"The person who gets the tossup isn't the only one who can answer the bonus. I mean, what's the point of having linked tossups and boni when you have a team? I thought the idea was to structure your teams so as to cover a wide base of knowledge, breadth-of-knowledge being part of the game and all." I think this hits the nail on the head. 1) One of the nice things about the game is that it forces you to, in order to improve performance, research areas that you might never learn in order to answer bonuses you get unexpectedly. In a linked bonus tournament, you might get away with never answering a question on trash, social science, or hell, even _science_, and still pull off a great score. 2) Most of the time on the linked bonuses, particularly the non-liberal-arts ones, I saw the person who got the tossup answering the bonus primarilly as well. I like the teamwork aspect of getting a tossup and "handing off" the bonus to a teammate. 3) Personally, I prefer questions (if good and accurate) that are as interdisciplinary as possible. Already tournament guidelines discourage these types of questions; having strict categorizations that affect play do so even more. 4) Certain subjects don't necessarily warrant more than one tossup/bonus per pack. I think it's perfectly fine to write an Alvin Ailey tossup, but one question on modern dance is enough per pack. You might say this asks for looser linking, but in the area of literature, for instance, there's little difference between a completely random bonus, and one that asks about two different periods and styles. Quizbowl, IMHO, is supposed to reward the polymath. The more often you can jump between subjects and expand the breadth of knowledge asked about, the better. Jer
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0: Sat 12 Feb 2022 12:30:45 AM EST EST