Here is an opportunity to weigh in with your opinion about a few issues-for-NAQT for which I would like to have a better sense of the state of player opinion. This is my own survey, not something conducted in any official sense by NAQT. Its purpose is to give me--and then all of us in NAQT--a better picture for how current players feel about a few key things that could at least conceivably be changed. It is not a referendum the results of which would be binding upon us, but we would, I think, sit up and take notice of any decided preferences that become clear. Please, if you want to have your opinion noted, and very possibly have an effect on our game, return email to me (ehillema_at_...) within the next few days (no later than April 17) with your answers to the questions below. For this I want returns from current collegiate players only. Please begin by telling me who you are, what school you play for, and whether you did or did not play in at least one of the NAQT collegiate events (CCT, SCT, ICT) during 1999/2000. Then please give your opinion regarding these three things: Issue 1: Timed or untimed? NAQT's collegiate events currently are timed games with two 9-minute halves. QUESTION 1: Would you prefer that NAQT continue to use timed play for its standard collegiate events, or switch to untimed play, with a set number of tossups in each match? A. strongly prefer timed B. mildly prefer timed C. I'm neutral D. mildly prefer untimed E. stongly prefer untimed Issue 2: Tossup answerability and the issue of giveaways unrelated to the rest of the question. Please consider this situation: an NAQT editor is confronted with a submitted tossup question which he or she believes will go unanswered by a majority of teams at a given event if limited to clues relating to the actual subject -- there exists no "giveaway" about the subject itself that is likely to suggest the right answer to any but a small minority of players. [Assume the editor's judgment about this is in fact correct.] However, the editor sees that the tossup can be made answerable by adding, at the end, a much easier clue that jumps to another subject area altogether. (An example taken from recent discussion might be a tossup on the Biblical character Gomer, given an ending like "who shares her name with a certain resident of Mayberry.") This example aside, assume that the actual facts are that the question will go largely unanswered if no such clue is added, that 90% of teams who will be present at the event could answer the question correctly if such a "switch-subject" giveaway is tacked on, and that in most cases it will be answered in that case by a buzzer race. QUESTION 2: Which of the following comes closest to your general opinion of such situations? A. the question should not be used (at least as a tossup); tossups that the majority of teams cannot answer should not generally be used, but neither should a switch-subject way-easier clue be added. B. the question should be used, without adding a switch-subject way-easier clue; it is fine to have tossups that few can answer, and hooray for those few who can. Unanswered tossups are a lesser evil than buzzer races on a final switch-subject clue. C. the question should be used, adding a switch-subject way-easier clue to make the question answerable, even if the most-frequent result is a buzzer race. Buzzer races on a final switch-subject clue are a lesser evil than unanswered tossups. (continued next message)
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