BELFAST

[Tanay]

This is a very preliminary announcement for BELFAST (Bellarmine Fine Arts Singles Tournament): A View of Toledo from the Bedroom in Arles.
BELFAST is a fine arts set being produced by Tanay Kothari (Bellarmine College Prep) and hopefully others from Bellarmine as well as several generous outsiders. Editing help and advice would be appreciated.

QUESTIONS: Tossups only. Questions will be 6-8 lines long in 10-point font with optional power marks. I am hoping to write 6-8 packets of twenty questions with a tiebreaker question in each packet. My hope is that the tournament will be enjoyable for anyone from high schoolers interested in art to college players. Difficulty will be around HSNCT/NSC/ACF Fall, with questions reaching ACF Winter level at the hardest. For comparison, see the fine arts questions in the Chipola tournament from earlier this year. That will be roughly the difficulty I am attempting to hit with the median question. The last packet will feature questions that are slightly harder than the others (practically all of the questions will be college level) so that any final round will be sufficiently challenging for those involved.

DISTRIBUTION: Half the questions will be visual arts (painting, architecture, etc) and half will be auditory arts (classical music, opera, etc). An attempt to release a sub-distribution is still in the works. Any help on determining a sub-distribution would be appreciated, as I don't anticipate having one that is identical to previous Fine Arts tournaments that catered mostly to really solid college art players.

PRICING: The pricing of this tournament will not be set in stone until I can realistically determine how many packets will be written. I intend to set it at $10 per person, but if I cannot write at least 7 packets or something else significant comes up, it will be $5 per person.

WHY THIS IS BEING WRITTEN: I believe that the fine arts canon is large enough to allow for the creation of a set that is playable for both high school and college students. This set will not be as difficult as KLEE or Pontormo, and I think this is a good thing for many people.

HOSTING THIS TOURNAMENT: I don't anticipate hosting this tournament at Bellarmine or seeing it occur at any other Bay Area high school. Mirrors are definitely the way to go. I intend to finish writing this tournament over the summer, so it will be ready for play during the 2010-2011 academic year. I prefer mirrors taking place in 2010 itself, but I've already made an exception to this, so I guess early 2011 is fine as well. Anyone interested in mirroring should contact me at myfirstname.mylastname at ThatEmailSiteGoogleRuns dot com or on Facebook.

PROGRESS: This will be updated periodically. About 4 packets have been completed.

More details will be posted here as they become apparent.

Thanks,
Tanay Kothari '11

[DumbJaques]

HSNCT/NSC to ACF Fall

HSNCT and NSC difficulty goes markedly higher than ACF Fall, I think.

[Tanay]

HSNCT/NSC to ACF Fall

HSNCT and NSC difficulty goes markedly higher than ACF Fall, I think.

Fair point. Fixed. Thanks.

[Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN)]

Given the difficulty, is the plan to have this be truly an open tournament where you want top arts players like Mike Sorice and Jonathan Magin to play (or even a player below their tier but still capable of putting up really good buzzes on some NSC level arts like me), or is it "open," with the intention of their being some kind of gentleman's agreement to keep the kinds of players who can destroy the set out of the field, given that its of pretty easy difficulty?

[Tanay]

Given the difficulty, is the plan to have this be truly an open tournament where you want top arts players like Mike Sorice and Jonathan Magin to play (or even a player below their tier but still capable of putting up really good buzzes on some NSC level arts like me), or is it "open," with the intention of their being some kind of gentleman's agreement to keep the kinds of players who can destroy the set out of the field, given that its of pretty easy difficulty?

I don't want to prevent anyone from playing for any reason. People who are really good at arts should know that this set really isn't comparable to stuff like KLEE; in other words, if the arts questions in ACF Fall or ACF Winter are consistently too easy for you, these questions will be as well. But in this case, instead of just having two or three arts questions in a packet, there will be twenty around that difficulty. That said, if you would still enjoy playing the set, please go ahead. I think Andrew Yaphe did this with the Chipola Fine Arts/Lit set (also ACF Fall/Winter difficulty) and ended up buzzing on all 20 questions in one game, which is pretty neat.

In terms of resolving a potential disparity in experience or talent, I noticed that VIOLATEDD used two divisions ("Demi-Gods" and "Mortals") to distinguish players of differing capabilities and make sure it was competitive and fun for everyone involved, and that might be something that TDs look into if there are clearly players who are a step or five ahead of the rest of the field.

The finals packet, I hope, will be interesting for even top arts players.

[jdeliverer]

Sorry for bumping, but was a subdistribution ever determined? Since it looks like we're playing a mirror of this next week in Illinois, unless I've missed something.

[Mike Bentley]

Hey so is this tournament going to be done by next weekend? I think there'd be some interest in playing it at CULT at VCU after everything is done.

[Tanay]

Sorry for the late response. I got back from Kansas City (with sporadic Internet access) earlier today. Two of our five writers opted out of the project (and subsequently, their writing assignments) within the last week, so it doesn't look promising. I'll do what I can, but the completion of this set by next weekend is a longshot at best.

[Tanay]

BELFAST has been fortunate enough to receive the help of a few good men. The outlook is better now than it was yesterday, and it's possible that we can get this set out by next weekend. However, more writers (especially music) would be appreciated.

[Tanay]

The sub-distribution is roughly:

10/0 Visual
- 3/0 Painters
- 3/0 Paintings
- 1/0 Architecture
- 1/0 Sculpture
- 1/0 Common Link
- 1/0 Miscellaneous (film, photography, art movements, literature about art, etc)

10/0 Auditory
- 2/0 Classical Music Pieces
- 3/0 Composers
- 1/0 Jazz/Modern Music
- 1/0 Ballet/Dance
- 1/0 Opera
- 1/0 Misc/Common Link
- 1/0 Something from one of the above categories

[Tanay]

Hey so is this tournament going to be done by next weekend? I think there'd be some interest in playing it at CULT at VCU after everything is done.

We will have five operational packets by this weekend. Is there interest in this mirror?

[Mike Bentley]

Hey so is this tournament going to be done by next weekend? I think there'd be some interest in playing it at CULT at VCU after everything is done.

We will have five operational packets by this weekend. Is there interest in this mirror?

Yes. Is anyone attending CULT in Richmond interested in staffing?

[jonah]

Was it intentional that packet five was way, way, more difficult than the others?

[Auroni]

Was it intentional that packet five was way, way, more difficult than the others?

The last packet will feature questions that are slightly harder than the others (practically all of the questions will be college level) so that any final round will be sufficiently challenging for those involved.

[jonah]

Was it intentional that packet five was way, way, more difficult than the others?

The last packet will feature questions that are slightly harder than the others (practically all of the questions will be college level) so that any final round will be sufficiently challenging for those involved.

Yes. I don't think the difference that actually was present constitutes "slightly harder", and was wondering if the degree of difficulty increase was intentional.

[Tanay]

Was it intentional that packet five was way, way, more difficult than the others?

The last packet will feature questions that are slightly harder than the others (practically all of the questions will be college level) so that any final round will be sufficiently challenging for those involved.

Yes. I don't think the difference that actually was present constitutes "slightly harder", and was wondering if the degree of difficulty increase was intentional.

I have no problem admitting that I messed up a bit in estimating the difficulty of the questions. I guess my intention in the final round packet was to challenge even the best players with stuff that was exciting and rarely asked about, but on the other hand, I should probably have more than four preliminary packets if that's the case. I'm looking into replacing a few of the questions or writing a few more packets to transition difficulty and will address other concerns as needed.

[jonah]

Was it intentional that packet five was way, way, more difficult than the others?

The last packet will feature questions that are slightly harder than the others (practically all of the questions will be college level) so that any final round will be sufficiently challenging for those involved.

Yes. I don't think the difference that actually was present constitutes "slightly harder", and was wondering if the degree of difficulty increase was intentional.

I have no problem admitting that I messed up a bit in estimating the difficulty of the questions. I guess my intention in the final round packet was to challenge even the best players with stuff that was exciting and rarely asked about, but on the other hand, I should probably have more than four preliminary packets if that's the case. I'm looking into replacing a few of the questions or writing a few more packets to transition difficulty and will address other concerns as needed.

I agree, and obviously the latter option is preferable. While that packet might make sense as a finals packet (though in my opinion it's probably too great a jump of difficulty even for that), with 5 packets chances are good everyone's going to play all the packets. That packet in particular produced a score of 0-(-10) in my room, and while that's unusually bad, it's also obscenely low.

[Tanay]

This tournament is still open for mirrors. I'm planning to add one more round, replace some of the final round answers that were deemed too tough, and move those (along with some others) to a declared "hard" round that can be played for fun without necessarily being given final-round designation.