The short version of what happened ...
One of the authors of one of the submitted question
packets had plagiarized a few questions from an old set
that's on the Stanford packet archive. Unfortunately,
two of the participating teams (Pitt and State
College High School) had recently practiced on that very
packet -- Pitt less than 48 hours before the NLIT. As I
was moderating that packet I said "D'oh! Some of
these seem awfully familiar", and since the match I was
moderating included one CMU player who'd been at Pitt's
practice (as I had been), I excluded the suspect
questions. Other moderators, who didn't recognize the
plagiarized questions, didn't, causing obvious problems in
various matches.
That's the main story; other
folks on this group can tell you about the followup and
fallout.
Doug