TRASHionals 2001 Review

• From: bokonon90
• Date: Fri, 06 Apr 2001 10:49:57 -0700
• Message-ID: <000TCS0E5.001OI20UV.12170551-quizbowl_at_...>

Now that I've bashed TRASHionals for their
format, I'll move on to review the rest of what happened.


The question structure was generally superb, with
only a handful of the sort of quickie buzzer races
that mar most trash tournaments. Taken as a whole, the
questions were quite good. The audio questions (music and
otherwise) were especially good and they seem to get better
each year. 

Moderating and officiating was
generally of high quality. I was afraid that the scoring
system would cause numerous scorekeeping glitches, but
it turned out to work out pretty well, all things
considered. 
Results were reported promptly and processed
expeditiously, things we often take for granted at tournaments
but shouldn't. 

There were some
meta-distribution issues, however. Certain minor arcana of sports
were grossly overrepresented. There seemed to be as
much auto racing as basketball, and there was a
notable shortage of questions on college hoops. There
were, it seeemed, few Olympic sports questions when
compared to golf and tennis (not that our team minded that
much.) In the early rounds, it seemed like half the
music questions were country or quasi-country, and that
the last five years constituted the lion's share of
both the music and film categories. 

TRASH
really needs to work on whatever randominzing algorirthm
it uses. There is nothing wrong with
product/invention questions per se, but one round stuck out as
containing far too many of them. Another round had all of
two sports TUs, one on auto racing, the other pro
wrestling. Another round had the only two tossups with South
Park-related clues I recall for the entire
tournament.

In closing, I will say I had a great time and that
those who skipped out on the awards ceremony missed out
on a lot of fun, from the numerous amusing prizes to
Dave Vacca's impromptu speeches to the unveiling of
the TRASH belt in all its glory.