Vancouver Estival Trivia Open (VETO) weblog

All the question packets from VETO in 2010 are now available for free download on the Stanford Quizbowl Archive.
Comments on the questions are welcome here.

If your team writes just one question per day starting today, you’ll have a complete packet ready by the time VETO rolls around.

But sometimes you just can’t think of what to write about; you don’t feel inspired to write anything, but you know that it’s your duty to write something. So here’s where the quiz bowl resources on the Web come to your aid:

1. Browse through the Stanford Packet Archive, paying special attention to those from more recent tournaments. Packets from previous VETOs are there, but as much as I don’t really like to say it, packets from most other recent tournaments tend to be of higher quality. :/ To get yourself into the mode of thinking like a quiz bowl question writer, there’s nothing better to read than actual full quiz bowl packets.
2. The point of reading packets in the archive is just to get yourself accustomed to the format, and absolutely not to find interesting clues to reuse. In order to help you find original material to write about, the VETO question guidelines page has tons of links categorized by subject. As you’re writing your packet, you should be making sure you’ve got the right number of questions in each category, and a diverse set of questions within each category. If you need more science questions, for example, we’ve got a list of links on subcategories from astronomy to zoology. Our guidelines also list a bunch of possible types of answers in each category.
3. Often it’s not enough just to read lots of stuff in a subject area in order to think of something to write questions about. You need to come up with specific answers, and then write clues for those answers. For your convenience, we’ve got a page listing answers to VETO questions from 2005 through 2007. Like the packets in the archive, the purpose of this page is not to suggest that you write questions with those same answers. Rather, the point is to show you ideas on what kinds of things to use as answers. For example, the first tossup answer listed is “Leyden Jar”. If you’re familiar with that, you might think, “Hey, if somebody wrote about the Leyden Jar last year, then I could write a tossup about the Van de Graaff Generator. It does not appear on this list.”

VETOX will be on Saturday, July 19, 2008, at two locations:

• Simon Fraser University on Burnaby Mountain the University of British Columbia (not Harbour Centre as in recent years);
• University of Toronto, St. George Campus (same as past few years).

It’s time to plan for the tenth Vancouver Estival Trivia Open.

First, to set the date: Is Saturday, July 19 OK with people?

Some other issues:

1. It might be a nice idea to have somebody editing all the packets instead of going with our traditional “guerrilla” style. But this work, of course, would require having an editor who would take on the job.
2. How about another Trans-Canada Championship Match? This will require a packet from someone who will not be playing in VETO.
3. Does anybody want to suggest changes to the question guidelines that we used last year?

Add your comments below.

This is what I know so far of teams for VETO.

VANCOUVER:
1. FARSIDE: Peter (2 packets)
2. SFU Junta: Carlos, Hanson, Mike, … (no packet)
3. UBC: Mike, … (1 packet)
4. UBC Pseudo: Daniel, Brendan, … (maybe packet)
5. SFU alumni: Tara, Joanne, Mischa, … (maybe packet)
6. maybe another UBC team (packet shared with first UBC team)

TORONTO:
1. Toronto 1 (1 packet)
2. Toronto 2 (1 packet)
3. Toronto 3 (1 packet)
4. Consolation prize for furthest-traveled team: Ben, Tamara, Shauna, Jordan (1 or 2 packets)
5. Western Ontario 1 (1 packet)
6. Western Ontario 2 (1 packet)
7. B2B: Brock, Bruce, Zhan, … (1 packet)
8. maybe Toronto 4 (maybe packet)

If you’re on one of these teams and know more, feel free to post a comment.

Teams that have won VETO in a previous year are entitled automatically to participate in this year’s tournament without any review. Other teams send a couple of their old packets to the VETO Invitation Committee, which looks over the packets and provides feedback on them and decides whether the team will supply questions this year. Every team that has won VETO in a previous year is entitled to one member on the VETO Invitation Committee.

Here are previous years’ winners in Vancouver, with the number of tossup points scored by each player (from CAQL results):
1999, FARSIDE: Peter 610
2000, FARSIDE: Peter 560, Tara 45
2001, FARSIDE: Peter 830
2002, SFU Junta: Carlos 270, Mike 185, Hanson 180, Sarah 170
2003, B2B: Bruce 335, Brock 290, Victoria 65, Meghan 10
2004, UBC: Fred 330, Luka 320, Mike 140, James 50
2005, UBC A: Fred 335, Luka 240, Zarya 185
2006, UBC Pseudo: Brendan 370, Daniel 200, Angus 110, Richard 0

And in Ontario (Waterloo in 2000, London in 2001, Toronto in 2003 on):
2000, Conglomerate: Victor 550, Tim 70, Mike 45
2001, UWO B: Matt 340, Zhan 190, Alt 160
2003, Rico’s Roughnecks: Eric 705, Dave 25, Richie 10, Mike 50, Rico 40
2004, Rico’s Roughnecks: Eric 550, Ross 175, Rico 40
2005, Teddy Bears: Paul 250, Roger 170, Andy 140, Mark 100
2006, Toronto: Eric 265, Bobby 140, Jeff 50, Matto 50

If players from a previous VETO champion team are split up among more than one prospective team in 2007, then the auto-bid earned from the earlier year goes to the 2007 team whose members scored the highest total tossup points from that earlier year’s VETO champion team.

This can get a bit complicated if people change teams. Examples:

• If Fred, Luka, and Brendan come to VETO this year and play on the same team, they will take a single auto-bid from winning 2004, 2005, and 2006, because together they got a majority of the winning team’s tossup points in all three of those years. Nobody else would get an auto-bid from those championships.
• If in 2007 we have team A with Fred and Mike, team B with Luka and Zarya, and team C with Brendan on it, then all three of those teams will get auto-bids, because the members of team A got a majority of the winning team’s tossup points in 2004, as did team B in 2005, and team C in 2006.

In summary, this system is not like NAQT ICT bids. It doesn’t result in determinations like “UBC is entitled to three teams”. Instead, it takes players as individuals.

If high-scoring members of a winning team don’t return this year, the remaining members are still entitled to an auto-bid. For example, Brendan got more than half of his team’s points last year, but if he doesn’t return, Daniel’s team will get an auto-bid because Daniel got more than half of the 2006 UBC Pseudo team’s tossup points that were not earned by Brendan.

This year’s VETO will be on Saturday, June 30, 2007, in both Vancouver and Toronto. It will once again be a guerrilla tournament, meaning teams will just show up with their packets and there will be no central editing. We’re working on an announcement.

Results have been posted for Vancouver and Toronto.

This blog is being closed to comments because of spam attacks.

The schedule in Vancouver is set to what I wrote below (July 12). We’ll meet in room 1510 of 515 W. Hastings St.
News:

1. The UBC team will bring a packet that its members wrote.
2. The DBCA team is called UBC Pseudo.
3. The BGT. team has a new player named Jason.

We’ll have three additional packets from Ontario for playoffs and backup.

We have rooms 1500, 1510, 1520, 1525, 1535.
I suggest 1510 for the meeting room.
I don’t like rooms 1525 and 1535 so much, because they have no windows.

Also, there is a chance that UBC might put together an original packet.

    room 1500  room 1520  room 1525   bringing packet  other staff
    ---------  ---------  ---------   ---------------  -----------
1.  FrSd-JMPR  UBC.-DBCA  BGT.-SFUJ | B2B. (authors)   none
2.  FrSd-BGT.  UBC.-B2B.  DBCA-JMPR | SFUJ (authors)   none
3.  BGT.-UBC.  SFUJ-B2B.  FrSd-DBCA | JMPR (Toronto)   none
4.  UBC.-JMPR  DBCA-SFUJ            | FrSd (authors)   BGT.  B2B.
5.  BGT.-JMPR  UBC.-SFUJ            | DBCA (authors)   FrSd  B2B.
6.  BGT.-B2B.  SFUJ-JMPR            | FrSd (authors)   UBC.  DBCA
7.  FrSd-B2B.  BGT.-DBCA            | UBC. (Toronto)   SFUJ  JMPR
8.  FrSd-UBC.  DBCA-B2B.            | BGT. (Toronto)   SFUJ  JMPR
9.  FrSd-SFUJ  JMPR-B2B.            | DBCA (Toronto)   BGT.  UBC.

FrSd: (FARSIDE) Peter - rounds 4 (author), 6 (author)
BGT.: Brittany/Geoff/Tariq - round 8 (Toronto)
UBC.: Mike/Fred/Lavan/Paul - round 7 (Toronto, or possibly author)
DBCA: Daniel/Brendan/Ciarán Llachlan/Angus - rounds 5 (author), 9 (Toronto)
SFUJ: (Junta) Carlos/Hanson/Mike/Shaun - round 2 (author)
JMPR: Joanne/Mischa/Paulman/Ross - round 3 (Toronto)
B2B.: Brock/Bruce/Victoria/Zhan - rounds 1 (author), 5 (contributor)