Re: COTKU comments

Charlie wrote:

"In other words, the
questions were not as hard as many would like, and that was
intentional. We also included "trashademic" clues at the end
of tossups where possible. Why? Because we had some
brand spankin' new schools in attendance, and we'd like
them to continue in the game. Sometimes there's a big
difference for a novice team between losing 270-20 and
losing 270-80."

Speaking as one of the COTKU
moderators, I didn't have a problem with the level of
difficulty. Given the fact that 2/3 of the field were
"Division II" and that it was early in the season, I
thought the difficulty level and the "trashademic" clues
were very much appropriate. The fact of the matter is
that the good teams got most of those questions long
before the trashy giveaway.

I did, however, take
issue with the "bad old ACF" style of writing. Some of
the tossups and many of the bonuses were interminably
long, villed with vagueries like "He was the most
renowned blah blah and heavily influenced blah blah..."
Even worse, sometimes they were unnecessarily so. I
remember one three part bonus where you had to name poets.
One part of it was three or four lines long and read
like this "blah blah blah blah (three more lines of
blahs)...Elegy in a Country Churchyard." I don't care what level
you're on...all the ink before the name of that work was
wasted, and the other three parts were equally
unnecessarily verbose.

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