The 13th Annual
Elvis Aaron Presley Memorial(?)
Academic Quiz Tournament


The University of Wisconsin College Bowl Group is pleased to announce the 13th Annual Elvis Aaron Presley Memorial (?) Academic Quiz Tournament will be held at Union South, 227 Randall Ave. Madison, Wisconsin on Feb. 4-5, 2000.

The tournament will begin with an informational meeting at 6:30 PM with games beginning at 7 PM on the 4th, and will end around 5pm on the 5th. As customary with the Elvis, we will be running round robin (or modified round robin, depending on the number of teams) with a single elimination playoff for the top four teams. PLEASE BE ON TIME: TEAMS MORE THAN 10 MINUTES LATE FOR GAMES WILL BE GIVEN FORFEITS.

Each school may register 2 teams immediately, and may place a third team on a space-available waitlist. The tournament is capped at 18 entries. Eligibility will follow CBI rules except that we will permit up to two grad students per team.

Fees will be $100 base fee per team.

Deductions/Penalties:
Unacceptable packet: +$10
WORKING buzzer system: -$10
Game official: -$20 (plus the official gets a free swanky souvenir t-shirt; let us know sizes in advance).
Packet submitted by 1/10/00: -$30
Packet submitted by 1/20/00: -$15
Packet submitted after 1/30/00: +$15/day after 1/30/00

Teams on the wait list may submit a packet early to receive the appropriate discount, but will *not* be penalized for submitting packets after 1/31/00.

All packets become the property of UW College Bowl Group upon submission. As always, participants get a complimentary copy of the questions after the tournament.

Rules will generally follow CBI format, except that games will not be timed. This includes the recognition rules. Other modifications may be announced at the informational meeting.

Packet Guidelines:
Submitted packets must consist of 27 tossups and 27 boni, as described below. Tossups are worth 10 points, and boni have multiple opportunities for points, with a total of 20, 25, or 30 points available. In these guidelines, "question" refers to "tossup or bonus". For example, out of the eight required history tossups, four must be pre-20th century.

Please note that there is a required FUN question. At least one question--tossup or bonus, though boni tend to work best--must fall into the category of "FUN" as well as meeting the below criteria. Please use your imagination to make the Fun Question as interesting and bizarre as possible. This is not an invitation to write a trash packet, but to make each game have something truly out of the ordinary. Examples of past Fun Questions include having sick, twisted and disgusting subject matter (though not pornographic), strange scoring, physical activities, charades, $100,000 Pyramid, and the like; be creative!! You may (and are encouraged) to have more than one FUN question in your packet. You need not identify which is the Fun Question---if it's not obvious, it's not fun enough. The goal is to make the teams (or at least the team that didn't get the question!) and moderators laugh. If you find the Fun requirement unacceptable, please don't come to our tournament. Speaking of fun, we may well repeat last year's pie-eating contest, though again probably not for points in the games. If you have interest in this, please let me know (and express any flavor preferences). Pies will be provided by the famous Norske Nook in Osseo, Wisconsin.

SCIENCE (4/4):
At least one tossup and one bonus each in Physics, Biology, and Chemistry.
At least one question outside these fields.

HISTORY (4/4):
At least four questions pre-20th century (one before AD 500).
At least one non-Western history question.
Maximum four American history question.
Maximum one per country outside the US.
Maximum one per war.

LITERATURE (4/4):
At least one question each on: Drama, Poetry, Ancient Literature, Non-Western Literature.

FINE ARTS (3/3):
At least one tossup and one bonus each on: Music, Painting.
At least one question on other arts.
Maximum three painting questions, two Renaissance questions.
Does not include film or jazz.

POPULAR CULTURE/SPORTS (2/2):
Maximum two sports questions, one per sport.
Maximum two questions in any other area (Movies, Television, etc.).
Film and jazz questions may be included here or under Miscellaneous.

RELIGION/MYTHOLOGY/PHILOSOPHY (2/2):
One tossup and one bonus each in Religion (different religions); One question each in Mythology, and Philosophy.

CURRENT EVENTS (2/2):
Newsworthy events since January 1, 1998. Does not include sports.

GEOGRAPHY (2/2):
At least one question on each of Physical Geography, Political Geography.

SOCIAL SCIENCES (1/1):
At least one question on Economics, Psychology, Law, or Sociology.

GENERAL KNOWLEDGE/MISCELLANEOUS (3/3):
Anything not included above (foreign languages, etc.). Includes multi-disciplinary questions. Creativity is encouraged. Also, extra questions in the above categories (e.g., jazz/film) can be included here.

**** GENERAL RULES:

TOSSUPS:
1. No spelling tossups.
2. No "FAQTP..." tossups.
3. Tossups must NOT exceed 500 characters, *including* answers.
4. In general, nearly all of tossups should be answerable by at least one player in any room if read the tossups are read in their entirety.

BONI:
1. Four-, five-, or six- part boni should be kept short. A "part" refers to a moderator prompt.
2. No one-part, all-or-nothing boni.
3. No boni with more than six short answers required in any combination. (i.e. FTP name the three.....; FTP name the four....; and FTP name any five of the 12.....)
4. Multiple-choice questions must have at least four possible answers (bovine, Russian aircraft manufacturer, both, or neither).
5. Boni must NOT exceed 900 characters, *including* answers.
6. Do NOT place all answers at the end of a question.
7. No more than one 30-20-10 per category.
8. In general, 20-point boni should be shorter and easier than 30-point boni.
9. Good teams should convert 50-60% of their bonus points, and well over half of all teams hearing any bonus should earn some points.

TOSSUPS AND BONI:
1. Use _underscoring_ (rather than capitalization or underlining) to indicate minimally-acceptable answers.
2. Provide pronunciations for difficult/unusual words. If you use a formula of some kind in a question or answer, include a description of how the formula should be read out loud.
3. Please randomize the questions so that all questions of one category are not clumped together; also avoid tossup-bonus pairings on the same category.
4. No self-referential questions, including ones where the packet-writer's school is the answer (i.e., University of Chicago doesn't get to write about economists.... ;) ).

Send packets to Mark Zimmer, 6 Della Ct. Madison WI 53714; if you send hard copy please also send a diskette (NO MAC!!) of the questions in PC format (NO MAC!!!). Questions may also be emailed to mzimmer@mailbag.com; you can either send it as part of an email message (discouraged) or as an attachment in .wpd (preferred), .rtf or .doc format. DO NOT USE TABS OR FORMATTING OF ANY KIND IN YOUR PACKET SINCE IT JUST INCREASES THE STUPID LABOR AT THE EXPENSE OF PROPER EDITING!!! If you use any non-standard characters, *please* include a description of what that character should look like.

ACCEPTABILITY OF PACKETS:
In order for a packet to be considered acceptable, at least 24 tossups and 24 boni must meet the guidelines above. The following will render a question unacceptable:
-Questions that exceed length restrictions.
-Questions that exceed subject guidelines (e.g., three hockey Qs -> only one counts towards the 24/24).
-Poorly-written questions, or "hose" questions, intentional or not.
-Questions that contain major factual errors.

Minor typos and repeats between packets, however, do NOT count against a packet. If a packet is returned for editing, a $10 penalty will be assessed.

Registering:
Send all registration requests to the tournament director, Mark Zimmer (mzimmer@mailbag.com). Each school should register all teams at one time, but additions may be made later. In your registration please include:
*School name, and number of teams. If you know your team names now, you can include them
*Number of buzzers and officials you plan to bring. This is not absolutely binding, but would be helpful. Remember to list t-shirt sizes for the officials.
*A contact (name and email) for each team.
*If any players want t-shirts, the deadline for ordering is 1/15/00. Every year we get people wishing they had ordered one, since we seldom have any extras to sell, so get your order in now. This year's shirt will be another rendition of the infamous "I was a Hunka Hunka Burning Love at the 13th Annual, etc." so be sure to order several.

Hotels:
A limited number of hotel rooms are available at Union South for Feb. 4. Please make a reservation directly with Tim Howe at the Union at (608)263-2600.

Questions/Comments:
Send them to Mark Zimmer (mzimmer@mailbag.com)

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