Andy Watkins
| Andy Watkins | |
| |
| Noted subjects | Science |
| Current college | NYU (inactive) |
| Past colleges | Harvard (2008-2011) |
| High school | Shady Side (2003-2007) |
| Stats | HDWhite • NAQT |
"Crazy" Andy Watkins played quizbowl for Harvard. He was known as a prolific question writer and poster on hsquizbowl.org, and for writing really hard science questions. He was the leading scorer on the Harvard B/D2 team at both the NAQT ICT and ACF Nationals in his freshman year. He was a member of PACE and chief editor of the 2011 NSC, and resigned from PACE alongside Trygve Meade following the logistical failures of that event. Andy was implicated in one of the largest quizbowl cheating scandals ever, and as a result all three of Harvard's championship titles hew won were revoked.
Andy is married to Hannah Kirsch.
High School Career
Andy was on a Shady Side team that impressed many for its ambition when it attended the 2006 ECSO; this was before the time when elite high school players became regular attendees at college-level events.
Editing Career
Andy was a member of the editorial staff for the following tournaments:
- Harvard Fall Tournament (several incarnations)
- Harvard T-Party 2008 and 2010
- Harvard International 1 and 2
- VETO
- FIST
- PACE NSC 2010 (science) and 2011 (chief editor)
In addition, Andy helped finish the chemistry for Lederberg (based on already-selected answers) and 2011 ACF Regionals.
Andy's science questions were known for being consistently too difficult for their intended audiences, despite a "philosophy of quizbowl" which would preclude overly-difficult questions.
Cheating scandal
- Main Article: Andy Watkins Cheating Scandal
In March 2013, NAQT announced that a routine inspection of its activity logs had shown that several NAQT question writers had abused their access privileges to preview questions that they would later play on. NAQT also revealed that this was because of a loophole that caused the first 40 characters of a question to be displayed and that the problem had since been fixed. Among the individuals implicated was Andy Watkins. Previously it had been widely speculated that Andy had cheated at numerous ICTs, but nonetheless at the time Andy's play was still held in good faith. For example, there was a large discrepancy between his performance at ACF Nationals compared to at ICT and there were numerous instances in which he had made early buzzes on subjects he was not known to be proficient in. After the NAQT revelation, Andy initially maintained his innocence, publishing a defense on the hsquizbowl forums. However he was later forced to abandon his position and issued an official public apology. Andy has since not participated in any quizbowl events, NAQT or otherwise.
Notable Tournaments
- 2011 ICT - Cheated; all victories revoked (with Dallas Simons, Stephen Liu, and Ted Gioia)
- 2011 ACF Nationals - 8th place (with Dallas Simons, Ted Gioia, and Stephen Liu)
- 2010 ICT - Cheated; all victories revoked (with Dallas Simons, Bruce Arthur, and Dennis Sun)
- 2010 ACF Nationals - Top bracket (with Dallas Simons)
- 2010 Penn Bowl - 1st place (with Dallas Simons, Ted Gioia, and Bruce Arthur)
- 2009 ICT - Cheated; all victories revoked (with Dallas Simons, Ted Gioia, and Kyle Haddad-Fonda)
- 2009 ACF Regionals - 1st place (with Dallas Simons, Ted Gioia, and Bruce Arthur)
- 2008 ACF Fall - 2nd place (with Dallas Simons and Dennis Sun)
- EFT4 - 2nd place (with Bruce Arthur)
- EFT3 - 1st place (with Bruce Arthur and Julia Schlozman)