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.
Original Brown tournament
EFT 1 (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.
EFT 2 (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.
EFT 3 (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.
EFT 4 (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.
EFT 5 (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.
Results table
| 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 | ||
| 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† | ||
| 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† | |||||
| 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 | ||
| 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
Revival
The EFT name was successfully revived in the fall of 2016. Subsequent iterations have been played in 2017 and 2018.