Week 28: Now we know it can be done
Event Success, Book Failure, but at least there is symmetry.
This past weekend I read for a tournament in Kentucky. I didn't leave my house. We performed the entire tournament over Discord, ten rounds over a little less than nine hours. I wanted to do this for some time, but I had been worried that my internet connection at home might fail at a critical time. This has been a historical problem for me, living at the end of a long country road which still has a copper wire phone connection being my internet connection. Before COVID, I had passed up opportunities to work from home because I figured I couldn't maintain a solid connection to a VPN. And while I discovered during working from home that it can be done, I usually don't go through a day without the connection glitching and disconnecting me from my office forcing a reset. So I entered into this with trepidation.
My connection mostly held out during the tournament, I recognized when it failed after round 4, and quickly moved to my emergency plan (tethering to my phone) for round 5. And I also had a sudden lag and echo problem in round 10, but that was resolved by resetting the discord page in the browser. I wanted to do this in these conditions (distance, with many other moderators, with teams spaced out, and some with equally sketchy connections) to be able to prove that my setup can work, but I also wanted to see how quickly I could respond to failures with solutions. And I wanted it to be in a situation where I could have failed, but my failure would not have destroyed the tournament. (I am after all a tester in my day job, the last thing I want is a failure without recovery.)
So now I've had my training, and I'm hoping I can pass that along to the next tournament I read for. That's really what we're going to have to do, propagate the knowledge down the line. Right now there's a huge demand for online events, but the most local tournaments are going to be flying blind until the knowledge and experience of moderators comes to them. If you are going to be a reader this year, please consider lending your experience to a small local tournament (not necessarily local to you) that is going to need all the help it can get. Every tournament this year is likely to be some team's first experience with online competition, so every tournament will need as many useful guides as possible.
Thanks to Todd Garrison and the folks at Glasgow for giving us the opportunity to test this where we wouldn't be a critical failure.
We're taking apart Failures of the Presidents this week. This was another bargain bin find, but it's comparatively recently published.
The thing I want to focus on about this book is that this book is basically entirely filled with clues in the style of clues about noble gases (week 25). Where coursework teaches about successes of presidents, or their scandals, their out and out failures are usually omitted from the curriculum. Pyramidal structure in quiz bowl questions leads these to be early-to-middle tossup clues when asked about for their connection to a president, or more likely a bonus question where the president is mentioned in the leadin, providing an orienting timeframe for the team.
1
On August 3, 1964, Lyndon Johnson was informed that a Navy ship had taken fire from North Vietnamese torpedo boats.
A. Name the arm of the South China Sea where this occurred. It later named a congressional resolution authorizing conflict with North Vietnam.
answer: Gulf of Tonkin
B. This navy destroyer sustained only two bullet hits in the inital conflict. Two days later, while out on patrol with the USS Turner Joy, two radar blips were spotted and attributed to North Vietnamese attackers.
answer: USS Maddox
C. This Secretary of Defense informed Johnson of the initial firefight, and overstated the impact of the second encounter.
answer: Robert Strange MacNamara
2
Maud Wright's kidnappers first purported themselves to be the forces of the Carranza government, but that lie was quickly exposed when they executed her husband Edward.
A. The Wright kidnapping occurred in 1916 near Hernandez in this nation.
answer: Mexico
B. The kidnapping was an prelude to the forces of this man heading north into Columbus, New Mexico and raiding the town.
answer: (Francisco) “Pancho” Villa
C. The Villa raids were partly in revenge for the policy of this US president supporting the Carranza government and punishing the previous regime of Victoriano Huerta.
answer: Woodrow Wilson
3
The military were engaged to support ending this labor action by moving the entire garrison of Fort Sheridan to Chicago and await orders of Grover Cleveland.
A. This was an effort to end what general strike of railroad workers outside of Chicago.
answer: Pullman Strike
B. Commanding forces at Fort Sheridan and breaking up the Pullman Strike was this general, who had earlier accepted the surrender of Nez Perce Chief Joseph.
answer: Nelson Miles
C. Part of Cleveland's strategy to end the strike was to declare the strike unlawful, then arrest this head of the American Railway Union who had organized the strike.
answer: Eugene V(ictor) Debs
4
In 1870, Buenaventura Baez, president of this nation, offered his nation to the United States, in exchange for paying $1.5 million in debts.
A. Name this nation, now known as The Dominican Republic which was open to annexation.
answer: Santo Domingo
B. This offer was inspired by this president's plan to annex Santo Domingo and build a colony for former slaves.
answer: Ulysses S. Grant
C. Grant's plan was opposed by this Massachusetts senator, whose roast of Andrew Butler during debate on the Kansas-Nebraska Act led Butler's cousin Preston Brooks to beat him with a cane on the Senate floor.
answer: Charles Sumner
5
The initial plan was to use the Students' Day march to occupy the embassy in this city for three days, but after CIA documents were found onsite, the standoff extended.
A. Name this city where this hostage crisis occurred after the US government allowed the deposed Shah Reza Pahlavi to enter the US for medical treatment.
answer: Tehran
B. Though not organizing the hostage situation, this leader of the Iranian Revolution praised the hostage takers and allowed the situation to continue for 444 days.
answer: Ayatollah Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini
C. This US president attempted to negotiate an end to the crisis, then authorized Operation Eagle Claw, a failed rescue mission.
answer: James Earl Carter