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Discussion of quizbowl topics not related to specific tournaments
logic2718
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Post by logic2718 »

Hey, I was wondering if anyone on here's going to MSA this coming summer or went in the past. Also, I've heard they have some sort of Quiz Bowl tournament. Can anyone give me more information about this?

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socalcaptain
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Post by socalcaptain »

Yes, a few of us have gone in the past (me, Charles Hang, Ravi, Sean, Grant, Michael, Mike, Mueller, and others).

They do have a tournament. Last I heard, it was still being run by Jim Meyer, the qb coach at Rock Bridge. You play against other houses in the student championship, and then the winning scholar team competes against a team of staff, a team of RAs, and a team of faculty. This happens over the course of the Academy.

See you on alumni day, I suppose!


<div class="editby">Edited by <a href='http://s4.zetaboards.com/Academic_Compe ... captain</a>, May 13 2009, 03:27:37 PM.</div>

hugatree1715
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Post by hugatree1715 »

I am so upset that I'm going to miss the 25th anniversary Alumni day! I will be in London during that time...

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Post by Charbroil »

Michael,

You were in my year! I'm sorry that I never got the chance to meet you...

Anyway, Ikshu, yeah, MSA is wonderful--for a lot of us, it was a defining experience in our lives. There's a Quiz Bowl tournament which in my year was groups 4 residential houses facing off against one another in a 44 tossup only game, with the top houses then facing off against each other again and the top house from there facing off against a team of teachers, a team of staff, and a team of RAs (again, 4 teams simultaneously).

Last year, apparently, (Grant can help explain this), they split up the girls and the guys because the girls' houses had never won any significant number of games in recent history (Terin's blowout victory in 06 notwithstanding), and the top girl and top guy team combined to face the other three teams.

The questions are fairly bad (buzzer beaters), but it's still a lot of fun--it was the first majorly watched game I'd ever played, with about 200-300 people watching. I'm actually considering asking Jim whether he would like some good questions--I could probably write some rounds for the tournament.



<div class="editby">Edited by <a href='http://s4.zetaboards.com/Academic_Compe ... arbroil</a>, May 13 2009, 06:32:27 PM.</div>

hugatree1715
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Post by hugatree1715 »

Charbroil wrote:Michael,

You were in my year! I'm sorry that I never got the chance to meet you...
I believe you were on my floor. I was in Paul's house, and you were in "Cheech" Steve's house, right?

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Post by AShoaib »

Kevin Sheng and Spencer Templeton from our team both went there.

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Post by Charbroil »

hugatree1715 wrote:
Charbroil wrote:Michael,

You were in my year! I'm sorry that I never got the chance to meet you...
I believe you were on my floor. I was in Paul's house, and you were in "Cheech" Steve's house, right?
I was actually in Marius's house, but we were on the same floor, yes.

I seem to recall that you and Marc (among others) beat our team in Scholar Bowl. Grr... :D

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Post by hugatree1715 »

That's right. Didn't you have a picture of Al Gore (or some other prominent liberal) on your door, while your roommate (who was liberal) had some prominent conservative on his door? I remember something about that...

And Spencer was in my house. We both went to the hospital on the same day. He had some sort of anxiety attack aggravated by dehydration or something, and I needed 17 stitches after rock climbing in Rock Bridge State Park with my major class...

Charles, if you were in Maurius' house, then was Marc in Steve's house?

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scphilli
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Post by scphilli »

You guys know about Jim Meyer's Millionaire appearance right?

logic2718
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Post by logic2718 »

cool! I'm really looking forward to MSA. The Quiz Bowl matches should be fun too. But yeah, Charles, if you could write some questions that would be amazing. Maybe give me some inside info before hand.... :P

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Post by hugatree1715 »

Ikshu, do you know what your major/minor/house is?

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Post by Charbroil »

hugatree1715 wrote:That's right. Didn't you have a picture of Al Gore (or some other prominent liberal) on your door, while your roommate (who was liberal) had some prominent conservative on his door? I remember something about that...

Charles, if you were in Maurius' house, then was Marc in Steve's house?
Something like the political thing happened--I really don't remember.

And I thought Marc was in your house...guess not? I guess that makes sense--I do recall losing to Steve's house now.
You guys know about Jim Meyer's Millionaire appearance right?
Not at all--do tell...


<div class="editby">Edited by <a href='http://s4.zetaboards.com/Academic_Compe ... arbroil</a>, May 13 2009, 09:04:27 PM.</div>

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scphilli
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Post by scphilli »

OK so the primetime Who Wants To Be a Millionaire was the American Idol of its day. So about 10 years ago, Jim Meyer was the first contestent on Millionaire in its second limited run. He won the $32K question and then was stuck on the one for $64K. So he had no idea what the question was so he decided to call his old MSA faculty member Vicki Lewis. By the way, Vicki Lewis was the coach of Liberty at the time. A very good one I might add. Anyway he calls her with all four options available...and she does the one thing a phone a friend is not supposed to do. She gives an answer with basically no certainty. Luckily this was basically a free guess and he didn't lose money. But she was still wrong.

I think every person in a 150 mile radius gave Vicki crap for that for YEARS. Poor dear.

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Post by Charbroil »

Oh yeah...I remember that story now. It's still funny though. :)

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Post by Jeffrey Hill »

scphilli wrote:By the way, Vicki Lewis was the coach of Liberty at the time.
Umm, don't you mean Vicki Jones?

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scphilli
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Post by scphilli »

U. Lou Sthagaim wrote:
scphilli wrote:By the way, Vicki Lewis was the coach of Liberty at the time.
Umm, don't you mean Vicki Jones?
Yes I seem to have confused her with the actress on NewsRadio that was dating Nick Nolte.

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Post by logic2718 »

hugatree1715 wrote:Ikshu, do you know what your major/minor/house is?
Major: Journey of the Hero

Anyone who has ever thought history was boring or math completely irrelevant to their lives should gather their goodies and kiss their loved ones goodbye: this major could be the journey you've been itching to take. We begin in the home of Joseph Campbell, unearthing the power and purpose of myth in human life. From there, we set out on a great trek beyond and between such traditional disciplines as mythology, history, religion, and philosophy to seek the treasures of deeper questions such as: Why do cultures across the globe tell the same stories? What is the role of the hero in our lives? What stories does our culture tell, and how is “education” relevant to that? Finally we delve inward and discover how those myths take effect in our own lives by exploring the relationship between society and the individual. So if you are a scholar full of curiosity and a hunger for this thing called life, you are emphatically invited to take a risk: take the journey of the hero.

Minor: Superhero Story Time

Superheroes, cartoons and talking mice. The face of literature is changing, and we are finding new ways to write short stories: comic books! This course will explore the possibilities of storytelling with comic books and how they have influenced other forms as well. We will cover the basic elements of sequential art and the key factors that allow the combination of visual and written texts to work. The course will include some of the most highly praised works within the medium, providing an opportunity to study a medium that is currently being defined, explored and created in the world in which we actually live.


Basically, I wanted a philosophy-ish major, but I didn't want the actual Intro to Philosophy course since I will be taking a class that covers the same stuff next year in school. The Journey of the Hero course looked cool, since I am interested in Campbell and the concept of the hero.

Superhero Story Time...well, comic books and superheroes rock. nuff' said.

And I didn't want a math course since it didn't seem like I'd learn much in those, so I went for fields in which I have less expertise.


House: um, I'm not sure. I just got a letter from MSA that may contain that information. However, I don't know where it is right now. I'll post it when I find out.

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Post by Charbroil »

Cool--I know people who did Journey of a Hero; it's quite fun. There's also always a Superhero related major/minor, though it was Physics of Superheros my year (a major).

Good luck and enjoy. :) You'll love the experience--almost everyone does. One of our players (Adam Rollins) is attending too, but I don't think he's anywhere as excited about Quiz Bowl.

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Post by hugatree1715 »

I had a great time, and I also picked a major and minor about which I knew little. I took "It's the End of the World As We Know It" as my major (it was a runthrough of every "-ism" up to postmodernism, and we even did some dada theater on Lowry Mall). I had a modern art minor (which was my fifth choice, but was still very fun). My RA was Paul, but he's not an RA anymore. Our house was immensely close (after talking to other scholars, our house was exponentially closer than others). It is a great time, and if there is a chemistry demonstration for a speaker, GO TO IT! YOU WON'T REGRET IT!

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Charlie Dees
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Post by Charlie Dees »

Image

Charbroil
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Post by Charbroil »

Oh, yeah, because that's mud to be flung in a Quiz Bowl Message Board. :P

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Post by PaxHispanica »

I was in Steve M's House. MSA was pretty ballin.

If i remember correctly, there was a valiant attempt at pyramidal questions, but the early clues were ridiculously hard and so it ended up coming down to the giveaways.

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Post by PenforPrez »

scphilli wrote:OK so the primetime Who Wants To Be a Millionaire was the American Idol of its day. So about 10 years ago, Jim Meyer was the first contestent on Millionaire in its second limited run. He won the $32K question and then was stuck on the one for $64K. So he had no idea what the question was so he decided to call his old MSA faculty member Vicki Lewis. By the way, Vicki Lewis was the coach of Liberty at the time. A very good one I might add. Anyway he calls her with all four options available...and she does the one thing a phone a friend is not supposed to do. She gives an answer with basically no certainty. Luckily this was basically a free guess and he didn't lose money. But she was still wrong.

I think every person in a 150 mile radius gave Vicki crap for that for YEARS. Poor dear.
Oh, the friends I know who were on the first run of Millionaire. :D Those were the days.

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Post by PenforPrez »

On a separate note, may I say how angry I am that MSA is probably going to get the axe in the state budget? Most of the Republicans in Jefferson City are like, "Smart people? Screw 'em!" :wacko: I found it very ironic that Charlie Shields (a Republican from St. Joe, I believe), a man who will cut anything out of the budget, was trying to defend MSA because his son went a few years ago. I never had the privilege to go, but MSA is one of the finest educational opportunities this state has to offer, and it says a lot about this state's priorities that it's being cut out.

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Post by Charbroil »

Actually, I think they put MSA on the State Budget again--a lot of people were lobbying for that and finally a couple of State Senators just did it.

Woo! :)

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Post by Charbroil »

Hey, I just wanted to mention that my friend Julia Price and I are writing the playoff round questions for MSA Scholar Bowl which will be played on the 21st & 25th of June. So, anyone going to Alumni day (as well as Ikshu and any other Board patrons going to MSA) will get to see our questions in action. Yay. :)

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socalcaptain
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Post by socalcaptain »

Sweet!!!!!

logic2718
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Post by logic2718 »

Awesome! I'm really glad that seasoned quizbowlers like you and Julia are writing the playoff round questions. I will enjoy...seeing them in action.
I will not enjoy playing them.

This is because I will not be playing them.
Since I did not qualify.

Begin rant:

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Post by logic2718 »

the way it was set up:
each of the 5 rounds was a heat of 4 teams except the last which was only 3 teams
also, each team only had 2 buzzers, which was really janky
questions were decent, i guess. science, lit, and history were pretty pyramidal. math calcs were retarded and of verrrry scattered difficulty
questions featured such QGesque staples as spelling (there was one for spell the term for a type of government where power is in the hands of a few people)
each quarter was 6 minutes long. as many questions in 6 minutes. and no bonuses. so just 24 min of tossups

at this point, possibly for of the best players are out. me, richard something (he won class 3), sam lite, and nathan emmons are all out. the people who advanced are all people who barely do quizbowl with a few exceptions. I watched all 5 rounds. questions were of incredibly varied difficulty.

1st round: my score was 60, but i got buzzer raced on around 3, so I could have had 90
2nd: woulda gotten 18
3rd: 28
4th: 12
5th: 11
that was from watching and writing down the answers before a team buzzed in correctly hence, a fairly accurate representation of what my actual score would've been.s o when there's that much of a difference, something's messed up.
also, rounds 4 and 5 had NO math calcs. which is not only super unfair and unbalanced, but since math calcs take roughly thrice as long as normal questions, it means that teams in rounds 4 and 5 were basically assured more questions that in the other rounds, and hence an opportunity for more points. and having more points does matter, since the lowest scoring of the 5 winners of the rounds is dropped. only the top 4 advance.
and that lowest scoring team was the one with richard and sam
there were also a couple of repeats. kinda unfair considering mostly everyone who was gonna play was watching the previous games.
the length of the game was a big factor, in my opinion. I do significantly better in later gameplay, when I've scouted out my opponents. I've come back from being down over 100 points at the half. indeed, the more questions, the more accurate representation of overall knowledge. with so few questions, you could get by with a few lucky situations where you somehow know the answer, even though your broader knowledge isn't too great.




I dunno if this is the same way it's gone in previous years, but it seemed like a grossly inaccurate representation of the best players. indeed, people who actually have had QB experience like me, richard, sam, and nathan (richard and I having placed highly at state and done well at tournaments) are all out. The incredibly scattered difficulty, stacked heats, incredibly short games, and ridiculously strange format all contributed to a bunch of silly upsets.


<div class="editby">Edited by <a href='http://s4.zetaboards.com/Academic_Compe ... gic2718</a>, Jun 14 2009, 04:41:27 PM.</div>

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socalcaptain
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Post by socalcaptain »

Agreed that the format isn't perfect, but it sounds like your year was a much bigger upset than mine - Terin Budine's team and mine were the first and second houses, respectively.

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Post by Charbroil »

Same here--while I do recall a few buzzer races which kept us out of winning the match between the top four teams, I don't recall any egregious upsets either.

Then again, not having math computation in the last two rounds is weird--Julia & I were originally going to write the questions for the first five rounds as well, but we didn't have time to do so.

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Post by logic2718 »

honestly. the questions weren't too bad. they were generally legit, pyramidal stuff. my only complaint was the lack of consistency from round to round and how stacked my heat was.
but yeah. "upset" is definitely the key descriptive phrase. not just for me, but like, a buncha people.

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Post by Machina »

I'm gonna have to agree with Ikshu on this one. I'm at MSA right now, and I was in Kate's house, heat 5. I watched Ikshu's heat, then left to go do MSA things, and missed the three rounds in between, so I can't vouch for the legitimacy of the middle 3 rounds. I can safely say, though, that the math distribution was a bit off to say the least. My round had absolutely no math calc at all, while the first round had a handful of ridiculous ones.

Also, the stacked-ness of the heats was weird too. Ikshu's team and Sam/Richard's team were in the same heat, and both ended up being knocked out of the final 4. My house won the fifth heat with a score of 130, and Sam/Richard's team only got 90 points, so my team ended up in the semis.

Charles and Julia, I look forward to hearing your questions!!!

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Charlie Dees
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Post by Charlie Dees »

Where are you people getting internet? I'm at Jesse Hall and having a horrible time getting a connection.

logic2718
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Post by logic2718 »

we're at the computer lab in EBW.

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Charlie Dees
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Post by Charlie Dees »

Is that like the Engineering Building? I only came to this part of campus to walk around the quad and go to Geology building classes, so I have no idea what anything else on this end of campus is called.

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Post by Charlie Dees »

I was right! I got your facebook message.

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Post by Charlie Dees »

I hope everyone enjoys the buzzers and packets I just delivered. Just be nice to the equipment, there were a couple buzzers on the fritz at Mizzou Open. Also, just so people know how to play the PACE Nationals packets from this year, the first third is 10 tossups with 20 point subject related bonuses, the second third is 8 tossups where you get to choose from one part 15 point bonuses by category which are found right behind said tossups, and the third phase is 10 tossups with 30 point bonuses, with any buzzes before or during the phrase "for 10 points" actually getting you 20. All of the other packets are just normal 20/20 format. Enjoy.

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Post by Charbroil »

Machina wrote:My house won the fifth heat with a score of 130, and Sam/Richard's team only got 90 points, so my team ended up in the semis.
I think yours is the first girl house to get into the semis since Alex's year (2006), so congratulations. :)

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Post by logic2718 »

Charbroil wrote: I think yours is the first girl house to get into the semis since Alex's year (2006), so congratulations. :)
actually, this time, there's 1 male house in the playoffs and 3 girl houses. so yeah...


and thanks a bunch for the stuff, charlie. we are most definitely enjoying it immensely. gotten a good group of player together who are enthusiastic about the game. we call it "UGQB: Underground Quizbowl." And yeah, some of the buzzers spaz out occasionally and refuse to stop buzzing, but that is easily dealt with.


<div class="editby">Edited by <a href='http://s4.zetaboards.com/Academic_Compe ... gic2718</a>, Jun 18 2009, 05:38:35 PM.</div>

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Charlie Dees
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Post by Charlie Dees »

I'm quite glad to hear it's been getting good use.

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Post by Charbroil »

Lol...I have to admit, I'm curious when you guys are getting the time to play Quiz Bowl. I certainly hope that it's not taking you guys away from your afternoon activities...those are fun and worth enjoying.

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Post by Machina »

Don't worry about us, Charles. We did UGQB during dinner night before last. ^_^ Also, thanks for the congrats!

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Post by DeckardCain »

logic2718 wrote:"UGQB: Underground Quizbowl."
If this board had a Facebook-esque "like" feature, it would definitely be getting good use here.

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Post by logic2718 »

heh. yeah, I just thought of the name (UGQB), and I instantly decided upon it due to awesomeness.

hey, is anyone here today for Alumni day? I will definitely try and scout out veteran quizbowlers at the dance.

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Post by socalcaptain »

Haha... 1:00 is a little late to ask people if they're going to show up at an event which starts at 2:00...

But, yes. I was there today, so were Ravi and Charles... and Taylor Smith from Hallsville. Charles had a couple of friends of his from MSA that were also pretty strong players in high school. My brother is a scholar this year, and he plays QB.

Certainly no shortage of talent.

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Post by Charbroil »

socalcaptain wrote:Charles had a couple of friends of his from MSA that were also pretty strong players in high school.
Yeah...I would have come to say hello to some of you MSA Quiz Bowl playing scholars, but we had to leave before the Street dance. :( Still, I'll be sure to introduce myself if I'm moderating any tournaments you guys are at next year.

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Post by Machina »

Charles, your and Julia's questions were great!! Sadly, my team lost by a mere 10 points to the boys' house...heartbreaking. It was a great experience and an amazing game though. We were tied all the way up until the very last question.

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Post by scphilli »

OK that explains why the weather was an unbearable high 90s all weeked: MSA Street Dance:).

Boomba Hey'ing since '98.

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Post by Charbroil »

Sabrina,

Thank you for the praise--it was a pleasure writing the questions. Incidentally (to both you and Ikshu, and anyone else who was there), I heard from Jim Meyer that only one of the questions wasn't answered--do you happen to remember which one it was? Also, do you remember if the early clues on the questions were easy enough and the middle ones were hard enough? That was my major concern.

To everyone else,

The questions Julia and I wrote are here. I hope you guys will take a look and critique them.

To ward off some obvious points, yes, we know there are formatting errors--we were rushed for time and obviously a few things slipped through. Also, I know that tossup 16 has a factual error in the answer in terms of a sign, and that computational math is bad--that discussion is not necessary, and will not be appreciated. :D (Given the experiences of the audience, I didn't want to take them away from the familiar too quickly, and Julia wanted the computational math anyway).

To give some background information, yes, the questions were definitely intended for a low level of difficulty (below A set level, and definitely below JV tournaments like Maggie Walker's HAVOC set and the one being written for next year)--given what Ikshu mentioned about most of the Quiz Bowl veterans having been knocked out before this round, we kept the answer spaces close to things that might come up in high school. Our limitation was about four lines, TNR (it seems shorter in the Google document, but that's what all of them were, roughly), and to be honest, we would have had trouble with finding sufficient middle clues for longer questions.

Also, the distribution was 7 Big Three (History, Lit., and Science), 6 Math (2 Theory, 4 Comp.), 4 Fine Arts, 3 RMP, and 2 Current Events & Popular Culture, with 1 Geography and 1 MSA themed tossup (the last being redacted to protect personal information). We didn't have hard subdistributions except for Science, which was 2 Chemistry, 2 Physics, 2 Biology (in reflection of the fact that most of the students took Biology last year), and 1 Misc. Science (which became a astronomy/engineering/physics common link).

Finally, the typographical issues which may impact meanings in the tossups written by Julia (author responsible for each tossup listed afterward) are my fault--I was the packet editor and in the course of quickly editing topics which I'm not perfectly familiar with, I made several mistakes.

Anyway, what do you guys think?


<div class="editby">Edited by <a href='http://s4.zetaboards.com/Academic_Compe ... arbroil</a>, Jun 21 2009, 09:35:01 PM.</div>

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