That Matt Weiner guy said: >>I frown on the idea that allowing >>blitzing tacitly endorses bad writing. >>Expecting that even the best tournaments >>won't contain 1 or 2 questions >>that are even slightly misleading is a bit >>too optimistic. Players shouldn't be >>punished for the fact that writers are human. With which I wholeheartedly agree. However, I felt this was also a good time to gripe about one of my personal pet peeves regarding blitzing and its necessity: Steer the players toward the answer as soon as humanly possible. "Hose questions" replace the idea of rewarding knowledge with the goal of punishing players for partial knowledge. I've seen three particularly nefarious examples that stick in my mind, probably because two of them happened to me. (I'm a Trash player, so these are all Trash examples, but the principles could probably apply to almost anything.) 1) Don't dance around the facts so as to imply you want a different answer, because YES, sometimes it IS that easy, and someone will get hosed. If the answer is the title of an episode of "Friends," names like Ross and Monica won't be giveaways to anyone; if you watch the show, you'll know who's being described, and if you don't, you might be lead to believe that the obvious answer (that the question is describing characters from "Friends" without referring to them by name) is what's being asked for. 2) Related to number one above, if it's a list bonus, question direction should be intuititive. Name of actor who has played the roles is pretty straightforward, and occurs somewhat frequently. Name of album from songs when they're all by the same band is very very iffy, especially if there's no indication that you're asking for an album until the end of the question. Try it with something like "The Greatest Hits of Elvis" if you're not sure what I'm trying to say. 3) Never, ever, EVER write a question where you quote lyrics but you're not asking for the SONG TITLE or WHO PERFORMED IT. (Exception: Quoting lyrics from a theme song where the title of the television show or film is wanted is acceptable.)(Addendum: If you ARE asking to identify band or album, make sure that the song has only been performed by one band and only appears on one album, unless you're specific about the fact that it's not on Album X or that it's a cover of a song by Group Y.) In short, don't lay false trails, because someone will pick them up and get hosed because of them. Quiz bowl is supposed to be fun and challenging, but guessing what the author had in mind shouldn't be a factor, and getting hosed is never any fun. Just my input. I could, of course, be wrong. Carey
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