And here are my 2 cents: I think the tournament was *a lot* of fun, and the ghetto spirit really captured the "essence" of the day. I was especially pleased to hear so many questions that escaped from the usual "canon" of QB. Whoever wrote that bonus on famous Chinese people--you rock!! And the surprise trash round was indeed a nice diversion. Kudos. I know there'd be a bunch of complaints about the packets--the uneven writing, the wild distribution, and the lack of "editing." There were moaners and groaners in all rounds. But how much of that is the fault of the editors? If it is a "packet-submission" tournament, then doesn't the quality of the tournament depend on the people who actually wrote the questions (i.e., the players)?? If a packet received is truly horrific, then the TD has all the right in the world to return it to sender for a rewrite. As the proud writer of the Hroswitha tossup, I just wanted to move beyond the usual pre-1600 canon of "literature" that has become repetitive from tournament to tournament (Hey, I even snuck a woman into the mix!). While I had no idea what questions my teammates wrote when they submitted them (e.g., Sailor Moon bonus), I was actually quite pleased with the variety and balance of our packet. The editor obviously did a great job pulling our packet together. I've heard so much rant about the "internal consistency" of a packet, but isn't the quality of a packet something quite subjective, anyway? All I look for in a packet is that each individual question be well written--factually correct, clues logically arranged, and free of grammatical confusion. It's just the luck of the draw that some questions "happen" to be in the same round. With all due respect to the rest of the QB community, I just think West Coast is an awesome circuit. The concept of fun is never lost among us. Okay, enough blabbing... Good job, USC!! Fun tournament! Willie Chen UCI quiz bowl
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0: Sat 12 Feb 2022 12:30:48 AM EST EST