Re: So! Deep Bench!

mrsmiley4 · Sun, 11 Nov 2001 21:52:05 -0800

First, I'd like to thank Minnesota in general for
holding the tournament, and David Levinson in particular
for not only TDing the tournament, but for also
accommodating the numerous difficulties that Grinnell had with
actually getting to the tournament (We were only able to
secure transportation for half a team, and then showed
up late). 

In any case, I certainly enjoyed
the tournament, and I'm pretty sure that the rest of
the team did as well. The moderators all seemed
pretty good, questions were generally accessible, and as
Lindsay said the other teams were pleasant to play
against, meaning that while our team almost uniformly was
stomped on, we were at least beaten to the ground on
questions to which we knew the answers, and the stompers
were very gracious about it. I didn't really notice
the marathon QB factor on Saturday, though this could
be because we didn't stay for TRASH-- 9 AM to 10 PM
does seem like a lot without a lunch break. Overall,
I'd definitely send a team back next year, hopefully
a full team of 8 this time. :)

That said, I
do have a few (hopefully) constructive criticisms to
offer. The first night of the tournament, wherein the
teams separated into the singles and doubles teams and
stayed in the same room the entire night, did seem a
little taxing, even coming in 6 rounds late. The room I
was in, First Singles, did finish relatively quickly,
but this was because of the nature of the players in
the room-- very few questions reached their ends
before one of us buzzed in and gave a correct answer.
This was obviously not the case in the other rooms,
since as we finished round 18, I want to say that the
third doubles room was three or four rounds behind.
That's a long time to be doing quizbowl, especially
after driving several hours to the Twin
Cities.

I didn't really find too many problems with
question wording-- there were a few hoses, and there was
at least one question that immediately comes to mind
where no useful information was given until about the
third sentence in, but on the whole they were pretty
good. I wasn't too crazy about the whole "lie" thing--
I realize that it was an experiment, but I felt
like in most cases it detracted from the answerability
of the tossup. The problem wasn't in the idea, I
don't think; more often, the lies were merely written
so that they didn't give enough information to
direct someone to the correct answer, or else they
pointed to an incorrect answer.

Overall, though,
we had a lot of fun this weekend. Thanks again to
Minnesota for holding the tournament and for the prize
books which are currently still in the box in my room,
waiting for me to do something with them. (Whether such a
thing will actually happen is anybody's
guess.)

Brad