Eminent Victorians (a 19th century side event)

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Gene Harrogate
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Eminent Victorians (a 19th century side event)

Post by Gene Harrogate »

I have made enough progress that I am happy to announce Eminent Victorians, a tossup-only side event focused entirely on the long nineteenth century! With help from Sheena Li, I am producing 10 packets of 20 powermarked tossups each, focused on the period of 1789 to 1914 (or, roughly, the Quebec Act to the Battle of Vimy Ridge). The distribution will be:

5 History
5 Literature
3 Fine Arts
2 Thought
1 Religion
2 History of Science
2 "Culture" (Academic other, mixed category, technology, old pop culture, random things)

Tossups are capped at 8.5 lines. Some Eurocentricism will be unavoidable in the literature and arts, but this tournament will by no means be a litany of Dead White Men (well, the clued people will probably be dead). Expect diverse and underrepresented topics, as well as some old favorites.

The median tossup will be somewhere in the neighborhood of FLOPEN, though with a good mix of difficult and common answerlines. My goal is to serve up a fun, playable half-day of quizbowl for both the certified masters of the musty, and players who are comfortable with something like Regionals.

I aim to have this tournament ready for the 2022 winter/spring semester.
Henry Atkins
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Gene Harrogate
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Re: Eminent Victorians (a 19th century side event)

Post by Gene Harrogate »

Hey all, an update on our progress:

This set is mostly written and should be ready for mirrors in August. We plan on hosting an in-person Canadian mirror, a fall online mirror, and (if possible) an evening mirror at Chicago Open. We would greatly welcome any mirrors of this set for in-person tournament weekends as well. While the questions are difficult, we did make an effort to keep our answerlines (mostly) reasonable and our clues varied. We plan on charging $10 a person.

One important change from the announcement is that packets now consist of 22 tossups, with an additional tossup on "any fine art" and an additional tossup on "our choice." We're trying out Mike Bentley's experimental powermarking system: buzzes until midway through the question will be worth 20 points and buzzes until roughtly the FTP will be worth 15.

Because we would like to have the best set possible come mirror time, we're looking for a few playtesters to test out individual categories over the next two months as we finish writing. Please contact me if you'd prefer giving feedback to actually playing the full set!
Henry Atkins
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Gene Harrogate
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Re: Eminent Victorians (a 19th century side event)

Post by Gene Harrogate »

This tournament is now available for mirrors, beginning with Norcal Side Event Weekend on 8/21! Please contact me on the forums, discord, or at henrya20 at gmail if you're interested in running this for a local mirror. I'll also host an online mirror at some point in the early fall.
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Re: Eminent Victorians (a 19th century side event)

Post by Tejas »

I wanted to clarify since the name of the event confused me, does this set focus on Britain/Europe during the given time period or is it global?
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Gene Harrogate
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Re: Eminent Victorians (a 19th century side event)

Post by Gene Harrogate »

Megachile dupla wrote: Thu Aug 11, 2022 3:01 pm I wanted to clarify since the name of the event confused me, does this set focus on Britain/Europe during the given time period or is it global?
Global, though some Eurocentricism in the literature and arts is unfortunately unavoidable.
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Re: Eminent Victorians (a 19th century side event)

Post by aseem.keyal »

I had a blast playing this set at the Stanford side event weekend! There were a ton of great ideas in each packet and I'd highly recommend people try to play this event if they're able to.
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Re: Eminent Victorians (a 19th century side event)

Post by Mike Bentley »

Yeah, this was fun. I can't remember how hard FLopen was but this did seem like a pretty challenging set, more so than I remember an open tournament being. Still worth playing but keep in mind that there's some stuff that's going to be pretty tough.
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University of Maryland, Class of 2008
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Gene Harrogate
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Re: Eminent Victorians (a 19th century side event)

Post by Gene Harrogate »

For a little more clarity (in case the set name confused anyone) the distribution is:
1 American history
1 British history
1 European history
1 World history
1 Interactions/global history

2 Prose fiction
1 Poetry
2 Any/other

1 Painting/sculpture
1 AFA
1 OFA
1 Any art

2 History of science

1 Philosophy
1 Social science/other thought
1 Religion

2 Culture (mixed, human geography, technology, 19th century pop culture)
1 My choice (generally tending towards mixed/culture)

Categories vary across regions and the period of 1789-1914
Henry Atkins
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Gene Harrogate
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Re: Eminent Victorians (a 19th century side event)

Post by Gene Harrogate »

The last planned mirror for this is in Canada in November. If you'd like to host it at some point this school year, let me know in the next month or two!
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Re: Eminent Victorians (a 19th century side event)

Post by ThisIsMyUsername »

This set is great. It contains a judicious mix of standard quizbowl fare and stuff you could not easily ask about in a run-of-the-mill tournament (because the clues cut across too many disciplines or belong to categories somewhat outside the mACF distribution). The stuff I didn’t know about sounded interesting and worth knowing. And the set as a whole gives a nice overview of the cultural highlights of the long nineteenth century.
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Re: Eminent Victorians (a 19th century side event)

Post by Cheynem »

I also enjoyed the set a lot. The difficulty is indeed probably a touch harder than advertised (although few questions are really of the "stump the chump" variety). I also was impressed at the varied amount of content packed into the questions--it really didn't feel like you were playing something that "tightly focused" (meaning this as a compliment).

I'm ambivalent if the 20-15-10 format worked or not. I liked having the superpowers, but there were times when I felt like the superpower mark ran a long time. I do think that having superpowers of some sort adds a certain elan and zing to tossup-only formats and also allows a hot buzzing team to get back into a game immediately (or put away a game and not just have a series of unsatisfying neg-vulch sequences decide a game).
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Re: Eminent Victorians (a 19th century side event)

Post by A Dim-Witted Saboteur »

Echoing the praise above, this was a delightful set. A really good mix of underrepresented parts of the 19th century and standard canon stuff that seldom felt dry. Thanks for writing!
Jakob M. (they/them)
Michigan State '21, Indiana '2?
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Gene Harrogate
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Re: Eminent Victorians (a 19th century side event)

Post by Gene Harrogate »

This has been posted to the archives and is now clear. Thanks everyone who played it!
Henry Atkins
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