Re: Lies

grapesmoker · Tue, 13 Nov 2001 11:45:59 -0800

Thanks for providing these questions. I was
hoping to get a hold of them at some point and
post.

>> Deconstruct at leisure.

That I
will.

You wrote:

<< The purpose is to test
your lateral thinking, your ability to go beyond
simple rote memorization, but to see if the gestalt
/pattern can help you. The clues may or may not help you
immediately, but may help in concert with later clues. I
suppose the snow covered north leads to some bizarre
thoughts so we don't have the same sense of absolute truth
that Berkeley does. Quizbowl is a game about pattern
recognition as much as anything else. Some examples (from
Singles packs) >>

The same thing can be done
without the "lies."

Now the
questions:

<< Scientists hope this branch of music will someday
provide the type of safe nuclear power that our sun
does.** >>

So what you have done here is
written a "clue" which doesn't test any knowledge; it
test the ability to quickly solve a silly riddle. That
might be fine if we were playing a different format,
where this may have been the only clue and teams had
some time to figure out what exactly we were talking
about. However in a quiz bowl setting, what happens is
that either players will simply ignore the "clue"
knowing it to be false, or someone will probably figure
out the answer based on no knowledge of fusion jazz
at all, other than its existence.

<<
Although he was born in London, he was claimed as a
distant cousin by Ricky during a marathon performance of
"Babaloo."**>>

Another egregious example. If you know about Ricky
Ricardo, you will might get this question off the fake
clue without knowing anything at all about David
Ricardo other than that he existed. What happens here is
that not only is a fake riddle clue used as a tossup
clue, but it's a trash clue to an academic
answer!

<< Ironic members of the ACLU, pagans, atheists, and
gays have blamed this man's presence in the United
States for the attacks of September 11, 2001.
**>>

This question is just poorly written. Anyone who's not
been living in a cave in the last two months will
probably immdiately buzz in with "Falwell." When my team
played on this question, it turned into a buzzer race
from the 7th or 8th word.

I didn't comment on
the first question because I can't really speak to
the baseball clue; I don't know much about that.
Nevertheless, it doesn't make sense to me to use an unrelated
trash clue for a geography question.

Jerry