2022 WORKSHOP: Specific Question Discussion

[Santa Claus]

This thread is for discussion of specific questions.

[Sima Guang Hater]

PACKET 1:
- The moon TU narrows it pretty early to sun or moon (mesoamerican stuff and vaguely-defined location)
- "Flagstaff" and "facilitate research" seems harder than the clue after it for light pollution, since the Lowell Observatory being there is pretty famous in my estimation
- The prophets TU was a great balance between text and tradition for this topic, I really enjoyed it
- Phylogenetic trees TU is very well-written, MRBAYES is a very popular software package
- Putting Madelung in power for lattices seems non-ideal
- Someone who knows more about this stuff than me - is there something that clearly differentiates a synthesizer and computer in this question given that software synthesizers are fairly popular?
- Very exciting to see LIWC come up, psychologists seem to love it for some reason
- Tunability seems hard, but also important after reading about it, so I suppose that works
- Will had some criticisms of calling CES a functional form, but I don't know enough to say whether that's sufficiently evocative
- I can't seem to find a reference to persistent phosphorescence, but I get a lot of references to persistent luminescence

PACKET 2:
- People thought biofilms was hard, I'm ambivalent about it. I really like all the clues in the TU though, esp the stuff about Pel in Pseudomonas
- Very cool to see health econ come up
- Having dissolved oxygen and the ventilator bonus part on oxygen seems non-ideal; the dissolved oxygen TU has good clues though
- There doesn't seem to be much purpose in doing a "two answers required" for L & I, but otherwise:
- The Neumann formula doesn't have I in it, so that's not helpful; I can't entirely tell if I has to be nonzero either
- Flux is usually conceived of as B dot A, so that's odd
- 1/2*LI^2 is a useful clue I suppose, and if I had parsed it correctly I would have buzzed there, but you're asking me to do a fair amount at game speed - maybe just put the 1/2 in the formula in the actual question text
- Seems odd to have a bonus part on Pirandello and then have a play by a non-Pirandello figure in the next part; not necessarily wrong, but I imagine it threw some teams
- Mentioned this already, but the "two-word" thing in the pragnanz bonus is more distracting than helpful. The bonus itself is very good however
- Are daisy chain gene drives well known enough to be a hard here? The term has four hits on PubMed, only one of which is in a title for a PNAS paper by George Church
- Conflict theory seems hard for a medium
- The Indonesian history bonus has a pretty difficult hard part - I think there were quite a few history hard parts in this tournament that were pretty difficult, but if they played well in other rooms then you can ignore this criticism
- I /love/ this pressure swing bonus part, and this whole bonus is well-written

PACKET 3:
- Love this history of childbirth tossup, I heard comments saying forceps is early, but upon reading the question, I think it's in the right place. It's hard to know whether the Semmelweiss clue is harder than forceps, but you can make an argument either way
- We had a pretty good discussion about this end-of-life care TU, which is a great idea that just needs some tweaking
- I can't seem to find this leadin to the entropy TU, and I'm not convinced it's unique. It doesn't show up here for example, nor can I find it in McQuarrie's section on the microcanonical ensemble
- People seemed to have some difficulties with this CNS tossup, particularly the pronoun. I thought it was alright and that the clues were well-chosen. I didn't know the literature around KDM6A before, but after reading some of it it looks important and interesting
- Did Saint Valentine play as a hard part?
- I didn't hear the entirety of this TLC part, so missing that is on me. I realize that C18 is a reverse-phase column, but it seems pretty difficult to ask people to get there without at least some description of what reverse-phase means

PACKET 4:
- People complained about the pronoun in this CMBR tossup; I think it's a reasonable pronoun. It does seem like it narrows very quickly - the Atacama is famous for astronomy, balloons famously observe the CMBR. Also the water hole is particularly useful for studying the 21cm line, which is also a "feature" I suppose. The stuff after that is good.
- Putting "sira" at the beginning of this TU doesn't really add anything; the seerah are just biographical literature about Muhammad. The fact that the black stone was moved by four people using a cloth is notable however. I have no idea how famous this hadith about Musa chasing after a stone is, but it may be emphasized more if you actually grew up with this stuff instead of learning it on Youtube
- If you allow the English word "consensus" as an answer I don't think it's a hard part (and Ijma is a reasonable hard in my estimation). Also 1/1 Islam in this packet

PACKET 5:
- This Winnipeg question is excellent, I esp like the clue about If day
- Mentioned this already but the Av question narrows down pretty fast
- The criticism of the "3" question that Jon Settle made in the discord I think is good; questions like this kind of lack thematic unity and are hard to contend with. The clues in isolation are fine
- I really liked this rotation TU, it's a simple answerline with deep content
- This prionogenesis(?) TU is not very good. The leadin is certainly a named model about prions, but it's really just describing aggregation, and a lot of processes have a lag then an exponential phase, which isn't really helpful. The way you've described PMCA is not useful since the answerline is on a process instead of just prions existing, and saying it detects single instances of this process isn't terribly evocative. Other criticism is in the discord
- Grinding could probably have a more expansive answerline, though I don't know too much about it

PACKET 6:
- Maybe clarify that Felix Dzerzhinsky wasn't actually in the Stasi, they just named a regiment after him
- The van der Waals gas TU seemed controversial
- This lipoprotein TU is pretty difficult; ApoA-I Milano is something you learn about in a footnote in med school, the other stuff is really hard
- Possibly more on this later, but this "land" answer is not going to play well (it certainly didn't here). There's no reason to be married to the idea

PACKET 7:
- I would be extra sure that this non-equilibrium TU rules out "irreversible"; the Onsager relations and Ilya Prigogine's work are both applied to irreversible processes quite frequently
- I enjoyed this population size TU, it's a field I don't know well so I can't comment
- I was going to say that Duhamel's principle could be too hard, but then I found out the only other time it's come up (per AseemsDB) is me putting it in Penn Bowl. As I often have difficulty control issues, that probably guarantees it's too hard
- I really loved this translation bonus
- This point groups bonus is very good, but the m and h are both pretty difficult. You could mention that C1 is the point group of chiral carbons, at least

PACKET 8:
- The IBD tossup is a good idea, but it has a few issues. The leadin applies to psoriasis (they've recently implicated ILC3, and IL-17 expression is big). I don't think the iron injection thing is unique to IBD, I have people on IV iron that don't have IBD.
- Will seemed to think the GG of India TU is difficult. He's probably right, but my knowledge of this kind of thing is mostly from family
- The chirality tossup is well written and interesting, though I question the leadin a little bit (that also confers steric bulk)
- Just as a data point, Jaimie Carlson missed the part on gadgets. I have no concept of whether it's actually too hard

PACKET 9:
- This is a very interesting TU on boats, though having both this TU and boat clues in the wood TU seems non-ideal
- Open tubular traps are also used to do gas chromatography. Also, stir bar sorptive extraction and solid-phase microextraction are both often paired with gas chromatography, particularly in the analysis of odorants; this kind of runs into that one problem that always happens when you toss up MALDI and someone says MS, and you should probably prompt them
- This Sudetens tossup was really good and interesting, and I think is a good example of doing a creative answerline well
- Seems odd to ask for the journal Green Chemistry than just the field
- The omnigenic model is very difficult. Apparently the Cell paper that posited it came out after I defended my thesis, so it's entirely possible that it's all over genetics syllabi since I've been in the field. I'd get some more input to see if it's a good hard part
- Will Alston has his revenge for my B mesons flub in ACF Nationals this year
- Europium seems difficult; I think the replacing calcium thing is more confusing than helpful

PACKET 10:
- I don't think the Beckman Coulter leadin is unique. I love my Beckman Coulter ultracentrifuge, but I need more to get there
- The stem cells TU is interesting and well-written. I especially appreciate the love for the cancer stem cell hypothesis
- Really enjoyed this opera house TU. I, unfortunately, couldn't remember the plot of Fitzcarraldo fast enough
- It's probably fine to just call the Bodhi tree an object. Besides the pronoun, this TU is really good and interesting
- I might not be parsing this clue correctly, but in action-angle coordinates, the Hamiltonian is still explicitly dependent on the action angles (which are the new generalized coordinates), but you can use action-angle coordinates when the Hamiltonian isn't dependent on time. I'm glad I waited, because I wanted to neg with time after you described what you use action-angle coordinates for (and I don't think I would have been wrong)
- Having Lila Abu-Lughod show up is very cool (and the bonus is well-written), but having it right next to a bonus on Ismailism is probably not great feng shui
- For the hard part of this physics bonus, it may be easier if you just outright say that the optical theorem says the cross-section is equal to four pi over k times this function of f(0), instead of just saying it's proportional
- Love John Shelby Spong and Gene Robinson (the person referred to in the hard part), but that hard part answerline is going to generate some problems
- Lentiviral vectors are a well-chosen hard part. It seems whoever RC is should write more, they have impeccable answerline choice

PACKET 11:
- The guru TU is good and interesting; I'm having difficulty parsing that sentence about brahmacharya. I would make it clear that its the sishya ("pupil") who are in the brahmacharya phase (rather than the guru), and mention that a kulam is where gurus live
- There's been some ink spilled on the TFs TU in the discord. I almost negged with response factors on the leadin about IRF3. ChIP applies, as Andrew Wang mentioned, to more than just TFs (including all DNA binding proteins), which could make buzzes with, e.g. deacetylases or methyltransferases correct on that clue. There's definitely more evocative clues about TFs as a whole, like those funky diagrams with the tall and short letters

[Sima Guang Hater]

Since this is a specific question, I'll put a separate post here to preserve this when the discord server for this tournament is deleted. I was not pleased with how the protest on the "land" question was handled, and I think it illustrates some negative tendencies in both question writing and protest resolution. This is the question:

Description acceptable. Material with this origin can be traced by monitoring the ratio of strontium-87 to strontium-86 in cored material. Red clay consists primarily of material with this origin and takes several thousand years to accumulate a single centimeter. Low primary productivity in the open ocean is attributed to an absence of micronutrients with this origin, which typically arrive in the form of dust. Sediments with this origin dominate at great depths despite minimal influx because (*) oozes slowly dissolve from abyssal plains. Sediments on the continent shelf typically have this general place of origin rather than being formed from the skeletons of phytoplankton. Rivers carry sediments from, for 10 points, what dry third of the Earth?
ANSWER: land [or terrigenous sediments; accept erosion or weathering of rocks, volcanoes, or volcanic eruptions; prompt on sedimentary rocks or dust before mentioned with “where do they originate?”]

I buzzed on strontium 86 with "space", since there are several papers using strontium dating to find the age of and trace the origin of meteorites. My protest was initially upheld by Adam Fine and the stats/records were changed accordingly. Then 3 rounds later, Kevin Wang reversed the ruling (something I'd only previously seen at PACE 2011, which I believe led to a refund for the team in question - not that I'm asking for that, I'm not Marshall Steinbaum).

To start, this is explicitly against the ACF rules (and the PACE rules use the same language):

All protests which require a resolution will be resolved exactly one time. All protest resolutions are final. No protest resolution may be reversed, appealed, or revisited at any time, for any reason.

Second, the fact that Kevin likely knew the teams involved in the protest, as it had been posted in the discord visible to him, is problematic. By definition, people adjudicating a protest cannot know who's involved, as it may bias them one way or the other.

Third, the reasoning behind the protest resolution reversal is incredibly pedantic:

The answer given was "space", which I recall correctly was given partway in the first line (in particular, before the final clause of "in cored material" was provided). the text that had been read was "Material with this origin can be traced by monitoring the ratio of strontium-87 to strontium-86" or something closely approximating that.

For "space" to be correct, material originating from space (implicitly a meteorite) would have to be "traced by monitoring the ratio of strontium-87 to strontium-86". The contention is that dating is a form of "tracing".

The statement that dating is a form of tracing is rejected. The use of isotopic ratios as tracers is used to monitor the change over time of variables, typically (including in the method described in the question) location. Under this broad definition, dating (a process which determines a point in time) would be monitoring the change in time over time.

More colloquially, tracing is taken to mean "determining the course of", "following in detail", or "discovering signs of". In no case is the strontium ratio being used to determine any information about a meteorite other than its age, so these definitions are not meaningful either.

Dating is certainly a method of determining the origin of meteorites, which falls under the broader category of tracing (I also never explicitly made that a contention). I was, of course, unable to convince Kevin of this, which is fine (well, it's not, but it's immutable at this point). The broader issue here is that protests on vague clues should generally favor the player, rather than an overly narrow interpretation of the text of the question. Had there been something specific about this application of Sr-87/86 dating to terrestrial rocks instead of meteorites (like a specific formula), I'd be perfectly fine with that. However, the entire protest resolution hinged on scrying the word "tracing", which could certainly be read differently. This is a level of pedantry that shouldn't be necessary in protest resolution, and is clearly an overcorrection.

This also illustrates the danger of using an overly broad and/or vague answerline, even if the content is interesting. If you're pulling from a lot of disparate processes to construct a broad answerline, you'd better make sure each and every clue uniquely applies to that process, or find ways to rule out alternate answers. This question didn't do that.

[touchpack]

Having gone through Packets 1-11, here are some additional comments that I haven't already made in the Discord server. I must mention, before this deluge of nitpicking, that I thought this set was very well done.

Packet 1

-Is the Born exponent really "typically approximated as 9"? I was under the impression it was highly dependent on structure, with a wide range (between like 5-11 or something). This threw me off a bit.

-I know "Cobb-Douglas" is marked as medium and "substitute" is marked as easy, but it played the opposite way for my team. I don't know much about econ, but I think my talented teammates should be converting social science easy parts (and thus, substitute is probably too hard for an easy).

-The phosphoresence bonus part was weird. It's obviously the best thing to guess, but the clueing made us think it was looking for something harder. It felt weirdly coy in an very artificial way (to decrease conversion to hard part levels, presumably), which I thought was unsatisfying. Not sure if others had this experience or not.

Packet 2

-I really like this BOD5 clue, but I agree that saying the word "demand" here feels a bit early--I don't think the Winkler test is any easier than saying "demand" and would make the 2nd line more coy and mention "demand" later.

-"male" feels hard for a medium part. I understand the concept of a gene drive and how they work but did not know this particular detail, which seems like a rough ask for a medium. idk if there's a good easier clue you can give, an alternative might be just changing it to "gene drives".

-Are you extra sure this bonus wasn't meant to be tagged with Germain as the hard and Lagrange as the medium? "French dude who worked on the calculus of variations" seems significantly easier than knowing about Sophie Germain primes to me.

-Don't have any criticism here, but I love this PSA bonus.

Packet 3

-Planck's constant cubed is the minimum phase space volume element per the uncertainty principle. So, this lead-in is just saying "this is something that you define per unit volume", which doesn't seem particularly helpful (I was tempted to neg with "volume").

-I think this fatigue testing bonus has two hard parts. Quizbowlers don't know very much about this stuff.

-I love this bonus part on the scoopula, but I'm not sure if it's an easy part. Might be worth making it a medium, then just giving very straightforward clues to make TLC an easy.

-Perhaps expand a bit more on this quite abrupt radial velocity bonus part, since, as you know, there are several different methods for discovering exoplanets. We got stuck on incorrect ones.

Packet 4

-Why are "nucleotides" and "nucleosides" just a prompt? Morpholinos are modified oligonucleotides, and the bonus part says "oligo analogue of these". Per my/Eric's previous post, you should just take obviously correct answers rather than making players jump through hoops to read your mind.

Packet 5

-"Grinding" bonus part should accept "pulverizing".

-The bonus part on "ultrasound" should not say "ultrasonic"--this confused our opponents into giving no answer. Find a different way to make this an easy part (or find a different easy part).

-I would swap the order of the "fission" and "photodisintegration" parts here, so teams don't just say "fission" assuming part 2 is the easy part.

Packet 6

-This "lipoproteins" tossup cliffs between very hard clues and "apo"--there's lots of core biochemistry stuff you could put here. As a suggestion, maybe something like "Remnants of these complexes use a protein suffixed B-48 to undergo endocytosis by the liver for recycling" (this creates 3 core buzzpoints: "chylomicron remnants", "ApoB-48", and "protein complexes that circulate through the body and are recycled by the liver").

-Maybe cut the sentence "Classical particles cannot have this property" (which was completely unhelpful to me) and insert the words "by definition" into this indistinguishable bonus part. Something like "since, by the definition of this property, the system remains the same..." I think indistinguishable can be a medium part but it needs to be more straightforward.

-"Name the two most common forms of calcium carbonate" feels like a pretty softball hard part. Also, magnesium is an alkaline earth metal, not an alkali metal, and also, "this alkaline earth metal in dolomite that is not calcium" feels like a pretty softball medium part. This bonus would not be too far out of place in ACF Fall, imo.

-Is "Vmax + Km" a hard part? It seems not much harder than "competitive", and significantly easier than most of the hard parts at this tournament. This bonus is also overall very easy, not too far out of place in ACF Fall.

Packet 7

-I don't think teams know enough about point groups for either of these bonus parts to be a medium. Perhaps just ask for "point groups".

Packet 8

-IBD is not the only reason you might need to give someone IV iron--patients can be NPO for a variety of reasons other than a malabsorption problem. (Also, ferric iron can only be given IV, though I'm not sure if there's a clinical use for giving ferric rather than ferrous iron)

-As I previously mentioned, I "stress tested" this chirality tossup by saying "steric bulk" in the first clue, which, while a stupid buzz, is technically a correct answer at that point. Also, as per my previous point re: answerlines, I'd just accept asymmetry outright rather than make the player jump through hoops.

-Is this mimivirus part gettable? This seems very hard.

-I know it says "these quantities", but Mayer cluster expansion also calculates partition functions. I would say something like "this group of quantities" or something to make it unambiguous that you're looking for multiple things.

Packet 10

-I would put the word "erroneously" between "sometimes hyphenated" in this Huang Minlon bonus part, just to make it clear for people who aren't aware of this funny anecdote.

[ryanrosenberg]

Substitute vs. complement goods is one of the few things I learned in my (bad, rushed) Econ 101 class, I think it's reasonable for an easy part.

[aseem.keyal]

-I know "Cobb-Douglas" is marked as medium and "substitute" is marked as easy, but it played the opposite way for my team. I don't know much about econ, but I think my talented teammates should be converting social science easy parts (and thus, substitute is probably too hard for an easy).

Substitute vs. complement goods is one of the few things I learned in my (bad, rushed) Econ 101 class, I think it's reasonable for an easy part.

I think substitute goods works as an easy, but the way the answer is written (asking for "this property" and including a lot of verbiage before asking for the opposite of complement) makes it more complicated than necessary for an easy. We ended up saying "substitution effect," which appears to be related concept that should probably have an answer line instruction.

[Mike Bentley]

Responding to Eric's post, I've heard of daisy chain drives, which is not true of most science hard parts. I think it's gettable. Male also seemed quite gettable to me.

Governor-general of India didn't seem that hard of an answer line to me, although it could perhaps be one clue easier.

[naan/steak-holding toll]

Substitute vs. complement goods is one of the few things I learned in my (bad, rushed) Econ 101 class, I think it's reasonable for an easy part.

Yeah I think substitute is totally fine to ask for as an easy part. The main thing I'd focus on in this bonus is the hard part on constant elasticity of substitution, which I think would play better if phrased in the way most people taking intermediate macro would learn it ("this property"). We didn't get this bonus but in the context of quizbowl, the phrase "this functional form" made me immediately jump to "what's the term for this kind of production function?" rather than thinking about what the math implies.

EDIT: It's also somewhat odd to ask for "substitute" as an easy part when the hard part requires you to say "substitution."

Governor-general of India didn't seem that hard of an answer line to me, although it could perhaps be one clue easier.

Would agree with this as well - Governor-General of India it seems like a fine answer, just probably warrants tuning/generosity along the same lines as the Vijayanagara tossup, which gave you 15 for recognizing a straightforward description of the Deccan sultanate conflict with Vijayanagara. I think a description of the Hastings trial, without names, is pretty equivalent in difficulty there and deserving of 15 at this level.

[Good Goblin Housekeeping]

Responding to Eric's post, I've heard of daisy chain drives, which is not true of most science hard parts. I think it's gettable. Male also seemed quite gettable to me.

I also found Male extremely confusing and could not figure out what the hell to say despite having (years ago) read some npr article about the plan to release a bunch of infertile mosquitos (forgetting the other detail)
Also the P-element thing for drosophila is slightly weird

Out of curiosity Mike, did Male seem "quite gettable" to you for any concrete reason or is this just "vibes"

[Mike Bentley]

Responding to Eric's post, I've heard of daisy chain drives, which is not true of most science hard parts. I think it's gettable. Male also seemed quite gettable to me.

I also found Male extremely confusing and could not figure out what the hell to say despite having (years ago) read some npr article about the plan to release a bunch of infertile mosquitos (forgetting the other detail)
Also the P-element thing for drosophila is slightly weird

Out of curiosity Mike, did Male seem "quite gettable" to you for any concrete reason or is this just "vibes"

Yes, it's something discussed in the numerous articles written about using gene drives against mosquitos and also is memorable for being similar to the plot of Jurassic Park.

[Good Goblin Housekeeping]

Ok, just wanted clarification since I'm under the assumption that less than 50% of the teams in a given field have read the (admittedly) trendy articles on the sterile insect technique (and the Jurassic Park thing, which I am not familiar with and had to look up is literally not remotely similar because that as far as I can tell is literally just the extremely "not actual science" of using unobtanium genetics to "make all of your dinosaurs female" ???)

(additional caveat as far as I can tell there is not a significant scientific reason to release female insects over males in SIT beyond cost since this is functionally just competitive inhibition, but is somehow significantly harder than the comparable bonus part on competitive inhibition... weird how that happens)

[naan/steak-holding toll]

I think it's pretty safe to say that "guessable" isn't quite what we should be aiming for at this level for middle parts, or indeed at any level, save perhaps CO where even some of the better teams are getting a decent number of middle parts through informed guesses. With the caveats that I think the "hard part first" structure is suboptimal in the abstract, and that I am an F tier bio player, I think this could perhaps be ameliorated by having "male" be first in that bonus without full context if the editors want to keep the "male" bonus part (which, to a noob like myself, sounded pretty cool).

[Sima Guang Hater]

Re: the gene drives bonus, as a former Drosophila geneticist the hybrid dysgenesis caused by P-element carrying males is well-known but a fairly deep cut, and the other clue in the bonus isn't particularly unique given that gene drives based on female sterility have also been developed. You also haven't made it clear what set of characteristics you're asking us to cleave along the axis of. The bonus part feels overall coy and hard to parse.

[Father of the Ragdoll]

I know that list comments like this rarely go addressed but I figured I'd give y'all this in the off chance you want to act on it.

Positive Things:
Packet 1:
Loved the light pollution tossup
Unfortunately did not get to play the animals in Islamic philosophy bonus but I thought it was a very cool way to ask about that philosophical tradition beyond the usual 3ish thinkers that get used as answerlines normally
Packet 2:
Thought the Vishnu tossup was very well done even though I mixed up Shaivist and Vaishnavist imagery
Enjoyed the Huns tossup - thought it was a cool and creative way to ask about an important but underasked about story from Germanic and Norse myth
Packet 3:
Lacrosse tossup was really cool
Enjoyed the master and slave tossup - maybe a bit topheavy but not offensively so
Packet 4:
Stones tossup was a delight - lead in might be a bit easier than others but i think the Moses bit is placed correctly
Based on what Kendra talks about from her work, the alignment/hmm/mutation bonus seems to be on a very cool and applied topic
Packet 5:
A big fan of the classical music sun tossup if only because it was my first classical music tossup since high school
The Inca myth bonus was very well executed, though I might argue the rainbow middle only works because it is guessable
Packet 6:
Memory tossup was neat
Also the rich men tossup - giveaway feels rough compared to others but I thought the bulk of the tossup was very cool and interestingly written
The Ramayana tossup produced a 10 word buzz from the best Hinduism team in quiz bowl (Texas B) so that's a good sign
Liked that studying Spinoza finally paying off on the Ethics tossup, wish there was more meat and potatoes in the phil like this to be honest
Boat tossup played like zebra -> zebra mussel -> water animal -> boats. Not sure if that's a good or a bad thing
Virtual bonus was really interesting
Packet 7:
Mozi feels a bit hard but I am happy to see non-Confucian/Daoisst/Legalist Chinese phil come up
Didn't get to hear it but glad to see Cheondoism come up
Packet 8:
The body of Christ tossup was really cool
Really enjoy seeing Jane Addams in the pragmatism tossup
Packet 9
African religion bonus was really cool
Finals 1:
Really liked the confederates tossup
Really liked the parasite bonus

Minor Issues:
Packet 1:
I'm not convinced the Dunbar number clue is correct in the primatology tossup - observations of nonhuman primates were involved in formulating the Dunbar number theory but it was by an anthropologist using primate data to extrapolate to humans - at the very least it was highly confusing
Packet 2:
Pragnanz feels pretty hard for a middle
Conflict theory remains hard for a middle
Christianity today seems like a very hit or miss part - I got John pretty handily but didn't even have a guess on this
Packet 3:
The Columbia tossup felt all over the place and mostly just pairing names to place
The Yoruban religion tossup felt strange - in my room it was a major buzzer race at Ile-ife and then a question of who remembered it said "description acceptable" at the start. Lucky for my team our opponents forgot that note and said Santeria
Valentine feels like a very, very guessable hard part
The prefix "schmi" feels like a very tenuous connection for a bonus
Packet 4:
Lead in to MLK is very hard to parse
Star of Bethlehem is another religion bonus where I knew enough to easily get the hard part but was not sure what was being asked of me for the middle - might just be a me issue but I think as written it played very loose and coy
Mirror stage without Lacan feels brutal for a middle
Packet 5:
Av tossup feels like it ought to have just been on Tisha B'av
Reading tossup played very poorly
Averroist clue in Latin tossup was very hard to parse at game speed
Not a fan of the 19th century tossup if only because of oft stated opposition to period of time answerlines in thought questions
Packet 6:
Do people actually known the Morrow Plots outside of UIUC? I'll gladly take the points but I can't imagine that's more well known than Carl Woese.
Packet 8:
Event-related design seems absolutely brutal, priming a soft middle compared to other soc sci
Packet 9:
Green Chemistry still doesn't need to be on the journal
Finals 1:
Thinking tossup seems hard
Copeland tossup narrows answerspace very very quickly
Coleman tossup was brutal before Ornette clues
Bon felt like a very soft hard part compared to other bonuses

Major issues:
Packet 1:
In the Pessimism tossup, the On the Fourfold Root of Sufficient Reason clue feels lazy and nonunique. To me, it feels entirely detached from the actual concept and is just a pre-FTP level Schopenhauer clue. And because it is just a clue about Schopenhauer and not a content clue, it also suffers from being nonunique, as Schopenhauer is also frequently described as a misogynist and a misanthropist, both of which could reasonably be attitudes. I think that also makes the clue just very loose and associative rather than testing knowledge of the topic.
Packet 3:
This might just be a me thing but I really did not like this clue in the smiling tossup, "This is the most positive of the six actions that Paul Ekman has claimed to be “universal.” I think it mostly is going to play as "oh Ekman -> facial expressions/microexpressions -> smiling is a positive expression" then either "guess smiling" or "sit and think if there is a more positive one that could be the answer" which is what happened in my room. I also think that cluing the FACS system is essentially not helpful. This tossup is also an example of soc sci tossups that are extremely hard before the power break.
Packet 4:
The West of Egypt tossup remains bad - I see no reason why this would not be a bonus or a tossup on Duat cluing geographical connections.
MLK tossup cliffs at "unjust law" and even more so at "moral arc of the universe." I don't think that can be avoided with this answerline since King's influence on more academic philosophy is just not that well known.
Packet 6:
I don't think the Islam bonus distinguishes between Sunnah and Haddith and as written should just take Sunnah
Packet 7:
I don't know why the raven tossup would reject crows. Many if not most Native American mythologies conflate the two in myths and I do not think this question did enough to distinguish them. If the reason it is being rejected is the title being referenced in the first line that feels like a weak justification since if people knew the title they would buzz there - no reason to punish people who know the later clues but didn't know the title referenced in the lead in.
Finals 1:
The relativism tossup has several problems in my opinion. First, I am not sure if it is a good idea to conflate several kinds of relativism. That would seem to reward word-association over understanding of the topic. I am also not convinced that the man is the measure of all things clue is well done. It is commonly said that is the start of relativism, however it is also fiercely debated as to if that was even an expression of relativism in the sense that we think of it. That makes this clue, like the Schopenhauer clue, one that rewards lower levels of understanding more than higher ones in my opinion. In general I think questions that clue statements like "is often" tend to perversely reward less knowledge since if you are more intimately familiar with the topic you are more likely to freeze and wonder what interpretation the author is thinking of while less informed players are rewarded for going on less information.
I think it is extremely misleading if not outright false to describe Anti as an "experimental fusion" album. I don't mind including it in the arts distro as much as many others would, but there is no reason to be obfuscatory or misleading about it.

[ErikC]

I know that list comments like this rarely go addressed but I figured I'd give y'all this in the off chance you want to act on it.

Conflict theory remains hard for a middle

Mirror stage without Lacan feels brutal for a middle

Major issues:
Packet 1:
In the Pessimism tossup, the On the Fourfold Root of Sufficient Reason clue feels lazy and nonunique. To me, it feels entirely detached from the actual concept and is just a pre-FTP level Schopenhauer clue. And because it is just a clue about Schopenhauer and not a content clue, it also suffers from being nonunique, as Schopenhauer is also frequently described as a misogynist and a misanthropist, both of which could reasonably be attitudes. I think that also makes the clue just very loose and associative rather than testing knowledge of the topic.

Packet 3:
This might just be a me thing but I really did not like this clue in the smiling tossup, "This is the most positive of the six actions that Paul Ekman has claimed to be “universal.” I think it mostly is going to play as "oh Ekman -> facial expressions/microexpressions -> smiling is a positive expression" then either "guess smiling" or "sit and think if there is a more positive one that could be the answer" which is what happened in my room. I also think that cluing the FACS system is essentially not helpful. This tossup is also an example of soc sci tossups that are extremely hard before the power break.

I disagree on conflict theory - it's one of the schools of sociology that's discussed in intro classes and the information given is basically all that you should need.

I think the mirror stage without Lacan is ok without the use of "specular image" but as written is a little hard to understand.

I see your point on the Schopenhauer clue. I think its a little loose of a connection with other things in the tossup but at the very least is a reasonable connection to make.

After playing the playtest mirror I couldn't quite put my finger on what bothered me about the soc sci but I think Brad put it well that there was a lack of meat and potatoes, along with hard questions on things like smiling that seem a little gimmicky (its the best word I can think of, I don't want the negative connotations necessarily).

[Father of the Ragdoll]

I disagree on conflict theory - it's one of the schools of sociology that's discussed in intro classes and the information given is basically all that you should need.

I don't necessarily disagree with the reasoning here but I do strongly believe that classroom significance is not enough to establish easiness. It can form the basis for a hypothesis but if people keep saying it is too hard then regardless of if it "should" be that hard I think it ought to be considered too hard. Maybe the conversion data shows a different story I don't know. For whatever its worth, I did not come across conflict theory in my Sociology 100 course, only in social work masters classes did I encounter it in the classroom.

I think the mirror stage without Lacan is ok without the use of "specular image" but as written is a little hard to understand.

As for mirror stage, I think this is a bad trap to get into. Would adding Lacan make it too easy? I really doubt it. In that case you should err on the side of being too easy since hard middle parts are one of the most demoralizing things to come across in a set for teams.

I see your point on the Schopenhauer clue. I think its a little loose of a connection with other things in the tossup but at the very least is a reasonable connection to make.

To be clear, I am not against cluing Schopenhauer in a pessimism tossup - just not in a way that is completely detached from pessimism and is essentially asking the player to lateral from a title to the author to one of the attitudes most commonly associated with his name.

Not replying like this because I think you are completely wrong by the way, just want to make sure my reasoning for critiquing those clues is clear.

[naan/steak-holding toll]

I don't necessarily disagree with the reasoning here but I do strongly believe that classroom significance is not enough to establish easiness. It can form the basis for a hypothesis but if people keep saying it is too hard then regardless of if it "should" be that hard I think it ought to be considered too hard. Maybe the conversion data shows a different story I don't know. For whatever its worth, I did not come across conflict theory in my Sociology 100 course, only in social work masters classes did I encounter it in the classroom.

Agree with Brad here - I think conflict theory is more along the lines of a Nats or Nats-minus middle part. Anecdotally, it's pretty easy to bungle since it has a fairly generic sounding name and is a pretty broad class - Eric M. and I are very much aware of what conflict theory is, I think we missed this because we misheard the bonus (after getting the hard part).

[Jem Casey]

Yep, I agree that conflict theory is too hard for a medium, my bad for not changing after Eric noted the issue above. Adjusted that, and added Lacan's name to the "Mirror stage" bonus part, before sending the packets out for this weekend's mirror. In general, I agree with Brad's dictum that:

you should err on the side of being too easy since hard middle parts are one of the most demoralizing things to come across in a set for teams.

...so apologies for not implementing it in practice!

Re: Schopenhauer, here's the clue:

The author of On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason is often seen as an exemplar of this attitude since he believed life was “blind striving” driven by the Will.

I agree it would be an issue if the clue just gave the title of "On the Fourfold Root" and asked players to guess an attitude commonly associated with its author. However, the purpose of that title drop is to tell players we're talking about Schopenhauer, before the rest of the clue points--I hope fairly specifically--to Schopenhauer's pessimism. I'm not sure that I see the point that this clue and the "relativism" pre-giveaway punish deeper levels of knowledge. However, "often"-type constructions are undeniably more taxing to process and harder to buzz confidently on, and filling out two questions in one category with them wasn't my greatest idea of the set. Not going to rewrite at this point, but I'd be happy to disambiguate or extend the answerlines if you think these clues have other plausible answers.

Re: some other stuff:

I'm not convinced the Dunbar number clue is correct in the primatology tossup - observations of nonhuman primates were involved in formulating the Dunbar number theory but it was by an anthropologist using primate data to extrapolate to humans - at the very least it was highly confusing

Isn't this exactly what the clue says?

Observations in this field inspired the theory that people can maintain up to 150 stable relationships, which is called Robin Dunbar’s namesake “number.”

"Anthropology" or similar is a perilous buzz to make on a second-line clue that explicitly refers to the study of human behavior, but if those words are getting lost at game-speed I can rephrase.

I also think that cluing the FACS system is essentially not helpful. This tossup is also an example of soc sci tossups that are extremely hard before the power break.

Similar to the "Fourfold Root" title drop, the mention of FACS isn't intended to be a complete clue that rewards players' memorization of specific encodings--that would indeed be nuts! The idea is to indicate the type of thing being asked for (a facial expression) to players familiar with the system's existence, which should help contextualize the mention of the Duchenne smile. Idk if either of these details is "extremely hard"--FACS is a well-established qb clue and the Duchenne smile is big in pop psych--but I agree that this is one of the many SS tossups that could be eased up by a clue or so without being too easy.

MLK tossup cliffs at "unjust law" and even more so at "moral arc of the universe." I don't think that can be avoided with this answerline since King's influence on more academic philosophy is just not that well known.

Fwiw, the clue prior to the "unjust law" quote is just material from "Letter from Birmingham Jail" and has gotten a decent number of buzzes. but agreed that this tossup stays too hard for the first couple sentences.

Lastly:

I know that list comments like this rarely go addressed but I figured I'd give y'all this in the off chance you want to act on it.

I don't think editors addressing list comments is rare at all! After the playtest mirror, we pulled the comments from the playtest server and the forums posts into the docs, and at least the majority of them resulted in some change--a similar procedure was followed for the last couple tournaments I've worked on (WORKSHOP '21 and Penn Bowl). And while suggestions are less likely to be implemented later in a set's run, I was still able to make about 5 changes based on your post before sending out the packets for the Yale mirror. Granted, there are always cases where something gets missed (e.g. I didn't copy the "conflict theory" note somehow), fixes are made but don't go as far as they should have, or editors strongly disagree with an item of feedback. But I think most writers value hearing about what worked and what didn't work for people playing their questions; thanks again for taking the time to post!

[Zealots of Stockholm]

I don't plan on diving into a bunch of questions, but as far as packetization goes I don't think its very wise or fair for both one of the hardest auditory tossups answerline-wise (Giselle) and what I thought was the hardest visual arts answerline I heard (Morisot) to be in the same packet, as this would greatly disadvantage teams with solid arts coverage that can't convert these tossups. To me, it would make sense to swap one for a tossup with an easier answerline. Separately, I don't think Morisot is a very good choice for the hardest vfa answerline as at this level I think its best to use a "harder" answer for canon expansion/better representation of marginalized groups in a distribution like painting/sculpture. While Morisot fits the bill for the latter (there certainly aren't a ton of askable non-male artists pre-1900), she's solidly canonical both in the arts world and qb (I believe), so I think there was room to be more creative/adventurous in that regard. Of course the rest of the arts distro was quite interesting if at times rather difficult imo. Potentially I'm just sour grapes bc I thought the second or third clue sounded a lot like Caillebotte's Young Man at His Window.

[Votre Kickstarter Est Nul]

The David Lynch bonus part in Packet 8, question 19 says Lost Empire instead of Inland Empire