24 hours of quizbowl

Mr. Kwalter · Post by **Mr. Kwalter** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 9:30 am

So, in the chatroom this morning (yeah, this morning) a few of us were talking about how long quizbowl has been played for at a given time, and mention was made of a 24 hour quizbowl practice once allegedly undergone by Princeton under Jeff Hoppes. Whether this actually happened or not aside (Jeff obviously can confirm/deny), we thought that it would be beyond awesome to actually do 24 hours of quizbowl. So, here is my proposal for such a 24 hour qb marathon:

There would be four tournaments, and all of them would be singles tournaments. There would be no editors; rather, each participant would write a packet for each tournament, and the packets would be used unedited. Each packet would have both tossups and bonuses and would be 20/20. One of the tournaments would be a normal distribution singles event. One of the tournaments would be trash. The other two would each be on one of the humanities disciplines: lit, history, r/m, p/ss, or arts. This means each participant would have to write four packets. Additionally, we'd need moderators and facilities. I suggest having an entry fee that would cover some nominal payment for moderators (who would no doubt moderate only one or two tournaments each) and any other overhead costs.

Hear me, internet! If you would be interested in participating in this glorious endeavour, reply to this post. If you have a suggestion for date and/or venue, say so. I'd say the obvious venues are chicago or maryland, though obviously we could all gather somewhere else entirely. As to date, I think we should do it in late summer/early fall, but if people have other ideas by all means they should put them forth. Who has two thumbs and wants to spend a whole day playing quizbowl? Right here.

The Time Keeper · Post by **The Time Keeper** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 9:33 am

Everyone should want to do this.

Maxwell Sniffingwell · Wed Mar 12, 2008 9:56 am

If it's at Chicago, I'm in.

(But you want a lit tournament with no editors? Wouldn't that repeat lilke crazy?)

AKKOLADE · Post by **AKKOLADE** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 9:59 am

I don't know if I could handle being a buzzer rock for 24 hours.

dtaylor4 · Post by **dtaylor4** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 10:06 am

I'd be down for staffing, and would be amenable to staffing all tournaments.

Post by **Auks Ran Ova** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 10:08 am

I'd be up for playing some tournaments and staffing others, especially if it's at Chicago or somewhere relatively nearby.

Mike Bentley · Post by **Mike Bentley** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 10:08 am

I would much rather see people put their efforts towards spreading these tournaments out. This would be fun in no way towards the end.

Wed Mar 12, 2008 11:41 am

Kit Cloudkicker wrote:a 24 hour quizbowl practice once allegedly undergone by Princeton under Jeff Hoppes. Whether this actually happened or not aside

That's no allegation. That was brutal reality from late spring 2000.

The setup: from about 1998 or so Princeton's lexicon had an entry for "latest time yet reached at a Princeton College Bowl practice," periodically updated from 2:00 am to 3:30 am to (as of a particular binge immediately after finals my freshman year) 5:45 am. At which point a few of us decided that it would be a good idea to retire the entry by holding a 24-hour marathon practice. After all, it was only another 13+ hours or so of continuous play to reach the normal 7:30 pm start of practice.

The execution: Obviously this thing required a number of co-conspirators. Steve Lawrie, Ben Malkevitch, and I called a special practice to begin at 2:30 pm shortly before one or another of the academic holidays (spring break? reading period? I don't think I remembered anything at the time, let alone eight years later). This functioned as a normal practice with two full teams worth of players up until midnight or so. At which point Ben arrived to staff the graveyard shift and enable Steve and I to continue playing through the early morning hours. Around 10 am or so our teammates began filtering back to witness the last few hours of the death march.

Note the necessary features:

-a minimum of three people (and at Princeton we had only three despite a tradition of late-night practices) willing to play quizbowl for an absurdly long stretch of time. Standard rotation among Solo Team A, Solo Team B, and moderator.

-teammates willing to go bring us food.

-an abundant supply of questions. At Princeton we used up most of our stockpile of practice questions for this event. Note in particular that after about 1 am or so we switched from the ACF regionals-ish stuff we had been playing for a normal late-year practice to progressively easier material. By about four o'clock in the morning we were working through the backlog of NAQT IS sets from our high school tournaments. By that point it was taking about forty-five minutes to read a round and bonus conversion was hovering around 10 or so. This despite the fact that these were 1. IS sets that 2. we had all three seen before. Most of the tossups were at least being answered at the end, in part because we had one player each with specialities in science, history, and fine arts.

To conclude: I think holding an actual tournament with 24 hours of real questions would be yet another level of completely insane, although it might just be feasible if people were willing to tolerate a bunch of repeats, periodically staff during their bye rounds, and put up with the consequent glacially slow moderation.

DakarKra · Post by **DakarKra** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 11:49 am

Eric, I love the idea and would be very interested in participating (staff or play), provided I could get there (so I'm more inclined towards the East Coast). Do you think that it might be better to have someone "editing" to replace duplicates (but not to go over question content) than the pure guerilla tournament?

BuzzerZen · Post by **BuzzerZen** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 11:51 am

Staying awake for 24 hours is trivial as long as there is sufficient excitement. Hell, we should have it at somebody's house.

Skepticism and Animal Feed · Wed Mar 12, 2008 11:54 am

If you're limiting it to only two subject tournaments, then you're going to inherently advantage specialists in whichever two subjects are picked over specialists in other subjects.

An idea might be to do a general tournament, a trash tournament, a humanities tournament, and a science tournament. Also, it might be a better idea to do at least two-person teams, so somebody who doesn't know, say, science, doesn't have to sit through multiple rounds of being stomped on.

Certainly, when it comes to things you could be doing at 3:30 AM, playing an unedited all-Science tournament written mostly by non-Science people does seem to have a certain charm.

AKKOLADE · Post by **AKKOLADE** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 12:17 pm

BuzzerZen wrote:Staying awake for 24 hours is trivial as long as there is sufficient excitement. Hell, we should have it at somebody's house.

Naked quiz bowl is the future.

ValenciaQBowl · Post by **ValenciaQBowl** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 12:24 pm

Naked quiz bowl is the future

I'd like to announce my retirement from the game.

Anyway, I'm too old to want to stay up 24 straight hours for anything, but if this is ancillary to Chicago, I'd be okay with bringing in coffee and bagels in the morning. Of course, Chicago's festivities are already pretty damn close to 24 hours, anyway.

grapesmoker · Post by **grapesmoker** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 12:32 pm

How could I not want to do this?

waspman23 · Post by **waspman23** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 1:09 pm

Now if we could just add alcohol to the event.....

Gautam · Post by **Gautam** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 1:43 pm

waspman23 wrote:Now if we could just add alcohol to the event.....

That would just result in complaining!

Just kidding

EDIT: yeah, I'd be totally up for this so long as it's reasonable on the pocket. If not, I can surely contribute questions and such.

Post by **Auks Ran Ova** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 1:43 pm

waspman23 wrote:Now if we could just add alcohol to the event.....

How is that not practically a given?

Post by **DumbJaques** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 1:50 pm

My concerns with this are of course not related to the 24 hour quizbowl part (CO Saturday featured for me 17+ hours of quizbowl on about 2 hours of sleep), but rather:

1) Everyone writing 4 20/20 unedited packets? I'm not sure how well I see that going.
2) I agree that doubles would be preferable here, particularly if we do subject tournaments and really just given the nature of the event.

Captain Sinico · Post by **Captain Sinico** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 2:05 pm

As an instance of my "will play literally anything" policy, I will play this!
I wonder if it's necessary (or, like, possible) for everyone to write 80/80, though. Maybe you could do more like 20/20 each and have 4 players with byes on any given round?

MaS

Pilgrim · Post by **Pilgrim** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 2:29 pm

I'd most likely be interested, especially if it was in Chicago.

However, I do agree that 80/80 is an awful lot for one person to write - especially considering that with all the interest that has already been expressed in this and the fact that there is no editor to combine packets, it seems like we will end up with more packets than we can run in 24 hours. I would agree with the suggestion of having 2-4 people collaborate on a set of packets and have byes at the same time.

dtaylor4 · Post by **dtaylor4** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 2:32 pm

To help with organization of questions, why not have each person team up with a freelancer or two and work on each participant's submissions?

salamanca · Post by **salamanca** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 2:55 pm

Michigan basically did this the week before both NAQT Nats and ACF Nats from 01-03 by reading every good tournament in our archive back to back to back etc.. Highlights include Litvak telling me to leave him the fuck alone after I chastised him for falling asleep and Subash taking the train over from Chicago to play through a marathon session with us. I believe Thorsley at one point might have left to take a nap, came back, and rejoined the madness.

Anyways, I highly recommend doing this at least once to prepare your squad for the rigors of Nats.

Ezequiel

Sima Guang Hater · Post by **Sima Guang Hater** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 3:29 pm

Outstanding; I'd do this, provided there was a vending machine stocked with Cola somewhere in the building. Writing 80/80 per person seems almost impossible, though.

Also, I notice science gets the shaft, as usual

Strongside · Post by **Strongside** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 3:37 pm

I would have interest in playing a tournament like this. Obviously a lot of things would have to be worked out and finalized for this to be a go, but the idea is awesome.

pray for elves · Post by **pray for elves** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 3:40 pm

I would definitely want to be in on this if possible.

Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN) · Wed Mar 12, 2008 3:52 pm

Banana paper wrote:I would much rather see people put their efforts towards spreading these tournaments out. This would be fun in no way towards the end.

Mike Bentley · Post by **Mike Bentley** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 4:08 pm

Serioulsy, I can't think of any good reasons why this wouldn't be better over two (or more) days.

Skepticism and Animal Feed · Wed Mar 12, 2008 4:18 pm

Perhaps instead of four quizbowl tournaments, we can have say two quizbowl tournaments, followed by quizing-type amusements like 20 questions, ACF Pyramid, Botticelli, Vespucci, etc?

SnookerUSF · Post by **SnookerUSF** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 4:50 pm

DumbJaques wrote:My concerns with this are of course not related to the 24 hour quizbowl part (CO Saturday featured for me 17+ hours of quizbowl on about 2 hours of sleep)

Not to mention the two hours of generally aimless driving in North Chicago....

Post by **Susan** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 5:26 pm

Argh, no Vespucci.

The Goffman Prophecies · Wed Mar 12, 2008 6:29 pm

waspman23 wrote:Now if we could just add alcohol to the event.....

Princeton's done this one too. See 2004 Buzzerfest.

fleurdelivre · Post by **fleurdelivre** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 10:41 pm

I'll volunteer to staff the whole 24 hours and would also edit, say, lit packets for duplicates, etc. (not so much on the content, but still a vast improvement over going unedited, no?)

First Chairman · Post by **First Chairman** » Thu Mar 13, 2008 10:52 am

So I'm going to ask... what's the security policy of the buildings you intend to use? Just find out... not a lot of places like having "sleep-in" events in buildings. Cleaning staff need time to clean you know.

johnboy81918 · Post by **johnboy81918** » Thu Mar 13, 2008 4:10 pm

555 95472 wrote:Outstanding; I'd do this, provided there was a vending machine stocked with Cola somewhere in the building. Writing 80/80 per person seems almost impossible, though.

Also, I notice science gets the shaft, as usual

I agree with the necessity of large supplies of caffeine for an event like this to be possible.

Also, completely off topic, your sig rocks, if it references what I think it does :) (if not, I'll just pretend it does anyway, so as to not ruin the moment for me)

Sima Guang Hater · Post by **Sima Guang Hater** » Thu Mar 13, 2008 4:23 pm

johnboy81918 wrote:Also, completely off topic, your sig rocks, if it references what I think it does :) (if not, I'll just pretend it does anyway, so as to not ruin the moment for me)

Shhh. Too many haters around.

johnboy81918 · Post by **johnboy81918** » Thu Mar 13, 2008 4:44 pm

555 95472 wrote:
johnboy81918 wrote:Also, completely off topic, your sig rocks, if it references what I think it does :) (if not, I'll just pretend it does anyway, so as to not ruin the moment for me)
Shhh. Too many haters around.

I know, how sad. Do you still read and/or watch?

Post by **DumbJaques** » Thu Mar 13, 2008 4:52 pm

Anyone who continues to discuss anime in this thread will have every one of their posts turned into declarations of sensual desire for Dren Rollins and words of praise for VETO.

Matt Weiner · Post by **Matt Weiner** » Thu Mar 13, 2008 4:53 pm

DumbJaques wrote:Anyone who continues to discuss anime in this thread will have every one of their posts turned into declarations of sensual desire for Dren Rollins and words of praise for VETO.

your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter

Sima Guang Hater · Post by **Sima Guang Hater** » Thu Mar 13, 2008 5:44 pm

Pin-tailed Manakin wrote:So I'm going to ask... what's the security policy of the buildings you intend to use? Just find out... not a lot of places like having "sleep-in" events in buildings. Cleaning staff need time to clean you know.

Yeah this is a good point. Ideally we could just hold it in someone's house, or dorm, or whatever.

grapesmoker · Post by **grapesmoker** » Thu Mar 13, 2008 7:49 pm

555 95472 wrote:
Pin-tailed Manakin wrote:So I'm going to ask... what's the security policy of the buildings you intend to use? Just find out... not a lot of places like having "sleep-in" events in buildings. Cleaning staff need time to clean you know.
Yeah this is a good point. Ideally we could just hold it in someone's house, or dorm, or whatever.

I know what the theme of my next party is going to be...

evilmonkey · Post by **evilmonkey** » Wed Mar 19, 2008 10:15 am

Given an appropriate time/place, I would participate. However, I'm fairly certain that, unedited, my questions would be ridiculously bad

Mr. Kwalter · Post by **Mr. Kwalter** » Thu Mar 20, 2008 3:47 pm

Okay, well, it sounds like this is a viable event, and it sounds like Chicago is the best place to do it. The question is now when. To me, it seems like we should do it in the summer. If we do CO in late July, we could do this in June. If we do CO in early July, we could do this in August. Once we set the date we can work out the specifics. What are people's thoughts (you may also express thoughts on the CO date, obviously)?

DakarKra · Post by **DakarKra** » Thu Mar 20, 2008 5:41 pm

If Chicago's the site, I definitely can't come. But I'd love to throw some questions at the person charged with organizing things, if/when someone is chosen to do so, for a complete packet or patching up other stuff.

Mr. Kwalter · Post by **Mr. Kwalter** » Fri Mar 21, 2008 2:32 am

So, after some IRC discussion the following ideas have been floated:

Location: A hotel somewhere in central New Jersey. It would be proximal to at least four major airports plus after the conclusion of the tournament players could travel to NYC and consume beating cobra hearts.

Date: August 2nd, 2008.

Tournaments:

A) One packet sub tournament with an editor. The submitted packets would be 24/24, and the packets played would be 20/20. Since none of the high-profile editors would want to edit this tournament, it would probably be fine for someone with the will and some skill to do it provided that their first recourse when replacing a question is to go to the extra questions in the packet, regardless of whether it fucks up the distribution.

B) A trash tournament, written by someone

C) and D) Subject tournaments. By my count there are currently 5 proposed (though perhaps not publicly) side events for CO. Certainly two of them could migrate to the 24 hour affair.

Also, the entire tournament would be doubles. The doubles are set for the first tournament, but after that, there will be a draft for each subsequent tournament. Draft picks will be awarded based on how people finish in the preceding tournament.

Thoughts?

wd4gdz · Post by **wd4gdz** » Fri Mar 21, 2008 9:40 am

I will have no $$ or desire to attend this, so I'd be willing to edit.

fleurdelivre · Post by **fleurdelivre** » Fri Mar 21, 2008 11:01 am

If New Jersey's the site, I'll help with logistics...

Mike Bentley · Post by **Mike Bentley** » Fri Mar 21, 2008 11:12 am

I potentially can edit the trash tournament, but it depends how sick I am of trash after writing ASS. It is likely I will be attending, although probably not staying awake for all of it.

DakarKra · Post by **DakarKra** » Sat Mar 22, 2008 12:48 pm

Wait... the tournament will be in New Jersey? Hey... I live in New Jersey... I'M IN!!! I'd love to help with reading, writing, and maybe a little editing, whenever someone is chosen to do any of that stuff for any of the tournaments.

evilmonkey · Post by **evilmonkey** » Mon Mar 24, 2008 2:29 pm

I'm probably in, dependent on how much I have to pay (including airfare and whatnot). Also dependent on my actually making money this summer.

silverscreentest · Post by **silverscreentest** » Tue Mar 25, 2008 10:05 am

Has anyone considered using this event as a fund-raising opportunity, such as getting people to pledge an amount per hour you're awake?