Global Announcement for ACF Fall 2009 (Weekend of 10/31)

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Global Announcement for ACF Fall 2009 (Weekend of 10/31)

Post by Gautam »

This is the global announcement for ACF Fall 2009, which will take place on the weekend of October 31, 2009.

Editors

Editor-in-Chief: Gautam Kandlikar (UMN)

Assistant Editors: Evan Adams (VCU,) Auroni Gupta (UCSD,) Will Nediger (UWO,) Mehdi Razvi (U Penn,) and George Stevens (Clemson.)

Hosting

We are currently seeking ACF Fall hosts. Hosting is an excellent way to raise money for your club, and allow new quizbowlers in your club to gain exposure to well-written, accessible questions. If you are interested in hosting, please read through the official ACF Hosting Guide and then email me at [email protected].

UPDATE: Hosts and contact information:
  • Northwest - Boise State University. Contact: Colin McNamara (boiseqb at gmail dot com)
  • West - Caltech Univeristy. Contact: Micah Manary (manary at caltech dot edu)
  • South Plains - University of Texas at Austin. Contact: Eric Kwartler (ekwartler at gmail dot com)
  • Midwest - University of Chicago. Contact: Matt Menard (mmenard AT uchicago DOT edu)
  • North - University of Minnesota. Contact: Gautam Kandlikar (kand0028 at umn dot edu)
  • Lower Midwest (Missouri) - University of Missouri. Contact: Charlie Dees (mizzouquizbowl at gmail dot com)
  • New England - MIT. Contact: Grace Li (graceli at mit dot edu)
  • Mid-Atlantic - VCU. Contact: Matt Weiner (mattweiner.vcu at gmail dot com)
  • Florida - University of Florida. Contact: Justin Byrd (hthker88 at ufl dot edu)
  • Southeast - Georgia Tech. Contact: Adam Leim (liema05 at gmail dot com)
We are still seeking hosts in Eastern Canada and Mid-South region.

UPDATE: Bid Submission Deadlines:

Since I completely forgot about announcing this, I will make the deadlines for submitting bids somewhat later than they were last year. If you want to host ACF Fall and you'd be able to work with your scheduling department to secure rooms even before school starts, please submit your bids by August 31, 2009. This is a "preferred deadline" of sorts. If you need to discuss things with your team and administration in person, please do so and submit your bids by September 15, 2009. I will not accept any more bids after September 15.

On September 1, I'll go through the preferred bids and announce hosts for whichever regions have strong bids. All other hosts will be announced between September 1 and September 16 on a rolling basis.

Packet Submission

As per the ACF submission rules, any team with at least one person on it who played a regular, collegiate, academic quizbowl tournament prior to September 1, 2008 is required to submit a packet in order to participate in an ACF tournament in 2009-2010. This includes ACF Fall. Teams required to submit packets who do not submit one by the final deadline will be dropped from the tournament.

Please submit packets to [email protected] and use "ACF Fall 2009: [Team Name]" in the subject line.

Submission schedule and additional discount

UPDATE: Please note that the submission deadline for the -$50 discount has been extended. It would be impractical to give programs only 3-4 days after school starts to write a packet. As such, the new submission deadline for the $50 discount is September 19, 2009.

This year's submission schedule is as follows:

Packet submitted on or before:
Sept 19, 2009: -$50
Sept 26, 2009: -$25 (-$50 for teams not required to submit packets)
Oct 10, 2009: No penalty (-$25 for teams not required to submit packets)
Oct 17, 2009: +$25
Oct 24, 2009: +$50
After Oct. 24, 2009: The editors may grant one or more 24-hour extensions at an additional penalty of $10 per day.

Additional discounts are offered for travel, buzzers, staffers, etc. Please refer to the tournament fees and discounts section of the ACF guidelines for further information.

Packet penalties


Teams will incur penalties for the following offenses:
  • Incorrect formatting: Several teams continue to submit incorrectly formatted packets despite the guidelines clearly stated on the ACF Question Formatting Guidelines document. Please take a moment to review the guidelines and format your packet accordingly.
  • Plagiarism: Please do not attempt to plagiarize. It is often very easy to catch. Please also refer to this thread excoriating those who attempted to plagiarize at ACF Fall 2008.
  • Writing specific types of forbidden questions: Types of questions prohibited at ACF events include spelling questions, binary matching bonuses, 5-10-15 bonuses, etc.
Please see the additional packet penalties section for more info.

Friendly reminders

Please refer to the ACF Packet Submission and Fee Information document for a more detailed explanation of submission and fee-related information.

This may seem obvious, but last year there were certain programs which submitted packets on which more than one team had collaborated. Please do NOT do this; it makes your packets useless for play.

Experienced teams writing packets for ACF Fall 2009 are encouraged to follow the difficulty levels of ACF Fall 2008 and ACF Fall 2007. Many teams submitted rather difficult questions for ACF Fall 2008 (discussion can be found in this thread.) Please use the higher difficulty questions for regular difficulty tournaments such as ACF Winter and Penn Bowl. Furthermore, teams new to packet-submission are encouraged to ask me questions about appropriate difficulty levels. Please think twice before submitting avant garde tossups on works from Senegalese literature or writing bonuses on cutting edge research in cancer biology.

High school teams continue to be exempt from packet submission. However, if you would like to submit one, you are certainly encouraged do that. High school teams will be eligible for the same packet submissions discounts as the teams not required to write packets.

If you have any other questions, please let me know at [email protected]

EDIT: Included links wherever necessary.
Last edited by Gautam on Sun Sep 06, 2009 12:02 am, edited 5 times in total.
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Re: Global Announcement for ACF Fall 2009 (Weekend of 10/31)

Post by dxdtdemon »

The links aren't working.
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Re: Global Announcement for ACF Fall 2009 (Weekend of 10/31)

Post by Gautam »

That is a good point. I had them in the word document I used, but I forgot to change them into BBcode. I will do that as soon as I am able to access my computer.
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Re: Global Announcement for ACF Fall 2009 (Weekend of 10/31)

Post by Kouign Amann »

gkandlikar wrote:That is a good point. I had them in the word document I used, but I forgot to change them into BBcode. I will do that as soon as I am able to access my computer.
ITT Gautam magically posts with his mind.
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Re: Global Announcement for ACF Fall 2009 (Weekend of 10/31)

Post by dtaylor4 »

Prof.Whoopie wrote:
gkandlikar wrote:That is a good point. I had them in the word document I used, but I forgot to change them into BBcode. I will do that as soon as I am able to access my computer.
ITT Gautam magically posts with his mind.
It's entirely possible to post from a computer that is not your own, like I am doing right now.
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Re: Global Announcement for ACF Fall 2009 (Weekend of 10/31)

Post by Kouign Amann »

dtaylor4 wrote:
Prof.Whoopie wrote:
gkandlikar wrote:That is a good point. I had them in the word document I used, but I forgot to change them into BBcode. I will do that as soon as I am able to access my computer.
ITT Gautam magically posts with his mind.
It's entirely possible to post from a computer that is not your own, like I am doing right now.
Killjoy...
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Re: Global Announcement for ACF Fall 2009 (Weekend of 10/31)

Post by theMoMA »

Gautam has one of those fancy phones.
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Re: Global Announcement for ACF Fall 2009 (Weekend of 10/31)

Post by Cheynem »

A phone that can access the Internet?! Does this come from sort of future where apes have evolved from men?
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Re: Global Announcement for ACF Fall 2009 (Weekend of 10/31)

Post by Gautam »

Hello,

Please note the two new updates to the original post w.r.t bid-submission deadlines and the extension of the packet submission deadline.

Also, while there's around a month left for the first packet deadline, it's never too early to start working on questions! We are there to answer any kinds of questions you may have regarding the quality of your questions. We've already had two esteemed gentlemen show us their questions and solicit feedback, and we'd be happy to see more questions and provide feedback.

Thanks,
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Re: Global Announcement for ACF Fall 2009 (Weekend of 10/31)

Post by at your pleasure »

Just to clarify, are mixed high school teams premitted? I assume they are, but I just want to be on the safe side.
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Re: Global Announcement for ACF Fall 2009 (Weekend of 10/31)

Post by Gautam »

The ACF Rules state mixed high school teams are not permitted, so the answer to your question is no.
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Re: Global Announcement for ACF Fall 2009 (Weekend of 10/31)

Post by Gautam »

Hello guys,

It's September 1, which means I have some hosts to announce for you!

The following hosts have been decided as of today:
Northwest - Boise State University. Contact: Colin McNamara (boiseqb at gmail dot com)
West - Caltech Univeristy. Contact: Micah Manary (manary at caltech dot edu)
South Plains - University of Texas at Austin. Contact: Eric Kwartler (ekwartler at gmail dot com)
Midwest - University of Chicago. Contact: Michael Arnold (marnold at uchicago dot edu)
North - University of Minnesota. Contact: Gautam Kandlikar (kand0028 at umn dot edu)
Lower Midwest (Missouri) - University of Missouri. Contact: Charlie Dees (mizzouquizbowl at gmail dot com)
New England - MIT. Contact: Grace Li (graceli at mit dot edu)
Mid-Atlantic - VCU. Contact: Matt Weiner (mattweiner.vcu at gmail dot com)
Florida - University of Florida. Contact: Justin Byrd (hthker88 at ufl dot edu)

We are still seeking hosts in Eastern Canada and Mid-South region.

I am also excited to announce that Seth Teitler has joined the ACF Fall editing team in the capacity of an advisor. He will be providing feedback to the editors regarding difficulty, question quality, pyramidalty, etc. We are really glad that Seth has been able to devote some time from his busy schedule to help us out!

I still haven't received any packet submissions, but I eagerly await submissions in my inbox. Remember, it's never too early to start writing that packet!

Thank you,
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Re: Global Announcement for ACF Fall 2009 (Weekend of 10/31)

Post by Golran »

Expect to receive a UCLA packet this week, we are only waiting on 3/3.
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Re: Global Announcement for ACF Fall 2009 (Weekend of 10/31)

Post by marnold »

I was the contact for the bidding process, but I will not be TDing our site of this tournament. That will be handled by Matt Menard, who you should email at mmenard AT uchicago DOT e d u with questions and sign-ups. A more formal announcement for our site will be up shortly.
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Re: Global Announcement for ACF Fall 2009 (Weekend of 10/31)

Post by Theory Of The Leisure Flask »

Did anyone from the NYC area put in a bid for this?
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Re: Global Announcement for ACF Fall 2009 (Weekend of 10/31)

Post by Gautam »

This post will be used to keep track of submissions:

Packets submitted by -$50 deadline:

Ohio State University
UCLA B
RPI
Yale A
Yale B
Maryland A
Rice University
Brandeis
Chattahoochee High School
St. Anselm's High School
Paul Laurence Dunbar High School

Packets submitted by the -$25 deadline:
Caltech
University of Washington A
Harvard A
Carleton A
LASA A

Packets submitted by the -$0 deadline:
Carnegie Mellon
Duke
Alabama A
Alabama B
Vanderbilt
Columbia
Furman
Case Western
Truman State A
Truman State B
Cornell
Kansas State
Brown B

Packet submitted by the +$25 deadline:
Princeton
Michigan State A
Claremont A
Illinois B
TAMU

Packets submitted by the +$50 deadline:
Northwestern
South Carolina
Michigan
UCLA A
Last edited by Gautam on Sun Oct 25, 2009 1:20 am, edited 12 times in total.
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Re: Global Announcement for ACF Fall 2009 (Weekend of 10/31)

Post by Gautam »

Update: GA Tech has been awarded the ACF Fall Southeast mirror.
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Re: Global Announcement for ACF Fall 2009 (Weekend of 10/31)

Post by setht »

gkandlikar wrote:Seth Teitler has joined the ACF Fall editing team in the capacity of an advisor. He will be providing feedback to the editors
Pursuant to this, if the editors could let me know their email addresses I'd like to get started on providing some feedback. My email address is [email protected].

Thanks,
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Re: Global Announcement for ACF Fall 2009 (Weekend of 10/31)

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Re: Global Announcement for ACF Fall 2009 (Weekend of 10/31)

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Re: Global Announcement for ACF Fall 2009 (Weekend of 10/31)

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Re: Global Announcement for ACF Fall 2009 (Weekend of 10/31)

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Re: Global Announcement for ACF Fall 2009 (Weekend of 10/31)

Post by Gautam »

Hello all,

The $50 discount deadline is soon coming up! I hope to see many packets in my inbox over the next few days!

Thanks,
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Re: Global Announcement for ACF Fall 2009 (Weekend of 10/31)

Post by stevebahnaman »

North Carolina Wesleyan College is starting a new quiz bowl team; I am the coach. I played at Emory up until 2004-5.

If we attend the Mid-Atlantic tourney at VCU in Richmond, and bring a laptop, we get $105 in discounts, right?

I just want to verify this.

Thanks,

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Re: Global Announcement for ACF Fall 2009 (Weekend of 10/31)

Post by Gautam »

Yes, Steve. Your program can certainly get a $105 discount.

I am glad to see that North Carolina Wesleyan is starting a quizbowl team and that you are choosing to attend ACF Fall. If you have any questions whatsoever, feel free to ask us on this thread, or email me at [email protected]

Thanks!
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Re: Global Announcement for ACF Fall 2009 (Weekend of 10/31)

Post by Gautam »

Thanks to representatives of Ohio State University, UCLA B, RPI, Yale A, Yale B, Maryland A, and Rice University for submitting packets before the $50 discount deadline. You guys are really awesome.

Gautam

EDIT: missing words!
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Re: Global Announcement for ACF Fall 2009 (Weekend of 10/31)

Post by Sun Devil Student »

Question for the ACF authorities:

The ACF website says "new ACF" teams get a $25 discount on registration, and "new quizbowl" teams get $75 off (from base registration of $120 per team).

Most of ASU's D2 team from last year is gone (either graduated or studying abroad), so the ASU club has an almost entirely different set of people this year. This year's ASU delegation to ACF Fall will consist mostly of new recruits who have never played "good quizbowl" before.

Even though "ASU" may technically not be new as a school, the fact is that almost all of "ASU" 's members this year are totally new as players. May we still get the $75 discount for being "new to quizbowl"?

Funding is our primary constraint in trying to expose as many as possible of our members to a true "good quizbowl" tournament, so if we are granted the additional discount on registration fees, this will free up some money for hotel rooms and allow us to bring more of our new recruits to compete.

If we can at least get the discount for 2 of our 3 likely teams, that would be very helpful to us.

Please let us know your decision.

Thanks for your consideration.
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Re: Global Announcement for ACF Fall 2009 (Weekend of 10/31)

Post by Auroni »

If I may answer that question, you will receive "new to quizbowl" and "new to ACF" discounts every year if your program has not attended those events in some time. UCSD was granted those discounts for all 08-09 ACF events despite a prior incarnation of our club circa 2005.
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Re: Global Announcement for ACF Fall 2009 (Weekend of 10/31)

Post by Gautam »

Hello all, the $25 discount deadline is fast approaching. Also, if you aren't required to write a packet but were planning on doing so anyway, you will be eligible to receive a $50 discount if I receive your packet by the midnight of the 26th!

Feel free to drop me a line anytime if you have any questions.
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Re: Global Announcement for ACF Fall 2009 (Weekend of 10/31)

Post by Gautam »

Hello all,

There are a couple of things I would like to point out. The first is that the formatting guidelines as listed in the document as listed here were somewhat contradictory with the guidelines listed here. The inconsistencies have been resolved and the detailed formatting guidelines are now available here. The link remains the same, but the content has been updated.

The editors have informed me that some of the packets they have received have had egregious formatting issues. Because there were inconsistencies within our formatting guidelines, we will not assess any penalties for incorrect formatting on packets we have received until now. However, any packets received henceforth will be assessed penalties for incorrect formatting as outlined in the guidelines. Thus, this is a reminder for teams to follow the formatting guidelines. Feel free to ask me any questions you have about formatting.

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Re: Global Announcement for ACF Fall 2009 (Weekend of 10/31)

Post by Mike Bentley »

Can you confirm that you received the UW A packet?
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Re: Global Announcement for ACF Fall 2009 (Weekend of 10/31)

Post by setht »

I have some requests from editors and reminders to pass on to any teams that are still writing packets.
1) It's okay to give your packets some color/flavor by inserting a few joking phrases, but please don't do this excessively. If you want to spice up an "A defeated B at this battle" bonus prompt with "A spanked B but good at this battle" or "A put the kibosh on B's expansionist ambitions at this battle" or whatever, that's fine, but don't do this too much, and don't use the same joke over and over. A packet with zero jokes is also just fine.

These next couple requests are aimed primarily at the more experienced writers out there.
2) Please try to keep the hard bonus parts reasonable. Stuff that's typically not encountered until the third year of classes (or later) in the relevant major is probably too hard. If you're having trouble coming up with a good hard part, consider writing on an easy answer and using some of the harder clues for that answer.

3) Please try to rein in the lead-in portion of tossups: we don't need 4 lines of lead-in, 1 line of middle clues, and 1 line of giveaway; rather, we want 1 line of lead-in, 4 lines of middle clues, and 1 line of giveaway. Please don't assume that "clue X comes up all the time at regular/hard tournaments" means that clue X is a suitable middle clue for ACF Fall.

If any writers feel like they're on top of all those things and want additional ideas for improving their submissions with an eye towards saving the editors time and getting their questions in with little or no changes, I recommend
4) Reading through questions carefully with an eye toward sentence structure. Make sure you don't have dangling modifiers or pronoun ambiguity--if a sentence admits two or more possible constructions of its meaning and any of those constructions is misleading, that sentence has to be rewritten.
I'll probably have more to say about this last bit some time later, possibly after the tournament.

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Re: Global Announcement for ACF Fall 2009 (Weekend of 10/31)

Post by Susan »

Seth wrote:4) Reading through questions carefully with an eye toward sentence structure. Make sure you don't have dangling modifiers or pronoun ambiguity--if a sentence admits two or more possible constructions of its meaning and any of those constructions is misleading, that sentence has to be rewritten.
I think it's generally a good idea to read your questions out loud once before you submit them, since these sorts of moderator-confounding errors are easier to catch when you hear the question read than when you're just seeing it.
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Re: Global Announcement for ACF Fall 2009 (Weekend of 10/31)

Post by Gautam »

Hello all,

This is another friendly reminder that the 0 penalty deadline (or $25 discount deadline for teams not required to write packets) is fast approaching. We've gotten some excellent submissions so far and I hope to see lots more.

Thanks,
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Re: Global Announcement for ACF Fall 2009 (Weekend of 10/31)

Post by Gautam »

Hello all,

I have posted an updated list of submitted packets in one of the previous posts. Thanks to all teams who have submitted packets so far.

If your team's name isn't on there and you know you submitted a packet, please get back to me asap. My email is [email protected]
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Re: Global Announcement for ACF Fall 2009 (Weekend of 10/31)

Post by Mike Bentley »

Wow, there are already 26 submitted packets?

It seems like there are going to be a lot of questions not used for this tournament. Maybe in the future we should re-evaluate how ACF Fall submission works. If we routinely keep getting 10-20 more packets than rounds we're going to have, does it make sense to start only requiring half-packets or something?
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Re: Global Announcement for ACF Fall 2009 (Weekend of 10/31)

Post by Down and out in Quintana Roo »

Bentley Like Beckham wrote:Wow, there are already 26 submitted packets?

It seems like there are going to be a lot of questions not used for this tournament. Maybe in the future we should re-evaluate how ACF Fall submission works. If we routinely keep getting 10-20 more packets than rounds we're going to have, does it make sense to start only requiring half-packets or something?
Yes. And you would also assume that those half-packets would be of better quality, as well.
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Re: Global Announcement for ACF Fall 2009 (Weekend of 10/31)

Post by theMoMA »

Bentley Like Beckham wrote:Wow, there are already 26 submitted packets?

It seems like there are going to be a lot of questions not used for this tournament. Maybe in the future we should re-evaluate how ACF Fall submission works. If we routinely keep getting 10-20 more packets than rounds we're going to have, does it make sense to start only requiring half-packets or something?
We can discuss this somewhere else if you'd like, but in my experience it would be a bad idea.
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Re: Global Announcement for ACF Fall 2009 (Weekend of 10/31)

Post by Important Bird Area »

theMoMA wrote:We can discuss this somewhere else if you'd like, but in my experience it would be a bad idea.
I have to agree with this; it's perfectly fine to take two packets that are mediocre and merge them into one good packet. Also, with 26 packets submitted at a relatively low level of difficulty, there are going to be a bunch of repeats, which might compel a few mergers even if the questions are great. Finally, if the editors end up with more than a playable number of good, repeat-free packets, then the ideal solution is to then announce "the final twelve packets are available for ACF Fall 2 to be held in early December" rather than to discourage new teams from writing questions by knocking down the submission requirement.
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Re: Global Announcement for ACF Fall 2009 (Weekend of 10/31)

Post by Matt Weiner »

Bentley Like Beckham wrote:Wow, there are already 26 submitted packets?

It seems like there are going to be a lot of questions not used for this tournament. Maybe in the future we should re-evaluate how ACF Fall submission works. If we routinely keep getting 10-20 more packets than rounds we're going to have, does it make sense to start only requiring half-packets or something?
Having edited ACF Fall a couple of times (and talked to this year's editors) I can confidently say there is no way the 26 submitted packets contain the 17+ rounds of well-written, appropriate-difficulty, repeat-free questions that Fall needs. Even in years when we got over 40 packets and wrote 3 editors rounds, we still had to write replacements from scratch to finish the set. There's a lot of first-time writers, people who don't understand the concept of "easy questions," and people writing on the same things because they do understand that concept, in the ACF Fall packet submitter pool. I don't think decreasing the writing requirement is a good idea; the current balance, where people have two years of exemption, is about as good as we're going to reach.
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Re: Global Announcement for ACF Fall 2009 (Weekend of 10/31)

Post by Gautam »

Hi all,

This is a reminder that the $25 deadline is coming up tonight. I apologize for not making any earlier notifications... I hope this does not adversely affect any teams in getting their packets in time.

Thanks,
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Re: Global Announcement for ACF Fall 2009 (Weekend of 10/31)

Post by Gautam »

The post with the packets has been updated to include packets submitted by the $25 penalty deadline. I've yet to see many usual suspects submit packets, and I hope that I'll be receiving many packets in my inbox in the next few days.

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Re: Global Announcement for ACF Fall 2009 (Weekend of 10/31)

Post by Gautam »

This is now the final list of packets that I've received:
gkandlikar wrote:
Packets submitted by -$50 deadline:

Ohio State University
UCLA B
RPI
Yale A
Yale B
Maryland A
Rice University
Brandeis
Chattahoochee High School
St. Anselm's High School
Paul Laurence Dunbar High School

Packets submitted by the -$25 deadline:
Caltech
University of Washington A
Harvard A
Carleton A
LASA A

Packets submitted by the -$0 deadline:
Carnegie Mellon
Duke
Alabama A
Alabama B
Vanderbilt
Columbia
Furman
Case Western
Truman State A
Truman State B
Cornell
Kansas State
Brown B

Packet submitted by the +$25 deadline:
Princeton
Michigan State A
Claremont A
Illinois B
TAMU

Packets submitted by the +$50 deadline:
ULL
Northwestern
South Carolina
Michigan
University of Iowa
UCLA A

Other submissions:
Brown Rosenberg et al (A?) +$60
Notre Dame +$60
Dartmouth A +$60
Illinois A +$80




EDIT: Sorry for the hasty post!
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