In my humble opinion, using Trivial Pursuit questions for *maybe* the first week or two is alright. The first few meetings of the semester are inconsequential anyway (unless you're rushing against the deadline for a competition you registered for in the Spring). Beyond that point it's counterproductive to use Trivial Pursuit questions for an established club, since the primary goal of those practices by that point are practicing people rather than recruiting peoople. On the other hand, if you happen to have a new club (which I don't think you have, but I'll say this anyway), it may be expedient to use TP questions for 4, 6 weeks or even longer. In that sort of situation, recruitment is more important (and this would probably apply to the second or third year of the program as well). As a fun party tournament or emergency set (oops, I forgot to print out this week's practice sets), Trivial Pursuit is alright. But the questions are much too short and they lend themselves to being streaky. Usually people are either really hot or really cold on a given night at Trivial Pursuit questions. It really isn't necessary for an established club to cater to newcomers for very long (if at all). You really are only looking for, say, 6 or 7 new people per year, so catering to the newbies is something that should be done with easier practice sets to start with (always a good idea when people are rusty after the summer). Using TP questions won't hurt per se, but it won't help your team very much. So, after the first week or two, give those officers punches in the nose at Missouri if they decide to stay with the TP questions. Patrick King NC State University --- quizbowl_at_yahoogroups.com wrote: > > Message: 3 > Date: Wed, 10 Sep 2003 22:17:11 -0000 > From: "Jason Mueller" <jcmpn7_at_...> > Subject: Trivial Pursuit and Quizbowl > > Is using Trivial Pursuit questions for quizbowl > practices instead of > packets a good idea, because that's what the new > leadership at Mizzou > wants to start out with, as they're still mad at me > for starting last > year off with Moon Pie questions. > > I oppose using Trivia Pursuit questions instead of > packets for the > following reasons: > > 1. The canons of TP knowledge and QB knowledge do > not have complete > overlap. If you want to succeed at QB, study QB > questions. > > 2. TP questions are poor preparation for tossups, > as TP questions > are not pyrimidal. > > 3. Difficulty of TP questions are hit-and-miss, as > some are > ridiculuosly easy and some are incredibly obscure. > > Does anyone else have an opinion on this? > > Jason Mueller > > > > __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0: Sat 12 Feb 2022 12:30:47 AM EST EST