Deep Bench at University of Chicago, 10.18-19.02
Results: Northwestern
(#1 Quad: Mike Bisberg, Colby Burnett, Justin Moles, Jan Zasowski)
(#2 Quad: Robert Flaxman, Mike Henninger, Andrew Reinbold, Andy Seputis)
(#1 Singles: Jan Zasowski)
(#2 Singles: Colby Burnett)
(#1 Doubles: Robert Flaxman, Mike Henninger)
(#2 Doubles: Andrew Reinbold, Andy Seputis)
(#3 Doubles: Mike Bisberg, Justin Moles)
Deep Bench is... well, a little weird. At least
it's not your ordinary quiz bowl tournament - as you see above - which is why I kept full
scores for every NU team, unlike my usual. It's too much of a team game for me not
to do that. Basic explanation: 5 points per #1 win, 4 points per #2 win, 3 points
per #3 win - oh, and no bonuses in singles or doubles. We did... well, not all that
great, but with Illinois, Michigan, and Carleton all on hand, what do you want from us?
Favorite Tossup: The Kiribati flag question is close, but I'm
going with Rich Beem because it was such a classic example of how people power questions
all the time (not that there were powers at this tournament). It started something
like "His only other Top Ten finishes were second at the Kemper Open and..." and
I thought "Who's an unknown with big wins this year?" I also thought I
remembered Beem finishing second at Kemper, but that was more tenuous.
Favorite Bonus: The first round of the tournament (for
us, really round three thanks to delicious byes) had the "Canadian islands"
bonus, which is just great. Ellesmere, Manitoulin, Prince Edward... the best part
was how my stone-cold answer of Manitoulin on part two drew an astonished "Wow"
from the moderator. To quote Ray Zalinsky, "God, I love that."
Worst Neg: In typical Flax fashion, I only had two...
Olmec for Toltec is pretty much always completely legit, so I guess it was Versailles for
Adrianople (where treaties are concerned). I guess the Treaty of Versailles wouldn't
have focused so heavily on Russia and Turkey... but they just said "some of its
terms." So I maintain I was pretty good on the whole.
Summer Reading Moment: Getting "Cry, the Beloved
Country" in Round Six... bad book, good buzz.
I Remembered One Thing from Astronomy: Triton, though
I was very close to negging with Charon until the guy on DePauw did it for me.
I Also Remembered One Thing from French Class: The
Bald Soprano (ou La Cantatrice Chauve, bien sur), which, unbelievably, I have
seen a stage performance of.
Packet Mangling: And why not, really. I guess
our packet wasn't hard enough in some places. I was pleased to note that quite a
number of my questions had survived intact - London Underground, Taliesin, The Wonders,
Mark Linn-Baker, Nepal, and three of my four bonuses. By comparison, some questions
I liked - Howard Carter, Isle Royale - were discarded entirely. Others fared even
worse - both of Justin's questions were completely rewritten - though at least they kept
the answers - and Drew's terrific Grecian Urn tossup was discarded, I guess because
another round had a question on the poem in it.
Best Ditching: IIT, apparently, just took off after
lunch on Saturday, having failed to accumulate a single point in ten quad matches and I
guess not wanting to bother with singles and doubles. I can't really blame them -
they were getting killed - but if you're a relatively newbie team (and I'd never
heard of them before last year's CBI) going to a tournament full of veterans, you have to
expect that. Taking off = lame.
Too Bad This Doesn't Count: Due to IIT's departure and
various byes, we ended up playing DePauw in some cases three times per team in the singles
and doubles portion. None of us lost to DePauw in the forfeited rounds that didn't
count - with both #1 and #2 doubles winning twice - but in the actual rounds, only #1
doubles - i.e. me and Mike - was able to beat DePauw. Oddly, we won 95-45 in both
non-counting rounds and then 95-35 in the real game - the score would have been 95-45 had
their player not said ibuprofen for acetaminophen. Weird.
Heard It!: Discussing Trash powers during a break, I
mentioned my David the Gnome 20-pointer (thanks to rollover) at Ann B. Davis last year.
A couple rounds later, it took "his fox Swift" for me to nail it again.
Ludicrous.
Quad Rounds
Round One: BYE
Round Two: BYE
Round Three: #1: Northwestern 160,
IIT 95
Round Three: #2: Northwestern 135,
IIT 20
Round Four: #1: Michigan 260, Northwestern
135
Round Four: #2: Michigan 155, Northwestern
100
Round Five: #1: Illinois 360, Northwestern
45
Round Five: #2: Illinois 355, Northwestern
50
Round Six: #1: DePauw 180, Northwestern 165
Round Six: #2: Northwestern 160,
DePauw 105
Round Seven: #1: Carleton 245, Northwestern
120
Round Seven: #2: Carleton 280, Northwestern
45
Quad Rounds: #1 1-4; #2 2-3; 13 points
Singles Rounds
Round One: BYE
Round Two: BYE
Round Three: #1: Northwestern def. IIT (forfeit)
Round Three: #2: Northwestern def. IIT (forfeit)
Round Four: #1: Michigan 130, Northwestern
10
Round Four: #2: Michigan 95, Northwestern
15
Round Five: #1: Northwestern 80,
Illinois 65
Round Five: #2: Illinois 125, Northwestern
25
Round Six: #1: DePauw 80, Northwestern 50
Round Six: #2: DePauw 80, Northwestern 40
Round Seven: #1: Northwestern 60,
Carleton 15
Round Seven: #2: Carleton 50, Northwestern
45
Singles Rounds: #1 3-2; #2 1-4; 19 points
Doubles Rounds
Round One: BYE
Round Two: BYE
Round Three: #1: Northwestern def. IIT (forfeit)
Round Three: #2: Northwestern def. IIT (forfeit)
Round Three: #3: Northwestern def. IIT (forfeit)
Round Four: #1: Michigan 140, Northwestern
20
Round Four: #2: Michigan 75, Northwestern 5
Round Four: #3: Michigan 55, Northwestern
25
Round Five: #1: Illinois 100, Northwestern
60
Round Five: #2: Illinois 115, Northwestern
50
Round Five: #3: Illinois 130, Northwestern
0
Round Six: #1: Northwestern 95,
DePauw 35
Round Six: #2: DePauw 70, Northwestern 35
Round Six: #3: DePauw 65, Northwestern 30
Round Seven: #1: Carleton 50, Northwestern
45
Round Seven: #2: Northwestern 25, Carleton 5
Round Seven: #3: Carleton 30, Northwestern
10
Doubles Rounds: #1 2-3; #2 2-3; #3 1-4; 21 points
Overall: 12-23, 53 points; 5th place (out of six)
Personal Stats: Questions Answered
No one's asking you to care about it. Powers would be in bold if they were used, neg-5s are in italics with the real answer following. Anything in plain text was just ten.
Quads
Round Three
Olmec (really Toltec)
Zambezi River
CCHA
Barry Goldwater
Adelphia Communications
El Greco
Round Four
And To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street
Kamchatka
Rich Beem
Battle of Puebla
Round Five
Versailles (really Adrianople)
Undercover Brother
Round Six
Animal Farm
Cry, the Beloved Country
Artemis
Charlie Chaplin
Round Seven
Paraguay River
Nikolai Gogol
Quads PPG: 30.0
Doubles
Round Four
Kiribati
Jean Valjean
Gulf of California
Round Five
Tamerlane
David the Gnome
Battle of Hastings
Round Six
The Bald Soprano
1812 Overture
Gustavus Adolphus
Ode on a Grecian Urn
Don Giovanni
Tale of Genji
Sri Lanka
Triton
Round Seven
Cameroon
Kiss of the Spider Woman
Glenn Gould
Doubles PPG: 42.5
Overall PPG: 35.56