All in all, this was a pretty good set. Great job by everybody. Lots of praise to the following tossups: crime (sociology tossup), "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry"; Heathcliff; and the Indus Valley.
Writing the following to touch on Tyler's comments. I may be a little tough on my science criticisms, but I'll note and concede that they were still fine questions at the end of the day.
trbenedict wrote:I'll also add that many of the questions I found "very hard" were in the sciences and fine arts, both of which are decidedly not my areas of expertise.
Fine ArtsRound 1: team questions were fine, although I did think to myself that Le Havre was tough to toss-up.
Round 2, 3, 4, 5, 6: all fine.
Round 7: Okay, this fine arts category and the American Literature category, at least to me, were the only two cases through the whole states set where one team question is considerably harder than both the other team question and the toss-up. If I had to rate the answerlines on a scale of 1-10 difficulty wise, Helga Testorf is a 6, Joanna Hiffernan is a generous 7, and Meurent is a 9.5. Unless something has changed in writing trends the last five years, I can recall hearing Testorf and Hiffernan as clues for Wyeth and Whistler/bonus part answerlines probably 10-15 times a year when I played but maybe once, at most, with Meurent and Manet. Maybe I'm completely wrong and off-base on this one, but Meurent probably would've been more appropriate as the toss-up answerline rather than the Team B question, which would've been fine so as to be balanced team questions.
(The criticism I have of the American Literature in Round 7 was that I'm led to believe Sam Shepard, while definitely significant in contemporary American Literature, is harder an answerline than Lillian Hellman as well as Neil Simon.)
SciencesRound 1: I thought these were largely great, although the "marijuana" final round was wonky. The lead-in is not helpful, and the clue progression of [symptoms of cannabinoid hypremesis syndrome] then [treatment of CHS] seemed to me, at least, to be "somewhat helpful" to then "not helpful at all". Basically this was a pretty cliff-y question, with the obvious buzzer race on "medicinal use" in the second-to-last sentence. It could've been done better.
Round 2: all fine; round 3: all fine.
Round 4: STD category questions were incredibly easy, only to be followed up by a very hard physical sciences round. Mercury was a pretty fine tossup, but
holy hell was phosphorus/palladium tough or what?
Round 5: fine
Round 6: I thought both of these were fine. Fugacity is decently asked about in regular difficulty. Compressibility factor would probably be "too hard" to ask a high schooler about from a general quizbowl-canon perspective, although if you understand the depth behind fugacity, the ideal gas law and general thermodynamics then you shouldn't have had any trouble with it. That one seemed to be a pretty reasonable "real knowledge" question, just a little tough of an answer line.
Round 7: fine.
I didn't think the transcription category was too tough for a good science player.