Re: Rare entries?

• From: ESchluessel
• Date: Mon, 03 Jul 2000 12:21:38 -0700
• Message-ID: <000SM1PU2.00176AMGC.12170551-quizbowl_at_...>

My Rare Entries results will be compiled upon my
return to Washington in a few days.

A few
thingies:
1. Editing the power marks for the most recent
Beltway Bandits that, to be perfectly honest, I don't
think I rose to. I refer you to the Stanford Archive
for examples, but some questions worth noting have
the following answers:

Iron Chef (tossup
begins: "Kaga Takeshi(*)" and it was still powered;
misordered clues)

Sukiyaki (Begins: "The singer died
in the crash of JAL flight 500(*)." James Dinan
buzzed in there and still didn't get the power;
indication: the power mark should have been later, or the
clues should have been reordered, or both; the next
clue was a translation of the lyrics)

Khan
Noonien Singh (This tossup's power mark was placed based
on when I would get the question; thus, it was
placed further in average along than other questions'.
It was also powered far more than any other
tossup.)

The lessons learned from Beltway's experiment with
power tossups lead to the following conclusions in my
mind:
1) Power marks in Trash are harder to place than in
academic QB; this is partly a result of the greater
diversity and specialization of knowledge called for in
Trash tournaments
2) A power mark, whenever used,
should give a few syllables' time after the "power
clues" for the answer to be drawn to the forefront of
the player's mind, especially in formats giving
shorter after-buzz times to answer (e.g. NAQT's 3sec. vs.
ACF's 5sec.)
3) Make damn well sure your clues are
in the right order if you're using power
marks.
4) Basing power marks on personal ability works only
if your abilities in a given field far exceed the
average team's -- not player's, but aggregate of player's
-- abilities in that field.

All that being
said, address must be given to the variety of
power-mark styles present. While Eric Hilleman or other NAQT
nabobs may certainly comment, it should be recognized
that while NAQT has become by and large synonymous on
the college circuit with power marks, NAQT's style is
not the sole font of wisdom in this respect; both
Nittany Lion and Philly Experiment (which I'd be lax not
to advertise here -- sign up at trivia_at_... or
ers_at_...) use power marks of a different intent. And we
haven't even mentioned the PACE "FTP" 20-point power,
which in intent occasionally acts like an entirely
different being.

Edmund