This packet was interesting at least, so it was much better than some technically sound but incredibly boring packets I have played on. And it wsa no more offensive than any other theme packet, and less offensive than some. Having written a few theme packets, I'd be a hypocrite to complain on those grounds, so I won't. As I recall, the answer to the first bonus part was also William Dean Howells, and each bonus referred to the previous bonus somehow, while each tossup began with a Howells reference. At worst, it was a packet in which the first sentence or clause was useless. Everything worked fine once I realized that it was just best if I paid absolutely no intention until after the Howells "clue," although before that point, I think I compared it to playing on packets from the Deep Bench tournament that had "lies." As Eric Hillemann stated, it did fulfill the basic distribution. I don't have a copy, so I can't say for sure. I want to say it probably leaned towards Americana more than the average packet and I'm not sure how much of the packet was post-Howells, temporally-speaking. The science tossups probably would have made hard-core science people complain, but then, just about every packet does that, it seems, these days. I'd be curious how an equally witty, similarly constructed theme packet would be received if the theme came from a clearly non-literature (and non-history) source. And, well, I'm the kind of guy who would consider writing such a packet, just because I can.
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