Announcement: 2023 ARCADIA

[Heiliger Dankgesang]

We are very excited to announce the third edition of ARCADIA (A Regs-minus Carolina and Duke Invitational of Academia), stylized as ARCADIIIA or ARCAD3A. Like prior ARCADIAs, we are targeting 2.5 dots on Ophir’s difficulty scale, and our set will be written primarily by current members and alumni of quizbowl teams in North Carolina’s Research Triangle. However, we are making a concerted effort this year to make our set more “beginner-friendly” and shoot more for “2-dot-plus” rather than “3-dot-minus.” This does not mean that there will be any less of the content typical of ARCADIA that we hope the community has come to appreciate!

There has already been a flurry of progress on our set– 17% of it is written as of now. We plan to be ready for mirrors starting in late November / early December 2023 (slightly later than in previous years), and we plan to allow mirrors through the end of February 2024.

Our distribution and editing team are as follows (we are switching to a standard ACF-style distribution). We are producing 14 packets of 20/20, plus tiebreakers. Tossups will be capped at 7.5 lines before powermarking, and bonuses will be capped at 8 lines.

Head Editor: Jim Fan
Logistics: Jacob Egol

4/4 Literature
1/1 American [Editor: Caroline Mao]
1/1 European [Editor: Caroline Mao]
1/1 British/Commonwealth [Editor: Henry Goff]
1/1 World/Other [Editor: Jim Fan]

4/4 History
1/1 American [Editor: Jonathan Shauf]
1/1 European [Editor: Ganon Evans]
1/1 World [Editor: Ryan Rosenberg]
1/1 British/Commonwealth/Ancient/Other [Editors: Grant Peet (British/CW) and Kevin Thomas (Ancient/Other)]

4/4 Science
1/1 Biology [Editor: Kevin Thomas]
1/1 Chemistry [Editor: Justin Zhang]
1/1 Physics [Editor: Vincent Du]
1/1 Other [Editor: Evan Knox]

3/3 Arts
1/1 Visual [Editor: Henry Goff]
1/1 Auditory [Editor: Eric Gunter]
1/1 Other [Editors: Ivvone Zhou (Other Auditory) and Michael Bucknall (Other Visual)]

2/2 Beliefs
1/1 Religion [Editor: Ganon Evans]
1/1 Mythology [Editor: Michael Bucknall]

1/1 Philosophy [Editor: Jonathan Shauf]

1/1 Social Science [Editor: Kevin Jiang]

1/1 Geography/Current Events/Other Academic [Editors: Kevin Thomas (Geography), Kevin Jiang (CE and Other)]

[msarma]

I'd certainly like to play an online mirror of this

[Zealots of Stockholm]

Like prior ARCADIAs, we are targeting 2.5 dots on Ophir’s difficulty scale . . . However, we are making a concerted effort this year to make our set more “beginner-friendly” and shoot more for “2-dot-plus” rather than “3-dot-minus.”

download.jpg

(6.85 KiB) Not downloaded yet

[Heiliger Dankgesang]

A brief personnel update: Payton Schubel has stepped down from our editing team. This set’s British Literature is now being edited by Henry Goff. The original post has been updated to reflect this.

[Heiliger Dankgesang]

2023 ARCADIA is now seeking mirror requests. This year, our set will be available for mirrors between December 2, 2023 and March 2, 2024. Our mirror fee is $50 per team. As with last year, we are requiring hosts to use MODAQ to assist us in collecting tossup and bonus conversion data.

If you would like to host a mirror of 2023 ARCADIA, please fill out this Google Form.

Closed high school teams may play collegiate mirrors of 2023 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; November 18, 2023
Northeast / New England: Yale; February 17, 2024
Upper Mid-Atlantic: Maryland; February 24, 2024
Lower Mid-Atlantic: Duke; February 17, 2024
Southeast: Emory; February 10, 2024
Great Lakes: Ohio State; January 20, 2024
Midwest: Indiana University; December 2, 2023
North:
Central / Lower Midwest: WUSTL; December 2, 2023
South Central: UT Austin; January 20, 2023
Rockies:
Northern California: UC Berkeley; December 2, 2023
Southern California: Claremont Colleges; December 2, 2023
Florida:
Northwest:
Eastern Canada: Carleton University; December 2, 2023
Upstate NY: RIT; December 2, 2023
United Kingdom: Imperial; December 9, 2023
Online additional: February 25, 2024

[Heiliger Dankgesang]

Time for a progress update: our set is currently 72% written, our editing pace is picking up, and we are about 5 weeks away from our playtest mirror. We are also still looking for hosts in many regions (see above)–– please fill out our mirror request form if you are interested!

[Heiliger Dankgesang]

Just a reminder that we are still looking for hosts all along the East Coast, in the United Kingdom, and in other regions, too!

[Zealots of Stockholm]

Like prior ARCADIAs, we are targeting 2.5 dots on Ophir’s difficulty scale . . . However, we are making a concerted effort this year to make our set more “beginner-friendly” and shoot more for “2-dot-plus” rather than “3-dot-minus.”

download.jpg

Since this generated some discourse (though on Discord, not here) at the time, I’ll circle back to (hopefully) rectify my unproductive shitpost.

This year’s ARCADIA is a really delightful set! I felt it was quite strong today at the playtest mirror and I’m sure the editors will make good use of all the feedback provided. I’m glad I made the last minute decision to play! Attend your local mirror!

[Heiliger Dankgesang]

After 14 mirrors, 2023 ARCADIA is officially clear for public discussion! Thank you to all of the teams who played, to all of the hosts and staff who mirrored our set, and to all of the writers and editors who made this possible. The set will be posted on the archive by March 1, after we take the next few days to fix any errata etc.

Be on the lookout for an announcement coming soon for ARCADIA 4, headed to a region near you in November 2024!