Crossposted from MACA

Does anyone have a field or provider information for this?

Since Richland is competing in this tournament, I did not write the questions.


Jim McCrary told me that the provider is Questions Galore (only because he is the state provider).


Bob Brown
The Question Bank

Per Lexington's website on March 13:

Blue Springs
Boonville
Bunceton
Cameron
Chillicothe
Cole Camp
Dixon
El Dorado Springs
Excelsior Springs
Fort Osage
Glasgow
Hallsville
Helias
Kearney A
Kearney B
Lee's Summit North
Lexington
Liberty
Lincoln
Lone Jack
Marshall
Meadville
North Kansas City
Oak Grove
Oak Park
Orrick
Park Hill
Pilot Grove
Plattsburg
Richland
Savannah
Smithton A
Smithton B
Smithville
Staley
St. Joseph Christian
St. Pius X of Kansas City
St. Mary's of Independence
Truman
Wellington-Napoleon

So 40 teams, I don't know if broken in large or small school brackets (probably).

A text message has informed me that NKC and Savannah are 3-0 with Liberty losing to NKC by 30, and the Questions Galore questions are "lots of pointless essays before one liners."

The top 12 teams advanced to the playoffs. In the large school division the top four seeds are Savannah, Park Hill, NKC, and Kearney, which got byes. Liberty won in the first round of the playoffs and advanced to play Kearney. The top four in the small school division are Hallsville, St. Joe Christian, Cameron, and Plattsburg; Richland was fifth.

Large-school division:
Liberty over Kearney on last question
Savannah vs. Truman

NKC over LSN by 15
Park Hill vs. Smithville

Small-school division:
Cameron over Lexington by 10
Pilot Grove over St. Joe Christian

Hallsville A over Hallsville B
Richland over Plattsburg

Savannah over Truman, Park Hill over Smithville.

Semis:
Liberty-Savannah, NKC-Park Hill
Cameron-Pilot Grove, Hallsville A-Richland

Savannah over Liberty 300-175
NKC over Park Hill 225-185
Hallsville over Richland
Pilot Grove over Cameron

At halftime of the large-school championship game: Savannah 145, NKC 50

Going into tossup 48: Savannah 180, NKC 160

Can NKC come back? Or will Savannah pull the upset?

???

My not-so-mysterious source tells me that the championship game ended 180-180 and that Savannah defeated NKC in overtime. Liberty defeated Park Hill 225-165 for third, and Hallsville defeated Pilot Grove 225-105 for first place in the small-school division.

Wow, sounds like a good final. I wonder how significant the Liberty losses were, and how good Kearney really is.

Just a reminder not to discuss the content of specific questions, as they will possibly be used elsewhere.

Ok. This tournament was ugh. To begin, we started late. I believe this was due to a team being late, so I don't know how much could have been done by the director. Questions Galore lived up to it's awful reputation and the questions were complete trash. As stated above, most of the questions had line after line of fluff with no question until the very end. The math computation was riddled with errors, and I think every round had at least on incorrect answer. To make it worse, in the first round our moderator refused to give us points and threw the question out even after we had shown that our answer was correct. Some of the math was also not doable in 15 seconds. Many of the questions were also completely antipyramidal. An author or artist was given and you could safely buzz with their most famous work. The science questions were terrible with extremely vague or simply false clues. The other categories may have been as well, but science is what I am good at.

I would argue that Liberty's losses were insignificant, along with every other match. Kearney is ok, they basically have one guy that gets everything though.

From what I understand, NKC was cheated out of winning the final. I am sure Grant can elaborate.

The one highlight of the day was the epic game of Ultimate Frisbee in the gym before the tournament started. I want to thank everyone who played with us and had a good time.

I want to make sure this is absolutely clear. Regardless of your opinion of the questions and how they might have affected the outcome of any particular game, and even though Questions Galore does not (presumably) have a clear-cut question security policy like NAQT/HSAPQ/etc, we must honor the fact that their questions might be used elsewhere later on.

The final ended in a 185-185 tie that involved a denied protest on the last bonus, with Savannah winning the tiebreaker.

While watching today I paid special attention to question structure, noting as much as I could question-by-question. Expect some sort of analysis later on, but at the moment I will agree that these questions were pretty bad.


<div class="editby">Edited by <a href='http://s4.zetaboards.com/Academic_Competition/profile/88961/'>U. Lou Sthagaim</a>, Mar 21 2009, 05:37:40 PM.</div>

With no disrespect to Savannah, i am not happy with the outcome of the tournament. They are a great team and Zach was very good today, but that being said..
In order to not mention specific questions I will be vague, but my main problem is not even with the error in the question, but in the way our protest was handled. the question was a physics bonus part which we answered with, as I have checked in my physics textbook (giancoli), a correct answer, though it was not the one on the page. (Although given the quality of the questions the fact that my answer was different from the one on the page should have been enough to prove it was correct.) Our answer was turned down, and Savannah answered also with a correct answer, conveniently the correct answer on the page. I protested, given that after the bonus finished we led by 5 points. The moderator left the room to ask Jim McCrary and for some reason Bob Brown about the protest. Within a minute and half, seemingly too little time to look anything up, he came back turning our answer down, after which we went to a tiebreaker which Savannah rightfully won. However, it does not seem fair to me that a protest that determines the outcome of a tournament was not taken to a physics teacher. As smart as those two coaches are, they do not teach physics, and my answer should have been acceptable.

Other people can vouch for me, but a vector is determined by magnitude and direction, so a negative answer should be just as acceptable as a positive one, if the direction of motion is unspecified. If a direction of motion reference frame is not given, then I should be allowed to determine which direction is positive and my answer should be correct.

Your reasoning seems to make sense, I would have taken a negative answer. This reminds me of the time (2006 JV Two Saints, maybe?) there was a protest as to whether "antielectron" would be accepted instead of "positron" and it took 30 minutes to resolve.

Aforementioned analysis is still coming later, but in the meantime, to give you a general idea of the problem with these questions, the vast majority of questions at today's tournament were filled with CLOOS (all 3 types, especially #3). The example clue for #3 given on that page ("The circulatory system is very important for human life") still makes me laugh every time because it's so terribly unhelpful, and that's basically what the "essays" in these "essays before one liners" were.

I take objection to the term "essays" being used to describe parts of these q's.

They were not "essays." They were tangents. Mindless, needless, stupifying tangents. Calling them essays would indicate that the people writing would have basic comprehension of the essay form which they clearly did not.

I will elaborate more later. But as a person who cares deeply about the state of quizbowl in Missouri and one of its more tireless activists to improve it and the quality of education it gives to the students in the state, the fact that these people have the contract for what is supposed to be the most important tournament of the year in this state is a complete disgrace.

Yes, I agree, tangents is a much better word to describe them. I knew essays wasn't quite right but hadn't come up with a more accurate term.


<div class="editby">Edited by <a href='http://s4.zetaboards.com/Academic_Competition/profile/88961/'>U. Lou Sthagaim</a>, Mar 21 2009, 08:56:36 PM.</div>

OK I have a little more time to elaborate, albeit discreetly.

I have gone to approximately over 100 high school tournaments in Missouri. This is the first and only time I have heard coaches, players, and staff complain about the sheer absurdity of a set with staggering unanimity. The McCrary's ran a wonderful tournament (some setbacks that they overcame or did all they could to) and should be commended. I thoroughly enjoyed the experience of working with them.

As to Questions Galore. There were many instances of clearly wrong answers in math, in music, and in science. There were questions that were so vague, I felt as though I were Gene Rayburn running an episode of Match Game where it was the Super Match and the poor contestant was trying to match Patty Duetsch. How do you put a vague answer together with someone who is by all accounts functionally insane? The result is you do not. I have never seen a set so hell bent on insulting the intelligence and ability of everyone involved and I have never seen coaches, staff, and players so united in their deep seated loathing for what transpired in my 13 years.

I fully intend to determine under the Sunshine laws (as the contract is paid by state money) who actually voted for this company and do everything I can to make sure those people are removed from positions of authority. This was not acceptable in any way shape or form. Anyone who accepted this over another viable bid should defend themselves within the close of business on Friday. You have wasted the state's money and our time in dealing with these charlatans.

This is not meant to be a stab at Lexington, because this should NOT have to be done. If anyone else is planning on running a tournament on Questions Galore (please don't), then please please please edit the math. I know SJC was kind enough to do that before the tournament and I am sure it saved lots of frustration.

If I were moderating, I would have taken either answer, but since it was our bonus and we got to answer first, we should have won the game.

I kinda don't know if I like the saving protests for the end; I doubt the problem was presented without an explanation of the implications. It was just the safer call to send it into overtime, and let the teams settle it with replacement tossups (on which Savannah did soundly beat us, granted).

If the decision had to be made after the first of four bonus parts I think they'd have given it to us, and we'd have won the tourney.

All in all, though I'm not too disappointed. I don't really care all that much about the trophy. I'm just glad we (in my opinion, no disrespect to Savannah) won the tournament without Brandonio.



edit: removed excessive parentheses


<div class="editby">Edited by <a href='http://s4.zetaboards.com/Academic_Competition/profile/3004725/'>nkc derek</a>, Mar 21 2009, 11:21:21 PM.</div>

OK I do not ordinarily say this but, by saying "no disrespect" and still saying what you said you are showing IMMENSE disrespect. Granted the MSHSAA rule (and I had to rule on two protests that didn't even matter today) should be amended to the "duly noted and resolved if it matters" rule, but what you said is so disrespectful to the champion I should wonder if when you shook their hands post match and said "good job" if you actually meant it. What do you think you are insinuating that you won a tournament you did not?


<div class="editby">Edited by <a href='http://s4.zetaboards.com/Academic_Competition/profile/89056/'>scphilli</a>, Mar 21 2009, 11:26:08 PM.</div>

First of all, I agree that, minus the starting late issue and a couple of other minor issues, the tournament was run well.

I have my notes compiled, and have come up with a total of 64.3% of the tossups which I believe had at least one moderate to severe problem. 1.7% additional questions were spelling and 16.6% additional questions were math calculation, for a total of 82.6% for those of us who want to see those categories go away. That doesn't necessarily mean the remaining 17.4% were good; they were tolerable enough, but most probably could have been improved with better clues.

I will post a more detailed breakdown tomorrow with self-written examples of each type of problem I observed.

Woah woah woah woah woah. No. After the game we shook hands and said good game and clapped loudly for the presentation of their first place trophy (and meant it). Savannah is a really good team; Zach is a very very good player and has the fastest buzz outside of maybe Charles of FHC. All I was saying was that on that particular day, at game's end, I think we earned more points (190-180) than they did, and therefore should not have had to play a first to three tossup overtime.

That's all.

I WASN'T saying they didn't deserve to touch buzzers, or that they should have just stayed home, or that they stumbled into their trophy. They played extremely well in the first half, I just think our comeback in the second half should have given us the edge, but we had a bonus part controversially stolen from us.

And the comment about Brandon was just to point out that we were able to tie in regulation (controversy aside) in the championship game without our captain and top scorer.

On another note, I actually didn't mind the Questions Galore "questions" being unedited, because that's what we'll have at state, so we should get used to knowing when to stick up for ourselves when they just have plain wrong answers, even though it is a lot nicer to play on edited questions (that was a long sentence).

edit: BBCode error


<div class="editby">Edited by <a href='http://s4.zetaboards.com/Academic_Competition/profile/3004725/'>nkc derek</a>, Mar 22 2009, 09:01:48 AM.</div>

I just want to say that Derek, you should not have said that, and we cannot say that we won the tournament. What happened, happened, and regardless of what controversy there is, Savannah won the tournament. Let it die.
And let's all be honest, these questions don't really even constitute a tournament they're so terrible. After having to play on them, unedited, I am absolutely appalled that MSHSAA would even consider them, much less choose them, especially over a high quality bid from Matt Weiner that "disappeared." The only good thing that has come of it is that is seems that there is an overwhelming hatred of these questions from all corners of the quizbowl world, whether people like pyramidal or not, they hate QG, and this could hopefully cause enough of a stirring for NAQT or MOQBA to make a bid next year, because I would hope that coaches right to MSHSAA and complain about this atrocity that MSHSAA has imposed upon us.

I guess the thoughts in my head don't translate into words as respectfully as I'd like them to.

As promised, here's the breakdown of my observations. The sample questions I included are hastily-written trash questions, but the same concept applies to all questions. I may supplement this with better written alternatives later on, but I think seeing the explanations of why these questions are bad should be enough to show how poorly written these questions are.

Throughout the 7 rounds (350 tossups), I observed several problems. Each question was only counted for what I believed was its most severe problem; for instance, several one liners were antipyramidal but are only counted as "one liners". Bonuses are not considered anywhere in this analysis.

====================================
at least 70 questions (20.0%) with rambling tangents or generally unhelpful clues

The vast majority of these were basically a series of statements followed by a one-liner:


Until the final sentence, there is no indication whatsoever as to what the question is going for. The italicized portion is in no way a question; it's just a statement of fact. It also does not help the player get to the desired answer because it mentions absolutely nothing about Creed. The question would have been equally effective just being the non-italicized one liner, because all the italicized text does is bore everybody with useless, unbuzzable information. These questions punish players for buzzing and guessing what the writer is going for before the eventual buzzer race-inducing one liner.

The worst of these questions made strong implications what the answer could be, but then asked about something else. For instance, the above question could have been modified to replace the second sentence with "One character on the show is an unmotivated salesman who constantly plays tricks on Dwight and is in love with the receptionist Pam"; such a question strongly implies the answer is Jim Halpert, but then hoses a player who logically buzzes with that answer because it continues with the Creed question.

A specific type of this rambling was the example that Abdullah gave in the Two Saints thread:

There were at least 3 or 4 questions like this. This example is unbuzzable until the word "third". For instance, the question could just as easily be "There are 3 primary colors. One is the color of the main feature on the Japanese flag. What is that color?" (red). For more on this type of bad question, refer to Abdullah's original post and the subsequent discussion.

This category also includes questions with unhelpful CLOOS (type 2 as outlined on the QBWiki) like unimportant biographical clues ("born on January 1, 1900") or almanac data ("This country has a population of 38 million").

====================================
at least 73 questions (20.9%) that were one-liners

These were questions that immediately began with "What author" or some other question without giving any clues beforehand:


This question basically has 2 clues (he plays Jack Donaghy on 30 Rock and is a famous brother), but they are all jammed into one sentence. People who watch 30 Rock will buzzer race on "Donaghy", and everybody else will probably buzzer race on "famous brother actors". This question does a poor job of giving people who are more knowledgeable about Alec Baldwin the chance to demonstrate their knowledge against those who aren't quite as familiar with his work.

====================================
at least 25 questions (7.1%) that were antipyramidal (3 more were classified as "Maybe antipyramidal")

Simply put, antipyramidality is a misplacement of clues:


Unacceptable editorial clues aside, the fact that Two and a Half Men is a comedy on CBS starring Charlie Sheen is probably the most well-known thing about it! That basically means that it will be a buzzer race on the first clue, and the rest of the question will go unread. This question does not distinguish between people who have deep knowledge of Two and a Half Men and those who don't.

This doesn't mean that all antipyramidal questions are those that have easy clues in the first line; it means that clues are not in order of decreasing difficulty. For instance, a question that has clues medium-hard-easy is antipyramidal, as people who don't know the medium clue probably aren't going to get it on the hard clue, and someone who knows the hard clue will not be able to avoid a buzzer race with someone who only knows the medium clue.

Even individual clues can be internally antipyramidal, such as a question on Steve Carell that says "He currently stars in The Office as the regional manager of the Dunder Mifflin branch in Scranton"; if you don't get it at "The Office", the rest of the clue will not be helpful. This was a typical problem with these questions; they would say "In [some work], he said '[some long-winded, unhelpful quote that would not be read in the first place if someone recognized the title]'"

A similar problem, which I sometimes included in this category, was questions that started with phrases like "this twentieth century American author". This narrows the answer space down really quickly and can lead to transparency.

I'm sure that a good deal of the questions in the "one liner" and "tangent" categories were also antipyramidal.

====================================
at least 16 questions (4.6%) were on topics that shouldn't be asked about or had non-cute-nor-clever aspects (I called these questions "stupid")

These include:
-questions that began with "Who am I?". There were multiple questions that started this way, and nearly all of them had line after line of unhelpful biographical clues.
-questions with unhelpful statements like "Let's see how much you know about..." or "Some movies have memorable quotes"
-questions that rely on the etymology of a word to arrive at an otherwise unimportant answer
-non-quizbowl topics like sewing, which I was actually charitable about and only included topics that I had never heard of as "stupid"
-chemical symbol spelling
-complete the analogy
-questions with ambiguous answers like "What is the purpose of..."

====================================
at least 8 questions (2.3%) were transparent

Similar to antipyramidality, transparency is defined on the QBWiki as "a mismatch between the distribution of points where the question is answered and the distribution of places where the question should be answered." It is best observed with an example:


While I think the clues are at least somewhat pyramidal, the first clue indicates that the answer is an agreement, and once "Ferdinand Magellan" is read, one will easily realize that it deals with European explorers around the 1500's; since the most famous agreement that applies to 16th century explorers is by far the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas, someone even with simple list knowledge can safely buzz at that point, answer Tordesillas, and get the question correct off of lateral thinking and not from knowing concrete clues, with 4+ lines to go in the question.

If you've ever thought after someone answers a question that "it was [correct answer] the whole time", it's quite possible that the question was transparent.

Several of the "tangents before a one-liner" were probably transparent, but because they didn't explicitly indicate what they were going for, players had no idea if the obvious answer was, in fact, correct.

====================================
at least 7 questions (2.0%) had vague clues

Basically, clues that aren't very helpful and seem like they can apply to more than one answer. I can't come up with an example myself, but they are basically "Style CLOOS" as outlined on the QBWiki. The example given there, "This painter was known for depicting beautiful landscapes with large brushstrokes", is pretty close to what I mean by "vague clues". Several of the questions with tangents probably also had vague clues.

====================================
at least 4 questions (1.1%) were going for a specific answer

A type of hose, these are questions that basically have a name, and not an entity, as an answer.


There are other problems with this question, but the problem I'm pointing out here is that while most of the question describes NBC (an entity that can be referred to by many different names), the actual question is asking the player to expand the acronym NBC, and not to identify the television network being described.

Other examples of this problem include requiring a scientific name and not accepting a common name. For instance, one (bad) question I wrote for Liberty's 2005 tournament required the scientific name for farsightedness and a prompt on "farsightedness" even though an answer of farsightedness demonstrates that the player knows what is being described.

Not accepting a name for something is only OK when it is unconventional or uncommon (for instance, the French title for a Spanish work of literature) or when the question mentions the alternate answer in the question; for instance, if the above question ended "name this network abbreviated NBC," while obviously not acceptable after it has been read, NBC should be an outright acceptable answer until the end of the question because it is universally* known by and officially branded with that name.

*no "NBC Universal" pun intended

====================================
at least 4 questions (1.1%) had clues that were definitely not unique

These are questions that contained significant clues that are not uniquely identifying:


The part in bold is not uniquely identifying, because it also applies to Heroes, Friday Night Lights, and probably a couple of other shows.

Every clue in a question should be able to stand on its own. Several questions with tangents probably had this problem as well.

====================================
at least 1 question (0.3%) had an end-of-question difficulty cliff

I only noted one difficulty cliff that was not a "tangent before a one-liner", but there were probably several more. A difficulty cliff is when there are several lines of unhelpful stuff followed by a well-known clue:


Besides the possibly antipyramidal reference to the Bob Seger System, all the clues before "Turn The Page" are probably unrecognizable to someone who is not familiar with Bob Seger's work before his breakthrough in the mid 70's (or people who aren't crazy enough to own at least one copy of all but his three rarest albums), possibly resulting in a buzzer race on the much more widely-known song title.

====================================
at least 1 question (0.3%) had an explicit left turn

This particular question violated pronoun rules and changed what the sought answer was. A similar example:


While several of the "tangent before a one-liner" questions could be considered left turns as well, the difference here is that the first clue clearly indicates that the answer should be a band, but later on the question subtly changes to ask about Mark Knopfler instead. Additionally, if you notice the underlined "its", it also violates pronoun rules, as forms of the terms "it" and "this" should only be used to refer to the answer, even though the "it" being referred to ("Tunnel of Love") was already mentioned in the question. Instead, forms of "that" should be used to refer to non-answers. Here's a revised version that follows these pronoun rules:


I don't consider "tangent before a one-liner" questions as left turns because they weren't explicitly pointing to any answer at all before the one-liner.

It should be noted that left-turns like this are probably not intentional but are a result of careless editing.

====================================
at least 1 question (0.3%) had an outright hose

A good chunk of the "tangent before a one liner" questions were hoses, but this particular question wasn't quite a tangent because it very strongly pointed to what the answer was supposed to be before asking about something else. A similar example:


At the end of the bold text, the question has instructed the player how to calculate the volume of the ladder and given the necessary information to complete that calculation. It would take a math player about 2 seconds to make that calculation, so they would buzz in at that time and give the logical answer of the volume of the ladder being "1110 cubic inches" (420*2+27*10), but to the player's surprise he is ruled incorrect, just to hear the question go on to the completely random added calculation of dividing the volume by a specified volume/minute rate.

====================================
at least 4 questions (1.1%) had outright wrong answers

Self explanatory. All the ones I noticed were math questions.

========================================================================
The three other problems I labeled:
at least 58 questions (16.6%) were math calculation questions that did not, to my knowledge, have an incorrect answer. Adding the 4 with incorrect answers, this means at least 62 of the 70 math questions were calculations.
at least 7 questions (2.0%) were spelling questions
at least 8 questions (2.3%) I considered too obscure; things I had never heard of. There might be more; there might be less; this was just based on what I know, and I think I was a bit charitable in this regard, so there were probably more questions in this category.

SEVERAL EDITS: Refined some things; made reference links to the QBWiki more consistent. I'll stop editing this post and do something more productive eventually. Found the unaccounted-for spelling question from the first round.

I feel like there were more transparent questions than that. Our team was often caught saying "are you freakin serious?" after the other team buzzed in with the obvious answer. I think there were a few more math or science questions with flat out wrong answers as well.

Spelling = awful awful awful. Almost every spelling question also has 2 words in it that could be asked, so you have to wait until the end.

Jeff there were far more than 5 hoses and left turns. 5 a game would be a reasonable estimate.

and Spencer, your picture does make you look like a fire-spitting heathen.

Really? I was going for a Sweet Transvestite.

Most definitely; that's why every number has been preceded with "at least". Also, remember that questions are only classified under their worst problem, so several of the "tangents before a one-liner" questions were also transparent, etc.

On a similar note, as I said earlier, this list doesn't mean the 17.4% that do not fall into any of these "problem" categories are good questions. I believe all of these 17.4% had a "this [class of object]" type statement early in the question and the answer was being referred to the entire time, but other than that, it's quite possible that some of these questions were antipyramidal, transparent, or really any of these problem categories; they just didn't stand out as being as problematic as the others. However, I would say that a good chunk of them had some useless, unhelpful clues that could have been replaced with pertinent academic clues.

With regard to tournament timing, the round start times were: 9:27, about 10:32, 11:30, 1:30, about 2:25, 3:26, and something like 4:20. The last round ended around 5:05, so the tournament did run close to the expected one hour per MSHSAA length round. Noting that I only considered 21% of the questions "one-liners" (plus any other one liners that were classified as something else), I believe that the vast majority of the questions were around 3 or 4 lines long, so the actual rounds seemed to be just as long as a pyramidal MSHSAA game. However, unlike a pyramidal MSHSAA game, the added length of the questions was due to needless rambling and did absolutely nothing to better distinguish which team was the better team as opposed to a game based solely on one-liners. All these questions do is frustrate players and waste time.

I am hoping to borrow Liberty's copy of the questions so I can look over them to gather some specific examples for non-public reference, verify the length of the questions, and to rework my previous post into a constructive letter to Questions Galore.

EDIT: Refined a statement for grammar


<div class="editby">Edited by <a href='http://s4.zetaboards.com/Academic_Competition/profile/88961/'>U. Lou Sthagaim</a>, Mar 22 2009, 11:35:55 PM.</div>

I'm sure there were. A lot of them probably were considered in this list as "tangents before a one-liner", where the rambling that does not specifically point to an answer strongly hints at what the answer might be but does not have a "this [something]" type phrase, so all of them are basically hoses, but I'm not considering them "left turns" here because the questions weren't explicitly going anywhere in the first place.

Basically, if I had noticed which tangents were definite hoses (questions that never explicitly state "this [something]" but strongly imply what the answer is and then it turns out to be something else) and which ones weren't (like my "Creed Bratton" tangent example above, because you have absolutely no idea where the question is going), it would make the ones that weren't definite hoses look better, when they're all bad.

You could pretty accurately say that there were about 10 hoses a game.

I forgot to mention that any interested people who were at Lexington or who will not be playing at any more tournaments using Questions Galore questions this season (excluding Districts/State, of course) can PM me with your e-mail address if you want me to send you the Excel sheet with question-by-question breakdown and comments.

EDIT: Added the obvious fact that people who already heard the questions themselves can request the sheet.

Current high school players who have received the list: Will Hack (PCH), Charles Hang (FHC)


<div class="editby">Edited by <a href='http://s4.zetaboards.com/Academic_Competition/profile/88961/'>U. Lou Sthagaim</a>, Mar 30 2009, 10:26:50 PM.</div>

This should be good for a laugh.

This information in Paul's post, which was split to a new thread, relates directly to the tournament:
I have split the posts not related directly to the Lexington tournament to this thread. There were some posts that had both Lexington-specific comments and general Questions Galore comments, so if you notice anything that seems out of context in either thread, please let me know so I can add an appropriate quote somewhere.

EDIT: Corrected link because the topic number changed when I merged Paul's post into that thread.

Oh yeah, I forgot to thank Matt for interpreting my lunchtime text message as a request to forward the data onto the message board; that's exactly why I sent it. Perhaps I should set up a (gasp) Twitter account to use for future instances of liveblogging a tournament when Internet access is not available.

I would have also seriously awarded points to any team (or at the very least $20) with the stones to buzz in on those HIDEOUS tu's that began "Who am I?" and then asked a bunch of q's in the first person by saying "Sean Phillips" after I said "Who am I?"

That would have been amazing. And theoretically, at that point in the question, correct.

You know...if you're moderating state (and assuming we're going), I'd be willing to take you up on that offer.

I just got confirmation from Eric Mukherjee, who is one of the best quizbowl players in the country and is working towards both biochemistry and math degrees at Brown University (in addition to having spent a ton of time doing math computation contests in high school), that Grant's answer was right and that the process for protesting an answer did not do what it should have done, so North Kansas City now has legitimate reason to argue that they should have won this tournament.

Not that it really matters, but there was an additional math tossup in that final that I believe Grant answered correctly but had the wrong answer on the page. Of course, since they didn't protest it, they don't have as much of an argument there, but just pointing out how errors of any kind in the questions can change the outcome of a tournament.

EDIT: The question was read correctly, so Grant's answer was, in fact, correct.

I appreciate asking someone with lots of experience. But really, Grant, Cameron, and I all know more than enough physics to tell you that his answer was correct as well. In fact, it is probably a better answer than the one on the page.

I better learn the names of all of the moderators at Districts / Sectionals / State. Is there a limit on the number of protests per game? : p

I believe you can protest as much as necessary in a game until you have two denied protests.

If I were moderating, I would have accepted his answer.

Ms. Camp (a chemistry teacher) agrees (at least, I'm pretty certain she did) that Grant's answer was correct as well, so the only dissenting opinion is still the official decision of the tournament director. Seriously, protests cannot be taken lightly, especially when they decide the outcome of a tournament.

I have the "questions" right now and there is nothing in the wording of the question that explicitly requires the answer to be a positive value.


I agree that they this is probably what happened. However, noting protests and resolving at the end only when it affects the outcome of the game is standard procedure; otherwise, protests that don't change the outcome of a game will unnecessarily waste time. There was nothing wrong with when the protest was handled; it was just the process used for determining whether the answer was acceptable or not that was wrong.

Anyway, the first rule of tournaments is "the tournament director is god" and his decisions are final, so you can NEVER say that "North Kansas City won the tournament" but you can validly argue that they "should have been declared the winner"

EDIT: I now can't remember if Camp explicitly said it should be acceptable but it seemed to me she agreed that it was.


<div class="editby">Edited by <a href='http://s4.zetaboards.com/Academic_Competition/profile/88961/'>U. Lou Sthagaim</a>, Mar 23 2009, 06:08:31 PM.</div>

From this PDF of game scores:

BLUE DIVISION RESULTS (Small School)

Preliminary Game 1
Pilot Grove 135, Richland B 120
Cole Camp 100, Bunceton 45
St. Joseph Christian 215, Plattsburg 40
Lexington 165, Wellington 70
Cameron Bye
Hallsville B 125, Lincoln 55
St. Mary’s 195, Smithton A 95
Richland A 210, Orrick 70
Lone Jack 75 (W-OT), Smithton B 75
Hallsville A 290, Meadville 40

Preliminary Game 2
Pilot Grove 165, Cole Camp 90
St. Joseph Christian 180, Lexington 95
Cameron 185, Hallsville B 60
Richland A 150, St. Mary’s 100
Hallsville A 290, Lone Jack 70
Richland B 125, Bunceton 45
Plattsburg 170, Wellington 70
Lincoln Bye
Smithton A 105, Orrick 70
Meadville 95, Smithon B 40

Preliminary Game 3
St. Joseph Christian 210, Pilot Grove 105
Cameron 185, Richland A 165
Hallsville A 280, Richland B 80
Plattsburg 200, Lincoln 65
Smithton A 155, Meadville 110
Lexington 250, Cole Camp 60
Hallsville B 105, St. Mary’s 70
Lone Jack 115, Bunceton 20
Wellington Bye
Orrick 130, Smithton B 115

Quarterfinal A
Hallsville B 175, Smithton A 125
Richland A 270, Richland B 130
Lexington 175, St. Mary’s 160
Pilot Grove 190, Lone Jack 40

Quarterfinal B
Hallsville A 245, Hallsville B 85
Richland A 155, Plattsburg 85
Cameron 150, Lexington 140
Pilot Grove 160, St. Joseph Christian 95

Semifinal
Hallsville A 185, Richland A 165
Pilot Grove 210, Cameron 130

Consolation
Cameron 145, Richland A 130

Championship
Hallsville A 225, Pilot Grove 105

All-Tournament
Smith, Taylor - Hallsville A - 13.33
Schmitz, Tim - St. Joseph Christian - 7.75
Botts, Kaylie - Cameron - 7.40
Jesse, Ian - Plattsburg - 6.50
Williams, Blake - Lexington - 6.00
Karr, Cale - Richland A - 5.43
Wehmeyer, Zach - Hallsville B - 5.20
Malott, Levi - Pilot Grove - 5.00

RED DIVISION RESULTS (Large School)

Preliminary Game 1
Oak Grove 125, Staley 80
Marshall 175, Team X 115
Park Hill 315, Fort Osage 105
Lee’s Summit North 240, Oak Park 60
Excelsior Springs 80, Benton 70
Liberty 260, Kearney A 165
St. Pius 185, Kearney B 95
North Kansas City 235, Smithville 155
Truman 170, Boonville 105
Savannah 275, Helias 105

Preliminary Game 2
Oak Grove 160, Marshall 150
Park Hill 225, Lee’s Summit North 170
Liberty 215, Excelsior Springs 85
North Kansas City 210, St. Pius 95
Savannah 280, Truman 120
Staley 120, Team X 70
Oak Park 115, Fort Osage 110
Kearney A 285, Benton 85
Smithville 220, Kearney B 75
Helias 245, Boonville 55

Preliminary Game 3
Park Hill 305, Oak Grove 100
North Kansas City 255, Liberty 225
Savannah 410, Staley 45
Kearney A 295, Oak Park 75
Smithville 230, Helias 180
Lee’s Summit North 250, Marshall 95
St. Pius 140, Excelsior Springs 130
Truman 235, Team X 70
Fort Osage 150, Benton 75
Kearney B 215, Boonville 115

Quarterfinal A
Truman 280, St. Pius 110
Liberty 365, Marshall 85
Lee’s Summit North 240, Helias 140
Smithville 230, Oak Grove 120

Quarterfinal B
Savannah 250, Truman 135
Liberty 255, Kearney A 215
North Kansas City 190, Lee’s Summit North 175
Park Hill (W-OT) 205, Smithville 205

Semifinal
Savannah 300, Liberty 175
North Kansas City 225, Park Hill 185

Consolation
Liberty 225, Park Hill 165

Championship
Savannah (W-OT) 185, North Kansas City 185

All Tournament
Kerns, Zach - Savannah - 12.83
Fish, Spencer - Liberty - 12.00
Velazquez, Philippe - Kearney A - 11.25
Gates, Grant - NKC - 10.33
Raisher, Jordan - Park Hill - 6.83
Cline, Brett - LSN - 6.20
Sunderland, Dan - LSN - 5.20
Fries, Andrew - Smithville - 5.20