“Questions based on Wikipedia links Ophir sent me” Discussion

[Jem Casey]

This is an all-purpose thread for discussing "Questions based on Wikipedia links Ophir sent me", which is now clear. You may use it post general thoughts, specific question feedback, errata, memorable buzzes and other anecdotes, etc. The set will be submitted to the archive later today.

Thanks are due (obviously!) to Ophir, not only for providing the impetus and the best part of the set with his incredible finds but for his role in polishing it. Though some of my half-baked tossupifications took approaches he probably wouldn’t condone in general, he always met me where I was and suggested wordings that improved the evocativeness and accuracy of countless clues across the set. For a writer, it’s always a relief to have quizbowl set production’s greatest "super-utility" player on your team. Thanks also to JinAh for giving much crucial feedback as the set’s only other playtester and patiently listening to much waffling about which links to use for what answers.

When I started writing QBOWLOSM in 2019, I was imagining it not as a typical side event but as a massive dump of questions that could be used for study material or informal shootouts/practices. As such, I wrote very quickly on the first answers I could think of with the first clues I could find--a method that produced many dour questions with unbuzzable first halves and tenuous connections to the spirit of Ophir’s links. By the time I picked it up again this year, we were both thinking of the project in a much more "curatorial" way and dozens of the old questions had to be cut; a substratum remained though, so feel free to blame whichever aspects of the set you didn’t like on 2019 Jordan.

This set was, in various parts, a tribute to my friendship with Ophir, an encomium of Wikipedia-reading, a try at quizbowl "constrained writing," and an excuse to ask about some topics that would be a bit out of place in a straightforward academic distribution. I had a blast working on it in all these respects and plan to write another one in a couple years.

[ericlgame]

them's the cords that hung john tawell

[yeah viv talk nah]

This set was amazing Jordan, thanks for writing it (and Ophir for inspiring it)! The sheer number of tightly themed questions on untapped conceits was truly remarkable.

My favorite moment of the day was unexpectedly resurrecting my memory of the odd Sherwood Anderson short story about Columbus's egg, as I had to read that for an assignment in junior English class.

[naan/steak-holding toll]

All tournaments should have history distributions inspired by Ophir.