2003 University of Michigan Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Tournament

Tournament Announcement | Registration Form | Notes on Packet Submission | Registered Teams

PACKET GUIDELINES
The tournament is a timed, packet-submission event using NAQT-style rules. Questions should follow the guidelines listed in the Michigan Memorandum. The required distribution of the packet is found in the Memorandum Appendix.

A packet in gross violation of the distribution found in the Appendix will be sent back to its authors for rewriting. Be sure that your packet contains the correct number of questions in all major categories and that a sufficiently broad range of subcategories are represented.

Individual questions that do not meet the guidelines found in the Michigan Memorandum will be sent back for rewriting. A packet will not be considered to be submitted until all questions in the packet are approved by the editors.

PACKET DIFFICULTY
The Appendix lists the following requirements for packet difficulty:

• Teams should average about 200 points per game
• Teams should average about 14 points per bonus
• Top teams should average about 21 points per bonus
• No team should average less than 7 points per bonus

Last year, teams averaged 166 points per game. The average bonus conversion was 14.5 PPB, while teams in the top bracket averaged 20.6 PPB and the team with the worst bonus conversion scored 7.0 PPB.

Therefore, in order to meet the difficulty requirements, bonuses should be the same difficulty as last year, while tossups should be easier and shorter. Last year's question set is available here. Please read over or practice on last year's set and keep these adjustments in mind when writing your questions.

PACKET QUALITY
A discount of up to $25 will be offered to teams whose packets show they put considerable effort into writing high quality questions for MLK. This discount replaces the new program discount and is intended to encourage new question writers, although any team can receive the discount by submitting an excellent packet.

The amount of the discount will be based on both the quality of the packet and the experience of its writers. A team consisting of four first-time question writers will only need to submit a reasonably well-written packet to receive a discount, while a team with years of question writing experience will receive a discount only if they submit a truly excellent packet.

The criteria for determining the packet quality discount are subjective; the exact value of the discount is at the sole discretion of the editor-in-chief.

PACKET MENTORING
Writing good questions involves not only learning the intracacies of the style, but also developing a feel for the material that players at different skill levels know. Because of this new quizbowl players almost always have difficulty in writing good questions; in fact, the first packets written by many of the most profilic quizbowl writers today are almost uniformly terrible.

However, with a little guidance and a little effort, inexperienced question writers can learn to write solid questions fairly quickly. Therefore, we are offering packet mentors to teams that feel they could use some help to write a good packet.

The mentor's role will be 1) to explain the conventions of question writing that you might not be aware of; 2) to help you write questions at the appropriate difficulty level; and 3) to provide feedback and advice so that you can continue to write good questions for tournaments in the future.

If you want guidance while writing your packet, send an email to mlk.editors@umich.edu and we will do our best to help you write a high quality packet. We also encourage any teams that have questions about our guidelines to ask questions while preparing their packets.

Teams that receive mentoring help are still eligible for a packet quality discount; in fact, they are more likely to receive one. We strongly encourage all teams to put the most possible effort into their questions so that MLK can have the best question set of the year.