This is a full announcement for the Academic Tournament Council's Winter Open, to be held January 29 in six locations around the country. Those six locations, as announced previously, will be Illinois, Princeton, UT-Austin, Berry, Stanford and Harvard. The goal of the ATC is to provide an accessible forum for young teams to learn the basics of packet writing while still maintaining the question quality expected by established programs. The ATC has no plans to run any national championship tournament, establish a new format, or otherwise step on the toes of ACF and NAQT. The continued existence and shape of the ATC will depend on the reception of this tournament. The Winter Open will be a packet submission event, with packet guidelines being graduated based on the team's writing experience. Packets should be written at or below the difficulty of NAQT Sectionals. The overriding theme of this tournament is accessible questions. Please, if you have never heard an answer come up in either a general-audience quizbowl tournament or an undergraduate- level class, do not use it. If you are unsure about whether an answer is easy enough, it probably isn't. We would like to show all interested teams that packet submission does not mean overly difficult, and we appreciate all writers keeping that goal in mind. The packet guidelines are as follows: New Teams (teams with 0 members with packet writing experience): Literature 1/1; History 1/1; Science 1/1; Religion, Mythology, Philosophy 1/1 (pick two of the three); Arts 1/1; Social Science 1/1; Your Choice 2/2 Total: 9/9 Novice Teams (teams with 1 member with packet writing experience): Literature 2/2; History 2/2; Science 2/2; Religion 1/1; Mythology 1/1; Philosophy 1/1; Arts 1/1; Social Science 1/1; Your Choice 1/1 Total: 12/12 Experienced Teams (teams with more than 1 experienced writer): Literature 4/4 with 1/1 each of American, British, other European, and non-Western, and substantial variation in time period, genre, and answer type. History 4/4 with 1/1 each of American and non-Western and 2/2 of European. Be sure to vary your questions in time period and answer type. Science 4/4 with 1/1 each of biology, physics, and chemistry and 1/1 miscellaneous science (math/cs/astronomy etc). Religion 1/1 The two questions should be from different religions. Mythology 1/1 The two questions should be from different mythologies. Philosophy 1/1 At least one question must be on post-1500 Western philosophy. Arts 2/2 - 1/1 on painting and 1/1 on academic music Social science 1/1 1 question must be on either law or economics, the second can be on the remaining of those two or on any other social science. Geography 1/1 - 1 question must be on physical geography, the second must be on political geography. Trash 1/1 - The trash may be sports, film, popular music or trash literature. Total: 20/20 Tossups should be on average 5-6 lines long in 10-point Times New Roman font. No more than one bonus per packet should be 30-20-10, and please do not write any 5-10-15 format bonus questions; just use the same material for a 10-10-10. The fees and packet deadlines for the ATC Winter Open will be as follows: Base fee: $70 Packet submitted by December 24th: - $40 Packet submitted by January 1st: - $20 Packet submitted by January 8th: No Penalty Packet submitted by January 15th: + $20 Packet submitted by January 22nd: + $40 Packets should be submitted to ekwartler_at_... as a word document (.doc). No team will be allowed to play without submitting a packet. The "new" and "novice" packets submitted by teams from a given region will not be used in that region so older members of established programs will have the opportunity to help their younger members write. The editors are also willing to help fledgling teams gain as much as possible from the writing experience by critiquing new and novice packets on request. Individual hosts will post details about their respective regional incarnations as we get closer to the date. Any questions should be sent to Eric Kwartler at ekwartler_at_... or to the following contact people at host schools: Harvard - Frank Kelly at fkelly_at_... Stanford - Eric Whitman Smith at ericwhitmansmith_at_... Berry - Dr. Wade Carpenter at wcarpenter_at_... Illinois - Michael Sorice at msorice_at_... Princeton - Chris Frankel at cfrankel_at_... UT-Austin - Eric Kwartler at ekwartler_at_... Full details can be found at https://webspace.utexas.edu/egk55/www/ Hope to see all of you on the 29th, Eric Kwartler, ATC President For ATC members Michael Sorice, Chris Frankel and Matt Weiner
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