Week 10: Reconsidering Televised Quizbowl
or the "my plans -- 2020" meme in real life
I read this article about "It's Academic" in the Washington Post and discovered that I had failed to consider an option. As a result I have to put some of my grand plans on hold until I figure out what to do.
Those of you to whom I've mentioned the possibility of a second book may have deduced that I was a bit farther along with that. I was planning to complete a study of televised quiz bowl competitions this summer, and release it ahead of the fall tapings of some of these shows.
I became interested in televised quiz bowl, as soon as I realized they were doing a show locally. I've always tried to make the effort to try to get the schools that were competing in that to compete at events I helped run. That's always been a mixed bag, as a fairly significant fraction of them start practicing only when they are told they'll be on TV, and stop as soon as they lose at taping. Over the years I've given what help I can to interested coaches and gotten them to have steadier year-round practice.
The circuit dismisses televised quiz bowl for entirely the wrong reasons. It's dismissed as too easy, or not relevant to the circuit, which is fallacy, the fundamental pieces of information used there are still clues on the circuit. It has the exact same roots as the circuit, but because video streaming only became feasible almost three decades prior to the circuit jumping to the internet, it will never be the same product. Televised quiz bowl is optimized to be local educational programming, and as such it evolved into its niche, and fits those 22 minutes perfectly. It suits the demands of the station, the sponsors, and all the schools of that broadcast area. Because of that it is impervious to the criticisms the circuit may launch. But the one problem it does have it the experience gap. If you have a single-elimination format, as most television competitions do, winning teams collect experience in the format which helps them dominate the format in the next year, which gives them more experience.
What book two is intended to do is to find a new way to solve the problem, not by changing the mechanics of each show, but by giving teams that are starting out a substitute to developing their own experience. I wanted to plot out whether it was possible for a coach to build knowledge into their team in the shortest amount of time from team formation to taping. I've long thought this is the hardest possible problem in quiz bowl that still has a solution. If you could solve this problem you've given every interested person in a high school the tool that can give them a fighting chance on television. Do that, and over time you will have thousands of teams ready and receptive to more competition.
I'd made progress on this in the past, my first draft of this was done in 2008. I was making my way towards a publication in summer 2020. Even my recuperation last year gave me an opportunity to compare broadcasts from around the country and the world. So I was all set to complete this. But that article showed me that I had screwed up.
Where I screwed up in this: I had considered two options for televised competition in the fall: either there would be tapings for a show, and things would be postponed into the spring or fall 2021, or they'd be clear to start on time. Neither of those would have been problematic for finishing a study of all shows, as long as their format remained the same. What that article showed me that televised quiz bowl will be able to adapt to the situation and it will create new formats on the fly.
I intended for completeness to cover all the format quirks of all the shows I could examine. I could bide my time because while questions would change, the formats, distributions, and writer tendencies were static. Now I cannot be sure that each station will come up with the same solution, and I'm going to have to see how each considers adapts to their new situation. I suppose this is actually ironic: that my research hinged on a static system remaining static, and now suddenly it’s dynamic.
The trap in the new format listed in the article is easy to spot, especially if you consider last year's National Spelling Bee. Without a buzzer, or questions contested between the teams, perfect play among multiple teams cannot be resolved by their new format. I won't fault them for that solution, because they have to do something, but I think that problem will face them as the more experienced teams reach the playoffs.
So now I'm stuck until I see how this changes everything. I can complete what I was doing prior to everything changes, but a good portion of that may no longer be relevant.
Stuff to Read
If your facebook feed hasn’t been flooded with ads for “The Great,” you might enjoy this accounting of the life of Catherine the Great.
Stuff to Listen to
I ran across references to this podcast on Canadian History, and while I haven’t gone into it too deeply this week, I’ve put it in my queue to listen to.
Though it’s not updated as frequently as it once was, Russian History Retold is a good resource for learning Russian and Soviet history.
Two separate lists of Essential Jazz Recordings, which don’t quite match up, despite both being from Wynton Marsalis. 1 2
Stuff to Look at
A chart of organic functional groups
The Articles I Learned from This Week
In a momentary lapse of optimism about finishing the second book, I sought out information about Michael Chabon’s Fountain City, the first thing that pops into my mind when I think failed second book. I found in this article a bunch of other failed book examples, and some advise to protect against it breaking you.
Balzac and his anonymous critic
The Articles You Could Learn from This Week
The graves of the poets: I’ve often thought there was a quiet business to be made out of filler multidisciplinary bonuses on people buried in a particular cemetery.
Stuff to Get Straight in Your Head
This tweet from Fermat’s Library:
is an excuse to mention their twitter feed, and a reminder for me to reformulate a mindmap PDF I did on the uses of the del operator in mathematics.
Didn’t You Learn Anything From the Last Time?
1
It described the Soviet power as "impervious to the logic of reason" but "highly sensitive to the logic of force."
A. Name this 1946 transmission from Moscow which included "Practical deductions from the point of US Policy"
answer: The Long Telegram
B. This charge d'affairs of the Moscow embassy transmitted the Long Telegram, and proposed offering strong resistance to Soviet actions, a policy later known as containment.
answer: George Kennan
C. Kennan cited this nation and Turkey as likely points of contention between the US and USSR. During the 1950s, the US interfered with the government of prime minister Mohammed Mossadegh.
answer: Iran
2
His opera Stiffelio was censored to remove most references to Protestantism.
A. Name this Italian composer, who ran afoul of the censors in the run up to Italian unification by describing an assassination of a king in Un ballo in Maschera.
answer: Giuseppe Verdi
B. Verdi seethed at the censors in writing this work after Stiffelio, stating in a letter "Without this curse, what purpose, what meaning, has the drama? The Duke becomes a useless character and the Duke absolutely must be a libertine … without that, this drama is impossible."
answer: Rigoletto
C. This container which housed the dead body of Gilda before discovered by Rigoletto was also questioned by censors, leading Verdi to fume "“What difference does [this] make to the police?"
answer: a sack or bag
3
The first two bands to get a perfect rating from this magazine were 12 Rods and Walt Mink, which were local Minneapolis bands.
A. Name this website for rock music criticism, known for its eccentric single decimal place rating system.
answer: Pitchfork
B. Pitchfork gave its first 10.0 rating in a decade to this 2020 release by Fiona Apple.
answer: Fetch the Bolt Cutters
C. Prior to this the last 10.0 rating went to this artist's "My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy."
answer: Kanye West
4
The infraclass of birds known as Palaeognathae, also known as ratites, has some huge members.
A. This flightless ratite named for an Olympian goddess is the only member of the infraclass native to South America.
answer: greater rhea
B. Both the largest and fastest running bird, this African ratite saw its blue-necked variety designated a separate species.
answer: ostrich
C. Native to Indonesia and northern Australia, the Southern variety of this ratite is huge, unlike the Northern and dwarf species.
answer: cassowary
5
Though the song "Cool, Cool, Considerate Men" appears in the trailers for this film, it was cut from the final version.
A. Name this 1972 film of a 1969 musical, which depicted the Founding Fathers voting for independence from Britain.
answer: 1776
B. The number was cut by producer Jack Warner after pressure from this sitting US President, who thought the number treated conservatives unfairly.
answer: Richard Milhous Nixon
C. The song also depicts this author of Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania incorrectly, siding with moneyed interest in "Cool, Cool, Considerate Men."
answer: John Dickinson