PRICK 2003 update

Still really early, but here's a little update on plans for
Princeton's fall tournament.  So far I've gotten 4 schools who say
they plan to attend (VCU, Cornell, Rutgers, Maryland) and several
others seriously looking into it.  The date will still be 10/18/03,
and will likely stay that way due to scheduling issues.

Anyway, the main point of this post.  I've been playtesting an early
batch of questions for this tournament written at the intended ACF
nationals/Auspicious Incident level difficulty and have heard concerns
as to the high difficulty level of the current set of questions,
especially given that the majority of "hardcore" players with
significant ACF-Nationals/masters experience probably won't be in
attendance.  Since I do recall Swarthmore receiving some criticism
from some Mid Atlantic teams for using AI questions in its tournament
(QOTC), I'm inclined to think that I may need to tone down the
difficulty after all.

Here's what I've been considering: I think it would be worthwhile to
keep a good share of hardcore questions in the packets for
experience/canon-expansion purposes, but balance them out by making
the majority of the questions ACF Regionals-Kentucky's Wildcat
Tournament level (still a level up from our spring tournament,
Buzzerfest), with perhaps a few easier questions thrown in as well. 
While I see the chance of seeming inconsistent, I think this solution
might provide a better balance between difficulty and accessibility.

Since we have to write the majority of the questions still, some
response from teams who have "signed up" or are considering attending
PRICK will prove crucial.  Please e-mail me at
cfrankel(at)princeton.edu and let me know what you think of the idea.
 To summarize, PRICK will still feature a share of hardcore questions,
but the overall difficulty will be toned down to slightly above ACF
Regionals level.

-Chris Frankel
-President, Princeton College Bowl

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0: Sat 12 Feb 2022 12:30:47 AM EST EST