2015-2016 CALI Specific Question Discussion

[Jason Cheng]

Requests to see specific questions and discuss them go here. We welcome any and all thoughts on our questions, and would be more than happy to discuss the thinking behind any of them.

[Jason Cheng]

In terms of editing, I handled the literature, current events/civics, and misc./trash for this tournament. I'd like to thank Charlie Mann for writing lots of questions for the literature and providing a constant source of good question ideas when I was running dry on my own. I'd also like to thank Corry for his feedback and help on the current events portion of the set.

I'd like to hear what people thought about some specific points I approached my categories with:

Literature
I tried to shape the literature stylistically in a few ways. This took the form of questions such as those on literary forms and genres (tossup on Japan, bonus on poetic forms from around the world, tossup on Poe where the early clues were about poetic devices in "The Bells", bonus on elements of Aristotle's Poetics, bonus on breaking the fourth wall/aside/monologue). I also tried asking questions that demonstrated connections to historical context of literature (such as the bonus on The Crucible/Second Red Scare/preschool teachers with clue about the Satanic Ritual Abuse scandal). I thought this style would reward students that showed an interest in the kind of things that come up in high school classes--this also took the form of questions such as the Lord of the Flies/Golding/dead parachutist bonus which tried testing for knowledge of symbolism in a book that high school teachers use as a primer for literary symbolism.

I also tried to integrate a wide variety of clues that I thought were accessible and went beyond the typical "memorize plots and characters" approach to literature, mostly because I thought this was an interesting aspect of literature and would make questions fun to play. One specific example I'd like feedback on is the bonus on Frantz Fanon/Wole Soyinka/comic books that also mentioned Fanon's Black Skin, White Masks, although there are many others I'm curious about.

Additionally, I stuck something like 6.5 questions on Shakespeare topics into the set intentionally. The reason I did this (besides the fact that I've read those things and it was easy to write the questions without spending too long on research) was because I'm of the opinion that any of the Shakespeare works that I wrote questions on were more likely to have been read by the average high school student almost anywhere in the world than, say, The Death of Artemio Cruz (which I also tossed up in the TU on Fuentes). Off the top of my head, the works used were his sonnets, the assassination of Julius Caesar, Macbeth, Romeo, Othello, the bonus on Twelfth Night/Midsummer Night's Dream/Two Gentlemen of Verona, and the bonus on dramatic devices in Hamlet. I think my opinion holds true for every work in there besides Two Gentlemen of Verona. I'd like to know how this overabundance of Shakespeare was received.

Current Events/Civics
I don't have that much to say here besides the fact that I put a ton of civics and high school level judicial history in the set. This was mostly due to my own belief that people should know these basic things due to their relevance to current events. For example, the grand juries bonus mentioned the indictment controversy over Ferguson and NY, the judicial history of gay marriage mentioned Obergefell, etc. I can elaborate more on this if people want.

Misc./Trash
I don't have much to say about this either since it's by definition hard to say that I had some kind of philosophy here. I will say that I tried to keep it as widely distributed as possible, since I've noticed that a lot of trash tends to cluster up into hyper-specific questions about things the question writers enjoy. This took the form of macro- and micro-level distribution management. In macro terms, I included the questions on fashion shows and high heels (I can't take credit for writing them, those were all Charlie's excellent ideas by the way). On a micro-level, I tried to do as many common link and NAQT-style "miscellaneous" clues as possible--the NBA bonus that also used Parks and Recreation clues on all three parts was an example of this, as was the common link on "sugar" using songs from 3-4 different genres and eras of music (I would've included The Archies but that would've been the hardest clue for kids these days).

[1992 in spaceflight]

Reading through the set, it seems like there were a few bonuses didn't have a middle part (The Congo lit bonus-the parts on Naipaul and King Leopold-is the only bonus through 4 packets that strikes me as not having a middle part). I'll update this post once I've finished reading through the set.

[Lo, a momentary rabbit-stage]

I was responsible for much of the mythology, a good deal of the literature, the philosophy, and some errata. I definitely tried to go a little more adventurous on a lot of my questions, and I'd like some feedback on those especially. For the philosophy, I really tried to limit the amount of tossups on philosophers / works in favor of concepts that are applicable to multiple disciplines with philosophy that high schoolers might have some more exposure to. I'm very interested to see how the fashion tossup and bonus were received, and thanks to Jason for letting me put that in. As far as bonuses go, I'd like some feedback on the Hitler art bonus (too contrived?), the Christmas potlatch bonus, and some of the more unconventional lit: namely, the bonus on the letter e, the common link bonus on wards, and the bonus on literary techniques (monologues etc.) Here's a quick breakdown of what I wrote:

TUs:

Myth:
Eyes // Ireland // Snake // dogs

Philo:
Hegel // Kierkegaard // free will // logic // Socrates // truth

SS:
Milgram // children

Art:
Grant Wood // Salvador Dali

Religions
bar mitzvah

Trash:
fashion shows

Literature:
Albee // Antigone // India // Modest Proposal // Aristophanes

Bonuses:

Myth:
Dwarf / Mjolnir / Ring ///
Raven / Cu Chulainn / Muses ///
Set / Horus / Apep ///

Philo:
"God is dead" / Nietzsche / Heidegger ///
Germany / phenomenology / existentialism ///
Confucius / Arendt / history ///
Wittgenstein / Chinese / Hume ///
Kant / Marx / Sartre ///
Russell / math / teapot

SS:
Boas / potlach / Christmas ///
Anna Freud / Adler / Sigmund Freud ///
Maslow / humanist / Frankl ///

Trash:
high heels / Loubotin / platforms ///

Art:
Dada / degenerate / Hitler ///
Liberty Leading the People / flags / Rauschenberg ///
Experience Music Project / Bilbao / Gehry ///

Literature:
Glass / Salinger / Seymour ///
O'Neill / Tyrone / alcoholism ///
O'Connor / A Good Man Is Hard To Find / Grandma ///
Rebecca / du Maurier / Birds ///
Master Harold and the boys / dancing / kite flying ///
Never Let Me Go / Ishiguro / UK ///
ward / Solzhenitsyn / Chekhov ///
Don Juan / Byron / Man and Superman ///
"A Room of One's Own" / de Beauvoir / feminism ///
letter e / Patrick White / Nobel ///
Sportsman's Sketches / Turgenev / Dostoyevsky ///
Gregor Samsa / Greta / Kafka ///
Kazantzakis / Greece / Dante ///
Ball of Fat / Maupassant / France ///
Paz / Aztecs / Cortez ///
Mahfouz / Egypt / Cairo ///
Owen / Sassoon / WWI ///
breaking the fourth wall / aside / monologue ///
Oates / McCullers / Shelley ///

Thanks again to the editors for being receptive to my often completely unworkable ideas and for providing a great first writing experience! CALI was a lot of fun, and I hope to do something similar in the future. Any and all feedback is welcome.

[basilosaurus]

Hi, thanks for writing the set, it was a lot of fun

Can I see these tossups?

Sri Lanka
Ukraine
Argentina
Distillation
Languages

Thanks!

[Jason Cheng]

Hi, thanks for writing the set, it was a lot of fun

Can I see these tossups?

Sri Lanka
Ukraine
Argentina
Distillation
Languages

Thanks!

10. In Islamic tradition, a mountain on this island is where Adam fell to Earth, leaving a prominent footprint on the peak. This island is connected to the mainland by a series of shallow limestone shoals, which people were able to walk across until the 15th century, known as Adam's Bridge. On this island, the sacred tooth of Buddha is currently housed in the former royal palace of the Kingdom of Kandy. The (*) Tamil Tigers were a separatist group that once operated on this island, which was known as Ceylon during the British colonial era. For 10 points, name this island country south of India.
ANSWER: Sri Lanka [or the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka or Shri Lamka or Ilankai; accept Ceylon before mentioned]

19. In this country, the independence fighter and Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera is considered a national hero by many right-wing groups, including the Right Sector party. In May 2015 this country appointed the former Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili as a regional governor. In February 2015 the fragile Minsk II (*) ceasefire came into effect in this country, which has witnessed fighting in its eastern cities of Luhansk and Donetsk since early 2014. Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 was shot down over, for 10 points, what country that lost Crimea to Russia in 2014?
ANSWER: Ukraine

18. In this country, the prosecutor Alberto Nisman was mysteriously killed after he accused this country's president of covering up Iran's involvement in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center. In August 2014 this country voluntarily defaulted on its national debt after a New York state court ruled that it still had to repay debts from its previous $130 billion dollar default in 2001. This (*) South American country's current president Cristina Kirchner is a member of the Justicialist party, which was founded in the 1940s by Juan Peron (wahn per-"OWN"). For 10 points, name this country whose capital is Buenos Aires (BWAY-noes "EYE"-rais).
ANSWER: Argentina [or Argentine Republic; or República Argentina]

14. This procedure can be modeled visually using a series of horizontal lines drawn to represent the number of stages needed. A Perkin triangle is used in the vacuum variant of this procedure, and the number of theoretical plates that it needs can be calculated with McCabe-Thiele method. One form of this procedure is used to split up large hydrocarbons, and it is unable to completely separate water from (*) alcohol because they form an azeotrope. This procedure obeys Raoult's law, which relates vapor pressure to temperature. For 10 points, name this procedure of boiling a liquid to separate it from others.
ANSWER: distillation [accept any specific types such as vacuum distillation]

2. A philosophical movement that studies the "ordinary" types of these systems asserts that they cannot be analyzed by logical truth conditions in sentences. A mostly-resolved debate in the field studying these systems discusses whether they come prior to thought, as in the (*) Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. In Word and Object, WVO Quine used the example of a native tribe and a rabbit to assert that only context can give meaning to these systems. The largest family of these systems is believed to trace its origins back to Proto-Indo-European. For 10 points, name these systems of communication studied by scholars like Noam Chomsky, examples of which include Swahili and English.
ANSWER: languages [accept linguistics; accept ordinary language or any adjective paired with "language"; prompt on "communication" or "speech" or other such terms]

[centraliacoach]

Can I see the infinite question? It was in rounds eight or nine I think.

[Corry]

Can I see the infinite question? It was in rounds eight or nine I think.

13. Two objects with this property are the subject of the continuum hypothesis, which equates aleph one and the power set of aleph one. Georg Cantor proved that one set had this property by taking the complement of the n-th digit of every element in his diagonal argument. The namesake structure in George Hilbert's Grand Hotel paradox has this property. Sets with this property are divided into countable and uncountable based on whether they can establish a one-to-one correspondence with the (*) integers. The rationals have this property because one can always add one more number to a list of them. For 10 points, name this property often symbolized by a sideways eight.
ANSWER: infinite [accept transfinite; accept uncountable before "countable"; accept answers that indicate an infinite number of objects]

[1992 in spaceflight]

So in a protest that ended up affecting who had the advantage in an advantage final at Centralia, someone buzzed in early and said "countable" before "countable" was mentioned in the question. Is "countable" acceptable based on how the clues are written?

[centraliacoach]

Specifically, the buzz came immediately after "Cantor." We were unable to find anything to say that answer was incorrect at that point. Was that ruling correct?

[coldstonesteveaustin]

I believe that the two objects referred to in the first line are the set of integers, which are countable, and the real numbers, which are uncountable. Based on that, the infinite property is the only one that applies to both. We only accepted uncountability because the Cantor clue uniquely identifies uncountability rather than infinity but we didn't want to cut that clue out. We're also going to clarify that the CH equates the cardinality of the continuum to aleph one rather than aleph one to its power set, though that part of the clue is sort of extraneous.

If in case the two objects are aleph one and its power set, aleph one is definitely uncountable, while I believe that its power set (which I think is aleph two?) is also uncountable.

[centraliacoach]

But since Cantor also put forth the CH, simply hearing his name wouldn't have necessarily clarified on its own. Based one acceptability of uncountable at that point, I would think countable is equally acceptable.

[Santa Claus]

But since Cantor also put forth the CH, simply hearing his name wouldn't have necessarily clarified on its own. Based one acceptability of uncountable at that point, I would think countable is equally acceptable.

In light of comments on the question, I have opted to rewrite the answerline to prompt on both "countable" and "uncountable", as well as rewrite the second line (beyond merely the word Cantor) to remove the preference for either of those two as correct answers. The point Hidehiro raised about "countable" being unacceptable because it does not apply to both of the subjects of the first clue still stands; it was just unfair to accept "uncountable" considering it had the same problems.

[swaymun.shahee]

Can I see these tossups:
New York City
Gogol
Withering Heights
Sun
Crimean War
Hemoglobin
Ammonia
Pride and Prejudice
A Streetcar Named Desire
Interstellar

[coldstonesteveaustin]

6. Mark Twain wrote that, whenever he read this novel, he wanted to "dig up" the author's skeleton and beat its "skull" with its "shin bone." During a ball in this novel, a character offends the guests through his inability to make small talk and his refusal to dance. This novel opens by noting a "truth (*) universally acknowledged, that a single," rich man must want a wife. In this novel, the tenant of Netherfield Park rescues Lydia by paying George Wickham to marry her, and his best friend Mr. Bingley eventually marries Jane. For 10 point, what novel in which Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet overcome bad first impressions was written by Jane Austen?
ANSWER: Pride and Prejudice

10. During this war, the city of Petropavlovsk (PEH-truh-PAHV-lovsk) was unsuccessfully besieged in Kamchatka. The Victoria Cross was originally introduced to honor British veterans of this war. It technically began with a dispute over who had the right to protect Christians in the Ottoman Empire. During an invasion in this war, a "thin red line" of British troops fought off a larger Russian force at the Battle of (*) Balaclava (bah-luh-KLAH-vuh), which occurred at the same time as the year-long siege of Sevastopol. For 10 points, name this major 1850s war in which several European countries fought on a namesake peninsula in southern Ukraine.
ANSWER: Crimean War

17. This object's spectrum contains a green spectral line that was initially attributed to a new element but was actually doubly ionized iron. The Homestake experiment discovered flavor oscillation by observing this object's namesake neutrino problem. This body is observed by the SOHO (so-ho) satellite, which is able to observe the transit of a family of comets that "graze" on and occasionally (*) collide with it. This body's strong magnetic field creates dark depressions in the photosphere, its namesake "spots". The distance between it and the Earth is defined as the astronomical unit. For 10 points, name this yellow star found in the center of the solar system.
ANSWER: the Sun [or Sol; accept descriptive answers mentioning the star in our solar system before mentioned; prompt on "corona"]

4. This compound is reacted with chloramine in the synthesis of hydrazine ("HYDRA"-zeen), and can be reacted with sodium hypochlorite to create monochloramine. This compound is used along with an alkali metal to reduce benzene to cyclohexane in a reaction named for Birch. The most common process for creating this compound originally used an osmium catalyst, but has since switched to less expensive (*) iron. That process, the most commonly performed in the world, produces this compound at high temperature and pressure for inclusion in fertilizer. This product of the Haber process is created from hydrogen and nitrogen gas. For 10 points, name this polar molecule with formula NH3.
ANSWER: ammonia [or nitrogen trihydride; or trihydrogen nitride; accept NH3 before read; prompt on "azane"]

7. The Hill coefficient of this protein is around 2.8, meaning that its binding is strongly cooperative. One variant of this protein can result from alpha thalassemia and has greater affinity because of its two gamma subunits. A point mutation on this protein turns glutamic acid into valine, resulting in rigid strands forming into a characteristic (*) sickle shape. This protein binds carbon monoxide almost 200 times more strongly than its intended substrate, which binds to the iron in its porphyrin (POR-fuh-rin) group. For 10 points, name this protein found in red blood cells, which gives them their red color and transports oxygen throughout the body.
ANSWER: hemoglobin

16. At the end of a story by this author, a menacing ghost shakes a large fist at a timid watchman before stalking off into the night. Near the end of his life, this author was told that his writing was sinful and as a result burned many of his unpublished manuscripts. Dostoyevsky (dahs-tuh-YEFF-skee) supposedly said of the Russian realists that "We all come out from" one of this author's stories. In a novel by this author, (*) Pavel Chichikov plots to take out a fraudulent loan in the name of the title entities. Akaky Akakyevich (ah-KAH-kee ah-kah-kee-YEH-vich) fails to receive help from the government after the title article of clothing is stolen from him in a short story by this author. For 10 points, name this Russian author of Dead Souls and "The Overcoat."
ANSWER: Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol (GO-gohl)

18. A crime-ridden alley in this city known as Mulberry Street was shown in the photograph Bandit's Roost. In this city, Diane Arbus photographed a small child standing in a park holding a pair of toy hand grenades. In 1964 Andy Warhol spent over 6 hours filming a silent black-and-white movie of a skyscraper in this city. A white-shirted man falls head-first from one of its skyscrapers in a (*) 2001 photograph known as The Falling Man. Eleven construction workers sit along a girder at its Rockefeller Center in the photograph Lunch atop a Skyscraper. For 10 points, name this city where a sailor was photographed kissing a random nurse in V-J Day in Times Square.
ANSWER: New York City [or NYC]

9. This play's opening stage directions describe a "blue piano" that "expresses the spirit of the life which goes on there." This play ends with the "swelling music" of that same "blue piano" as a man announces that "the game is seven card stud." One of this play's characters, who is accused by her sister of abandoning Belle Reve, hides in Eunice's home while her husband (*) screams her name from the sidewalk. While being carted away to a mental hospital, a woman declares that she has "always depended on the kindness of strangers" at the end of this play. For 10 points, Stella, Stanley, and Blanche appear in what play by Tennessee Williams?
ANSWER: A Streetcar Named Desire

14. The special effects in this film were achieved with the help of consultant Kip Thorne. In this film, Matt Damon plays Dr. Mann, who kills Romilly with a hidden bomb. The protagonist of this film uses a tesseract to transmit data from the robot TARS and help his daughter solve (*) Brand's equation. In this film, Murph leads an exodus to Saturn, while Cooper and Amelia travel through a wormhole and orbit a black hole named Gargantua. For 10 points, name this 2014 film about finding a new home for mankind, directed by Christopher Nolan.
ANSWER: Interstellar

17. During a nightmare in this novel, a gentleman grabs at a tree branch knocking on his window but instead feels a dead girl's hand. The two central estates of this novel are separated by moors. In this novel, a "dark-skinned" orphan child overhears his childhood sweetheart say "it would degrade [h]er" to marry him." That girl in this novel instead marries (*) Edgar, whom she had met after being bitten by dogs while trespassing on Thrushcross Grange. This novel opens with Mr. Lockwood renting a room at the title estate, where he meets the servant Nelly Dean. For 10 points, name this novel about the tragic lives of Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff written by Emily Brontë.
ANSWER: Wuthering Heights

[adamsil]

Just a couple of complaints that I heard from the Centennial mirror:

The amino acid bonus part didn't work very well. The clue said something like "these compounds are named for having a singly-bonded nitrogen", and I had a team say "amine" in response to that clue, then protest it. You ought to clarify that there's a carboxyl group too.

Also, in the aforementioned distillation tossup--Raoult's Law definitely does not relate vapor pressure to temperature. That's normally Antoine's equation.

The leadin to the Moses question was unmistakably too easy--every player on both teams slammed their buzzers upon hearing it. That's by far the best-known story from Numbers.

Two "applied" physics bonuses, the baseball one and the roller coaster(? Can't quite remember what the circumstances were, but the answer was "centripetal" force) had hard parts that were too vague. I still don't know how you were supposed to tease out "impulse" from the baseball clue rather than "momentum" or "energy" or "velocity", and the centripetal force clue, though a pretty common problem to solve in HS physics, didn't really work for me either.

I'll leave a couple other comments in the general thread.

[Halved Xenon Stinging]

Could i see the Durer tossup in round 13? I reflex buzzed with Manet as soon as the question mentioned Maximilian.

[Corry]

Could i see the Durer tossup in round 13? I reflex buzzed with Manet as soon as the question mentioned Maximilian.

16. This artist, who depicted Maximilian I holding a pomegranate, sketched a pair of Praying Hands on blue colored paper. A skull rests on a window ledge and a lion lies on the ground at the foreground of one of this artist's engravings. Besides that version of Saint (*) Jerome in His Study, this man included a figure with an hourglass on a pale horse in his Knight, Death, and the Devil. This man painted a self-portrait noted for its resemblance to Christ and portrayed Death, Famine, War, and Plague in one work. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse is by, for 10 points, what German artist of many woodcuts?
ANSWER: Albrecht Dürer

[Halved Xenon Stinging]

Could i see the Durer tossup in round 13? I reflex buzzed with Manet as soon as the question mentioned Maximilian.

16. This artist, who depicted Maximilian I holding a pomegranate, sketched a pair of Praying Hands on blue colored paper. A skull rests on a window ledge and a lion lies on the ground at the foreground of one of this artist's engravings. Besides that version of Saint (*) Jerome in His Study, this man included a figure with an hourglass on a pale horse in his Knight, Death, and the Devil. This man painted a self-portrait noted for its resemblance to Christ and portrayed Death, Famine, War, and Plague in one work. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse is by, for 10 points, what German artist of many woodcuts?
ANSWER: Albrecht Dürer

Maybe you could add "Holy Roman Emperor" in front of Maximilian?

[needhamquizteam]

It was a well written set, but in one tossup about DNA. I think it is quite rare that DNA is often referred to as a "compound", in most resources I have seen it referred to as a molecule.

[Corry]

Maybe you could add "Holy Roman Emperor" in front of Maximilian?

Done.

It was a well written set, but in one tossup about DNA. I think it is quite rare that DNA is often referred to as a "compound", in most resources I have seen it referred to as a molecule.

Fair enough. Also changed.