Ottawa QT XII Recap

Powerful building full of ringers.

We got six teams yesterday, all from Lisgar and Colonel By, so it was a field full of sharks. Every player got a power in this tournament (even the ones who missed some rounds), and 5 of the 6 teams scored over 20 points-per-bonus.

Sheena and Colin were the Lisgar A team and went 7-0. They were also the top two scorers in the field. Together they got 51 powers and only one neg -- which might have been Sheena buzzing early on Asian history.

The other top-bracket teams were two more Lisgar teams. Gareth, Patrick, and Gabriel went 0-2 against the champions but 5-0 against every other team. Their job got easier when Nadia arrived at noon to answer some science for them.

The Lisgar B team was William, Matija, Felipe, and Jon. They easily led the field in negs and in talking over the questions, but they also got 25 powers in seven rounds. They scraped into top bracket by having 5 more PPG than Colonel By A. Once they were in top bracket, they lost more games, but the great singer Josh showed up and got them some history buzzes.

The Colonel By teams were great at competing with their teammates and at arriving on time for the tournament. Captain Jonathan led them with 41 tossups, and senior player Adam helped out with 4 negs and some basketball knowledge. Both Kevin Lees got a lot of questions. The Colonel By players also snuck onto a uOttawa computer to play ProtoBowl.

The Lisgar junior team ended at 3-4, but were one question away from making top bracket. They tied one of their senior teams in the morning, 365-365, and then they lost the three-question tiebreaker on the final question. Thomas got 10 powers for that team, and Olive actually knew some lit questions yesterday, which most other players didn't.

People seemed to like the questions, even though they weren't trash. My Canada questions all played well, especially a bonus about Christmas, but except for a hose where a Joe Clark tossup sounded like a Kim Campbell tossup. The America questions we left in the tournament all played pretty well. Colonel By players seemed to know American history from the news, and Lisgar players all seemed to know it from Hamilton.

This tournament was bailed out by coach Ruth Crabtree and scorekeeper Audrey, who emerged at the last minute when it became clear I needed more staff. The tournament was also carried by volunteer legend Ben Smith, who heroically read well past his bedtime without any scorekeeper.

Here are round robin stats and final stats from Ottawa Quizbowl Tournament yesterday. Here are the Canada questions I swapped in for anything that seemed "too American."

Leftover prizes. Prize-winners picked the Koran, Master and
Margarita, and Brief History of Time over these.

Highlights from 2016 Provincials

A famous person.

Here's what I saw at quizbowl Provincials last week.

Lit Is Impossible

Teams did worse on lit than every other category. The low point was the two tossups on the same difficult British novelist. The best it got was with the one Canadian Lit question -- Patrick's common-link question on snow, which someone buzzed on a Robertson Davies snowball clue. I heard players predicting several Margaret Atwood questions, but those never arrived.

Every author question went to the end, so at one point, I went crazy and paused a game to endorse a Russian author I like. I hope people in next year's tournaments can buzz on my favourite author, even if they can't buzz on most authors.

(After the match, a player asked if I was an English teacher. I told him I was a bookkeeper. He said I was basically an English teacher, so he might not have known what "bookkeeper" meant. Bookkeepers can like literature sometimes!)

Jacky Li

Jacky from East Scarborough is somewhat well-known in Ontario for being obsessed with quizbowl. After last weekend, he clearly has every right to be obsessed with quizbowl. He powered a lot of history and current / general questions, leading the field in scoring. He also led his team to a very close loss against Lisgar -- that match went down to the final tossup, but Lisgar still won on an American lit buzz.

Jacky was also visibly invested in the games, celebrating or groaning depending how the questions broke. His aggressive play also won him the prize for most wrong answers, which was a plaque celebrating the 2004 Toronto Maple Leafs. Jacky said he couldn't take the plaque on TTC, so I got to keep the plaque and bring it back to Ottawa. I promise I will take good care of it.

A memento of the Kaberle / Belak era.

Merivale

Merivale beat Lisgar! They are the only Canadian team to win a match against Lisgar A this year. The Merivale core are quizbowl enthusiasts, and they're all really good players by now. It was nice to see them beat Lisgar after having to grind tough matches against Lisgar all year in Ottawa tournaments.

Thilini 30'ed a bunch of lit bonuses, in a field where most teams sucked at lit. Joe claimed that Swagat always beat the Lisgar players at science. Ivan and Nathan were also buzzing early.

Merivale also revealed that they'd travelled to the event without parents, staying at a bed-and-breakfast that didn't check their ages. I hope for them that their parents were in on this plan, and I hope for myself that ONQBA could never be considered their legal guardians.

The best part of the tournament happened in a Merivale-Bayview match. Thilini got a tossup where the answer was something dirty, and then her teammates tried to high-five her but she refused. She complained that the question was too gross to celebrate.

A complaint

This man is not a bus!

Merivale knowingly travelled alone to the tournament and planned their trip. But another team travelled to the tournament in two cars, and then they were informed in the morning that they had only one car back.

This is, literally, a case where a coach drove minors to Toronto and then just abandoned them there. No one should ever do this. It would have been better to cancel the team that morning.

Aaron DR was the only staffer with a car, so he had to drive the players home himself. This cost him for gas, wear and tear on the car, and 2-3 hours of a trip out of town that he was forced into making. Without Aaron, I don't know if the players had the money or knowledge to coordinate their own (unsupervised) trip home.

Population of Heaven

I mistakenly told teams that Protestants think 144,000 people will go to heaven. I looked this up and I'm wrong -- the 144,000 quota is what Jehovah's Witnesses believe. (The number 144,000 is mentioned in Revelation -- 12,000 people descending from each of the 12 tribes of Israel.) Early Protestants believed that you were predestined into heaven or hell at birth, but they did not believe in a fixed population of heaven.


Exhibition Game

The low bracket was scheduled for a full 14 rounds, but players were tired late in the day and the Waterloo team dropped early. For a game between the two Westmount teams, half the players just took a break outside, and the other half tried to mount an exhibition game in my room. Before it fell apart, the game consisted mostly of Emaan answering history questions -- I was impressed when he knew who William Van Horne was.

By the end of the "round," Peter had joined the game as his own team, and we'd only got through about eight tossups and no bonuses.


Canada Questions

The great Patrick directed the tournament and made the Canadian edition of the question sets. He used some of my writing for this.

I wrote a history tossup on Gordie Howe for the tournament, claiming that he'd crossed over from pop culture into "cultural history." Patrick did not fall for this against -- he turned it into a "name three Howes" bonus, asking for Gordie Howe and two historical politicians. I would have liked to see him ask for Gordie Howe, Mark Howe, and Marty Howe.

Teams whiffed on Patrick's long hockey bonus. One part of the bonus celebrated the great Ottawa Senators for their ability to score short-handed goals. Another part ended with the phrase "name all three teams." On another hockey question, one team guessed "Steven Crosby."

Patrick wrote a tossup on Alberta with clues about Eddie the Eagle -- a British ski jumper who got mock-famous for how much he sucked at the Calgary Olympics. As it happened, there were posters and TV commercials around Canada for an Eddie the Eagle movie last week, so players all recognized him but couldn't buzz with a province. Lisgar buzzed on the next clue about Moraine Lake, before we got to the clues about the Jamaican bobsled team.

Someone got my George Brown tossup really early. The South-Ontario players were strong on Patrick's question about museums in Ottawa.

Lisgar Wins

Lisgar won the tournament.

Lisgar showed up as heavy favourites (going by some past results and their spot in the HSQB rankings). They lost one match all day, and their 21.92 PPB was a full 3.53 ahead of the field. (This is, Lisgar converted 73% of their bonus parts, and the next-highest team got only 61%.) Lisgar has now come 4th in Ithaca and won all their other tournaments this year.

A Lisgar team has now won Provincials in 5 of the 7 years it's been held. We're grateful that two Lisgar coaches were able to bring a strong team this weekend, but they have ruined the what-if scenario!-- who would have won Provincials if Lisgar couldn't attend? Bayview had 50 powers and had a strong B team. East Scarborough might have had the strongest player in the field. Merivale swept the top-bracket playoffs. White Oaks played without their top player and still managed a winning record.

Some players smiling in gratitude to their chaperones.

Heroic Staff
- Patrick ran the tournament, which means he did hours of prep to book the venue and prizes, coordinate the teams and staff, and fix up the question set. He also did all the announcements and made sweet nametags for the readers and scorekeepers.
- Rick, Anthony, Jay, Britney, Peter, Isaac, and Nick all staffed the tournament and did a great job. (I think they got through more questions than I did most rounds.)
- Aaron staffed the tournament and also hosted Patrick and me for the weekend. He is a great friend, even though he made me watch Fear Factor.
- Joe made the schedules, printed the questions, and did a lot of control room work. Joe's family also drove Patrick and me to Toronto last weekend.
- A number of coaches and parents drove and chaperoned the teams and even watched all the games.

This gets me through any door anywhere.

Other Highlights
- Chinese players missed some points because I tried too hard to pronounce the Chinese names in the questions.
- Teams correctly answered all bonus parts that asked for equations or formulas. Those are awkward to read and awkward to answer, but they're math and science questions that map well to classroom learning. I was glad to see that the players were good at those.

- Two strong teams missed a tossup on a very famous concept from Judaism.

- A player buzzed a clue about the US Federal Reserve.
- Westmount players first-lined a comp-sci tossup and a tossup on a very bad musical.
- Players earnestly attempted to answer the Civil War questions that we had failed to replace.

- A grade-nine player won a giant buzzer race on a TV character.

- Players all knew everything about gay rights history.

- One bonus part asked "how many hours per day" and the team guessed "40 hours."

- Teams did well on the classic music and opera all day, but the White Oaks coach was amazed when none of his players knew about classic rock.

December 5th: Quizbowl Night in Ontario

For the first time this season, we saw two high-school tournaments placed on the same weekend. After the awards were handed out and buzzers packed up, I created the following general summary of the events.

University of Toronto Novice Tournament

There was a sense of novelty and uniqueness felt by this tournament, given that it was the first one Toronto hosted this season, and the fact that three schools were playing their first ever quizbowl tournament. However, if you thought that this resulted in a lack of competition, you would be strongly mistaken! White Oaks and Bayview A both won the majority of their games, earning a place in the upper bracket. After facing off against each other, it was determined that East Scarborough A would play in an advantage final against White Oaks. Despite losing the first game, East Scarborough A won the second 410-295 to win the tournament. Both experienced players (such as Jacky Li and George Lu), and talented newer players (such as Kelly Yu and Aleem Damji) alike put in impressive performances.

Stegosaurus Bowl at Lisgar

This tournament also followed a unique new format from most quizbowl tournaments, as it utilized a ladder format. Under this format, teams played two pre-games for ranking purposes before they were sent to their respective seeded rooms. After this took place, teams would move up or down the 'ladder' to play teams more suited to their skill level. The Lisgar Dragons managed to stave off defeat despite notable efforts by Merivale A and the Lisgar Shamrocks. While Sheena Li and Colin Veevers had great performances, it should be noted that Eric from Cairine Wilson showed a remarkable first time performance by receiving 70 points per game.

An exciting diagram of Stegosaurus Bowl

Stats for both these tournaments can be found here and here.

OQT 2015 Recap Letter

Moderators clearly impressed
by everyone's cool knowledge.

I'm sending a version of this letter to the clubs that played in the 2015 Ottawa Quizbowl Tournament.

Hello all --

I want to thank you and your teams for playing in the 11th OQT yesterday. The Ottawa Quizbowl Tournament is played every November at U of Ottawa, and I was very pleased with yesterday's edition. We played "elevator bowl" for nine rounds, and it all went quick and friendly thanks to the players and moderators.

Final stats are here. There were high-scoring teams from all four schools (Lisgar, Merivale, Colonel By, and Glebe). Lisgar A dominated with an 8-0 record and 47 powers. Lisgar B and Merivale both went 6-2, which qualifies them for a US Nationals in the spring, should either of those teams wish to buy flights to Dallas. (They might rather go to Provincials in Toronto.) Most players stayed for "mock finals," which was a tenth round of friendly scrimmages including both players and staff. Every school was given paper copies of the unplayed questions for "round 11 and 12."

Rodrigo Morante and I directed the tournament and wrote the Canada questions for the set. We had a full staff of 5 UOttawa students (Rodrigo, Shervin, Shelby, Dennis, and Ian), 3 ONQBA people (Ben, Patrick, and me), and a Lisgar coach (Ruth Crabtree). Staff said their highlights included a [Canadian TV question], an overtime game between two teams seeking their first win, and a request from players to read the questions in Chinese.

Players are encouraged to complete this feedback form for us. We're committed to growing our game, and we're still learning how to tinker with our events to make something that more people want to play.

I also want to advertise our next tournament, which is Stegosaurus Bowl on December 5 at Lisgar. This is planned as a ladder format tournament, so instead of a fixed round schedule, it will be "win and move up a room, lose and move down a room." It is in only two weeks, but I am excited for it -- I think the ladder structure will lead to more close matches and rivalries. You can find details on our forum announcement or our ONQBA blog announcement, and you can register teams with me or Ms. Crabtree.

Thanks again and congratulations to all participants in yesterday's Ottawa Quizbowl Tournament.

Brendan

Recap: Lisgar Novice (October 2015)

Lisgar Novice was the first tournament of the 2015-16 season. Aidan Ryan directed, and a lot of (ineligible) senior players showed up to staff. I went so I could insist that the staff all wear nametags, and I did some coverage -- here is what I saw from every team.

Merivale C was Daniel, Claire, and Hao Hao when I saw them. They took a bad loss to Colin (Lisgar C), but they still got a nice power on an opera clue.

Lisgar B enjoying themselves.

Lisgar B was Nadia, Olive, Katriona, and Patrick. They went 5-3 with strong stats. Nadia seemed very strong on lit questions, and Patrick got some nice buzzes on history. Olive had an early buzz on my Cape Breton tossup, and she caught that it was asking "Cape Breton" instead of just "Nova Scotia."

Merivale A was Amiya, Zarak, and Ivan when I saw them. They seemed very good at at science (with a power and a 30), and they 20'ed a tricky bonus on U.S. sports.

Lisgar A was Justin, Kieran, Matthew, and Felipe. They went 6-2 and led the tournament in PPB. Felipe was the second-highest scorer in the tournament, and I saw him power two science questions. I was also impressed with Justin powering current events.

Colonel By B was Kevin, Victor, and David. They seemed very good at lit and classics. I saw them lose a close, high-scoring match, largely because they got -5 on a scrambly pop music tossup.

Colonel By C was Sam, Kevin, Conor, and Farid. They looked like a team of senior students, and they were definitely the rowdiest team in the tournament -- they cracked a lot of jokes. Conor knew some lit and Farid knew some U.S. politics. At one point they buzzed "Edmonton" for a city in Manitoba, but they still won their round when Kevin got a chemistry tossup at the end.

Merivale B was Alan, Megharaj, and Wahaj. I saw them lose to a strong team, but they seemed to know current events, and they 30'ed a physics bonus. They made a heartbreaking bad buzz by naming a book title on a tossup that asked for the author.

Colonel By A with important moderators.

Colonel By A was Denis, Jon, Emily, and Kevin. They came second in the tournament, going 1-2 against Colin and 7-0 against all other teams. They led the field in powers -- Emily got a lot of lit, and Kevin got a lot of history.

Lisgar C was one player -- Colin -- and he won the tournament! He swept 8-0 in the round robin, and then he split the finals 1-1 with Colonel By A, which clinched first place.

Lisgar C (artist's rendering).

The finals was Lisgar Colin (8-0) against Colonel By A (7-1). Colin had a one-game advantage, so he would take the tournament with a win. If Colonel By won the finals, it would just force a second game of the finals.

Finals game 1 was very close -- Colonel By got more powers, but it looked like Colin would win 280-225.

However, there was a protest to resolve. In mid-game, Denis had buzzed a tossup and changed his guess mid-word. Moderator Ben had called -5, but after the game, we checked the rules and it turned out that Dennis's buzz was allowed. That caused a 60-point swing and changed the game to a win for Colonel By.

Finals game 2 was less close. Colin beat the Colonel By team 13-7 on tossups. The one-player team, Lisgar C, won the tournament, 390-235.

A grade 10 Lisgar student won today's tournament playing solo. A surprise start to the Ottawa season.

— Ben Smith (@smith_ben) 17 Octobre 2015

Throughout the day, Colin had scored early buzzes and 30s on a ton of history, geography, and art questions. He seemed generally to just be a curious learner and to be aware of the world. In an early round, he had a funny exchange with a moderator over pronouncing a weird European name.

Here's my category breakdown for the two finals games:

Colonel By D was four more Kevins. They were unable to compete in this tournament.

Other things:
- Complete stats
- Canada questions (early draft)
- Tournament thread on HSQB
- Facebook album