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 is 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 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 showed that several NAQT question writers that abused their access privileges to preview questions that they would later play on, among those individuals named was Andy Watkins. It had been speculated previous to the revelation that cheating had occured, however Andy's play was nonetheless still held in good faith. Casting doubt on this however was the large discrepancy between his performance at ACF Nationals compared to at ICT and that he had made numerous early buzzes on subjects he was not known to be proficient in. After the NAQT announcement, Andy initially maintained his innocence, publishing a defense on the hsquizbowl forums. However he was later forced to abandon his position and has since not participated in any quizbowl events.
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)