Over the past week, I’ve seen three articles that have uses in quiz bowl.
All the first reviews of the works of Margaret Atwood
The thing about this article is it’s useful and because she is mentioned or her works are mentioned in nearly every tournament from high school to college, the information in the article will come up frequently. It’s also a reminder that you can have a question about Margaret Atwood that incorporates a lot of titles, but literary reviews can supply a surprising amount of detail about each title; so you get completeness, and comparative brevity, a nice balance in one place. So when a question involves early to mid-level clues on plot points of more obscure titles, you have the advantage of those who only know the titles, while in getting all the titles, you have the advantage of those who only know The Handmaid’s Tale. You’re not going to beat someone who’s read all her works, but that’s a small enough set of players that the advantage is great. When the answer is an author, pyramidality means that slight detail knowledge of many works will beat in-depth knowledge of one work.
A new version of Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations will be published
On the facebook page I made a note about longstanding reference books which have new editions. The upshot of this note was that even if you don’t read a new version of (in that case) the Norton Anthology of Poetry, it’s important to note that the contents have changed, and as such if you were to study this now, this information will be essentially stable for the entire length of your playing career.
That’s as true for this case as it was for Norton, but quotations have become problematic because of both the tendency of quotations to be quoted and misattributed, and the fact that most quotes are simply too long to be clues, or require additional context to be written into the question and aren’t generally clue-dense. While this probably will not be used by writers on the circuit for lots of questions, there’s a prevalence of these types of quote questions as blank clues on television competitions, where the question opens with the quote and gives relevant detail afterward. The play here for someone is admittedly weak, but it is to note whose quotes are coming in in large numbers, because some fraction of them will be plugged into questions and put on chyrons.
In a section of the book on lists of people, I note there are key descriptions to look for in lists: First, last, current, etc. Ones that aren’t usually present in the list itself are extrema: shortest, longest, etc. This sort of listicle does highlight a particular extrema, which definitionally most lists of rulers must have, but usually isn’t easy to extract from each table. For that reason, cutting across a wide set of lists, it’s useful to look at this list and take that information to heart.
Taking the noise out of the system
[Extending the ideas from last week on player behavior, let’s take a look at maintaining concentration.]
Concentration in quiz bowl and focusing on the moderator’s words is key. In quiz bowl you have the advantage in this situation that everyone in the room is there for the same purpose. Aside from the possibility that the discussion of the last question is running long, everyone in the room gets quiet and focuses on what is said by the moderator.
In comparison, pub quizzes are much more distracting affairs. Even if the pub quiz is main event going on in the pub, there’s no guarantee that all the parties are there to compete, and there’s no lack of other things going on. You could have a TV overhead, a guy throwing darts behind you, the next table talking, and the waitstaff asking if you want another drink.
Bar trivia isn’t significantly more difficult than televised quiz bowl, but it is televised quiz bowl with the noise turned up. If you can do a pub quiz with all the possible distractions in place, isolate the mind and concentrate on what is being asked, you will be able to do the same thing in a competition when the only distractions are your opponents and your teammates. If you can figure out your best practices under less than ideal conditions, you will be able to apply those practices when all you have to worry about is making sure your side is ready for the next question. Am I suggesting you take the team on a field trip? No. But you should suggest to them that they take note of noise and distraction in their everyday life, and see what tricks they use in their lives apply from their life and use it to improve in practice, and then in competition.
The best method for your players will vary, but my method for tuning out noise is to shut off other senses. I begin by closing my eyes. After the question is read for the first time, I open them, but for a couple of seconds, I’m clearly not seeing anything, and focused solely on what I’ve heard. You could be stealing my entrée off my plate and I wouldn’t recognize it until it’s too late. The alternative thing I do is stare at a blank surface, either the table or a wall. The key for me is to shut down the senses I don’t need at the moment, and allow the senses that I do need to be active and processing.
Part of this is sharing techniques, if something unusual works for one player on your team, it may work for multiple players, but until they hear it, the other players can’t apply it. This is a general rule whether sharing information about concentration, or specific areas of knowledge, the more people on the team that know about it, the more people on the team that can apply the information and test its value in the game and in life.
It’s Happening
Sometime next week, I’ll be sitting down with the first group of Seton LaSalle students to play quiz bowl in their first practice. I’ve finally convinced the administration to move forward with this. So now, I’ll have an actual team to advise, and a coach to help. (Yeah, like my work with Pitt and CMU, I’m not aiming for official capacity, and I want someone there who is affiliated with the school. This is for their own good as well as mine. There’s knowledge of processes that I have to wall off from one hat to another.)
What I will try to incorporate in this newsletter going forward is a documentation of what I do for each practice. I’ll try and compile data from every practice from the ground up. This will be useful for the book, but it will also sort of be a check against me building up too many secrets. If you’re seeing what I’m doing, you can’t say that I’m helping them with something secret, you can just as easily duplicate the process.
This is my rough draft of what I want to do in the first practice:
Get names, why they came to practice, what they want out of quiz bowl.
Explain “What is quiz bowl?”
Explain “What are the goals I want to hit for this year?”
Regular weekly practice. Make habits of practice and study.
Get to a tournament. Target is to get to Pitt’s November tournament, but we may not be able to be organized in time, failing that, Allderdice in January, if it is held.
We’re too late for Hometown Hi-Q, but we can prepare for this on a slower timeframe than the planned book. (The timing is not quite right for me to eat what I kill.)
Intermediate Unit 3 tournament, if it is held, and if non-public schools are allowed to compete (this is a possibility given some IU’s don’t have full programs at private schools.)
Improve every month.
Learn what the team members don’t know… yet.
Show them the buzzer, and a web-based buzzer.
Give them a quick summary of the rules. Run a round with the normal rules of quiz bowl.
Choose a round slightly easier than anything they may encounter in play. The round should also include all the features of the round they will play in their first competition. (So a round slightly below A level, with powers.)
Make sure to have someone keeping score so you can look at what they don’t know yet. (Catie keeps volunteering for this task.)
Introduce them to basic tactics of quiz bowl
Use last names, never volunteer more information than is necessary.
Look for last clues.
Everyone here knows something, but nobody here will ever know it all.
Listen to all the clues
Don’t be afraid to be wrong, but recognize the risk.
Run a second round
If there’s more players than buzzers, make sure everybody gets at least one round on buzzer in practice.
[cheat and make sure there’s some answer that is repeated] Explain that everything repeats.
Make sure you confer with your teammates on bonus questions.
As they leave, make sure you get the names right.
Ask if they want material to study for the next practice, provide it to them.
Record which rounds you read in practice in a document
Look at the scoresheets, and the packets and match up where the players were collectively not answering. Note these as possible subjects for future study material to find and offer to the team.
While that looks like an ambitious plan for an hour, it’s all achievable. And if we miss a point, there’s the next practice. So now that I’ve told God my plans, I will prepare for laughter.