Date: Mon, 18 Jan 1999 20:41:09 -0500
From: Eric Owens <etowens@feist.com
Subject: ACF Newsletter, v. 4
Bcc: acflist, gaius

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
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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.