Difference between revisions of "Collegiate difficulties"
Kevin Wang (talk | contribs) |
Kevin Wang (talk | contribs) |
||
Line 23: | Line 23: | ||
*novice - [[ACF Fall]] | *novice - [[ACF Fall]] | ||
**1 dot on the college quizbowl calendar difficulty scale | **1 dot on the college quizbowl calendar difficulty scale | ||
− | |||
− | |||
− | |||
*regular | *regular | ||
− | *Regionals - [[ACF Regionals]] | + | **EFT - the difficulty of the revived [[EFT]] under the head-editorship of [[Will Alston]] |
− | **3 dots on the college quizbowl calendar difficulty scale | + | ***2 dots on the college quizbowl calendar difficulty scale |
+ | **2.5 dots on the college quizbowl calendar difficulty scale | ||
+ | **Regionals - [[ACF Regionals]] | ||
+ | ***3 dots on the college quizbowl calendar difficulty scale | ||
*[[Nationals-minus]] - the difficulty of typical Spring Open tournaments | *[[Nationals-minus]] - the difficulty of typical Spring Open tournaments | ||
**previously called Regionals-plus | **previously called Regionals-plus |
Revision as of 12:56, 8 November 2019
See also: Difficulty
The following is an (incomplete) list of commonly-used collegiate tournament difficulties, in order from easiest to hardest.
Terminology
There are four broad categories of college difficulty: novice, regular, nationals, and post-nationals. Each successively higher difficulty corresponds to another dot on Ophir Lifshitz' college quizbowl calendar difficulty scale.
The first three correspond roughly to ACF Fall, ACF Regionals, and ACF Nationals. In turn, ACF Regionals difficulty corresponds to DI SCT and ACF Nationals to DI ICT; there is no exact NAQT equivalent to ACF Fall, though DII SCT is similar. All are roughly interchangable. The fourth "post-nationals" difficulty designates any tournament harder than ACF Nationals, of which Chicago Open is the prototypical example.
Plus and Minus
Sets that aim to be easier or harder than an existing set or difficulty are typically denoted "plus" or "minus". For example, a set trying to be more difficult than ACF Regionals might call itself "Regionals-plus" or "regular-plus."
Regular vs. Regionals
Theoretically, "regular" difficulty and "Regionals" difficulty are the exact same, as regular difficulty is defined as the difficulty of ACF Regionals. An emerging distinction between the "regular" and "Regionals" difficulties is a consequence of arguments to have ACF Regionals no longer represent the difficulty of the median tournament, e.g. by lowering the difficulty of other tournaments relative to Regionals or by making Regionals itself easier.
Advocates for lowering the average difficulty of college quizbowl to be roughly the difficulty of 2018 EFT have used "regular" difficulty to refer to this new difficulty - "Regionals" difficulty would then represent the unchanged objective difficulty of ACF Regionals, which would now be harder than "regular".
The List
- "true" novice - NAQT Collegiate Novice
- novice - ACF Fall
- 1 dot on the college quizbowl calendar difficulty scale
- regular
- EFT - the difficulty of the revived EFT under the head-editorship of Will Alston
- 2 dots on the college quizbowl calendar difficulty scale
- 2.5 dots on the college quizbowl calendar difficulty scale
- Regionals - ACF Regionals
- 3 dots on the college quizbowl calendar difficulty scale
- EFT - the difficulty of the revived EFT under the head-editorship of Will Alston
- Nationals-minus - the difficulty of typical Spring Open tournaments
- previously called Regionals-plus
- Minnesota Open - used to ground Cane Ridge Revival and George Oppen
- 3.5 dots on the college quizbowl calendar difficulty scale
- Nationals - ACF Nationals, ICT
- 4 dots on the college quizbowl calendar difficulty scale
- Chicago Open
- 2017 Chicago Open
- Arrabal