2010 Fall Novice Tournament: Clear for Discussion

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2010 Fall Novice Tournament: Clear for Discussion

Post by Frater Taciturnus »

The 2010 Fall High School Novice Tournament will be available for hosting from September 11, 2010 until December 18, 2010. Bids for hosting this tournament must be received by July 31st if you intend to host in September. There is no fee to mirror this tournament, which is being head-edited by Stephen Eltinge (from Thomas Jefferson), Matt Jackson (formerly of Georgetown Day School, now of Yale), and Doug Graebner (formerly of Walt Whitman, now of U. Chicago), and overseen by college students.

This set will consist of 13 rounds of 20 toss-ups and 20 three-part, 30-point bonuses, plus tie-breaker questions. There will be no computational math, and popular culture will be less than 5% of this set.

Bids must include:
-The name of the school interested in hosting, and the name(s) and contact information of coach(es) and/or player(s) serving as prospective tournament directors. We do not require previous experience.
-The date on which the tournament would be held.
-Fee structures. We suggest that schools charge 70% of the normal fee in their area due to the nature of this tournament and are happy to have multiple mirrors per state depending on the circuit(s) there.
-Entrance restrictions of some kind. We have not attempted to devise restrictions ourselves because of the varying competitiveness of regions, which leads us to believe that individual hosts are more likely to find appropriate restrictions for their area.
-An estimated maximum field size.
-Assurance that stats will be compiled using SQBS. Donald Taylor and Dwight Wynne have written a guide to SQBS if your school has never used this program before.
-Information about tournament structure. (We advise hosts to run round-robin play-offs when possible and also to provide consolation matches when possible. We are happy to assist hosts in determining a format to provide the greatest number of meaningful games.)
-Anything else you consider relevant to our consideration of your bid.

Bids should be emailed to George Berry at george berry 292 at hotmail dot com. Feel free to post any questions/concerns/comments should be posted in this thread or to email them to George Berry.
Last edited by Frater Taciturnus on Wed Dec 08, 2010 1:22 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: 2010 Fall Novice Tournament Available for Mirrors

Post by Frater Taciturnus »

Because of a clerical error this announcement claimed the first day the tournament would be available was on a Sunday. This is not the case; the tournament will be available for running on Saturday, September 11th. The announcement has been fixed to repair this mistake.
Janet Berry
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Re: 2010 Fall Novice Tournament Available for Mirrors

Post by Joshua Rutsky »

When can we expect to find out if bids have been accepted/approved?

Thanks!
Joshua Rutsky
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Re: 2010 Fall Novice Tournament Available for Mirrors

Post by Frater Taciturnus »

Joshua Rutsky wrote:When can we expect to find out if bids have been accepted/approved?

Thanks!
Bids submitted before July 31st will be processed by the end of the day on August 2nd. All bids after that point should not require more than a week to follow up on. If you have submitted a bid and not heard back from me confirming its submission within 2 days, please resubmit with a CC to Andy Watkins at andy.watkins2ATgmailDOTcom.
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Re: 2010 Fall Novice Tournament Available for Mirrors

Post by Frater Taciturnus »

We will continue to accept bids for september at this time, and will still accept bids for other times. We really would like to see this mirrored in every part of the circuit.
Janet Berry
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Re: 2010 Fall Novice Tournament Available for Mirrors

Post by Coach K »

Is there a list of approved mirrors anywhere?
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Re: 2010 Fall Novice Tournament Available for Mirrors

Post by Frater Taciturnus »

There is now!

List of Mirrors:

September:
Liberal Arts and Sciences Academy (Austin, TX) will host on September 11th

October:
Detroit Catholic Central (Novi, MI) will host on October 2nd
Dorman High School (Spartanburg, SC) will host on October 9th
Northwestern University (Chicago, IL) will host on October 16th
Thomas Jefferson High School (Fairfax, VA) will host on October 16th
Lisgar Collegiate Institute (Ottawa, Ontario) will host on October 16th
Lyndon State College, Lyndonville, VT will host on October 23rd
Hoover High School (Hoover, AL) will host on October 30th
Brown University (Providence, RI) will host on October 30th
Chipola College (Marianna, FL) will host on October 30th
Alpharetta High School (Alpharetta, GA) will host on October 30th

November:
Missouri State University and Kickpoo High School (both in Springfield, Missouri) will host on November 6th
Rock Bridge High School will host on November 6th
St Charles CC will host on November 20th
Arizona State University will host on November 20th
Last edited by Frater Taciturnus on Wed Oct 06, 2010 6:58 pm, edited 9 times in total.
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Re: 2010 Fall Novice Tournament Available for Mirrors

Post by Frater Taciturnus »

At this time we would like to put out an open call for mirrors in the following areas:

Northern California
Southern California
Pacific Northwest (maybe a pair of mirrors on opposite sides of borders)
Minnesota
Non-Chicagoland Illinois
Central Pennsylvania/ Western PA/Northeast Ohio
Florida (perhaps multiple mirrors necessary?)
Southern Ohio/Kentucky
West Virginia
Southeast or Southwest Virginia
South Carolina
North Carolina (dependent on South Carolina and Southern Virginia mirror locations)
North Mid-Atlantic (Baltimore to NJ)
Iowa

Of course, this does not rule out or intend to discourage bids from other regions. Any interested hosts should still submit a bid.
Last edited by Frater Taciturnus on Wed Oct 06, 2010 6:58 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: 2010 Fall Novice Tournament Available for Mirrors

Post by FlamingPiWalrusWizard »

It would be really cool if we could host a mirror out here. I'll talk to our coach about it. Also, what stats are necessary? Would team point totals be sufficient?
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Re: 2010 Fall Novice Tournament Available for Mirrors

Post by Masked Canadian History Bandit »

Lisgar CI (and myself personally) would definitely be interested in mirroring this in Ottawa, Ontario for the Canadian HS QB circuit. It'll a great opportunity to introduce Canadian players, both completely new players, and those who've only played Reach for the Top, to the wonderful game of quizbowl. If we mirror this, it will most likely in October, but contact with our coach is shaky now. Is it okay if we submit a formal bid around the first week of September?
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Re: 2010 Fall Novice Tournament Available for Mirrors

Post by cvdwightw »

Not speaking in any official capacity, any bids received after July 31 (i.e. now) will be looked at on a rolling basis - bids should receive a response within a week of submission. Therefore it's always okay to send in bids later as long as it will give you sufficient time to promote the tournament and no one else in your area bids before then.
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Re: 2010 Fall Novice Tournament Available for Mirrors

Post by Sun Devil Student »

This sounds like it might be a good set for Arizona. Even better would be if we could host it in the spring semester, say in late February or March. Would such a delayed mirror be permitted or are all mirrors required to run in this fall (2010) semester?

Also, just to clarify: What kind of "novice" is this - more like NAQT A-level or regular IS sets? I'm given the impression that Fall Novice is an IS-level or slightly higher set, but I wanted to make sure.

Thanks to all of you guys who helped make this set. I think ASU Quizbowl would be interested in running this.
Kenneth Lan, ASU '11, '12, UIC '17
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Re: 2010 Fall Novice Tournament Available for Mirrors

Post by cvdwightw »

Sun Devil Student wrote:What kind of "novice" is this - more like NAQT A-level or regular IS sets? I'm given the impression that Fall Novice is an IS-level or slightly higher set, but I wanted to make sure.
The idea behind the set is to use answers that "novices" are likely to have heard of. Perhaps the best way to describe that is A-level answer selection without A-level length limits or A-level distribution (FNT has a higher length cap than A sets and uses a distribution closer to ACF than NAQT).
Dwight Wynne
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"It's a competition, but it's not a sport. On a scale, if football is a 10, then rowing would be a two. One would be Quiz Bowl." --Matt Birk on rowing, SI On Campus, 10/21/03

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Re: 2010 Fall Novice Tournament Available for Mirrors

Post by Sun Devil Student »

Would it be okay for ASU to host a delayed mirror of this set around 3/16/2011 (March 2011)?

While it is possible for ASU to host this set on Nov. 20, I think it would make more sense to have an NAQT A-level tournament on that day, since we are already hosting the ACF-style SCOP set on Oct. 23 and I'd like to alternate between ACF-style and NAQT-style events. Also, judging by Dwight's description, Fall Novice will be *perceived* as harder than NAQT A-level even if it is actually not because the question length is longer, even if the answer choices are exactly the same. I would like to put off the tournament that feels harder until later in the school year when teams are more prepared for them.

The main issue, I suppose, is whether our community is capable of maintaining question security for 3 months after the rest of the country is done mirroring this set. Can this be done? If you say no, we can host the mirror early (11/20 if necessary), but I feel that it would work better for the Sonoran quizbowl circuit to put such longer-question events in the spring.
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Re: 2010 Fall Novice Tournament Available for Mirrors

Post by Down and out in Quintana Roo »

Sun Devil Student wrote:...even if the answer choices are exactly the same.
That's not really true at all. The answer choices will actually be much much better, since the distribution for this set is one that most "good quizbowl" people agree is better.

Why don't you just take a look at last year's questions to get an idea of what we're talking about?

http://quizbowlpackets.com/archive/09fallnovice/
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Re: 2010 Fall Novice Tournament Available for Mirrors

Post by Sun Devil Student »

Carangoides ciliarius wrote:
Sun Devil Student wrote:...even if the answer choices are exactly the same.
That's not really true at all. The answer choices will actually be much much better, since the distribution for this set is one that most "good quizbowl" people agree is better.

Why don't you just take a look at last year's questions to get an idea of what we're talking about?

http://quizbowlpackets.com/archive/09fallnovice/
Ok, I should have said "even if the answer choices were exactly the same" (using subjunctive tense) - yes, the distribution of answer choices is different, but that's not my point here. It's a well known phenomenon that long questions seem harder than short questions, e.g. that given an identical answer difficulty, the long question seems harder. This has been pointed out in other threads on this forum.

I was merely inquiring into whether it might not be possible for ASU to host a mirror of this Fall Novice Tournament set in March 2011, justifications being 1) the above false perception and 2) that I thought it would be nice to alternate between ACF and NAQT styles instead of having two ACF-type events in the fall and two NAQT-type events in the spring.

So, can we have "Fall Novice Tournament" in the spring, or does it have to be in the fall?
Kenneth Lan, ASU '11, '12, UIC '17
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Re: 2010 Fall Novice Tournament Available for Mirrors

Post by Frater Taciturnus »

The list of confirmed mirrors has been updated and will continue to be updated as teams finalize hosting dates and more bids come in.

We continue to express our desire for more bids in regions that don't have a mirror.
Janet Berry
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Re: 2010 Fall Novice Tournament Available for Mirrors

Post by AlphaQuizBowler »

Frater Taciturnus wrote:The list of confirmed mirrors has been updated and will continue to be updated as teams finalize hosting dates and more bids come in.

We continue to express our desire for more bids in regions that don't have a mirror.
Could you update it with a link to the announcement for Alpharetta's mirror? Thanks.
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Re: 2010 Fall Novice Tournament Available for Mirrors

Post by Charbroil »

Frater Taciturnus wrote:St Charles CC will host on November 13th
We're hosting November 20th, and the announcement can be found here: http://www.hsquizbowl.org/forums/viewto ... =1&t=10643
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Re: 2010 Fall Novice Tournament Available for Mirrors

Post by Mike Bentley »

Hey I sent in a bid last week. Any update on this?
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Re: 2010 Fall Novice Tournament Available for Mirrors

Post by Charbroil »

Could an admin pin this thread so it can be more easily found? I think last year's thread was pinned, which makes sense, given its importance.

Also, an updated list of links to sites (including ours) would be great.
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Re: 2010 Fall Novice Tournament Available for Mirrors

Post by jonah »

Is there a private discussion forum available for this? I have some specific comments I'd like to share.
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Re: 2010 Fall Novice Tournament Available for Mirrors

Post by Masked Canadian History Bandit »

Lisgar in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, has just completed its mirror. The link to that topic, and its stats is here: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=10623

Also, I agree with this statement posted above by Jonah. A discussion forum for this would be great for pooling together praise and (perhaps more importantly) critical commentary.
jonah wrote:Is there a private discussion forum available for this? I have some specific comments I'd like to share.
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Re: 2010 Fall Novice Tournament Available for Mirrors

Post by Joshua Rutsky »

The Hoover High School mirror of this event is now complete. Stats and results are available at

http://results.scobo.net/SQBS.aspx?org= ... =standings

for your perusal.
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Re: 2010 Fall Novice Tournament Available for Mirrors

Post by Frater Taciturnus »

Discussion of this tournament, including a link to the set, is available here.
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