I'd promised myself I was going to take the night off from quizbowl, but two ongoing threads (the COTKU comments and the concerns for the circuit's future) were too interested -- and too closely related -- for me to pass up. I agree with much of what Stephen and Raj said in the way of criticism of COTKU. As I see it, the biggest problem we had at COTKU is the same as the biggest problem the circuit faces: where are we going to get the questions? We had 27 teams at COTKU, and we received exactly four, count 'em four, complete packets from those teams. All four were really good, but you can't run a tournament on four rounds. (In fairness we received a partial from one team; got high school questions instead from my UTC kids and another almost-all-new team; and evidently were sent a packet by another that didn't come through when I had the computer problems in late September. But that's still only 8 teams out of 27 that wrote any questions at all.) So we traded for questions with Deep Bench and Rollapalooza. And guess what? They also had very few rounds submitted, and many of those were of uneven quality and/or distribution. Peter Onyisi of Chicago and Bill Stallard of UM-Rolla can correct me if they wish, but I think that without the swap, none of us had near enough questions to make up a tournament, Shoot, combining all three gave me barely enough raw material to use for COTKU. I wound up *writing* additional questions in the middle of the night Friday night to fill out the remaining gaps in the packets. Between the question shortage and late submissions, we also didn't have enough time to do as we did for the Moon Pie last April with the folks at Princeton, namely, send fully assembled packets to another set of eyes for a second proofing. The Main Street question was one of several that on second reading I knew needed a rewrite, and there were several factual errors that I caught on second reading as well. Unfortunately, that second reading was at the tournament itself. (FWIW, I'm going to reedit the questions before I send them to those who are buying or swapping for them.) I should add that I made things worse with one dubious decision months ago. Between my child custody schedule and other tournaments' schedules, we had limited options for when to host our fall high school tournament, and (as in 2001) I chose the weekend before COTKU. It didn't seem to hit me as hard last year, but this year raw material from SIX tournaments (counting swapped materials from two others for each weekend) turned out to be more than I could keep straight. That's why we had so many duplicates -- although you should have seen how many more I caught and edited out. (I'd never heard of one psych disorder before, yet it was an answer in three different boni in the raw materials.) Between the two tournaments, I pulled three all-nighters in an eight-day stretch -- not an easy thing for someone old enough to remember the JFK assassination, and not conducive to high quality editing. Next year I won't stack these two tournaments back-to-back like that. On the level of difficulty, I'll gently disagree with Stephen. COTKU was advertised as easy-to-medium difficulty, which we think is appropriate for an early-season independent tournament with a lot of first-year players. Last year those who commented said the questions were too hard, so we adjusted downward. Also, over 2/3 of the registering teams were in Division II, including some schools without a single experienced player. So I decided to err on the side of ease. Speaking of which, so much for dinosaurs ruling the earth: We had only a handful of grad students with years on the circuit in the COTKU field. I like to think the fact that we've vigorously courted new schools has helped in that regard. As for the other points raised: Yes, COTKU was understaffed, at least by our standards. Two of our regular experienced readers have moved out of the area, and two people who usually read for us were there this time as coaches and preferred to remain with their teams. While we did have some readers to fill their shoes, they're still learning the ropes. This and a shortage of *working* buzzers (looks like some veteran programs need equipment upgrades) had a lot to do with the logistical delays; as Stephen Taylor kindly pointed out, we also had to deal with the usual no-show-driven schedule adjustments, as well as vehicle problems for two teams that required some accommodations. The rest of the delays were thanks to stupid errors I made, failing to assign a moderator to one room on two separate occasions, which threw us further behind. I apologize and plead extenuating circumstances, namely exhaustion from the question editing marathon (see above.) The good news is, as our first tournament each academic year, COTKU is usually the one with the most rough spots, and we hope to have 'em all ironed out by TrashMasters (Dec. 7-8.) Speaking of which... (see next post)
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