The Chris McCray Tournament For Academic Excellence – A Summer Trash Tournament at the University of Maryland Sunday, June 24th, 2007 This is an updated announcement for the Chris McCray Tournament For Academic Excellence. Please disregard the previous announcement, as this has more updated information. If you are interested in a field update, please check the bottom of this post. The Maryland Academic Quiz Team is pleased to announce our first ever (to our knowledge) summer trash tournament to be held on Sunday, June 24th, 2007, following our Sun 'n Fun mirror. This primarily packet submission trash tournament is open to all players, including high school players, high school coaches, undergraduate players, graduate players, and unaffiliated players. The goal of this tournament is to offer competitive matches between players of all age levels by focusing on more recent pop culture and "culturally significant" older pop culture. Since there will be so many different age groups represented at this tournament, we will make an effort to distribute prizes amongst the different groups so long as there are enough teams for each division (high school, college, open). We are looking to do some form of a round robin followed by a rebracketed playoffs. The total number of rounds will be between 10 and 12. Pricing: + $100 – Base Entrance Fee Per Team. - $10 – Automatic discount for an additional team from the same school. - $60 – Acceptable Packet Submitted by May 26th. - $20 – Acceptable Half-Packet Submitted by May 26th. - $30 – Acceptable Packet Submitted by June 2nd. + $0 – Acceptable Packet Submitted by June 9th. + $30 – No packet submitted. Must inform the Tournament Director by May 26th if you are not writing a packet, or else you may be dropped from the tournament. - $5 – Per working buzzer system per school. - $10 – Per competent moderator (as determined by the Tournament Director) per school. - $10 – Per competent moderator (as determined by the Tournament Director) that helped out at our Sun 'n Fun mirror that did not apply his or her discount at that tournament. - $10 – Travel discount for coming from over 250 miles away per school. Minimum Fee : $35 Per Team Packet Guidelines: Each team wishing to submit a packet must write 26 tossup and 26 bonuses according to the specifications below. If the packet does not meet the specifications, it will be rejected and the team will be asked to revise the packet so that it meets those expectations. Distribution: 26/26 Total: 4/4 Movies – Please vary across genres, films, actors, directors, etc. 4/4 TV – Please vary across genres, shows, actors, creators, etc. 4/4 Music – Please vary across genres, albums, songs, singers, bands, etc. 4/4 Sports – 1/1 on Baseball, 1/1 on Football, 1/1 on Basketball, 1/1 on Other 1/1 Extra on Movies / TV / Music / Sports - Please write on two different subjects for your tossup / bonus. 1/1 Video and Computer Games 1/1 Consumerama – Inventions, weird products, advertisements, companies, etc. 1/1 Comic Strips and Comic Books 1/1 Food and Drink 1/1 Internet Trash – Non-academic things on the Internet, i.e. Hamsterdance. 4/4 Any Subject Not Mentioned Above – This can include recent, sci- fi, and trashy literature, trashy current events, board games and card games, road trip stuff, general knowledge, and anything else that relates to pop culture but has yet to be mentioned. Please do not write more than 1/1 in any particular category. 0/0 Meta Questions – Absolutely do not write a meta question (i.e. your cute tossup on the terrible trash tournament you lost in the final round on when you were an undergraduate five years ago) for this tournament, your packet will be rejected. 0/0 "Adult" Questions – Please refrain from writing about sexually explicit subjects like adult films for this tournament since there may be high school teams playing. While we all may have our opinions on what is appropriate for high school students and what isn't, just to avoid any problems just refrain from writing questions on these subjects. Update (4/15/07): Please do not write a theme packet. They add extra editing hassle and usually do not turn out well. Update (5/3/07): I may be willing to entertain a limited number of audio or visual tossups or bonuses in a packet (no more than 1/1). If you plan to write any such questions, please contact me before you write them. General note on the Movies, TV, Music, and Sports questions: 2/2 for each of these categories should be on subjects that occurred in the 2000s and 1990s (1/1 for each decade). The remaining 2/2 should be on subjects that occurred in the 1980s or earlier (no more than 1/1 per decade). When writing about early `90's and earlier subjects, make sure that the answer is something that is still notable today. This is not the tournament to be asking about some awful band of the 1980s or some canceled sitcom that has never been released on DVD or in syndication. Half-Packet Distribution: 13/13 Total: 2/2 Movies 2/2 TV 2/2 Music 2/2 Sports 1/1 Extra Movies, TV, Music, Sports 4/4 Anything else (see above for possible subjects) Difficulty: Aim for each tossup to be answered in 90% of the rooms. Aim for the average points per bonus to be above 15 points (i.e. more teams should 30 a bonus than 0 it). First time writers: Remember to write your tossups in such a way that the clues get easier as the tossup goes on. The first clue should be answered by people who have really in-depth knowledge on a subject, while the last clue should be able to be answered by someone who has very little knowledge of a subject (although still a little bit of familiarity with what is being asked). Also, remember to give specific, identifying information about your answers in your tossups and bonuses. Writing a lead in like, "this show lasted for eight seasons and was universally liked by critics" isn't very helpful. Instead you would want to mention something like, "this show ran from 1980 to 1988 and its character, Mike Bentley,…" provides much more detailed information. Length: Questions should be between 5.5 and 7.5 complete lines in Size 12, Times New Roman Font with 1.25 inch margins on the left and right (the default when opening documents in Word). Bonus questions should in general be no longer than two complete lines per part. Bonus leadins should generally not be longer than two lines as well, but occasionally going over this limit is acceptable. Try to have around 75 percent of your bonuses be in the 10-10-10 format, with the other 25 percent being in other formats like 40-30- 20-10-1, and 10-5. Please do not write any 15-15 bonuses, or more than one or two bonuses with 5 or more parts. Please do not write more than one or two list bonuses (i.e. "For five points each, name all six kids on the Brady Bunch.") Formatting: Please group your questions by distribution. Here is what a sample of what your videogame distribution might look like. Note that underscores are used rather than bolding and underlining because of the limited nature of the text formatting here. 1/1 Videogames: 1) By holding the joystick down and pressing every button on the machine it was possible to play a Battlezone-esque game even in the attract mode. Inputting certain initials on various birthdays made unlocked characters such as Godzilla and Raiden of Mortal Kombat. It was one of the first games to feature digital likenesses of its players, although Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan were conspicuous absences. FTP, identify this 1993 2 on 2 basketball game known for players being "on fire" and show boating slam dunks. ANSWER: _NBA Jam_ 1) Nintendo consoles have always had some pretty unusual controllers, long before the "Wiimote" was dreamed up. Answer some questions about these crazy peripherals, FTPE. [10] Perhaps the predecessor to the DDR Dance Mat, this NES peripheral came packed with World Class Track Meet, a game where the player would pound his feet as fast as possible on the feet pads. ANSWER: _Power Pad_ (also accept _Family Fun Fitness_ but not "Pad of Power") [10] It was rumored to be developed to allow Japanese gamers a free hand for adult videogames. The NES version was featured in the movie The Wizard, with Lucas Barton proclaiming he loves the device, it's so bad! ANSWER: _Power Glove_ [10] This bazooka-like Super Nintendo peripheral was seen as the successor to the Zapper, and Yoshi's Safari was the most popular game to take advantage of it. ANSWER: _Super Scope_ (also accept _Nintendo Scope_ and _Example Third Answer_) Please format your questions as they appear above. Note that all required parts of an answer should be bolded and underlined. Please do not use any automatic Word formatting like numbers or tabs. Do not add power marks to your own questions, they will be added by the editing staff. Mirroring and Obtaining Questions: The University of Oklahoma will be conducting a mirror of this tournament (look for that announcement). UTC is also conducting a mirror. Any other schools interested in mirroring this tournament should contact me, Mike Bentley, at mike000 at umd dot edu (that's three zeros). Questions will be distributed for free to those teams that participate in the tournament. People not participating may trade for the questions, or purchase them for $15. The questions will be submitted to the Stanford Archive in January 2008. Freelancing: Anyone willing to write 8/8 or more in any subject (varied subjects preferred) for this tournament will receive the question set for free. Please contact me immediately if you plan on doing this. Registration: To register, please contact me, Mike Bentley, at mike000 at umd dot edu (that's three zeros). Please include your real team name (i.e. your school or who is on your team for open teams), your level (high school, college, or open), how many buzzers you're bringing, how many extra moderators you're bringing, any reader discounts you may qualify for by reading for the HSNCT mirror on the previous day, and any travel discounts you think you might qualify for. Please also include whether you plan on writing a packet, a half packet, or no packet, as well as a projection of what deadline you're going to submit your packet by. More details on the time and place of registration will be posted soon. Current Field: Roger Craig and Co. (1 Open) Wilmington Charter School (4, 3 High School, 1 Open) University of Delaware (2, College) Carnegie Mellon (1 or so, College, not 100% confirmed) Garfield Heights, Ohio (1, High School) Jason Keller and Co. (Maybe, College) Other teams that I talked to at TRASHionals also expressed some interest in coming to this tournament. There are also a few freelance players who are currently looking for teams.
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