NAC Commentary

Howdy all. First off, I would like to say what
excellent teams and good sports Grand Junction (who ceded
the D.C. title) and Manheim Township (who they ceded
it to) are. I had the distinct pleasure of losing an
excellent game to Manheim in the preliminaries, and then
getting to the second round of the playoffs before losing
to Grand Junction. Gotta love Chip's random seeding.
Also, I've been playing Plymouth Canton all year, and
their captain Ben for longer than that. He's an awesome
player.

As much fun as I always have at the NAC, a few
things bother me. I don't know what kind of protest
decided the Claremore-Thornton match, but it certainly
wasn't the first game-deciding protest of the tournament
(or the second, or...) I realize that these things
happen, and am extremely glad that there is recourse for
teams wishing to protest. I think it says something
about the quality of the questions, though, when there
are protest so often (more than one of my matches was
protest-riddled.) Being a math guy, I am particularly disgusted
when his completely inaccurate questions comes up (at
one point he claimed that Eucild proved that all
numbers of the form x! - 1 are prime, a statement that
nearly made me vomit on the spot). Almost as annoying is
the fact that many of the math answers are either one
or zero. Similar problems plague his "science"
questions (that is, if he decides to put any in that
round.)

Anyway, I've whined enough. From any high schoolers
reading this, I'd like to know if you thought this year's
NAC was particularly, er, flawed (if you were at the
NAC), or if you enjoyed any other national tournaments
you went to (if you were at any). Even better, if you
were at both the NAC and some other tournament, please
e-mail me at meyvisnate_at_... and tell me if you
really thought the NAC was worth it.

Thanks in
advance.

--Nate

P.S. Is there another non-trash-y Rare Entries contest
going on anytime soon?

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