I'll take a middle ground between Lee and Chris. Some of the questions seemed like they could definitely be just as good with a few lines cut out...I saw several that were 8 or 9 lines long in 10 pt font, which just seems unnecesarry to me. And Lee, we actually "only" played for 12 hours (including 1.5 hr lunch break) at Chattanooga, with 3 more rounds and 8 more teams than at mid- Atlantic, which more or less explains the difference. Thanks to Charlie et. al. for a pretty smooth tournament. As for the difficulty, I agree that tossups were mostly accessible, at least in the areas I feel capable of commenting on, though it did seem that several fine arts questions were closer to previous nationals level than previous regional ones. Bonuses were fairly tough, but it wasn't too common we said "what the hell?" about one. I guess that's the nature of packet-submission tournaments though... There were a couple notable errors in science questions that I feel I should point out, not to nit-pick but to make constructive criticism. The oxytocin question had a very fundamental error that almost cost us that game, as we wound up winning by 5 points. At the beginning of the question, I could tell it was either oxytocin or prolactin, but couldn't decide which until I heard "released from the anterior pituitary," at which time I buzzed and said prolactin, even though I'd been leaning toward oxytocin based on the similarity to ADH clue. The problem is that oxytocin is released from the posterior pituitary and prolactin from the anterior...thus my confusion. Also, although a more minor error, the Rayleigh-Jeans tossup said something about it working OK at shorter wavelengths, but not at higher energies, which is contradictory. In the context of that question, it was pretty easy to figure out in the midst of it what it was supposed to say though. Anyway, I just brought these up to suggest more careful fact-checking and editing, especially when people are writing about areas they don't really know too well. Even one word can make the difference in a question. Overall, I enjoyed the tournament and the questions. Thanks to all involved. -Matt
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