1. Kudos to Kelly. Extraordinary editing job--if people can't see the difference between the quality of the questions and those of a normal invitational--I don't know what to say. 2. Kudos to Raj and his crew for a well-run, efficient, fun tournament at Florida. 3. As good as these questions were, it did illustrate why extremely easy (in the sense of the answers) tossups can be a bad thing--if most tournaments were at that level of accessibility. It does lead to an awful lot of biography (albeit extremely well-written biography) and a lot less in the way of non-Western questions (all your Asian history has to be dynasties or shogunates). I'm not saying that tournaments like this don't have a place, they do--I think the ACF Fall tourney was a wonderful innovation--but increased difficulty in some tournaments is necessary for canon diversity. 4. Another sign of the sheer quality of Kelly's editing--there were at most a couple tossups with a stock QB leadin (the only one I can remember off-hand--"Ann Singleton" for Ruth Benedict). Not only is this an extremely low number but it also rewards a QB neophyte with a fair amount of knowledge...they are not disadvantaged for a failure to know QB-standard clues and prevents this from becoming purely a memory game. I wish more question writers and editors would be cognizant of this. my 3 cents, nathan freeburg
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