July 7 Mad City Masters

• From: ehillema
• Date: Fri, 04 May 2001 08:54:01 -0700
• Message-ID: <000TF5K4P.001O3QON0.12170551-quizbowl_at_...>

SATURDAY JULY 7 - MAD CITY MASTERS (at the
University of Wisconsin-Madison).

In 1999 the Mad
City Masters succeeded the Minnesota Masters (Paul
Bunyan/All-Onion), held since 1993, as the upper Midwest's summer
open tournament for three-person teams. For the fourth
year in a row (one in Minnesota), I will be packet
editor and tournament director.

This year's Mad
City Masters will again be a Saturday-only,
packet-submission, open quiz tournament featuring teams of _THREE_
or fewer players, not four. As an open tournament,
anyone is welcome to play regardless of age or student
status. The tournament will generally employ NAQT game
rules, except that games will be untimed. Field size
will be capped at a maximum of 22 teams, and I welcome
team registrations from this point
forward.

ENTRANCE FEE:
$45 per team whose acceptable packet is
received by June 18. OR
$75 per team whose acceptable
packet is received by June 30. OR
$135 per team whose
acceptable packet is received by July 6. OR
$1,000.00 per
team sending no acceptable packet but willing to pay
to play anyway.

(What I really want is all
packets by June 30!)

PACKET WRITING:
The
required packets should have 25 tossups and 25 bonuses,
balanced across subjects as per the following ranges for
each set of 25:

4-5 History (mixing eras and
geography of course)
4-5 Literature (ditto)
4-5
Science/Math (mixing subcategories)
1-3 Geography
1-2
Sports
2-3 Film or TV or Pop Music or other Pop Culture
topic
2-3 Fine Arts (Music other than Pop, Visual Arts,
etc.)
1-2 Philosophy/Religion/Mythology
1-2 Social
Sciences (Soc, Anthro/Archaeology, Econ, Poli Sci, Psych,
Law, etc.)
1-4 General/Miscellaneous (other topics,
mixed topics, current events) 

Acceptable
packets must have subject distribution that falls within
these ranges. The text of tossup questions (not
including spaces or answers) should always fall between 200
and 500 characters in length--that's roughly two and
a half to at most six lines of text in most fonts.
Bonuses should all be worth a total of 30 points, with
partial points possible.

What to say about desired
difficulty? Questions should be interesting and challenging
for experienced players, as befits a Masters event;
at the same time, however, I want packets that can
be played with enjoyment by an average
college-circuit-ability team. Tossups in particular should rarely go
unanswered if read to completion to such a team. As one
benchmark, I'd say that for this event any packet within the
range from typical NAQT Sectionals difficulty on the
low end to typical NAQT Division I ICT difficulty on
the other (average to well above-average invitational
circuit difficulty) would be appropriate and successful,
but that writers should aim to avoid writing a packet
with a difficulty level outside that range in either
direction. (Roughly the same in ACF terms: anything from ACF
Regionals to ACF Nationals in difficulty is
fine.)

Finally, an acceptable packet should show some evidence of
having been prepared with care, and _proofread_ prior to
being sent off. Yes, it will be edited, but you should
submit it in a state that you believe is ready for play
as is.

The tournament will be held in
classrooms of the University of Wisconsin Humanities
Building, Park Street between University and State, with
registration opening at 9:45 a.m. and all teams requested to
be there by 10:15 at the latest. Meanwhile, teams
should reserve places by contacting me
(ehillema_at_...). Packets should be submitted in electronic form,
either by email (Word, RTF or Text-only attachment
preferred) or on a disk (Mac preferred) mailed
to:

Eric Hillemann
Carleton College Archives
One
North College Street
Northfield, MN
55057

Also: I am seeking several additional moderators for
this tournament, and will pay volunteers $15 each for
a full commitment of roughly 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. It
i