EFT

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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 the next four iterations.

2019

The 2019 iteration.

2018

The 2018 iteration.

2017

The 2017 iteration.

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 Skype 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