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Avery Speaks Out

Discussion of quizbowl topics not related to specific tournaments
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DeckardCain
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Avery Speaks Out

Post by DeckardCain »

The following comment was posted by Bryce Avery, Missouri state series question writer, on hsquizbowl.org. I wanted everyone to see this.
I have a 3-part response.

1) The errors Charlie mentions are my fault. The Merchant of Venice is a true atrocity. Sincere apologies--and sincere embarrassment. I gotta edit a lot better--and do even more checking of the work of those I buy questions from.

The Clinton question was, "name the home states of these female U.S. Senators re-elected in 2006." I should have said, "states represented by..." That would have been clearer, though I still think more people would say "New York" as it was written than either "Illinois" or "Arkansas"--and knowing what state Maria Cantwell (one of the parts) was raised in is pretty obscure for HS questions. I haven't checked; she may not have been raised in the state she now represents in the Senate.

For the Hercules question, the first few reputable-looking sites I googled up to check the story all said Pluto as Lord of the Underworld. When I tried Hades in checking this response here, I see at least an equal number giving that as an answer.

For the Danube--my first answer set included Moldova--but in final checking, I googled up a couple of maps where the scale made it difficult to ensure that Moldova actually borders the Danube. So I took it out to be safe; I should have known that some wise-acre Missouri kid would say "Moldova "of all possible answers. (More on this below.)

2) As far as the Missouri contract goes--someone else is welcome to have it. But since even Charlie admits that NAQT/pyramid is not a welcome format in much of Missouri (he names maybe 10 schools who like it, out of more than 300 who played districts this year), the new writer will have to be willing to write some shorter questions--at a price MACA will like.

As Byko mentions, the distribution is not that much fun--and you get to write at least 13 rounds of it (only 9-11 of which are actually used in most years, and more than 13 if the vendor would actually like to make a few bucks to subsidize both the cut rate he had to give to get the gig in the first place and the requirement that only MACA gets to sell those 13 rounds throughout Missouri for the 12 months after the state finals.)

Good luck with all that.

3) Missouri seems to have more immature smart-aleck HS players per capita than any other state in the country. Every state has them, and I was one of them when I was that age.

But, based on all the other states where we do or have done quiz events, in any random quiz match, Missouri is the state most likely to feature a kid who : A) deliberately (and unnecessarily) answers "Samuel Clemens" when asked who wrote "Huck Finn" [to demonstrate his 'depth of knowledge'],







B) screams loud, long and obnoxiously if (by error) only "Mark Twain" is written on the paper (so that his answer is ruled wrong by the moderator) [not accepting that his own 'superior' answer is what got him in trouble] and C) makes the assumptions that i) anything he knows is easy by definition, ii) anything he doesn't know or has never heard of is obscure by definition and iii) [based on comments after last year's event] any game where each team scores less than 100 points must be the fault of the questions and couldn't possibly indicate the presence of 8 clueless players who couldn't find their rear ends with both hands and a map.

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Jeffrey Hill
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Avery Speaks Out

Post by Jeffrey Hill »

Link to hsquizbowl.org thread from which that came (will jump to Charlie's comments)

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Post by FishyFreshman »

Maybe it is just me, but doesn't that seem a little obnoxious. His questions were blatantly wrong, and he is trying to blame us for being smart alecs. This is an academic competition, we are supposed to be smart, and I think it is fair for us to at least expect the questions to be right.

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Charlie Dees
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Post by Charlie Dees »

Here were my posts about his questions:
The questions were a better set than last year, but that still doesn't make them good. There were still lots of factual errors, vague questions (in one match there were 4 upheld protests), and it was mostly speed. There were more semi-pyramidal structures than before, which is good, and I noticed more diversity than before (all the lit used to be about the same few works, nationalities, time periods, and authors, for instance. Avery had lots of pet topics to write about). With the errors it became very clear that Avery was writing what he thought was right without bothering to factcheck it. For instance, he asked "who is the merchant of Venice?" essentially. The answer on the page was Shylock, but anyone can read the play or check a website and know that it's Antonio. The worst part of this was in the Savannah-Smithville game. There was a bonus part that was incorrect, and Smithville gave the right answer but didn't protest. They ended up losing on a tiebreaker. While yes they should have protested, at the same time they should have not had to deal with it being wrong in the first place.
I'll point out the pet topics I've noticed through reading various Avery sets.
- The state of Utah or things in it.
- 19th Century American Literature, especially Hawthorne (and Rappacini's Daughter)
- Things occuring in the year before the questions were played.
- The Forsyte Saga
- A Hans Christian Anderson bonus/Lightning round that I swear has come up in varying configurations three times, but with the exact same wording.
- Psychological coping techniques.
- Judeo Christian Religion (Probably 95% of his religion questions are biblical, although there a Quran bonus this year)
- Questions that start out by describing a work but then want an author.
- Math and Science that is odd.

Also noted are repeats like a Tom Sawyer bonus that definitely had repeats from previous sets. He also would do things that really aren't related to the topic he labeled them. There was a question (in a different set) that was labeled math calculation, but it started out with essentially "This number is the new maximum score for the SAT" and then went on to a problem that gives you 2400. He put religion under Literature always. The language arts questions are only dubiously language arts. A bonus might be labeled Language Arts and then have the topic "Identify the most common language in these countries" or even more often "Identify these words that begin with (whatever letter). One was listing a bunch of first names with biographies and you had to recognize that they had the last name Miller (Bode Miller also is a bit of a pet topic). Sometimes the science calc was not labeled science while other times they were. It is very obvious that he recycles questions from his tournaments over history. It is also obvious that he has a big bank of them and, when assembling matches based on MSHSAA's template, tries to maneuver questions in that don't belong in certain categories simply because he is too lazy to write more questions in that category.
Here are some of the protests that showed up Saturday:
The aforementioned Shylock/Antonio.
In the finals, something math about arcsin where the answer should have been 240, not 300 (that's what Smithville had the problem on).
A bonus asking for the "homestate" of senators. We answered illinois for Hilary Clinton, because that is definitely her homestate. The page said New York.
Oak Park answered Hades on a bonus that wanted ruler of the underworld but never specified Greek or Roman (and the other parts seemed to make it Greek). The page said Pluto.
There were some other math things.
There was a listing bonus wanting 4 countries that touch the Danube. We said Moldova as one, which for some reason wasn't on the page.
I'll edit as they come to me.

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Avery Speaks Out

Post by tjeffschool »

at a price MACA will like.
only MACA gets to sell those 13 rounds throughout Missouri for the 12 months after the state finals.
Just to clarify, he means MSHSAA. MACA (The Missouri Academic Coaches Association) does not set the pricing for the state providers or receive any money from the sale of district and state questions.

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Post by East Buc & UMR »

3) Missouri seems to have more immature smart-aleck HS players per capita than any other state in the country. Every state has them, and I was one of them when I was that age.

But, based on all the other states where we do or have done quiz events, in any random quiz match, Missouri is the state most likely to feature a kid who : A) deliberately (and unnecessarily) answers "Samuel Clemens" when asked who wrote "Huck Finn" [to demonstrate his 'depth of knowledge'],  screams loud, long and obnoxiously if (by error) only "Mark Twain" is written on the paper (so that his answer is ruled wrong by the moderator) [not accepting that his own 'superior' answer is what got him in trouble] and C) makes the assumptions that i) anything he knows is easy by definition, ii) anything he doesn't know or has never heard of is obscure by definition and iii) [based on comments after last year's event] any game where each team scores less than 100 points must be the fault of the questions and couldn't possibly indicate the presence of 8 clueless players who couldn't find their rear ends with both hands and a map.
I would have to agree with most of this comment, up till the iii) part. Anyone thinking those questions weren't to blame is just plain stupid. I think TMCE, Jeff and I would of had a hard time on several of the questions in that round.

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Post by jonpin »

Wow. I'm glad I've never had to play on questions written by this guy. My immediate reaction is to call him the kind of string of names that got Charlie banninated.

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Post by ecks »

East Buc & UMR wrote: I would have to agree with most of this comment, up till the iii) part. Anyone thinking those questions weren't to blame is just plain stupid. I think TMCE, Jeff and I would of had a hard time on several of the questions in that round.
I wouldn't really agree with any part, except for the i) & ii) points. Saying "Samuel Clemens" instead of "Mark Twain" isn't necessarily just a demonstration of how much you know; I used to run across questions occasionally which specifically wanted the author's real name and learned to just answer with that.

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Charlie Dees
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Post by Charlie Dees »

I cant resist cross-posting Chris Ray's response:
I have a 3-part response.

1) Yes, those are your fault. Also, if you need to use google to find out who the freaking god of the Greek underworld is, maybe quiz bowl editor/question writer isn't the best occupation for you.

Quote:
For the Danube--my first answer set included Moldova--but in final checking, I googled up a couple of maps where the scale made it difficult to ensure that Moldova actually borders the Danube. So I took it out to be safe; I should have known that some wise-acre Missouri kid would say "Moldova "of all possible answers. (More on this below.) 


That's stupid. First of all, since when is giving the exact thing asked for specifically by the question "wise-acre" or whatever the crap that means? It said name X countries that border it, not "the largest and best-known to hack question writers." What if some kid was from Moldova, and knew it bordered the Danube? What if he just happened to say that? What if you actually could have bothered, instead of going by what you eyeballed on a couple of google image searches, to take 5-10 seconds to look up THE DANUBE or COUNTRIES THAT BORDER THE DANUBE? These are questions without real answers, much like the ones from your question set!


2)
Quote:
As far as the Missouri contract goes--someone else is welcome to have it.


Cool. Could you cross-post your resignation letter here?

Quote:
the new writer will have to be willing to write some shorter questions--at a price MACA will like. 


After some quick and dirty math, I calculate that Avery offers the "value" package of about 9 terrible, two-line questions for every dollar. This can be contrasted with something like, oh, say, DACQ, which offers much longer and better-constructed questions at the rate of about 13 dollar. Coincidentally, DACQ will likely be preparing a "hybrid" set of 18+ packets consisting of well-written speed and pyramidal questions, which will make their debut at ACE camp this summer. Still stand by your statement?

3) Quote:
Missouri seems to have more immature smart-aleck HS players per capita than any other state in the country. Every state has them, and I was one of them when I was that age. 


Congratulations, you still are! This whole rant is way less mature than anything Charlie has ever posted, and I'm pretty sure he's challenged Jason Mueller to a chair-throwing contest. Also, the insinuation that MO is the only state where players know more than 2 countries that border the Danube or know Mark Twain's real name is ludicrous; please get your hands or rear end or whatever on a map and make the trip to nationals or to a midwestern or mid-atlantic or southern tournament, or any tournament which doesn't use your pitiful excuse for questions, and you will understand how ridiculous of a statement this really is.



Quote:



But, based on all the other states where we do or have done quiz events, in any random quiz match, Missouri is the state most likely to feature a kid who : A) deliberately (and unnecessarily) answers "Samuel Clemens" when asked who wrote "Huck Finn" [to demonstrate his 'depth of knowledge'],







B) screams loud, long and obnoxiously if (by error) only "Mark Twain" is written on the paper (so that his answer is ruled wrong by the moderator) [not accepting that his own 'superior' answer is what got him in trouble] and C) makes the assumptions that i) anything he knows is easy by definition, ii) anything he doesn't know or has never heard of is obscure by definition and iii) [based on comments after last year's event] any game where each team scores less than 100 points must be the fault of the questions and couldn't possibly indicate the presence of 8 clueless players who couldn't find their rear ends with both hands and a map.


Again, nothing says "maturity" like sidestepping all the legitimate requests for you to explain yourself and offer concrete evidence like making ad-hominem attacks on people half your age. Good show!

Also, you didn't even make a good (or entertaining) ad hominem attack! It's completely freaking irrelevant why someone said Samuel Clemens, or Moldova, or Mary Anne Evans, or whatever. If that's the correct answer and a reasonable equivalent, you need to put it on the damn page. Nobody's "superior" answer got them into trouble, your incompetence did that. In particular, if there's someone who happens to be Russian and wants to say Ivan grozny or whatever instead of Ivan the Terrible, or has only heard one of the ways to pronounce the thousands of canonical answers whose pronunciations scholars can't even agree upon, you don't get to decide that they shouldn't get points (particularly when your level of "research" into your question topics isn't even sufficient to convey to you that Pluto and Hades are analogous figures).

And the only one being overly obnoxious here is you. The rest of us are making legitimate arguments instead of trying to avoid them by acting like jerks (while I am a jerk, that is incidental to the aforementioned points I make).

Also, it's way mature to refer to inexperienced or whatever high school players who put up low point totals as not being able to find portions of their anatomy or whatever. Arbitrary point totals don't mean much either way, but I'm willing to wager that the packet referred to was more at fault than the teams. If you'd like to produce it to prove me wrong, again, I encourage you to. Also, the whole bit about players who think everything they've heard about is too easy/vice versa or whatever is completely asinine. Nobody here said anything like that and if you're referring to Charlie, he plays in a chat room with me and other college and top hs players and, while very impressive for a junior, does not score 100 ppg. I don't think he's under any illusions about either knowing everything or that things he doesn't know are infinitely difficult. Based on the whole "pet topics" thing, however, I'd say that you're the one with trouble in that department.

In closing, your argument was ridiculous, and woefully hilarious considering you made an immature, evasive response attacking a high schooler who wasn't even the one who called on you to respond, all the while calling other people immature. I tried to avoid personal attacks before, because I figured you easily could just be someone with a different perspective on things who meant well and reasonably disagreed with me. I don't think anyone's going to be under that impression now. Bryce Avery, your questions suck, your defenses for them suck, and this didn't even come close to a justification for why anyone anywhere would pay you to write them. You are entirely deserving of this kind of a response, given that joke of an argument you made.

And you didn't post any questions.

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Post by East Buc & UMR »

I cant resist cross-posting Chris Ray's response:











:wub:









:wub:









:wub:

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Charlie Dees
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Post by Charlie Dees »

That's some hotness there. Not gonna lie.

But in all seriousness, it is a very good response.

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Post by East Buc & UMR »

Wonder why avery didn't post that hear.

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Post by KentB »

Is he even a member here ??

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Jeffrey Hill
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Post by Jeffrey Hill »

KentB wrote: Is he even a member here ??
Yeah, he posted once. He joined March 16, 2006 and that date is the last activity from him - not sure where he posted.

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Post by DeckardCain »

ScoBo1987 wrote: not sure where he posted.
http://z4.invisionfree.com/Academic_Com ... wtopic=983

He had some similar things to say in that post, it seems.

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Post by Jeffrey Hill »

DeckardCain wrote:
ScoBo1987 wrote: not sure where he posted.
http://z4.invisionfree.com/Academic_Com ... wtopic=983
Thanks, you beat me to it. Did you go through all the topics from around that time or were you somehow able to use the search to find it?

This link will jump directly to Avery's post

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Post by DeckardCain »

I just happened to remember what thread it was in.

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Post by Jeffrey Hill »

I like how he says "nor would you say "Samuel Clemens" for "Mark Twain." Things like that just ask for trouble," when trouble can be easily avoided by including both answers on the page. (Of course, I think it's in the context of adjusting to questions that don't list alternate answers)

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Post by East Buc & UMR »

Also the thread brandon points out the moderator from Tarkio.

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Post by MoundCityBMW...T »

oh good god...thanks for bringing that back up--i had almost forgotten about that incontinent old man. if there ever was a time that a moderator change was needed...it was then.

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Post by scphilli »

He was incontinent? That must've been smelly...

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Post by ajax »

What an a-hole... He blames the students for trying. In fact, I cannot even swallow Article 3 of his manifesto. If the questions are not correct, do not even ask them in a competition; duh!!! Bad question writers are game changers; thus, they must be reduced to show a true comparison of who is the best and who is not.

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