2022 ARCADIA: Announcement

[mico]

We are pleased to announce a second edition of ARCADIA (A Regs-minus Carolina And Duke Invitational of Academia), stylized as ARCADIIA. This set will be intended for collegiate play in late fall/early winter 2022, and will be written primarily by current members and alumni of Quizbowl teams in the Research Triangle of North Carolina. We are aiming for 2.5 dots on Ophir’s difficulty scale, comparable to 2021 ARCADIA and 2020 IKEA.

We plan to have a total of 14 packets of 20/20, plus tiebreakers. Tossups will be capped at 7.5 lines pre-powermarking, although most will be kept under 7 lines. Bonuses will be capped at 8 lines.

Our distribution is as follows:

4/4 Literature
1/1 American
1/1 European
1/1 British/Commonwealth
1/1 World/Other
4/4 History
1/1 American
1/1 European
1/1 World
1/1 British/Commonwealth/Ancient/Other
4/4 Science
1/1 Biology
1/1 Chemistry
1/1 Physics
1/1 Other
3/3 Arts
1/1 Visual
1/1 Auditory
1/1 Other
1.5/1.5 Beliefs
1.5/1.5 Social Science
1/1 Philosophy
1/1 Geography/Current Events/Other Academic

Our editing team is as follows:

Head - Grant Peet
Literature - Henry Goff (American and World/Other), Payton Schubel (European), Caroline Mao (British)
History - Ganon Evans (American), Grant Peet (European, World, and British/Commonwealth), Kevin Thomas (Ancient/Archaeology)
Science - Hasna Karim (Biology), Justin Zhang (Chemistry), Jim Fan (Physics), Vincent Du (Other)
Fine Arts - Ganon Evans (Visual, Visual Other), Jacob Egol (Auditory), Eric Gunter (Auditory Other)
Beliefs - Kevin Thomas, Hasna Karim (Islam/Subcontinent), Jacob Egol (Judaism)
Social Science - Kevin Jiang, Ashish Subramanian (Linguistics)
Philosophy - Jonathan Shauf and Michael Bucknall
Geography/Current Events/Other Academic - Ashish Subramanian
Logistics - Jacob Egol

[Heiliger Dankgesang]

This set is currently 55% written, and we’re anticipating that we’ll reach completion around mid-October (i.e., a week or two later compared to last year).

With that being said, we are now re-opening our host bid form to take mirror requests. This year, we are aiming to host our open playtest mirror on October 29. Afterward, the set will be available for all other mirrors between November 12 and December 31, with the exception being that we may host online high school and/or open mirrors in early January. Our mirror fee will again be $45 per team.

If you would like to host a mirror of 2022 ARCADIA, please fill out this Google Form.

Closed high school teams may play collegiate mirrors of 2022 ARCADIA at the discretion of the mirrors' hosts. All closed high school teams must have an adult chaperone.

We hope to have at least one host per geographical region according to ACF's regional groupings. A running list of mirrors by region will be kept here:

Open playtest mirror: Online; October 30, 2022
Northeast / New England: Harvard; November 12, 2022
Upper Mid-Atlantic: Princeton; December 10, 2022
Lower Mid-Atlantic: Duke; November 19, 2022
Southeast: Georgia Tech; January 21, 2023 (rescheduled from 12/3/22) canceled
Great Lakes: Ohio State; December 3, 2022
Midwest: Northwestern; November 12, 2022
North:
South-Central:
Rockies:
California: UC Berkeley; December 4, 2022
Florida:
Northwest:
Eastern Canada: McMaster; November 26, 2022
United Kingdom: Durham and Sheffield; January 14, 2023
Online (All Regions): Online; February 11, 2023
High School: Online (hosted by Ohio State), February 12, 2023

[Heiliger Dankgesang]

Time for another progress update— this set is now 83% written and our editing pace is starting to pick up, so we're on target to reach completion around mid-October. We have also now confirmed our playtest mirror for October 30.

We are still looking for mirror sites in most regions in the US, Canada, and the UK— please fill out the above Google Form if you are interested in hosting!

[Heiliger Dankgesang]

Just a reminder that we are still looking for more mirrors, particularly in the North, on the West Coast, in Canada, and in the UK!

[Heiliger Dankgesang]

After experimenting with it at our playtest two weeks ago and our first round of mirrors this past weekend, the ARCADIA Team would like to formally announce that we are requiring hosts this year to use MODAQ to assist us in collecting tossup and bonus conversion data. I have created this guide for using MODAQ for hosts to give to their moderators. (For more general information about MODAQ, please see this post.)

Additionally, this is a final call for in-person hosts, particularly in the United Kingdom and in the North. For teams who are otherwise unable to play an in-person mirror, we plan to run a nationwide online mirror for closed college teams (similar to Winter Closed), which will likely happen in early January (either January 7, 14, or 21— we also plan to run a high school mirror, likely on another of those dates).

[Heiliger Dankgesang]

In case it wasn't directly mentioned at any mirrors thus far— anyone who played or staffed a mirror of ARCADIA is welcome to join our set's private discussion forum. You can request to join it in the "usergroups" portion of your User Control Panel.

[Heiliger Dankgesang]

Other than the Southeast mirror (which we are working with Georgia Tech to reschedule for a date in January) and the UK mirror, all in-person collegiate mirrors of ARCADIA have concluded. Our next priority is to host a non–regionally-restricted online mirror for all college teams who were unavailable for any of the regional mirrors— a poll is forthcoming to gauge interest for the date on which that should be held.* There is a small chance that we may also allow closed high school teams to play this online mirror (a decision has not been made regarding that), but it is likely that we will also host a high-school-only mirror as we did last year.

* For purposes of non-competition: The ARCADIA Team will make a point to not schedule the nationwide mirror on the same date as the Georgia Tech (and possibly UK) mirror(s), such that as many teams as possible can play their regional mirrors as originally intended.

[Heiliger Dankgesang]

Update: if you are/were unavailable for any of the regional mirrors of ARCADIA, registration is open for our non-regionally-restricted online mirror, to be held on February 11. Additionally, Ohio State has graciously offered to host a high school mirror of our set, to be held on February 12. We anticipate that mirrors of 2022 ARCADIA will conclude following these two mirrors.