This tournament will require packets from all teams unless an arrangement
is made otherwise. The distribution of the packets is:
Primary Distribution
| Sports | 4/4 | pre-1960 1/1 post-1960 3/3 |
| Television/Video | 4/4 | pre-1980 1/1 post-1980 3/3 |
| Film | 4/4 | pre-1970 1/1 post-1970 3/3 |
| Music | 6/6 | no more than 1/1 from any decade except 80's and 90's which may be 2/2 |
| Geek | 3/3 | no more than 1/1 computer games; geek TV goes under TV |
| Other | 4/4 | no more than 2/2 classifiable into any of the above categories |
Secondary distribution
This distribution doesn't call for additional questions, but rather
constraints on the Primary distribution above
| Floof |
2/2 |
2/2 throughout the pack should be "floofy" -- that
is, concern traditionally feminine ways or domains (e.g. women's sports) |
| Food |
1/1 |
1/1 throughout the packet should be food- or cooking-related. |
| Comics |
at most 1/1 |
No more than 2 questions in the whole pack should
concern comic strips or comic books. |
| Meta-QB |
At most 1 |
No more than 1 question in the whole pack should allow
players to score points simply from knowing about quiz bowl |
| Special Effect |
At most 1/1 |
Questions that require physical challenges, special
equipment, or anything that can't be printed on an 8½" x 11" piece
of paper should be limited to 1/1 a pack. The authors of such questions are
responsible for providing said materials. |
Tertiary Distribution
Difficulty
Within each category, most questions should be average difficulty; for
every really hard question you write, add an easier one in the same category.
Chronology
Most categories have time-distribution notes in the table above. Remember
that the average age of players at this tournament will be somewhere between
21 and 25; balance things that only an ancient person would get with things
only a pupa would get.
Brow
Every question can be assigned a relative "classiness". Porn is low-brow;
Fellini films are high-brow. Survivor V: My Closet is low-brow; Twin Peaks
is about as close to high-brow as TV gets, sad to say. Britney Spears is
low-brow; Ravi Shankar is high-brow. You get the idea. Keep the average brow
roughly medium.
Interior Distribution
Sports 4/4
In general, sports questions concern teams, events, leagues, players,
arenas, and plays. No more than 1/1 should be on regional sports (car
racing, Australian-rules football, hockey, camel racing). No more than
1/1 should be on Things That Are Not Sports (golf, bowling, ice skating,
43-man squamish)
Television/Video 4/4
Television questions should cover multiple areas of the genre: drama, sitcoms,
cop shows, news, game shows, networks, etc. No category of programming should
be more than 1/1. There should be no more than 1 network question and 1 soap
opera question per pack.
Film 4/4
In terms of distribution, film is a lot like television. No more than 1 question
on a movie production house; no more than 1 question on pornographic film.
Music 6/6
No more than three questions all told on albums, and split questions roughly
evenly between songs and performers. Get creative, too -- don't hesitate
to ask questions about whammy bars, concerts, musicals, and things like that.
Geek 3/3
Go nuts. Just make sure you don't write more than 1/1 in any particular category.
Other 4/4
Go really nuts. Hell, it's a trash tournament.
Submission Guidelines
- Submit your packs with tossups sorted by category, then boni sorted by
category; As the first or last page of your packet, include a list, sorted
by tossups and boni, then by category, of the subjects of each of your questions.
This makes checking for repeats much easier. Thanks to Roger Craig for
this idea.
- Submit packets in (in order of preference) Rich Text .rtf format, WordPerfect
.wpd format, ASCII .txt format, .doc MS Word format, inline text.
- Denote the necessary portions of an answer like this. Don't
use capitalization. If you're submitting in ASCII, use _underscoring_around_each_necessary_part_.
- Expand acronyms and abbreviations when they're first introduced in a question.
Not everybody knows what the PAC-10 is.
- Include pronunciation guides on the assumption that the moderators have
only a public high school education. Just because you can pronounce "necrotizing
fasciitis" without a second glance...
- Don't number your questions, and include a boldface header at the beginning
of each category
- Put breaks only between questions. Don't put a line between a question and
its answer, or between a bonus intro and question.
- Include the visual portions of visual boni as the last page in the document
- If you're using Microsoft Word, DO NOT USE AUTOFORMATTING!
Autoformatting is evil. Hint: to get rid of autoformatting, save
your .doc file as an .rtf file.
Rules
CP4 will use the following rules. These rules are subject to change at any
moment up to the point when the tournament begins:
- All rounds will proceed until 15 tossups have been answered, or until
25 tossups have been read, whichever comes first
- A correct answer on a tossup question will be worth 20 points; an incorrect
interruption will be penalized by 10 points; an incorrect non-interruption
will carry no penalty. There are no power tossups.
- There will be no clocks
- Nonverbal, nonsubstantive conferring is allowed at all points
- A correct answer on a tossup entitles the answering team to a bonus question
- All boni shall be worth a total of 60 points; detailed rules on boni
will come below
- Answers will be given after the conclusion of each bonus part unless otherwise
noted in the question.
- In each round, each team receives three "actions". There are two kinds
of "play" that can be performed with each action. Defensive plays cost 1
action, and consist of either laming a bonus, or cancelling the opposing
team's offensive play. Offensive plays cost 2 actions, and consist of stealing
the other team's bonus (in which case they receive no bonus), and cancelling
an opposing team's lame (and forcing them to take a bonus they've already
lamed). Actions can only be called in the interval from the moderator's announcement
of a tossup answer as correct, up to and including the prompt to answer the
first part of the bonus.
- If the answering team lames a bonus, then the non-answering team may
ask for that bonus to be theirs the next time they score a tossup.
- The Bag of Chips: In submitting a packet, a team may, at its discretion,
include in as many boni as it wants one part above and beyond the point-scoring
content of the question. This part shall be unreasonably hard, and begins
with the phrase "for all that and a bag of chips"; this section of the question
only comes into play if the team has singlehandedly scored all the
available points on the bonus; it is itself worth no points, but correctly
answering a Bag of Chips is noted on the scoresheet and a running total is
kept throughout the tournament.
Notes on writing boni
All point totals have been doubled to encourage greater flexibility in bonus
formats. A sixty-point bonus may be divided into two, three, four, five,
or six equal sections; this eliminated the necessity of the "5-10-20-30" and
"F5PE +5 for all" formats. Experimentation in bonus formats is encouraged,
with the following constraints:
- No bonus should have more than six prompts (not counting an optional Bag
of Chips)
- No bonus should have less than two parts (except for boni not using question-and-answer
format)
- All boni should be worth a minimum of zero and a maximum of 60 points, with
the following exception: the 40-30-20-10, which in this case expands to 80-60-40-20,
may include an 80-point clue so long as this clue contains no really useful
information. 80's should be included only when they are more creatively
written than "for 80 points, he's a movie star."
- All boni may include epsilon-point clues. The epsilon-point clue follows
all other parts of the bonus and requires the barest rudiment of knowledge
of the bonus's subject. Epsilon-point clues should be creative; a clue such
as "For epsilon points, this album's name is 'Revolver'" only wastes everyone's
time.
- Epsilon is a positive real number arbitrarily close to zero without being
zero. Epsilons count only for the purpose of breaking ties.
- In general, all bonus parts should have point values in integer multiples
of five; this may be varied, but such variation should be used sparingly.
- While point values have been scaled up, this does not mean difficulty or
length should be scaled up. The point increase is essentially cosmetic.
- To avoid ambiguity, use the abbrevations "F10P," "F20P," "F15P" etc. in
place of "FTP," "FFP," "FFTP" etc.
Question Deadlines
The tournament being on July 27th:
Early-early deadline: June 15th, -$30
Early deadline: June 29th, -$20
Somewhat early deadline: July 6th, -$10
On time: July 13th, $0
Late fees: from the first day your packet is late to the 7th, take the square
of the number of days late; that amount in dollars is your late fee.
From the eighth day late onward, the late fee amount freezes at $50, but
the tournament staff reserves the right to subject you to humiliations of
their devising.
Furthermore, the editors reserve the right to send back any packet submitted
early that lacks creativity, zeal, and quality for retooling. This is so
people don't send in Chip Beall-like rounds in February.
Fees
Base fee: $70
Buzzer discount: -$10 each (buzzer must be in suitable condition)
Moderator discount: -$10 each (moderator must be trained beforehand)
Second, third, etc. team from a given entity (TD's discretion what constitutes
an entity): $50
GWACC reserves the right to refuse participation to anyone for any reason or no reason.
The tournament director and tournament coordinator is
Edmund Schluessel
. He can also be reached at 202-904-3636.