On one screen tonight is this newsletter, and on the other screen is a remote desktop into two more remote machines at my day job as I try to rescue an overnight run which is malfunctioning. Let's see which gets done first.
We had our first practice of the year, due to bad weather on Tuesdays for the past two weeks. We practiced on the last round of a novice tournament, and both Mrs. Parker and I were noting how much more difficult the literature was in this round, both relative to the previous literature in the tournament, and to the other categories in this round. I didn't have a good explanation of the whole phenomenon, but I managed to explain some parts of it.
This was the last round of the tournament, so it was probably pitched by the editor to be slightly more difficult for the final two teams. When that happens a lot of the questions which were judged too difficult for the early rounds are moved back here before they are moved out. That can lead to a much more difficult final round than even the writer intended.
Another thing I noticed about this packet was that all the literature was world literature. Another issue we face is that canon expansion in quiz bowl has not pushed in the same direction as reading lists in schools. The canonical quiz bowl world literature is pretty far removed from what's on school reading lists, both geographically and especially chronologically. That kind of manifested itself with this round, as the literature questions were both world and pre-20th century, a combination which is completely not in the curriculum. Now I knew them, and I knew them as common subjects for world lit in high school packets, but only as that. They weren't going to be ones that were sought out by readers except as study for quiz bowl.
The questions in a novice tournament cannot be written by the novices themselves, they have to be written by experienced writers who know what they think a novice player should know to continue playing quiz bowl. This is not the same thing as what the novice player knows from their school's curriculum.
There's also a subtlety in that in most cases a novice team comes together because they players are interested and chose to work together, or were chosen to be a team by a single person. In all likelihood, that means they will have a similar educational history to each other. The team members likely are in the same classes, and took the same classes throughout their years at the school. So it's highly likely in certain categories like literature, where they’ve had years of the same classes and same reading lists, they also all have the same things they didn’t read, the same holes in their knowledge. You avoid that in subjects like the sciences, since if someone writes a question the particular detail of the question might have been missed in class, but the general subject of the question is covered. But in a subcategory like world literature, that isn't even guaranteed to be covered in classwork... it can be bad. This is also why literature in televised quiz bowl is so restrained to things that are inevitable to appear in the curriculum.
So with that said, and recognized as a major problem, I committed myself to creating a reduced list of world literature that would be likely to come up, and to compiling a list of summaries for next week. I've reduced the current list down to 40 works by about 30 authors, and I think that's probably about right. I'll turn this into a study guide for next week, and probably link in summaries from either Masterplots or heaven forbid Benet's. I'm not intending it to be a replacement for study, but a second point of exposure, so that when these do come up in practice or in a game, they have something to base guessing on, or further pursue the knowledge.
A final point: A lot of novice questions are not really designed for novice teams at novice programs. They _are_ designed for teams of novice players who happen to be at schools with experience. The difference is subtle, but it's important, in that the experience after the tournament will be much different. The latter team, will get guidance about what was important among those questions and which will come up again, and learn more from the experience. The former team won't get the same value out of the experience, and won't be able to have that information gathered for them. If I do this right in the book, the book will be able to give novice teams at novice programs some sort of this necessary guidance.
The other screen shows me that the linux build is recovered and we're left with Windows. What else can we discuss while I wait to see if the latest fix works?
Craig sent me this article this morning on what is happening with Jeopardy! in the UK, and I reacted by saying that Stephen Fry was going the full Dick Cavett, which is sort of the wrong analogy, but only just. I've heard other discouraging reactions to Jeopardy!'s UK version over the past couple weeks, and I'm not surprised at the bad reaction to anything in the Jeopardy! ecosystem, but I am sort of surprised at how each of the components here were misused and misunderstood.
First of all, Stephen Fry spent enough years as host of QI that you know exactly the style of moderation he brings. He doesn't do rapid fire, he does stylized erudition in asides, and that is his brand. That was also Cavett's brand in the 1970's. When I said it's the wrong analogy above, I meant that Cavett's problem during the 1984 College Bowl National Championship was erudite asides that not only interrupted the flow of the game, they actually interrupted the game itself. I don't think Fry's doing that, unless there's lots of outtakes of asides and commentary on the cutting room floor, he's filling the time allotted to the show.
If the reports are correct and he pushed for the format of the nighttime version and this wouldn't have been brought to the UK without his hosting, then a lot of this makes sense. He's chosen a format that plays to his strengths. The pattern of the nighttime Jeopardy! versions has been to rely on celebrity to allow an expansion to an hour format, and fill in those spaces between the sections of questions. Essentially, Fry chose the format which best fits his style, giving him the opportunity to vamp in the gaps that celebrities would have filled otherwise. You could call it a cynical approach, but you could also call it matching host to format. And if it is a vehicle for the host first and a Jeopardy! show second, and it wouldn't exist without the host commitment, it would seem that the reason we're bent out of shape is it's got the Jeopardy! name on it. Strip that, and it would be seen as a logical companion piece to QI in a programming block.
As for the article, I think it's got a couple of holes in it because it overlooks the history and evolution of Jeopardy! especially with the recent efforts in prime time. The nighttime program is a far cry from the original 1984 program, and not just because you can't buzz in before the answer is fully read. Audio Daily Doubles, once commonplace, are a vanished breed, and the general writing style and host performance have been refined. And that refinement from first season to second is probably going to be the thing that matters here. It worked for Alex, it worked for Ken, and it will happen here. Reps matter with everything.
I think the author also missed the essential divide between big money nighttime and daytime game shows, especially in the UK, where daytime shows have never really disappeared. It's an environment where the season champion of a different game show wins...a teapot. Jeopardy! started as a daytime lower stakes program, and while it increased the size of the tournament prizes, it's only once adjusted the show's internal scale of payments.
After numerous pokes and prods and directory cleanups, the Windows version finally moved at 11:54, and started running its overnight certification process. We're not going to make midnight,but let's wrap this up.
# Poem OTW: Death Be Not Proud
https://poets.org/poem/death-be-not-proud-holy-sonnet-10
# Poet OTW: John Donne
https://poets.org/poet/john-donne
# YouTube Terminology Video OTW
# Art Movement OTW: Abstract Expressionism
https://artsandculture.google.com/entity/abstract-expressionism/m012yb9
# Painting OTW: Lavender Mist
https://www.nga.gov/collection/highlights/pollock-number-1-1950-lavender-mist.html
# Mythological Figure OTW: Andromeda
https://pantheon.org/articles/a/andromeda.html
# Bridge OTW: New River Gorge Bridge
https://www.nps.gov/neri/planyourvisit/nrgbridge.htm
# Mineral OTW: Feldspar
https://mineralseducationcoalition.org/minerals-database/feldspar/
# Vasari's Life of the Artist OTW: Masaccio
https://archive.org/details/livesofmostemine02vasauoft/page/182/mode/2up
# National Park OTW: Acadia
https://www.nps.gov/acad/index.htm
# Periodic Table OTW: Element Data
https://www.compoundchem.com/2016/12/06/periodic-table-data/
# Presidential Election OTW: 1860
https://www.270towin.com/1860_Election/
# Battle OTW: New Orleans
https://www.battlefields.org/learn/war-1812/battles/new-orleans
# Star OTW: Bootes
https://earthsky.org/constellations/bootes-the-herdsman-arcturus/
# Constellation Mythology OTW: Aries
http://comfychair.org/~cmbell/myth/aries.html
# Chemistry History OTW: Silent Spring
https://www.acs.org/education/whatischemistry/landmarks/rachel-carson-silent-spring.html
# History Podcast OTW: 12 Byzantine Rulers: Justinian
https://12byzantinerulers.com/ 7, 8, 9 - Justinian
# Roman Emperor OTW: Tiberius
https://www.pbs.org/empires/romans/empire/tiberius.html
# In Our Time OTW: The Sistine Chapel
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0015vh8
# You Gotta Know OTW: Arthurian Myth
https://www.naqt.com/you-gotta-know/arthurian-characters.html