Re: Ghetto Warz

Jordan Boyd-Graber <*jordanbg_at_jordanbg.yahoo.invalid*> · Thu, 22 Apr 2004 19:34:14 -0000

I guess I'll add to what Irene said.

First of all, I'd like to thank the crew at USC for a fun tournament.
 I liked the surprise trash round during the middle of the day; it was
a fun way to get back on track, but I *am* glad that it didn't count
toward records.  The prizes sounded very interesting and readable, and
weren't just random Dover books (good books, but they have an aura of
cheapness) or bargin bin crap.  Still not as memorable as Aztlan Cup
books, but far more readable.  

As for the tournament itself, the packets were - for the most part -
pretty solid.  Nevertheless, there were some uneven points in the
tournament.  The difficulty went all over the place from the linguist
Fodor (I held off as long as I could without negging with Chomsky, but
couldn't hold off long enough) to a tossup on just "bacteria."  I
think much of the editing was just shoring up existing questions; with
weaker packets, maybe some work on the answers was also needed.  Such
as asking for a medieval writer who isn't Anna Comnena, Hildegarde, or
Margery Kempe.  What was the answer, again?  I think that hardly
satisfies the condition "60% of a well-balanced team should know the
answer by the end of the question" set out by the packet guidelines.  

For USC's first effort at writing and editing a tournament since
Tremor bowl four years ago, I think it was a good effort.  The packets
were very fun, and I think that the Ghetto spirit of the tournament
was well represented.  There were some problems, though.  I think that
not having a playoff packet after the second round robin was a
letdown; declaring UCSD the winner determined by head-to-head after a
tie in record hardly seems fair.  The packet where questions were
unsorted was a bad way to start the day, but it was sorta nice to
build up a nice lead on the science questions at the start of the
packet.  :)

The packets themselves sometimes diverged a little too far from the
traditional canon.  One of the house rounds had three of the four lit
questions from Sci-Fi: Duke Leto, Canticle for Leibowitz, and Wrinkle
in Time.  Two of the four history packets were also framed in terms of
video games: Civil War Generals and KOEI's Romance of the Three
Kingdoms.

I really had fun today, despite these complaints (which as I read over
them seem harsher than I meant them to be).  I think that this
tournament, if it continues will be a welcome addition to the regular
calendar.  And the USC people are probably the nicest people on the CA
QB circuit, I think I'd enjoy anything they put on.

BTW, are results going to be up soon?

-Jordan (aka Schlomo of Caltech Aleph)