Michigan MLK Memorial Question Memorandum

Appendix: Packet Specifications

I. Question Distribution
For the Michigan MLK tournament, this distribution supersedes the distribution contained in the Stanford Guidelines. This distribution *must* be followed strictly. Packets that do not follow this distribution will be returned for rewriting.

Subject	Toss-ups	Bonuses	Total
History	5	4	9
Literature	5	4	9
Science	5	4	9
Current Events	4	4	8
Fine Arts	3	2	5
Geography	2	2	4
Social Science	2	2	4
Religion/Myth/Phil	2	2	4
Popular Culture/Sports	2	2	4
General Knowledge	3	4	7
TOTALS	33	26	59

Of the questions, at least ten (10) must cover under-represented topics. These questions may be about women or people of color, but may also be about social movements, non-western literature, history, culture or thought and any other topic which, despite being the subject of serious academic study, are not asked about with an appropriate frequency in quiz bowl. While the subjects of these questions may not frequently be asked about, this in no way indicates that they arein any sense obscure to a well-educated person; accordingly, these subjects should not be considered obscure by quiz bowl players.

II. Question Difficulty
Many packets are not written at the correct difficulty level. We would like to remind you that we are looking for questions near the difficulty level of NAQT Sectionals and to please remember that this is a timed tournaments, so please write toss-ups of an appropriate length. Packets that are too easy or too hard produce unreliable results and undermine the value of the tournament results.

On tossups:
*At least* 90% of tossups should be answerable by one of the eight players *if read in their entirety* in a match between two good teams. This is *not* the same as having 90% answered in match situations. That means 3-4 of the tossups may be somewhat too difficult, but that the others are answerable. The overall difficulty is important, but a more important measure of the quality of tossups is the number of pieces of substantial information, and the ordering of those pieces of information from most to least obscure.

On bonuses:
Good teams should be able to convert 60-70% of all bonus points. As an extension of this:
* on 30 point bonuses, good teams should convert approximately 65% of bonus points (averaging between 15 and 20 points).
* on 30-20-10 bonuses, good teams should get the 30 point clue 20% of the time, the 20 point clue 40% of the time, and the 10 point clue 30% of the time (approximately).

For purposes of this difficulty distribution, a "good team" means a team that finishes around the top 30% of the pool (i.e. the teams that finish 4th, 5th, and 6th out of 16, or the teams fighting for the last playoff spots).

III. Category Sub-distribution
Following the broad category distribution is only part of writing a balanced packet. The other part is writing diverse questions *within* each subject area. A survey of the questions from many prominent invitationals shows that this is the second greatest problem with most packets (the first being the poor quality of the questions themselves). For example, while many packets have 4 history tossups, all 4 are U.S. history, or all are 20th Century (or none are). Similarly, while many packets contained an adequate number of science, almost none actually contained *substantial* science questions from more than 2-3 fields. History of science was far overrepresented (more than half of all science questions) and areas such as biology and chemistry were sorely underrepresented (or if they were asked, then physics, astronomy, and other categories were ignored).

This situation is unacceptable for tournament play.

For the MLK Memorial, we ask that teams write diverse packets. As a baseline, we ask that teams follow this sub-distribution. This is a rough distribution and can be modified as appropriate. Playoff rounds, however, must follow this distribution as closely as possible. In general, try to distribute the topics so that closely related questions are divided between tossups and bonuses (i.e. don't make all 4 of the U.S. history questions tossups and all 4 of the World history questions bonuses-try to split them).

We want the MLK Memorial to be the best tournament in the nation this season. To do this, we need your help in writing the best questions.

This *is* a difficult distribution to follow. We are not unaware of this. We know from experience that following it can increase packet writing time (we follow something similar for our high school tournament). However, in return for this effort you get to play all your rounds on packets that are much better than you otherwise would hear. You also get to learn about areas you otherwise would simply ignore. It is work for us both, but it is worth it.

Do you have to follow this *exactly?* No. We will accept reasonable variance *so long as the packet is fair, diverse, and no one category is overrepresented.* However, we demand that packets be diverse. Thus, if you write three U.S. Civil War questions, your packet will be returned for rewriting. If you are inexperienced at writing packets, we ask that you follow the distribution closely.

Current Events (8)
1. United States Events
2. United States Leaders
3. United States People
4. Other U.S. Current Events (can repeat topic from above)
5. World Events
6. World Leaders
7. World People
8. Other World Current Events (can repeat topic from above)

Tabloid events are specifically excluded here (put them into popular culture or miscellaneous). Questions of contemporary importance are required for current events.

History (9)
1. World History Until 1000
2. World History 1000-1750
3. World History 1750-1900
4. World History 20th Century
5. U.S. History Until 1800
6. U.S. History 1800-1876
7. U.S. History 1877-1950
8. U.S. History 1951-present
9. An additional history question on any subject not already written on

For World History, no 2 questions should cover the same country, and no more than 2 should cover the same continent. For U.S. History, no more than one question should relate to U.S. Presidents. For both, no more than 2/4 should have answers that are political and military leaders and battles/wars (so also write about events, institutions, non-military and political folk, etc.)

Literature (9)
1. English Literature Until 1800
2. English Literature 1800-present
3. World Literature Until 1750*
4. World Literature 1750-present*
5. United States Literature Until 1850
6. United States Literature 1851-1925
7. United States Literature 1925-present
8. Non-fiction, Literary Science Fiction/Fantasy, or other
9. Minority/Non-Western Literature

*World literature includes Continental European, Latin American, Asian and African literature. Any world lit question may come from any of these literary traditions.

Popular Fiction, Science Fiction, Fantasy that is not widely considered literary has been moved to popular culture.

The 8 questions must include a minimum of one question each on drama and poetry. No more than 4 of the 8 should have an author as an answer (that means at least 1/2 of the questions should relate to the *content* of works in some significant fashion, not just pairings of works and authors).

Science (9)
1. Anatomy, Physiology, or Medicine
2. Biology
3. Physics
4. Chemistry
5. Astronomy
6. Earth Science (Archeology, Geology, Meteorology, etc.)
7. History of Science
8. Mathematics or Computer Science
9. Another biology, physics or chemistry question

*Only two* questions may be history of science in a pure form. If you write 2, they must be from different fields and should also be from different time periods.

Distinction: If the sought answer is a substantive concept or physical phenomenon, and historical information is merely used as a clue, then it does not count as history of science. If the historical event of discovery or the discover is the operative fact, then it counts as history of science. The bottom line is that we want science questions of substance.

Geography (4)
1. United States Geography
2. Americas Geography (may be a second U.S. Geography)
3. Europe or Asia Geography
4. Other World Geography

No more than one of the four should be a question that asks for a capital city (or cities) given the political entity.

Fine Arts (5)
1. Music
2. Art or Sculpture
3. Architecture or Dance or Other Fine Arts
4. Music or Art (from different period or field than above)
5. Film*

*As film is now universally considered an art form, one question on cinema is to be included in the Fine Arts category. The films, directors, schools, screenwriters, etc. to be included in this category are those generally considered to be worthy of academic study. Please note that this does not exclude popular or Hollywood films, like The Philadelphia Story or E.T., and does not call for overly obscure answers.

General Knowledge (4)
This area includes business and industry, language, foreign languages, games, and about anything else not found in the distribution. We especially encourage questions that combine different fields and questions that, while being excellent questions, do not fit easily into other categories.

If necessary, extra questions from a category can be placed here, but we strongly prefer questions that are not simply leftovers from other categories.

Popular Culture (4)
Write four questions on the following:
1. Baseball, Football or Basketball
2. Another question on either baseball, football or basketball (but no more than one question on the same sport), or a question on hockey, soccer or sports in the Olympics
3. Television
4. Movies (those too trashy to be included in the fine arts category)
5. Popular music

Social Science (4)
1. Psychology or Sociology or anthropology or linguistics
2. Political science or government or law
3. Economics or other social science
4. Additional psychology, sociology, political science or economics question

Religion, Mythology, or Philosophy (4)
Pick four questions from the following:
1. Major World Religions
2. Greek, Roman, Norse, or Egyptian Myth
3. Non-Major Religions
4. Other Mythology
5. Philosophy (may have two questions)

If you exercise the option of having two philosophy questions, make them about different schools of philosophy.

IV. Submission of Packets

This section is adapted from the ACF Nationals Question Submission Instructions, written by Jim Dendy. (Since the ACF Question Writing Guidelines are based on the Stanford Guidelines, it seemed only fair...) This is also a reasonable national standard, so we would like to promote it as such.

Please submit rounds (in order of preference)

1. via Email as RTF of Word, or as a Word attachment. Packets go to mac.packetdrop@umich.edu
2. via Email as text
3. via US Mail on 3.5 diskette in Word or WordPerfect format (please include a neatly laser printed copy!)
4. via US Mail on disk as text

IMPORTANT NOTE: The packet MUST be blind to all but the team writing the packet if you are entering more than one team.

Past editors have spent an inordinate amount of time reformatting rounds to make them formatted consistently. It will allow us more time spend on the more important facets of editing if the rounds follow a pattern so that macros can be used for formatting. Please follow the follow guidelines (anal as they may seem) to help us out.

Take particular care with the following:

1. Using tabs, DO NOT use tabs or spaces to line things up.

2. Do not type all three parts of a bonus a single paragraph followed by a single answer line with all three answers on it. Please put the answer after each part as shown in the example following.

3. DO NOT CAPITALIZE the underlined part of your answers. Instead, bold the portion which is the acceptable answer if sending in rich text, or surround the needed portion with _these underscore marks._

4. Please label all parts of bonuses with their point value as such (10) or (5/5), (30), (20), (10), etc.

5. Do not use 1) 2) etc.. Use 1., 2.

6. Do not label toss-ups T1 or T-1 etc. and bonuses B1 B-1 etc.. Just number the questions.

7. For titles within the body of questions, please place quotation marks around the titles, such as "Moby Dick." We would like to reserve underlining only for correct answers.

8. Type all bonuses with the answers on a SEPARATE line from the question. See examples below

Please type rounds EXACTLY as follows:

200? Michigan MLK Memorial
Questions by "Your School Name Here and Team Designator and your team name" (Members: XXXX, YYYY, ZZZZ, AAAA)

Tossups
1. Cooked in a bag made from the rumen, it contains such ingredients as suet, oatmeal, as well as the minced heart, liver, and lungs of a sheep. For 10 points--name this dish, which has been referred to as "boiled, castrated, bagpipe."
Answer: Haggis

2. Born March 9, 1940 in San Juan, Puerto Rico, he launched his theatrical career in the New York Shakespeare Festival in 1971 as Proteus in "Two Gentlemen of Verona"; his last role was as Chico Mendes in "The Burning Season." For 10 points--name this actor who died in October 1994.
Answer: Raul Julia or Raul Rafael Carlos Julia y Arcelay

Bonuses
1. For 10 points each--which American novel contains these characters:

(10) Wang Lung, O-Lan, Lotus Blossom
Answer: "The Good Earth" by Pearl S. Buck

(10) John, Elizabeth, and Gabriel Grimes and Florence
Answer: "Go Tell It on the Mountain" by James Baldwin

(10) Doc Daneeka, Clevinger, Milo Minderbinder, Major Major Major
answer: "Catch-22" by Joseph Heller

2. Only 5 major league pitchers have ever thrown more than 45 consecutive scoreless innings. For 5 points each and a bonus five for all - name them.
Answer: Carl Hubbell,
Bob Gibson,
Walter Johnson,
Don Drysdale,
Orel Hershiser

3. Name this island, 30-20-10:
(30) It is located to the Southwest of Sumatra and the Sunda Strait, and was first discovered by Europeans in 1699 when a surgeon on a merchant ship was shipwrecked there.
(20) Its capital, Mildendo, is surrounded by walls which are only 30 inches high.
(10) The shipwrecked surgeon was Lemuel Gulliver.
Answer: Lilliput