2022 CO Trash: Thanks and general discussion

[theMoMA]

Thanks for playing CO Trash! Writing and reading this set for such a talented field is one of the true joys in quizbowl, and we hope you had as good a time playing as we did producing the questions and presenting them to you.

Thanks as always to my beloved cowriters, Carsten, Rob, and NOT Cory Haala, and to all of the staffers who generously gave their time to put on the tournament.

Please go ahead and discuss the general contours of CO Trash in this thread. Specific question discussion should go in the designated thread.

[Cheynem]

I very much enjoyed this tournament. One of the nice things about such a tournament is that each question (generally) has a very clear purpose or theme but is also somewhat unpredictable. At easier tournaments like ACRONYM, you can probably predict half of the answerlines and topics going in, but not so here (to be clear, I think that's a good thing for an easy trash tournament). This tournament is going to be very much like the Nats or CO of trash, and I like that.

My biggest "issue" with the tournament was the comic book questions--or, that is, the lack of any. I remember hearing a tossup on Carol Danvers and a few bonuses, but that's it. Now, most trash tournaments and things like Buzzword ridiculously overrepresent comics, leading to hapless writers like myself having to constantly try to think about new ways to write things that will get good conversion rates. I also think comic strips and trash fiction or whatever are underrepresented in tournaments, and the questions on those topics here were good as far as I could tell. But it was very disappointing to me, in light of what I said above, that one of my favorite trash categories basically didn't appear--the one tournament of the year where I could expect to see deep cuts and hard answerlines from comic books.

Finally, there were perhaps a few too many "cute" such tossups in which the theme dominated a lot of the question and (unless you didn't know the particular theme) led to buzzer races. Most of these could be described as "tossups on people known for one thing but almost all of the clues are on other things they did"--the acting of Kid Cudi and Carsten Daly, the movie making of L. Frank Baum, etc. These were generally very interesting questions but there were perhaps too many of them. Similarly, some tossups seemed to be dominated by a theme almost to the point where the clues or the prose suffered--the Penny Hardaway tossup (to me) was a hard-to-parse series of transactions being shot at you, and the BYU football tossup seemed to basically just say "this was a racist school" over and over. I do appreciate the tossups having a theme and telling a story, though, and some of them, especially in sports, were logical and used good clues/told a good story--Kurt Warner entirely on his religious beliefs, the Brewers about their mostly poor pitching, the off the court history of the Washington Bullets...

[tpmorrison]

I had a lot of fun playing this set. Whenever I knew anything about a topic, I thought it was very well-written, and the remaining 95% of the time the questions were still fun to listen to because of the humor and interesting clues. I also like the academic bent of much of this set, which I think is well-suited to CO Sunday.

I’d say I have two minor complaints, though these are really more just suggestions based on personal preference. The first is what Mike already said about “cute” tossups that didn’t really strike me as adhering to good buzz pyramids. The second is that it felt like the vanity nature of the set led to some over/underemphases. The music, for instance, was heavy on music videos and minor bands/artists, but light on engagement with popular music as an art form (e.g. album tossups, tossups on acclaimed/artsier popular music). Contrast this with the movie questions, which I thought struck a nice balance between artsy and popular fare.

[meebles127]

this was fun. thanks

[1992 in spaceflight]

Just want to second what Mike is saying about the comics questions here. I only remember the Carol Danvers tossup and the Long Halloween/Calendar Man/Frank Miller bonus as comics questions I heard in the 12 rounds we played. Were there any more I perhaps just forgot playing?

I recognize that things like comic strips and trash lit have a place in the distribution, but I think there's a nice balance that can be struck between having too many comics questions and not having enough.

Also just want to say, I really enjoyed playing this set and had fun actually powering things at this year's CO Trash. Thanks for writing the set!

[Cheynem]

I'm glad Tim mentioned the general prose. I chuckled a lot, in a good way, hearing these questions, which I thought made for an entertaining experience.

One last thing is that the randomization occasionally could have used some work. One round had two questions referencing 1990s WCW pay-per-views (I didn't get either). Another round had 1/1 Kevin Garnett content (to be fair, one was on a movie and had nothing to do with his actual career per se).

[Auks Ran Ova]

Just want to second what Mike is saying about the comics questions here. I only remember the Carol Danvers tossup and the Long Halloween/Calendar Man/Frank Miller bonus as comics questions I heard in the 12 rounds we played. Were there any more I perhaps just forgot playing?

I recognize that things like comic strips and trash lit have a place in the distribution, but I think there's a nice balance that can be struck between having too many comics questions and not having enough.

Much like previous years, comics, comic strips, and trash lit split 1/1 of the distro. This year, that resulted in 4/5 "comics" (in addition to 2/2 strips and 8/7 trash lit), most of which I wrote. Here are the answer lines for comics and comic strips:

Comics TUs: Carol Danvers, French (various franco-belgian comics), R. Crumb, One-Punch Man
Bonuses: Nami/One Piece/Arlong, DC/Matt Fraction/Umbrella Academy, Seth/Peanuts/Chris Ware, Long Halloween/Calendar Man/Frank Miller, No Longer Human/Will Eisner/David Lynch

Strips TUs: Pepe the Frog, Funky Winkerbean
Bonuses: Wallace the Brave/unicorn/Nancy, New Zealand/Love Is/Lore Olympus

I tried to take more of a holistic approach to "comics" here, so this is definitely fairly low on the Big Two American publishers content and higher on secondary publishers, webcomics, manga, and the like. This is partly deliberate due to the likelihood of Marvel/DC content coming up in TV/movies and partly just a reflection of my/our more generalist interests here (and also the fact that none of us is a big American comics head--it took what felt like forever to write the Carol Danvers tossup, and all I could really do was hope the clues were good and pyramidal lol). I can certainly see increasing the amount of major-publisher stuff a little in future sets.

[Cheynem]

Yeah, those were good questions, and it was certainly good to see some comic strip and non-Western comic content coming up. But I do think a few more "traditional" American comic books could come up--even a few of those bonuses veered more into non-straight comics content. I don't recall if this is actually any different numbers-wise than previous CO Trashes, but it did feel less represented.

[Auks Ran Ova]

I'm glad Tim mentioned the general prose. I chuckled a lot, in a good way, hearing these questions, which I thought made for an entertaining experience.

I'm glad you and others enjoyed this--to my mind one of the worst things a tournament can be is "hard and dull", so we try a lot to keep things entertaining, engaging, and amusing.

One last thing is that the randomization occasionally could have used some work. One round had two questions referencing 1990s WCW pay-per-views (I didn't get either). Another round had 1/1 Kevin Garnett content (to be fair, one was on a movie and had nothing to do with his actual career per se).

We finished writing early enough that we were all able to do full passes on the set, fixing a lot of feng shui stuff and adding PGs and the like. Some stuff inevitably slipped through the cracks, though we also just left a few things that weren't real gameplay-affecting content repeats because we thought it was funny. I'm sorry if this negatively affected the experience for anyone!

[Good Goblin Housekeeping]

Damn rob if you were so "holistic" on these comic strips why wasn't there more weeb content after all manga allegedly outsells all comics these days amirite

[Here Comes Rusev Day]

I'm glad to have played this set and the way it asked about everything across the board really lent to a nice experience for me. I wasn't keeping track on the day, but I think the other sports could have been a little more diverse besides one soccer tossup on Manchester United and I only remember one women's sports question all day (Candace Parker), and in general a lot of sports skewed older more often than not, though im sure the final set still ends up being not too out of wack. I particularly enjoyed the Kyle Katarn tossup even if I negged it by thinking that he would be too hard an answerline at CO Trash and was absolutely delighted to be wrong.

[Auks Ran Ova]

I think the other sports could have been a little more diverse besides one soccer tossup on Manchester United and I only remember one women's sports question all day (Candace Parker)

Not sure what you're referring to about Man U--do you mean the tossup on Chelsea? Here are the "other sports" answerlines:

TU: mile run, Isle of Man (racing, etc.), Singh (various sports), Toronto (soccer), Greg Norman, Hamm (mostly men's gymnastics but also women's soccer), Auston Matthews, caddies, Chelios, cheating at a marathon, Chelsea, Zimbabwe (Cara Black, Kirsty Coventry, 1980 women's field hockey), Minnesota Wild, Arthur Ashe

Bonus: Icarus/Sochi/Russia (Olympics + cycling), Big Bertha/persimmon/Lee Trevino, Paul the Octopus/Spain/Carles Puyol, 50 in 50/Gretzky/5 goals, sand/marbles/Iowa, Hasbulla/Khabib/Daniel Cormier, three-sided soccer/Denmark/West Ham, Ons Jabeur/Serena Williams/Magda Linette, TJ Oshie/Warroad/Pyeongchang, Refrigerator/Vinnie Johnson/Edmonton Elks, Getafe/Maradona/Espanyol, Chad Ford/Darko Milicic/Trent Dilfer, Dogecoin car/Carl Edwards/Chevy, Tour de Trump/Greg LeMond/DuPont

2/3 soccer, 3/2 hockey, 1/1 tennis, 2/1 golf, 1ish/1 motorsports, and a bunch of other and mixed stuff seems about right, subject-wise. There was 1/1 pure women's sports in here in addition to the Candace Parker TU, though I agree that it's a good goal to have more women's sports in general in the future.

[Here Comes Rusev Day]

I think the other sports could have been a little more diverse besides one soccer tossup on Manchester United and I only remember one women's sports question all day (Candace Parker)

Not sure what you're referring to about Man U--do you mean the tossup on Chelsea? Here are the "other sports" answerlines:

TU: mile run, Isle of Man (racing, etc.), Singh (various sports), Toronto (soccer), Greg Norman, Hamm (mostly men's gymnastics but also women's soccer), Auston Matthews, caddies, Chelios, cheating at a marathon, Chelsea, Zimbabwe (Cara Black, Kirsty Coventry, 1980 women's field hockey), Minnesota Wild, Arthur Ashe

Bonus: Icarus/Sochi/Russia (Olympics + cycling), Big Bertha/persimmon/Lee Trevino, Paul the Octopus/Spain/Carles Puyol, 50 in 50/Gretzky/5 goals, sand/marbles/Iowa, Hasbulla/Khabib/Daniel Cormier, three-sided soccer/Denmark/West Ham, Ons Jabeur/Serena Williams/Magda Linette, TJ Oshie/Warroad/Pyeongchang, Refrigerator/Vinnie Johnson/Edmonton Elks, Getafe/Maradona/Espanyol, Chad Ford/Darko Milicic/Trent Dilfer, Dogecoin car/Carl Edwards/Chevy, Tour de Trump/Greg LeMond/DuPont

2/3 soccer, 3/2 hockey, 1/1 tennis, 2/1 golf, 1ish/1 motorsports, and a bunch of other and mixed stuff seems about right, subject-wise. There was 1/1 pure women's sports in here in addition to the Candace Parker TU, though I agree that it's a good goal to have more women's sports in general in the future.

My mistake,, we negged that tossup on Chelsea with Manchester United. Did not get to hear the Toronto or Auston Matthews tossups, though that was probablly in a packet we didn't hear of course.

[1992 in spaceflight]

Just want to second what Mike is saying about the comics questions here. I only remember the Carol Danvers tossup and the Long Halloween/Calendar Man/Frank Miller bonus as comics questions I heard in the 12 rounds we played. Were there any more I perhaps just forgot playing?

I recognize that things like comic strips and trash lit have a place in the distribution, but I think there's a nice balance that can be struck between having too many comics questions and not having enough.

Much like previous years, comics, comic strips, and trash lit split 1/1 of the distro. This year, that resulted in 4/5 "comics" (in addition to 2/2 strips and 8/7 trash lit), most of which I wrote. Here are the answer lines for comics and comic strips:

Comics TUs: Carol Danvers, French (various franco-belgian comics), R. Crumb, One-Punch Man
Bonuses: Nami/One Piece/Arlong, DC/Matt Fraction/Umbrella Academy, Seth/Peanuts/Chris Ware, Long Halloween/Calendar Man/Frank Miller, No Longer Human/Will Eisner/David Lynch

Strips TUs: Pepe the Frog, Funky Winkerbean
Bonuses: Wallace the Brave/unicorn/Nancy, New Zealand/Love Is/Lore Olympus

I tried to take more of a holistic approach to "comics" here, so this is definitely fairly low on the Big Two American publishers content and higher on secondary publishers, webcomics, manga, and the like. This is partly deliberate due to the likelihood of Marvel/DC content coming up in TV/movies and partly just a reflection of my/our more generalist interests here (and also the fact that none of us is a big American comics head--it took what felt like forever to write the Carol Danvers tossup, and all I could really do was hope the clues were good and pyramidal lol). I can certainly see increasing the amount of major-publisher stuff a little in future sets.

The Carol Danvers tossup was good and pyramidal, as were the bonuses I heard.

Mike has said what I would say about the comics in a much better way, so I just want to reiterate that I agree with him.

[Tippy Martinez]

The music, for instance, was heavy on music videos and minor bands/artists, but light on engagement with popular music as an art form (e.g. album tossups, tossups on acclaimed/artsier popular music). Contrast this with the movie questions, which I thought struck a nice balance between artsy and popular fare.

100% agree with Tim here with respect to the music questions. While I was happy to see a move toward having much more contemporary music, I felt the answer line selection on many of these tossups to be incredibly boring. The tossups on "Tyler Herro" and "Rumors" (cluing mostly from the Lizzo and Cardi B song) were prime examples of these. It's not even like I object to these artists being asked about at CO Trash, it was just disappointing to see them asked about in a way that rewards knowledge of some of their most forgettable material.

[InvadErGII]

I'm curious to know more about the decision to include a couple of "meta" questions (The Judge, Chad Kubicek). It's been ages since I've heard a tournament have questions like this and have generally found them to be polarizing - I'm not a fan personally, though both of the ones mentioned above seemed well-constructed if nothing else.

[Cheynem]

The Judge question was amusing since we were playing the round using The Judge. I liked that question better than the one on Chad Kubicek, although the latter was also amusing (but probably shouldn't have been in the finals).

[Auks Ran Ova]

I'm curious to know more about the decision to include a couple of "meta" questions (The Judge, Chad Kubicek). It's been ages since I've heard a tournament have questions like this and have generally found them to be polarizing - I'm not a fan personally, though both of the ones mentioned above seemed well-constructed if nothing else.

Though exact amounts have varied over the years, meta questions have been a part of CO Trash going back to the Yaphe & co. days. 2016 had the common link tossup on Vinok(o)urovs, 2018 had a bonus part that clued old jokes about Eric Mukherjee (and possibly other questions, most of that summer is a blur to me). We've generally tried to limit meta content to either joking asides, common links that can reward other areas of knowledge, or (as with the two tossups this year) relatively audience-agnostic stuff that at least at the end is accessible to anyone familiar with the wider world of quizbowl (rather than a particular subgroup's in-jokes--it's divisive enough as is, no need to return to "two tossups based on one college newspaper article about Lee Henry").