Last week we looked into Risk Assessment because new scoring systems for questions had been created in reaction to new formats compelled by COVID. This week, we cover a topic that becomes visible because of the format changes due to COVID: questions written closer in time to the episode taping leading to a pattern of writing an single subject in a sitting.
(This has to be written in such a way as to avoid such quiz bowl terms of art as ‘packet distribution’ and ‘feng shui'.’ And also it has to avoid explaining why this doesn’t appear in circuit quiz bowl, since that will be explained later. Though those are somewhat easily described to circuit veterans, the target of this book is people with zero circuit experience and almost zero quiz bowl experience, so such while such terms of art are useful for us, we can’t include them without pages of explanation.)
Clues and answers that appear in consecutive rounds
Mr Bond, they have a saying in Chicago: "Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it's enemy action." —Auric Goldfinger
Watching a series of televised matches end to end, you may find patterns that repeat between rounds. For instance, Round 1 of a taping session may refer to Mars in a question as the fourth planet from the sun, and then the next round mentions that Jupiter is the fifth planet from the sun. This does not mean that you should be rush to have your team memorize the sixth planet from the sun. But it means that writers are obeying patterns as they fill their sets for that station.
When writing, questions inspire additional questions. So clues that you use may lead you to thinking along a similar line in writing later questions. This pattern is reinforced if you are using a certain source of information, say a chapter of a textbook. Because the source is tied to a particular subcategories of a subject, an inspired writer can get ideas for multiple questions in the same place, and they share certain structures of clues and answers.
When those questions are set into rounds, if there’s a similar category which those questions satisfy, and it is present in each round, the similar questions will fill similar holes in consecutive rounds.
Sometimes this works out a lot better for the writers. If a round of directed questions needs to be written for each team, similar questions can fill a slot in each round. Here the only advantage is to the team which is last to face the round, as they are able to note what was in the other teams’ rounds. (Point to clarify later: Need to determine if shows taping through teleconferences actually allow teams to see other teams competing.)
If you know this is happening, you now know that there's a possibility that clues in prior games in your taping session will reveal patterns that will appear in your game. That’s a reason that TV shows sometimes sequester contestants during matches in which they will not appear. However, if your program doesn’t, you should see this as an opportunity to focus on what might appear in your round.
You may even see a situation where an answer appears in consecutive on-air rounds. This doesn't mean that you should have your team study that (in fact, unless those were the last two episodes to be taped, it probably means that you don't need to study it.) But that does mean that that repeated answer falls into a category important enough to be asked about once per episode. You now just need to figure out how big that subcategory is.
The situation I saw this happen with was two consecutive rounds with the answer: Odysseus. Now that is a common answer for a mythology question, or maybe a classic literature question, but the fact it appeared in consecutive rounds indicates that the two questions were probably created very close to each other. The writer found two things that they felt were worthy of creating a question around. And they proceeded to create those questions. They then were submitted, and whoever did the editing was willing to place them in consecutive rounds. Probably this was because the questions fit a particular hole that had no other questions available, and they figured that the teams in game two would not see the questions in game one or vice versa. Because they were writing a small set of rounds at a time, they didn’t want to waste the second question.
So what can this given: “that two questions using the same answer appear very close to each other,” tell us about future rounds? Well, first there’s a very small chance they’ll be a third or fourth question with that answer. There’s a more likely chance that the two questions were written consecutively, and written from the same notes, and written from the same source material, and so there’s a more likely chance that a third or fourth question or more was written from that source material. So we can likely focus our study on subcategories closer to the repeated material within the general category. For a TV round where you have little time to prepare, this can be useful, as long as you have knowledge of subcategories, so this is not for your first time.
To simulate how this would work, let's figure out a series of subcategories, smallest to largest, that match our duplicated answers until we figure out what is likely the category this fills.
Odysseus (unlikely)
The Odyssey
The Trojan War
Homeric Epics
Heroic Age of Greek Myth
Greek Mythology
Mythology in general
For TV, I would find it unlikely that they would dedicate space to anything smaller that Greek Mythology as a category they feel must be filled in each round, and it's more likely if they have a dedicated category slot it's Mythology. However if you believe that they are writing each category in a sitting and working from a source at a time, it's likely their use of Odysseus as an answer reflects other questions they have written during the same period of writing, and it reflects the sources they may be looking at to write questions. So it may be that the mythology slot for the next few rounds may be dominated by questions related to the Iliad, Odyssey, and the Trojan War, or it may cover the Heroic Age and be packed with questions about Heracles, Perseus, Jason, and the like.
Let’s try this again for the repeated clue type of “nth planet from the Sun.”
Planets by position
Planets by more relevant clues
The Solar System
Astronomy
Science
Astronomy might be enough of a subject to appear every round, but Science is definitely used each round. And within Astronomy we would expect that questions on planets and the solar system to dominate, over questions about star types, or other phenomena. There’s other reasons this will be true, but this method allows you to estimate what will likely appear in future rounds, and take enemy action against the round, given appropriate happenstance and coincidence.
I will be writing next week’s newsletter well in advance because I know how weird next week is going to be. Figured I should warn you all in advance.