<<What the D2 players need is not artificially easier questions but rather the chance to hear a question out and not have it interrupted by some sixth-year player who's heard all the chestnuts on that answer before, thus (1) potentially ruining the fun for all but the most hardcore and (2) ruining the value of the question for the new team (they don't heard the intermediate and giveaway clues.)>> Looking back to my first year of competition (1994-95), I can say, in hindsight, that having at least one or two tournaments against only JV players might have been a better introduction than the trial-by-fire that was my first tournament. OTOH, back in 1994-95, I would guess that the questions then tended to cover a smaller subset of "answer space" than they do today. IMO, the most important thing about DivII is the fact that it does give people a chance to compete without us dinosaurs. Nevertheless, I think _some_ tinkering at the question level might be useful: while wholesale rewrites are probably a bad idea, adding in some easier giveaways, or toning down boni a bit (e.g., making 5-10-15s into 10-10-10s, reducing difficulty of egregiously obscure questions*) might not be such a bad idea. --STI (*) Example: a bonus on extremely rare diseases, or minor battles of the War of 1812, etc. It would be possible to edit the questions so the information is more likely to "stick" without dumbing the questions down too far. [From experience, I've found that some things--especially on Qs where I'm totally clueless--just go in one ear and out the other.]
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