OAC Regionals/State Question Discussion

Any posts that are outdated will be moved here. Please do not post any new topics in this forum.

OAC Regionals/State Question Discussion

Postby swwFC » Sat Apr 16, 2016 3:15 pm

I'm going to be brief here because I have an engagement party to go to, but I wanted to set up a thread for players/coaches/readers/whomever to provide feedback on the questions that were utilized for Regionals (and are to be utilized at States in 3 weeks). For those of you that do not know, the questions were written by former Ohio standout quizbowler Ike Jose and myself. I would like to publicly thank Ike for again writing high quality questions that required little work to get into final form. I, as "head editor" if that's what you want to call it, was responsible for the final form of the questions, so if there is an issue with anything in the set, that would ultimately fall on me. With that said, the writing duties were divided up as follows:

Steven:
All History
Fine Arts - painting
American Government (Category Round)
Geography
Christian religion
Greco-Roman mythology
Current Events
Other Fine Arts - film

Ike:
All Literature
All Science
Mathematics (Category Round)
Economics (Category Round)
Non-Christian religion
Non-Greco-Roman mythology
Social Science
Fine Arts - music
Other Fine Arts - all non-film
Philosophy

The questions seemed to play well as the SE Regional site and there were no major issues that I heard about, so hopefully that is true for the other sites as well. I (and I am sure Ike as well) am very interested in receiving any and all feedback on the questions, so please feel free to speak up and be frank in your criticism, whether good or bad. Also feel free to PM me if you would rather keep your criticism private. If any sites are compiling conversion data, I would also be interested in seeing that information.

I hope everyone enjoyed the set, and I look forward to it being played States!
Steven Wellstead
Fisher Catholic High School, Class of 2007
Case Western Reserve University, Class of 2011
NAQT Writer
swwFC
Rookie
 
Posts: 25
Joined: Wed Feb 26, 2014 1:01 pm
Location: Lancaster, OH

Re: OAC Regionals/State Question Discussion

Postby Djones » Sat Apr 16, 2016 3:31 pm

Hands down the best regional set that we have played. I saw no real issues with anything and everyone at our site had great things to say. Kudos to you and Ike for a job very well done. We are lucky to have you as a writing team.
David Jones
Coach, Northmont High School
Djones
Varsity
 
Posts: 199
Joined: Sat Feb 22, 2014 7:28 pm

Re: OAC Regionals/State Question Discussion

Postby Get Lynned » Sat Apr 16, 2016 4:48 pm

I already told you this when I kept score for rounds 3,4,5, and 6, but I thought the "R" and "J" alphabet rounds were the best alphabet rounds I've seen at the regional level. All of the alphabet rounds, I feel, were able to separate the men from the boys (unlike alphabet rounds in previous years that were easy >15 for good teams, ~19 for states-level.)

I really enjoyed the Geography q's across the board. Other tossups I really enjoyed, among others, was the "death of Scalia" and the Gordimer question was solid.

I thought "Howe" was probably pushing it for American Lit at the regionals level (a point that could be debated for a while), but honestly we saw a really great set (especially if that's the only criticism.)

(Thanks again for putting asterisks – it made it very easy to find the key phrase that determined the acceptability/promptability of a given answer without having to do a double take or a long pause.)
Thomas Moore
Ohio Wesleyan '18

Retired from online, for good.
Get Lynned
Varsity
 
Posts: 309
Joined: Fri Feb 21, 2014 6:56 pm
Location: Self-Imposed Exile, 4ever

Re: OAC Regionals/State Question Discussion

Postby swwFC » Sun Apr 17, 2016 8:39 pm

Thanks for the kind words Dave! Hopefully many others felt similarly.

Yeah, I thought the alphabet rounds seemed to work fairly solidly for the SE site - the top teams seemed to be challenged, typically getting in the 14-15 range, while the second tier teams were getting low double digits. Hopefully they weren't too painful for some of the lesser skilled teams (I was reading mostly for the top teams at the SE site, so I didn't get a chance to see what some of the lower scores were). Heading into the tournament, my thought was that the first two alphabet rounds were fairly easy overall, but they ratcheted up in difficulty starting in Round 3...I'm wondering if that ended up being the case in practice.

Actually, the Gordimer TU had one of the couple typos I noticed during the day. The question noted that Lionel was the "daughter" of the title character of Burger's Daughter, but it should have actually said "father." I'm almost positive that was a screw-up on my end when I reworded that clue...I hope that didn't trip anyone up.

Yeah, in hindsight, the Benet/Howe American Lit team questions in Round 3 were probably harder than some of the stuff that came after it and would have been better placed in the final rounds.

In addition to the use of asterisks, hopefully the readers found the pronunciation guides with the highlighting to be helpful. I kind of piggybacked off some of the discussion about this issue that has been happening recently on the national forums, since I thought it was a great idea that would be helpful for some of the more experienced readers who may not need many of the pronunciation guides.
Steven Wellstead
Fisher Catholic High School, Class of 2007
Case Western Reserve University, Class of 2011
NAQT Writer
swwFC
Rookie
 
Posts: 25
Joined: Wed Feb 26, 2014 1:01 pm
Location: Lancaster, OH

Re: OAC Regionals/State Question Discussion

Postby swwFC » Sat May 07, 2016 7:37 pm

If anybody who was at St. Charles today has any comments or criticism about the set used for States, please feel free to post it here (or even PM me if you would prefer). For the top teams, the set seemed to be challenging but fair, in my opinion, based on the matches I saw. I'm sure there ended up being balance issues on some of the team questions, but hopefully those cases were few and far between. I hope teams found it to be an appropriate set for determining the state champion.

Congrats again to Solon for an impressive performance!
Steven Wellstead
Fisher Catholic High School, Class of 2007
Case Western Reserve University, Class of 2011
NAQT Writer
swwFC
Rookie
 
Posts: 25
Joined: Wed Feb 26, 2014 1:01 pm
Location: Lancaster, OH


Return to Old/Outdated Posts

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 15 guests

cron