EFT

The Early Fall Tournament (EFT) is a name given to two distinct series of easier-than-regular quizbowl tournaments. The first series, written largely by the Brown club, ran five times between 2006 and 2010. The name was revived by Will Alston in 2016 for a tournament with a similar purpose.

Revival

The EFT name was successfully revived in the fall of 2016 by Will Alston, who went on to edit or be otherwise involved in the next four iterations. After its return, EFT would routinely have the largest fields and most mirrors of any collegiate tournament short of those run by ACF and NAQT.

2019

The 2019 iteration.

2018

The 2018 iteration was originally intended to be head edited by Joey Goldman alongside editors Alex Damisch, Ewan MacAulay, Dylan Minarik, Tejas Raje, Ramapriya Rangaraju, and Ryan Rosenberg. However, the logistics of the tournament fell into disarray and original editors Tejas, Alex, Dylan, and Ryan were forced to recruit additional editors Billy Busse, Ike Jose, Eric Mukherjee, Will Nediger, Jacob Reed, and Kenji Shimizu in the final weeks of its production. Jordan Brownstein, Rob Carson, Auroni Gupta, Andrew Hart, Kady Hsu, Ryan Humphrey, Young Fenimore Lee, Benji Nguyen, Andrew Wang, and Jason Zhou were credited as writers; it is unclear at what point they joined the project. Joey and Ewan were unable to complete their roles as head editor and science editor respectively and were ultimately credited as writers; the set's subtitle was made I guess Brexit really does mean Brexit as a result. Original editor Ramapriya did not appear in the final credits.

Rob Carson was originally slated to just provide oversight alongside Will Alston but stepped up to write. Alex also served as logistics czar.

Discussion

The final product was thought to have overshot its intended difficulty and its unfortunate editing situation meant that it was much rougher around the edges than previous iterations of the set.

Justine French made several prominent criticisms in the general discussion forum. While others joined them in commenting on overall question quality, French more controversially advocated "against putting hard clues in the easy part, since for players that do not know very many clues it is disheartening to have one of the few hard clues they can get be rendered useless by some (often tangentially related) easy clue."^[1] They also made the claims that Advanced Stats was a) "a significant burden on hosts" (and in fact would "[force] hosts to recruit almost double the number of staffers"^[2]), b) that they "only exist so that elite players can flex the first buzzes they got because they remembered a clue from Chicago Open four years ago", and c) are "actively harmful to community" unless editors use them to actively fix questions.^[3]

French's arguments were criticized as hyperbolic, with Billy Busse comparing the post to "throwing a temper tantrum at McDonalds because they put pickles on your burger after you asked for no pickles",^[4] and many of their individual claims were disputed by later posters:

• the level of competency required to operate Advanced Stats is only marginally above that required to use electronic scoresheets, and thus scorekeepers (while preferred) would not be necessary^[5] and any region (including SoCal) could find people with this level of competency.^[6]
• Advanced Stats play an important role in tournaments that do not require changes from editors (e.g. ACF Regionals^[7]) and were in fact used to edit EFT between mirrors.^[8]

The set also featured Andrew Wang's memorable tossup on "carbon and carbon", which Graham Reid described as "pathological".^[9] The question would be changed to ask for "these bonds" in later mirrors, but mere existence of this question would inspire players to neg future tossups with the pronoun "these two elements" with this answer.

EFT Round 5 wrote:
17. A bond between these two elements is reversibly formed and broken in a Wanzlick equilibrium. Some schemes for forming bonds between these two elements use catalytic cycles consisting of oxidative addition, transmetalation, and reductive elimination. A bond forms between these two elements in the first step of a reaction that has a four-membered oxaphosphetane ring intermediate. A bond between these two elements forms in palladium-catalyzed (*) coupling reactions. Organometallic reagents are often used to produce bonds between these two elements by giving one of them an atypical nucleophilic character. Bonds between these two elements are simply drawn as lines with no labels in skeletal structures of molecules. For 10 points, the backbone of organic chemistry consists of bonds between what two elements, which both have an atomic mass of 12?
ANSWER: carbon AND carbon [or C AND C; or two carbons; accept carbon–carbon bonds]
<AW, Chemistry>

Region	Host	Date	Champion	Second	Stats	Packets
Discord	the editing team	9/22/2018			Stats	Packets
SoCal	UCLA	12/1/2018			Stats
NorCal	Stanford	11/10/2018			Stats
Virginia Tech	Virginia Tech	11/10/2018			Stats
SoCal	UCSD	10/27/2018			cancelled
UK (closed)	Oxford	10/20/2018			Prelims Combined
Boise State	Boise State	10/13/2018	BYU	Oregon	Stats
Georgia Tech	Georgia Tech	10/13/2018			Prelims Overall
UK (open)	Oxford	10/13/2018			Stats
Yale	Yale	10/13/2018	Amherst A	Harvard B	Morning Complete
UCF	University of Central Florida	10/13/2018			Prelims Combined
Canada	Carleton University	10/13/2018	Toronto J	Toronto B	Prelims All Games
Minnesota	Minnesota	10/6/2018	"Drangonball Z" (sic)	Minnesota D	Stats
WUSTL	WUSTL	10/6/2018			prelims combined
Michigan	Michigan	9/29/2018	OSU A	MSU A	Prelims Combined
Maryland	Maryland	9/29/2018	Johns Hopkins A	Maryland A	Prelims Combined

2017

The 2017 iteration was again edited by Will Alston and Richard Yu, with James Lasker joining them. Other writers included Alex Fregeau, Vasa Clarke, Eric Xu, and Jack Mehr.

It followed in the steps of TTIAC in including a "thought" distribution.

Region	Host	Date	Champion	Second	Stats	Packets
Skype	the editing team	12/26/2017			Stats	Packets
Michigan	Michigan	10/21/2017			Prelims Combined
UK		10/21/2017			Stats (incomplete)
Northern California	Stanford	10/15/2017			Stats
Louisville	Louisville	10/14/2017			Prelims Combined
Southern California	UCSD	10/14/2017			Stats
Canada	University of Toronto	10/14/2017			Stats
Virginia	Virginia	10/14/2017			Prelims Overall
WKU	WKU	10/14/2017			(cancelled)
Georgia Tech	Georgia Tech	10/14/2017			Stats
Minnesota	University of Minnesota	10/14/2017			Stats
Boise State	Boise State	10/14/2017	Oregon	Colorado	Stats
WUSTL	WUSTL	10/7/2017			Prelims Combined
Yale	Yale	9/30/2017			Prelims Combined
New College of Florida	New College of Florida	9/30/2017			Stats
Second Skype	the editing team	12/26/2017			Stats

2016

The 2016 iteration of EFT was edited by Will Alston, Richard Yu, and Andrew Wang, with writing contributions from Eddie Kim, Jason Cheng, Parikshit Chauhan, Jason Zhou, and Ryan Humphrey. Auroni Gupta assisted with tournament production.

This tournament was the first to explicitly include a playtest mirror by holding an open Skype mirror of the tournament a week before any closed mirrors.

Region	Host	Date	Champion	Second	Stats	Packets
Skype	the editing team	9/17/2016			Stats	Packets
Northeast	New York University	10/1/2016			Prelims Combined
Mid-Atlantic	University of Maryland	10/8/2016			Prelims Combined
Southeast	Duke University	10/8/2016			Prelims Combined
Florida	University of Florida	10/1/2016			Stats
Kentucky	Western Kentucky University	10/15/2016			Stats
Texas	Texas A&M	10/29/2016			Stats
North	University of Minnesota	9/24/2016			Stats
Upper Midwest	University of Chicago	10/22/2016			Prelims Complete
Lower Midwest	Washington University in St. Louis	10/1/2016			Stats
Great Lakes	Youngstown State University	10/8/2016			Prelims Playoffs
Northern California	Stanford University	10/15/2016			Prelims Combined
Southwest	University of California, San Diego	10/8/2016			Prelims Combined
Canada	University of Ottawa	10/15/2016			Stats
UK	Oxford	11/26/2016			Stats

Original Brown tournament

2010

EFT 5: The Prince of Aquitaine whose Tournament is Destroyed was a collaboration between Brown, Eric Mukherjee, and Illinois, headed by Ike Jose. Mirrors occurred at Brown, Illinois, VCU, Georgia Tech, and Toronto, with the main site taking place on October 2, 2010.

This incarnation of EFT received more criticism than previous years, with common complaints being the lack of grammar/copy-editing in many questions, absurd difficulty outliers, and an unclear baseline difficulty.

Set	Region	Host	Date	Champion	Second	Stats	Packets
EFT 5	New England (main site)	Brown	October 2, 2010	Harvard A	Yale A	Prelims, Playoffs	Packets
	Midwest	Illinois	October 2, 2010	Minnesota A	Minnesota B	Stats†
	California	Claremont	October 3, 2010	Irvine	UCSD A	Prelims, Playoffs
	Mid-Atlantic	VCU	October 3, 2010	Maryland A	Carnegie Mellon	Stats
	Minnesota	Minnesota	October 16, 2010	Gautam Kandlikar	St. Thomas A	Stats
	Southeast	Georgia Tech	October 23, 2010	South Carolina A	Chipola & Georgia (tie)	Prelims, Playoffs
	Canada	Toronto	October 31, 2010	Western Ontario	Toronto A	Stats

^† Broken stats link

2009

EFT 4: Cattle-Related Vocabulary took place on October 3 and 4, 2009 at Brown, Virginia, Illinois, Texas, UCLA, Millsaps, Toronto, Gonzaga, and Macalester. Substantial portions of the set were written by Jerry Vinokurov, Guy Tabachnick, Eric Mukherjee, Aaron Rosenberg, Daniel Klein, and Ian Eppler, with contributions from Seth Teitler, Ike Jose, Trygve Meade, and Hannah Kirsch.

The tournament was mostly well-received, with most of the complaints centered on uneven bonus difficulty and mediocre copy editing. The tournament elicited discussion of the nature of stock clues after Andy Watkins criticized the use of the Reptile Fund as an early clue for Bismarck. A discussion of the trash distribution in academic tournaments also ensued.

Set	Region	Host	Date	Champion	Second	Stats	Packets
EFT 4	New England (main site)	Brown	October 3, 2009	Harvard B	Harvard A	Prelims, Playoffs	Packets
	Canada	Toronto	October 3, 2009	Toronto A	Michigan A	Prelims, Playoffs†
	Mid-Atlantic	Virginia	October 3, 2009	Maggie Walker	State College	Stats†
	Midwest	Illinois	October 3, 2009	Chicago D	Chicago B	Stats†
	Minnesota	Macalester	October 3, 2009	Minnesota Red	Carleton	Stats
	Northwest	Gonzaga	October 3, 2009	Washington A	Washington B	Stats†
	Southeast	South Carolina	October 3, 2009	Clemson	Southside	Stats
	Texas	UT-Austin	October 3, 2009	Rice	LASA A	Stats†
	California	UCLA	October 4, 2009	UCSD	Steve Katz	Stats
	South	Millsaps	October 4, 2009	Alabama A?	Alabama B?	Stats

^† Broken stats link

2008

EFT 3: Trapping Bees in a Dyson Sphere ran on October 4 and 11, 2008 at various sites around the country, including Brown, Wake Forest, Vanderbilt, UCLA, FSU and Illinois, with many sites seeing record attendance (the Brown site had to cap registration at 24 teams due to staff shortages). The set was written in equal shares by Jerry Vinokurov, Dennis Jang, Eric Mukherjee, and Aaron Rosenberg, with contributions from Jonathan Magin, Evan Nagler, Lisa Qing, and Eric Johnson, and as tradition dictates, was assembled at 7AM on the day of the tournament.

The tournament was well-received overall, with the exception of a tossup on peer-to-peer networks and an excess of questions on comic books in the trash distribution (everyone knows whose fault that is). The tournament also set off a large discussion about the writing of music questions, due to a tossup on the Leningrad Symphony containing some technical middle clues that were not uniquely identifying.

EFT 3 was also notably the subject of Christian Flow's Mind Games Article in the Harvard Crimson, which followed the exploits for Dallas Simons and the Harvard B team.

Set	Region	Host	Date	Champion	Second	Stats	Packets
EFT 3	New England (main site)	Brown	October 4, 2008	Harvard A	Dartmouth A	Stats†	Packets
	California	UCLA	October 4, 2008	UCLA 2	UCSD A & Stanford (tie)	Stats
	Mid-Atlantic	Wake Forest	October 11, 2008	Maryland B	Virginia	Stats
	Florida	FSU				Stats†
	Midwest	Illinois				Stats†
	Southeast	Vanderbilt				Stats†

^† Broken stats link

2007

EFT 2, subtitled Rataplan Ghost Rides the World War I Ambulance, was written by Dennis Jang, Eric Mukherjee, and Jerry Vinokurov, with the same goal as the previous incarnation. Mirrors were held at Brown, UCLA, USF, William and Mary, Chicago, Vanderbilt, and OU, with the main mirror taking place on September 29, 2007.

Rutgers won the Brown mirror after defeating Harvard, with Jason Keller winning the individual scoring award. The tournament was a huge logistical nightmare however, and prizes couldn't be given because stats were not compiled in time. Surprisingly, people did not complain.

The question set itself was praised fairly highly, with some qualms about the length of the questions (which averaged somewhere between 6 and 7 lines), the difficulty of tossups on Tlaloc and Legendre, the representation of the social science canon (some liked it, some didn't) and a factual error about the writer of Harrision Bergeron. The two packets written exclusively by Jerry were also seen as much more difficult than the others. Willie Chen returned briefly to complain about problems in the set that didn't exist, but was quickly refuted by Eric and Chris Ray.

Set	Region	Host	Date	Champion	Second	Stats	Packets
EFT 2	New England (main site)	Brown	September 29, 2007	Rutgers	Harvard	Stats	Packets
	Texas/Oklahoma	Oklahoma	September 29, 2007	UT-Austin	Harding	Stats
	California	UCLA	October 6, 2007	Irvine A	UCLA B	Prelims, Playoffs
	Florida	USF	October 6, 2007			Not available
	Mid-Atlantic	William and Mary	October 6, 2007	Maryland A	Penn	Stats†
	Midwest	Chicago	October 6, 2007	Minnesota B	Illinois A & UIC (tie)	Prelims, Playoffs
	Southeast	Vanderbilt	October 6, 2007	Alabama A	WUSTL A	Stats†

^† Broken stats link

2006

The first incarnation was written by Seth Teitler, Ryan Westbrook, Jerry Vinokurov, and Selene Koo, with the intent being to have an additional early-season novice tournament that, unlike ACF Fall, did not require teams to submit a packet to play. EFT was held at several regional sites over the weekends of October 7-8 and October 14-15, 2006. Host schools included Chicago, Brown, Maryland, Texas, Georgia Tech, USF, and UCLA.

Feedback can be found in this thread. Overall, this tournament was received with praise. Much of the commentary revolved around the difficulty of "hard" bonus parts as well as niche subjects like world literature and social science.

Set	Region	Host	Date	Champion	Second	Stats	Packets
EFT 1	New England (main site)	Brown	October 7, 2006	Yale A	Rutgers	Stats†	Packets
	California	UCLA	October 7, 2006	Stanford A	UCLA A	Stats
	Florida	USF	October 7, 2006			Not available
	Texas	UT-Austin	October 7, 2006			Not available
	Southeast	Georgia Tech	October 8, 2006	Vanderbilt	Kentucky	Stats†
	Midwest	Chicago	October 14, 2006	Chicago A	Michigan A	Prelims, Playoffs

^† Broken stats link