Re: a question

theaug37 <*no_reply_at_yahoogroups.com*> · Sun, 03 Nov 2002 23:52:42 -0000

I personally would not be surprised if this has never happened... In
order for such a shutout to occur, the moon has to be in the 7th
house, and Jupiter has to align with Mars, ect etc.  

First, the team has to be suitably good enough to have just the mere
ability to know every Tossup in the packet.  Second, the said team has
to play against a team so bad, not only do they not answer one
question, but present such little threat that the good team feels no
need to jump the gun and neg.  

In my opinion, I think this has never happened, because I think we
would have heard about it in some form or another.  Considering that
most good teams capable of such a shutout has established programs,
I'm sure that if such thing has happened, even if it is not known to
the QB world, it would be known in the program's lore.  (are you
telling me that historically strong teams of Chicago, Maryland,
Michigan, et al. would not notice that they got all 20 tossups?  I
don't think so; all they have to do is look at their own score tallys)

And personally, I think packets of yesteryear were not as
"standardized" as today, and perhaps included some "out of nowhere"
questions that even expert teams just didn't know.  Just looking
through the Stanford Archive packets, even though many questions are
easy, there are many questions that are obsecure.  At events such as
invitationals, ACF regionals, and Junior birds, the ability to answer
all 20 questions by a team is more difficult for one reason or
another.  I don't think it's coincidence that JP posed this question
in light of ACF Fall, because it's probably one of few events
throughout circuit history that combined truly accessible questions
with full eligibility by people of all skill levels.[1], [2]  I'm sure
disregarding previous two ACF Falls, even 19/20 tossups by one team
would be a rare feat.  

Although I think at the current rate of evolution, 20/20 tossups will
happen at some point.  Someone should really start a pool on who/when
it would be. 

-Augustine-
Orphaned QB player oscillating on retirement. [3]

[1] In case people weren't sure, ACF is very accessible these days,
and ACF Fall probably uses the "easiest" subset of answers (not clues)
for tossups than any other tournament that's not a junior bird these days.

[2] NAQT IFTs that existed about two years ago were probably of the
same caliber of accessibility, but shutouts would have been much
harder because of the time limits and the max 28/28 tossup load. 

[3] In case anyone wasn't clear, I'm not affiliated with ACF, NAQT,
NAFTA, or any other organization for the purposes of this posting. 

--- In quizbowl_at_y..., mikewormdog <no_reply_at_y...> wrote:
> 
> 
> It has to have happened...we (Yale) got 19/20 two rounds in a row on 
> Saturday.  Probably the people who have done the 20/20 don't find it 
> all that notable. If we would have gotten the 20 and this topic 
> didn't come up on the groups thing, I probably wouldn't have thought 
> much of it.
> 
> 
> Mike Wehrman