ACF Fall thoughts (long)

arsaces_i <*no_reply_at_yahoogroups.com*> · Mon, 04 Nov 2002 20:37:43 -0000

Those of you who know me know to read this message through the usual 
filters; thouse who don't, understand that a) my team won our Fall; 
b) I am a long-established ACF partisan; c) Kelly, the editor, is my 
temmate of many years and a close personal friend. In sum, for all 
these reasons, I'm baised; do with this knowledge as you list.

Any analysis of the quality of the ACF Fall tournament has to begin 
with what it set out to do, which is provide 1) a thoroughly ACF 
tournament whose questions 2) challenges veteran players while 3) 
remaining accessible to novitiates. Given thse criteria, I think the 
ACF Fall came about as close to meeting its goal completely as is 
humanly possible. Here are my reasons for why that is true:

1) "ACF" means that the questions were to be throughly Academic 
through and through. Now, think on what you heard this weekend: with 
the exception of the (at maximum) one tossup and one bonus of trash 
that was allowed per packet, can any of you dispute that all the 
other questions were solidly academic, both in answer and in clues? 
In other words, can any of you think of a tossup about something 
Academic that had a trashy clue? Moreover, can any of you recall any 
questions which were not clearly designed to be trash whose answer 
was irrelevant, or on the borders od the canon? It might perhaps be 
held against the tournament by those who desire such things that it 
didn't "expand" the canon enough, but that implies that all the 
clearly academic questions were just that: academic questions with 
acedemic clues about firmly academic answers.

2) It seemed to me that, even if the answers bordered on the easy, 
the clues provided enough that they still rewarded the most 
knowledgeable players, satisfying the ACF purist. What this amounted 
to in my case was that I didn't get beaten out to a single myth, 
Greco-Roman History, or Art tossup (my particular specialties) 
because the clues were such that the giveaways were placed in the 
first line every time. The answers were, on the whole, very easy, but 
the clues were such that justice was served: a tossup whose answer is 
as easy as "Jason" is for a mythologist, for example, was written 
such that those who know myth deeply will get it at the early point 
and not have to worry about being gunned down by someone with less 
knowledge but faster reflexes.

3) That having been said, the answers were easy enough that I can't 
recall a single tossup that was utterly unanswerable by a player of 
even modest abilities. A tossup on "Gawain" may not have been gotten 
by everyone at the trigger spot for an experienced player (strength 
increases until noon), but I'd bet everyone was able to buzz in and 
get it on the "Green Knight" clue.

This goes for tossups, of course, because they were written with (I 
imagine) individual players in mind. As for the bonuses, I'll agree 
that some contained unanswerable parts by all but those deeply 
familiar with the subject areas, but bonuses should be harder than 
tossups, shouldn't they? After all, a bonus is thrown open for all 
four members of a team. I was familiar with Anton Mengs 
(unfortunately, I didn't get that bonus), and I imagine that for evey 
bonus which had a third part that your team (general "you", by the 
way; this post is not singling anyone out for dialogue) couldn't 
convert, there were others of equal difficulty that you could, 
provided you were a team of certain depth.

Other difficulties that have been cited (repeats, spelling errors) 
seem pretty minor in the grand scheme of things; I am from a 
different era, of course, but by my standards a) two answers which 
are identical are not repeats unless the clues are repeated; b) one 
mistaken full-fledged repeat over fifteen+ packets nears perfection.

By these standards, I reiterate my argument that this tournament 
succeeded completely in its established aims. I share in the chorus 
of praise it has so far garnered for the editor.

SLK