Chicago Open Discussion

Old college threads.
User avatar
Adventure Temple Trail
Auron
Posts: 2755
Joined: Tue Jul 15, 2008 9:52 pm

Re: Chicago Open Discussion

Post by Adventure Temple Trail »

Who has the set, and can they post it?
Matt Jackson
University of Chicago '24
Yale '14, Georgetown Day School '10
member emeritus, ACF
User avatar
Cheynem
Sin
Posts: 7220
Joined: Tue May 11, 2004 11:19 am
Location: Grand Rapids, Michigan

Re: Chicago Open Discussion

Post by Cheynem »

My Mukherjee-esque list:

-I negged predestination with "free will." I am not a theologian, but in my layman's mind and various Bible studies I've been to, I thought these concepts were very highly related--i.e., do we have free will if something like predestination exists? I am not sure if I deserved a prompt though.

-I enjoyed the tossup on William Faulkner's Nobel speech; it was a creative idea that was still accessible. It was kind of odd that randomization placed it right next to the Eisenhower farewell address question though.

-I am skeptical how many people remember the names of islands from the Odyssey. I think that the IDEA of these questions is good, but I think a better idea might be something like "description acceptable" (so just saying "Circe's island" is okay).

-I too thought the Metropolis tossup cliffed a bit. It's something easily fixable with just a couple harder Metropolis the movie clues (this packet--packet 3--was really really good by the way).

-Can someone who knows more sociology stuff comment on "social learning"? I'm really not a fan of these concept tossups in that at the end of the question, people just basically have to repeat back what the giveaway was in some way.

-Ooh, that TI-83 question was pretty awesome.

-I love James Dickey and his poetry and it's glad to see it being asked about.

-How long until we get a tossup on "Martin, Barton, and Fish"? All three dudes are pretty important in some way.

-I really enjoyed the Thomas Becket in literature tossup.

-I'd need to see the questions again, but I felt like in round 7, that the Orientalism and Winston Churchill questions could have gradated down the cliff a little.

-I got confused with the pronoun "This period" for "the occupation of East Timor" even if it is probably the most accurate. I'm not sure if "this conflict" would have been better.

-The Mark Reynolds tossup seemed like someone's stream of consciousness rant about Mark Reynolds. I know nothing about the guy, but the clues seemed rather fleeting.

-I was very happy to see a tossup on the United Mine Workers. And Nightwood. And the Mitford family. Lots of good stuff in packets 10-11.

-I have read the book of Philippians several times and felt that tossup seemed vague. I'd have to look at it again.

-The tossup on "Society of United Irishmen," at least to me, seemed a little unnecessarily hard, since it requires you to know the name of a pretty hard group with a generic-esque name.

-The "radio plays" tossup was a very good idea. As was the tossup on the tavernkeeper from Canterbury Tales.

-Man, that last packet was pretty awesome--Tlateolco Massacre, flaying of Marsias in art, Morricone, Chinatown, hard F. Scott Fizgerald.

You know, when playing this set, I thought "Hmm, a middle-tier CO," but looking back at my notes I really don't have a ton of complaints. I think the packet variance was probably my biggest concern in that the difficulty swings were sometimes jarring, but in terms of question quality, overall very solid.

One thing that I noticed about this set was that when trash did appear, a lot of times it was pretty hard trash. I think that's cool and that's one reason why I would like to see trash remain at CO because where else would you have a spot for questions on DJ Baby Bok Choi or Gilbert Gottfried saying "You Fool!" on Hollywood Squares.
Mike Cheyne
Formerly U of Minnesota

"You killed HSAPQ"--Matt Bollinger
User avatar
Maxwell Sniffingwell
Auron
Posts: 2164
Joined: Sun Feb 12, 2006 3:22 pm
Location: Des Moines, IA

Re: Chicago Open Discussion

Post by Maxwell Sniffingwell »

Cheynem wrote:-The Mark Reynolds tossup seemed like someone's stream of consciousness rant about Mark Reynolds. I know nothing about the guy, but the clues seemed rather fleeting.
Seconded on this - I play enough fantasy baseball that I expected to lock down anything on current players, and this got to the end before I even had an idea. Was this written by a frustrated Indians fan?
Greg Peterson

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

"a decent player" - Mike Cheyne
User avatar
AKKOLADE
Sin
Posts: 15784
Joined: Thu Apr 24, 2003 8:08 am

Re: Chicago Open Discussion

Post by AKKOLADE »

cornfused wrote:Was this written by a frustrated Indians fan?
Is there any other kind?
Fred Morlan
University of Kentucky CoP, 2017
International Quiz Bowl Tournaments, CEO, co-owner
former PACE member, president, etc.
former hsqbrank manager, former NAQT writer & subject editor, former hsqb Administrator/Chief Administrator
Tanay
Rikku
Posts: 427
Joined: Wed Jun 03, 2009 5:05 pm

Re: Chicago Open Discussion

Post by Tanay »

cornfused wrote:
Cheynem wrote:-The Mark Reynolds tossup seemed like someone's stream of consciousness rant about Mark Reynolds. I know nothing about the guy, but the clues seemed rather fleeting.
Seconded on this - I play enough fantasy baseball that I expected to lock down anything on current players, and this got to the end before I even had an idea. Was this written by a frustrated Indians fan?
I think the clue just outside of power (being the first to get to 200 strikeouts, and then doing it two more times) was fine--it deals with a single-season record for a fairly important statistic, for which Reynolds holds three of the top five marks. That being said, I'd agree with you about most of the clues in this tossup.
Tanay
ex-Berkeley, ex-Bellarmine
User avatar
Nine-Tenths Ideas
Auron
Posts: 1558
Joined: Sat Feb 03, 2007 10:14 pm
Location: MD

Re: Chicago Open Discussion

Post by Nine-Tenths Ideas »

Mark Reynolds was by me-- sorry. Matt asked for a sports question and I said "I have this crappy question on Mark Reynolds I wrote for the VCU Open Side Event" but I should've just written something new. My bad.
Isaac Hirsch
University of Maryland '14
Never Gonna Play Again
Ringil
Rikku
Posts: 412
Joined: Sun Sep 21, 2008 12:46 am

Re: Chicago Open Discussion

Post by Ringil »

Edmund wrote:Thanks again to the staffing team for a smoothly run tournament and to Matt and his co-editors for an enjoyable set.

In particular I would praise the science which seemed to be suitable hard but accessible and of real significance. I'd be interested to hear the kibitz on the "contact" tossup (which seems to have taken place off the forum) as this is a topic I deal with professionally. It certainly is an interesting and real thing in theoretical mechanics.
I think the main problem was that it just didn't lend itself very well to a tossup. It would have been much better as a bonus.
Libo
Washington '14, Michigan '13, Troy High School '09
User avatar
The King's Flight to the Scots
Auron
Posts: 1645
Joined: Mon Jan 26, 2009 11:11 pm

Re: Chicago Open Discussion

Post by The King's Flight to the Scots »

For the record I don't think "social learning theory" is a combination of words you can really guess unless you've at least heard the phrase before. Certainly the Nediger team couldn't get it at the end. I also think "Society of United Irishmen" is something you can get with some knowledge of the historical period, and the clues for that answer are better than the clues for Wolfe Tone.

I actually didn't write the Aiaia tossup--Rob submitted it, I looked at it and figured it was fine and didn't expect people to have much trouble with it. I don't really have a philosophical problem with accepting "Circe's island" for that tossup. Free will probably deserved a prompt, just not an issue I anticipated coming up when I looked at that submitted question.
Matt Bollinger
UVA '14, UVA '15
User avatar
Adventure Temple Trail
Auron
Posts: 2755
Joined: Tue Jul 15, 2008 9:52 pm

Re: Chicago Open Discussion

Post by Adventure Temple Trail »

Vernon Lee Bad Marriage, Jr. wrote:Free will probably deserved a prompt, just not an issue I anticipated coming up when I looked at that submitted question.
Not to further derail this thread into discussion-one-question-land, but I'm skeptical of the idea of this prompt; there's a small industry of religious/theological texts whose central question is "Can predestination and free will coexist?" (Augustine's De libero arbitrio, though that precedes the term "predestination", and a bunch of Plantinga's stuff), which implies to me that they are firmly different concepts. To bring it to the broader principle that makes it worth discussing: This seems like a slide into prompts which are simply too generous to make sense. Even if predestination did imply the absence of free will by definition (a contested question), that would make "free will" the opposite concept as the intended answer. We don't prompt on "free will" if the answer is "determinsim," or "anti-Trinitarians" if the answer is "the Trinity," or "Jews" if the answer is "anti-Semitism"; you have to know which side of a given argument the question is talking about and not expect to be prompted for saying the literal opposite thing.
Matt Jackson
University of Chicago '24
Yale '14, Georgetown Day School '10
member emeritus, ACF
User avatar
Cheynem
Sin
Posts: 7220
Joined: Tue May 11, 2004 11:19 am
Location: Grand Rapids, Michigan

Re: Chicago Open Discussion

Post by Cheynem »

I see Matt Jackson's point, but I'd need to look a the question again to see if the clues were specific enough to be able to make that distinction (I'm sure they were, but at the time, I was unable to).
Mike Cheyne
Formerly U of Minnesota

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

Re: Chicago Open Discussion

Post by grapesmoker »

I really enjoyed the tossups on "The Crane Wife" and Ennio Morricone. Thanks to whoever wrote that. Also, that tossup on the Josephson effect was really good; the quantum metrology triangle clue in particular is super important and I'm glad to see it mentioned.
Jerry Vinokurov
ex-LJHS, ex-Berkeley, ex-Brown, sorta-ex-CMU
presently: John Jay College Economics
code ape, loud voice, general nuissance
User avatar
ObsidianFoot
Lulu
Posts: 24
Joined: Sun Mar 03, 2013 12:55 am

Re: Chicago Open Discussion

Post by ObsidianFoot »

Cheynem wrote:
-I got confused with the pronoun "This period" for "the occupation of East Timor" even if it is probably the most accurate. I'm not sure if "this conflict" would have been better.
I was keeping score, not playing, but, for what it's worth, I was listening to this question when Aaron Rosenberg did what I probably would have done: He buzzed on the clue that described the Santa Cruz massacre, said something like "the rule of Suharto," was prompted, and was then negged when he didn't realize that "East Timor" was the needed part of the answer.

"This period" seems to be an accurate prompt for the answerline, seeing as it has also been used in a number of tossups on "the United States occupation of Haiti." My issue is not with the prompt, but rather with the fact that "the rule of Suharto" was not an adequate answer, despite "Santa Cruz massacre" having been used, in the past, as a clue in multiple tossups about Suharto; as such, this clue does not seem to point as clearly as intended to an answerline that required "East Timor." (In contrast, it seems that any clue on "the occupation of Haiti" will point to that answerline, and not to, say, "the presidency of FDR," despite his having written a constitution during the specified period.
Charles Tian
University of Chicago, 2014

ACF Nationals 2013 Undergraduate Champion

"You should have seized power, Tian!" --Rob Carson, 2012 National History Bee and Bowl
User avatar
The King's Flight to the Scots
Auron
Posts: 1645
Joined: Mon Jan 26, 2009 11:11 pm

Re: Chicago Open Discussion

Post by The King's Flight to the Scots »

ObsidianFoot wrote:
Cheynem wrote:
-I got confused with the pronoun "This period" for "the occupation of East Timor" even if it is probably the most accurate. I'm not sure if "this conflict" would have been better.
I was keeping score, not playing, but, for what it's worth, I was listening to this question when Aaron Rosenberg did what I probably would have done: He buzzed on the clue that described the Santa Cruz massacre, said something like "the rule of Suharto," was prompted, and was then negged when he didn't realize that "East Timor" was the needed part of the answer.

"This period" seems to be an accurate prompt for the answerline, seeing as it has also been used in a number of tossups on "the United States occupation of Haiti." My issue is not with the prompt, but rather with the fact that "the rule of Suharto" was not an adequate answer, despite "Santa Cruz massacre" having been used, in the past, as a clue in multiple tossups about Suharto; as such, this clue does not seem to point as clearly as intended to an answerline that required "East Timor." (In contrast, it seems that any clue on "the occupation of Haiti" will point to that answerline, and not to, say, "the presidency of FDR," despite his having written a constitution during the specified period.
I'm confused--the Santa Cruz Cemetery Massacre happened in East Timor during the occupation. If you know what it is, how does that not "point to" the East Timor occupation?
Matt Bollinger
UVA '14, UVA '15
User avatar
Cheynem
Sin
Posts: 7220
Joined: Tue May 11, 2004 11:19 am
Location: Grand Rapids, Michigan

Re: Chicago Open Discussion

Post by Cheynem »

I think it points to it--I too was considering just saying "the Suharto regime." I don't have a problem though with the prompt being directed to the answer--did the clues encompass anything in the East Timor occupation beyond Suharto's regime, though?
Mike Cheyne
Formerly U of Minnesota

"You killed HSAPQ"--Matt Bollinger
User avatar
The King's Flight to the Scots
Auron
Posts: 1645
Joined: Mon Jan 26, 2009 11:11 pm

Re: Chicago Open Discussion

Post by The King's Flight to the Scots »

Cheynem wrote:I think it points to it--I too was considering just saying "the Suharto regime." I don't have a problem though with the prompt being directed to the answer--did the clues encompass anything in the East Timor occupation beyond Suharto's regime, though?
question wrote:Michele Turner collected oral testimonies from victims of this period into a book called “Telling” the country in which it occurred. A minor incursion preceding this period killed a group of Australian journalists called the Balibo Five. During this period, Yorkshire Television reporter Max Stahl videotaped a massacre of protesters marching to a tomb in (*) Santa Cruz cemetery. Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo and Jose Ramos-Horta won the Nobel Peace Prize for trying to resolve the violence of this period, during which FALINTIL, the military arm of FRETILIN, resisted an invasion supported by Henry Kissinger. For 10 points, name this bloody period from 1975-1999 that began when Suharto invaded a neighboring island nation.
Neither the Telling East Timor clue nor the next clue are strictly true of "Suharto's Regime," although I think it still deserves a prompt.
Matt Bollinger
UVA '14, UVA '15
User avatar
Good Goblin Housekeeping
Auron
Posts: 1100
Joined: Sun May 23, 2010 10:03 am

Re: Chicago Open Discussion

Post by Good Goblin Housekeeping »

RyuAqua wrote:Who has the set, and can they post it?
Hey does anyone actually HAVE the set? Because it would be nice to see the whole thing
Andrew Wang
Illinois 2016
User avatar
itsthatoneguy
Rikku
Posts: 264
Joined: Wed Apr 09, 2008 9:36 pm

Re: Chicago Open Discussion

Post by itsthatoneguy »

Muriel Axon wrote:I wrote tossups on J. G. Hamann, public goods, Anthony Giddens, redlining, and cultural evolution. If you found any of these tossups unsatisfactory, please let me know.
Minor point, but in my room someone buzzed on redlining with "white flight." Obviously the two are related, but it was unclear if I should prompt the player or not. I chose not to, much to his chagrin, so more instructions in the answerline would've been nice.
Bryan Berend
Detroit Catholic Central '09
Michigan '13
User avatar
Adventure Temple Trail
Auron
Posts: 2755
Joined: Tue Jul 15, 2008 9:52 pm

Re: Chicago Open Discussion

Post by Adventure Temple Trail »

itsthatoneguy wrote:
Muriel Axon wrote:I wrote tossups on J. G. Hamann, public goods, Anthony Giddens, redlining, and cultural evolution. If you found any of these tossups unsatisfactory, please let me know.
Minor point, but in my room someone buzzed on redlining with "white flight." Obviously the two are related, but it was unclear if I should prompt the player or not. I chose not to, much to his chagrin, so more instructions in the answerline would've been nice.
You can't Just Say Stuff related to the words in the question and expect a prompt! You need to know the actual answer! Why doesn't the audience of Chicago Open, which includes the most experienced players still in quizbowl, understand this?
Matt Jackson
University of Chicago '24
Yale '14, Georgetown Day School '10
member emeritus, ACF
User avatar
Cheynem
Sin
Posts: 7220
Joined: Tue May 11, 2004 11:19 am
Location: Grand Rapids, Michigan

Re: Chicago Open Discussion

Post by Cheynem »

Nobody was complaining about not being prompted--Bryan was saying that as a moderator, he was unsure of what to do in terms of prompts. For what it's worth, in the round I watched, Jerry said that question was confusing as well.

I wasn't paying attention at all during the question and have never seen it, so I have no idea what its quality was. I will say that I've read a lot about redlining and white flight and they are quite distinct processes but also rather related as well, so the clues would need to be very specific for redlining to avoid having them also be applicable to other things.
Mike Cheyne
Formerly U of Minnesota

"You killed HSAPQ"--Matt Bollinger
User avatar
Tees-Exe Line
Tidus
Posts: 623
Joined: Mon Apr 12, 2010 5:02 pm

Re: Chicago Open Discussion

Post by Tees-Exe Line »

Cheynem wrote:I've read a lot about redlining and white flight
Really? Why's that?
Marshall I. Steinbaum

Oxford University (2002-2005)
University of Chicago (2008-2014)
University of Utah (2019- )

Get in the elevator.
User avatar
Cheynem
Sin
Posts: 7220
Joined: Tue May 11, 2004 11:19 am
Location: Grand Rapids, Michigan

Re: Chicago Open Discussion

Post by Cheynem »

Because I wanted to beat you to the racial covenants tossup at the 2011 ACF Nationals.

SPOILER ALERT: I did.
Mike Cheyne
Formerly U of Minnesota

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

Re: Chicago Open Discussion

Post by grapesmoker »

Cheynem wrote:Nobody was complaining about not being prompted--Bryan was saying that as a moderator, he was unsure of what to do in terms of prompts. For what it's worth, in the round I watched, Jerry said that question was confusing as well.
What threw me off about the question was my misunderstanding of the word "promoted," which I thought was being used to describe the CRA. That was a failure by me to parse the sentence correctly. I should have powered the question, but because of my confusion I said "lending to minorities" then hemmed and hawed and figured out that the answer being sought was "redlining" and said so, but got negged. Anyway, I guess the question could have been phrased a bit better, but the failure to understand it as written was all mine.
Jerry Vinokurov
ex-LJHS, ex-Berkeley, ex-Brown, sorta-ex-CMU
presently: John Jay College Economics
code ape, loud voice, general nuissance
User avatar
Steeve Ho You Fat
Auron
Posts: 1138
Joined: Mon Jun 01, 2009 11:48 pm

Re: Chicago Open Discussion

Post by Steeve Ho You Fat »

The clues are all pointing directly at redlining, not white flight, which is a distinctly different thing that sometimes happens as a consequence of redlining. There wasn't anything wrong with the question.
Joe Nutter
PACE Emeritus
Michigan State University '14
Walnut Hills High School '11
User avatar
Muriel Axon
Tidus
Posts: 729
Joined: Wed Mar 21, 2012 12:19 am

Re: Chicago Open Discussion

Post by Muriel Axon »

My submitted version of the redlining tossup had information for moderators on what to do with answers like "community disinvestment" and "discriminatory lending," etc. I'm not sure if any of this made it into the final set. There was no instruction on answers like "white flight" because I considered them sufficiently wrong not to worry about.

EDIT: Also, Marshall and Mike - get a room, guys!
Shan Kothari

Plymouth High School '10
Michigan State University '14
University of Minnesota '20
User avatar
Tees-Exe Line
Tidus
Posts: 623
Joined: Mon Apr 12, 2010 5:02 pm

Re: Chicago Open Discussion

Post by Tees-Exe Line »

Reading Harry Byrd, Jr's obituary reminded me that the tossup on Stonewall Jackson dropped the names of towns in the Shenandoah Valley too early. Thanks to the domination of a narrowly-defined set of Virginians, I think those are well known.
Marshall I. Steinbaum

Oxford University (2002-2005)
University of Chicago (2008-2014)
University of Utah (2019- )

Get in the elevator.
User avatar
vcuEvan
Auron
Posts: 1085
Joined: Mon Feb 23, 2004 5:49 pm
Location: Richmond VA

Re: Chicago Open Discussion

Post by vcuEvan »

Tees-Exe Line wrote:Reading Harry Byrd, Jr's obituary reminded me that the tossup on Stonewall Jackson dropped the names of towns in the Shenandoah Valley too early. Thanks to the domination of a narrowly-defined set of Virginians, I think those are well known.
Maybe, although even if you recognize the name of a town in the Shenandoah you still have to recognize that it's from Jackson's valley campaign.
Evan Adams
VCU '11, UVA '14, NYU '15
User avatar
Tees-Exe Line
Tidus
Posts: 623
Joined: Mon Apr 12, 2010 5:02 pm

Re: Chicago Open Discussion

Post by Tees-Exe Line »

vcuEvan wrote:
Tees-Exe Line wrote:Reading Harry Byrd, Jr's obituary reminded me that the tossup on Stonewall Jackson dropped the names of towns in the Shenandoah Valley too early. Thanks to the domination of a narrowly-defined set of Virginians, I think those are well known.
Maybe, although even if you recognize the name of a town in the Shenandoah you still have to recognize that it's from Jackson's valley campaign.
I think the issue is probably just that it was a list of names. If it had been just one in the Shenandoah Valley, I would have thought "that's some town in Virginia; this is a Civil War general." As was, I thought "what links all of those? They're all towns in the Shenandoah Valley. This is Jackson."
Marshall I. Steinbaum

Oxford University (2002-2005)
University of Chicago (2008-2014)
University of Utah (2019- )

Get in the elevator.
User avatar
Adventure Temple Trail
Auron
Posts: 2755
Joined: Tue Jul 15, 2008 9:52 pm

Re: Chicago Open Discussion

Post by Adventure Temple Trail »

Tees-Exe Line wrote:
vcuEvan wrote:
Tees-Exe Line wrote:Reading Harry Byrd, Jr's obituary reminded me that the tossup on Stonewall Jackson dropped the names of towns in the Shenandoah Valley too early. Thanks to the domination of a narrowly-defined set of Virginians, I think those are well known.
Maybe, although even if you recognize the name of a town in the Shenandoah you still have to recognize that it's from Jackson's valley campaign.
I think the issue is probably just that it was a list of names. If it had been just one in the Shenandoah Valley, I would have thought "that's some town in Virginia; this is a Civil War general." As was, I thought "what links all of those? They're all towns in the Shenandoah Valley. This is Jackson."
you knew stuff; you got points; the horror
Last edited by Adventure Temple Trail on Tue Jul 30, 2013 3:18 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Matt Jackson
University of Chicago '24
Yale '14, Georgetown Day School '10
member emeritus, ACF
gyre and gimble
Yuna
Posts: 765
Joined: Tue Feb 17, 2009 2:45 am

Re: Chicago Open Discussion

Post by gyre and gimble »

Tees-Exe Line wrote:
vcuEvan wrote:
Tees-Exe Line wrote:Reading Harry Byrd, Jr's obituary reminded me that the tossup on Stonewall Jackson dropped the names of towns in the Shenandoah Valley too early. Thanks to the domination of a narrowly-defined set of Virginians, I think those are well known.
Maybe, although even if you recognize the name of a town in the Shenandoah you still have to recognize that it's from Jackson's valley campaign.
I think the issue is probably just that it was a list of names. If it had been just one in the Shenandoah Valley, I would have thought "that's some town in Virginia; this is a Civil War general." As was, I thought "what links all of those? They're all towns in the Shenandoah Valley. This is Jackson."
I always thought Sheridan's Shenandoah campaign was much more famous? Why would you default to Jackson?
Stephen Liu
Torrey Pines '10
Harvard '14
Stanford '17
User avatar
Tees-Exe Line
Tidus
Posts: 623
Joined: Mon Apr 12, 2010 5:02 pm

Re: Chicago Open Discussion

Post by Tees-Exe Line »

gyre and gimble wrote:
Tees-Exe Line wrote:
vcuEvan wrote:
Tees-Exe Line wrote:Reading Harry Byrd, Jr's obituary reminded me that the tossup on Stonewall Jackson dropped the names of towns in the Shenandoah Valley too early. Thanks to the domination of a narrowly-defined set of Virginians, I think those are well known.
Maybe, although even if you recognize the name of a town in the Shenandoah you still have to recognize that it's from Jackson's valley campaign.
I think the issue is probably just that it was a list of names. If it had been just one in the Shenandoah Valley, I would have thought "that's some town in Virginia; this is a Civil War general." As was, I thought "what links all of those? They're all towns in the Shenandoah Valley. This is Jackson."
I always thought Sheridan's Shenandoah campaign was much more famous? Why would you default to Jackson?
I knew Bollinger and his treason-loving friends would never let that butcher into CO.
Marshall I. Steinbaum

Oxford University (2002-2005)
University of Chicago (2008-2014)
University of Utah (2019- )

Get in the elevator.
User avatar
Important Bird Area
Forums Staff: Administrator
Posts: 6113
Joined: Thu Aug 28, 2003 3:33 pm
Location: San Francisco Bay Area
Contact:

Re: Chicago Open Discussion

Post by Important Bird Area »

What do Chicago Open and Sheridan's valley campaign have in common?

answer: _crows flying over them should carry their own provisions_
Jeff Hoppes
President, Northern California Quiz Bowl Alliance
former HSQB Chief Admin (2012-13)
VP for Communication and history subject editor, NAQT
Editor emeritus, ACF

"I wish to make some kind of joke about Jeff's love of birds, but I always fear he'll turn them on me Hitchcock-style." -Fred
User avatar
Important Bird Area
Forums Staff: Administrator
Posts: 6113
Joined: Thu Aug 28, 2003 3:33 pm
Location: San Francisco Bay Area
Contact:

Re: Chicago Open Discussion

Post by Important Bird Area »

Seriously, I too thought that the Jackson tossup was relatively easy. (It was still pyramidal, it just struck me as closer to regular difficulty than most of the other history questions in the set.)
Jeff Hoppes
President, Northern California Quiz Bowl Alliance
former HSQB Chief Admin (2012-13)
VP for Communication and history subject editor, NAQT
Editor emeritus, ACF

"I wish to make some kind of joke about Jeff's love of birds, but I always fear he'll turn them on me Hitchcock-style." -Fred
hokie168
Lulu
Posts: 35
Joined: Mon Feb 23, 2009 11:20 pm

Re: Chicago Open Discussion

Post by hokie168 »

Hey, this is Dennis from the UVA team. I edited the "other science" and welcome feedback and suggestions about those questions.

In general, my edits to math tossups were based on the following ideas: If the answer is a theorem, add early clues about methods of proving that theorem. If the answer is a topic, include early clues describing important papers/results regarding that topic. I was able to playtest the edits on a few professional mathematicians and math grad students, and they seemed to work fairly well.

The tossups I wrote were:
Shading
Derecho
David Hilbert
Amber
Aquifer

The bonuses I wrote were:
Lava flows/columnar jointing/rhyolitic lava
Nicolas Bourbaki/Samuel Eilenberg/Jean-Pierre Serre
Decision trees/naive Bayes classifier/VC dimension
Modules/vector spaces/principal ideal domains

I was also responsible for the trash bonuses in the finals packets, on Bayern Munich/Arjen Robben/Gerd Muller and I Ran (So Far Away)/Rock Me Amadeus/Send Me An Angel.
Dennis Loo
Former coach at TJ and IMSA
Former player at UVA and Virginia Tech
evilmonkey
Yuna
Posts: 964
Joined: Mon Sep 25, 2006 11:23 am
Location: Durham, NC

Re: Chicago Open Discussion

Post by evilmonkey »

Cheynem wrote: -I negged predestination with "free will." I am not a theologian, but in my layman's mind and various Bible studies I've been to, I thought these concepts were very highly related--i.e., do we have free will if something like predestination exists? I am not sure if I deserved a prompt though.
If I remember correctly from my freshman philosophy seminar, there does exist such a thing as deterministic free will - it is the standpoint that although all of our actions are predetermined, they are predetermined in the sense that all of the events in our life up to that point will lead us to freely choose the predetermined path. But, that is a rather rare stance - in most cases, determinism and free will are set apart.

I haven't seen/heard the question, but I'd guess that free will shouldn't be prompted for predestination, since in most cases predestination is meant to imply a lack of free will.
Bryce Durgin
Culver Academies '07
University of Notre Dame '11
Texas A&M '15
User avatar
Sima Guang Hater
Auron
Posts: 1962
Joined: Mon Feb 05, 2007 1:43 pm
Location: Nashville, TN

Re: Chicago Open Discussion

Post by Sima Guang Hater »

Alright, what the hell.

I liked this tournament. Most of the criticisms I had people have already addressed. The chemistry at this tournament was particularly difficult, hard to power (if Billy's only getting two powers at this tournament you've probably done something wrong), and suffered from having an excess of clues from papers early on. Within those confines, it was very well-written, interesting, and pyramidal, however.

PACKET 1:
-There's a Bloch-Gruneisen model; I'd have appreciated an "it's not Bloch, but..." deal here.
-I've always heard of Tafsir as actual works (i.e. The Tafsir of Ibn Kathir), rather than a process, which is why I said ijtihad for the first part.
-What was the chemistry question in this packet?

PACKET 2:
-I thought the tossups on the Family of Saltimbiques, "Black", and the 21cm line were very good ideas. I can't really speak to the actual execution unfortunately.
-Re this isothiocyanate tossup:
Me, After CO 2008 wrote:There were many tossups on progressively more and more strange functional groups in the set, and while some of them were certainly interesting (furans), I think there's a point where you really can go too far with this (aryl halides). If the trend continues in this direction, we'll be writing tossups on more and more obscure moieties, which I really don't think is preferable [...] I really don't want to see tossups on things likes beta-hydroxyesters and isothiocyanates (take my word for it. These can be done), when tossups on esters and nitriles can still be clue-dense and very interesting, and at the same time be gettable for non-specialists.
Apparently everyone knew that isothiocyanates are responsible for the taste of Wasabi except me.
-Is there a better way to introduce academic geography into the canon than just shoving a tossup on Waldo Tobler into a CO packet? There seemed to be a lot of it in this tournament too.
-This tossup on Eisenhower's farewell got pretty figure-outable when it started talking about inventors being overshadowed.
-This Paget's disease bonus is really good. I'm sad we didn't get to hear it.

PACKET 4:
-I really enjoyed this sequence alignment question. Likewise with this very dense femtochemistry question.

PACKET 5:
-This was our packet. I'd appreciate any comments on the questions I wrote, esp the mass question, which was me trying to be creative.

PACKET 6:
-Re this Lyme disease tossup, I'm not really sure what's buzzable in power, although I guess I should have remembered Salp15. Still, that's pretty brutal.
-It's exciting to see Zintl clusters come up, even if I couldn't remember what they were called.
-It was probably overkill to make barstar the hard part of this bonus when barnase itself would have done just fine.

PACKET 7:
-A tossup on Makemake is pretty ill-advised.

PACKET 8:
-Charcot-Leyden crystals made my day. So did Mitsunobu reaction even if I negged it.
-I agree with Jerry's comments about this X-ray topography tossup

PACKET 9:
-Concert in the Tuileries should also be acceptable.
-A tossup on Schottky? Why? Likewise, why would you write a tossup on half of Capitalism and Schizophrenia? Seems kind of nitpicky to me.
-Look at the giveaway of the Molybdenum tossup. If that's what your giveaway has to look like, you've picked something too difficult to write about.

PACKET 10:
-I believe topological insulators came up twice

PACKET 11:
-This tossup on the thermoelectric effect should have just been on Seebeck. It got confusing at the end.

PACKET 12:
-Both Pulsating White Dwarves and Contact were not good ideas for answerlines
-This iridium tossup is a classic example of too many paper clues in one question. The first 2/3 of this question are completely inaccessible to anyone who hasn't done a literature search on organoiridium chemistry and read the work of two particular experts on the subject, and that's crazy.

PACKET 13:
-Canadian fluorine chemistry, eh?

PACKET 15:
-This tossup on diazonium salts is the only truly ill-advised chemistry answerline in this set, if only because they were called "salts" very early and that makes it easy to narrow down.

PACKET 16:
-Its fine to spell out that you're referring to malate synthase and isocitrate lyase in this malate tossup. It's not like the word "synthase" is uniquely linked to "malate" in any way.
-You can also say more about vincristine other than the horror that occurs if you accidentally stick it into a spine. Say its a vinca alkaloid, even, hardly anyone without knowledge will have heard of them anyway.
-It's just called Cowling's theorem. This needs to be re-iterated.
-This bonus part on Weinreb amides doesn't have to be 6 lines long. In fact I was finished after "named for their American creator".

PACKET 17:
-I agree with Jerry's comments on the 2D ising model question

FINALS:
-Eschenmosher is a very, very bad idea.
Eric Mukherjee, MD PhD
Brown 2009, Penn Med 2018
Instructor/Attending Physician/Postdoctoral Fellow, Vanderbilt University Medical Center
Coach, University School of Nashville

“The next generation will always surpass the previous one. It’s one of the never-ending cycles in life.”
Support the Stevens-Johnson Syndrome Foundation
Ethnic history of the Vilnius region
Auron
Posts: 1000
Joined: Tue Feb 17, 2004 12:50 am
Location: Columbia, SC

Re: Chicago Open Discussion

Post by Ethnic history of the Vilnius region »

The Quest for the Historical Mukherjesus wrote:
PACKET 9:
-Concert in the Tuileries should also be acceptable.
Seems like this would be a textbook example of the reasonable translation rule. Was Concert at the Tuileries somehow not accepted?
Eric D.
University of South Carolina Alum
gyre and gimble
Yuna
Posts: 765
Joined: Tue Feb 17, 2009 2:45 am

Re: Chicago Open Discussion

Post by gyre and gimble »

Is the set available somewhere?
Stephen Liu
Torrey Pines '10
Harvard '14
Stanford '17
User avatar
The King's Flight to the Scots
Auron
Posts: 1645
Joined: Mon Jan 26, 2009 11:11 pm

Re: Chicago Open Discussion

Post by The King's Flight to the Scots »

gyre and gimble wrote:Is the set available somewhere?
I guess I've said this a couple times but...I'll try to get it posted tomorrow, and, failing that, by the end of the week.
Matt Bollinger
UVA '14, UVA '15
User avatar
grapesmoker
Sin
Posts: 6345
Joined: Sat Oct 25, 2003 5:23 pm
Location: NYC
Contact:

Re: Chicago Open Discussion

Post by grapesmoker »

Sorry about that Waldo Tobler tossup.
Jerry Vinokurov
ex-LJHS, ex-Berkeley, ex-Brown, sorta-ex-CMU
presently: John Jay College Economics
code ape, loud voice, general nuissance
User avatar
The King's Flight to the Scots
Auron
Posts: 1645
Joined: Mon Jan 26, 2009 11:11 pm

Re: Chicago Open Discussion

Post by The King's Flight to the Scots »

I uploaded the set this morning. Just waiting for approval now.

EDIT: The set is here.
Matt Bollinger
UVA '14, UVA '15
Edmund
Wakka
Posts: 176
Joined: Sun Feb 07, 2010 8:25 pm

Re: Chicago Open Discussion

Post by Edmund »

The Quest for the Historical Mukherjesus wrote: PACKET 11 -This tossup on the thermoelectric effect should have just been on Seebeck. It got confusing at the end.
I wrote this one so this may have been my bad. The concern is that there is only one thermoelectric effect, which you can measure in a bunch of ways. But most of the early clues apply to all the "thermoelectric effects" (Peltier, Seebeck, etc) and it would be hard to find enough material to apply uniquely to the Seebeck effect. Possibly it wasn't a good idea in the first place.

Regarding isothiocyanates, I would think there is an argument that their biochemical process / natural product relevance raises them above the level of other functional groups of three-atom complexity. It'd be hard to defend a synthetic organic chemistry tossup on -NCS but that's not what was written.
Edmund Dickinson
UK Quizbowl
University of Oxford '11
touchpack
Rikku
Posts: 451
Joined: Tue Sep 20, 2011 12:25 am

Re: Chicago Open Discussion

Post by touchpack »

I'll throw in my 2 cents regarding science (mostly chem since that's what I know best and Sriram specifically asked for feedback)
The Quest for the Historical Mukherjesus wrote: The chemistry at this tournament was particularly difficult, hard to power (if Billy's only getting two powers at this tournament you've probably done something wrong)
While I agree that the chemistry was difficult (more on this later), there were a number of tossups I was sitting on but didn't buzz until after power had ended. From looking at the set I estimate I could've gotten at least 5 powers (but also more negs) had I played differently.

Packet 1:
This was my packet, so any feedback from others would be great.
The Quest for the Historical Mukherjesus wrote: -There's a Bloch-Gruneisen model; I'd have appreciated an "it's not Bloch, but..." deal here.
-What was the chemistry question in this packet?
Having already given the full description of the Gruneisen parameter, and considering how radically different it is from the Bloch-Gruneisen formula, I didn't think anyone could be possibly confused by the question. Sorry if this wasn't the case!

The chem was Debye model and exchange interaction / secular matrix / conjugation (bonus 20 so you may have not heard it). I guess I probably shouldn't write 1/1 physical chemistry for packet sub--sorry about that.

Packet 2:
-I'm fine with having a couple questions like this isothiocyanate question per tournament, but if you write like this all the time, your chemistry starts to become less academic and more resembling trivia
-I'm very sad I misheard the name "Barry Simon" and got confused on this Berry phase tossup.
-term symbols is a great bonus part
-this vorticity bonus part seems very hard to get from knowing the material in the bonus part, but very easy to guess. It's a decent idea though.

Packet 3:
-I had no idea there were enough clues to write a 7.5 line tossup on the Antoine equation!

Packet 4:
-This is probably the best question you can write with the answerline "femtochemistry." I like the clue selection and I think the gradation is good, but the problem is the tossup makes it obvious that it's a field within analytical chemistry, and I couldn't think of (and still can't really think of) anything else that would be reasonable to toss up, so the question became a giant game of chicken.
-I'm not sure the world is ready yet for a tossup on twistors. Why not just write a tossup on "spinors" or maybe even "quantum gravity" instead?

Packet 5:
-this mass tossup was really cool
-Vilsmeier-Haack is pretty brutal. Did this question get answered anywhere?

Packet 6:
-I think someone mentioned this upthread, but I liked this tossup on the Josephson effect.

Packet 7:
-Davies equation is too early here--a lot of the named clues for this answerline kind of get used over and over and over

Packet 8:
-I too enjoyed the inclusion of Charcot-Leyden crystals, even if it took me over half the tossup to remember what they were called
-This Mitsunobu tossup is very well done.

Packet 9:
-Please don't try to toss up Molybdenum again... specific iron-molybdenum-sulfur proteins are NOT a giveaway. Once again, I question how many rooms converted this tossup. (I recognized some of the clues at the end but couldn't remember which element they applied to)
-Bartoli indole synthesis is already a hard part, and then you get a 2nd hard part in AIBN (I sadly guessed NBS). I probably would've just made the first part indoles and not given the easiest clues.

Packet 10:
-This tossup on THF is a good idea and is very well-executed, but I think if you know what maleic anhydride is and can immediately think through what would happen to it if you hydrogenated it, you deserve 15 points. I wasn't sure what exactly would happen with the carbonyls.

Packet 11:
-Mossbauer spec was pretty good
-So with this thermoelectric tossup, I was confused partially because I thought (apparently wrongly) that the thermoelectric effect was just the Seebeck effect. In addition, when you word clues like this:

"The Onsager reciprocal relations are used to derive the Thomson relations for this effect, one of which describes the Peltier effect."

It gets REALLY confusing, since the clue doesn't tell you what the relation is between the Peltier effect and the answerline. Ashvin and I kinda just sat there trying to figure out what answer the tossup was expecting. (Ashvin got it a few seconds after giveaway)

Packet 12:
-Can people please stop dropping the extremely notable fact that "this process involves putting some biological compound onto a membrane" early in blot tossups? I keep not learning my lesson and negging them...
-Pulsating white dwarf and contact are indeed bad answerlines
-This iridium tossup might as well be 3 lines long, as Eric pointed out.

Packet 13:
-Honest question: do people really know that much about squaring the circle? I'm not sure this question provides much gradation.
-Unless Neil Bartlett is way more famous than I'm giving him credit for, this bonus seems awfully hard

Packet 14:
-A tossup on beta-lactams should probably not have its first two clues mention a strain of E coli that can resist them and their gram-negative properties. I'm actually happy I didn't figure out the obvious since I probably would've been too afraid to buzz had I done so.
-minor break from science to point out that Oleg spawns in the very southeast corner of his chapter, and there is nothing "southwest" of him. This was VERY confusing to me, Austin, and Andrew, who have most of the chapters in that game memorized.
-I love when you know for sure that question x was written by person y. This radiation reaction force tossup, aside from being pretty good, just reeks of Sorice.
-ROMP suffers a similar problem to femtochemistry, albeit on a much lesser scale. Of course, this problem could have been alleviated had the tossup not straight-up told the player in power it was a type of polymerization.
-This NMR bonus is extremely difficult.

Packet 15:
-ctrl-F "salts," replace with "compounds" or "functional group," and all of a sudden this diazonium tossup goes from terrible to actually pretty good

"Waves that contain no power, called evanescent waves, appear when another type of this phenomenon occurs. "
-Had I not heard the rest of the tossup already, I could buzz here, say tunneling, and I'd be absolutely correct. Thankfully I got the tossup before it reached this point.
-I think this is the 3rd bonus so far on "obscure types of organic compounds the question writer finds cool."

Packet 16:
-I'm gonna pick on this proline tossup a bit because it was one of my favorite tossups of the tournament. So, not that many people in quiz bowl know about proline's uses in organic chemistry, so that already makes this tossup hard (but appropriate for a tournament such as CO). The most notable thing about proline in synthesis is its ability to catalyze asymmetric aldol condensations, but this is never directly mentioned in the tossup, making it much more difficult than necessary and making the difficulty slope at the end quite steep! I would've changed it around this way:

In 2000, the Barabas group explored an intramolecular reaction catalyzed by this compound that produced the Wieland-Miescher ketone asymmetrically. The catalyst for a particular asymmetric reduction of a carbonyl to an alcohol involving boranes is synthesized using this compound as a precursor; that reaction is the CBS reduction. In addition, this compound is a catalyst in the Hajos-Parrish reaction, which is an asymmetric (*) aldol condensation

-There are so so so so many plasma instabilities, and this bonus part does a very bad job of distinguishing between them. Sorice somehow managed to guess the correct ones. (I would've gotten kink but probably not sausage) Also the Cowling's theorem thing was dumb.

-I knew what you were talking about 2 lines into this 6 (!) line bonus part on Weinreb amides. It's a shame I couldn't remember what they were called :( Also, this is yet another chemistry bonus with two hard parts

Packet 17:
-Knowing the most famous reaction of peroxyacids (mCPBA epoxidation) gets you 15, but Hajos-Parrish only gives you 10? And maleic anhydride only gives you 10? I assumed this tossup was waaay out of power when I heard the description of the Baeyer-Villiger oxidation, haha. Powermark aside, this is a good question.
-What you described is just one application of the Lee-Kesler method. You can also use it to estimate compressibility factors, virial coefficients, fugacity coefficients, etc. I was able to figure out what you were going for though (partially with the help of "name these doubly-eponymous things").

Finals 1:
-Just make Eschenmoser the hard part (yes, the hard part, not the medium part) of a bonus, there's no reason to toss him up.

Finals 2:
-This orgo bonus is two hard-to-impossible parts again.

Overall, Sriram, this was a very good set of chemistry questions, and I extend my thanks to you for writing them. Just make some of your medium parts and tossups a little easier next time. (and I sincerely hope there is a next time)
Billy Busse
University of Illinois, B.S. '14
Rosalind Franklin University, M.S. '21, M.D. Candidate '25
Emeritus Member, ACF
Writer/Subject Editor/Set Editor, NAQT
User avatar
Auroni
Auron
Posts: 3145
Joined: Thu Nov 15, 2007 6:23 pm

Re: Chicago Open Discussion

Post by Auroni »

I had no issue converting the molybdenum tossup, for what that's worth. It certainly ended with the most famous molybdenum biochemistry clue, but would probably be a middle or hard bonus part answerline even with that clue, so it was probably just too hard a question.
Auroni Gupta (she/her)
User avatar
Adventure Temple Trail
Auron
Posts: 2755
Joined: Tue Jul 15, 2008 9:52 pm

Re: Chicago Open Discussion

Post by Adventure Temple Trail »

touchpack wrote: -minor break from science to point out that Oleg spawns in the very southeast corner of his chapter, and there is nothing "southwest" of him. This was VERY confusing to me, Austin, and Andrew, who have most of the chapters in that game memorized.
My bad -- unlike you guys, I did not have the chapters memorized, and had to look back at a map on which I somehow misread "the northeasternmost house tile" as "boss". Shoulda said northwest.
Matt Jackson
University of Chicago '24
Yale '14, Georgetown Day School '10
member emeritus, ACF
User avatar
Auks Ran Ova
Forums Staff: Chief Administrator
Posts: 4295
Joined: Sun Apr 30, 2006 10:28 pm
Location: Minneapolis
Contact:

Re: Chicago Open Discussion

Post by Auks Ran Ova »

RyuAqua wrote:
touchpack wrote: -minor break from science to point out that Oleg spawns in the very southeast corner of his chapter, and there is nothing "southwest" of him. This was VERY confusing to me, Austin, and Andrew, who have most of the chapters in that game memorized.
My bad -- unlike you guys, I did not have the chapters memorized, and had to look back at a map on which I somehow misread "the northeasternmost house tile" as "boss". Shoulda said northwest.
If you indeed wrote that, take consolation in the fact that all the non-FE clues were totally awesome and that seeing all the rest of them just now was almost, but not quite, as cool as buzzing on "Ria Silmane".
Rob Carson
University of Minnesota '11, MCTC '??, BHSU forever
Member, ACF
Member emeritus, PACE
Writer and Editor, NAQT
Everyman
Lulu
Posts: 10
Joined: Wed Feb 01, 2012 4:02 am

Re: Chicago Open Discussion

Post by Everyman »

Further observations on the chem questions. For whatever reason, I find myself disagreeing with Billy about multiple bonus sets. I guess I'm coming at this from a position of ignorance re difficulty, not having played CO, but these bonus sets all seemed fine to me:
touchpack wrote:9: -Bartoli indole synthesis is already a hard part, and then you get a 2nd hard part in AIBN (I sadly guessed NBS). I probably would've just made the first part indoles and not given the easiest clues.
14: -This NMR bonus is extremely difficult.
15: -I think this is the 3rd bonus so far on "obscure types of organic compounds the question writer finds cool."
Finals 2: -This orgo bonus is two hard-to-impossible parts again.
Is the issue the choice of answers, the cluing, or both?

9: AIBN is a well-known radical initiator.
14: The DEPT part was unhelpfully wordy — only "determine the number of hydrogens bonded to each carbon atom" is really useful — but this seems otherwise straightforward.
15: Crown ethers and cryptands are common macrocycles.
Finals 2: I have never heard of the Pauson-Khand reaction, but sulfur dioxide protection is a common example (if not the main example) of cheletropic reactions.

Conversely, I had no idea what was going on in the doubly-eponymous bonus set in 17. Also —
13: -Unless Neil Bartlett is way more famous than I'm giving him credit for, this bonus seems awfully hard
— I have to agree with this!
Hugh
Oxford
Locked