Ferdinand Tönnies Discussion

Old college threads.
Locked
User avatar
Birdofredum Sawin
Rikku
Posts: 400
Joined: Tue Nov 09, 2004 11:25 pm
Location: Mountain View

Ferdinand Tönnies Discussion

Post by Birdofredum Sawin »

It appears that the only two iterations of the Tönnies (the Chicago and Berkeley ones) have both been completed, so feel free to post comments, critique, unmitigated praise, etc. I'll be posting some expressions of gratitude, and perhaps some overall comments on the set, at some point in the future.
Andrew

Ex-Virginia, Ex-Chicago, Ex-Stanford
User avatar
Cheynem
Sin
Posts: 7220
Joined: Tue May 11, 2004 11:19 am
Location: Grand Rapids, Michigan

Re: Ferdinand Tönnies Discussion

Post by Cheynem »

This was a very good set, in my opinion. I liked that it tossed up TV shows for the most part instead of TV characters, and saved some of the tougher or sillier stuff for bonus parts. I also thought the meta was used nicely--there were only a few "gentle" meta tossups and even then they had other clues. The random academia was also amusing. I might post more specifically later.
Mike Cheyne
Formerly U of Minnesota

"You killed HSAPQ"--Matt Bollinger
User avatar
grapesmoker
Sin
Posts: 6345
Joined: Sat Oct 25, 2003 5:23 pm
Location: NYC
Contact:

Re: Ferdinand Tönnies Discussion

Post by grapesmoker »

From a reader perspective, this set was pretty hilarious to read so thanks for that.
Jerry Vinokurov
ex-LJHS, ex-Berkeley, ex-Brown, sorta-ex-CMU
presently: John Jay College Economics
code ape, loud voice, general nuissance
User avatar
Mike Bentley
Sin
Posts: 6461
Joined: Fri Mar 31, 2006 11:03 pm
Location: Bellevue, WA
Contact:

Re: Ferdinand Tönnies Discussion

Post by Mike Bentley »

I thought this was the best incarnation of this tournament held yet. It was extremely enjoyable. Thanks to everyone who contributed to it. I'll probably have a few specific comments later.
Mike Bentley
Treasurer, Partnership for Academic Competition Excellence
Adviser, Quizbowl Team at University of Washington
University of Maryland, Class of 2008
User avatar
Important Bird Area
Forums Staff: Administrator
Posts: 6113
Joined: Thu Aug 28, 2003 3:33 pm
Location: San Francisco Bay Area
Contact:

Re: Ferdinand Tönnies Discussion

Post by Important Bird Area »

Cheynem wrote:The random academia was also amusing.
grapesmoker wrote:From a reader perspective, this set was pretty hilarious to read so thanks for that.
Mike and Jerry pretty much have my reaction down. There was a lot of stuff I wish I had been playing instead of reading, which doesn't happen too often on trash events.
Jeff Hoppes
President, Northern California Quiz Bowl Alliance
former HSQB Chief Admin (2012-13)
VP for Communication and history subject editor, NAQT
Editor emeritus, ACF

"I wish to make some kind of joke about Jeff's love of birds, but I always fear he'll turn them on me Hitchcock-style." -Fred
User avatar
fizzball
Wakka
Posts: 170
Joined: Tue Mar 21, 2006 4:51 pm
Location: Evanston, IL

Re: Ferdinand Tönnies Discussion

Post by fizzball »

I think I enjoyed last year's set a shade better, though this year's considerably toned down my least favorite part of CO Trash.

Questions were mostly very good, though there were some blatant cases of non-pyramidality. Also, power marks in sports were often placed too low, as they've been in previous incarnations. Or so I'm told by members of my team who actually answered them while I sat quietly.

I would suggest dropping powers altogether. I think in an event such as this, where the ages of participants spanned 20 years, power tossups may give an unfair advantage to older teams.

Good time as always. Thanks to Donald for running the Midwest, and Andrew & co. for the questions. No thanks to the asshat at Harold's -- staff or customer, doesn't matter -- who stamped a stack of $1s with "remember 9/11 was an inside job." Now I have four singles I can never give to a human.
Last edited by fizzball on Mon Jul 27, 2009 2:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.
--Greg Sorenson
Gerbils
User avatar
theMoMA
Forums Staff: Administrator
Posts: 5993
Joined: Mon Oct 23, 2006 2:00 am

Re: Ferdinand Tönnies Discussion

Post by theMoMA »

I don't know if this is just my feeling of the tournament in general, or if it was caused by a few packets that had excesses of one or the other, but this set seemed to have a lot more TV and music than I was expecting.

Maybe this reflects a different writing principle on my part, but I certainly prefer more clues in a bonus prompt than was the norm at this tournament. Especially the easy part. Too often, the easiest ten points required you to know a single film that Reese Witherspoon was in, or whatever. In the later packets, there were also a large number of bonuses that had multiple extremely difficult parts. Naming two caddies, one of whom is only famous for the nickname you say in the prompt? Come on. We certainly weren't a team angling to win the tournament, but we were one of the solidly second-tier teams, and our matches against like teams were sometimes excruciating because they hinged on getting the 20able and 30able bonuses instead of the frustratingly difficult ones.

The biggest problem that I had is that the TV and movies tossups too often took the form of a series of sentences like "The [unbuzzable adjectival description] character [character name] was played by [actor name]." This kind of question really tests for knowledge that doesn't necessarily amount to watching the show. The tossups on on the shows I do watch started out by describing the general function of minor characters, and the actors who played them. I would have preferred tossups that spent much of the first half talking about notable anecdotes or plot points from the shows, even the considerable majority of ones that I don't watch, instead of concentrating so heavily on actors, because I think they are infinitely more interesting and reward people who actually watch the shows.
Andrew Hart
Minnesota alum
User avatar
Cheynem
Sin
Posts: 7220
Joined: Tue May 11, 2004 11:19 am
Location: Grand Rapids, Michigan

Re: Ferdinand Tönnies Discussion

Post by Cheynem »

The one thing I guess I would have liked more of was the slightly wacky, cross-distributional stuff (i.e., more questions like "dog food" or "being possessed by a demon"), although I did feel some of the common link stuff turned into either uninteresting instances of "fill in the blank" (I'm not a big fan of "This word..." tossups) or confusing instances of "what are you looking for?" (I had this reaction to the "Red" tossup, since I didn't know if the question wanted "Red" or "Barber," and while I found it hilarious, I was a little confused by the "Polity" tossup for a while) Some of this could be me playing this on just a few hours of sleep, though, and I understand the difficulty in writing these questions. I also liked the comic stuff that appeared, but it seemed a little underrepresented.

I agree that the bonus difficulty was slightly erratic at times. In one round, there was an insanely deep Steve Young bonus, then a bonus on Estonian film. The definition of a "hard" part was also stretched at times, with some really difficult stuff popping up (my favorite was the one asking you to identify who played "the crabby old lady" in Shirley Temple movies). I must say, though, that I felt the majority of bonuses were very solid and I actually felt, for the most part, they gave a lot of clues and avoided even the semblance of a list.

Favorites: Lucifer, Designing Women, Becker, Bob Hope, Law and Order: SVU, Demon Possession, Yakety Sax, Gentle Ben, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (nice overlap here with CO proper). I also enjoyed the bonus on Nicholas Ray movies, Anatole Litvak movies, Super Mario Brothers 3, and old time radio.

Nitpicking here, but that "Custer" tossup that started to say "Raymond Massey, in a 1940 film..." is gigantic negbait for Abraham Lincoln, since he played Lincoln in a 1940 film as well as apparently John Brown in that Custer film.

Amusing Thing: This tournament had 1/1 Becker. This allowed us to at least 10 the Estonian film bonus.
Mike Cheyne
Formerly U of Minnesota

"You killed HSAPQ"--Matt Bollinger
User avatar
Mike Bentley
Sin
Posts: 6461
Joined: Fri Mar 31, 2006 11:03 pm
Location: Bellevue, WA
Contact:

Re: Ferdinand Tönnies Discussion

Post by Mike Bentley »

theMoMA wrote:The biggest problem that I had is that the TV and movies tossups too often took the form of a series of sentences like "The [unbuzzable adjectival description] character [character name] was played by [actor name]." This kind of question really tests for knowledge that doesn't necessarily amount to watching the show. The tossups on on the shows I do watch started out by describing the general function of minor characters, and the actors who played them. I would have preferred tossups that spent much of the first half talking about notable anecdotes or plot points from the shows, even the considerable majority of ones that I don't watch, instead of concentrating so heavily on actors, because I think they are infinitely more interesting and reward people who actually watch the shows.
I didn't get too much of a sense of this when I was playing the tournament, but I will agree with the premise that actors and actresses are usually far less interesting than the characters they play and the film and TV shows they appear in. For instance, I've watched every episode of Weeds where the actor who plays Agent Scotson appears, but I'll be damned if I know who plays him. Meanwhile, I know a lot of about his character and some of the other characters on that show.

I'm curious to hear from other people as to whether they enjoy what I think is a relatively high number of questions on "personalities" (i.e. actors, actresses, directors) in typical trash tournaments (and probably even more so in TRASH tournaments, but I don't actually have the numbers to prove this). If I recall correctly, tournaments like GARBAGE called for 2/2 (or 50%) of their TV and Movies questions to be primarily on personalities. To me this seems a bit high.
Mike Bentley
Treasurer, Partnership for Academic Competition Excellence
Adviser, Quizbowl Team at University of Washington
University of Maryland, Class of 2008
User avatar
marnold
Tidus
Posts: 706
Joined: Wed Jan 17, 2007 12:32 pm
Location: NY

Re: Ferdinand Tönnies Discussion

Post by marnold »

I'm glad people seemed to enjoy this. In general, except for a few misplaced clues that made me cringe as I was reading them - probably the same clues Greg has in mind a few posts up - I thought we produced a solid set well in line with the quality Andrew-helmed tournaments have demonstrated the last few years.

Since I'm most interested in how my questions played, I wrote the following tossups: stuttering, "velvet," 3Oh!3, Baltimore rap, The Doors, Queens of the Stone Age, White Lines, alcohol, Boots, R.E.M., Lionel Richie, Tracy McGrady, Red in sports, South Africa golf, illiteracy in sports, LA Angels, Rasheed Wallace, US Soccer, Hawaii qb, Jimmy Connors, Len Dawson, North Carolina, Brandon Jennings, Girls Next Door, Faulkner, Christian Slater, 400 Blows, Bob Hope, 7th Heaven, Pete and Pete, Gentle Ben, Anna Faris, Two-A-Days, Achewood, Buzz Bissinger, musical chairs, Bourbon Street (this was probably a poor idea), dog food, Tulsa, Kissing Suzy Kolber, Chirstopher Hitchens, Yakety Sax, Gabor sisters, Mexican Wrestlers, Shel Silverstein, Rosetta Stone, pandas, Bill O'Reilly, Charlie Brown, porn stars, Poland, zero (in part, mostly Andrew, though)

Also, I think this is the first tournament I really got to see how much of a challenge writing trash can be. I didn't come to the tournament last year, so this was the first time I moderated my own trash questions, and it was an interesting experience. The differences in what people know about these subjects and even how they know it are just far, far more pronounced than in academic quizbowl, especially at this tournament which has young academic players, old academic players, young trash players and old trash players all represented in the field.

Last, a somewhat significant number of people didn't pay me at the Chicago site. You obviously know who you are, and thanks to the miracles of record-keeping, so do we. Please send me an email (marnold A.T. uchicago.edu) to let me know about it.
Last edited by marnold on Mon Jul 27, 2009 1:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Michael Arnold
Chicago 2010
Columbia Law 2013

2009 ACF Nats Champion
2010 ICT Champion
2010 CULT Champion
Member of Mike Cheyne's Quizbowl All-Heel Team

Fundamental Theorem of Quizbowl (Revised): Almost no one is actually good at quizbowl.
User avatar
Maxwell Sniffingwell
Auron
Posts: 2164
Joined: Sun Feb 12, 2006 3:22 pm
Location: Des Moines, IA

Re: Ferdinand Tönnies Discussion

Post by Maxwell Sniffingwell »

fizzball wrote:I would suggest dropping powers altogether. I think in an event such as this, where the ages of participants spanned 20 years, power tossups may give an unfair advantage to older teams.
How so?
Greg Peterson

Northwestern University '18
Lawrence University '11
Maine South HS '07

"a decent player" - Mike Cheyne
User avatar
Cheynem
Sin
Posts: 7220
Joined: Tue May 11, 2004 11:19 am
Location: Grand Rapids, Michigan

Re: Ferdinand Tönnies Discussion

Post by Cheynem »

I think what Greg (S.) may be saying is that some of the "older" material tended to require a gentler level of knowledge in order to get fifteen, which may reward those who are either chronologically older or I guess someone like myself who likes that sort of stuff. For example, "The Lawrence Welk Show" lead-off by talking about the Lennon Sisters, who were some of the most notable performers on it. Using a modern equivalent, it would be like saying "This show featured Chris Kattan and Cheri Oteri as cast members" for a Saturday Night Live clue. I'm not necessarily complaining because nobody wants to get into truly deep Lawrence Welk knowledge, but the basic idea is that you didn't need deep knowledge to get fifteen. Similarly, you could get fifteen on Steve McQueen for having basic knowledge of one of his most famous films, "The Sand Pebbles." Again, I'm not really complaining here because I don't think there's a "good" way around this aside from not writing about old stuff (which would, of course, kill my ppg).

I don't think though that this was really that prevalent a trend, although without seeing the set, I don't know where the power marks were. I will say that the lead-ins for other "old" stuff like Perry Mason, Bob Hope, and Steamboat Willie seemed pretty tough knowledge (man, you gots to know your NEW Perry Mason stuff).

Regarding your tossups, Marnold, aside from me not really answering a lot of them, they were pretty solid for the most part, I thought. The Angels tossup was significantly easier because it used the word "expansion" quickly, and the Gabor sisters tossup could have been refined a little bit, but I had no real problems.
Mike Cheyne
Formerly U of Minnesota

"You killed HSAPQ"--Matt Bollinger
User avatar
shlack
Lulu
Posts: 46
Joined: Fri Mar 19, 2004 10:45 am
Location: Ohio, U-S-A!

Re: Ferdinand Tönnies Discussion

Post by shlack »

marnold wrote: Bourbon Street (this was probably a poor idea)
Agreed. I wouldn't be shocked if more than half the field negged on "New Orleans" on this question. Other than that, the questions were good, especially yours, Michael, since I answered a lot of them! Someone pointed out that they couldn't think of any bonus that was zeroed -- always a sign of a good tournament. I also thought there was a good difficulty distribution within the bonuses, i.e. it was quite hard to get a 30 and if you did, you felt you had really good knowledge of the subject (liked the Grffin Book question btw). Also, if you haven't paid the man for this tournament yet, pay him! I get more 'bang for the buck' from CO trash, I find, than other events these days.

Finally, Mike Cheyne really needs to take the title of "world's youngest-looking 80 year old man" away from Rob Carson immediately. That guy is amazing, great to play with ya.
Ted Stratton
Brandeis '03
User avatar
Birdofredum Sawin
Rikku
Posts: 400
Joined: Tue Nov 09, 2004 11:25 pm
Location: Mountain View

Re: Ferdinand Tönnies Discussion

Post by Birdofredum Sawin »

Before the discussion advances too far, I wanted to thank everyone who made the tournament possible. First, thanks to the invaluable Donald Taylor, who pitched in with logistics, writing questions, and generally with the averting of disaster. Next, thanks to people who helped out with additional writing and/or editing assistance: Seth Teitler, Leo Wolpert, and Jordan Segall. Thanks to everyone who volunteered to moderate at both sites (I have no idea who you are). And finally, of course, thanks to my collaborators on the tournament: Michael Arnold, David Seal, and Mike Sorice.

This is the first time I was unable to attend one of my CO trash tournaments, so I have no sense of how the questions played. I will say that, for a variety of reasons, this set was less heavily edited by me than previous installments of the tournament. I wrote about a third of the questions outright (including a lot of the TV/movies and significant portions of the music and "other" questions), and edited the rest to a certain extent.

Anyway, I may jump in with comments as this thread progresses, but I wanted to make sure that everyone got thanked.
Andrew

Ex-Virginia, Ex-Chicago, Ex-Stanford
User avatar
fizzball
Wakka
Posts: 170
Joined: Tue Mar 21, 2006 4:51 pm
Location: Evanston, IL

Re: Ferdinand Tönnies Discussion

Post by fizzball »

Cheynem wrote:I think what Greg (S.) may be saying is that some of the "older" material tended to require a gentler level of knowledge in order to get fifteen, which may reward those who are either chronologically older or I guess someone like myself who likes that sort of stuff. For example, "The Lawrence Welk Show" lead-off by talking about the Lennon Sisters, who were some of the most notable performers on it. Using a modern equivalent, it would be like saying "This show featured Chris Kattan and Cheri Oteri as cast members" for a Saturday Night Live clue. I'm not necessarily complaining because nobody wants to get into truly deep Lawrence Welk knowledge, but the basic idea is that you didn't need deep knowledge to get fifteen.
This, but also: when writing about long-lived current things (say, Sesame Street, U2, SNL, Simpsons) for an open-trash audience, pyramidality becomes much more subjective. One can no longer make the assumption that going old = going deep. Take the R.E.M. question. I got it on "Don't Go Back to Rockville" (maybe for power, I don't recall right now) but would have been absolutely schooled on clues dealing with anything after Out of Time.
--Greg Sorenson
Gerbils
User avatar
Geringer
Rikku
Posts: 354
Joined: Sat Feb 14, 2009 11:10 pm

Re: Ferdinand Tönnies Discussion

Post by Geringer »

This tournament was great. It ran smoothly, the questions were well-written, and it was very well-staffed. But...

After playing eight rounds of this tournament, and reading the previous installments of CO Trash, a few things came to mind.

1. As put to me by a player on the Sorenson team before he beat me by 400+, harder clues inevitably mean older clues in most cases. With movies and TV, a lot of older players have the advantage of having seen a movie when it came out in theaters. With music and sports, a lot of the same stuff is true. There were many sports questions about journeyman players of the 1990's. Most of these guys were out of the league by the time I was in diapers and otherwise unremarkable and I would imagine most undergrad-or-younger players didn't do too well on the questions. Other than a couple of video game questions, a few tossups on newer music like 3oh3 and Lil Wayne (Tha Carter III), and a recent sports question or two like David Wright, questions all dipped into clues involving the 70s or 80s, which were generally nailed by the older teams who actually lived those years.

1b. (tl;dr) I didn't feel like some of the material was very accessible at all to undergraduate players. I'm not saying it's right or wrong, I'm just stating.

2. There were too many questions, in my opinion, about pseudo-academic topics like literature. Trash literature is great, but it seemed a little over-represented compared to other topics which seemed under-represented, like video games.

3. The academic clues were annoying and on a few occasions I saw early buzzes on reverse-fraud. There was one common-link tossup which listed four-ish obscure people and incited a buzzer race on an academic clue. It seemed to me like the question no more than a cleverly disguised academic question. I have heard the argument that because regular academic sets have a 1/1 trash distro, trash sets should have a similar amount of academic stuff. In my opinion, this cross-contamination was completely different. Although academic sets have a trash question, regular questions aren't contaminated by trash clues. I felt like the constant academic cross-contamination hurt the "trashiness" of the tournament.
R. Jeffrey Geringer
Saint Viator '09
Illinois '13, '14
User avatar
Cheynem
Sin
Posts: 7220
Joined: Tue May 11, 2004 11:19 am
Location: Grand Rapids, Michigan

Re: Ferdinand Tönnies Discussion

Post by Cheynem »

I love the trash literature! Where else is this stuff going to come up? By being pseudo-academic, the best you can hope to see it is at trash tournaments (or in some odd corner of the NAQT distribution).

The academia didn't seem annoying to me, like it came up every so often, but not really constantly. The best part was having Siegfried Kracauer pop up in both CO and CO Trash.
Mike Cheyne
Formerly U of Minnesota

"You killed HSAPQ"--Matt Bollinger
User avatar
Mike Bentley
Sin
Posts: 6461
Joined: Fri Mar 31, 2006 11:03 pm
Location: Bellevue, WA
Contact:

Re: Ferdinand Tönnies Discussion

Post by Mike Bentley »

I didn't get the impression there was a ton of trash lit at this tournament. Also, the academic stuff seemed pretty mild. There were a few questions where it seemed like it was very tough to get it on trash knowledge but pretty easy to get it on academic knowledge, but whatever. It's just one of the things to expect at this tournament, like a lower proportion of videogame tossups and a bit more meta than usual.

I'm a bit curious to see what the distribution of this tournament was. Things didn't seem all that constant from round to round (for instance, one of the rounds had 1/2 videogames, while another had 0/0) and there seemed to be a lot of cross-disciplinary questions.
Mike Bentley
Treasurer, Partnership for Academic Competition Excellence
Adviser, Quizbowl Team at University of Washington
University of Maryland, Class of 2008
User avatar
Auks Ran Ova
Forums Staff: Chief Administrator
Posts: 4295
Joined: Sun Apr 30, 2006 10:28 pm
Location: Minneapolis
Contact:

Re: Ferdinand Tönnies Discussion

Post by Auks Ran Ova »

shlack wrote:Finally, Mike Cheyne really needs to take the title of "world's youngest-looking 80 year old man" away from Rob Carson immediately. That guy is amazing, great to play with ya.
Yeah, I may be old, but Mike is something else.

I may have more substantive comments on the set later, but for now I'll mention that I too disliked the focus on actors and actresses in the film and TV distributions, for the basically same reasons Andrew has laid out (I do think the Burn Notice TU, at least that part of it I heard before buzzing, did a good job actually talking about the characters). Also, Marnold, I really liked the Achewood and KSK tossups.
Rob Carson
University of Minnesota '11, MCTC '??, BHSU forever
Member, ACF
Member emeritus, PACE
Writer and Editor, NAQT
Kanga-Rat Murder Society
Wakka
Posts: 209
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 10:52 pm
Location: NW Suburbia, IL

Re: Ferdinand Tönnies Discussion

Post by Kanga-Rat Murder Society »

SomethingBetterAndLessCumbersome wrote:
1. As put to me by a player on the Sorenson team before he beat me by 400+, harder clues inevitably mean older clues in most cases. With movies and TV, a lot of older players have the advantage of having seen a movie when it came out in theaters. With music and sports, a lot of the same stuff is true. There were many sports questions about journeyman players of the 1990's. Most of these guys were out of the league by the time I was in diapers and otherwise unremarkable and I would imagine most undergrad-or-younger players didn't do too well on the questions. Other than a couple of video game questions, a few tossups on newer music like 3oh3 and Lil Wayne (Tha Carter III), and a recent sports question or two like David Wright, questions all dipped into clues involving the 70s or 80s, which were generally nailed by the older teams who actually lived those years.

1b. (tl;dr) I didn't feel like some of the material was very accessible at all to undergraduate players. I'm not saying it's right or wrong, I'm just stating.
I am actually fairly suprised to hear this. As a fellow recent high school graduate, I thought that questions were almost perfectly distributed between eras. Take for example this list of questions written by Michael Arnold:
stuttering, "velvet," 3Oh!3, Baltimore rap, The Doors, Queens of the Stone Age, White Lines, alcohol, Boots, R.E.M., Lionel Richie, Tracy McGrady, Red in sports, South Africa golf, illiteracy in sports, LA Angels, Rasheed Wallace, US Soccer, Hawaii qb, Jimmy Connors, Len Dawson, North Carolina, Brandon Jennings, Girls Next Door, Faulkner, Christian Slater, 400 Blows, Bob Hope, 7th Heaven, Pete and Pete, Gentle Ben, Anna Faris, Two-A-Days, Achewood, Buzz Bissinger, musical chairs, Bourbon Street (this was probably a poor idea), dog food, Tulsa, Kissing Suzy Kolber, Chirstopher Hitchens, Yakety Sax, Gabor sisters, Mexican Wrestlers, Shel Silverstein, Rosetta Stone, pandas, Bill O'Reilly, Charlie Brown, porn stars, Poland, zero
Out of the 30 questions here that I can remember the content of, 18 of them were based off of clues that took place in the last decade. There were tons of questions, such as Brandon Jennings, South African golf, and U.S. Soccer, that featured clues from the past month (I singled those out only because I know sports best). I am the exact same age that you are, and I felt that I did just fine against older teams. The area that our team (3 recent hs graduates and a 24 year old) struggled most with was independent music, a notably recent subject.

I felt that this tournament was awesome. The tossups were interesting even when I had no idea what they were talking about. The power marks also seemed to be great. Out of the powers that I got, I can only think of one that I felt should have been 10 (this was the South African Golf question). Typically, powering a question meant that the player had really good first hand knowledge of the subject of the tossup, something that I could not say was true for the high school tournaments I played.
Cheynem wrote:The one thing I guess I would have liked more of was the slightly wacky, cross-distributional stuff (i.e., more questions like "dog food" or "being possessed by a demon"), although I did feel some of the common link stuff turned into either uninteresting instances of "fill in the blank" (I'm not a big fan of "This word..." tossups) or confusing instances of "what are you looking for?" (I had this reaction to the "Red" tossup, since I didn't know if the question wanted "Red" or "Barber," and while I found it hilarious, I was a little confused by the "Polity" tossup for a while)
This would be my biggest complaint. "Name this word" toss-ups were typically confusing, and often lead to a "Oh, That's what they wanted" response. I would eliminate those for the next incarnation.
Nicholas Bergeon
Buffalo Grove High School '09
UW-Madison '12
WUSTL Law'15
User avatar
rylltraka
Tidus
Posts: 568
Joined: Mon Oct 31, 2005 10:55 pm
Location: Los Angeles

Re: Ferdinand Tönnies Discussion

Post by rylltraka »

I thought this tournament was delightful across the board.

The bonus structuring, in that most every bonus had a near-guaranteed ten for any knowledge (often beyond what the "topic" of the bonus was), was a very welcome aspect. Difficulty did fluctuate between the 20-point questions in bonuses, but not to a pervasive degree.

The music seemed to skew towards more recent, as far as I recall. My memory may be faulty.

Perhaps video games were underrepresented, as Mike says, but I was generally too entertained by the quality of the tournament to care. Many thanks to all involved.

Favorite bits: Ghostbusters bonus, Jimmy Connors and Andy Murray, War Pigs, Charlie Brown, shark as food TU, human-hunting, SMB3 bonus, Star Fox 64 TU, Glenn Beck
Mik Larsen
USC '08, UCLA '14
User avatar
Birdofredum Sawin
Rikku
Posts: 400
Joined: Tue Nov 09, 2004 11:25 pm
Location: Mountain View

Re: Ferdinand Tönnies Discussion

Post by Birdofredum Sawin »

For what it's worth, the distribution was 6/6 TV/movies, 5/5 music, 4/4 sports, and 5/5 "other" (including comic books, video games, trash lit, weird quasi-academia, tossups on "homunculi," etc.). We adhered to that high-level distribution pretty rigorously, but the sub-distributions were not as thoroughly monitored as I would have liked. That is, if I had had more time to rearrange questions I would have tried to even out, e.g., the number of video game questions per round; as it was, I just tried to make sure that no round had an egregious glut of any particular sub-category of "other" questions.

I did want to respond to Andrew's remarks about the tossups on TV shows. I wrote a lot of these, and I'm not sure how Andrew's criticism (i.e., "I would have preferred tossups that spent much of the first half talking about notable anecdotes or plot points from the shows, even the considerable majority of ones that I don't watch, instead of concentrating so heavily on actors, because I think they are infinitely more interesting and reward people who actually watch the shows") applies. I agree with Andrew's preference, and in fact tried to write tossups that "spend much of the first half talking about notable anecdotes or plot points from the shows." For instance, here's a pretty representative share of the tossups I wrote on TV, which I think do exactly the kind of thing Andrew claims he would have "preferred" the tossups to do:

One episode of this show centered on the right hand of James Meier, which was mysteriously discovered on the boundary of Nevada and California. In another episode, a scientist at Leyland University was poisoned, and it happened that the victim’s ex-wife, Sophie Miller, was once the psychiatrist of this show’s title figure. The pilot episode featured the murder of a golf pro’s wife and a doctor, and introduced us to such characters as Kimball Cho and Grace Van Pelt, who work in a unit run by Teresa Lisbon. We also learned about the dastardly “Red John,” a serial killer who murdered the wife and daughter of the title figure, Patrick Jane. FTP, name this CBS show about the California Bureau of Investigation and their astute consultant, a slick character played by Simon Baker.
ANSWER: The Mentalist

This man learned many of his skills from his mentor Al Humphreys, who died in an explosion. He used the pseudonym John Walden at the time he had an affair with Julia Eberly, which led to the birth of his troubled son Kyle. He was married to a woman who suffered from leukemia named Marisol, and after she was killed by a sniper working for the Mala Noche cartel, he went to Brazil and murdered the cartel’s leader, Antonio Riaz. He was often tormented by his relationship with his brother Raymond, played by Dean Winters, and he supervises a team which includes Eric Delko and Calleigh Duquesne. Known for his mysterious pauses in the middle of sentences and his fondness for sunglasses, FTP, name this character who is a Floridian equivalent of Gil Grissom, a crime lab supervisor portrayed by David Caruso on CSI: Miami.
ANSWER: Horatio Caine (accept either; accept “H”)

A series of tie-in novels based on this series, including The End Game and The Fix, have been written by Tod Goldberg. One minor figure on this show, Seymour, is played by the delightfully named character actor Silas Weir Mitchell; that character is an arms dealer who had special throwing knives made for the central figure. Other characters include Agent Jason Bly, who at one point was trapped in a bank with the main character, and Nate, the main character’s brother, who during season 2 was arrested for fraud. The protagonist’s mother, Madeline, is played by Sharon Gless, while his former girlfriend Fiona is played by Gabrielle Anwar. FTP, name this show which centers on a former spy trying to figure out why he got the title dismissal, a series starring Jeffrey Donovan which airs on the USA network.
ANSWER: Burn Notice

Toward the end of this show’s first season, one character was infuriated when her ex-husband, a baseball player named Jack Dent, published an autobiography which discussed his sexual conquests, while its second season featured a controversial episode in which Kendall Dobbs died of AIDS. In its last season, the character of Bonnie Poteet, a rich Texan played by Judith Ivey, was added to the cast, while its last seasons also saw one character move to Japan and sell part of her property to her cousin Allison, played by Julia Duffy. Its earlier core of five characters included Charlene, a stupid office assistant, and Mary Jo, who did a lot of the real work, as well as two sisters, Julia and Suzanne Sugarbaker. FTP, name this TV show in which the role of “sassy black man” was played by Meshach Taylor, a program which starred Annie Potts and Delta Burke and centered on an Atlanta design firm.
ANSWER: Designing Women

In the penultimate episode of this show’s first season, a convent was stricken with typhoid while one character went on a date with a man who had a shoe fetish. One character on this show was discovered to have a young daughter named Betsy, and is played by an actor who had previously appeared as Piz on the dreadful third season of Veronica Mars, Chris Lowell. Other characters on this show include Cooper Freedman, who has a crush on Violet, and an expert on Oriental culture named Pete Wilder. However, the show centers on the director of Oceanside Wellness Center, who responded to the unfortunate wedding of Christina and Burke by moving to Los Angeles after resigning from Seattle Grace. FTP, name this ABC drama in which Addison Montgomery is played by Kate Walsh, a show which is allegedly even more dismal than the show from which it spun off, Grey’s Anatomy.
ANSWER: Private Practice

One character on this show used to compete as a martial artist under the name “Naptime,” and was arrested for shooting a police officer. Another character on this show has a gay son named Ken who has helped him with computer problems; that character also has a son named Darius Parker, who turned out to be a murderer and was played by Ludacris. In addition to that character named for the author of The Palm Wine Drunkard, Fin Tutuola, this show features a lawyer who was disbarred for not turning evidence over to the defense, Casey Novak, and a former alcoholic who commands the titular unit, Donald Cragen. Centering on Olivia Benson and Elliot Stabler, detectives played by Mariska Hargitay and Christopher Meloni, FTP, name this member of a venerable TV franchise which centers on sex crimes.
ANSWER: Law and Order: Special Victims Unit or Law and Order: SVU

In one episode of this show, one character was shown performing a pitiful stand-up comedy routine in which he just recited the names of fish; that episode also saw that character try to coach a children’s basketball team. Earlier in the season, one character’s annoying college girlfriend, Karen, showed up, while another character was hired by Goliath National Bank. The central characters are often seen at MacLaren’s bar, and in the most recent fourth season one of them almost married a woman named Stella, who lived in New Jersey and was played by Sarah Chalke. Featuring a former Canadian teen star named Robin, an architect named Ted, and the whoremongering, suit-clad Barney, FTP, name this CBS sitcom which stars Josh Radnor, Jason Segal, and Neil Patrick Harris.
ANSWER: How I Met Your Mother

As you can see, these questions focus almost exclusively on anecdotes and plot points, and only mention the names of actors incidentally or as giveaways. Anyway, perhaps I'm missing something, but I was perplexed by that critique (as applied to the Tonnies; in principle, as I said, I agree with that approach to question writing).
Andrew

Ex-Virginia, Ex-Chicago, Ex-Stanford
User avatar
Cheynem
Sin
Posts: 7220
Joined: Tue May 11, 2004 11:19 am
Location: Grand Rapids, Michigan

Re: Ferdinand Tönnies Discussion

Post by Cheynem »

Those were all great tossups, some of my favorites, actually (although rather CBS focused). My only regret was that the Horatio Caine tossup did not mention Marnold's excellent humor post using that meme with Horatio making a terrible pun.
Mike Cheyne
Formerly U of Minnesota

"You killed HSAPQ"--Matt Bollinger
Rothlover
Yuna
Posts: 815
Joined: Wed Feb 25, 2004 8:41 pm

Re: Ferdinand Tönnies Discussion

Post by Rothlover »

One brief thing I want to note in terms of accessibility: In 10 rounds, only 9 tus went unanswered between the two teams playing. That is a 95.5% conversion rate. The tu answers selected were either clearly well selected, or the competition was outstanding, or both, because you don't get that at any event that isn't CO Trash.
Dan Passner Brandeis '06 JTS/Columbia '11-'12 Ben Gurion University of the Negev/Columbia '12?
MichaelKearney
Lulu
Posts: 44
Joined: Sun Apr 06, 2008 7:20 pm

Re: Ferdinand Tönnies Discussion

Post by MichaelKearney »

I really enjoyed this tournament, even more than last year's event. The readers were universally friendly and clear-tongued, and realized that the best way to shorten round lengths in trash tournaments is to just go ahead and read the next tossup, and expect people to listen. I never felt like anyone was speed-talking through a question, and we still had a ton of time for lunch.

My only gripe is that if you're going to move your tournament back an hour, posting that info on the forums at 3AM isn't the best way to inform your teams. (Comically, we had checked the forums at 2AM right before going to bed, just in case something like this happened)

I've always considered this to be an Andrew-theme tournament, so I don't see the point of discussing the amount of trash lit(which I like), common-link(which I hate), and quizbowl in-jokes(which are just like that time that me and Charlie Steinhice ate at Provino's.) The bonus conversion was a little iffy at times, mostly due to the insertion of "cute" bonus topics like Estonian film and golf caddies. It's totally cool to write weird gimmick bonuses, but it's REALLY hard to keep the easy-medium-hard trifecta in play. It's the same for common-link tossups. I love them when they're good(Mexican Wrestlers, zero, being possessed), but they frequently require mind-reading on the part of the player.

Cold Soups, Porn Stars, and the Gabor Sisters are different examples of where they fall flat. Cold soups is an answer that virtually requires prompting, because most players are just going to buzz in with "soup" until the end of the question. You're requiring the player to hold off on early buzzing or play guess the adjective, and that's a problem. Porn Stars is a tossup wherein you're going to mention people who share multiple jobs (directors, photographers, escorts), and the player has to determine how specific the writer needs you to be. The Gabor sisters is a question that requires some weird descriptive sentences(members of this group, a person with this designation, etc), when it could've been just as easily written as a "last name's the same" question.

They're still WAY better than "this word appears before" and "this seven-letter adjective that can also be used as a noun", which are basically exercises in sentence diagramming and word parsing. This tournament featured way less of those compared to years past, and I've got to applaud that trend, in addition to the drastic reduction in meta. I didn't notice any clues that were flat-out wrong, and only one lead-in that was non-specific(This band played a cover of the Star-Spangled Banner). That's some damn good editing.

The only suggestions I could make for future iterations are the same ones I'd make for any other trash writers.

First, just go ahead and write question 21. It sucks to know that your awesome tossup might not get read, but ties are dumb. It saves you if there's some kind of weird protest, or if you've gotta throw a tossup out due to moderator error.
Second, if your answer lines contain a lot of "Accept close alternatives" and prompts, consider re-writing the question and asking for something less specific. Same re-writing advice goes for questions that require vagueness to be pyramidal, like using "location" instead of "street" or "country", or using cop-outs like "could be described as", "was similar to", etc.
Thirdly, it's totally cool to simply state "Team and year required", "Name's the same" or "Two answers required" at the beginning of a question and dispense with the descriptive sentences which only repeat themselves.

If that's all I can suggest, that's a flippin' awesome event. It's changed a lot in recent years, and I'll continue to recommend it to the Southern circuit regulars.
marnold wrote:Also, I think this is the first tournament I really got to see how much of a challenge writing trash can be.
Writing for a potential 30-year age span from sometimes apocryphal information, to fit a canon that doesn't exist, while still requiring questions to meet a totally subjective "fun" quality? I've written three tournaments so far, and I still don't know why the hell anyone would want to do it.
Michael Kearney, Vanderbilt '02
User avatar
dtaylor4
Auron
Posts: 3733
Joined: Tue Nov 16, 2004 11:43 am

Re: Ferdinand Tönnies Discussion

Post by dtaylor4 »

MichaelKearney wrote:I really enjoyed this tournament, even more than last year's event. The readers were universally friendly and clear-tongued, and realized that the best way to shorten round lengths in trash tournaments is to just go ahead and read the next tossup, and expect people to listen. I never felt like anyone was speed-talking through a question, and we still had a ton of time for lunch.

My only gripe is that if you're going to move your tournament back an hour, posting that info on the forums at 3AM isn't the best way to inform your teams. (Comically, we had checked the forums at 2AM right before going to bed, just in case something like this happened).
I didn't have immediate internet access at 2am, which is when I left following the Lit tournament. I didn't get to my destination until about 3ish, and made the post as soon as I could.

I moved it back because a number of readers and players had stayed even longer, and I did my best to be considerate. I know a number of players wanted it moved back to 10, but I also knew that there were players that needed to leave early anyway, which is why I made it 9am. In all, this meant nothing, as the campus police took their sweet time in letting us in AGAIN. How fitting that I'm listening to NWA as I type this.
gregpweinstein
Lulu
Posts: 62
Joined: Wed Sep 10, 2008 9:22 pm

Re: Ferdinand Tönnies Discussion

Post by gregpweinstein »

I also wanted to award my kudos to the great staff and writers of this tournament. This was my first time attending this tournament and I assure you it will not be my last. Other than the late start time and a couple wrong clues in tossups (which gave me pause, but I was still able to answer), this was a very solid tournament all around. As always, I thought it skewed old, but thats just cause I am young and prefer the mid-80s to now questions to come up, evidenced by I am pretty sure the only pre-80s question I got was Bob Cousy. However, after getting into the double digits of tournaments I have attended I have come to expect old, so I am not complaining. I did not expect as much indie music stuff to come up as it did, but I guess thats typical of where the question writers are from, Chicago being a hugely metropolitan center. But I had a great time and thoroughly enjoyed playing with my team, and cant wait till next year. very nicely done! Oh and that designate side tournament thing is genius, and I really enjoyed playing that for the short time that I did.

P.S. Arnold, I think I am one of those people who owe you money, and if there was a way I could talk to you about that, that would be great. thanks

EDIT: I was informed by a teammate that I was paid for, sorry about any confusion Arnold.
Last edited by gregpweinstein on Tue Jul 28, 2009 2:41 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Mr. Charles Montgomery Burns, "I cant be responsible for what my goons are ordered to do."
Greg "Lover of red-headed women, The Simpsons, and various other stuff" Weinstein
Berry College 2007-?
User avatar
SnookerUSF
Rikku
Posts: 310
Joined: Sun Oct 03, 2004 2:55 am
Location: USF-Tampa, FL
Contact:

Re: Ferdinand Tönnies Discussion

Post by SnookerUSF »

It was a real joy to read, and will look forward to doing so next year.
Ahmad Ragab, itinerant moderator at the New School for Social Research

ACF Nationals 2011:"Too real for the streets"
-Auroni Gupta

"Can 40,000 redacted topic Tossups be wrong?"

"With my gnomes I'm highlighting the danger of political opportunism and right-wing ideology. I get the feeling that this gnome has reopened an old wound."
-Ottomar Hoerl
User avatar
grapesmoker
Sin
Posts: 6345
Joined: Sat Oct 25, 2003 5:23 pm
Location: NYC
Contact:

Re: Ferdinand Tönnies Discussion

Post by grapesmoker »

One remark, on an area of my expertise: when writing questions about soccer teams, it's not a good idea to drop the goalkeeper early on. It's a little like saying "This team's starting point guard is Chris Paul," since goalkeepers are fairly prominent. But I did think it was great to see some more soccer questions than usual.
Jerry Vinokurov
ex-LJHS, ex-Berkeley, ex-Brown, sorta-ex-CMU
presently: John Jay College Economics
code ape, loud voice, general nuissance
User avatar
Joe Romersa
Rikku
Posts: 355
Joined: Wed Oct 22, 2008 12:20 am

Re: Ferdinand Tönnies Discussion

Post by Joe Romersa »

Will the packet be posted up somewhere so people like me can see it?
Alex Wang
Arcadia High '10
UCLA '14 or so
User avatar
DumbJaques
Forums Staff: Administrator
Posts: 3109
Joined: Wed Apr 21, 2004 6:21 pm
Location: Columbus, OH

Re: Ferdinand Tönnies Discussion

Post by DumbJaques »

I was a bit disappointed by the lack of pretty recent mainstream music (that is, the last five years or so). The only questions I recall off hand on new stuff that's charted mainstream within the last few years were bizarrely MGMT and 3OH!3, but I haven't really looked through the set yet.

On a similar note, there seemed like there was an intense amount of music in the set. It certainly looks like some packets had 5 or even 6 questions that were music or almost entirely music, and lots of common link questions mentioned 1-2 clues of non-music stuff that nobody had even the faintest chance of getting and then just became music tossups.
Chris Ray
OSU
University of Chicago, 2016
University of Maryland, 2014
ACF, PACE
User avatar
Captain Sinico
Auron
Posts: 2675
Joined: Sun Sep 21, 2003 1:46 pm
Location: Champaign, Illinois

Re: Ferdinand Tönnies Discussion

Post by Captain Sinico »

Before I field questions, I'd like to thank my collaborators, especially Andrew, for putting up with my seemingly entitative lack of punctuality. I'll hit the thread back with a list of my questions if anyone's interested (including some UNPUBLISHED WORKS!)

Now then...
grapesmoker wrote:One remark, on an area of my expertise: when writing questions about soccer teams, it's not a good idea to drop the goalkeeper early on. It's a little like saying "This team's starting point guard is Chris Paul," since goalkeepers are fairly prominent. But I did think it was great to see some more soccer questions than usual.
Yeah, I did consider that, but then I considered that, as someone who follows soccer, I only knew Júlio César from the Brazilian National Team; I didn't know where he was playing his club ball, so I was comfortable saying that anyone who knows Inter's roster cold even at the level of starting goalie deserve a fourth-clue buzz. In a similar vein, I'd claim that Júlio César is less famous than the subjects of the subsequent six-or-so clues (Ibrahimoviç, Vierra, and Materazzi.)

MaS
Mike Sorice
Former Coach, Centennial High School of Champaign, IL (2014-2020) & Team Illinois (2016-2018)
Alumnus, Illinois ABT (2000-2002; 2003-2009) & Fenwick Scholastic Bowl (1999-2000)
Member, ACF (Emeritus), IHSSBCA, & PACE
User avatar
Captain Sinico
Auron
Posts: 2675
Joined: Sun Sep 21, 2003 1:46 pm
Location: Champaign, Illinois

Re: Ferdinand Tönnies Discussion

Post by Captain Sinico »

As promised, my questions:

SPORTS

Tossups: Marshall Faulk, No-Name Defense, Paul Brown, Hack Wilson, Tom Seaver, Philadelphia Athletics, Inter, Buffalo Sabres, ultimate, Denver Nuggets, Moses Malone, Chris Paul.

Bonuses: White Sox perfect games (Mark Buehrle, Nap Lajoie, Detroit Tigers); Brian Jordan, Odalis Pérez, Gary Sheffield; Tampa 2 (Tampa 2, Tony Dungy, Bud Carson); Syracuse NCAA upsets (zone defense, Vermont Catamounts, Dick Tarrant); drugged-up Michigan State footballers (Jeff Smoker, Plaxico Burress, Paul Edinger); NBA fatties (Michael Sweetney, DeJuan Blair, Zach Randolph); K.C. Jones (K.C. Jones, U. San Fran, SuperSonics); Stasneys (Stasneys, Avalanche, Blues); the Klitschko brothers (Klitschko brothers, WBA, Ruslan Chagaev); 2008 NFL Draft (Matt Stafford, Oakland Raiders, Northern Illinois); Steve Young (L.A. Express, Vinnie Testaverde, Aeneas Williams); the Ice Bowl (Packers/Cowboys, Don Meredith, Dan Reeves); pitching records (Old Hoss Radbourn, Kid Nichols, Cy Young); MLB umpires (umpires, Runges, Ed Walsh); crash-prone pitchers (Nick Adenhart, Steve Howe, Josh Hancock).

Unused questions:
It took this player three years to suit up for the team that had taken him with the second pick of the second round of a weak draft topped by Derrick Coleman and Gary Payton. Two years removed from an EFF MVP with Bentton, this player’s best season came with that same team for which he was second in points, rebounds, and assists in spite of a late-season transfer from the Birmingham Barons toward the end of that 1995-96 season. This last player to win the Sixth Man of the Year on an NBA champion retired in 2006 after not being signed by either of the teams near his Highland Park home, rounding out four years with the Milwaukee Bucks. FTP, name this adaptable forward best known for his role as the sixth man during the Bulls’ second three-peat and for being Croatian.
ANSWER: Toni Kukoč

Last year saw probably the most important record held by this person broken by Robert Griffin in a game against this person’s team, as Griffin attempted his 139th pass. In addition to the setting of that record for pass attempts without interception to start a career, this man’s time as a college quarterback saw wins in the 1987 Sun Bowl and 1988 Holiday Bowl with major help from Thurman Thomas and Barry Sanders, respectively. Later, this coach served as offensive coordinator for Les Miles until the latter went to LSU, leaving this man to head coach such players as Brandon Pettigrew and Zac Robinson. He may be best known for a vigorous defense of Bobby Reid, as he called an article detailing Reid’s loss of the starter’s job “garbage.” FTP, name this head football coach for your Oklahoma State Cowboys, a man who recently was 40.
ANSWER: Michael Ray Gundy

This player owns the AL record for sacrifice flies and grounded into four triple plays, a record he noted that he hopes will be broken. His best season saw him lead his league with 118 RBI to garner all but two first place votes, those going to Mickey Mantle, and win the 1964 AL MVP. The manager opposed to this player’s team in the 1970 World Series, Sparky Anderson, quipped that, if he dropped the plate that he was then eating food off of, this player would pick it on one hop; that same series saw him receive the nickname “Hoover.” One record held by this baseballer was later tied by Carl Yastrzemski, who also played twenty-three seasons for one team. FTP, name this sixteen-time Gold Glove winner, a defensive wizard at third for the 1960’s and ‘70’s Orioles.
ANSWER: Brooks Calbert Robinson, Jr. (prompt on Robinson)

MUSIC

Tossups: cakes, Fats Domino, "Escape (The Piña Colada Song)", Kenny Loggins, Keith Moon, "So Far Away", "Yakety Yak", Joan Jett, "Paperback Writer", "War Pigs", At the Filmore East, The Association.

Bonuses: The Band, "The Weight", Luis Buñiel; Ride the Lightning, Metallica, "The Call of Ktulu"; Al Green, Green is Blues, "Let's Stay Together"; "Sir Duke", Stevie Wonder, "Village Ghetto Land"; Stray Cats, Teds, "Rock this Town"; "Jeepster", T.Rex, Howlin' Wolf; "Shake, Rattle and Roll", Bill Haley and His Comets, Big Joe Turner; "Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands", Blonde on Blonde, "Rainy Day Women #12 & 35"; "Watching the Wheels", Double Fantasy, "Kiss Kiss Kiss"; Songs about the radio ("Turn It On Again", Permanent Waves, Roger Taylor); Sound check songs ("Essaywhuman?!!!?!", Pearl Jam, Next Friday); "Someday We'll Know", New Radicals, Rayleigh scattering; fake-English-talking bands ("Island in the Sun", Gasman, Madonna.)

Unused questions:
One interlude in this work centers on the discovery of a book in which “o” and “u” are of particular interest as it contains nude women posed like letters of the alphabet. A deception in this work is exposed when it is revealed that the main characters are ignorant that the namesake of a gang they’re trying to infiltrate is not a Street, but an Avenue. A digression about “Certs, with Retsyn” results from one of the main characters mishearing the lyrics to a Stooges cover performed by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, “Search and Destroy”. Anthrax, owners of alphabet porn, and Hollis Crew members Run D.M.C. appear on this album along with Megadeth, White Zombie, Primus, Jackyl, and an artist who created a virtual reality video for the final non-hidden track “I Got You Babe”. FTP, name this album on which Cher appears with two cartoon characters from MTV.
ANSWER: The Beavis and Butt-head Experience

An early work in this genre finds the protagonist “fr[eezing] right to the bone” shortly before taking the subway downtown and being told he “sound like a hillbilly.” A spontaneously created work in this genre contains a comical mispronunciation of “psychiatric” and has the protagonist steal a Cadillac and listen to Rock-a-Day Johnny on his record player before ending with parallel sayings from Abraham Lincoln and the protagonist. A third song in this genre ends with the cryptic threat to “stay in [the] kitchen, have [the titular occurrence] / In the bathroom” before wishing on “some ‘o these people” the same boat mishap that previously befell the protagonist. FTP, name this type of song, the aforementioned examples of which include ones named for New York, World War III and the Bear Mountain Picnic Massacre, all by Bob Dylan.
ANSWER: Bob Dylan talking blues songs (prompt on Bob Dylan blues songs or Bob Dylan talking songs)

This person’s large breasts are alluded to in the claim that “she’s the kind of a girl / Who makes” a publication then known for photos of choice topless bathers, The News of the World. A relation of this character “keeps a ten-bob note up his nose” and “shaves in the dark” according to one section of the work in which they both appear; that section says of this character herself that she “works in a shop / She never stops / She’s a go-getter.” The part of the medley in which this character appears that is directly addressed to this character notes that she’s “killer-diller” in such getups as “jackboots and kilt” and a bag made of her namesake plastic. FTP, name this “attractively built” character who’s “so good-looking, but she looks like a man” and whom “you should see,” according to a song from Abbey Road by the Beatles.
ANSWER: Polythene Pam

More to come shortly,
MaS
Mike Sorice
Former Coach, Centennial High School of Champaign, IL (2014-2020) & Team Illinois (2016-2018)
Alumnus, Illinois ABT (2000-2002; 2003-2009) & Fenwick Scholastic Bowl (1999-2000)
Member, ACF (Emeritus), IHSSBCA, & PACE
User avatar
Captain Sinico
Auron
Posts: 2675
Joined: Sun Sep 21, 2003 1:46 pm
Location: Champaign, Illinois

Re: Ferdinand Tönnies Discussion

Post by Captain Sinico »

MOVIES AND TV

Tossups: Walter Sobchak, A Passage to India, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Fast Eddie Felson, Connon MacLeod, Roger Murtaugh.

Bonuses: Volver, Pedro Almodóvar, Penelope Cruz; Paul Allen, American Psycho, axe to the head; ensemble films (Love Actually, Paris, je t'aime, Glengarry Glen Ross); The News Hour with Jim Lehrer, NOVA, P.O.V.; cartoon shills (Esurance, Mr. Opportunity, Blackbeak); characters whose names are what they are ending in -ie (Towlie, Meatwad, Mellvar); Ghost Busters, Central Park West, Walter Peck; Judge Doom, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, the Dip; Playmakers, Eric Ozisic, ESPN.

Unused questions:
This person is the central character of a movie in which appears a character named for and clearly based on the creator of “Big Road Blues” and “Canned Heat Blues”. Appeals by this man to the law and to the radio are rejected as the former is “but a human institution” and his would-be killers do not have the latter. Earlier, he was contrasted with “bona fide” man who thrashes him using bare-knuckle boxing, Vernon T. Waldrip. This Dapper Dan pomade enthusiast leads a group including the aforementioned Tommie Johnson the popularity of which leads to the re-election of Pass the Biscuits Pappy O’Daniel. This main character of a film named for the movie-within-movie of Sullivan’s Travels is the lead singer of the aforementioned Soggy Bottom Boys, who record a hit version of “Man of Constant Sorrow”. FTP, name this character who leads a gang of escaped convicts to his home in O Brother, Where Are Thou?
ANSWER: Ulysses Everett McGill (accept any underlined part)

This person is called a “warthog-faced buffoon,” which he insists is the first time he’s ever been insulted. At the entrance to an area into which only this man and one of his associates are allowed, he is advised “If you don’t have your health, you haven’t got anything.” This man’s name is repeated at least eight times as a taunt by Valerie, the wife of an MLT enthusiast whom this man fired. The aforementioned area owned by this man is home to a machine with highest setting 50 built by the aforementioned associate, Count Rugin, and is known as the Pit of Despair; an escapee from that area challenges this man to a duel “to the pain” after being revived by Miracle Max. FTP, name this Prince of Florin whose attempts to wed Buttercup and foil Westley drive the plot of the film in which he is the principal villain, The Princess Bride.
ANSWER: Prince Humperdink of Florin

This film follows the attempts of the Scarlett Johansson-played Sondra Pransky to expose Tarot Card Killer copycat Lord Peter Lyman, played by Hugh Jackman. FTPE:
[10] Name this bad-by-most-accounts film that shares its name with a novel in which non-writer William Boot is shipped off to Ishmaelia.
ANSWER: Scoop
[10] Scoop was directed by this man, who puts in a cameo appearance as a magician named The Great Splendini.
ANSWER: Woody Allen (accept Allen Stewart Konigsberg)
[10] Woody Allen would later directed Scarlett Johansson in this film, in which she, as one of the title entities, forms part of a ménage-a-trois involving an artist named Juan Antonio and his erstwhile ex-wife, María Elena.
ANSWER: Vicky Christina Barcelona


OTHERS

Tossups: the spine.

Bonuses: The Jerky Boys, Frank Rizzo, "Pablo Honey"; Road Rash, Sega Genesis, EA; T. Hermann Zwiebel, The Onion, launched into space; Real Men of Genius, Bud Light, "Mr. Overly Competitive Touch Football Game Player"; Warp Whistles, Super Mario Bros. 3, Boom-Boom; Punch-Out!! (arcade), Pizza Pasta, Turkey

Any comments welcome,
MaS
Mike Sorice
Former Coach, Centennial High School of Champaign, IL (2014-2020) & Team Illinois (2016-2018)
Alumnus, Illinois ABT (2000-2002; 2003-2009) & Fenwick Scholastic Bowl (1999-2000)
Member, ACF (Emeritus), IHSSBCA, & PACE
User avatar
dtaylor4
Auron
Posts: 3733
Joined: Tue Nov 16, 2004 11:43 am

Re: Ferdinand Tönnies Discussion

Post by dtaylor4 »

For the sake of disclosure, only two of my questions made it into the set: the Robin Williams bonus, and the poker books bonus.
User avatar
Birdofredum Sawin
Rikku
Posts: 400
Joined: Tue Nov 09, 2004 11:25 pm
Location: Mountain View

Re: Ferdinand Tönnies Discussion

Post by Birdofredum Sawin »

Anyone who has a copy of the set should feel free to make it available online. (Or, if you are an online archiver of questions and want to make the set available, get in touch with me and I'll email it to you.)
Andrew

Ex-Virginia, Ex-Chicago, Ex-Stanford
User avatar
MicroEStudent
Rikku
Posts: 462
Joined: Tue Feb 17, 2009 11:20 pm

Re: Ferdinand Tönnies Discussion

Post by MicroEStudent »

Birdofredum Sawin wrote:Anyone who has a copy of the set should feel free to make it available online. (Or, if you are an online archiver of questions and want to make the set available, get in touch with me and I'll email it to you.)
As my team was unable to make it due to transportation problems, I would greatly appreciate the ability to download the set.
Nathaniel Kane
RIT '09, '11 (BS Microelectronic Engineering, MS Microelectronic Engineering)
User avatar
dtaylor4
Auron
Posts: 3733
Joined: Tue Nov 16, 2004 11:43 am

Re: Ferdinand Tönnies Discussion

Post by dtaylor4 »

I sent it to Chris Carter for him to post at collegiate.quizbowlpackets.com
User avatar
ValenciaQBowl
Auron
Posts: 2558
Joined: Thu Feb 05, 2004 2:25 pm
Location: Orlando, Florida

Re: Ferdinand Tönnies Discussion

Post by ValenciaQBowl »

I had a typically fine time playing this and want to thank all the writers and the staffers at the CO site. The power on Moses Malone for "fo, fo, fo" was probably a tad easy, but then again maybe not, as I reckon it's only that easy to folks who were actually watching the NBA in the early-mid 80s. And the power given for a first-line recognition of "Whitey Ford" [Sings the Blues] was probably too easy, too. But so what? It's trash, and it was fun.

I would've loved to have heard the "talking blues" question, which I surely would've negged early with an attempt at some Bob Dylan album name, adding to my stupid totals. Thanks again to all who helped put this on.
Chris Borglum
Valencia College Grand Poobah
User avatar
Maxwell Sniffingwell
Auron
Posts: 2164
Joined: Sun Feb 12, 2006 3:22 pm
Location: Des Moines, IA

Re: Ferdinand Tönnies Discussion

Post by Maxwell Sniffingwell »

Dammit, I missed a Toni Kukoc question?

The "fo, fo, fo" clue WAS too early in my room, too - it's the only the thing I know Moses Malone for and triggered a buzzer race between three guys on the other team.
Greg Peterson

Northwestern University '18
Lawrence University '11
Maine South HS '07

"a decent player" - Mike Cheyne
InvadErGII
Rikku
Posts: 308
Joined: Sat Sep 13, 2008 7:41 pm

Re: Ferdinand Tönnies Discussion

Post by InvadErGII »

I regret not being able to send a team to this...it sounds like it was a great time. If anyone with the set feels like sending them to invadergii AT gmail, that would be great. Otherwise, I'll keep my eyes peeled for it on the packet archive.
Erik Nelson
Director, Minnesota High School Quiz Bowl
President, Play Quiz Bowl LLC
www.bouncebackfoundation.org
User avatar
setht
Auron
Posts: 1205
Joined: Mon Oct 18, 2004 2:41 pm
Location: Columbus, Ohio

Re: Ferdinand Tönnies Discussion

Post by setht »

I wrote the following questions: tossups on Ursula, Bones, Waltz With Bashir, Dollhouse and Heroes; bonuses on radio comedians, Led Zep albums, Ray Stevens, and martial arts films.

If anyone has comments/complaints on these, let me know (here, or [email protected]).

Thanks,
-Seth
Seth Teitler
Formerly UC Berkeley and U. Chicago
President of NAQT
Emeritus member of ACF
User avatar
Mike Bentley
Sin
Posts: 6461
Joined: Fri Mar 31, 2006 11:03 pm
Location: Bellevue, WA
Contact:

Re: Ferdinand Tönnies Discussion

Post by Mike Bentley »

I sat on the Waltz with Bashir tossup on the assumption it was a bit too tough to be a tossup, but apparently it's more famous than I though (as I ended up getting beat on it). It seemed like a good question, though.

Oh yeah, one complaint I had about this set is that music bonuses often seemed to begin with clues like, "This song states [some lyrics]. For 10 points each, identify this song [from some more lyrics]". I usually find it very hard to translate some moderator reading lyrics at quizbowl speed into what song those lyrics go to without some sort of context. Thus, while this is probably okay for some pretty famous parts or hard parts for bonuses, I'd like to see more things like "For 10 points each, name this 1983 metal song" or "For 10 points each, name this song by a band featuring X and Y..." in these first parts to bonuses.
Mike Bentley
Treasurer, Partnership for Academic Competition Excellence
Adviser, Quizbowl Team at University of Washington
University of Maryland, Class of 2008
Locked