Fall Novice Tournament

Fall Novice Tournament is a novice-difficulty high school tournament written and edited entirely by high schoolers and/or rising freshmen each fall, with logistical supervision from interested collegiate players who do not write for the event. Its goal is to provide an extremely answerable set for new players and novices in every region and expose interested contributing high schoolers to question writing in a controlled environment for the first time.

2009

Inspired by online discussions of then-inadequate A-sets, the 2009 Fall Novice Tournament was a project aimed to create an accessible, pyramidal, and canonical tournament specifically designed for novice teams. Edited by Sarah Angelo, Charlie Rosenthal, and Zhao Zhang, the tossups were written in 12-point Times New Roman and rarely exceeded five lines, with few bonus parts exceeding two lines. It was overseen by George Berry, Charlie Dees, Donald Taylor, Andy Watkins and Dwight Wynne.

Several mirrors of the set were hosted across the country from September to December 2009, with individual hosts setting different eligibility restrictions. Overall, the set was well-received, with scattered complaints about difficulty outliers.

2010

George Berry oversaw the second iteration of Fall Novice, which was edited by Stephen Eltinge, Douglas Graebner, and Matt Jackson. It was played at twelve sites.

2011

George Berry returns to oversee the 2011 tournament with further oversight and difficulty-reduction by Charlie Dees. Its editors are James Bradbury, Lily Chen, Diana Gerr, Tanay Kothari, Aidan Mehigan, and Max Schindler. The set will be available for mirroring starting in September.