Fourth annual Vancouver Estival Trivia Open and mirror in London, Ontario Saturday, July 20, 2002 The Vancouver Estival Trivia Open (VETO) is the nation's longest-running annual quiz bowl tournament. Updates will be posted on the page http://caql.org/events/veto02.html which includes LOTS of hyperlinks. For questions and comments, contact pmcc _at_ alumni.sfu.ca Unlike in previous years, VETO 2002 will be played with entirely new questions. Each team will have to write an original packet of questions. As always, this event is FREE of charge. When Saturday, July 20, 2002, from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. We chose this date because it marks exactly 131 years since British Columbia joined the Canadian confederation. In order to allow enough time to coordinate teams from the two sites, please notify us by July 1, 2002, if you would like to participate. This date should be easy to remember because it's Canada Day, a day when the media give us more than the usual amount of Canadian trivia -- which may become useful question material. Where In the heart of downtown Vancouver, B.C., Canada: Simon Fraser University at Harbour Centre, 515 West Hastings St. This is directly across the street from the Waterfront SkyTrain and SeaBus station. By road, Vancouver is about: * 3 hours from Seattle; * 9 hours from Eugene; * 18 hours from San Francisco; * 24 hours from Los Angeles; * 33 hours from Winnipeg; * 39 hours from Tulsa; * 60 hours from Fairbanks. Vancouver International Airport is served by more than 40 air carriers offering scheduled nonstop flights from 31 communities in British Columbia, another 33 locations elsewhere in North America, 12 cities in Asia/Pacific, and 3 cities in Europe. Devotees of Southwest Airlines may prefer to fly to Seattle/Tacoma and then take the Quick Shuttle or rent a car. Although the flight may possibly be cheaper, if you factor in the time and money you spend on the 3--4 hours ground transportation each way, it may still be more worthwhile to take Air Canada or another airline directly to Vancouver. Accommodation Over the past year and a half, you may have seen SFU players in Seattle, St. Louis, London, Berkeley, Corvallis, Chapel Hill, or Ann Arbor. Now we would love to show our home town to you! * Bruce is offering FREE lodging in the spare room in his downtown apartment! He can accommodate up to four people, but they should bring sleeping bags. * Another cheap option is a dorm bed at the HI Vancouver hostel, which we've checked out and found is pretty good as hostels go. It is in a nice neighbourhood 2.1 km from the tournament. * There are also quite a few reasonably priced hotels in downtown Vancouver, within walking distance of the tournament location. The worldres website is a good one for looking up accommodation online. * If you don't have a car, you may also want to consider staying near a SkyTrain station. Do not be tempted by cheap hotel rates in the East Hastings neighbourhood. This is the V6A postal prefix area, which has the lowest median income in all of Canada. You really don't want to stay there. Who can play VETO is open to anyone, but every team should include some players with quiz bowl experience, because every team will be expected to provide: * staffing of games during bye rounds (although during every round, at least two teams will have byes); * sufficient copies of an original packet of questions ready for play, and also emailed in a timely manner to a designated team at the mirror site; * sufficient copies of a question packet received via email from the mirror site. A team that is overflowing with question-writing talent may choose to use its surplus energies to help out a team with less experience in this area. Each team can have any number of players, but no more than four can play at a time. As in previous years, if you don't have a full team of four, we can match you up with other players. The field at the Vancouver site is capped at 12 teams. Format VETO 2002 will be run "guerrilla style" without central editing and will be staffed by players. We'll play at least a full round-robin, perhaps a double round-robin, depending on the number of teams. There will probably be a final round between the top two teams. Games will be conducted according to NAQT rules, except that matches will be untimed, with a fixed number of tossups per round. Ontario mirror and Trans-Canada championship match The Vancouver Estival Trivia Open will be mirrored in London, Ontario. Packets will be shared between the two tournaments. The climax of the day will be the third annual Trans-Canada Championship Match at 5 p.m. (Pacific time) in the teleconference room. The winning team from VETO will compete against the winning team from the Ontario mirror (where it will be 8 p.m.), over the telephone. Stay for a whole separate trash tournament! And Exit Music! On Sunday, July 21, the second annual Count Chocula's Toilet Bowl, a popular culture quiz tournament, will take place at Harbour Centre. More details on this will be posted under separate cover by Hanson Ho (hansonho _at_ shaw.ca). Count Chocula's Toilet Bowl will use questions from RC Cola Classic held on April 28, 2002, in Chattanooga, with Canadian content added by Hanson. Players do not need to write any questions! Some time during the weekend, Hanson Ho will be presenting an all-new Exit Music audio recall championship. This will be based on mainstream popular music from the last decade or so, with a twist of modern indie. Question Packets VETO rounds will be untimed, with 20 tossups played in each. To allow for tiebreakers and for questions that might get botched during play, your packet should include: * 24 tossups, each worth 10 points -- no 15-point "powers"; * 22 bonuses, each worth 30 points -- but no single-part, single-answer bonuses. Use the following subject distribution for both tossups and bonuses: Science, Math, Technology 3 -- 4 History 3 -- 4 Literature 3 -- 4 Geography 2 -- 3 Current Events 2 -- 3 Fine Arts 1 -- 2 Religion, Philosophy, Mythology 1 -- 2 Social Science 1 -- 2 Popular Culture, Games, Sports 1 -- 2 General Knowledge 0 -- 3 Canadian content quota: Of the first 20 tossups, at least 4 must refer to Canadian people, places, things, events, and created works. The same goes for the first 20 bonuses. Tossups should include at least two separate clues, preferably at least four. Multiple-choice bonuses should be used sparingly, if at all, and should provide at least four choices. In order that we can keep to a reasonable schedule, questions must not be too long: * No tossup question, and no part of a bonus question, should be longer than 6 lines if using a fixed-width font with 79 characters per line. * No bonus question should ever require more than four separate team conferrals. To promote fun and variety, teams are encouraged to bring multimedia questions (visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory, gustatory). These tend to work better as bonuses than as tossups. Cassette tape players will be available for auditory questions. Every packet must contain at least one multimedia question: It can be as simple as presenting a printout of a picture you found through http://images.google.com and asking a few questions about the picture. Aim for a difficulty level approximating that of NAQT sectionals. A web page will be announced with more detailed hints on question writing, including links to reference sources. Prizes The leading individual scorer at VETO will take over the title of West Coast Dominatrix of Relevant Knowledge (WC-DORK). Anyone may sponsor a prize and select a winner according to any criteria. Last year we had prizes for the longest trip to VETO, most united team, most ridiculously wrong answer, and others. Contact us if you're sponsoring a prize that you want listed on the web page as encouragement. Other Vancouver activities on VETO weekend The 25th Annual Vancouver Folk Music Festival will take place on the same weekend as VETO. This is also the beginning of the weeklong 10th Golden Oldies World Cricket Festival. See http://www.tourism-vancouver.org for more information about Vancouver, including links to special promotions. Why not take this opportunity to spend more time in super, natural British Columbia? I'm totally psyched! Where do I sign up? If you are interested in participating, please contact Peter McCorquodale at pmcc _at_ alumni.sfu.ca by July 1, 2002, so that we can sort out teams. Updates will be posted on the web page http://caql.org/events/veto02.html __________________________________________________________ "A lot of Imperialist ladies asked me to tea to meet schoolmasters from New Zealand and editors from Vancouver, and that was the dismalest business of all." - John Buchan, The Thirty-Nine Steps
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