Before I begin my comments about the quality and/or lack of quality questions that NAQT produces, I want to preface it by saying that I respect what NAQT does to promote the game, and the ways in which it strives to make qb more attractive to a large audience vis-a-vis the inclusion of general knowledge, copious geography, and the author of "Bambi" (sorry that last one was just too easy). But seriously, NAQT has marketed its tournaments very well and its nationals has, for many persons, become the premier event in determining who the best team in the country is on "academic" questions. However, because of this, they should be praised when they get things right and criticized when they fail to meet those standards. And logistics aside, though even that was put to the test a week ago, my opinion is that they have not gotten many things right in the past few years. Don't get me the wrong: the show is often good, the teams do make an effort to show up, and the readers and supporting staff are superb, but the questions, oh, the questions... Anyways, I won't reiterate many of the excellent points that Subash and NAQTrauma have made, but I will agree that their criticisms are, for the most part, dead on (and in some cases, I feel, a bit generous towards the quality of the questions). But I am truly happy that Subash spoke out, because I think it rebuts the "sore loser" argument that often accompanies these criticisms, which makes the comments seem personal and detracts from the element that truly merits our attention: the composition of questions. Part of this, I think, stems from the personal investment in the power tossup. As Subash pointed out with his discussion of "fraudulent" powers, NAQT is, at the highest level, more often than not, all about speed checks, yet people don't want to impugn their own buzzes on badly constructed questions. I mean it feels great to get a power on R.U.R from Helena Glory at that moment, but it should not cloud the fact that the question was simply badly structured. No one wants to say: "wow I'm really good at giveaways." But that's what happens on essentially two-thirds of the academic tossups at NAQT, with the eventual outcome being that differentiation among top teams becomes really hard to achieve. This seems counter-productive to crowning a national champion and is a disservice to all the participants no matter their rank... (caveat: not that I don't think Chicago would have won anyway or that berkeley and, yes, maryland are not great teams, but very often the questions simply rewarded jumps on trite clues rather than knowledge) In my opinion, this dissonance about the questions results in such schizoid assertions as Raj's (who I think is a great guy and player) statement that: > As for the sketchy pyramidality (now there's a word) on tossups, I > really didn't think it was that bad. There were a fair number of > shaky tossups, in retrospect. > What's going on in this statement? Are the questions good or are they shaky? Is-- "that bad"-- a standard that a National tournament should strive for? I think most people would agree that questions that are"not that bad" should not decide the national championship... there are 28 and 26 questions per round in an NAQT packet and if we think some of them are not that bad or just "good enough" instead of good, what happened to question quality standards? I also think that some of this has to do with the sheer accretion of questions during rounds being played and probably during editing: ie. its hard to remember how bad that question on "carrier" was when that tossup on the "larson ice shelf" is coming fast and furious on its heels, and you have to get ready for "henry adams." All too often I feel like NAQT questions placate people by including some easily powerable questions and/or questions on Necco wafers. In other words: the filler keeps us from making sure the academic questions are quality, because the players don't notice as much... (this does not mean that I did not know what I was getting into by playing NAQT and I do think that trash and current events are a legitimate part of the distribution (though i wish it were smaller) but I feel like their placement does distract from the criticism of the academic questions, since who cares that "the wasps" began with a give away if you can power that "abercrombie and fitch" tossup and feel really special). Anyways, I think I too will begin submitting to NAQT in the hopes of improving some of the aforementioned issues and I can't encourage other players enough to do the same thing, Ezequiel
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