2023 BHSU: Specific question discussion

[Auks Ran Ova]

This thread is for discussion of specific questions from the 2023 BHSU set. If you'd like to see the text of a question, you can request that here. There is a separate thread for general discussion of the set and its philosophy.

[Adventure Temple Trail]

Some tossups that I recall thinking narrowed down the answer space too quickly included: "wireless Internet" in Africa (what else are people delivering to rural areas by balloon?), the Dominican Republic dance tossup (it's not Cuba but in the Spanish-speaking Caribbean and has musical genres inspired by slavery?), the ecology tossup on "elevation" (you just tossed up climate/temperature in political philosophy so that's been ruled out...what else could have wide variety? salinity? soil pH?). Some other tossups just gave a clue that was too easy or fundamental to a work too early; thinking specifically about (funeral/coffin-themed?) Faulkner (there has to have been some other literary character besides Anse Bundren who got dentures and a new wife for it to be this early, right?) and Naming and Necessity (saying in the first line that it argues for "contingent a priori" is not hiding the ball much more than if you said "necessary a posteriori," and well Necessity is the second title concept). Could I see each of those questions?

I told Billy this day-of, but mentioning Hmong mushroom gatherers in an anthropology-heavy tossup on "mushroom gathering" makes the tossup on The Spirit Catches You And You Fall Down later in the same packet play suboptimally; I'd move one of those to a different round.

The reference to "yellow shirts and red shirts" after dropping a Southeast Asian-sounding name in the Malaysia tossup led several players to neg with Thailand, where there have also been (more notable?) yellow shirt and red shirt factions protesting the government in recent years.

I had mixed feelings about the questions that did the "trick" of seeming to be in one category while actually being in another (from liked most to liked least: Lydia Tar, Robert Frobisher, Midgar, and in distant last that Frog and Toad "philosophical dialogue" bonus part, which is the moment I felt most acutely "laughed at" by the editorial voice of the set.)


Lastly: You really should remove the "Matt Bollinger's favorite 2020 presidential candidate Kanye West" gag from that one bonus immediately. I know many of us used to be fans of his music, but as worded it sounds like you're either glossing over Kanye's extremely public anti-Semitism, or worse, accusing one of your own editing team of being an anti-Semite (which I know for a fact that Matt B. is not!!!!!). This looks really bad to people who don't know him personally or aren't aware of his former taste in music.

[Tejas]

Lastly: You really should remove the "Matt Bollinger's favorite 2020 presidential candidate Kanye West" gag from that one bonus immediately. I know many of us used to be fans of his music, but as worded it sounds like you're either glossing over Kanye's extremely public anti-Semitism, or worse, accusing one of your own editing team of being an anti-Semite (which I know for a fact that Matt B. is not!!!!!). This looks really bad to people who don't know him personally or aren't aware of his former taste in music.

To be clear on this part, this question was written some time ago when Kanye was much less insane/bigoted and was not caught during the final checks. Obviously none of us support anything he says, and I apologize for any offense caused by the question. The bonus has already been replaced for future mirrors.

[The King's Flight to the Scots]

Lastly: You really should remove the "Matt Bollinger's favorite 2020 presidential candidate Kanye West" gag from that one bonus immediately. I know many of us used to be fans of his music, but as worded it sounds like you're either glossing over Kanye's extremely public anti-Semitism, or worse, accusing one of your own editing team of being an anti-Semite (which I know for a fact that Matt B. is not!!!!!). This looks really bad to people who don't know him personally or aren't aware of his former taste in music.

To be clear on this part, this question was written some time ago when Kanye was much less insane/bigoted and was not caught during the final checks. Obviously none of us support anything he says, and I apologize for any offense caused by the question. The bonus has already been replaced for future mirrors.

Yeah apologies for the misjudgment here. I'll add that I did not write the question and had a vague idea that asking to change or replace it would amount to taking a joke poorly (in a set where we were playing a fair number of jokes on the field), which is why I didn't make a push during final edits.

[The King's Flight to the Scots]

BHSU packets that were played at the main site can be found here.

[touchpack]

the ecology tossup on "elevation" (you just tossed up climate/temperature in political philosophy so that's been ruled out...what else could have wide variety? salinity? soil pH?).

This was categorized in geography, so I didn't edit it, but I thought this was fine because when I playtested it, I spent most of the question thinking the answer would be latitude, since the latitudinal diversity gradient is perhaps the most important/well-characterized gradient in all of ecology. Maybe burden of knowledge, I guess? I do agree that the question has a relatively small answerspace, which is suboptimal, but that does happen in science/science-adjacent topics from time to time.

[The King's Flight to the Scots]

Some tossups that I recall thinking narrowed down the answer space too quickly included: "wireless Internet" in Africa (what else are people delivering to rural areas by balloon?), the Dominican Republic dance tossup (it's not Cuba but in the Spanish-speaking Caribbean and has musical genres inspired by slavery?), the ecology tossup on "elevation" (you just tossed up climate/temperature in political philosophy so that's been ruled out...what else could have wide variety? salinity? soil pH?). Some other tossups just gave a clue that was too easy or fundamental to a work too early; thinking specifically about (funeral/coffin-themed?) Faulkner (there has to have been some other literary character besides Anse Bundren who got dentures and a new wife for it to be this early, right?) and Naming and Necessity (saying in the first line that it argues for "contingent a priori" is not hiding the ball much more than if you said "necessary a posteriori," and well Necessity is the second title concept). Could I see each of those questions?

16. A July 2022 Ecology study found that species richness of bumblebees increased with this variable, despite flowers exhibiting a peak in richness at the mid-range of this variable. In 2020, a yellow-rumped leaf-eared mouse was discovered in Llullaillaco ("YOU"-yai-yaco), making it the mammal known to survive the widest range of this variable. A group of flamingo species including James's flamingo are known for living in habitats with high values for this variable. Deer (*) mice exhibit an alpha-hemoglobin adaptation to help them survive in high values of this variable. Pikas are lagomorphs that reside in environments high in this variable, which are also the most common habitats of the non-humped camelids and ibexes. For 10 points, what variable is particularly high in environments home to yaks and Sherpas?
ANSWER: elevation [or altitude or height]
<RR>

7. The Equiano and 2Africa projects aim to expand access to this service across Africa. Project Taara made a 2021 demonstration of this service in Kinshasa and Brazzaville using light beams. A failed attempt by the Loon company would have provided this service to remote areas of Africa using balloons. Seacom provides subsea technology to deliver this service, though provisioning in rural areas is often dogged by “last-mile” problems. It's not (*) cell service, but Huawei is the largest provider of this service in sub-Saharan Africa. In February 2023, Elon Musk ordered SpaceX to prevent Ukraine’s military using this service by cutting off access to the satellite-based Starlink. For 10 points, Google and Meta have used fiber optic cables to provide what service?
ANSWER: internet service [accept fiber optics; accept web service; prompt on satellites with “for what purpose?”]
<RR>

17. The electric guitar was first introduced to a style of music from this country in the song “Consejo a las mujeres” by Blas Durán. That style was popularized through Radio Guarachita, and its first recording was “Borracho de amor” by José Manuel Calderón. It is not Cuba, but the three main rhythms of that music are the derecho, majao, and mambo. According to legend, this country’s national dance evolved from enslaved workers dragging their chained legs along the ground. The típico, or (*) cibaeño (see-ba-EH-nyo), subtype of the music for that dance uses the tambora drum and güira (GWEE-ra) scraper alongside accordion, in contrast to a similarly-named style from this country’s Francophone western neighbor. For 10 points, name this Caribbean country home to the music and dance styles of bachata and merengue.
ANSWER: Dominican Republic [or the DR or República Dominicana] (The “similarly-named music” is Haitian Méringue.)
<AR>

7. This work critiques Kant by claiming that the statement “This stick is one meter long” is both contingent and a priori. This book distinguishes between building a table out of ice from the Thames River and discovering that an existing table is actually made of ice. The third section of this work argues that gold could appear non-yellow, through an optical illusion, but must have atomic number 79. This book proposes a model in which an initial (*) “baptism” leads to a “causal chain.” Consisting of three lectures delivered at Princeton in 1970, this work rejects the Russell-Frege theory and tragically proposes that “Richard Nixon” refers to the same person in all possible worlds. For 10 points, the claim that proper names are “rigid designators” is found in what series of lectures by Saul Kripke?
ANSWER: Naming and Necessity
<MB>

1. In a novel by this author, a corpse falls out of a casket onto a wreath, causing a wire to pull out a wax stopper filling a bullet hole in its head. Gene serves liquor during a funeral held at a dance hall in a novel by this author. In a novel by this author, a man buys a set of false teeth and a gramophone, and then marries a woman from whom he had borrowed some spades. This author described the gangster Red’s “jazz-style” funeral in a novel in which the bootlegger Lee Goodwin is represented at a murder trial by the lawyer (*) Horace Benbow. A dead woman created by this author is put into her wedding dress and a mosquito-net veil before being placed backwards into a coffin made “on the bevel” by Cash. For 10 points, what author who created Temple Drake in Sanctuary wrote about the burial of Addie Bundren in As I Lay Dying?
ANSWER: William (Cuthbert) Faulkner
<KD>

We got feedback from John Lawrence that the Naming and Necessity lead-in should be replaced, so I'll do that. On the Dominican Republic tossup, I don't think I see any reason to definitely assume you're in the Caribbean without a lot of contextual knowledge. If it's the "mambo" thing, it seems like mambo dancing may be more likely to be popular in countries with close links to Cuba (such as Mexico or the USA), but it's also popular throughout Latin America. Let us know why you thought that, though.

[Aaron's Rod]

Some tossups that I recall thinking narrowed down the answer space too quickly included: "wireless Internet" in Africa (what else are people delivering to rural areas by balloon?), the Dominican Republic dance tossup (it's not Cuba but in the Spanish-speaking Caribbean and has musical genres inspired by slavery?), the ecology tossup on "elevation" (you just tossed up climate/temperature in political philosophy so that's been ruled out...what else could have wide variety? salinity? soil pH?).

For what it's worth, IIRC all 3 of these tossups went past the power mark in my room, and someone did indeed neg "elevation" with "salinity."

[Excelsior (smack)]

[10m] Raymond advocates the use of this type of code in The Cathedral and the Bazaar. Code of this type, such as Python’s decorators, makes files easier to understand without adding any extra functionality.
ANSWER: syntactic sugar

This bonus part feels un-gettable (but maybe you have conversion data that proves me wrong!). Nothing in the question is incorrect, but I feel that it doesn't effectively evoke the idea of syntactic sugar. The best I could come up, based on the second sentence, was "declarative code" (which is not really excluded by the second sentence, tbh). If you want to keep this answerline, consider adding a clue about "desugaring", and/or giving other examples that are more obviously sugar-y (e.g. "a += b" is sugar for "a = a + b"). Also, describing syntactic sugar as a "type of code" is unnatural/confusing. Since this is intended as a middle part, consider just saying "syntax of this type" instead.

(This is the only thing that struck me as weird/bad in the tournament - overall, this was a very good and enjoyable tournament!)

Also, re: the "elevation" tossup, I too was planning to neg that with "salinity" when a teammate buzzed in first and got it right. Flamingos, generally, are known for living in highly-saline bodies of water.

[naan/steak-holding toll]

Also, re: the "elevation" tossup, I too was planning to neg that with "salinity" when a teammate buzzed in first and got it right. Flamingos, generally, are known for living in highly-saline bodies of water.

Thankfully Mike buzzed and got this right as well, but I was unsure what that clue wanted you to say and was also tempted to neg with salinity. I assume the clue is trying to get at the fact that James's flamingo lives high up in the Andes, but it's still mostly found in saline environments there. Probably the question should say something along the lines of "Unlike most flamingoes..." to rule that out.

Similarly to Matt, I also thought the Internet tossup was pretty obvious - looking at the question, 15 for "last mile problem" seems really generous as well, though I suppose that occurs with delivering a lot of other services to rural areas as well. I don't think the DR tossup was that obvious though, since enslaved people definitely had impact on music in many other Hispanophone countries.

Finally, while the phrase "these physical devices" in the clusters seems intended to stop people from saying "virtual machines," it does seem that clusters aren't necessarily "physical" in that they can consist of virtual machines.

[ryanrosenberg]

Thankfully Mike buzzed and got this right as well, but I was unsure what that clue wanted you to say and was also tempted to neg with salinity. I assume the clue is trying to get at the fact that James's flamingo lives high up in the Andes, but it's still mostly found in saline environments there. Probably the question should say something along the lines of "Unlike most flamingoes..." to rule that out.

This is a good suggestion, I'll make that change for future mirrors.

[grapesmoker]

I would like to register a minor complaint about the tossup on the d'Alembertian. On the following clue:

In classical field theory, applying this operation to some function of the wavenumber, k, is equivalent to multiplying the function by negative k squared.

I buzzed in and said "Laplacian." Because of the definition of the d'Alembertian, the part that gives you the k-squared factor can only come from the spatial part, which is to say, the Laplacian (the other part is a second derivative with respect to time, and thus cannot give you any factors of k). Also, the clue above will not be correct if the function is time-dependent, for the reason stated. So this clue very much does apply to the Laplacian and I think either should be replaced or updated in such a way that makes clear that it's the time-independent part of the d'Alembertian that is giving you the k-squared factor.

[Subhamitra Banerjee Roychoudhury]

I negged this tossup (packet 5, tossup 18) with "non-rhoticity" on the clue "The high-prestige dialect in antebellum Charleston was marked by this feature." Is it true that said dialect was marked by rhoticity, and not non-rhoticity?

[Adventure Temple Trail]

I believe I was one who negged with "non-rhoticity" on the clue "The high-prestige dialect in antebellum Charleston was marked by this feature" in this tossup (packet 5, tossup 18). Is it true that the said dialect was marked by rhoticity, and not non-rhoticity?

I also did this, and asked at the tournament if editors could review the direction of each clue prior to future mirrors. There may also be a way to rewrite it so that either "non-rhotic" or "rhotic" could be accepted (though that'd be more effort; I believe in linguistics usage, "feature" is a technical term would require one to specify [+rhotic] or [-rhotic].) (I'd also put this tossup in the bucket of 'things that narrowed down the answer space very quickly'.)

[touchpack]

I would like to register a minor complaint about the tossup on the d'Alembertian. On the following clue:

In classical field theory, applying this operation to some function of the wavenumber, k, is equivalent to multiplying the function by negative k squared.

I buzzed in and said "Laplacian." Because of the definition of the d'Alembertian, the part that gives you the k-squared factor can only come from the spatial part, which is to say, the Laplacian (the other part is a second derivative with respect to time, and thus cannot give you any factors of k). Also, the clue above will not be correct if the function is time-dependent, for the reason stated. So this clue very much does apply to the Laplacian and I think either should be replaced or updated in such a way that makes clear that it's the time-independent part of the d'Alembertian that is giving you the k-squared factor.

I went back and re-read the section of Schwartz's QFT that I pulled this from and I see I was a bit lazy here with the wording. If you're working non-relativistically, where k is a classic 3-component vector, then the answer to this sentence is the Laplacian. If you're working relativistically, and k is defined as a four-vector, then the answer is the d'Alembertian, and the sentence as written doesn't specify how k is being defined. (and indeed, as you note, the time derivative of e^(ikx) is zero, so the time-dependent part isn't really doing anything other than matching the dimensions of the problem).

I'll figure out a way to tweak or replace this clue for future mirrors.

[modernhemalurgist]

The conformal tossup (good idea btw) should probably accept biholomorphicity before mentioned

[The King's Flight to the Scots]

Buzzpoint and conversion stats from the Northwestern site can be found below.

[Mike Bentley]

Some tossups that I recall thinking narrowed down the answer space too quickly included: "wireless Internet" in Africa (what else are people delivering to rural areas by balloon?), the Dominican Republic dance tossup (it's not Cuba but in the Spanish-speaking Caribbean and has musical genres inspired by slavery?), the ecology tossup on "elevation" (you just tossed up climate/temperature in political philosophy so that's been ruled out...what else could have wide variety? salinity? soil pH?). Some other tossups just gave a clue that was too easy or fundamental to a work too early; thinking specifically about (funeral/coffin-themed?) Faulkner (there has to have been some other literary character besides Anse Bundren who got dentures and a new wife for it to be this early, right?) and Naming and Necessity (saying in the first line that it argues for "contingent a priori" is not hiding the ball much more than if you said "necessary a posteriori," and well Necessity is the second title concept). Could I see each of those questions?

I told Billy this day-of, but mentioning Hmong mushroom gatherers in an anthropology-heavy tossup on "mushroom gathering" makes the tossup on The Spirit Catches You And You Fall Down later in the same packet play suboptimally; I'd move one of those to a different round.

The reference to "yellow shirts and red shirts" after dropping a Southeast Asian-sounding name in the Malaysia tossup led several players to neg with Thailand, where there have also been (more notable?) yellow shirt and red shirt factions protesting the government in recent years.

I had mixed feelings about the questions that did the "trick" of seeming to be in one category while actually being in another (from liked most to liked least: Lydia Tar, Robert Frobisher, Midgar, and in distant last that Frog and Toad "philosophical dialogue" bonus part, which is the moment I felt most acutely "laughed at" by the editorial voice of the set.)


Lastly: You really should remove the "Matt Bollinger's favorite 2020 presidential candidate Kanye West" gag from that one bonus immediately. I know many of us used to be fans of his music, but as worded it sounds like you're either glossing over Kanye's extremely public anti-Semitism, or worse, accusing one of your own editing team of being an anti-Semite (which I know for a fact that Matt B. is not!!!!!). This looks really bad to people who don't know him personally or aren't aware of his former taste in music.

I do agree a somewhat higher number of tossups than I'd expect at this set narrowed things down pretty early. Some ones that come to mind are the Colorado Party (how many plausible leftwing Latin American parties are there are this difficulty?), the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (it's an Old English text with lots of dates and years) and landlords.

I also found it a little hard to keep track of whether you wanted pro or against on the abortion ban tossup. There's like a triple negative with "In response to an essay against this type of policy" when the answer is anti-abortion.

Farm Security Administration was a cool idea even if I reaction buzzed on "oh it's the New Deal Photo agency" and couldn't pull the answer in time.

The Perl tossup felt really hard. I feel I know at least a few things about it but could not answer on the giveaway, especially since there's a language out there called OCaml.

The Reconstruction tossup seemed quite hard to me until it then dropped the relatively easy Dunning School.

[The King's Flight to the Scots]

I think the answerspace issues that Mike and Matt bring up should be examined in relation to the goals of the set. As we announced from the beginning, we wanted to write a "Nats-" set that felt like a real midpoint between Regionals and Nationals. That goal necessarily entailed writing a set that was easier than recent spring opens, which have been closer to the "Nats difficulty" end of that spectrum. So, the relevant questions are whether each question fit within our targeted difficulty distribution, and whether our target difficulty was a desirable goal. While both of those are open for discussion, I do think that our approach made the tournament much more enjoyable for the majority of the field.

We also made a relevant change to length that may explain people's surprise at some early clue drops. As we got further along on the project, we decided our goals would be better achieved with a lower length cap than usual. We set the cap at 7 lines in 10 pt TNR for tossups and 7.5 lines in 10 pt TNR for bonuses. Although in practice, some questions were closer to 7.5 lines, the median tossup was still much shorter than you'd find in previous hard events. Overall it seemed like people appreciated this change, although it might have been good to announce ahead of time.

Given the reduced average length and difficulty, I'd expect there were some cases where we overdid it and generated some early buzzer races. However, I think there were also cases where we wrote a perfectly fine question, which did not create buzzer races, but it surprised people by dropping clues earlier than they expected. There's also a middle ground where people don't narrow the possible answers down definitively enough to buzz, but experience frustration because they had the answer in mind the entire tossup. This is certainly an undesirable outcome that detracts from players' enjoyment of the set, so it's worth avoiding wherever possible. It is, though, important to distinguish this case from a case of transparency that actually makes a question play badly.

With all that in mind, I'd like to post the buzz distributions for the tossups that Matt and Mike have flagged that were played in the round robin. I'm excluding the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle tossup since we only have the one datapoint on that tossup from the Finals game. The board won't let me post more than three at a time, so I'll include the rest in two followup posts.

It appears that the internet and Faulkner tossups did indeed play easier than you'd ideally like. The internet question drops known clues fairly early, and the Faulkner tossup cliffs a bit when it drops the false teeth chestnut in the third sentence. We'll certainly fix those before the next mirror.

Naming and Necessity is a weird case where I agree that the clue should be changed, but it doesn't seem to have affected gameplay in most rooms. Elevation seems a _little_ easy, but not egregiously so. Then the buzzpoint distributions for landlords, Colorado Party, and Dominican Republic all seem fine. If there's an issue with those, it's the middle ground I mentioned where players experience frustration from sitting on an answer.

Overall, I would say that the questions that have been brought up usually drew the appropriate number of early buzzes, relative to their length. It seems possible that we could do more to avoid the feeling of "sitting on an answer," though - it may be the case that the smaller answerspace for an easier set results in that feeling more commonly.

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[The King's Flight to the Scots]

Posting this followup to include the distributions I mentioned. Also, I'd like to take a moment to address the issue of players feeling targeted by some of the category fake-out bonuses. Our intention was entirely to provide people with entertainment, rather than to have fun at players' expense; I do agree, though, that some bonuses came off as more confusing in game than they appeared to us on paper. I can see how the confusion produced by, e.g., the Vinteuil bonus or the DBZ bonus could have made those questions feel more like unfair bait-and-switch gimmicks than we meant them to be. We'll be amending those before the next mirror to try to ameliorate that issue.

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[The King's Flight to the Scots]

And, last followup here.

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[Jem Casey]

(I'd also put this tossup in the bucket of 'things that narrowed down the answer space very quickly'.)

To add some qualitative data re: Matt’s last point here, the tossup didn’t play that way at all in my room. Ophir didn’t even realize it was a ling tossup for the first couple sentences, and Nick negged with a plausible wrong answer around the half-way point; they can correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think any of the other strong SS players in the room got a super early read, either.

Now our experience may be the exception and not Matt’s, but a broader point (which may be better explored in its own thread some other time) is just how hard assessing a tossup's “obviousness" is. A lot of the stuff that constitutes the experience and emotional valence of obviousness/transparency can be hard to express and varies a ton by who’s playing whom when: tacit knowledge from real life expertise, quizbowl-specific procedural knowledge (e.g. metagaming skills like “theme reversal”), getting lucky with a good initial hunch that illuminates rather than muddles the following clues, the reaction of other players, the stakes of the game, and so on.

Questions are rarely obvious to people with no knowledge of the subject, so it may be helpful to frame potential issues in terms of what knowledge you suspect the clue is functionally rewarding, and why that knowledge is too basic for its point in the question. To use the “internet service” example Matt and Will brought up, I’ll embarrass myself and admit I have no idea why “balloons” + “remote areas” couldn’t apply to other services besides the internet (why not mail, medicine, money transfer, or himmelsbrief chain letters?). If this is obvious, it seems like it’s obvious to players who’ve encountered similar schemes in other settings or heard about this one, not just to any worldly-ish person who knows the meanings of the terms at hand. Or to take Mike’s Colorado Party and landlords examples: if he locked in on those early, it sounds like he had a lucky initial hunch or the question rewarded some subtle contextual knowledge he has and I don’t (there are plenty of tossupable left wing/liberal Latin American parties and classes of people from modern China afaik). It can be tricky, but if we can tease out of our memory why a question seemed obvious (“internet-beaming balloons were endlessly covered in tech magazines for a few years,” “Aparicio Saravia is a hs stock clue”), editors may have a better shot at predicting whether the issue will crop up for other players.

I agree with Matt B that restrained length and difficulty (not to mention a killer field at the main site) is a big part of the perceived increase in buzzer races / games of chicken; if things knowledgeable players are likely to know are coming earlier in the questions, the types of things they’re likely to find suggestive but non-definitive are, too. I’m ok with making this trade in exchange for questions focused on genuinely notable things, but YMMV.

Lastly, I’d encourage the writers to not spend too much time beefing up questions that got flagged for obviousness here or widely powered at the main site. As I said in the main thread, I appreciated the set delivering on the promised MO / VCU Open difficulty and even the peons in College Park and New Haven deserve to experience that.

---

a few possible tweaks for future mirrors:

- not sure why I played the "Chilean coup" lit tossup as oafishly as I did (after writing a tossup with the same acceptable answers and some of the same clues a few years ago!) but could consider adding instructions for answers like "the Pinochet regime" and a prompt for "Operation Condor."
- while I was confused by it at the time, I think using "this movement" for the excellent "gymnastics" tossup works as long as all the clues are about the Turnverein movement, not just the general phenomenon of 19th century nationalists doing gymnastics. To that end, I'd word the post-power Sokol clue more like the pre-power Sokol clue, i.e. make clear that it wasn't part of "this movement," but was a "counterpart to" or was "influenced by" it. Also, I would wager that far more players know what Sokol is than can buzz on Jahn's name specifically; maybe move his name into the burschenschaften/Wartburg sentence to help tie that clue down a bit more.
- ibn Arabi is sometimes called ibn al-'Arabi; should include that in the answerline.
- Unless this is an editions issue, I believe "half the world" in the Hume tossup should be "the whole world."
- Aren't Stanislavi's "supertasks" more commonly translated as "superobjectives"? The former is an unrelated philosophy thing in my head, anyway.
- since the bias paradox was most famously articulated by Louise Antony, it would be helpful if the Longino clue named her.

[grapesmoker]

With regard to that question on the Internet: I was more or less sitting on that answer from the get-go because the opening clue made it sound like information was being transmitted with light beams. But I also know a bunch of stuff about Loon for professional reasons so I would likely have buzzed there no matter what. I think the "obviousness" of it is related to the fact that if you're a tech person who keeps up on current events you likely have the specialized knowledge required to lateral into the correct answer. Looking at the buzz points (useful data!) I see that the one room where that question went beyond the 51 mark (which is still in power) was on a neg, so that suggests to me that a substantial number of people had the background to figure this one out relatively early.

[naan/steak-holding toll]

I'd definitely agree that this set's difficulty really shouldn't be beefed up much. I'd like more tournaments to be at this "classic MO" level.

To use the “internet service” example Matt and Will brought up, I’ll embarrass myself and admit I have no idea why “balloons” + “remote areas” couldn’t apply to other services besides the internet (why not mail, medicine, money transfer, or himmelsbrief chain letters?).

This point is certainly true - the main gripe I had with the question is that the question immediately said "this is something you have large-scale projects to expand access to in Africa" (this could be many things, but basically makes me think "health care," "internet," or "water" immediately) and "this is something whose viability you'd demonstrate with light beams" (i.e. it's probably the Internet). I think this question let the player sift through possibly answers pretty superficially, with stuff that you can pick up by glancing over topics that come up all the time in publications covering international news, even if you didn't know the specifics.

I'd draw a contrast with the Colorado or Anglo-Saxon Chronicle questions, neither of which I see a huge problem with. In both cases, there's not a huge answer space, but you do need non-superficial knowledge to narrow things down. For the former, I was considering the PRI and Liberal Party of Mexico (until some names were dropped) as possible answers. For the latter, I drew a bead pretty early but, as was a recurring theme throughout this event, had to sit a while to be confident enough that it wasn't Bede or something pseudo-historical like Monmouth's history.

In retrospect, I don't think there's really a problem with the landlords question. Indeed, I considered that answer but briefly ruled it out because the question said "rich peasants," which would encompass many (most?) rural property owners, but in the context of the question that was pretty silly of me to do because the clue was enumerating a specific list of hated categories.

[Adventure Temple Trail]

Jordan's points about the non-obviousness of purported "obviousness" in cluing, and the Actual Data on some of my examples, are well-taken. (And yes, very much a fruitful avenue for future quizbowl theorizing!) I think I can walk back my initial assessment somewhat, though select tossups may merit a tweak here or there.

[ryanrosenberg]

I negged this tossup (packet 5, tossup 18) with "non-rhoticity" on the clue "The high-prestige dialect in antebellum Charleston was marked by this feature." Is it true that said dialect was marked by rhoticity, and not non-rhoticity?

I looked into this, and I messed up the polarity for this clue; the high-prestige dialect shifted to non-rhoticity due to interacting more with British merchants. I'm very sorry to the people who were incorrectly negged on this clue and will change it to read "marked by the absence of this feature" for future mirrors.

[The King's Flight to the Scots]

I've attached preliminary category stats here.

EDIT: Excel screwed up some of the references, so I'm linking copies of the Google sheets instead. Bonuses here, tossups here.

[grapesmoker]

I wanted to flag one more question that I thought was problematic. Bonus 1 in Packet 2, last part, reads:

[10m] Recent models of cognition tend to use a framework drawing on the work of this mathematician, promoted by Joshua Tenenbaum and others. Stan and BUGS are common softwares for implementing a framework based on the work of this mathematician.
ANSWER: Thomas Bayes

I know a little bit about all the things in this text but I had some trouble putting it together into an answer. For example, while you can rightly call Tenenbaum a Bayesian, he's lots of other stuff too, so that bit seems relatively uninformative. As for Stan and BUGS, one could reasonably claim that the correct answer based on that clue should be "Markov" since both BUGS and Stan are codes for doing Markov chain Monte Carlo. Or is the answer Stanislaw Ulam, originator of MCMC? I hope the ambiguity is clear here. I managed to work my way to "Bayes" because I know that Stan does Bayesian inference, but I was very confused about this whole construction. I think this bonus part should be rewritten to be a lot less coy about what it's asking for.

[ryanrosenberg]

I wanted to flag one more question that I thought was problematic. Bonus 1 in Packet 2, last part, reads:

[10m] Recent models of cognition tend to use a framework drawing on the work of this mathematician, promoted by Joshua Tenenbaum and others. Stan and BUGS are common softwares for implementing a framework based on the work of this mathematician.
ANSWER: Thomas Bayes

I know a little bit about all the things in this text but I had some trouble putting it together into an answer. For example, while you can rightly call Tenenbaum a Bayesian, he's lots of other stuff too, so that bit seems relatively uninformative. As for Stan and BUGS, one could reasonably claim that the correct answer based on that clue should be "Markov" since both BUGS and Stan are codes for doing Markov chain Monte Carlo. Or is the answer Stanislaw Ulam, originator of MCMC? I hope the ambiguity is clear here. I managed to work my way to "Bayes" because I know that Stan does Bayesian inference, but I was very confused about this whole construction. I think this bonus part should be rewritten to be a lot less coy about what it's asking for.

My goal in writing this part was to provide enough context for knowledgeable people to be able to say the correct answer; this is a tricky thing to ask about, because being straightforward (e.g. saying "this probability theorist" or "this probabilistic framework") would make the part too guessable to work well as a middle part at this difficulty. Thanks for pointing out that it still played frustratingly for someone with knowledge, though. I'll try to think of a way to phrase this so I don't have to hide the ball so much.

[Jem Casey]

I just remembered a clue I found confusing:

Hayden Ellis proposed that defects in this faculty are the cause of the Capgras delusion.

I've repeatedly heard Ellis's theory described as holding that people with the Capgras delusion are able to recognize faces, but don't experience the same sense of familiarity/emotional warmth that unaffected people do. While this is a bit nit-picky and I should have known that the clue couldn't be driving at anything else, as a faker I wasn't sure if there was some more big-brained answer (perceptual fluency or something) that was being tested. Maybe could rephrase to something like "Hayden Ellis proposed that this faculty operates without an affective response in people with the Capgras delusion."

[Votre Kickstarter Est Nul]

Before I post some favorites, here's a needless quibble or two. I think the baseball bonus was too easy, and probably too 30-able by anyone watching a good chunk of baseball (especially when compared to the other sports hard part: the Potsfield Maroons or whatever it was). Mostly, I was sad cause I recently read Winning Fixes Everything and was hoping for a deeper cut. This, though, is probably just what happens when you ask about new vs. old sports (I assume England also played harder than D'Antoni, though I'm glad I'm not the only person who heard Kurt Thomas and small-ball five Boris Diaw and said Popovich). England was cool! great umbrella clue.

As an NBA Youngboy Sometimes Enjoyer, I found that bonus part a little tough, because I think of him more as a singles-based rapper, so while I've heard songs off of both albums named and could name many of his songs(iirc), I can't recall the names of his albums. I do listen to albums by other rappers and remember their names, so to me this feels more like something I don't do with NBA rather than me just not being good at albums content. I think a perfectly reasonable response to me here is "sucks, get good." Just a note is all.

Could I see the text of the Cambodia question? I buzzed in at what I recall was a line that went "later empires used the prangs..." and I buzzed and said Thailand and felt sorta hosed, since I'm not sure how, without waiting for the rest of the clue, I could have at that point chosen between Thailand and Cambodia. My feeling was that this line should be written in a way to allow the player to chose before hearing the word prang rather than after, but I'd have to see the text. If I'm also just wrong about this fact, sorry, though a quick google search at the time confirmed my desire to protest.

[Votre Kickstarter Est Nul]

Time for some favorites! I will try and have some organization to this, and will try and add comments if applicable. I liked alot more than just these, but I'm just quickly scrolling through my scoresheet to find some highlights.

Packet 1: re-election of Diaz!; BMI; bald (not sure what was happening here but my teammate got it early and it seemed funny); anti-tobacco laws; he sanctions vs. SA bonus.
2: Miss Havishams house; foraging for mushrooms; gymnastics?!?!; epicureanism; Europe / Riba(?) / Vermeer.
3: CLR James; Matisse collages; killin' flies; polish rider bonus
4: burning of the Temple of Artemis!!; Daniel Ellsburg; War with the Newts; McLellan / Johnston / Malvern Hill*
5: databases (simply because I was able to buzz on CS, which brought me much joy); cats; dancing to architecture bonus
6: Queen of Egypt; juggling; 1810s; Paz; Battle of Kosovo; dutch learning (one of the coolest Qs all day); Berio / accordion / multiphonics; denmark (which we bagelled cause I distracted my teammates with my focus on not caring about flags, but yk, still cool); Mandlebrot set bonus
7: Kongo; oranges; lepers (also a contender for favorite overall Q); Richard III (a contender for my favorite hypercanonical answerline, fanastic theme tossup at this tourney); climate; American First bonus; tax collection; typology / jonah / swedenborg
8: baseball scoring (I liked this because it clued things I've never heard of, but because it was baseball, I was momentarily mad at myself for not buzzing, before remembering that watching baseball and answering this question are unrelated activities); board games; islamic infallibility? cool; nootka bonus; standing up an egg lmao
9: anti-abortion laws; Pattinson and Stewart slapped; Manila galleons**; Texas; frottage / Ernst / collage-novel; Tharpe bonus; Quiet Rev/ mixed bonus
10: Russia; Debussy preludes; frontier; Fanon; sandals; asparagus !; Mike d'Antoni (you hosed me, a dullard, incapable of just thinking for a second, you bullies!), Mao / Malraux / SdB
11: Greek; Argentina; Iran; Jules Verne bonus; Alawite bonus though I'm unsure I have any clue what the difficulties here were (mod said Maronites, the only part we didn't get, was the easy?); Robert Conquest / Ukraine / ass. of Kirov; frog and toad lmao; donner party (woah! what a clue)

Sorry there aren't many notes for these. I just wanted to note alot of the fun stuff (though this is not all of it).

Could I see the Kindred tossup? I was unable to place the early clues (been a while since I read it), but would like to re-remember them.

*This feels like a perfect example of what I mentioned in the other thread of a bonus not afriad to ask about things that come up that players nonetheless are unlikely to kill just because it's come up. We 10d it, as I deserve, because I know jack about the civil war. But all 3 answers were recognizable, "oh god how don't I know that" parts that I'd guess nonetheless played out statistically like you'd want them too. If this bonus actually went 100/70/50, I take it back and will take the self-own in peace.

**I'm not sure if he's going to post, so I'll take this up for him, but Grant Peet has an excellent second line buzz on the beeswax and said "shipwreck," which was rejected. I don't know the clue, but from quick conversation with him after, it seems as if this was a wrecked manila galleon, and if that's the case, I don't think the sentence was written in a way that allows the player to choose between the two. I think a directed prompt would be appropriate in this instance.

[mico]

It felt like there was a ton of "this event" and "this action/policy" answerlines in the history tossups in the first few packets. The first tossup on a person in history wasn't until packet 3 for example. That's neither here nor there, but it just felt different from the other categories. I think there were a few of the more complex answerlines in history than other subjects in the first few packets as well, and I don't think all of them worked, but I understand the reasoning behind them and this would be the set to try some of those ideas. Examples include the "re-election" which I think played a bit confusing, especially with the "description acceptable" tag, since the answerline didn't really accept many descriptions, just prompted on them until you said the main answer. Also the "burning of the Temple of Artemis," but I enjoyed that one.

Entirely a vibes observation: it felt like there were much more South Asian history questions than West Asian. Maybe just packetization or I'm misremembering. Also felt like there was a ton of Ancient-adjacent philosophy early in the set.

Some errata:

Word forms like "introspective method" should be addressed in the "introspection" tossup, the moderator was unsure what to do with that answer.

It might be nice to reword the second sentence in the sanctions on South Africa part; while an answer like "ending Apartheid" is wrong, it's correct for the second sentence in isolation and could be avoided if the player missed the UN part.

The answerline for "federation of Australia" could be fleshed out more to deal with answers like "the union of Australia."

I didn't like what I heard was the juxtaposition of "Sokol" with "this activity in Germany." Despite knowing what the Sokol movement was, I thought the juxtaposition meant the question wanted a specific German movement too, like Wandervogel. As an aside, if you're going to prompt on "physical culture" and "German nationalism," then Wandervogel also seems like a reasonable prompt.

I was mildly annoyed to be negged without a prompt for an answer of "Diana" on the "Pompadour" tossup. The clue in question does not have a good indicator: "She delicately holds a bow vertically and leans on a golden quiver in a painting in which her plain robes are topped by a leopard skin" and Diana is arguably the more reasonable answer for that clue as phrased.

The clue about people risking poisoning by foraging mushrooms resulted in our team being negged for answering "eating mushrooms." Not sure if that is correct, but it seems reasonable given that how most foragers would be poisoned, by eating them.

At game speed the Haile Selassie speech clue was easy to miss, as evidenced by all 3 rooms at the Maryland site negging with "Ethiopia." Looking at the question text, it's pretty clear, but I wonder if it could be rephrased as "An action by this country provoked another country's leader to warn..."

Seems weird to have two southwestern English counties as asnwerlines in the first few packets. Also odd to have the Mahabarata and Ramayana tossed up back-to-back.

The Pottsville Maroons bonus seems significantly harder than the George Springer bonus.

I would not consider "Dutch learning" to be "this field." We were negged for answering "medicine" on the Dejima clue, which seems more of a reasonable field. Even if that answer isn't right, I can envision people trying to guess a type of learning when they recognize a Dutch learning clue, instead of saying that itself.

Having answerlines on Madame Pompadour and Madame Recamier seems a bit much.

Should deal with answers of "wifi" in the internet tossup.

"America First Committee" is a fair bit tougher than some of the other easies, this could be converted into an answerline of Lindbergh if so desired.

"abortion ban" can be fleshed out to deal with "anti-abortion" and the like.

The Raphael Lemkin clue played confusingly in our room since both teams weren't sure what it meant since they kind of associated Lemkin with the whole Armenian genocide, not the murder of one Armenian. Neither here nor there.

A couple of hard agencies tossups, the FEC and the FSA.

As Emmett said, I was really frustrated by the Manila galleons tossup. I don't know if there's a better indicator than "these objects," but when the discovery of beeswax in Oregon is traced back to a wrecked ship, you better believe my answer will be "these objects" = "shipwrecks." To get negged outright is demoralizing. I think you'd need a directed prompt anyways, since players have no way of knowing what level of detail the answer wants. Ships vs Spanish ships vs Manila galleons.

I think Peltola is a bit light for a H part. It's still fresh enough in people's minds.

Calling "turnout" a "factor" seems odd to me, it's a factor in what? I think "metric" or even "quantity" would be better.

Aside from everything there, I had a good time playing the set and I'm mostly glad it stuck to its targeted difficulty!

[The King's Flight to the Scots]

Word forms like "introspective method" should be addressed in the "introspection" tossup, the moderator was unsure what to do with that answer.

The answerline for "federation of Australia" could be fleshed out more to deal with answers like "the union of Australia."

The clue about people risking poisoning by foraging mushrooms resulted in our team being negged for answering "eating mushrooms." Not sure if that is correct, but it seems reasonable given that how most foragers would be poisoned, by eating them.

I would not consider "Dutch learning" to be "this field." We were negged for answering "medicine" on the Dejima clue, which seems more of a reasonable field. Even if that answer isn't right, I can envision people trying to guess a type of learning when they recognize a Dutch learning clue, instead of saying that itself.

Should deal with answers of "wifi" in the internet tossup.

"abortion ban" can be fleshed out to deal with "anti-abortion" and the like.

Thanks, we'll deal with these before this weekend. Most of these are added prompts or rejects I think.

I didn't like what I heard was the juxtaposition of "Sokol" with "this activity in Germany." Despite knowing what the Sokol movement was, I thought the juxtaposition meant the question wanted a specific German movement too, like Wandervogel. As an aside, if you're going to prompt on "physical culture" and "German nationalism," then Wandervogel also seems like a reasonable prompt.

So, the Turners/gymnasts do constitute a specific movement in Germany; this tossup drew some negs at Northwestern too, though, I think because a lot of players don't really know that. I'll probably edit it to ask for the activity instead to account for that issue. For what it's worth, none of the clues apply to the Wandervogel so we can't really prompt on that answer.

As Emmett said, I was really frustrated by the Manila galleons tossup. I don't know if there's a better indicator than "these objects," but when the discovery of beeswax in Oregon is traced back to a wrecked ship, you better believe my answer will be "these objects" = "shipwrecks." To get negged outright is demoralizing. I think you'd need a directed prompt anyways, since players have no way of knowing what level of detail the answer wants. Ships vs Spanish ships vs Manila galleons.

Sorry that this happened! We had a directed prompt for specific types of ships but we'll add one for "shipwrecks" too.

[vydu]

Echoing Emmett, I particularly enjoyed the "famous person doing other stuff" sorts of clues, which were always very fun and interesting, as well as the more biographical stuff: thinking of things like da Vinci's restaurant, Ben Franklin's demography work, Claude Shannon's love for juggling, Elinor Ostrom failing trig, Chandrasekhar teaching that star-studded class of two.

An incomplete list of stuff I thought was very cool: Thessaloniki, Mary Sommerville bonus, BMI, Europe/Ripa/Vermeer, bird behavior tossup, the computer simulations in SS bonus, Roman Epicureanism, Baroque fantasias, the earth art tossup, traffic modelling, the energy storage tossup, the physics tossup on cones, the Modern Mexican cuisine bonus, the construction planning bonus, multispecies ethnographies

Some notes on specific questions:
- I think the Debussy preludes tossup's score clue on the Girl with the Flaxen Hair would benefit by noting that there's a pause between the "D-flat" and the other three notes (and maybe also mentioning that it then ascends back to D-flat). Have played that piece but was unfortunately unable to parse that clue during the game
- I remember being confused by "this type of potential" as a pronoun for the lattices tossup, but it makes total sense in retrospect. I do think that way of framing will be a bit unfamiliar to most, but not sure if there's a way around it (or that there needs to be any change)
- That periodate tossup seemed very hard to me, it seems like the powerbreak has only come up a handful of times before? In general I think there were a few science tossups in which there weren't enough late clues to have a good buzz distribution, imo the "length", "diamond anvil cell", and "Perl" tossups suffered suffered slightly from this
- I negged with "freeze-drying" on the freezing tossup, which I assume is wrong but thought I'd mention in case it's something to be accounted for
- Should "twigs" or related answers be promptable for the "branches" tossup? This neg happened in our game at the pruning clue, and felt a bit harsh

[touchpack]

Some notes on specific questions:
- I remember being confused by "this type of potential" as a pronoun for the lattices tossup, but it makes total sense in retrospect. I do think that way of framing will be a bit unfamiliar to most, but not sure if there's a way around it (or that there needs to be any change)
- That periodate tossup seemed very hard to me, it seems like the powerbreak has only come up a handful of times before? In general I think there were a few science tossups in which there weren't enough late clues to have a good buzz distribution, imo the "length", "diamond anvil cell", and "Perl" tossups suffered suffered slightly from this
- I negged with "freeze-drying" on the freezing tossup, which I assume is wrong but thought I'd mention in case it's something to be accounted for
- Should "twigs" or related answers be promptable for the "branches" tossup? This neg happened in our game at the pruning clue, and felt a bit harsh

Thanks for the feedback!

-Lattices: I agree that it's a suboptimal framing (and no one is going to be able to guess the answer because of it), but I figured that anyone who recognizes any of the optical lattice clues cold will be able to reason their way to the answer. The tossup originally started as a tossup on optical lattices, then I figured that was really more of a Chicago Open answer than a pre-nats open answer so I did this to make it more accessible. Certainly open to ideas if you (or anyone else) thinks they have come up with a better way of wording it than "this type of potential".

-Periodates: I knew this tossup was going to be a bit top-heavy, but it's playing much harder than I expected. (Come on people, periodate cleavage of diols is like, extremely core undergraduate orgo canon!). In retrospect, I think the Lemieux-Johnson clue is only easy to put together in retrospect--even though it says both "cleavage" and "osmium tetroxide" it's extremely hard to put together at game speed if you aren't previously familiar with it. I've moved that clue up above the periodic acid-Schiff stain (a very important stain in pathology that's core med school canon, and where I buzzed on this tossup in internal playtesting).

-Length: This one seems to have played quite poorly at the Maryland site, but it played fine at the Northwestern site, with two players buzzing right out of power (the Kolmogorov theory of turbulence comes up a reasonable amount). Frankly, I think the formula for the Reynolds number is not a difficult clue--it's core fluid mechanics and it comes up all the time, even at the high school level, in tossups on "velocity", "density", and "viscosity" (but I'm the first person crazy enough to toss up length scale).

-Diamond anvil cells: This played poorly at the Northwestern site, but only because the answerline was too restrictive--it was powered in one room and another player buzzed on the "small area to transmit force" clue. While it's definitely more top-heavy than ideal, 2 players have powered it so far, so I think it's ok now that I've fixed the answerline.

-Perl: not a science tossup, so I have no comment.

-Freezing: I see where you buzzed, I was describing flash-freezing for electron microscopy. Freeze-drying uses the same flash-freezing step but the additional "drying" part makes it incompatible with the other clues, so that's unfortunately a reject (answerline updated).

-Branches: My bad, never considered that answer (and honestly, I might have given the player the points on a protest). There is now a directed prompt on "twigs" and "boughs".

[aseem.keyal]

Could I see the text of the Cambodia question? I buzzed in at what I recall was a line that went "later empires used the prangs..." and I buzzed and said Thailand and felt sorta hosed, since I'm not sure how, without waiting for the rest of the clue, I could have at that point chosen between Thailand and Cambodia. My feeling was that this line should be written in a way to allow the player to chose before hearing the word prang rather than after, but I'd have to see the text. If I'm also just wrong about this fact, sorry, though a quick google search at the time confirmed my desire to protest.

6. This country is currently in a dispute with the Met over looted art donated by Douglas Latchford. Garcinia tree resin was made into a yellow pigment named for this country used by Chinese painters and Western artists like J.M.W. Turner. A laterite foundation supports the stone towers of a temple in this country that features hundreds of smiling faces that point in the cardinal directions. Later empires adopted the elaborate prang spires developed in this country. A west-facing site in this country is home to a massive (*) baray reservoir and a sandstone bas relief depicting the Churning of the Ocean. In this country, a large square moat surrounds a three-tiered complex with a quincunx of towers representing Mount Meru that was built for Suryavarman II. For 10 points, name this country home to the Khmer temple Angkor Wat.
ANSWER: Cambodia [or Kingdom of Cambodia; or Kampuchea] (the pigment is gamboge)
<AK>

My understanding is that prang spires were an element of Khmer architecture that Thai empires like the Ayutthaya adopted. Do you feel the clue could cause other players to neg with Thailand as well? I don't think the end of the clue ("developed in this country") adds much more information than the beginning ("Later empires"), but I can reword it if you feel it works better that way. It also looks like Thai prangs are potentially more well known than Khmer ones, so I can also replace it if I find another buzzable middle clue.

[naan/steak-holding toll]

Strictly speaking, the Khmer empire was not confined to present-day Cambodia and included substantial parts of present-day Thailand, as well as parts of today's Myanmar and Vietnam, at its height. I see what the writer is trying to get at but unless we can show that the oldest prang are from sites in present-day Cambodia, I'm not sure we can say the clue is unique.

[aseem.keyal]

Strictly speaking, the Khmer empire was not confined to present-day Cambodia and included substantial parts of present-day Thailand, as well as parts of today's Myanmar and Vietnam, at its height. I see what the writer is trying to get at but unless we can show that the oldest prang are from sites in present-day Cambodia, I'm not sure we can say the clue is unique.

This is a good point, I'll be replacing the clue for future mirrors.

[Bhagwan Shammbhagwan]

I enjoyed most of the questions in this question set, but I was a bit annoyed by the question on the Farm Security Administration. Both me and another player in the room could recognize the photographs in the second half of the tossup but weren't able to connect them to what we both felt was a kind of minor New Deal agency. Maybe this could just be a question on Let Us Now Praise Famous Men? Not sure.

[aseem.keyal]

I enjoyed most of the questions in this question set, but I was a bit annoyed by the question on the Farm Security Administration. Both me and another player in the room could recognize the photographs in the second half of the tossup but weren't able to connect them to what we both felt was a kind of minor New Deal agency. Maybe this could just be a question on Let Us Now Praise Famous Men? Not sure.

FSA is one of the harder answer lines in the visual art, but I don't think it's excessive. While the agency might not be very important in the context of American history, it is significant to the history of photography. Changing it to a tossup on Let Us Now Praise Famous Men would not allow me to clue this underasked content from this period.

[warum]

Some comments:
Gamboge seems too early in the Cambodia TU
Alceste seems hard for a medium part in the Gluck bonus
Asking for both Afrofuturism and Africanfuturism seems extremely hard
For the "Maximum wavelength" TU it seemed hard to figure out what to say at the end
Regardless of the "red shirt/yellow shirt" clue in the Malaysia tossup being uniquely identifying with the extra info the tossup provides, it still is hard to parse at game speed that you are not looking for Thailand. What if you said "This is the southern of two countries that each have opposing red-shirt and yellow-shirt political movements."

I gave an answer like "time resolution of a numerical method" on the "step size" tossup. The moderator took a while to decide what to do, then prompted me (at his discretion since he was also a set editor), after which I gave the correct answer of "time step." The answerline could be expanded to account for possibilities like this.

[halle]

I had a lot of fun with this set! I think the things that feel worth saying lean more towards the negative, because there are a whole lot of questions where I could say "good stuff! no notes" and I might get around to doing that in the thread created for that purpose, but there's little reason to do that in this post. On the whole, I think the set was great, including the areas in which I've found questions to criticize.

First, can I see the current text of the New York City painting tossup from packet 1? It struck me as extremely hard to get a grip on what the clues were pointing to when I played, and I was able to identify some potential reasons why by looking at the version of the question in the previously-uploaded packets, but I won't get into the weeds on clue selection/inaccuracies until I see the version of the tossup that I actually played.

I don't see the bear myth tossup in the uploaded version of packet 9, but I recall it saying something about a "battle trance" in power. It was a bit frustrating for this to turn out to be a clue about the most famous kind of battle trance. Not a massive issue though.

I have already communicated to Andrew Wang that his bonus part about balancing eggs doesn't rule out "balancing brooms" in any way, but he's such a big fan people of posting in the discussion forum that I'll mention it here too.

Cagliostro is one of my favorite guys that I've learned about recently and it was delightful to hear his name (even in the other team's bonus, during a late round in which I was barely functioning).

[aseem.keyal]

First, can I see the current text of the New York City painting tossup from packet 1? It struck me as extremely hard to get a grip on what the clues were pointing to when I played, and I was able to identify some potential reasons why by looking at the version of the question in the previously-uploaded packets, but I won't get into the weeds on clue selection/inaccuracies until I see the version of the tossup that I actually played.

15. An essay from Yves-Alain Bois’s (EEV-ah-LAHN BWAHZ's) Painting as Model describes the “all-over” composition of a painting of this city as a “pas de trois” and connects it to the artist’s essay “The New Realism.” The chapter “Trouble in Utopia” in Robert Hughes’s The Shock of the New contrasts “Utopian city plans” with an artist’s “incorruptible” late-career paintings of this city. Paintings of this city eliminated empty “bays” found in earlier works like Place de La Concorde and the (*) Tableau series. In November 2022, Susanne Meyer-Büser confirmed Francesco Visalli’s claim that a painting titled for this city has likely been hanging upside down. Yellow lines connect red, white, and blue squares in a painting inspired by this city's grid and by blues music. For 10 points, what city inspired Piet Mondrian’s Broadway Boogie-Woogie?
ANSWER: New York City [or NYC]
<AK>

I had a feeling this might play too difficult, and it was an oversight on my part not to make it easier. I'll be making some changes for the remaining mirrors, but feel free to post any suggestions or criticisms.

[halle]

First, can I see the current text of the New York City painting tossup from packet 1? It struck me as extremely hard to get a grip on what the clues were pointing to when I played, and I was able to identify some potential reasons why by looking at the version of the question in the previously-uploaded packets, but I won't get into the weeds on clue selection/inaccuracies until I see the version of the tossup that I actually played.

15. An essay from Yves-Alain Bois’s (EEV-ah-LAHN BWAHZ's) Painting as Model describes the “all-over” composition of a painting of this city as a “pas de trois” and connects it to the artist’s essay “The New Realism.” The chapter “Trouble in Utopia” in Robert Hughes’s The Shock of the New contrasts “Utopian city plans” with an artist’s “incorruptible” late-career paintings of this city. Paintings of this city eliminated empty “bays” found in earlier works like Place de La Concorde and the (*) Tableau series. In November 2022, Susanne Meyer-Büser confirmed Francesco Visalli’s claim that a painting titled for this city has likely been hanging upside down. Yellow lines connect red, white, and blue squares in a painting inspired by this city's grid and by blues music. For 10 points, what city inspired Piet Mondrian’s Broadway Boogie-Woogie?
ANSWER: New York City [or NYC]
<AK>

I had a feeling this might play too difficult, and it was an oversight on my part not to make it easier. I'll be making some changes for the remaining mirrors, but feel free to post any suggestions or criticisms.

Thanks for posting the question! It appears to be the same as the version I was able to look at last night. Basically, even after hearing the answer, I couldn't tell which artist most of these clues were referring to, and when I tried to use the titles mentioned in the question to find out, it took a decent amount of googling to trace my way back to Mondrian. When I was playing the question, I was considering Degas as an answer (specifically, I was trying to remember if he returned to New Orleans late in his career or if he went somewhere else) and when I googled "Place de la Concorde painting" the first results were all about a Degas painting, which is described on Wikipedia as being notable for its use of negative space, so I figured I must have correctly made that association somewhere in the back of my mind. Upon realizing all the other clues were about Mondrian, I discovered that he has a much less famous painting by that title, so the clue isn't inaccurate, but it leaves a whole lot of room for confusion. I also didn't get any results about Mondrian by googling "'The New Realism' essay art" and upon looking up Bois's book (his name is spelled Yve-Alain, which is probably a spellcheck/autocorrect issue but worth fixing for future packet archive search purposes (such as on your own excellent db lol)) I eventually found that the essay is actually called "A New Realism," but searching for that title doesn't net many results on Mondrian either unless you add his name to the search query, and does lead to a lot of results about the completely unrelated movement called New Realism. "All-over" is a common term used to describe abstract painting, most often abstract expressionism, so I'm really not sure that there's anything buzzable between the Painting as Model title drop and the end of the sentence. I'm not sure how widely read that book is--while I'd never heard of it, I'd be willing to believe that lots of people have, but I think it'd still be ideal to pick quotes from it that aren't phrases closely associated with completely different things. I do think that the Shock of the New clue was well-chosen, as that's a widely read (and watched) work which happens to be one of my own blind spots.

Some thoughts about what you could add to the top half of the question: the Bois name and title drop are a great way to signal to people with a lot of knowledge about Mondrian that we're likely talking about him, and the second half of that sentence could mention that he's collaborated with Rosalind Krauss and bring up her well-known writing about grids, which discusses Mondrian. A switch from "of this city" to "inspired by this city" might key players in that we're talking about abstract works as well, although I do think it's accurate to describe a Mondrian painting as being "of New York."

To counter my having dwelled on this one question for so long, I'll comment that there's very little else I'd change about the Vis Art in general! The difficulty in that category felt consistent and had a good balance of types of clues in terms of different ways of engaging with art--some questions engaged a lot with secondary sources, some with visual descriptions, some with historical context, and most with a mix of these types of clues, which I think is an ideal approach. Despite having an exhaustion crash at the end of the tournament that is literally noticeable in the stats of the last two rounds, I'm excited to read the remaining packets because I know I'll enjoy them!

[Adventure Temple Trail]

Asking for both Afrofuturism and Africanfuturism seems extremely hard

It is not; the notion of Africanfuturism as a Thing, and the conception of it as something distinct from U.S.-centric Afrofuturism, is an absolutely massive topic in science fiction discussion right now, and its main proponent, Nnedi Okorafor, has won multiple awards for works in the genre. I might buy that it's artificially harder in quizbowl context, given quizbowl's relative lack of focus on sci-fi in literature.

I don't see the bear myth tossup in the uploaded version of packet 9, but I recall it saying something about a "battle trance" in power. It was a bit frustrating for this to turn out to be a clue about the most famous kind of battle trance. Not a massive issue though.

I think this was in packet 12 or 13 originally. It's another example of the early clue drop thing that I found frustrating in the set (though I may have been primed by subconscious recollection of the Magic: the Gathering card Ursine Fylgja).

[The King's Flight to the Scots]

I don't think it's quite accurate to say that clue is about the same kind of battle trance that berserkers go into. The character being described is Bodvar Bjarki, a (possible) Norse analogue of Beowulf with the ability to summon a ghost bear while he's asleep; the bear is his spirit animal in a much more literal sense than is true for the berserkers. The story may be related to berserker legends, but I think you'd be getting pretty lucky if you buzzed just off of that.

[Asterias Wrathbunny]

Could someone post the "hot" in OFA tossup?

[touchpack]

Could someone post the "hot" in OFA tossup?

11. This is the second adjective in the name of a Robert Johnson song whose title objects are sold “two for a nickel, four for a dime.” An ensemble with this adjective in its name featured its leader’s second wife Lil Hardin on piano and was recorded for Okeh records. It’s not “traditional,” but this adjective is often used as an alternative name for Dixieland jazz. This is the second adjective in the name of a band whose leader wrote the “King Porter (*) Stomp,” claimed to have invented jazz, and was nicknamed after a slang term for genitalia. A box set of recordings by an ensemble with this adjective in its name includes “Heebie Jeebies,” one of the first songs to employ scat singing. For 10 points, name this adjective that describes Louis Armstrong’s “Five”, and alongside red, Jelly Roll Morton’s “Peppers.”
ANSWER: hot [accept the Hot Five, Hot Seven, or Red Hot Peppers] (The song in the lead-in is “They’re Red Hot.”)
<DM>

[Asterias Wrathbunny]

Could someone post the "hot" in OFA tossup?

11. This is the second adjective in the name of a Robert Johnson song whose title objects are sold “two for a nickel, four for a dime.” An ensemble with this adjective in its name featured its leader’s second wife Lil Hardin on piano and was recorded for Okeh records. It’s not “traditional,” but this adjective is often used as an alternative name for Dixieland jazz. This is the second adjective in the name of a band whose leader wrote the “King Porter (*) Stomp,” claimed to have invented jazz, and was nicknamed after a slang term for genitalia. A box set of recordings by an ensemble with this adjective in its name includes “Heebie Jeebies,” one of the first songs to employ scat singing. For 10 points, name this adjective that describes Louis Armstrong’s “Five”, and alongside red, Jelly Roll Morton’s “Peppers.”
ANSWER: hot [accept the Hot Five, Hot Seven, or Red Hot Peppers] (The song in the lead-in is “They’re Red Hot.”)
<DM>

I see that using "second adjective" in the first line makes it consistent with the rest of the tossup, but the word order of "They're Red Hot" made it confusing to parse during gameplay. I don't see why "This is the final word" wouldn't have been sufficient. And a personal preference thing but I also am not a fan of shoehorning a delta blues song into an otherwise thematically cohesive tossup on hot jazz (even though I love Robert Johnson).