2019 Scattergories 3 discussion

[women, fire and dangerous things]

Here's your thread for discussion of Scattergories 3! Many thanks are due to Jaimie Carlson for writing some excellent questions for the set, and thanks to Jaimie for running the Discord mirror on short notice and to Alex Damisch for running the CO mirror.

I've claimed that this will most likely be the last iteration of Scattergories (though I already have some more ideas so maybe in a few years I'll write another one), and I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, though I probably should've fleshed out the prompts on some of the answerlines a bit more.

[Mike Bentley]

This was by far my favorite set of the year. I'm sad I had to leave and missed the last round. I sure hope you write another one in the future, although as someone who has also written three iterations of a side tournament in a row I can see why you'd want a break.

A few nitpicks:

It would have been helpful to re-order a few sentences so they were a little friendlier on players. Examples that immediately come to mind are the blurbs question that included the "I great you on the verge of a great career" clue. That was originally stated in a letter (which was what I was buzzing on). I should have figured out that "letter" or even "review" wasn't whimsical enough to be an answer line, but it would have been nice if that clue began, "A letter that turned into one of these things stated..." Another one was on that fairy tale question. I don't remember what the actual answer line was, but one of the clues began, "Helen Oyeyemi wrote a book based on this fairy tale" or something to that effect. I reaction buzzed on Hansel and Gretel due to having read Gingerbread. Adding some characters or something before dropping her name would have distinguished which of her fairy tale books it was talking about.

But overall this was a lot of fun and I hope if you're not writing another one of these someone else at least makes an attempt in a similar mold.

[jinah]

This iteration of Scattergories was, as I expected, delightful. I had a lot of fun both playing the questions and watching other people play them. Playing this set really brought home for me why I like quizbowl - learning about interesting, fun, things; creative answerlines; the feeling that quizbowl is stretching your brain and rewarding things you like and care about, not just requiring you to slog through a list of mental file cards on things you don’t care about but have been forced to remember facts about for quizbowl. I also got to see some great buzzes by my teammates and opponents that were pretty exciting, especially because I could also see their own excitement.

That said, I also have a few nits. I think the answerlines and prompt instructions could have been expanded, and that some of the questions had clues that were hard to parse, especially at game speed, or that were difficult to use to get to the exact answerline that was wanted. What comes to mind are the parts, changing the _spelling_ of your last name, and bilingual title tossups, though I think part of this is inherent to a lot of ~creative~ commonlinks. I also agree with Mike that in some cases the uniquely identifying part of the clue came after the more general clue it modified, which isn’t ideal.

[Cheynem]

I greatly enjoyed this set, of course. There were numerous excellent ideas and very good questions. As usual with Will's sets, I feel like all of the questions have an unique and interesting vision behind them.

The question on "being tied to a tree"--I may have misparsed something, but I buzzed on the clue about this happening to Tom Walker's wife in "The Devil and Tom Walker" and said "being disemboweled" because he finds her internal organs taken out of her body. I probably just missed hearing something, though.

[ValenciaQBowl]

I had so much fun playing these questions in a tournament setting after just reading the first two iterations casually with Orlando-area players. I absolutely loved most of the answer ideas. And I negged on the two questions that I loved most: using Nurse with Wound (!!!) as a lead-in to the answer line about the "chance meeting of a sewing machine and an umbrella on a dissecting table" from Maldoror (couldn't remember what other object was with the sewing machine) and then a lead-in cluing Tom McCarthy's Satin Island--the first time (I know of) that someone has clued that guy, whose work I love (though I couldn't remember the protagonist was an anthropologist, which is super lame on my part).

Sure there are some nits, and like everyone I had some negs trying to figure out exactly what was going on, but that was completely fine with me, at least, in return for hearing so many weird and awesome clues and question ideas. Good work, Will!

[women, fire and dangerous things]

I sure hope you write another one in the future, although as someone who has also written three iterations of a side tournament in a row I can see why you'd want a break.

I was just talking to JinAh about this and we agreed to write Scattergories 4 together, so you're in luck!

[Mike Bentley]

I sure hope you write another one in the future, although as someone who has also written three iterations of a side tournament in a row I can see why you'd want a break.

I was just talking to JinAh about this and we agreed to write Scattergories 4 together, so you're in luck!

[Red Panda Cub]

My main complaint about this tournament is that it made me sad I didn't get to play the previous two.

[theMoMA]

This was a delightful tournament, much like the first two. If I had a complaint, it would be that there were a few tossups that seemed sort of perfunctory and not particularly whimsical (the tossup on "funerary masks" seemed more like a brisk regular-difficulty tossup than something I'd expect to see in a Scattergories) and some of the more complex answer lines seemed to be harder to latch onto than I would've liked (for instance, the tossup on "looking out onto water from a dock" did not accept "looking out onto a body of water," which seemed to fulfill the answer line directive of place and action such as standing in front of a window). This is not a criticism of the questions, but I also had a very hard time understanding the tournament format. That said, the tournament was a lot of fun and I'm glad to have had a chance to play it in a great field with an excellent group of teammates.

Like all right-thinking people, I will look forward to playing as many Scattergories as exist. There are very few tournaments where it is abundantly clear that the writers really wanted to write every question, and I think that's what makes these sets so fun.

[Cheynem]

The tossup about "customs trying to decide if something was art" was kind of rough--my teammate basically said that but added the word "Brancusi" and was negged because they weren't all about Brancusi.

[Muriel Axon]

This tournament was delightful. I echo all the praise others left before in this thread. As Andrew wrote, the best thing about Scattergories is the feeling that the questions were written just out of sheer joy (which, as we learned, is a liquid).

some of the more complex answer lines seemed to be harder to latch onto than I would've liked (for instance, the tossup on "looking out onto water from a dock" did not accept "looking out onto a body of water," which seemed to fulfill the answer line directive of place and action such as standing in front of a window)

I was a bit confused by this question. It seemed to be describing La Jetee, where, if I recall correctly, the woman was standing on a platform at Orly Airport.

[women, fire and dangerous things]

I was a bit confused by this question. It seemed to be describing La Jetee, where, if I recall correctly, the woman was standing on a platform at Orly Airport.

Yeah, that answer was also accepted for that reason (it's a jetty that serves as an airport observation platform), but this answer probably just ended up too convoluted to play well. In fact, there was a "should have been prompted" protest on an answer that was explicitly promptable according to the answerline, I suspect because the answerline was like 5 lines long and it was easy to miss that prompt instruction as a moderator.

[Mike Bentley]

Recordings of our matches: http://www.doc-ent.com/sc19/Scattegories3/

(Note link has been updated to not be a place where people can easily find it without access to this forum. Don't be dumb and share the link with people who haven't played the set.)

[Muriel Axon]

Could I see the question on lointain? I buzzed in with tout, so I just want to see whether that was an outright stupid decision or not. (In my defense, it is an adjective, and Will has written a common-link on the word 'all' before...)

[women, fire and dangerous things]

A contemporary music ensemble of this name was founded by Ingrid Culliford and Odaline de la Martinez. This Italian word is repeated at the beginning of the duet that Margarita and Faust sing when they meet in prison in Arrigo Boito’s Mefistofele [may-fee-STOH-fay-lay]. The French cognate of this Italian adjective appears in the title of a cello concerto inspired by Baudelaire’s poetry and written by Henri Dutilleux [doo-tee-YUH]. This adjective describes a trumpet in the title of a fanfare written by John (*) Adams for the 150th anniversary of Texas’s declaration of independence. This is the last word in the name of the aria that Wally sings when she decides to leave home in Alfredo Catalani’s La Wally. A György Ligeti [jurj LEE-geh-tee] piece of this name appears on the soundtracks of Shutter Island and The Shining. For 10 points, name this Italian word for “distant.” ANSWER: lontano [or lontana; accept Tromba Lontana or “Ebben? Ne andrò lontana; prompt on lointaine]

That's a good point - I wasn't thinking of tout as an adjective in that title because I was unconsciously treating it like English, but you're right, and that clue should have been worded to point unambiguously to lointain.