[Note: The following is an account of the novice/frosh/soph tourney held at Iowa and run by ISU this last weekend. It was written by Josh Kortbein, a player from ISU, as a report to the rest of the ISU club. It is presented here with his permission and some minimal editing.] The top teams at the past weekend's Les Enfants Terribles were: 1. Carleton A (Andrew, Andy, Cheryl, Emily) 2. Illinois A (Jerry, Jill, Rob) 3. Iowa State A (Josh, Steve, Tifne) [Note from Kube: Carleton rolled in the showdown match with Illinois, going out to about a 200 pt lead after 11 questions. Cheryl had 50 pts by question 9 and finished with 60, her high game of the tourney.] The all-stars (top three individual scorers, one player voted on by players, and one player voted on by tourney staff) were 1. Rob, Illinois A 2. Tifne, Iowa State A 3. Andy, Carleton A 4. Emily, Carleton A 5. Cheryl, Carleton A Note that Emily was voted as an all-star by both the players' votes, and the moderators'; thus, Cheryl was the "runner-up" in votes. Less statistical or enumerative thoughts on the tournament: There were only 7 teams - substantially fewer than Rob et al planned for, I think - but it still turned out pretty well. We played five rounds Friday night, then two Saturday, followed by a three-round playoff. The matches were interesting; the A team either was stomped upon, stomped another team, or had a close game against everyone they played. (But that could be said of most games.) The games in which we stomped another team were interesting, at least in one respect: it seems a little unusual to be on the stomping end without one of our normal A team players there, kicking and stomping. Our game against Wisconsin was somewhat mediocre; we won by a substantial margin, but it wasn't a clear rout. I'm not sure what to say about that. We played two games against Illinois A, one during round robin play and one during playoffs. As we've seen before, Illinois has lots of strong players; this is true even among their "newbies". One player in particular, Rob, looked VERY good; he's someone that we should be watching. In our first match against Illinois, we lost on the last question - pissah. In the playoffs match against them, we lost on the second-to-last question - another pissah. This does bode well for future play against a similar Illinois team, though. We also played two games against Carleton A, one R.R. and one playoff game. In both games, they just walked all over us. They're very good players, but this still seems slightly anomalous, because after round robin play Illinois A had a better record than Carleton, who had a better record than us. Consensus on our team seemed to be that the packet composition seemed to have something to do with it (not that it was bad, Rob). The second round packet and the playoff packet really seemed to expose our weak areas - which are mostly humanities. Unfortunately, those are the subjects Carleton are best at. ISU certainly needs to learn more about philosophy, art, history, and literature. :/ I'm sure Rob or someone will eventually send stats here or post them to the newsgroup, but note that we did pretty well individually - in particular, Ben, Steve, and I were all clustered together somewhere in the scoring. Ah, well. I lied. This isn't brief after all. But if you really cared, would you be reading this far? Thoughts? Josh [Notes from Kube: Not a bad way to end my active career in quiz bowl. I hope to see many of you on Masters circuit (though not for at least -- . ___ // Chad Kubicek {~._.~}// kubiwan@iastate.edu ( Y )K/ Aerospace Engineering/Mathematics ()~*~() Iowa State University (_)-(_) Go 'Clones!!!