2021 Dede Allen: Question-Specific Discussion

[magin]

Please use this thread to discuss specific questions from Dede Allen. We’re interested in your feedback!

If you want to know which clues we used for a question, we’d be happy to post them here.

We’re also curious about how successful some of our question types were. For instance, here are some common prompts we used:

• Name the color that appears in the title of these movies.

• Name the first letter of these movies (ignoring articles like “a” and “the”).

• Name the profession of the main characters of these movies.

• Name the author of the works adapted into these movies.

• Name the type of location where these scenes take place. We’re looking for an answer like gazebo instead of a geographic location.

• Name the first word in the titles of these movies (ignoring articles like “a” and “the”).

• Name the number that appears in the title of these movies.

Were any of these question types particularly successful or unsuccessful? If so, how were the successful questions successful, and how could the unsuccessful ones be improved?

[Cheynem]

One thing I'll note is that I think the sheer amount of "Name this color" or "Name this number" questions meant that as you got later in the tournament, it became easier to narrow the answer down based on actually tossupable colors or numbers (unless, I guess, answerlines could be repeated).

I liked almost all of the prompts, especially author. The "first letter" questions were somewhat jarring because there usually was no thematic connection between the clues, but I suppose you could sneak in stuff you couldn't ask about on their own.

[magin]

One thing I'll note is that I think the sheer amount of "Name this color" or "Name this number" questions meant that as you got later in the tournament, it became easier to narrow the answer down based on actually tossupable colors or numbers (unless, I guess, answerlines could be repeated).

I liked almost all of the prompts, especially author. The "first letter" questions were somewhat jarring because there usually was no thematic connection between the clues, but I suppose you could sneak in stuff you couldn't ask about on their own.

Yeah, for a second iteration, I don't think we'd have as many tossups on colors and numbers. You're right that it starts to really narrow down the answer space once you've done too many of those.

It seems like the author tossups tended to go much better than we were expecting. I wasn't sure about the tossups on Du Maurier and Highsmith, for instance, but they both had a much better buzz distribution and conversion rate than the tossups on John Ford or William Friedkin.

The tossups on letters were a way to ask about a few movies we couldn't ask otherwise (like Yi Yi, X: The Man With the X-Ray Eyes, and Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner). They also let us add more non-English language films as clues, which was tougher than we anticipated in an audio format.

[magin]

Also, here are some of the movies I enjoyed using as early clues:

Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?, A Face in the Crowd, Love & Basketball, Bang the Drum Slowly, Ace in the Hole, Short Term 12, Beau Travail, Hardcore, Christine, Diner, Halloween 3: Season of the Witch, American Honey, The Last Black Man in San Francisco, 633 Squadron, Showgirls, Home Alone 3, Battlefield Earth, Zardoz, Rhinestone, Matinee, Swing Vote, Z, Sorcerer, Pink Flamingos, Serpico, X: The Man With the X-Ray Eyes, the work of Rudy Ray Moore, and The Castle.

I think of a tournament like this as a type of bestiary where you get to walk around and see the contents of another person's mind, so I hope these choices were engaging and interesting for you.