Terrapin Invitiational Tournament (11/14/09) at Maryland

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Terrapin Invitiational Tournament (11/14/09) at Maryland

Post by DumbJaques »

Terrapin Invitational Tournament XXI - Jeremy Eaton-coined subtitle forthcoming
Saturday, November 14, 2009
University of Maryland - College Park

ANNOUNCEMENT:

The Maryland Academic Quiz Team is pleased to announce the latest incarnation of our Terrapin Invitational Tournament, which (though technically the 23rd such tournament held) will repair the rip in the TIT space-time continuum by actually being TIT XXI. This event will be a packet submission tournament which will continue to explore the nature of Regular Difficulty - our goal is actually to have this tournament be about as hard as last season's TIT.

This is a packet submission event following the normal guidelines - if you were playing tournaments prior to last year, your team should be writing a packet. If your team meets this definition in name but doesn't really have much writing experience, you should email me *right away* to discuss it - I want teams to be able to attend this event, but building writing experience for teams is just as important as this event actually having enough submissions.

Illinois's venerable Mike Sorice has signed on to oversee the science editing for this set. He will hopefully [EDIT: be joined by] the hobo astronomer Bruce encountered on the side of the road that one time. I will once again be head-editing and working on the other subjects. Jeremy Eaton, SteveJon Guth, Jeff Amoros, and Rebecca Fischer will also be working on the set.

Since this event is taking on the Illinois Open role this year, it will be an open event, but the difficulty is not being raised since I feel the previous TIT would serve pretty much any field perfectly adequately while still being accessible enough (though a bit too hard at times) for the bulk of the field. It's our hope that this tournament will be more along the lines of a normal event where school-based teams compete, but which is also open to players who aren't in school anymore and the assortment of random hybrid or high school amalgam teams - similar to last year's Minnesota Open field, for example. If people feel the need to form COesque superteams for regular to regionals questions, I guess you're free to do that, but it seems silly.

EDIT: We WILL be running a mirror of Ryan Westbrook's FIST event on Sunday, November 15th. Packet submission will NOT be required for that event. We will also be running both the Walden III Social Science/Philosophy tournament and RMPfest II as side events. The exact schedule of the side events is still up in there, and will be split across friday/saturday/sunday nights depending on what is most convenient for everyone.

MIRRORS:

This tournament will be mirrored at Illinois (I believe, on the same date) in the usual Illinois Open spot, and on 11/15/09 at Harvard. Both sites require packet submission in the same manner described below. We would love to have a West Coast, Southern, or Canadian mirror, so please email me if you're interested.

PRICING:

+$100 - Base Fee
-$50 - Packet submitted by Saturday, October 3rd.
-$25 - Packet submitted by Saturday, October 10th.
+$0 - Packet submitted by Saturday, October 17th.
+$25 - Packet submitted by Saturday, October 24th.
+$50 - Packet submitted by Saturday, October 31st.
+$100 - Packet submitted after that. Last year this system was insufficient to prevent roughly half the packets from arriving within days of the tournament, so teams should understand that packets arriving more than a few days after 10/31/09 will suffer increasingly unpleasant penalties (all the worse if your packet isn't on track and you don't LET ME KNOW).
-$5 - Working buzzer discount, unlimited
-$10 - Competent moderator discount (can be from moderating FIST, or vice versa)
+$10 - Formatting penalty for formatting your questions incorrectly (see formatting section below).
-$20 - Prize for the best unedited packet received in general, and by the best Division II (first two years play quizbowl) only team.

Minimum Fee Per Team: $40.

If you aren't require to write and want to, that would be awesome and your fee would be subject to even heavier discounting.


PACKET GUIDELINES:

Distribution 24/24
4/4 History (1/1 US, 2/2 European, 1/1 World; vary your answers by subject/time period, use judgment as to what category your ancient history questions fall under, but most should probably be counted as European)
4/4 Literature (1/1 American, 1/1 British, 1/1 European, 1/1 World; try to include at least 1/1 drama, 1/1 novels, and 1/1 poetry)
4/4 Science (1/1 Physics, 1/1 Chemistry, 1/1 Biology, 1/1 Other Science like Computer Science, Non-Computational Math, Geology, Astronomy, Earth Science, Engineering, etc.)
2/2 Extra Big Three (no more than 1/1 in any category; try to use these in a sensible way - if you're going to try and push the envelope with tossups on minor works of Robert Graves, you could include a replacement lit tossup here to ensure that I'm laughing with you and not crying in a corner when I get your packet)
3/3 RMP (1/1 Philosophy, 2/2 Religion and Mythology - these are grouped together because they sometimes overlap, but you should make sure your questions are appropriately varied)
3/3 Fine Arts (1/1 Visual Fine Arts like Painting and Sculpture, 1/1 Classical Music, 1/1 Your Choice or other like Architecture, Artistic Film, Dance, Opera or more painting / music.)
1/1 Social Science (Economics, Sociology, Psychology, Anthropology, Linguistics, etc.)
1/1 Trash. Go nuts!*
2/2 Academic Choice - This is an experimental category that I'm testing out as a means of resolving the great geography/social science dilemma. What can you do in this category? Well, pretty much anything. You can write straight academic questions from other categories, you can write geography, or you can write interdisciplinary questions. Please note that interdisciplinary questions are not "general knowledge" questions - all the clues had better be academic enough to fit in any other tossup, or you're rewriting it. Essentially, make a case for your preferred way to round out the distribution. Believe in academic geography? Put up or shut up. Want to pile own the social science until Ahmad builds you a temple of skulls? Go for it. Are you Shantanu? Write more renaissance art-chitecture questions. Your only restriction here is that you're limited to 1/1 in a category. That includes interdisciplinary questions (that is, don't write more than 1/1 interdisciplinary). You also obviously can't write trash questions here.

*In a way that produces good trash questions, stop sending me questions on K-pop.

Please vary all your questions by time period, region of the world (when applicable) and genre. Also vary the type of question you ask. For example, do not write 5 literature tossups on 19th century British novelists. A better literature selection would include tossups on authors, works and characters, on American, British, and World literature, and on fiction, drama, and poetry.

Difficulty:

Your answer selections should range between Fall and Regionals difficulty, inclusive. Last year's Terrapin is probably the best model for likely difficulty of this event, and is definitely the best model for how hard you should make your questions. You are strenuously encouraged to err on the easier side. I'm happy to be excited by accessible tossups on stuff that doesn't get as much coverage as it should, but if you're writing a tossup you honestly don't believe more than 20% of the field will convert - stop.

Every bonus should have a clear easy, medium and hard part. Almost every team in the tournament should be converting the easy part of the bonus, while a little more than half of the teams should be converting the medium part. The hard part of a bonus should be able to be answered by those with in-depth knowledge in the field.

Question Length:

All of the following lengths apply to documents written in Word with 1 inch margins (change these from the default), and a 10 point Times New Roman font.

Final tossups will be between 6 and 8 lines long. However, we'd prefer that you submit tossups on the long side (or even over the 8 line limit), since it's always easier for us to get rid of clues that we don't like than to add additional clues by ourselves.

Bonus parts should be kept within reason. Do not write extremely lengthy leadins or bonus parts (try to keep them under 2 lines, generally). Also do not write extremely short bonuses or list bonuses, as these are typically not very interesting. The vast majority of your bonuses should be 10-10-10. Please do not write any 30-20-10 bonuses, as these really throw off the balance of the bonuses in a round. 5-10-15 bonuses are similarly bad and should be shunned, since they arbitrarily weight the hard part when in theory the bonus should have the same relative difficulty to all the others. However, I have an unusual tolerance for 10-5 bonuses and a few other creative point structures, so including one or two of these isn't out of the question, but don't do it more than that.


Formatting:


Please format your questions in the following matter:

1/1 Unfunny Meta Example Questions (reused to honor our recent alum):

The person involved in this event is starting a rumor that it was actually a planned occurrence to get himself mentioned in a meta question in Matt Weiner's canceled Chicago Open trash tournament. Immediately after this event occurred, one person was unable to identify Okazaki Fragments. It was preceded by Jeremy Eaton answering a tossup on time dilation. The person responsible for this event blamed not getting enough sleep the night before and the two hour drive to Richmond, but most of all just plain not paying attention. Occurring in a game against South Carolina at the 2007 VCU Open, it is now immortalized in the YTMND page Nude Descending a Gas Chamber. FTP, identify this action wherein Mike Bentley erroneously answered "The Armory Show" for "Auschwitz".
ANSWER: Worst Buzz (also accept Nude Descending a Gas Chamber before mentioned, Mike Bentley's Embarrassing Neg with The Armory Show on the Auschwitz Question at the 2007 Illinois Novice Tournament, and clear knowledge equivalents; do not accept just "Armory Show" or "Auschwitz")

Answer the following about a certain comic strip, FTPE.
[10] Like Chris Ray, the title character of this Dik Browne comic strip has red hair and a big beard, and is also illiterate and bathes only once a year.
ANSWER: Hagar the Horrible
[10] Using Wikipedia might erroneously lead you to believe that Hagar the Horrible was based on this play by Henrik Ibsen in which Sigurd defeats Hjardis by killing her sentinel, a white bear.
ANSWER: The Vikings at Helgeland
[10] If Jonathan Magin had his way, Hagar the Horrible and all other comic strips would be inspired by this Robert Louis Stevenson novel about some Scottish dude and his buried treasure.
ANSWER: The Master of Ballantrae

DO NOT USE ANY AUTOMATIC WORD FORMATTING EXCEPT FOR SMART QUOTES. Specifically, do not use any indentation or automatic numbering in your packets. Submit all packets in .doc or .rtf format please.

If questions are not correctly formatted (at the discretion of the editors), your packet will be returned for you to reformat. If you submit your packet at the deadline and it is rejected for formatting issues, you will be charged a $10 formatting fee (and asked to reformat the packet), but you will not have to pay any additional fees for missing the deadline, unless you are aggravating about resubmitting the format fixes.

Also note that your questions should be organized by category and type, not pre-mixed or divided into tossups and bonuses (thus, you should have the 4 history tossups followed by the 4 history bonuses, followed by the 4 lit tossups and 4 lit bonuses, etc.

Misc.:

As with all packet submission tournaments, questions must be blind to all other teams attending the tournament. Specifically, if a school is sending more than one team to the tournament, members of different teams should not know of each others' questions.

Please do not plagiarize questions. Do not copy direct passages and phrases from the sources you use to write questions. Additionally, do not write questions directly out of Wikipedia. While Wikipedia can be a useful source in finding preliminary information on a question, we encourage you to use more in-depth, scholarly and peer reviewed sources when writing your questions. Please see various question writing guides such as Jerry's guide for more information on where to find good sources for writing questions.

REGISTRATION:


To register, email me at [email protected]. Please indicate how many teams you're bringing (or interested in bringing) and what discounts you think you apply for (such as the number of moderators and buzzers you're bringing). If you're just adding to the open field as a free agent, let me know that as well.

Details on where on campus the event will be held and when specifically registration will be will be announced closer to the date of the tournament.
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Re: Terrapin Invitiational Tournament (11/14/09) at Maryland

Post by DumbJaques »

I'll keep a running field in this post. You're definitely encouraged to post here about your attendance, but don't forget to email me.

TIT Field:
VCU
CMU
Penn (how many?)
George Washington
William and Mary 1-2
George Mason (The Zach Foster+ experience!)
UNC 2
Princeton 1+
Duke

I have also heard that Matt Weiner will be in attendance, in a capacity to be determined, and I think I heard some rumblings during CO from Brown and/or Ahmad Ragab (apparently naturally pulled toward sufficient concentrations of social science and philosophy questions).
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Re: Terrapin Invitiational Tournament (11/14/09) at Maryland

Post by Captain Sinico »

DumbJaques wrote:[Mike Sorice] will hopefully the hobo astronomer Bruce encountered on the side of the road that one time.
Yes, indeed.

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Re: Terrapin Invitiational Tournament (11/14/09) at Maryland

Post by bsmith »

DumbJaques wrote:Canadian mirror
I already have a rental car reserved for this, so I assume you will be finding out about this shortly. There will be an Ottawa packet before the $0 deadline, possibly earlier.
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Re: Terrapin Invitiational Tournament (11/14/09) at Maryland

Post by DumbJaques »

Mike Sorice transcends verbs.
I already have a rental car reserved for this, so I assume you will be finding out about this shortly. There will be an Ottawa packet before the $0 deadline, possibly earlier.
I just talked to Chris Greenwood, and things look all lined up. I assume an announcement will be out shortly. Canadian mirror teams are NOT required to write packets, but can certainly do so for discounts (-$50 if before 10/10, -$25 if before 10/17).
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Re: Terrapin Invitiational Tournament (11/14/09) at Maryland

Post by setht »

DumbJaques wrote:4/4 History (1/1 US, 2/2 European, 1/1 World, 1/1 Your Choice
Should that be 1/1 European?

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Re: Terrapin Invitiational Tournament (11/14/09) at Maryland

Post by DumbJaques »

Should that be 1/1 European?

-Seth

Actually it should be 2/2 European, but the 1/1 choice should be nixed (since you're writing 2/2 extra big 3). Sorry!
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Re: Terrapin Invitiational Tournament (11/14/09) at Maryland

Post by ... and the chaos of Mexican modernity »

DumbJaques wrote:

George Mason (The Zach Foster experience!)
I'm actually pretty sure now this isn't just gonna be me playing solo, if that's what "The Zach Foster experience" means?
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Re: Terrapin Invitiational Tournament (11/14/09) at Maryland

Post by DumbJaques »

I'm pleased to announce that UC-Berkeley and Tulane will be mirroring TIT in the West Coast and Southern regions, respectively. Combined with the Maryland, Illinois, Harvard, and Guelph sites, this gives us quite a decent slate of geographic exposure, but we'll happy to entertain any other mirror requests as they come in. Please note that teams attending these sites are not required to write packets, but are certainly free to do so (or send in half packets, etc.) for negotiable discounts.

Speaking of packets, I've received the following:

Yale
Dunbar


Please note that the no penalty deadline is this weekend. Since everyone's going to be busy with MO, you can get away with submitting packets on Monday, but no later than that if you want to hit this deadline. If you're planning on writing a packet and/or attending this site and haven't mentioned it to me, please let me so that we can make sure stuff is well planned-out.
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Re: Terrapin Invitiational Tournament (11/14/09) at Maryland

Post by Mike Bentley »

The Southwest flights to the Bay Area so cheap at the moment I can't justify not going to this tournament at Berkeley. Assuming that the Berkeley mirror is also being run as an open tournament, I'm looking for teammates.
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Re: Terrapin Invitiational Tournament (11/14/09) at Maryland

Post by Important Bird Area »

Bentley Like Beckham wrote:Assuming that the Berkeley mirror is also being run as an open tournament
It sure is.
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Re: Terrapin Invitiational Tournament (11/14/09) at Maryland

Post by Mike Bentley »

Can someone at Berkeley confirm the date of this tournament so I can buy a plane ticket?
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Re: Terrapin Invitiational Tournament (11/14/09) at Maryland

Post by DumbJaques »

Here is the current field for this event:

VCU
CMU
Penn
George Washington
William and Mary 1-2
George Mason (The Zach Foster+ experience!)
UNC 2
Princeton 1+
Duke
Rutgers-NB 2
Loyola
UVA
World Enough and Time Cat (Matt Bollinger, Stephen Eltinge, Aidan Mehigan, Trey Taraila)
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Re: Terrapin Invitiational Tournament (11/14/09) at Maryland

Post by Matt Weiner »

DumbJaques wrote:Matt Weiner
I am not playing this tournament, nor any tournament where the rest of the field is notable thing I am not, colleges. I will be joining VCU's team for FIST the following day. You can put me down as a moderator for Terrapin.
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Re: Terrapin Invitiational Tournament (11/14/09) at Maryland

Post by DumbJaques »

At this site, I am still awaiting packets from VCU, Penn, UVA, and CMU. Some of you have talked to me about this, but please send me an email letting me know what your situation and timeline looks like. Also, everyone should check that their field info is correct, and if you're still listed with an uncertain number of teams, please clarify for me.
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Re: Terrapin Invitiational Tournament (11/14/09) at Maryland

Post by Mike Bentley »

FYI I'm planning on submitting some questions, probably around the order of a half packet. I hope to have this done this weekend.
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Re: Terrapin Invitiational Tournament (11/14/09) at Maryland

Post by bsmith »

It was only 20/20, but did you receive the questions I sent a couple weeks ago?
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Re: Terrapin Invitiational Tournament (11/14/09) at Maryland

Post by DumbJaques »

It was only 20/20, but did you receive the questions I sent a couple weeks ago?
Yep.
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Re: Terrapin Invitiational Tournament (11/14/09) at Maryland

Post by DumbJaques »

FYI I'm planning on submitting some questions, probably around the order of a half packet. I hope to have this done this weekend.
Oh hey, I missed this, awesome. Mike Bentley: Cool dude.
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Re: Terrapin Invitiational Tournament (11/14/09) at Maryland

Post by Skepticism and Animal Feed »

Any plans for RMPFest?
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Re: Terrapin Invitiational Tournament (11/14/09) at Maryland

Post by DakarKra »

Whig's Boson wrote:Any plans for RMPFest?
If it's held Saturday night, I'll play. There's also the possibility that other Rutgers people will play as well (though I'm not vouching for them).
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Re: Terrapin Invitiational Tournament (11/14/09) at Maryland

Post by DumbJaques »

Any plans for RMPFest?
Yeah, didn't I email you about that? We're hosting RMPfest Saturday night after this event.
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Re: Terrapin Invitiational Tournament (11/14/09) at Maryland

Post by The King's Flight to the Scots »

A high school alliance team consisting of myself, Aidan Mehigan, Trey Taraila, and Stephen Eltinge would like to play this.

Also, are you running RMPfest as a doubles event?
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Re: Terrapin Invitiational Tournament (11/14/09) at Maryland

Post by DumbJaques »

RMPfest will be doubles or triples depending on what happens with numbers.
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Re: Terrapin Invitiational Tournament (11/14/09) at Maryland

Post by Lapego1 »

We'll have only one team for the main event.
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Re: Terrapin Invitiational Tournament (11/14/09) at Maryland

Post by olsb25 »

It's looking extremely likely that the 1+ for us will just be 1. In any case, when and where should we appear on Saturday?
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Re: Terrapin Invitiational Tournament (11/14/09) at Maryland

Post by Gautam »

DumbJaques wrote:I'm pleased to announce that UC-Berkeley and Tulane will be mirroring TIT in the West Coast and Southern regions, respectively. Combined with the Maryland, Illinois, Harvard, and Guelph sites, this gives us quite a decent slate of geographic exposure, but we'll happy to entertain any other mirror requests as they come in. Please note that teams attending these sites are not required to write packets, but are certainly free to do so (or send in half packets, etc.) for negotiable discounts.
I just noticed this, so I want to be clear: Is the above bolded text referring to all mirrors or only to mirrors at Berkeley and Tulane? In other words, does Minnesota have to submit a packet for attending Illinois or not?
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Re: Terrapin Invitiational Tournament (11/14/09) at Maryland

Post by Mike Bentley »

Hey did you guys get my packet?
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Re: Terrapin Invitiational Tournament (11/14/09) at Maryland

Post by DumbJaques »

I just noticed this, so I want to be clear: Is the above bolded text referring to all mirrors or only to mirrors at Berkeley and Tulane? In other words, does Minnesota have to submit a packet for attending Illinois or not?
This very clearly refers to the Berkeley and Tulane mirrors - both the Harvard and Illinois announcements should certain clarify any possible confusion. Minnesota is required to submit a packet (could someone email me about a timeline on that, because I was expecting it today based on various communications, but maybe I misread something).
Hey did you guys get my packet?
Yeah, I did get your "surprise here's a great full packet" email; I hadn't responded to it out of fear that it would turn into a pumpkin or something, but rest assured - it's much appreciated, and you rule.
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Re: Terrapin Invitiational Tournament (11/14/09) at Maryland

Post by DumbJaques »

This tournament will take place in the esteemed Jimenez Hall. We're meeting in room 0301, as we are wont to do. Registration will start at 8:30, with rounds hopefully starting at 9:00 AM or swiftly thereafter. Teams with tentative numbers, please get back to me soon and let me know how many you're bringing. I'd love to get up to 18 teams for scheduling purposes, so if anyone's lurking around, I bid you come forth.
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Re: Terrapin Invitiational Tournament (11/14/09) at Maryland

Post by Gautam »

DumbJaques wrote:
I just noticed this, so I want to be clear: Is the above bolded text referring to all mirrors or only to mirrors at Berkeley and Tulane? In other words, does Minnesota have to submit a packet for attending Illinois or not?
This very clearly refers to the Berkeley and Tulane mirrors - both the Harvard and Illinois announcements should certain clarify any possible confusion. Minnesota is required to submit a packet (could someone email me about a timeline on that, because I was expecting it today based on various communications, but maybe I misread something).
Hokay. The packet is atleast 1/3 done. We will be getting it into you ASAP.
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Re: Terrapin Invitiational Tournament (11/14/09) at Maryland

Post by Zip Zap Rap Pants »

In case you were wondering, we'll have just one team for this, two buzzers, maybe a moderator.
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Re: Terrapin Invitiational Tournament (11/14/09) at Maryland

Post by pfeffernuisance »

regarding GMU- Zach wants to go but the other person may drop if it's just 2. We'll confirm in an hour, after this week's meeting
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Re: Terrapin Invitiational Tournament (11/14/09) at Maryland

Post by DumbJaques »

Hey guys,

A couple of teams in the field had sudden drops that depleted their numbers, and are looking for free agents to bolster up their squads so we don't have to endure any schedule-destroying team shuffles. Consider this an open call for this site - come one, come all, don't pay any packet fees or writing requirements, and just show up to play some quizbowl. In particular, it'd really help to have this field count not change, so feel very encouraged to come.

Also: those of you who are planning on staying after for the FIST mirror and possible shenanigans on Sunday, please make your intentions known to me or in the FIST thread if you haven't already done so. If you're interested in playing the event but don't have a hotel or anything, we can probably help you out, shoot me an email.
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Re: Terrapin Invitiational Tournament (11/14/09) at Maryland

Post by Lapego1 »

We'll have some extras it seems (like two). If you want to stick them on a full team, I don't think they'd mind.
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Re: Terrapin Invitiational Tournament (11/14/09) at Maryland

Post by Zip Zap Rap Pants »

it's been a while sooo....anybody got some quick results?
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Re: Terrapin Invitiational Tournament (11/14/09) at Maryland

Post by Matt Weiner »

Zip Zap Rap Pants wrote:it's been a while sooo....anybody got some quick results?
I just finished round 12, the second room to do so. Tournament is running SLOOOOOOWWWW, and at this rate we will start RMPfest at 9:30 if we're lucky.

Carnegie Mellon was undefeated going into their last playoff game with Duke.
VCU had 1 loss, to CMU.
Penn lost to both CMU and VCU.

So it looks like CMU and VCU are playing a final, with the nature to be determined by the outcome of the CMU-Duke game.

The other championship bracket teams were the high school coalition and Princeton.
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Re: Terrapin Invitiational Tournament (11/14/09) at Maryland

Post by Matt Weiner »

CMU beat Duke, BUT there's still a lingering protest from the VCU-Penn game that we're trying to call Mike Sorice about.
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Re: Terrapin Invitiational Tournament (11/14/09) at Maryland

Post by Jeaton1 »

Protest resolved in favor of Penn. Penn and CMU went into final game. CMU wins 300-280. Congrats to CMU and thanks to all of those who came out to play today.
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Re: Terrapin Invitiational Tournament (11/14/09) at Maryland

Post by Sima Guang Hater »

Thanks to Maryland for hosting a really fun tournament; my teammates and I had a really good time. And congrats to the awesome Trevor Davis for his well-deserved win.
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Re: Terrapin Invitiational Tournament (11/14/09) at Maryland

Post by vcuEvan »

This was a fun tournament. The questions were decent for the most part, but there were a large number of repeats and structure and typo issues seemed to overwhelm even the good moderators.

I'm still befuddled at the method of protest resolution used for our game against Penn. First they called Mike Sorice, the question writer, who definitively stated that the given answer was wrong. Thirty minutes later, two Maryland people were consulted who decided that the given answer was actually correct and reversed the decision and the outcome of the game. That decision may have been correct, but I do think that these Maryland people should have at least heard Mike Sorice's reasoning before deciding. Regardless, thanks to Penn, CMU, and the other teams present for some good games, and to Maryland for hosting.
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Re: Terrapin Invitiational Tournament (11/14/09) at Maryland

Post by grapesmoker »

vcuEvan wrote:I'm still befuddled at the method of protest resolution used for our game against Penn. First they called Mike Sorice, the question writer, who definitively stated that the given answer was wrong. Thirty minutes later, two Maryland people were consulted who decided that the given answer was actually correct and reversed the decision and the outcome of the game. That decision may have been correct, but I do think that these Maryland people should have at least heard Mike Sorice's reasoning before deciding. Regardless, thanks to Penn, CMU, and the other teams present for some good games, and to Maryland for hosting.
So, in relation to this: I'm pretty sure, from talking to Eric, that the question being discussed here was written by me. I was under the impression that Mike had said that the answer given was acceptable, which was confusing to me. Now that I see this is not the case I would say that I would agree with Mike and the answer which I understand was given should not have been accepted. I could be wrong about that, but I don't believe so; however, if someone from the Maryland team wants to tell me how they decided that the answer given was acceptable, I'd like to hear from them off-forum.
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Re: Terrapin Invitiational Tournament (11/14/09) at Maryland

Post by Matt Weiner »

Yeah, I certainly didn't like the protest procedure; as a moderator, I was also less than enthused with the THUNDER redux in the questions, with 11-line tossups and 4-line bonus parts being the norm, and typos or missing words in every question making it impossible to read at any sort of quick pace. I don't know who decided that this is necessary for any tournament, especially a regular-difficulty, regular-season event at which plenty of teams who are not nationals contenders are playing, but YOUR ARE WRONG, and stop doing it.

Also not cool: the fact that schedules were being made and staff were being assigned as we arrived, that no one from Maryland saw fit to let us know in advance of the tournament that there was a home football game and all parking lots were closed, the continued lack of any sort of prizes at post-Bentley Maryland tournaments, and the fact that it took twelve hours to run twelve rounds. FIST, the following day, featured an even more stunning 60 minute per round pace given that there were only two rooms; perhaps the fact that there were zero (0) dedicated staffers for that event and we had to continuously pause while Chris Ray reassigned himself teammates and changed the order of packets for the tournament he was playing in also contributed to the lagging. This weekend's Maryland tournaments didn't come close to the sins of the Harvard iteration of Terrapin, but they were part of a recent general trend of disinterested tournament organization that is sure to have negative consequences (eg, giving peripheral teams the choice of "stay until 9:30 just to complete the basic schedule, or don't play tournaments") in the near future if it's not taken care of.
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Re: Terrapin Invitiational Tournament (11/14/09) at Maryland

Post by DumbJaques »

I just had an absolutely huge post about all this stuff deleted due to computer crashing, so this is going to briefer than I'd like, but here we go:

protest stuff
I didn't like the way the protest was handled either, but I think I did the best job I could given the facts. Instead of being notified about the protest, I was informed by one team that the moderator was calling Mike; that's not how these things are supposed to be handled. As soon as the other two science editors looked at the issue (I clearly didn't understand this stuff enough to make a ruling on the science of the question), they felt very strongly in opposition to what Mike had said. Given that the vote among the three science editors for this tournament was split 2-1, I went with the majority and then applied that scientific evaluation to the ACF rules on answer acceptability. At that point, the issue was pretty cut and dry. SteveJon and Jeremy looked at what they believed to be the actual paper used to write the buzz-inducing leadin clues; Jerry, I'm sure they'd be happy to talk to you about it.
Yeah, I certainly didn't like the protest procedure; as a moderator, I was also less than enthused with the THUNDER redux in the questions, with 11-line tossups and 4-line bonus parts being the norm, and typos or missing words in every question making it impossible to read at any sort of quick pace. I don't know who decided that this is necessary for any tournament, especially a regular-difficulty, regular-season event at which plenty of teams who are not nationals contenders are playing, but YOUR ARE WRONG, and stop doing it.
For some reason I still can't understand, the file sent to all the moderators/other tournament sites had the wrong documents. Specifically, not all of the packets were in their final stages, and many had yet to undergo copy-editing and tossup shortening. Far less acceptably, some even had questions that weren't edited as much as they had been in the finalized drafts. I have no idea how this happened and I'm sure it's my fault, but I really wish teams would stop submitting a quarter of the packets within a few days of the tournament; having an extra day (or jesus, an extra few hours) to look over this kind of thing would really be awesome. In any event though, I'm extremely sorry teams didn't get the final TIT product they should have received, and I accept ultimate responsibility for that - sorry, guys.
Also not cool: the fact that schedules were being made and staff were being assigned as we arrived, that no one from Maryland saw fit to let us know in advance of the tournament that there was a home football game and all parking lots were closed, the continued lack of any sort of prizes at post-Bentley Maryland tournaments, and the fact that it took twelve hours to run twelve rounds
Schedules were in fact done before anyone arrived, but we had Penn show up with extra people and one team show up despite not ever having registered (!!!!), so things were shuffled a bit. This really wasn't a big delay - the bigger delay was that a few teams didn't show up until 9:45, and teams not bothering to tell us until 9:00 am that they'd be needing a ride from the metro. I suppose we should have started without those teams, but as you said, I felt bad about the football game stuff, so we waited. I'm extremely sorry nobody posted about the football game issues; I had thought those things were taken care of and didn't pay as much attention to checking issues like that as I should have this week given all the editing stuff, and it's a huge oversight on our part. The lack of prizes is also really not cool, and will be corrected by a large book depository at our next event, which past recipients can raid to take what's owed to them.

FIST, the following day, featured an even more stunning 60 minute per round pace given that there were only two rooms; perhaps the fact that there were zero (0) dedicated staffers for that event and we had to continuously pause while Chris Ray reassigned himself teammates and changed the order of packets for the tournament he was playing in also contributed to the lagging.
This is a flagrant misrepresentation of what happened. At some point yesterday, I said something like "if there's a packet marked 'editors finals,' shouldn't that be the finals? I said nothing more about it and in fact was not the one who actually re-ordered the rounds or anything. When Jeremy showed up, I asked him if he wanted to play with Trevor and I as part of the moderator rotation, rather than rotate onto the team that already had 4 people. I really didn't give any of these orders you're asserting I gave, nor did the literally 3 total minutes all of those things occurred during constitute a "continuous detriment" to the tournament. Stop making shit up.

Given that the FIST field minus Maryland house contributions was GW, you, Trevor, and Jonathan, a substantial Maryland house contribution was pretty necessary, and we had a rotation of people playing and reading, all of whom were excellent moderators. I guess we shouldn't have done this but it's not obvious to me why that took so long, since we were running a grand total of two rooms right next to each other. I think starting late was a bigger issue.

On the other hand, we clearly didn't have enough staff for this event (despite having enough staff, by personal affirmation, less than 12 hours prior to the tournament starting), and it ended up taking way too fucking long. Those things are our fault, and we apologize - clearly there's a less than stellar track record for organization at recent Maryland events, so we're going to have to figure out how we can clean that up.
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Re: Terrapin Invitiational Tournament (11/14/09) at Maryland

Post by Sima Guang Hater »

Can we please get some stats for this tournament?
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Re: Terrapin Invitiational Tournament (11/14/09) at Maryland

Post by DumbJaques »

Whoops, I actually thought those were already up. I've got them uploaded at http://results.scobo.net/SQBS.aspx?org= ... =standings.
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Re: Terrapin Invitiational Tournament (11/14/09) at Maryland

Post by olsb25 »

DumbJaques wrote:Whoops, I actually thought those were already up. I've got them uploaded at http://results.scobo.net/SQBS.aspx?org= ... =standings.
A quick examination of our stats shows at least one mistake: We beat the HS chimera the second time we played them... and two of our games have 0 tossups heard.
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Re: Terrapin Invitiational Tournament (11/14/09) at Maryland

Post by DumbJaques »

A quick examination of our stats shows at least one mistake: We beat the HS chimera the second time we played them... and two of our games have 0 tossups heard.
Well, tossups heard don't really matter since everyone hears 20 in mACF format. What was the score for your second high school game? This scoresheet is beyond illegible, I can't even tell which team is which.
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Re: Terrapin Invitiational Tournament (11/14/09) at Maryland

Post by olsb25 »

DumbJaques wrote:
A quick examination of our stats shows at least one mistake: We beat the HS chimera the second time we played them... and two of our games have 0 tossups heard.
Well, tossups heard don't really matter since everyone hears 20 in mACF format. What was the score for your second high school game? This scoresheet is beyond illegible, I can't even tell which team is which.
That might have been the one that Dan kept... either way, the score was 305-210, assuming my legal pad tally is correct.
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