EFT
The Early Fall Tournament (EFT) is a name given to two distinct series of easier-than-regular quizbowl tournaments. The first series, written largely by the Brown club, ran five times between 2006 and 2010. The name was revived by Will Alston in 2016 for a tournament with a similar purpose.
Revival
The EFT name was successfully revived in the fall of 2016 by Will Alston, who went on to edit or be otherwise involved in the next four iterations.
2019
The 2019 iteration.
2018
The 2018 iteration was edited Alex Damisch, Ewan MacAulay, Dylan Minarik, Tejas Raje, Ramapriya Rangaraju, and Ryan Rosenberg. Will Alston returned alongside Rob Carson to provide oversight and Alex also served as logistics czar. The tournament was originally intended to be head edited by Joey Goldman, but that did not pan out.
| Region | Host | Date | Champion | Second | Stats | Packets |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Discord | the editing team | 9/22/2018 | Stats | Packets | ||
| SoCal | UCLA | 12/1/2018 | Stats | |||
| NorCal | Stanford | 11/10/2018 | Stats | |||
| Virginia Tech | Virginia Tech | 11/10/2018 | Stats | |||
| SoCal | UCSD | 10/27/2018 | cancelled | |||
| UK (closed) | Oxford | 10/20/2018 | Prelims Combined | |||
| Boise State | Boise State | 10/13/2018 | BYU | Oregon | Stats | |
| Georgia Tech | Georgia Tech | 10/13/2018 | Prelims Overall | |||
| UK (open) | Oxford | 10/13/2018 | Stats | |||
| Yale | Yale | 10/13/2018 | Amherst A | Harvard B | Morning Complete | |
| UCF | University of Central Florida | 10/13/2018 | Prelims Combined | |||
| Canada | Carleton University | 10/13/2018 | Toronto J | Toronto B | Prelims All Games | |
| Minnesota | Minnesota | 10/6/2018 | "Drangonball Z" (sic) | Minnesota D | Stats | |
| WUSTL | WUSTL | 10/6/2018 | prelims combined | |||
| Michigan | Michigan | 9/29/2018 | OSU A | MSU A | Prelims Combined | |
| Maryland | Maryland | 9/29/2018 | Johns Hopkins A | Maryland A | Prelims Combined |
2017
The 2017 iteration was again edited by Will Alston and Richard Yu, with James Lasker joining them. Other writers included Alex Fregeau, Vasa Clarke, Eric Xu, and Jack Mehr.
It followed in the steps of TTIAC in including a "thought" distribution.
| Region | Host | Date | Champion | Second | Stats | Packets |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Skype | the editing team | 12/26/2017 | Stats | Packets | ||
| Michigan | Michigan | 10/21/2017 | Prelims Combined | |||
| UK | 10/21/2017 | Stats (incomplete) | ||||
| Northern California | Stanford | 10/15/2017 | Stats | |||
| Louisville | Louisville | 10/14/2017 | Prelims Combined | |||
| Southern California | UCSD | 10/14/2017 | Stats | |||
| Canada | University of Toronto | 10/14/2017 | Stats | |||
| Virginia | Virginia | 10/14/2017 | Prelims Overall | |||
| WKU | WKU | 10/14/2017 | (cancelled) | |||
| Georgia Tech | Georgia Tech | 10/14/2017 | Stats | |||
| Minnesota | University of Minnesota | 10/14/2017 | Stats | |||
| Boise State | Boise State | 10/14/2017 | Oregon | Colorado | Stats | |
| WUSTL | WUSTL | 10/7/2017 | Prelims Combined | |||
| Yale | Yale | 9/30/2017 | Prelims Combined | |||
| New College of Florida | New College of Florida | 10/15/2016 | Stats | |||
| Second Skype | the editing team | 12/26/2017 | Stats |
2016
The 2016 iteration of EFT was edited by Will Alston, Richard Yu, and Andrew Wang, with writing contributions from Eddie Kim, Jason Cheng, Parikshit Chauhan, Jason Zhou, and Ryan Humphrey. Auroni Gupta assisted with tournament production.
This tournament was the first to explicitly include a playtest mirror by holding an open Skype mirror of the tournament a week before any closed mirrors.
| Region | Host | Date | Champion | Second | Stats | Packets |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Skype | the editing team | 9/17/2016 | Stats | Packets | ||
| Northeast | New York University | 10/1/2016 | Prelims Combined | |||
| Mid-Atlantic | University of Maryland | 10/8/2016 | Prelims Combined | |||
| Southeast | Duke University | 10/8/2016 | Prelims Combined | |||
| Florida | University of Florida | 10/1/2016 | Stats | |||
| Kentucky | Western Kentucky University | 10/15/2016 | Stats | |||
| Texas | Texas A&M | 10/29/2016 | Stats | |||
| North | University of Minnesota | 9/24/2016 | Stats | |||
| Upper Midwest | University of Chicago | 10/22/2016 | Prelims Complete | |||
| Lower Midwest | Washington University in St. Louis | 10/1/2016 | Stats | |||
| Great Lakes | Youngstown State University | 10/8/2016 | Prelims Playoffs | |||
| Northern California | Stanford University | 10/15/2016 | Prelims Combined | |||
| Southwest | University of California, San Diego | 10/8/2016 | Prelims Combined | |||
| Canada | University of Ottawa | 10/15/2016 | Stats | |||
| UK | Oxford | 11/26/2016 | Stats |
Original Brown tournament
2010
EFT 5: The Prince of Aquitaine whose Tournament is Destroyed was a collaboration between Brown, Eric Mukherjee, and Illinois, headed by Ike Jose. Mirrors occurred at Brown, Illinois, VCU, Georgia Tech, and Toronto, with the main site taking place on October 2, 2010.
This incarnation of EFT received more criticism than previous years, with common complaints being the lack of grammar/copy-editing in many questions, absurd difficulty outliers, and an unclear baseline difficulty.
| Set | Region | Host | Date | Champion | Second | Stats | Packets |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| EFT 5 | New England (main site) |
Brown | October 2, 2010 | Harvard A | Yale A | Prelims, Playoffs | Packets |
| Midwest | Illinois | October 2, 2010 | Minnesota A | Minnesota B | Stats† | ||
| California | Claremont | October 3, 2010 | Irvine | UCSD A | Prelims, Playoffs | ||
| Mid-Atlantic | VCU | October 3, 2010 | Maryland A | Carnegie Mellon | Stats | ||
| Minnesota | Minnesota | October 16, 2010 | Gautam Kandlikar | St. Thomas A | Stats | ||
| Southeast | Georgia Tech | October 23, 2010 | South Carolina A | Chipola & Georgia (tie) | Prelims, Playoffs | ||
| Canada | Toronto | October 31, 2010 | Western Ontario | Toronto A | Stats |
† Broken stats link
2009
EFT 4: Cattle-Related Vocabulary took place on October 3 and 4, 2009 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.
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.
| Set | Region | Host | Date | Champion | Second | Stats | Packets |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| EFT 4 | New England (main site) |
Brown | October 3, 2009 | Harvard B | Harvard A | Prelims, Playoffs | Packets |
| Canada | Toronto | October 3, 2009 | Toronto A | Michigan A | Prelims, Playoffs† | ||
| Mid-Atlantic | Virginia | October 3, 2009 | Maggie Walker | State College | Stats† | ||
| Midwest | Illinois | October 3, 2009 | Chicago D | Chicago B | Stats† | ||
| Minnesota | Macalester | October 3, 2009 | Minnesota Red | Carleton | Stats | ||
| Northwest | Gonzaga | October 3, 2009 | Washington A | Washington B | Stats† | ||
| Southeast | South Carolina | October 3, 2009 | Clemson | Southside | Stats | ||
| Texas | UT-Austin | October 3, 2009 | Rice | LASA A | Stats† | ||
| California | UCLA | October 4, 2009 | UCSD | Steve Katz | Stats | ||
| South | Millsaps | October 4, 2009 | Alabama A? | Alabama B? | Stats |
† Broken stats link
2008
EFT 3: Trapping Bees in a Dyson Sphere ran on October 4 and 11, 2008 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.
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.
EFT 3 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.
| Set | Region | Host | Date | Champion | Second | Stats | Packets |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| EFT 3 | New England (main site) |
Brown | October 4, 2008 | Harvard A | Dartmouth A | Stats† | Packets |
| California | UCLA | October 4, 2008 | UCLA 2 | UCSD A & Stanford (tie) | Stats | ||
| Mid-Atlantic | Wake Forest | October 11, 2008 | Maryland B | Virginia | Stats | ||
| Florida | FSU | Stats† | |||||
| Midwest | Illinois | Stats† | |||||
| Southeast | Vanderbilt | Stats† |
† Broken stats link
2007
EFT 2, 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, with the main mirror taking place on September 29, 2007.
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.
The question set itself 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.
| Set | Region | Host | Date | Champion | Second | Stats | Packets |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| EFT 2 | New England (main site) |
Brown | September 29, 2007 | Rutgers | Harvard | Stats | Packets |
| Texas/Oklahoma | Oklahoma | September 29, 2007 | UT-Austin | Harding | Stats | ||
| California | UCLA | October 6, 2007 | Irvine A | UCLA B | Prelims, Playoffs | ||
| Florida | USF | October 6, 2007 | Not available | ||||
| Mid-Atlantic | William and Mary | October 6, 2007 | Maryland A | Penn | Stats† | ||
| Midwest | Chicago | October 6, 2007 | Minnesota B | Illinois A & UIC (tie) | Prelims, Playoffs | ||
| Southeast | Vanderbilt | October 6, 2007 | Alabama A | WUSTL A | Stats† |
† Broken stats link
2006
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.
Feedback 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.
| Set | Region | Host | Date | Champion | Second | Stats | Packets |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| EFT 1 | New England (main site) |
Brown | October 7, 2006 | Yale A | Rutgers | Stats† | Packets |
| California | UCLA | October 7, 2006 | Stanford A | UCLA A | Stats | ||
| Florida | USF | October 7, 2006 | Not available | ||||
| Texas | UT-Austin | October 7, 2006 | Not available | ||||
| Southeast | Georgia Tech | October 8, 2006 | Vanderbilt | Kentucky | Stats† | ||
| Midwest | Chicago | October 14, 2006 | Chicago A | Michigan A | Prelims, Playoffs |
† Broken stats link