> Quick and dirty intuitive evidence of this -- how many of you have > met someone knew, told them you did quiz bowl, and been asked for a > sample question? Happens a lot, right? And when someone asks you > what a typical question is like, do you really pull some six-sentence > behemoth out of your vast memory banks? > Here again, in fact they do not. Depending on the question content, > playing more than ten games in one day can get... tedious... Both of these comments speak to a dangerous principle: that the structure of quizbowl should be determined by people who do not like or are not involved in quizbowl. The sports analogy fits that bill somewhat as well. Why should preference be given to the wants of people who find playing more games "tedious" over those who don't? What does explaining the game to someone who's not involved have to do with anything? As for the "six sentence behemoth", I can hardly think of a way to write a tossup distinguishing between the top teams at ANY tournament that is not somewhere in the neighborhood of six *lines.* I'm not sure what sort of length you mean by "sentence"; if it's the many-claused type of sentence that I prefer than that would indeed be too long. I'm fully prepared to write lengthy explanations of the answers to all the question I posed, if you really want me to, but I was hoping that certain things were already understood. --M.W.
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