ACF Fall discussion

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Re: ACF Fall discussion (don't read, players at U Wash. site)

Post by cvdwightw »

To the best of my knowledge, Sicily is not a city. Hawking radiation showed up twice, and there was at least one other repeat I don't remember; also, the Mohs/Moh's/Mohr's scale showed up twice in bonuses.

As I said before, this tournament was pretty awesome. A few minor flaws here and there, but nothing that distracted from the overall accessibility and quality of questions.
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Re: ACF Fall discussion (don't read, players at U Wash. site)

Post by Saiem »

dschafer wrote: Computer Science / Math

More on Math/CS:
Dartmouth A Bonus 4 wrote: [10] Identify this curve named for a female Italian mathematician, which asymptotically approaches 0 as x approaches plus or minus infinity, and which can be generated by extending all chords passing through a fixed point on the circle.
ANSWER: witch of Agnesi [or Agnesienne; or cubique d’Agnesi]
I looked this up on Mathworld after hearing that packet, and it's neat looking and all, but that seems pretty obscure. A search of my records reveals that it showed up in PACE one year; before that, it was the hard part of an ACF Nats bonus. I think this was very hard, even for the third part of a bonus.

(Edits for grammar)
Nah, the witch of Agnesi is really just well known cause it has an awesome name, honestly. It doesn't strike me as particularly important, but I've definitely heard about it several times, and could certainly pull it as a bonus part on a function named for a female mathematician.

EDIT (comments on the tournament): This tournament was pretty well-written for the most part. My teammate (I believe) also negged with The Ambassadors for the Burial at Ornans. Our team didn't get the Gorilla suit tossup (we negged pretty early with conformity because someone wasn't listening), but that has to be one of the coolest experiments to come up in a tossup.

The math for the most part was pretty good, no real complaints. Though, I had a psychic buzz neg on the perfect numbers question. I heard something like "All but the smallest of these can be expressed as the sum *buzz* Primes*

I thought it was quoting the goldbach conjecture, which would lead one to primes. What happens in this situation? Am I just retarded? Luckily it didn't matter in that match, it was just a dumb neg. But the rest of the way down, that question was pretty interesting.

Tossups I thought were good: Harold and Kumar (lulz), Fermat, Crassus, Soyinka, Daedalus and Kurt Warner.

People that should have an s at the end of their name: Thomas Kuhn

Number of Negs I had that showed up in other rounds: 8

Number of Negs I had: 9
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Re: ACF Fall discussion (don't read, players at U Wash. site)

Post by MiltonPlayer47 »

This was an excellent tournament. These aren't complaints but are some things my teammates and I noticed:

There seemed to be more Fine Arts than what you would expect even from an ACF tournament. In our first round there were two toss ups on composers (Elgar and Rimsky-Korsakov) and two on painting (Degas and I don't remember the other). The tournament as a whole seemed to have a lot of painting in general.

There were also a lot of Bible questions it seemed like. I'll admit I wrote a Bible bonus myself, mainly because Religion is a weak category for me and since I had to write it for my team's pack a Bible bonus was an easy way to go.

Geography seemed to come up more than in past years. There was consistently one toss up a round and it seemed like it was almost always on a country. There was never more than 1/1 a round and since I like geography there is no use in complaining, but the other ACF Falls I have played in had more rounds where there was zero Geography.

Finally, we all noticed there was a pretty large amount of astronomy and astrophysics.

All of the things I just mentioned can probably be attributed to trying to keep difficulty down or the editors trying their best to use what people submitted.

Thanks to all the writers and editors for making this a great set!
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Re: ACF Fall discussion (don't read, players at U Wash. site)

Post by evilmonkey »

grashid wrote:Hey, I don't know Andrew Hart's email, so I was wondering if someone could email me the questions? Thanks.
Me too please. [email protected]
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Re: ACF Fall discussion (don't read, players at U Wash. site)

Post by Auks Ran Ova »

dschafer wrote:Computer Science / Math
William Afham wrote:
Ukonvasara wrote:
la2pgh wrote:The tossups on quicksort and tree left me wanting. I don't know anything about CS, but I got tree and was outbuzzed on quicksort. I think that those answers were a bit on the easy side.
So, uh, what is your complaint here, other than that an easy tournament had accessible answers?
I am pretty sure that those questions were fine to good, and there is no way they are too accessible, especially for those just being introduced to the game.
I thought the quicksort tossup was average. I got that tossup when we played it in practice right after mergesort was mentioned, based on "hey, this sort sounds actually useful, and they've already mentioned every other actually useful sort," since heapsort was previously mentioned as well. Rereading it, the start said (paraphrasing) "this is recursive and has a worst case", which in hindsight should have clued me to quicksort, but that TU was gotten by process-of-elimination in a practice attended by multiple CS people, which doesn't seem ideal. Tree seemed like a really well-written tossup, though.
Since I made substantial edits to both of these questions, I'll respond. You are entirely correct that quicksort was somewhat guessable, especially if you hear the names of other sorting algorithms and make the not-unreasonable logical leap that "hey, maybe this could be the most askable one that hasn't been mentioned yet." While I failed to foresee the guessability, making it probably not the platonic ideal of quicksort questions, I'd like to think I did a good job of producing a tossup filled with, at the very least, concrete and informative clues. I definitely believe that if you are a knowledgable CS player, you should probably be getting novice-level CS tossups early, but this was likely not the best possible way to ensure that. I am glad you liked the tree tossup!
dschafer wrote:
Harvard A + New College, Bonus 5 wrote: This term, one of the tenets of OOP, refers to the ability of methods to accept as input a variety of types of objects.
ANSWER: polymorphism [accept word forms]
As it pertains to OOP, that's not the the best definition of polymorphism I've seen; might there have been confusion between Type polymorphism vs. Polymorphism in object-oriented programming?
Yeah, this was my bad. I wrote that bonus mostly from memory and, like a chump, defined the wrong type of polymorphism. I'm sorry if this resulted in anyone failing to get points.
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Re: ACF Fall discussion (don't read, players at U Wash. site)

Post by Cheynem »

I actually didn't care for the Kurt Warner toss-up; it brought up NFL Europe and Arena Football way too early, in my opinion (of course, I still sat on it until it said "Trent Green").
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Re: ACF Fall discussion (don't read, players at U Wash. site)

Post by vcuEvan »

I unfortunately didn't get to play it but from a moderator's perspective this was pretty much the ideal easy college tournament. Good job guys.
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Re: ACF Fall discussion (don't read, players at U Wash. site)

Post by Mechanical Beasts »

Ukonvasara wrote: Since I made substantial edits to both of these questions, I'll respond. You are entirely correct that quicksort was somewhat guessable, especially if you hear the names of other sorting algorithms and make the not-unreasonable logical leap that "hey, maybe this could be the most askable one that hasn't been mentioned yet." While I failed to foresee the guessability, making it probably not the platonic ideal of quicksort questions, I'd like to think I did a good job of producing a tossup filled with, at the very least, concrete and informative clues. I definitely believe that if you are a knowledgable CS player, you should probably be getting novice-level CS tossups early, but this was likely not the best possible way to ensure that. I am glad you liked the tree tossup!
I wouldn't worry about this. Your quicksort question was more interesting than the average quicksort question, and moreover, it's literally impossible to prevent anyone who knows what CS words mean and who knows diddly about the canon from a meta perspective to be able to infer "this sounds recursive and is askable and is not merge" pretty early! The fact that you kept it good for as long as you did is a testament to goodness.
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Re: ACF Fall discussion (don't read, players at U Wash. site)

Post by Skepticism and Animal Feed »

Why was my "Mandy Moore" tossup cut from the set?
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Re: ACF Fall discussion (don't read, players at U Wash. site)

Post by pray for elves »

Whig's Boson wrote:Mandy Moore
Whig's Boson wrote:Mandy Moore
Whig's Boson wrote:MANDY MOORE
Do you really need to ask this question?
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Re: ACF Fall discussion (don't read, players at U Wash. site)

Post by Mechanical Beasts »

Salad Fingers, man. A much bigger loss.
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Re: ACF Fall discussion (don't read, players at U Wash. site)

Post by OntarioQuizzer »

Moderating, I really thought that this was a great set. The answer selection and accessibility led to even the bottom schools at our tournament being able to score some points. The questions themselves were interesting as well, and I felt that I learned a lot even moderating, though it really felt like a number of packets could have used a proofreader. I wish I had a copy of the set here to point out some of the grammatical errors, but I don't.

All in all, well done!
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Re: ACF Fall discussion (don't read, players at U Wash. site)

Post by Matt Weiner »

For what it's worth, I found that the tossups did a laudable job of distinguishing between even top players with the leadins, while still being super-accessible at the end. So, Brown and Dartmouth should have had a legitimate game even if they were 30ing every bonus (which I imagine they were not literally doing.)
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Re: ACF Fall discussion (don't read, players at U Wash. site)

Post by Magister Ludi »

Greg, I am sorry if the Die Fledermaus question confused you. In my experience, non-Gilbert and Sullivan operettas are alternatively referred to as operas. In the performances I've attended of Die Fledermaus and Gianni Schicchi both were referred to as operas in the programs. In the opera reference book that I wrote the Die Fledermaus question out of, operetta is defined: "Literally a short opera. It's impossible to draw a steady line between all operetta and opera." If I mentioned operetta at the start of the question it would be to obvious. That transprency issue compounded with the fact that calling Die Fledermaus an opera would not be technically incorrect lead me to make that decision.

I also want to apologize for the factual error in the Beloved question. It was a submitted question and I didn't double check those details.

I edited non-world lit, classical music, jazz/opera, and philosophy. If you would like feedback on your packet (even if the packet was not used), I would be happy to offer comments.
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Re: ACF Fall discussion (don't read, players at U Wash. site)

Post by Golran »

Yeah, I would like feedback, my packet was the UCLA B packet. My e-mail is Golran@NOSPAMucla-DOT-edu
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Re: ACF Fall discussion (don't read, players at U Wash. site)

Post by lasercats »

Magister Ludi wrote:Greg, I am sorry if the Die Fledermaus question confused you. In my experience, non-Gilbert and Sullivan operettas are alternatively referred to as operas. In the performances I've attended of Die Fledermaus and Gianni Schicchi both were referred to as operas in the programs. In the opera reference book that I wrote the Die Fledermaus question out of, operetta is defined: "Literally a short opera. It's impossible to draw a steady line between all operetta and opera." If I mentioned operetta at the start of the question it would be to obvious. That transprency issue compounded with the fact that calling Die Fledermaus an opera would not be technically incorrect lead me to make that decision.

I also want to apologize for the factual error in the Beloved question. It was a submitted question and I didn't double check those details.

I edited non-world lit, classical music, jazz/opera, and philosophy. If you would like feedback on your packet (even if the packet was not used), I would be happy to offer comments.

Thanks for including a question about Ives! I blanked on it, but it's nice to see an American composer who is not Gershwin etc. included in a question.
I think I would consider Fledermaus an opera rather than operetta, but I usually divide the two based more on subject matter and difficulty than length. Operetta and "Light Opera" are nearly synonymous in my book.
Anyway, great job on the music questions!
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Re: ACF Fall discussion (don't read, players at U Wash. site)

Post by Captain Sinico »

I didn't like the quicksort question because (I could be wrong here but) I didn't hear an unique clue anywhere in the first several lines. Of course, the few questions I didn't like were massively counterbalanced by the many, many questions I did like...

MaS
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Re: ACF Fall discussion (don't read, players at U Wash. site)

Post by Auks Ran Ova »

Captain Scipio wrote:I didn't like the quicksort question because (I could be wrong here but) I didn't hear an unique clue anywhere in the first several lines. Of course, the few questions I didn't like were massively counterbalanced by the many, many questions I did like...

MaS
Trygve and I wrote: In 1999, McIlroy created an adversary for this algorithm that guarantees that it will run in worst-case time. Its worst-case runtime can be avoided by switching to heapsort after a certain recursion depth, a construction known as introsort. Like mergesort, it is easily parallelizable, and its runtime can be decreased by first selecting the median of the unsorted input list. It was invented by C.A.R. Hoare, and the second phase of this algorithm is the partition function, which splits the original list into lists of elements that are greater or less than the chosen pivot value. For 10 points, identify this divide-and-conquer sorting algorithm which runs in big O of n log n time, named for its speed.
ANSWER: Quicksort
Actually, I thought every clue was unique, other than the thing about parallelizability, which, you're probably right, doesn't do a whole lot.
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Re: ACF Fall discussion (don't read, players at U Wash. site)

Post by fleurdelivre »

I got to see both some very very good teams and some newer teams play in my room over the course of the day; I think that this tournament was much less demoralizing for the lower half of the field, and it was great fun to read. I got the feeling throughout the day that I could actually have enjoyed playing this tournament (as opposed to my usual quizbowl enjoyment of sitting quietly with a buzzer in hand, watching my teammates answer questions).

Notes for set polishing:
1) Cauchy is an answer at one point and made at least two other appearances as a clue - it was a bit redundant.
2) In Round 11 or 12 at the Brandeis site (packet by Andrew or Cornell), there was a bonus where answer part 3 was mentioned in the lead-in - the person was a student of or hired by the central clue? I wish I could remember better, but by that point in the day...
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Re: ACF Fall discussion (don't read, players at U Wash. site)

Post by Captain Sinico »

Well, okay; I buzzed at "heapsort" so maybe it was a bit earlier than I thought. Unless I'm thinking wrong, the McIlroy adversary is just an already-sorted list, which is a worst-case guarantor for a lot of algorithms, so that clue's non-unique (I could be wrong there, though.) Switching to heapsort below a certain depth improves a lot of algorithms (largely because heapsort is a good algorithm in time) so that clue's certainly non-unique. It looks good after that, but it's really guessable at that point.

MaS
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Re: ACF Fall discussion (don't read, players at U Wash. site)

Post by Auks Ran Ova »

Captain Scipio wrote:Well, okay; I buzzed at "heapsort" so maybe it was a bit earlier than I thought. Unless I'm thinking wrong, the McIlroy adversary is just an already-sorted list, which is a worst-case guarantor for a lot of algorithms, so that clue's non-unique (I could be wrong there, though.)
That clue was in the submitted tossup as it appeared in the final; to check it during editing, I searched "McIlroy adversary" and found this, which didn't seem to make mention of other sorting algorithms (though I could have simply missed them).
Switching to heapsort below a certain depth improves a lot of algorithms (largely because heapsort is a good algorithm in time) so that clue's certainly non-unique.
This is true. However, the clue as a whole I think is useful by the end of the sentence, because as far as I know the term "introsort" is unique to the combination of quicksort and heapsort.
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Re: ACF Fall discussion (don't read, players at U Wash. site)

Post by Mechanical Beasts »

Captain Scipio wrote:Well, okay; I buzzed at "heapsort" so maybe it was a bit earlier than I thought. Unless I'm thinking wrong, the McIlroy adversary is just an already-sorted list, which is a worst-case guarantor for a lot of algorithms, so that clue's non-unique (I could be wrong there, though.) Switching to heapsort below a certain depth improves a lot of algorithms (largely because heapsort is a good algorithm in time) so that clue's certainly non-unique. It looks good after that, but it's really guessable at that point.
McIlroy's paper 'A Killer Adversary for Quicksort' wrote:Quicksort can be made to go quadratic by constructing input on the fly in response to the sequence of
items compared. The technique is illustrated by a specific adversary for the standard C qsort function. The general method works against any implementation of quicksort–even a randomizing one–that satisfies certain very mild and realistic assumptions.
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Re: ACF Fall discussion (don't read, players at U Wash. site)

Post by Auks Ran Ova »

everyday847 wrote:
Captain Scipio wrote:Well, okay; I buzzed at "heapsort" so maybe it was a bit earlier than I thought. Unless I'm thinking wrong, the McIlroy adversary is just an already-sorted list, which is a worst-case guarantor for a lot of algorithms, so that clue's non-unique (I could be wrong there, though.) Switching to heapsort below a certain depth improves a lot of algorithms (largely because heapsort is a good algorithm in time) so that clue's certainly non-unique. It looks good after that, but it's really guessable at that point.
McIlroy's paper 'A Killer Adversary for Quicksort' wrote:Quicksort can be made to go quadratic by constructing input on the fly in response to the sequence of
items compared. The technique is illustrated by a specific adversary for the standard C qsort function. The general method works against any implementation of quicksort–even a randomizing one–that satisfies certain very mild and realistic assumptions.
get out of my head andy watkins
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Re: ACF Fall discussion (don't read, players at U Wash. site)

Post by ihavenoidea »

12. This figure was the last of his race, and tutored such figures as Asclepius and Aeneas. For 10 points each:
[10] Name this figure, who exchanged his immortality to free Prometheus from his bondage.
ANSWER: Chiron [or Cheiron]
[10] Chiron was a member of this race of beings, who are half-horse.
ANSWER: centaurs
[10] One of Chiron’s star pupils was this mythical healer, who was the son of Apollo and Coronis and was killed with a thunderbolt after he kept resurrecting people for gold, much like Ron Paul.
ANSWER: Asclepius
I believe this is what Katy is talking about.
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Re: ACF Fall discussion (don't read, players at U Wash. site)

Post by Auroni »

auronigupta AT gmail DOT com - tell me how UCSD's packet was

There were only a handful of tossups that I felt were really weak (Bork mentioning Supreme Court in like the second clue, Coral Sea talking about US ships right away, Sanskrit literature) but overall there was amazing amount of stuff with great leadins. Personal favorites include the China, Calvino, and Vermont tossups and there was a lot of interesting stuff as the third part of bonuses (although you could really ramp up stuff like "loop of henle" as the hard part of a kidneys bonus).
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Re: ACF Fall discussion (don't read, players at U Wash. site)

Post by Ethnic history of the Vilnius region »

lasercats wrote: Thanks for including a question about Ives! I blanked on it, but it's nice to see an American composer who is not Gershwin etc. included in a question.
It's cool that you seemed to really enjoy your first go at an ACF tournament. Indeed, Ives comes up a whole lot in college quizbowl, as do lots of other American composers and their works. You're definitely in for tons of great music questions the more tournaments you go to.
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Re: ACF Fall discussion (don't read, players at U Wash. site)

Post by BuzzerZen »

Laudatory preface: Awesome tournament. Good job, editors. I liked the questions, scored points, and had fun. But you know that already.

I will reiterate the oft-voiced approval of the "color" tossup and disdain for the "knowledge" tossup.

Now, to occasionally post nitpicks as I look through the set and remember things that bothered me. For instance:
UCSD/Princeton A wrote: 6. This tradition was reformed by King Josiah, and the Second-Temple era service focused on Psalms 113 through 118. Traditional songs associated with this observance include Adir Hu and Had Gadya. Upon reciting the acronym “D'tzach adash b'achav,” wine is spilled. The Magid begins with a discussion of “the bread of affliction”, and also includes the tale of the Four Sons and the Four Questions. Also including the breaking of the middle matzah and hiding of the afikoman, the story of the Exodus is told before the meal is eaten. For 10 points, name this traditional Passover meal.
ANSWER: Passover Seder
I think this was a little strange/poorly edited. The first clue was lost on me, but I buzzed after "Had Gadya" with "Passover" and was negged without a prompt. There's nothing in the first two clues to really strongly suggest that the tossup is about the seder and not Passover in general. "Tradition" and "observance" could both easily refer to the holiday itself, and not the meal, as holidays are indeed traditions and observances. The seder is the primary focus of the Passover observance in contemporary Judaism, as far as I can tell, so saying "Passover" is not unreasonable for most of the question. I'd suggest that the underlining/prompting be changed prior to the mirror.

I was about to mention what I thought to be a factual error in the Freud tossup, but it turns out that failing to read all of Moses and Monotheism confused me.

Maybe more later?
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Re: ACF Fall discussion (don't read, players at U Wash. site)

Post by Terrible Shorts Depot »

I have to commend Ted for the inclusion of multiple jazz tossups. While I'm no expert on jazz, I was very excited to hear it come up.

The Lepanto tossup was pretty nifty, except the Cervantes clue came up way too early. All 6 hands in the room I was in hit the buzzer upon his mention. However, the Sorrows of Young Werther tossup in the same packet more than made up for it.

If the editors could give me any feedback on the half packet I wrote, that would be fantastic. My email is la2pgh03 AT gmail DOT com.
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Re: ACF Fall discussion (don't read, players at U Wash. site)

Post by Gautam »

I'd like to apologize for the repeats in the categories I edited (there seemed to be more of them than in the other editor's work). For some reason, over the last few days of editing, my search utility was not functioning properly, and as such, I was working off of memory. In retrospect it was not that great of an idea as I was frequently confused as to whether I had mentioned a particular topic already for ACF Fall, or if it was used in any of about 400 questions I've written since August.

I hope it didn't affect the outcomes of too many games.

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Re: ACF Fall discussion (don't read, players at U Wash. site)

Post by naturalistic phallacy »

BuzzerZen wrote:Laudatory preface: Awesome tournament. Good job, editors. I liked the questions, scored points, and had fun. But you know that already.

I will reiterate the oft-voiced approval of the "color" tossup and disdain for the "knowledge" tossup.

Now, to occasionally post nitpicks as I look through the set and remember things that bothered me. For instance:
UCSD/Princeton A wrote: 6. This tradition was reformed by King Josiah, and the Second-Temple era service focused on Psalms 113 through 118. Traditional songs associated with this observance include Adir Hu and Had Gadya. Upon reciting the acronym “D'tzach adash b'achav,” wine is spilled. The Magid begins with a discussion of “the bread of affliction”, and also includes the tale of the Four Sons and the Four Questions. Also including the breaking of the middle matzah and hiding of the afikoman, the story of the Exodus is told before the meal is eaten. For 10 points, name this traditional Passover meal.
ANSWER: Passover Seder
I think this was a little strange/poorly edited. The first clue was lost on me, but I buzzed after "Had Gadya" with "Passover" and was negged without a prompt. There's nothing in the first two clues to really strongly suggest that the tossup is about the seder and not Passover in general. "Tradition" and "observance" could both easily refer to the holiday itself, and not the meal, as holidays are indeed traditions and observances. The seder is the primary focus of the Passover observance in contemporary Judaism, as far as I can tell, so saying "Passover" is not unreasonable for most of the question. I'd suggest that the underlining/prompting be changed prior to the mirror.
After seeing this tossup (we did not hear this at the MN mirror), I would have to agree with Silby and say prompt on "Passover" until mentioned.
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Re: ACF Fall discussion (don't read, players at U Wash. site)

Post by fleurdelivre »

ihavenoidea wrote:
12. This figure was the last of his race, and tutored such figures as Asclepius and Aeneas. For 10 points each:
[10] Name this figure, who exchanged his immortality to free Prometheus from his bondage.
ANSWER: Chiron [or Cheiron]
[10] Chiron was a member of this race of beings, who are half-horse.
ANSWER: centaurs
[10] One of Chiron’s star pupils was this mythical healer, who was the son of Apollo and Coronis and was killed with a thunderbolt after he kept resurrecting people for gold, much like Ron Paul.
ANSWER: Asclepius
I believe this is what Katy is talking about.
It is - thank you!
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Re: ACF Fall discussion (don't read, players at U Wash. site)

Post by Maxwell Sniffingwell »

la2pgh wrote:I have to commend Ted for the inclusion of multiple jazz tossups. While I'm no expert on jazz, I was very excited to hear it come up.
As a jazz trumpet player, I was upset to see my opponents get the first jazz tossup - I turned to my teammate and said, "Damn it, that's probably the only jazz question in the tournament, too." Then they kept coming. This was awesome.
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Re: ACF Fall discussion (don't read, players at U Wash. site)

Post by Captain Sinico »

I see. Thanks; now I'm learnding! So, I'd still say it was more transparent than is optimal but maybe there's not a whole lot you can do about that.

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Re: ACF Fall discussion (don't read, players at U Wash. site)

Post by Magister Ludi »

lasercats wrote:Thanks for including a question about Ives! I blanked on it, but it's nice to see an American composer who is not Gershwin etc. included in a question.
You'll have to thank Andrew Hart (who wrote the Ives question) for having the audacity to write on an American composer other than Gershwin.
Last edited by Magister Ludi on Mon Nov 10, 2008 7:48 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: ACF Fall discussion (don't read, players at U Wash. site)

Post by Lapego1 »

gkandlikar wrote:I'd like to apologize for the repeats in the categories I edited (there seemed to be more of them than in the other editor's work). For some reason, over the last few days of editing, my search utility was not functioning properly, and as such, I was working off of memory. In retrospect it was not that great of an idea as I was frequently confused as to whether I had mentioned a particular topic already for ACF Fall, or if it was used in any of about 400 questions I've written since August.

I hope it didn't affect the outcomes of too many games.

Gautam
You deserve a lot of credit, Gautam. Assuming you did science, it was quite superb. The only complaints I had were that a lot of the organic chem we ended up hearing was related to aromatic stuff (benzene derivatives, Diels-Alder, Huckel's rule, Friedel Crafts etc.), but I have a feeling that was mainly due to the selection of packets at VCU. By default, there must've been a lot of non-aromatic in the other packets. Also, mentioning giant squids in the axon tossup may have been a bit too early as it ended up being a buzzer race in our room, though the case may not have been the same elsewhere.

Also, since they were mentioned earlier, I should say I wrote the bonuses containing UV-Vis and Cauchy sequences. For the Cauchy sequence, this was probably a poor choice for a Fall-level answer, but as originally written it was asking for "Cauchy sequence" and didn't include the Schwarz thing. I tried to describe it as best I could without overwhelming people with a bunch of symbols, but looking back at it, I suppose my description wasn't apt for all cases.
I wrote: [10] When performing liquid chromatography with proteins or nucleic acids, it is often convenient to run the eluate through one of these devices that measures light absorption in the 200-600 nanometer range.
ANSWER: _UV-vis spec_trophotometer [or ultraviolet-visual spec; accept spectrometer instead of spectrophotometer]
Ignoring the fact that it should say "visible" instead of "visual", I'm not sure how much the bonus was changed, but I was sure to include 200-600nm (vis. = 350-750ish) as a clue, plus amino acids and nucleic acids absorb at like a max of 280-300 which should completely rule out visible alone. I'm not sure what else I could've done with this to differentiate between that and vis. I don't even think "visible" alone should be promptable or acceptable because the 200-600nm should make things clear.
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Re: ACF Fall discussion (don't read, players at U Wash. site)

Post by Mechanical Beasts »

Lapego1 wrote: Ignoring the fact that it should say "visible" instead of "visual", I'm not sure how much the bonus was changed, but I was sure to include 200-600nm (vis. = 350-750ish) as a clue, plus amino acids and nucleic acids absorb at like a max of 280-300 which should completely rule out visible alone. I'm not sure what else I could've done with this to differentiate between that and vis. I don't even think "visible" alone should be promptable or acceptable because the 200-600nm should make things clear.
I feel like it ended up asking for a certain range of the spectrum, hence some consternation.
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Re: ACF Fall discussion (don't read, players at U Wash. site)

Post by dschafer »

Lapego1 wrote:Also, since they were mentioned earlier, I should say I wrote the bonuses containing UV-Vis and Cauchy sequences. For the Cauchy sequence, this was probably a poor choice for a Fall-level answer, but as originally written it was asking for "Cauchy sequence" and didn't include the Schwarz thing. I tried to describe it as best I could without overwhelming people with a bunch of symbols, but looking back at it, I suppose my description wasn't apt for all cases.
I don't have a problem with Cauchy sequence as the hard part of a math bonus at fall; they are pretty important, and I imagine anyone who has taken an analysis course will have heard of them. Regarding the definition of Cauchy sequences: I distinctly remember hearing Cauchy sequences described in quiz bowl before as dealing with consecutive elements (searching my archive, it appears it was in an Illinois Open 2006 bonus), and hence wanted to mention it to hopefully prevent it in the future. As I commented on above, I have a very, very hard time seeing a situation where that actually would have affected the game.
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Re: ACF Fall discussion (don't read, players at U Wash. site)

Post by alkrav112 »

I want to publicly mourn the loss of a delightful tossup on TV, movie, and webcomic characters named "Tina," which was apparently excised from this tournament in the editing process in favor of a question on DOOM.

Seriously, though, this tournament was superb, and I think our team was converting bonuses roughly where it should have been for a tournament like this (without Kurtis). A quick note: it may have just been the packets we heard at the CMU site, but a teammate of mine was noting a strong lack of Civil War questions (as I recall, we heard 0/1 Civil War all tournament). I haven't had a chance to look at the rest of the packets yet, but did anyone else notice that, or was it just my imagination?

Thanks again to everyone who made this tournament happen!
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Re: ACF Fall discussion (don't read, players at U Wash. site)

Post by Theory Of The Leisure Flask »

So this was a top-notch tournament as expected. Minor nitpicks: the repeats (Engels was read in consecutive rounds at our site), Carter was a pretty big hose for Nixon (damn, I was glad to have lost that race), Sgt. Pepper shouldn't have begun with quoting lyrics and Saint-Saens shouldn't have begun with the Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso. As for distribution, it seemed like there was a lot of fine arts and geography, but I'm never going to complain about extra arts questions. Pretty much everything else was really good.

Questions that were particularly awesome: anomie, election of 1876, aquifers, the John Adams bonus, Ives, Manny Being Manny, the Golden Gate/sonnets/Eugene Onegin bonus. I wish I had gotten to hear the "colors" and "knowledge" and "murder of LHO" questions; given Eric's comments I'm not sorry we missed the Grieg question at VCU.
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cornfused wrote:
Cheynem wrote:Oh man...there was a He-Man bonus? Was this in the finals packets?
It wasn't a He-Man bonus, it was just a bonus with a He-Man part... I can't remember the other two parts because I (like the rest of the room) was laughing my ass off. But yeah, that was in the final - 1st finals packet, I suppose.
I believe one of them was New York Giants. Can't remember the other one. Now that I think about it, the first may have been the former New York Giant that said the line was like Voltron.
Assuming the editors didn't change things around, the answers were LaVar Arrington (off of calling the Giants' defense "Voltron"), He-Man, and Earth, Wind & Fire.
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Re: ACF Fall discussion (don't read, players at U Wash. site)

Post by Cheynem »

Out of curiosity, what characters were used to represent "Tina" in that toss-up? Off-hand, I can think of a "talky" version on a Twilight Zone episode and Laurel Holloman's character on "The L Word."
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Re: ACF Fall discussion (don't read, players at U Wash. site)

Post by Deckard Cain »

First of all, I thought this was a fantastic set. I only had one or two questions to comment on, but I'll wait until I can see them again; if the packets are being emailed, I'd like them as well - mwcbp3 at mst dot edu. Feedback would also be appreciated.

Since a few of my questions have been commented on, I'll respond:
Cheynem wrote:*I loved the toss-ups on... the assassination of Lee Harvey Oswald
Thank you; I was extremely fond of this tossup and enjoyed writing it.
Cheynem wrote:I actually didn't care for the Kurt Warner toss-up; it brought up NFL Europe and Arena Football way too early, in my opinion (of course, I still sat on it until it said "Trent Green").
Having been introduced to football and the Rams in particular around the time of Warner's rise to prominence, it's entirely possible I misjudged how much people know about him. Sorry about that.

My favorite tossup of the tournament was "Manny being Manny," so kudos go to whoever wrote this. I'm kind of glad I sat on it until near the end.

Again, this was an excellent tournament. I think this was about as good as an ACF Fall could possibly be, and it was a ton of fun to play. Much thanks to the editors for providing it.
Last edited by Deckard Cain on Mon Nov 10, 2008 7:09 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: ACF Fall discussion (don't read, players at U Wash. site)

Post by Auks Ran Ova »

The Tina tossup was in fact edited (I liked it too) but sadly cut during the combining of packets, as both Michigan and Yale's packets had produced usable trash tossups. Here's the final version:
Michigan and I wrote:One character with this first name is Guy's girlfriend in That Thing You Do! and is played by Charlize Theron. A minor character with this first name is Simon Skinner's secretary in Hot Fuzz, and a woman with this first name falls in love with Prince Mamuwalde in Blacula. In Achewood, this is the name of Ray's entrepreneurial ex-girlfriend, and another character with this name is Elaine's showbiz-wannabe roommate on Seinfeld. Another figure with this name played Kate Holbrook in Baby Mama and anchored Weekend Update with Jimmy Fallon. A llama who is told to "eat her ham" in Napoleon Dynamite shares, for 10 points, which given name with soul singer Turner and comedian Fey?
ANSWER: Tinas
The Giants/cartoons bonus, which I thought was a pretty inspired submission, did in fact keep the original answers, Arrington/He-Man/Earth, Wind, & Fire.
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Re: ACF Fall discussion (don't read, players at U Wash. site)

Post by Auks Ran Ova »

Deckard Cain wrote:
Cheynem wrote:I actually didn't care for the Kurt Warner toss-up; it brought up NFL Europe and Arena Football way too early, in my opinion (of course, I still sat on it until it said "Trent Green").
Having been introduced to football and the Rams in particular around the time of Warner's rise to prominence, it's entirely possible I misjudged how much people know about him. Sorry about that.
Here was the final version of the tossup:
Missouri S&T and I wrote:16. A spider bite incurred on his honeymoon once prevented him from trying out for Chicago, and in his autobiography All Things Possible, he described walking through the red light district of Amsterdam on his way to church while playing in NFL Europe. He went undrafted and was released by the Packers in 1994, after which this Northern Iowa graduate led the Iowa Barnstormers to two second-place finishes. He earned his first NFL starting job after an injury to Trent Green and led the “Greatest Show on Turf.” He now has such targets as Larry Fitzgerald and Anquan Boldin. For 10 points, name this QB who won the MVP with the Rams, currently for the Arizona Cardinals.
ANSWER: Kurtis Eugene “Kurt” Warner
In retrospect, I probably should've just said "Europe" instead of NFL Europe, but I did deliberately avoid saying "Arena" so as to avoid transparency issues.
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Re: ACF Fall discussion (don't read, players at U Wash. site)

Post by alkrav112 »

Thanks for posting the "Tina" tossup, Rob. I was just about to do that myself. I'm going to keep writing trash tossups like these in order to counter-balance the sheer volume of comic-book/video-game submissions.

And thanks, Chris, for liking my anomie TU and John Adams bonus. I particularly enjoyed writing the latter, as I feel he does not come up at the novice level nearly enough in proportion to how awesome he is.
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Re: ACF Fall discussion (don't read, players at U Wash. site)

Post by lasercats »

Parson Smirk wrote:
lasercats wrote: Thanks for including a question about Ives! I blanked on it, but it's nice to see an American composer who is not Gershwin etc. included in a question.
It's cool that you seemed to really enjoy your first go at an ACF tournament. Indeed, Ives comes up a whole lot in college quizbowl, as do lots of other American composers and their works. You're definitely in for tons of great music questions the more tournaments you go to.

Wait, does this mean that I will have to start paying attention in my Music History classes? Maybe I don't enjoy non-Gershwin questions after all.
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Re: ACF Fall discussion (don't read, players at U Wash. site)

Post by Cheynem »

In rereading the Warner toss-up, it's much better than I was grumbling about--I apparently just recognized the Iowa Barnstormers as an AFL team. And it also refrained from the obvious "working in a grocery store" clue for the very nice lead-in. So ignore my complaint.
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Re: ACF Fall discussion (don't read, players at U Wash. site)

Post by ClemsonQB »

Minor Distribution Quibble:

I don't have the set right in front of me, so I can't point out all the specifics and may be forgetting something, but I remember dudes from Roman history being really overrepresented. Like, off the top of my head, I can recall tossups on Crassus, Marcus Aurelius, Domitian, Mark Antony, Augustus and Hadrian. Which made up 6 tossups in the eleven rounds I played. I don't recall a single tossup on events from ancient history, or any person from ancient history that wasn't Roman (i.e. no Egyptian rulers, Greeks, Persians, etc.).
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Re: ACF Fall discussion (don't read, players at U Wash. site)

Post by KGeee »

As our first ACF tournament, I thought the set was good. We had the unfortunate luck of getting a lot of mythology bonuses, but it was fun. I liked the various world leader questions and accessibility of most of the bonuses, as a team full of students with very little previous quiz bowl experience.
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Re: ACF Fall discussion (don't read, players at U Wash. site)

Post by Pilgrim »

ClemsonQB wrote:Like, off the top of my head, I can recall tossups on Crassus, Marcus Aurelius, Domitian, Mark Antony, Augustus and Hadrian. Which made up 6 tossups in the eleven rounds I played.
For what it's worth, this means that the seven rounds that you didn't play contained zero Roman history tossups (unless you count Attila) since those were the only ones in the tournament. Roman history was probably a little overrepresented, but that was mainly a product of a lot of people submitting Roman history tossups, and less part of my nefarious plan to shoehorn more of my favorite subject into the distribution (of the 3/3 ancient European history that I wrote, 1/0 was Republican Rome, 1/1 was Imperial Rome, 1/1 was Greek, and 0/1 was Byzantine, which I feel is pretty fair).
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Re: ACF Fall discussion (don't read, players at U Wash. site)

Post by Lapego1 »

ClemsonQB wrote:Minor Distribution Quibble:

I don't have the set right in front of me, so I can't point out all the specifics and may be forgetting something, but I remember dudes from Roman history being really overrepresented. Like, off the top of my head, I can recall tossups on Crassus, Marcus Aurelius, Domitian, Mark Antony, Augustus and Hadrian. Which made up 6 tossups in the eleven rounds I played. I don't recall a single tossup on events from ancient history, or any person from ancient history that wasn't Roman (i.e. no Egyptian rulers, Greeks, Persians, etc.).
We heard some of that Roman stuff but also two bonuses on Greek history, both of which seemed to involve the Greco-Persian wars (there was a battles bonus, and one involving Themistocles IIRC); I don't recall any tossups on Greek but that could just be my memory.
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