ANNOUNCEMENT: Michigan Winter Tournament (Winter 2020)
Posted: Wed Apr 03, 2019 11:42 am
I am pleased to announce the 2020 Michigan Winter Tournament, a regular-minus-difficulty tournament to be available for mirrors starting January 2020.
The tournament will be written largely by members of the University of Michigan club, as well as several outside editors. The following people will be editors for the tournament (in alphabetical order):
Harris Bunker [UCSD] -- philosophy, social science
Emmett Laurie [Rutgers] -- US literature, history
Evan Lynch [Southampton] -- overall difficulty and quality control
Matt Mitchell [Colorado] -- physics, CS
Eric Mukherjee [ex-Penn] -- bio, chem
Jacob O'Rourke [ex-Truman State] -- literature
Rudra Ranganathan [Michigan] -- myth
Conor Thompson [Michigan] -- math, other science, religion, geography, other academic
Jeremy Tsai [Maryland] -- auditory fine arts
Chandler West [Auburn] -- visual fine arts
This will be a closed tournament, with the exception of an online playtesting mirror to be announced later. Teams must consist of players from one school, which can be a middle school, high school, college, or any other well-defined educational institution. Other than at the online playtest mirror, chimera teams will not be allowed. If you are directing a mirror and would like to request an exception to these eligibility rules, please email me ([email protected]) with your request. If you are playing a mirror and would like to request an exception to these eligibility rules, you will need to clear it both with me and with the tournament director of your mirror.
Our target difficulty is a 2 on the quizbowl calendar scale; we hope to produce a tournament similar in difficulty to past instances of EFT and somewhat easier than ACF Regionals. My goal is for the set to be interesting and break new ground without being particularly oppressive in difficulty; I don't believe that spiciness has to come at the expense of accessibility and will be doing my best to put that philosophy to work in my writing and editing.
The tournament will consist of fifteen packets of 22/22, intended to be read in their entirety and using the following distribution (all categories will have an equal representation as tossups and bonuses):
4 Literature
1 American
1 British
1 European
1 World
4 Science
1 Biology
1 Physics
0.75 Chemistry
0.625 Math (about two-thirds pure and one-third applied)
0.625 Earth/Astro/CS/Other
4 History
1 American
1 European
0.5 Asia (incl. the Middle East and other non-East Asia things)
0.5 World Non-Asia
1 "Grab Bag" (incl. Commonwealth, ancient, other, etc.)
3.5 Fine Arts
1 Classical Music
1 Painting
0.75 Other Auditory/Performance
0.75 Other Visual
2.5 "Thought"
1 Philosophy
1.5 Social Science (split six ways equally between economics, linguistics, anthropology/archaeology, psychology/sociology, IR/polisci, and other social science)
2 "Beliefs"
1 Religion (split evenly between Judeo-Christian and not that)
1 Mythology (split 6/4/6 between Greco-Roman, other European, and non-European)
2 Other
1 Geography
1 Other Academic
Questions will be powermarked.
There will not be a designated finals packet; hosts not using all fifteen packets are free to use either packets 14/15 for finals or simply to continue in order. For tournaments which are using all the packets, or which might be using them for tiebreakers, we will provide a short packet of "extras" to use as tiebreakers or replacements. This will likely consist of fewer than ten tossups and fewer than five bonuses.
We are seeking mirrors in each of the following regions. The mirror fee will be $40 per non-house team. If you are interested in hosting a mirror, email me at [email protected]; if you are not in one of the listed regions or believe that your region could support multiple mirrors, we would still like to hear from you -- this is not an exhaustive list! (Likewise, we understand that there may not be mirrors in all of these regions.)
We would prefer mirrors in January or February to provide teams with a tournament to play during those months that is not Regs or SCT, but if you feel your circuit would be better served by a March mirror, we are open to that possibility.
As mentioned above, we expect hosts to read all 22/22 of the packets, rather than only the first 20/20 as many mirrors of e.g. NAQT's high school sets do. We will be keeping a strong control on question length (I expect all questions to be shorter than 750 characters, or 6-7 lines of 10-point TNR) in order to make sure that this doesn't lead to a significantly higher time burden on hosts.
List of Mirrors
New England: Harvard (date TBD)
Northeast: Rutgers (15 February 2020)
Mid-Atlantic: VCU (1 February 2020)
North: Iowa (29 February 2020)
Midwest: Michigan (18 January 2020)
Canada: Waterloo (11 January 2020)
Southeast: Auburn (18 January 2020)
Texas: North Texas (22 February 2020)
Southern California: California-San Diego (1 February 2020)
United Kingdom: Southampton (29 February 2020)
The Internet [open]: Discord (21 December 2019, playtest mirror)
Social Distancing Mirror [open, tossups only]: Discord (21 March 2020)
The tournament will be written largely by members of the University of Michigan club, as well as several outside editors. The following people will be editors for the tournament (in alphabetical order):
Harris Bunker [UCSD] -- philosophy, social science
Emmett Laurie [Rutgers] -- US literature, history
Evan Lynch [Southampton] -- overall difficulty and quality control
Matt Mitchell [Colorado] -- physics, CS
Eric Mukherjee [ex-Penn] -- bio, chem
Jacob O'Rourke [ex-Truman State] -- literature
Rudra Ranganathan [Michigan] -- myth
Conor Thompson [Michigan] -- math, other science, religion, geography, other academic
Jeremy Tsai [Maryland] -- auditory fine arts
Chandler West [Auburn] -- visual fine arts
This will be a closed tournament, with the exception of an online playtesting mirror to be announced later. Teams must consist of players from one school, which can be a middle school, high school, college, or any other well-defined educational institution. Other than at the online playtest mirror, chimera teams will not be allowed. If you are directing a mirror and would like to request an exception to these eligibility rules, please email me ([email protected]) with your request. If you are playing a mirror and would like to request an exception to these eligibility rules, you will need to clear it both with me and with the tournament director of your mirror.
Our target difficulty is a 2 on the quizbowl calendar scale; we hope to produce a tournament similar in difficulty to past instances of EFT and somewhat easier than ACF Regionals. My goal is for the set to be interesting and break new ground without being particularly oppressive in difficulty; I don't believe that spiciness has to come at the expense of accessibility and will be doing my best to put that philosophy to work in my writing and editing.
The tournament will consist of fifteen packets of 22/22, intended to be read in their entirety and using the following distribution (all categories will have an equal representation as tossups and bonuses):
4 Literature
1 American
1 British
1 European
1 World
4 Science
1 Biology
1 Physics
0.75 Chemistry
0.625 Math (about two-thirds pure and one-third applied)
0.625 Earth/Astro/CS/Other
4 History
1 American
1 European
0.5 Asia (incl. the Middle East and other non-East Asia things)
0.5 World Non-Asia
1 "Grab Bag" (incl. Commonwealth, ancient, other, etc.)
3.5 Fine Arts
1 Classical Music
1 Painting
0.75 Other Auditory/Performance
0.75 Other Visual
2.5 "Thought"
1 Philosophy
1.5 Social Science (split six ways equally between economics, linguistics, anthropology/archaeology, psychology/sociology, IR/polisci, and other social science)
2 "Beliefs"
1 Religion (split evenly between Judeo-Christian and not that)
1 Mythology (split 6/4/6 between Greco-Roman, other European, and non-European)
2 Other
1 Geography
1 Other Academic
Questions will be powermarked.
There will not be a designated finals packet; hosts not using all fifteen packets are free to use either packets 14/15 for finals or simply to continue in order. For tournaments which are using all the packets, or which might be using them for tiebreakers, we will provide a short packet of "extras" to use as tiebreakers or replacements. This will likely consist of fewer than ten tossups and fewer than five bonuses.
We are seeking mirrors in each of the following regions. The mirror fee will be $40 per non-house team. If you are interested in hosting a mirror, email me at [email protected]; if you are not in one of the listed regions or believe that your region could support multiple mirrors, we would still like to hear from you -- this is not an exhaustive list! (Likewise, we understand that there may not be mirrors in all of these regions.)
We would prefer mirrors in January or February to provide teams with a tournament to play during those months that is not Regs or SCT, but if you feel your circuit would be better served by a March mirror, we are open to that possibility.
As mentioned above, we expect hosts to read all 22/22 of the packets, rather than only the first 20/20 as many mirrors of e.g. NAQT's high school sets do. We will be keeping a strong control on question length (I expect all questions to be shorter than 750 characters, or 6-7 lines of 10-point TNR) in order to make sure that this doesn't lead to a significantly higher time burden on hosts.
List of Mirrors
New England: Harvard (date TBD)
Northeast: Rutgers (15 February 2020)
Mid-Atlantic: VCU (1 February 2020)
North: Iowa (29 February 2020)
Midwest: Michigan (18 January 2020)
Canada: Waterloo (11 January 2020)
Southeast: Auburn (18 January 2020)
Texas: North Texas (22 February 2020)
Southern California: California-San Diego (1 February 2020)
United Kingdom: Southampton (29 February 2020)
The Internet [open]: Discord (21 December 2019, playtest mirror)
Social Distancing Mirror [open, tossups only]: Discord (21 March 2020)