Five Questions I Liked From 2023 ACF Nationals — And Five I Didn’t

[kearnm7]

I edited European History and Other History for 2023 ACF Nationals. I tried to produce a history distribution that was balanced in its geographical, chronological, and topical focus. I was assisted by several excellent freelancers and some top submissions. Thanks are also due to my fellow editors, who made this set very enjoyable.

However, for this post I wanted to try a new approach to a Nationals category wrap-up. I will present below five questions that I liked and five questions that I did not fully like from my categories at Nationals (all the questions that I did not fully like are solely my own). They will be randomized: take a guess at which ones I liked and did not fully like, plus why. Then, scroll down to see if I agree and see my commentary, which should hopefully provide an illustration of some important writing principles. And if you do or don’t agree, reply and say why — or mention other questions that you liked or did not fully like!

Buzz distributions can be seen on this website, created by Jordan Brownstein.

People of this sort often signed their names with elaborately stylized monograms containing the letters v, c, and f, which stood for vivat, crescat, floreat. These people could be identified by a Zirkel or a system of uniform called the couleur. These people viewed Schmisse as a mark of honor. Groups of these people used Schläger while engaging in the traditional practice of Mensur. These people promoted an ideal of Grossdeutschland while leading a convention known as the Wartburg Festival. One of these people called a dramatist a “traitor to the nation” before confronting him inside his house in Mannheim. That one of these people, Karl Sand, murdered August von Kotzebue, prompting Klemens von Metternich to issue the Karlsbad Decrees that banned these people’s Burschenschaften. For 10 points, what sort of people participated in duels while attending institutions in Göttingen and Heidelberg?
ANSWER: German university students [or German college students; or Universitätsstudenten; accept members of German student associations or German fraternities or German fraternal associations or equivalents; accept Burschenschaften until read; prompt on academic fencers or duelists by asking “what sort of people participated in this particular tradition of fencing duels?”; prompt on Germans or Deutscher; prompt on youth or equivalents; prompt on scholars or equivalents]

In this decade, an astronomer in Bologna dubbed “the mad Italian prophet” unsuccessfully predicted that the world would end on July 18th. In this decade, protesters in Ely and Littleport rioted over high grain prices. A lack of horses in this decade may have inspired the invention of the velocipede by Karl Drais. This decade is the focus of the book When the Mississippi Ran Backwards. In this decade, the Maison Chapuis and the Villa Diodati on Lake Geneva were rented by a group that read the collection Fantasmagoriana for entertainment in bad weather. In this decade, Honoré Flaugergues discovered a comet with the second-longest recorded period of visibility, behind the Hale-Bopp Comet. The New Madrid earthquakes occurred in this decade, which included the “Year Without A Summer.” For 10 points, name this decade when a cold winter hampered Napoleon’s invasion of Russia.
ANSWER: 1810s [prompt on 10s]

In a rare televised speech, a politician in this country said “as a community, we are living away beyond our means” in response to an energy crisis. This country’s modernization was outlined in the 2021 “personal history” We Don’t Know Ourselves. Police captured a bowtie-wearing double murderer in the apartment of the chief law officer of this country, whose media called the scandal “grotesque, unbelievable, bizarre, and unprecedented,” or “GUBU.” Candidates in this country and its northern neighbor ran in the “Anti H-Block” party. Awareness of domestic issues in this country was heightened by The Late Late Show on RTÉ, its national broadcaster. In this country, Charles Haughey’s government proposed the 8th Amendment, almost fully banning abortions with support from Fianna Fáil. For 10 points, name this country whose booming economy of the 1990s was called the “Celtic Tiger.”
ANSWER: Ireland [or Republic of Ireland; or Éire; or Poblacht na hÉireann; reject “Northern Ireland”]

Three sisters from Aquileia named Agape, Chionia, and Irene were martyred in this city after not eating sacrificial offerings. This city took its patron saint from Sirmium and built the Church of Saint Demetrius to honor him. An edict issued in this city is often called Cunctos populos. This city’s populace lynched an administrator named Butheric after he arrested a popular charioteer. The dialects spoken in this city’s countryside formed the basis for the Glagolitic script created by two natives of this city, the missionaries Cyril and Methodius. In 380, Theodosius I issued an edict in this city that made Nicene Christianity the Roman Empire’s state religion. A massacre of 7,000 people in this city led Milan’s bishop, Ambrose, to force Theodosius I to commit public penance. For 10 points, name this Byzantine “second city” found in the Greek region of Macedonia.
ANSWER: Thessalonica [or Thessaloniki; or Saloniki; or Salonica; accept Massacre of Thessalonica; accept Edict of Thessalonica]

A woman with this epithet had an affair with a moneychanger and conspired with him to drown her husband in his bath. A ruler with this epithet described the rituals needed to receive it in a work called “The Book of Ceremonies.” A ruler was promised the hand of a woman with this epithet in exchange for returning the town of Korsun to her brother. A ruler with this epithet shared the throne with a member of the Lekapenos family. A ruler with this epithet consolidated his power by crushing revolts from two generals named Bardas. A desire to marry a woman with this epithet caused Vladimir the Great to convert the Kievan Rus’ to Christianity. The princess Anna held this epithet, which was given to royal children born in a colorful stone chamber in the Great Palace of Constantinople. For 10 points, what Greek epithet held by several middle Byzantine rulers means “born in the purple”?
ANSWER: Porphyrogenitus [or Porphyrogenita, Porphyrogennetos, or Porphyrogennete; accept Anna Porphyrogenita or Anna Porphyrogennete; accept Basil II Porphyrogenitus or Basil II Porphyrogennetos; accept Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus or Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos; accept Zoë Porphyrogenita or Zoë Porphyrogennetos; until “purple” is read, prompt on “born in the purple” by asking “what is the original language title?”]

This ruler was defeated at the Battle of Kressenbrunn along with his son, to whom he lost a civil war four years later. A defeat suffered by this ruler was criticized in the eyewitness history Carmen miserabile, written by Roger of Apulia. This ruler consolidated his western territories despite losing the Battle of the Leitha River. This ruler’s cavalry was lured into a swamp at a battle where enemy forces pushed him back with a rolling catapult barrage and outflanked him by building a pontoon bridge. This ruler expelled the Cumans from his kingdom after initially offering them refuge. This ruler’s capital of Esztergom was sacked during a period known as the Tatárjárás, or the “passing of the Tatars.” After this son of Andrew II lost a battle near the Sajó River to Subotai, he founded the city of Buda to resist further invasions. For 10 points, name this Hungarian king whom the Mongols crushed at Mohi.
ANSWER: Béla IV of Hungary [or Béla IV Árpád; prompt on Béla or Árpád]

A letter by this writer warned of demagogues “who will descend upon Europe” and act as “terrible simplifiers.” This writer produced a comprehensive study of a country’s art that was arranged geographically to act as a travel guide in The Cicerone. This writer described a time when “a common veil woven of faith, illusion, and childish prepossession” covered “both sides of human consciousness, [which] lay dreaming or half awake.” A book by this writer that includes the sections “The Discovery of the World and of Man” and “The Development of the Individual” inspired the research of Johan Huizinga. This writer described a period of “the State as the outcome of reflection and calculation – the State as a work of art” in a pioneering book on cultural history. For 10 points, name this 19th-century Swiss historian who wrote The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy.
ANSWER: Jacob Burckhardt [or Carl Jacob Christoph Burckhardt]

It’s not music or philosophy, but this activity is the focus of the sole extant work by the Greek writer Aeneas, whose nickname is often misspelled “Tacitus.” This activity is the subject of a work with three-dimensional sketches by Hero of Byzantium, who suggests using chelonai. Heraclides of Tarentum invented the sambuca for this activity. Abandoned equipment that was originally used for this activity was sold to finance a monumental statue designed by Chares of Lindos. A huge device called a helepolis was used for this activity by Demetrius I of Macedon, whose innovations in this activity inspired his nickname Poliorcetes. When traditional methods of this activity failed, Alexander the Great built a kilometer-long causeway to reach the city of Tyre. For 10 points, machines like the ballista and the battering ram were used to take fortified cities in what sort of military activity?
ANSWER: siegecraft [or sieges or besieging or siege engineering; accept siege of Tyre; accept Siege of Rhodes; accept siege tower; accept How to Survive under Siege; accept poliorcetics or Poliorcetes or Parangelmata Poliorcetica until “Poliorcetes” is read; prompt on warfare, conflict, battle, tactics, military strategy, artillery firing, military engineering, or similar answers by asking “for what specific type of engagement?”]

A new mode of performing this activity led the “Besant phase” to be replaced by the “Old Women’s phase.” This activity names an ancient site found by the archaeologists Sigurd Olsen and Gerald Chubbuck. The former slave George McJunkin studied this activity at a site where he found the first example of “Folsom points.” This activity was conducted at a place whose name means “deep kettle of blood.” According to tradition, exceptional skill in this activity inspired the name of the leader “Poundmaker.” This activity, which was conducted at sites like Ulm Pishkun and Head-Smashed-In, furnished the material needed for the traditional preparation of pemmican. This activity declined when its target’s population fell from 60 million to less than one thousand in the late 1800s. For 10 points, name this activity that Plains Indians conducted at namesake “jumps” to acquire hides and meat.
ANSWER: bison hunting [or buffalo hunting or other equivalents; accept bison jumps or buffalo jumps; accept killing, capturing, corralling, butchering, stalking, pursuing, pounding, or equivalent answers in place of “hunting”; accept Olsen–Chubbuck Bison Kill Site; prompt on hunting, killing, capturing, corralling, butchering, stalking, pursuing, pounding, or equivalents by asking “what quarry?”]

Per a 1979 book, migrants from this modern country clung to a “myth of return” that caused closed communities. After an attack led primarily by men with parents from this country, a politician said “whatever you do, however many you kill, you will fail.” A 2022 New York Times podcast details an alleged plot led primarily by teachers with ancestry in this country to take over three public schools in “Operation Trojan Horse.” In 2001, men with ancestry in this country rioted in Oldham and Bradford, where migrants worked in textile mills after fleeing dam-induced flooding. Three men with ancestry in this country plotted with Germaine Lindsay to attack a Tavistock Square bus and three subway trains in the 7/7 bombings. In 2016, a politician whose parents migrated from this country succeeded Boris Johnson as mayor of London. For 10 points, from what country did Sadiq Khan’s parents migrate?
ANSWER: Pakistan [or Islamic Republic of Pakistan; or Islāmī Jumhūriyah Pākistān]

[kearnm7]

Here are the questions that I liked and why:

• 1. German university students. Not intended as the tournament’s first tossup, but it was an appropriate beginning (to go with the final tossup of finals on “medals”).
  
  • Liked because:
    a. Tossup on an easy but novel answerline.
    b. Fully tested material that was a theme of that period of German history (the push-pull between the German government and student organizations).
    c. Generated an excellent buzz distribution, especially in the middle clues.

• 2. 1810s.
  
  • Liked because:
    a. Unique and good theme (around “natural events” in the decade).
    b. Example of the benefits of packet submission and editor collaboration.
    • Originally a great submission from UMN A on “the Year Without A Summer,” but my original edited draft overlapped too much with the Eminent Victorians tossup on the same answerline. Taylor therefore came up with the great idea to keep some of the material and turn it into this answerline and theme, which also allowed for an easier giveaway.

• 3. Ireland. Originally a great freelance tossup.
  • Liked because:
    a. Shows Nationals’ ability to have tight themes on easy answerlines.
    • In this case, Irish political history of the late 20th century. No other tournament can do that so effectively: even for ACF Regionals 2021, when I also had a tossup on modern Ireland, I had to draw from a wider period (World War II to 2018) and topic area to generate a proper pyramid.

• 4. Bela IV. I liked this tossup despite its 33% conversion rate (though that was somewhat lower than I had hoped). This was deliberately the hardest European history answerline in the tournament.
  • Liked because:
    a. Shows that harder answerlines can be useful to test material that could not otherwise be effectively tested in tossups.
    • Specifically, I think it would have been more transparent to try for an answerline of Hungary — one could not have so easily said “Leitha,” “Esztergom,” “Tatárjárás,” or “Buda” in their current places. I think tossups with harder answerlines can also serve to keep players honest about trying to fraud or metagame.

• 5. Bison-hunting.
  
  • Liked because:
    a. Unique take on a very important historical topic.
    b. Shows the important of the “other history” category.
    • Doesn’t properly fit into the American or world history distributions but is worth asking. Tried for similarly unique tossups with those on Arabia (great submission from Cornell A), al-Andalus, law, and Scythians (great freelance submission).

[kearnm7]

Here are the questions I did not fully like and why:

• 1. Thessalonica. I liked this tossup when I wrote it, but less so after seeing the buzzpoint data.
  
  • Disliked because:
    a. The sentence “The dialects spoken in this city’s countryside formed the basis for the Glagolitic script created by two natives of this city, the missionaries Cyril and Methodius” generated a huge number of negs.
  Despite its historical importance (it was crucial that Cyril and Methodius were exposed to the Slavic tribes around Thessalonica), I might look to phrase the clue differently or replace it to forestall other negs if writing the question again. Playability is king in quizbowl, and that clue was not very playable.

• 2. Porphyrogenitus.
  • Liked because:
    a. Tests material that is probably underasked in quizbowl — middle Byzantine history.
    b. Has a very novel answerline.
  • Disliked because:
    c. The first two clues are hard to pin down.
    d. Then the tossup primarily plays as a game of guessing for knowledgeable players (epithet given to both men and women, plus Byzantine names in the middle clues), rather than being able to confidently buzz.
  In revising, I might look to find middle clues without names that are less obviously Byzantine.

• 3. Siegecraft.
  • Liked because:
    a. Unique and interesting answerline.
  • Disliked because:
    b. Tossup is probably too hard in the first three clues, then cliffs and flattens out at the fourth clue, which describes the Colossus of Rhodes (though we don’t know for sure, because it was only played in one room).
  In revising, I might have dropped one of the first clues, then found middle clues that were more buzzable and pushed the pyramid up by a line. It may not be a fully workable answerline in any case, though.

• 4. Jacob Burckhardt.
  • Liked because:
    a. Re-introduced an important historian to the canon as an answerline (who was once very popular as an answerline).
  • Disliked because:
    b. Tossup ended up primarily being played in the last two lines, which is not ideal for playability.
    c. Ends up being fairly quote and title heavy, since there’s not much other material to lean on.
  In revising, I might have tried to find an alternate answerline that would have allowed Burckhardt to be tested but allowed for a better buzz distribution. Would also reduce the emphasis on quotes and titles.

• 5. Pakistan.
  • Liked because:
    a. Material the question tests is important: British Pakistanis have played a significant role in the development of modern Britain.
  • Disliked because:
    b. Execution of the tossup did not justify the material.
    c. The phrasing of the indicator is weaselly and hedging (things like “led primarily by teachers with ancestry in this country” or “whose parents migrated from this country”). Those phrases are long and take up a lot of space, meaning there was one fewer clue than there might have been.
    d. For the players, I think it might have been very frustrating trying to nail down the clues to a particular country, even if the events themselves sound familiar (tying down the somewhat ambiguous lead-in or the 7/7 bombers to a particular country).
  The original drafts of this tossup were on “this nationality” and “this ethnicity,” which posed their own problems since many of the mentioned figures are nationally British (although ancestrally Pakistani, which has its own issues with partition) and of different ethnicities. The tossup as played was probably the best option for the tournament, but I would probably not include the tossup if the tournament ran again.

If I were to summarize the questions that I did not like, I would say that the biggest difficulty is finding good, buzzable middle clues for new answerlines: that would be a goal for me in the future.

I certainly wish I could have improved those questions: and perhaps with more time, I could have. But at some point the questions have to be done and played, and I’m overall pleased with how the categories turned out.

[Cheynem]

I largely think your assessments are correct--I don't aesthetically like the 1810s as an answerline, but that's just me (the clues are very good).

I am perhaps most interested in your opinion on the Pakistan tossup. I think you are correct, but I also wonder what would be the best/optimal answerline on the topic (which I agree is very interesting and important). A tossup on the U.K. as an answerline seems perhaps too obvious at Nats. I almost wonder if doing the tossup on the bombings would have been best, although that eliminates some of the clue patterns. You might be right that this is the best you can do with the answerline and clues, but it's not something that's optimal.

[Skepticism and Animal Feed]

I would have personally placed the clues about the Cumans before the detailed description of the Battle of Mohi because, at least in my day, the battle was more famous than the backstory behind it. Unless there has been a sudden burst of interest in non-first-tier Hungarian kings, I think you could have mentioned "son of Andrew II" much, much earlier.

I really, really like the German university students question. That's a question that never would have existed in my day and yet there's so much of a there there. I love how you transitioned from obscure but important traditions into roles that German university students played in major world events. It is a great example of how to ask something that doesn't normally get asked, demonstrate its importance, and tie it to something askable by the FTP.

[Subotai the Valiant, Final Dog of War]

I would have personally placed the clues about the Cumans before the detailed description of the Battle of Mohi because, at least in my day, the battle was more famous than the backstory behind it. Unless there has been a sudden burst of interest in non-first-tier Hungarian kings, I think you could have mentioned "son of Andrew II" much, much earlier.

I really enjoyed this question as well! Personally, I know the Battle of Mohi well (well, you might expect that from my forums username), but I wasn't prepared to buzz on a relatively generic tactics clue since it could have referred to some battle I didn't know, especially if the answerline were something as difficult as Bela IV, so I buzzed only on the Cumans clue. There isn't really an easy way of cluing that battle without sounding somewhat generic, so I don't fault the writer on that, but I suspect that's why the description was earlier: that it's sort of hard to buzz on in isolation.

I also really liked the bison hunting tossup! It's a cool idea and has various interesting clues about culture, archaeology, and buffalo jumping. [On a minor note, I do think that Folsom might be easier than the two clues after it. The etymology of "Ulm Pishkun" and deep biographical clues of Poundmaker (a figure in the Northwest Rebellion I'd not heard of, although I acknowledge my Canadian native history is not the best) seem harder than knowing that the early discoveries of Paleoindian points were associated with megafaunal hunt sites.]

I now see what Michael meant when he mysteriously told me during the tournament that I was doing well on some of his favorite questions, though...

[naan/steak-holding toll]

Personally I'm a fan of the Burckhardt question - sure, quotes from long books aren't always ideal clues, but I think this one was well chosen (even if I mis-remembered where it was from and negged with Huizinga in playtesting). For a better buzz curve it might have been better off as a common link on Burckhardts ala 2013 CO, or a tossup on the Renaissance, but given the answer line the execution is solid.

[Jem Casey]

Thanks for posting this, Michael! I like the idea of chopping it up a bit about questions that didn’t attract any “specific questions” discussion, but are still worth praising or analyzing.

The buzzpoint data is amazing to have, but I don’t want to rely too heavily on it for assessing questions; after all, by itself it doesn’t tell us what the issue is (if there was one) or how to avoid similar problems in future questions. For fun, here are some maxims drawn from a few of your disliked tossups:

Thessalonica: try to neg-proof clues that use buzzwords not commonly “associated” with the intended answer.
I like the Glagolitic clue and wouldn’t condemn it or the tossup just because it drew some negs. Assuming that the clue isn’t actually ambiguous (knowing the wrong answers would be helpful), I’ll note that the negs do fit a pattern in which relatively difficult clues that mention things many players have heard of draw more negs than straightforwardly obscure or easy clues. The fix is not to cut those clues (which are often very good and memorable), but to put up as many stop signs as possible by filling in the details that players may mistakenly think the clue is asking them to supply. For instance, saying “The dialects spoken by Slavs in this city’s countryside” might help ward off reflex buzzes with “Kiev” or other famous Slavic cities.

Siegecraft: test your question’s pyramid by “making up a guy.”
Issues with cliffiness and flatness like the ones you diagnosed can sometimes be detected with a method I call “making up a guy” (“guy” being gender-neutral). When you make up a guy, you try to imagine what sort of knowledge base someone would have to have to be helped by one clue and not the previous one, and think about how likely this guy is. In this case, players knowing the term “helepolis” and Demetrius I’s moniker but not knowing the story about the Colossus’s connection to the abandoned engine feels like something of an edge case given how this constellation of facts is usually presented, which sets off alarm bells for a possible plateau.*

Jacob Burckhardt: pick hard answers that could plausibly draw a smooth buzz curve and write them to “fail safely” if they don’t.
Like Will, I’m a fan of this tossup; wouldn’t have guessed you thought it was a dud! The lessons I’d take from this one are about the things you did well:

• Answer selection: as an extremely famous historian who is often mentioned in qb but hasn’t been the focus of a tossup in a decade, Burckhardt feels like a “natural” choice for canon revitalization/expansion. It seems plausible that a hypothetical nats field would have several tiers of knowledge about him; maybe one person has studied his work academically, a handful have picked up information about him via his connection to writers like Huizinga and Nietzsche, a few more have read an excerpt in class or learned a few facts about his main ideas for quizbowl, etc. In other words, there’d be good reason to hope that a well-written Burckhardt tossup would play well--tossing him up isn’t merely an exercise in the maligned style of canon expansion that involves picking a hard thing that comes up and then picking n clues for it.
• Cluing: in reverse clue lookup, every clue aces the “seems famous, I should know about this” test. As ordered, they give an increasingly specific picture of Burckhardt’s beliefs, interests, style, and era before getting into the easiest stuff about his magnum opus.
• Failing safely. I wouldn’t have guessed that Burckhardt would play to a 60% conversion rate, but there’s no doubt that this answer choice was “riskier”--that is, more likely to generate a late buzz curve--than, say, the students question (compare middle clues on specific passages from a 19th century historian to something with solid qb and pop history exposure like mensur). But even though the risk didn’t pay off as well as you hoped, the tossup was set up to “fail safely” because of the evocative cluing and the careful spacing of the main buzzable details in the last couple sentences. I’d be surprised if it left many teams frustrated by a buzzer race or the “obscureness” of the answerline.

* “Making up a guy” has other applications as well. For instance, if you need to cut a detail to meet a character count, try to imagine a “guy” whose knowledge base would lead them to lament “I wasn’t sure about [shortened clue], but would have buzzed if you’d said [detail]!” Bits where this complaint feels the least likely can be the first to go.