In response to Mike's concerns: 1. Tournament started too late. I will recommend to the GMU team that we not schedule it on the same day as the singles tournament. Bryce has expressed a willingness to do this, as well. -- 2. Bounceback/sink criticism. Mike says this does not reward knowledge. I find this criticism puzzling, as bouncebacks reward knowledge at all times, not just when you get the tossup. The sink provided an escape valve enabled teams to not have points "stolen" from them in areas where they knew they did not know the answers. It also lends a strategic aspect to the game, IMO. However bouncebacks on 30-20-10 boni are not a Good Thing (tm). -- 3. Bad questions. We endeavoured to have a variety of answers -- I think we did this. Now, we must seek to use a variety of question styles. We wrote the 15 packets in the manner in which we are used to writing packets -- and trends that can be refreshing and interesting in one packet *can* get tedious after 15. I am very much open to suggestions, as well. Please post them on here; doing so can only be of benefit to all question writers. -- 4. Distribution skewed The distribution, if I recall correctly, was published on this very club and e-mailed to the list. I recall no complaints about the ditribution except a comment from Edmund that there was too much sports. After seeing the tournament through, I am inclined to agree. My suggestions for next year lie below. There are numerous sports that can fall into "other". The ones I recall being represented in the 15 packets we wrote were tennis, golf, swimming, wrestling, yachting, horse racing, and yes, there was an auto racing bonus (I believe it to have been in Round 15). To complain about the absence of *one* particular favourite "minor" sport seems, to me, to be nitpicking. Criticising the excessive amounts of hockey is a bit ironic, since I wrote 1/1 hockey question per packet for CP1 (I wrote 6 of the 13 packets that were used.) I don't recall *anyone* complaining about the hockey last year; for CP2 I wrote .8/.8 per packet in hockey. This adds up to 12/12 total across the entire tournament. Making the tournament packet submission opens up a whole new series of problems. Packet difficulty will vary wildly, which I can almost guarantee you would have been a complaint if we had done it that way ... also the potential for repeats is greatly increased. Also, I would almost guarantee you that over 50% of teams attending would have not submitted a packet until the week before the tournament. This is enough time to eliminate blatant hoses, attempt to find repeats and the such. It is not enough time to re-research and re-write the questions. -- Suggestions for next year: disclaimer -- I don't speak for the GMU team nor will these ideas necessarily be included in CP3. Sports 60/60 (Baseball/football/basketball 12/12, hockey 8/8, soccer 4/4, other 12/12) Music 60/60 (pre-1960 9/9, 1970s 12/12, 1980s 18/18, 1990s 21/21) Movies 60/60 (same as music) TV 60/60 (same as music) Other 75/75 sci-fi/geek 25/25 non sci-fi lit 10/10 comic strips 5/5 strictly academic 5/5 computer games 5/5 food 5/5 current events 5/5 girl stuff 5/5 sex/drugs 5/5 The academic bent of current events and computer questions that was evident this year will be eliminated. The strictly academic questions will remain however (I think this makes for an interesting crossover.) (to be continued)
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