Regarding this "lie", << Although he was born in London, he was claimed as a distant cousin by Ricky during a marathon performance of "Babaloo."**>>, Jerry said: 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!" and Dave Levinson replied: The ability to fuse knowledge across disciplines (and frankly Lucy is as a legitimate part of culture and askable as Amahl and the Night Visitors and so-called high culture) should be a fundamental part of the game (and used to be). ------- Lucy is a fine topic, but you're ignoring Jerry's criticism about the question's structure. You have turned an otherwise fine, if not thrilling, question about David Ricardo that begins with more obscure information and ends with easier clues into a contest to see who can figure out the quickest that the person who shares a name with Ricky Ricardo is an economist. If this clue weren't fake, you *could* make a perfectly good DR tossup with a trashy lead-in by referring more obscurely to the supposed episode to reward people who knew of the DR reference on Lucy without giving it away totally, leaving a pyramidal tossup in room without a Lucy expert. The first clue, as written, does not distinguish between expert knowledge of DR, RR, or any combination thereof; if it were not a lie, this would be a poorly written question. I was not at the tournament this weekend. Were players somehow aware that a given question's leadin would include a lie (eg did every question have a lie?)? If not, there's also the problem of penalizing experts by confusing them with false information that non-experts might happily discard. I would have spent the first half of the tossup trying to recall what was said on either the lease breaking or Maharincess of Franistan episodes, which contain or refer to marathon Babaloo sessions, on the mistaken assumption that it was relevant, while someone who knows that DR and RR exist answered the question, possibly before any DR experts in the room. I have less of problem with the Coase tossup with regard to the first objection, but I could see it confusing and infuriating a Coase expert, who should be answering a question on Coase if it was well written. Even if it doesn't matter most of the time, underestimating the knowledge of those who hear a question unfairly penalizes the real expert when a question in his niche comes up, which is a shame. David
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0: Sat 12 Feb 2022 12:30:45 AM EST EST