EFT

EFT, or the Early Fall Tournament, is a novice-level tournament written largely by the Brown club.

First EFT

The first incarnation was written by Seth Teitler, Ryan Westbrook, Jerry Vinokurov, and Selene Koo, with the intent being to have an additional early-season novice tournament that, unlike ACF Fall, did not require teams to submit a packet to play. EFT was held at several regional sites over the weekends of October 7-8 and October 14-15, 2006. Host schools included Chicago, Brown, Maryland, Texas, Georgia Tech, USF, and UCLA.

Results

Stanford A won the mirror at UCLA, which featured an 11-team round robin. Statistics can be found here.

Feedback

Feedback from the 2006 EFT can be found in this thread. Overall, this tournament was received with praise. Much of the commentary revolved around the difficulty of "hard" bonus parts as well as niche subjects like world literature and social science.

EFT2

EFT2, subtitled Rataplan Ghost Rides the World War I Ambulance, was written by Dennis Jang, Eric Mukherjee, and Jerry Vinokurov, with the same goal as the previous incarnation. Mirrors were held at Brown, UCLA, USF, William and Mary, Chicago, Vanderbilt, and OU.

Results

Rutgers won the Brown mirror after defeating Harvard, with Jason Keller winning the individual scoring award. The tournament was a huge logistical nightmare however, and prizes couldn't be given because stats were not compiled in time. Surprisingly, people did not complain. Statistics can be found here.

Feedback

The tournament was praised fairly highly, with some qualms about the length of the questions (which averaged somewhere between 6 and 7 lines), the difficulty of tossups on Tlaloc and Legendre, the representation of the social science canon (some liked it, some didn't) and a factual error about the writer of Harrision Bergeron. The two packets written exclusively by Jerry were also seen as much more difficult than the others. Willie Chen returned briefly to complain about problems in the set that didn't exist, but was quickly refuted by Eric and Chris Ray.

EFT3

EFT3: Trapping Bees in a Dyson Sphere ran on October 4th and 11th at various sites around the country, including Brown, Wake Forest, Vanderbilt, UCLA, FSU and Illinois, with many sites seeing record attendance (the Brown site had to cap registration at 24 teams due to staff shortages). The set was written in equal shares by Jerry Vinokurov, Dennis Jang, Eric Mukherjee, and Aaron Rosenberg, with contributions from Jonathan Magin, Evan Nagler, Lisa Qing, and Eric Johnson, and as tradition dictates, was assembled at 7AM on the day of the tournament.

Results

• Brown Mirror
• Wake Forest Mirror
• Vandy Mirror
• UCLA Mirror
• UIUC Mirror
• FSU Mirror

Feedback

The tournament was well-received overall, with the exception of a tossup on peer-to-peer networks and an excess of questions on comic books in the trash distribution (everyone knows whose fault that is). The tournament also set off a large discussion about the writing of music questions, due to a tossup on the Leningrad Symphony containing some technical middle clues that were not uniquely identifying.

EFT3 was also notably the subject of Christian Flow's Mind Games Article in the Harvard Crimson, which followed the exploits for Dallas Simons and the Harvard B team.

EFT4

EFT4: Cattle-Related Vocabulary took place on October 3rd and 4th at Brown, Virginia, Illinois, Texas, UCLA, Millsaps, Toronto, Gonzaga, and Macalester. Substantial portions of the set were written by Jerry Vinokurov, Guy Tabachnick, Eric Mukherjee, Aaron Rosenberg, Daniel Klein, and Ian Eppler, with contributions from Seth Teitler, Ike Jose, Trygve Meade, and Hannah Kirsch.

Results

• Brown Mirror
• Virginia Mirror
• Gonzaga Mirror
• Toronto Mirror
• Texas Mirror
• Millsaps Mirror
• UCLA Mirror
• UIUC Mirror
• Macalester Mirror

Feedback

The tournament was mostly well-received, with most of the complaints centered on uneven bonus difficulty and mediocre copy editing. The tournament elicited discussion of the nature of stock clues after Andy Watkins criticized the use of the Reptile Fund as an early clue for Bismarck. A discussion of the trash distribution in academic tournaments also ensued.