The packet wins again!

The Packet Wins Again! is an exclamation originally used after a particular type of hose, when a player is negged due to not having specific insight into the mind of the packet-writer. In modern usage, a packet (or more generally a set) can win if it is so difficult that teams score fewer points than the total from tossups going dead.

Historical usage

An excellent example of a historical "packet winning again" would be a tossup on the Niebelungenlied which leads in with a clue about A, B, and C texts; said clue is applicable more canonically to Piers Plowman.

While this phenomenon can occur in any tournament (as set theory dictates that no set of editors can have knowledge of the applicability of every single clue), it is much more common in tournaments edited hastily by non-superstar teams. The occurrence of this phenomenon is roughly proportional to <math>C*e^(-a*t)</math>, where t is the collective number of good tournaments edited by the group of editors, and C and a are constants.