Some FOIST Rules

Durham_Devil · Thu, 28 Jun 2001 13:34:53 -0700

I'll be sending an official set of rules to
Edmund later today, but here's a subset:

* The
rounds will be an take-off on Eric Hillemann's singles
format, but depending on the number of people who show up
(I've heard the remote possibility of as many as 40,
but I think that may have been my wildest dreams), we
may deviate wildly after "qualifying".

* No
matter what the format, for Round 1, players will choose
where to play based on first-come,
first-serve.

* Tossups will have power marks. I set them. Don't
even think of arguing over this. If I put the mark too
early, consider that I thought the subject better known
than it was. If I put it too late, you're
welcome.

* The top 5 finishers will receive some
prizes.

* Questions so far have tended to be 3.5-6.5 lines
long in 12-pt Times New Roman font with 1" margins. I
made them longer than usual in most cases because (a)
I had a lot of knowledge about it and (b) instead
of two competing sides, there could be as many as
eight.

* All qualifying rounds will have lengths that are
multiples of 20 questions. Within each set of 20, there
will be 4 "sports" questions, 4 "movie" questions, 4
"music" questions, 4 "TV" questions, and 4 "other"
questions.

* I have finished the movie questions. Distribution
runs to about 60% naming the movie from plot features,
about 20% naming the Hollywood movie personality, and
about 20% naming the plot element (character, event,
etc.). And for those of you geeks out there, the movie
section contains at least 15% info that can be classified
as sci-fi.

* Any resemblance between
questions in this tournament and questions in any
tournament you've ever seen before is purely
coincidental.

There is one more possible rule I wish to introduce,
but I will devote a separate post to explaining it,
and will leave it to a closed vote and open
debate.

Andy