Hello

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Tees-Exe Line
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Hello

Post by Tees-Exe Line »

This is a test post since I've never done this private forum thing before. Please, on the count of three, discuss!
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Re: Hello

Post by Skepticism and Animal Feed »

Maybe we should share the colored matrix with the people on this forum, so they'll know who to yell at for whichever specific question displeased them?
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Re: Hello

Post by Tees-Exe Line »

Is there a way to upload a spreadsheet on here? In any case, I think if people have gripes about particular questions the relevant party will probably come forward. Is there a need to segment things like that normally?
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Re: Hello

Post by jonah »

If it's small enough, you can attach it to a post using controls below the box you write in. If it's too big, send me the file and I'll post it.
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Re: Hello

Post by Skepticism and Animal Feed »

The easiest thing to do would probably be to take a screenshot and post it here.

Nobody has ever released their answer matrix (that I know of) so it might be a cool experiment to see if doing so stimulates discussion, either by letting people know who wrote what, or simply reminding people of what questions were asked at the tournament.
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Re: Hello

Post by Connie Prater »

This right here. There are a couple of inconsistencies as a result of people changing their minds on things and not updating this to reflect that.
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Re: Hello

Post by Ringil »

That tossup on chariots was pretty bad, and had a not true clue something to the lines of "they were last used at the battle of Gaugamela." That clue is entirely false as they were also used en masse in Ipsus, some 30 years later.
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Re: Hello

Post by Tees-Exe Line »

Do you have a citation for their use at Ipsus? I'm perfectly willing to believe I was wrong about Gaugamela being the last use, but I also think that the sources for Ipsus are even thinner than the sources for Gaugamela. I have a book at home that covers the Alexandrian sources pretty well, so I'll check that to see what it says when I get home.

As for the overall quality of the chariot question, I'm curious why you think it was bad since it was one of my favorite questions in the tournament. I am, of course, a fan of the archaeological record as opposed to text-based sources, especially for the Hellenistic period where no actual textual histories survive.
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Re: Hello

Post by Ringil »

The major source of the battle is:
The Life of Demetrius by Plutarch
He took the field with more than seventy thousand infantry, ten thousand horse, and seventy-five elephants; while he adversaries had sixty-four thousand infantry, five hundred more horse than he, four hundred elephants, and a hundred and twenty chariots.
While it's true they didn't play a decisive impact on the battle, large numbers of them were still used.

Now that I think about it, the material before that clue was pretty cool, but I guess this one clue really made me confused, causing me to see the question as bad. Though just to confirm my memory, could the text of the tossup be posted?
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Re: Hello

Post by Tees-Exe Line »

Plutarch is not a better source for Ipsus than Wikipedia is (in fact, they're identical). With respect to chariots in particular, both he and Arrian include them in the order of battle for eastern empires as an anachronistic contrast to their western protagonists. That said, Arrian puts them in Porus' army as well, though not present at Hydaspes (as I learned when I looked at the source I mentioned in my last post), so I'll edit the definitive claim that they were last used in battle at Gaugamela. (They may not have been at Gaugamela either, but the sources are better for that.) For the record, Plutarch was a rhetorician writing 300 years later.

Here's the tossup:
The earliest finds of this item come from the Sintashta-Petrovka culture, found north of the Aral Sea and dated to around 2500 BC. The first text describing these items in the ancient Near East recounts how King Hattusili I used them against the Hurrians during the conquest of Hattusa, and a later Hurrian-Hittite text written by one Kikkuli of the Mitanni describes a conditioning regimen lasting 214 days. A ceremonial one of these with bronze plates depicting Achilles receiving armor from his mother was unearthed in an Etruscan burial chamber dated to 530 BC and is now on display in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Their final and unsuccessful use in war was at the Battle of Gaugamela, where the Macedonian lines parted to let them through, whence they could be attacked from behind. For 10 points, what is this single-axled horse-drawn military device, deployed in great numbers at the Battle of Kadesh?
ANSWER: chariots
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Re: Hello

Post by grapesmoker »

I would say a much larger problem with the tossup on chariots is how easy it was to figure it out. Well, this is a thing that was clearly important to the Hittites and used during conquest; I wonder what military innovation was in vogue then? I guess it's not entirely knowledge-devoid, but it's pretty easy to solve that puzzle.
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Re: Hello

Post by Quantum Mushroom Billiard Hat »

Overall, I enjoyed the tournament quite a bit. The questions generally seemed well written, and though there was more math than I'd prefer, that was as advertised.

Could someone post the polymerization tossup? I negged it with "metathesis" off what I think was description of ring-opening metathesis polymerization, which was frustrating. Although it's certainly correct to describe a concept before naming it, it's just as important to make sure people won't neg with whatever it is named.

If someone could send me the set, I might have a couple more things too.
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Re: Hello

Post by Tees-Exe Line »

Here's the polymerization tossup:
One mechanism useful in this process includes an intermediate coordination complex containing an alkene and is named for Cossee and Arlman. A cyclic molecule is used in the ring-opening form of this process and includes less shrinkage. This process may be intiated by azo- or peroxy- based initiators, light, or a redox reaction, among other methods. One form of this process begins with a molecule with a double bond and a free radical addition to that double bond. The “living” form of this process allows more control over the end product than the conventional “free radical” type of this process. This process may utilize Ziegler-Natta catalysts, and can be subdivided into initiation, propagation, transfer, and termination steps. For ten points, name this process in which large compounds are formed out of monomers.
ANSWER: Polymerization
I'll put the whole set on the packet archive after I've edited it a bit for the mirror next weekend.
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Re: Hello

Post by Quantum Mushroom Billiard Hat »

Tees-Exe Line wrote:Here's the polymerization tossup:
One mechanism useful in this process includes an intermediate coordination complex containing an alkene and is named for Cossee and Arlman. A cyclic molecule is used in the ring-opening form of this process and includes less shrinkage. This process may be intiated by azo- or peroxy- based initiators, light, or a redox reaction, among other methods. One form of this process begins with a molecule with a double bond and a free radical addition to that double bond. The “living” form of this process allows more control over the end product than the conventional “free radical” type of this process. This process may utilize Ziegler-Natta catalysts, and can be subdivided into initiation, propagation, transfer, and termination steps. For ten points, name this process in which large compounds are formed out of monomers.
ANSWER: Polymerization
I'll put the whole set on the packet archive after I've edited it a bit for the mirror next weekend.
Thanks. I think the second clue is ring opening metathesis polymerization, so a worthwhile edit would be to add the word "metathesis" before "form of this process" to reduce the possibility of negs there.
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Re: Hello

Post by jready »

Quantum Mushroom Billiard Hat wrote:
Tees-Exe Line wrote:Here's the polymerization tossup:
One mechanism useful in this process includes an intermediate coordination complex containing an alkene and is named for Cossee and Arlman. A cyclic molecule is used in the ring-opening form of this process and includes less shrinkage. This process may be intiated by azo- or peroxy- based initiators, light, or a redox reaction, among other methods. One form of this process begins with a molecule with a double bond and a free radical addition to that double bond. The “living” form of this process allows more control over the end product than the conventional “free radical” type of this process. This process may utilize Ziegler-Natta catalysts, and can be subdivided into initiation, propagation, transfer, and termination steps. For ten points, name this process in which large compounds are formed out of monomers.
ANSWER: Polymerization
I'll put the whole set on the packet archive after I've edited it a bit for the mirror next weekend.
Thanks. I think the second clue is ring opening metathesis polymerization, so a worthwhile edit would be to add the word "metathesis" before "form of this process" to reduce the possibility of negs there.
I wrote the clue to describe ring opening polymerization, which seems to be a different thing than ring opening metathesis polymerization, and the clue does accurately describe what I wanted it to. However, my clue does not distinguish between them, so it would improve the question to do something like starting that sentence with "It's not metathesis, but..."
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Re: Hello

Post by Connie Prater »

Now that this set has been released, can this go public?
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Re: Hello

Post by Tees-Exe Line »

Sure, but is there a way for a private forum to just be made generally available? I think past tournaments whose discussions have started in this private form have remained like that.
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