CANCEL BOWL 7:

You Will Find True Love on (or a Week After) Bastille Day

Yup, time for another one.

I. LOGISTICS

Cancel Bowl 7 will be held at the Wentworth Institute of Technology, located at 550 Huntington Avenue in Boston. Directions to Wentworth can be found here. Unlike BU, parking at Wentworth is not free on the weekends (we have Saturday classes as part of our continuing education program), so I would suggest using the T. Wentworth is located diagonally across the street from the Museum of Fine Arts stop on the Green Line’s E branch.

The opening meeting will take place in room 206 of Wentworth Hall.  You should be sure TO ARRIVE BY 9 AM!  Game play will begin by 9:30, sooner if you all show up on time for once. I would prefer to start by 9:15. We should be wrapped by 6 at the latest.

II. TOURNAMENT PLAY

We'll play some sort of round robin, depending on the number of teams and packs. We’re also happy to accommodate free agents, either to fill out teams or form new ones.

20 question games, as usual. Teams will get one lame (and save) per game (if you don't know what that means, email me. No other special rules, as I’ve decided to forego the NBA Jams rules this time around.

Standings will be an old fave, modified NASL. You get 3 points for a win, 1 for a tie, and a half a point for every 50 points you score in each game. For example, if a game ends 285-120, the winning team would get 5.5 points (3 for a win and 2.5 for scoring 285 points in the game), while the losing team would get one point for its score.

III. STAFFING

It's a guerilla style tournament, so you'll be staffing on your bye. If this is a problem, let me know ASAP. This sort of set up really doesn't work otherwise.

IV. LUNCH

OK, being in a new part of town means that we’ve got some different options. Our dining area on campus should be open, and while it is convenient it’s expensive for what it is. You’re welcome to eat there, of course.

Going back down Huntington Avenue towards downtown you have the University House of Pizza (which is closest and OK), and by Northeastern you have a Qdoba, Au Bon Pain, and Boloco. There’s also a variety of fast foody stuff in the Northeastern student union, but no guarantees on what will be open.

You could also venture further up Huntington, but I’ll be honest, I don’t know much of what’s available up there. There is a pizza place by the Longwood T stop, a Friday’s at Brigham Circle, and from what I hear a pretty good pub in The Squealing Pig. I don’t know that I’d recommend going to a sit-down place at lunch, though.

IV. PACKS

As there is no pack swap arranged at this time, any team/individual playing in this thing is going to have to write a pack.

We are also soliciting freelance packs, with the writers thereof getting a full set of packs in return. If you’d like to do this, please email me (cancelbowl@yahoo.com) as soon as possible!

Your pack should follow the following distribution, for both TUs and bonuses:

Sports, movies, music, and TV should get 3-4 questions each.
Lit should get 2 questions.
Toys and games, food and drink, consumer products/company history, non-game computer stuff, wacky current events, advertising, multidisciplinary questions, and miscellaneous trashy goodness should get 1-2 questions each.

Condition française spéciale! As this event is taking place on Bastille Day, there is now a 1/1 requirement for something French. It doesn’t have to take the place of any existing required question, just that one of your tossups and one bonus should have something Francophonic about it. This should be read very loosely; Paris Hilton would count thanks to her first name. That being said, please don’t write questions on Paris Hilton. I think we’ve all had enough of her for one summer.

You should have at least 24/24, in order to compensate for possible repeats and lames.  Some general guidelines:

1. Questions, both overall and in categories where there are multiple questions, should cover a fair spread of time. They should not focus on one time period.

2. In categories with multiple questions, you should also vary the topics.  For example, you shouldn't ask more than one question on the same movie, TV show, or musical group.  Don't ask more than 2 questions on the same sport, and if you do ask two questions make sure they're about different eras and, if possible, levels of competition (for example, a question on pro football from 2006 and a college football question from, say, the 1990s.).

3. Lit questions should cover the wide variety of printed material out there - books, magazines, comic books, comic strips, etc.  Electronic publications aren't literature, but physical books from electronic publications would be literature.  Similar care should be taken here to provide a variety of eras, genres, and authors.

4. Try to keep questions reasonably short.  This is kind of the pot calling the kettle black given my tendency towards verbosity, but I'll keep it short if you do.  Riffing on Mike Burger's length requirements (and possibly copying them wholesale), tossups should be around 5.5 lines of 12 point type (in a standard-type font).  Bonuses should have lead-ins and parts no longer than 1.5 to 2 lines each.

V. SIGNING UP

If you are interested in participating, please contact me. In your email, please note:

1. Who you are

2. If you have a team or are a free agent

3. If you can bring buzzers

If there are other questions or requests, feel free to make those, too.  Better to hear them now than 2 days before the tournament.

Thanks.  Register early and often!