PIANO
The Pre-ICT and ACF Nationals Open/Minnesota Open (PIANO/MO) was, as the name suggests, an open, pre-nationals set written by members of the Minnesota and Yale teams for Spring 2019. The tournament was head edited by Jacob Reed, with science editing from Adam Silverman and some history and literature help from Joey Goldman and Will Holub-Moorman; the other writers were Sam Bailey, Michael Borecki, Stephen Eltinge, Adam G. Fine, Jason Golfinos, Matt Jackson, Wonyoung Jang, Michael Kearney, Moses Kitakule, Shan Kothari, John Marvin Sipp, and Derek So.
The set experimented slightly with the distribution, dividing 4/4 history into 1/1 each of American, European, and World, with a 1/1 distribution of Ancient history, archaeology, and "other". Partially following on 2016's MYSTERIUM, the 4/4 RMPSS distribution was reallocated to give 1/1 Philosophy, 1/1 Economics and Psychology, 1/1 Religious texts, myths, and legends, and 1/1 Other religion and other social science.
The set was largely very well-received, especially Adam Silverman's science, which was hailed as some of the best ever written. Most divisive were the sometimes offbeat topic selection (due especially to writers like John Marvin, Jacob Reed, and Derek So), including numerous questions straddling multiple distributions. The remaining criticism was directed at the set's difficulty, which was misleadingly advertised as somewhat easier than ACF Nationals; on the whole, the set turned out to be almost exactly the same difficulty as the 2018 ACF Nationals.
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