Greetings! This is the official announcement for the 2003 Mad City Masters tournament, to be held Saturday, June 28 on the campus of the University of Wisconsin - Madison. For a number of years now it has been one of the top summer tournaments held in the upper midwest. Although its usual ringmaster is Eric Hillemann, he is still writing a book, and hence I find myself in charge this year. Basically, the tournament is open to three-person teams from any level of play, though because this is a masters event beginners may experience some hardships. The traditional question difficulty level lies between that of NAQT Sectionals and the NAQT ICT, or basically accessible to general college teams while still able to discriminate among the top players in the country. This year, the tournament will run as a guerrilla-style event similar to some tournaments on the West Coast. One result of this is that the tournament is free to whomever registers. Another is that the questions will not be edited...teams are completely responsible for their own packets. Registration will close on June 21 at high noon, at which time I shall inform teams of how many copies of their packets they will need to bring. I will work on providing packets for any play-off rounds - freelance packets may also be accepted for that purpose in exchange for either a complete set of the questions if one can be gathered, or a complete set of 2003 Elvis questions if it cannot. (Basically I'm doing this because after much examination, I find I won't be able to set aside the time to work the tournament up to circuit standards, and hence rather than listen to piles of complaining about the substandard job, I will simply do nothing. Because of the nature of the field, I doubt the questions would vast amounts of work anyway.) Please note that this also means we are not planning a singles tournament in conjunction with this event. However, if someone else wishes to hold one here that weekend, let me know at st_aidan _at_ hotmail.com and we can handle logistics, moderating, and so on. Here is the expected distribution: 4-5 History 4-5 Literature 4-5 Math/Science 1-2 Geography 1-2 Sports 1-2 Pop Culture 1-2 Current Events 1-2 Religion/Mythology/Philosophy 2-3 Fine Arts 1-2 Social Science 1-2 Other 1.) Please note that pop culture and current events are two completely different categories which should not, IMHO, be mentioned as a unit nearly as often as they are. Please use judgement in determining which category a particular question belongs to. 2.) Writers will be responsible for balance among subcategories in all categories. Hence, no more than 1/1 for any particular field of science of social science, not all history questions should be military, and so on. In addition, please be aware of geographic and cultural balance: Please be aware that each packet should include at least 4/4 of stuff not from Europe or North America north of the Rio Grande, of which 1/1 must be history and 1/1 Literature. 3.) Obviously, we will not be returning unacceptable packets because we won't be seeing or editing them ahead of time. However, everyone will know who to blame if there are flaws... Feel free to e-mail me if there are questions or concerns. Brian ************************************************************************ Brian Ulrich bjulrich_at_... Dept. of History st_aidan_at_... University of Wisconsin bjulrich.blogspot.com "Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading newspapers is like trying to tell the time by watching the second hand of a clock." -Ben Hecht ************************************************************************ _________________________________________________________________ Help STOP SPAM with the new MSN 8 and get 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail
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