First off, I want to make it clear that i am not the person who posted this afternoon, as several of my friends seem to think. However, I do agree with much of what the poster said with regards to the questions. I enjoyed the tournament very much and definitely thought the questions were better than what I heard last year. I thought NAQT actually had the difficulty almost perfect, and there did seem to be more academic stuff in most of the rounds than I'd expected (before someone from NAQT posts and says the distribution is always the same, let me just say that this was a personal impression). Of course I don't think I'll ever be happy with NAQT's general knowledge distribution (TU's on rock, paper, scissors; is; crown victoria; pro bono; etc) but I was fully aware that these questions would occur and really have no right to complain about them I guess. Before I list the TU's and trends that I had problems with, let me list those I enjoyed or appreciated the creativity of anyway - the One-Armed Man, Boreas, Sagrada Familia, Horace Greeley, Scholar Gipsy, Primo de Rivera, Blast, tea dumping (or tea parties or whatever), and there were several more. Actually the TUs that I thought were on the whole quite good were the pop culture and sports ones, which were frequently creative and pyramidal. Clearly if this level of consistency can be achieved in the trash categories; why not in the academic ones? What I would like to take issue with, is what has mostly been brought up already. Probably half or more of the power TU's I had this past weekend were "fraudulent," meaning that they were on questions that I thought were not pyramidally written. Now I don't mean to list these as an indirect means of self-aggrandizement as Nathan Freeburg constantly feels the need to do; I simply feel that they make my point. Among those TUs that come to mind (I'll skip the egregious ones the earlier poster mentioned) were a Hyksos TU that mentioned "shepherd kings" in the first sentence; a shaky Mimir TU; a poor The Nose TU giving major plot immediately; a Satyricon TU that had one of the major characters as the second clue; a Gunter Grass TU that had his most recent novel as the first clue; a TU on The Wasps that had one of its two main characters within the first five words; a TU on Vico that started by listing his four stages of history; a particularly awful TU on townships that referred to its use in the acronym SOWETO; and the list goes on. These clues were indicative of about 1/3 (maybe more) of the academic TU's I heard this past weekend. Now it could be that my complaints are simply those of one who has heard/written too many questions and has lost his ability to judge difficulty, but these aforementioned clues and styles are those that I have seen come up way too often and violate the basic rules of pyramidality that I believe NAQT strives for. Certainly there are enough veterans within NAQT's ranks to recognize what constitutes a giveaway and at what point in the question a clue should appear. Maybe I'm pointing at things that one might think to be too difficult, but let me point to a couple of examples from the science categories this past weekend - a TU on Raman scattering and one on the Zeeman effect. Now these are two answer that can be found at most basic circuit invitationals, so one would be hardpressed to criticize them on grounds of accessibility. The former mentioned the phrase "Stokes" (or Anti-Stokes; i can't remember which) quite early on and the latter referred to the "anomalous" variety of the Zeeman effect. I buzzed on both of those "clue words" powering questions on things I know absolutely nothing about, while my teammates Matt Reece and Peter Onyisi (the two best physics players on the circuit as far as I've seen) were not even buzzing. Now I don't want to hear people bring up the argument that only science players are entitled to get science questions. The fact that I was able to get these and several other physics questions "early on" due to dry, overused clues speaks not to the issues of entitlement or whining by specialists but to a fundamental flaw in the way the writer or editor has parsed the information in the TU. I'm not saying Matt or Peter should have gotten the TU before me, but if the question was written pyramidally, they would at least have a clue what it was about before I did. A few questions like these would have been an exception, but they seemed to follow a rule rather than breaking it. I don't know if this is a lack of diligence on the part of editors or inability to judge the proper ordering of clues. A separate and possibly more troubling question style issue this past weekend was the occurrence of TU's on academic subjects with almost no actual clues. I'm referring to those dreaded stylistic TUs along the line of "This man traveled in Europe. he thought about history. He categorized it in a medieval context. FTP, name this author of Mont Saint Michel and Chartres." Clearly I've simplified this question a bit, but the Henry Adams TU from this past weekend was in essence written like this. It typifies those TUs I'd hoped were dying out - the ones filled with vague information that is often not helpful at all. Other glaring examples of this included a TU on Joan Miro describing his style for a couple of sentences and then giving a major painting; a TU on Cassini (or his laws) that described his laws of lunar motion and which would have been gotten immediately or not until a guaranteed buzzer race at the end; a TU on Malraux that was useless biography for most players I'm sure; a TU on Tarquin Superbus that gave a useful Livy clue then went on saying the same thing for three sentences; an awful Tolstoy TU with very little useful information in the first couple of sentences; and so on. I was hoping these questions in the form of "His early realistic adolescent literature gave way to a modernist adult stage that would only be replaced by the postmodernist fiction of his later years" would not make an appearance at ICT and was disappointed to see them and in such abundance. These questions stink of simple cutting and pasting from some book or website and are just incredibly frustrating. They typify the kind of laziness that characterized ACF of years past which that format is trying to eliminate completely, and which I thought NAQT always stook a clear stance against. Another criticism I had was with the order in which questions appeared in the packets. We had numerous instances of getting 4 out 5 TUs as science or 2 straight lit bonuses, or 4 straight trash and general knowledge questions in a row. Albeit this point is not as important, and I'm sure there's an easy way to randomize these questions slightly better. What puzzles me and distresses me so much is that for an organization headed by an individual, Rob Hentzel (and with a few other members whose commitment I can't question), who I know devotes an enormous amount of time and effort to the final product, NAQT still manages to put out such an inconsistent final set of questions. Is it the written product that the editors get; ineptitude on the part of the editors; a fundamental difference in question philosophy (with regards to structure not distribution); a desire to inflate power TU stats thereby adding some level of "excitement;" or simply that they don't care. Now I know it's not the latter, and I know that NAQT does not desire to have questions that solely progress in a linear sense the way ACF usually desires. Meaning that I think that they want some creativity; some of that puzzle aspect, which I have no problem with. The inverse pyramid though, I dislike and I'm confident that they do as well. The unfortunate conclusion then is that NAQT is getting too many crappy questions from its writers; and its editors are not being vigilant enough in weeding those questions out or doing a better job in editing them to agreed upon levels of pyramidality. Case in point (this is not a personal attack) - a couple of NAQT's question writers are regarded with such ridicule that their NAQT ID numbers are now syonymous with lousy questions in all formats. When I first realized this was the case, I can't say that I was surprised as these individuals' questions rarely ascend to the level of marginal and are more frequently found in the arena of the craptacular. I know I plan to write more questions to effect some change from within and I would encourage those of you with similar complaints to do the same. Now, I want to close a post that has been more negative than I'd intially intended with a positive comment. The only reason that I took the time to write this long winded post, is that I'm confident that R. and a few others at NAQT will take the time to read it with an open mind. I just wish they'd implement some of these changes that I think the majority of the circuit would be in agreement with. I would be at fault if I did not thank them for what they always do well - put on national championship that features the best competition to be had all year; run an efficient tournament (if not always with the best format :) and invest an incredible amount of their own time for what can't be all that profitable a venture at the end of the day. Anyway, good luck to those individuals competing at the true national championship in a couple of weeks, where 15 of the best teams will duke it out to see who has the most knowledge of gerunds, animals, legumes, and conjunctives. I'll throw in my vote for Seth Kendall for the sportsmanship award right now. Subash
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