I agree with most of what you said -- but the Hamlet example also illustrates a basic problem: trust me, beginning with Kyd and the ur- Hamlet or even Saxo Grammaticus will not prevent it from being a buzzer race. In a room of 8 people, someone (if not several people) is going to know that clue. Maybe in an all Div II match you can get away with it but the problem with most questions at that level (and I'm the guy who wrote a George Washington tossup for ACF Nats) is that given a couple good teams you just won't find stuff that's obscure enough for lead-in clues (or what's obscure is so obscure that no one will know it and we'll just continuously have buzzer races on the middle clue). Given a tournament with pyramidally written questions where every answer is known at the end by almost everone in the room, more experienced players will always win. Given a sufficiently obscure answer space, less experienced but well-read players have a shot. If all the answers are "easy", experience with game play, buzzers, question format, etc. will win. Given sufficient obscurity, knowledge could beat out game experience. I'm not advocating for more obscurity here (though personally I'm all for it - - but then I'd actually like to have opponents to play against....), I'm pointing out that your premise is flawed. Easier questions do not give inexperienced players more of a shot -- exactly the opposite. Let's take 4 really well-read, smart people who have never played qb before and put them against the average qb team on NAQT SCT questions -- they'll lose about 600-10. Now let's take the same match and put it on Kleist questions...I can think of four people I know right now who have never played qb but who would have a shot in that circumstance...
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