Discord ACF Regionals Packet Discussion

Matt Weiner - Yesterday at 11:01 PM
I'm going to use this packet
Packet by Delaware A (Eric Wolfsberg, Rohan Narayan), Kentucky A (Neelav Dutta), and Cambridge A (Jason Golfinos, Ewan MacAulay, Elysia Warner)
1. Like its composer’s opera about Elizabeth of England, this opera’s overture is directly taken from that of Aureliano in Palmira. When asked to turn over a love letter, a girl in this opera hands over a laundry list instead. Its overture’s F minor second theme features a motif of three staccato eighth notes, followed by two slurred ones, in an example of the composer’s iconic “crescendo.” A tone below the original D major is usually used to sing its aria about gossip titled “La calunnia.” Arias in this opera include one sung before the music teacher Don Basilio arrives, titled “Una voce poco fa” (“OO-nah VOH-chay POH-koh FA”), and one in which the title character repeats his name before the patter section, titled “Largo al factotum.” For 10 points, name this opera about Count Almaviva’s attempts to woo Rosina, written by Gioachino Rossini.
ANSWER: The Barber of Seville, or, the Useless Precaution [or Il barbiere di Siviglia, ossia L’inutile precauzione]
<Other Art (Opera)>
so it's interesting that we start with clues about the production of the piece and then a plot clue and then we go to several score clues in a row
this is the type of question I would expect to have quite a few negs because it refers to "it's composer's iconic crescendo" (which rossini piece, if you know that clue? might say the wrong one) plus constant confusion between this and the marriage of figaro
Wang Anshi - Yesterday at 11:04 PM
so the first really identifiable clue for someone who has just seen the opera without being technically proficient is probably Don Basilio
Matt Weiner - Yesterday at 11:04 PM
I think limiting the number of score clues and aria titles is an obvious way to achieve shorter questions with fewer clues that the bottom half of the field can't buzz on, while still keeping basically the same appeal to the top half (you get 1 of each)
maybe in this case since LaF is so famous you can have 1 more aria title in the first half of the tossup but do you need 2?
this definitely seems like it has two leadins - presumably by their placement the editors think both clues are harder than even the hardest score clue, do we need both? they don't seem to flow into each other in any thematic way either
this could be a viable d2 answer though I would mention that it's a prequel to the marriage of figaro in order to give people the confidence to buzz with the other one
clues definitely seem concrete and useful though - if you know that the barber of seville is an important opera (who doesn't?) it would be hard to write off the whole question as trivial
alright, show us the buzzes
RyanBilger - Yesterday at 11:07 PM
One sec
Ryan Rosenberg - Yesterday at 11:08 PM
oh just got back on
RyanBilger - Yesterday at 11:08 PM

That what you're looking for?
Wang Anshi - Yesterday at 11:09 PM
we need the horizontal line
Matt Weiner - Yesterday at 11:09 PM
is there an easy way to see how many times it was negged
Ryan Rosenberg - Yesterday at 11:10 PM
yes one sec

RyanBilger - Yesterday at 11:11 PM
Huh look at that, nice
Matt Weiner - Yesterday at 11:11 PM
the conversion seems low but I'm wondering how many of that were due to the team that otherwise would have gotten it saying the marriage of figaro early
Wang Anshi - Yesterday at 11:12 PM
ping me when you get to a science question, I have ideas
Matt Weiner - Yesterday at 11:12 PM
this runs into sort of the main issue with lowering difficulty - if we're going to have around 8 opera tossups in acf regionals and 20% of rooms can't answer the barber of seville, then 100% conversion just isn't possible
this is is a science-adjacent geography question
2. The organization ICARDA received the first authorized transfer from one of these locations to help it recover from the Syrian Civil War. The largest of these locations was established by a Millennium Commission awarded to a royal organization based in Kew. In March 2017, a so-called “World Archive” was opened next to one of these locations that was built into an abandoned coal mine near Longyearbyen. Workers at the Vavilov Institute guarded one of these locations during the siege of Leningrad, refusing to make use of its contents. One of these locations is kept at negative 0.4 degrees Fahrenheit, which prevented melted permafrost from damaging its stocks in May 2017. For 10 points, identify these storage facilities exemplified by a “global” one in Svalbard that preserves over 400,000 agricultural samples.
ANSWER: seed vaults [or seed banks; or gene banks; prompt on vaults, banks, or other storage facilities]
<Geography>
itamar - Yesterday at 11:13 PM
this one got a lot of good buzzes iirc
Matt Weiner - Yesterday at 11:13 PM
I think this is a great answer because it's something people should know about, has a reasonable number of clues, but hasn't been done to death by the canon
Ryan Rosenberg - Yesterday at 11:13 PM
that conversion pct excluded bouncebacks iirc
Matt Weiner - Yesterday at 11:13 PM
so that's "percent of rooms where it was answered on a first buzz" ?
Ryan Rosenberg - Yesterday at 11:13 PM
yes
Matt Weiner - Yesterday at 11:13 PM
can we get the overall # too?
Ryan Rosenberg - Yesterday at 11:13 PM
the actual is 51/56
Matt Weiner - Yesterday at 11:13 PM
pretty good
this is a perfect example of real geography too
Ryan Rosenberg - Yesterday at 11:14 PM
There was a big cliff at Longyearbyen
Matt Weiner - Yesterday at 11:14 PM
now the only drawback is - there's only so many tossups you can write on this answer that don't reduce to a list of seed vaults
Ryan Rosenberg - Yesterday at 11:14 PM
(in terms of how many people buzzed)
Matt Weiner - Yesterday at 11:14 PM
so you have to keep innovating but I think to some extent it's possible to keep finding similar answers
I bet this tossup is very flummoxing to dairy queeners
maybe you have real knowledge, as either an experienced player or a new one
but if you're just coming in with the naqt level 4 canon you are out of luck here
answer line seems d2 appropriate as is
buzzes
?
RyanBilger - Yesterday at 11:16 PM

itamar - Yesterday at 11:16 PM
are these graphs with your personal buzz data
Ryan Rosenberg - Yesterday at 11:16 PM
54/56 conversion
RyanBilger - Yesterday at 11:16 PM
Sorry I've been pulling these with my buzzpoint highlighted, not trying to self-aggrandize
itamar - Yesterday at 11:17 PM
cool
RyanBilger - Yesterday at 11:17 PM
Yeah, sorry, was just the first way I thought of to get the data
Matt Weiner - Yesterday at 11:17 PM
3. This character is said to split an opponent “like a mussel” in a passage where he set himself ablaze. The return of a stolen statue of this character is predicted in a document called his “Prophecy” that tells of a journey to Hatti. That prophecy about this character was used for propaganda on the Cyrus Cylinder, which was found at the shrine to this character at Esagila (“ess-uh-GHEE-luh”). To allow the gods to rest, this character created humans by using the blood of a vizier who commanded legions of monsters against him named Kingu. This net-wielding hero was attacked by an “evil wind” unleashed by the personification of salty waters. After defeating that monster, this hero acquired the Tablets of Destiny, which justify his rule in the Enuma Elish. Tiamat was slain by, for 10 points, what chief Babylonian god?
ANSWER: (Bel-)Marduk
<Mythology>
Wang Anshi - Yesterday at 11:18 PM
I imagine this cliffed at Kingu
Matt Weiner - Yesterday at 11:18 PM
interesting that we have one concrete literature clue and two archaeology clues before the more typical "bedtime stories"
Wang Anshi - Yesterday at 11:18 PM
this didn't have a lot of buzzable things
like there's very little talk of his killing of tiamat, which is the only story that most people will know
or about his fifty names
Matt Weiner - Yesterday at 11:18 PM
and that's interesting but maybe this is where frustrating leadins come from - not every question needs to innovate, sometimes you can just ask myth in your myth questions and not dig for 3 different meta-myth leadins
yeah one of the things you would want to do for a d2 conversion is put more gradation in the tiamat part
itamar - Yesterday at 11:19 PM
this is the one where our moderator ignored the pronunciation guide,  interpreted "esagila" as a spanish word, and said "ess-uh-jee-yah"
a pity, i thought the pronunciation guides were basically the least distracting/most helpful they've ever been
Matt Weiner - Yesterday at 11:21 PM
I would probably hesitate to put "marduk" as a tossup answer in a regular high school tournament but not for a second in a d2 environment
again if you're going to have non g/r myth at all you have to ask something and this seems like it
so how did this play?
RyanBilger - Yesterday at 11:22 PM

Ryan Rosenberg - Yesterday at 11:22 PM
here are all the pre-FTP buzzes

RyanBilger - Yesterday at 11:22 PM
That's JHU B's buzz, since that's who we played on this packet the highlighted buzzes will probably be us or them
Matt Weiner - Yesterday at 11:23 PM
so pretty much no one was helped by the pre-myth clues
Ryan Rosenberg - Yesterday at 11:23 PM
yeah and the two first buzzers are very good HS myth players
Derek - Yesterday at 11:24 PM
as a first time editor it would have been really cool to have done this for wao ii
shame we dont have the data
Matt Weiner - Yesterday at 11:24 PM
4. Examining the spectrum of a quantization of the classical Hamiltonian “H equals xp” yields a result similar to this statement according to the Berry–Keating conjecture. This statement is implied by the stronger Mertens conjecture, which was proven to be false in 1985. Adolf Piltz formulated a “generalized” version of this statement that applies to Dirichlet (“DEE-ree-klet”) L-series, which reduces to the standard version when all terms in the series have numerator 1. This statement, which was introduced in the 1859 paper “On the Number of Primes Less Than a Given Magnitude,” would place a tight bound on the error term in the prime number theorem if it were true. This statement ignores the negative even integers, which are the “trivial zeros.” For 10 points, identify this unproven conjecture that the nontrivial zeros of a certain man’s zeta function all have real part one-half.
ANSWER: Riemann hypothesis [prompt on Riemann]
<Other Science (Math)>
itamar - Yesterday at 11:24 PM
@Wang Anshi
Matt Weiner - Yesterday at 11:24 PM
I'm never going to edit math for a college tournament but this seems fine, I've certainly heard of everything in the second half
Wang Anshi - Yesterday at 11:24 PM
the fact that there's a generalized riemann hypothesis is pretty famous
and the statement of it is easy enough to digest
I didn't buzz there but i forgot its statement, so that's on me
the Mertens conjecture is also famous
tbh I don't know who that leadin is helping, but it's not my field so I can't really comment on it
itamar - Yesterday at 11:26 PM
how'd people do on this
Wang Anshi - Yesterday at 11:26 PM
I feel like there could be more middle - more things about the riemann zeta function or implications if it were true
Matt Weiner - Yesterday at 11:26 PM
whatever criteria you come up with for math answers this seems to fit - you can read a blurb about this in an ap calculus manual, it's a problem lay mathematicians like playing with, it gets taught in classes - for d2 just shorten and you should be good to go
Wang Anshi - Yesterday at 11:26 PM
but that's just a quick impression
Matt Weiner - Yesterday at 11:26 PM
let's look at buzzes
Ryan Rosenberg - Yesterday at 11:26 PM
lotta early-ish buzzes

Joe Su - Yesterday at 11:27 PM
for tossups like this you could say that this should just be a tossup on Riemann
RyanBilger - Yesterday at 11:27 PM

Joe Su - Yesterday at 11:27 PM
to make it easier
RyanBilger - Yesterday at 11:27 PM
This went dead in my room because I am a dingus who doesn't know math so enjoy @Jeremy Tsai 's buzz as the overlay
Wang Anshi - Yesterday at 11:27 PM
did Penn A not play this packet
RyanBilger - Yesterday at 11:27 PM
Nope
Wang Anshi - Yesterday at 11:27 PM
ok we played it in pracice
that's why I recognizae it
recognize*
Matt Weiner - Yesterday at 11:28 PM
so not helpful leadins but a very smooth distro once it starts up
is it so easy to make this a tossup on riemann though?
there's five other names (hamilton, berry, keating, merts, piltz) in the question
itamar - Yesterday at 11:28 PM
maia is nuts
Matt Weiner - Yesterday at 11:28 PM
you would have to be very careful about just saying "a result this man proposed" or something
I think the answer line as it is avoids a lot of contorted wording
5. Apart from “A,” this is the first word in the title of a poem that opens: “I’ll tell thee now (dear Love) what thou shalt do / To anger destiny, as she doth us.” T. S. Eliot wrote that a poem whose title starts with this word demands “considerable agility” to comprehend the double comparison of a globe to a tear, and of a tear to a deluge. Poems of this type “of the Book” and “of Weeping” appear in the volume Songs and Sonnets alongside a third example describing a love “inter-assurèd of the mind, / Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss.” The speaker asserts “’Twere profanation of our joys / To tell the laity our love” in that poem titled for this genre, which asserts: “Thy firmness makes my circle just / And makes me end where I begun,” at the end of an extended metaphor comparing two souls to points on a compass. For 10 points, John Donne wrote what type of farewell address “forbidding mourning?”
ANSWER: valediction [accept “A Valediction of the Book”; accept “A Valediction of Weeping”; accept “A Valediction Forbidding Mourning”]
<Non-Epic Poetry>
itamar - Yesterday at 11:30 PM
yikes
Matt Weiner - Yesterday at 11:30 PM
ok this is nuts
itamar - Yesterday at 11:30 PM
no one buzzes on this before "inter-assured" and then it's probably just a john lawrence-type
Matt Weiner - Yesterday at 11:31 PM
that's a LOT of secondary shit to cover before you even get to "a valediction forbidding mourning" which is not exactly a gimme
I don't like the thought process behind "just writing on “A Valediction Forbidding Mourning” is too boring now"
yes, it's good to work in stuff that couldn't sustain a question on its own by using leadins on common links judiciously
but in this case you have poems by ts eliot and john donne
if you want to expose their lesser known work you can...write tossups on ts eliot or john donne???
itamar - Yesterday at 11:32 PM
which one of these is by eliot?
aren't these all donne
Matt Weiner - Yesterday at 11:32 PM
oh they're all donne and eliot just commented, woops
Wang Anshi - Yesterday at 11:33 PM
yeah this is an interesting idea
itamar - Yesterday at 11:33 PM
this is an easier answerline to get right, fwiw - i've heard newbies bungle the full title
Matt Weiner - Yesterday at 11:33 PM
so yeah I don't think "the word valediction in donne" is an appropriate conceit for a regionals tossup
Wang Anshi - Yesterday at 11:33 PM
but it just doesnt' play well
Matt Weiner - Yesterday at 11:33 PM
this might work at nationals, here, write it on donne and use most of the same clues
this is totally useless in d2 ... even with donne as the answerline you would have to rewrite 80% of this to fit the difficulty curve
what does the buzz say
Ryan Rosenberg - Yesterday at 11:34 PM
there were buzzes before inter-assured!

RyanBilger - Yesterday at 11:34 PM

itamar - Yesterday at 11:34 PM
were there buzzes before "songs and sonnets"
RyanBilger - Yesterday at 11:34 PM
Princeton's buzz because I picked it up off a neg but for some reason it's not showing up
Ryan Rosenberg - Yesterday at 11:34 PM
Adam Black got it at songs and sonnets in my room
Matt Weiner - Yesterday at 11:35 PM
shout out to the totally random person on florida c who just fucking loves john donne
itamar - Yesterday at 11:35 PM
haha
Matt Weiner - Yesterday at 11:35 PM
but yeah the curve pretty much bears out what I thought
Ryan Rosenberg - Yesterday at 11:35 PM
everything else seems to be clustered around the Valediction Forbidding Mourning clues
Matt Weiner - Yesterday at 11:35 PM
I think this demonstrates an easy editorial fallacy which is building your percentages upon each other
"it's okay to write on john donne, probably 95% of acf regionals players know him"
"it's probably okay to write a tossup on A Valediction Forbidding Mourning because most people know that's a famous john donne poem and I can lead them to it"
"it's good to write a whole tossup on 'valediction in donne' because A Valediction Forbidding Mourning is within the bounds of reasonablenesS"
you get one of those leaps, you can't use them to build a tower of babel
6. A design featuring pelicans and grape vines in this painting is situated above text that says “Youth without age on his forehead” on a step behind a crown. Popes Martin V and Gregory VII and the Antipope Alexander V are seen together in a crowd in this painting beneath John the Baptist holding a book. Depictions of John the Baptist and John the Evangelist in grisaille (“griz-EYE”) are located below two empty panels separating Gabriel and Mary in this painting’s Annunciation, which is located above a portrait of its patron, Jodocus Vijd (“yo-DOH-cuss FATE”), on its closed view. In this painting, Adam is positioned above a replacement for a stolen panel depicting the Just Judges, who are witnessing the title “Adoration of the Mystic Lamb.” For 10 points, name this polyptych altarpiece by Hubert and Jan van Eyck.
ANSWER: Ghent Altarpiece [accept The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb or Het Lam Gods until “adoration” is read]
<Painting/Sculpture>
this seems like a good straightforward question
lots of buzzable descriptions of the painting, cultural context clues, a little bit of art history stuff
itamar - Yesterday at 11:38 PM
did anyone buzz before grisaille
RyanBilger - Yesterday at 11:38 PM
A couple I think
I buzzed like right at grisaille and I wasn't the earliest
Ryan Rosenberg - Yesterday at 11:38 PM
no one buzzed before grisaille
Fed from Chicago C was the first, right at grisaille
Matt Weiner - Yesterday at 11:39 PM
why learn leadin clues about the ghent alterpiece when you can learn stupid shit about jeff koons or whatever
RyanBilger - Yesterday at 11:39 PM

itamar - Yesterday at 11:39 PM
i'm not sure i love calling it a painting
Matt Weiner - Yesterday at 11:39 PM
if we re-orient towards making you buzz early on easy answers like this maybe people will do so
RyanBilger - Yesterday at 11:39 PM
I'll put that out there now
Matt Weiner - Yesterday at 11:39 PM
yikes
RyanBilger - Yesterday at 11:39 PM
Yeah...
Matt Weiner - Yesterday at 11:39 PM
well at least you can just cut off the first 1/3 and make it a d2 question
RyanBilger - Yesterday at 11:40 PM
I can't tell where exactly the cliff is, maybe "stolen panel"?
Ryan Rosenberg - Yesterday at 11:40 PM
yeah that's it
only four people buzzed in the first three-quarters
Fed, Ryan, Luke from Harvard B, and John Lawrence
55/56 conversion
hftf - Yesterday at 11:42 PM
If you wait an hour I'll post the annotated tossup texts
EricWolfsberg - Yesterday at 11:42 PM
FWIW the Ghent Altarpiece tossup was (almost or exactly) unchanged from my submission
Matt Weiner - Yesterday at 11:43 PM
annotated with all this info? that would be useful for future iterations of this exercise
7. A writer from this present-day country was said to have created “the strongest narcotic” of his century by saying that history should be written “as what actually happened.” The leading figure of this country’s “youngest historical school” was the author of the six-volume history series Modern Capitalism. Another of this country’s historians wrote a three-volume History of Rome, which won him a Nobel Prize in 1903. A Universal History up to the time of ancient Greece was attempted by this country’s leading 19th-century historian, who wrote the essay “The Great Powers” and pioneered emphasis on primary sources. Many historians were influenced by an idealist from this country who effectively stated “Africa has no history” in his Lectures on the Philosophy of History and described history as a process of dialectic. For 10 points, name this home country of Georg Hegel.
ANSWER: Federal Republic of Germany [or Bundesrepublik Deutschland; be generous and accept historical incarnations such as the German Empire or Weimar Republic] (The thinkers referenced are Walter Benjamin, Werner Sombart, Theodore Mommsen, Leopold von Ranke, and Hegel.)
<Historio/Archaeo>
love too reference thinkers
so I basically hate questions like this, aesthetically
let's look at it difficulty wise
I don't think that doling out a mini-pyramid on von ranke after you've said everything there is to say about mommsen is particularly helpful
there was no country called "germany" for 40 years after hegel died
I know we said "present-day country" way back in the very first phrase but it's a long journey to the very strong phrase "home country"
Joe Su - Yesterday at 11:46 PM
fyi the music tossup in this round had a garbled second sentence when it was played over the first weekend which screwed me over
Matt Weiner - Yesterday at 11:46 PM
I guess I don't see what the point of writing this question in this way is as opposed to writing a tossup on hegel as historian or "histories of rome" or whatever. all of this meta-historiography stuff is pretty useless if you're not a top-level flashcarder or a history grad student
itamar - Yesterday at 11:47 PM
wouldn't hegel as historian play worse at this difficulty(edited)
Jeremy Tsai - Yesterday at 11:47 PM
oh we are doing detailed analysis
Matt Weiner - Yesterday at 11:47 PM
this is taking space away from just writing an interesting question on something that happened in german history and doesn't seem to be garnering many early buzzes in exchange
RyanBilger - Yesterday at 11:47 PM
Yeah Jeremy
Jeremy Tsai - Yesterday at 11:47 PM
fwiw I was ready to buzz with the antipope stuff but got negged out of it on my own team
Matt Weiner - Yesterday at 11:47 PM
the entire giveaway presumes that you know hegel as a historian
Jeremy Tsai - Yesterday at 11:47 PM
probably would still wait until stolen panel in the game
Matt Weiner - Yesterday at 11:48 PM
so this is taking that premise and adding on "but that's so easy we have to ask about von ranke and werner sombart first!"
Ryan Rosenberg - Yesterday at 11:48 PM
A lot of people buzzed on von Ranke actually
itamar - Yesterday at 11:48 PM
feels like the main issue is that von ranke isn't really easier than mommsen
RyanBilger - Yesterday at 11:48 PM
Yeah there seems to have been a cliff at "Africa has no history"
Ryan Rosenberg - Yesterday at 11:48 PM
all first-half buzzes

Matt Weiner - Yesterday at 11:48 PM
let's see the numbers
Jeremy Tsai - Yesterday at 11:48 PM
I mean, Hegel's historical discussion is very famous and the "Africa has no history" thing I've seen show up in high school sets
RyanBilger - Yesterday at 11:49 PM

Joe Su - Yesterday at 11:49 PM
canada REPRESENT
itamar - Yesterday at 11:49 PM
there's probably some lit players who can get mommsen off of "hey he won the second ever lit nobel"
Jeremy Tsai - Yesterday at 11:49 PM
how many people buzzed before Hegel stuff showed up
Matt Weiner - Yesterday at 11:49 PM
is the Michael Kearney on yale related to the Michael Kearney who plays for the southern trash blob
Erik Christensen - Yesterday at 11:49 PM
this tossup was first lined by a history major(edited)
on toronto b
Ryan Rosenberg - Yesterday at 11:50 PM
yeah Chris Ray first lined it
Erik Christensen - Yesterday at 11:50 PM
hes not an undergrad so perhaps it wasnt too hard?
Ryan Rosenberg - Yesterday at 11:50 PM
which is part of why "median first buzz" is BS
Erik Christensen - Yesterday at 11:50 PM
the only thing i first lined was during a scrimmage on bye round
feels bad man
Ryan Rosenberg - Yesterday at 11:50 PM
like, Chris buzzed at the earliest you could be sure of the answer
EricWolfsberg - Yesterday at 11:51 PM
I mean, Benjamin is super famous for other stuff so I have no difficulty believing someone would know the (presumably somewhat more obscure) thing the first line was from
Derek - Yesterday at 11:51 PM
i went "oh der modern kapitalismus is a thing i've heard of" but i didnt buzz because i wasnt sure it was the same thing
Ryan Rosenberg - Yesterday at 11:51 PM
but as a mod I still read 20% of the question
Derek - Yesterday at 11:51 PM
feels bad as well
Joe Su - Yesterday at 11:51 PM
median buzz makes more sense when I did it because it's a more conservative estimate of how late someone buzzed
Matt Weiner - Yesterday at 11:51 PM
once you are familiar with the canon most of the clues from the second sentence on should at least ring a bell, but it seems to stay at that level forever
guess my instinct is wrong and people know von ranke though. score one for big data
8. Defects in SURF1, which partakes in the biogenesis of an enzyme in this process, are linked to central nervous system degeneration in Leigh syndrome. That enzyme in this process has an unusual crosslink between the side chain rings of its tyrosine-244 and histidine-240, enabling the function of its binuclear copper center. The protein that generates heat in brown adipose tissue, thermogenin, counteracts the chemical gradient induced by this process as an “uncoupler.” A free radical intermediate called semiquinone is reduced to ubiquinol as part of the Q cycle carried out by cytochrome bc1 in this process. Oxygen acts as the “final acceptor” of this process, whose complexes I and II use reserves of NADH and FADH2. ATP synthesis is driven by the proton gradient formed by, for 10 points, what series of redox reactions at the end of cellular respiration?
ANSWER: electron transport chain [prompt on oxidative phosphorylation; prompt on OXPHOS; prompt on respiration]
<Biology>
ok they definitely still teach this in the 9th grade right
Erik Christensen - Yesterday at 11:53 PM
i didnt
Joe Su - Yesterday at 11:53 PM
grade 12
for Ontario
Wang Anshi - Yesterday at 11:53 PM
yes
SURF1 and leigh's syndrome are straight out of med school and undergrad biochem, respectively
Matt Weiner - Yesterday at 11:53 PM
guessing this had a lot of negs from people who weren't sure what level of focus we were looking at
Ryan Rosenberg - Yesterday at 11:53 PM
yeah I learned the giveaway in 9th grade
Matt Weiner - Yesterday at 11:53 PM
like maybe buzzing with "cellular respiration" and not being able to get to the right thing on the prompt
itamar - Yesterday at 11:53 PM
that's some good undergrad biochem you have
EricWolfsberg - Yesterday at 11:53 PM
Would it be helpful if I posted the original versions of things from Delaware's packet?
Of which this tossup is one
Ryan Rosenberg - Yesterday at 11:54 PM
9 negs out of 56 rooms
Wang Anshi - Yesterday at 11:54 PM
I think this one is fine as is, you could probably cut off the leadin and it would largely be the same
Matt Weiner - Yesterday at 11:54 PM
definitely usable in d2 with some leadins removed
Ryan Rosenberg - Yesterday at 11:54 PM
one neg was with "chemiosmosis"
Matt Weiner - Yesterday at 11:54 PM
I don't feel the prior question is d2 viable at all
Wang Anshi - Yesterday at 11:54 PM
very few people are going to know SURF1 unless you've read lederberg 2 recently

RyanBilger - Yesterday at 11:54 PM

Matt Weiner - Yesterday at 11:55 PM
get rid of all that empty space at the left and you have a pretty smooth curve
Joe Su - Yesterday at 11:55 PM
the second sentence is harder than the first
Wang Anshi - Yesterday at 11:56 PM
yep
hftf - Yesterday at 11:56 PM
@itamar nothing I can do about that unfortunately, I worked very hard on making the pgs as helpful as possible for this set
Jeremy Tsai - Yesterday at 11:56 PM
it's talking about cytochrome c right
cytochrome c oxidase
Matt Weiner - Yesterday at 11:57 PM
9. Restrictions after one of these events forced a contingent of Old Believers to relocate to Rogozhskoye (“ruh-GOHSH-skuh-yuh”). A column formed by nine angels was erected during one of these events in Vienna by Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I. The Loimologia of Nathaniel Hodges chronicles one of these events, during which a diarist claimed “I have never lived so merrily.” A 1630 one of these events that forced Venice to use the Lazzaretto Vecchio is depicted in great detail in the novel The Betrothed. Another of these events popularized a religious movement whose members traveled around whipping themselves. One of these events that gave way to a fire was chronicled in the diary of Samuel Pepys (“peeps”). For 10 points, name these events that were addressed by doctors wearing bird-like masks.
ANSWER: outbreaks of bubonic plague [prompt on disease outbreaks, epidemics, or pandemics by asking “of what disease?”]
<European History post-600>
I like the idea of writing on plagues other than The plague but the execution isnt' there
itamar - Yesterday at 11:57 PM
@hftf they were really great! the other mod complimented them. it definitely wasn't your fault
Wang Anshi - Yesterday at 11:57 PM
yes it is
Matt Weiner - Yesterday at 11:58 PM
the second, third, and fourth sentences are just "this got described in [something that is way too hard for where it appears in the tossup]"
itamar - Yesterday at 11:58 PM
he might not have noticed the toggle option
Matt Weiner - Yesterday at 11:58 PM
if you have read The Betrothed you get to buzz well past the halfway point!
why wouldn't that be like, the FIRST clue
itamar - Yesterday at 11:58 PM
the word "diarist" sort of helps in the third line
Matt Weiner - Yesterday at 11:58 PM
yeah after that you get to clues I would expect a lot of people to know
EricWolfsberg - Yesterday at 11:59 PM
I think a decent number of people negged with fire after diarist, which means that people did know it was Peyps
Derek - Yesterday at 11:59 PM
ah yes pepys living it up during the fire
EricWolfsberg - Yesterday at 11:59 PM
Or the room I was watching did at least
Derek - Yesterday at 11:59 PM
skipping merrily through the alleys
Matt Weiner - Yesterday at 11:59 PM
also I'm guessing there are clues elsewhere in the set about the plague of justinian or other things I would expect to see here which is why they were omitted
how's the graph look
itamar - Yesterday at 11:59 PM
the category is history post-600
itamar - Today at 12:00 AM
that's probably why
RyanBilger - Today at 12:00 AM

Big cliff at the flagellants clue
Which in truth is what did it for me
Wang Anshi - Today at 12:00 AM
I love how the cliffs are visible on these graphs, btw
Matt Weiner - Today at 12:00 AM
I didn't tell the editors to arrange their categories such that there is no place in the set for a question referencing events in the 540s as well as later
itamar - Today at 12:00 AM
yes
Wang Anshi - Today at 12:00 AM
as...actual cliffs(edited)
Matt Weiner - Today at 12:01 AM
you could die driving a segway off that thing
itamar - Today at 12:01 AM
except kenji handled this area of history and i'm pretty will alston handled earlier history, so it probably helped prevent messy overlap
Matt Weiner - Today at 12:01 AM
if the price of "preventing messy overlap" is making an individual question artificially harder than that's part of the puzzle here
so yeah graph shows pretty much no one cares about the non-pepys sources, this could have been a tossup on the plague in london and would have been better
and arguably d2-able which in its current state it is not
RyanBilger - Today at 12:04 AM
I'm walking to go get the free food the college is giving out, I'll bring my computer so I can still post the graphs, just not for a few minutes
Matt Weiner - Today at 12:04 AM
10. This novel enjoins the reader to consult a “metaphysical professor” should they “ever be athirst in the great American desert,” since “as everyone knows, meditation and water are wedded forever.” The narrator of this novel contrasts his quiet inclinations with the “philosophical flourish” with which “Cato throws himself upon his sword.” It opens with an “etymology” across thirteen languages for a word that appears in this novel’s full title, followed by a series of “extracts,” compiled by a “sub-sub-librarian,” of that word’s appearances in past literature. In its first numbered chapter, “Loomings,” the narrator confesses that “whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly, November in my soul… then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.” For 10 points, name this novel that opens “Call me Ishmael,” written by Herman Melville.
ANSWER: Moby Dick; or, The Whale
<Long Fiction>
Erik Christensen - Today at 12:05 AM
this was
quite a doozy
Matt Weiner - Today at 12:05 AM
this is fine. obviously usable in d2. I know there's a dictum about being careful with direct quotes from long novels but you should recognize pretty much every word of moby dick if you're gonna be a lit guy. if anything is gets very easy very quickly (doesn't everyone know about the preface?)
itamar - Today at 12:05 AM
CO did this
Jeremy Tsai - Today at 12:05 AM
I think someone mentioned it's themed around only the first chapter
EricWolfsberg - Today at 12:05 AM
The original version was even more close-readingy
And just had quotes from the first chapter and not the preferatory material
Matt Weiner - Today at 12:06 AM
sure, gotta focus somewhere
EricWolfsberg - Today at 12:06 AM
The first chapter of this novel lists its action next to a “Bloody Battle in Afghanistan” in an divine playbill  and includes the Hardicanutes in a list of old established families. The protagonist of this novel asks what the indignity of having to sweep amounts to “in the scales of the New Testament,” says that there is “all the difference in the world between paying and being paid,” and contrasts his actions with how “with a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword.” The first chapter of this novel, “Loomings,” describes how, during a “damp, drizzly November in [his] soul,” the protagonist decides “to sail about a little and see the watery part of the world.” For 10 points, name this novel whose first chapter begins, “Call Me Ishmael.”
Erik Christensen - Today at 12:06 AM
the thing is i dont know if anyone at the toronto site other than derek so has read it
Wang Anshi - Today at 12:06 AM
I'm buzzing on Loomings, and I suck
at literature
Erik Christensen - Today at 12:06 AM
so this question was almost all a buzzer race
Matt Weiner - Today at 12:06 AM
2011 acf nationals was the real deal
8. This section of a larger work claims "Though in many of its aspects this visible world seems formed in love, the invisible spheres were formed in fright." It compares the narrator's reaction to the central phenomenon to a colt's instinctual fear of a buffalo robe shaken in front of it. This section imagines light "operating without medium upon matter," causing the "palsied universe" to lie "before us a leper," in its final paragraph, which ends with the narrator asking "Wonder ye then at the fiery hunt?" It argues that the title phenomenon is both "the veil of the Christian's deity" and "the intensifying agent in things the most appalling to mankind," such as milky fog, polar bears, and albinos. The forty-second chapter of the novel it appears in, it describes the fear that the title color invokes in Ishmael. For 10 points, name this chapter about the terror caused by the color of Moby-Dick.
ANSWER: "The Whiteness of the Whale"
Wang Anshi - Today at 12:06 AM
yup
I remember that question
Matt Weiner - Today at 12:07 AM
that question was great
Jeremy Tsai - Today at 12:07 AM
and I thought prompting on people who can say "the sermon from moby dick" but requiring "Father Mapple's Sermon" was tough
Matt Weiner - Today at 12:07 AM
can't wait for the theme tournament with tossups on every chapter of MD
EricWolfsberg - Today at 12:08 AM
But yeah I think both this and the tossup on Socrates later in the packet were examples of me trying to write a "hard tossup on an easy answerline" and going overboard on both counts
Ryan Rosenberg - Today at 12:08 AM
the better JL is James Lasker btw

Matt Weiner - Today at 12:08 AM
11. For Dirichlet (“DEE-ree-klet”) boundary conditions, this quantity is given by the volume integral of the charge density times the Green’s function. During a gauge (“gayj”) transformation, this quantity is replaced by its original value minus the time derivative of the gauge function. By applying the law of cosines and writing this quantity in terms of Legendre (“luh-ZHAWND-ruh”) polynomials, one obtains its multipole expansion. In empty space, this quantity has no local extrema due to Earnshaw’s theorem, which follows from the fact that it satisfies Laplace’s equation. This scalar quantity is constant within a conducting material. After specifying this quantity at one point, it can be calculated elsewhere by taking the negative line integral of the electric field. For 10 points, name this quantity whose difference between two points in a circuit equals current times resistance, according to Ohm’s law.
ANSWER: electric potential [accept scalar potential or voltage; prompt on potential or V; do not accept or prompt on “potential energy” or “vector potential”]
<Physics>
Wang Anshi - Today at 12:10 AM
this is fine, its all super core
Matt Weiner - Today at 12:10 AM
seems fine as far as I can tell
Wang Anshi - Today at 12:11 AM
gauge transformations come up in second semester E and M, the leadin is notable from harder physics classes, earnshaws/laplace is where you buzz from packets or intro UG physics, the pre-FTP is from AP physics C
itamar - Today at 12:12 AM
line integral in AP physics C?
Sam Brochin - Today at 12:12 AM
Sounds about right, as far as I know
Matt Weiner - Today at 12:12 AM
12. The Washington Post claimed that Barack Obama’s head of this agency considered resigning because “there are days where I have literally nothing to do.” Playing on Italian stereotypes, a head of this cabinet agency mocked a papal opinion on sex by opining “he no play-a da game, he no make-a da rules.” Pigford v. Glickman entitles African-Americans to apply for monetary settlements for this agency’s discriminatory loan allocations between 1981 and 1996. This agency switched from pushing “buffer stock” schemes to “get big or get out” industrialization during the tenure of Earl Butz. A selectively edited tape from Breitbart led Shirley Sherrod to be fired by this agency, which was headed by Tom Vilsack under Barack Obama and employs a “beagle brigade” to sniff out contraband. For 10 points, name this cabinet department currently headed by Sonny Perdue.
ANSWER: The United States Department of Agriculture [or the USDA]
<US History>
this is just all over the place
prediction, 0-1 buzzes on the first two sentences
then it goes right to a big chunk of "current events for old people" like the name of clinton's agriculture secretary and the shirley sherrod scandal which is now 8 years old
if you know which agency trains the third most prominent set of sniffing dogs you see at airports you can buzz immediately before ftp
I just don't know who this question is for
Ryan Rosenberg - Today at 12:15 AM
three buzzes on/before the Earl Butz quote
Matt Weiner - Today at 12:15 AM
yeesh
Sam Brochin - Today at 12:15 AM
How many people buzzed on Vilsack?
EricWolfsberg - Today at 12:15 AM
Why is this US History and not Current Events?
Ryan Rosenberg - Today at 12:15 AM
chris ray was very amused by the tossup

Matt Weiner - Today at 12:15 AM
the bulk of it is on stuff that happened between 1975 and 1996, that's history
Jeremy Tsai - Today at 12:15 AM
the only current events clue is Sonny Perdue
Matt Weiner - Today at 12:16 AM
not particuarly well written history though
EricWolfsberg - Today at 12:16 AM
Oh okay(edited)
Jeremy Tsai - Today at 12:16 AM
unless you still count Obama as current events I guess
Ryan Rosenberg - Today at 12:16 AM
it gets real brutal after, though

Matt Weiner - Today at 12:16 AM
I'm just baffled here
like there isn't some great leadin or obvious giveaway that the rest of the question was built around
Jeremy Tsai - Today at 12:16 AM
our teammate buzzed with Press Secretary and could not explain why
and jesus that neg rate
Matt Weiner - Today at 12:16 AM
the whole thing feels like filler, the only part I like is the butz clue because that feels like something you would want to know if you actually studied the history of farming in the u.s.
but guess what if you study that you need to be buzzing on the FIRST clue of a tossup on the department of agriculture, it's not something that should be more than halfway through
Sam Brochin - Today at 12:17 AM
It's always seemed weird to me that the FDA is under HHS, but the Forest Service is under USDA
Matt Weiner - Today at 12:18 AM
not enough usable clues to make this a d2 question either
13. A character created by this author describes losing all hope in life after a love interest points out a caterpillar in his hair as he’s attempting to kiss her. Another character created by this author shoots out the eyes of a portrait that has a mustache drawn on it and makes mines out of china teapots. In a work by this author, the narrator’s friend Serval describes how people from a certain region are asked their names and addresses before being burned to death by Mother Savage. A character created by this author whose use of the phrase “fi donc” has earned him a feminine nickname is murdered by the prostitute Rachel. In another story by this author, a carriage containing the Loiseaus (“lwah-ZOHS”) and Cornudet is allowed to return to Le Havre (“AHV”) after Elisabeth Rousset sleeps with a Prussian officer. For 10 points, name this French author of “Mademoiselle Fifi” and “Boule de Suif” (“bool duh sweef”).
ANSWER: Guy de Maupassant (“MO-pah-sant”)
<Short Fiction>
EricWolfsberg - Today at 12:19 AM
The original version of this had mostly the same clues but the answerline was Prussia
so the editors had the good sense to change that
Matt Weiner - Today at 12:19 AM
I dunno man, I've read stuff by maupassant and I have no idea what's going on here before the "everyone slam your buzzers right now" clues about mlle. fifi
Jeremy Tsai - Today at 12:19 AM
Prussia in Maupassant seems like a good idea on paper but probably most people will neg with France
Matt Weiner - Today at 12:20 AM
the leadins are concrete, I expect if people have read those particular stories they will buzz
but they are very hard and then it becomes very easy
dgraebner - Today at 12:20 AM
oh I saw the thing about the Ghent altarpiece
RyanBilger - Today at 12:21 AM

Since I didn't post that one
dgraebner - Today at 12:21 AM
I think that was a good question
RyanBilger - Today at 12:21 AM
Ready for the Maupassant diagram yet?
dgraebner - Today at 12:21 AM
I can think of one way to make it slightly clearer @itamar
Matt Weiner - Today at 12:21 AM
let's do it
Sam Brochin - Today at 12:21 AM
I think the writers of that USDA question overestimated how many people knew second-tier Cabinet secretaries(edited)
RyanBilger - Today at 12:22 AM

Matt Weiner - Today at 12:24 AM
maupassant needs to lose the leadins. usable in d2 after
14. A target value for one form of this quantity that is especially useful during periods of crisis can be found with the McCallum rule. At equilibrium, this quantity equals the quantity provided by the Baumol–Tobin model. The k-percent rule advocates a constant yearly increase in this quantity. The LM curve tracks equilibrium points between liquidity preference and this quantity. This quantity divides a country’s gross national product in the “velocity equation.” Quantitative easing attempts to lower interest rates by raising this quantity through open market operations, or the buying and selling of bonds. Anna Schwartz and Milton Friedman argued that erratic changes in this quantity have led to inflation. For 10 points, name this quantity, the amount of currency present in an economy.
ANSWER: money supply [or monetary supply or monetary base; prompt on M or money]
<Social Science>
itamar - Today at 12:25 AM
pretty buzzable throughout
Matt Weiner - Today at 12:25 AM
I'm always confused about what is meant by the use of "divide" as a transitive verb in a mathematical context
anyway this seems fine
Ryan Rosenberg - Today at 12:26 AM
yeah this was fine, it's monetary policy that's pretty well-discussed outside of the classroom as well
Wang Anshi - Today at 12:26 AM
yeah Baumol-Tobin is where you have to buzz
Matt Weiner - Today at 12:27 AM
pretty easy to shave off the start and make this d2
15. The finale of a symphony by this composer begins with a decrescendo, followed by the flutes playing a melody marked leggiero (“lej-JEH-roh”) over eighth note string triplets. This man said that he created a “blue sky in A major” with a symphony that is the first in the standard repertoire to start in major, but end in a minor key. The Andante con moto second movement of that symphony by this composer, according to Ignaz Moscheles (“EEG-nots MOH-sheh-les”), draws on a Czech pilgrims’ song. To create an alternative third movement for his Symphony No. 1 in C minor, this composer orchestrated the scherzo (“SKAIRT-so”) of his E-flat string octet. The finale of this man’s Fourth Symphony includes a saltarello and tarantella, which are dances from the country that symphony is usually named after. For 10 points, name this composer of “Italian” and “Scottish” symphonies who wrote incidental music to A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
ANSWER: Felix Mendelssohn
<Music>
RyanBilger - Today at 12:28 AM

Jeremy Tsai - Today at 12:28 AM
got an embarassingly late buzz on this but yes it's pretty standard stuff
EricWolfsberg - Today at 12:29 AM
It looks like the middle clues were easier (possibly because of that one cliff) but there was less overall conversion relative to other RMPSS questions
RyanBilger - Today at 12:29 AM
So on Mendelssohn...

Wang Anshi - Today at 12:30 AM
ultracliff
EricWolfsberg - Today at 12:30 AM
(people don't know score clues)
Sam Brochin - Today at 12:30 AM
Score clues are filler
Matt Weiner - Today at 12:30 AM
this has been discussed to death but yes, if you know score clues you are a top music player and should buzz on the leadin, we don't need five score clues to distinguish, use one and move on
RyanBilger - Today at 12:31 AM
Gotta get that from your words to the editors'/writers' ears(edited)
Joe Su - Today at 12:31 AM
the second or something clue was not an english sentence during the first weekend
Matt Weiner - Today at 12:31 AM
could probably d2 that with some additional titles added to the end
16. In its main industrial use, this compound reacts photochemically with nitrosyl chloride to form an oxime that rearranges to generate the Nylon precursor caprolactam. Though the proton NMR spectrum of a mostly-deuterated derivative of this compound resolves into two signals at around negative 90 degrees Celsius, the spectrum for this compound itself is just a single peak at 1.43 ppm. This compound eliminates the steric strain caused by the proximity of two “flagpole hydrogens” by undergoing a very low energy 10.8 kilocalorie “pseudorotation.” Each carbon of this compound is bound to one “axial” and one “equatorial” hydrogen in its most stable configuration. Fully hydrogenating benzene yields this compound. The “boat” is less favorable than the “chair” conformation of, for 10 points, what cycloalkane with formula C6H12?
ANSWER: cyclohexane [do not accept or prompt on “hexane”]
<Chemistry>
Joe Su - Today at 12:31 AM
I would have much earlier if the tossup was comprehensible
buzzed
itamar - Today at 12:32 AM
where did the "elite music players" buzz on mendelssohn
RyanBilger - Today at 12:32 AM
@Ryan Rosenberg can we get that list for Mendelssohn please?(edited)
EricWolfsberg - Today at 12:32 AM
It looks like the first buzz was at 62% or something
Ryan Rosenberg - Today at 12:32 AM

RyanBilger - Today at 12:32 AM
Right on schedule
itamar - Today at 12:32 AM
oh good, JL can buzz 60% in. all's right in the world
Ryan Rosenberg - Today at 12:32 AM
these were the first six
Jeremy Tsai - Today at 12:33 AM
I'm pretty sure there was a 3 way buzzer race on "flagpole hydrogens" in our room
Wang Anshi - Today at 12:33 AM
caprolactam is notable if you know polymers
itamar - Today at 12:33 AM
alex buzzed at caprolactam
Wang Anshi - Today at 12:33 AM
which alex
itamar - Today at 12:33 AM
our alex (harmata)
EricWolfsberg - Today at 12:34 AM
This is stuff you definitely learn if you take orgo
Wang Anshi - Today at 12:34 AM
the thing about the 1.43 ppm chemical shift is also really notable
Jeremy Tsai - Today at 12:34 AM
I have learned nothing about polymers in orgo
itamar - Today at 12:34 AM
our mod didn't use buzz points
Matt Weiner - Today at 12:34 AM
I think people need to be more considerate of how hard it can be to buzz on clues like "Though the proton NMR spectrum of a mostly-deuterated derivative of this compound...." in real game conditions
Wang Anshi - Today at 12:34 AM
because it shows that the equitorial and axial hydrogens are equivalent and they stop rapidly interconverting then
EricWolfsberg - Today at 12:34 AM
I would imagine many teams don't have anyone who has taken orgo
Matt Weiner - Today at 12:34 AM
here's clues about something else, figure out what it is and then what it's a "derivative of" before someone just hears the next clue and beats you
Jeremy Tsai - Today at 12:34 AM
or memorized the ppm shifts, but that clue at least helped narrow it down and eliminate a lot of other common molecules that get asked about
Wang Anshi - Today at 12:34 AM
yeah its very hard to parse things verbally that are usually presented visibly
Ryan Rosenberg - Today at 12:34 AM
Adam Silverman also buzzed at caprolactam
itamar - Today at 12:35 AM
not surprised
Wang Anshi - Today at 12:35 AM
at one point in my life I could look at the H1 NMR spectrum of cyclohexane and tell you what it was, but I couldn't do that from a verbal description
Ryan Rosenberg - Today at 12:35 AM
only other person to get it early was Evan Lynch
RyanBilger - Today at 12:35 AM

Wang Anshi - Today at 12:35 AM
I'd have gotten in there but I was spectating
RyanBilger - Today at 12:35 AM
Yeah watching me take the L
OK, what's next?
hftf - Today at 12:38 AM

RyanBilger - Today at 12:38 AM
Whoa, that's sweet
Matt Weiner - Today at 12:38 AM
17. A ruler of this ethnicity aided peasants by establishing “charity granaries” and regularizing the tax burden levelled by traditional owners of appanages of land won in war, called khubi. That ruler of this ethnicity chose not to convert the use of farmland thanks to his Christian wife Chabi. A princess of this ethnicity who would only marry a man who beat her in a wrestling match purportedly fell in love with a ruler of this ethnicity named Ghazan, who converted to Islam. Rulers of this ethnicity were patrons of Rabban bar Sauma, one of many Nestorian Christians prominent in their court. The leader who unified these people had a wife who was kidnapped by a group of them, the Merkits. This ethnicity ruled the largest realm to elect leaders through a kuriltai assembly, and led the Golden Horde. For 10 points, name this people who ruled the largest contiguous empire in world history thanks to Genghis Khan.
ANSWER: Mongols [or Mongolians; accept Khamag or Khongirad Mongols since all the leaders mentioned were from a family descended from those tribes] (The first two clues refer to Khubilai Khan’s policies in China.)
<Other History>
Joe Su - Today at 12:39 AM
thumbs up for ophir
Matt Weiner - Today at 12:39 AM
thanks
Joe Su - Today at 12:39 AM
my four dollars being put to good work
RyanBilger - Today at 12:39 AM
I don't know jack about the Mongols so this isn't my place to comment
Erik Christensen - Today at 12:40 AM
i found this question made me think the answer the whole time but didnt give me anything solid to buzz on
dgraebner - Today at 12:40 AM
I feel like this could be improved with some other...pronoun
than rulers of this ethnicity
Wang Anshi - Today at 12:40 AM
honestly I thought it was pretty hard until kurultai
Erik Christensen - Today at 12:40 AM
its the best way of doing it
Wang Anshi - Today at 12:40 AM
but this isn't my field
Jeremy Tsai - Today at 12:40 AM
at least this wasn't the Armenian American tossup
Erik Christensen - Today at 12:40 AM
i got it at the merkits
because thats genghis
Matt Weiner - Today at 12:40 AM
this seems like a pretty straightforward, buzzable question - if there's one criticism
hftf - Today at 12:41 AM
I'm not going to open my server but if someone does want to screenshot all the questions i'll make a tunnel for that person to do so
Matt Weiner - Today at 12:41 AM
it's that when you write on a big topic like "the mongols" you should pick an angle instead of hopping around to 9 of the possible 8000 clues you could use
Erik Christensen - Today at 12:41 AM
a specific issue is that turkic people and mongols so tightly connected
dgraebner - Today at 12:41 AM
like it feels like a question you can easily know abunch of clues on but not quite actually be able to say "what is the exact thing you want me to say
hftf - Today at 12:41 AM
PM me and promise you'll only use it for that
Matt Weiner - Today at 12:41 AM
like the middle of this really wants to be about "christianity and the mongols", that could be the whole thing
Ryan Rosenberg - Today at 12:41 AM
hot take: the Armenian American question was fine and people who negged were being dumb
Erik Christensen - Today at 12:41 AM
it said ethnicity
Matt Weiner - Today at 12:41 AM
or it could all be about agricultural policy or all about marriages
Ryan Rosenberg - Today at 12:42 AM
(I negged it where everyone else did)
Erik Christensen - Today at 12:42 AM
mongol agricultural policy wasnt mh
dgraebner - Today at 12:42 AM
like I know that a lot of the mongols had christan wives, that rabban bar sauma was immportant ot them, that one of them converted to islam
srombro - Today at 12:42 AM
Yea that question seemed fine to me
itamar - Today at 12:42 AM
did anyone buzz on the first two lines
Matt Weiner - Today at 12:42 AM
I haven't seen this armenian question yet but if it's anything like roman women I'm gonna...say things
Erik Christensen - Today at 12:42 AM
no it was fine
Matt Weiner - Today at 12:42 AM
I predict there were 4 buzzes on the first two lines
what do we have
Erik Christensen - Today at 12:43 AM
no it was jsut negged with african americans
itamar - Today at 12:43 AM
no one knows that george deukmejian existed(edited)
Ryan Rosenberg - Today at 12:43 AM
yep, four buzzes at the end of the second sentence
Jeremy Tsai - Today at 12:43 AM
same for us
Ryan Rosenberg - Today at 12:43 AM
people should know that Bradley lost to an Armenian, it's important context
Erik Christensen - Today at 12:44 AM
that question was super blessed
because it made a kardashian academic content
dgraebner - Today at 12:44 AM
can somoene post it
Jeremy Tsai - Today at 12:44 AM
I think David wasn't paying attention fully and thought it was asking for the ethnicity of Bradley
Matt Weiner - Today at 12:44 AM
let's swerve to this question real quick
Derek - Today at 12:44 AM
yes akhil negged as such
RyanBilger - Today at 12:44 AM

Ryan Rosenberg - Today at 12:45 AM
12. The first recorded immigrant of this ethnicity to the US was a man who introduced the cultivation of silkworms to Jamestown named Martin. Members of this ethnicity sponsored a monument consisting of eight arches in Montebello. An election in which a politician of this ethnicity defeated Tom Bradley to become governor led to the coining of the term “Bradley effect.” After witnessing attacks on people of this ethnicity, Henry Morgenthau Sr. raised funds to help them. A plurality of residents of Glendale, California, are of this ethnicity, as was the lawyer who read a supposed suicide note from Nicole Simpson to the press during the O. J. Simpson trial. Immigration by this group surged after the Iranian revolution, as they comprise the largest Christian group in Iran. For 10 points, name this ethnic group whose immigration also increased after a genocide in the Ottoman Empire.

ANSWER: Armenians [or Armenian Americans] (The third sentence refers to George Deukmejian.)
Matt Weiner - Today at 12:45 AM
what packet was it in, I just downloaded the set and windows hasn't indexed it
Wang Anshi - Today at 12:45 AM
my teammate knew about that dukmeijian guy
Matt Weiner - Today at 12:45 AM
thanks
yeah it pretty much tells you what category of answer it wants and then gives clues about that answer
Wang Anshi - Today at 12:45 AM
but he buzzed and said "black" because he didn't hear "defeated" or something
Matt Weiner - Today at 12:45 AM
so this is another case of "but what if I buzzed in with black people" "then you'd be clearly wrong because that doesn't fit any of the clues" "yeah but WHAT IF I BUZZED IN WITH BLACK PEOPLE"
Derek - Today at 12:45 AM
ah the first recorded black immigrant
Matt Weiner - Today at 12:46 AM
just like people shouting "what if I buzzed in with plebeians" louder and louder re: "roman women"
Joe Su - Today at 12:46 AM
I mean that is what Akhil negged it with
because he misheard something
RyanBilger - Today at 12:46 AM

dgraebner - Today at 12:46 AM
I too consider Glendale famous for its African-American community
RyanBilger - Today at 12:46 AM
I buzzed at the OJ thing because sadly I know that is why we are stuck with the Kardashians
Ryan Rosenberg - Today at 12:47 AM
people should listen to the question and not reflex buzz on Bradley effect
Joe Su - Today at 12:47 AM
and buzzed in with Tom Bradley's ethnicity
dgraebner - Today at 12:47 AM
oops
Ryan Rosenberg - Today at 12:47 AM
or, like, know things about the election because it's a famous historical study
dgraebner - Today at 12:47 AM
I guess watertown, mass wouldv'e been a fun clue
Matt Weiner - Today at 12:47 AM
who could forget robert kardashian after watching david schwimmer's brilliant portrayal of him in the people v oj simpson
RyanBilger - Today at 12:48 AM
Damn I need to actually watch that
Sam Brochin - Today at 12:48 AM
JUICE
Wang Anshi - Today at 12:48 AM
lol
Matt Weiner - Today at 12:48 AM
my life's ambition is to meet kim kardashian so I can ask if she still calls OJ "Uncle Juice"
Sam Brochin - Today at 12:48 AM
2016 had a weird one-two punch of O.J.: Made in America and The People v. O.J. Simpson
Wang Anshi - Today at 12:48 AM
is that a thing from teh movie or real
Sam Brochin - Today at 12:48 AM
Surprisingly, both were fantastic
Wang Anshi - Today at 12:49 AM
yeah why is OJ back in the public consciousness all of a sudden
Jeremy Tsai - Today at 12:49 AM
because he is now out of prison presumably
Matt Weiner - Today at 12:49 AM
>>"We are Kardashians," Robert tells the children as they eat their chow mein, "and in this family, being a good person and a loyal friend is more important than being famous. Fame is fleeting, it's hollow. It means nothing at all without a virtuous heart."
Jeremy Tsai - Today at 12:49 AM
bless his heart
dgraebner - Today at 12:49 AM
ouch
Sam Brochin - Today at 12:49 AM
It was kinda weird how they shoehorned in the Kardashian kids to hammer home the theme of the show
Matt Weiner - Today at 12:50 AM
>>So…Did that restaurant moment actually happen?

"It was a fictionalized moment by the writers," Schwimmer exclusively tells E! News.
18. Colin Low was unusually granted permission to film a ritual named for this object that supposedly began after a race between “four-leggeds” and “two-leggeds” to determine who would eat whom. Young men pierced their chests with pins and hooks during that ritual named for this object, which begins with the presentation of a buffalo skull as an altar for offerings. James Paytiano recorded a story about this thing and one of its children named Flaming Arrow Kachina, which was adapted into a Newberry-winning book about an “Arrow to” it. Aztec cosmology centered around the reigns of five different incarnations of this object, which was nourished in the New Fire ceremony with human hearts. Most Plains tribes disallow photographs of a “dance” named after, for 10 points, what celestial object?
ANSWER: the Sun [accept Sun Dance or Arrow to the Sun]
<Religion>
Wang Anshi - Today at 12:51 AM
I think that children's book is famous
Erik Christensen - Today at 12:51 AM
im not going to lie
itamar - Today at 12:51 AM
it is very famous
Erik Christensen - Today at 12:51 AM
i was thinking the sun because of zelda
itamar - Today at 12:51 AM
but i'm not sure if it's 5th line clue famous
EricWolfsberg - Today at 12:51 AM
Yeah I'm guessing huge cliff at "five"
Sam Brochin - Today at 12:51 AM
As a rule of thumb (though this may just apply to high school), any religion/myth tossup on an object will either be the sun or the moon
And it's usually not the moon
Matt Weiner - Today at 12:52 AM
this probably had a good buzz curve?
Erik Christensen - Today at 12:52 AM
thats usually pretty accurate
Matt Weiner - Today at 12:52 AM
and would work in d2
itamar - Today at 12:52 AM
"flaming"
Derek - Today at 12:52 AM
or something from norse mythology
Erik Christensen - Today at 12:52 AM
its usually obvious something isnt norse
Matt Weiner - Today at 12:53 AM
let's see those numeros
Derek - Today at 12:53 AM
@erik shitthole objects
Erik Christensen - Today at 12:53 AM
what
Matt Weiner - Today at 12:53 AM
what?
Derek - Today at 12:53 AM
well i thought that was a clever trump reference
Matt Weiner - Today at 12:54 AM
yeah you almost made me spit out my covfefe
::bowtie starts spinning around wildly::
Derek - Today at 12:54 AM
i tried
Jeremy Tsai - Today at 12:54 AM
Is it even possible to make a clever Trump reference
Erik Christensen - Today at 12:54 AM
ok so that was the reference
it wasnt good
itamar - Today at 12:54 AM
douche chill
RyanBilger - Today at 12:54 AM
Walking back from food, graph in a minute
Erik Christensen - Today at 12:55 AM
trump references in philosophy memes
Matt Weiner - Today at 12:55 AM
19. Regina Gagnier’s (“GAHN-yay’s”) book The Idylls of the Marketplace argues that this author’s work functioned as a protest against the commodification of art through notions of utility. In one work, this author wrote that “Watteau would have loved to paint” two women who sit in front of a tapestry inspired by François Boucher’s (“boo-SHAY’s”) The Triumph of Love. He analyzed the case of the art critic and serial killer Thomas Griffiths Wainewright in his essay “Pen, Pencil, and Poison.” This author compared the response to realism and romanticism to different “rage[s] of Caliban” in the preface to a work in which the chemist Alan Campbell helps dispose of the body of a murdered painter. In that novel by this author, Lord Henry Wotton watches Basil Hallward paint the title artwork, which ages instead of its subject. For 10 points, name this author of An Ideal Husband and The Picture of Dorian Gray.
ANSWER: Oscar Wilde
<Miscellaneous Lit>
Derek - Today at 12:55 AM
i wonder what object in myth is the most gettable that hasn't been tossed up before
itamar - Today at 12:56 AM
she-wolf was probably the most gettable character from myth that hasn't been tossed up before
Erik Christensen - Today at 12:56 AM
kusenagi
Matt Weiner - Today at 12:56 AM
so I guess this question is a great focal point for the unarticulated debate running under the surface level debate in the acf regionals thread
Wang Anshi - Today at 12:56 AM
kusanagi is really hard to write a question on, I tried
Erik Christensen - Today at 12:56 AM
it might have been tossed up
itamar - Today at 12:56 AM
"walls of rome"
Derek - Today at 12:57 AM
quizdb shows one tossup
Wang Anshi - Today at 12:57 AM
I've done that
RyanBilger - Today at 12:57 AM

Apologies for the lateness on that
Derek - Today at 12:58 AM
i think i was the first buzz on that
Matt Weiner - Today at 12:58 AM
at what point does it become so difficult and/or boring to just write a fucking tossup on oscar wilde from the 5-10 prose and drama things he wrote that you can reasonably conclude an educated person has read or is aware of, that you need a sentence about criticism, two full sentences about nonfiction, and finally a preface clue before you get to the first clue about the plot of a play or a story
itamar - Today at 12:58 AM
that preface is hot stuff
Matt Weiner - Today at 12:58 AM
and yes oscar wilde was an important critic and, as an important author, presumably has important criticism written about him
yes I've powered tossups on "the preface to dorian gray" before but I am not the presumed audience of the sixth clue of a regular difficulty tossup
so this is a great example of taking a very accessible answer line and just going hog wild with first-half clues better suited for nationals/CO
Jeremy Tsai - Today at 12:59 AM
there's only like 1/3 of a line about the preface in the tossup anyways
Matt Weiner - Today at 12:59 AM
that good d2 player who has read a bunch of oscar wilde fiction? out of luck until 3/4 of the way through the question!
this really doesn't seem necessary to me at regionals and I feel much more for that situation than for people who just don't know anything and expect points
Matt Weiner - Today at 1:00 AM
it's cramming in stuff that in the abstract could be justified (at nationals, or in one question per packet, or for someone who wrote like 2 things and has a dry clue well)
and doing where you don't need to, in almost every question
itamar - Today at 1:00 AM
the watteau/boucher clue is from an ideal husband
Matt Weiner - Today at 1:00 AM
this is where the feeling that the leadins are a waste of time comes from
itamar - Today at 1:00 AM
it's the very first stage instruction
Matt Weiner - Today at 1:01 AM
I can't give credit for that, it's non-memorable to me from when I read an ideal husband
itamar - Today at 1:01 AM
very non-memorable
Matt Weiner - Today at 1:01 AM
stage instruction!
itamar - Today at 1:01 AM
"[The room is brilliantly lighted and full of guests.  At the top of the staircase stands lady chiltern, a woman of grave Greek beauty, about twenty-seven years of age.  She receives the guests as they come up.  Over the well of the staircase hangs a great chandelier with wax lights, which illumine a large eighteenth-century French tapestry—representing the Triumph of Love, from a design by Boucher—that is stretched on the staircase wall.  On the right is the entrance to the music-room.  The sound of a string quartette is faintly heard.  The entrance on the left leads to other reception-rooms.  mrs. marchmont and lady basildon, two very pretty women, are seated together on a Louis Seize sofa.  They are types of exquisite fragility.  Their affectation of manner has a delicate charm.  Watteau would have loved to paint them.]"
RyanBilger - Today at 1:01 AM

I would say the buzzpoint data bears that out
Matt Weiner - Today at 1:01 AM
is "an ideal husband" so strip-mined at the regionals level that we must resort to stage instruction clues instead of plot?
itamar - Today at 1:01 AM
clearly
Matt Weiner - Today at 1:01 AM
yeah wow
just a big nothing there before the real clues
Derek - Today at 1:02 AM
i think a tossup with stage instructions as the answerline could be fun
Matt Weiner - Today at 1:02 AM
like anything you have to be realistic about what is memorable to whom
Jeremy Tsai - Today at 1:02 AM
wasn't there a tossup on the tree from Waiting for Godot last year
itamar - Today at 1:02 AM
two years ago
Erik Christensen - Today at 1:02 AM
neat
Matt Weiner - Today at 1:03 AM
if the editors of this set were merely forced to articulate "we think more than 0-1 people remember the stage instructions from An Ideal Husband" they would understand how absurd a notion it is
obviously there are famous directions from shakespeare or no exit or whatever that would work differently than this clue
Derek - Today at 1:03 AM
shaw
Matt Weiner - Today at 1:04 AM
to convert the above to d2 is basically to write a new, reasonable tossup on wilde, so not immediately usable
20. A character with this name is chastised for proposing the division of herding into that of beasts and that of men. Another character with this name is told that his concept of a “day” must be like a sail covering many people, and thus have many parts. A silent character with this name learns that statesmen are distinguished from sophists through their ability to weave theoretical and practical knowledge from an argument presented by the Eleatic (“ell-ee-attic”) Stranger. A character of this name is uniquely [emphasize] not present or mentioned in the Laws, and is unable to get Callicles to concede that doing evil is worse than having it done to you in a dialogue named for Gorgias. For 10 points, give the name of this character who fails to convince a jury not to execute him for impiety in the Apology, a dialogue written by his student Plato.
ANSWER: Socrates [accept Socrates the Younger]
<Philosophy>
EricWolfsberg - Today at 1:04 AM
IMO same thing with this (which is mostly unchanged from what I wrote)
Gorgias is not a pre-FTP clue
Matt Weiner - Today at 1:04 AM
so these clues are all from platonic dialogues, right
EricWolfsberg - Today at 1:04 AM
Yes
Matt Weiner - Today at 1:04 AM
what is the purpose of trying to mislead people into thinking they apply to disparate "characters" who by chance share a name
EricWolfsberg - Today at 1:04 AM
Statesman, Parmenides, Statesman again, then it names things
Derek - Today at 1:05 AM
this played to loud groans in our room
Erik Christensen - Today at 1:05 AM
yeah
hosey question + ancient philsophy + plot clues
EricWolfsberg - Today at 1:05 AM
TBF the (very hard) statesman clues are about a different person also named socrates
Erik Christensen - Today at 1:05 AM
oh neat
EricWolfsberg - Today at 1:06 AM
But I'll cop to this being poorly written and too hard
Wang Anshi - Today at 1:06 AM
yeah this character...
RyanBilger - Today at 1:06 AM

Jeremy Tsai - Today at 1:06 AM
everyone had a collective "ohhhhh" in our room
EricWolfsberg - Today at 1:06 AM
Though if you were going to ask about socrates from platonic dialogues, what would you call him?
Wang Anshi - Today at 1:06 AM
figure
Erik Christensen - Today at 1:07 AM
person?
Matt Weiner - Today at 1:07 AM
person
EricWolfsberg - Today at 1:07 AM
But plato fictionalizes him
Erik Christensen - Today at 1:07 AM
figure makes me think it could be a god or something
Matt Weiner - Today at 1:07 AM
people can be fictional
Erik Christensen - Today at 1:07 AM
yeah but he still existed
Derek - Today at 1:07 AM
are you saying socrates isn't a god
Conor Thompson - Today at 1:07 AM
well actual gods were "hero" in this tournament so
itamar - Today at 1:07 AM
heracles was both
Matt Weiner - Today at 1:07 AM
I have a similar criticism to the mongols question
RyanBilger - Today at 1:08 AM
Oh wait, didn't that happen in that Marduk question?
Matt Weiner - Today at 1:08 AM
platonic dialogues are a big topic with a lot of viable clues at the regionals level, there should be a tighter focus to this question instead of just picking a bunch of arbitrary clues
Derek - Today at 1:08 AM
do people even know the statesman
Matt Weiner - Today at 1:08 AM
judging from that graph, no
EricWolfsberg - Today at 1:08 AM
no
nooo
That was a bad idea
Jeremy Tsai - Today at 1:08 AM
maybe the tossup is taking a stance on the question whether Socrates really existed or not
Erik Christensen - Today at 1:08 AM
wake up sheeple
EricWolfsberg - Today at 1:09 AM
Again, my rationale was "places where Socrates fails to do something"
Wang Anshi - Today at 1:09 AM
I know it exists I don't know anything about it
its on the list of more obscure ones
EricWolfsberg - Today at 1:09 AM
but that was a dumb idea
itamar - Today at 1:09 AM
it seems like it was easier to slip tough phil/SS past WHM
Derek - Today at 1:09 AM
reminds me of that tossup that called eichmann the "alleged" whatever
Matt Weiner - Today at 1:09 AM
gotta maintain cultural sensitivity
RyanBilger - Today at 1:09 AM
Alright, so that's all the tossups, what are our conclusions?
Conor Thompson - Today at 1:09 AM
@RyanBilger yeah i negged marduk with gilgamesh
Matt Weiner - Today at 1:09 AM
honestly I have no problem saying historical events happened and if you don't like it fuck off [I think I put in an answerline instruction on an armenian genocide q once to this effect]
but it gets harder with religion
Conor Thompson - Today at 1:10 AM
because marduk is a god
and i figured i'd probably forgotten the plot
Matt Weiner - Today at 1:10 AM
do I have to keep putting in phrases like "believed to" before I write that, like, buddha got enlightened under a bo tree
or can we all assume that's implied
Derek - Today at 1:10 AM
what's a kingu to a god
itamar - Today at 1:10 AM
he's a character in the myths
RyanBilger - Today at 1:10 AM
Two that strike me are that many of these questions can be D2 converted and that some lead-ins really need to be reined in even in D1
Matt Weiner - Today at 1:10 AM
well judging from these tossups the notion that the leadins were pointless seems fairly well supported
Conor Thompson - Today at 1:10 AM
my position on stuff like that is that if it's something that's common to all myths/practice about them (or even the most prominent), it's fine
Matt Weiner - Today at 1:10 AM
I would like to hear more people really put forth what they want a leadin to do
Conor Thompson - Today at 1:11 AM
but like if you're writing a tossup on jesus from ahmadiyya islam clues, maybe "believed to" would be good
Matt Weiner - Today at 1:11 AM
distinguish the theoretical best player in the subject of all time from the second-best, and if that is pointless because neither are playing this tournament or that matchup will happen at a maximum of one site, oh well?
introduce brand new clues every time?
just fill space instead of writing a 6 line tossup because 6 lines is the usable clues you have?
Derek - Today at 1:11 AM
tell me something interesting that helps me contextualize the actual buzzable clues
Matt Weiner - Today at 1:12 AM
if the correct answer is something like "the leadin should be buzzed on by at least 3-4 people nationwide and the editors should be realistic about that as compared to something unlikely to be buzzed on at all" then we need to tone things down
perhaps just shortening the length overall is a way to do so
I edited an acf regionals where every tossup was six line capped (did every single question except science) and was a subject editor on a later edition with a seven line cap
Erik Christensen - Today at 1:12 AM
at regioanls i think 3-4 people is low
Matt Weiner - Today at 1:13 AM
I don't think there's anything wrong with 6-7 line tossups
Erik Christensen - Today at 1:13 AM
maybe 6-8 is better
Derek - Today at 1:13 AM
have twice as many short questions and no bonuses since they don't affect games anyway
Wang Anshi - Today at 1:13 AM
I remember that regionals, it was good
Joe Su - Today at 1:13 AM
derek
you know you suck at short questions
Jeremy Tsai - Today at 1:13 AM
the NAQT 3 line tossups are somehow more painful for me
Derek - Today at 1:13 AM
calumny
Matt Weiner - Today at 1:13 AM
if the point of the leadin is to "contextualize" and let you deduce the answer, I don't think most of these leadins did so
Derek - Today at 1:13 AM
agreed
Matt Weiner - Today at 1:13 AM
many of them had nothing to do with the other clues thematically or were just "one critic said X about this person"
RyanBilger - Today at 1:13 AM
6-7 is perfectly fine, I didn't love the whole MAKE YOUR SUBMISSIONS 8 LINES OR THEY'RE GETTING RETURNED TO YOU ethos
Derek - Today at 1:14 AM
although i think there was a mongolian sounding word in the mongols leadin?
itamar - Today at 1:14 AM
khubi
Derek - Today at 1:14 AM
thats just phonetic association though
Jeremy Tsai - Today at 1:14 AM
khubi and the two strings
Matt Weiner - Today at 1:14 AM
remember when we had the elimination tournament to determine the best mongol of all time and cody kept voting in every round with "khubi"
RyanBilger - Today at 1:14 AM
Do any of you guys want to do a sum-up of this to post in the ACF Regionals forum? I can do it if nobody else prefers, just thought I'd ask.
Erik Christensen - Today at 1:14 AM
so who won
Derek - Today at 1:15 AM
i can see how the wilde intro fits into his wildyness
RyanBilger - Today at 1:15 AM
Clearly it was Chaka
Matt Weiner - Today at 1:15 AM
I guess we can leave bonuses alone for now since this was a response to a thread about tossup clue difficulty(edited)
yeah ryan it would be cool to sum up the whole discussion
Derek - Today at 1:17 AM
was subutai ethnically mongol
Matt Weiner - Today at 1:17 AM
my one point of conclusion is the above, can the editors of this set, or anyone who plans to edit any set, articulate precisely what they believe the purpose and audience of a leadin is
itamar - Today at 1:17 AM
he was from the forest
RyanBilger - Today at 1:18 AM
I might not get it written up until tomorrow, but I'll definitely do it because I think this was valuable and illuminating
Anybody else have conclusions/thoughts you'd like included in that writeup?
Derek - Today at 1:18 AM
oh the forest
of course
Wang Anshi - Today at 1:18 AM
I'm going to coin a term here
called "fanning"
that's when you take a late clue and add middle clues about the late clue
to avoid cliffing
and to make the middle clues more numerous and getting more buzzes in the middle
its a thing people should do more
Matt Weiner - Today at 1:19 AM
and then once you've put some real thought and effort into those middle clues(edited)
Derek - Today at 1:19 AM
surely i t depends a lot whether you initially wrote the question top down or bottom up
Matt Weiner - Today at 1:19 AM
delete your leadin and leave the tossup as is
Wang Anshi - Today at 1:19 AM
a lot of those questions could have been made more buzzable, eg by putting more clues about kurultais into that mongol tossup
and yeah then cut the leadin
itamar - Today at 1:20 AM
but will alston wanted to test if you know about kublai khan's agrarian reforms
Matt Weiner - Today at 1:20 AM
this feels like a very spiritual way to write
If you meet the leadin on the road, kill him!
Wang Anshi - Today at 1:20 AM
does the dog have leadin nature
Derek - Today at 1:20 AM
this tossup was revealed to me in a dream
Matt Weiner - Today at 1:20 AM
what is the sound of no hands buzzing
a: the leadins to this packet
itamar - Today at 1:21 AM
how many of those tossups actually had buzzes on leadins
dgraebner - Today at 1:21 AM
is a leadin still useful if you had to cut it
itamar - Today at 1:21 AM
besides germany and cyclohexane
dgraebner - Today at 1:21 AM
to look at the marduk question
Erik Christensen - Today at 1:21 AM
compare leadins to trash question first lines
Derek - Today at 1:21 AM
i mean theoretically even if nobody buzzes on the first line of armenians
it stops you from buzzing with black
dgraebner - Today at 1:21 AM
several of hte early clues are important and notable, but there's on reason for more tha one to be in there
Matt Weiner - Today at 1:21 AM
apparently not!
Derek - Today at 1:21 AM
in theory
Erik Christensen - Today at 1:21 AM
people are quite able to buzz in on the first line of most trash
itamar - Today at 1:22 AM
perhaps, if you immediately red flag it in your mind
i imagine most people didn't
Erik Christensen - Today at 1:22 AM
because they are much more helpful
dgraebner - Today at 1:22 AM
it's the same issue as teh "multiple jumps" matt identifed
where because one thing is hard but knowable, and this is ahrd but knowable
you can put all them in
Derek - Today at 1:23 AM
when i write tossups on books ive read i just think whats a detail that still stands out to me
itamar - Today at 1:24 AM
do you revisit the book to make sure you're accurately describing it
EricWolfsberg - Today at 1:24 AM
I mean
That's how you get the leadin to the Moby-Dick tossup from this packet
Derek - Today at 1:24 AM
the moby dick twitterbot is godly
Kevin Wang - Today at 1:25 AM
that leads to leadins that are hard as shit though