I will answer your questions: 1) I picked the art because it was the thing that stood out most in my mind - basically because Daniel and I both commented on the rarity of not getting any points on an art bonus. Some of the obscure lit actually worked in our favor, as I am a lit major and was familiar with most of the works. However, I know that some other newer players were complaining about the obscurity in lit as well. Kivin and Daniel are both history majors, yet I ended up answering most of the history questions that we got. The ones I knew can be attributed to my studying of packets. Kivin got exceedingly frustrated at the obscurity of the history questions. As far as science is concerned, I have little opinion there. I am not a science player, and none of my teammates are either. I have tried to learn some of the science canon through the studying of past packets, but I lack the background to comprehend the technical language used in most science questions. IE - every gas law sounds the same to me... Personally, I didn't think the questions were that horrible, but seeing the reaction of my teammates was discouraging. Kivin, in particular is a very enthusiastic player and has been among the best throughout middle and high school. Seeing him despair at this level is disheartening. 2) I think they were turned off a little by both, but mainly by the difficulty. I think that hearing 8+ line tossups and then still not knowing the answer on the giveaway was disheartening and a little embarassing to be honest. Speaking for myself, I have never been shut out by any team at any level, but Kelly came really close to shutting us out. I believe the score was around 380 to -5 at number 17. Luckily, I took an early shot (on a science tossup no less) and got on the board on number 18. The final score was 450-15. Usually when we get beat - even when we get beat bad - there are several times when the team will beat us on a buzzer race or that I will be thinking an answer and the other team just gets it first. This was not the case against Kelly. While he rarely had to wait until the end, I still didn't know the answer once he got it. In fact, several of them I had never heard of. We glanced at the packet after the round and realized that even if we had heard the entire question, we still wouldn't have gotten most of them on that particular round. Not all of the rounds were like that, but that particular one was. 3) As for my teammates expressing themselves in the public forum - don't hold your breath. They pretty much speak through me. In fact, I wasn't going to make such an open fiasco out of the NAQT Div. II bids, but they insisted that I speak up. Why don't they post for themselves? I don't really know. Kivin checks his e-mail about once every three or four months - in fact his Yahoo account was erased due to his lack of checking. And Daniel - well he just calls me and tells me what I need to remember to say. As for writing packets, we hosted a Juco tournament at Athens State in January and wrote the packets ourselves. Suprisingly, I think Daniel's questions were the best. Kivin and Daniel do write a lot of questions, and they are always good. We have been praised at virtually every packet-submission tournament we have attended. We chose not to write a packet for ACF Regionals this year due to it being our first time at Regionals. However, if we had written one, it appears it wouldn't have been used. The questions would have been around 4-5 lines long and much more accessible even to freshman teams. We will be submitting a packet to ACF Nationals (Kivin doesn't want to go, but Daniel and I do). I'm sure our packet will be butchered by the editors. We will make it difficult, but not impossible. Anyway, I hope this clears up your questions. Thanks for your interest and I hope my posts will be taken to heart (and with a grain of salt). -Lee --- In quizbowl_at_yahoogroups.com, quizbowlpostmodernist <no_reply_at_y...> wrote: > A few questions directed mostly at Lee, but answerable by anyone who > finds them applicable to their team: > > 1) Would you have found the difficulty more bearable had the art > questions (and questions in any area you consider yourself strong) > been answered more often by your team, even if everything else seemed > just as hard as it was this past weekend? > > 2) Are your teammates turned off of ACF by just the difficulty, or by > the combination of difficulty and length? Would easier but equally > long questions be preferred by your teammates to equally difficult > but shorter (approaching NAQT-ish length) questions? > > 3) Are your teammates at all interested in voicing for themselves how > they feel about this or any other question set in the various > internet fora available? And are they at all motivated to write > questions that don't have the traits they despise for other > tournaments? > > --Anthony
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0: Sat 12 Feb 2022 12:30:47 AM EST EST