As president of UTC's quizbowl team, I am announcing this on behalf of Charlie. The UTC Academic Trivia Association will host its 4th annual Moon Pie Classic on Sunday, August 20th, 2006, on the UT-Chattanooga campus. It will be a packet submission tournament, with editing responsibilities to be handled collaboratively by associates of the UTCATA. ELIGIBILITY: This is an open tournament, which means that any and all who wish to play may participate regardless of current, former, or future collegiate affiliation. Typically such tournaments attract former or current college players, but it should be observed again that all players (including current high school students) are welcome; in fact, teams composed of high school students/class of 06 graduates will receive discounts on fees, which are detailed below. - In the case of free agents: There is the possiblity that teams might be looking for additional players, so if you would like to attend but do not have a team together, let us know and we will try to match you with teams needing help. Likewise, teams who could use additional support are encouraged to make us aware of that fact as soon as possible. REGISTRATION REQUIREMENTS: For a variety of reasons (of which some will probably be made obvious directly) it would help us a great deal if we could get an indication on the number of teams who wish to play as soon as possible. Therefore, if this tournament interests you, please drop as line as soon as possible, and keep us informed if for some reason your plans change and you cannot make it. Note: If your team includes players with disabilities or access issues, it will simplify things if you let us know in advance. That way we can take it into account when scheduling (building changes, etc.) FEES: As in years past, Moc Masters will be a packet submission tournament. This means that packets are *expected* from teams who plan to attend. You'll note we said "expected", but not required; teams will be given the option of playing without submitting, but there are substantial incentives in place to encourage writing. To whit: - Undiscounted fee: $120. For this sum you can simply show up and play, and nothing further is required, with one exception: YOU MUST LET US KNOW BY JULY 15th THAT YOU PLAN TO PLAY WITHOUT PACKET. This does not preclude the possibility that you may be allowed to play without writing if you notify us after that date, but you may be penalised for late notification. This seems unusual, but the reason for this new policy is so that we have a firm handle on how many teams will be attending and how many rounds we can expect from them versus how many we will have provide ourselves. - Packet written to guidelines below, submitted by July15th: $40. You read that correctly: if you can get a packet to us in three weeks which is written to the packet specifications described below, you will receive an EIGHTY DOLLAR discount from the non-packet fee. We figure the best way to ensure a quality, team-composed tournament set is to a) make the reward for writing a packet irresistable, and b) get the packets in plenty of time; this is how we propose to do so. - Packet written to guidelines below, submitted by July 22: $55 - Packet written to guidelines below, submitted by July 29: $70 - Packet written to guidelines below, submitted by August 5: $85 - Packet written to guidelines below, submitted by August 12: $100 As can be seen, any packet submission whatsoever will automatically be worth a $20 discount from non-submission; packets submitted any time in the next five weeks will result in almost half the entry fee taken off, even before other discounts. *Note Well* the following, however: to get any of the abovementioned packet discounts, the packets must be usable, which means they must be written to the packet specifications below. Packets which do not do so will be returned with a short explanation of why they cannot be used, and the discount will start from the date at which they are finally submitted in usable form. - Special Novice Discounts: If your team will consist entirely of high school students or those who have just graduated and thus have no ACF experience, or if no member of your team has any ACF experience, you may play without submitting a packet for $60, provided you alert us by July 15th. This does not mean that you cannot write a packet, however; if you compose a usable packet by July 15th, your entry fee will be waived entirely, and if you can submit one by July 29, you will only pay $20. - Additional discounts: Teams looking to save even more money can do so by means of taking advantage of an additional discount for composition of high school packets; a set of original high-school level questions will receive an additional $15 reduction from the base fee. Also, $5 will be taken off for a working buzzer system, as well as another $5 for the services of a full-time game volunteer. With all the discounts in effect, it will be more than possible for teams to play at this tournament and pay nothing for the privilege, and we would be just as pleased as punch for this to occur. PACKET SPECIFICATIONS: - Exclusivity: Obviously, packets should be blind to anyone who might conceivably play at this tournament. - Degree of Difficulty: Though this tournament styles itself a "Masters" tournament, that designation pertains far more to its open eligibility than to the difficulty of questions we wish to present. In other words, we are looking for questions to be on the easier side rather than the harder, somewhere between ACF Regionals and ACF Fall, and closer to the latter than the former. Writers would be well served to consult these tournaments (Fall sets can be found at this address: http://www.dpo.uab.edu/~paik/acf/results.html ) or tournament sets like Kelly McKenzie's Wildcat tournaments ( http://www.uky.edu/StudentOrgs/AT/tournaments/wildcat_inv_03_spring/wildcat_inv_03_spring.htm ) for the overall style and level of difficulty desired, and to keep in mind that, if a choice has to be made between a well-written difficult tossup and a well-written easier one, the easier one is to be preferred for this event. That having been said, the editing for these packets will primarily concern itself with culling of repeats, correcting obvious factual errors, meeting the distribution, and ensuring pyramidality, and will NOT have as its main focus maintaining a level of difficulty. It is incumbent on the writer to make sure that his or her questions will not be too hard or too easy, and complaints on that score will be directed squarely at the writer at this event, as is appropriate. In other words, make sure your questions don't go overboard, and everything will be fine. FORMAT: - Please arrange questions separately by category. - Make sure the words "for ten points" or abbreviation "FTP" appear in each tossup shortly before the final clue. - Please place the answer in a separate line, with the word "Answer:" and a single tab before the answer. Please bold AND underline all required information - Ideally, titles of books, plays, films, and works of art should be italicized, while titles of songs, short stories, and short poems should be placed in quotes. - Please e-mail the packet as either an MS Word or RTF file, preferably in 12 point Times New Roman font. - Please e-mail packets to this address: utcacfediting_at_... DISTRIBUTION: We ask for 25 tossups and 25 bonuses per packet, distributed as follows below. - Literature: Please include 5 tossups and 5 boni, of which at least 1/1 should be works of American literature, 1/1 should be British or Commonwealth literature, and at least 1/1 should be European literature. While questions on authors are obviously fine, questions which cover actual works or characters are greatly encouraged; ideally, literature questions of this type would outnumber those only covering authors. - Sciences: 5/5, of which 1/1 each of biology, physics, and chemistry. If you have a second question from any of these categories, try to make them from a different subcategory (e.g. two physics boni would be OK, but two on thermodynamics would be overkill). Effort made to make sure that these questions are actually about the science as opposed to science history and science biography alone would be greatly appreciated; if science biography is written, make sure that the clues are relevant to the reason for why the scientist is known (in other words, rather than "Born in 1901, his first university post was at Danzig University", try something like "In 1934 this man completed his doctorate based on his study of Pym Particles, for which he contributed the Yellowjacket theory of interaction and devised the equations named for him and his colleague Steve Rogers". - History: 5/5, of which at least 1/1 should be American, at least 1/1 should be pre-1815, 1/1 post-1815, and 1/1 non-US. - Philosophy/religion/myth: 3/3 for full packet, preferably 1/1 apiece. - Fine arts: 3/3; no more than 1/1 each on painting, 1/1 classical music - Geography: 1/1 - Social sciences: 1/1 for full packet - Your choice: 2/2. These may include 1/1 from any one of the categories above (but no more than 1/1 from any sub-category), as well as General knowledge/interdisciplinary questions -- these are especially helpful as tossups, since they make good Tossup 21s. It may also include 1/1 of Trash, but no more than that; as it turns out, Trash will be here in abundance in the previous day's tournament, so these packets really should be as close to completely academic as possible. OTHER NOTES: Generally, the editing staff expects that writers heed the basic tenets of quizbowl theory over the past decade or so and avoid obvious howlers in their packets. In general, try to keep tossup length to a reasonable level (at least three sentences); a delicate balance will be attempted between question length and clue density, but if an error must be made, have it come in the form of more clues rather than excessive brevity. As far as bonuses go, please use 30-20-10's sparingly, and do NOT write any of the kind "5 for one, 10 for two, 20 for 3, and 30 for all four". DRIVING DIRECTIONS: >From Atlanta and points south -- take I-75 to Chattanooga, then I-24 west towards downtown, then follow the freeway splitoff for U.S. 27 North, downtown Chattanooga. From 27 North take the 4th Street exit, within sight of the Tennessee Aquarium. Go right on 4th St. (you have no choice) and follow it for ca. 1 mile. Go past the UTC Arena, after which E. 4th St. becomes part of E. 3rd St. After that, take the second right on Palmetto St. Go two blocks and turn right on Vine St. (just past the EMCS Building.) Just before the place where Vine St. is blocked off, the parking lot for Grote and Holt Halls is on the right. Enter Grote by the door next to the dumpster. >From Knoxville and points north -- take I-75 to Chattanooga, then I-24 West; directions from there same as above. >From Nashville and points west/north: Take I-24 east to Chattanooga. As you round Moccasin Bend (freeway goes alongside river) watch for two exit lanes on the right; take the less rightward of the two, which will have signs above it for U.S. 27 N. Rest of directions are the same as above. >From Birmingham and points southwest: Take I-59 to the outskirts of Chattanooga, where it dead-ends into I-24. Get on I-24 East and follow the Nashville directions from there. CONTACT: Recall that packets are to be sent to utcacfediting_at_... . For other questions, e-mail Charlie Steinhice (steinhic at bellsouth dot net -- and yes, it's steinhic, not steinhice).
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