Michigan MLK 2005 Announcement

• From: Adam Kemezis <kemezis_at_kemezis.yahoo.invalid>
• Date: Sat, 23 Oct 2004 17:46:22 -0000
• Message-ID: <cle5de+n83r_at_...>

Dear Folks:

As many of you may by now have come to expect, Michigan Academic Competitions is 
pleased to announce our annual Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Tournament, taking place 
on Saturday 15 January 2005, the Saturday immediately before Martin Luther King Day.

As usual, this will be an academic tournament with timed rounds and NAQT-style. 
Difficulty will be comparable to previous years, somewhere between NAQT and ACF 
Regionals. The MLK will be followed on Sunday by the equally annual Ann B. Davis Trash 
Tournament, to be announced separately.

CONTACTS

Questions about logistics or packets should be addressed to Tournament Director and 
Editor Adam Kemezis (akemezis at umich dot edu). 

ELIGIBILITY

This tournament is open to all current students, graduate or undergraduate. If you are 
currently taking any course that could contribute to a degree program at the institution 
you're playing for, or if you are working toward a degree but not taking courses (welcome 
to the club), you're eligible. If you're in doubt, ask.

Depending on the size of the field, exceptions may be made on a case-by-case basis. 
Again, if you want to be an exception, let us know.


FEE STRUCTURE

Base fee for first team from a given school: $90
Base fee for additional teams from same school: $85
You're bringing a buzzer system: -$5/system (max of 2)
You've never been to the MLK before: -$10/team
You're coming from more than 500 miles away: -$20/team

You give me packet by (all these dates are Sundays):

28 November: -$30
12 December: -$15
26 December: -$5
2 January: No penalty
9 January: +$10
After that: +$25

Minimum fee per team: $50
Hard copy of questions (after tournament): $20

Teams from foreign countries may pay in the currency of their home country at an 
exchange rate of one to one with U.S. Dollars. 


QUESTION SUBMISSION

We will be using our usual distribution, viz.:

Literature: 4/4
History: 4/4
Science: 5/4
Current Events: 3/3
Arts: 3/4
Geography and Social Science: 4/4
Myth, Religion, Philosophy: 3/3
Pop Culture: 3/3
General Knowledge: 1/1

Teams that have less experience writing questions may want to consult the Michigan 
Memorandum on question writing, available on the web at:

http://www.umich.edu/~uac/mac/rules/memorandum2002.html

Along with its appendix:

http://www.umich.edu/~uac/mac/rules/appendix2002.html

Packets should be submitted, if at all possible in RTF form. If somehow this is not 
possible, some version of Word other than very recent ones should work OK. Packets 
submitted in Word Perfect format should include detailed, personally tested instructions 
on how to get Word 98 for Mac to read them, along with an explanation of why, if it was 
possible to test the conversion, it was not possible to simply save out of Word as an RTF 
file. 

There are a few general points I'd ask everyone to keep in mind:

-- Please remember that this is a timed tournament. Tossups should not be more than five 
lines of 10 to 12 point type, or 500 characters. Bonus parts should not be more than two 
lines, and bonuses should not contain more than three of them, unless they are one-word 
questions (e.g. "Given a country, name its capital city," or some such).

-- When formatting, simple is best. Using tabs and line spacings to make everything line 
up never works right in the end.

-- Please put all answers to tossups and bonus parts on different lines from the questions.

--When specifying the minimum required part of an answer, use underlining, or if that's a 
problem, _underscore_ marks. DO NOT USE CAPITALS. THEY SUCK REAL BAD.

--Please no questions on flags or spelling, and no computation or "for a quick ten points" 
tossups. Tossups must contain at least four or five discrete facts that cannot be logically 
derived from one another.

--One visual bonus is permitted per packet, as long as it does not require color copying. 
Audio bonuses are not permitted.

--If you have any questions about anything to do with your packet, just send an e-mail. 
It's much easier to answer e-mails than to re-write questions because of a 
misunderstanding.

BASIC LOGISTICS:

If you're wondering how to get to Ann Arbor and where to stay once you get there, some 
general suggestions can be found at:

http://www.umich.edu/~uac/mac/faq/part2.html

If you have more specific questions, or are just feeling chatty, give us an e-mail.

We look forward to a big crowd and a fine show come January.

Cheers,
Kemezis