ACF Newsletter, v. 4 Editors Gaius Stern & Eric Owens In this Issue: ACF Website ACF Regionals Information ACF Nationals Information Packet Breakdowns for ACF Tournaments Stanford Cardinal Classic IX BYU Perpetual Motion VI About your subscription ------------------------------------------------------------- ACF Website Dave Hamilton reports that the ACF web page has finally been updated. Check it out for yourself at http://www.inform.umd.edu/StudentOrg/maqt/acf/Welcome.html. Dates and such found on the webpage should be updated, as well as the ACF question writing guidelines to be used for regionals and nationals packets. ACF Regionals Information ACF Regionals will be held the weekend of February 27. The Midwest regional will be at Chicago, the Southwest regional at Texas A&M, and the West regional at Berkeley. To the best of our knowledge Berkeley is the only host that has made an official announcement yet--we will provide more info on the Chicago & A&M sites in the next newsletter. West Regional @ Berkeley, February 26-27 Base Fee: $80 for first team -10 for each additional team Early ?'s -30 (by Jan 05) -15 (by Jan 15) Buzzer system -10 (per working system) Moderator: -20 (must be arranged with host) Newcomers: -40 if never played at an ACF Regionals For more info: contact Jason Hong, jasonh@cs.berkeley.edu ACF Nationals Info University of Chicago, April 23-24 $100 base fee per team. $40 minimum fee. -$40 + complete packet sets if packet submitted by 12/31 -$40 if packet submitted by 1/15 -$30 1/31 -$10 2/15 No penalty packet deadline 2/31. -$5 working buzzer, notified before 2/15. We will only take 20 of these discounts. 1st come, 1st served. -$10 experienced moderator, approved by TD by 2/15. We will only take 10. 1st come 1st served., 1/school. -$20 if your school has never attended ACF NCT before. -$05, packet formatted _exactly_ according to specs. (in editors' msg) Penalties for late packets will be announced later (Jan). They may be steep. This is to ensure that this year's ACF NCT questions are of the highest quality. No packet by 4/1 penalty: $80. +$15 for packets; +$20 for packs if you didn't play. For more info, contact: Mike Zarren, mikez@tiac.net Packet Breakdowns for ACF Tournaments The tossup and bonus sections of the packet should each follow this distribution. Category First 20 questions Last 10 questions History 4-5 2-3 Literature 4-5 2-3 Religion, Phil., Myth. 2 1 Social Science 1 0-1 Science 4-5 2-3 Art, Archit., and Film 1 0-1* Music 1 0-1* Geography 0-1 0-1 Any of the above** 1-2 0-1 * At least one of the ten reserve questions should be either art/film or music. ** Should be from different categories. In addition, if there were five questions written on Literature, History, or Science already, neither of these miscellaneous questions should be used on another question from that category. More details on this breakdown can be found on the ACF website referenced above. Stanford Cardinal Classic IX The Stanford University College Bowl Club will be present Cardinal Classic IX on February 5-6, 1999. This is a packet-submission tournament. The general distribution for questions should be as according to the Stanford guidelines, which can be found at http://www.stanford.edu/group/CollegeBowl/Stanrules.txt. To summarize, teams should submit packets of 32 tossups and 30 bonuses, with a nice and even subject distribution as listed on the web page. Please send your completed packets to the editor, Adam Kemezis, at kemezis@leland.stanford.edu. (Kindly do *not* send an attached file; instead, put the questions in the body of the email.) For deadlines, see below. Fees and other monetary stuff: the fee structure for the tournement looks like this: Base fee: $150 Questions in by 1/11/99: -$60 Questions in by 1/17/99: -$40 Questions in by 1/23/99: -$20 Questions not in by 1/29/99: +$20 Working buzzer system: -$10 (one per team) Teams from schools that have never attended a Cardinal Classic before start with a base fee of $120. Successive teams from the same school start with a base fee $15 lower. (Team 2 starts at $135, 3 starts at $120, etc.) The same discounts then apply. Any questions, comments, or want to sign your school up? Contact Joshua Solomin, at jsolomin@stanford.edu. BYU Perpetual Motion VI BYU will be hosting an ACF tournament on March 5-6, 1999. There are no entry fees, and packets are due on February 20. The packet distribution is 24 tossups and 24 bonuses, as follows: 4 Science 4 History 4 Literature 2 Geography 2 Fine Arts 2 Pop Culture 1 Social Science 1 Religion/Mythology 1 Current Events/General Knowledge 1 Sports 2 General Knowledge/Any Category (but not in the same category) After the completion of the tournament, there will be a trash tournament, question distribution as follows: Get On the Bus The tournament will be guerrilla-style (moderate your own packet) and round-robin. We will start on Saturday night and go till we're done. Packets should be reasonably similar to the following distribution, thanks to Phil Groce. And thanks to BYU for making this whole weekend of quiz bowl FREE. 4 sports (mix 'em up, 2-3 must be the NBA, MLB, NFL) 4 movies (2-3 in or after 1990) 4 TV (at least 1 1990+ -- mix 'em up between sitcoms, soaps, dramas, etc.; Simpsons, Beavis and Butt-head, etc. encouraged) 4 music (2 or more 1990+ -- mix between top 40/Adult Contemporary, "alternative"/indie/underground, everything else) 3 "geek" questions (comic books, RPG, sci-fi, video games, etc. -- no more than 1 of each) 3 general trash (possible questions in this area: pop lit, games/kids' stuff, evil/bizarre/weird/conspiracy/scandal, food and drink, anything else except the five other major categories) Porn/gay porn question overload discouraged. This is a BYU tournament, after all. For more info, contact Earl Cahill at cahille@math.byu.edu About Your Subscription: If you need to change e-mail accounts to which the newsletter is sent, remove yourself from the newsletter list, or add new people to the newsletter list, please e-mail the information to etowens@feist.com with "ACF Newsletter" as the subject of your message. Please be sure to include the account under which the subscription presently exists. Next month: Tournament announcements from Wichita State & Quincy, as well as more information on ACF Regionals and Nationals.