The following is an announcement and call for interest for The Illinois Open 2005: Spite, Death and the Devil, which will be hosted by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Academic Buzzer Team on the "picturesque" campus of UIUC on November 5, 2005. Once again, I, Mike Sorice, am in charge here. Anyone interested in attending this fourth in a series of fine events should e-mail me at msorice(at)uiuc.edu at his or her earliest convenience. The Illinois Open 2005 will be an ACF style, packet submission, open eligibility tournament with a target difficulty slightly below that of ACF Regionals. An acceptable packet is required of each participating team without exception, unless granted a dispensation by me. Anyone wishing to apply for a dispensation, for whatever reason, must request one of me by e-mail at msorice(at)uiuc.edu before the packet due date, which date is October 8, 2005. No set of circumstances gives an ironclad guarantee of a dispensation so, if you intend to request one, I urge you to contact me at once. Distribution and Packet Guidelines: (#TU/#Bonuses Category) 5/5 Literature 5/5 Science 5/5 History 3/3 Religion, Mythology, and Philosophy 3/3 Fine Arts 2/2 Social Science 1/1 Geography 1/1 Your Choice (trash, current events, anything above, or anything else. I.e. your choice) Beyond that, please follow these three simple principles: (I) Write questions with unambiguous, well-defined answers and without "filler," i.e. sequences of information or non-information that do not directly imply a single answer or set of equivalent, explicitly acceptable answers. (II) Vary your questions and answers in each discipline over sub discipline, time period, and region where applicable. (III) Write questions of reasonable length. Tossups of more than eight lines or less than three are unacceptable; bonus parts of more than four lines are unacceptable; bonuses requiring six prompts under any circumstances (e.g. 10-5; 15-10-5) are unacceptable, and bonuses requiring five prompts should be used very sparingly, if at all. It is my fondest hope that rules more specific than these are not required, as they largely have not been in years past. As always, if you find these requirements too vague to operate upon or do not understand them, I urge you to e-mail me at msorice(at)uiuc.edu. I reserve the right to reject as unacceptable any and all packets that disregard these principles. Formatting: I prefer to receive packets as Microsoft Word files containing text as 10 points Times New Roman and attached to e-mail to msorice(at)uiuc.edu. https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/msorice/www/io_formatting_example.doc is an exemplar of the formatting I'm looking for (if, most certainly, not the content.) The rules followed therein are as follows: 1. The first two lines ought to be the tournament title ("The Illinois Open 2005: Spite, Death and the Devil") and team name following by a space and comma-delineated, parenthetical list of members of that team, all bolded. 2. Questions ought to be sorted, numbered, and labeled by category in the order given by the distribution (i.e. first all the literature tossups, then all the literature bonuses, then all the science tossups, etc.) headed by the discipline name and number of questions (e.g. "Literature (5/5).") 3. Insert the answer on the line immediately succeeding the end of the tossup or bonus part after indenting one tab and writing "Answer: ". 4. Please use no acronyms (e.g. FTPE, FTSNOP, etc.) 5. The required parts of the answer should be bolded and underlined and all other parts (prompts, do not accepts, etc.) should be in quotes. Work titles should be italicized or quoted as appropriate, and no other extraneous formatting is to be included. 6. Prompts or alternative answers ought to be included parenthetically after the "primary" answer. Every effort to explicitly include acceptable or promptable alternative answers ought to be made. 7. The Illinois Open 2005 and its mirror sites are likely to be staffed by experienced moderators, but any pronunciation guides that you deem useful or necessary ought to be included in phonetic English in square brackets immediately following the word whose pronunciation it is meant to elucidate. 8. Bonus parts should be delineated with Arabic numerals followed by a period and single space. Bonuses with parts of a single point value need not include the point value; bonuses with variable point values for their parts (5-10-15, 30-20-10, 15-5, etc.) must include the point value parenthetically following the bonus part number. Full Fee Structure and Payment Procedure: Base fee: $120 Minimum fee: $40 (Acceptable packet submitted by: discount) September 17: $30 September 24: $20 October 1: $10 October 8: 0* October 15: -$10+ October 22: -$20 After October 22: -$50, assuming I decide to let you play, which is highly unlikely unless you've e-mailed me before 12:00 PM CST on October 22 to let me know that I should expect your packet late. Buzzer discount rate: $10/(working buzzer) Moderator discount rate: $20/(competent game official) Multiple team discount rate: $20/(team from the same school after the first) Being from far away discount rate: $60/(qualifying- team) Please note that: *any team receiving a dispensation from me will play at the no discount rate with respect to their packet, but is certainly eligible for all other discounts. +a negative discount means that I take more of your money, whereas a positive discount means that you keep more of your money. -to qualify for the being from far away discount rate, a team must be comprised of current representatives of an academic institution located at least 6 hours by automobile from Champaign-Urbana (according to MapQuest "Total Est. Time") in either direction. The UIUC Academic Buzzer Team accepts, as payment, cash or checks made-out to "UIUC Academic Buzzer Team." Though we expect payment at registration, we are aware that this is not always possible and are, therefore, willing to accept payments at later times, so long as we are aware of the need to wait. Mirroring, Freelance Submissions, and Obtaining the Questions: Previous years' Illinois Opens have been successfully mirrored at various sites throughout the country. As then, we are open to propositions for mirroring of our event under the right circumstances. Anyone interested in mirroring The Illinois Open 2005: Spite, Death and the Devil should contact me at msorice(at)uiuc.edu as soon as possible to discuss the parameters of such an endeavor. I am proud to announce that a number of sites have already contacted me to discuss mirroring, so it seems likely that there will be at least one mirror site, but I am still open to all offers at this point in time (and likely not for much longer.) We are more than happy to exchange the full set of questions from The Illinois Open 2005: Spite, Death and the Devil in return for an acceptable (see packet guidelines above) freelance packet submitted in a timely fashion, i.e. on or before the packet due date of October 8, 2005. Anyone with any enquiries about freelance submissions should contact me at msorice(at)uiuc.edu. The full set of packets from The Illinois Open 2005: Spite, Death and the Devil will be on sale at the event for the price of $10 in both printed and electronic form. Following the event, the questions may be purchased from me in electronic form for $15 by sending e-mail to msorice(at)uiuc.edu. Requests for printed packets after the event may also be accommodated and should also be directed to me. Michael Angelo Sorice, msorice(at)uiuc.edu Tournament Director and Chief Editor The Illinois Open 2005: Spite, Death and the Devil
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