. Formed in the early 90’s by songwriter and bass player Adam Schlesinger, their most recent albums are 2007’s Traffic and Weather and 2005’s(*) Out of State Plates. Their self-titled album was released in 1996, but it is their 2003 effort Welcome Interstate Managers for which they are best-known. For ten points, identify this group named for a lawn ornament in front of a New Jersey store who recorded the hit “Stacy’s Mom.”
ANS: Fountains of Wayne
Ok where to start with this? Well let’s take it from the top, looking at the structure of this tossup. The third and fourth words of the tossup are the first and last name of the lead singer. From there we go continue listing band members, before we hit a two line list of their albums, and then a giveaway about the story behind their name, and their song that is the reason why that name sounds familiar to people.

Next, this tossup is boring as hell. As much as I like Fountains of Wayne (hint: a lot), this tossup is really goddamn boring. The Gay Potatoes anecdote comes close to being an actual interesting clue, but from there this tossup could literally be thrown together as a Mad Lib. There are interesting things to put in tossups on Fountains of Wayne, outside of Gay Potatoes! This tossup seems written as an afterthought, with no real effort except to look up the names of the albums. Outside of the dead giveaway, there is literally nothing about individual songs by the band. There is nothing about the music videos of the band. It is literally straight “do you know these album titles?” list knowledge testing. I mean, between Drew Carey, Demetri Martin, and whoever the chick was in Stacy’s Mom, there are some notable guest appearances in their music videos, including Drew Carey’s appearance being in a highly controversial video that I’m pretty sure got yanked off MTV. Basically, I am saying that there are good clues out there-find them and use them!

Moving beyond this tossup, I thought this tournament had a serious issue with subdistributions, and they skewed to the same problems every trash set seems to skew. This Delaware B packet has 2/1 soccer. Add in the hockey and golf, and this packet has 3/2 minor sports. This tournament did seem to have fewer questions searching for an individual album, which I was happy about, but some of the name the actor tossups got brutal.

Someone I see already mentioned the Tom Gola tossup, and was totally write about that: every good tournaments writers acknowledge that they needs to suck it up sometimes, and instead of writing the hilariously hard tossup they want, write an easier tossup that will be converted. It seemed half the time the tournament definitely got this but in every packet I have seen so far there has been 1-2 ridiculously hard, obvious vanity tossups.
Janet Berry
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mpellegrini
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Re: DOKTRINE-University of Pittsburgh-4/10

Post by mpellegrini »

Cheynem wrote:I'm glad that neither of you wrote the tossup on Silence of the Lambs: the musical which ended up in your packet.
I wrote that one. What was wrong with it?
Mark Pellegrini
University of Delaware (2001-Present)
Charter School of Wilmington (1997-2001)
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Nicklausse/Muse
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Re: DOKTRINE-University of Pittsburgh-4/10

Post by Nicklausse/Muse »

Just guessing - because it's not notable in its own right, it's just based on a famous thing? Because all gettable clues are actually references to the film?
Rebecca Maxfield
Brown University '13
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