ACF Winter 2025 at Claremont Buzzpoints

ACF Winter 2025 at Claremont

Earliest 100 buzzes for each player

Akshay Seetharam ↩

[after 17% of the tossup] Composer and genre required. The slow introduction of the first of these pieces opens with a cadence into the subdominant and only reaches the tonic in bar 4. A 3/4 fast movement in one of these pieces uses an oboe theme of [read slowly] seven B-flat quarter notes followed by an eighth-note descent from C to F. The recapitulation in one of these pieces is anticipated by a horn call that creates dissonance with the strings. A flute, oboe, and two clarinets imitate bird calls in a movement of one of these pieces titled “Scene by the brook.” The composer had to be turned to face the audience’s applause at the performance of the last of these pieces, which includes a setting of “Ode to Joy.” For 10 points, name these orchestral works that include ones nicknamed “Eroica” and “Choral.”
ANSWER: symphonies by Ludwig van Beethoven [prompt on symphonies by asking “by who?”; prompt on works by Ludwig van Beethoven by asking “in what genre?”]
[after 17% of the tossup] An actor portraying this character has a heart attack after reciting this character’s line “a wren goes to ’t” in the opening scene of Station Eleven. After this character dies, one character remarks that “I have a journey, sir; shortly to go. [This character] calls me. I must not say no,” implying that he will kill himself. This character mourns another character, crying, “Why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life / And thou no breath at all?” This character claims that he is a “man more sinned against than sinning” during a scene that begins with him saying “blow, winds, and crack your cheeks!” during a storm where he is followed by his fool and a bastard son disguised as Tom O’Bedlam. For 10 points, name this titular king of a Shakespeare play who disinherits Cordelia after she refuses to flatter him.
ANSWER: King Lear
[after 17% of the tossup] René Leibowitz cited a piece by this composer that begins with the spoken line “I cannot remember everything. I must have been unconscious” as an example of music that meets the requirements of “committed art.” This composer’s early use of quartal harmony can be heard in an ascending theme first played by the horn in his first Chamber Symphony. This composer began using an athematic style in his Opus 11 Drei Klavierstücke (“DRY klah-vee-AIR-shtuck-uh”), and he also wrote A Survivor from Warsaw. The title character is called “drunk” in the opening section of a song cycle by this composer that is accompanied by a namesake ensemble and pioneered the technique of Sprechstimme. For 10 points, name this Austrian composer of Pierrot Lunaire who developed 12-tone serialism.
ANSWER: Arnold Schoenberg
[after 25% of the tossup] This modern-day country was the southernmost territory subject to an 1890 ordinance that banned secret societies such as the Ghee Hin. Race riots spilled over into this country from a larger neighbor on May 13, 1969, in response to a general election. This country’s CMIO model has been in use since its first census in 1824, assigning each resident to one of four racial categories. To discourage the use of a local creole whose name is a portmanteau of this country’s name and English, this country launched the Speak Good English Movement in 2000. Since this country’s 1819 founding as a trading post by Stamford Raffles, its indigenous population has become outnumbered by Tamil and Chinese migrants. For 10 points, name this island country that was briefly part of Malaysia.
ANSWER: Singapore [or Republic of Singapore; or Republik Singapura; or Xīnjiāpō Gònghéguó; or Ciṅkappūr Kuṭiyaracu] (The creole is Singlish.)
[after 38% of the tossup] This operation’s output is estimated by simulating trajectories in the REINFORCE algorithm, one of a class of methods named for “policy” and this operation. Pseudo-residuals are fit using “weak learners” such as decision trees in a method contrasted with random forests named for this operation’s “boosting.” Since the sigmoid activation function saturates at extreme values, it is susceptible to a problem in which this operation “vanishes.” The negative learning rate scales the result of this operation applied to the loss associated with a single data point in the update step of a stochastic algorithm named for this operation. An optimization algorithm that takes steps in the opposite direction to this operation is named for this operation’s “descent.” For 10 points, name this operation that outputs a vector of partial derivatives.
ANSWER: gradient [accept policy gradient; accept gradient boosting or gradient-boosted trees; accept vanishing gradient; accept gradient descent or stochastic gradient descent; prompt on del or nabla; prompt on partial derivative until read]
[after 39% of the tossup] A piece by this composer repeatedly begins phrases with the descending notes [read slowly] pickup F, E, D, A, F. The left hand plays a loud octave G to open the rondo finale of a piano sonata by this composer whose first movement’s first subject is interrupted by an ominous low G-flat trill. This composer wrote a work with a notoriously difficult piano part whose right hand plays repeated octave G’s while the left hand ascends in octaves up a G minor scale to E-flat. This composer used a repeated open fifth in the accompaniment of one work to represent a hurdy-gurdy player. A song by this composer sets a poem by Goethe in which a supernatural creature terrorizes a boy on horseback. For 10 points, name this Austrian composer of Winterreise and Der Erlkönig.
ANSWER: Franz Schubert [or Franz Peter Schubert]
[after 39% of the tossup] Algebraic varieties named for this shape are subject to the orbit–cone correspondence and can be constructed from fans. For knots named for this shape, “x-to-the-p equals y-to-the-q” is a relation of the knot group. “R-squared” quotient “Z-squared” is isomorphic to this surface, which has “Z-cross-Z” as its fundamental group. This surface can be obtained by gluing each pair of opposite edges of the unit square in the same direction. This orientable surface with Euler characteristic zero is the Cartesian product of two circles. Depending on orientation, either a Klein bottle or this genus-one surface is formed by joining the circular ends of a cylinder. For 10 points, the surface of a coffee cup is topologically equivalent to what single-holed surface shaped like a doughnut?
ANSWER: torus [or 2-torus; accept toric varieties; accept torus knots]
[after 44% of the tossup] A coordinate-free definition of this operation relies on the top exterior power defining a one-dimensional space. SL(n) (“S-L-N”) is the kernel of a homomorphism defined by this operation from GL(n) (“G-L-N”) to the non-zero reals under multiplication. Unusually, this operation is only introduced towards the end of a textbook by Sheldon Axler called Linear Algebra Done Right, which defines this operation as the unique alternating multilinear form up to scaling. The output of this operation equals the constant term of the characteristic polynomial. The general linear group excludes matrices which output zero under this operation since they are non-invertible. For 10 points, name this operation that, for a two-by-two matrix, equals “a d minus b c.”
ANSWER: determinant [or det]
[after 45% of the tossup] A man with this first name sent false eviction notices that were unsuccessfully fought by Lillian Edelstein and the group ETNA. A writer and an editor both with this first name are subjects of Lizzie Gottlieb’s documentary Turn Every Page. A man with this first name wrote the Pulitzer-winning book Master of the Senate, part of the ongoing biography The Years of Lyndon Johnson. That writer with this first name detailed “one mile” built by another man with this first name across the poor East Tremont neighborhood in The Power Broker. Fiorello La Guardia appointed a man with this first name as the inaugural New York City Parks Commissioner, where he feuded with Jane Jacobs. For 10 points, what first name is shared by biographer Caro and urban planner Moses?
ANSWER: Robert [accept Robert Moses; accept Robert Caro; accept Robert Gottlieb] (ETNA was the East Tremont Neighborhood Association.)
[after 47% of the tossup] A bourrée anglaise concludes J. S. Bach’s solo partita for this instrument, for which his son C. P. E. Bach also wrote a solo sonata in A minor. In the Berlin Philharmonic, Emmanuel Pahud plays this instrument. Mozart wrote four quartets for this instrument accompanied by strings, and a concerto for this instrument and harp. Francis Poulenc’s (“fron-SEESE poo-LANK’s”) sonata for this instrument begins with it playing a descending E minor broken chord. Edgar Varèse wrote Density 21.5 for a player of this instrument. A solo for this instrument marked très modéré descends chromatically from C-sharp to G to open Debussy’s Prélude à l’apres-midi d’un faune. For 10 points, name this reedless woodwind instrument.
ANSWER: flute [or flauto traverso; or transverse flute; reject “flauto dolce”]
[after 50% of the tossup] This food names a “Curtain” dividing the affluent Hampshire County from Hampden County in western Massachusetts. A 1975 book by William Shurtleff and Akiko Aoyagi popularized this food in the West. Newly-released prisoners eat this food in a South Korean custom. Low-quality building projects are derisively called “dregs” of this food in China. British Home Secretary Suella Braverman decried Just Stop Oil protesters as “wokerati” who read the Guardian and eat this food. This food, which titles a parody of Super Meat Boy by PETA, is used in “pock-marked old woman” and “stinky” dishes. Coagulation in making this food results in varieties called “firm” or “silken.” For 10 points, name this block-shaped food made from fermented soybeans.
ANSWER: tofu [or bean curd; or dòufu; or dubu; or tubu; accept Super Tofu Boy; accept tofu-dreg projects, dòufuzhā gōngchéng, tofu projects, or tofu buildings; accept Tofu Curtain; accept mápó tofu; accept stinky tofu or chòu dòufu; prompt on soy or soybeans]
[after 52% of the tossup] The “kinetic” form of this quantity names a type of detector that can count photons and derives from the motion of Cooper pairs in superconductors. This quantity times angular frequency equals a form of reactance. Voltage equals this quantity times the time derivative of current in an alternate form of Faraday’s law, since this quantity is defined as the derivative of magnetic flux with respect to current. Since this quantity is linearly proportional to permeability, it can be increased by a conducting core. One over the square root of this quantity times capacitance equals the resonant frequency of an oscillating circuit. This quantity measures the strength of coiled circuit components that store energy in magnetic fields. For 10 points, name this quantity symbolized L and measured in henries.
ANSWER: inductance [accept kinetic inductance detector; prompt on L until read]
[after 52% of the tossup] A character who opposes two of these people quarrels with his son over the girl Emma in an opera that was left with unfinished orchestration. In an opera, one of these people chooses Marfa as his bride, but she goes insane after being poisoned at their engagement party. The orchestra imitates the sound of bells at the start of a scene in which a crowd chants “Glory!” in an opera about one of these people who hallucinates a murdered child. An 1836 opera titled for one of these people features a scene in which the Polish army is led into a blizzard and was followed by its composer’s opera Ruslan and Lyudmila. That opera by Mikhail Glinka is titled A Life for [one of these people]. For 10 points, what kind of person is the main character of Modest Mussorgsky’s opera Boris Godunov?
ANSWER: tsars [accept A Life for the Tsar or Zhizn’ za tsarya; accept The Tsar’s Bride or Tsarskaya Nevesta; prompt on Russian king or Russian emperor] (The first line refers to Khovanshchina.)
[after 56% of the tossup] The biography Camera Girl recounts how this woman worked at Vogue for one day and covered Elizabeth II’s coronation as a reporter for the Times-Herald newspaper. Conflicting testimonies exist over whether this woman was proposed to at a booth in Martin’s Tavern in D.C. or the Omni Parker House in Boston. This woman’s successor renamed the East Garden in her honor, since she redesigned it along with the Rose Garden. This woman prematurely birthed her youngest son Patrick on the 20th anniversary of her husband’s rescue in the PT-109 incident. This First Lady compared her household to Camelot and later remarried the Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis. For 10 points, name this person who served as First Lady before her husband’s 1963 assassination.
ANSWER: Jacqueline Kennedy [or Jackie Kennedy; or Jacqueline Bouvier; or Jackie Bouvier; or Jacqueline Onassis; or Jackie Onassis; prompt on Kennedy or J. Kennedy; prompt on Onassis until read]
[after 57% of the tossup] Gladys del Estal was killed protesting a facility of this type that ETA bombed several times in Lemóniz, Spain. Pierre Messemer’s namesake plan provided for the production of 170 facilities of this type. Rebecca Harms commissioned the TORCH Report to investigate a facility of this type. A facility of this type in Isar was shut down in April 2023, following a decades-long phase-out by the German government that received widespread criticism after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Anatoly Dyatlov was imprisoned for his actions at a site of this type during an event that formed the Red Forest. After that event, a massive concrete sarcophagus was built to surround that facility in Pripyat. For 10 points, European facilities of what type include Chernobyl?
ANSWER: nuclear power plants [or nuclear power stations; accept nuclear reactors; prompt on power plants or power stations]
[after 59% of the tossup] Eliminating this substance is the goal of the DGP braneworld model. So-called “phantom” forms of this substance are an extreme case of hypothetical quintessence models. An equation of state of pressure equal to negative density characterizes this substance, whose density remains constant as space expands. An era dominated by this substance began roughly 4 billion years ago, when the expansion of the universe began to accelerate. This substance is represented by a quantity that Einstein called his “biggest blunder” when adding it to his field equations, known as the cosmological constant. For 10 points, name this mysterious substance that accounts for over 70 percent of the universe, along with matter and dark matter.
ANSWER: dark energy [prompt on lambda or cosmological constant until read by asking “what substance does that quantity represent?”]
[after 61% of the tossup] Generalized BEP relations can be used to predict this quantity on metallic surfaces calculated via Marcus theory. Frustrated Lewis pairs have higher values of this quantity due to steric hindrance. This quantity is divided by R in a plot of one-over-T against the natural logarithm of k. The high value of this quantity in the Haber process is due to the nitrogen triple bond. This quantity is divided by RT in the exponential of the Arrhenius equation. This quantity is determined from the difference between the transition state and reactants on a reaction coordinate diagram and can be lowered by catalysts. For 10 points, identify this quantity denoted E-sub-a, the minimum energy required for a reaction to occur.
ANSWER: activation energy [accept E-sub-a until read; prompt on energy until read; prompt on E until read]
[after 61% of the tossup] In the writings of Wallace Fard, one of these places is identified with the city of Allah’s residence and the origin of the “Mother Plane,” which he claimed to be the Biblical merkāvā, God’s chariot. After being kidnapped under the pretext of tax audits, thetans were sent to one of these locations called Teegeeack (“TEE-jee-ack”). According to the Book of Abraham, Methuselah helped to discover one of these places called Kolob which is “closest to the throne of God.” The LDS church strenuously denies the popular belief that these places will be each Mormon’s heavenly reward for following the “straight and narrow” way to the Celestial Kingdom. For 10 points, name these celestial bodies from which extraterrestrials are often claimed to come as ambassadors to humanity.
ANSWER: planets [accept exoplanets; accept Earths until “Abraham” is read; prompt on Unidentified Flying Objects or UFOs until “Abraham” is read; prompt on volcanoes until “Abraham” is read by asking “on what larger type of place could the volcanoes be found?”]
[after 62% of the tossup] Timothy Jackson asserted that the outline of this symphony’s slow woodwind opening, which rises from E to G, then F-sharp to A, represents a cruciform. The last movement of this symphony uses a composite melody in the violins of [read slowly] long F-sharp, E, D, dotted C-sharp, B, C-sharp, while the third movement is simultaneously in 4/4 and 12/8. Traditionally, the audience claps between the third and fourth movements of this symphony. This B minor symphony was conducted by its composer less than a month before his death, possibly from cholera. This symphony’s allegro con grazia second movement is a 5/4 “limping waltz.” For 10 points, name this final symphony by the composer of the 1812 Overture.
ANSWER: Pathétique Symphony [or Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6]
[after 63% of the tossup] One disease affecting these structures is X-chromosome linked to mutations in the DKC1 gene and may require bone marrow transplants. Dyskerin helps to stabilize a catalytic complex that acts on this structure. Deficiencies in maintaining these structures, which are measured by the Q-FISH technique, are a major risk factor for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. Cajal bodies may serve to recruit RNA structures that act on these structures. The Hayflick limit is based on the length of these structures that can be extended by TERT. Shortened examples of these structures that lose their shelterin cap can trigger senescence, and these structures consist of repeating TTAGGG motifs. For 10 points, what DNA sequences protect the ends of chromosomes?
ANSWER: telomeres
[after 64% of the tossup] This ruler was a brother of a prince who wrote a treatise comparing two religions called The Mingling of the Two Oceans. It was not Timur, but following the Battle of Chamkaur, this ruler was the target of a Zafarnāma proclaiming spiritual victory. Farmans issued by this ruler banned syncretic customs such as Nowruz and jharokha darshan. After winning a civil war, this ruler accused his brother Dara Shikoh of heresy and executed him. For allegedly attempting to prevent the forced conversion of Hindus in Kashmir, this ruler executed Sikh Guru Tegh Bahadur. This ruler issued a compendium of Hanafi jurisprudence called Fatawa-e-Alamgiri and reinstated the jizya tax on non-Muslims. For 10 points, name this sixth Mughal emperor and successor of Shah Jahan, who undid most of Akbar’s policy of religious tolerance.
ANSWER: Aurangzeb [or Abul Muzaffar Muhy-ud-Din Muhammad Aurangzeb Alamgir; accept Alamgir I until “Fatawa-e-Alamgiri” is read]
[after 65% of the tossup] A former leader of this country earned the nickname “Teflon” for serving four consecutive terms in government despite scandals like one where parents were falsely accused of childcare benefit fraud. A political party formed after protests against this county’s nitrogen pollution policy, called BBB, became the largest party in this country’s Senate after its 2023 elections. A politician in this country was fined for hate speech after leading a chant of “fewer, fewer Moroccans.” Before becoming Secretary-General of NATO, Mark Rutte served as this county’s prime minister. This country’s October 2025 general elections were narrowly won by the centrist D66 party and saw Geert Wilders’s PVV lose ground. For 10 points, name this northern European nation whose capital is Amsterdam.
ANSWER: Netherlands [or Nederland; or Kingdom of the Netherlands; prompt on Holland]
[after 65% of the tossup] The son of a Lebanese businessman claims that he is adapting a novel by this author for theatre to hide his relationship with Nick Guest in Alan Hollinghurst’s novel The Line of Beauty. A novel by this author ends with the woman’s rights orator Verena Tarrant being carried out of a hall with tears, “not the last she was destined to shed,” in her eyes. The protagonist of a novel by this author first meets her aunt Lydia in the library of her grandmother’s house in Albany. Pansy is revealed to be the daughter of Madame Merle in a novel by this author in which the protagonist rejects the proposals of Lord Warburton and Caspar Goodwood before marrying Gilbert Osmond in Rome. For 10 points, name this author of The Bostonians who also created Isabel Archer in The Portrait of a Lady.
ANSWER: Henry James
[after 67% of the tossup] A woman in this text sleeps for the entirety of her brother-in-law’s exile so that her husband could be awake the entire time instead. This text’s author was legendarily inspired to write it after the sage Narada had him chant the name of its dedicatee to turn away from his sinful life as the bandit Ratnakar. The king of the bears, Jambavan, reminds a figure in this text who was divinely fathered by a wind god that he has the strength to reach an enemy kingdom by jumping over an ocean. The title figure of this older of the two itihasas slays a ten-headed demon before returning home and inheriting his title as king of Ayodhya. For 10 points, name this Hindu epic in which Sita, the wife of the title blue-skinned deity, is kidnapped by Ravana.
ANSWER: Ramayana (The first line refers to Urmila, the wife of Lakshmana and sister-in-law of Rama.)
[after 68% of the tossup] During a conflict with this tribe, a military court at Fort St. Marks controversially found two British merchants guilty of arms dealing. This tribe’s twenty-year agreement with territorial governor William Pope Duval was broken in less than ten years by another leader, who executed Arbuthnot and Ambrister for spying for these people. A group of this tribe settled in Coahuila, Mexico, under John Horse and Wild Cat, and Andros Island in the Bahamas was settled by this tribe’s “Black” descendants. The Treaty of Moultrie Creek signed by this tribe was superseded by the Treaty of Payne’s Landing. A false white flag operation captured this tribe’s Chief Osceola. For 10 points, name this Florida-based tribe that fought several 19th-century wars against the US.
ANSWER: Seminoles [or Yat’siminoli]
[after 68% of the tossup] Anicia Juliana commissioned a copy of a work for people in this profession that is named for Vienna. Jakob Böhme revived a practice that these people used called the doctrine of signatures. A bench with a lever-based traction system is often named for a member of this profession. Dioscorides’ teachings in this profession were kept in the House of Wisdom, where they would later influence Rhazes. Jacques Dubois (“doo-BWAH”) publicly challenged his former student, Andreas Vesalius, to disprove theories used by people in this profession that were originally developed by Galen. Ancient members of this profession may have attempted to balance out the Four Humors. For 10 points, a modern-day oath is named after members of what ancient profession that included Hippocrates?
ANSWER: doctors [accept surgeons; accept healers; accept equivalents like medical professionals]
[after 72% of the tossup] XPS analysis of this element must be careful not to confuse it with a similar binding energy peak from zinc. Sodium, oxygen, and this element make up Graham’s salt. The Gutmann–Beckett method uses NMR spectroscopy of this element’s 31 isotope. A triphenyl derivative of this element is found in Vaska’s complex and can also be used to create ylides (“ILL-ids”) in the Wittig reaction. Oxygen and this element can form anions designated as ortho or pyro, and also forms a triprotic acid. Alongside nitrogen and potassium, fertilizers report the content of this element. For 10 points, name this element with red and white varieties used to light matches.
ANSWER: phosphorus [or P; accept phosphates]
[after 73% of the tossup] A photograph taken during this war depicts an opera singer in silhouette raising her arms during an aria from Madame Butterfly. A photograph from this war shows a woman taking a bath with her muddy boots on the bathmat, and was taken by David Scherman. A large crowd walks down a street in a photograph from this war centered around a shaved woman holding a baby. A darkroom accident destroyed most of the photographs Robert Capa took during one battle in this war, which became the series The Magnificent Eleven. Lee Miller took photographs for Vogue during this war. In a photograph from this war, a group of six soldiers on Mount Suribachi hold onto a flagpole. For 10 points, name this war in which Joe Rosenthal took Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima.
ANSWER: World War II [or WWII; or Second World War]
[after 73% of the tossup] A group of hymns in this text begin with a mahala symbol, which may either mean “woman” or “place of alighting.” Three repetitions of a hymn whose name means “that door” occur in this text, including one which provides the only vocatives in its Japujī section. Over 100 hymns in this text were written by the 13th-century mystic sheikh Bābā Farīd (“fuh-REED”). A rumalla cloth covers this text when closed; while it is read, this text is fanned with a yak-hair chauri. This text’s opening line, called the Mūl Mantar (“MOOL MUN-ter”), contains the monotheistic statement “Ik Onkar.” After a 1708 declaration at Naded, this text took on an eternal spiritual role, succeeding Gobind Singh. For 10 points, name this holy book that serves as Sikhism’s eternal Guru.
ANSWER: Gurū Granth Sāhib [accept Śrī Gurū Granth Sāhib Jī; accept Ādī Granth or Ādī Śrī Granth Sāhib Jī]
[after 75% of the tossup] Most languages fulfill Optimality Theory’s HNuc (“H-nuke”) constraint by making these constructs obligatory, unlike Czech and Tashelhiyt (“ta-shill-HEET”) Berber. Back mutation in Old English is an example of the “breaking” of these constructs. In one Salishan language, the phrase “then he had in his possession a bunchberry plant” entirely lacks these constructs. Unlike standard Italian’s seven, Sardinian only distinguishes five of these constructs’ qualities. The transition from Middle to Early Modern English brought about a “Great” shift of these constructs. Two of these constructs are undergoing the “cot–caught” merger in American English. For 10 points, name these linguistic sounds contrasted with consonants.
ANSWER: vowels [accept vocoids; accept vowel breaking; prompt on phonemes]
[after 76% of the tossup] After he was photographed giving three protesters the middle finger, this politician’s gesture was mocked as the “Salmon Arm salute.” A partial nationalization of this politician’s country’s oil industry in the National Energy Program was strongly opposed by Peter Lougheed. During an event that resulted in the conviction of Paul Rose, this politician was urged to the military to intervene by Robert Bourassa. During that event that was moderated by Robert Lemieux (“lum-YUH”), this person said “just watch me,” when asked how far he would go to implement the War Measures Act in response to the kidnapping of James Cross and Pierre Laporte. For 10 points, the October Crisis occurred during the tenure of what Canadian Prime Minister of the 1970s?
ANSWER: Pierre Elliott Trudeau [prompt on Trudeau]
[after 76% of the tossup] Rising acciaccaturas (“ah-CHAH-ka-TOOR-ahs”) representing a gnome introduce a “concert” piece in this genre that is paired with one titled “Forest Murmurs.” Alexander Scriabin’s Opus 8 collection of pieces in this genre ends with an extremely virtuosic one in D-sharp minor marked patetico. Sergei Lyapunov wrote a set of pieces in this genre, “completing” an earlier set that includes one inspired by the story of a cossack tied to a horse that begins with arpeggiated diminished chords. High D-sharps are heard throughout a piece in this genre based on the last movement of Paganini’s second violin concerto called “La Campanella.” For 10 points, Franz Liszt (“list”) composed a set of “Transcendental” pieces in which genre that usually focuses on improving specific aspects of technique?
ANSWER: études [or studies; accept Transcendental Études or Transcendental Studies or Études d’exécution transcendante d’après Paganini or Transcendental Etudes after Paganini or Zwei Concertetüden or Two Concert-Studies]
[after 79% of the tossup] As exposed by Francis Fletcher-Vane, an activist known as “Skeffy” was summarily executed during this event in the Portobello Barracks. The phrase that one country “unfree shall never be at peace” was coined prior to this event during the funeral of Jeremiah Rossa. Rumors of imminent arrests were described in the forged “Castle Document” by Joseph Plunkett prior to this event. The SS Aud failed to supply arms to this event, despite negotiations by Roger Casement. During this event, a document proclaiming a republic was read on the steps of the General Post Office by Patrick Pearse. Éamon de Valera (“EH-min day vuh-LAY-ruh”) was elected to lead Sinn Féin (“shin fayn”) following this event. For 10 points, what 1916 Irish rebellion against British rule is named for a Christian holiday?
ANSWER: Easter Rising [or Easter Rebellion]
[after 82% of the tossup] In the multiple parameter case, this distribution is the limit of a statistic that sandwiches an “I inverse” term between two “theta-hat minus theta-zero” terms called the Wald statistic. In a theorem about convergence to this distribution, one parameter equals the difference in dimension between the full parameter space and the space associated with the null hypothesis. Twice the log-likelihood ratio converges to this distribution by Wilks’ theorem. The formula “rows minus one times columns minus one” gives the value of a parameter when computing a test statistic converging to this distribution, which sums values of “observed minus expected squared, all over expected” for each entry in a contingency table. For 10 points, what distribution names a large-sample hypothesis test for goodness-of-fit or independence?
ANSWER: chi-squared (“kye-squared”) distribution [reject “chi”]
[after 84% of the tossup] Possible sources of this phenomenon are identified by intersections on a Campbell diagram. “Tongues” of this phenomenon may be found with the Mathieu equation when considering its “parametric” form. A “universal” curve for this phenomenon is quantified by the half bandwidth of a Lorentzian function. Injection locking may cause the “sympathetic” form of this phenomenon. This phenomenon occurs more intensely but in a more narrow region when the Q-factor is high, corresponding to underdamped systems with little energy loss. This phenomenon is typically distinguished from the self-exciting aeroelastic flutter that caused the collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. For 10 points, name this phenomenon in which an oscillator driven at its natural frequency grows in amplitude.
ANSWER: resonance [or word forms like resonating or resonators; accept parametric resonance; prompt on oscillation or word forms until read; prompt on vibration; prompt on instability]
[after 84% of the tossup] In response to the execution of Joshua Huddy, this leader threatened to draw lots to randomly execute an officer in the Asgill Affair. This leader was painted after winning a battle at Assunpink Creek with the gray horse Blueskin. In a moving speech, this leader put on spectacles before lamenting, “I have not only grown gray but almost blind in the service of my country.” This leader named a Benjamin Talmadge-led spy group the Culper Ring and foiled the Newburgh Conspiracy. John Trumbull painted this leader “Resigning His Commission,” an act paralleling Cincinnatus. This leader surprised Hessian soldiers the day after Christmas 1776 by crossing the Delaware River. For 10 points, name this commander-in-chief of the Continental Army.
ANSWER: George Washington
[after 85% of the tossup] NACA (“NACK-uh”) developed a standard set of these devices with four or five digit identifiers. Effects like downwash for finite versions of these objects are simulated by modelling these objects as an infinite set of filaments in a theory named for Prandtl (“PRAWN-tull”). The force per unit length on these devices is proportional to the line integral of the tangential velocity around them, according to the Kutta–Joukowski (“KOO-tuh zhoo-KOFF-skee”) theorem. The chord line connects these devices’ leading and trailing edges, while the difference in convexity of their upper and lower surfaces is called their camber. These objects enter a stall when they exceed the critical angle of attack. For 10 points, name these devices that generate lift while moving through air.
ANSWER: airfoils [or aerofoils; accept aircraft wings; prompt on foils before “air” is read and accept afterwards; prompt on airplanes and aircraft by asking “which part?”; reject “jets”]
[after 86% of the tossup] The wife of a ruler with this regnal name legendarily hung herself with her girdle after she was offered hemlock, a sword, and a rope to commit suicide. Adea Eurydice was married to a ruler of this name, who was possibly rendered mentally disabled following a poisoning attempt by his father’s wife. Onomachos was killed at the Battle of Crocus Field by an army under a king with this name during the Third Sacred War. A king of this name, who was victorious at the Battle of Chaeronea, was assassinated by Pausanias of Orestis in a conspiracy that ancient sources speculated to be orchestrated by his wife, Olympias. For 10 points, Macedonian expansion began during the reign of a king with what name, the father of Alexander the Great?
ANSWER: Philip [accept Philip II of Macedon or Philip III of Macedon]
[after 88% of the tossup] Coins from a kingdom on this body of water were found on Marchinbar island. An “accidental crusade” targeted a kingdom on the coast of this body of water later invaded by Butua. A ruler of another state on this body of water built the Husuni Kubwa and added a coral dome to a Great Mosque in its capital. That state’s “chronicle” describes its founding by the son of a ruler of Shiraz. Gold mined from the interior highlands were brought to this body of water at the port city of Sofala, which paid tribute to the Mutapa Empire while controlled by the Kilwa Sultanate. The Portuguese stronghold at Fort Jesus was besieged by Omani forces near Mombasa on this body of water. For 10 points, the Swahili coast in East Africa formed the western boundary of what ocean?
ANSWER: Indian Ocean [prompt on Swahili coast until read]
[after 88% of the tossup] This is the [emphasize] first name of a man also referred to as the “twin,” whose namesake logia have given credence to the Q source hypothesis. Papias described the head of a man with this name swelling so large he could not fit between two houses. The only Biblically canonical quote from the Book of Enoch occurs in an epistle attributed to Jesus’ brother of this name, also called Thaddaeus. A man with this name is called the “thirteenth spirit” after uniquely being able to look Jesus in the face in a Gnostic gospel named for him. According to Acts, a man with this name died after he “fell headlong and burst asunder” in Akeldama, a place named for the 30 silver pieces used to buy it. For 10 points, give the name of the disciple who betrayed Jesus.
ANSWER: Judas [or Jude; or Yehūdā; or Ioûdas; accept Judas Thomas or Judas Didymus; accept Judas Iscariot or Gospel of Judas; accept Judas Thaddaeus or Epistle of Jude] (“Didymus” is not a name, and the Gospel of Thomas is not Gnostic sensu stricto.)
[after 89% of the tossup] In this state, Tina Bell fronted Bam Bam, the first band to record at Reciprocal Recording. The all-female opening night of a music festival in this state saw the live debut of Heavens to Betsy, whose split led Corin Tucker to form Sleater-Kinney. A band from this state spent over 5 years on Billboard with their album Ten, which contains a song claiming “thoughts arrive like butterflies.” This state’s “riot grrl” movement included acts like Bikini Kill, whose frontwoman Kathleen Hanna inspired a hit by another band from this state by claiming its lead singer smelled like a deodorant brand. Krist Novoselic was the bassist of a band from this state who included songs like “Lithium” and “Come As You Are” on their album Nevermind. For 10 points, grunge bands like Pearl Jam and Nirvana formed in what US state’s city of Seattle?
ANSWER: Washington [or State of Washington; or WA]
[after 90% of the tossup] Susan Ridyard dismissed apocryphal claims that the half-sister of a monarch of this name foresaw his death after she dreamt she lost her right eye and was subsequently offered his throne; that half-sister was canonized as Saint Edith. A monarch of this name, who dissolved many monasteries in the “anti-monastic reaction,” may have been murdered by his mother-in-law, Ælfthryth (“ELF-thrith”). A future monarch of this name, who was exiled by Harold Harefoot, inherited the throne from Harthacnut after he returned with his mother Emma of Normandy. In addition to a monarch known as the “Martyr,” a monarch with this name commissioned the modern Westminster Abbey and ignited a succession crisis between Harold Godwinson and the future William the Conqueror after his death. For 10 points, a king of England of what name had the epithet “Confessor?”
ANSWER: Edward [accept Edward the Confessor or Edward the Martyr]
[after 95% of the tossup] Tom Shadbolt coined the acronym KEEPOOS after Norman Kirk barred a group of members of this profession who would later be opposed by John Minto’s Group HART. Raed Ahmed, a member of this profession, defected to the United States in response to the persistent torture of people in this profession by Uday Hussein. Avery Brundage was criticized for insensitivity after an attack on people in this profession that led to the hijacking of Lufthansa Flight 615. The murder of a Moroccan waiter in Lillehammer was retribution for the murder of people in this profession who were restricted by the Gleneagles Agreement. Operation Wrath of God sought vengeance for people in this profession who were taken hostage by the group Black September. For 10 points, the Munich Massacre targeted what people who compete at the Olympics?
ANSWER: athletes [or sportsmen; or coaches; accept specific athletes like weightlifters, runners, soccer players, or rugby players]
[after 96% of the tossup] The first English translation of a concept posited by this thinker was made by Alexander Tille 13 years before a controversial rendering by Thomas Common. A work lambasted for its existentialist portrayal of this thinker that dubs him “Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist” was written by Walter Kaufmann. This thinker borrowed the term “Tschandala” from a translation of the Laws of Manu to contrast focuses on “breeding” and “taming” in religious moralities. His sister Elizabeth Förster posthumously published the works of this philosopher, who wrote that embracing amor fati would allow humans to accept “eternal recurrence.” For 10 points, name this German philosopher who developed the Übermensch in his book Thus Spake Zarathustra.
ANSWER: Friedrich Nietzsche [or Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche] (The first line refers to the Übermensch, which Alexander Tille rendered as “Beyond-man” and Thomas Common translated as “Superman.”)
[after 99% of the tossup] For unknown reasons, the stele erected at this ruler’s Qiánlíng mausoleum was left wordless. Potentially for political purposes, this ruler promoted Buddhism, constructing a Dàyún Temple in each prefecture in the two capitals region. The Buddhist monk Huáiyì promulgated the Great Cloud Sutra to legitimize this ruler before being put to death for setting fire to some palace buildings. This ruler elevated Luòyáng to the primary capital, and might have modeled for the face of the largest Buddha statue at the Lóngmén Grottoes. This ruler oversaw the rebuilding of the Giant Wild Goose Pagoda. Following the death of Emperor Tàizōng of Táng, this founder of a Zhōu (“joe”) dynasty was sent to be a nun at Gānyè (“gahn-yeh”) Temple as a former concubine. For 10 points, name this only empress regnant of Imperial China.
ANSWER: Empress Wǔ [or Wǔ Zétiān; or Wǔ Zhào; or Wǔ Mèiniáng; or Wǔ Hòu]
[after 99% of the tossup] A player of this instrument included her composition “Ballad From a Music Box” on an album dedicated to another player of this instrument which reunited her with collaborators from her debut album Firefly. The London Symphony Orchestra featured on a George Martin-produced album by a fusion group led by a player of this instrument who names a track on Bitches Brew. Emily Remler played this instrument, which was also played by a musician whose last recordings were released on an album titled for his “ology.” That player of this instrument who wrote “Nuages” (“noo-WOZH”) played with only two fingers on his left hand, and led the Quintette du Hot Club de France with Stéphane Grappelli. For 10 points, Django Reinhardt played what plucked six-string instrument?
ANSWER: guitar [accept acoustic guitar or electric guitar] (The album in the first line is East to Wes, dedicated to Wes Montgomery. The guitarist in the second line is John McLaughlin, who led the Mahavishnu Orchestra.)
[after 100% of the tossup] This thinker connects the “joys of watching” to Baudelaire’s conception of the flâneur in the essay “Melancholy Objects.” This thinker claimed that collecting certain objects allows us to “collect the world” in an essay opening “Humankind lingers unregenerately in Plato’s cave.” The “pure” and “deliberate” types of the title concept are contrasted in an essay by this thinker with epigrams from Oscar Wilde. The framing of “freaks” is discussed by this thinker in a collection contrasting the Farm Security Administration with Diane Arbus. A list including Scopitone films and Tiffany lamps appears in an essay by this thinker that outlines conditions for the title sensibility, described as “good because it’s awful.” For 10 points, name this American author of On Photography and “Notes on ‘Camp.’”
ANSWER: Susan Sontag [or Susan Lee Sontag]

Isaac Millians ↩

[after 20% of the tossup] In this city, the “Fast Form Manifest” style was used by Thierry Noir to create cartoonish heads that can be seen at the East Side Gallery. The film Night Crossing opens with footage of an event in this city that was also captured by Peter Leibing. Blue rope was used to fasten over 100,000 square meters of fabric in a “wrapping” of a building in this city by Christo and Jeanne-Claude. A Dmitri Vrubel mural in this city depicts a 1979 meeting in which Leonid Brezhnev shared a fraternal kiss. A watch was removed from a soldier’s wrist in a photograph taken atop this city’s parliament building after its capture by the Soviets. For 10 points, name this city where graffiti was broken into chunks after the 1989 fall of its namesake wall.
ANSWER: Berlin [accept East Berlin or Ost-Berlin; accept West Berlin; accept Berlin Wall] (The second line refers to Leibing’s Leap into Freedom. The third line refers to Wrapped Reichstag. The fifth line refers to Raising a Flag over the Reichstag.)
[after 23% of the tossup] The final name in this game’s credits is Seth Goldman, who designed a secret boss who blocks the path to Nyleth’s shrine. In this game, the disgraced Lugoli attacks the player by flinging green balls of muckmaggots with a ladle. The Extricator is used to remove the “Twisted Bud” that parasitizes this game’s protagonist, who must seek out Dr. Yarnaby in Greymoor to remove it. In this game’s true ending, the player character uses the Everbloom to descend into the Abyss to free Lost Lace from the hold of the Void with the aid of her half-sibling, the protagonist of a 2017 Metroidvania set in Hallownest. For 10 points, Hornet is the protagonist of what long-awaited Team Cherry game, which was unexpectedly released in September 2025 as the sequel to Hollow Knight?
ANSWER: Hollow Knight: Silksong [reject “Hollow Knight”]
[after 32% of the tossup] This author depicted Octave, a widower who expands his wife’s silk shop into a department store named The Ladies’ Paradise, in a sequel to a novel whose title has been translated by Henry Vizetelly as Piping Hot. In a novel by this author, a woman who has a stroke is unable to report the murder of a character who bites a man on the neck before drowning. A character created by this author meets the anarchist Souvarine in a novel set in “Le Voreux.” This author, who wrote a novel in which a character kills Catherine’s abusive lover Chaval while trapped in a pit, created the murderer Thérèse Raquin (“tay-REZZ ra-CAN”). Étienne Lantier leads a strike at the Montsou mines in this author’s novel Germinal. For 10 points, name this author of the Rougon-Macquart (“roo-GON-mah-CAR”) series, who defended Alfred Dreyfus in the letter “J’Accuse…!”
ANSWER: Émile Zola [or Émile Édouard Charles Antoine Zola]
[after 40% of the tossup] After he refused to allow any lapsi back into the church, a bishop from this state accused antipope Novatian of inducing his wife’s abortion. After the early Christians Perpetua and Felicity were martyred in this city, Perpetua’s narrative of her “passion” became a widely used devotional text. Much commerce from this city shipped from its harbor, the Cothon. A road marker ten miles away from this city names the Battle of Ad Decimum, where Belisarius defeated a state led by King Gelimer. Following the Decian Persecutions, a plague bearing the name of this city’s Bishop Cyprian was described by its namesake as divine punishment. Hippo Regius was selected to replace this city by the Vandal Kingdom after their invasion of Africa. For 10 points, name this city that sent an army to invade Italy under Hannibal during the Second Punic War.
ANSWER: Carthage
[after 41% of the tossup] Description acceptable. After he demonstrated this practice for her, Dowager Empress Maria of Russia gave the foundling Anton Petrov a new name referencing it. Biographer John Baron may have originated a myth about Sarah Nelmes’s role in the origin of this practice. To promote this practice in Vienna, Maria Theresa hosted 65 commoners for a royal banquet at the Schönbrunn palace. Caroline of Ansbach helped popularize this practice after being shown it by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who introduced it to Europe after witnessing it in the Ottoman Empire. Catherine the Great gave Thomas Dimsdale a title for performing this practice on her by grating pustules into an open wound. For 10 points, the development of what medical practice in 18th-century Europe is often credited to Edward Jenner?
ANSWER: smallpox inoculation [accept equivalents like smallpox vaccination or smallpox variolation; prompt on inoculation, vaccination, or variolation by asking “against what disease?”; reject answers like “treatment of smallpox”] (Sarah Nelmes is the milkmaid Jenner is supposed to have seen without any smallpox lesions. Anton Petrov was renamed Anton Vaccinoff – and given a house and an income – after he received the vaccine to demonstrate its safety.)
[after 42% of the tossup] This ethnicity’s newspaper Hunchak named a party that revolted in the Sasun Rebellions. A politician of this ethnicity was killed in parliament by an ex-journalist whom Alexander Litvinenko alleged the Russian GRU colluded with. After the Tehcir (“teh-JEER”) Law led to mass deportations, these people sought revenge in Operation Nemesis. Hrant Dink, a member of this ethnicity, was assassinated while on trial for violating Article 301, which affirms the denial of genocide against these people. Massacres of these people were organized by the Three Pashas, who forced people of this ethnicity on death marches through the Syrian Desert. For 10 points, the Ottoman Empire organized a genocide of what people whose country’s capital is Yerevan?
ANSWER: Armenians [or Hayer] (The politician in the second line is Vazgen Sargsyan.)
[after 42% of the tossup] One sect in this tradition uses an “A” inside a circle to represent the “rainbow body,” a concept likely borrowed from an indigenous religion which the Rimé movement attempts to harmonize with this tradition. Adherents to this tradition make votive torma sculptures out of dyed butter and use meteoric iron to produce ritual phurba (“POOR-bah”) daggers. The youngest of four schools in this tradition is named for their distinctive yellow headwear, while the oldest, Nyingma (“nuh-YING-muh”), produced this tradition’s “Book of the Dead.” Dharamsala is the location of a theocratic government-in-exile from this religious tradition which formerly ruled from Lhasa’s Potala Palace. For 10 points, what tradition’s 14th Dalai Lama is Tenzin Gyatso?
ANSWER: Tibetan Buddhism [prompt on Buddhism; prompt on Mahayana Buddhism or Vajrayana Buddhism; prompt on Dzogchen or Gelug or Nyingma until “Nyingma” is read by asking “which forms part of what broader tradition?”]
[after 46% of the tossup] This artist placed images of 19th-century women on the floor of an exhibition entrance for the work Horizontal Memory. Eadweard Muybridge inspired a video work by this artist consisting of close-up shots of 15 different people’s buttocks. An early work by this artist consists of the single instruction to leave a canvas “on the floor or in the snow.” In one performance, this artist sat onstage while audience members cut out pieces of her clothing until she was almost nude. This Fluxus artist was photographed by Annie Leibovitz lying clothed in bed as her naked husband kisses her, shortly before his murder. For 10 points, name this Japanese artist whose works include collaborations with her husband John Lennon.
ANSWER: Yoko Ono [or Ono Yoko]
[after 47% of the tossup] John Wilson’s 2023 recording of this musical was the first complete recording of the original orchestration by Robert Russell Bennett. Miles Davis’s album Steamin’ opens with a cover of a song from this musical in which a character describes “the slickest gig you’ll ever see.” A character in this musical imagines “long tangled hair” which “falls across my face” in a song in which he vows to win a bride, “Lonely Room.” One of the female lead’s love interests sings “chicks and ducks and geese better scurry” before the imagined “surrey with the fringe on top.” Agnes de Mille choreographed this musical’s “dream ballet” in which Laurey “makes up her mind” about Jud and Curly. For 10 points, name this Rodgers and Hammerstein musical titled after a US state.
ANSWER: Oklahoma!
[after 49% of the tossup] This modern-day country was the southernmost territory subject to an 1890 ordinance that banned secret societies such as the Ghee Hin. Race riots spilled over into this country from a larger neighbor on May 13, 1969, in response to a general election. This country’s CMIO model has been in use since its first census in 1824, assigning each resident to one of four racial categories. To discourage the use of a local creole whose name is a portmanteau of this country’s name and English, this country launched the Speak Good English Movement in 2000. Since this country’s 1819 founding as a trading post by Stamford Raffles, its indigenous population has become outnumbered by Tamil and Chinese migrants. For 10 points, name this island country that was briefly part of Malaysia.
ANSWER: Singapore [or Republic of Singapore; or Republik Singapura; or Xīnjiāpō Gònghéguó; or Ciṅkappūr Kuṭiyaracu] (The creole is Singlish.)
[after 54% of the tossup] A photograph of this person looking down and wearing a denim jacket is framed by the hills of the Nevada desert. Cecil Beaton took a series of photographs of this person at the Ambassador Hotel, including a “Japanese photo” in which she holds a flower against her torso. Eve Arnold took many photographs of this person, including one in which she wears a bathing suit and reads Ulysses. Red marker pen was used to draw “crucifixes” on photographs of this woman taken by Bert Stern for her “Last Sitting.” Andy Warhol created a “Diptych” of this actress, whom Sam Shaw and George Barris photographed in a billowing white dress above a subway grate. For 10 points, name this “blonde bombshell” actress who starred in The Seven Year Itch.
ANSWER: Marilyn Monroe [or Norma Jean Mortenson]
[after 55% of the tossup] Note to moderator: Read the answerline carefully. This technology is depicted creating a blue Greek letter omega in the painting If All the World Were Paper and All the Water Sink by Jess. This technology led an artist to begin depicting his “favorite food for thought” in paintings such as Living Still Life. This technology inspired a bronze sculpture in the shape of a skull at the University of Chicago’s Mansueto Library by Henry Moore. Catholicism and this technology influenced Salvador Dalí’s “disintegration” of an earlier painting, exemplifying a form of “mysticism” named after this technology. In a 2023 blockbuster film, events caused by this technology are portrayed with slow-motion thermite reactions. For 10 points, name this technology used in weapons that are depicted in Christopher Nolan’s film Oppenheimer.
ANSWER: nuclear energy [or nuclear power; or nuclear reactions; or atomic energy; or atomic power; or atomic reactions; accept nuclear weapons or nuclear bombs or atomic weapons or atomic bombs or A-bombs; accept Nuclear Mysticism; accept nuclear reactors or nuclear power plants; accept nuclear fission or nuclear fusion or atom splitting; prompt on bombs or weapons or explosives; prompt on reactors or power plants; reject “thermonuclear weapons” or “hydrogen bombs”] (The third sentence refers to Moore’s Nuclear Energy. The fourth sentence refers to Dalí’s Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory.)
[after 56% of the tossup] This deity’s wife stands over him in an artistic motif from the Gosforth Cross. Alternate versions of a story detail a different one of this deity’s two sons turning into a wolf and killing the other. This deity is referred to by the kenning “brother of Býleistr” in the Völuspá when the völva explains that his escape will signal the start of Ragnarök, at which point this deity will kill and be killed by Heimdallr. This deity attacks Njörd for being incestuous and claims to have cuckolded Týr in a text sometimes named for his flyting. This son of Fárbauti and Laufey turns into a salmon to escape his punishment of having venom dripped on him for eternity after he causes the death of Baldr. For 10 points, name this Norse trickster god.
ANSWER: Loki [or Loki Laufeyson; accept Lokasenna or The Flyting of Loki or Loki’s Verbal Duel]
[after 60% of the tossup] In a paper on these institutions “in the Middle Ages,” George Makdisi warns against analogizing them to their European counterparts. A possibly apocryphal tradition holds that a building occupied by one of these institutions was founded by Fatima al-Fihri. That institution was named after the people of Kairouan, or al-Qarawiyyin (“al-kah-rah-wee-YEEN”). Al-Sahili was credited with building a complex that housed one of these institutions together with nearby Sidi Yahya called Djinguereber (“jin-guh-ray-BAIR”). Saladin ended Shi’a influence in one of these institutions at Cairo called Al-Azhar (“all-UZZ-har”). Another one of these institutions was housed at Sankoré (“sahn-ko-RAY”) Mosque in Timbuktu. For 10 points, the Qur’an and Islamic law were studied at what institutions often analogized to those created in Bologna and Oxford?
ANSWER: universities [or university; accept madrasas; accept schools; accept jāmi‘ah or jāmi‘at; accept University of al-Qarawiyyin or University of Timbuktu or Al-Azhar University; prompt on libraries or library; prompt on mosques or masjids until “Mosque” is read by asking “what additional function did it serve?”]
[after 60% of the tossup] Louis Nelson used sandblasting to depict these people in an artwork surrounded by a group of 19 stainless steel sculptures titled The Column. James E. Connell III was the model for a depiction of one of these people in a sculpture that was deliberately placed across a “sea of sacrifice.” In response to controversy over a 21-year-old student winning a 1981 contest, Frederick Hart created a bronze sculpture of three of these people that included the first depiction of an African American on the National Mall. Two large black granite slabs arranged in a V-shape make up a monument dedicated to these people by Maya Lin. For 10 points, name these people whose names are etched onto the walls of the Vietnam Memorial.
ANSWER: war veterans [or soldiers; accept equivalents like servicepeople or troops; accept Army people or Navy people or Air Force people; accept Vietnam Veterans Memorial; accept Korean War Veterans Memorial; accept Three Soldiers or Three Servicemen; prompt on fighters or combatants; prompt on dead people]
[after 60% of the tossup] Pompeian-style mosaics are found in this non-Italian region at the House of the Griffins, in the city of Complutum. Arganthonios, the possible namesake of silver, ruled this region’s Turdetani people. Legendarily, a rebel leader in this territory picked the hairs off of a horse’s tail one by one to demonstrate a strategy against the Roman army. According to legend, Corocotta came forth to claim a ransom for himself during the revolt of the Cantabrians in this region. Quintus Sertorius led a revolt in this region, the birthplace of the emperors Trajan and Hadrian. After victories at Baecula and Ilipa, the Romans conquered this territory from the armies of Hamilcar Barca. For 10 points, name this region of the Roman Empire whose province of Lusitania became Portugal.
ANSWER: Hispania [accept Hispania Tarraconensis or Hispania Baetica or Hispania Lusitania; accept Iberia or Iberian Revolt; accept Lusitania until read; accept Baetica; prompt on Spain or Roman Spain; prompt on Portugal or Roman Portugal until read]
[after 61% of the tossup] This artist drew from an earlier depiction of pine trees in Calvi for a woodcut of tire tracks and footprints crossing over a reflective puddle. A statue of a simurgh gifted to this artist inspired the “bird-humans” that are depicted three times along the central vertical axis in the mezzotint Another World. Piranesi’s Imaginary Prisons inspired this artist’s lithograph of faceless people in a space with multiple sources of gravity. After studying Islamic tile art at the Alhambra, this artist began depicting figures such as knights and reptiles in tessellated patterns. This artist’s print Relativity depicts several staircases in a shape similar to a Penrose triangle. For 10 points, name this Dutch artist whose prints often depict impossible objects.
ANSWER: M. C. Escher [or Maurits Cornelis Escher]
[after 61% of the tossup] The concept of “architecture parlante” was developed in this century by an architect who designed an ambitious ideal town centred on a salt factory. A church designed in this century depicts the Ten Commandments on bronze doors and the Last Judgement on its pediment and is called La Madeleine. In this century, architects like Robert Adam were influenced by Giovanni Battista Piranesi’s vedute drawings depicting Roman landmarks. A building from this century that uses a Greek cross plan with domes on each ambulatory and Corinthian orders in its portico was designed by Jacques-Germain Sufflot. That building from this century became a mausoleum for national heroes and was modelled on a Roman temple. For 10 points, name this century during which Neoclassicism developed with buildings such as the Panthéon in Paris.
ANSWER: 18th century [or 1700s] (The architect in the first line is Claude Nicolas Ledoux.)
[after 62% of the tossup] In one of these people’s stories, a man accidentally kills his nephew by burning his house down in an attempt to get him away from his two wives. Two lizard-men in these people’s mythology castrate Kidili for attempting to assault the women who eventually become the Pleiades and are chased across the sky by Jukurra-Jukurra. To describe the transcendence of time in these people’s stories, W. E. H. Stanner coined the term “everywhen.” In one of these people’s stories, the menstrual blood of one of the Wawalag sisters attracts a waterhole-dwelling creature to swallow them. These people tell stories of songlines formed during the Dreamtime by traveling creator spirits such as the Rainbow Serpent. For 10 points, name these native people of Australia.
ANSWER: Aboriginal Australians [or Aborigines; accept specific subgroups like Kukatja or Yolngu; prompt on indigenous Australians or native Australians]
[after 62% of the tossup] Tom Turpin’s Rosebud Bar was a center for players of this style, an early example of which is “The Bully Song.” Pieces in this style typically use 16-measure themes divided into four parts, and its “classic” school was centered on St. Louis. Interest in this style was revived following a 1970 album by Joshua Rifkin which included a piece that begins with the notes [read slowly] D, E, C, A, [pause] B, G played by both hands. Some pieces in this style were published as “two-steps.” Stride piano was a successor to this style, which is characterized by alternating bass notes and chords underneath syncopated melodies. For 10 points, name this music style exemplified by Scott Joplin pieces like The Entertainer.
ANSWER: ragtime [accept two-step until read]
[after 62% of the tossup] The first English translation of a concept posited by this thinker was made by Alexander Tille 13 years before a controversial rendering by Thomas Common. A work lambasted for its existentialist portrayal of this thinker that dubs him “Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist” was written by Walter Kaufmann. This thinker borrowed the term “Tschandala” from a translation of the Laws of Manu to contrast focuses on “breeding” and “taming” in religious moralities. His sister Elizabeth Förster posthumously published the works of this philosopher, who wrote that embracing amor fati would allow humans to accept “eternal recurrence.” For 10 points, name this German philosopher who developed the Übermensch in his book Thus Spake Zarathustra.
ANSWER: Friedrich Nietzsche [or Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche] (The first line refers to the Übermensch, which Alexander Tille rendered as “Beyond-man” and Thomas Common translated as “Superman.”)
[after 64% of the tossup] This activity provides an alternate name for Cindy Sherman’s Untitled Film Still #48, in which a woman in a plaid skirt stands facing away from the viewer next to her suitcase. John Maynard Smith referenced this activity for the name of a genetic effect in which an allele increases in frequency due to a linked beneficial allele. Dutch liftplaats signs mark places for this activity, which is similar to the D.C. area’s “slug lines.” In 2013, a Canadian robot that did this activity across Canada was destroyed in Philadelphia. In a book titled partly for this activity, Vogons destroy Earth right after the protagonist is saved by the towel-carrying Ford Prefect. For 10 points, extending one’s thumb towards the road is a gesture for what activity that inspired a series of “Guides” by Douglas Adams?
ANSWER: hitchhiking [or hitching; or hitchhike; accept thumbing until “thumb” is read; accept The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy; accept HitchBot; accept genetic hitchhiking; prompt on driving, riding in a car, traveling, waiting for a rideshare, passengers, carpooling, commuting, or equivalents of any]
[after 65% of the tossup] This author’s first novel, which follows a widow who engages in an affair with her brother-in-law, was retitled Land of Sin. A character created by this author works at the “Central Registry of Births, Marriages and Deaths.” In a novel by this author, whose sequel was translated by this author’s widow Pilar del Río, a character uses a stiletto heel to kick a car thief who is shot after developing an infection. In the sequel to a novel by this author of All the Names, a “dog of tears” reappears as the only named character and an election occurs in which the majority of ballots are blank. In a novel by this author, characters like the girl with the dark glasses are quarantined in a ward and the doctor’s wife is the only one not affected by the title “white sickness.” For 10 points, name this Portuguese author of Blindness.
ANSWER: José Saramago [or José de Sousa Saramago] (The sequel to Blindness is Seeing.)
[after 65% of the tossup] This author’s death inspired an author to state “a light was gone” in an interview featured in a New Yorker article partially titled for an “Infinite Footnote to” this author. In a story by this author that inspired a work of hypertext fiction featuring postal clerk Emily Runbird, a man who has just arrived in Ashgrove takes a child’s advice to bear left at every crossroad. In a story by this author, the poet Carlos Daneri attempts to save a cellar containing a point in space that contains all other points. The title construct of a story by this author is analogized to a guessing game where the answer is chess by the Sinologist Dr. Albert before Richard Madden arrests Yu Tsun. For 10 points, name this Argentinian author of “The Aleph” and “The Garden of Forking Paths.”
ANSWER: Jorge Luis Borges [or Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges] (The first line refers to “César Aira’s Infinite Footnote to Borges.” The second line refers to Stuart Moulthrop’s Victory Garden.)
[after 67% of the tossup] A former leader of this country earned the nickname “Teflon” for serving four consecutive terms in government despite scandals like one where parents were falsely accused of childcare benefit fraud. A political party formed after protests against this county’s nitrogen pollution policy, called BBB, became the largest party in this country’s Senate after its 2023 elections. A politician in this country was fined for hate speech after leading a chant of “fewer, fewer Moroccans.” Before becoming Secretary-General of NATO, Mark Rutte served as this county’s prime minister. This country’s October 2025 general elections were narrowly won by the centrist D66 party and saw Geert Wilders’s PVV lose ground. For 10 points, name this northern European nation whose capital is Amsterdam.
ANSWER: Netherlands [or Nederland; or Kingdom of the Netherlands; prompt on Holland]
[after 69% of the tossup] In this ballet, one statement of a unison string theme beginning with a descending and ascending octave is followed by four dancers clapping nine eighth notes. Mnemonics were used by Peter Sparling to learn the steps of a hat-wearing character in this ballet who directs four characters to successively sit on a church bench cued by flutes. Merce Cunningham first performed that role in this ballet, which used a simple set that included a rocking chair and the outline of a house. This ballet, which revolves around the marriage of the Husbandman and the Bride, includes variations on the Shaker hymn “Simple Gifts.” For 10 points, name this ballet choreographed by Martha Graham with music by Aaron Copland.
ANSWER: Appalachian Spring
[after 70% of the tossup] A Pulitzer-Prize-winning photograph shows this person dancing at a rock concert during his “vote or lose” campaign. The chair of Sibneft was recognized as one of the “Seven Bankers” who supported this person after this person implemented the loans-for-shares scheme. Robert Solow and Franco Modigliani were two of several economists who wrote an open letter to this person about reforms that were championed by Anatoly Chubais (“choo-BICE”). This non-Polish politician’s visit to a Randalls grocery store in Houston may have inspired him to implement “shock therapy” in his country. This person helped diffuse the August Coup by giving a speech atop a tank. For 10 points, what politician served as the first President of Russia?
ANSWER: Boris Yeltsin [or Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin]
[after 71% of the tossup] This author added a character named Caroline who goes to milk a cow in a rewritten version of a scene that appears in an earlier work which lasts for “nearly two hours.” This author described ships “robed in purest white” that seemed like “shrouded ghosts” in a work in which Sandy gives the protagonist a root to keep on the right side of his body to ward off harm. The protagonist of a work by this author learns how to read from the Columbian Orator after being forbidden by Hugh Auld. William Lloyd Garrison wrote an introduction to this author’s memoir, which depicts his fight against Edward Covey. For 10 points, name this author who wrote about escaping his enslavement in three autobiographies including My Bondage and My Freedom and a Narrative in the Life of himself, An American Slave.
ANSWER: Frederick Douglass [or Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey; accept Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave]
[after 73% of the tossup] A position separating this concept from reason is defined by a “basic reliance” on it according to Alvin Plantinga, who co-founded a journal titled for this concept “and Philosophy” with other reformed epistemologists. The dictum “subjectivity is truth” appears in a work defending this “absurd” concept under the pseudonym Johannes Climacus entitled Concluding Unscientific Postscript. A man who still expects he will receive a princess’s seemingly unobtainable love goes beyond “infinite resignation” in his embodiment of this concept. That “knight of” this concept is described in Søren Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling, which also describes it as a qualitative “leap.” For 10 points, name this religious concept of believing without seeing.
ANSWER: faith [accept qualitative leap of faith or knight of faith; accept Faith and Philosophy; accept fideism]
[after 74% of the tossup] The editor of this country’s Marxist newspaper Don Quichotte (“don kee-SHOT”), Henri Curiel (“on-REE cure-YEL”), founded its Democratic Movement for National Liberation. A leader of this country pickpocketed a watch off Winston Churchill during a state visit and was the target of Project FF. An organization launched a coup as this country’s leader was surrounded at such residences as Montaza and Abdeen Palace. That organization established the Revolutionary Command Council and later formed the Liberation Rally party. This country’s second president initiated the Agrarian Reform Law and was a member of the Mohamed Naguib-led Free Officers Movement that overthrew its king in 1952. For 10 points, name this African country whose leaders during the Cold War included King Farouk and Gamal Abdel Nasser.
ANSWER: Egypt [or Kingdom of Egypt; or Arab Republic of Egypt]
[after 76% of the tossup] A medieval travel journal from this country was written by an anonymous “Lady” whose aunt, known only as a noble’s “mother,” authored The Gossamer Years. A book from this country opens “In spring it is the dawn that is most beautiful” and features the section “Embarrassing Things.” Ivan Morris translated that book and one retitled after the same “Bridge of Dreams” that titles a chapter of a novel from this country. A possibly autobiographical character in a novel from this country is kidnapped by the protagonist after the daughter of the Minister of the Left dies. The blank chapter “Vanished into the Clouds” appears in that novel from this country, often considered the first modern novel. For 10 points, name this country home to the authors of The Pillow Book and The Tale of Genji.
ANSWER: Japan [or Nippon; or Nihon] (The first line is the Sarashina Diary.)
[after 79% of the tossup] Footage of this city is combined with the filmmaker reading out letters sent from her mother in Chantal Akerman’s film News from Home. A shot pans away from a man talking to a woman on a pay-phone to an empty corridor in a film set in this city for which Bernard Herrmann wrote his last completed film score. A film set in this city contains a chase scene in which a narcotics detective tries to catch a criminal on a speeding elevated train and which includes accidental collisions. A man in this city who wants to “wash all this scum off the streets” upsets a woman by taking her on a date to a porn theater, and later prepares for an attempted assassination by giving the “you talkin’ to me” speech. For 10 points, name this city, the setting of The French Connection and Taxi Driver.
ANSWER: New York City [or NYC]
[after 79% of the tossup] Specific term required. Reuben Gronau distinguished home production and this concept in a paper built on Gary Becker’s “A Theory of the Allocation of Time.” This concept’s “gap” of two to three hours per week between American mothers and fathers was studied by Arlie Hochschild (“HOKE-shild”). A book partly titled for this concept calls gambling “barbarian” in the chapter “The Belief in Luck.” The opportunity cost of this activity increases with wages, but at high wages, this activity [emphasize] increases in labor’s backward-bending supply curve. Per an 1899 book, pecuniary emulation seeks to surpass a group named for this activity that engages in conspicuous consumption. For 10 points, name this activity of voluntarily abstaining from labor, whose “class” was theorized by Thorsten Veblen.
ANSWER: leisure [accept The Theory of the Leisure Class or leisure class; accept leisure gap; prompt on free time or time off or not working or relaxation or recreation; prompt on class until read by asking “what other concept characterizes the class in that work’s title?”; reject “unemployment”] (The first paper is “Leisure, Home Production, and Work—the Theory of the Allocation of Time Revisited.”)
[after 80% of the tossup] Joseph Cundall’s photographs of this artwork were referenced by Elizabeth Wardle to create a replica now held in the Reading Museum. In this artwork, a naked man squats underneath a woman in a red gateway who is being touched by a priest. This artwork’s 58 tituli describe the construction of a motte and a man who “gives strength to the boys.” The appearance of figures such as Wadard in this artwork suggests that it was commissioned by the Bishop of Odo. A man in this artwork with an arrow in his eye is often identified as Harold Godwinson, whose coronation is depicted below Halley’s Comet in this artwork. For 10 points, name this embroidered depiction of the Norman conquest of England held in a namesake French cathedral.
ANSWER: Bayeux Tapestry [or Tapisserie de Bayeux]
[after 84% of the tossup] The “crux” of this concept is lacking “means by which to render our lives believable” according to a speech that opens by describing Antonio Pigafetta as a precursor to modern novelists. In a novel whose title ends with this word, a woman sends her daughter to a convent for having a baby with a mechanic. William Faulkner is called “my master” in a Nobel acceptance speech titled for this concept “of Latin America.” This word ends the title of a novel in which 17 brothers with Ash Wednesday crosses are shot in the head. A novel whose title ends with this word opens with the protagonist remembering how his father took him to see ice and chronicles generations of the Buendía family. For 10 points, Gabriel García Márquez wrote a novel titled “One Hundred Years of” what concept?
ANSWER: solitude [or soledad; accept One Hundred Years of Solitude or Cien Años de Soledad; accept “The Solitude of Latin America” or “La Soledad de América Latina”]
[after 84% of the tossup] In a poem in this language, a poet asks the protagonist if he wrote the line “Ladies who have intelligence of love.” That line appears in a poem in this language in which Love tells a poet in Latin, “ego dominus tuus,” or “I am your lord.” T. S. Eliot quoted a poet who wrote in this language with the line “Because I do not hope to turn again.” That poet, who wrote a song whose title is translated as “A lady asks me,” founded a literary school that influenced a prosimetrum on courtly love in this language. Works in the sweet new style movement in this language include the love poem The New Life. In a long narrative poem in this language, Beatrice and Virgil act as guides to a poet traveling through hell, purgatory, and heaven. For 10 points, name this language used by Dante to write The Divine Comedy.
ANSWER: Italian [or italiano; or lingua italiana; accept Tuscan or dialetto toscano or Florentine or dialetto fiorentino or vernacolo fiorentino] (Guido Cavalcanti’s “Donna mi prega” translates to “A lady asks me.”)
[after 85% of the tossup] In the 1980s, “reflectivist” thinkers in this discipline took part in one of several Great Debates over this discipline. Cynthia Enloe strove to make “feminist sense” of this discipline in a book partly titled for bananas and beaches. He’s not Nozick, but a thinker in this discipline who described a theoretically impossible “night watchman” in a work arguing for an “offensive” subschool of this discipline is John Mearsheimer. The non-coercive “soft” form of one concept central to this discipline was coined by Joseph Nye. In this discipline, balance of power is favored by realists over liberalists’ democratic peace theory. For 10 points, name this discipline that studies interactions between states.
ANSWER: international relations [or IR; accept international affairs or international political economy or global affairs or foreign affairs or foreign policy or diplomacy or geopolitics; prompt on political science or political economy or policy studies or politics or government; prompt on offensive realism until “realist” is read by asking “what discipline does that school study?”]
[after 86% of the tossup] A character in this book opens a box to find coals instead of a feather dropped by Gabriel during the Annunciation. In this book, a character marries Neerbal after being taught how to “put the devil back in Hell” by the monk Rustico. A poem by John Keats adapts a story in this book in which a woman cries every day over a pot of basil containing her lover’s severed head. In a different story in this collection, a man wins a woman’s affections after cooking his pet falcon for her as a meal. A nobleman pretends to murder his children to test the loyalties of his wife Griselda in this collection’s final story, one of several told by Dioneo over 10 days. For 10 points, Florentines fleeing the Black Death tell stories to each other in what collection by Giovanni Boccaccio?
ANSWER: The Decameron [or Decamerone]
[after 86% of the tossup] Description acceptable. Massirah is controversially used to perform this action in Sudan. Surah al-Nisā’ warns that this practice, which is likened to belomancy and polytheism in Surah al-Mā’idah, can invalidate daily prayer. Along with apostasy, this action can require ḥadd punishment based on sunnah rather than on the text of the Qur’an. Khalid ibn Walid is credited with increasing punishment for this practice from 40 to 80 lashes. Although an al-Tirmidhī hadith equates this action with the consumption of khamr (“KHAH-mur”), some jurists of the Ḥanafī school only prohibit performing this action with date or grape products. For 10 points, identify this practice of intoxication which is forbidden in Islam.
ANSWER: drinking alcohol [accept sukr or muskar; accept intoxication or word forms until read; accept drunkenness or word forms; accept drinking wine or beer or liquor; accept consuming khamr until read; prompt on drinking by asking “drinking what?”]
[after 95% of the tossup] A speaker in one of these title places notes that “The others have gone; they were tired… But I would rather be standing here” in a poem that declares “There is something terrible about a child.” Charlotte Mew wrote a poem set at one of these places “In Nunhead.” A “school” of poetry named for these places included Thomas Parnell and Robert Blair. In a poem set in one of these places, the speaker imagines “a heart once pregnant with celestial fire” and “hands” that “wak’d to ecstasy the living lyre.” The speaker of a poem reflects that “the paths of glory led but to” one of these places in a poem that includes an epitaph to “A youth to Fortune and to Fame unknown” and begins “The curfew tolls the knell of parting day.” For 10 points, an elegy by Thomas Gray is set in a “Country” type of what location?
ANSWER: graveyards [or cemeteries; or graves; or churchyards; accept “In Nunhead Cemetery”; accept “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”; prompt on churches by asking “in what part of the church is that poem set?”]
[after 99% of the tossup] In a film from this country, a woman caring for a man with Alzheimer’s suffers a miscarriage after being pushed down a flight of stairs. A director from this country made a film set in Tuscany in which a character played by Juliette Binoche (“bee-NUSH”) debates with a man over his theory that copies are worth as much as originals. A director from this country was accused of plagiarism shortly after the release of his film A Hero. A 1990 docufiction film reenacts events in which a man impersonated a film director from this country. A director from this country, who frequently shot in cars, also made a film in which a suicidal man looks for someone to bury him after death, Taste of Cherry. For 10 points, name this home country of directors Asghar Farhadi (“far-haw-DEE”) and Abbas Kiarostami.
ANSWER: Iran [or Islamic Republic of Iran; or Jomhuri-ye Eslami-ye Iran] (The first line refers to A Separation. The docufiction film is Close-Up.)
[after 99% of the tossup] In one novel, a character with this profession crushes baby birds under a stone to save them from the sadistic Tom Bloomfield. That character with this profession is reunited with the dog Snap while walking along the beach at the end of a novel published under the pen name Acton Bell. In another novel, the employer of a character with this profession asks “does my forehead not please you?” and “do you think me handsome?” to which that character with this profession replies bluntly, “No, sir.” That character with this profession travels to Ferndean, and helps a man blinded in a fire at Thornfield Hall started by his wife. After refusing a proposal from the clergyman St. John (“SIN-jin”) Rivers, that title character with this profession states in the final chapter, “Reader, I married him.” For 10 points, name this profession of Jane Eyre.
ANSWER: governess [prompt on teacher; prompt on tutor; prompt on servant; prompt on nanny; prompt on au pair]
[after 99% of the tossup] A leader of this country names an index alternative to GDP based on electricity consumption, rail cargo, and bank lending. The New Development Bank is headquartered in this country, which was the last in the [emphasize] original acronym of rising economic powers coined by Jim O’Neill. A namesake “shock” on manufacturing jobs resulted from this country joining the WTO in 2001. To attract foreign direct investment, this country opened four southern ports in 1979 as economic “experiments.” This country has been accused of “debt trap diplomacy” through loans to African countries as a part of its Belt and Road Initiative. For 10 points, what country’s Special Economic Zones include Shēnzhèn?
ANSWER: China [or People’s Republic of China; or Zhōngguó; or Zhōnghuá Rénmín Gònghéguó; accept China shock; reject “Republic of China”] (The acronym BRIC referred to Brazil, Russia, India, and China. The index is the Lǐ Kèqiáng index.)
[after 99% of the tossup] In 1995, the oldest recorded evidence of this practice was excavated at a site whose name means “beloved’s pass.” 47 depictions of this practice are found at a site for it called Dainzú (“dah-een-SOO”). A man participating in this practice is depicted on a stone panel with snakes sprouting from his neck. Depictions of people engaging in this practice generally depict them covering their chest with a palma and wearing heavy “yokes” on a belt. Ulama is a modern descendant of this practice, which took place in purpose-built venues shaped like a capital I from above. The Popol Vuh describes the practice of sacrificing people who participated in this activity. For 10 points, participants had to use their hips to push a rubber object through stone hoops in what pre-Colombian activity?
ANSWER: Mesoamerican ball game [or ōllamaliztli; or tlachtli; or pitz; or juego de pelota; or pok-ta-pok; or pok-a-tok; or pokolpok; accept ulama until read; prompt on games or sports]
[after 100% of the tossup] This painting was reimagined for a 2015 Greenpeace campaign by the collective Kennardphillipps, which depicts its setting in the aftermath of an oil spill. This painting depicts an “extraordinary conquest of a life which most people would consider hopeless” according to its artist, who was buried in this painting’s real-life setting. Despite being 30 years older than the intended subject, the artist’s wife Betsy James modeled the upper body of this painting’s central figure, who may have suffered from Charcot–Marie–Tooth disease. In this painting set in Cushing, Maine, the title person looks towards the Olson House, which sits atop a hill in the distance. For 10 points, name this painting of a woman in a pink dress crawling in a field by Andrew Wyeth.
ANSWER: Christina’s World
[after 100% of the tossup] During this country’s Hujum campaign, body-length robes called paranjas were banned and women were forced to unveil. This country’s arrest and execution of intellectuals like Choʻlpon marked the end of its reformist Jadid movement. In the 1930s, this country’s official ethnogenesis narratives canonized national heroes such as Alisher Nava’i and Manas. This country’s fishing industry in towns like Moynaq was destroyed due to excessive cotton cultivation. Newcomers outnumbered the original population in a nomadic region of this country after mass resettlement during its Virgin Lands campaign. This country’s irrigation projects, like the Karakum Canal, diverted enough water to shrink the nearby Aral Sea. For 10 points, name this country from which Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan seceded in 1991.
ANSWER: Soviet Union [or USSR; or Union of Soviet Socialist Republics; prompt on Russia; prompt on Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic or Uzbekistan until “Uzbekistan” is read; prompt on Kirghiz Soviet Socialist Republic or Kirghizia or Kyrgyzstan until “Kyrgyzstan” is read; prompt on Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic or Kazakhstan until “Kazakhstan” is read; prompt on Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic or Turkmenia or Turkmenistan]

Annika Larson ↩

[after 19% of the tossup] A drug awareness campaign led by this person was called “Meth. We’re on it.” After claiming Native American leaders colluded with drug cartels, this politician was banned from all of her state’s Indian reservations. When trying to ask this politician a question, California Senator Alex Padilla was forced to the ground and handcuffed. To avoid violating the Hatch Act, airports have refused to play a video featuring this politician blaming Democrats for a government shutdown. One of this woman’s first acts of office was to rescind the temporary protected status for Venezuelan refugees. In her autobiography No Going Back, this politician recounted how she shot her “untrainable” dog Cricket. For 10 points, what former governor of South Dakota nicknamed “ICE Barbie” is the current Secretary of Homeland Security?
ANSWER: Kristi Noem [or Kristi Lynn Arnold Noem; or Kristi Lynn Arnold]
[after 23% of the tossup] Dynamic dispatch for methods in C++ is typically implemented with a table of these constructs called a “vtable” (“V-table”). During serialization, these constructs are converted to a position-independent persistent version during “swizzling.” Addition to these constructs is scaled by the size of an underlying data type in an example of these constructs’ namesake “arithmetic.” Garbage collection prevents certain types of segmentation faults by cleaning up “dangling” instances of these constructs. Each node in a linked list contains both data and one of these constructs associated with the next node. In C, an asterisk can be used to access data at the location described by one of these constructs. For 10 points, name this data type that stores addresses in memory.
ANSWER: pointers [accept dangling pointers; accept pointer arithmetic; accept function pointers or method pointers; accept references; accept addresses until read]
[after 33% of the tossup] A dark horse candidate for this office won after defeating airline executive Al Checchi (“CHECK-ee”) in this office’s only ever “blanket primary.” A holder of this office staked a successful 1994 reelection campaign on a ballot initiative to bar undocumented immigrants from public education and healthcare. A holder of this office lost support after ending the implementation of the “Save our State” initiative and facing an electricity crisis in 2001. That holder of this office was recalled in a 2003 election and was Gray Davis. This office’s most recent Republican holder was a former actor and bodybuilder. Another former actor held this office in between the tenures of Pat and Jerry Brown. For 10 points, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Ronald Reagan held what office that leads a state from Sacramento?
ANSWER: governor of California [prompt on governor by asking “of where?”] (The first and third sentences refer to Gray Davis. The second sentence refers to Pete Wilson.)
[after 37% of the tossup] A character in a play by this author miraculously turns into a beautiful maid after her brother, the Fat Gentleman, shoots at her. This author’s play Frenzy for Two, Or More is often paired with a play in which a character created by this author shows off his ability to fly. A logician uses a syllogism to prove that a dog is a cat in a play by this author of A Stroll in the Air. In an “anti-play” by this author, which is set in an “English interior, with English armchairs,” the Smiths and the Martins engage in surreal conversation after the Fire Chief mentions the title character. In a play by this author of The Lesson, the typist Daisy leaves Bérenger after every character except for him turns into the title animal. For 10 points, name this absurdist Romanian-French playwright of The Bald Soprano and Rhinoceros.
ANSWER: Eugène Ionesco [or Eugen Ionescu] (The play in the first line is The Picture.)
[after 41% of the tossup] The southern shore of this body of water is home to the large Granot Loma log cabin mansion. The remnants of a floating hopper on this body of water is nicknamed “Uncle Harvey’s Mausoleum.” Birdwatchers flock to Whitefish Point on this body of water, which is part of an aquatic “Graveyard” where a shipwreck museum houses a salvaged bell. The cartoon-inspired Pickle Barrel House is in one of two towns on this lake named Grand Marais. This lake is connected to others to its south via a lock between two cities named Sault Ste. Marie (“SOO saint muh-REE”). This lake is home to the furthest inland oceangoing port in the world and the wreck of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald. For 10 points, Duluth, Minnesota, is on what largest North American Great Lake?
ANSWER: Lake Superior [or Gichi-Gami; or Kitchi-Gami]
[after 43% of the tossup] In 1939, a ship named for this city carrying Jewish refugees from Germany was denied from landing in the US in the so-called “Voyage of the Damned.” Cases arising from Detroit and this city resulted in racially restrictive covenants being struck down under the Equal Protection Clause. Harold Bixby, a businessman from this city, sponsored an object built in San Diego but named for this city that was later used to win the Orteig Prize. Shelley v. Kraemer originated in this city, which preserved the Old Courthouse where the Dred Scott trial was first heard as part of an “expansion memorial.” Charles Lindbergh named his Atlantic-crossing aircraft for the “Spirit of” this city. For 10 points, name this Midwestern city home to the Gateway Arch.
ANSWER: St. Louis [accept The Spirit of St. Louis; accept MS St. Louis]
[after 45% of the tossup] This author’s first novel, which follows a widow who engages in an affair with her brother-in-law, was retitled Land of Sin. A character created by this author works at the “Central Registry of Births, Marriages and Deaths.” In a novel by this author, whose sequel was translated by this author’s widow Pilar del Río, a character uses a stiletto heel to kick a car thief who is shot after developing an infection. In the sequel to a novel by this author of All the Names, a “dog of tears” reappears as the only named character and an election occurs in which the majority of ballots are blank. In a novel by this author, characters like the girl with the dark glasses are quarantined in a ward and the doctor’s wife is the only one not affected by the title “white sickness.” For 10 points, name this Portuguese author of Blindness.
ANSWER: José Saramago [or José de Sousa Saramago] (The sequel to Blindness is Seeing.)
[after 47% of the tossup] Coefficients named for this person decay according to a power law whose degree is two plus the smoothness of the underlying function. This person’s namesake “extension” and “restriction” operators are the subject of the disproven Mizohata–Takeuchi conjecture. An overshoot of around 9 percent results from truncating constructs named for this person due to the Gibbs phenomenon. Constant functions become Dirac delta functions under an operation named for this person defined by integrating a function times “e to the minus i k x.” Periodic functions are decomposed into sums of trigonometric functions in this person’s namesake “series.” For 10 points, what mathematician names a transform that, like the Laplace transform, translates from the time domain to the frequency domain?
ANSWER: Joseph Fourier [accept Fourier series; accept Fourier transform; accept Fourier coefficients; accept Fourier restriction operator or Fourier extension operator]
[after 49% of the tossup] Dissociation of disclinations are used to model these phenomena in KTHNY theory. Above the upper critical dimension, these phenomena belong to the same universality class predicted by mean-field theory. An argument using the favorability of spontaneously forming domain walls was used by Rudolph Peierls (“PIE-erls”) to prove one of these phenomena exists in two dimensions or higher for a certain lattice model. Landau theory classifies these phenomena into first- or second-order based on whether the change in their order parameter is discontinuous. These phenomena include the shift between paramagnetic and ferromagnetic ordering at the Curie point. On pressure–temperature diagrams, these events are represented by crossing a coexistence curve. For 10 points, name these phenomena in which a material changes between different states of matter.
ANSWER: phase transitions [or phase changes; accept first-order phase transitions or second-order phase transitions; accept continuous phase transitions; prompt on transitions]
[after 50% of the tossup] A HiGee form of this technique uses centrifugal acceleration to force horizontal flow, while another uses a dividing wall. Molecular sieves remove water and carbon dioxide upstream of a cryogenic form of this technique. The Kirkbride equation can be used to calculate the inlet location in this technique whose shortcut form uses the FUG method. The Q-line on a McCabe–Thiele diagram represents the feed in this technique. This technique may employ a Dean–Stark apparatus to remove water. Purity of products from this technique can be enhanced by increasing the reflux ratio. Adding a component to mixtures in this technique to break azeotropes can separate water and ethanol. For 10 points, what physical process separates components of a liquid mixture by their boiling points?
ANSWER: distillation [accept specific forms like fractional distillation or azeotropic distillation or HiGee distillation]
[after 53% of the tossup] A leader of this country names an index alternative to GDP based on electricity consumption, rail cargo, and bank lending. The New Development Bank is headquartered in this country, which was the last in the [emphasize] original acronym of rising economic powers coined by Jim O’Neill. A namesake “shock” on manufacturing jobs resulted from this country joining the WTO in 2001. To attract foreign direct investment, this country opened four southern ports in 1979 as economic “experiments.” This country has been accused of “debt trap diplomacy” through loans to African countries as a part of its Belt and Road Initiative. For 10 points, what country’s Special Economic Zones include Shēnzhèn?
ANSWER: China [or People’s Republic of China; or Zhōngguó; or Zhōnghuá Rénmín Gònghéguó; accept China shock; reject “Republic of China”] (The acronym BRIC referred to Brazil, Russia, India, and China. The index is the Lǐ Kèqiáng index.)
[after 56% of the tossup] The Kadomtsev model explains rapid temperature drops in these devices called sawtooth relaxations. One type of these devices are protected from kink instabilities when the safety factor is greater than one. Another type of these devices heats a hohlraum using laser pulses in a technique called ICF. The first one of these devices to achieve a Q greater than one is the National Ignition Facility, which uses internal confinement. Magnetic fields confine plasma in a toroid in the stellarator and tokamak types of these machines, and these devices often use deuterium and tritium for fuel. For 10 points, name these devices that seek to produce power by combining atomic nuclei.
ANSWER: fusion reactors [accept tokamaks until “tokamak” is read; accept inertial confinement fusion reactors; prompt on reactors; prompt on nuclear reactors; reject “fission reactors”]
[after 57% of the tossup] Due to this phenomenon, sheep with either a mutated BMP15 or GDF9 gene were found to display increased fecundity. Organisms that display this phenomenon are selected against during disruptive selection. Along with fitness, this phenomenon decreases in a population during inbreeding depression. In humans with the cystic fibrosis gene, this phenomenon is hypothesized to result in cholera resistance in its namesake advantage. 2pq gives the proportion of organisms that display this phenomenon during Hardy–Weinberg equilibrium. Incomplete dominance causes camelias displaying this phenomenon to appear pink rather than red or white. For 10 points, organisms have two different alleles for a given trait in what phenomenon contrasted with homozygosity?
ANSWER: heterozygosity [accept heterozygote; accept heterozygote advantage]
[after 62% of the tossup] In a play by this author, after recalling the papaya cream scrubs given to her, one character is mistakenly called Carl by an aging actress using the name “Princess Kosmonopolis.” The opening stage directions of a play by this author describe a bed with giant wicker cornucopias on the headboard that used to belong to Jack Straw and Peter Ochello. In a play by this author, one character claims that his leg injury from hurtling causes him to drink until he hears a “click” in his head. That character rants about “mendacity” to Big Daddy when he suggests that he had a romantic relationship with his teammate Skipper. For 10 points, name this author of Sweet Bird of Youth who wrote about Brick and Maggie Pollitt’s failing marriage in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.
ANSWER: Tennessee Williams [or Thomas Lainer Williams III]
[after 62% of the tossup] In one work, this thinker used the example of Castor and Pollux sleeping in alternating shifts to demonstrate that the soul is not always thinking. A chapter in a work by this thinker contrasts certain knowledge with arguments that are likely to be true based on “probability,” or agreement between our own and others’ experiences. This thinker described a central concept being affected by sensory experiences of intrinsic “primary qualities” and subjective “secondary qualities.” This thinker argued that reflection or sensation informs all “objects of thinking” to refute “innate ideas” in favor of the human mind as a blank slate, or tabula rasa. For 10 points, name this Enlightenment philosopher who wrote An Essay Concerning Human Understanding.
ANSWER: John Locke
[after 67% of the tossup] John Wilson’s 2023 recording of this musical was the first complete recording of the original orchestration by Robert Russell Bennett. Miles Davis’s album Steamin’ opens with a cover of a song from this musical in which a character describes “the slickest gig you’ll ever see.” A character in this musical imagines “long tangled hair” which “falls across my face” in a song in which he vows to win a bride, “Lonely Room.” One of the female lead’s love interests sings “chicks and ducks and geese better scurry” before the imagined “surrey with the fringe on top.” Agnes de Mille choreographed this musical’s “dream ballet” in which Laurey “makes up her mind” about Jud and Curly. For 10 points, name this Rodgers and Hammerstein musical titled after a US state.
ANSWER: Oklahoma!
[after 69% of the tossup] A paper titled for this concept argues that “functional explanations” can account for phenomena like reportability, but not this concept. Reportability defines the “access” type of this concept, which Ned Block distinguished from its “phenomenal” type. Joseph Levine argued that theories of this concept struggle to explain subjectivity due to the explanatory gap. The phi phenomenon is evidence for the theory that this concept arises from many sources of input and systems of interpretation, called the multiple drafts model. David Chalmers argued that science cannot even attempt to explain why this concept exists, which is its “hard problem.” Philosophical zombies lack this concept. For 10 points, a book by Daniel Dennett “explains” what concept, which is the mental awareness of one’s experience?
ANSWER: consciousness [accept hard problem of consciousness; accept phenomenal consciousness or access consciousness; accept Consciousness Explained; accept “Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness”]
[after 70% of the tossup] This author is described as an “odoriferous poet” by a sentient chair before meeting the composer Benjamin Britten in Alan Bennett’s play The Habit of Art. A poem by this author advises “Let not Time deceive you, / You cannot conquer time” and promises “I’ll love you / Till Africa and China meet, / And the river jumps over the mountain.” This author considered five of his poems to be “trash” and later changed the word “or” in his most famous poem to “and.” Another poem by this author of “As I Walked Out One Evening” bemoans a man who was “my North, my South, my East and West.” One poem by this author begins with the speaker sitting in “one of the dives / On Fifty-second street” and later declares “We must love one another or die.” For 10 points, name this poet of “Funeral Blues” and “September 1, 1939.”
ANSWER: W. H. Auden [or Wystan Hugh Auden]
[after 70% of the tossup] Damage to this organ may be categorized via the Ishak staging system. The ductus venosus allows this organ to be bypassed in fetal circulation. The AST/ALT ratio may be used in the diagnosis of diseases of this organ. Three quarters of this organ’s blood supply comes from the vessel that is formed from the union of the splenic (“SPLEN-ick”) and superior mesenteric veins; that vessel is the portal vein. This organ’s caudate (“CAW-date”) lobe is named for its resemblance to a tail. Damage to this organ can prevent the conjugation of bilirubin, resulting in jaundice. For 10 points, name this organ that can suffer cirrhosis from alcohol consumption.
ANSWER: liver
[after 72% of the tossup] A questionnaire that screens for a disorder partly named for this process assesses BMI and neck size and is known by the acronym STOP-BANG. Disorders involving this process can be indicated by a high score on a scale named for Epworth Hospital, including one that can be treated by supplementing orexin and often presents with cataplexy. The “central” form of a condition can be differentiated from its “obstructive” form based on whether it is more prevalent during “quiescent” or “paradoxical” stages of this process, though both can be managed with CPAP machines. High levels of somatotropin are released after the onset of the “slow wave” form of this process, during which memory consolidation also occurs. For 10 points, circadian rhythms regulate what process promoted by melatonin?
ANSWER: sleeping [or being asleep; accept obstructive sleep apnea or central sleep apnea; accept REM sleep or paradoxical sleep or non-REM sleep or NREM sleep or quiescent sleep; prompt on terms like snoozing or dozing off]
[after 73% of the tossup] An enzyme that primarily degrades this protein forces substrates to refold into beta-sheets in a triangular prism-shaped active site. Two disulfide bonds stabilize the two chains of this protein, which originate from cleavage of a single precursor that assembles into hexameric complexes that coordinate to zinc. This protein propagates signals after binding a receptor tyrosine kinase that triggers the PI3K and ERK pathways. Intracellular vesicles sensitive to this protein express the protein GLUT4. Amylin and this hormone are produced in the islets of Langerhans in beta cells of the pancreas. This hormone promotes the formation of glycogen. For 10 points, name this peptide hormone that promotes absorption of glucose that is deficient in diabetes.
ANSWER: insulin
[after 73% of the tossup] Fragmentation of molecules undergoing this technique is observed in the McLafferty rearrangement. In one form of this technique, selected reaction monitoring is used to select ions for the next stage of processing. Michael Barber invented a technique used during this process where a beam of high energy atoms strike a surface in a technique called fast atom bombardment. Multiple rounds of this technique are performed in its “tandem” variety. Molecules may be prepared for this technique by undergoing electrospray ionization or MALDI. Plots in this technique often coupled with gas chromatography plot intensity against m-over-z. For 10 points, name this technique that separates molecules based on their mass-to-charge ratio.
ANSWER: mass spectrometry [or MS]
[after 74% of the tossup] The editor of this country’s Marxist newspaper Don Quichotte (“don kee-SHOT”), Henri Curiel (“on-REE cure-YEL”), founded its Democratic Movement for National Liberation. A leader of this country pickpocketed a watch off Winston Churchill during a state visit and was the target of Project FF. An organization launched a coup as this country’s leader was surrounded at such residences as Montaza and Abdeen Palace. That organization established the Revolutionary Command Council and later formed the Liberation Rally party. This country’s second president initiated the Agrarian Reform Law and was a member of the Mohamed Naguib-led Free Officers Movement that overthrew its king in 1952. For 10 points, name this African country whose leaders during the Cold War included King Farouk and Gamal Abdel Nasser.
ANSWER: Egypt [or Kingdom of Egypt; or Arab Republic of Egypt]
[after 75% of the tossup] One type of these hormones was first discovered in a species of rice-plant pathogen named fujikuroi. Uniconazole (“uni-CON-uh-zole”) inhibits the production of this hormone through blockage of kaurene oxidase. The absence of these hormones can increase biomass growth in the roots and cause shortened internodes. The binding of these hormones causes the degradation of DELLA proteins like GAI. The presence of water activates these hormones that stimulate the production of hydrolytic enzymes in germinating seeds. In elongating stems, these hormones’ concentration is regulated by auxins. For 10 points, name this class of plant hormone that mediates developmental processes like stem elongation.
ANSWER: gibberellins [or GAs; accept gibberellic acid]
[after 76% of the tossup] Specific term required. Reuben Gronau distinguished home production and this concept in a paper built on Gary Becker’s “A Theory of the Allocation of Time.” This concept’s “gap” of two to three hours per week between American mothers and fathers was studied by Arlie Hochschild (“HOKE-shild”). A book partly titled for this concept calls gambling “barbarian” in the chapter “The Belief in Luck.” The opportunity cost of this activity increases with wages, but at high wages, this activity [emphasize] increases in labor’s backward-bending supply curve. Per an 1899 book, pecuniary emulation seeks to surpass a group named for this activity that engages in conspicuous consumption. For 10 points, name this activity of voluntarily abstaining from labor, whose “class” was theorized by Thorsten Veblen.
ANSWER: leisure [accept The Theory of the Leisure Class or leisure class; accept leisure gap; prompt on free time or time off or not working or relaxation or recreation; prompt on class until read by asking “what other concept characterizes the class in that work’s title?”; reject “unemployment”] (The first paper is “Leisure, Home Production, and Work—the Theory of the Allocation of Time Revisited.”)
[after 76% of the tossup] Insertion of a XA21 pattern recognition receptor into this organism prevents disease by Xoo. R. solani is a fungal pathogen of this plant that causes sheath blight. Increased lodging resistance conferred by the sd1 gene was a characteristic of the IR8 strain of this plant. Low amylose content characterizes some varieties of this plant, resulting in strong molecular adhesion between starch molecules. A variety of this plant that can synthesize vitamin A precursors is notable for its golden colour. This crop that contains no gluten can be divided into short and long grain varieties. For 10 points, what staple crop with varieties like basmati is grown in paddies?
ANSWER: rice [or Oryza]
[after 76% of the tossup] This class of reactions produces a family of toxic compounds that have two benzene rings connected by two oxygen atoms at the para positions, the dioxin family. The Zeldovich mechanism explains the formation of a type of nitrogen-containing molecule during these reactions. Preventing the backflow of one of these reactions in stacks can be accomplished with sweep gas. Gaseous products of these reactions react with nitrogen oxides and light to generate ozone. In these reactions, gases pass over platinum and rhodium to limit the release of VOCs. Those catalytic converters following these reactions reduce the formation of photochemical smog in cities. For 10 points, name these reactions in which a chemical reacts with an oxidant like oxygen to release heat and light.
ANSWER: combustion [or burning]
[after 78% of the tossup] Materials called NIMs with an unusual value for this quantity were first realized using split-ring resonators. An empirical formula for this quantity is expanded in negative even powers of wavelength and becomes inaccurate in regions of anomalous dispersion. The imaginary part of complex values for this quantity models attenuation. Since most materials have negligible magnetic susceptibility, this value is approximately given by the square root of relative permittivity. A decrease of this quantity across an interface enables rays to undergo total internal reflection. The ratio of the sines of the angles of incidence and refraction equals the ratio of two values of this quantity according to Snell’s law. For 10 points, name this quantity that is the ratio of speed of light in vacuum to its speed in a material.
ANSWER: index of refraction [or refractive index or refraction index; accept IOR; prompt on n]
[after 79% of the tossup] This poet, who exhorted the earth for teaching “the lesson of poverty, / having nothing and wanting nothing,” wrote that the “tongue has one customer, the ear” in a poem whose speaker asserts “Anyone apart from someone he loves / understands what I say.” The speaker laments that “the keeping away is pulling me in” in a poem by this author that opens by asking a “dissolver of sugar” to “dissolve me, / if this is the time.” The disappearance of this poet’s teacher inspired the dedication of many of the 90 ghazals in one of his collections. This poet has been cited as the “best-selling poet in the US” due to Coleman Barks’s translations, one of which renders an opening line as “Listen to the story told by the reed.” For 10 points, name this Sufi poet of the Masnavi, or Spiritual Couplets.
ANSWER: Rumi [or Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī] (Rumi’s teacher, Shams of Tabriz, is the dedicatee of many poems in the Divan-i Kabir.)
[after 79% of the tossup] In a play by this author, a character remarks, “I hate brandy… it stinks of modern literature” while at an Italian restaurant. In that play by this author, that character reminisces about taking a speedboat to Torcello to read Yeats alone. At the end of a different play by this author, a character who had left to get a drink of water returns stripped of some of his clothing and his gun. A character in that play by this author yells “Kaw!” after reading about a “child of eight” killing a cat and a “man of eighty-seven” crawling under a lorry. Two characters in a play by this author argue about the difference between the phrases “light the kettle” and “put on the kettle” and send items like a stale Eccles (“ECK-ulls”) cake up the title device. For 10 points, what playwright of Betrayal wrote about the hitmen Gus and Ben in The Dumb Waiter?
ANSWER: Harold Pinter
[after 80% of the tossup] This book posits that geometricians determine properties from the construction of figures in a section on “What Philosophy Is.” The Foole’s claim that “there is no such thing as Justice” is rebutted by the claim that broken covenants lead to injustice in this book after the third of its 19 laws of nature is posed. According to this book, misinterpretation of scripture can drive a state to become a “Confederacy of Deceivers.” The fear of violent death is called summum malum in this book and cited as the reason humans form states in its first section, “Of Man.” This book characterizes the “state of nature” as a “war of all against all” that is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” For 10 points, name this 1651 book that advocates for rule by an absolute sovereign, written by Thomas Hobbes.
ANSWER: Leviathan [accept Leviathan or The Matter, Forme and Power of a Commonwealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil]
[after 84% of the tossup] The causative agent of this disease contains a pE88 plasmid encoding several ABC transporters. This disease may cause Risus sardonicus and more general opisthotonus (“opp-is-THOT-uh-nuss”) also seen in cerebral palsy or strychnine poisoning. Exotoxins present in this disease include a cholesterol-dependent hemolysin and a ganglioside-binding protein that cleaves synaptobrevin. Renshaw cells are inactivated by this disease, which prevents the release of inhibitory neurotransmitters. It’s not botulism, but this disease is caused by a Clostridium bacterium and has symptoms that can be alleviated by benzodiazepines. A toxoid from this disease is included alongside diphtheria and pertussis in the Tdap vaccine. For 10 points, name this disease that causes muscle spasms associated with exposure to rusty nails.
ANSWER: tetanus [or lockjaw]
[after 84% of the tossup] Chinese practitioners of this tradition construct gǒngběi memorials on the graves of ménhuàn lineage founders. This tradition was introduced to Australia by Friedrich von Frankenberg, whose student Francis Brabazon built the “Avatar’s Abode” to house the leader of “[this tradition] Reoriented.” The Yan Taru movement was created to further women’s education by a West African follower of this tradition, Nana Asma’u. The concept of fanā’ is followed by baqā’, or “perpetual existence,” in this tradition whose practices often revolve around dhikr (“thicker”), or remembrance of God. Ascetics from this tradition’s Mevlevi ṭarīqa called “dervishes” perform a namesake “whirling” dance. For 10 points, what mystic Islamic tradition inspired Rumi’s Masnavī?
ANSWER: Sufism [or Taṣawwuf; or Ṣufiyyah; accept sūfēi zhǔyí; prompt on Naqshbandi or Chishti or Mevlevi until read by asking “which are part of what larger tradition?”]
[after 85% of the tossup] This thinker describes common purpose as an outcome of “instinctive liking” or a shared “instinctive aversion” in Why Men Fight. With Jean-Paul Sartre, this thinker led a conference finding the US guilty of war crimes in Vietnam. This thinker advocated for a four-hour workday in the essay “In Praise of Idleness.” P. F. Strawson criticized an essay by this thinker that argues against Alexius Meinong (“MY-nong”) with examples of “the author of Waverley” and the “present” kings of England and France to contrast types of definite descriptions. This author of “On Denoting” formulated an argument against defaulting to belief in God that involves a floating teapot. For 10 points, name this English philosopher who collaborated with Alfred North Whitehead on Principia Mathematica.
ANSWER: Bertrand Russell [or Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell; accept Russell’s teapot]
[after 86% of the tossup] An author from this country intertwined scenes of Robert Browning in Venice with the lives of the main characters in the novel The Whirlpool. In one of 11 interviews conducted by Graeme Gibson with novelists from this country, Timothy Findley coined the name for one region in this country’s “Southern Gothic” literature. “Boy” Staunton causes a pregnant woman to go into premature labor in Fifth Business, a novel in this country’s Deptford Trilogy. An author from this country featured symposiums led by Professor Pieixoto as metafictional epilogues for two novels. While meeting outside of the “Ceremony” in a novel from this country, Offred plays Scrabble with the Commander. For 10 points, name this home country of the author of The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood.
ANSWER: Canada (The Whirlpool is by Jane Urquhart. The second line refers to “Southern Ontario Gothic.” The Deptford Trilogy is by Robertson Davies.)
[after 86% of the tossup] Description acceptable. Massirah is controversially used to perform this action in Sudan. Surah al-Nisā’ warns that this practice, which is likened to belomancy and polytheism in Surah al-Mā’idah, can invalidate daily prayer. Along with apostasy, this action can require ḥadd punishment based on sunnah rather than on the text of the Qur’an. Khalid ibn Walid is credited with increasing punishment for this practice from 40 to 80 lashes. Although an al-Tirmidhī hadith equates this action with the consumption of khamr (“KHAH-mur”), some jurists of the Ḥanafī school only prohibit performing this action with date or grape products. For 10 points, identify this practice of intoxication which is forbidden in Islam.
ANSWER: drinking alcohol [accept sukr or muskar; accept intoxication or word forms until read; accept drunkenness or word forms; accept drinking wine or beer or liquor; accept consuming khamr until read; prompt on drinking by asking “drinking what?”]
[after 88% of the tossup] One model of this material that features a “critical state line” is called its “Modified Cam” model. An equation developed by Karl von Terzaghi computes this material’s “bearing capacity.” This material’s swelling potential increases with its plasticity index, which can be calculated from its Atterberg limits. Increases in pressure cause this prototypical three-phase material to contract during “consolidation.” Compaction of this material can cause a structure’s foundation to move during “settlement.” Applied stresses can cause excess pore water pressure to build in this material, causing its “liquefaction” during earthquakes. Based on its particle size distribution, this material can be classified into subtypes such as sand and clay. For 10 points, what organic material do plant roots typically anchor themselves in?
ANSWER: soil [or earth; or dirt; accept sand until read; accept clay until read; accept Modified Cam-Clay model]
[after 92% of the tossup] Despite being named for Fermi, a “golden rule” first derived by this physicist predicts transitions due to perturbations. Both state vectors and observables have time dependence in a framework introduced by this physicist called the interaction picture. This physicist’s eponymous equation predicts free particles undergo rapid oscillatory motion called Zitterbewegung (“TSIT-ur-buh-VAY-goong”). The existence of a single magnetic monopole implies the quantization of electric charge according to this physicist’s quantization condition. This physicist “factored” the wave equation to find gamma matrices and spinors used in his namesake equation. The existence of negative energy solutions led this man to propose his namesake “sea” of electrons. For 10 points, what British physicist developed a namesake relativistic generalization of the Schrödinger equation?
ANSWER: Paul Dirac [accept Dirac sea; accept Dirac equation; accept Dirac picture; accept Dirac quantization condition]
[after 99% of the tossup] The unreliability of the first and last observed instances of these objects is explained through the Signor–Lipps effect. Ichnologists (“ick-NOL-uh-jists”) study so-called “trace” examples of these objects, which provide the primary evidence for the substrate revolution. The relative ordering of these objects are considered when invoking the law of faunal succession. Stratigraphic correlation may be performed using easily identifiable examples of these objects with short temporal range and wide geographic distribution. Lagerstätten of these objects include the Burgess Shale and La Brea Tar Pits. For 10 points, graptolites and brachiopods are examples of the “index” type of what preserved remains of past organisms?
ANSWER: fossils [accept trace fossils or index fossils or guide fossils or indicator fossils or dating fossils or zone fossils]
[after 99% of the tossup] Ernest Gellner’s characterization of this system as a “blueprint for a social order” was criticized by Talal Asad, who lamented the lack of a “coherent anthropology of” this system in an article that calls it a “discursive tradition.” Two antipodal countries’ figures in this system named Lyusi and Kalijaga recur throughout a book titled for this system. A 1960 book partly titled for an island distinguishes versions of this religion between the doctrinal santri and ritualistic abangan. One author used his technique of “thick description” to compare this religion’s divergent cultures in an African and an Asian country. For 10 points, a Clifford Geertz book titled for what religion “observed” discusses its practice in Morocco and Indonesia?
ANSWER: Islam [accept Islam Observed; prompt on religion until read] (The 1960 book is Geertz’s The Religion of Java.)
[after 99% of the tossup] Works by Capuchin friars such as Giovanni Cavazzi da Montecuccolo (“mon-tay-KOO-ko-lo”) are an important source for the history of this state. The son of a ruler of this state was appointed bishop in partibus infidelium of Utica. A woman from this state recovered from an illness possessed by Saint Anthony and led her followers to occupy the abandoned capital of São Salvador. King Pedro IV of this state ordered the prophet Kimpa Vita to be burned at the stake. Catholicism became entrenched in this state during the rule of Afonso I. Following a dispute with this state, Portugal moved the bishop’s seat at this state’s capital to the nearby colonial city of Luanda. This kingdom’s lineage of Christian kings began with the conversion of Nzinga-a-Nkuwu. For 10 points, name this kingdom that was located to the south of a namesake Central African river.
ANSWER: Kongo [or Kingdom of Kongo; or Kongo Dya Ntotila; or Reino do Congo]
[after 100% of the tossup] This character suggests that God should recreate the world after positing the “principle of perpetual disappointment” as a “fundamental law of the Universe.” This character almost leaves behind a stack of comic books after going on a tirade in which he smashes a bottle of brandy and tears up an unfinished essay on global politics. This character claims that a copy of On the Origin of Species is safe because he put it in the library’s theology section. This author of “A World Without Collisions” declares himself an atheist after an older interlocutor suggests Jesus Christ as a “man of magnitude.” This character lets out his frustration about his alcoholic father returning from the hospital on Sam and Willie. For 10 points, an Athol Fugard play is titled for what character “…and the Boys”?
ANSWER: Master Harold [or Hally; accept “Master Harold” …and the Boys]
[after 100% of the tossup] In a play from this period, Angela uses a secret panel behind a glass cupboard door to manipulate her lover into believing she is the title character. An author from this period wrote a play in which a woman complains about men before her lover saves her by grabbing her attacker’s crossbow. The Phantom Lady was a “cloak-and-sword play” from this period, which was also known for the auto sacramental. In another play from this period, the murder of the Commander goes unpunished after the title village refuses to give up his killer. In a play from this period, King Basilio tries to avoid a prophecy by locking Segismundo, the prince of Poland, in a tower. For 10 points, Lope de Vega’s Fuenteovejuna and Pedro Calderón de la Barca’s Life is a Dream were published during what Spanish literary period?
ANSWER: Spanish Golden Age [or Spanish Golden Century; or Siglo de Oro]
[after 100% of the tossup] For non-adhesive materials in contact, this quantity can be calculated using Hertzian theory. Averaging the Navier–Stokes equations gives a term representing one type of this quantity that is proportional to the averaged fluctuating velocity correlation and named for Reynolds. A cylinder plotted in the space of principal coordinates of this quantity gives the maximum allowed value for the deviatoric type of this quantity before yielding according to the von Mises criterion. Off-diagonal elements of a tensor for this quantity named for Cauchy represent this quantity’s “shear” form. In uniaxial cases, this quantity is given by force over cross-sectional area. For 10 points, name this quantity that measures the forces causing deformation and is often plotted against strain.
ANSWER: stress [accept shear stress or deviatoric stress; accept principal stress; accept Cauchy stress tensor; accept Reynolds stress or Reynolds stress tensor]
[after 100% of the tossup] One of these things partly named for Lancaster was designed by John Loudon McAdam and was unusually built by a private company due to Pennsylvania being broke. These things are the first suggestions in the title of a 1808 report calling for 20 million dollars of funding, written by Albert Gallatin. The Jeffersonian belief that the Postal Clause only gave Congress power to designate, not build, these things informed Madison’s veto of the Bonus Bill and Andrew Jackson’s veto of one of these things for Maysville. Some modern ones of these projects lay over older “traces” like one named for the Natchez. A “National” one of these projects began at Cumberland, Maryland. For 10 points, name these projects that allowed for travel between cities via wagons.
ANSWER: roads [or highways; accept National Road or Maysville Road; accept toll roads or post roads or turnpikes; accept traces until read; reject “railroads”]

Elishiya Crain-Keddie ↩

[after 24% of the tossup] Social media users gave the name “Jelly” to one of these characters repeatedly shown crying colorful tears. Simon Baek revealed that a Sunlight Sister had a child with one of these characters before being killed by Celine. One of these beings rues how he left his family in poverty “while I slept on silk sheets in the palace with my belly full every night” to become one of these beings with the aid of Gwi-Ma. A song that claims one of these beings “with no feelings don’t deserve to live, it’s so obvious” is performed to expose Rumi as being part-[one of these beings], something revealed when patterns on her arm are exposed while fighting Jinu in a bathhouse. For 10 points, the Honmoon protects humanity from what beings exemplified by the Saja Boys, who are fought in a 2025 Netflix film by the K-pop group HUNTR/X (“huntrix”)?
ANSWER: demons [or dokkaebi or jeoseung saja; prompt on Saja Boys until read by asking “what general class of beings are they?”]
[after 34% of the tossup] In this state, Tina Bell fronted Bam Bam, the first band to record at Reciprocal Recording. The all-female opening night of a music festival in this state saw the live debut of Heavens to Betsy, whose split led Corin Tucker to form Sleater-Kinney. A band from this state spent over 5 years on Billboard with their album Ten, which contains a song claiming “thoughts arrive like butterflies.” This state’s “riot grrl” movement included acts like Bikini Kill, whose frontwoman Kathleen Hanna inspired a hit by another band from this state by claiming its lead singer smelled like a deodorant brand. Krist Novoselic was the bassist of a band from this state who included songs like “Lithium” and “Come As You Are” on their album Nevermind. For 10 points, grunge bands like Pearl Jam and Nirvana formed in what US state’s city of Seattle?
ANSWER: Washington [or State of Washington; or WA]
[after 50% of the tossup] A 1978 group of people in this profession called “Thirty-Five New Guys” included six pioneering female members like Shannon Lucid. An actress diversified this profession through a national outreach campaign with the company Woman in Motion. A person best known for this profession publicly came out via her obituary and was once asked if 100 tampons was appropriate for one week in this profession. Actress Nichelle Nichols inspired people in this profession like Mae Jemison. In a televised accident investigated by the Rogers Commission, members of this profession including Judith Resnik perished alongside a teacher trained for this profession named Christa McAuliffe. For 10 points, name this profession of Sally Ride.
ANSWER: astronauts [prompt on scientists; prompt on engineers; prompt on aviators or pilots; prompt on geologists; prompt on schoolteachers until “teacher” is read] (Nichelle Nichols was the original portrayer of Uhura in Star Trek.)
[after 53% of the tossup] These groups name a class of theorems that includes “conditional” and “competence-sensitive” subtypes and a non-paradox statement put forth by the Marquis de Condorcet. A relaxed requirement for these groups in Louisiana and Oregon was made unconstitutional in the Ramos case. Potential members of these groups with “conscientious scruples” are excluded from “death qualification” in a process nicknamed “Witherspooning.” These groups are selected from a pool of potential candidates called a venire or struck for cause during the process of voir dire. The Sixth Amendment guarantees the right to these groups’ impartial nature. For 10 points, what groups composed of one’s “peers” determine a verdict in court?
ANSWER: juries [or jury; accept petit jury; accept Condorcet’s jury theorem; reject “grand juries”; reject “voters”] (Ramos v. Louisiana abolished non-unanimous jury verdicts.)
[after 56% of the tossup] In the writings of Wallace Fard, one of these places is identified with the city of Allah’s residence and the origin of the “Mother Plane,” which he claimed to be the Biblical merkāvā, God’s chariot. After being kidnapped under the pretext of tax audits, thetans were sent to one of these locations called Teegeeack (“TEE-jee-ack”). According to the Book of Abraham, Methuselah helped to discover one of these places called Kolob which is “closest to the throne of God.” The LDS church strenuously denies the popular belief that these places will be each Mormon’s heavenly reward for following the “straight and narrow” way to the Celestial Kingdom. For 10 points, name these celestial bodies from which extraterrestrials are often claimed to come as ambassadors to humanity.
ANSWER: planets [accept exoplanets; accept Earths until “Abraham” is read; prompt on Unidentified Flying Objects or UFOs until “Abraham” is read; prompt on volcanoes until “Abraham” is read by asking “on what larger type of place could the volcanoes be found?”]
[after 68% of the tossup] One of these animals is often depicted supporting Kui Xing. A table-carrying child of the Dragon King is one of these animals named Bixi. A snake is often depicted winding around one of these animals that represents the north. The name of that one of the Four Symbols is typically translated as “Black [this animal].” After holes are patched with multicolored stones, one of these animals named Ao has his legs cut off by Nüwa to create four pillars for holding up the heavens. In the comparative mythology section of Primitive Culture, Edward Burnett Tylor discusses the tropes of both elephants and these animals as world-bearing creatures. For 10 points, ancient Chinese divination sometimes made use of the shells of what reptiles?
ANSWER: turtles [or tortoises; or wū gūi (“ooh gway”); accept Black Tortoise or Black Turtle-Snake or xuánwǔ; accept World-Bearing Turtles or World-Bearing Tortoises]
[after 69% of the tossup] A piece by this composer emphasizes the word “dominum” through homorhythmic repetition before a triple-time Alleluja section. Since 2012, The Sixteen have released nine albums dedicated to this composer’s music. The head-motif of an ascending fourth followed by a stepwise descent down appears in a piece by this composer that adds a seventh voice in its second Agnus Dei movement. In a description of this composer’s style, leaps are countered by stepwise movement in the other direction and dissonances fall on weak beats, as taught in Joseph Fux’s (“FOOKS’s”) Gradus ad Parnassum. This composer’s most famous missa sine nomine apocryphally “saved polyphony” at the Council of Trent. For 10 points, name this Italian Renaissance composer of the Pope Marcellus Mass.
ANSWER: Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (The first line refers to his O Magnum Mysterium.)
[after 83% of the tossup] This architect designed the scenery for a 1968 Billy Al Bengston exhibition at LACMA. This architect fixed a full-scale F-104 jet fighter to the entrance of the California Aerospace Museum. This architect’s use of a fish motif appears in his design of a restaurant in Kobe. This architect’s “open-ended” approach can be seen in the use of corrugated steel and mesh fencing of his Santa Monica residence. A building designed by this architect described as a “metaphoric city” has an atrium he nicknamed “the flower.” This architect associated with Deconstructivism used concave wave-like exteriors for a Los Angeles concert hall. For 10 points, name this Canadian-American architect of the Walt Disney Concert Hall and Guggenheim Bilbao.
ANSWER: Frank Gehry [or Frank Owen Gehry; or Frank Owen Goldberg]
[after 88% of the tossup] Composer and genre required. The slow introduction of the first of these pieces opens with a cadence into the subdominant and only reaches the tonic in bar 4. A 3/4 fast movement in one of these pieces uses an oboe theme of [read slowly] seven B-flat quarter notes followed by an eighth-note descent from C to F. The recapitulation in one of these pieces is anticipated by a horn call that creates dissonance with the strings. A flute, oboe, and two clarinets imitate bird calls in a movement of one of these pieces titled “Scene by the brook.” The composer had to be turned to face the audience’s applause at the performance of the last of these pieces, which includes a setting of “Ode to Joy.” For 10 points, name these orchestral works that include ones nicknamed “Eroica” and “Choral.”
ANSWER: symphonies by Ludwig van Beethoven [prompt on symphonies by asking “by who?”; prompt on works by Ludwig van Beethoven by asking “in what genre?”]
[after 94% of the tossup] René Leibowitz cited a piece by this composer that begins with the spoken line “I cannot remember everything. I must have been unconscious” as an example of music that meets the requirements of “committed art.” This composer’s early use of quartal harmony can be heard in an ascending theme first played by the horn in his first Chamber Symphony. This composer began using an athematic style in his Opus 11 Drei Klavierstücke (“DRY klah-vee-AIR-shtuck-uh”), and he also wrote A Survivor from Warsaw. The title character is called “drunk” in the opening section of a song cycle by this composer that is accompanied by a namesake ensemble and pioneered the technique of Sprechstimme. For 10 points, name this Austrian composer of Pierrot Lunaire who developed 12-tone serialism.
ANSWER: Arnold Schoenberg
[after 94% of the tossup] Nicholas Owen gained notoriety for his skill in building these people’s “holes.” Richard Topcliffe gained fame for his ability to hunt down people of this type, such as his victim Richard Southwell. After John Day was liberated from prison, he published a propaganda piece directed [emphasize] against these people called Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. The death of Edmund Godfrey inflamed fears of these people, following a fabricated conspiracy theory promulgated by Titus Oates. These people were the largest demographic targeted in the Test Act. An attempt to reduce discrimination against this religious group led to the near-destruction of the newly built Newgate Prison during the Gordon Riots. For 10 points, Elizabeth I led large persecutions of what religious group that was accused of leading the Popish Plot?
ANSWER: Catholics [or papists; prompt on priests by asking “of what religion?”]
[after 98% of the tossup] Timothy Jackson asserted that the outline of this symphony’s slow woodwind opening, which rises from E to G, then F-sharp to A, represents a cruciform. The last movement of this symphony uses a composite melody in the violins of [read slowly] long F-sharp, E, D, dotted C-sharp, B, C-sharp, while the third movement is simultaneously in 4/4 and 12/8. Traditionally, the audience claps between the third and fourth movements of this symphony. This B minor symphony was conducted by its composer less than a month before his death, possibly from cholera. This symphony’s allegro con grazia second movement is a 5/4 “limping waltz.” For 10 points, name this final symphony by the composer of the 1812 Overture.
ANSWER: Pathétique Symphony [or Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6]

Vivian Fan ↩

[after 28% of the tossup] In a story set after this war, Henry jumps into a river and tells his brother Lyman “my boots are filling” before he drowns. In a story set after this war, Norman Bowker walks fully clothed into his hometown lake after driving around it twelve times, only stopping to get a hamburger. After being shot twice, the protagonist of a story set during this war vows to scare the inexperienced medic Bobby Jorgenson using flares and sandbags. This war is the subject of a collection that contains “How to Tell a True War Story” and another story in which Kiowa drowns in a sewage field. Lieutenant Jimmy Cross lists “can openers, pocket knives, heattabs, wristwatches” in a story set during this war in which Ted Lavender is shot in the head. For 10 points, name this war, the backdrop of the stories in Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried.
ANSWER: Vietnam War [or Second Indochina War; or Chiến tranh Việt Nam; or Kháng chiến chống Mỹ] (The first story is “The Red Convertible” by Louise Erdrich.)
[after 28% of the tossup] Social media users gave the name “Jelly” to one of these characters repeatedly shown crying colorful tears. Simon Baek revealed that a Sunlight Sister had a child with one of these characters before being killed by Celine. One of these beings rues how he left his family in poverty “while I slept on silk sheets in the palace with my belly full every night” to become one of these beings with the aid of Gwi-Ma. A song that claims one of these beings “with no feelings don’t deserve to live, it’s so obvious” is performed to expose Rumi as being part-[one of these beings], something revealed when patterns on her arm are exposed while fighting Jinu in a bathhouse. For 10 points, the Honmoon protects humanity from what beings exemplified by the Saja Boys, who are fought in a 2025 Netflix film by the K-pop group HUNTR/X (“huntrix”)?
ANSWER: demons [or dokkaebi or jeoseung saja; prompt on Saja Boys until read by asking “what general class of beings are they?”]
[after 30% of the tossup] A medieval travel journal from this country was written by an anonymous “Lady” whose aunt, known only as a noble’s “mother,” authored The Gossamer Years. A book from this country opens “In spring it is the dawn that is most beautiful” and features the section “Embarrassing Things.” Ivan Morris translated that book and one retitled after the same “Bridge of Dreams” that titles a chapter of a novel from this country. A possibly autobiographical character in a novel from this country is kidnapped by the protagonist after the daughter of the Minister of the Left dies. The blank chapter “Vanished into the Clouds” appears in that novel from this country, often considered the first modern novel. For 10 points, name this country home to the authors of The Pillow Book and The Tale of Genji.
ANSWER: Japan [or Nippon; or Nihon] (The first line is the Sarashina Diary.)
[after 30% of the tossup] A photograph of this person looking down and wearing a denim jacket is framed by the hills of the Nevada desert. Cecil Beaton took a series of photographs of this person at the Ambassador Hotel, including a “Japanese photo” in which she holds a flower against her torso. Eve Arnold took many photographs of this person, including one in which she wears a bathing suit and reads Ulysses. Red marker pen was used to draw “crucifixes” on photographs of this woman taken by Bert Stern for her “Last Sitting.” Andy Warhol created a “Diptych” of this actress, whom Sam Shaw and George Barris photographed in a billowing white dress above a subway grate. For 10 points, name this “blonde bombshell” actress who starred in The Seven Year Itch.
ANSWER: Marilyn Monroe [or Norma Jean Mortenson]
[after 30% of the tossup] In a novel by this author, Terry is exiled for trying to rape his wife Alima. In that novel by this author, the sociology student Vandyck Jennings and two of his friends investigate an unknown region whose inhabitants reproduce through parthenogenesis. This author wrote a short story in which one character consumes cod-liver oil instead of ale, wine, and red meat. The protagonist of that story by this author requests to remove its title object, describing it as “a debased Romanesque with delirium tremens.” This author wrote a story in which the protagonist exclaims “I’ve got out at last… in spite of you and Jane” after she is prescribed a rest cure by her husband John. For 10 points, name this author who described a woman imprisoned by the pattern of the title decoration in The Yellow Wallpaper.
ANSWER: Charlotte Perkins Gilman [or Charlotte Anna Perkins Gilman; or Charlotte Perkins Stetson] (The novel is Herland.)
[after 43% of the tossup] A Joy Harjo poem that quotes this poem begins, “We were running out of breath, as we ran out to meet ourselves.” A bell hooks book titled for this poem is subtitled “Black Men and Masculinity.” The setting of this poem titles a poetic form in which the last word of each line makes a quote and was pioneered by Terrence Hayes. This poem’s author said she was inspired to write this poem after walking past a pool hall in Chicago and thinking “I wonder how they feel about themselves?” This poem from the collection The Bean Eaters is narrated by “pool players” at the “Golden Shovel.” The characters in this poem “Strike straight,” “Jazz June,” and “Die soon.” For 10 points, name this eight-line poem where every line except for the last ends with the word “We,” by Gwendolyn Brooks.
ANSWER: “We Real Cool”
[after 44% of the tossup] One of these animals is often depicted supporting Kui Xing. A table-carrying child of the Dragon King is one of these animals named Bixi. A snake is often depicted winding around one of these animals that represents the north. The name of that one of the Four Symbols is typically translated as “Black [this animal].” After holes are patched with multicolored stones, one of these animals named Ao has his legs cut off by Nüwa to create four pillars for holding up the heavens. In the comparative mythology section of Primitive Culture, Edward Burnett Tylor discusses the tropes of both elephants and these animals as world-bearing creatures. For 10 points, ancient Chinese divination sometimes made use of the shells of what reptiles?
ANSWER: turtles [or tortoises; or wū gūi (“ooh gway”); accept Black Tortoise or Black Turtle-Snake or xuánwǔ; accept World-Bearing Turtles or World-Bearing Tortoises]
[after 46% of the tossup] Characters who later appear in this story cause Leila to yearn for siblings while in a cab to the title event in the story “Her First Ball.” A girl in this story bites a piece of bread and butter while pondering “absurd class distinctions” after seeing a workman stop to smell lavender. A character described as “the butterfly” tests a piano in this story by practicing the song “This Life is Weary” before the maid Sadie interrupts to ask about sandwich flags. After hearing of a man thrown off his horse from Godber’s man during his cream puff delivery, a character in this story attempts to cancel the title event. That character takes leftover food to the widow of Scott and embraces her brother while stammering “Isn’t life.” For 10 points, Laura Sheridan plans the title event of what Katherine Mansfield story?
ANSWER: “The Garden Party”
[after 46% of the tossup] A ruler of these people commissioned the “Great proclamation upon the pacification of Wú” to affirm their independence. A dynasty of these people that sustained repeated naval attacks by Po Binasuor was usurped by another dynasty that only ruled for seven years. These people defeated invading armies at Bạch Đằng (“bike dong”) River three times. Literature in a native writing system called chữ Nôm flourished during a dynasty of these people that repulsed three Mongol invasions. These people had a centuries-long feud with the Kingdom of Champa to their south. These people’s Fourth Era of Northern Domination was ended by the Lam Sơn rebellion. That rebellion of these people against the Míng Dynasty was lead by Lê Lợi. For 10 points, name these people whose Trần, Hồ, and Later Lê Dynasties had their capital at modern-day Hànội.
ANSWER: Vietnamese people [or Viet; or người Việt; or Kinh]
[after 50% of the tossup] A poem by this author describes a woman who is “sick to her marrow bone” and “utterly alone.” A poem by this author concludes, “For one moment of peace / I would give the peace of the tomb.” The narrator says that “Mary Magdalene beat her breasts and sobbed” in a poem by this author that opens, “No foreign sky protected me.” This author, who was called “half nun, half whore,” wrote a poem in which a woman with “lips blue” asks the narrator, “can you describe this?” At the beginning of one of her poems, this author wrote, “I have lit my treasured candles, / one by one.” The sections “Crucifixion” and “Instead of a Preface” appear in a poem by this author of “Poem Without a Hero” about a woman who waits seventeen months outside of a prison in Leningrad. For 10 points, name this Soviet author of “Requiem.”
ANSWER: Anna Akhmatova (“ock-MAH-toh-vah”)
[after 50% of the tossup] This medium was used by artists in London’s Bow district to depict figures such as Kitty Clive and General James Wolfe. Ehrenfried von Tschirnhaus (“CHURN-house”) spurred the creation of works in this medium at Meissen (“MICE-in”), which often drew inspiration from the Kakiemon (“ka-kee-EH-moan”) style. After moving from Vincennes, Jean-Claude Duplessis became the artistic director of a factory that produced works in this medium at Sèvres (“SEV-ruh”). A variety of faience (“fie-ONSE”) produced in Delft emulated “export” works in this medium, which were often created in Jǐngdézhèn (“jing-duh-jun”). Early European attempts to recreate this medium lacked the kaolin (“KAY-uh-lin”) needed for its “hard-paste” type, which is less prone to chipping. For 10 points, name this medium used to produce blue-and-white Míng dynasty vases.
ANSWER: porcelain [or china; accept hard-paste porcelain or soft-paste porcelain or Chinese export porcelain; accept bone china; prompt on pottery or ceramics; prompt on clay or kaolin until “kaolin” is read; reject “earthenware” or “stoneware”]
[after 51% of the tossup] In one novel, a character with this profession crushes baby birds under a stone to save them from the sadistic Tom Bloomfield. That character with this profession is reunited with the dog Snap while walking along the beach at the end of a novel published under the pen name Acton Bell. In another novel, the employer of a character with this profession asks “does my forehead not please you?” and “do you think me handsome?” to which that character with this profession replies bluntly, “No, sir.” That character with this profession travels to Ferndean, and helps a man blinded in a fire at Thornfield Hall started by his wife. After refusing a proposal from the clergyman St. John (“SIN-jin”) Rivers, that title character with this profession states in the final chapter, “Reader, I married him.” For 10 points, name this profession of Jane Eyre.
ANSWER: governess [prompt on teacher; prompt on tutor; prompt on servant; prompt on nanny; prompt on au pair]
[after 60% of the tossup] An eight-foot-tall sculpture of a person with this surname sits atop a pedestal engraved with the phrase “The Holiest Thing Alive” in Ashland, Pennsylvania. That person with this surname may have substituted for Maggie Graham in a painting that gained popularity after being acquired by the Musée de Luxembourg. The composition of a portrait of Thomas Carlyle was modeled after a portrait of a person with this surname that contains a butterfly monogram beside a print of the Thames hanging on a wall. Because she could not stand for long periods of time, a woman with this surname sat for a portrait in which she wears a white lace headscarf while facing to the left. For 10 points, give the surname of the model for Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1 by her son, James McNeill.
ANSWER: Whistler [accept James Abbott McNeill Whistler or Anna McNeill Whistler; accept Whistler’s mother]
[after 60% of the tossup] This artist placed images of 19th-century women on the floor of an exhibition entrance for the work Horizontal Memory. Eadweard Muybridge inspired a video work by this artist consisting of close-up shots of 15 different people’s buttocks. An early work by this artist consists of the single instruction to leave a canvas “on the floor or in the snow.” In one performance, this artist sat onstage while audience members cut out pieces of her clothing until she was almost nude. This Fluxus artist was photographed by Annie Leibovitz lying clothed in bed as her naked husband kisses her, shortly before his murder. For 10 points, name this Japanese artist whose works include collaborations with her husband John Lennon.
ANSWER: Yoko Ono [or Ono Yoko]
[after 62% of the tossup] An eight-year “Great Unrest” of these events in Sweden culminated in an unusually large one in Torsåker led by Lars Hornæus. A Carlo Ginzburg book details how the Italian Benandanti were impacted by these events. Several of these events began after Anne of Denmark travelled to Scotland. Johannes Junius, the mayor of Bamberg, wrote a letter to his daughter detailing the impact of these events, which Wolfgang Behringer’s research proposes arose as a result of the “Little Ice Age.” Heinrich Kramer received a papal bull authorizing him to instigate these events after publishing a treatise on them, the Malleus Maleficarum, which details methods of torturing people to induce confessions. For 10 points, Early Modern Europe saw a “craze” of what events that sought to prove people guilty of using magic?
ANSWER: witch trials [or witch hunts; accept the Early Modern witch craze; prompt on inquisitions by asking “targeting what people?”]
[after 64% of the tossup] In a poem in this language, a poet asks the protagonist if he wrote the line “Ladies who have intelligence of love.” That line appears in a poem in this language in which Love tells a poet in Latin, “ego dominus tuus,” or “I am your lord.” T. S. Eliot quoted a poet who wrote in this language with the line “Because I do not hope to turn again.” That poet, who wrote a song whose title is translated as “A lady asks me,” founded a literary school that influenced a prosimetrum on courtly love in this language. Works in the sweet new style movement in this language include the love poem The New Life. In a long narrative poem in this language, Beatrice and Virgil act as guides to a poet traveling through hell, purgatory, and heaven. For 10 points, name this language used by Dante to write The Divine Comedy.
ANSWER: Italian [or italiano; or lingua italiana; accept Tuscan or dialetto toscano or Florentine or dialetto fiorentino or vernacolo fiorentino] (Guido Cavalcanti’s “Donna mi prega” translates to “A lady asks me.”)
[after 64% of the tossup] An early commentator on this work had a pseudonym meaning “Inkstone Studio.” John Minford helped complete the seminal English translation of this work by David Hawkes. A significant dispute in this work’s namesake “-ology” centers on whether its last forty chapters were a later addition to its first eighty chapters. Feminist criticism of this work often contrasts the female-dominated space of the Grand View Garden with the patriarchal outside world and discusses the 12 Beauties of Jīnlíng. In this novel, the Disenchantment Fairy is visited by a priest and a monk carrying the protagonist, who is reincarnated as a boy with a piece of jade in his mouth. For 10 points, the tragic love story of Jiǎ Bǎoyù and Lín Dàiyù is detailed in what classic Chinese novel?
ANSWER: Dream of the Red Chamber [or The Story of the Stone; or A Dream of Red Mansions; or Hóng lóu mèng; prompt on Redology]
[after 64% of the tossup] In a poem by this author, the title creature “says the highway dust is over all” and predicts “that other fall we name the fall.” In another poem by this author, “part of a moon” falls “down the west” and drags “the whole sky with it to the hills.” This author of “The Oven Bird” wrote a poem that defines “home” as “the place where… they have to take you in” and begins with Mary waiting for her husband who says, “Silas is back.” In another poem by this author, a “little horse” “gives his harness bells a shake” to ask the speaker “if there is some mistake.” That poem by this author ends, “I have promises to keep, / And miles to go before I sleep.” For 10 points, name this author of monologues like “The Death of the Hired Man” who also wrote “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening.”
ANSWER: Robert Frost
[after 65% of the tossup] A satirical 1978 essay describes a hypothetical in which these people claim superiority due to an exclusive connection to lunar phases. Kate Manne coined a portmanteau about how sympathy prioritizes the “bright future” of these people over others’ suffering. The “adventurer” is contrasted with the “sub-[these people]” in a section on approaches to personal freedom from The Ethics of Ambiguity. In an essay inspired by John Berger’s Ways of Seeing entitled “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” Laura Mulvey describes these people’s objectifying “gaze.” These people are defined as “the Subject” and contrasted with “the Other” in Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex. For 10 points, feminist philosophers often critique “the patriarchy” for prioritizing what people?
ANSWER: men [or males; or boys; accept male gaze; accept sub-men; accept “If Men Could Menstruate”] (The essay in the first line is “If Men Could Menstruate” by Gloria Steinem. The portmanteau is “himpathy.”)
[after 66% of the tossup] 111 workers who built this structure recounted their experiences in a series of letters discussed by a Julie Greene book and the documentary Box 25. The existence of a secret plan to destroy this structure was confirmed by the autobiography America’s Prisoner. People who died in 1964 riots that tore down the “Fence of Shame” around this structure were commemorated on Martyrs Day. It’s not a tower, but Gustave Eiffel was prosecuted in a bribery scandal during an unsuccessful attempt to build this structure. Walter Reed’s medical advancements controlling yellow fever enabled the construction of this structure, which the Torrijos–Carter treaties transferred from US control in 1999. For 10 points, what man-made waterway connects the Caribbean to the Pacific through a namesake Central American country?
ANSWER: Panama Canal (America’s Prisoner is by Manuel Noriega.)
[after 70% of the tossup] In one of these places in a 1935 novella, a man with the “eyes of a schoolboy surprised in the act of breaking one of the rules” is noticed by William Bradshaw. Christopher Isherwood’s Berlin Stories begins with a novella titled for the communist spy Mr. Norris and these places. In one of these places, Cyrus B. Hardman complains that he cannot find a “small, dark man with a womanish voice.” In one of these places, a man finds a handkerchief embroidered with the letter “H” belonging to Princess Dragomiroff and searches for a “scarlet kimono.” In one of these places, the disguised baby kidnapper Cassetti is stabbed by all twelve suspects. For 10 points, name this type of place where Ratchett’s death is investigated by Hercule Poirot (“air-COOL pwah-ROH”) in Murder on the Orient Express.
ANSWER: trains [or passenger cars; or passenger coaches; accept train compartment; accept Mr. Norris Changes Trains; accept Murder in the Calais Coach; accept Murder on the Orient Express until read]
[after 72% of the tossup] This deity is often equated with an Etruscan god accompanied by a demon who wields a torch and scissors named Culsu. During a Sabine attack led by Tatius, this deity created a hot spring named Lautolae. Some texts credit this deity with fathering the Tiber River with his wife Camese. This deity is credited with having minted the first coins. This deity assaulted Cranaë (“kruh-NAY-ee”) before giving her the branch of a hawthorn tree, leading to her deification as the goddess Cardea. Fontus was fathered by this deity and the goddess Juturna. The gates of temples to this deity were kept open during times of war and shut during times of peace. For 10 points, name this two-faced Roman deity of beginnings, endings, and doorways.
ANSWER: Janus
[after 74% of the tossup] The narrator of a poem by this author described breaking “the copious curls upon my head” because her aunt “liked smooth-order hair.” In a different poem by this author, the speaker encourages the addressee to “Gather the north flowers to complete the south / And catch the early love up in the late.” In a long poem by this author, Marian Erle has a child out of wedlock and refuses to marry Romney, who proposes to the title character instead. Virginia Woolf wrote about this author’s cocker spaniel getting kidnapped in the fictional biography Flush. This author wrote “call me by my pet name” in a collection in which a different poem begins, “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.” For 10 points, name this poet who wrote the nine-book “novel in verse” Aurora Leigh and Sonnets from the Portuguese.
ANSWER: Elizabeth Barrett Browning [or Elizabeth Barrett Browning; accept Elizabeth Barrett; prompt on Browning; reject “Robert Browning”]
[after 84% of the tossup] This author added a character named Caroline who goes to milk a cow in a rewritten version of a scene that appears in an earlier work which lasts for “nearly two hours.” This author described ships “robed in purest white” that seemed like “shrouded ghosts” in a work in which Sandy gives the protagonist a root to keep on the right side of his body to ward off harm. The protagonist of a work by this author learns how to read from the Columbian Orator after being forbidden by Hugh Auld. William Lloyd Garrison wrote an introduction to this author’s memoir, which depicts his fight against Edward Covey. For 10 points, name this author who wrote about escaping his enslavement in three autobiographies including My Bondage and My Freedom and a Narrative in the Life of himself, An American Slave.
ANSWER: Frederick Douglass [or Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey; accept Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave]
[after 85% of the tossup] During a storm, this character’s love interest organizes a party game in which guests count successive numbers quickly and get boxed in the ear for making a mistake. In a different novel, this character reintegrates into society after another character thwarts his plan by placing chicken blood in his guns. This character is the subject of a parody by Friedrich Nicolai, and a novel about him inspired a novel subtitled The Beloved Returns by Thomas Mann. This character reads his translation of Ossian to a character who mentions the poet Klopstock while looking at the sky. This character is buried under two linden trees after committing suicide due to his unrequited love for Charlotte. For 10 points, name this character whose “Sorrows” title an epistolary novel by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
ANSWER: Young Werther [accept The Sorrows of Young Werther or The Joys of Young Werther] (The Mann novel is Lotte in Weimar: The Beloved Returns and the Nicolai parody is The Joys of Young Werther.)
[after 99% of the tossup] Julia Annas claims that the Kallipolis is only reachable if specific examples of these things already exist in an essay on them “in the Republic.” Four classes of moderate wealth divide a “sacred number” of 5,040 citizens in a society theorized in a dialogue titled for these things. In one dialogue, Cicero depicted himself discussing these things while walking around his estate with Atticus and Quintus. In a dialogue titled for these things, a “Nocturnal Council” is set in place for preserving salvation during a lengthy conversation between Megillus, Clinias, and an “Athenian Stranger.” Socrates unusually does not appear in any of the 12 books discussing establishing these title things in Plato’s final and longest dialogue. For 10 points, name these rules governing a society.
ANSWER: laws [accept On the Laws or De legibus; accept “Law in the Republic”; prompt on rules until read]
[after 100% of the tossup] This author maligned social classes like the aristocratic “Barbarians” and middle-class “Philistines” for embracing sentimental “bathos.” This author was inspired by a fable contrasting the spider with the bee in Jonathan Swift’s The Battle of the Books to write that a concept which partially titles one book should be defined by “sweetness and light.” This author defined the first title concept as “the best which has been thought and said” in Culture and Anarchy. This author included the poem “To Marguerite – Continued” with the dramatic poem Empedocles on Etna. A poem by this author begins, “The sea is calm tonight” and declares “Ah, love, let us be true / To one another!” For 10 points, name this critic and poet who wrote about a “darkling plain… where ignorant armies clash by night” in “Dover Beach.”
ANSWER: Matthew Arnold

Karthik Krishnamurthy ↩

[after 18% of the tossup] An actor portraying this character has a heart attack after reciting this character’s line “a wren goes to ’t” in the opening scene of Station Eleven. After this character dies, one character remarks that “I have a journey, sir; shortly to go. [This character] calls me. I must not say no,” implying that he will kill himself. This character mourns another character, crying, “Why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life / And thou no breath at all?” This character claims that he is a “man more sinned against than sinning” during a scene that begins with him saying “blow, winds, and crack your cheeks!” during a storm where he is followed by his fool and a bastard son disguised as Tom O’Bedlam. For 10 points, name this titular king of a Shakespeare play who disinherits Cordelia after she refuses to flatter him.
ANSWER: King Lear
[after 33% of the tossup] The son of a Lebanese businessman claims that he is adapting a novel by this author for theatre to hide his relationship with Nick Guest in Alan Hollinghurst’s novel The Line of Beauty. A novel by this author ends with the woman’s rights orator Verena Tarrant being carried out of a hall with tears, “not the last she was destined to shed,” in her eyes. The protagonist of a novel by this author first meets her aunt Lydia in the library of her grandmother’s house in Albany. Pansy is revealed to be the daughter of Madame Merle in a novel by this author in which the protagonist rejects the proposals of Lord Warburton and Caspar Goodwood before marrying Gilbert Osmond in Rome. For 10 points, name this author of The Bostonians who also created Isabel Archer in The Portrait of a Lady.
ANSWER: Henry James
[after 38% of the tossup] In a poem by this author, the title creature “says the highway dust is over all” and predicts “that other fall we name the fall.” In another poem by this author, “part of a moon” falls “down the west” and drags “the whole sky with it to the hills.” This author of “The Oven Bird” wrote a poem that defines “home” as “the place where… they have to take you in” and begins with Mary waiting for her husband who says, “Silas is back.” In another poem by this author, a “little horse” “gives his harness bells a shake” to ask the speaker “if there is some mistake.” That poem by this author ends, “I have promises to keep, / And miles to go before I sleep.” For 10 points, name this author of monologues like “The Death of the Hired Man” who also wrote “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening.”
ANSWER: Robert Frost
[after 40% of the tossup] A woman in this text sleeps for the entirety of her brother-in-law’s exile so that her husband could be awake the entire time instead. This text’s author was legendarily inspired to write it after the sage Narada had him chant the name of its dedicatee to turn away from his sinful life as the bandit Ratnakar. The king of the bears, Jambavan, reminds a figure in this text who was divinely fathered by a wind god that he has the strength to reach an enemy kingdom by jumping over an ocean. The title figure of this older of the two itihasas slays a ten-headed demon before returning home and inheriting his title as king of Ayodhya. For 10 points, name this Hindu epic in which Sita, the wife of the title blue-skinned deity, is kidnapped by Ravana.
ANSWER: Ramayana (The first line refers to Urmila, the wife of Lakshmana and sister-in-law of Rama.)
[after 48% of the tossup] A man with this first name sent false eviction notices that were unsuccessfully fought by Lillian Edelstein and the group ETNA. A writer and an editor both with this first name are subjects of Lizzie Gottlieb’s documentary Turn Every Page. A man with this first name wrote the Pulitzer-winning book Master of the Senate, part of the ongoing biography The Years of Lyndon Johnson. That writer with this first name detailed “one mile” built by another man with this first name across the poor East Tremont neighborhood in The Power Broker. Fiorello La Guardia appointed a man with this first name as the inaugural New York City Parks Commissioner, where he feuded with Jane Jacobs. For 10 points, what first name is shared by biographer Caro and urban planner Moses?
ANSWER: Robert [accept Robert Moses; accept Robert Caro; accept Robert Gottlieb] (ETNA was the East Tremont Neighborhood Association.)
[after 55% of the tossup] A novel about a character with this occupation includes a set of “Commendatory Verses” by fictional characters, including Urganda the Unknown. A character with this occupation changes his nickname to be “of the Lions” instead of one about having a “Sorrowful Face.” A man with this occupation is described with the epithet Innamorato in the title of a poem by Matteo Boiardo. In a novel about a character with this occupation, the romance Amadis of Gaul is among the books taken out of a library to be burned by a barber and priest. That novel contains references to an epic poem about a man with this occupation titled Orlando Furioso. A character who names his horse Rocinante aspires to hold this occupation and recruits the laborer Sancho Panza. For 10 points, name this chivalric profession held by Don Quixote.
ANSWER: knight [or knight-errant; or caballero; or caballero andante; accept “Knight of the Lions” or “Knight of the Sorrowful Face”]
[after 62% of the tossup] The Kadomtsev model explains rapid temperature drops in these devices called sawtooth relaxations. One type of these devices are protected from kink instabilities when the safety factor is greater than one. Another type of these devices heats a hohlraum using laser pulses in a technique called ICF. The first one of these devices to achieve a Q greater than one is the National Ignition Facility, which uses internal confinement. Magnetic fields confine plasma in a toroid in the stellarator and tokamak types of these machines, and these devices often use deuterium and tritium for fuel. For 10 points, name these devices that seek to produce power by combining atomic nuclei.
ANSWER: fusion reactors [accept tokamaks until “tokamak” is read; accept inertial confinement fusion reactors; prompt on reactors; prompt on nuclear reactors; reject “fission reactors”]
[after 63% of the tossup] For unknown reasons, the stele erected at this ruler’s Qiánlíng mausoleum was left wordless. Potentially for political purposes, this ruler promoted Buddhism, constructing a Dàyún Temple in each prefecture in the two capitals region. The Buddhist monk Huáiyì promulgated the Great Cloud Sutra to legitimize this ruler before being put to death for setting fire to some palace buildings. This ruler elevated Luòyáng to the primary capital, and might have modeled for the face of the largest Buddha statue at the Lóngmén Grottoes. This ruler oversaw the rebuilding of the Giant Wild Goose Pagoda. Following the death of Emperor Tàizōng of Táng, this founder of a Zhōu (“joe”) dynasty was sent to be a nun at Gānyè (“gahn-yeh”) Temple as a former concubine. For 10 points, name this only empress regnant of Imperial China.
ANSWER: Empress Wǔ [or Wǔ Zétiān; or Wǔ Zhào; or Wǔ Mèiniáng; or Wǔ Hòu]
[after 64% of the tossup] Damage to this organ may be categorized via the Ishak staging system. The ductus venosus allows this organ to be bypassed in fetal circulation. The AST/ALT ratio may be used in the diagnosis of diseases of this organ. Three quarters of this organ’s blood supply comes from the vessel that is formed from the union of the splenic (“SPLEN-ick”) and superior mesenteric veins; that vessel is the portal vein. This organ’s caudate (“CAW-date”) lobe is named for its resemblance to a tail. Damage to this organ can prevent the conjugation of bilirubin, resulting in jaundice. For 10 points, name this organ that can suffer cirrhosis from alcohol consumption.
ANSWER: liver
[after 64% of the tossup] This poet, who exhorted the earth for teaching “the lesson of poverty, / having nothing and wanting nothing,” wrote that the “tongue has one customer, the ear” in a poem whose speaker asserts “Anyone apart from someone he loves / understands what I say.” The speaker laments that “the keeping away is pulling me in” in a poem by this author that opens by asking a “dissolver of sugar” to “dissolve me, / if this is the time.” The disappearance of this poet’s teacher inspired the dedication of many of the 90 ghazals in one of his collections. This poet has been cited as the “best-selling poet in the US” due to Coleman Barks’s translations, one of which renders an opening line as “Listen to the story told by the reed.” For 10 points, name this Sufi poet of the Masnavi, or Spiritual Couplets.
ANSWER: Rumi [or Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī] (Rumi’s teacher, Shams of Tabriz, is the dedicatee of many poems in the Divan-i Kabir.)
[after 66% of the tossup] In a play from this period, Angela uses a secret panel behind a glass cupboard door to manipulate her lover into believing she is the title character. An author from this period wrote a play in which a woman complains about men before her lover saves her by grabbing her attacker’s crossbow. The Phantom Lady was a “cloak-and-sword play” from this period, which was also known for the auto sacramental. In another play from this period, the murder of the Commander goes unpunished after the title village refuses to give up his killer. In a play from this period, King Basilio tries to avoid a prophecy by locking Segismundo, the prince of Poland, in a tower. For 10 points, Lope de Vega’s Fuenteovejuna and Pedro Calderón de la Barca’s Life is a Dream were published during what Spanish literary period?
ANSWER: Spanish Golden Age [or Spanish Golden Century; or Siglo de Oro]
[after 67% of the tossup] In quinoa, class-1 HKT proteins load this element into bladder cells. Variations in hydrogen concentration in the brain cause acid-sensing pH sensor proteins to mainly transport this element. Paralytic shellfish poisoning occurs when alkaloids like saxitoxin block the transport of this element. A symporter of glucose and this element called SGLT2 is found in proximal tubules. Subunits of proteins that conduct this element contain six transmembrane passes and are voltage-gated. An ion of this element enters neurons during action potential firing. Blockers for this element’s channels can be used to treat arrhythmia. Hydrolysis of ATP pumps three atoms of this element out of cells against potassium. For 10 points, name this element found alongside chloride in table salt.
ANSWER: sodium [or Na]
[after 68% of the tossup] After being asked about art, a character in this novel says, “People are like trees in a forest; no botanist would think of studying each individual birch tree.” While standing by a window, a character in this novel confesses his love to a woman who marries a 46-year-old hypochondriac and inherits the estate Nikolskoe (“nee-KOL-sko-yeh”). At the beginning of this novel, a character who is compared to a jackdaw returns to a man whose brother settles in Dresden after pursuing Princess R. One of this novel’s protagonists mends an opponent’s leg immediately after a duel over the servant Fenichka. After a faulty autopsy, a character in this novel dies from an infected cut. At the beginning of this novel, Nikolai waits at his estate, Marino, for Arkady. For 10 points, Yevgeny Bazarov is a proponent of nihilism in what Ivan Turgenev novel?
ANSWER: Fathers and Sons [or Otcy i deti; or Fathers and Children]
[after 70% of the tossup] A character in a play by this author miraculously turns into a beautiful maid after her brother, the Fat Gentleman, shoots at her. This author’s play Frenzy for Two, Or More is often paired with a play in which a character created by this author shows off his ability to fly. A logician uses a syllogism to prove that a dog is a cat in a play by this author of A Stroll in the Air. In an “anti-play” by this author, which is set in an “English interior, with English armchairs,” the Smiths and the Martins engage in surreal conversation after the Fire Chief mentions the title character. In a play by this author of The Lesson, the typist Daisy leaves Bérenger after every character except for him turns into the title animal. For 10 points, name this absurdist Romanian-French playwright of The Bald Soprano and Rhinoceros.
ANSWER: Eugène Ionesco [or Eugen Ionescu] (The play in the first line is The Picture.)
[after 71% of the tossup] Saidiya Hartman’s “Venus in Two Acts” argues that these institutions limit stories that can be told about slavery, but can be transcended by critical fabulation. The principle of respect des fonds (“ruh-SPAY day FON”) is discussed in the “Dutch Manual” for the appraisal of these institutions. The use of these institutions in research was pioneered by Leopold von Ranke. In 2023, the Hachette group sued one of these institutions founded by Brewster Kahle that pioneered controlled digital lending. Cornell University operates a website named for these institutions that hosts scientific preprints. A massive book digitization effort is run by an online one of these institutions that also hosts a digital library and the Wayback Machine. For 10 points, name these collections of historical records or materials.
ANSWER: archives [accept Internet Archive; accept arXiv.org; prompt on sources; prompt on Open Library until “library” is read by asking “what type of larger institution is that a part of?”; prompt on libraries until “library” is read]
[after 73% of the tossup] Most languages fulfill Optimality Theory’s HNuc (“H-nuke”) constraint by making these constructs obligatory, unlike Czech and Tashelhiyt (“ta-shill-HEET”) Berber. Back mutation in Old English is an example of the “breaking” of these constructs. In one Salishan language, the phrase “then he had in his possession a bunchberry plant” entirely lacks these constructs. Unlike standard Italian’s seven, Sardinian only distinguishes five of these constructs’ qualities. The transition from Middle to Early Modern English brought about a “Great” shift of these constructs. Two of these constructs are undergoing the “cot–caught” merger in American English. For 10 points, name these linguistic sounds contrasted with consonants.
ANSWER: vowels [accept vocoids; accept vowel breaking; prompt on phonemes]
[after 74% of the tossup] The narrator of a poem by this author described breaking “the copious curls upon my head” because her aunt “liked smooth-order hair.” In a different poem by this author, the speaker encourages the addressee to “Gather the north flowers to complete the south / And catch the early love up in the late.” In a long poem by this author, Marian Erle has a child out of wedlock and refuses to marry Romney, who proposes to the title character instead. Virginia Woolf wrote about this author’s cocker spaniel getting kidnapped in the fictional biography Flush. This author wrote “call me by my pet name” in a collection in which a different poem begins, “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.” For 10 points, name this poet who wrote the nine-book “novel in verse” Aurora Leigh and Sonnets from the Portuguese.
ANSWER: Elizabeth Barrett Browning [or Elizabeth Barrett Browning; accept Elizabeth Barrett; prompt on Browning; reject “Robert Browning”]
[after 74% of the tossup] Ruzsa (“ROO-zhah”) names a distance function between these objects that can be used to prove a bound on sums of these objects called Plünnecke’s inequality. Functors from a locally small category into the category of these objects are the subject of the Yoneda lemma. A class is called “proper” if it is “too big” to be expressed as one of these objects. If X is one of these objects, then X has size strictly smaller than that of “two to the X” by Cantor’s theorem. Problems with constructing these objects via unrestricted comprehension were resolved with a theory of these objects named for Zermelo and Fraenkel that was later extended to include the axiom of choice. Countably infinite instances of these objects have cardinality equal to that of the natural numbers. For 10 points, name these unordered collections of elements.
ANSWER: sets [accept subsets; accept set theory]
[after 78% of the tossup] After an 1886 rebellion, many members of this ethnicity’s Ghiljī (“GILL-jee”) tribe were forcibly resettled. A ruler of this ethnicity briefly lost control of his state during a conflict in which Alexander Burnes was killed. A governor of this ethnicity was defeated at Nowshera by a ruler who united twelve misls into a single state. William Brydon was the only European who survived a retreat from the capital of a ruler of this ethnicity. A ruler of this ethnicity lost Peshawar to Ranjit Singh. Another ruler of this ethnicity overthrew Shah Shuja, ending the rule of the Sadozai branch of its Durrani clan. After a defeat by Britain at Kandahar, the Durand Line became the eastern border between British India and a state ruled by people of this ethnicity. For 10 points, name this ethnicity of the Barakzai rulers of Afghanistan.
ANSWER: Pashtuns [or Pakhtuns; or Pathans; or Paṣtūns; prompt on Afghans until “Afghanistan” is read]
[after 79% of the tossup] Four deputies titled for these structures represented the Maḥdī during the Minor Occultation. One figure named for this structure began his religious career after seeing seven drops of blood on another’s throat, and is buried on Mount Carmel. Salman the Persian is the final person to fill a role named for these structures in Alawism, which comprises a trinity along with the Manifestation and the Name. In the first of a collection of Zen kōans titled for one of these structures lacking itself, a dog replies “mu” when asked if it has Buddha-nature. Vermillion examples of these structures mark places where kami enter into the human realm in Shintō shrines. For 10 points, bāb and torii are words for what structures, through which Jesus entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday?
ANSWER: gates [or doors; or portals; accept Gateless Gate; accept mén or guān or mon or kan; accept kahyō; accept Báb or bāb or ’abwāb until “bāb” is read; accept wakīl or safīr or na‘īb until “shrine” is read; prompt on barrier] (Báb is Arabic for gate.)
[after 80% of the tossup] A paper titled for this concept argues that “functional explanations” can account for phenomena like reportability, but not this concept. Reportability defines the “access” type of this concept, which Ned Block distinguished from its “phenomenal” type. Joseph Levine argued that theories of this concept struggle to explain subjectivity due to the explanatory gap. The phi phenomenon is evidence for the theory that this concept arises from many sources of input and systems of interpretation, called the multiple drafts model. David Chalmers argued that science cannot even attempt to explain why this concept exists, which is its “hard problem.” Philosophical zombies lack this concept. For 10 points, a book by Daniel Dennett “explains” what concept, which is the mental awareness of one’s experience?
ANSWER: consciousness [accept hard problem of consciousness; accept phenomenal consciousness or access consciousness; accept Consciousness Explained; accept “Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness”]
[after 80% of the tossup] This process names a phenomenon in which the momentum of stellar material causes it to be carried through the tachocline, known as this process’s namesake “overshoot.” High-resolution images of the Sun’s surface appear granulated because of entities named for this process in the photosphere. This process occurs when the magnitude of the actual temperature gradient exceeds that of the adiabatic temperature gradient, according to the Schwarzschild criterion. For main sequence stars under around 0.35 solar masses, this process is the dominant form of energy transport. In a zone named for this process just below the Sun’s atmosphere, plasma circulates heat via this process’s namesake “currents.” For 10 points, name this thermal process exemplified by movement of warmer fluid upwards and cold fluid downwards.
ANSWER: convection [accept convection currents; accept convective cells; accept convective overshoot; accept convective zone]
[after 80% of the tossup] Annealing of this material is accomplished in lehrs. An industrial method to produce a type of this material lays liquid raw materials over tin to form a float. Diffusion of interfering ions described by the Nikolsky–Eisenman equation across this material is seen in electrodes, which can be used to measure pH. Sintering particles of this material into hollow disks creates fritted examples of these materials that are used as filters. Addition of boron trioxide lowers the coefficient of thermal expansion of these materials. Silica, soda ash, and limestone produce the molten form of this material, which is then solidified by blowing. For 10 points, what amorphous material is often used to make lab materials and window panes?
ANSWER: glass
[after 81% of the tossup] This musician’s band repeats a chant beginning “freedom for your daddy” on a bonus track of an album that also includes a song written to show that a band can swing in 6/8 time. An album by this musician recorded with Eric Dolphy at Cornell includes a song with censored lyrics like “don’t let them tar and feather us” and called an Arkansas politician “sick and ridiculous.” Lyrics like “You know someone great has gone” were added by Joni Mitchell to a song by this musician dedicated to a man nicknamed “Prez.” That song by this composer of “Better Git It in Your Soul” was re-titled “Theme for Lester Young” on an album whose title repeats his last name five times. For 10 points, name this jazz bassist who wrote “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat.”
ANSWER: Charles Mingus [or Charles Mingus Jr.]
[after 82% of the tossup] This city employed the slave-trading Suteans, who inhabited nearby Subum, as couriers. MUL.APIN (“mool-ah-peen”), a series of two texts from this city, contains several stellar calendars and is one of the earliest compendia of astronomical knowledge. It’s not Greek, but the Metonic calendar likely originated in this city during the rule of Samsu-iluna. Claiming that no Egyptian was allowed to die outside of Egypt, Amunhotep III refused to send a princess to marry this city’s ruler Burna-Buriash II, from its Kassite Dynasty. A stele from this city that depicts a ruler thinking as he receives guidance from Shamash is the origin of the phrase “an eye for an eye.” For 10 points, name this Mesopotamian city ruled by Hammurabi.
ANSWER: Babylon [or Bābilim]
[after 82% of the tossup] A prologue by this author recounts the development of a joke in which passengers on a steamboat to Alexandria shout “Hans” after two Lebanese men humiliate the title “Tramp from Piraeus.” In a story by this author, a Zulu man spits in the face of a gay public official named Bobby who attempts to pick him up in a bar before being beaten at a checkpoint. Back-to-back stories in a collection by this author follow the insane Man-Man and the poet B. Wordsworth. The linked stories “One out of Many” and “Tell Me Who to Kill” appear in this author’s book In a Free State. The six-fingered title character of a novel by this author lives at the Hanuman House with the Tulsi family. For 10 points, name this Trinidadian author of Miguel Street and A House for Mr. Biswas.
ANSWER: V. S. Naipaul [or Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul]
[after 84% of the tossup] Anthropologist Alan Klein’s books about this activity as a source of national pride include one partly named for “sugar” and one subtitled “A Tale of Two Laredos.” A site for this activity named Latinoamericano in Havana is the second largest of its kind in the world, while another site in San Juan’s Hato Rey district is named for a pioneer in this activity, Hiram Bithorn. Bottle caps are used in a variant of this activity called vitilla. Young boys are recruited by buscones for this activity’s academies in the Dominican Republic. This activity is less popular in the Commonwealth Caribbean than a similar sport from Britain that [emphasize] instead has bowlers and wickets. For 10 points, name this American sport whose foreign-born players have given credence to the title of “World Series.”
ANSWER: baseball [or béisbol; or juego de pelota; prompt on sports until read] (Alan Klein wrote Sugarball: The American Game, the Dominican Dream and Baseball on the Border: A Tale of Two Laredos. The British sport is cricket.)
[after 85% of the tossup] A HiGee form of this technique uses centrifugal acceleration to force horizontal flow, while another uses a dividing wall. Molecular sieves remove water and carbon dioxide upstream of a cryogenic form of this technique. The Kirkbride equation can be used to calculate the inlet location in this technique whose shortcut form uses the FUG method. The Q-line on a McCabe–Thiele diagram represents the feed in this technique. This technique may employ a Dean–Stark apparatus to remove water. Purity of products from this technique can be enhanced by increasing the reflux ratio. Adding a component to mixtures in this technique to break azeotropes can separate water and ethanol. For 10 points, what physical process separates components of a liquid mixture by their boiling points?
ANSWER: distillation [accept specific forms like fractional distillation or azeotropic distillation or HiGee distillation]
[after 86% of the tossup] The first of 36 chapters in a text in this language outlines a sage’s development of the “graceful” style of drama to accompany the original “verbal,” “grand,” and “energetic” styles. The stage manager for plays in this language has a name meaning “holder of threads.” In a mad scene in a play in this language, a royal speaks to a series of animals and a river after his wife is turned into a vine for entering a forest forbidden to women. In a play in this language, a king who spares a deer in its opening encounters his son playing with a lion cub in a hermitage. That king is cursed by a sage to forget his wife until a fisherman recovers a signet ring in a play in this language. For 10 points, name this ancient language used to write Urvashi Won by Valor and The Recognition of Shakuntala by Kālidāsa.
ANSWER: Sanskrit [or saṃskṛtam] (The first line refers to Bharata’s Nātyaśāstra.)
[after 87% of the tossup] A group of hymns in this text begin with a mahala symbol, which may either mean “woman” or “place of alighting.” Three repetitions of a hymn whose name means “that door” occur in this text, including one which provides the only vocatives in its Japujī section. Over 100 hymns in this text were written by the 13th-century mystic sheikh Bābā Farīd (“fuh-REED”). A rumalla cloth covers this text when closed; while it is read, this text is fanned with a yak-hair chauri. This text’s opening line, called the Mūl Mantar (“MOOL MUN-ter”), contains the monotheistic statement “Ik Onkar.” After a 1708 declaration at Naded, this text took on an eternal spiritual role, succeeding Gobind Singh. For 10 points, name this holy book that serves as Sikhism’s eternal Guru.
ANSWER: Gurū Granth Sāhib [accept Śrī Gurū Granth Sāhib Jī; accept Ādī Granth or Ādī Śrī Granth Sāhib Jī]
[after 96% of the tossup] Cellulose nanocrystals can enhance nucleation activity in materials made from these molecules. Examples of these molecules that can conduct electricity include P3HT. The Kuhn length of these molecules is a function of dihedral bond angle. Distribution of components in these molecules can be analyzed with the Mayo–Lewis equation. These molecules, which can follow the Flory–Schulz distribution, have a step-growth mechanism characterized by the Carothers (“ker-OTHERS”) equation. One way to characterize these molecules is by calculating the ratio of the number-average molecular weight to that of M0 (“M-naught”). For 10 points, name these molecules that consist of long repeating chains.
ANSWER: polymers [accept copolymers or polymerization or degree of polymerization; prompt on plastics]
[after 97% of the tossup] A piece by this composer begins quietly with oboes and low strings playing continuous eighth notes as the violins play arpeggios, which crescendoes into a loud D major chord by the chorus and three trumpets. This composer wrote an anthem for the Foundling Hospital, the venue of charity concerts that originated the “Scratch” form of one of his works. This composer was inspired by shepherd-bagpipers to include a pastoral Pifa in a work whose libretto is by Charles Jennens. A widely excerpted sinfonia scored for two oboes and strings appears in this composer’s Solomon. This composer was commissioned to write four anthems for the coronation of George II, including Zadok the Priest. For 10 points, name this Baroque composer who included a Hallelujah chorus in his Messiah.
ANSWER: George Frideric Handel
[after 97% of the tossup] This character suggests that God should recreate the world after positing the “principle of perpetual disappointment” as a “fundamental law of the Universe.” This character almost leaves behind a stack of comic books after going on a tirade in which he smashes a bottle of brandy and tears up an unfinished essay on global politics. This character claims that a copy of On the Origin of Species is safe because he put it in the library’s theology section. This author of “A World Without Collisions” declares himself an atheist after an older interlocutor suggests Jesus Christ as a “man of magnitude.” This character lets out his frustration about his alcoholic father returning from the hospital on Sam and Willie. For 10 points, an Athol Fugard play is titled for what character “…and the Boys”?
ANSWER: Master Harold [or Hally; accept “Master Harold” …and the Boys]
[after 98% of the tossup] This substance lies underneath so-called false bottoms, which form through double diffusion. This substance may become trapped in pockets following its namesake rejection. It’s not related to thermodynamics, but the potential density of this substance is displayed on T-S diagrams. Deviations from this substance’s VSMOW standard are used to identify periods during which it becomes enriched with oxygen-18 due to low temperatures. This dense substance lies below Ghyben–Herzberg lenses, which share their name with an equation used to model its “intrusion.” The SMOC (“S-mock”) and AMOC (“A-mock”) drive the thermohaline circulation of this substance. Reverse osmosis is often used to purify, for 10 points, what substance that mixes with a fresh counterpart in estuaries?
ANSWER: seawater [or ocean water; accept brine or saline or saltwater; accept brine pockets or brine rejection or saltwater intrusion or brine pools; accept brackish water or brack; prompt on water; reject “freshwater” or “salt” or “ice”]
[after 98% of the tossup] This thinker connects the “joys of watching” to Baudelaire’s conception of the flâneur in the essay “Melancholy Objects.” This thinker claimed that collecting certain objects allows us to “collect the world” in an essay opening “Humankind lingers unregenerately in Plato’s cave.” The “pure” and “deliberate” types of the title concept are contrasted in an essay by this thinker with epigrams from Oscar Wilde. The framing of “freaks” is discussed by this thinker in a collection contrasting the Farm Security Administration with Diane Arbus. A list including Scopitone films and Tiffany lamps appears in an essay by this thinker that outlines conditions for the title sensibility, described as “good because it’s awful.” For 10 points, name this American author of On Photography and “Notes on ‘Camp.’”
ANSWER: Susan Sontag [or Susan Lee Sontag]
[after 99% of the tossup] One type of these hormones was first discovered in a species of rice-plant pathogen named fujikuroi. Uniconazole (“uni-CON-uh-zole”) inhibits the production of this hormone through blockage of kaurene oxidase. The absence of these hormones can increase biomass growth in the roots and cause shortened internodes. The binding of these hormones causes the degradation of DELLA proteins like GAI. The presence of water activates these hormones that stimulate the production of hydrolytic enzymes in germinating seeds. In elongating stems, these hormones’ concentration is regulated by auxins. For 10 points, name this class of plant hormone that mediates developmental processes like stem elongation.
ANSWER: gibberellins [or GAs; accept gibberellic acid]
[after 99% of the tossup] The Anderson–Newns–Grimley model allows the energy of this process to be calculated in a self-consistent manner by introducing another term to the Hamiltonian. It’s not distillation, but azeotropy in this process can be described using a DSL model. Reaction kinetic models for heterogeneous catalysis contain constants for this process in the denominator, which use an isothermal mechanism for this process named for Langmuir. BET isotherms for this process account for multilayer interactions. Activated carbon and zeolites are two examples of surfaces where this process commonly occurs. For 10 points, name this process in which atoms bond to a surface, such as when gas molecules attach to solid substrates.
ANSWER: adsorption [or adsorbing; or chemisorption; reject “absorption” or “absorbing”]
[after 99% of the tossup] Two of these functional groups are substituted onto a molecule of naphthalene to create a proton sponge. They’re not epoxides, but reaction of this functional group with mCPBA gives syn alkenes due to the cyclic 5-membered transition state in the Cope elimination. Reaction of this functional group with benzenesulfonyl chloride followed by acidification in the Hinsberg test allows distinction of the degree of substitution. Primary examples of this functional group are formed from alkyl halides in the Gabriel synthesis. Carbonyls can be converted into this functional group in one-pot reductive reactions. For 10 points, name this functional group consisting of a nitrogen atom single bonded to at least one carbon atom.
ANSWER: amines [or amino group]
[after 100% of the tossup] Generalized BEP relations can be used to predict this quantity on metallic surfaces calculated via Marcus theory. Frustrated Lewis pairs have higher values of this quantity due to steric hindrance. This quantity is divided by R in a plot of one-over-T against the natural logarithm of k. The high value of this quantity in the Haber process is due to the nitrogen triple bond. This quantity is divided by RT in the exponential of the Arrhenius equation. This quantity is determined from the difference between the transition state and reactants on a reaction coordinate diagram and can be lowered by catalysts. For 10 points, identify this quantity denoted E-sub-a, the minimum energy required for a reaction to occur.
ANSWER: activation energy [accept E-sub-a until read; prompt on energy until read; prompt on E until read]
[after 100% of the tossup] One model of this material that features a “critical state line” is called its “Modified Cam” model. An equation developed by Karl von Terzaghi computes this material’s “bearing capacity.” This material’s swelling potential increases with its plasticity index, which can be calculated from its Atterberg limits. Increases in pressure cause this prototypical three-phase material to contract during “consolidation.” Compaction of this material can cause a structure’s foundation to move during “settlement.” Applied stresses can cause excess pore water pressure to build in this material, causing its “liquefaction” during earthquakes. Based on its particle size distribution, this material can be classified into subtypes such as sand and clay. For 10 points, what organic material do plant roots typically anchor themselves in?
ANSWER: soil [or earth; or dirt; accept sand until read; accept clay until read; accept Modified Cam-Clay model]
[after 100% of the tossup] Eliminating this substance is the goal of the DGP braneworld model. So-called “phantom” forms of this substance are an extreme case of hypothetical quintessence models. An equation of state of pressure equal to negative density characterizes this substance, whose density remains constant as space expands. An era dominated by this substance began roughly 4 billion years ago, when the expansion of the universe began to accelerate. This substance is represented by a quantity that Einstein called his “biggest blunder” when adding it to his field equations, known as the cosmological constant. For 10 points, name this mysterious substance that accounts for over 70 percent of the universe, along with matter and dark matter.
ANSWER: dark energy [prompt on lambda or cosmological constant until read by asking “what substance does that quantity represent?”]
[after 100% of the tossup] In this city, a judge tried to connect 13 fires and a burglary to fears of a slave uprising in the Conspiracy of 1741. Land in this modern-day city and nearby Pavonia were raided in the one-day Peach War. In this city, Edward Hart led a group of settlers who petitioned for religious tolerance in a “Remonstrance” named for part of this city. In retaliation for Kieft’s War, members of the Siwanoy tribe killed Anne Hutchinson in what is now this city. This was the largest city transferred to England in exchange for Suriname in the 1667 Treaty of Breda. The Lenape tribe traded an island in this city for 60 guilders of goods from Peter Minuit. For 10 points, Peter Stuyvesant ruled from what city that was once New Amsterdam?
ANSWER: New York [accept New Amsterdam until “Amsterdam” is read; prompt on Flushing Remonstrance or Manhattan Island or Pelham Bay by asking “what larger city is that part of?”]
[after 100% of the tossup] This ruler was a brother of a prince who wrote a treatise comparing two religions called The Mingling of the Two Oceans. It was not Timur, but following the Battle of Chamkaur, this ruler was the target of a Zafarnāma proclaiming spiritual victory. Farmans issued by this ruler banned syncretic customs such as Nowruz and jharokha darshan. After winning a civil war, this ruler accused his brother Dara Shikoh of heresy and executed him. For allegedly attempting to prevent the forced conversion of Hindus in Kashmir, this ruler executed Sikh Guru Tegh Bahadur. This ruler issued a compendium of Hanafi jurisprudence called Fatawa-e-Alamgiri and reinstated the jizya tax on non-Muslims. For 10 points, name this sixth Mughal emperor and successor of Shah Jahan, who undid most of Akbar’s policy of religious tolerance.
ANSWER: Aurangzeb [or Abul Muzaffar Muhy-ud-Din Muhammad Aurangzeb Alamgir; accept Alamgir I until “Fatawa-e-Alamgiri” is read]
[after 100% of the tossup] This class of reactions produces a family of toxic compounds that have two benzene rings connected by two oxygen atoms at the para positions, the dioxin family. The Zeldovich mechanism explains the formation of a type of nitrogen-containing molecule during these reactions. Preventing the backflow of one of these reactions in stacks can be accomplished with sweep gas. Gaseous products of these reactions react with nitrogen oxides and light to generate ozone. In these reactions, gases pass over platinum and rhodium to limit the release of VOCs. Those catalytic converters following these reactions reduce the formation of photochemical smog in cities. For 10 points, name these reactions in which a chemical reacts with an oxidant like oxygen to release heat and light.
ANSWER: combustion [or burning]

Nikola Wu ↩

[after 13% of the tossup] A 2022 Consumer Reports investigation found high levels of heavy metals like cadmium and lead in this product. The voluntary Harkin–Engel protocol has been ineffective in eliminating forced labor in this product. Poor harvests due to extreme weather and blights like black pod disease caused prices for this product to reach record highs in 2024. A 2021 Supreme Court case dismissed a child labor lawsuit filed by kidnapped workers producing this product in Côte d’Ivoire, citing lack of standing to sue multinational companies producing this food like Ferrero. A type of this food with a filling of knafeh (“k’NAH-feh”) and pistachio went viral on TikTok in 2024 and is named for Dubai. For 10 points, name this food made from fermented cocoa beans that comes in milk and dark variants.
ANSWER: chocolate [or cacao; accept cocoa beans until read, but prompt after]
[after 17% of the tossup] Lack of mutual understanding between people with and without this condition is the subject of a “double” problem by Damian Milton. Professor Richard Borcherds’s life with this condition is chronicled in a chapter of the book The Essential Difference, which argues that the systemizing quotient being much greater than its counterpart causes this condition. Both the “mind-blindness” and “extreme male brain” theories about this condition were developed by Simon Baron-Cohen. The RAADS-R test helps diagnose adults with this condition, which now encompasses childhood disintegrative disorder and a “syndrome” named for an Austrian pediatrician. For 10 points, name this disorder characterized by social impairment, which is commonly viewed as a “spectrum.”
ANSWER: autism spectrum disorder [or ASD; prompt on Asperger’s syndrome by asking “what disorder does that now fall under?”] (Damian Milton developed the double empathy problem.)
[after 20% of the tossup] For unknown reasons, the stele erected at this ruler’s Qiánlíng mausoleum was left wordless. Potentially for political purposes, this ruler promoted Buddhism, constructing a Dàyún Temple in each prefecture in the two capitals region. The Buddhist monk Huáiyì promulgated the Great Cloud Sutra to legitimize this ruler before being put to death for setting fire to some palace buildings. This ruler elevated Luòyáng to the primary capital, and might have modeled for the face of the largest Buddha statue at the Lóngmén Grottoes. This ruler oversaw the rebuilding of the Giant Wild Goose Pagoda. Following the death of Emperor Tàizōng of Táng, this founder of a Zhōu (“joe”) dynasty was sent to be a nun at Gānyè (“gahn-yeh”) Temple as a former concubine. For 10 points, name this only empress regnant of Imperial China.
ANSWER: Empress Wǔ [or Wǔ Zétiān; or Wǔ Zhào; or Wǔ Mèiniáng; or Wǔ Hòu]
[after 34% of the tossup] A text in this language features a little-known god named Lur, whose name is also found on many votive candelabra. A bronze statue of a man raising his right arm, commonly known as The Orator, features an inscription written primarily in this language. This language, used to write a guide for mummification on a linen book named for Zagreb, was grouped with Rhaetic and Lemnian by Helmut Rix. The Tyrrhenika was a history of the people who spoke this language, whose last speakers included the Emperor Claudius. People who spoke this non-Indo-European language were the [emphasize] first inhabitants of cities like Veii and Alba Longa. For 10 points, Latin was influenced by what language that was spoken by the predecessors to the Romans in Italy?
ANSWER: Etruscan [accept Etruscans]
[after 36% of the tossup] An essay describes how one of the author’s classmates used this belief to justify his failure to study for an exam, showing that proponents of this belief have abandoned reason. Proponents of this belief “delight in acting in bad faith” according to that essay by Jean-Paul Sartre. The deconstructionist Paul de Man wrote hundreds of articles defending this position for the newspaper Le Soir (“luh swar”). This belief and imperialism are analyzed in the first two sections of The Origins of Totalitarianism. During the Farías and Faye controversies, a philosopher was accused of this belief, which explains his failure to protect his mentor Edmund Husserl. The Black Notebooks of Martin Heidegger contain many expressions of this prejudice. For 10 points, name this prejudice defended in Mein Kampf.
ANSWER: antisemitism [or anti-Jewish prejudice; or Jew-hatred; or Judeophobia; accept “Anti-Semite and Jew”; prompt on Nazism or racism or prejudice or bigotry until “prejudice” is read]
[after 38% of the tossup] This author of a set of recipes posthumously titled for his “Prison Cooking” discussed biases influenced by antipathy and sympathy in a text that argues the inverse of the “principle of asceticism.” The claim that humanity is ruled over by “two sovereign masters” appears in that treatise by this thinker who rejected natural rights as a “perversion of language” and “nonsense upon stilts.” This author of An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation included fecundity and purity among the variables in his felicific calculus. This thinker’s quantity-focused approach to determining happiness was countered by his associate, John Stuart Mill. For 10 points, name this English philosopher who co-founded utilitarianism.
ANSWER: Jeremy Bentham [accept Jeremy Bentham’s Prison Cooking]
[after 39% of the tossup] A philosopher who wrote in this language criticized blind adherence to authority-based opinion and observed how it led to generational religious stagnation in Deliverance from Error. Competing arguments in this language include one beginning with a “necessary existent” called the Proof of the Truthful and one propounded by William Lane Craig. Extra internal senses like estimation were posited by a thinker who used this language to imagine a being generated without awareness of his body in the “floating man” thought experiment. A thinker dubbed the “Second Teacher” wrote a commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics in this language that was also used to write The Incoherence of the Philosophers. For 10 points, name this language used by Avicenna and al-Ghazali.
ANSWER: Arabic [or Arabiyya] (The “authority-based opinion” is taqlid. William Lane Craig defends the kalam cosmological argument. The “Second Teacher” is al-Farabi.)
[after 45% of the tossup] This author’s first novel, which follows a widow who engages in an affair with her brother-in-law, was retitled Land of Sin. A character created by this author works at the “Central Registry of Births, Marriages and Deaths.” In a novel by this author, whose sequel was translated by this author’s widow Pilar del Río, a character uses a stiletto heel to kick a car thief who is shot after developing an infection. In the sequel to a novel by this author of All the Names, a “dog of tears” reappears as the only named character and an election occurs in which the majority of ballots are blank. In a novel by this author, characters like the girl with the dark glasses are quarantined in a ward and the doctor’s wife is the only one not affected by the title “white sickness.” For 10 points, name this Portuguese author of Blindness.
ANSWER: José Saramago [or José de Sousa Saramago] (The sequel to Blindness is Seeing.)
[after 47% of the tossup] This deity’s wife stands over him in an artistic motif from the Gosforth Cross. Alternate versions of a story detail a different one of this deity’s two sons turning into a wolf and killing the other. This deity is referred to by the kenning “brother of Býleistr” in the Völuspá when the völva explains that his escape will signal the start of Ragnarök, at which point this deity will kill and be killed by Heimdallr. This deity attacks Njörd for being incestuous and claims to have cuckolded Týr in a text sometimes named for his flyting. This son of Fárbauti and Laufey turns into a salmon to escape his punishment of having venom dripped on him for eternity after he causes the death of Baldr. For 10 points, name this Norse trickster god.
ANSWER: Loki [or Loki Laufeyson; accept Lokasenna or The Flyting of Loki or Loki’s Verbal Duel]
[after 49% of the tossup] This deity’s “Philesius” aspect was worshipped at Milesian temples alongside a lover of this deity named Branchus. After being spurned in favor of this deity, Thamyris loses a competition to the Muses and has his eyes gouged out. After accidentally killing a stag gifted to him by this deity, Cyparissus is turned into a cypress tree. This deity gets the Fates drunk in a plan leading Alcestis to sacrifice herself in the place of King Admetus. A jealous Zephyrus redirects a discus to kill a man whose blood this god turns into the hyacinth flower. To save her from this god’s advances, Peneus turns his daughter Daphne into a laurel tree. For 10 points, the gift of prophecy is often bestowed on the lovers of what Greek god of music?
ANSWER: Apollo [or Apollon; or Phoebus Apollo]
[after 55% of the tossup] One of these things partly named for Lancaster was designed by John Loudon McAdam and was unusually built by a private company due to Pennsylvania being broke. These things are the first suggestions in the title of a 1808 report calling for 20 million dollars of funding, written by Albert Gallatin. The Jeffersonian belief that the Postal Clause only gave Congress power to designate, not build, these things informed Madison’s veto of the Bonus Bill and Andrew Jackson’s veto of one of these things for Maysville. Some modern ones of these projects lay over older “traces” like one named for the Natchez. A “National” one of these projects began at Cumberland, Maryland. For 10 points, name these projects that allowed for travel between cities via wagons.
ANSWER: roads [or highways; accept National Road or Maysville Road; accept toll roads or post roads or turnpikes; accept traces until read; reject “railroads”]
[after 58% of the tossup] A position separating this concept from reason is defined by a “basic reliance” on it according to Alvin Plantinga, who co-founded a journal titled for this concept “and Philosophy” with other reformed epistemologists. The dictum “subjectivity is truth” appears in a work defending this “absurd” concept under the pseudonym Johannes Climacus entitled Concluding Unscientific Postscript. A man who still expects he will receive a princess’s seemingly unobtainable love goes beyond “infinite resignation” in his embodiment of this concept. That “knight of” this concept is described in Søren Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling, which also describes it as a qualitative “leap.” For 10 points, name this religious concept of believing without seeing.
ANSWER: faith [accept qualitative leap of faith or knight of faith; accept Faith and Philosophy; accept fideism]
[after 60% of the tossup] The sex worker Cora Pearl gained celebrity status in this city for her lavish lifestyle and many affairs with this city’s royalty. Charles Marville photographed a project in this city that was partly sponsored by the Pereire (“peh-RAIR”) brothers. The Polish noble Jarosław Dąbrowski (“YAR-oh-swoff dom-BROFF-skee”) helped lead a government in this city, during which a woman who helped design the black flag of anarchism earned the moniker the “red virgin.” That government in this city was crushed in the Bloody Week by forces loyal to Adolphe Thiers, after which many prisoners were deported to New Caledonia. Streets were possibly widened in this city to make it harder to erect barricades during a renovation completed by Baron Haussmann. For 10 points, a proto-communist commune was established in what capital of the Second French Empire?
ANSWER: Paris
[after 62% of the tossup] Specific term required. Reuben Gronau distinguished home production and this concept in a paper built on Gary Becker’s “A Theory of the Allocation of Time.” This concept’s “gap” of two to three hours per week between American mothers and fathers was studied by Arlie Hochschild (“HOKE-shild”). A book partly titled for this concept calls gambling “barbarian” in the chapter “The Belief in Luck.” The opportunity cost of this activity increases with wages, but at high wages, this activity [emphasize] increases in labor’s backward-bending supply curve. Per an 1899 book, pecuniary emulation seeks to surpass a group named for this activity that engages in conspicuous consumption. For 10 points, name this activity of voluntarily abstaining from labor, whose “class” was theorized by Thorsten Veblen.
ANSWER: leisure [accept The Theory of the Leisure Class or leisure class; accept leisure gap; prompt on free time or time off or not working or relaxation or recreation; prompt on class until read by asking “what other concept characterizes the class in that work’s title?”; reject “unemployment”] (The first paper is “Leisure, Home Production, and Work—the Theory of the Allocation of Time Revisited.”)
[after 62% of the tossup] In one work, this thinker used the example of Castor and Pollux sleeping in alternating shifts to demonstrate that the soul is not always thinking. A chapter in a work by this thinker contrasts certain knowledge with arguments that are likely to be true based on “probability,” or agreement between our own and others’ experiences. This thinker described a central concept being affected by sensory experiences of intrinsic “primary qualities” and subjective “secondary qualities.” This thinker argued that reflection or sensation informs all “objects of thinking” to refute “innate ideas” in favor of the human mind as a blank slate, or tabula rasa. For 10 points, name this Enlightenment philosopher who wrote An Essay Concerning Human Understanding.
ANSWER: John Locke
[after 63% of the tossup] This thinker describes common purpose as an outcome of “instinctive liking” or a shared “instinctive aversion” in Why Men Fight. With Jean-Paul Sartre, this thinker led a conference finding the US guilty of war crimes in Vietnam. This thinker advocated for a four-hour workday in the essay “In Praise of Idleness.” P. F. Strawson criticized an essay by this thinker that argues against Alexius Meinong (“MY-nong”) with examples of “the author of Waverley” and the “present” kings of England and France to contrast types of definite descriptions. This author of “On Denoting” formulated an argument against defaulting to belief in God that involves a floating teapot. For 10 points, name this English philosopher who collaborated with Alfred North Whitehead on Principia Mathematica.
ANSWER: Bertrand Russell [or Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell; accept Russell’s teapot]
[after 69% of the tossup] A novel about a character with this occupation includes a set of “Commendatory Verses” by fictional characters, including Urganda the Unknown. A character with this occupation changes his nickname to be “of the Lions” instead of one about having a “Sorrowful Face.” A man with this occupation is described with the epithet Innamorato in the title of a poem by Matteo Boiardo. In a novel about a character with this occupation, the romance Amadis of Gaul is among the books taken out of a library to be burned by a barber and priest. That novel contains references to an epic poem about a man with this occupation titled Orlando Furioso. A character who names his horse Rocinante aspires to hold this occupation and recruits the laborer Sancho Panza. For 10 points, name this chivalric profession held by Don Quixote.
ANSWER: knight [or knight-errant; or caballero; or caballero andante; accept “Knight of the Lions” or “Knight of the Sorrowful Face”]
[after 72% of the tossup] A questionnaire that screens for a disorder partly named for this process assesses BMI and neck size and is known by the acronym STOP-BANG. Disorders involving this process can be indicated by a high score on a scale named for Epworth Hospital, including one that can be treated by supplementing orexin and often presents with cataplexy. The “central” form of a condition can be differentiated from its “obstructive” form based on whether it is more prevalent during “quiescent” or “paradoxical” stages of this process, though both can be managed with CPAP machines. High levels of somatotropin are released after the onset of the “slow wave” form of this process, during which memory consolidation also occurs. For 10 points, circadian rhythms regulate what process promoted by melatonin?
ANSWER: sleeping [or being asleep; accept obstructive sleep apnea or central sleep apnea; accept REM sleep or paradoxical sleep or non-REM sleep or NREM sleep or quiescent sleep; prompt on terms like snoozing or dozing off]
[after 73% of the tossup] This material is classified under letters G to J of the Unified Numbering System. Maraging (“MAR-aging”) forms of this material contain hard precipitate particles over an artificially elongated aging period. Modern manufacturing of this material uses a supersonic oxygen jet and burnt lime to generate a basic slag. Case-hardening of this material can be accomplished using carburization. Rapidly quenching one form of this material produces crystalline martensite. Hot-dip and electrogalvanization are methods for plating this material to prevent corrosion, which can also be accomplished by adding chromium. For 10 points, name this alloy of iron and carbon that includes a stainless variety.
ANSWER: steel [accept stainless steel]
[after 73% of the tossup] The son of a Lebanese businessman claims that he is adapting a novel by this author for theatre to hide his relationship with Nick Guest in Alan Hollinghurst’s novel The Line of Beauty. A novel by this author ends with the woman’s rights orator Verena Tarrant being carried out of a hall with tears, “not the last she was destined to shed,” in her eyes. The protagonist of a novel by this author first meets her aunt Lydia in the library of her grandmother’s house in Albany. Pansy is revealed to be the daughter of Madame Merle in a novel by this author in which the protagonist rejects the proposals of Lord Warburton and Caspar Goodwood before marrying Gilbert Osmond in Rome. For 10 points, name this author of The Bostonians who also created Isabel Archer in The Portrait of a Lady.
ANSWER: Henry James
[after 74% of the tossup] These phenomena express “conceptions” of things like the world according to Calvin Hall’s continuity theory. In the AIM (“A-I-M”) model, these phenomena are caused by interactions between aminergic and cholinergic neurons that generate PGO waves; that model of these phenomena is based on Hobson and McCarley’s activation-synthesis model. Echidnas’ large frontal cortex inspired Crick and Mitchison to theorize that these phenomena cause “reverse learning.” Antti Revonsuo theorized that these phenomena simulate probable threats. These phenomena act as “wish fulfillment” according to an 1899 book that described a precursor to the Oedipus complex. For 10 points, Sigmund Freud wrote about the “interpretation” of what phenomena that occur during REM sleep?
ANSWER: dreams [or dreaming; accept The Interpretation of Dreams or Die Traumdeutung; prompt on sleep or REM sleep until “REM” is read]
[after 76% of the tossup] An eight-year “Great Unrest” of these events in Sweden culminated in an unusually large one in Torsåker led by Lars Hornæus. A Carlo Ginzburg book details how the Italian Benandanti were impacted by these events. Several of these events began after Anne of Denmark travelled to Scotland. Johannes Junius, the mayor of Bamberg, wrote a letter to his daughter detailing the impact of these events, which Wolfgang Behringer’s research proposes arose as a result of the “Little Ice Age.” Heinrich Kramer received a papal bull authorizing him to instigate these events after publishing a treatise on them, the Malleus Maleficarum, which details methods of torturing people to induce confessions. For 10 points, Early Modern Europe saw a “craze” of what events that sought to prove people guilty of using magic?
ANSWER: witch trials [or witch hunts; accept the Early Modern witch craze; prompt on inquisitions by asking “targeting what people?”]
[after 77% of the tossup] It’s not in Canada, but the first wave of settlers at this place spent two months mining over a thousand tons of what turned out to be fool’s gold. In a proto-strike, Polish artisans in this place refused to work until they gained the right to vote. Soldiers en route to this place to stop a revolt hallucinated after eating a poisonous salad containing a plant now commonly named for this place. The shipwreck of Christopher Newport’s Sea Venture in the Bahamas led to the death of eighty percent of this place’s population during the Starving Time. A Pamunkey chief captured and brought a leader of this colony to his brother, Powhatan. For 10 points, what first permanent English settlement in the Americas was led by John Smith?
ANSWER: Jamestown (The name jimsonweed comes from Jamestown.)
[after 87% of the tossup] This author added a character named Caroline who goes to milk a cow in a rewritten version of a scene that appears in an earlier work which lasts for “nearly two hours.” This author described ships “robed in purest white” that seemed like “shrouded ghosts” in a work in which Sandy gives the protagonist a root to keep on the right side of his body to ward off harm. The protagonist of a work by this author learns how to read from the Columbian Orator after being forbidden by Hugh Auld. William Lloyd Garrison wrote an introduction to this author’s memoir, which depicts his fight against Edward Covey. For 10 points, name this author who wrote about escaping his enslavement in three autobiographies including My Bondage and My Freedom and a Narrative in the Life of himself, An American Slave.
ANSWER: Frederick Douglass [or Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey; accept Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave]
[after 89% of the tossup] Response elements named for this compound can be found in the promoter region of the Dicer gene, where it can be bound by RXR. This compound is hydroxylated in the 25-position by an enzyme that is regulated by the secretion of PTH. Corticosteroids like dexamethasone decrease levels of this compound in the body by regulating this compound’s namesake receptor. A derivative of this compound called calcipotriol is used to treat psoriasis. Bowed legs and bone fractures can result from a deficiency of this compound called rickets. This compound can be synthesized in the body from 7-dehydrocholesterol in the presence of UVB radiation. For 10 points, what fat-soluble vitamin is synthesized through exposure to sunlight?
ANSWER: vitamin D [or vitamin D1; or vitamin D2; or vitamin D3; or vitamin D4; or vitamin D5; or ergocalciferol; or lumisterol; or ergosterol; or cholecalciferol; or 22-dihydroergocalciferol; or sitocalciferol; accept calcitriol; accept D after “vitamin” is read]
[after 89% of the tossup] Tom Shadbolt coined the acronym KEEPOOS after Norman Kirk barred a group of members of this profession who would later be opposed by John Minto’s Group HART. Raed Ahmed, a member of this profession, defected to the United States in response to the persistent torture of people in this profession by Uday Hussein. Avery Brundage was criticized for insensitivity after an attack on people in this profession that led to the hijacking of Lufthansa Flight 615. The murder of a Moroccan waiter in Lillehammer was retribution for the murder of people in this profession who were restricted by the Gleneagles Agreement. Operation Wrath of God sought vengeance for people in this profession who were taken hostage by the group Black September. For 10 points, the Munich Massacre targeted what people who compete at the Olympics?
ANSWER: athletes [or sportsmen; or coaches; accept specific athletes like weightlifters, runners, soccer players, or rugby players]
[after 90% of the tossup] This city employed the slave-trading Suteans, who inhabited nearby Subum, as couriers. MUL.APIN (“mool-ah-peen”), a series of two texts from this city, contains several stellar calendars and is one of the earliest compendia of astronomical knowledge. It’s not Greek, but the Metonic calendar likely originated in this city during the rule of Samsu-iluna. Claiming that no Egyptian was allowed to die outside of Egypt, Amunhotep III refused to send a princess to marry this city’s ruler Burna-Buriash II, from its Kassite Dynasty. A stele from this city that depicts a ruler thinking as he receives guidance from Shamash is the origin of the phrase “an eye for an eye.” For 10 points, name this Mesopotamian city ruled by Hammurabi.
ANSWER: Babylon [or Bābilim]
[after 100% of the tossup] After he received the deposed Peter Orseolo in his court, a king of this name invaded Hungary to remove Samuel Aba and reinstate him as king. After a failed rescue mission by Robert I of Capua, Pope Paschal II was forced to crown a king of this name. Rudolf of Rheinfelden attempted to claim the throne of a king of this name during an event where he sought peace at the castle of Matilda of Tuscany. The Concordat of Worms was agreed to by a king of this name after the Investiture Controversy reached a peak during the reign of his father of the same name. A king of this name fasted for three days in public penance after he was excommunicated by Pope Gregory VII. For 10 points, a Holy Roman Emperor of what name publicly repented during the Walk to Canossa?
ANSWER: Henry [accept Henry III Salian or Henry IV Salian or Henry V Salian; accept Heinrich in place of “Henry”]

Terrence Han ↩

[after 14% of the tossup] Description acceptable. William Cowherd’s Bible Christian Church was the first Protestant group to incorporate this practice as doctrine. Leo Tolstoy’s 1891 essay “The First Step” advocated for this practice. After James Caleb Jackson cured her children from diphtheria, Ellen G. White instituted this practice in a religious group that still performs this practice alongside teetotalism. Ella Eaton Kellogg developed Protose and Nuttolene to aid in this practice at the Battle Creek Sanitarium. This practice, which increases Livity in the bodies of practitioners, is performed by Rastafarians as a part of Ital (“EYE-tall”). For 10 points, Seventh Day Adventists follow what practice of abstaining from eating meat?
ANSWER: vegetarianism [or plant-based diet; accept veganism; accept descriptions of not eating meat or not consuming animal products until “meat” is read]
[after 26% of the tossup] This deity’s wife stands over him in an artistic motif from the Gosforth Cross. Alternate versions of a story detail a different one of this deity’s two sons turning into a wolf and killing the other. This deity is referred to by the kenning “brother of Býleistr” in the Völuspá when the völva explains that his escape will signal the start of Ragnarök, at which point this deity will kill and be killed by Heimdallr. This deity attacks Njörd for being incestuous and claims to have cuckolded Týr in a text sometimes named for his flyting. This son of Fárbauti and Laufey turns into a salmon to escape his punishment of having venom dripped on him for eternity after he causes the death of Baldr. For 10 points, name this Norse trickster god.
ANSWER: Loki [or Loki Laufeyson; accept Lokasenna or The Flyting of Loki or Loki’s Verbal Duel]
[after 27% of the tossup] After he was photographed giving three protesters the middle finger, this politician’s gesture was mocked as the “Salmon Arm salute.” A partial nationalization of this politician’s country’s oil industry in the National Energy Program was strongly opposed by Peter Lougheed. During an event that resulted in the conviction of Paul Rose, this politician was urged to the military to intervene by Robert Bourassa. During that event that was moderated by Robert Lemieux (“lum-YUH”), this person said “just watch me,” when asked how far he would go to implement the War Measures Act in response to the kidnapping of James Cross and Pierre Laporte. For 10 points, the October Crisis occurred during the tenure of what Canadian Prime Minister of the 1970s?
ANSWER: Pierre Elliott Trudeau [prompt on Trudeau]
[after 28% of the tossup] It’s not in Canada, but the first wave of settlers at this place spent two months mining over a thousand tons of what turned out to be fool’s gold. In a proto-strike, Polish artisans in this place refused to work until they gained the right to vote. Soldiers en route to this place to stop a revolt hallucinated after eating a poisonous salad containing a plant now commonly named for this place. The shipwreck of Christopher Newport’s Sea Venture in the Bahamas led to the death of eighty percent of this place’s population during the Starving Time. A Pamunkey chief captured and brought a leader of this colony to his brother, Powhatan. For 10 points, what first permanent English settlement in the Americas was led by John Smith?
ANSWER: Jamestown (The name jimsonweed comes from Jamestown.)
[after 28% of the tossup] In one of these people’s stories, a man accidentally kills his nephew by burning his house down in an attempt to get him away from his two wives. Two lizard-men in these people’s mythology castrate Kidili for attempting to assault the women who eventually become the Pleiades and are chased across the sky by Jukurra-Jukurra. To describe the transcendence of time in these people’s stories, W. E. H. Stanner coined the term “everywhen.” In one of these people’s stories, the menstrual blood of one of the Wawalag sisters attracts a waterhole-dwelling creature to swallow them. These people tell stories of songlines formed during the Dreamtime by traveling creator spirits such as the Rainbow Serpent. For 10 points, name these native people of Australia.
ANSWER: Aboriginal Australians [or Aborigines; accept specific subgroups like Kukatja or Yolngu; prompt on indigenous Australians or native Australians]
[after 37% of the tossup] An eight-year “Great Unrest” of these events in Sweden culminated in an unusually large one in Torsåker led by Lars Hornæus. A Carlo Ginzburg book details how the Italian Benandanti were impacted by these events. Several of these events began after Anne of Denmark travelled to Scotland. Johannes Junius, the mayor of Bamberg, wrote a letter to his daughter detailing the impact of these events, which Wolfgang Behringer’s research proposes arose as a result of the “Little Ice Age.” Heinrich Kramer received a papal bull authorizing him to instigate these events after publishing a treatise on them, the Malleus Maleficarum, which details methods of torturing people to induce confessions. For 10 points, Early Modern Europe saw a “craze” of what events that sought to prove people guilty of using magic?
ANSWER: witch trials [or witch hunts; accept the Early Modern witch craze; prompt on inquisitions by asking “targeting what people?”]
[after 37% of the tossup] For unknown reasons, the stele erected at this ruler’s Qiánlíng mausoleum was left wordless. Potentially for political purposes, this ruler promoted Buddhism, constructing a Dàyún Temple in each prefecture in the two capitals region. The Buddhist monk Huáiyì promulgated the Great Cloud Sutra to legitimize this ruler before being put to death for setting fire to some palace buildings. This ruler elevated Luòyáng to the primary capital, and might have modeled for the face of the largest Buddha statue at the Lóngmén Grottoes. This ruler oversaw the rebuilding of the Giant Wild Goose Pagoda. Following the death of Emperor Tàizōng of Táng, this founder of a Zhōu (“joe”) dynasty was sent to be a nun at Gānyè (“gahn-yeh”) Temple as a former concubine. For 10 points, name this only empress regnant of Imperial China.
ANSWER: Empress Wǔ [or Wǔ Zétiān; or Wǔ Zhào; or Wǔ Mèiniáng; or Wǔ Hòu]
[after 38% of the tossup] Description acceptable. After he demonstrated this practice for her, Dowager Empress Maria of Russia gave the foundling Anton Petrov a new name referencing it. Biographer John Baron may have originated a myth about Sarah Nelmes’s role in the origin of this practice. To promote this practice in Vienna, Maria Theresa hosted 65 commoners for a royal banquet at the Schönbrunn palace. Caroline of Ansbach helped popularize this practice after being shown it by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who introduced it to Europe after witnessing it in the Ottoman Empire. Catherine the Great gave Thomas Dimsdale a title for performing this practice on her by grating pustules into an open wound. For 10 points, the development of what medical practice in 18th-century Europe is often credited to Edward Jenner?
ANSWER: smallpox inoculation [accept equivalents like smallpox vaccination or smallpox variolation; prompt on inoculation, vaccination, or variolation by asking “against what disease?”; reject answers like “treatment of smallpox”] (Sarah Nelmes is the milkmaid Jenner is supposed to have seen without any smallpox lesions. Anton Petrov was renamed Anton Vaccinoff – and given a house and an income – after he received the vaccine to demonstrate its safety.)
[after 39% of the tossup] The wife of a ruler with this regnal name legendarily hung herself with her girdle after she was offered hemlock, a sword, and a rope to commit suicide. Adea Eurydice was married to a ruler of this name, who was possibly rendered mentally disabled following a poisoning attempt by his father’s wife. Onomachos was killed at the Battle of Crocus Field by an army under a king with this name during the Third Sacred War. A king of this name, who was victorious at the Battle of Chaeronea, was assassinated by Pausanias of Orestis in a conspiracy that ancient sources speculated to be orchestrated by his wife, Olympias. For 10 points, Macedonian expansion began during the reign of a king with what name, the father of Alexander the Great?
ANSWER: Philip [accept Philip II of Macedon or Philip III of Macedon]
[after 40% of the tossup] This ruler was a brother of a prince who wrote a treatise comparing two religions called The Mingling of the Two Oceans. It was not Timur, but following the Battle of Chamkaur, this ruler was the target of a Zafarnāma proclaiming spiritual victory. Farmans issued by this ruler banned syncretic customs such as Nowruz and jharokha darshan. After winning a civil war, this ruler accused his brother Dara Shikoh of heresy and executed him. For allegedly attempting to prevent the forced conversion of Hindus in Kashmir, this ruler executed Sikh Guru Tegh Bahadur. This ruler issued a compendium of Hanafi jurisprudence called Fatawa-e-Alamgiri and reinstated the jizya tax on non-Muslims. For 10 points, name this sixth Mughal emperor and successor of Shah Jahan, who undid most of Akbar’s policy of religious tolerance.
ANSWER: Aurangzeb [or Abul Muzaffar Muhy-ud-Din Muhammad Aurangzeb Alamgir; accept Alamgir I until “Fatawa-e-Alamgiri” is read]
[after 40% of the tossup] After he refused to allow any lapsi back into the church, a bishop from this state accused antipope Novatian of inducing his wife’s abortion. After the early Christians Perpetua and Felicity were martyred in this city, Perpetua’s narrative of her “passion” became a widely used devotional text. Much commerce from this city shipped from its harbor, the Cothon. A road marker ten miles away from this city names the Battle of Ad Decimum, where Belisarius defeated a state led by King Gelimer. Following the Decian Persecutions, a plague bearing the name of this city’s Bishop Cyprian was described by its namesake as divine punishment. Hippo Regius was selected to replace this city by the Vandal Kingdom after their invasion of Africa. For 10 points, name this city that sent an army to invade Italy under Hannibal during the Second Punic War.
ANSWER: Carthage
[after 42% of the tossup] This ethnicity’s newspaper Hunchak named a party that revolted in the Sasun Rebellions. A politician of this ethnicity was killed in parliament by an ex-journalist whom Alexander Litvinenko alleged the Russian GRU colluded with. After the Tehcir (“teh-JEER”) Law led to mass deportations, these people sought revenge in Operation Nemesis. Hrant Dink, a member of this ethnicity, was assassinated while on trial for violating Article 301, which affirms the denial of genocide against these people. Massacres of these people were organized by the Three Pashas, who forced people of this ethnicity on death marches through the Syrian Desert. For 10 points, the Ottoman Empire organized a genocide of what people whose country’s capital is Yerevan?
ANSWER: Armenians [or Hayer] (The politician in the second line is Vazgen Sargsyan.)
[after 42% of the tossup] A deity has his toes cut off for using one of these objects after rejecting a first offer of gruel and accepting a second offer of a gold ring. A deity uses one of these objects called Mesektet or Mandjet after embodying his ram-headed form. The Book of Gates describes 12 minor deities who observe one of these objects passing by. Nemty is often depicted as a falcon standing on one of these objects due to his role in using them. Khepri protects one of these objects by standing in front of it and helping to battle off Apophis. By painting a wooden one of these vehicles to resemble stone, Horus wins a race against Set and becomes the king of Egypt. For 10 points, Ra rides through the underworld in a “solar” one of what seafaring vehicles?
ANSWER: boats [or ships; or barques; or ferries; or ferry; accept ferrymen; accept Ra’s solar barque]
[after 42% of the tossup] During this battle, a defeated rear admiral said “let us enjoy the beauty of the moon” while going down with his ship. The Chicago Tribune was almost prosecuted under the Espionage Act for Stanley Johnston’s report on this battle, where the Thach Weave debuted with prior help of “Butch” O’Hare. This battle’s location was deciphered from “AF” through breaking the JN-25 code. The losing side of this battle had also attacked the Aleutian Islands as a diversion. In this battle, bombers attacked the Akagi and Kaga as they rearmed planes for a second strike. All four Japanese carriers in this battle were sunk in exchange for the loss of the USS Yorktown. For 10 points, what battle considered a turning point in the Pacific Theater was a June 1942 victory for US forces?
ANSWER: Battle of Midway
[after 43% of the tossup] During a conflict with this tribe, a military court at Fort St. Marks controversially found two British merchants guilty of arms dealing. This tribe’s twenty-year agreement with territorial governor William Pope Duval was broken in less than ten years by another leader, who executed Arbuthnot and Ambrister for spying for these people. A group of this tribe settled in Coahuila, Mexico, under John Horse and Wild Cat, and Andros Island in the Bahamas was settled by this tribe’s “Black” descendants. The Treaty of Moultrie Creek signed by this tribe was superseded by the Treaty of Payne’s Landing. A false white flag operation captured this tribe’s Chief Osceola. For 10 points, name this Florida-based tribe that fought several 19th-century wars against the US.
ANSWER: Seminoles [or Yat’siminoli]
[after 45% of the tossup] A ruler of these people commissioned the “Great proclamation upon the pacification of Wú” to affirm their independence. A dynasty of these people that sustained repeated naval attacks by Po Binasuor was usurped by another dynasty that only ruled for seven years. These people defeated invading armies at Bạch Đằng (“bike dong”) River three times. Literature in a native writing system called chữ Nôm flourished during a dynasty of these people that repulsed three Mongol invasions. These people had a centuries-long feud with the Kingdom of Champa to their south. These people’s Fourth Era of Northern Domination was ended by the Lam Sơn rebellion. That rebellion of these people against the Míng Dynasty was lead by Lê Lợi. For 10 points, name these people whose Trần, Hồ, and Later Lê Dynasties had their capital at modern-day Hànội.
ANSWER: Vietnamese people [or Viet; or người Việt; or Kinh]
[after 47% of the tossup] In a story from this region, a king discovers two hundred soldiers hiding in bags of flour in his giant house. A character from this region invents the game of “badger-in-the-bag” to win a princess’s hand in marriage. After drinking three drops from a cauldron, a figure from this region is swallowed by a sorceress upon transforming into a grain of wheat. A queen from this region is forced to carry travelers on her back after six negligent maids frame her for eating her infant child. The golden-haired Pryderi appears in all “Four Branches” of a text from this region. A bard whose name means “shining brow” names this region’s Book of Taliesin. For 10 points, name this constituent country of the United Kingdom whose myths are contained in the Mabinogion.
ANSWER: Wales [or Cymru; prompt on Great Britain; prompt on UK or United Kingdom until read]
[after 48% of the tossup] A man with this first name sent false eviction notices that were unsuccessfully fought by Lillian Edelstein and the group ETNA. A writer and an editor both with this first name are subjects of Lizzie Gottlieb’s documentary Turn Every Page. A man with this first name wrote the Pulitzer-winning book Master of the Senate, part of the ongoing biography The Years of Lyndon Johnson. That writer with this first name detailed “one mile” built by another man with this first name across the poor East Tremont neighborhood in The Power Broker. Fiorello La Guardia appointed a man with this first name as the inaugural New York City Parks Commissioner, where he feuded with Jane Jacobs. For 10 points, what first name is shared by biographer Caro and urban planner Moses?
ANSWER: Robert [accept Robert Moses; accept Robert Caro; accept Robert Gottlieb] (ETNA was the East Tremont Neighborhood Association.)
[after 52% of the tossup] As exposed by Francis Fletcher-Vane, an activist known as “Skeffy” was summarily executed during this event in the Portobello Barracks. The phrase that one country “unfree shall never be at peace” was coined prior to this event during the funeral of Jeremiah Rossa. Rumors of imminent arrests were described in the forged “Castle Document” by Joseph Plunkett prior to this event. The SS Aud failed to supply arms to this event, despite negotiations by Roger Casement. During this event, a document proclaiming a republic was read on the steps of the General Post Office by Patrick Pearse. Éamon de Valera (“EH-min day vuh-LAY-ruh”) was elected to lead Sinn Féin (“shin fayn”) following this event. For 10 points, what 1916 Irish rebellion against British rule is named for a Christian holiday?
ANSWER: Easter Rising [or Easter Rebellion]
[after 54% of the tossup] Gladys del Estal was killed protesting a facility of this type that ETA bombed several times in Lemóniz, Spain. Pierre Messemer’s namesake plan provided for the production of 170 facilities of this type. Rebecca Harms commissioned the TORCH Report to investigate a facility of this type. A facility of this type in Isar was shut down in April 2023, following a decades-long phase-out by the German government that received widespread criticism after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Anatoly Dyatlov was imprisoned for his actions at a site of this type during an event that formed the Red Forest. After that event, a massive concrete sarcophagus was built to surround that facility in Pripyat. For 10 points, European facilities of what type include Chernobyl?
ANSWER: nuclear power plants [or nuclear power stations; accept nuclear reactors; prompt on power plants or power stations]
[after 59% of the tossup] One of these animals is often depicted supporting Kui Xing. A table-carrying child of the Dragon King is one of these animals named Bixi. A snake is often depicted winding around one of these animals that represents the north. The name of that one of the Four Symbols is typically translated as “Black [this animal].” After holes are patched with multicolored stones, one of these animals named Ao has his legs cut off by Nüwa to create four pillars for holding up the heavens. In the comparative mythology section of Primitive Culture, Edward Burnett Tylor discusses the tropes of both elephants and these animals as world-bearing creatures. For 10 points, ancient Chinese divination sometimes made use of the shells of what reptiles?
ANSWER: turtles [or tortoises; or wū gūi (“ooh gway”); accept Black Tortoise or Black Turtle-Snake or xuánwǔ; accept World-Bearing Turtles or World-Bearing Tortoises]
[after 60% of the tossup] For non-adhesive materials in contact, this quantity can be calculated using Hertzian theory. Averaging the Navier–Stokes equations gives a term representing one type of this quantity that is proportional to the averaged fluctuating velocity correlation and named for Reynolds. A cylinder plotted in the space of principal coordinates of this quantity gives the maximum allowed value for the deviatoric type of this quantity before yielding according to the von Mises criterion. Off-diagonal elements of a tensor for this quantity named for Cauchy represent this quantity’s “shear” form. In uniaxial cases, this quantity is given by force over cross-sectional area. For 10 points, name this quantity that measures the forces causing deformation and is often plotted against strain.
ANSWER: stress [accept shear stress or deviatoric stress; accept principal stress; accept Cauchy stress tensor; accept Reynolds stress or Reynolds stress tensor]
[after 61% of the tossup] According to Pindar, a goddess attempted to imitate the sound of two of these beings crying by inventing the aulos flute. Two drops of blood from these beings were gifted to either Erichthonius or Asclepius for use as a panacea. The death of one of these beings spilled blood that mixed with sand to create the viper that killed the Argonaut Mopsus and created a warrior named for being born with a golden sword. Ceto mothered two immortal examples of these beings named Stheno and Euryale. The head of the only mortal one of these sisters is placed on the aegis by Athena after Chrysaor and Pegasus are born from her beheading by Perseus. For 10 points, what snake-haired sisters from Greek myth include Medusa?
ANSWER: Gorgons [accept Gorgoneion]
[after 62% of the tossup] A golden one of these objects named for Victory features a depiction of Vishnu riding Garuda. A lake was renamed after being the site where one of these objects was retrieved by the golden-shelled Kim Quy to return to the Dragon King. A deity attains one of these objects after getting an enemy drunk on eight barrels of sake placed near eight gates. The legendary king Lê Lợi owns one of these objects called Heaven’s Will. The tail of Yamata no Orochi contained one of these objects discovered by Susano’o named Kusanagi. For 10 points, name these weapons that include Muramasa’s legendarily cursed katanas.
ANSWER: swords [accept katanas until read]
[after 62% of the tossup] Raids called correrias were practiced in this industry by a businessman who names the Isthmus of Fitzcarrald. A book titled for “Red” and this industry was written by an author who noticed a disproportionate number of arms being shipped by Elder Dempster. The chicotte (“shee-CUT”) was a tool used to punish people in this industry, while in another country, barons in this industry, like Julio Cesar Arana, conducted mass enslavement of the Putumayo people. Adam Hochschild wrote a book titled for a certain monarch’s “Ghost” that detailed atrocities by this industry. The Casement Report publicized those atrocities, which included cutting off the hands of workers who did not meet quotas. For 10 points, King Leopold II profited off of what industry in places like the Congo Free State, whose product may be used to manufacture tires?
ANSWER: rubber [or latex]
[after 63% of the tossup] A rebel movement in this country dubbed the “Goryani” was initiated after a coup executed by this country’s resistance movement NOVA. During a period known as the “big excursion,” many dissidents were imprisoned on this country’s Belene Island. During this country’s Revival Process, many of this country’s ethnically Pomak people were forced to change their last names. A leader of this country, who was previously on trial for the Reichstag Fire, replaced this country’s young king Simeon II after a referendum dismantled the monarchy. A ricin pellet in an umbrella was used to assassinate this country’s dissident, Georgi Markov. For 10 points, Georgi Dimitrov and Todor Zhivkov were leaders of what Balkan country whose capital is Sofia?
ANSWER: Bulgaria [accept People’s Republic of Bulgaria; accept Republic of Bulgaria; accept Kingdom of Bulgaria; accept Republika Bŭlgariya; Narodna republika Bŭlgaria; accept Tsarstvo Bŭlgariya; accept Tsardom of Bulgaria; accept Third Tsardom of Bulgaria; accept Treto Bŭlgarsko Tsarstvo]
[after 64% of the tossup] Some of the last authentic srbulja (“sir-BOOL-ya”) were produced in this polity by the Vuković family. A tradition from this polity that may originate from Empress Helena was recreated by Józef Haller (“YOO-zef HAL-lair”) after the capture of Kołobrzeg (“KOH-wob-zheg”). A coin minted by Vespasian lent the symbol of a dolphin wrapping around an anchor to a businessman from this polity. This polity, home to Aldus Manutius, was partly governed by the Council of Ten. The League of Cambrai (“com-BRAY”) was formed to counterbalance the influence of this polity. The Bucentaur was central to an annual ceremony in this polity where a ring would be thrown into the sea. For 10 points, Saint Mark was the patron saint of what polity led by doges and named for an Adriatic city with many canals?
ANSWER: Venice [or Venezia; or Most Serene Republic of Venice]
[after 65% of the tossup] One sect in this tradition uses an “A” inside a circle to represent the “rainbow body,” a concept likely borrowed from an indigenous religion which the Rimé movement attempts to harmonize with this tradition. Adherents to this tradition make votive torma sculptures out of dyed butter and use meteoric iron to produce ritual phurba (“POOR-bah”) daggers. The youngest of four schools in this tradition is named for their distinctive yellow headwear, while the oldest, Nyingma (“nuh-YING-muh”), produced this tradition’s “Book of the Dead.” Dharamsala is the location of a theocratic government-in-exile from this religious tradition which formerly ruled from Lhasa’s Potala Palace. For 10 points, what tradition’s 14th Dalai Lama is Tenzin Gyatso?
ANSWER: Tibetan Buddhism [prompt on Buddhism; prompt on Mahayana Buddhism or Vajrayana Buddhism; prompt on Dzogchen or Gelug or Nyingma until “Nyingma” is read by asking “which forms part of what broader tradition?”]
[after 66% of the tossup] One of these things partly named for Lancaster was designed by John Loudon McAdam and was unusually built by a private company due to Pennsylvania being broke. These things are the first suggestions in the title of a 1808 report calling for 20 million dollars of funding, written by Albert Gallatin. The Jeffersonian belief that the Postal Clause only gave Congress power to designate, not build, these things informed Madison’s veto of the Bonus Bill and Andrew Jackson’s veto of one of these things for Maysville. Some modern ones of these projects lay over older “traces” like one named for the Natchez. A “National” one of these projects began at Cumberland, Maryland. For 10 points, name these projects that allowed for travel between cities via wagons.
ANSWER: roads [or highways; accept National Road or Maysville Road; accept toll roads or post roads or turnpikes; accept traces until read; reject “railroads”]
[after 66% of the tossup] 111 workers who built this structure recounted their experiences in a series of letters discussed by a Julie Greene book and the documentary Box 25. The existence of a secret plan to destroy this structure was confirmed by the autobiography America’s Prisoner. People who died in 1964 riots that tore down the “Fence of Shame” around this structure were commemorated on Martyrs Day. It’s not a tower, but Gustave Eiffel was prosecuted in a bribery scandal during an unsuccessful attempt to build this structure. Walter Reed’s medical advancements controlling yellow fever enabled the construction of this structure, which the Torrijos–Carter treaties transferred from US control in 1999. For 10 points, what man-made waterway connects the Caribbean to the Pacific through a namesake Central American country?
ANSWER: Panama Canal (America’s Prisoner is by Manuel Noriega.)
[after 66% of the tossup] After he received the deposed Peter Orseolo in his court, a king of this name invaded Hungary to remove Samuel Aba and reinstate him as king. After a failed rescue mission by Robert I of Capua, Pope Paschal II was forced to crown a king of this name. Rudolf of Rheinfelden attempted to claim the throne of a king of this name during an event where he sought peace at the castle of Matilda of Tuscany. The Concordat of Worms was agreed to by a king of this name after the Investiture Controversy reached a peak during the reign of his father of the same name. A king of this name fasted for three days in public penance after he was excommunicated by Pope Gregory VII. For 10 points, a Holy Roman Emperor of what name publicly repented during the Walk to Canossa?
ANSWER: Henry [accept Henry III Salian or Henry IV Salian or Henry V Salian; accept Heinrich in place of “Henry”]
[after 68% of the tossup] In this region, thatched houses called umjip would regularly be used by semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers. A crown from this region has three antler-like structures on top, a replica of which was gifted to President Donald Trump in 2025. The word for “ridge” is the only remaining word from a language that was spoken by this region’s Gaya Confederacy. Six eggs descended from a golden bowl with a message that princes would hatch and become kings of this region according to the Samguk yusa. Dangun (“DAHN-goon”) was the legendary founder of a kingdom in this region that, during its non-Chinese Three Kingdoms Period, fragmented into states like Baekje (“BECK-jeh”) and Goguryeo. For 10 points, Silla unified what peninsula that was later ruled by the Joseon Dynasty?
ANSWER: Korea [accept Korean peninsula or Hanguk]
[after 70% of the tossup] A text in this language features a little-known god named Lur, whose name is also found on many votive candelabra. A bronze statue of a man raising his right arm, commonly known as The Orator, features an inscription written primarily in this language. This language, used to write a guide for mummification on a linen book named for Zagreb, was grouped with Rhaetic and Lemnian by Helmut Rix. The Tyrrhenika was a history of the people who spoke this language, whose last speakers included the Emperor Claudius. People who spoke this non-Indo-European language were the [emphasize] first inhabitants of cities like Veii and Alba Longa. For 10 points, Latin was influenced by what language that was spoken by the predecessors to the Romans in Italy?
ANSWER: Etruscan [accept Etruscans]
[after 71% of the tossup] Karl Taube, who wrote an essay on this substance’s symbolism partially titled for its “fetishes,” studied a god of this substance who appears in the San Bartolo murals. A foliated god of this substance is contrasted with the “first father,” a tonsured god of this substance, whose emergence from a turtle carapace is often equated with the resurrection of Hun Hunahpu. A passage into the side of a mountain that reveals the source of this substance is opened by the Hero Twins, who use it to replace the teeth of Seven Macaw. After attempts using mud and wood failed, humanity was created out of this foodstuff by Tepeu and Qucumatz. For 10 points, the Three Sisters included squash, beans, and what staple grain that features in many Mesoamerican stories?
ANSWER: maize [or corn; accept Maya maize god or tonsured maize god or foliated maize god; accept “Lighting Celts and Corn Fetishes”]
[after 72% of the tossup] The biography Camera Girl recounts how this woman worked at Vogue for one day and covered Elizabeth II’s coronation as a reporter for the Times-Herald newspaper. Conflicting testimonies exist over whether this woman was proposed to at a booth in Martin’s Tavern in D.C. or the Omni Parker House in Boston. This woman’s successor renamed the East Garden in her honor, since she redesigned it along with the Rose Garden. This woman prematurely birthed her youngest son Patrick on the 20th anniversary of her husband’s rescue in the PT-109 incident. This First Lady compared her household to Camelot and later remarried the Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis. For 10 points, name this person who served as First Lady before her husband’s 1963 assassination.
ANSWER: Jacqueline Kennedy [or Jackie Kennedy; or Jacqueline Bouvier; or Jackie Bouvier; or Jacqueline Onassis; or Jackie Onassis; prompt on Kennedy or J. Kennedy; prompt on Onassis until read]
[after 72% of the tossup] In 1995, the oldest recorded evidence of this practice was excavated at a site whose name means “beloved’s pass.” 47 depictions of this practice are found at a site for it called Dainzú (“dah-een-SOO”). A man participating in this practice is depicted on a stone panel with snakes sprouting from his neck. Depictions of people engaging in this practice generally depict them covering their chest with a palma and wearing heavy “yokes” on a belt. Ulama is a modern descendant of this practice, which took place in purpose-built venues shaped like a capital I from above. The Popol Vuh describes the practice of sacrificing people who participated in this activity. For 10 points, participants had to use their hips to push a rubber object through stone hoops in what pre-Colombian activity?
ANSWER: Mesoamerican ball game [or ōllamaliztli; or tlachtli; or pitz; or juego de pelota; or pok-ta-pok; or pok-a-tok; or pokolpok; accept ulama until read; prompt on games or sports]
[after 74% of the tossup] The editor of this country’s Marxist newspaper Don Quichotte (“don kee-SHOT”), Henri Curiel (“on-REE cure-YEL”), founded its Democratic Movement for National Liberation. A leader of this country pickpocketed a watch off Winston Churchill during a state visit and was the target of Project FF. An organization launched a coup as this country’s leader was surrounded at such residences as Montaza and Abdeen Palace. That organization established the Revolutionary Command Council and later formed the Liberation Rally party. This country’s second president initiated the Agrarian Reform Law and was a member of the Mohamed Naguib-led Free Officers Movement that overthrew its king in 1952. For 10 points, name this African country whose leaders during the Cold War included King Farouk and Gamal Abdel Nasser.
ANSWER: Egypt [or Kingdom of Egypt; or Arab Republic of Egypt]
[after 74% of the tossup] Joseph Cundall’s photographs of this artwork were referenced by Elizabeth Wardle to create a replica now held in the Reading Museum. In this artwork, a naked man squats underneath a woman in a red gateway who is being touched by a priest. This artwork’s 58 tituli describe the construction of a motte and a man who “gives strength to the boys.” The appearance of figures such as Wadard in this artwork suggests that it was commissioned by the Bishop of Odo. A man in this artwork with an arrow in his eye is often identified as Harold Godwinson, whose coronation is depicted below Halley’s Comet in this artwork. For 10 points, name this embroidered depiction of the Norman conquest of England held in a namesake French cathedral.
ANSWER: Bayeux Tapestry [or Tapisserie de Bayeux]
[after 74% of the tossup] Russell Belk included possessions in an “extended” version of this concept. A version of this concept is influenced by partners in the Michelangelo phenomenon, which is similar to Charles Horton Cooley’s perception-based “looking-glass” form of this concept. This concept’s shaping by social experience is explored in the middle chapters of a book that pioneered symbolic interactionism. That book by George Herbert Meade is titled for “mind,” this concept, and “society.” Carl Rogers strove for the alignment of one’s “real” and “ideal” versions of this concept. The mirror test has demonstrated “awareness” of this concept in magpies and dolphins. For 10 points, a measure of one’s own worth is known as what concept’s “esteem?”
ANSWER: the self [accept self-esteem; accept self-awareness; accept real self or ideal self; accept Mind, Self, and Society; accept extended self]
[after 77% of the tossup] This thinker coined the name of a mystical “fourth force” in popularizing Stanislav Grof’s “transpersonal” subfield of their discipline. This thinker included notes on synergy and salesmen in a loosely structured book titled for this person “on Management.” Existence is the most basic of three categories in Clayton Alderfer’s simplification of a model by this thinker. This thinker distinguished fundamental deficiency-cognition from being-cognition, which occurs during euphoric “peak experiences.” This psychologist studied figures like Albert Einstein to create a theory of human motivation. For 10 points, name this psychologist who placed self-actualization atop of a “hierarchy of needs.”
ANSWER: Abraham Maslow [or Abraham Harold Maslow; accept Maslow on Management]
[after 82% of the tossup] In Turkic folklore, these places are inhabited by tickling spirits known as Shurale and spirits called Äbädä, who are turned away by inverting one’s clothing. Slavic tutelary deities called Leshy are said to inhabit these locations. A sun god binds an inhabitant of one of these places by sending either seven or 13 winds. While journeying toward one of these locations, a hero has five dreams including one of a falling mountain and one of wrestling a bull. Nemetons were often created by sectioning off sacred areas of these locations by Celtic druids. Enkidu helps destroy one of these locations after the beheading of its inhabitant, Humbaba. For 10 points, name these locations that include one in the Epic of Gilgamesh made up of cedars.
ANSWER: forests [accept cedar forests; accept sacred groves; prompt on cedar trees or oak trees]
[after 83% of the tossup] A thinker from this country traced how its people sequentially obtained civil, political, and social rights in the essay “Citizenship and Social Class.” A feminist abolitionist thinker from this country wrote Society in America and popularized the works of Auguste Comte through her translations. The “mother of sociology” Harriet Martineau is from this country, where the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies was founded by Jamaica-born Marxist thinker Stuart Hall. An 1845 book compares the illness and death rates of this country’s rural and industrialized populations to document capitalist exploitation, inspiring Marx to collaborate with its author. For 10 points, Friedrich Engels wrote a book on the “Condition of the Working Class in” what country home to the University of Birmingham?
ANSWER: England [or United Kingdom; or UK; or Great Britain; accept Condition of the Working Class in England; reject “Scotland” or “Wales” or “Northern Ireland”] (The first sentence refers to T. H. Marshall.)
[after 85% of the tossup] Methods of displaying certain types of these objects are named after having one, two, or three colors. A lady rushes towards a bear in one of twelve narrative scenes from one of these objects titled after a court teacher’s “admonitions.” Three of these non-title objects hang from the ceiling in an installation originally named after a “Mirror to Analyze the World.” A ship’s crew attempts to lower their mast to avoid crashing into the Rainbow Bridge in one of these objects that was animated for the 2010 World Expo. “Hand” types of these objects include Zhāng Zéduān’s (“jahng dzuh-dwen’s”) panoramic painting Along the River During the Qīngmíng Festival. For 10 points, Chinese calligraphy is often displayed on what objects that can be rolled up?
ANSWER: scrolls [or juàn; accept handscrolls or hanging scrolls; accept Admonitions Scroll; prompt on paper or silk; prompt on ink drawings; prompt on calligraphy until read] (The third line refers to Xú Bīng’s A Book From the Sky.)
[after 86% of the tossup] Description acceptable. Massirah is controversially used to perform this action in Sudan. Surah al-Nisā’ warns that this practice, which is likened to belomancy and polytheism in Surah al-Mā’idah, can invalidate daily prayer. Along with apostasy, this action can require ḥadd punishment based on sunnah rather than on the text of the Qur’an. Khalid ibn Walid is credited with increasing punishment for this practice from 40 to 80 lashes. Although an al-Tirmidhī hadith equates this action with the consumption of khamr (“KHAH-mur”), some jurists of the Ḥanafī school only prohibit performing this action with date or grape products. For 10 points, identify this practice of intoxication which is forbidden in Islam.
ANSWER: drinking alcohol [accept sukr or muskar; accept intoxication or word forms until read; accept drunkenness or word forms; accept drinking wine or beer or liquor; accept consuming khamr until read; prompt on drinking by asking “drinking what?”]
[after 88% of the tossup] In 1939, a ship named for this city carrying Jewish refugees from Germany was denied from landing in the US in the so-called “Voyage of the Damned.” Cases arising from Detroit and this city resulted in racially restrictive covenants being struck down under the Equal Protection Clause. Harold Bixby, a businessman from this city, sponsored an object built in San Diego but named for this city that was later used to win the Orteig Prize. Shelley v. Kraemer originated in this city, which preserved the Old Courthouse where the Dred Scott trial was first heard as part of an “expansion memorial.” Charles Lindbergh named his Atlantic-crossing aircraft for the “Spirit of” this city. For 10 points, name this Midwestern city home to the Gateway Arch.
ANSWER: St. Louis [accept The Spirit of St. Louis; accept MS St. Louis]
[after 93% of the tossup] A paper titled for this concept argues that “functional explanations” can account for phenomena like reportability, but not this concept. Reportability defines the “access” type of this concept, which Ned Block distinguished from its “phenomenal” type. Joseph Levine argued that theories of this concept struggle to explain subjectivity due to the explanatory gap. The phi phenomenon is evidence for the theory that this concept arises from many sources of input and systems of interpretation, called the multiple drafts model. David Chalmers argued that science cannot even attempt to explain why this concept exists, which is its “hard problem.” Philosophical zombies lack this concept. For 10 points, a book by Daniel Dennett “explains” what concept, which is the mental awareness of one’s experience?
ANSWER: consciousness [accept hard problem of consciousness; accept phenomenal consciousness or access consciousness; accept Consciousness Explained; accept “Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness”]
[after 93% of the tossup] Four deputies titled for these structures represented the Maḥdī during the Minor Occultation. One figure named for this structure began his religious career after seeing seven drops of blood on another’s throat, and is buried on Mount Carmel. Salman the Persian is the final person to fill a role named for these structures in Alawism, which comprises a trinity along with the Manifestation and the Name. In the first of a collection of Zen kōans titled for one of these structures lacking itself, a dog replies “mu” when asked if it has Buddha-nature. Vermillion examples of these structures mark places where kami enter into the human realm in Shintō shrines. For 10 points, bāb and torii are words for what structures, through which Jesus entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday?
ANSWER: gates [or doors; or portals; accept Gateless Gate; accept mén or guān or mon or kan; accept kahyō; accept Báb or bāb or ’abwāb until “bāb” is read; accept wakīl or safīr or na‘īb until “shrine” is read; prompt on barrier] (Báb is Arabic for gate.)
[after 98% of the tossup] Saidiya Hartman’s “Venus in Two Acts” argues that these institutions limit stories that can be told about slavery, but can be transcended by critical fabulation. The principle of respect des fonds (“ruh-SPAY day FON”) is discussed in the “Dutch Manual” for the appraisal of these institutions. The use of these institutions in research was pioneered by Leopold von Ranke. In 2023, the Hachette group sued one of these institutions founded by Brewster Kahle that pioneered controlled digital lending. Cornell University operates a website named for these institutions that hosts scientific preprints. A massive book digitization effort is run by an online one of these institutions that also hosts a digital library and the Wayback Machine. For 10 points, name these collections of historical records or materials.
ANSWER: archives [accept Internet Archive; accept arXiv.org; prompt on sources; prompt on Open Library until “library” is read by asking “what type of larger institution is that a part of?”; prompt on libraries until “library” is read]
[after 98% of the tossup] An essay describes how one of the author’s classmates used this belief to justify his failure to study for an exam, showing that proponents of this belief have abandoned reason. Proponents of this belief “delight in acting in bad faith” according to that essay by Jean-Paul Sartre. The deconstructionist Paul de Man wrote hundreds of articles defending this position for the newspaper Le Soir (“luh swar”). This belief and imperialism are analyzed in the first two sections of The Origins of Totalitarianism. During the Farías and Faye controversies, a philosopher was accused of this belief, which explains his failure to protect his mentor Edmund Husserl. The Black Notebooks of Martin Heidegger contain many expressions of this prejudice. For 10 points, name this prejudice defended in Mein Kampf.
ANSWER: antisemitism [or anti-Jewish prejudice; or Jew-hatred; or Judeophobia; accept “Anti-Semite and Jew”; prompt on Nazism or racism or prejudice or bigotry until “prejudice” is read]
[after 98% of the tossup] In a paper titled for this century, the phrase “Christian Dior… looks a more attractive proposition than Montagu Burton” is used to illustrate an economic slump caused by shortsightedness in capitalism. That essay was partly inspired by widespread currency debasement during this century’s Kipper und Wipper period. Susan Strange portmanteaued “failure” with a system named for an agreement in this century that was based on the teachings of Jean Bodin (“bo-DAN”). It’s not the 19th century, but economic stagnation during this century led Eric Hobsbawm to coin the term “general crisis” to refer to the majority of it. Demographic upheavals during this century included the Khmelnytsky (“k’mell-NITS-kee”) Uprising and the Polish Deluge. For 10 points, widespread economic instability roiled Europe during what century of the Thirty Years’ War?
ANSWER: 17th century [or 1600s]
[after 99% of the tossup] Possible sources of this phenomenon are identified by intersections on a Campbell diagram. “Tongues” of this phenomenon may be found with the Mathieu equation when considering its “parametric” form. A “universal” curve for this phenomenon is quantified by the half bandwidth of a Lorentzian function. Injection locking may cause the “sympathetic” form of this phenomenon. This phenomenon occurs more intensely but in a more narrow region when the Q-factor is high, corresponding to underdamped systems with little energy loss. This phenomenon is typically distinguished from the self-exciting aeroelastic flutter that caused the collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. For 10 points, name this phenomenon in which an oscillator driven at its natural frequency grows in amplitude.
ANSWER: resonance [or word forms like resonating or resonators; accept parametric resonance; prompt on oscillation or word forms until read; prompt on vibration; prompt on instability]
[after 99% of the tossup] Susan Ridyard dismissed apocryphal claims that the half-sister of a monarch of this name foresaw his death after she dreamt she lost her right eye and was subsequently offered his throne; that half-sister was canonized as Saint Edith. A monarch of this name, who dissolved many monasteries in the “anti-monastic reaction,” may have been murdered by his mother-in-law, Ælfthryth (“ELF-thrith”). A future monarch of this name, who was exiled by Harold Harefoot, inherited the throne from Harthacnut after he returned with his mother Emma of Normandy. In addition to a monarch known as the “Martyr,” a monarch with this name commissioned the modern Westminster Abbey and ignited a succession crisis between Harold Godwinson and the future William the Conqueror after his death. For 10 points, a king of England of what name had the epithet “Confessor?”
ANSWER: Edward [accept Edward the Confessor or Edward the Martyr]
[after 100% of the tossup] A character with this profession asks another character why he thinks the Welsh will want a “multi-culti bot-verse” since they voted for Brexit. After breaking down a door, it is discovered that a character with this profession in a different work annotated “a pious work” with “startling blasphemies” and laid heaps of “white salt” on saucers. A character with this profession writes that “my life, my honour, my reason, are all at your mercy” to his friend Lanyon, who later dies of shock. A man with this profession reveals that he created a new signature by “sloping my own hand backward” in his “Full Statement of the Case.” After the murder of Sir Danvers Carew, Gabriel Utterson investigates a person with this profession. For 10 points, name this profession of Henry Jekyll, the alter-ego of Mr. Hyde.
ANSWER: medical doctor [or MD; accept Dr. Henry Jekyll; accept Dr. Ry Shelley; accept medical professional; prompt on scientist, researcher, chemist, professor, or grave robber] (The first clue is from Frankissstein by Jeanette Winterson.)
[after 100% of the tossup] Insertion of a XA21 pattern recognition receptor into this organism prevents disease by Xoo. R. solani is a fungal pathogen of this plant that causes sheath blight. Increased lodging resistance conferred by the sd1 gene was a characteristic of the IR8 strain of this plant. Low amylose content characterizes some varieties of this plant, resulting in strong molecular adhesion between starch molecules. A variety of this plant that can synthesize vitamin A precursors is notable for its golden colour. This crop that contains no gluten can be divided into short and long grain varieties. For 10 points, what staple crop with varieties like basmati is grown in paddies?
ANSWER: rice [or Oryza]
[after 100% of the tossup] A photograph taken during this war depicts an opera singer in silhouette raising her arms during an aria from Madame Butterfly. A photograph from this war shows a woman taking a bath with her muddy boots on the bathmat, and was taken by David Scherman. A large crowd walks down a street in a photograph from this war centered around a shaved woman holding a baby. A darkroom accident destroyed most of the photographs Robert Capa took during one battle in this war, which became the series The Magnificent Eleven. Lee Miller took photographs for Vogue during this war. In a photograph from this war, a group of six soldiers on Mount Suribachi hold onto a flagpole. For 10 points, name this war in which Joe Rosenthal took Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima.
ANSWER: World War II [or WWII; or Second World War]

Karthik Jayaram ↩

[after 16% of the tossup] In a scene set in one of these places, a character mentions outsourcing at Clemmons Technologies due to NAFTA, which Tracey thinks is a laxative. Later in that play, the owner of one of these places, Stan, is disabled when Jason hits him with a baseball bat. In another play set in one of these places, a character admits that he’d face the electric chair if he had to “kill someone and they have to go on living!” In one of these places owned by an agoraphobe who vows to walk around the block on his birthday, a traveling salesman admits to murdering his wife Evelyn. Don Parritt commits suicide by jumping off a fire escape in one of these places after Hickey attempts to convince its patrons to abandon their “pipe dreams.” For 10 points, name these places, one of which is run by Harry Hope in Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh.
ANSWER: bars [or saloons; or public houses; accept Harry Hope’s Saloon; accept Alibi Club; prompt on restaurant; prompt on club; prompt on hotel] (The first and second lines refer to Sweat by Lynn Nottage.)
[after 17% of the tossup] An actor portraying this character has a heart attack after reciting this character’s line “a wren goes to ’t” in the opening scene of Station Eleven. After this character dies, one character remarks that “I have a journey, sir; shortly to go. [This character] calls me. I must not say no,” implying that he will kill himself. This character mourns another character, crying, “Why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life / And thou no breath at all?” This character claims that he is a “man more sinned against than sinning” during a scene that begins with him saying “blow, winds, and crack your cheeks!” during a storm where he is followed by his fool and a bastard son disguised as Tom O’Bedlam. For 10 points, name this titular king of a Shakespeare play who disinherits Cordelia after she refuses to flatter him.
ANSWER: King Lear
[after 19% of the tossup] Paul Lombardi and Michael Webster identified “serial mistakes” in the postlude of a Stravinsky piece titled for this genre and “Canticles” which begins with a prelude scored only for strings. A contrapuntal movement in a piece in this genre begins with the theme [read slowly] dotted A, A, down to F, up to B-flat, down to C-sharp. The first of Luigi Cherubini’s (“care-oo-BEE-nee’s”) two pieces in this genre was written for the anniversary of Louis XVI’s execution. A work in this genre composed “for the fun of it” unusually replaces a common section with a Pie Jesu (“PEE-ay YAY-soo”). Franz Xaver Süssmayr completed an unfinished work in this genre that includes a 12/8 Lacrimosa. For 10 points, Mozart died before completing a D minor piece in what genre of mass for the dead?
ANSWER: requiem mass [accept Requiem Canticles; prompt on mass until read]
[after 22% of the tossup] In a novel set in this state, a character is beat up after asking two boys to return candy stolen from Mr. Marconi’s Tobacco and Cigars. The highly abusive real-life Dozier School was fictionalized in a novel set in this state by Colson Whitehead. In a different novel set in this state, the protagonist remarks that “the business of the head rag irked her endlessly” after her husband forbids her from showing her hair in public. The protagonist of a novel set in this state has a vision of her future husband desecrating a pear tree after she is caught kissing Johnny Taylor. In a novel set in this state, Tea Cake is shot after being bitten by a rabid dog during the Okeechobee hurricane. For 10 points, name this state where Janie Crawford tells her story in its town of Eatonville, the setting of Their Eyes Were Watching God.
ANSWER: Florida [or FL] (The Whitehead novel is The Nickel Boys.)
[after 25% of the tossup] In the beginning of this text, a floating air spirit’s knees are home to a nest containing duck eggs that hatch to create heaven and earth. Scholars suggest that the virgin birth depicted in this text after Marjatta eats a berry is a result of Christianization. A woman in this text uses honey to revive her son, pieces of whose body she finds with a copper rake and sews together after seeing the omen of his bleeding hairbrush. The Mistress of the North who rules over Pohjola in this text promises her daughter to its protagonist if he can successfully forge the Sampo. After the witch Louhi steals the sun, the moon, and fire in this text, the smith Ilmarinen and the kantele-playing first man, Väinämöinen, work to restore them. For 10 points, name this national epic of Finland.
ANSWER: Kalevala
[after 25% of the tossup] The Kadomtsev model explains rapid temperature drops in these devices called sawtooth relaxations. One type of these devices are protected from kink instabilities when the safety factor is greater than one. Another type of these devices heats a hohlraum using laser pulses in a technique called ICF. The first one of these devices to achieve a Q greater than one is the National Ignition Facility, which uses internal confinement. Magnetic fields confine plasma in a toroid in the stellarator and tokamak types of these machines, and these devices often use deuterium and tritium for fuel. For 10 points, name these devices that seek to produce power by combining atomic nuclei.
ANSWER: fusion reactors [accept tokamaks until “tokamak” is read; accept inertial confinement fusion reactors; prompt on reactors; prompt on nuclear reactors; reject “fission reactors”]
[after 26% of the tossup] The first of 36 chapters in a text in this language outlines a sage’s development of the “graceful” style of drama to accompany the original “verbal,” “grand,” and “energetic” styles. The stage manager for plays in this language has a name meaning “holder of threads.” In a mad scene in a play in this language, a royal speaks to a series of animals and a river after his wife is turned into a vine for entering a forest forbidden to women. In a play in this language, a king who spares a deer in its opening encounters his son playing with a lion cub in a hermitage. That king is cursed by a sage to forget his wife until a fisherman recovers a signet ring in a play in this language. For 10 points, name this ancient language used to write Urvashi Won by Valor and The Recognition of Shakuntala by Kālidāsa.
ANSWER: Sanskrit [or saṃskṛtam] (The first line refers to Bharata’s Nātyaśāstra.)
[after 27% of the tossup] A poem in this language contrasts the owl’s “taciturn flight” with the “deceptive plumage” of the title bird. This language was used to write both “Twist the Neck of the Swan” and a poem that addresses a “future invader” that “still prays to Jesus Christ and still speaks [this language].” The title figure is addressed as a “professor of energy” and “an Alexander-Nebuchadnezzar” in that poem in this language. This language’s modernist poetry movement was kickstarted by the author of the poem “To Roosevelt.” The speaker describes working “in July as in January” to “cultivate a white rose” in a poem in this language by an author whose collection Simple Verses includes the patriotic song “Guantanamera.” For 10 points, name this language used by poets Rubén Darío and José Martí.
ANSWER: Spanish [or español; accept Castilian or castellano] (“Twist the Neck of the Swan” is by Enrique González Martínez.)
[after 28% of the tossup] The narrator of a poem by this author described breaking “the copious curls upon my head” because her aunt “liked smooth-order hair.” In a different poem by this author, the speaker encourages the addressee to “Gather the north flowers to complete the south / And catch the early love up in the late.” In a long poem by this author, Marian Erle has a child out of wedlock and refuses to marry Romney, who proposes to the title character instead. Virginia Woolf wrote about this author’s cocker spaniel getting kidnapped in the fictional biography Flush. This author wrote “call me by my pet name” in a collection in which a different poem begins, “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.” For 10 points, name this poet who wrote the nine-book “novel in verse” Aurora Leigh and Sonnets from the Portuguese.
ANSWER: Elizabeth Barrett Browning [or Elizabeth Barrett Browning; accept Elizabeth Barrett; prompt on Browning; reject “Robert Browning”]
[after 37% of the tossup] A composer with this surname was called “an eagle whose wings are grown” by his father and only oversaw 30 pieces published in his lifetime written while working in Lisbon. A composer with this surname developed the three-part Italian overture for his operas and composed oratorios such as La Giuditta with librettos by his patron Cardinal Ottoboni. A piece by a composer with this surname begins with the ascending dotted quarter notes [read slowly] G, B-flat, E-flat, F-sharp, B-flat, C-sharp and was inspired by his pet Pulcinella walking across his keyboard. This surname is shared by the founder of the Neapolitan school of opera, Alessandro, and a composer whose “Cat’s Fugue” is one of 555 sonatas he wrote for harpsichord. For 10 points, give this surname of the baroque keyboard composer Domenico.
ANSWER: Scarlatti [accept Domenico Scarlatti or Alessandro Scarlatti]
[after 37% of the tossup] A woman in this text sleeps for the entirety of her brother-in-law’s exile so that her husband could be awake the entire time instead. This text’s author was legendarily inspired to write it after the sage Narada had him chant the name of its dedicatee to turn away from his sinful life as the bandit Ratnakar. The king of the bears, Jambavan, reminds a figure in this text who was divinely fathered by a wind god that he has the strength to reach an enemy kingdom by jumping over an ocean. The title figure of this older of the two itihasas slays a ten-headed demon before returning home and inheriting his title as king of Ayodhya. For 10 points, name this Hindu epic in which Sita, the wife of the title blue-skinned deity, is kidnapped by Ravana.
ANSWER: Ramayana (The first line refers to Urmila, the wife of Lakshmana and sister-in-law of Rama.)
[after 40% of the tossup] One sect in this tradition uses an “A” inside a circle to represent the “rainbow body,” a concept likely borrowed from an indigenous religion which the Rimé movement attempts to harmonize with this tradition. Adherents to this tradition make votive torma sculptures out of dyed butter and use meteoric iron to produce ritual phurba (“POOR-bah”) daggers. The youngest of four schools in this tradition is named for their distinctive yellow headwear, while the oldest, Nyingma (“nuh-YING-muh”), produced this tradition’s “Book of the Dead.” Dharamsala is the location of a theocratic government-in-exile from this religious tradition which formerly ruled from Lhasa’s Potala Palace. For 10 points, what tradition’s 14th Dalai Lama is Tenzin Gyatso?
ANSWER: Tibetan Buddhism [prompt on Buddhism; prompt on Mahayana Buddhism or Vajrayana Buddhism; prompt on Dzogchen or Gelug or Nyingma until “Nyingma” is read by asking “which forms part of what broader tradition?”]
[after 40% of the tossup] The synthesized beam is analogous to the point-spread function in a kind of these devices that measure visibility in u-v space, which is Fourier transformed to generate an image. Test masses suspended from four pendulums reduce seismic noise in one of these devices consisting of two four kilometer-long étalons (“ay-tuh-LON”). Some of these devices use aperture synthesis to achieve a resolution on the order of wavelength divided by baseline, which the EHT used to take the first image of a black hole. Two of these devices in Louisiana and Washington detected a 2017 neutron star merger, which was the first gravitational wave signal. The LIGO observatory uses Michelson’s design for these devices. For 10 points, what devices measure the phenomenon that occurs when two waves are superimposed?
ANSWER: interferometers [accept Fabry–Pérot interferometers or Michelson interferometers; accept telescope arrays; accept étalons until read; prompt on telescopes or observatories until “observatory” is read; prompt on gravitational wave detectors until “gravitational wave” is read]
[after 40% of the tossup] In a novel by this author, a couple play a game in which they fill in blank speech bubbles in each other’s drawings called “the bubble game.” In another work by this author, arts and crafts are included in a “Gallery” by a mysterious figure named “Madame.” The protagonist of a novel by this author destroys a polluting “Cootings Machine” to cure Josie’s illness. In a different novel by this author, two characters travel to Norfolk where Kathy finds a cassette tape by Judy Bridgewater. Characters in that novel by this author attend school at Hailsham and are divided into “carers” and “donors.” In a novel by this author, after receiving a letter from Miss Kenton at Darlington Hall, Mr. Faraday gives the butler Stevens permission to leave. For 10 points, name this Nobel-winning author of Never Let Me Go and The Remains of the Day.
ANSWER: Kazuo Ishiguro (The novel in the first and third clues is Klara and the Sun.)
[after 41% of the tossup] In Berezin integrals, variables representing these particles take values in the exterior algebra of a complex vector space and are called Grassmann numbers. Massless elementary particles of this type do not exist in the Standard Model, but massless quasiparticles of this type are found in Weyl (“vile”) semimetals. At absolute zero, the occupation number distribution of these particles is a step function. If these particles are their own antiparticles, then their 4-spinor solutions to the Dirac equation are completely real. By the spin–statistics theorem, wavefunctions of these particles are antisymmetric with respect to exchange, which leads to them obeying the Pauli exclusion principle. For 10 points, name this type of particle with half-integer spin and contrasted with bosons.
ANSWER: fermions [accept fermionic fields; accept Majorana fermions; accept Weyl fermions; prompt on neutrinos]
[after 41% of the tossup] A speaker in one of these title places notes that “The others have gone; they were tired… But I would rather be standing here” in a poem that declares “There is something terrible about a child.” Charlotte Mew wrote a poem set at one of these places “In Nunhead.” A “school” of poetry named for these places included Thomas Parnell and Robert Blair. In a poem set in one of these places, the speaker imagines “a heart once pregnant with celestial fire” and “hands” that “wak’d to ecstasy the living lyre.” The speaker of a poem reflects that “the paths of glory led but to” one of these places in a poem that includes an epitaph to “A youth to Fortune and to Fame unknown” and begins “The curfew tolls the knell of parting day.” For 10 points, an elegy by Thomas Gray is set in a “Country” type of what location?
ANSWER: graveyards [or cemeteries; or graves; or churchyards; accept “In Nunhead Cemetery”; accept “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”; prompt on churches by asking “in what part of the church is that poem set?”]
[after 44% of the tossup] In Turkic folklore, these places are inhabited by tickling spirits known as Shurale and spirits called Äbädä, who are turned away by inverting one’s clothing. Slavic tutelary deities called Leshy are said to inhabit these locations. A sun god binds an inhabitant of one of these places by sending either seven or 13 winds. While journeying toward one of these locations, a hero has five dreams including one of a falling mountain and one of wrestling a bull. Nemetons were often created by sectioning off sacred areas of these locations by Celtic druids. Enkidu helps destroy one of these locations after the beheading of its inhabitant, Humbaba. For 10 points, name these locations that include one in the Epic of Gilgamesh made up of cedars.
ANSWER: forests [accept cedar forests; accept sacred groves; prompt on cedar trees or oak trees]
[after 44% of the tossup] One model of these substances consists of two independent phases, one condensed state and one normal state, and was formulated by Tizsa. The mixing of a working liquid and one of these substances allows cooling down to 2 millikelvins in a dilution refrigerator. One of these substances can be created using isentropic compression in a Pomeranchuk cell. These substances display quantized vortices called rotons that can form in these substances as predicted by Landau. These substances have high thermal conductivity due to propagating temperature waves called second sound. Below the lambda point, helium-4 transitions to one of these substances. These substances can form Rollin films that enable them to creep up walls. For 10 points, name these substances that have zero viscosity and flow without friction.
ANSWER: superfluids [accept superfluidity; accept superfluid liquid helium]
[after 46% of the tossup] This musician’s band repeats a chant beginning “freedom for your daddy” on a bonus track of an album that also includes a song written to show that a band can swing in 6/8 time. An album by this musician recorded with Eric Dolphy at Cornell includes a song with censored lyrics like “don’t let them tar and feather us” and called an Arkansas politician “sick and ridiculous.” Lyrics like “You know someone great has gone” were added by Joni Mitchell to a song by this musician dedicated to a man nicknamed “Prez.” That song by this composer of “Better Git It in Your Soul” was re-titled “Theme for Lester Young” on an album whose title repeats his last name five times. For 10 points, name this jazz bassist who wrote “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat.”
ANSWER: Charles Mingus [or Charles Mingus Jr.]
[after 47% of the tossup] A coordinate-free definition of this operation relies on the top exterior power defining a one-dimensional space. SL(n) (“S-L-N”) is the kernel of a homomorphism defined by this operation from GL(n) (“G-L-N”) to the non-zero reals under multiplication. Unusually, this operation is only introduced towards the end of a textbook by Sheldon Axler called Linear Algebra Done Right, which defines this operation as the unique alternating multilinear form up to scaling. The output of this operation equals the constant term of the characteristic polynomial. The general linear group excludes matrices which output zero under this operation since they are non-invertible. For 10 points, name this operation that, for a two-by-two matrix, equals “a d minus b c.”
ANSWER: determinant [or det]
[after 47% of the tossup] In this city, the “Fast Form Manifest” style was used by Thierry Noir to create cartoonish heads that can be seen at the East Side Gallery. The film Night Crossing opens with footage of an event in this city that was also captured by Peter Leibing. Blue rope was used to fasten over 100,000 square meters of fabric in a “wrapping” of a building in this city by Christo and Jeanne-Claude. A Dmitri Vrubel mural in this city depicts a 1979 meeting in which Leonid Brezhnev shared a fraternal kiss. A watch was removed from a soldier’s wrist in a photograph taken atop this city’s parliament building after its capture by the Soviets. For 10 points, name this city where graffiti was broken into chunks after the 1989 fall of its namesake wall.
ANSWER: Berlin [accept East Berlin or Ost-Berlin; accept West Berlin; accept Berlin Wall] (The second line refers to Leibing’s Leap into Freedom. The third line refers to Wrapped Reichstag. The fifth line refers to Raising a Flag over the Reichstag.)
[after 47% of the tossup] Despite being named for Fermi, a “golden rule” first derived by this physicist predicts transitions due to perturbations. Both state vectors and observables have time dependence in a framework introduced by this physicist called the interaction picture. This physicist’s eponymous equation predicts free particles undergo rapid oscillatory motion called Zitterbewegung (“TSIT-ur-buh-VAY-goong”). The existence of a single magnetic monopole implies the quantization of electric charge according to this physicist’s quantization condition. This physicist “factored” the wave equation to find gamma matrices and spinors used in his namesake equation. The existence of negative energy solutions led this man to propose his namesake “sea” of electrons. For 10 points, what British physicist developed a namesake relativistic generalization of the Schrödinger equation?
ANSWER: Paul Dirac [accept Dirac sea; accept Dirac equation; accept Dirac picture; accept Dirac quantization condition]
[after 48% of the tossup] This director used a recurring slow two-bar organ theme in a film split up into twelve chapters about an aspiring actress who resorts to prostitution. Producers forced this director to include a nude scene with Brigitte Bardot (“bar-DOH”) in a film in which Fritz Lang played himself. The protagonist paints his face blue before blowing himself up at the end of a film by this director, one of several starring his then-wife Anna Karina. In a film by this director, Jean Seberg (“jeen SEE-berg”) plays a newspaper girl handing out Cahiers du Cinéma (“kah-YAY doo see-nay-MAH”) who romances a criminal who imitates Humphrey Bogart; that film by this director makes repeated use of jump cuts. For 10 points, name this French New Wave director of Breathless.
ANSWER: Jean-Luc Godard (The films are Vivre Sa Vie, Le Mépris, and Pierrot le Fou.)
[after 48% of the tossup] A man with this first name sent false eviction notices that were unsuccessfully fought by Lillian Edelstein and the group ETNA. A writer and an editor both with this first name are subjects of Lizzie Gottlieb’s documentary Turn Every Page. A man with this first name wrote the Pulitzer-winning book Master of the Senate, part of the ongoing biography The Years of Lyndon Johnson. That writer with this first name detailed “one mile” built by another man with this first name across the poor East Tremont neighborhood in The Power Broker. Fiorello La Guardia appointed a man with this first name as the inaugural New York City Parks Commissioner, where he feuded with Jane Jacobs. For 10 points, what first name is shared by biographer Caro and urban planner Moses?
ANSWER: Robert [accept Robert Moses; accept Robert Caro; accept Robert Gottlieb] (ETNA was the East Tremont Neighborhood Association.)
[after 49% of the tossup] This food names a “Curtain” dividing the affluent Hampshire County from Hampden County in western Massachusetts. A 1975 book by William Shurtleff and Akiko Aoyagi popularized this food in the West. Newly-released prisoners eat this food in a South Korean custom. Low-quality building projects are derisively called “dregs” of this food in China. British Home Secretary Suella Braverman decried Just Stop Oil protesters as “wokerati” who read the Guardian and eat this food. This food, which titles a parody of Super Meat Boy by PETA, is used in “pock-marked old woman” and “stinky” dishes. Coagulation in making this food results in varieties called “firm” or “silken.” For 10 points, name this block-shaped food made from fermented soybeans.
ANSWER: tofu [or bean curd; or dòufu; or dubu; or tubu; accept Super Tofu Boy; accept tofu-dreg projects, dòufuzhā gōngchéng, tofu projects, or tofu buildings; accept Tofu Curtain; accept mápó tofu; accept stinky tofu or chòu dòufu; prompt on soy or soybeans]
[after 49% of the tossup] A HiGee form of this technique uses centrifugal acceleration to force horizontal flow, while another uses a dividing wall. Molecular sieves remove water and carbon dioxide upstream of a cryogenic form of this technique. The Kirkbride equation can be used to calculate the inlet location in this technique whose shortcut form uses the FUG method. The Q-line on a McCabe–Thiele diagram represents the feed in this technique. This technique may employ a Dean–Stark apparatus to remove water. Purity of products from this technique can be enhanced by increasing the reflux ratio. Adding a component to mixtures in this technique to break azeotropes can separate water and ethanol. For 10 points, what physical process separates components of a liquid mixture by their boiling points?
ANSWER: distillation [accept specific forms like fractional distillation or azeotropic distillation or HiGee distillation]
[after 49% of the tossup] A composer from this country who expressed a desire to “blow the opera houses up” clashed with his teacher over a ten-movement symphony that contains “love” and “statue” themes. Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho became influenced by spectralism while studying in this country’s IRCAM (“eer-cam”) institute. The clarinet plays solo in the “Abyss of the Birds” movement of a chamber piece that a composer from this country wrote in a prisoner of war camp. A whip-crack opens a jazz-inspired piano concerto by a composer from this country who also wrote an orchestral piece that uses a repetitive snare drum ostinato, his Boléro. For 10 points, name this home country of Olivier Messiaen and Maurice Ravel.
ANSWER: France [or French Republic; or République française] (The first line refers to Pierre Boulez, who hated Messiaen’s Turangalîla-Symphonie.)
[after 50% of the tossup] This thinker connects the “joys of watching” to Baudelaire’s conception of the flâneur in the essay “Melancholy Objects.” This thinker claimed that collecting certain objects allows us to “collect the world” in an essay opening “Humankind lingers unregenerately in Plato’s cave.” The “pure” and “deliberate” types of the title concept are contrasted in an essay by this thinker with epigrams from Oscar Wilde. The framing of “freaks” is discussed by this thinker in a collection contrasting the Farm Security Administration with Diane Arbus. A list including Scopitone films and Tiffany lamps appears in an essay by this thinker that outlines conditions for the title sensibility, described as “good because it’s awful.” For 10 points, name this American author of On Photography and “Notes on ‘Camp.’”
ANSWER: Susan Sontag [or Susan Lee Sontag]
[after 50% of the tossup] Characters who later appear in this story cause Leila to yearn for siblings while in a cab to the title event in the story “Her First Ball.” A girl in this story bites a piece of bread and butter while pondering “absurd class distinctions” after seeing a workman stop to smell lavender. A character described as “the butterfly” tests a piano in this story by practicing the song “This Life is Weary” before the maid Sadie interrupts to ask about sandwich flags. After hearing of a man thrown off his horse from Godber’s man during his cream puff delivery, a character in this story attempts to cancel the title event. That character takes leftover food to the widow of Scott and embraces her brother while stammering “Isn’t life.” For 10 points, Laura Sheridan plans the title event of what Katherine Mansfield story?
ANSWER: “The Garden Party”
[after 50% of the tossup] When the protagonist of this novella appears for the second time, his coat sleeves are “smeared with green” and he has only bloodstained socks on his feet. The protagonist of this novella admits that “in spite of some carnal cravings,” he only eats fruit among a group of creatures. After rescuing a character from drowning, the protagonist of this novella sees an abandoned museum that he calls the Palace of Green Porcelain. The narrator of this novella believes the title object is hidden in a hollow pedestal topped with a sphinx. In this novella, the Psychologist and the Provincial Mayor are guests at a dinner party during which the protagonist shows two white flowers given to him by Weena. For 10 points, a scientist posits that the Eloi and Morlocks both evolved from humans in what novella by H. G. Wells?
ANSWER: The Time Machine
[after 50% of the tossup] This technique’s saturation transfer Forsen experiment applies modified Bloch equations to determine the movement of molecules. Ligand binding to proteins can be measured using CSPs in this technique, which can lead to line broadening at low exchange rates. Long-distance interactions can be identified using cross peaks in a two-dimensional form of this technique called COSY. Details on connectivity, including bond angle, can be determined from spin–spin coupling in this technique. Benzene’s anisotropy (“an-eye-SAW-truh-pee”) deshields protons in this technique, causing it to have higher H-one values for chemical shift. For 10 points, name this technique that places chemical compounds in an applied magnetic field to determine their structure.
ANSWER: NMR [or nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy]
[after 52% of the tossup] This author created a list of subjects like waves, swaddling bands, and blank paper for a novel set in Poland during World War II. The Writer and the Factory Girl are among the chapter subjects of a novel by this author in which a middle-school boy tends to corpses during an uprising. A boy has a nightmare about a bird with hands in a novel by this author in which a woman holds a bird with bite marks in a hospital courtyard. This author of The White Book and Human Acts created a birthmark-obsessed video artist who paints flowers on his sister-in-law for a piece in one novel. One of this author’s protagonists claims to be turning into a tree after violent dreams about animal slaughter. For 10 points, what South Korean winner of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature wrote The Vegetarian?
ANSWER: Han Kang
[after 52% of the tossup] One technique for the purification of RNA-protein complexes makes use of these organisms in MS2 tagging. Another technique using these organisms uses pIII and takes advantage of an M13 vector. One form of these organisms, in which the Cro and cl repressors are found, was first isolated by Esther Lederberg. These organisms were used to prove that DNA is genetic material by radiolabeling with phosphorus-32 and sulfur-35 in the Hershey–Chase experiment. One variety of these organisms that can undergo a lytic life cycle but not a lysogenic life cycle has a hollow tail and an icosahedral head. Examples of these organisms include T4 and lambda. For 10 points, name these viruses that infect bacteria.
ANSWER: bacteriophages [accept lambda phage or T4 phage until read; prompt on viruses]
[after 52% of the tossup] A deity has his toes cut off for using one of these objects after rejecting a first offer of gruel and accepting a second offer of a gold ring. A deity uses one of these objects called Mesektet or Mandjet after embodying his ram-headed form. The Book of Gates describes 12 minor deities who observe one of these objects passing by. Nemty is often depicted as a falcon standing on one of these objects due to his role in using them. Khepri protects one of these objects by standing in front of it and helping to battle off Apophis. By painting a wooden one of these vehicles to resemble stone, Horus wins a race against Set and becomes the king of Egypt. For 10 points, Ra rides through the underworld in a “solar” one of what seafaring vehicles?
ANSWER: boats [or ships; or barques; or ferries; or ferry; accept ferrymen; accept Ra’s solar barque]
[after 52% of the tossup] Dissociation of disclinations are used to model these phenomena in KTHNY theory. Above the upper critical dimension, these phenomena belong to the same universality class predicted by mean-field theory. An argument using the favorability of spontaneously forming domain walls was used by Rudolph Peierls (“PIE-erls”) to prove one of these phenomena exists in two dimensions or higher for a certain lattice model. Landau theory classifies these phenomena into first- or second-order based on whether the change in their order parameter is discontinuous. These phenomena include the shift between paramagnetic and ferromagnetic ordering at the Curie point. On pressure–temperature diagrams, these events are represented by crossing a coexistence curve. For 10 points, name these phenomena in which a material changes between different states of matter.
ANSWER: phase transitions [or phase changes; accept first-order phase transitions or second-order phase transitions; accept continuous phase transitions; prompt on transitions]
[after 54% of the tossup] In a novel by this author, Terry is exiled for trying to rape his wife Alima. In that novel by this author, the sociology student Vandyck Jennings and two of his friends investigate an unknown region whose inhabitants reproduce through parthenogenesis. This author wrote a short story in which one character consumes cod-liver oil instead of ale, wine, and red meat. The protagonist of that story by this author requests to remove its title object, describing it as “a debased Romanesque with delirium tremens.” This author wrote a story in which the protagonist exclaims “I’ve got out at last… in spite of you and Jane” after she is prescribed a rest cure by her husband John. For 10 points, name this author who described a woman imprisoned by the pattern of the title decoration in The Yellow Wallpaper.
ANSWER: Charlotte Perkins Gilman [or Charlotte Anna Perkins Gilman; or Charlotte Perkins Stetson] (The novel is Herland.)
[after 54% of the tossup] Coefficients named for this person decay according to a power law whose degree is two plus the smoothness of the underlying function. This person’s namesake “extension” and “restriction” operators are the subject of the disproven Mizohata–Takeuchi conjecture. An overshoot of around 9 percent results from truncating constructs named for this person due to the Gibbs phenomenon. Constant functions become Dirac delta functions under an operation named for this person defined by integrating a function times “e to the minus i k x.” Periodic functions are decomposed into sums of trigonometric functions in this person’s namesake “series.” For 10 points, what mathematician names a transform that, like the Laplace transform, translates from the time domain to the frequency domain?
ANSWER: Joseph Fourier [accept Fourier series; accept Fourier transform; accept Fourier coefficients; accept Fourier restriction operator or Fourier extension operator]
[after 57% of the tossup] Cellulose nanocrystals can enhance nucleation activity in materials made from these molecules. Examples of these molecules that can conduct electricity include P3HT. The Kuhn length of these molecules is a function of dihedral bond angle. Distribution of components in these molecules can be analyzed with the Mayo–Lewis equation. These molecules, which can follow the Flory–Schulz distribution, have a step-growth mechanism characterized by the Carothers (“ker-OTHERS”) equation. One way to characterize these molecules is by calculating the ratio of the number-average molecular weight to that of M0 (“M-naught”). For 10 points, name these molecules that consist of long repeating chains.
ANSWER: polymers [accept copolymers or polymerization or degree of polymerization; prompt on plastics]
[after 57% of the tossup] A golden one of these objects named for Victory features a depiction of Vishnu riding Garuda. A lake was renamed after being the site where one of these objects was retrieved by the golden-shelled Kim Quy to return to the Dragon King. A deity attains one of these objects after getting an enemy drunk on eight barrels of sake placed near eight gates. The legendary king Lê Lợi owns one of these objects called Heaven’s Will. The tail of Yamata no Orochi contained one of these objects discovered by Susano’o named Kusanagi. For 10 points, name these weapons that include Muramasa’s legendarily cursed katanas.
ANSWER: swords [accept katanas until read]
[after 57% of the tossup] A medieval travel journal from this country was written by an anonymous “Lady” whose aunt, known only as a noble’s “mother,” authored The Gossamer Years. A book from this country opens “In spring it is the dawn that is most beautiful” and features the section “Embarrassing Things.” Ivan Morris translated that book and one retitled after the same “Bridge of Dreams” that titles a chapter of a novel from this country. A possibly autobiographical character in a novel from this country is kidnapped by the protagonist after the daughter of the Minister of the Left dies. The blank chapter “Vanished into the Clouds” appears in that novel from this country, often considered the first modern novel. For 10 points, name this country home to the authors of The Pillow Book and The Tale of Genji.
ANSWER: Japan [or Nippon; or Nihon] (The first line is the Sarashina Diary.)
[after 58% of the tossup] In a 2018 novel, this character is reimagined into two teenage boys who fall in love and kiss as its narrator claims that “history is enough to make a future.” This character is charged by a bull while stuck in a tree in a novel that ends with him claiming to have “had an accident… so may you all.” This character learns about the world from The Shaper and an omniscient dragon in a novel by John Gardner. A man is discouraged from fighting this character by Unferth, who believes this character will win. A giant’s sword melts from the hilt after it is used to cut this character’s head from his corpse, which is taken as a trophy after the killing of his “monstrous hell-bride” of a mother. For 10 points, Beowulf first defends Heorot by fighting what monster, a “descendant of Cain” who dies after his arm is ripped off?
ANSWER: Grendel (The first clue refers to Maria Dehvana Headley’s The Mere Wife. The John Gardner novel is Grendel.)
[after 59% of the tossup] One model of this material that features a “critical state line” is called its “Modified Cam” model. An equation developed by Karl von Terzaghi computes this material’s “bearing capacity.” This material’s swelling potential increases with its plasticity index, which can be calculated from its Atterberg limits. Increases in pressure cause this prototypical three-phase material to contract during “consolidation.” Compaction of this material can cause a structure’s foundation to move during “settlement.” Applied stresses can cause excess pore water pressure to build in this material, causing its “liquefaction” during earthquakes. Based on its particle size distribution, this material can be classified into subtypes such as sand and clay. For 10 points, what organic material do plant roots typically anchor themselves in?
ANSWER: soil [or earth; or dirt; accept sand until read; accept clay until read; accept Modified Cam-Clay model]
[after 59% of the tossup] The Anderson–Newns–Grimley model allows the energy of this process to be calculated in a self-consistent manner by introducing another term to the Hamiltonian. It’s not distillation, but azeotropy in this process can be described using a DSL model. Reaction kinetic models for heterogeneous catalysis contain constants for this process in the denominator, which use an isothermal mechanism for this process named for Langmuir. BET isotherms for this process account for multilayer interactions. Activated carbon and zeolites are two examples of surfaces where this process commonly occurs. For 10 points, name this process in which atoms bond to a surface, such as when gas molecules attach to solid substrates.
ANSWER: adsorption [or adsorbing; or chemisorption; reject “absorption” or “absorbing”]
[after 60% of the tossup] Extensions described by this adjective for functions on graphs can be constructed using random walks started at each vertex that run until they hit the boundary. The real and imaginary parts of a complex analytic function are “conjugates” described by this adjective. Since their average value over a ball is equal to the value at its center, functions described by this adjective satisfy the mean value property. Solutions to Laplace’s equation are described by this adjective. Since the integral of “one over x” from one to infinity diverges, so does a series described by this adjective according to the integral test. For 10 points, the sum of the reciprocals of each positive integer is a divergent series described by what adjective?
ANSWER: harmonic [accept harmonic series or harmonic function or harmonic conjugates or harmonic extension]
[after 60% of the tossup] A former leader of this country earned the nickname “Teflon” for serving four consecutive terms in government despite scandals like one where parents were falsely accused of childcare benefit fraud. A political party formed after protests against this county’s nitrogen pollution policy, called BBB, became the largest party in this country’s Senate after its 2023 elections. A politician in this country was fined for hate speech after leading a chant of “fewer, fewer Moroccans.” Before becoming Secretary-General of NATO, Mark Rutte served as this county’s prime minister. This country’s October 2025 general elections were narrowly won by the centrist D66 party and saw Geert Wilders’s PVV lose ground. For 10 points, name this northern European nation whose capital is Amsterdam.
ANSWER: Netherlands [or Nederland; or Kingdom of the Netherlands; prompt on Holland]
[after 60% of the tossup] In 2019, the Opificio delle Pietre Dure determined that this artist originally intended to include a turban in a painting of Saint Catherine. The “shaping and reshaping” of this artist’s identity titles a biography by Mary Garrard, who argued for autobiographical readings of this artist’s paintings. While in England, this artist was inspired by the Iconologia of Cesare (“CHEZ-ah-ray”) Ripa to create a self-portrait as the “Allegory of Painting.” A maidservant in a painting by this artist appears younger than in an earlier 1599 depiction by a different artist and is shown holding down a man to help the title woman cut off his head. For 10 points, name this artist whose “Power of Women” paintings include a bloody depiction of Judith Slaying Holofernes.
ANSWER: Artemisia Gentileschi [or Artemisia Lomi Gentileschi; accept Artemisia Gentileschi around 1622: The Shaping and Reshaping of an Artistic Identity] (The earlier depiction of Judith Slaying Holofernes is by Caravaggio.)
[after 61% of the tossup] One of these animals is often depicted supporting Kui Xing. A table-carrying child of the Dragon King is one of these animals named Bixi. A snake is often depicted winding around one of these animals that represents the north. The name of that one of the Four Symbols is typically translated as “Black [this animal].” After holes are patched with multicolored stones, one of these animals named Ao has his legs cut off by Nüwa to create four pillars for holding up the heavens. In the comparative mythology section of Primitive Culture, Edward Burnett Tylor discusses the tropes of both elephants and these animals as world-bearing creatures. For 10 points, ancient Chinese divination sometimes made use of the shells of what reptiles?
ANSWER: turtles [or tortoises; or wū gūi (“ooh gway”); accept Black Tortoise or Black Turtle-Snake or xuánwǔ; accept World-Bearing Turtles or World-Bearing Tortoises]
[after 61% of the tossup] Note to moderator: Read the answerline carefully. This technology is depicted creating a blue Greek letter omega in the painting If All the World Were Paper and All the Water Sink by Jess. This technology led an artist to begin depicting his “favorite food for thought” in paintings such as Living Still Life. This technology inspired a bronze sculpture in the shape of a skull at the University of Chicago’s Mansueto Library by Henry Moore. Catholicism and this technology influenced Salvador Dalí’s “disintegration” of an earlier painting, exemplifying a form of “mysticism” named after this technology. In a 2023 blockbuster film, events caused by this technology are portrayed with slow-motion thermite reactions. For 10 points, name this technology used in weapons that are depicted in Christopher Nolan’s film Oppenheimer.
ANSWER: nuclear energy [or nuclear power; or nuclear reactions; or atomic energy; or atomic power; or atomic reactions; accept nuclear weapons or nuclear bombs or atomic weapons or atomic bombs or A-bombs; accept Nuclear Mysticism; accept nuclear reactors or nuclear power plants; accept nuclear fission or nuclear fusion or atom splitting; prompt on bombs or weapons or explosives; prompt on reactors or power plants; reject “thermonuclear weapons” or “hydrogen bombs”] (The third sentence refers to Moore’s Nuclear Energy. The fourth sentence refers to Dalí’s Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory.)
[after 62% of the tossup] Claude Debussy’s sole work in this genre was the last of his pieces premiered in his lifetime. Jean-Pierre Rampal made a flute arrangement of a piece in this genre that contains a Recitativo-Fantasia third movement. A collaborative piece in this genre uses a cryptogram of the phrase “free, but lonely” and was written by Robert Schumann, Johannes Brahms, and Albert Dietrich. César Franck wrote an A minor piece in this genre as a wedding present for Eugène Ysaÿe (“oo-ZHEN ee-ZYE”). A dream in which the devil appeared to Giuseppe Tartini inspired a piece in this genre nicknamed “Devil’s Trill” for a difficult passage involving double stops. For 10 points, name this genre of music for a high string instrument usually accompanied by piano.
ANSWER: violin sonata [prompt on sonata by asking “for what instrument?”]
[after 62% of the tossup] Cyclobutanolates undergoing one of these reactions can be used to construct seven-member ring frameworks. Quaternary ammonium compounds treated with silver oxide can undergo one of these reactions. A concerted form of these reactions creates anti-periplanar products. Alkyl halides can be transformed with these reactions using DBU and other strong bases. Competition between kinetics and thermodynamics during these reactions can lead to products named for either Hofmann or Zaitsev. The “1cB” form of this reaction occurs when a poor leaving group is present on the alpha carbon in these pi-bond forming reactions. For 10 points, name these general reactions that can form alkenes through either E1 or E2 mechanisms.
ANSWER: elimination reactions [accept E1 or E2 until read]
[after 63% of the tossup] Possible sources of this phenomenon are identified by intersections on a Campbell diagram. “Tongues” of this phenomenon may be found with the Mathieu equation when considering its “parametric” form. A “universal” curve for this phenomenon is quantified by the half bandwidth of a Lorentzian function. Injection locking may cause the “sympathetic” form of this phenomenon. This phenomenon occurs more intensely but in a more narrow region when the Q-factor is high, corresponding to underdamped systems with little energy loss. This phenomenon is typically distinguished from the self-exciting aeroelastic flutter that caused the collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. For 10 points, name this phenomenon in which an oscillator driven at its natural frequency grows in amplitude.
ANSWER: resonance [or word forms like resonating or resonators; accept parametric resonance; prompt on oscillation or word forms until read; prompt on vibration; prompt on instability]
[after 63% of the tossup] After being asked about art, a character in this novel says, “People are like trees in a forest; no botanist would think of studying each individual birch tree.” While standing by a window, a character in this novel confesses his love to a woman who marries a 46-year-old hypochondriac and inherits the estate Nikolskoe (“nee-KOL-sko-yeh”). At the beginning of this novel, a character who is compared to a jackdaw returns to a man whose brother settles in Dresden after pursuing Princess R. One of this novel’s protagonists mends an opponent’s leg immediately after a duel over the servant Fenichka. After a faulty autopsy, a character in this novel dies from an infected cut. At the beginning of this novel, Nikolai waits at his estate, Marino, for Arkady. For 10 points, Yevgeny Bazarov is a proponent of nihilism in what Ivan Turgenev novel?
ANSWER: Fathers and Sons [or Otcy i deti; or Fathers and Children]
[after 64% of the tossup] In this ballet, one statement of a unison string theme beginning with a descending and ascending octave is followed by four dancers clapping nine eighth notes. Mnemonics were used by Peter Sparling to learn the steps of a hat-wearing character in this ballet who directs four characters to successively sit on a church bench cued by flutes. Merce Cunningham first performed that role in this ballet, which used a simple set that included a rocking chair and the outline of a house. This ballet, which revolves around the marriage of the Husbandman and the Bride, includes variations on the Shaker hymn “Simple Gifts.” For 10 points, name this ballet choreographed by Martha Graham with music by Aaron Copland.
ANSWER: Appalachian Spring
[after 64% of the tossup] This painting was reimagined for a 2015 Greenpeace campaign by the collective Kennardphillipps, which depicts its setting in the aftermath of an oil spill. This painting depicts an “extraordinary conquest of a life which most people would consider hopeless” according to its artist, who was buried in this painting’s real-life setting. Despite being 30 years older than the intended subject, the artist’s wife Betsy James modeled the upper body of this painting’s central figure, who may have suffered from Charcot–Marie–Tooth disease. In this painting set in Cushing, Maine, the title person looks towards the Olson House, which sits atop a hill in the distance. For 10 points, name this painting of a woman in a pink dress crawling in a field by Andrew Wyeth.
ANSWER: Christina’s World
[after 65% of the tossup] This artist drew from an earlier depiction of pine trees in Calvi for a woodcut of tire tracks and footprints crossing over a reflective puddle. A statue of a simurgh gifted to this artist inspired the “bird-humans” that are depicted three times along the central vertical axis in the mezzotint Another World. Piranesi’s Imaginary Prisons inspired this artist’s lithograph of faceless people in a space with multiple sources of gravity. After studying Islamic tile art at the Alhambra, this artist began depicting figures such as knights and reptiles in tessellated patterns. This artist’s print Relativity depicts several staircases in a shape similar to a Penrose triangle. For 10 points, name this Dutch artist whose prints often depict impossible objects.
ANSWER: M. C. Escher [or Maurits Cornelis Escher]
[after 65% of the tossup] The GP-A experiment directly measured this phenomenon in space and on Earth. Relativistic aberration and this phenomenon are responsible for apparent increases in luminosity via relativistic beaming. If an angle theta is slowly varying, the strength of this phenomenon equals one minus cosine theta times v over c. In relativity, the strength of this phenomenon equals the square root of the fraction “one plus beta over one minus beta.” Canal rays underwent this phenomenon in the Ives–Stilwell experiment supporting special relativity, while the Pound–Rebka experiment measured a form of this effect caused by gravitational time dilation. Hubble’s law is based on observations of this effect. For 10 points, what effect changes the frequency of waves emitted by moving sources?
ANSWER: Doppler effect [accept redshift or blueshift; prompt on time dilation or gravitational time dilation until read by asking “what phenomenon does that cause?”; prompt on gravity]
[after 65% of the tossup] During a storm, this character’s love interest organizes a party game in which guests count successive numbers quickly and get boxed in the ear for making a mistake. In a different novel, this character reintegrates into society after another character thwarts his plan by placing chicken blood in his guns. This character is the subject of a parody by Friedrich Nicolai, and a novel about him inspired a novel subtitled The Beloved Returns by Thomas Mann. This character reads his translation of Ossian to a character who mentions the poet Klopstock while looking at the sky. This character is buried under two linden trees after committing suicide due to his unrequited love for Charlotte. For 10 points, name this character whose “Sorrows” title an epistolary novel by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
ANSWER: Young Werther [accept The Sorrows of Young Werther or The Joys of Young Werther] (The Mann novel is Lotte in Weimar: The Beloved Returns and the Nicolai parody is The Joys of Young Werther.)
[after 65% of the tossup] In a story from this region, a king discovers two hundred soldiers hiding in bags of flour in his giant house. A character from this region invents the game of “badger-in-the-bag” to win a princess’s hand in marriage. After drinking three drops from a cauldron, a figure from this region is swallowed by a sorceress upon transforming into a grain of wheat. A queen from this region is forced to carry travelers on her back after six negligent maids frame her for eating her infant child. The golden-haired Pryderi appears in all “Four Branches” of a text from this region. A bard whose name means “shining brow” names this region’s Book of Taliesin. For 10 points, name this constituent country of the United Kingdom whose myths are contained in the Mabinogion.
ANSWER: Wales [or Cymru; prompt on Great Britain; prompt on UK or United Kingdom until read]
[after 65% of the tossup] A character with this profession becomes upset when another character refuses to say “a man outgrows his wife every seven years.” At the beginning of another play, a character with this profession says, “the morning star always gets wonderful bright the minute before it has to go.” Mr. Fitzpatrick holds this job during a mass food poisoning in a play about the Antrobus family. A character with this profession remarks that “this is the way things were” before a choir directed by the alcoholic organist Simon Stimson sings. That character with this profession replies, “the saints and poets, maybe” when a dead woman asks him if human beings “realize life while they live it” after she revisits her twelfth birthday. For 10 points, Thornton Wilder included characters with what profession in his plays The Skin of Our Teeth and Our Town?
ANSWER: stage manager [accept stage director; prompt on narrator; prompt on manager]
[after 65% of the tossup] This author maligned social classes like the aristocratic “Barbarians” and middle-class “Philistines” for embracing sentimental “bathos.” This author was inspired by a fable contrasting the spider with the bee in Jonathan Swift’s The Battle of the Books to write that a concept which partially titles one book should be defined by “sweetness and light.” This author defined the first title concept as “the best which has been thought and said” in Culture and Anarchy. This author included the poem “To Marguerite – Continued” with the dramatic poem Empedocles on Etna. A poem by this author begins, “The sea is calm tonight” and declares “Ah, love, let us be true / To one another!” For 10 points, name this critic and poet who wrote about a “darkling plain… where ignorant armies clash by night” in “Dover Beach.”
ANSWER: Matthew Arnold
[after 66% of the tossup] A photograph taken during this war depicts an opera singer in silhouette raising her arms during an aria from Madame Butterfly. A photograph from this war shows a woman taking a bath with her muddy boots on the bathmat, and was taken by David Scherman. A large crowd walks down a street in a photograph from this war centered around a shaved woman holding a baby. A darkroom accident destroyed most of the photographs Robert Capa took during one battle in this war, which became the series The Magnificent Eleven. Lee Miller took photographs for Vogue during this war. In a photograph from this war, a group of six soldiers on Mount Suribachi hold onto a flagpole. For 10 points, name this war in which Joe Rosenthal took Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima.
ANSWER: World War II [or WWII; or Second World War]
[after 66% of the tossup] Saidiya Hartman’s “Venus in Two Acts” argues that these institutions limit stories that can be told about slavery, but can be transcended by critical fabulation. The principle of respect des fonds (“ruh-SPAY day FON”) is discussed in the “Dutch Manual” for the appraisal of these institutions. The use of these institutions in research was pioneered by Leopold von Ranke. In 2023, the Hachette group sued one of these institutions founded by Brewster Kahle that pioneered controlled digital lending. Cornell University operates a website named for these institutions that hosts scientific preprints. A massive book digitization effort is run by an online one of these institutions that also hosts a digital library and the Wayback Machine. For 10 points, name these collections of historical records or materials.
ANSWER: archives [accept Internet Archive; accept arXiv.org; prompt on sources; prompt on Open Library until “library” is read by asking “what type of larger institution is that a part of?”; prompt on libraries until “library” is read]
[after 66% of the tossup] One disease affecting these structures is X-chromosome linked to mutations in the DKC1 gene and may require bone marrow transplants. Dyskerin helps to stabilize a catalytic complex that acts on this structure. Deficiencies in maintaining these structures, which are measured by the Q-FISH technique, are a major risk factor for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. Cajal bodies may serve to recruit RNA structures that act on these structures. The Hayflick limit is based on the length of these structures that can be extended by TERT. Shortened examples of these structures that lose their shelterin cap can trigger senescence, and these structures consist of repeating TTAGGG motifs. For 10 points, what DNA sequences protect the ends of chromosomes?
ANSWER: telomeres
[after 67% of the tossup] This poet, who exhorted the earth for teaching “the lesson of poverty, / having nothing and wanting nothing,” wrote that the “tongue has one customer, the ear” in a poem whose speaker asserts “Anyone apart from someone he loves / understands what I say.” The speaker laments that “the keeping away is pulling me in” in a poem by this author that opens by asking a “dissolver of sugar” to “dissolve me, / if this is the time.” The disappearance of this poet’s teacher inspired the dedication of many of the 90 ghazals in one of his collections. This poet has been cited as the “best-selling poet in the US” due to Coleman Barks’s translations, one of which renders an opening line as “Listen to the story told by the reed.” For 10 points, name this Sufi poet of the Masnavi, or Spiritual Couplets.
ANSWER: Rumi [or Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī] (Rumi’s teacher, Shams of Tabriz, is the dedicatee of many poems in the Divan-i Kabir.)
[after 67% of the tossup] This figure is depicted in several “Palagi heads,” one of which was reattached to its original body by Adolf Furtwängler. A 1990 sculpture of this figure used a cantilever to support the right arm in lieu of a column and is housed in a William Crawford Smith building. A frieze depicting the birth of Pandora was omitted from a “Varvakeion” copy of a sculpture of this figure. Alan LeQuire created a plaster replica of that sculpture of this larger figure for the naos (“NAY-oss”) of a building in Nashville. The artist’s patron Pericles appears on a round shield next to a coiled snake in a large chryselephantine sculpture of this figure by Phidias. For 10 points, the ancient Greek Parthenon once held a sculpture of what goddess of war?
ANSWER: Athena [accept Athena Parthenos or Varvakeion Athena or Athena Lemnia] (LeQuire’s reproduction of the Athena Parthenos was created for the Nashville Parthenon.)
[after 68% of the tossup] An author from this country intertwined scenes of Robert Browning in Venice with the lives of the main characters in the novel The Whirlpool. In one of 11 interviews conducted by Graeme Gibson with novelists from this country, Timothy Findley coined the name for one region in this country’s “Southern Gothic” literature. “Boy” Staunton causes a pregnant woman to go into premature labor in Fifth Business, a novel in this country’s Deptford Trilogy. An author from this country featured symposiums led by Professor Pieixoto as metafictional epilogues for two novels. While meeting outside of the “Ceremony” in a novel from this country, Offred plays Scrabble with the Commander. For 10 points, name this home country of the author of The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood.
ANSWER: Canada (The Whirlpool is by Jane Urquhart. The second line refers to “Southern Ontario Gothic.” The Deptford Trilogy is by Robertson Davies.)
[after 68% of the tossup] In a paper on these institutions “in the Middle Ages,” George Makdisi warns against analogizing them to their European counterparts. A possibly apocryphal tradition holds that a building occupied by one of these institutions was founded by Fatima al-Fihri. That institution was named after the people of Kairouan, or al-Qarawiyyin (“al-kah-rah-wee-YEEN”). Al-Sahili was credited with building a complex that housed one of these institutions together with nearby Sidi Yahya called Djinguereber (“jin-guh-ray-BAIR”). Saladin ended Shi’a influence in one of these institutions at Cairo called Al-Azhar (“all-UZZ-har”). Another one of these institutions was housed at Sankoré (“sahn-ko-RAY”) Mosque in Timbuktu. For 10 points, the Qur’an and Islamic law were studied at what institutions often analogized to those created in Bologna and Oxford?
ANSWER: universities [or university; accept madrasas; accept schools; accept jāmi‘ah or jāmi‘at; accept University of al-Qarawiyyin or University of Timbuktu or Al-Azhar University; prompt on libraries or library; prompt on mosques or masjids until “Mosque” is read by asking “what additional function did it serve?”]
[after 68% of the tossup] This character suggests that God should recreate the world after positing the “principle of perpetual disappointment” as a “fundamental law of the Universe.” This character almost leaves behind a stack of comic books after going on a tirade in which he smashes a bottle of brandy and tears up an unfinished essay on global politics. This character claims that a copy of On the Origin of Species is safe because he put it in the library’s theology section. This author of “A World Without Collisions” declares himself an atheist after an older interlocutor suggests Jesus Christ as a “man of magnitude.” This character lets out his frustration about his alcoholic father returning from the hospital on Sam and Willie. For 10 points, an Athol Fugard play is titled for what character “…and the Boys”?
ANSWER: Master Harold [or Hally; accept “Master Harold” …and the Boys]
[after 69% of the tossup] Lugaro cells found in this structure were discovered following Marr and Albus’s theory of learning in this structure. The fusion of rhombic lips leads to the formation of this structure that lies dorsal to the fourth ventricle. Along with the pons, this structure develops from the metencephalon of the hindbrain. This structure is affected by Joubert syndrome, which leads to impaired development of this structure’s vermis. Climbing fibers terminate in large dendritic tree-forming Purkinje cells in this structure located to the rear and below the cerebrum. For 10 points, name this motor control center of the brain that connects to the spinal cord, also called the “little brain.”
ANSWER: cerebellum
[after 70% of the tossup] A photograph of this person looking down and wearing a denim jacket is framed by the hills of the Nevada desert. Cecil Beaton took a series of photographs of this person at the Ambassador Hotel, including a “Japanese photo” in which she holds a flower against her torso. Eve Arnold took many photographs of this person, including one in which she wears a bathing suit and reads Ulysses. Red marker pen was used to draw “crucifixes” on photographs of this woman taken by Bert Stern for her “Last Sitting.” Andy Warhol created a “Diptych” of this actress, whom Sam Shaw and George Barris photographed in a billowing white dress above a subway grate. For 10 points, name this “blonde bombshell” actress who starred in The Seven Year Itch.
ANSWER: Marilyn Monroe [or Norma Jean Mortenson]
[after 70% of the tossup] A paper titled for this concept argues that “functional explanations” can account for phenomena like reportability, but not this concept. Reportability defines the “access” type of this concept, which Ned Block distinguished from its “phenomenal” type. Joseph Levine argued that theories of this concept struggle to explain subjectivity due to the explanatory gap. The phi phenomenon is evidence for the theory that this concept arises from many sources of input and systems of interpretation, called the multiple drafts model. David Chalmers argued that science cannot even attempt to explain why this concept exists, which is its “hard problem.” Philosophical zombies lack this concept. For 10 points, a book by Daniel Dennett “explains” what concept, which is the mental awareness of one’s experience?
ANSWER: consciousness [accept hard problem of consciousness; accept phenomenal consciousness or access consciousness; accept Consciousness Explained; accept “Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness”]
[after 71% of the tossup] Tom Turpin’s Rosebud Bar was a center for players of this style, an early example of which is “The Bully Song.” Pieces in this style typically use 16-measure themes divided into four parts, and its “classic” school was centered on St. Louis. Interest in this style was revived following a 1970 album by Joshua Rifkin which included a piece that begins with the notes [read slowly] D, E, C, A, [pause] B, G played by both hands. Some pieces in this style were published as “two-steps.” Stride piano was a successor to this style, which is characterized by alternating bass notes and chords underneath syncopated melodies. For 10 points, name this music style exemplified by Scott Joplin pieces like The Entertainer.
ANSWER: ragtime [accept two-step until read]
[after 72% of the tossup] In hollow rectangular waveguides, waves named for this quantity have the lowest non-zero cutoff frequency in the one-zero mode. For a point charge moving at a uniform relativistic velocity, this quantity becomes “pancake-shaped” by bunching up in the transverse direction. The density of energy stored by this quantity is given by permittivity over 2 times this quantity squared. The component of this quantity parallel to the surface is constant across a boundary. That derivation uses that the flux of this quantity through a surface is proportional only to enclosed charge density according to Gauss’s law. The negative line integral of this quantity gives the scalar potential. For 10 points, what vector quantity is measured in newtons per coulomb and created by electric charges?
ANSWER: electric field [or E-field; prompt on E]
[after 72% of the tossup] The thermal form of this process subject to the Soret effect was investigated by Clusius and Dickel using an insulated column. The force of a “self” form of this process is given by the derivative of chemical potential with respect to distance. The Schmidt number relates the kinematic viscosity of a fluid to this process. The Wilke–Chang correlation can be used to estimate this process and uses a solute–solvent interaction factor. Random walks were related to a parabolic equation named for this process by Einstein. The letter D represents a coefficient of this process in two laws of it named for Fick. Solvent undergoes a specific form of this process across membranes in osmosis. For 10 points, name this general process where particles travel down concentration gradients.
ANSWER: diffusion [prompt on osmosis until read; prompt on Brownian motion; prompt on isotope separation by asking “what general process is used?”]
[after 72% of the tossup] Description acceptable. After he demonstrated this practice for her, Dowager Empress Maria of Russia gave the foundling Anton Petrov a new name referencing it. Biographer John Baron may have originated a myth about Sarah Nelmes’s role in the origin of this practice. To promote this practice in Vienna, Maria Theresa hosted 65 commoners for a royal banquet at the Schönbrunn palace. Caroline of Ansbach helped popularize this practice after being shown it by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who introduced it to Europe after witnessing it in the Ottoman Empire. Catherine the Great gave Thomas Dimsdale a title for performing this practice on her by grating pustules into an open wound. For 10 points, the development of what medical practice in 18th-century Europe is often credited to Edward Jenner?
ANSWER: smallpox inoculation [accept equivalents like smallpox vaccination or smallpox variolation; prompt on inoculation, vaccination, or variolation by asking “against what disease?”; reject answers like “treatment of smallpox”] (Sarah Nelmes is the milkmaid Jenner is supposed to have seen without any smallpox lesions. Anton Petrov was renamed Anton Vaccinoff – and given a house and an income – after he received the vaccine to demonstrate its safety.)
[after 72% of the tossup] A composer from this country achieved success with an orchestral work inspired by a witch trial and wrote the concerto Veni, Veni, Emmanuel for a deaf percussionist from this country. A composer who travelled to this country with Carl Klingemann was inspired by it to write a cyclic symphony beginning with the slow rising theme E, A, B, C. A piece inspired by this country uses the repeated motif [read slowly] F-sharp, D, C-sharp, D, B, down to F-sharp. This country’s folk melodies inspired a fantasy for violin and orchestra by Max Bruch, as well as a work by a different composer that makes use of its namesake “snap” rhythm. For 10 points, name this country that inspired Mendelssohn’s third symphony and his Hebrides Overture.
ANSWER: Scotland [prompt on United Kingdom or UK; prompt on Great Britain] (The composer and percussionist in the first line are James MacMillan and Evelyn Glennie respectively.)
[after 73% of the tossup] Anicia Juliana commissioned a copy of a work for people in this profession that is named for Vienna. Jakob Böhme revived a practice that these people used called the doctrine of signatures. A bench with a lever-based traction system is often named for a member of this profession. Dioscorides’ teachings in this profession were kept in the House of Wisdom, where they would later influence Rhazes. Jacques Dubois (“doo-BWAH”) publicly challenged his former student, Andreas Vesalius, to disprove theories used by people in this profession that were originally developed by Galen. Ancient members of this profession may have attempted to balance out the Four Humors. For 10 points, a modern-day oath is named after members of what ancient profession that included Hippocrates?
ANSWER: doctors [accept surgeons; accept healers; accept equivalents like medical professionals]
[after 74% of the tossup] The editor of this country’s Marxist newspaper Don Quichotte (“don kee-SHOT”), Henri Curiel (“on-REE cure-YEL”), founded its Democratic Movement for National Liberation. A leader of this country pickpocketed a watch off Winston Churchill during a state visit and was the target of Project FF. An organization launched a coup as this country’s leader was surrounded at such residences as Montaza and Abdeen Palace. That organization established the Revolutionary Command Council and later formed the Liberation Rally party. This country’s second president initiated the Agrarian Reform Law and was a member of the Mohamed Naguib-led Free Officers Movement that overthrew its king in 1952. For 10 points, name this African country whose leaders during the Cold War included King Farouk and Gamal Abdel Nasser.
ANSWER: Egypt [or Kingdom of Egypt; or Arab Republic of Egypt]
[after 74% of the tossup] A late section of this book discusses a man with “aspect-blindness” as analogous to someone lacking a “musical ear.” A claim in this book about philosophy having methods “like therapies” inspired the therapeutic approach discussed in a book titled for “New” and its author. This book’s opening describes a shopkeeper’s responses to a slip reading “five red apples” while criticizing a quote about naming objects from Augustine’s Confessions. A builder and an assistant communicate with words like “block” and “pillar” in one of this book’s language games. This book rejects private languages with the beetle-in-a-box thought experiment. For 10 points, name this posthumously published book in which Ludwig Wittgenstein reverses many positions from his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.
ANSWER: Philosophical Investigations [or Philosophische Untersuchungen] (The New Wittgenstein is by Cora Diamond, Alice Crary, and James F. Conant.)
[after 75% of the tossup] At the end of this play, one character sings “I want you to help me” eighteen times, only stopping the repetition to invoke the names of her family members. In one scene in this play, a group of men sing a song that claims “When you marry, marry a railroad man” after an estranged family member returns. In this play, Wining Boy sells another character a silk suit by convincing him it will attract women. After their truck breaks down twice in West Virginia, a character in this play and his friend Lymon arrive with a truck full of watermelons and claim that a man was pushed down a well by the Ghosts of the Yellow Dog. For 10 points, name this play in which Boy Willie and Berniece exorcise Sutter’s ghost from the title instrument, written by August Wilson.
ANSWER: The Piano Lesson
[after 76% of the tossup] Isaac Bickerstaffe replaced this character with Doctor Cantwell in an adaptation of another author’s play about this character, The Non-Juror by Colley Cibber (“SIB-er”). The non-speaking maid Flipote is slapped at the end of the first scene of a play titled for this character, which Richard Wilbur translated into English verse. In that play, a grandmother who views this character as perfect is proven wrong when this character’s actions lead to the bailiff Loyal serving eviction papers. The maid Dorine prevents Mariane from marrying this character, who is arrested by order of a king in a deus ex machina ending. This character, who is exposed while trying to seduce Elmire, pretends to be religious to gain Orgon’s trust. For 10 points, name this character, a “Hypocrite” created by Molière.
ANSWER: Tartuffe (The Isaac Bickerstaffe play is The Hypocrite.)
[after 77% of the tossup] An author from this country wrote of paintings drawing back a curtain on the writing of a poet from here who claims “’Tis dead, ’tis dust, ’tis shadow, yea, ’tis nought” at the end of the poem “To Her Portrait.” That poet from this modern-day country charges the title subjects with patent arrogance “that fights with many weapons” in the poem “You Foolish Men.” This is the home country of both the author and subject of the biography The Traps of Faith. In a poem from this country, a woman whose breasts are “two churches of blood” is told “I travel your body, like the world.” A 584-line poem from this country opens “a willow of crystal, a poplar of water” and borrows a circular calendar for its title, “Sun Stone.” For 10 points, name this home country of Sor Juana and Octavio Paz.
ANSWER: Mexico [or United Mexican States; or UMS; or Estados Unidos Mexicanos; or EUM]
[after 77% of the tossup] In a story by this author, which is narrated to Miss K.I.T., Burmin falls to his knees in front of Maria after realizing she is the woman he jokingly married four years prior during the title event. While translating a work by this author, an author whose essays are collected in Strong Opinions wrote a set of “Notes on Prosody.” This author of “The Blizzard” wrote a collection framed as the stories of the mysterious landowner Ivan Belkin. Vladimir Nabokov feuded with Edmund Wilson over a translation of a work by this author composed of sonnets ending with masculine and feminine rhymes. This author wrote a poem in which Lensky challenges the title dandy to a duel after Tatyana’s name-day celebration. For 10 points, name this Russian author of Eugene Onegin.
ANSWER: Alexander Pushkin [or Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin] (Vladimir Nabokov’s essays are collected in Strong Opinions.)
[after 77% of the tossup] One type of these hormones was first discovered in a species of rice-plant pathogen named fujikuroi. Uniconazole (“uni-CON-uh-zole”) inhibits the production of this hormone through blockage of kaurene oxidase. The absence of these hormones can increase biomass growth in the roots and cause shortened internodes. The binding of these hormones causes the degradation of DELLA proteins like GAI. The presence of water activates these hormones that stimulate the production of hydrolytic enzymes in germinating seeds. In elongating stems, these hormones’ concentration is regulated by auxins. For 10 points, name this class of plant hormone that mediates developmental processes like stem elongation.
ANSWER: gibberellins [or GAs; accept gibberellic acid]
[after 77% of the tossup] Louis Nelson used sandblasting to depict these people in an artwork surrounded by a group of 19 stainless steel sculptures titled The Column. James E. Connell III was the model for a depiction of one of these people in a sculpture that was deliberately placed across a “sea of sacrifice.” In response to controversy over a 21-year-old student winning a 1981 contest, Frederick Hart created a bronze sculpture of three of these people that included the first depiction of an African American on the National Mall. Two large black granite slabs arranged in a V-shape make up a monument dedicated to these people by Maya Lin. For 10 points, name these people whose names are etched onto the walls of the Vietnam Memorial.
ANSWER: war veterans [or soldiers; accept equivalents like servicepeople or troops; accept Army people or Navy people or Air Force people; accept Vietnam Veterans Memorial; accept Korean War Veterans Memorial; accept Three Soldiers or Three Servicemen; prompt on fighters or combatants; prompt on dead people]
[after 77% of the tossup] A character in this book opens a box to find coals instead of a feather dropped by Gabriel during the Annunciation. In this book, a character marries Neerbal after being taught how to “put the devil back in Hell” by the monk Rustico. A poem by John Keats adapts a story in this book in which a woman cries every day over a pot of basil containing her lover’s severed head. In a different story in this collection, a man wins a woman’s affections after cooking his pet falcon for her as a meal. A nobleman pretends to murder his children to test the loyalties of his wife Griselda in this collection’s final story, one of several told by Dioneo over 10 days. For 10 points, Florentines fleeing the Black Death tell stories to each other in what collection by Giovanni Boccaccio?
ANSWER: The Decameron [or Decamerone]
[after 78% of the tossup] Prior to her ordination, Pajāpatī first had to accept this many Garudhammas, a controversial requirement still expected of most bhikkhūṇīs today. On uposatha days, laypeople may temporarily vow to obey a set of this many precepts usually reserved for monks. A conch shell and a pair of golden fish are part of this many mangalas, auspicious signs used as yidams. The Buddha’s life is marked by this many mahāpratihārya or Great Events. Patanjali listed asana and pranayama among this many limbs of yoga in his Yoga Sutras. The dharma·chakra is typically depicted with this number of spokes. This many “right” practices comprise the fourth Noble Truth. For 10 points, nirvana is reached by following a Noble [what number]-fold Path?
ANSWER: eight [or 8; or ashta; or aṣṭa; accept Eight Garudhammas or Eight Precepts or Eight Auspicious Signs or Noble Eightfold Path]
[after 79% of the tossup] Members of this art movement’s predecessor held meetings in the “pink salon” of an artist who created a self-portrait of herself with bright red eyes. This movement’s first exhibition was put on by former members of the NKVM, including the artist of the Mystical Heads series. The phrase “and all being is flaming sorrow” was inscribed onto the back of a painting from this movement, whose ideas were influenced by the treatise Concerning the Spiritual in Art. Alexej von Jawlensky and Gabriele Münter were members of this movement, as was the artist of Fate of the Animals and several large depictions of horses. For 10 points, name this art movement founded by Franz Marc and Wassily Kandinsky, named after a painting of a brightly-colored man on horseback.
ANSWER: The Blue Rider [or Der Blaue Reiter; prompt on German Expressionism] (The artist in the first line is Marianne von Werefkin.)
[after 80% of the tossup] In a poem by this author, the title creature “says the highway dust is over all” and predicts “that other fall we name the fall.” In another poem by this author, “part of a moon” falls “down the west” and drags “the whole sky with it to the hills.” This author of “The Oven Bird” wrote a poem that defines “home” as “the place where… they have to take you in” and begins with Mary waiting for her husband who says, “Silas is back.” In another poem by this author, a “little horse” “gives his harness bells a shake” to ask the speaker “if there is some mistake.” That poem by this author ends, “I have promises to keep, / And miles to go before I sleep.” For 10 points, name this author of monologues like “The Death of the Hired Man” who also wrote “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening.”
ANSWER: Robert Frost
[after 80% of the tossup] In a play from this period, Angela uses a secret panel behind a glass cupboard door to manipulate her lover into believing she is the title character. An author from this period wrote a play in which a woman complains about men before her lover saves her by grabbing her attacker’s crossbow. The Phantom Lady was a “cloak-and-sword play” from this period, which was also known for the auto sacramental. In another play from this period, the murder of the Commander goes unpunished after the title village refuses to give up his killer. In a play from this period, King Basilio tries to avoid a prophecy by locking Segismundo, the prince of Poland, in a tower. For 10 points, Lope de Vega’s Fuenteovejuna and Pedro Calderón de la Barca’s Life is a Dream were published during what Spanish literary period?
ANSWER: Spanish Golden Age [or Spanish Golden Century; or Siglo de Oro]
[after 81% of the tossup] A prologue by this author recounts the development of a joke in which passengers on a steamboat to Alexandria shout “Hans” after two Lebanese men humiliate the title “Tramp from Piraeus.” In a story by this author, a Zulu man spits in the face of a gay public official named Bobby who attempts to pick him up in a bar before being beaten at a checkpoint. Back-to-back stories in a collection by this author follow the insane Man-Man and the poet B. Wordsworth. The linked stories “One out of Many” and “Tell Me Who to Kill” appear in this author’s book In a Free State. The six-fingered title character of a novel by this author lives at the Hanuman House with the Tulsi family. For 10 points, name this Trinidadian author of Miguel Street and A House for Mr. Biswas.
ANSWER: V. S. Naipaul [or Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul]
[after 82% of the tossup] A character who opposes two of these people quarrels with his son over the girl Emma in an opera that was left with unfinished orchestration. In an opera, one of these people chooses Marfa as his bride, but she goes insane after being poisoned at their engagement party. The orchestra imitates the sound of bells at the start of a scene in which a crowd chants “Glory!” in an opera about one of these people who hallucinates a murdered child. An 1836 opera titled for one of these people features a scene in which the Polish army is led into a blizzard and was followed by its composer’s opera Ruslan and Lyudmila. That opera by Mikhail Glinka is titled A Life for [one of these people]. For 10 points, what kind of person is the main character of Modest Mussorgsky’s opera Boris Godunov?
ANSWER: tsars [accept A Life for the Tsar or Zhizn’ za tsarya; accept The Tsar’s Bride or Tsarskaya Nevesta; prompt on Russian king or Russian emperor] (The first line refers to Khovanshchina.)
[after 82% of the tossup] During a conflict with this tribe, a military court at Fort St. Marks controversially found two British merchants guilty of arms dealing. This tribe’s twenty-year agreement with territorial governor William Pope Duval was broken in less than ten years by another leader, who executed Arbuthnot and Ambrister for spying for these people. A group of this tribe settled in Coahuila, Mexico, under John Horse and Wild Cat, and Andros Island in the Bahamas was settled by this tribe’s “Black” descendants. The Treaty of Moultrie Creek signed by this tribe was superseded by the Treaty of Payne’s Landing. A false white flag operation captured this tribe’s Chief Osceola. For 10 points, name this Florida-based tribe that fought several 19th-century wars against the US.
ANSWER: Seminoles [or Yat’siminoli]
[after 83% of the tossup] This thinker coined the name of a mystical “fourth force” in popularizing Stanislav Grof’s “transpersonal” subfield of their discipline. This thinker included notes on synergy and salesmen in a loosely structured book titled for this person “on Management.” Existence is the most basic of three categories in Clayton Alderfer’s simplification of a model by this thinker. This thinker distinguished fundamental deficiency-cognition from being-cognition, which occurs during euphoric “peak experiences.” This psychologist studied figures like Albert Einstein to create a theory of human motivation. For 10 points, name this psychologist who placed self-actualization atop of a “hierarchy of needs.”
ANSWER: Abraham Maslow [or Abraham Harold Maslow; accept Maslow on Management]
[after 84% of the tossup] In this state, Tina Bell fronted Bam Bam, the first band to record at Reciprocal Recording. The all-female opening night of a music festival in this state saw the live debut of Heavens to Betsy, whose split led Corin Tucker to form Sleater-Kinney. A band from this state spent over 5 years on Billboard with their album Ten, which contains a song claiming “thoughts arrive like butterflies.” This state’s “riot grrl” movement included acts like Bikini Kill, whose frontwoman Kathleen Hanna inspired a hit by another band from this state by claiming its lead singer smelled like a deodorant brand. Krist Novoselic was the bassist of a band from this state who included songs like “Lithium” and “Come As You Are” on their album Nevermind. For 10 points, grunge bands like Pearl Jam and Nirvana formed in what US state’s city of Seattle?
ANSWER: Washington [or State of Washington; or WA]
[after 84% of the tossup] In a poem in this language, a poet asks the protagonist if he wrote the line “Ladies who have intelligence of love.” That line appears in a poem in this language in which Love tells a poet in Latin, “ego dominus tuus,” or “I am your lord.” T. S. Eliot quoted a poet who wrote in this language with the line “Because I do not hope to turn again.” That poet, who wrote a song whose title is translated as “A lady asks me,” founded a literary school that influenced a prosimetrum on courtly love in this language. Works in the sweet new style movement in this language include the love poem The New Life. In a long narrative poem in this language, Beatrice and Virgil act as guides to a poet traveling through hell, purgatory, and heaven. For 10 points, name this language used by Dante to write The Divine Comedy.
ANSWER: Italian [or italiano; or lingua italiana; accept Tuscan or dialetto toscano or Florentine or dialetto fiorentino or vernacolo fiorentino] (Guido Cavalcanti’s “Donna mi prega” translates to “A lady asks me.”)
[after 84% of the tossup] A piece by this composer begins quietly with oboes and low strings playing continuous eighth notes as the violins play arpeggios, which crescendoes into a loud D major chord by the chorus and three trumpets. This composer wrote an anthem for the Foundling Hospital, the venue of charity concerts that originated the “Scratch” form of one of his works. This composer was inspired by shepherd-bagpipers to include a pastoral Pifa in a work whose libretto is by Charles Jennens. A widely excerpted sinfonia scored for two oboes and strings appears in this composer’s Solomon. This composer was commissioned to write four anthems for the coronation of George II, including Zadok the Priest. For 10 points, name this Baroque composer who included a Hallelujah chorus in his Messiah.
ANSWER: George Frideric Handel
[after 85% of the tossup] Annealing of this material is accomplished in lehrs. An industrial method to produce a type of this material lays liquid raw materials over tin to form a float. Diffusion of interfering ions described by the Nikolsky–Eisenman equation across this material is seen in electrodes, which can be used to measure pH. Sintering particles of this material into hollow disks creates fritted examples of these materials that are used as filters. Addition of boron trioxide lowers the coefficient of thermal expansion of these materials. Silica, soda ash, and limestone produce the molten form of this material, which is then solidified by blowing. For 10 points, what amorphous material is often used to make lab materials and window panes?
ANSWER: glass
[after 86% of the tossup] A piece by this composer repeatedly begins phrases with the descending notes [read slowly] pickup F, E, D, A, F. The left hand plays a loud octave G to open the rondo finale of a piano sonata by this composer whose first movement’s first subject is interrupted by an ominous low G-flat trill. This composer wrote a work with a notoriously difficult piano part whose right hand plays repeated octave G’s while the left hand ascends in octaves up a G minor scale to E-flat. This composer used a repeated open fifth in the accompaniment of one work to represent a hurdy-gurdy player. A song by this composer sets a poem by Goethe in which a supernatural creature terrorizes a boy on horseback. For 10 points, name this Austrian composer of Winterreise and Der Erlkönig.
ANSWER: Franz Schubert [or Franz Peter Schubert]
[after 87% of the tossup] The speaker of a poem by this author describes how “My chilled limbs now nummed lye forlorn” because the addressee’s absence caused “My Sun” to go “so far in’s Zodiack.” In a poem by this author, the speaker “wash’d thy face, but more defects I saw,” and personifies the title object as a “rambling brat.” In a different poem, this poet wrote that the addressee’s love is prized more than “all the riches that the East doth hold.” This author described a collection published by John Woodbridge without this author’s permission as an “ill form’d offspring of my feeble brain.” This poet declared “If ever two were one, then surely we” in “To My Dear and Loving Husband.” For 10 points, name this colonial-era poet of “The Author to Her Book,” which appears in her collection The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America.
ANSWER: Anne Bradstreet [or Anne Dudley] (The first line is from “A Letter to her Husband, absent upon Publick Employment.”)

Krishay Garg ↩

[after 29% of the tossup] In a novel set in this state, a character is beat up after asking two boys to return candy stolen from Mr. Marconi’s Tobacco and Cigars. The highly abusive real-life Dozier School was fictionalized in a novel set in this state by Colson Whitehead. In a different novel set in this state, the protagonist remarks that “the business of the head rag irked her endlessly” after her husband forbids her from showing her hair in public. The protagonist of a novel set in this state has a vision of her future husband desecrating a pear tree after she is caught kissing Johnny Taylor. In a novel set in this state, Tea Cake is shot after being bitten by a rabid dog during the Okeechobee hurricane. For 10 points, name this state where Janie Crawford tells her story in its town of Eatonville, the setting of Their Eyes Were Watching God.
ANSWER: Florida [or FL] (The Whitehead novel is The Nickel Boys.)
[after 29% of the tossup] The narrator of a poem by this author described breaking “the copious curls upon my head” because her aunt “liked smooth-order hair.” In a different poem by this author, the speaker encourages the addressee to “Gather the north flowers to complete the south / And catch the early love up in the late.” In a long poem by this author, Marian Erle has a child out of wedlock and refuses to marry Romney, who proposes to the title character instead. Virginia Woolf wrote about this author’s cocker spaniel getting kidnapped in the fictional biography Flush. This author wrote “call me by my pet name” in a collection in which a different poem begins, “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.” For 10 points, name this poet who wrote the nine-book “novel in verse” Aurora Leigh and Sonnets from the Portuguese.
ANSWER: Elizabeth Barrett Browning [or Elizabeth Barrett Browning; accept Elizabeth Barrett; prompt on Browning; reject “Robert Browning”]
[after 37% of the tossup] A Joy Harjo poem that quotes this poem begins, “We were running out of breath, as we ran out to meet ourselves.” A bell hooks book titled for this poem is subtitled “Black Men and Masculinity.” The setting of this poem titles a poetic form in which the last word of each line makes a quote and was pioneered by Terrence Hayes. This poem’s author said she was inspired to write this poem after walking past a pool hall in Chicago and thinking “I wonder how they feel about themselves?” This poem from the collection The Bean Eaters is narrated by “pool players” at the “Golden Shovel.” The characters in this poem “Strike straight,” “Jazz June,” and “Die soon.” For 10 points, name this eight-line poem where every line except for the last ends with the word “We,” by Gwendolyn Brooks.
ANSWER: “We Real Cool”
[after 37% of the tossup] Isaac Bickerstaffe replaced this character with Doctor Cantwell in an adaptation of another author’s play about this character, The Non-Juror by Colley Cibber (“SIB-er”). The non-speaking maid Flipote is slapped at the end of the first scene of a play titled for this character, which Richard Wilbur translated into English verse. In that play, a grandmother who views this character as perfect is proven wrong when this character’s actions lead to the bailiff Loyal serving eviction papers. The maid Dorine prevents Mariane from marrying this character, who is arrested by order of a king in a deus ex machina ending. This character, who is exposed while trying to seduce Elmire, pretends to be religious to gain Orgon’s trust. For 10 points, name this character, a “Hypocrite” created by Molière.
ANSWER: Tartuffe (The Isaac Bickerstaffe play is The Hypocrite.)
[after 39% of the tossup] In one work, to perform the lead in this play, a character describes a costume of a “beribboned (“bih-RIB-und”) boater, gaily striped blazer, parti-colored shoes, trousers of your own choice” to entice Henry Carr. In this play, a character is told that although losing one parent “may be regarded as a misfortune, losing both looks like carelessness.” After a different character in this play tells his friend not to eat cucumber sandwiches “ordered specially” for his aunt, he eats one himself. A character in this play invents an invalid (“IN-va-lid”) friend so he can avoid obligations by “Bunburying” in the country. For 10 points, name this play in which Jack Worthing and Algernon Moncrieff both attempt to be christened under the titular name, written by Oscar Wilde.
ANSWER: The Importance of Being Earnest (The first clue is about Travesties by Tom Stoppard.)
[after 40% of the tossup] This process names a phenomenon in which the momentum of stellar material causes it to be carried through the tachocline, known as this process’s namesake “overshoot.” High-resolution images of the Sun’s surface appear granulated because of entities named for this process in the photosphere. This process occurs when the magnitude of the actual temperature gradient exceeds that of the adiabatic temperature gradient, according to the Schwarzschild criterion. For main sequence stars under around 0.35 solar masses, this process is the dominant form of energy transport. In a zone named for this process just below the Sun’s atmosphere, plasma circulates heat via this process’s namesake “currents.” For 10 points, name this thermal process exemplified by movement of warmer fluid upwards and cold fluid downwards.
ANSWER: convection [accept convection currents; accept convective cells; accept convective overshoot; accept convective zone]
[after 41% of the tossup] A speaker in one of these title places notes that “The others have gone; they were tired… But I would rather be standing here” in a poem that declares “There is something terrible about a child.” Charlotte Mew wrote a poem set at one of these places “In Nunhead.” A “school” of poetry named for these places included Thomas Parnell and Robert Blair. In a poem set in one of these places, the speaker imagines “a heart once pregnant with celestial fire” and “hands” that “wak’d to ecstasy the living lyre.” The speaker of a poem reflects that “the paths of glory led but to” one of these places in a poem that includes an epitaph to “A youth to Fortune and to Fame unknown” and begins “The curfew tolls the knell of parting day.” For 10 points, an elegy by Thomas Gray is set in a “Country” type of what location?
ANSWER: graveyards [or cemeteries; or graves; or churchyards; accept “In Nunhead Cemetery”; accept “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”; prompt on churches by asking “in what part of the church is that poem set?”]
[after 43% of the tossup] Annealing of this material is accomplished in lehrs. An industrial method to produce a type of this material lays liquid raw materials over tin to form a float. Diffusion of interfering ions described by the Nikolsky–Eisenman equation across this material is seen in electrodes, which can be used to measure pH. Sintering particles of this material into hollow disks creates fritted examples of these materials that are used as filters. Addition of boron trioxide lowers the coefficient of thermal expansion of these materials. Silica, soda ash, and limestone produce the molten form of this material, which is then solidified by blowing. For 10 points, what amorphous material is often used to make lab materials and window panes?
ANSWER: glass
[after 43% of the tossup] Dynamic dispatch for methods in C++ is typically implemented with a table of these constructs called a “vtable” (“V-table”). During serialization, these constructs are converted to a position-independent persistent version during “swizzling.” Addition to these constructs is scaled by the size of an underlying data type in an example of these constructs’ namesake “arithmetic.” Garbage collection prevents certain types of segmentation faults by cleaning up “dangling” instances of these constructs. Each node in a linked list contains both data and one of these constructs associated with the next node. In C, an asterisk can be used to access data at the location described by one of these constructs. For 10 points, name this data type that stores addresses in memory.
ANSWER: pointers [accept dangling pointers; accept pointer arithmetic; accept function pointers or method pointers; accept references; accept addresses until read]
[after 46% of the tossup] In a poem by this author, the title creature “says the highway dust is over all” and predicts “that other fall we name the fall.” In another poem by this author, “part of a moon” falls “down the west” and drags “the whole sky with it to the hills.” This author of “The Oven Bird” wrote a poem that defines “home” as “the place where… they have to take you in” and begins with Mary waiting for her husband who says, “Silas is back.” In another poem by this author, a “little horse” “gives his harness bells a shake” to ask the speaker “if there is some mistake.” That poem by this author ends, “I have promises to keep, / And miles to go before I sleep.” For 10 points, name this author of monologues like “The Death of the Hired Man” who also wrote “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening.”
ANSWER: Robert Frost
[after 49% of the tossup] A HiGee form of this technique uses centrifugal acceleration to force horizontal flow, while another uses a dividing wall. Molecular sieves remove water and carbon dioxide upstream of a cryogenic form of this technique. The Kirkbride equation can be used to calculate the inlet location in this technique whose shortcut form uses the FUG method. The Q-line on a McCabe–Thiele diagram represents the feed in this technique. This technique may employ a Dean–Stark apparatus to remove water. Purity of products from this technique can be enhanced by increasing the reflux ratio. Adding a component to mixtures in this technique to break azeotropes can separate water and ethanol. For 10 points, what physical process separates components of a liquid mixture by their boiling points?
ANSWER: distillation [accept specific forms like fractional distillation or azeotropic distillation or HiGee distillation]
[after 51% of the tossup] In a 2018 novel, this character is reimagined into two teenage boys who fall in love and kiss as its narrator claims that “history is enough to make a future.” This character is charged by a bull while stuck in a tree in a novel that ends with him claiming to have “had an accident… so may you all.” This character learns about the world from The Shaper and an omniscient dragon in a novel by John Gardner. A man is discouraged from fighting this character by Unferth, who believes this character will win. A giant’s sword melts from the hilt after it is used to cut this character’s head from his corpse, which is taken as a trophy after the killing of his “monstrous hell-bride” of a mother. For 10 points, Beowulf first defends Heorot by fighting what monster, a “descendant of Cain” who dies after his arm is ripped off?
ANSWER: Grendel (The first clue refers to Maria Dehvana Headley’s The Mere Wife. The John Gardner novel is Grendel.)
[after 52% of the tossup] Characters who later appear in this story cause Leila to yearn for siblings while in a cab to the title event in the story “Her First Ball.” A girl in this story bites a piece of bread and butter while pondering “absurd class distinctions” after seeing a workman stop to smell lavender. A character described as “the butterfly” tests a piano in this story by practicing the song “This Life is Weary” before the maid Sadie interrupts to ask about sandwich flags. After hearing of a man thrown off his horse from Godber’s man during his cream puff delivery, a character in this story attempts to cancel the title event. That character takes leftover food to the widow of Scott and embraces her brother while stammering “Isn’t life.” For 10 points, Laura Sheridan plans the title event of what Katherine Mansfield story?
ANSWER: “The Garden Party”
[after 53% of the tossup] One technique for the purification of RNA-protein complexes makes use of these organisms in MS2 tagging. Another technique using these organisms uses pIII and takes advantage of an M13 vector. One form of these organisms, in which the Cro and cl repressors are found, was first isolated by Esther Lederberg. These organisms were used to prove that DNA is genetic material by radiolabeling with phosphorus-32 and sulfur-35 in the Hershey–Chase experiment. One variety of these organisms that can undergo a lytic life cycle but not a lysogenic life cycle has a hollow tail and an icosahedral head. Examples of these organisms include T4 and lambda. For 10 points, name these viruses that infect bacteria.
ANSWER: bacteriophages [accept lambda phage or T4 phage until read; prompt on viruses]
[after 53% of the tossup] Generalized BEP relations can be used to predict this quantity on metallic surfaces calculated via Marcus theory. Frustrated Lewis pairs have higher values of this quantity due to steric hindrance. This quantity is divided by R in a plot of one-over-T against the natural logarithm of k. The high value of this quantity in the Haber process is due to the nitrogen triple bond. This quantity is divided by RT in the exponential of the Arrhenius equation. This quantity is determined from the difference between the transition state and reactants on a reaction coordinate diagram and can be lowered by catalysts. For 10 points, identify this quantity denoted E-sub-a, the minimum energy required for a reaction to occur.
ANSWER: activation energy [accept E-sub-a until read; prompt on energy until read; prompt on E until read]
[after 56% of the tossup] Dissociation of disclinations are used to model these phenomena in KTHNY theory. Above the upper critical dimension, these phenomena belong to the same universality class predicted by mean-field theory. An argument using the favorability of spontaneously forming domain walls was used by Rudolph Peierls (“PIE-erls”) to prove one of these phenomena exists in two dimensions or higher for a certain lattice model. Landau theory classifies these phenomena into first- or second-order based on whether the change in their order parameter is discontinuous. These phenomena include the shift between paramagnetic and ferromagnetic ordering at the Curie point. On pressure–temperature diagrams, these events are represented by crossing a coexistence curve. For 10 points, name these phenomena in which a material changes between different states of matter.
ANSWER: phase transitions [or phase changes; accept first-order phase transitions or second-order phase transitions; accept continuous phase transitions; prompt on transitions]
[after 58% of the tossup] In a poem, these creatures are said to “all resemble one another” and have “tired mouths / And luminous illimitable souls.” William H. Gass wrote that these creatures are “what the poet would be if he could free himself from human distraction” in a book of “Reflections on the Problems of Translation.” One of these creatures is told in another poem to pluck an herb before a reference to an urn inscribed with “Subrisio Saltat.” These creatures are invoked before the line “Where are the days of Tobias.” An author wrote, “Every [one of these creatures] is terrifying” in a poem written while he was a guest of Princess Marie von Thurn und Taxis. For 10 points, Rainer Maria Rilke asks, “Who, if I cried out, would hear me among” the orders of what creatures in The Duino Elegies?
ANSWER: angels [or engel; accept “the angelic orders” or “The Angels”] (The first line refers to “The Angels” by Rilke. The second line refers to Reading Rilke: Reflections on the Problems of Translation.)
[after 59% of the tossup] This author’s first novel, which follows a widow who engages in an affair with her brother-in-law, was retitled Land of Sin. A character created by this author works at the “Central Registry of Births, Marriages and Deaths.” In a novel by this author, whose sequel was translated by this author’s widow Pilar del Río, a character uses a stiletto heel to kick a car thief who is shot after developing an infection. In the sequel to a novel by this author of All the Names, a “dog of tears” reappears as the only named character and an election occurs in which the majority of ballots are blank. In a novel by this author, characters like the girl with the dark glasses are quarantined in a ward and the doctor’s wife is the only one not affected by the title “white sickness.” For 10 points, name this Portuguese author of Blindness.
ANSWER: José Saramago [or José de Sousa Saramago] (The sequel to Blindness is Seeing.)
[after 60% of the tossup] An author from this country wrote of paintings drawing back a curtain on the writing of a poet from here who claims “’Tis dead, ’tis dust, ’tis shadow, yea, ’tis nought” at the end of the poem “To Her Portrait.” That poet from this modern-day country charges the title subjects with patent arrogance “that fights with many weapons” in the poem “You Foolish Men.” This is the home country of both the author and subject of the biography The Traps of Faith. In a poem from this country, a woman whose breasts are “two churches of blood” is told “I travel your body, like the world.” A 584-line poem from this country opens “a willow of crystal, a poplar of water” and borrows a circular calendar for its title, “Sun Stone.” For 10 points, name this home country of Sor Juana and Octavio Paz.
ANSWER: Mexico [or United Mexican States; or UMS; or Estados Unidos Mexicanos; or EUM]
[after 61% of the tossup] Cellulose nanocrystals can enhance nucleation activity in materials made from these molecules. Examples of these molecules that can conduct electricity include P3HT. The Kuhn length of these molecules is a function of dihedral bond angle. Distribution of components in these molecules can be analyzed with the Mayo–Lewis equation. These molecules, which can follow the Flory–Schulz distribution, have a step-growth mechanism characterized by the Carothers (“ker-OTHERS”) equation. One way to characterize these molecules is by calculating the ratio of the number-average molecular weight to that of M0 (“M-naught”). For 10 points, name these molecules that consist of long repeating chains.
ANSWER: polymers [accept copolymers or polymerization or degree of polymerization; prompt on plastics]
[after 61% of the tossup] A character with this profession becomes upset when another character refuses to say “a man outgrows his wife every seven years.” At the beginning of another play, a character with this profession says, “the morning star always gets wonderful bright the minute before it has to go.” Mr. Fitzpatrick holds this job during a mass food poisoning in a play about the Antrobus family. A character with this profession remarks that “this is the way things were” before a choir directed by the alcoholic organist Simon Stimson sings. That character with this profession replies, “the saints and poets, maybe” when a dead woman asks him if human beings “realize life while they live it” after she revisits her twelfth birthday. For 10 points, Thornton Wilder included characters with what profession in his plays The Skin of Our Teeth and Our Town?
ANSWER: stage manager [accept stage director; prompt on narrator; prompt on manager]
[after 61% of the tossup] The GP-A experiment directly measured this phenomenon in space and on Earth. Relativistic aberration and this phenomenon are responsible for apparent increases in luminosity via relativistic beaming. If an angle theta is slowly varying, the strength of this phenomenon equals one minus cosine theta times v over c. In relativity, the strength of this phenomenon equals the square root of the fraction “one plus beta over one minus beta.” Canal rays underwent this phenomenon in the Ives–Stilwell experiment supporting special relativity, while the Pound–Rebka experiment measured a form of this effect caused by gravitational time dilation. Hubble’s law is based on observations of this effect. For 10 points, what effect changes the frequency of waves emitted by moving sources?
ANSWER: Doppler effect [accept redshift or blueshift; prompt on time dilation or gravitational time dilation until read by asking “what phenomenon does that cause?”; prompt on gravity]
[after 62% of the tossup] Damage to this organ may be categorized via the Ishak staging system. The ductus venosus allows this organ to be bypassed in fetal circulation. The AST/ALT ratio may be used in the diagnosis of diseases of this organ. Three quarters of this organ’s blood supply comes from the vessel that is formed from the union of the splenic (“SPLEN-ick”) and superior mesenteric veins; that vessel is the portal vein. This organ’s caudate (“CAW-date”) lobe is named for its resemblance to a tail. Damage to this organ can prevent the conjugation of bilirubin, resulting in jaundice. For 10 points, name this organ that can suffer cirrhosis from alcohol consumption.
ANSWER: liver
[after 63% of the tossup] This author is described as an “odoriferous poet” by a sentient chair before meeting the composer Benjamin Britten in Alan Bennett’s play The Habit of Art. A poem by this author advises “Let not Time deceive you, / You cannot conquer time” and promises “I’ll love you / Till Africa and China meet, / And the river jumps over the mountain.” This author considered five of his poems to be “trash” and later changed the word “or” in his most famous poem to “and.” Another poem by this author of “As I Walked Out One Evening” bemoans a man who was “my North, my South, my East and West.” One poem by this author begins with the speaker sitting in “one of the dives / On Fifty-second street” and later declares “We must love one another or die.” For 10 points, name this poet of “Funeral Blues” and “September 1, 1939.”
ANSWER: W. H. Auden [or Wystan Hugh Auden]
[after 65% of the tossup] This painting was reimagined for a 2015 Greenpeace campaign by the collective Kennardphillipps, which depicts its setting in the aftermath of an oil spill. This painting depicts an “extraordinary conquest of a life which most people would consider hopeless” according to its artist, who was buried in this painting’s real-life setting. Despite being 30 years older than the intended subject, the artist’s wife Betsy James modeled the upper body of this painting’s central figure, who may have suffered from Charcot–Marie–Tooth disease. In this painting set in Cushing, Maine, the title person looks towards the Olson House, which sits atop a hill in the distance. For 10 points, name this painting of a woman in a pink dress crawling in a field by Andrew Wyeth.
ANSWER: Christina’s World
[after 65% of the tossup] Fragmentation of molecules undergoing this technique is observed in the McLafferty rearrangement. In one form of this technique, selected reaction monitoring is used to select ions for the next stage of processing. Michael Barber invented a technique used during this process where a beam of high energy atoms strike a surface in a technique called fast atom bombardment. Multiple rounds of this technique are performed in its “tandem” variety. Molecules may be prepared for this technique by undergoing electrospray ionization or MALDI. Plots in this technique often coupled with gas chromatography plot intensity against m-over-z. For 10 points, name this technique that separates molecules based on their mass-to-charge ratio.
ANSWER: mass spectrometry [or MS]
[after 65% of the tossup] A character in this book opens a box to find coals instead of a feather dropped by Gabriel during the Annunciation. In this book, a character marries Neerbal after being taught how to “put the devil back in Hell” by the monk Rustico. A poem by John Keats adapts a story in this book in which a woman cries every day over a pot of basil containing her lover’s severed head. In a different story in this collection, a man wins a woman’s affections after cooking his pet falcon for her as a meal. A nobleman pretends to murder his children to test the loyalties of his wife Griselda in this collection’s final story, one of several told by Dioneo over 10 days. For 10 points, Florentines fleeing the Black Death tell stories to each other in what collection by Giovanni Boccaccio?
ANSWER: The Decameron [or Decamerone]
[after 66% of the tossup] In a play from this period, Angela uses a secret panel behind a glass cupboard door to manipulate her lover into believing she is the title character. An author from this period wrote a play in which a woman complains about men before her lover saves her by grabbing her attacker’s crossbow. The Phantom Lady was a “cloak-and-sword play” from this period, which was also known for the auto sacramental. In another play from this period, the murder of the Commander goes unpunished after the title village refuses to give up his killer. In a play from this period, King Basilio tries to avoid a prophecy by locking Segismundo, the prince of Poland, in a tower. For 10 points, Lope de Vega’s Fuenteovejuna and Pedro Calderón de la Barca’s Life is a Dream were published during what Spanish literary period?
ANSWER: Spanish Golden Age [or Spanish Golden Century; or Siglo de Oro]
[after 66% of the tossup] One disease affecting these structures is X-chromosome linked to mutations in the DKC1 gene and may require bone marrow transplants. Dyskerin helps to stabilize a catalytic complex that acts on this structure. Deficiencies in maintaining these structures, which are measured by the Q-FISH technique, are a major risk factor for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. Cajal bodies may serve to recruit RNA structures that act on these structures. The Hayflick limit is based on the length of these structures that can be extended by TERT. Shortened examples of these structures that lose their shelterin cap can trigger senescence, and these structures consist of repeating TTAGGG motifs. For 10 points, what DNA sequences protect the ends of chromosomes?
ANSWER: telomeres
[after 67% of the tossup] In quinoa, class-1 HKT proteins load this element into bladder cells. Variations in hydrogen concentration in the brain cause acid-sensing pH sensor proteins to mainly transport this element. Paralytic shellfish poisoning occurs when alkaloids like saxitoxin block the transport of this element. A symporter of glucose and this element called SGLT2 is found in proximal tubules. Subunits of proteins that conduct this element contain six transmembrane passes and are voltage-gated. An ion of this element enters neurons during action potential firing. Blockers for this element’s channels can be used to treat arrhythmia. Hydrolysis of ATP pumps three atoms of this element out of cells against potassium. For 10 points, name this element found alongside chloride in table salt.
ANSWER: sodium [or Na]
[after 67% of the tossup] The “crux” of this concept is lacking “means by which to render our lives believable” according to a speech that opens by describing Antonio Pigafetta as a precursor to modern novelists. In a novel whose title ends with this word, a woman sends her daughter to a convent for having a baby with a mechanic. William Faulkner is called “my master” in a Nobel acceptance speech titled for this concept “of Latin America.” This word ends the title of a novel in which 17 brothers with Ash Wednesday crosses are shot in the head. A novel whose title ends with this word opens with the protagonist remembering how his father took him to see ice and chronicles generations of the Buendía family. For 10 points, Gabriel García Márquez wrote a novel titled “One Hundred Years of” what concept?
ANSWER: solitude [or soledad; accept One Hundred Years of Solitude or Cien Años de Soledad; accept “The Solitude of Latin America” or “La Soledad de América Latina”]
[after 70% of the tossup] This thinker describes common purpose as an outcome of “instinctive liking” or a shared “instinctive aversion” in Why Men Fight. With Jean-Paul Sartre, this thinker led a conference finding the US guilty of war crimes in Vietnam. This thinker advocated for a four-hour workday in the essay “In Praise of Idleness.” P. F. Strawson criticized an essay by this thinker that argues against Alexius Meinong (“MY-nong”) with examples of “the author of Waverley” and the “present” kings of England and France to contrast types of definite descriptions. This author of “On Denoting” formulated an argument against defaulting to belief in God that involves a floating teapot. For 10 points, name this English philosopher who collaborated with Alfred North Whitehead on Principia Mathematica.
ANSWER: Bertrand Russell [or Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell; accept Russell’s teapot]
[after 70% of the tossup] In a scene set in one of these places, a character mentions outsourcing at Clemmons Technologies due to NAFTA, which Tracey thinks is a laxative. Later in that play, the owner of one of these places, Stan, is disabled when Jason hits him with a baseball bat. In another play set in one of these places, a character admits that he’d face the electric chair if he had to “kill someone and they have to go on living!” In one of these places owned by an agoraphobe who vows to walk around the block on his birthday, a traveling salesman admits to murdering his wife Evelyn. Don Parritt commits suicide by jumping off a fire escape in one of these places after Hickey attempts to convince its patrons to abandon their “pipe dreams.” For 10 points, name these places, one of which is run by Harry Hope in Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh.
ANSWER: bars [or saloons; or public houses; accept Harry Hope’s Saloon; accept Alibi Club; prompt on restaurant; prompt on club; prompt on hotel] (The first and second lines refer to Sweat by Lynn Nottage.)
[after 70% of the tossup] Anicia Juliana commissioned a copy of a work for people in this profession that is named for Vienna. Jakob Böhme revived a practice that these people used called the doctrine of signatures. A bench with a lever-based traction system is often named for a member of this profession. Dioscorides’ teachings in this profession were kept in the House of Wisdom, where they would later influence Rhazes. Jacques Dubois (“doo-BWAH”) publicly challenged his former student, Andreas Vesalius, to disprove theories used by people in this profession that were originally developed by Galen. Ancient members of this profession may have attempted to balance out the Four Humors. For 10 points, a modern-day oath is named after members of what ancient profession that included Hippocrates?
ANSWER: doctors [accept surgeons; accept healers; accept equivalents like medical professionals]
[after 71% of the tossup] Lugaro cells found in this structure were discovered following Marr and Albus’s theory of learning in this structure. The fusion of rhombic lips leads to the formation of this structure that lies dorsal to the fourth ventricle. Along with the pons, this structure develops from the metencephalon of the hindbrain. This structure is affected by Joubert syndrome, which leads to impaired development of this structure’s vermis. Climbing fibers terminate in large dendritic tree-forming Purkinje cells in this structure located to the rear and below the cerebrum. For 10 points, name this motor control center of the brain that connects to the spinal cord, also called the “little brain.”
ANSWER: cerebellum
[after 72% of the tossup] An author from this country intertwined scenes of Robert Browning in Venice with the lives of the main characters in the novel The Whirlpool. In one of 11 interviews conducted by Graeme Gibson with novelists from this country, Timothy Findley coined the name for one region in this country’s “Southern Gothic” literature. “Boy” Staunton causes a pregnant woman to go into premature labor in Fifth Business, a novel in this country’s Deptford Trilogy. An author from this country featured symposiums led by Professor Pieixoto as metafictional epilogues for two novels. While meeting outside of the “Ceremony” in a novel from this country, Offred plays Scrabble with the Commander. For 10 points, name this home country of the author of The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood.
ANSWER: Canada (The Whirlpool is by Jane Urquhart. The second line refers to “Southern Ontario Gothic.” The Deptford Trilogy is by Robertson Davies.)
[after 73% of the tossup] In a poem in this language, a poet asks the protagonist if he wrote the line “Ladies who have intelligence of love.” That line appears in a poem in this language in which Love tells a poet in Latin, “ego dominus tuus,” or “I am your lord.” T. S. Eliot quoted a poet who wrote in this language with the line “Because I do not hope to turn again.” That poet, who wrote a song whose title is translated as “A lady asks me,” founded a literary school that influenced a prosimetrum on courtly love in this language. Works in the sweet new style movement in this language include the love poem The New Life. In a long narrative poem in this language, Beatrice and Virgil act as guides to a poet traveling through hell, purgatory, and heaven. For 10 points, name this language used by Dante to write The Divine Comedy.
ANSWER: Italian [or italiano; or lingua italiana; accept Tuscan or dialetto toscano or Florentine or dialetto fiorentino or vernacolo fiorentino] (Guido Cavalcanti’s “Donna mi prega” translates to “A lady asks me.”)
[after 75% of the tossup] This character suggests that God should recreate the world after positing the “principle of perpetual disappointment” as a “fundamental law of the Universe.” This character almost leaves behind a stack of comic books after going on a tirade in which he smashes a bottle of brandy and tears up an unfinished essay on global politics. This character claims that a copy of On the Origin of Species is safe because he put it in the library’s theology section. This author of “A World Without Collisions” declares himself an atheist after an older interlocutor suggests Jesus Christ as a “man of magnitude.” This character lets out his frustration about his alcoholic father returning from the hospital on Sam and Willie. For 10 points, an Athol Fugard play is titled for what character “…and the Boys”?
ANSWER: Master Harold [or Hally; accept “Master Harold” …and the Boys]
[after 76% of the tossup] This author added a character named Caroline who goes to milk a cow in a rewritten version of a scene that appears in an earlier work which lasts for “nearly two hours.” This author described ships “robed in purest white” that seemed like “shrouded ghosts” in a work in which Sandy gives the protagonist a root to keep on the right side of his body to ward off harm. The protagonist of a work by this author learns how to read from the Columbian Orator after being forbidden by Hugh Auld. William Lloyd Garrison wrote an introduction to this author’s memoir, which depicts his fight against Edward Covey. For 10 points, name this author who wrote about escaping his enslavement in three autobiographies including My Bondage and My Freedom and a Narrative in the Life of himself, An American Slave.
ANSWER: Frederick Douglass [or Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey; accept Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave]
[after 77% of the tossup] A late section of this book discusses a man with “aspect-blindness” as analogous to someone lacking a “musical ear.” A claim in this book about philosophy having methods “like therapies” inspired the therapeutic approach discussed in a book titled for “New” and its author. This book’s opening describes a shopkeeper’s responses to a slip reading “five red apples” while criticizing a quote about naming objects from Augustine’s Confessions. A builder and an assistant communicate with words like “block” and “pillar” in one of this book’s language games. This book rejects private languages with the beetle-in-a-box thought experiment. For 10 points, name this posthumously published book in which Ludwig Wittgenstein reverses many positions from his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.
ANSWER: Philosophical Investigations [or Philosophische Untersuchungen] (The New Wittgenstein is by Cora Diamond, Alice Crary, and James F. Conant.)
[after 77% of the tossup] The first of 36 chapters in a text in this language outlines a sage’s development of the “graceful” style of drama to accompany the original “verbal,” “grand,” and “energetic” styles. The stage manager for plays in this language has a name meaning “holder of threads.” In a mad scene in a play in this language, a royal speaks to a series of animals and a river after his wife is turned into a vine for entering a forest forbidden to women. In a play in this language, a king who spares a deer in its opening encounters his son playing with a lion cub in a hermitage. That king is cursed by a sage to forget his wife until a fisherman recovers a signet ring in a play in this language. For 10 points, name this ancient language used to write Urvashi Won by Valor and The Recognition of Shakuntala by Kālidāsa.
ANSWER: Sanskrit [or saṃskṛtam] (The first line refers to Bharata’s Nātyaśāstra.)
[after 77% of the tossup] In a story by this author, which is narrated to Miss K.I.T., Burmin falls to his knees in front of Maria after realizing she is the woman he jokingly married four years prior during the title event. While translating a work by this author, an author whose essays are collected in Strong Opinions wrote a set of “Notes on Prosody.” This author of “The Blizzard” wrote a collection framed as the stories of the mysterious landowner Ivan Belkin. Vladimir Nabokov feuded with Edmund Wilson over a translation of a work by this author composed of sonnets ending with masculine and feminine rhymes. This author wrote a poem in which Lensky challenges the title dandy to a duel after Tatyana’s name-day celebration. For 10 points, name this Russian author of Eugene Onegin.
ANSWER: Alexander Pushkin [or Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin] (Vladimir Nabokov’s essays are collected in Strong Opinions.)
[after 79% of the tossup] A prologue by this author recounts the development of a joke in which passengers on a steamboat to Alexandria shout “Hans” after two Lebanese men humiliate the title “Tramp from Piraeus.” In a story by this author, a Zulu man spits in the face of a gay public official named Bobby who attempts to pick him up in a bar before being beaten at a checkpoint. Back-to-back stories in a collection by this author follow the insane Man-Man and the poet B. Wordsworth. The linked stories “One out of Many” and “Tell Me Who to Kill” appear in this author’s book In a Free State. The six-fingered title character of a novel by this author lives at the Hanuman House with the Tulsi family. For 10 points, name this Trinidadian author of Miguel Street and A House for Mr. Biswas.
ANSWER: V. S. Naipaul [or Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul]
[after 80% of the tossup] The thermal form of this process subject to the Soret effect was investigated by Clusius and Dickel using an insulated column. The force of a “self” form of this process is given by the derivative of chemical potential with respect to distance. The Schmidt number relates the kinematic viscosity of a fluid to this process. The Wilke–Chang correlation can be used to estimate this process and uses a solute–solvent interaction factor. Random walks were related to a parabolic equation named for this process by Einstein. The letter D represents a coefficient of this process in two laws of it named for Fick. Solvent undergoes a specific form of this process across membranes in osmosis. For 10 points, name this general process where particles travel down concentration gradients.
ANSWER: diffusion [prompt on osmosis until read; prompt on Brownian motion; prompt on isotope separation by asking “what general process is used?”]
[after 80% of the tossup] Despite being named for Fermi, a “golden rule” first derived by this physicist predicts transitions due to perturbations. Both state vectors and observables have time dependence in a framework introduced by this physicist called the interaction picture. This physicist’s eponymous equation predicts free particles undergo rapid oscillatory motion called Zitterbewegung (“TSIT-ur-buh-VAY-goong”). The existence of a single magnetic monopole implies the quantization of electric charge according to this physicist’s quantization condition. This physicist “factored” the wave equation to find gamma matrices and spinors used in his namesake equation. The existence of negative energy solutions led this man to propose his namesake “sea” of electrons. For 10 points, what British physicist developed a namesake relativistic generalization of the Schrödinger equation?
ANSWER: Paul Dirac [accept Dirac sea; accept Dirac equation; accept Dirac picture; accept Dirac quantization condition]
[after 81% of the tossup] In a ballet, a girl who is jealous of one of these beings shakes an ear of corn to find out if her lover is faithful. Alexandre Benois’s set design for a ballet named for one of these beings includes a fantastical room that contains stars and snowy mountains. After being put to sleep by a mad doctor, Franz awakes to Swanhilda imitating one of these beings they had earlier seen in a window. One of these beings brought to life by the Charlatan is represented by a C major and F-sharp major polychord in a ballet choreographed by Michel Fokine. In a ballet set on Christmas Eve, Drosselmeyer gives Clara one of these beings who fights the Mouse King. For 10 points, a living kind of what object is the subject of The Nutcracker?
ANSWER: dolls [accept puppets; accept nutcracker dolls; accept automatons; accept marionettes; prompt on toys; prompt on nutcrackers until read by asking “what type of object is that an example of?”]
[after 81% of the tossup] A character who opposes two of these people quarrels with his son over the girl Emma in an opera that was left with unfinished orchestration. In an opera, one of these people chooses Marfa as his bride, but she goes insane after being poisoned at their engagement party. The orchestra imitates the sound of bells at the start of a scene in which a crowd chants “Glory!” in an opera about one of these people who hallucinates a murdered child. An 1836 opera titled for one of these people features a scene in which the Polish army is led into a blizzard and was followed by its composer’s opera Ruslan and Lyudmila. That opera by Mikhail Glinka is titled A Life for [one of these people]. For 10 points, what kind of person is the main character of Modest Mussorgsky’s opera Boris Godunov?
ANSWER: tsars [accept A Life for the Tsar or Zhizn’ za tsarya; accept The Tsar’s Bride or Tsarskaya Nevesta; prompt on Russian king or Russian emperor] (The first line refers to Khovanshchina.)
[after 82% of the tossup] This author maligned social classes like the aristocratic “Barbarians” and middle-class “Philistines” for embracing sentimental “bathos.” This author was inspired by a fable contrasting the spider with the bee in Jonathan Swift’s The Battle of the Books to write that a concept which partially titles one book should be defined by “sweetness and light.” This author defined the first title concept as “the best which has been thought and said” in Culture and Anarchy. This author included the poem “To Marguerite – Continued” with the dramatic poem Empedocles on Etna. A poem by this author begins, “The sea is calm tonight” and declares “Ah, love, let us be true / To one another!” For 10 points, name this critic and poet who wrote about a “darkling plain… where ignorant armies clash by night” in “Dover Beach.”
ANSWER: Matthew Arnold
[after 83% of the tossup] Specific term required. Reuben Gronau distinguished home production and this concept in a paper built on Gary Becker’s “A Theory of the Allocation of Time.” This concept’s “gap” of two to three hours per week between American mothers and fathers was studied by Arlie Hochschild (“HOKE-shild”). A book partly titled for this concept calls gambling “barbarian” in the chapter “The Belief in Luck.” The opportunity cost of this activity increases with wages, but at high wages, this activity [emphasize] increases in labor’s backward-bending supply curve. Per an 1899 book, pecuniary emulation seeks to surpass a group named for this activity that engages in conspicuous consumption. For 10 points, name this activity of voluntarily abstaining from labor, whose “class” was theorized by Thorsten Veblen.
ANSWER: leisure [accept The Theory of the Leisure Class or leisure class; accept leisure gap; prompt on free time or time off or not working or relaxation or recreation; prompt on class until read by asking “what other concept characterizes the class in that work’s title?”; reject “unemployment”] (The first paper is “Leisure, Home Production, and Work—the Theory of the Allocation of Time Revisited.”)
[after 84% of the tossup] An enzyme that primarily degrades this protein forces substrates to refold into beta-sheets in a triangular prism-shaped active site. Two disulfide bonds stabilize the two chains of this protein, which originate from cleavage of a single precursor that assembles into hexameric complexes that coordinate to zinc. This protein propagates signals after binding a receptor tyrosine kinase that triggers the PI3K and ERK pathways. Intracellular vesicles sensitive to this protein express the protein GLUT4. Amylin and this hormone are produced in the islets of Langerhans in beta cells of the pancreas. This hormone promotes the formation of glycogen. For 10 points, name this peptide hormone that promotes absorption of glucose that is deficient in diabetes.
ANSWER: insulin
[after 85% of the tossup] One model of these substances consists of two independent phases, one condensed state and one normal state, and was formulated by Tizsa. The mixing of a working liquid and one of these substances allows cooling down to 2 millikelvins in a dilution refrigerator. One of these substances can be created using isentropic compression in a Pomeranchuk cell. These substances display quantized vortices called rotons that can form in these substances as predicted by Landau. These substances have high thermal conductivity due to propagating temperature waves called second sound. Below the lambda point, helium-4 transitions to one of these substances. These substances can form Rollin films that enable them to creep up walls. For 10 points, name these substances that have zero viscosity and flow without friction.
ANSWER: superfluids [accept superfluidity; accept superfluid liquid helium]
[after 85% of the tossup] In one work, this thinker used the example of Castor and Pollux sleeping in alternating shifts to demonstrate that the soul is not always thinking. A chapter in a work by this thinker contrasts certain knowledge with arguments that are likely to be true based on “probability,” or agreement between our own and others’ experiences. This thinker described a central concept being affected by sensory experiences of intrinsic “primary qualities” and subjective “secondary qualities.” This thinker argued that reflection or sensation informs all “objects of thinking” to refute “innate ideas” in favor of the human mind as a blank slate, or tabula rasa. For 10 points, name this Enlightenment philosopher who wrote An Essay Concerning Human Understanding.
ANSWER: John Locke
[after 87% of the tossup] The southern shore of this body of water is home to the large Granot Loma log cabin mansion. The remnants of a floating hopper on this body of water is nicknamed “Uncle Harvey’s Mausoleum.” Birdwatchers flock to Whitefish Point on this body of water, which is part of an aquatic “Graveyard” where a shipwreck museum houses a salvaged bell. The cartoon-inspired Pickle Barrel House is in one of two towns on this lake named Grand Marais. This lake is connected to others to its south via a lock between two cities named Sault Ste. Marie (“SOO saint muh-REE”). This lake is home to the furthest inland oceangoing port in the world and the wreck of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald. For 10 points, Duluth, Minnesota, is on what largest North American Great Lake?
ANSWER: Lake Superior [or Gichi-Gami; or Kitchi-Gami]
[after 88% of the tossup] In a novel by this author, Terry is exiled for trying to rape his wife Alima. In that novel by this author, the sociology student Vandyck Jennings and two of his friends investigate an unknown region whose inhabitants reproduce through parthenogenesis. This author wrote a short story in which one character consumes cod-liver oil instead of ale, wine, and red meat. The protagonist of that story by this author requests to remove its title object, describing it as “a debased Romanesque with delirium tremens.” This author wrote a story in which the protagonist exclaims “I’ve got out at last… in spite of you and Jane” after she is prescribed a rest cure by her husband John. For 10 points, name this author who described a woman imprisoned by the pattern of the title decoration in The Yellow Wallpaper.
ANSWER: Charlotte Perkins Gilman [or Charlotte Anna Perkins Gilman; or Charlotte Perkins Stetson] (The novel is Herland.)
[after 88% of the tossup] The metals found in Fischer-type and Schrock-type carbenes have low and high values for this quantity respectively. The 18-electron rule is applicable for low values of this quantity for metals in organometallic complexes. For a given pH, this quantity is found on the x-axis of Frost–Ebsworth diagrams. Relativistic effects affecting the 6s orbital allows gold to assume a negative value of this quantity. Due to the inert-pair effect, larger Group 14 elements tend to reduce the value of this quantity by 2. Fluorine is the only halogen to exclusively have a value of negative one for this quantity. For 10 points, name this quantity that gives the number of electrons lost from an atom during bonding.
ANSWER: oxidation state [accept oxidation number or valence]
[after 90% of the tossup] A bourrée anglaise concludes J. S. Bach’s solo partita for this instrument, for which his son C. P. E. Bach also wrote a solo sonata in A minor. In the Berlin Philharmonic, Emmanuel Pahud plays this instrument. Mozart wrote four quartets for this instrument accompanied by strings, and a concerto for this instrument and harp. Francis Poulenc’s (“fron-SEESE poo-LANK’s”) sonata for this instrument begins with it playing a descending E minor broken chord. Edgar Varèse wrote Density 21.5 for a player of this instrument. A solo for this instrument marked très modéré descends chromatically from C-sharp to G to open Debussy’s Prélude à l’apres-midi d’un faune. For 10 points, name this reedless woodwind instrument.
ANSWER: flute [or flauto traverso; or transverse flute; reject “flauto dolce”]
[after 91% of the tossup] At the end of this play, one character sings “I want you to help me” eighteen times, only stopping the repetition to invoke the names of her family members. In one scene in this play, a group of men sing a song that claims “When you marry, marry a railroad man” after an estranged family member returns. In this play, Wining Boy sells another character a silk suit by convincing him it will attract women. After their truck breaks down twice in West Virginia, a character in this play and his friend Lymon arrive with a truck full of watermelons and claim that a man was pushed down a well by the Ghosts of the Yellow Dog. For 10 points, name this play in which Boy Willie and Berniece exorcise Sutter’s ghost from the title instrument, written by August Wilson.
ANSWER: The Piano Lesson
[after 92% of the tossup] People commemorate one of these beings on Candlemas by sending gifts for her on small boats out to sea. Stones representing these beings are held in porcelain vessels named soperas. All-white clothing is worn to invoke one of these figures referred to as the “Father of Creation.” Small cement heads are often erected outside homes to obtain the protection of one of these figures who wears a red and black hat named Elegua. Drums called bata are played to summon these figures in the hope that they will possess people who are attending a feast. In the practice of matanza, animals are sacrificed to these beings, who were sent to Earth by Olódùmarè. For 10 points, religions like Candomblé and Santeria syncretize Catholic saints with what spirits from Yoruba religion?
ANSWER: orishas [or orisas; or òrìṣàs; or orichas; or orichás; or orixas; or orixás]
[after 94% of the tossup] An eight-foot-tall sculpture of a person with this surname sits atop a pedestal engraved with the phrase “The Holiest Thing Alive” in Ashland, Pennsylvania. That person with this surname may have substituted for Maggie Graham in a painting that gained popularity after being acquired by the Musée de Luxembourg. The composition of a portrait of Thomas Carlyle was modeled after a portrait of a person with this surname that contains a butterfly monogram beside a print of the Thames hanging on a wall. Because she could not stand for long periods of time, a woman with this surname sat for a portrait in which she wears a white lace headscarf while facing to the left. For 10 points, give the surname of the model for Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1 by her son, James McNeill.
ANSWER: Whistler [accept James Abbott McNeill Whistler or Anna McNeill Whistler; accept Whistler’s mother]
[after 94% of the tossup] The son of a Lebanese businessman claims that he is adapting a novel by this author for theatre to hide his relationship with Nick Guest in Alan Hollinghurst’s novel The Line of Beauty. A novel by this author ends with the woman’s rights orator Verena Tarrant being carried out of a hall with tears, “not the last she was destined to shed,” in her eyes. The protagonist of a novel by this author first meets her aunt Lydia in the library of her grandmother’s house in Albany. Pansy is revealed to be the daughter of Madame Merle in a novel by this author in which the protagonist rejects the proposals of Lord Warburton and Caspar Goodwood before marrying Gilbert Osmond in Rome. For 10 points, name this author of The Bostonians who also created Isabel Archer in The Portrait of a Lady.
ANSWER: Henry James
[after 97% of the tossup] This musician’s band repeats a chant beginning “freedom for your daddy” on a bonus track of an album that also includes a song written to show that a band can swing in 6/8 time. An album by this musician recorded with Eric Dolphy at Cornell includes a song with censored lyrics like “don’t let them tar and feather us” and called an Arkansas politician “sick and ridiculous.” Lyrics like “You know someone great has gone” were added by Joni Mitchell to a song by this musician dedicated to a man nicknamed “Prez.” That song by this composer of “Better Git It in Your Soul” was re-titled “Theme for Lester Young” on an album whose title repeats his last name five times. For 10 points, name this jazz bassist who wrote “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat.”
ANSWER: Charles Mingus [or Charles Mingus Jr.]
[after 97% of the tossup] Timothy Jackson asserted that the outline of this symphony’s slow woodwind opening, which rises from E to G, then F-sharp to A, represents a cruciform. The last movement of this symphony uses a composite melody in the violins of [read slowly] long F-sharp, E, D, dotted C-sharp, B, C-sharp, while the third movement is simultaneously in 4/4 and 12/8. Traditionally, the audience claps between the third and fourth movements of this symphony. This B minor symphony was conducted by its composer less than a month before his death, possibly from cholera. This symphony’s allegro con grazia second movement is a 5/4 “limping waltz.” For 10 points, name this final symphony by the composer of the 1812 Overture.
ANSWER: Pathétique Symphony [or Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6]
[after 98% of the tossup] Tom Turpin’s Rosebud Bar was a center for players of this style, an early example of which is “The Bully Song.” Pieces in this style typically use 16-measure themes divided into four parts, and its “classic” school was centered on St. Louis. Interest in this style was revived following a 1970 album by Joshua Rifkin which included a piece that begins with the notes [read slowly] D, E, C, A, [pause] B, G played by both hands. Some pieces in this style were published as “two-steps.” Stride piano was a successor to this style, which is characterized by alternating bass notes and chords underneath syncopated melodies. For 10 points, name this music style exemplified by Scott Joplin pieces like The Entertainer.
ANSWER: ragtime [accept two-step until read]
[after 99% of the tossup] After being asked about art, a character in this novel says, “People are like trees in a forest; no botanist would think of studying each individual birch tree.” While standing by a window, a character in this novel confesses his love to a woman who marries a 46-year-old hypochondriac and inherits the estate Nikolskoe (“nee-KOL-sko-yeh”). At the beginning of this novel, a character who is compared to a jackdaw returns to a man whose brother settles in Dresden after pursuing Princess R. One of this novel’s protagonists mends an opponent’s leg immediately after a duel over the servant Fenichka. After a faulty autopsy, a character in this novel dies from an infected cut. At the beginning of this novel, Nikolai waits at his estate, Marino, for Arkady. For 10 points, Yevgeny Bazarov is a proponent of nihilism in what Ivan Turgenev novel?
ANSWER: Fathers and Sons [or Otcy i deti; or Fathers and Children]
[after 100% of the tossup] A play by this author featuring only male characters was restaged under the title Paradise with an all-female cast by Kae Tempest in 2021. A deus ex machina occurs in that play by this author when a deified Heracles convinces a character with a festering snakebite wound to go back to Troy with Neoptolemus. A play by this author ends with the chorus quoting Solon’s indictment to “count no man happy” until he is dead. This playwright of Philoctetes wrote about a man who is told by the blind seer Tiresias that he caused a plague by killing his predecessor at a crossroad. The title character of the first play in a cycle by this author gouges out his eyes upon finding the hanged body of his wife and mother, Jocasta. For 10 points, name this ancient Greek tragedian of Oedipus Rex.
ANSWER: Sophocles
[after 100% of the tossup] A humorous painting that was commissioned for one of these events depicts a figure peeing through a laurel wreath and was created by Lorenzo Lotto. Rainwater damaged a 1992 restoration of a painting depicting one of these events that was created for the San Giorgio Monastery before being looted by Napoleon. The artist plays a viola da braccio alongside Tintoretto and Titian in a depiction of one of these events from John 2, which is currently the largest painting in the Louvre. A 1434 double portrait often interpreted as depicting one of these events includes the artist’s signature on a wall and a hand hold that may be an act of fides. For 10 points, one of what events is depicted in a Paolo Veronese painting set “at Cana?”
ANSWER: weddings [or marriages; or matrimony; accept The Wedding at Cana or Arnolfini Wedding; prompt on feasts or banquets by asking “as part of what other events?”] (The first line refers to Lotto’s Venus and Cupid. The fourth line refers to Jan van Eyck’s Arnolfini Portrait.)
[after 100% of the tossup] In hollow rectangular waveguides, waves named for this quantity have the lowest non-zero cutoff frequency in the one-zero mode. For a point charge moving at a uniform relativistic velocity, this quantity becomes “pancake-shaped” by bunching up in the transverse direction. The density of energy stored by this quantity is given by permittivity over 2 times this quantity squared. The component of this quantity parallel to the surface is constant across a boundary. That derivation uses that the flux of this quantity through a surface is proportional only to enclosed charge density according to Gauss’s law. The negative line integral of this quantity gives the scalar potential. For 10 points, what vector quantity is measured in newtons per coulomb and created by electric charges?
ANSWER: electric field [or E-field; prompt on E]
[after 100% of the tossup] A questionnaire that screens for a disorder partly named for this process assesses BMI and neck size and is known by the acronym STOP-BANG. Disorders involving this process can be indicated by a high score on a scale named for Epworth Hospital, including one that can be treated by supplementing orexin and often presents with cataplexy. The “central” form of a condition can be differentiated from its “obstructive” form based on whether it is more prevalent during “quiescent” or “paradoxical” stages of this process, though both can be managed with CPAP machines. High levels of somatotropin are released after the onset of the “slow wave” form of this process, during which memory consolidation also occurs. For 10 points, circadian rhythms regulate what process promoted by melatonin?
ANSWER: sleeping [or being asleep; accept obstructive sleep apnea or central sleep apnea; accept REM sleep or paradoxical sleep or non-REM sleep or NREM sleep or quiescent sleep; prompt on terms like snoozing or dozing off]
[after 100% of the tossup] Pilgrimages to this location venerate the spots where four shards of a jar of ambrosia landed on Earth. After a failed horse sacrifice, this location “descended from heaven” when a cosmic serpent was slain by Indra. After Agni is not capable of bearing Shiva’s child, Kārtikeya is born in this location. A city near this location that houses genealogical records of pilgrims dating to the 17th century is a popular site for cremation, as its holiness is believed to grant salvation. At times specified by the orbit of Jupiter, adherents at the Kumbh Mēlā festival immerse themselves in ghats adjacent to this body of water. For 10 points, name this holiest river in Hinduism, which is also India’s longest.
ANSWER: River Ganges [or Ganga; prompt on Prayāgrāja or Allahabad or Varanasi or Haridwāra or Ujjain or Nashik]
[after 100% of the tossup] Camelid bones and feline incense burners were left on this body of water by pilgrims to its Khoa Reef. Parallel canals and alternating plant beds were used in the Waru Waru irrigation technique on this body of water. A civilization centred on this body of water created the Akapana mud pyramid and Pumapunku mounds, as well as a monolithic “Gate” that depicted 32 humans and 16 condor-headed people surrounding a central figure. The Gate of the Sun was constructed near this body of water that contains the Island of the Sun and the Island of the Moon, which are pilgrimage sites for this lake’s Tiwanaku civilization. For 10 points, many Aymara live near what lake that is shared by Peru and Bolivia?
ANSWER: Lake Titicaca
[after 100% of the tossup] John Wilson’s 2023 recording of this musical was the first complete recording of the original orchestration by Robert Russell Bennett. Miles Davis’s album Steamin’ opens with a cover of a song from this musical in which a character describes “the slickest gig you’ll ever see.” A character in this musical imagines “long tangled hair” which “falls across my face” in a song in which he vows to win a bride, “Lonely Room.” One of the female lead’s love interests sings “chicks and ducks and geese better scurry” before the imagined “surrey with the fringe on top.” Agnes de Mille choreographed this musical’s “dream ballet” in which Laurey “makes up her mind” about Jud and Curly. For 10 points, name this Rodgers and Hammerstein musical titled after a US state.
ANSWER: Oklahoma!
[after 100% of the tossup] The concept of “architecture parlante” was developed in this century by an architect who designed an ambitious ideal town centred on a salt factory. A church designed in this century depicts the Ten Commandments on bronze doors and the Last Judgement on its pediment and is called La Madeleine. In this century, architects like Robert Adam were influenced by Giovanni Battista Piranesi’s vedute drawings depicting Roman landmarks. A building from this century that uses a Greek cross plan with domes on each ambulatory and Corinthian orders in its portico was designed by Jacques-Germain Sufflot. That building from this century became a mausoleum for national heroes and was modelled on a Roman temple. For 10 points, name this century during which Neoclassicism developed with buildings such as the Panthéon in Paris.
ANSWER: 18th century [or 1700s] (The architect in the first line is Claude Nicolas Ledoux.)

Abhinav Rachakonda ↩

[after 16% of the tossup] The final name in this game’s credits is Seth Goldman, who designed a secret boss who blocks the path to Nyleth’s shrine. In this game, the disgraced Lugoli attacks the player by flinging green balls of muckmaggots with a ladle. The Extricator is used to remove the “Twisted Bud” that parasitizes this game’s protagonist, who must seek out Dr. Yarnaby in Greymoor to remove it. In this game’s true ending, the player character uses the Everbloom to descend into the Abyss to free Lost Lace from the hold of the Void with the aid of her half-sibling, the protagonist of a 2017 Metroidvania set in Hallownest. For 10 points, Hornet is the protagonist of what long-awaited Team Cherry game, which was unexpectedly released in September 2025 as the sequel to Hollow Knight?
ANSWER: Hollow Knight: Silksong [reject “Hollow Knight”]
[after 34% of the tossup] In a story set after this war, Henry jumps into a river and tells his brother Lyman “my boots are filling” before he drowns. In a story set after this war, Norman Bowker walks fully clothed into his hometown lake after driving around it twelve times, only stopping to get a hamburger. After being shot twice, the protagonist of a story set during this war vows to scare the inexperienced medic Bobby Jorgenson using flares and sandbags. This war is the subject of a collection that contains “How to Tell a True War Story” and another story in which Kiowa drowns in a sewage field. Lieutenant Jimmy Cross lists “can openers, pocket knives, heattabs, wristwatches” in a story set during this war in which Ted Lavender is shot in the head. For 10 points, name this war, the backdrop of the stories in Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried.
ANSWER: Vietnam War [or Second Indochina War; or Chiến tranh Việt Nam; or Kháng chiến chống Mỹ] (The first story is “The Red Convertible” by Louise Erdrich.)
[after 35% of the tossup] In one of these people’s stories, a man accidentally kills his nephew by burning his house down in an attempt to get him away from his two wives. Two lizard-men in these people’s mythology castrate Kidili for attempting to assault the women who eventually become the Pleiades and are chased across the sky by Jukurra-Jukurra. To describe the transcendence of time in these people’s stories, W. E. H. Stanner coined the term “everywhen.” In one of these people’s stories, the menstrual blood of one of the Wawalag sisters attracts a waterhole-dwelling creature to swallow them. These people tell stories of songlines formed during the Dreamtime by traveling creator spirits such as the Rainbow Serpent. For 10 points, name these native people of Australia.
ANSWER: Aboriginal Australians [or Aborigines; accept specific subgroups like Kukatja or Yolngu; prompt on indigenous Australians or native Australians]
[after 41% of the tossup] Raiders in this state fought both Union and Confederate forces during the Cortina Wars. During the Battle of Gaines’ Mill, every officer in a “Brigade” named for this state was injured or killed except for its leader, John Bell Hood. A month after Appomattox, men in this state fought the last battle of the Civil War, the Battle of Palmito Hill. The Nueces (“new-AY-siss”) Massacre targeted antislavery Unionist Germans in this state. Benjamin Franklin Tarry led a regiment nicknamed for a law enforcement group in this state that fought against the Comanche. Gordon Granger’s announcement of the Emancipation Proclamation in a coastal city in this state is commemorated on Juneteenth. For 10 points, name this state whose police force includes its namesake “Rangers.”
ANSWER: Texas [accept Texas Rangers; accept Texas Germans; accept Texas Brigade]
[after 46% of the tossup] A book on “A Natural History of” this function in language was written by Laurence Horn, who names non-Boolean clauses in which phrases with this function can be “raised.” Words performing this function before verbs are dropped in favor of postverbal ones as part of Jespersen’s cycle. Use of this function is repeated for rhetorical understatement in litotes (“ly-TOTE-eez”). AAVE (“A-A-V-E”) has, but General American English lacks, a phenomenon in which this function intensifies when used more than once, called this function’s “concord.” In German, prepending a “k” to an indefinite article does this function. Doubling this function in General American English cancels out and is often stylistically discouraged. For 10 points, what function is applied when adding the contraction “n’t” (“N apostrophe T”) to certain verbs?
ANSWER: negation [or negative; accept double negation or double negative; accept negative concord; accept NEG-raising or negative raising; accept A Natural History of Negation]
[after 47% of the tossup] A group of hymns in this text begin with a mahala symbol, which may either mean “woman” or “place of alighting.” Three repetitions of a hymn whose name means “that door” occur in this text, including one which provides the only vocatives in its Japujī section. Over 100 hymns in this text were written by the 13th-century mystic sheikh Bābā Farīd (“fuh-REED”). A rumalla cloth covers this text when closed; while it is read, this text is fanned with a yak-hair chauri. This text’s opening line, called the Mūl Mantar (“MOOL MUN-ter”), contains the monotheistic statement “Ik Onkar.” After a 1708 declaration at Naded, this text took on an eternal spiritual role, succeeding Gobind Singh. For 10 points, name this holy book that serves as Sikhism’s eternal Guru.
ANSWER: Gurū Granth Sāhib [accept Śrī Gurū Granth Sāhib Jī; accept Ādī Granth or Ādī Śrī Granth Sāhib Jī]
[after 61% of the tossup] Pilgrimages to this location venerate the spots where four shards of a jar of ambrosia landed on Earth. After a failed horse sacrifice, this location “descended from heaven” when a cosmic serpent was slain by Indra. After Agni is not capable of bearing Shiva’s child, Kārtikeya is born in this location. A city near this location that houses genealogical records of pilgrims dating to the 17th century is a popular site for cremation, as its holiness is believed to grant salvation. At times specified by the orbit of Jupiter, adherents at the Kumbh Mēlā festival immerse themselves in ghats adjacent to this body of water. For 10 points, name this holiest river in Hinduism, which is also India’s longest.
ANSWER: River Ganges [or Ganga; prompt on Prayāgrāja or Allahabad or Varanasi or Haridwāra or Ujjain or Nashik]
[after 63% of the tossup] Joseph Cundall’s photographs of this artwork were referenced by Elizabeth Wardle to create a replica now held in the Reading Museum. In this artwork, a naked man squats underneath a woman in a red gateway who is being touched by a priest. This artwork’s 58 tituli describe the construction of a motte and a man who “gives strength to the boys.” The appearance of figures such as Wadard in this artwork suggests that it was commissioned by the Bishop of Odo. A man in this artwork with an arrow in his eye is often identified as Harold Godwinson, whose coronation is depicted below Halley’s Comet in this artwork. For 10 points, name this embroidered depiction of the Norman conquest of England held in a namesake French cathedral.
ANSWER: Bayeux Tapestry [or Tapisserie de Bayeux]
[after 63% of the tossup] This ethnicity’s newspaper Hunchak named a party that revolted in the Sasun Rebellions. A politician of this ethnicity was killed in parliament by an ex-journalist whom Alexander Litvinenko alleged the Russian GRU colluded with. After the Tehcir (“teh-JEER”) Law led to mass deportations, these people sought revenge in Operation Nemesis. Hrant Dink, a member of this ethnicity, was assassinated while on trial for violating Article 301, which affirms the denial of genocide against these people. Massacres of these people were organized by the Three Pashas, who forced people of this ethnicity on death marches through the Syrian Desert. For 10 points, the Ottoman Empire organized a genocide of what people whose country’s capital is Yerevan?
ANSWER: Armenians [or Hayer] (The politician in the second line is Vazgen Sargsyan.)
[after 64% of the tossup] In the multiple parameter case, this distribution is the limit of a statistic that sandwiches an “I inverse” term between two “theta-hat minus theta-zero” terms called the Wald statistic. In a theorem about convergence to this distribution, one parameter equals the difference in dimension between the full parameter space and the space associated with the null hypothesis. Twice the log-likelihood ratio converges to this distribution by Wilks’ theorem. The formula “rows minus one times columns minus one” gives the value of a parameter when computing a test statistic converging to this distribution, which sums values of “observed minus expected squared, all over expected” for each entry in a contingency table. For 10 points, what distribution names a large-sample hypothesis test for goodness-of-fit or independence?
ANSWER: chi-squared (“kye-squared”) distribution [reject “chi”]
[after 64% of the tossup] Making workers independently seek this concept, known as decommodification, distinguishes Gøsta Esping-Andersen’s three “worlds” titled for this concept and “capitalism.” Charles Murray’s book Losing Ground controversially claims that programs providing this concept harm American society. This concept names a restriction within the taxing and spending clause in Article I of the US Constitution, which follows from a goal in the preamble to “promote the general” type of this concept. The Beveridge Report is credited with starting social reforms to provide this concept “cradle-to-grave” through services like universal health care. For 10 points, governments provide relief to their people in what concept’s namesake “state,” exemplified by Sweden?
ANSWER: welfare [or well-being; accept social welfare; accept welfare state; accept general welfare clause; accept welfare capitalism; prompt on quality of life; prompt on social safety net or social security or entitlement]
[after 65% of the tossup] This country began an offensive by capturing Fort Boquerón. In a speech on the Senate floor, Huey Long supported the war effort of this country and accused Standard Oil of backing its northwestern neighbor. Lino Oviedo allegedly threatened General Andrés Rodríguez with a grenade to convince him to lead a coup in this country. A department in this country is named for Rutherford B. Hayes because he arbitrated a border dispute in this country’s favor. For 35 years, this country was under the dictatorship of Colorado Party leader Alfredo Stroessner, who was of partial Guaraní descent. This country fought a war with Bolivia over the supposedly oil-rich Gran Chaco. For 10 points, name this South American country whose party feuds intensified after its loss in the War of the Triple Alliance.
ANSWER: Paraguay [or Republic of Paraguay; or República del Paraguay]
[after 78% of the tossup] In 1995, the oldest recorded evidence of this practice was excavated at a site whose name means “beloved’s pass.” 47 depictions of this practice are found at a site for it called Dainzú (“dah-een-SOO”). A man participating in this practice is depicted on a stone panel with snakes sprouting from his neck. Depictions of people engaging in this practice generally depict them covering their chest with a palma and wearing heavy “yokes” on a belt. Ulama is a modern descendant of this practice, which took place in purpose-built venues shaped like a capital I from above. The Popol Vuh describes the practice of sacrificing people who participated in this activity. For 10 points, participants had to use their hips to push a rubber object through stone hoops in what pre-Colombian activity?
ANSWER: Mesoamerican ball game [or ōllamaliztli; or tlachtli; or pitz; or juego de pelota; or pok-ta-pok; or pok-a-tok; or pokolpok; accept ulama until read; prompt on games or sports]

Josh Xu ↩

[after 25% of the tossup] Sundiata Acoli and a woman who took this surname were wounded in a 1973 shootout on the New Jersey Turnpike. That woman with this surname escaped from prison in 1979 with aid from the Black Liberation Army and was granted asylum in Cuba, where she died in 2025. Jeff Pearlman’s 2025 book about a man with this surname focuses on his relationship with mother, a member of the Panther 21, and took its title from one of his works, Only God Can Judge Me. Keefe D was arrested in 2023 over the unsolved murder of a man with this surname. Orlando Anderson possibly killed that person with this surname in a Las Vegas drive-by shooting linked to his feud with the Notorious B.I.G. For 10 points, the activists Assata and Afeni shared what surname with the rapper Tupac?
ANSWER: Shakur [accept Tupac Shakur or Afeni Shakur or Assata Shakur; prompt on Lesane Parish Crooks or JoAnne Deborah Bryan or JoAnne Deborah Chesimard or Alice Williams by asking “by what surname were they commonly known?”]
[after 35% of the tossup] This operation’s output is estimated by simulating trajectories in the REINFORCE algorithm, one of a class of methods named for “policy” and this operation. Pseudo-residuals are fit using “weak learners” such as decision trees in a method contrasted with random forests named for this operation’s “boosting.” Since the sigmoid activation function saturates at extreme values, it is susceptible to a problem in which this operation “vanishes.” The negative learning rate scales the result of this operation applied to the loss associated with a single data point in the update step of a stochastic algorithm named for this operation. An optimization algorithm that takes steps in the opposite direction to this operation is named for this operation’s “descent.” For 10 points, name this operation that outputs a vector of partial derivatives.
ANSWER: gradient [accept policy gradient; accept gradient boosting or gradient-boosted trees; accept vanishing gradient; accept gradient descent or stochastic gradient descent; prompt on del or nabla; prompt on partial derivative until read]
[after 36% of the tossup] A ruler of these people commissioned the “Great proclamation upon the pacification of Wú” to affirm their independence. A dynasty of these people that sustained repeated naval attacks by Po Binasuor was usurped by another dynasty that only ruled for seven years. These people defeated invading armies at Bạch Đằng (“bike dong”) River three times. Literature in a native writing system called chữ Nôm flourished during a dynasty of these people that repulsed three Mongol invasions. These people had a centuries-long feud with the Kingdom of Champa to their south. These people’s Fourth Era of Northern Domination was ended by the Lam Sơn rebellion. That rebellion of these people against the Míng Dynasty was lead by Lê Lợi. For 10 points, name these people whose Trần, Hồ, and Later Lê Dynasties had their capital at modern-day Hànội.
ANSWER: Vietnamese people [or Viet; or người Việt; or Kinh]
[after 38% of the tossup] During a conflict with this tribe, a military court at Fort St. Marks controversially found two British merchants guilty of arms dealing. This tribe’s twenty-year agreement with territorial governor William Pope Duval was broken in less than ten years by another leader, who executed Arbuthnot and Ambrister for spying for these people. A group of this tribe settled in Coahuila, Mexico, under John Horse and Wild Cat, and Andros Island in the Bahamas was settled by this tribe’s “Black” descendants. The Treaty of Moultrie Creek signed by this tribe was superseded by the Treaty of Payne’s Landing. A false white flag operation captured this tribe’s Chief Osceola. For 10 points, name this Florida-based tribe that fought several 19th-century wars against the US.
ANSWER: Seminoles [or Yat’siminoli]
[after 41% of the tossup] After an 1886 rebellion, many members of this ethnicity’s Ghiljī (“GILL-jee”) tribe were forcibly resettled. A ruler of this ethnicity briefly lost control of his state during a conflict in which Alexander Burnes was killed. A governor of this ethnicity was defeated at Nowshera by a ruler who united twelve misls into a single state. William Brydon was the only European who survived a retreat from the capital of a ruler of this ethnicity. A ruler of this ethnicity lost Peshawar to Ranjit Singh. Another ruler of this ethnicity overthrew Shah Shuja, ending the rule of the Sadozai branch of its Durrani clan. After a defeat by Britain at Kandahar, the Durand Line became the eastern border between British India and a state ruled by people of this ethnicity. For 10 points, name this ethnicity of the Barakzai rulers of Afghanistan.
ANSWER: Pashtuns [or Pakhtuns; or Pathans; or Paṣtūns; prompt on Afghans until “Afghanistan” is read]
[after 41% of the tossup] During this battle, a defeated rear admiral said “let us enjoy the beauty of the moon” while going down with his ship. The Chicago Tribune was almost prosecuted under the Espionage Act for Stanley Johnston’s report on this battle, where the Thach Weave debuted with prior help of “Butch” O’Hare. This battle’s location was deciphered from “AF” through breaking the JN-25 code. The losing side of this battle had also attacked the Aleutian Islands as a diversion. In this battle, bombers attacked the Akagi and Kaga as they rearmed planes for a second strike. All four Japanese carriers in this battle were sunk in exchange for the loss of the USS Yorktown. For 10 points, what battle considered a turning point in the Pacific Theater was a June 1942 victory for US forces?
ANSWER: Battle of Midway
[after 43% of the tossup] Tom Shadbolt coined the acronym KEEPOOS after Norman Kirk barred a group of members of this profession who would later be opposed by John Minto’s Group HART. Raed Ahmed, a member of this profession, defected to the United States in response to the persistent torture of people in this profession by Uday Hussein. Avery Brundage was criticized for insensitivity after an attack on people in this profession that led to the hijacking of Lufthansa Flight 615. The murder of a Moroccan waiter in Lillehammer was retribution for the murder of people in this profession who were restricted by the Gleneagles Agreement. Operation Wrath of God sought vengeance for people in this profession who were taken hostage by the group Black September. For 10 points, the Munich Massacre targeted what people who compete at the Olympics?
ANSWER: athletes [or sportsmen; or coaches; accept specific athletes like weightlifters, runners, soccer players, or rugby players]
[after 47% of the tossup] The first undersea roundabout is part of a tunnel system in one of this country’s territories, whose coat of arms shows only a single ram on a blue shield. The entire northeastern portion of one of this country’s islands makes up the world’s largest national park. In 2022, this country and Canada added a land border when they partitioned an island to end the peaceful Whisky War. This country’s territories include an archipelago in the North Sea whose capital is Tórshavn (“TORS-hown”) and an island home to Thule Air Base. The strait of Skagerrak is north of this country’s portion of the Jutland Peninsula. For 10 points, what country administers the Faroe Islands and Greenland?
ANSWER: Denmark [or Kingdom of Denmark; or Danish Realm; or Kongeriget Danmark; or Kongsríki Danmarkar; or Kunngeqarfik Danmarki; accept Danish Empire; prompt on Greenland until read] (The island in the third sentence is Hans Island.)
[after 47% of the tossup] Description acceptable. Louis Delgrès (“del-GRESS”) attempted to resist the reversal of this goal in an area where it was achieved by Victor Hugues (“yoog”). Although this goal was reaffirmed in Article 3 of a constitution issued by a leader later likened to Fidel Castro and Pericles, dissatisfaction with its implementation led to a rebellion led by Moïse Hyacinthe (“mo-EEZ yah-SANT”). In exchange for military aid, Simón Bolívar promised Alexandre Pétion (“pay-tee-ON”) to achieve this goal in Venezuela. The National Convention issued a decree ratifying this goal for all territories after it was declared locally by Léger-Félicité Sonthonax (“lay-ZHAY fay-lee-see-TAY son-toh-NAX”). This goal was reversed by the Law of 20 May 1802, which the Leclerc (“luh-CLAIR”) expedition attempted to enforce in Saint-Domingue (“san-doh-MANG”). For 10 points, name this goal that sought to end the institution that enabled Haiti’s pre-revolution sugar plantations.
ANSWER: abolition of slavery [or ending slavery; accept equivalents such as emancipation of slaves or manumission of slaves or freeing slaves; accept enslaved people in place of “slaves”; reject “abolition of the slave trade” or “ending the slave trade” or equivalents]
[after 51% of the tossup] After he was photographed giving three protesters the middle finger, this politician’s gesture was mocked as the “Salmon Arm salute.” A partial nationalization of this politician’s country’s oil industry in the National Energy Program was strongly opposed by Peter Lougheed. During an event that resulted in the conviction of Paul Rose, this politician was urged to the military to intervene by Robert Bourassa. During that event that was moderated by Robert Lemieux (“lum-YUH”), this person said “just watch me,” when asked how far he would go to implement the War Measures Act in response to the kidnapping of James Cross and Pierre Laporte. For 10 points, the October Crisis occurred during the tenure of what Canadian Prime Minister of the 1970s?
ANSWER: Pierre Elliott Trudeau [prompt on Trudeau]
[after 51% of the tossup] In a paper on these institutions “in the Middle Ages,” George Makdisi warns against analogizing them to their European counterparts. A possibly apocryphal tradition holds that a building occupied by one of these institutions was founded by Fatima al-Fihri. That institution was named after the people of Kairouan, or al-Qarawiyyin (“al-kah-rah-wee-YEEN”). Al-Sahili was credited with building a complex that housed one of these institutions together with nearby Sidi Yahya called Djinguereber (“jin-guh-ray-BAIR”). Saladin ended Shi’a influence in one of these institutions at Cairo called Al-Azhar (“all-UZZ-har”). Another one of these institutions was housed at Sankoré (“sahn-ko-RAY”) Mosque in Timbuktu. For 10 points, the Qur’an and Islamic law were studied at what institutions often analogized to those created in Bologna and Oxford?
ANSWER: universities [or university; accept madrasas; accept schools; accept jāmi‘ah or jāmi‘at; accept University of al-Qarawiyyin or University of Timbuktu or Al-Azhar University; prompt on libraries or library; prompt on mosques or masjids until “Mosque” is read by asking “what additional function did it serve?”]
[after 53% of the tossup] A dark horse candidate for this office won after defeating airline executive Al Checchi (“CHECK-ee”) in this office’s only ever “blanket primary.” A holder of this office staked a successful 1994 reelection campaign on a ballot initiative to bar undocumented immigrants from public education and healthcare. A holder of this office lost support after ending the implementation of the “Save our State” initiative and facing an electricity crisis in 2001. That holder of this office was recalled in a 2003 election and was Gray Davis. This office’s most recent Republican holder was a former actor and bodybuilder. Another former actor held this office in between the tenures of Pat and Jerry Brown. For 10 points, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Ronald Reagan held what office that leads a state from Sacramento?
ANSWER: governor of California [prompt on governor by asking “of where?”] (The first and third sentences refer to Gray Davis. The second sentence refers to Pete Wilson.)
[after 53% of the tossup] Raiders in this state fought both Union and Confederate forces during the Cortina Wars. During the Battle of Gaines’ Mill, every officer in a “Brigade” named for this state was injured or killed except for its leader, John Bell Hood. A month after Appomattox, men in this state fought the last battle of the Civil War, the Battle of Palmito Hill. The Nueces (“new-AY-siss”) Massacre targeted antislavery Unionist Germans in this state. Benjamin Franklin Tarry led a regiment nicknamed for a law enforcement group in this state that fought against the Comanche. Gordon Granger’s announcement of the Emancipation Proclamation in a coastal city in this state is commemorated on Juneteenth. For 10 points, name this state whose police force includes its namesake “Rangers.”
ANSWER: Texas [accept Texas Rangers; accept Texas Germans; accept Texas Brigade]
[after 54% of the tossup] A leader of this country names an index alternative to GDP based on electricity consumption, rail cargo, and bank lending. The New Development Bank is headquartered in this country, which was the last in the [emphasize] original acronym of rising economic powers coined by Jim O’Neill. A namesake “shock” on manufacturing jobs resulted from this country joining the WTO in 2001. To attract foreign direct investment, this country opened four southern ports in 1979 as economic “experiments.” This country has been accused of “debt trap diplomacy” through loans to African countries as a part of its Belt and Road Initiative. For 10 points, what country’s Special Economic Zones include Shēnzhèn?
ANSWER: China [or People’s Republic of China; or Zhōngguó; or Zhōnghuá Rénmín Gònghéguó; accept China shock; reject “Republic of China”] (The acronym BRIC referred to Brazil, Russia, India, and China. The index is the Lǐ Kèqiáng index.)
[after 56% of the tossup] In the multiple parameter case, this distribution is the limit of a statistic that sandwiches an “I inverse” term between two “theta-hat minus theta-zero” terms called the Wald statistic. In a theorem about convergence to this distribution, one parameter equals the difference in dimension between the full parameter space and the space associated with the null hypothesis. Twice the log-likelihood ratio converges to this distribution by Wilks’ theorem. The formula “rows minus one times columns minus one” gives the value of a parameter when computing a test statistic converging to this distribution, which sums values of “observed minus expected squared, all over expected” for each entry in a contingency table. For 10 points, what distribution names a large-sample hypothesis test for goodness-of-fit or independence?
ANSWER: chi-squared (“kye-squared”) distribution [reject “chi”]
[after 57% of the tossup] After he received the deposed Peter Orseolo in his court, a king of this name invaded Hungary to remove Samuel Aba and reinstate him as king. After a failed rescue mission by Robert I of Capua, Pope Paschal II was forced to crown a king of this name. Rudolf of Rheinfelden attempted to claim the throne of a king of this name during an event where he sought peace at the castle of Matilda of Tuscany. The Concordat of Worms was agreed to by a king of this name after the Investiture Controversy reached a peak during the reign of his father of the same name. A king of this name fasted for three days in public penance after he was excommunicated by Pope Gregory VII. For 10 points, a Holy Roman Emperor of what name publicly repented during the Walk to Canossa?
ANSWER: Henry [accept Henry III Salian or Henry IV Salian or Henry V Salian; accept Heinrich in place of “Henry”]
[after 57% of the tossup] This architect designed the scenery for a 1968 Billy Al Bengston exhibition at LACMA. This architect fixed a full-scale F-104 jet fighter to the entrance of the California Aerospace Museum. This architect’s use of a fish motif appears in his design of a restaurant in Kobe. This architect’s “open-ended” approach can be seen in the use of corrugated steel and mesh fencing of his Santa Monica residence. A building designed by this architect described as a “metaphoric city” has an atrium he nicknamed “the flower.” This architect associated with Deconstructivism used concave wave-like exteriors for a Los Angeles concert hall. For 10 points, name this Canadian-American architect of the Walt Disney Concert Hall and Guggenheim Bilbao.
ANSWER: Frank Gehry [or Frank Owen Gehry; or Frank Owen Goldberg]
[after 57% of the tossup] This concept titles a posthumous work by Anthony A. Hoekema (“HOO-kuh-mah”). The Second Council of Orange confirmed one type of this concept developed by Augustine that is supported by Arminians. This theological concept is not referenced in the King James Version of the Gospels outside of the Prologue of John, where Jesus is described as “[this concept] from [this concept].” According to Ephesians, salvation occurs through faith and by this concept, forming three Lutheran Solae along with sola scriptura. The angel Gabriel’s address to Mary in Luke 1:28 was adapted into a prayer describing her as “full of” this concept. For 10 points, name this Christian concept of unmerited divine favor described in a spiritual by John Newton as “Amazing.”
ANSWER: grace [accept sola gratia; accept “Amazing Grace”]
[after 58% of the tossup] As exposed by Francis Fletcher-Vane, an activist known as “Skeffy” was summarily executed during this event in the Portobello Barracks. The phrase that one country “unfree shall never be at peace” was coined prior to this event during the funeral of Jeremiah Rossa. Rumors of imminent arrests were described in the forged “Castle Document” by Joseph Plunkett prior to this event. The SS Aud failed to supply arms to this event, despite negotiations by Roger Casement. During this event, a document proclaiming a republic was read on the steps of the General Post Office by Patrick Pearse. Éamon de Valera (“EH-min day vuh-LAY-ruh”) was elected to lead Sinn Féin (“shin fayn”) following this event. For 10 points, what 1916 Irish rebellion against British rule is named for a Christian holiday?
ANSWER: Easter Rising [or Easter Rebellion]
[after 58% of the tossup] In the 1980s, “reflectivist” thinkers in this discipline took part in one of several Great Debates over this discipline. Cynthia Enloe strove to make “feminist sense” of this discipline in a book partly titled for bananas and beaches. He’s not Nozick, but a thinker in this discipline who described a theoretically impossible “night watchman” in a work arguing for an “offensive” subschool of this discipline is John Mearsheimer. The non-coercive “soft” form of one concept central to this discipline was coined by Joseph Nye. In this discipline, balance of power is favored by realists over liberalists’ democratic peace theory. For 10 points, name this discipline that studies interactions between states.
ANSWER: international relations [or IR; accept international affairs or international political economy or global affairs or foreign affairs or foreign policy or diplomacy or geopolitics; prompt on political science or political economy or policy studies or politics or government; prompt on offensive realism until “realist” is read by asking “what discipline does that school study?”]
[after 58% of the tossup] The 17th-century Sinckan (“seen-kahn”) manuscripts from this island contain contracts with indigenous peoples such as the Siraya. That group was often referred to as “cooked” due to their extended contact with newer settlers, in contrast to “raw” groups such as the Atayal (“ah-TAH-yal”), Amis (“AH-meese”), and Seediq (“SAY-dick”), who lived in this island’s mountainous interior. The Spanish Fort Santo Domingo in the north of this island was captured by a Dutch expedition from Fort Zeelandia in 1642. The Kingdom of Tungning was established after the Dutch East India Company presence on this island was removed by Koxinga. Austronesian-speaking indigenous peoples were pushed into this island’s Central Mountain Range by waves of Hakka and Hokkien settlers crossing a narrow strait from China. For 10 points, name this island once called Formosa.
ANSWER: Taiwan [accept Formosa until read]
[after 59% of the tossup] Screenwriter Ben Hecht’s novel Perfidy details a libel case filed by a man from this country against the journalist Malchiel Gruenwald, who accused him of refusing to publish the Vrba–Wetzler Report. In this country, the Glass House was established for refugees by Carl Lutz. An ambassador to this country was inspired by the propaganda film “Pimpernel” Smith to rent out buildings and label them as Swedish. Raoul Wallenberg served as ambassador to this country that was ruled by the Arrow Cross party, whose massacres in this country are commemorated by a statue of bronze shoes on a river in this country. This country’s loss of territory in the Treaty of Trianon partly drove it to ally with Nazi Germany under the leadership of Miklós Horthy. For 10 points, many Jews were deported from what country whose capital is Budapest?
ANSWER: Hungary [or Magyarország; or Kingdom of Hungary; or Magyar Királyság]
[after 60% of the tossup] After he refused to allow any lapsi back into the church, a bishop from this state accused antipope Novatian of inducing his wife’s abortion. After the early Christians Perpetua and Felicity were martyred in this city, Perpetua’s narrative of her “passion” became a widely used devotional text. Much commerce from this city shipped from its harbor, the Cothon. A road marker ten miles away from this city names the Battle of Ad Decimum, where Belisarius defeated a state led by King Gelimer. Following the Decian Persecutions, a plague bearing the name of this city’s Bishop Cyprian was described by its namesake as divine punishment. Hippo Regius was selected to replace this city by the Vandal Kingdom after their invasion of Africa. For 10 points, name this city that sent an army to invade Italy under Hannibal during the Second Punic War.
ANSWER: Carthage
[after 61% of the tossup] Nicholas Owen gained notoriety for his skill in building these people’s “holes.” Richard Topcliffe gained fame for his ability to hunt down people of this type, such as his victim Richard Southwell. After John Day was liberated from prison, he published a propaganda piece directed [emphasize] against these people called Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. The death of Edmund Godfrey inflamed fears of these people, following a fabricated conspiracy theory promulgated by Titus Oates. These people were the largest demographic targeted in the Test Act. An attempt to reduce discrimination against this religious group led to the near-destruction of the newly built Newgate Prison during the Gordon Riots. For 10 points, Elizabeth I led large persecutions of what religious group that was accused of leading the Popish Plot?
ANSWER: Catholics [or papists; prompt on priests by asking “of what religion?”]
[after 62% of the tossup] This author is described as an “odoriferous poet” by a sentient chair before meeting the composer Benjamin Britten in Alan Bennett’s play The Habit of Art. A poem by this author advises “Let not Time deceive you, / You cannot conquer time” and promises “I’ll love you / Till Africa and China meet, / And the river jumps over the mountain.” This author considered five of his poems to be “trash” and later changed the word “or” in his most famous poem to “and.” Another poem by this author of “As I Walked Out One Evening” bemoans a man who was “my North, my South, my East and West.” One poem by this author begins with the speaker sitting in “one of the dives / On Fifty-second street” and later declares “We must love one another or die.” For 10 points, name this poet of “Funeral Blues” and “September 1, 1939.”
ANSWER: W. H. Auden [or Wystan Hugh Auden]
[after 62% of the tossup] Making workers independently seek this concept, known as decommodification, distinguishes Gøsta Esping-Andersen’s three “worlds” titled for this concept and “capitalism.” Charles Murray’s book Losing Ground controversially claims that programs providing this concept harm American society. This concept names a restriction within the taxing and spending clause in Article I of the US Constitution, which follows from a goal in the preamble to “promote the general” type of this concept. The Beveridge Report is credited with starting social reforms to provide this concept “cradle-to-grave” through services like universal health care. For 10 points, governments provide relief to their people in what concept’s namesake “state,” exemplified by Sweden?
ANSWER: welfare [or well-being; accept social welfare; accept welfare state; accept general welfare clause; accept welfare capitalism; prompt on quality of life; prompt on social safety net or social security or entitlement]
[after 63% of the tossup] After he went out to support T. J. Ryan for a referendum in this decade, a Prime Minister of one country unsuccessfully tried to get a protester arrested after he was struck by an egg. A declaration of jihad from the Ottoman Empire inspired two Pashto cameleers to commit a mass shooting during this decade’s Battle of Broken Hill. William Birdwood commanded troops during a campaign in this decade that began with a landing at Cape Helles. Ian Hamilton was criticized for his leadership during that campaign in that decade that saw extensive fighting on Scimitar Hill. That campaign in this decade is commemorated every year on ANZAC Day. For 10 points, during what decade did the Australian Army participate in World War I?
ANSWER: 1910s [prompt on 10s]
[after 63% of the tossup] This ethnicity’s newspaper Hunchak named a party that revolted in the Sasun Rebellions. A politician of this ethnicity was killed in parliament by an ex-journalist whom Alexander Litvinenko alleged the Russian GRU colluded with. After the Tehcir (“teh-JEER”) Law led to mass deportations, these people sought revenge in Operation Nemesis. Hrant Dink, a member of this ethnicity, was assassinated while on trial for violating Article 301, which affirms the denial of genocide against these people. Massacres of these people were organized by the Three Pashas, who forced people of this ethnicity on death marches through the Syrian Desert. For 10 points, the Ottoman Empire organized a genocide of what people whose country’s capital is Yerevan?
ANSWER: Armenians [or Hayer] (The politician in the second line is Vazgen Sargsyan.)
[after 65% of the tossup] An eight-year “Great Unrest” of these events in Sweden culminated in an unusually large one in Torsåker led by Lars Hornæus. A Carlo Ginzburg book details how the Italian Benandanti were impacted by these events. Several of these events began after Anne of Denmark travelled to Scotland. Johannes Junius, the mayor of Bamberg, wrote a letter to his daughter detailing the impact of these events, which Wolfgang Behringer’s research proposes arose as a result of the “Little Ice Age.” Heinrich Kramer received a papal bull authorizing him to instigate these events after publishing a treatise on them, the Malleus Maleficarum, which details methods of torturing people to induce confessions. For 10 points, Early Modern Europe saw a “craze” of what events that sought to prove people guilty of using magic?
ANSWER: witch trials [or witch hunts; accept the Early Modern witch craze; prompt on inquisitions by asking “targeting what people?”]
[after 68% of the tossup] Anicia Juliana commissioned a copy of a work for people in this profession that is named for Vienna. Jakob Böhme revived a practice that these people used called the doctrine of signatures. A bench with a lever-based traction system is often named for a member of this profession. Dioscorides’ teachings in this profession were kept in the House of Wisdom, where they would later influence Rhazes. Jacques Dubois (“doo-BWAH”) publicly challenged his former student, Andreas Vesalius, to disprove theories used by people in this profession that were originally developed by Galen. Ancient members of this profession may have attempted to balance out the Four Humors. For 10 points, a modern-day oath is named after members of what ancient profession that included Hippocrates?
ANSWER: doctors [accept surgeons; accept healers; accept equivalents like medical professionals]
[after 68% of the tossup] Anthropologist Alan Klein’s books about this activity as a source of national pride include one partly named for “sugar” and one subtitled “A Tale of Two Laredos.” A site for this activity named Latinoamericano in Havana is the second largest of its kind in the world, while another site in San Juan’s Hato Rey district is named for a pioneer in this activity, Hiram Bithorn. Bottle caps are used in a variant of this activity called vitilla. Young boys are recruited by buscones for this activity’s academies in the Dominican Republic. This activity is less popular in the Commonwealth Caribbean than a similar sport from Britain that [emphasize] instead has bowlers and wickets. For 10 points, name this American sport whose foreign-born players have given credence to the title of “World Series.”
ANSWER: baseball [or béisbol; or juego de pelota; prompt on sports until read] (Alan Klein wrote Sugarball: The American Game, the Dominican Dream and Baseball on the Border: A Tale of Two Laredos. The British sport is cricket.)
[after 68% of the tossup] A former leader of this country earned the nickname “Teflon” for serving four consecutive terms in government despite scandals like one where parents were falsely accused of childcare benefit fraud. A political party formed after protests against this county’s nitrogen pollution policy, called BBB, became the largest party in this country’s Senate after its 2023 elections. A politician in this country was fined for hate speech after leading a chant of “fewer, fewer Moroccans.” Before becoming Secretary-General of NATO, Mark Rutte served as this county’s prime minister. This country’s October 2025 general elections were narrowly won by the centrist D66 party and saw Geert Wilders’s PVV lose ground. For 10 points, name this northern European nation whose capital is Amsterdam.
ANSWER: Netherlands [or Nederland; or Kingdom of the Netherlands; prompt on Holland]
[after 69% of the tossup] A text in this language features a little-known god named Lur, whose name is also found on many votive candelabra. A bronze statue of a man raising his right arm, commonly known as The Orator, features an inscription written primarily in this language. This language, used to write a guide for mummification on a linen book named for Zagreb, was grouped with Rhaetic and Lemnian by Helmut Rix. The Tyrrhenika was a history of the people who spoke this language, whose last speakers included the Emperor Claudius. People who spoke this non-Indo-European language were the [emphasize] first inhabitants of cities like Veii and Alba Longa. For 10 points, Latin was influenced by what language that was spoken by the predecessors to the Romans in Italy?
ANSWER: Etruscan [accept Etruscans]
[after 69% of the tossup] This thinker coined the name of a mystical “fourth force” in popularizing Stanislav Grof’s “transpersonal” subfield of their discipline. This thinker included notes on synergy and salesmen in a loosely structured book titled for this person “on Management.” Existence is the most basic of three categories in Clayton Alderfer’s simplification of a model by this thinker. This thinker distinguished fundamental deficiency-cognition from being-cognition, which occurs during euphoric “peak experiences.” This psychologist studied figures like Albert Einstein to create a theory of human motivation. For 10 points, name this psychologist who placed self-actualization atop of a “hierarchy of needs.”
ANSWER: Abraham Maslow [or Abraham Harold Maslow; accept Maslow on Management]
[after 70% of the tossup] Some of the last authentic srbulja (“sir-BOOL-ya”) were produced in this polity by the Vuković family. A tradition from this polity that may originate from Empress Helena was recreated by Józef Haller (“YOO-zef HAL-lair”) after the capture of Kołobrzeg (“KOH-wob-zheg”). A coin minted by Vespasian lent the symbol of a dolphin wrapping around an anchor to a businessman from this polity. This polity, home to Aldus Manutius, was partly governed by the Council of Ten. The League of Cambrai (“com-BRAY”) was formed to counterbalance the influence of this polity. The Bucentaur was central to an annual ceremony in this polity where a ring would be thrown into the sea. For 10 points, Saint Mark was the patron saint of what polity led by doges and named for an Adriatic city with many canals?
ANSWER: Venice [or Venezia; or Most Serene Republic of Venice]
[after 73% of the tossup] Note to moderator: Read the answerline carefully. The Brazen Sea, described as circular with a circumference exactly three times its diameter, could be found in this location along with the Bread of Faces. This place is contrasted with the Land of Israel in the final verse of the folksong Dayyēnū. The ‘amīdā must be recited facing this place, which was built using stone cut by the shāmir worm. Prayer slips called kvitelakh fill cracks in the only surviving western one of the Herodian retaining walls surrounding this place. After it was desecrated by Antiochus IV, kosher oil unexpectedly burned for eight days in the second one of these places in the miracle of Hanukkah. For 10 points, what holy building was originally built in Jerusalem by King Solomon?
ANSWER: Jerusalem Temple [or Bēt-ha-Mīkdāsh; or the Temple in Jerusalem; accept bayt-ul-Maqdis; accept First Temple or Second Temple; accept Temple of Solomon; accept Temple of Herod; accept Holy Temple; prompt on Temple until “Jerusalem” is read by asking “where?”, but accept afterward; prompt on Temple Mount or Hār ha-Bayit or al-Ḥaram al-Sharīf or al-Aqṣa or Jerusalem or Yerūshālayim or al-Quds by asking “what building in it?”; prompt on the Holy of Holies or Kōdesh ha-Kodāshīm by asking “which is thought to be in what larger structure?”; prompt on Western Wall or Wailing Wall or ha-Kōtel ha-Ma‘arāvī or Kosel or Kotel or Ḥa’iṭ al-Burāq or Buraq Wall until “western” is read by asking “what larger structure did that form part of?”; reject “Al-Aqṣa Mosque” or “Dome of the Rock”]
[after 74% of the tossup] The editor of this country’s Marxist newspaper Don Quichotte (“don kee-SHOT”), Henri Curiel (“on-REE cure-YEL”), founded its Democratic Movement for National Liberation. A leader of this country pickpocketed a watch off Winston Churchill during a state visit and was the target of Project FF. An organization launched a coup as this country’s leader was surrounded at such residences as Montaza and Abdeen Palace. That organization established the Revolutionary Command Council and later formed the Liberation Rally party. This country’s second president initiated the Agrarian Reform Law and was a member of the Mohamed Naguib-led Free Officers Movement that overthrew its king in 1952. For 10 points, name this African country whose leaders during the Cold War included King Farouk and Gamal Abdel Nasser.
ANSWER: Egypt [or Kingdom of Egypt; or Arab Republic of Egypt]
[after 75% of the tossup] Coins from a kingdom on this body of water were found on Marchinbar island. An “accidental crusade” targeted a kingdom on the coast of this body of water later invaded by Butua. A ruler of another state on this body of water built the Husuni Kubwa and added a coral dome to a Great Mosque in its capital. That state’s “chronicle” describes its founding by the son of a ruler of Shiraz. Gold mined from the interior highlands were brought to this body of water at the port city of Sofala, which paid tribute to the Mutapa Empire while controlled by the Kilwa Sultanate. The Portuguese stronghold at Fort Jesus was besieged by Omani forces near Mombasa on this body of water. For 10 points, the Swahili coast in East Africa formed the western boundary of what ocean?
ANSWER: Indian Ocean [prompt on Swahili coast until read]
[after 76% of the tossup] Pompeian-style mosaics are found in this non-Italian region at the House of the Griffins, in the city of Complutum. Arganthonios, the possible namesake of silver, ruled this region’s Turdetani people. Legendarily, a rebel leader in this territory picked the hairs off of a horse’s tail one by one to demonstrate a strategy against the Roman army. According to legend, Corocotta came forth to claim a ransom for himself during the revolt of the Cantabrians in this region. Quintus Sertorius led a revolt in this region, the birthplace of the emperors Trajan and Hadrian. After victories at Baecula and Ilipa, the Romans conquered this territory from the armies of Hamilcar Barca. For 10 points, name this region of the Roman Empire whose province of Lusitania became Portugal.
ANSWER: Hispania [accept Hispania Tarraconensis or Hispania Baetica or Hispania Lusitania; accept Iberia or Iberian Revolt; accept Lusitania until read; accept Baetica; prompt on Spain or Roman Spain; prompt on Portugal or Roman Portugal until read]
[after 78% of the tossup] Pilgrimages to this location venerate the spots where four shards of a jar of ambrosia landed on Earth. After a failed horse sacrifice, this location “descended from heaven” when a cosmic serpent was slain by Indra. After Agni is not capable of bearing Shiva’s child, Kārtikeya is born in this location. A city near this location that houses genealogical records of pilgrims dating to the 17th century is a popular site for cremation, as its holiness is believed to grant salvation. At times specified by the orbit of Jupiter, adherents at the Kumbh Mēlā festival immerse themselves in ghats adjacent to this body of water. For 10 points, name this holiest river in Hinduism, which is also India’s longest.
ANSWER: River Ganges [or Ganga; prompt on Prayāgrāja or Allahabad or Varanasi or Haridwāra or Ujjain or Nashik]
[after 79% of the tossup] In this city, a judge tried to connect 13 fires and a burglary to fears of a slave uprising in the Conspiracy of 1741. Land in this modern-day city and nearby Pavonia were raided in the one-day Peach War. In this city, Edward Hart led a group of settlers who petitioned for religious tolerance in a “Remonstrance” named for part of this city. In retaliation for Kieft’s War, members of the Siwanoy tribe killed Anne Hutchinson in what is now this city. This was the largest city transferred to England in exchange for Suriname in the 1667 Treaty of Breda. The Lenape tribe traded an island in this city for 60 guilders of goods from Peter Minuit. For 10 points, Peter Stuyvesant ruled from what city that was once New Amsterdam?
ANSWER: New York [accept New Amsterdam until “Amsterdam” is read; prompt on Flushing Remonstrance or Manhattan Island or Pelham Bay by asking “what larger city is that part of?”]
[after 80% of the tossup] This text describes how killing a holy hedgehog results in extirpation of the soul for nine generations. This text was originally split into 21 sections called nasks, corresponding to the 21 words of one mantra. A repeated description of a god “who is all death” in one part of this text describes Winter as an “evil creation.” This text’s name is often coupled with its Zend commentaries, with which it is often conflated. The sin of burying corpses is described as “unforgivable” in one part of this text called the Vendidad. One of the only sections of this larger work credited to its central prophet are the Gathas, in which the daēvas are minor evil gods loyal to Angra Mainyu who work against Ahura Mazdā. For 10 points, name this central text of Zoroastrianism.
ANSWER: Avesta [accept Zend-Avesta; prompt on Vendidad or Gathas until read]
[after 80% of the tossup] In 1939, a ship named for this city carrying Jewish refugees from Germany was denied from landing in the US in the so-called “Voyage of the Damned.” Cases arising from Detroit and this city resulted in racially restrictive covenants being struck down under the Equal Protection Clause. Harold Bixby, a businessman from this city, sponsored an object built in San Diego but named for this city that was later used to win the Orteig Prize. Shelley v. Kraemer originated in this city, which preserved the Old Courthouse where the Dred Scott trial was first heard as part of an “expansion memorial.” Charles Lindbergh named his Atlantic-crossing aircraft for the “Spirit of” this city. For 10 points, name this Midwestern city home to the Gateway Arch.
ANSWER: St. Louis [accept The Spirit of St. Louis; accept MS St. Louis]
[after 80% of the tossup] Susan Ridyard dismissed apocryphal claims that the half-sister of a monarch of this name foresaw his death after she dreamt she lost her right eye and was subsequently offered his throne; that half-sister was canonized as Saint Edith. A monarch of this name, who dissolved many monasteries in the “anti-monastic reaction,” may have been murdered by his mother-in-law, Ælfthryth (“ELF-thrith”). A future monarch of this name, who was exiled by Harold Harefoot, inherited the throne from Harthacnut after he returned with his mother Emma of Normandy. In addition to a monarch known as the “Martyr,” a monarch with this name commissioned the modern Westminster Abbey and ignited a succession crisis between Harold Godwinson and the future William the Conqueror after his death. For 10 points, a king of England of what name had the epithet “Confessor?”
ANSWER: Edward [accept Edward the Confessor or Edward the Martyr]
[after 81% of the tossup] This modern-day country was the southernmost territory subject to an 1890 ordinance that banned secret societies such as the Ghee Hin. Race riots spilled over into this country from a larger neighbor on May 13, 1969, in response to a general election. This country’s CMIO model has been in use since its first census in 1824, assigning each resident to one of four racial categories. To discourage the use of a local creole whose name is a portmanteau of this country’s name and English, this country launched the Speak Good English Movement in 2000. Since this country’s 1819 founding as a trading post by Stamford Raffles, its indigenous population has become outnumbered by Tamil and Chinese migrants. For 10 points, name this island country that was briefly part of Malaysia.
ANSWER: Singapore [or Republic of Singapore; or Republik Singapura; or Xīnjiāpō Gònghéguó; or Ciṅkappūr Kuṭiyaracu] (The creole is Singlish.)
[after 81% of the tossup] This ruler was a brother of a prince who wrote a treatise comparing two religions called The Mingling of the Two Oceans. It was not Timur, but following the Battle of Chamkaur, this ruler was the target of a Zafarnāma proclaiming spiritual victory. Farmans issued by this ruler banned syncretic customs such as Nowruz and jharokha darshan. After winning a civil war, this ruler accused his brother Dara Shikoh of heresy and executed him. For allegedly attempting to prevent the forced conversion of Hindus in Kashmir, this ruler executed Sikh Guru Tegh Bahadur. This ruler issued a compendium of Hanafi jurisprudence called Fatawa-e-Alamgiri and reinstated the jizya tax on non-Muslims. For 10 points, name this sixth Mughal emperor and successor of Shah Jahan, who undid most of Akbar’s policy of religious tolerance.
ANSWER: Aurangzeb [or Abul Muzaffar Muhy-ud-Din Muhammad Aurangzeb Alamgir; accept Alamgir I until “Fatawa-e-Alamgiri” is read]
[after 82% of the tossup] In a paper titled for this century, the phrase “Christian Dior… looks a more attractive proposition than Montagu Burton” is used to illustrate an economic slump caused by shortsightedness in capitalism. That essay was partly inspired by widespread currency debasement during this century’s Kipper und Wipper period. Susan Strange portmanteaued “failure” with a system named for an agreement in this century that was based on the teachings of Jean Bodin (“bo-DAN”). It’s not the 19th century, but economic stagnation during this century led Eric Hobsbawm to coin the term “general crisis” to refer to the majority of it. Demographic upheavals during this century included the Khmelnytsky (“k’mell-NITS-kee”) Uprising and the Polish Deluge. For 10 points, widespread economic instability roiled Europe during what century of the Thirty Years’ War?
ANSWER: 17th century [or 1600s]
[after 83% of the tossup] For unknown reasons, the stele erected at this ruler’s Qiánlíng mausoleum was left wordless. Potentially for political purposes, this ruler promoted Buddhism, constructing a Dàyún Temple in each prefecture in the two capitals region. The Buddhist monk Huáiyì promulgated the Great Cloud Sutra to legitimize this ruler before being put to death for setting fire to some palace buildings. This ruler elevated Luòyáng to the primary capital, and might have modeled for the face of the largest Buddha statue at the Lóngmén Grottoes. This ruler oversaw the rebuilding of the Giant Wild Goose Pagoda. Following the death of Emperor Tàizōng of Táng, this founder of a Zhōu (“joe”) dynasty was sent to be a nun at Gānyè (“gahn-yeh”) Temple as a former concubine. For 10 points, name this only empress regnant of Imperial China.
ANSWER: Empress Wǔ [or Wǔ Zétiān; or Wǔ Zhào; or Wǔ Mèiniáng; or Wǔ Hòu]
[after 83% of the tossup] Specific term required. Reuben Gronau distinguished home production and this concept in a paper built on Gary Becker’s “A Theory of the Allocation of Time.” This concept’s “gap” of two to three hours per week between American mothers and fathers was studied by Arlie Hochschild (“HOKE-shild”). A book partly titled for this concept calls gambling “barbarian” in the chapter “The Belief in Luck.” The opportunity cost of this activity increases with wages, but at high wages, this activity [emphasize] increases in labor’s backward-bending supply curve. Per an 1899 book, pecuniary emulation seeks to surpass a group named for this activity that engages in conspicuous consumption. For 10 points, name this activity of voluntarily abstaining from labor, whose “class” was theorized by Thorsten Veblen.
ANSWER: leisure [accept The Theory of the Leisure Class or leisure class; accept leisure gap; prompt on free time or time off or not working or relaxation or recreation; prompt on class until read by asking “what other concept characterizes the class in that work’s title?”; reject “unemployment”] (The first paper is “Leisure, Home Production, and Work—the Theory of the Allocation of Time Revisited.”)
[after 84% of the tossup] Description acceptable. Due to the outcome of this event, the word dawla shifted its meaning from “turn” to “dynasty.” Julius Wellhausen ascribed the causes of this event to Persian resentment for their disprivileged status under the “Arab Kingdom.” The Akhbār al-Dawla reveals this event’s original goal was to empower the Hashemites instead of a branch family. Support for this movement came from Khurāsān, where new converts called mawālī were alienated by harsh kharāj and jizya taxes. Merv was captured during this uprising by an army under the Black Standard. Abū Muslim’s victory over Marwān II at the Battle of Zab during this uprising enabled a dynasty to establish itself in newly-founded Baghdad. For 10 points, name this uprising that overthrew the Umayyad Caliphate.
ANSWER: Abbasid Revolution [or ath-thawra al-‘Abbāsiyyah; accept descriptions of the founding of the Abbasid Caliphate or the start of the Abbasid Caliphate; accept descriptions of the Abbasid rebellion or Abbasid revolt; accept descriptions of the fall of the Umayyads or the Abbasids overthrowing the Umayyad Caliphate until “Umayyad” is read; accept Movement of the Men of the Black Raiment; prompt on Third Fitna]
[after 85% of the tossup] Chinese practitioners of this tradition construct gǒngběi memorials on the graves of ménhuàn lineage founders. This tradition was introduced to Australia by Friedrich von Frankenberg, whose student Francis Brabazon built the “Avatar’s Abode” to house the leader of “[this tradition] Reoriented.” The Yan Taru movement was created to further women’s education by a West African follower of this tradition, Nana Asma’u. The concept of fanā’ is followed by baqā’, or “perpetual existence,” in this tradition whose practices often revolve around dhikr (“thicker”), or remembrance of God. Ascetics from this tradition’s Mevlevi ṭarīqa called “dervishes” perform a namesake “whirling” dance. For 10 points, what mystic Islamic tradition inspired Rumi’s Masnavī?
ANSWER: Sufism [or Taṣawwuf; or Ṣufiyyah; accept sūfēi zhǔyí; prompt on Naqshbandi or Chishti or Mevlevi until read by asking “which are part of what larger tradition?”]
[after 86% of the tossup] Camelid bones and feline incense burners were left on this body of water by pilgrims to its Khoa Reef. Parallel canals and alternating plant beds were used in the Waru Waru irrigation technique on this body of water. A civilization centred on this body of water created the Akapana mud pyramid and Pumapunku mounds, as well as a monolithic “Gate” that depicted 32 humans and 16 condor-headed people surrounding a central figure. The Gate of the Sun was constructed near this body of water that contains the Island of the Sun and the Island of the Moon, which are pilgrimage sites for this lake’s Tiwanaku civilization. For 10 points, many Aymara live near what lake that is shared by Peru and Bolivia?
ANSWER: Lake Titicaca
[after 88% of the tossup] A man with this first name sent false eviction notices that were unsuccessfully fought by Lillian Edelstein and the group ETNA. A writer and an editor both with this first name are subjects of Lizzie Gottlieb’s documentary Turn Every Page. A man with this first name wrote the Pulitzer-winning book Master of the Senate, part of the ongoing biography The Years of Lyndon Johnson. That writer with this first name detailed “one mile” built by another man with this first name across the poor East Tremont neighborhood in The Power Broker. Fiorello La Guardia appointed a man with this first name as the inaugural New York City Parks Commissioner, where he feuded with Jane Jacobs. For 10 points, what first name is shared by biographer Caro and urban planner Moses?
ANSWER: Robert [accept Robert Moses; accept Robert Caro; accept Robert Gottlieb] (ETNA was the East Tremont Neighborhood Association.)
[after 97% of the tossup] In a film from this country, a woman caring for a man with Alzheimer’s suffers a miscarriage after being pushed down a flight of stairs. A director from this country made a film set in Tuscany in which a character played by Juliette Binoche (“bee-NUSH”) debates with a man over his theory that copies are worth as much as originals. A director from this country was accused of plagiarism shortly after the release of his film A Hero. A 1990 docufiction film reenacts events in which a man impersonated a film director from this country. A director from this country, who frequently shot in cars, also made a film in which a suicidal man looks for someone to bury him after death, Taste of Cherry. For 10 points, name this home country of directors Asghar Farhadi (“far-haw-DEE”) and Abbas Kiarostami.
ANSWER: Iran [or Islamic Republic of Iran; or Jomhuri-ye Eslami-ye Iran] (The first line refers to A Separation. The docufiction film is Close-Up.)
[after 98% of the tossup] In 2025, Karolína Muchová (“MOO-ho-vah”) beat this tournament’s oldest competitor since the trans woman Renee Richards 44 years earlier. In 2017, Sloane Stephens became the first winner of this tournament with a protected ranking. A player who won this tournament without dropping a set served a 109-mile-per-hour ace to defeat Leylah Fernandez in its 2021 final, becoming the only qualifier to win a Grand Slam. In her last Grand Slam match, Serena Williams lost to Ajla Tomljanović (“EYE-luh tum-LYAH-no-vitch”) in this tournament, where she called official Carlos Ramos a “thief” during her 2018 finals defeat to Naomi Osaka. This is the later of two Grand Slams whose final Amanda Anisimova lost in 2025, being beaten by its defending champion Aryna Sabalenka. For 10 points, name this chronologically last tennis Grand Slam that is held at the Arthur Ashe Stadium in Queens.
ANSWER: US Open Tennis Championships (Muchová beat Venus Williams. Emma Raducanu won in 2021.)
[after 98% of the tossup] In this region, thatched houses called umjip would regularly be used by semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers. A crown from this region has three antler-like structures on top, a replica of which was gifted to President Donald Trump in 2025. The word for “ridge” is the only remaining word from a language that was spoken by this region’s Gaya Confederacy. Six eggs descended from a golden bowl with a message that princes would hatch and become kings of this region according to the Samguk yusa. Dangun (“DAHN-goon”) was the legendary founder of a kingdom in this region that, during its non-Chinese Three Kingdoms Period, fragmented into states like Baekje (“BECK-jeh”) and Goguryeo. For 10 points, Silla unified what peninsula that was later ruled by the Joseon Dynasty?
ANSWER: Korea [accept Korean peninsula or Hanguk]
[after 99% of the tossup] A Pulitzer-Prize-winning photograph shows this person dancing at a rock concert during his “vote or lose” campaign. The chair of Sibneft was recognized as one of the “Seven Bankers” who supported this person after this person implemented the loans-for-shares scheme. Robert Solow and Franco Modigliani were two of several economists who wrote an open letter to this person about reforms that were championed by Anatoly Chubais (“choo-BICE”). This non-Polish politician’s visit to a Randalls grocery store in Houston may have inspired him to implement “shock therapy” in his country. This person helped diffuse the August Coup by giving a speech atop a tank. For 10 points, what politician served as the first President of Russia?
ANSWER: Boris Yeltsin [or Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin]
[after 99% of the tossup] The biography Camera Girl recounts how this woman worked at Vogue for one day and covered Elizabeth II’s coronation as a reporter for the Times-Herald newspaper. Conflicting testimonies exist over whether this woman was proposed to at a booth in Martin’s Tavern in D.C. or the Omni Parker House in Boston. This woman’s successor renamed the East Garden in her honor, since she redesigned it along with the Rose Garden. This woman prematurely birthed her youngest son Patrick on the 20th anniversary of her husband’s rescue in the PT-109 incident. This First Lady compared her household to Camelot and later remarried the Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis. For 10 points, name this person who served as First Lady before her husband’s 1963 assassination.
ANSWER: Jacqueline Kennedy [or Jackie Kennedy; or Jacqueline Bouvier; or Jackie Bouvier; or Jacqueline Onassis; or Jackie Onassis; prompt on Kennedy or J. Kennedy; prompt on Onassis until read]
[after 99% of the tossup] In the writings of Wallace Fard, one of these places is identified with the city of Allah’s residence and the origin of the “Mother Plane,” which he claimed to be the Biblical merkāvā, God’s chariot. After being kidnapped under the pretext of tax audits, thetans were sent to one of these locations called Teegeeack (“TEE-jee-ack”). According to the Book of Abraham, Methuselah helped to discover one of these places called Kolob which is “closest to the throne of God.” The LDS church strenuously denies the popular belief that these places will be each Mormon’s heavenly reward for following the “straight and narrow” way to the Celestial Kingdom. For 10 points, name these celestial bodies from which extraterrestrials are often claimed to come as ambassadors to humanity.
ANSWER: planets [accept exoplanets; accept Earths until “Abraham” is read; prompt on Unidentified Flying Objects or UFOs until “Abraham” is read; prompt on volcanoes until “Abraham” is read by asking “on what larger type of place could the volcanoes be found?”]
[after 100% of the tossup] The wife of a ruler with this regnal name legendarily hung herself with her girdle after she was offered hemlock, a sword, and a rope to commit suicide. Adea Eurydice was married to a ruler of this name, who was possibly rendered mentally disabled following a poisoning attempt by his father’s wife. Onomachos was killed at the Battle of Crocus Field by an army under a king with this name during the Third Sacred War. A king of this name, who was victorious at the Battle of Chaeronea, was assassinated by Pausanias of Orestis in a conspiracy that ancient sources speculated to be orchestrated by his wife, Olympias. For 10 points, Macedonian expansion began during the reign of a king with what name, the father of Alexander the Great?
ANSWER: Philip [accept Philip II of Macedon or Philip III of Macedon]
[after 100% of the tossup] A thinker from this country traced how its people sequentially obtained civil, political, and social rights in the essay “Citizenship and Social Class.” A feminist abolitionist thinker from this country wrote Society in America and popularized the works of Auguste Comte through her translations. The “mother of sociology” Harriet Martineau is from this country, where the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies was founded by Jamaica-born Marxist thinker Stuart Hall. An 1845 book compares the illness and death rates of this country’s rural and industrialized populations to document capitalist exploitation, inspiring Marx to collaborate with its author. For 10 points, Friedrich Engels wrote a book on the “Condition of the Working Class in” what country home to the University of Birmingham?
ANSWER: England [or United Kingdom; or UK; or Great Britain; accept Condition of the Working Class in England; reject “Scotland” or “Wales” or “Northern Ireland”] (The first sentence refers to T. H. Marshall.)
[after 100% of the tossup] During this country’s Hujum campaign, body-length robes called paranjas were banned and women were forced to unveil. This country’s arrest and execution of intellectuals like Choʻlpon marked the end of its reformist Jadid movement. In the 1930s, this country’s official ethnogenesis narratives canonized national heroes such as Alisher Nava’i and Manas. This country’s fishing industry in towns like Moynaq was destroyed due to excessive cotton cultivation. Newcomers outnumbered the original population in a nomadic region of this country after mass resettlement during its Virgin Lands campaign. This country’s irrigation projects, like the Karakum Canal, diverted enough water to shrink the nearby Aral Sea. For 10 points, name this country from which Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan seceded in 1991.
ANSWER: Soviet Union [or USSR; or Union of Soviet Socialist Republics; prompt on Russia; prompt on Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic or Uzbekistan until “Uzbekistan” is read; prompt on Kirghiz Soviet Socialist Republic or Kirghizia or Kyrgyzstan until “Kyrgyzstan” is read; prompt on Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic or Kazakhstan until “Kazakhstan” is read; prompt on Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic or Turkmenia or Turkmenistan]

Kaiwen Xiao ↩

[after 15% of the tossup] In a novel by this author, a couple play a game in which they fill in blank speech bubbles in each other’s drawings called “the bubble game.” In another work by this author, arts and crafts are included in a “Gallery” by a mysterious figure named “Madame.” The protagonist of a novel by this author destroys a polluting “Cootings Machine” to cure Josie’s illness. In a different novel by this author, two characters travel to Norfolk where Kathy finds a cassette tape by Judy Bridgewater. Characters in that novel by this author attend school at Hailsham and are divided into “carers” and “donors.” In a novel by this author, after receiving a letter from Miss Kenton at Darlington Hall, Mr. Faraday gives the butler Stevens permission to leave. For 10 points, name this Nobel-winning author of Never Let Me Go and The Remains of the Day.
ANSWER: Kazuo Ishiguro (The novel in the first and third clues is Klara and the Sun.)
[after 26% of the tossup] This deity’s wife stands over him in an artistic motif from the Gosforth Cross. Alternate versions of a story detail a different one of this deity’s two sons turning into a wolf and killing the other. This deity is referred to by the kenning “brother of Býleistr” in the Völuspá when the völva explains that his escape will signal the start of Ragnarök, at which point this deity will kill and be killed by Heimdallr. This deity attacks Njörd for being incestuous and claims to have cuckolded Týr in a text sometimes named for his flyting. This son of Fárbauti and Laufey turns into a salmon to escape his punishment of having venom dripped on him for eternity after he causes the death of Baldr. For 10 points, name this Norse trickster god.
ANSWER: Loki [or Loki Laufeyson; accept Lokasenna or The Flyting of Loki or Loki’s Verbal Duel]
[after 29% of the tossup] In the beginning of this text, a floating air spirit’s knees are home to a nest containing duck eggs that hatch to create heaven and earth. Scholars suggest that the virgin birth depicted in this text after Marjatta eats a berry is a result of Christianization. A woman in this text uses honey to revive her son, pieces of whose body she finds with a copper rake and sews together after seeing the omen of his bleeding hairbrush. The Mistress of the North who rules over Pohjola in this text promises her daughter to its protagonist if he can successfully forge the Sampo. After the witch Louhi steals the sun, the moon, and fire in this text, the smith Ilmarinen and the kantele-playing first man, Väinämöinen, work to restore them. For 10 points, name this national epic of Finland.
ANSWER: Kalevala
[after 29% of the tossup] A character in this book opens a box to find coals instead of a feather dropped by Gabriel during the Annunciation. In this book, a character marries Neerbal after being taught how to “put the devil back in Hell” by the monk Rustico. A poem by John Keats adapts a story in this book in which a woman cries every day over a pot of basil containing her lover’s severed head. In a different story in this collection, a man wins a woman’s affections after cooking his pet falcon for her as a meal. A nobleman pretends to murder his children to test the loyalties of his wife Griselda in this collection’s final story, one of several told by Dioneo over 10 days. For 10 points, Florentines fleeing the Black Death tell stories to each other in what collection by Giovanni Boccaccio?
ANSWER: The Decameron [or Decamerone]
[after 32% of the tossup] Characters who later appear in this story cause Leila to yearn for siblings while in a cab to the title event in the story “Her First Ball.” A girl in this story bites a piece of bread and butter while pondering “absurd class distinctions” after seeing a workman stop to smell lavender. A character described as “the butterfly” tests a piano in this story by practicing the song “This Life is Weary” before the maid Sadie interrupts to ask about sandwich flags. After hearing of a man thrown off his horse from Godber’s man during his cream puff delivery, a character in this story attempts to cancel the title event. That character takes leftover food to the widow of Scott and embraces her brother while stammering “Isn’t life.” For 10 points, Laura Sheridan plans the title event of what Katherine Mansfield story?
ANSWER: “The Garden Party”
[after 33% of the tossup] This thinker describes common purpose as an outcome of “instinctive liking” or a shared “instinctive aversion” in Why Men Fight. With Jean-Paul Sartre, this thinker led a conference finding the US guilty of war crimes in Vietnam. This thinker advocated for a four-hour workday in the essay “In Praise of Idleness.” P. F. Strawson criticized an essay by this thinker that argues against Alexius Meinong (“MY-nong”) with examples of “the author of Waverley” and the “present” kings of England and France to contrast types of definite descriptions. This author of “On Denoting” formulated an argument against defaulting to belief in God that involves a floating teapot. For 10 points, name this English philosopher who collaborated with Alfred North Whitehead on Principia Mathematica.
ANSWER: Bertrand Russell [or Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell; accept Russell’s teapot]
[after 36% of the tossup] In a novel by this author, Terry is exiled for trying to rape his wife Alima. In that novel by this author, the sociology student Vandyck Jennings and two of his friends investigate an unknown region whose inhabitants reproduce through parthenogenesis. This author wrote a short story in which one character consumes cod-liver oil instead of ale, wine, and red meat. The protagonist of that story by this author requests to remove its title object, describing it as “a debased Romanesque with delirium tremens.” This author wrote a story in which the protagonist exclaims “I’ve got out at last… in spite of you and Jane” after she is prescribed a rest cure by her husband John. For 10 points, name this author who described a woman imprisoned by the pattern of the title decoration in The Yellow Wallpaper.
ANSWER: Charlotte Perkins Gilman [or Charlotte Anna Perkins Gilman; or Charlotte Perkins Stetson] (The novel is Herland.)
[after 39% of the tossup] Social media users gave the name “Jelly” to one of these characters repeatedly shown crying colorful tears. Simon Baek revealed that a Sunlight Sister had a child with one of these characters before being killed by Celine. One of these beings rues how he left his family in poverty “while I slept on silk sheets in the palace with my belly full every night” to become one of these beings with the aid of Gwi-Ma. A song that claims one of these beings “with no feelings don’t deserve to live, it’s so obvious” is performed to expose Rumi as being part-[one of these beings], something revealed when patterns on her arm are exposed while fighting Jinu in a bathhouse. For 10 points, the Honmoon protects humanity from what beings exemplified by the Saja Boys, who are fought in a 2025 Netflix film by the K-pop group HUNTR/X (“huntrix”)?
ANSWER: demons [or dokkaebi or jeoseung saja; prompt on Saja Boys until read by asking “what general class of beings are they?”]
[after 39% of the tossup] A character in a play by this author miraculously turns into a beautiful maid after her brother, the Fat Gentleman, shoots at her. This author’s play Frenzy for Two, Or More is often paired with a play in which a character created by this author shows off his ability to fly. A logician uses a syllogism to prove that a dog is a cat in a play by this author of A Stroll in the Air. In an “anti-play” by this author, which is set in an “English interior, with English armchairs,” the Smiths and the Martins engage in surreal conversation after the Fire Chief mentions the title character. In a play by this author of The Lesson, the typist Daisy leaves Bérenger after every character except for him turns into the title animal. For 10 points, name this absurdist Romanian-French playwright of The Bald Soprano and Rhinoceros.
ANSWER: Eugène Ionesco [or Eugen Ionescu] (The play in the first line is The Picture.)
[after 42% of the tossup] An author from this country intertwined scenes of Robert Browning in Venice with the lives of the main characters in the novel The Whirlpool. In one of 11 interviews conducted by Graeme Gibson with novelists from this country, Timothy Findley coined the name for one region in this country’s “Southern Gothic” literature. “Boy” Staunton causes a pregnant woman to go into premature labor in Fifth Business, a novel in this country’s Deptford Trilogy. An author from this country featured symposiums led by Professor Pieixoto as metafictional epilogues for two novels. While meeting outside of the “Ceremony” in a novel from this country, Offred plays Scrabble with the Commander. For 10 points, name this home country of the author of The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood.
ANSWER: Canada (The Whirlpool is by Jane Urquhart. The second line refers to “Southern Ontario Gothic.” The Deptford Trilogy is by Robertson Davies.)
[after 44% of the tossup] A coordinate-free definition of this operation relies on the top exterior power defining a one-dimensional space. SL(n) (“S-L-N”) is the kernel of a homomorphism defined by this operation from GL(n) (“G-L-N”) to the non-zero reals under multiplication. Unusually, this operation is only introduced towards the end of a textbook by Sheldon Axler called Linear Algebra Done Right, which defines this operation as the unique alternating multilinear form up to scaling. The output of this operation equals the constant term of the characteristic polynomial. The general linear group excludes matrices which output zero under this operation since they are non-invertible. For 10 points, name this operation that, for a two-by-two matrix, equals “a d minus b c.”
ANSWER: determinant [or det]
[after 46% of the tossup] An author born in this modern-day country asked, “May I take the ridiculous position of saying that I do not like the way Gide exalts the body?” in a footnote to an essay about “Summer” in this country’s capital. In a story set in this country, a schoolteacher sees the message “You handed over our brother. You will pay for this” after the prisoner he freed walks to Tinguit. In a novel set in this country, Thomas Pérez faints during a funeral procession. Daru defies the orders of Balducci in “The Guest,” a story that an author born in this country included in the collection Exile and the Kingdom. Raymond Sintès (“san-TESS”) abuses his mistress in a novel set in this country that opens, “Maman died today.” For 10 points, name this country where Meursault (“murr-SO”) shoots an Arab in Albert Camus’s novel The Stranger.
ANSWER: Algeria [or People’s Democratic Republic of Algeria; or Al Jumhuriyah al Jaza’iriyah ad Dimuqratiyah ash Sha’biyah; accept French Algeria or Colonial Algeria] (The essay in the first line is “Summer in Algiers.”)
[after 47% of the tossup] An author from this country wrote of paintings drawing back a curtain on the writing of a poet from here who claims “’Tis dead, ’tis dust, ’tis shadow, yea, ’tis nought” at the end of the poem “To Her Portrait.” That poet from this modern-day country charges the title subjects with patent arrogance “that fights with many weapons” in the poem “You Foolish Men.” This is the home country of both the author and subject of the biography The Traps of Faith. In a poem from this country, a woman whose breasts are “two churches of blood” is told “I travel your body, like the world.” A 584-line poem from this country opens “a willow of crystal, a poplar of water” and borrows a circular calendar for its title, “Sun Stone.” For 10 points, name this home country of Sor Juana and Octavio Paz.
ANSWER: Mexico [or United Mexican States; or UMS; or Estados Unidos Mexicanos; or EUM]
[after 51% of the tossup] In this city, the “Fast Form Manifest” style was used by Thierry Noir to create cartoonish heads that can be seen at the East Side Gallery. The film Night Crossing opens with footage of an event in this city that was also captured by Peter Leibing. Blue rope was used to fasten over 100,000 square meters of fabric in a “wrapping” of a building in this city by Christo and Jeanne-Claude. A Dmitri Vrubel mural in this city depicts a 1979 meeting in which Leonid Brezhnev shared a fraternal kiss. A watch was removed from a soldier’s wrist in a photograph taken atop this city’s parliament building after its capture by the Soviets. For 10 points, name this city where graffiti was broken into chunks after the 1989 fall of its namesake wall.
ANSWER: Berlin [accept East Berlin or Ost-Berlin; accept West Berlin; accept Berlin Wall] (The second line refers to Leibing’s Leap into Freedom. The third line refers to Wrapped Reichstag. The fifth line refers to Raising a Flag over the Reichstag.)
[after 52% of the tossup] It’s not cannibalism, but an essay on this practice notes that “the certainties postulated by philosophers hardly ever exist” when analogizing it to the case of shipwrecked sailors Dudley and Stephens. Kitty Genovese’s murder is used to make a distinction between “Good,” “Splendid,” and “Minimally Decent” Samaritans in an essay on this practice. An essay titled for this practice describes an analogy of seeds floating through windows and taking root in houses. This practice is paired with “the Doctrine of Double Effect” in the title of an essay by Philippa Foot that proposed the trolley problem. An essay on this practice proposes a thought experiment involving keeping a dying violinist alive. For 10 points, Judith Jarvis Thomson wrote a “Defense” of what practice opposed by pro-life activists?
ANSWER: abortion [accept equivalents such as ending or terminating a pregnancy; accept “A Defense of Abortion”; accept “The Problem of Abortion and the Doctrine of Double Effect”]
[after 53% of the tossup] A position separating this concept from reason is defined by a “basic reliance” on it according to Alvin Plantinga, who co-founded a journal titled for this concept “and Philosophy” with other reformed epistemologists. The dictum “subjectivity is truth” appears in a work defending this “absurd” concept under the pseudonym Johannes Climacus entitled Concluding Unscientific Postscript. A man who still expects he will receive a princess’s seemingly unobtainable love goes beyond “infinite resignation” in his embodiment of this concept. That “knight of” this concept is described in Søren Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling, which also describes it as a qualitative “leap.” For 10 points, name this religious concept of believing without seeing.
ANSWER: faith [accept qualitative leap of faith or knight of faith; accept Faith and Philosophy; accept fideism]
[after 54% of the tossup] This author maligned social classes like the aristocratic “Barbarians” and middle-class “Philistines” for embracing sentimental “bathos.” This author was inspired by a fable contrasting the spider with the bee in Jonathan Swift’s The Battle of the Books to write that a concept which partially titles one book should be defined by “sweetness and light.” This author defined the first title concept as “the best which has been thought and said” in Culture and Anarchy. This author included the poem “To Marguerite – Continued” with the dramatic poem Empedocles on Etna. A poem by this author begins, “The sea is calm tonight” and declares “Ah, love, let us be true / To one another!” For 10 points, name this critic and poet who wrote about a “darkling plain… where ignorant armies clash by night” in “Dover Beach.”
ANSWER: Matthew Arnold
[after 55% of the tossup] This deity is said to gather “sacred writings” scattered by Typhon in an essay from the fifth volume of Plutarch’s Moralia. Depictions of a Roman seafarers’ festival named for this deity’s “vessel,” or “Navigium,” appear in a temple at Pompeii, far from her cult center in Philae. The name by which this deity was worshipped in Greece may allude to her throne headdress. This deity’s namesake knot, the tyet, was sometimes buried as an amulet with mummies. Lucius joins a cult to this deity in Apuleius’s The Golden Ass. In an ancient set of lamentations, this deity and her sister, Nephthys, chant for her husband’s resurrection. For 10 points, name this Egyptian goddess of magic who was often worshipped in a triad with her son, Horus, and husband, Osiris.
ANSWER: Isis [or Aset; accept knot of Isis or girdle of Isis; accept vessel of Isis or Navigium Isidis] (The essay in the first line is “On Isis and Osiris.”)
[after 55% of the tossup] In one of these places in a 1935 novella, a man with the “eyes of a schoolboy surprised in the act of breaking one of the rules” is noticed by William Bradshaw. Christopher Isherwood’s Berlin Stories begins with a novella titled for the communist spy Mr. Norris and these places. In one of these places, Cyrus B. Hardman complains that he cannot find a “small, dark man with a womanish voice.” In one of these places, a man finds a handkerchief embroidered with the letter “H” belonging to Princess Dragomiroff and searches for a “scarlet kimono.” In one of these places, the disguised baby kidnapper Cassetti is stabbed by all twelve suspects. For 10 points, name this type of place where Ratchett’s death is investigated by Hercule Poirot (“air-COOL pwah-ROH”) in Murder on the Orient Express.
ANSWER: trains [or passenger cars; or passenger coaches; accept train compartment; accept Mr. Norris Changes Trains; accept Murder in the Calais Coach; accept Murder on the Orient Express until read]
[after 56% of the tossup] A golden one of these objects named for Victory features a depiction of Vishnu riding Garuda. A lake was renamed after being the site where one of these objects was retrieved by the golden-shelled Kim Quy to return to the Dragon King. A deity attains one of these objects after getting an enemy drunk on eight barrels of sake placed near eight gates. The legendary king Lê Lợi owns one of these objects called Heaven’s Will. The tail of Yamata no Orochi contained one of these objects discovered by Susano’o named Kusanagi. For 10 points, name these weapons that include Muramasa’s legendarily cursed katanas.
ANSWER: swords [accept katanas until read]
[after 57% of the tossup] A Joy Harjo poem that quotes this poem begins, “We were running out of breath, as we ran out to meet ourselves.” A bell hooks book titled for this poem is subtitled “Black Men and Masculinity.” The setting of this poem titles a poetic form in which the last word of each line makes a quote and was pioneered by Terrence Hayes. This poem’s author said she was inspired to write this poem after walking past a pool hall in Chicago and thinking “I wonder how they feel about themselves?” This poem from the collection The Bean Eaters is narrated by “pool players” at the “Golden Shovel.” The characters in this poem “Strike straight,” “Jazz June,” and “Die soon.” For 10 points, name this eight-line poem where every line except for the last ends with the word “We,” by Gwendolyn Brooks.
ANSWER: “We Real Cool”
[after 57% of the tossup] Generalized BEP relations can be used to predict this quantity on metallic surfaces calculated via Marcus theory. Frustrated Lewis pairs have higher values of this quantity due to steric hindrance. This quantity is divided by R in a plot of one-over-T against the natural logarithm of k. The high value of this quantity in the Haber process is due to the nitrogen triple bond. This quantity is divided by RT in the exponential of the Arrhenius equation. This quantity is determined from the difference between the transition state and reactants on a reaction coordinate diagram and can be lowered by catalysts. For 10 points, identify this quantity denoted E-sub-a, the minimum energy required for a reaction to occur.
ANSWER: activation energy [accept E-sub-a until read; prompt on energy until read; prompt on E until read]
[after 59% of the tossup] This author’s death inspired an author to state “a light was gone” in an interview featured in a New Yorker article partially titled for an “Infinite Footnote to” this author. In a story by this author that inspired a work of hypertext fiction featuring postal clerk Emily Runbird, a man who has just arrived in Ashgrove takes a child’s advice to bear left at every crossroad. In a story by this author, the poet Carlos Daneri attempts to save a cellar containing a point in space that contains all other points. The title construct of a story by this author is analogized to a guessing game where the answer is chess by the Sinologist Dr. Albert before Richard Madden arrests Yu Tsun. For 10 points, name this Argentinian author of “The Aleph” and “The Garden of Forking Paths.”
ANSWER: Jorge Luis Borges [or Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges] (The first line refers to “César Aira’s Infinite Footnote to Borges.” The second line refers to Stuart Moulthrop’s Victory Garden.)
[after 59% of the tossup] In one work, this thinker used the example of Castor and Pollux sleeping in alternating shifts to demonstrate that the soul is not always thinking. A chapter in a work by this thinker contrasts certain knowledge with arguments that are likely to be true based on “probability,” or agreement between our own and others’ experiences. This thinker described a central concept being affected by sensory experiences of intrinsic “primary qualities” and subjective “secondary qualities.” This thinker argued that reflection or sensation informs all “objects of thinking” to refute “innate ideas” in favor of the human mind as a blank slate, or tabula rasa. For 10 points, name this Enlightenment philosopher who wrote An Essay Concerning Human Understanding.
ANSWER: John Locke
[after 59% of the tossup] One of these animals is often depicted supporting Kui Xing. A table-carrying child of the Dragon King is one of these animals named Bixi. A snake is often depicted winding around one of these animals that represents the north. The name of that one of the Four Symbols is typically translated as “Black [this animal].” After holes are patched with multicolored stones, one of these animals named Ao has his legs cut off by Nüwa to create four pillars for holding up the heavens. In the comparative mythology section of Primitive Culture, Edward Burnett Tylor discusses the tropes of both elephants and these animals as world-bearing creatures. For 10 points, ancient Chinese divination sometimes made use of the shells of what reptiles?
ANSWER: turtles [or tortoises; or wū gūi (“ooh gway”); accept Black Tortoise or Black Turtle-Snake or xuánwǔ; accept World-Bearing Turtles or World-Bearing Tortoises]
[after 59% of the tossup] In a 2018 novel, this character is reimagined into two teenage boys who fall in love and kiss as its narrator claims that “history is enough to make a future.” This character is charged by a bull while stuck in a tree in a novel that ends with him claiming to have “had an accident… so may you all.” This character learns about the world from The Shaper and an omniscient dragon in a novel by John Gardner. A man is discouraged from fighting this character by Unferth, who believes this character will win. A giant’s sword melts from the hilt after it is used to cut this character’s head from his corpse, which is taken as a trophy after the killing of his “monstrous hell-bride” of a mother. For 10 points, Beowulf first defends Heorot by fighting what monster, a “descendant of Cain” who dies after his arm is ripped off?
ANSWER: Grendel (The first clue refers to Maria Dehvana Headley’s The Mere Wife. The John Gardner novel is Grendel.)
[after 60% of the tossup] A character with this profession becomes upset when another character refuses to say “a man outgrows his wife every seven years.” At the beginning of another play, a character with this profession says, “the morning star always gets wonderful bright the minute before it has to go.” Mr. Fitzpatrick holds this job during a mass food poisoning in a play about the Antrobus family. A character with this profession remarks that “this is the way things were” before a choir directed by the alcoholic organist Simon Stimson sings. That character with this profession replies, “the saints and poets, maybe” when a dead woman asks him if human beings “realize life while they live it” after she revisits her twelfth birthday. For 10 points, Thornton Wilder included characters with what profession in his plays The Skin of Our Teeth and Our Town?
ANSWER: stage manager [accept stage director; prompt on narrator; prompt on manager]
[after 60% of the tossup] This concept was the domain of Erua, an aspect of Marduk’s consort Ṣarpanītū. Rodnovery (“rod-NOV-ery”) revived a Slavic folk practice in which people with this condition keep faceless Pelenashka dolls secret. Egyptian pottery depicting a deity of this concept was found on Crete in a cave named for Eileithyia (“ill-ih-THIGH-uh”), another deity of this concept. In Egypt, people with this condition used ankh-like tjeti knots, while in Mesopotamia, apotropaic talismans of Pazuzu protected people with this condition from a chimeric deity. That deity, Lamashtu, was believed to cause cot deaths by tapping people with this condition seven times on the stomach. For 10 points, people pray to fertility goddesses hoping to obtain what condition leading to childbirth?
ANSWER: pregnancy [or word forms like pregnant; accept labor or childbirth until “childbirth” is read; prompt on fertility until read]
[after 60% of the tossup] Four deputies titled for these structures represented the Maḥdī during the Minor Occultation. One figure named for this structure began his religious career after seeing seven drops of blood on another’s throat, and is buried on Mount Carmel. Salman the Persian is the final person to fill a role named for these structures in Alawism, which comprises a trinity along with the Manifestation and the Name. In the first of a collection of Zen kōans titled for one of these structures lacking itself, a dog replies “mu” when asked if it has Buddha-nature. Vermillion examples of these structures mark places where kami enter into the human realm in Shintō shrines. For 10 points, bāb and torii are words for what structures, through which Jesus entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday?
ANSWER: gates [or doors; or portals; accept Gateless Gate; accept mén or guān or mon or kan; accept kahyō; accept Báb or bāb or ’abwāb until “bāb” is read; accept wakīl or safīr or na‘īb until “shrine” is read; prompt on barrier] (Báb is Arabic for gate.)
[after 61% of the tossup] The “crux” of this concept is lacking “means by which to render our lives believable” according to a speech that opens by describing Antonio Pigafetta as a precursor to modern novelists. In a novel whose title ends with this word, a woman sends her daughter to a convent for having a baby with a mechanic. William Faulkner is called “my master” in a Nobel acceptance speech titled for this concept “of Latin America.” This word ends the title of a novel in which 17 brothers with Ash Wednesday crosses are shot in the head. A novel whose title ends with this word opens with the protagonist remembering how his father took him to see ice and chronicles generations of the Buendía family. For 10 points, Gabriel García Márquez wrote a novel titled “One Hundred Years of” what concept?
ANSWER: solitude [or soledad; accept One Hundred Years of Solitude or Cien Años de Soledad; accept “The Solitude of Latin America” or “La Soledad de América Latina”]
[after 61% of the tossup] In a story set after this war, Henry jumps into a river and tells his brother Lyman “my boots are filling” before he drowns. In a story set after this war, Norman Bowker walks fully clothed into his hometown lake after driving around it twelve times, only stopping to get a hamburger. After being shot twice, the protagonist of a story set during this war vows to scare the inexperienced medic Bobby Jorgenson using flares and sandbags. This war is the subject of a collection that contains “How to Tell a True War Story” and another story in which Kiowa drowns in a sewage field. Lieutenant Jimmy Cross lists “can openers, pocket knives, heattabs, wristwatches” in a story set during this war in which Ted Lavender is shot in the head. For 10 points, name this war, the backdrop of the stories in Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried.
ANSWER: Vietnam War [or Second Indochina War; or Chiến tranh Việt Nam; or Kháng chiến chống Mỹ] (The first story is “The Red Convertible” by Louise Erdrich.)
[after 62% of the tossup] In Turkic folklore, these places are inhabited by tickling spirits known as Shurale and spirits called Äbädä, who are turned away by inverting one’s clothing. Slavic tutelary deities called Leshy are said to inhabit these locations. A sun god binds an inhabitant of one of these places by sending either seven or 13 winds. While journeying toward one of these locations, a hero has five dreams including one of a falling mountain and one of wrestling a bull. Nemetons were often created by sectioning off sacred areas of these locations by Celtic druids. Enkidu helps destroy one of these locations after the beheading of its inhabitant, Humbaba. For 10 points, name these locations that include one in the Epic of Gilgamesh made up of cedars.
ANSWER: forests [accept cedar forests; accept sacred groves; prompt on cedar trees or oak trees]
[after 62% of the tossup] A medieval travel journal from this country was written by an anonymous “Lady” whose aunt, known only as a noble’s “mother,” authored The Gossamer Years. A book from this country opens “In spring it is the dawn that is most beautiful” and features the section “Embarrassing Things.” Ivan Morris translated that book and one retitled after the same “Bridge of Dreams” that titles a chapter of a novel from this country. A possibly autobiographical character in a novel from this country is kidnapped by the protagonist after the daughter of the Minister of the Left dies. The blank chapter “Vanished into the Clouds” appears in that novel from this country, often considered the first modern novel. For 10 points, name this country home to the authors of The Pillow Book and The Tale of Genji.
ANSWER: Japan [or Nippon; or Nihon] (The first line is the Sarashina Diary.)
[after 62% of the tossup] A group of hymns in this text begin with a mahala symbol, which may either mean “woman” or “place of alighting.” Three repetitions of a hymn whose name means “that door” occur in this text, including one which provides the only vocatives in its Japujī section. Over 100 hymns in this text were written by the 13th-century mystic sheikh Bābā Farīd (“fuh-REED”). A rumalla cloth covers this text when closed; while it is read, this text is fanned with a yak-hair chauri. This text’s opening line, called the Mūl Mantar (“MOOL MUN-ter”), contains the monotheistic statement “Ik Onkar.” After a 1708 declaration at Naded, this text took on an eternal spiritual role, succeeding Gobind Singh. For 10 points, name this holy book that serves as Sikhism’s eternal Guru.
ANSWER: Gurū Granth Sāhib [accept Śrī Gurū Granth Sāhib Jī; accept Ādī Granth or Ādī Śrī Granth Sāhib Jī]
[after 63% of the tossup] In a novel set in this state, a character is beat up after asking two boys to return candy stolen from Mr. Marconi’s Tobacco and Cigars. The highly abusive real-life Dozier School was fictionalized in a novel set in this state by Colson Whitehead. In a different novel set in this state, the protagonist remarks that “the business of the head rag irked her endlessly” after her husband forbids her from showing her hair in public. The protagonist of a novel set in this state has a vision of her future husband desecrating a pear tree after she is caught kissing Johnny Taylor. In a novel set in this state, Tea Cake is shot after being bitten by a rabid dog during the Okeechobee hurricane. For 10 points, name this state where Janie Crawford tells her story in its town of Eatonville, the setting of Their Eyes Were Watching God.
ANSWER: Florida [or FL] (The Whitehead novel is The Nickel Boys.)
[after 63% of the tossup] In bacteria, these molecules can form OLE (“O-L-E”) structures implicated in stress-response. The bridge helix of a protein that synthesizes this molecule can be inhibited by alpha-amanitin. These molecules can form a hammerhead structure originally discovered in tobacco ringspot virus that has catalytic activity. This molecule can form the PPT that interacts with the spliceosome, which also contains small nuclear examples of these molecules. A hypothesis named for this molecule’s world posits that its ability to self-replicate predates the existence of other biomolecules. This molecule with non-coding and transfer subtypes pairs adenine with uracil. For 10 points, name this usually single-stranded biomolecule that can be prefixed “m” for messenger.
ANSWER: RNA [or ribonucleic acid; accept RNA world or RNA synthase or snRNAs or ncRNAs or tRNAs or mRNAs]
[after 64% of the tossup] A member of this school wrote a chreia (“KRAY-ah”) about one of its members wearing a tablet with the names of men who beat him for his half-shaven head. At a symposium, a member of this school defended spending her time on philosophy rather than weaving against Theodorus the Atheist. Thinkers in this school from the village of Maroneia included Metrocles and his sister, Hipparchia, who married the Theban philosopher Crates (“CRAY-teez”) and began living in stoa on the streets of Athens. A member of this school who taught those philosophers mocked Plato’s definition of man as a “featherless biped” by plucking a chicken and searched for an “honest man” with a lantern in daylight. For 10 points, a word meaning “dog-like” names what philosophical school supported by Diogenes of Sinope?
ANSWER: Cynicism [or Cynics; or Cynici]
[after 65% of the tossup] A novel about a character with this occupation includes a set of “Commendatory Verses” by fictional characters, including Urganda the Unknown. A character with this occupation changes his nickname to be “of the Lions” instead of one about having a “Sorrowful Face.” A man with this occupation is described with the epithet Innamorato in the title of a poem by Matteo Boiardo. In a novel about a character with this occupation, the romance Amadis of Gaul is among the books taken out of a library to be burned by a barber and priest. That novel contains references to an epic poem about a man with this occupation titled Orlando Furioso. A character who names his horse Rocinante aspires to hold this occupation and recruits the laborer Sancho Panza. For 10 points, name this chivalric profession held by Don Quixote.
ANSWER: knight [or knight-errant; or caballero; or caballero andante; accept “Knight of the Lions” or “Knight of the Sorrowful Face”]
[after 67% of the tossup] A deity has his toes cut off for using one of these objects after rejecting a first offer of gruel and accepting a second offer of a gold ring. A deity uses one of these objects called Mesektet or Mandjet after embodying his ram-headed form. The Book of Gates describes 12 minor deities who observe one of these objects passing by. Nemty is often depicted as a falcon standing on one of these objects due to his role in using them. Khepri protects one of these objects by standing in front of it and helping to battle off Apophis. By painting a wooden one of these vehicles to resemble stone, Horus wins a race against Set and becomes the king of Egypt. For 10 points, Ra rides through the underworld in a “solar” one of what seafaring vehicles?
ANSWER: boats [or ships; or barques; or ferries; or ferry; accept ferrymen; accept Ra’s solar barque]
[after 67% of the tossup] Isaac Bickerstaffe replaced this character with Doctor Cantwell in an adaptation of another author’s play about this character, The Non-Juror by Colley Cibber (“SIB-er”). The non-speaking maid Flipote is slapped at the end of the first scene of a play titled for this character, which Richard Wilbur translated into English verse. In that play, a grandmother who views this character as perfect is proven wrong when this character’s actions lead to the bailiff Loyal serving eviction papers. The maid Dorine prevents Mariane from marrying this character, who is arrested by order of a king in a deus ex machina ending. This character, who is exposed while trying to seduce Elmire, pretends to be religious to gain Orgon’s trust. For 10 points, name this character, a “Hypocrite” created by Molière.
ANSWER: Tartuffe (The Isaac Bickerstaffe play is The Hypocrite.)
[after 68% of the tossup] In a poem in this language, a poet asks the protagonist if he wrote the line “Ladies who have intelligence of love.” That line appears in a poem in this language in which Love tells a poet in Latin, “ego dominus tuus,” or “I am your lord.” T. S. Eliot quoted a poet who wrote in this language with the line “Because I do not hope to turn again.” That poet, who wrote a song whose title is translated as “A lady asks me,” founded a literary school that influenced a prosimetrum on courtly love in this language. Works in the sweet new style movement in this language include the love poem The New Life. In a long narrative poem in this language, Beatrice and Virgil act as guides to a poet traveling through hell, purgatory, and heaven. For 10 points, name this language used by Dante to write The Divine Comedy.
ANSWER: Italian [or italiano; or lingua italiana; accept Tuscan or dialetto toscano or Florentine or dialetto fiorentino or vernacolo fiorentino] (Guido Cavalcanti’s “Donna mi prega” translates to “A lady asks me.”)
[after 69% of the tossup] A paper titled for this concept argues that “functional explanations” can account for phenomena like reportability, but not this concept. Reportability defines the “access” type of this concept, which Ned Block distinguished from its “phenomenal” type. Joseph Levine argued that theories of this concept struggle to explain subjectivity due to the explanatory gap. The phi phenomenon is evidence for the theory that this concept arises from many sources of input and systems of interpretation, called the multiple drafts model. David Chalmers argued that science cannot even attempt to explain why this concept exists, which is its “hard problem.” Philosophical zombies lack this concept. For 10 points, a book by Daniel Dennett “explains” what concept, which is the mental awareness of one’s experience?
ANSWER: consciousness [accept hard problem of consciousness; accept phenomenal consciousness or access consciousness; accept Consciousness Explained; accept “Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness”]
[after 69% of the tossup] The title character of a novel by this author complains about Copernicus to the librarian who encourages him to write his story, Don Eligio. In a play by this author, a girl dressed in all white and a black sash clings to a woman whose “wax-like” face is covered by a widow’s veil. While caring for his wife, this author wrote a novel in which a character uses his winnings from Monte Carlo to pose as Adriano Meis after he is declared dead. In a play by this author of The Late Mattia Pascal, a man flirts with his former step-daughter in Madame Pace’s brothel. At the end of a play by this author, the deaths of the Child and the Boy lead the Stage Manager to complain, “I’ve lost a whole day over these people.” For 10 points, name this Italian playwright of Six Characters in Search of an Author.
ANSWER: Luigi Pirandello
[after 70% of the tossup] In a play by this author, after recalling the papaya cream scrubs given to her, one character is mistakenly called Carl by an aging actress using the name “Princess Kosmonopolis.” The opening stage directions of a play by this author describe a bed with giant wicker cornucopias on the headboard that used to belong to Jack Straw and Peter Ochello. In a play by this author, one character claims that his leg injury from hurtling causes him to drink until he hears a “click” in his head. That character rants about “mendacity” to Big Daddy when he suggests that he had a romantic relationship with his teammate Skipper. For 10 points, name this author of Sweet Bird of Youth who wrote about Brick and Maggie Pollitt’s failing marriage in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.
ANSWER: Tennessee Williams [or Thomas Lainer Williams III]
[after 71% of the tossup] Karl Taube, who wrote an essay on this substance’s symbolism partially titled for its “fetishes,” studied a god of this substance who appears in the San Bartolo murals. A foliated god of this substance is contrasted with the “first father,” a tonsured god of this substance, whose emergence from a turtle carapace is often equated with the resurrection of Hun Hunahpu. A passage into the side of a mountain that reveals the source of this substance is opened by the Hero Twins, who use it to replace the teeth of Seven Macaw. After attempts using mud and wood failed, humanity was created out of this foodstuff by Tepeu and Qucumatz. For 10 points, the Three Sisters included squash, beans, and what staple grain that features in many Mesoamerican stories?
ANSWER: maize [or corn; accept Maya maize god or tonsured maize god or foliated maize god; accept “Lighting Celts and Corn Fetishes”]
[after 71% of the tossup] A speaker in one of these title places notes that “The others have gone; they were tired… But I would rather be standing here” in a poem that declares “There is something terrible about a child.” Charlotte Mew wrote a poem set at one of these places “In Nunhead.” A “school” of poetry named for these places included Thomas Parnell and Robert Blair. In a poem set in one of these places, the speaker imagines “a heart once pregnant with celestial fire” and “hands” that “wak’d to ecstasy the living lyre.” The speaker of a poem reflects that “the paths of glory led but to” one of these places in a poem that includes an epitaph to “A youth to Fortune and to Fame unknown” and begins “The curfew tolls the knell of parting day.” For 10 points, an elegy by Thomas Gray is set in a “Country” type of what location?
ANSWER: graveyards [or cemeteries; or graves; or churchyards; accept “In Nunhead Cemetery”; accept “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”; prompt on churches by asking “in what part of the church is that poem set?”]
[after 71% of the tossup] A satirical 1978 essay describes a hypothetical in which these people claim superiority due to an exclusive connection to lunar phases. Kate Manne coined a portmanteau about how sympathy prioritizes the “bright future” of these people over others’ suffering. The “adventurer” is contrasted with the “sub-[these people]” in a section on approaches to personal freedom from The Ethics of Ambiguity. In an essay inspired by John Berger’s Ways of Seeing entitled “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” Laura Mulvey describes these people’s objectifying “gaze.” These people are defined as “the Subject” and contrasted with “the Other” in Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex. For 10 points, feminist philosophers often critique “the patriarchy” for prioritizing what people?
ANSWER: men [or males; or boys; accept male gaze; accept sub-men; accept “If Men Could Menstruate”] (The essay in the first line is “If Men Could Menstruate” by Gloria Steinem. The portmanteau is “himpathy.”)
[after 72% of the tossup] The thermal form of this process subject to the Soret effect was investigated by Clusius and Dickel using an insulated column. The force of a “self” form of this process is given by the derivative of chemical potential with respect to distance. The Schmidt number relates the kinematic viscosity of a fluid to this process. The Wilke–Chang correlation can be used to estimate this process and uses a solute–solvent interaction factor. Random walks were related to a parabolic equation named for this process by Einstein. The letter D represents a coefficient of this process in two laws of it named for Fick. Solvent undergoes a specific form of this process across membranes in osmosis. For 10 points, name this general process where particles travel down concentration gradients.
ANSWER: diffusion [prompt on osmosis until read; prompt on Brownian motion; prompt on isotope separation by asking “what general process is used?”]
[after 72% of the tossup] Joseph Cundall’s photographs of this artwork were referenced by Elizabeth Wardle to create a replica now held in the Reading Museum. In this artwork, a naked man squats underneath a woman in a red gateway who is being touched by a priest. This artwork’s 58 tituli describe the construction of a motte and a man who “gives strength to the boys.” The appearance of figures such as Wadard in this artwork suggests that it was commissioned by the Bishop of Odo. A man in this artwork with an arrow in his eye is often identified as Harold Godwinson, whose coronation is depicted below Halley’s Comet in this artwork. For 10 points, name this embroidered depiction of the Norman conquest of England held in a namesake French cathedral.
ANSWER: Bayeux Tapestry [or Tapisserie de Bayeux]
[after 72% of the tossup] The narrator of a poem by this author described breaking “the copious curls upon my head” because her aunt “liked smooth-order hair.” In a different poem by this author, the speaker encourages the addressee to “Gather the north flowers to complete the south / And catch the early love up in the late.” In a long poem by this author, Marian Erle has a child out of wedlock and refuses to marry Romney, who proposes to the title character instead. Virginia Woolf wrote about this author’s cocker spaniel getting kidnapped in the fictional biography Flush. This author wrote “call me by my pet name” in a collection in which a different poem begins, “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.” For 10 points, name this poet who wrote the nine-book “novel in verse” Aurora Leigh and Sonnets from the Portuguese.
ANSWER: Elizabeth Barrett Browning [or Elizabeth Barrett Browning; accept Elizabeth Barrett; prompt on Browning; reject “Robert Browning”]
[after 72% of the tossup] The first English translation of a concept posited by this thinker was made by Alexander Tille 13 years before a controversial rendering by Thomas Common. A work lambasted for its existentialist portrayal of this thinker that dubs him “Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist” was written by Walter Kaufmann. This thinker borrowed the term “Tschandala” from a translation of the Laws of Manu to contrast focuses on “breeding” and “taming” in religious moralities. His sister Elizabeth Förster posthumously published the works of this philosopher, who wrote that embracing amor fati would allow humans to accept “eternal recurrence.” For 10 points, name this German philosopher who developed the Übermensch in his book Thus Spake Zarathustra.
ANSWER: Friedrich Nietzsche [or Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche] (The first line refers to the Übermensch, which Alexander Tille rendered as “Beyond-man” and Thomas Common translated as “Superman.”)
[after 73% of the tossup] After being asked about art, a character in this novel says, “People are like trees in a forest; no botanist would think of studying each individual birch tree.” While standing by a window, a character in this novel confesses his love to a woman who marries a 46-year-old hypochondriac and inherits the estate Nikolskoe (“nee-KOL-sko-yeh”). At the beginning of this novel, a character who is compared to a jackdaw returns to a man whose brother settles in Dresden after pursuing Princess R. One of this novel’s protagonists mends an opponent’s leg immediately after a duel over the servant Fenichka. After a faulty autopsy, a character in this novel dies from an infected cut. At the beginning of this novel, Nikolai waits at his estate, Marino, for Arkady. For 10 points, Yevgeny Bazarov is a proponent of nihilism in what Ivan Turgenev novel?
ANSWER: Fathers and Sons [or Otcy i deti; or Fathers and Children]
[after 73% of the tossup] Most languages fulfill Optimality Theory’s HNuc (“H-nuke”) constraint by making these constructs obligatory, unlike Czech and Tashelhiyt (“ta-shill-HEET”) Berber. Back mutation in Old English is an example of the “breaking” of these constructs. In one Salishan language, the phrase “then he had in his possession a bunchberry plant” entirely lacks these constructs. Unlike standard Italian’s seven, Sardinian only distinguishes five of these constructs’ qualities. The transition from Middle to Early Modern English brought about a “Great” shift of these constructs. Two of these constructs are undergoing the “cot–caught” merger in American English. For 10 points, name these linguistic sounds contrasted with consonants.
ANSWER: vowels [accept vocoids; accept vowel breaking; prompt on phonemes]
[after 74% of the tossup] A prologue by this author recounts the development of a joke in which passengers on a steamboat to Alexandria shout “Hans” after two Lebanese men humiliate the title “Tramp from Piraeus.” In a story by this author, a Zulu man spits in the face of a gay public official named Bobby who attempts to pick him up in a bar before being beaten at a checkpoint. Back-to-back stories in a collection by this author follow the insane Man-Man and the poet B. Wordsworth. The linked stories “One out of Many” and “Tell Me Who to Kill” appear in this author’s book In a Free State. The six-fingered title character of a novel by this author lives at the Hanuman House with the Tulsi family. For 10 points, name this Trinidadian author of Miguel Street and A House for Mr. Biswas.
ANSWER: V. S. Naipaul [or Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul]
[after 75% of the tossup] Alexander Marshack dubiously claimed that seemingly random lines carved on an artifact from this country’s Thaïs Bone were actually a system of time. This country, home to the pebble-painting Azilian industry, is the location of the type site of the Acheulean (“uh-SHOO-lee-in”) culture. This country is the northernmost range of a culture that names an alternative to the Clovis First hypothesis, the Solutreans. A buffalo stands above a bird-headed man in a painting at a site in this country. That site in this country, which was completely reconstructed for tourists due to the presence of mold, was discovered after a dog fell into a cave. For 10 points, the Cro-Magnon rock shelter is found in what country that is home to the Lascaux (“lass-KO”) Cave Paintings?
ANSWER: France [or French Republic; or République française]
[after 75% of the tossup] A late section of this book discusses a man with “aspect-blindness” as analogous to someone lacking a “musical ear.” A claim in this book about philosophy having methods “like therapies” inspired the therapeutic approach discussed in a book titled for “New” and its author. This book’s opening describes a shopkeeper’s responses to a slip reading “five red apples” while criticizing a quote about naming objects from Augustine’s Confessions. A builder and an assistant communicate with words like “block” and “pillar” in one of this book’s language games. This book rejects private languages with the beetle-in-a-box thought experiment. For 10 points, name this posthumously published book in which Ludwig Wittgenstein reverses many positions from his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.
ANSWER: Philosophical Investigations [or Philosophische Untersuchungen] (The New Wittgenstein is by Cora Diamond, Alice Crary, and James F. Conant.)
[after 76% of the tossup] This artist drew from an earlier depiction of pine trees in Calvi for a woodcut of tire tracks and footprints crossing over a reflective puddle. A statue of a simurgh gifted to this artist inspired the “bird-humans” that are depicted three times along the central vertical axis in the mezzotint Another World. Piranesi’s Imaginary Prisons inspired this artist’s lithograph of faceless people in a space with multiple sources of gravity. After studying Islamic tile art at the Alhambra, this artist began depicting figures such as knights and reptiles in tessellated patterns. This artist’s print Relativity depicts several staircases in a shape similar to a Penrose triangle. For 10 points, name this Dutch artist whose prints often depict impossible objects.
ANSWER: M. C. Escher [or Maurits Cornelis Escher]
[after 76% of the tossup] In one novel, a character with this profession crushes baby birds under a stone to save them from the sadistic Tom Bloomfield. That character with this profession is reunited with the dog Snap while walking along the beach at the end of a novel published under the pen name Acton Bell. In another novel, the employer of a character with this profession asks “does my forehead not please you?” and “do you think me handsome?” to which that character with this profession replies bluntly, “No, sir.” That character with this profession travels to Ferndean, and helps a man blinded in a fire at Thornfield Hall started by his wife. After refusing a proposal from the clergyman St. John (“SIN-jin”) Rivers, that title character with this profession states in the final chapter, “Reader, I married him.” For 10 points, name this profession of Jane Eyre.
ANSWER: governess [prompt on teacher; prompt on tutor; prompt on servant; prompt on nanny; prompt on au pair]
[after 78% of the tossup] A member of this family cannot stop laughing when he is arrested after buying a lost Italian girl a loaf of bread and trying to locate her family. That member of this family feels “blood surge steadily” when he holds his hand on his sister’s throat and says her lover’s name. This family is descended from a refugee of the Battle of Culloden, according to an appendix written in 1945 that ends with the line “They endured.” While climbing a tree to witness a funeral, a member of this family reveals her muddy underwear, foretelling her sexual promiscuity. A member of this family commits suicide on June 2, 1910, by drowning in the Charles River after telling his roommate Shreve about Thomas Sutpen in Absalom, Absalom! For 10 points, Jason, Quentin, Benjy, and Caddy belong to what family in William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury?
ANSWER: Compson family [accept Jason Compson; accept Caddy Compson; accept Benjy Compson; accept Quentin Compson]
[after 82% of the tossup] In the first chapter of volume III of Frankenstein, Victor cites this poem to describe Henry Clerval’s relationship with “The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood” as “an appetite; a feeling, and a love.” In this poem, the author describes how in his “boyish days” he “bounded o’er the mountains… more like a man / Flying from something that he dreads, than one / Who sought the thing he loved.” In this poem, the speaker describes “wreathes of smoke” sent up by a Hermit who sits alone by his fire. In its closing address, the author of this poem asks “wilt thou then forget… these steep woods and lofty cliffs,” to his sister Dorothy, who accompanied him to the titular location five years earlier. For 10 points, name this poem composed “a few miles above” the titular location by William Wordsworth.
ANSWER: “Tintern Abbey” [or “Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey”; or “Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey, On Revisiting the Banks of the Wye During a Tour”]
[after 82% of the tossup] This class of reactions produces a family of toxic compounds that have two benzene rings connected by two oxygen atoms at the para positions, the dioxin family. The Zeldovich mechanism explains the formation of a type of nitrogen-containing molecule during these reactions. Preventing the backflow of one of these reactions in stacks can be accomplished with sweep gas. Gaseous products of these reactions react with nitrogen oxides and light to generate ozone. In these reactions, gases pass over platinum and rhodium to limit the release of VOCs. Those catalytic converters following these reactions reduce the formation of photochemical smog in cities. For 10 points, name these reactions in which a chemical reacts with an oxidant like oxygen to release heat and light.
ANSWER: combustion [or burning]
[after 82% of the tossup] During a storm, this character’s love interest organizes a party game in which guests count successive numbers quickly and get boxed in the ear for making a mistake. In a different novel, this character reintegrates into society after another character thwarts his plan by placing chicken blood in his guns. This character is the subject of a parody by Friedrich Nicolai, and a novel about him inspired a novel subtitled The Beloved Returns by Thomas Mann. This character reads his translation of Ossian to a character who mentions the poet Klopstock while looking at the sky. This character is buried under two linden trees after committing suicide due to his unrequited love for Charlotte. For 10 points, name this character whose “Sorrows” title an epistolary novel by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
ANSWER: Young Werther [accept The Sorrows of Young Werther or The Joys of Young Werther] (The Mann novel is Lotte in Weimar: The Beloved Returns and the Nicolai parody is The Joys of Young Werther.)
[after 84% of the tossup] These structures are central to the GOLT hypothesis, which describes changes in the morphology of WBEs due to global warming. Cymothoa exigua is a parasite that enters hosts through these structures. These structures form the exit point in streamlined organisms that utilize ramjet ventilation. Rakers in these structures filter food particles and these structures are supported by either bony or cartilaginous arches. Unlike most salamanders, external examples of these structures on stalks are present on adult axolotls. In some organisms, these structures require a constant flow of water over them to prevent drowning. For 10 points, name these respiratory structures that enable fish to breathe underwater.
ANSWER: gills
[after 92% of the tossup] The son of a Lebanese businessman claims that he is adapting a novel by this author for theatre to hide his relationship with Nick Guest in Alan Hollinghurst’s novel The Line of Beauty. A novel by this author ends with the woman’s rights orator Verena Tarrant being carried out of a hall with tears, “not the last she was destined to shed,” in her eyes. The protagonist of a novel by this author first meets her aunt Lydia in the library of her grandmother’s house in Albany. Pansy is revealed to be the daughter of Madame Merle in a novel by this author in which the protagonist rejects the proposals of Lord Warburton and Caspar Goodwood before marrying Gilbert Osmond in Rome. For 10 points, name this author of The Bostonians who also created Isabel Archer in The Portrait of a Lady.
ANSWER: Henry James
[after 92% of the tossup] Description acceptable. Massirah is controversially used to perform this action in Sudan. Surah al-Nisā’ warns that this practice, which is likened to belomancy and polytheism in Surah al-Mā’idah, can invalidate daily prayer. Along with apostasy, this action can require ḥadd punishment based on sunnah rather than on the text of the Qur’an. Khalid ibn Walid is credited with increasing punishment for this practice from 40 to 80 lashes. Although an al-Tirmidhī hadith equates this action with the consumption of khamr (“KHAH-mur”), some jurists of the Ḥanafī school only prohibit performing this action with date or grape products. For 10 points, identify this practice of intoxication which is forbidden in Islam.
ANSWER: drinking alcohol [accept sukr or muskar; accept intoxication or word forms until read; accept drunkenness or word forms; accept drinking wine or beer or liquor; accept consuming khamr until read; prompt on drinking by asking “drinking what?”]
[after 95% of the tossup] This figure is depicted in several “Palagi heads,” one of which was reattached to its original body by Adolf Furtwängler. A 1990 sculpture of this figure used a cantilever to support the right arm in lieu of a column and is housed in a William Crawford Smith building. A frieze depicting the birth of Pandora was omitted from a “Varvakeion” copy of a sculpture of this figure. Alan LeQuire created a plaster replica of that sculpture of this larger figure for the naos (“NAY-oss”) of a building in Nashville. The artist’s patron Pericles appears on a round shield next to a coiled snake in a large chryselephantine sculpture of this figure by Phidias. For 10 points, the ancient Greek Parthenon once held a sculpture of what goddess of war?
ANSWER: Athena [accept Athena Parthenos or Varvakeion Athena or Athena Lemnia] (LeQuire’s reproduction of the Athena Parthenos was created for the Nashville Parthenon.)
[after 98% of the tossup] Wendy Freedman used infrared measurements to constrain these stars’ Wesenheit (“VESS-en-hite”) function. Observing that an equation concerning these stars depended on “population” prompted Walter Baade to recalculate the size of the known universe to double its previous estimate. Arthur Eddington proposed that compressing these stars’ outer layers causes an increase in opacity, an effect later known as the “kappa mechanism.” The Hubble constant was initially derived from observations of these stars in spiral galaxies, utilizing a linear relation between “M-sub-V” and “log P.” These standard candles are commonly used to calibrate distances to type Ia (“one-A”) supernovae and satisfy a period-luminosity relation discovered by Henrietta Swan Leavitt. For 10 points, name these variable stars.
ANSWER: Cepheid variables [or Cepheids; prompt on variable stars until “variable” is read]
[after 99% of the tossup] This painting provoked the comment “tribulations for later” from Pablo Picasso, who made 140 drawings inspired by its subject. Frédéric Bazille was depicted four times in a response to this painting that was cut into three pieces due to mold damage. This painting was praised for depicting “figures of natural grandeur” by Émile Zola, who asserted “no one goes to the Louvre to be scandalized.” The poses of this painting’s figures drew from an engraving of The Judgement of Paris by Marcantonio Raimondi. This painting, which was exhibited at the 1863 Salon des Refusés, depicts Victorine Meurent (“murr-ON”) beside a basket of fruit atop a pile of clothes. For 10 points, name this painting of a nude woman sitting with two clothed men by Édouard Manet.
ANSWER: Luncheon on the Grass [or Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe] (The second sentence refers to Claude Monet’s version of Luncheon on the Grass.)
[after 100% of the tossup] This character suggests that God should recreate the world after positing the “principle of perpetual disappointment” as a “fundamental law of the Universe.” This character almost leaves behind a stack of comic books after going on a tirade in which he smashes a bottle of brandy and tears up an unfinished essay on global politics. This character claims that a copy of On the Origin of Species is safe because he put it in the library’s theology section. This author of “A World Without Collisions” declares himself an atheist after an older interlocutor suggests Jesus Christ as a “man of magnitude.” This character lets out his frustration about his alcoholic father returning from the hospital on Sam and Willie. For 10 points, an Athol Fugard play is titled for what character “…and the Boys”?
ANSWER: Master Harold [or Hally; accept “Master Harold” …and the Boys]
[after 100% of the tossup] This activity provides an alternate name for Cindy Sherman’s Untitled Film Still #48, in which a woman in a plaid skirt stands facing away from the viewer next to her suitcase. John Maynard Smith referenced this activity for the name of a genetic effect in which an allele increases in frequency due to a linked beneficial allele. Dutch liftplaats signs mark places for this activity, which is similar to the D.C. area’s “slug lines.” In 2013, a Canadian robot that did this activity across Canada was destroyed in Philadelphia. In a book titled partly for this activity, Vogons destroy Earth right after the protagonist is saved by the towel-carrying Ford Prefect. For 10 points, extending one’s thumb towards the road is a gesture for what activity that inspired a series of “Guides” by Douglas Adams?
ANSWER: hitchhiking [or hitching; or hitchhike; accept thumbing until “thumb” is read; accept The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy; accept HitchBot; accept genetic hitchhiking; prompt on driving, riding in a car, traveling, waiting for a rideshare, passengers, carpooling, commuting, or equivalents of any]
[after 100% of the tossup] Eliminating this substance is the goal of the DGP braneworld model. So-called “phantom” forms of this substance are an extreme case of hypothetical quintessence models. An equation of state of pressure equal to negative density characterizes this substance, whose density remains constant as space expands. An era dominated by this substance began roughly 4 billion years ago, when the expansion of the universe began to accelerate. This substance is represented by a quantity that Einstein called his “biggest blunder” when adding it to his field equations, known as the cosmological constant. For 10 points, name this mysterious substance that accounts for over 70 percent of the universe, along with matter and dark matter.
ANSWER: dark energy [prompt on lambda or cosmological constant until read by asking “what substance does that quantity represent?”]
[after 100% of the tossup] This essay’s author is compared to the boy from “The Emperor’s New Clothes” in a Cedric Watts essay countering it. F. R. Leavis’s description of an author’s “insistence upon inexpressible and incomprehensible mystery” is quoted in this essay’s description of a writer who induces “hypnotic stupor” in his readers. This essay references Marco Polo’s “spectacular” omission of the Great Wall of China in his travelogues and states the Congo River is portrayed as an antithesis to the Thames. The speaker of this essay recalls receiving a letter from a “young fellow from Yonkers” who was happy to learn about a tribe’s “customs and superstitions” after reading its author’s novel Things Fall Apart. For 10 points, “Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness” is the subject of what Chinua Achebe essay?
ANSWER: “An Image of Africa” [or “An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness”]
[after 100% of the tossup] In a story by this author, which is narrated to Miss K.I.T., Burmin falls to his knees in front of Maria after realizing she is the woman he jokingly married four years prior during the title event. While translating a work by this author, an author whose essays are collected in Strong Opinions wrote a set of “Notes on Prosody.” This author of “The Blizzard” wrote a collection framed as the stories of the mysterious landowner Ivan Belkin. Vladimir Nabokov feuded with Edmund Wilson over a translation of a work by this author composed of sonnets ending with masculine and feminine rhymes. This author wrote a poem in which Lensky challenges the title dandy to a duel after Tatyana’s name-day celebration. For 10 points, name this Russian author of Eugene Onegin.
ANSWER: Alexander Pushkin [or Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin] (Vladimir Nabokov’s essays are collected in Strong Opinions.)

Andrew Nucci ↩

[after 24% of the tossup] Dissociation of disclinations are used to model these phenomena in KTHNY theory. Above the upper critical dimension, these phenomena belong to the same universality class predicted by mean-field theory. An argument using the favorability of spontaneously forming domain walls was used by Rudolph Peierls (“PIE-erls”) to prove one of these phenomena exists in two dimensions or higher for a certain lattice model. Landau theory classifies these phenomena into first- or second-order based on whether the change in their order parameter is discontinuous. These phenomena include the shift between paramagnetic and ferromagnetic ordering at the Curie point. On pressure–temperature diagrams, these events are represented by crossing a coexistence curve. For 10 points, name these phenomena in which a material changes between different states of matter.
ANSWER: phase transitions [or phase changes; accept first-order phase transitions or second-order phase transitions; accept continuous phase transitions; prompt on transitions]
[after 31% of the tossup] Despite being named for Fermi, a “golden rule” first derived by this physicist predicts transitions due to perturbations. Both state vectors and observables have time dependence in a framework introduced by this physicist called the interaction picture. This physicist’s eponymous equation predicts free particles undergo rapid oscillatory motion called Zitterbewegung (“TSIT-ur-buh-VAY-goong”). The existence of a single magnetic monopole implies the quantization of electric charge according to this physicist’s quantization condition. This physicist “factored” the wave equation to find gamma matrices and spinors used in his namesake equation. The existence of negative energy solutions led this man to propose his namesake “sea” of electrons. For 10 points, what British physicist developed a namesake relativistic generalization of the Schrödinger equation?
ANSWER: Paul Dirac [accept Dirac sea; accept Dirac equation; accept Dirac picture; accept Dirac quantization condition]
[after 32% of the tossup] This adjective appears in the name of a type of space that combines “real and imagined” activities as conceptualized by Edward Soja. Ray Oldenburg used this adjective to describe places that are “levelers” where “conversation is the main activity” in the book The Great Good Place. Alfred Sauvy coined a term containing this adjective in reference to a group that was “exploited” before the French Revolution as noted by the Abbé Sieyès (“ah-BAY say-YES”). Libraries and cafés exemplify social places described by this adjective, in decline in America, that are outside of the home and work. A term containing this adjective originally denoted countries not aligned with the US or USSR during the Cold War. For 10 points, developing countries are said to be in what kind of ordinal “world?”
ANSWER: third [accept third world or third estate or third place or thirdspace]
[after 35% of the tossup] Materials called NIMs with an unusual value for this quantity were first realized using split-ring resonators. An empirical formula for this quantity is expanded in negative even powers of wavelength and becomes inaccurate in regions of anomalous dispersion. The imaginary part of complex values for this quantity models attenuation. Since most materials have negligible magnetic susceptibility, this value is approximately given by the square root of relative permittivity. A decrease of this quantity across an interface enables rays to undergo total internal reflection. The ratio of the sines of the angles of incidence and refraction equals the ratio of two values of this quantity according to Snell’s law. For 10 points, name this quantity that is the ratio of speed of light in vacuum to its speed in a material.
ANSWER: index of refraction [or refractive index or refraction index; accept IOR; prompt on n]
[after 38% of the tossup] The final name in this game’s credits is Seth Goldman, who designed a secret boss who blocks the path to Nyleth’s shrine. In this game, the disgraced Lugoli attacks the player by flinging green balls of muckmaggots with a ladle. The Extricator is used to remove the “Twisted Bud” that parasitizes this game’s protagonist, who must seek out Dr. Yarnaby in Greymoor to remove it. In this game’s true ending, the player character uses the Everbloom to descend into the Abyss to free Lost Lace from the hold of the Void with the aid of her half-sibling, the protagonist of a 2017 Metroidvania set in Hallownest. For 10 points, Hornet is the protagonist of what long-awaited Team Cherry game, which was unexpectedly released in September 2025 as the sequel to Hollow Knight?
ANSWER: Hollow Knight: Silksong [reject “Hollow Knight”]
[after 39% of the tossup] Algebraic varieties named for this shape are subject to the orbit–cone correspondence and can be constructed from fans. For knots named for this shape, “x-to-the-p equals y-to-the-q” is a relation of the knot group. “R-squared” quotient “Z-squared” is isomorphic to this surface, which has “Z-cross-Z” as its fundamental group. This surface can be obtained by gluing each pair of opposite edges of the unit square in the same direction. This orientable surface with Euler characteristic zero is the Cartesian product of two circles. Depending on orientation, either a Klein bottle or this genus-one surface is formed by joining the circular ends of a cylinder. For 10 points, the surface of a coffee cup is topologically equivalent to what single-holed surface shaped like a doughnut?
ANSWER: torus [or 2-torus; accept toric varieties; accept torus knots]
[after 43% of the tossup] One model of these substances consists of two independent phases, one condensed state and one normal state, and was formulated by Tizsa. The mixing of a working liquid and one of these substances allows cooling down to 2 millikelvins in a dilution refrigerator. One of these substances can be created using isentropic compression in a Pomeranchuk cell. These substances display quantized vortices called rotons that can form in these substances as predicted by Landau. These substances have high thermal conductivity due to propagating temperature waves called second sound. Below the lambda point, helium-4 transitions to one of these substances. These substances can form Rollin films that enable them to creep up walls. For 10 points, name these substances that have zero viscosity and flow without friction.
ANSWER: superfluids [accept superfluidity; accept superfluid liquid helium]
[after 43% of the tossup] In hollow rectangular waveguides, waves named for this quantity have the lowest non-zero cutoff frequency in the one-zero mode. For a point charge moving at a uniform relativistic velocity, this quantity becomes “pancake-shaped” by bunching up in the transverse direction. The density of energy stored by this quantity is given by permittivity over 2 times this quantity squared. The component of this quantity parallel to the surface is constant across a boundary. That derivation uses that the flux of this quantity through a surface is proportional only to enclosed charge density according to Gauss’s law. The negative line integral of this quantity gives the scalar potential. For 10 points, what vector quantity is measured in newtons per coulomb and created by electric charges?
ANSWER: electric field [or E-field; prompt on E]
[after 48% of the tossup] One type of these hormones was first discovered in a species of rice-plant pathogen named fujikuroi. Uniconazole (“uni-CON-uh-zole”) inhibits the production of this hormone through blockage of kaurene oxidase. The absence of these hormones can increase biomass growth in the roots and cause shortened internodes. The binding of these hormones causes the degradation of DELLA proteins like GAI. The presence of water activates these hormones that stimulate the production of hydrolytic enzymes in germinating seeds. In elongating stems, these hormones’ concentration is regulated by auxins. For 10 points, name this class of plant hormone that mediates developmental processes like stem elongation.
ANSWER: gibberellins [or GAs; accept gibberellic acid]
[after 52% of the tossup] A composer from this country who expressed a desire to “blow the opera houses up” clashed with his teacher over a ten-movement symphony that contains “love” and “statue” themes. Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho became influenced by spectralism while studying in this country’s IRCAM (“eer-cam”) institute. The clarinet plays solo in the “Abyss of the Birds” movement of a chamber piece that a composer from this country wrote in a prisoner of war camp. A whip-crack opens a jazz-inspired piano concerto by a composer from this country who also wrote an orchestral piece that uses a repetitive snare drum ostinato, his Boléro. For 10 points, name this home country of Olivier Messiaen and Maurice Ravel.
ANSWER: France [or French Republic; or République française] (The first line refers to Pierre Boulez, who hated Messiaen’s Turangalîla-Symphonie.)
[after 52% of the tossup] In a play by this author, a character remarks, “I hate brandy… it stinks of modern literature” while at an Italian restaurant. In that play by this author, that character reminisces about taking a speedboat to Torcello to read Yeats alone. At the end of a different play by this author, a character who had left to get a drink of water returns stripped of some of his clothing and his gun. A character in that play by this author yells “Kaw!” after reading about a “child of eight” killing a cat and a “man of eighty-seven” crawling under a lorry. Two characters in a play by this author argue about the difference between the phrases “light the kettle” and “put on the kettle” and send items like a stale Eccles (“ECK-ulls”) cake up the title device. For 10 points, what playwright of Betrayal wrote about the hitmen Gus and Ben in The Dumb Waiter?
ANSWER: Harold Pinter
[after 54% of the tossup] These groups name a class of theorems that includes “conditional” and “competence-sensitive” subtypes and a non-paradox statement put forth by the Marquis de Condorcet. A relaxed requirement for these groups in Louisiana and Oregon was made unconstitutional in the Ramos case. Potential members of these groups with “conscientious scruples” are excluded from “death qualification” in a process nicknamed “Witherspooning.” These groups are selected from a pool of potential candidates called a venire or struck for cause during the process of voir dire. The Sixth Amendment guarantees the right to these groups’ impartial nature. For 10 points, what groups composed of one’s “peers” determine a verdict in court?
ANSWER: juries [or jury; accept petit jury; accept Condorcet’s jury theorem; reject “grand juries”; reject “voters”] (Ramos v. Louisiana abolished non-unanimous jury verdicts.)
[after 56% of the tossup] A questionnaire that screens for a disorder partly named for this process assesses BMI and neck size and is known by the acronym STOP-BANG. Disorders involving this process can be indicated by a high score on a scale named for Epworth Hospital, including one that can be treated by supplementing orexin and often presents with cataplexy. The “central” form of a condition can be differentiated from its “obstructive” form based on whether it is more prevalent during “quiescent” or “paradoxical” stages of this process, though both can be managed with CPAP machines. High levels of somatotropin are released after the onset of the “slow wave” form of this process, during which memory consolidation also occurs. For 10 points, circadian rhythms regulate what process promoted by melatonin?
ANSWER: sleeping [or being asleep; accept obstructive sleep apnea or central sleep apnea; accept REM sleep or paradoxical sleep or non-REM sleep or NREM sleep or quiescent sleep; prompt on terms like snoozing or dozing off]
[after 57% of the tossup] A 1978 group of people in this profession called “Thirty-Five New Guys” included six pioneering female members like Shannon Lucid. An actress diversified this profession through a national outreach campaign with the company Woman in Motion. A person best known for this profession publicly came out via her obituary and was once asked if 100 tampons was appropriate for one week in this profession. Actress Nichelle Nichols inspired people in this profession like Mae Jemison. In a televised accident investigated by the Rogers Commission, members of this profession including Judith Resnik perished alongside a teacher trained for this profession named Christa McAuliffe. For 10 points, name this profession of Sally Ride.
ANSWER: astronauts [prompt on scientists; prompt on engineers; prompt on aviators or pilots; prompt on geologists; prompt on schoolteachers until “teacher” is read] (Nichelle Nichols was the original portrayer of Uhura in Star Trek.)
[after 58% of the tossup] The Kadomtsev model explains rapid temperature drops in these devices called sawtooth relaxations. One type of these devices are protected from kink instabilities when the safety factor is greater than one. Another type of these devices heats a hohlraum using laser pulses in a technique called ICF. The first one of these devices to achieve a Q greater than one is the National Ignition Facility, which uses internal confinement. Magnetic fields confine plasma in a toroid in the stellarator and tokamak types of these machines, and these devices often use deuterium and tritium for fuel. For 10 points, name these devices that seek to produce power by combining atomic nuclei.
ANSWER: fusion reactors [accept tokamaks until “tokamak” is read; accept inertial confinement fusion reactors; prompt on reactors; prompt on nuclear reactors; reject “fission reactors”]
[after 58% of the tossup] One model of this material that features a “critical state line” is called its “Modified Cam” model. An equation developed by Karl von Terzaghi computes this material’s “bearing capacity.” This material’s swelling potential increases with its plasticity index, which can be calculated from its Atterberg limits. Increases in pressure cause this prototypical three-phase material to contract during “consolidation.” Compaction of this material can cause a structure’s foundation to move during “settlement.” Applied stresses can cause excess pore water pressure to build in this material, causing its “liquefaction” during earthquakes. Based on its particle size distribution, this material can be classified into subtypes such as sand and clay. For 10 points, what organic material do plant roots typically anchor themselves in?
ANSWER: soil [or earth; or dirt; accept sand until read; accept clay until read; accept Modified Cam-Clay model]
[after 59% of the tossup] Ruzsa (“ROO-zhah”) names a distance function between these objects that can be used to prove a bound on sums of these objects called Plünnecke’s inequality. Functors from a locally small category into the category of these objects are the subject of the Yoneda lemma. A class is called “proper” if it is “too big” to be expressed as one of these objects. If X is one of these objects, then X has size strictly smaller than that of “two to the X” by Cantor’s theorem. Problems with constructing these objects via unrestricted comprehension were resolved with a theory of these objects named for Zermelo and Fraenkel that was later extended to include the axiom of choice. Countably infinite instances of these objects have cardinality equal to that of the natural numbers. For 10 points, name these unordered collections of elements.
ANSWER: sets [accept subsets; accept set theory]
[after 61% of the tossup] Composer and genre required. The slow introduction of the first of these pieces opens with a cadence into the subdominant and only reaches the tonic in bar 4. A 3/4 fast movement in one of these pieces uses an oboe theme of [read slowly] seven B-flat quarter notes followed by an eighth-note descent from C to F. The recapitulation in one of these pieces is anticipated by a horn call that creates dissonance with the strings. A flute, oboe, and two clarinets imitate bird calls in a movement of one of these pieces titled “Scene by the brook.” The composer had to be turned to face the audience’s applause at the performance of the last of these pieces, which includes a setting of “Ode to Joy.” For 10 points, name these orchestral works that include ones nicknamed “Eroica” and “Choral.”
ANSWER: symphonies by Ludwig van Beethoven [prompt on symphonies by asking “by who?”; prompt on works by Ludwig van Beethoven by asking “in what genre?”]
[after 63% of the tossup] In quinoa, class-1 HKT proteins load this element into bladder cells. Variations in hydrogen concentration in the brain cause acid-sensing pH sensor proteins to mainly transport this element. Paralytic shellfish poisoning occurs when alkaloids like saxitoxin block the transport of this element. A symporter of glucose and this element called SGLT2 is found in proximal tubules. Subunits of proteins that conduct this element contain six transmembrane passes and are voltage-gated. An ion of this element enters neurons during action potential firing. Blockers for this element’s channels can be used to treat arrhythmia. Hydrolysis of ATP pumps three atoms of this element out of cells against potassium. For 10 points, name this element found alongside chloride in table salt.
ANSWER: sodium [or Na]
[after 65% of the tossup] Annealing of this material is accomplished in lehrs. An industrial method to produce a type of this material lays liquid raw materials over tin to form a float. Diffusion of interfering ions described by the Nikolsky–Eisenman equation across this material is seen in electrodes, which can be used to measure pH. Sintering particles of this material into hollow disks creates fritted examples of these materials that are used as filters. Addition of boron trioxide lowers the coefficient of thermal expansion of these materials. Silica, soda ash, and limestone produce the molten form of this material, which is then solidified by blowing. For 10 points, what amorphous material is often used to make lab materials and window panes?
ANSWER: glass
[after 65% of the tossup] These phenomena express “conceptions” of things like the world according to Calvin Hall’s continuity theory. In the AIM (“A-I-M”) model, these phenomena are caused by interactions between aminergic and cholinergic neurons that generate PGO waves; that model of these phenomena is based on Hobson and McCarley’s activation-synthesis model. Echidnas’ large frontal cortex inspired Crick and Mitchison to theorize that these phenomena cause “reverse learning.” Antti Revonsuo theorized that these phenomena simulate probable threats. These phenomena act as “wish fulfillment” according to an 1899 book that described a precursor to the Oedipus complex. For 10 points, Sigmund Freud wrote about the “interpretation” of what phenomena that occur during REM sleep?
ANSWER: dreams [or dreaming; accept The Interpretation of Dreams or Die Traumdeutung; prompt on sleep or REM sleep until “REM” is read]
[after 66% of the tossup] A bourrée anglaise concludes J. S. Bach’s solo partita for this instrument, for which his son C. P. E. Bach also wrote a solo sonata in A minor. In the Berlin Philharmonic, Emmanuel Pahud plays this instrument. Mozart wrote four quartets for this instrument accompanied by strings, and a concerto for this instrument and harp. Francis Poulenc’s (“fron-SEESE poo-LANK’s”) sonata for this instrument begins with it playing a descending E minor broken chord. Edgar Varèse wrote Density 21.5 for a player of this instrument. A solo for this instrument marked très modéré descends chromatically from C-sharp to G to open Debussy’s Prélude à l’apres-midi d’un faune. For 10 points, name this reedless woodwind instrument.
ANSWER: flute [or flauto traverso; or transverse flute; reject “flauto dolce”]
[after 66% of the tossup] A traditional song from this country compares a ruler’s concubines with flowers, and was recorded by Robert E. Brown for the Voyager Golden Record. Colin McPhee studied the music of a region in this country whose styles include kebyar and uses nested rhythmic structures called colotomy. Performers in one of this country’s art forms sit behind a stage made of banana trunks and can instruct musicians by striking a box with a cempala (“chem-PAH-la”). Tuning systems from this country include the pentatonic slendro and the heptatonic pélog. This country is the home of wayang puppetry, which is accompanied by an ensemble which primarily consists of metallic percussion such as the gong ageng. For 10 points, name this country, the origin of gamelan.
ANSWER: Indonesia [or Republic of Indonesia; or Republik Indonesia]
[after 67% of the tossup] This city employed the slave-trading Suteans, who inhabited nearby Subum, as couriers. MUL.APIN (“mool-ah-peen”), a series of two texts from this city, contains several stellar calendars and is one of the earliest compendia of astronomical knowledge. It’s not Greek, but the Metonic calendar likely originated in this city during the rule of Samsu-iluna. Claiming that no Egyptian was allowed to die outside of Egypt, Amunhotep III refused to send a princess to marry this city’s ruler Burna-Buriash II, from its Kassite Dynasty. A stele from this city that depicts a ruler thinking as he receives guidance from Shamash is the origin of the phrase “an eye for an eye.” For 10 points, name this Mesopotamian city ruled by Hammurabi.
ANSWER: Babylon [or Bābilim]
[after 68% of the tossup] An enzyme that primarily degrades this protein forces substrates to refold into beta-sheets in a triangular prism-shaped active site. Two disulfide bonds stabilize the two chains of this protein, which originate from cleavage of a single precursor that assembles into hexameric complexes that coordinate to zinc. This protein propagates signals after binding a receptor tyrosine kinase that triggers the PI3K and ERK pathways. Intracellular vesicles sensitive to this protein express the protein GLUT4. Amylin and this hormone are produced in the islets of Langerhans in beta cells of the pancreas. This hormone promotes the formation of glycogen. For 10 points, name this peptide hormone that promotes absorption of glucose that is deficient in diabetes.
ANSWER: insulin
[after 69% of the tossup] Insertion of a XA21 pattern recognition receptor into this organism prevents disease by Xoo. R. solani is a fungal pathogen of this plant that causes sheath blight. Increased lodging resistance conferred by the sd1 gene was a characteristic of the IR8 strain of this plant. Low amylose content characterizes some varieties of this plant, resulting in strong molecular adhesion between starch molecules. A variety of this plant that can synthesize vitamin A precursors is notable for its golden colour. This crop that contains no gluten can be divided into short and long grain varieties. For 10 points, what staple crop with varieties like basmati is grown in paddies?
ANSWER: rice [or Oryza]
[after 71% of the tossup] Lugaro cells found in this structure were discovered following Marr and Albus’s theory of learning in this structure. The fusion of rhombic lips leads to the formation of this structure that lies dorsal to the fourth ventricle. Along with the pons, this structure develops from the metencephalon of the hindbrain. This structure is affected by Joubert syndrome, which leads to impaired development of this structure’s vermis. Climbing fibers terminate in large dendritic tree-forming Purkinje cells in this structure located to the rear and below the cerebrum. For 10 points, name this motor control center of the brain that connects to the spinal cord, also called the “little brain.”
ANSWER: cerebellum
[after 71% of the tossup] They’re not amyloids, but production of ester derivatives of this molecule can be inhibited by CP-113818. SQS converts two molecules of FPP to a key intermediate in the synthesis of this molecule. The INSIG protein lowers production of this molecule by binding to a domain of SCAP, preventing migration of this molecule to the Golgi apparatus. Linear isoprene units are a precursor to this cyclized molecule through a squalene intermediate. Macrophage-like foam cells contain a form of this molecule called LDL, which can be inhibited by statins. High levels of this molecule can lead to fatty plaque deposits in the walls of arteries. For 10 points, what molecule maintains membrane fluidity and is a lipid implicated in heart disease?
ANSWER: cholesterol [prompt on lipids until read]
[after 72% of the tossup] Tom Turpin’s Rosebud Bar was a center for players of this style, an early example of which is “The Bully Song.” Pieces in this style typically use 16-measure themes divided into four parts, and its “classic” school was centered on St. Louis. Interest in this style was revived following a 1970 album by Joshua Rifkin which included a piece that begins with the notes [read slowly] D, E, C, A, [pause] B, G played by both hands. Some pieces in this style were published as “two-steps.” Stride piano was a successor to this style, which is characterized by alternating bass notes and chords underneath syncopated melodies. For 10 points, name this music style exemplified by Scott Joplin pieces like The Entertainer.
ANSWER: ragtime [accept two-step until read]
[after 74% of the tossup] Fragmentation of molecules undergoing this technique is observed in the McLafferty rearrangement. In one form of this technique, selected reaction monitoring is used to select ions for the next stage of processing. Michael Barber invented a technique used during this process where a beam of high energy atoms strike a surface in a technique called fast atom bombardment. Multiple rounds of this technique are performed in its “tandem” variety. Molecules may be prepared for this technique by undergoing electrospray ionization or MALDI. Plots in this technique often coupled with gas chromatography plot intensity against m-over-z. For 10 points, name this technique that separates molecules based on their mass-to-charge ratio.
ANSWER: mass spectrometry [or MS]
[after 77% of the tossup] The Anderson–Newns–Grimley model allows the energy of this process to be calculated in a self-consistent manner by introducing another term to the Hamiltonian. It’s not distillation, but azeotropy in this process can be described using a DSL model. Reaction kinetic models for heterogeneous catalysis contain constants for this process in the denominator, which use an isothermal mechanism for this process named for Langmuir. BET isotherms for this process account for multilayer interactions. Activated carbon and zeolites are two examples of surfaces where this process commonly occurs. For 10 points, name this process in which atoms bond to a surface, such as when gas molecules attach to solid substrates.
ANSWER: adsorption [or adsorbing; or chemisorption; reject “absorption” or “absorbing”]
[after 79% of the tossup] René Leibowitz cited a piece by this composer that begins with the spoken line “I cannot remember everything. I must have been unconscious” as an example of music that meets the requirements of “committed art.” This composer’s early use of quartal harmony can be heard in an ascending theme first played by the horn in his first Chamber Symphony. This composer began using an athematic style in his Opus 11 Drei Klavierstücke (“DRY klah-vee-AIR-shtuck-uh”), and he also wrote A Survivor from Warsaw. The title character is called “drunk” in the opening section of a song cycle by this composer that is accompanied by a namesake ensemble and pioneered the technique of Sprechstimme. For 10 points, name this Austrian composer of Pierrot Lunaire who developed 12-tone serialism.
ANSWER: Arnold Schoenberg
[after 81% of the tossup] In this ballet, one statement of a unison string theme beginning with a descending and ascending octave is followed by four dancers clapping nine eighth notes. Mnemonics were used by Peter Sparling to learn the steps of a hat-wearing character in this ballet who directs four characters to successively sit on a church bench cued by flutes. Merce Cunningham first performed that role in this ballet, which used a simple set that included a rocking chair and the outline of a house. This ballet, which revolves around the marriage of the Husbandman and the Bride, includes variations on the Shaker hymn “Simple Gifts.” For 10 points, name this ballet choreographed by Martha Graham with music by Aaron Copland.
ANSWER: Appalachian Spring
[after 84% of the tossup] A piece by this composer begins quietly with oboes and low strings playing continuous eighth notes as the violins play arpeggios, which crescendoes into a loud D major chord by the chorus and three trumpets. This composer wrote an anthem for the Foundling Hospital, the venue of charity concerts that originated the “Scratch” form of one of his works. This composer was inspired by shepherd-bagpipers to include a pastoral Pifa in a work whose libretto is by Charles Jennens. A widely excerpted sinfonia scored for two oboes and strings appears in this composer’s Solomon. This composer was commissioned to write four anthems for the coronation of George II, including Zadok the Priest. For 10 points, name this Baroque composer who included a Hallelujah chorus in his Messiah.
ANSWER: George Frideric Handel
[after 86% of the tossup] The opening of an opera by this composer uses wide horn arpeggios and sighing string figures to represent lovemaking between two characters, one of whom stops clocks in the night because of her fear of aging. An unseen character is represented by a broken D minor chord in an opera by this composer that uses a motif built from a polytonal E major and C-sharp major chord. Two lovers sing the duet “Mit ihren augen voll Tränen” (“mit EER-in OW-gun voll TRAIN-in”) in act two of an opera by this composer before being interrupted by the lecherous Baron Ochs (“ox”). The title character of an opera by this composer performs the “Dance of the Seven Veils” before kissing the head of John the Baptist. For 10 points, name this German composer of Der Rosenkavalier and Salome.
ANSWER: Richard Strauss [or Richard Georg Strauss; prompt on Strauss]
[after 95% of the tossup] This musician’s band repeats a chant beginning “freedom for your daddy” on a bonus track of an album that also includes a song written to show that a band can swing in 6/8 time. An album by this musician recorded with Eric Dolphy at Cornell includes a song with censored lyrics like “don’t let them tar and feather us” and called an Arkansas politician “sick and ridiculous.” Lyrics like “You know someone great has gone” were added by Joni Mitchell to a song by this musician dedicated to a man nicknamed “Prez.” That song by this composer of “Better Git It in Your Soul” was re-titled “Theme for Lester Young” on an album whose title repeats his last name five times. For 10 points, name this jazz bassist who wrote “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat.”
ANSWER: Charles Mingus [or Charles Mingus Jr.]
[after 96% of the tossup] Damage to this organ may be categorized via the Ishak staging system. The ductus venosus allows this organ to be bypassed in fetal circulation. The AST/ALT ratio may be used in the diagnosis of diseases of this organ. Three quarters of this organ’s blood supply comes from the vessel that is formed from the union of the splenic (“SPLEN-ick”) and superior mesenteric veins; that vessel is the portal vein. This organ’s caudate (“CAW-date”) lobe is named for its resemblance to a tail. Damage to this organ can prevent the conjugation of bilirubin, resulting in jaundice. For 10 points, name this organ that can suffer cirrhosis from alcohol consumption.
ANSWER: liver
[after 97% of the tossup] Note to moderator: Read the answerline carefully. This technology is depicted creating a blue Greek letter omega in the painting If All the World Were Paper and All the Water Sink by Jess. This technology led an artist to begin depicting his “favorite food for thought” in paintings such as Living Still Life. This technology inspired a bronze sculpture in the shape of a skull at the University of Chicago’s Mansueto Library by Henry Moore. Catholicism and this technology influenced Salvador Dalí’s “disintegration” of an earlier painting, exemplifying a form of “mysticism” named after this technology. In a 2023 blockbuster film, events caused by this technology are portrayed with slow-motion thermite reactions. For 10 points, name this technology used in weapons that are depicted in Christopher Nolan’s film Oppenheimer.
ANSWER: nuclear energy [or nuclear power; or nuclear reactions; or atomic energy; or atomic power; or atomic reactions; accept nuclear weapons or nuclear bombs or atomic weapons or atomic bombs or A-bombs; accept Nuclear Mysticism; accept nuclear reactors or nuclear power plants; accept nuclear fission or nuclear fusion or atom splitting; prompt on bombs or weapons or explosives; prompt on reactors or power plants; reject “thermonuclear weapons” or “hydrogen bombs”] (The third sentence refers to Moore’s Nuclear Energy. The fourth sentence refers to Dalí’s Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory.)
[after 99% of the tossup] A piece by this composer emphasizes the word “dominum” through homorhythmic repetition before a triple-time Alleluja section. Since 2012, The Sixteen have released nine albums dedicated to this composer’s music. The head-motif of an ascending fourth followed by a stepwise descent down appears in a piece by this composer that adds a seventh voice in its second Agnus Dei movement. In a description of this composer’s style, leaps are countered by stepwise movement in the other direction and dissonances fall on weak beats, as taught in Joseph Fux’s (“FOOKS’s”) Gradus ad Parnassum. This composer’s most famous missa sine nomine apocryphally “saved polyphony” at the Council of Trent. For 10 points, name this Italian Renaissance composer of the Pope Marcellus Mass.
ANSWER: Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (The first line refers to his O Magnum Mysterium.)
[after 99% of the tossup] The asymmetry in the production of these particles is measured by the experiment at Fermilab using the Drell–Yan process. That experiment observes the “sea” type of these particles, which are contrasted with their “valence” type. In the most common decay mode, the Higgs boson decays into one of these particles and its antiparticle. Mixing angles determined by the CKM matrix describe transformations between types of these particles mediated by the weak interaction. In the November Revolution, the fourth one of these particles was confirmed with the discovery of the J/psi meson. Experiments at SLAC verified the existence of these particles through the discovery of deep inelastic scattering. For 10 points, name these particles with a two-thirds or negative one-third charge whose up and down types make up protons.
ANSWER: quarks [accept antiquarks; prompt on fermion]
[after 99% of the tossup] A polynomial-time algorithm for a promise problem that takes one of these constructs as input would imply “NP equals RP,” according to the Valiant–Vazirani theorem. The DPLL algorithm takes one of these constructs as input. In 1972, Richard Karp exhibited chains of polynomial-time reductions stemming from a problem taking one of these constructs as input, which was shown by the Cook–Levin theorem to be NP-complete. These constructs can be placed in conjunctive normal form by applying De Morgan’s laws. These constructs’ clauses are restricted to contain at most three literals in a problem abbreviated 3SAT (“THREE-sat”), which asks if there is an input for which these constructs output “true.” For 10 points, name these constructs built by using operators like “AND” and “OR” to link variables that take the value true or false.
ANSWER: Boolean formulas [or Boolean expressions; accept Boolean formulas in conjunctive normal form; accept Boolean functions; accept Boolean sentences; accept Boolean statements; accept Boolean clauses until “clauses” is read; accept Boolean well-formed formulas or Boolean wffs; accept propositional formulas or propositional expressions or propositional sentences; accept logical formulas or logical expressions; prompt on formulas or expressions or functions or sentences or statements or well-formed formulas or wffs; prompt on clauses until read; prompt on booleans or bools; reject “Boolean circuits” or “Boolean variables”]
[after 100% of the tossup] The gradient of this quantity is misaligned from the density gradient in an instability simultaneously discovered by Eady and Charney. This quantity is plotted against temperature on emagrams, which can be transformed into skew-T diagrams by rotating isotherms 45 degrees, making them more suitable for plotting radiosonde data. In hydrostatic equilibrium, the gravitational force balances a force named for a gradient in this quantity, which also balances the Coriolis force in geostrophic balance. It’s not a direction, but high and low values of this quantity differentiate anticyclones and cyclones. Drops in this atmospheric quantity are associated with inclement weather. For 10 points, name this force measured by barometers.
ANSWER: pressure [accept specific types of pressure such as atmospheric pressure or gauge pressure; accept pressure gradient force; prompt on PGF; prompt on log-P or ln-P; prompt on p or P]
[after 100% of the tossup] A ruthenium-based catalyst named for Shvo can catalyze the addition of this molecule to polar molecules. In a GTL cracking process, bifunctional platinum catalysts can be used to add this molecule to long chain waxes. This is the lighter reactant used in both Fischer–Tropsch synthesis as well as the Sabatier process. Steam reforming produces a mixture of carbon monoxide and this gas, a mixture known as syngas. The water-gas-shift reaction produces carbon dioxide and this gas. Raney nickel catalyzes a reaction between benzene and several equivalents of this molecule. This molecule is used to saturate alkenes. For 10 points, name this diatomic molecule composed of two atoms of the lightest element.
ANSWER: hydrogen [or H2; or dihydrogen; or hydrogen gas; accept hydrogenation]
[after 100% of the tossup] For non-adhesive materials in contact, this quantity can be calculated using Hertzian theory. Averaging the Navier–Stokes equations gives a term representing one type of this quantity that is proportional to the averaged fluctuating velocity correlation and named for Reynolds. A cylinder plotted in the space of principal coordinates of this quantity gives the maximum allowed value for the deviatoric type of this quantity before yielding according to the von Mises criterion. Off-diagonal elements of a tensor for this quantity named for Cauchy represent this quantity’s “shear” form. In uniaxial cases, this quantity is given by force over cross-sectional area. For 10 points, name this quantity that measures the forces causing deformation and is often plotted against strain.
ANSWER: stress [accept shear stress or deviatoric stress; accept principal stress; accept Cauchy stress tensor; accept Reynolds stress or Reynolds stress tensor]

Aarav Kakad ↩

[after 41% of the tossup] In 2025, Karolína Muchová (“MOO-ho-vah”) beat this tournament’s oldest competitor since the trans woman Renee Richards 44 years earlier. In 2017, Sloane Stephens became the first winner of this tournament with a protected ranking. A player who won this tournament without dropping a set served a 109-mile-per-hour ace to defeat Leylah Fernandez in its 2021 final, becoming the only qualifier to win a Grand Slam. In her last Grand Slam match, Serena Williams lost to Ajla Tomljanović (“EYE-luh tum-LYAH-no-vitch”) in this tournament, where she called official Carlos Ramos a “thief” during her 2018 finals defeat to Naomi Osaka. This is the later of two Grand Slams whose final Amanda Anisimova lost in 2025, being beaten by its defending champion Aryna Sabalenka. For 10 points, name this chronologically last tennis Grand Slam that is held at the Arthur Ashe Stadium in Queens.
ANSWER: US Open Tennis Championships (Muchová beat Venus Williams. Emma Raducanu won in 2021.)
[after 43% of the tossup] Fragmentation of molecules undergoing this technique is observed in the McLafferty rearrangement. In one form of this technique, selected reaction monitoring is used to select ions for the next stage of processing. Michael Barber invented a technique used during this process where a beam of high energy atoms strike a surface in a technique called fast atom bombardment. Multiple rounds of this technique are performed in its “tandem” variety. Molecules may be prepared for this technique by undergoing electrospray ionization or MALDI. Plots in this technique often coupled with gas chromatography plot intensity against m-over-z. For 10 points, name this technique that separates molecules based on their mass-to-charge ratio.
ANSWER: mass spectrometry [or MS]
[after 52% of the tossup] A drug awareness campaign led by this person was called “Meth. We’re on it.” After claiming Native American leaders colluded with drug cartels, this politician was banned from all of her state’s Indian reservations. When trying to ask this politician a question, California Senator Alex Padilla was forced to the ground and handcuffed. To avoid violating the Hatch Act, airports have refused to play a video featuring this politician blaming Democrats for a government shutdown. One of this woman’s first acts of office was to rescind the temporary protected status for Venezuelan refugees. In her autobiography No Going Back, this politician recounted how she shot her “untrainable” dog Cricket. For 10 points, what former governor of South Dakota nicknamed “ICE Barbie” is the current Secretary of Homeland Security?
ANSWER: Kristi Noem [or Kristi Lynn Arnold Noem; or Kristi Lynn Arnold]
[after 54% of the tossup] A polynomial-time algorithm for a promise problem that takes one of these constructs as input would imply “NP equals RP,” according to the Valiant–Vazirani theorem. The DPLL algorithm takes one of these constructs as input. In 1972, Richard Karp exhibited chains of polynomial-time reductions stemming from a problem taking one of these constructs as input, which was shown by the Cook–Levin theorem to be NP-complete. These constructs can be placed in conjunctive normal form by applying De Morgan’s laws. These constructs’ clauses are restricted to contain at most three literals in a problem abbreviated 3SAT (“THREE-sat”), which asks if there is an input for which these constructs output “true.” For 10 points, name these constructs built by using operators like “AND” and “OR” to link variables that take the value true or false.
ANSWER: Boolean formulas [or Boolean expressions; accept Boolean formulas in conjunctive normal form; accept Boolean functions; accept Boolean sentences; accept Boolean statements; accept Boolean clauses until “clauses” is read; accept Boolean well-formed formulas or Boolean wffs; accept propositional formulas or propositional expressions or propositional sentences; accept logical formulas or logical expressions; prompt on formulas or expressions or functions or sentences or statements or well-formed formulas or wffs; prompt on clauses until read; prompt on booleans or bools; reject “Boolean circuits” or “Boolean variables”]
[after 76% of the tossup] An enzyme that primarily degrades this protein forces substrates to refold into beta-sheets in a triangular prism-shaped active site. Two disulfide bonds stabilize the two chains of this protein, which originate from cleavage of a single precursor that assembles into hexameric complexes that coordinate to zinc. This protein propagates signals after binding a receptor tyrosine kinase that triggers the PI3K and ERK pathways. Intracellular vesicles sensitive to this protein express the protein GLUT4. Amylin and this hormone are produced in the islets of Langerhans in beta cells of the pancreas. This hormone promotes the formation of glycogen. For 10 points, name this peptide hormone that promotes absorption of glucose that is deficient in diabetes.
ANSWER: insulin
[after 86% of the tossup] Raiders in this state fought both Union and Confederate forces during the Cortina Wars. During the Battle of Gaines’ Mill, every officer in a “Brigade” named for this state was injured or killed except for its leader, John Bell Hood. A month after Appomattox, men in this state fought the last battle of the Civil War, the Battle of Palmito Hill. The Nueces (“new-AY-siss”) Massacre targeted antislavery Unionist Germans in this state. Benjamin Franklin Tarry led a regiment nicknamed for a law enforcement group in this state that fought against the Comanche. Gordon Granger’s announcement of the Emancipation Proclamation in a coastal city in this state is commemorated on Juneteenth. For 10 points, name this state whose police force includes its namesake “Rangers.”
ANSWER: Texas [accept Texas Rangers; accept Texas Germans; accept Texas Brigade]
[after 88% of the tossup] Annealing of this material is accomplished in lehrs. An industrial method to produce a type of this material lays liquid raw materials over tin to form a float. Diffusion of interfering ions described by the Nikolsky–Eisenman equation across this material is seen in electrodes, which can be used to measure pH. Sintering particles of this material into hollow disks creates fritted examples of these materials that are used as filters. Addition of boron trioxide lowers the coefficient of thermal expansion of these materials. Silica, soda ash, and limestone produce the molten form of this material, which is then solidified by blowing. For 10 points, what amorphous material is often used to make lab materials and window panes?
ANSWER: glass
[after 94% of the tossup] The causative agent of this disease contains a pE88 plasmid encoding several ABC transporters. This disease may cause Risus sardonicus and more general opisthotonus (“opp-is-THOT-uh-nuss”) also seen in cerebral palsy or strychnine poisoning. Exotoxins present in this disease include a cholesterol-dependent hemolysin and a ganglioside-binding protein that cleaves synaptobrevin. Renshaw cells are inactivated by this disease, which prevents the release of inhibitory neurotransmitters. It’s not botulism, but this disease is caused by a Clostridium bacterium and has symptoms that can be alleviated by benzodiazepines. A toxoid from this disease is included alongside diphtheria and pertussis in the Tdap vaccine. For 10 points, name this disease that causes muscle spasms associated with exposure to rusty nails.
ANSWER: tetanus [or lockjaw]
[after 94% of the tossup] This medium was used by artists in London’s Bow district to depict figures such as Kitty Clive and General James Wolfe. Ehrenfried von Tschirnhaus (“CHURN-house”) spurred the creation of works in this medium at Meissen (“MICE-in”), which often drew inspiration from the Kakiemon (“ka-kee-EH-moan”) style. After moving from Vincennes, Jean-Claude Duplessis became the artistic director of a factory that produced works in this medium at Sèvres (“SEV-ruh”). A variety of faience (“fie-ONSE”) produced in Delft emulated “export” works in this medium, which were often created in Jǐngdézhèn (“jing-duh-jun”). Early European attempts to recreate this medium lacked the kaolin (“KAY-uh-lin”) needed for its “hard-paste” type, which is less prone to chipping. For 10 points, name this medium used to produce blue-and-white Míng dynasty vases.
ANSWER: porcelain [or china; accept hard-paste porcelain or soft-paste porcelain or Chinese export porcelain; accept bone china; prompt on pottery or ceramics; prompt on clay or kaolin until “kaolin” is read; reject “earthenware” or “stoneware”]
[after 98% of the tossup] This substance lies underneath so-called false bottoms, which form through double diffusion. This substance may become trapped in pockets following its namesake rejection. It’s not related to thermodynamics, but the potential density of this substance is displayed on T-S diagrams. Deviations from this substance’s VSMOW standard are used to identify periods during which it becomes enriched with oxygen-18 due to low temperatures. This dense substance lies below Ghyben–Herzberg lenses, which share their name with an equation used to model its “intrusion.” The SMOC (“S-mock”) and AMOC (“A-mock”) drive the thermohaline circulation of this substance. Reverse osmosis is often used to purify, for 10 points, what substance that mixes with a fresh counterpart in estuaries?
ANSWER: seawater [or ocean water; accept brine or saline or saltwater; accept brine pockets or brine rejection or saltwater intrusion or brine pools; accept brackish water or brack; prompt on water; reject “freshwater” or “salt” or “ice”]
[after 99% of the tossup] In a film from this country, a woman caring for a man with Alzheimer’s suffers a miscarriage after being pushed down a flight of stairs. A director from this country made a film set in Tuscany in which a character played by Juliette Binoche (“bee-NUSH”) debates with a man over his theory that copies are worth as much as originals. A director from this country was accused of plagiarism shortly after the release of his film A Hero. A 1990 docufiction film reenacts events in which a man impersonated a film director from this country. A director from this country, who frequently shot in cars, also made a film in which a suicidal man looks for someone to bury him after death, Taste of Cherry. For 10 points, name this home country of directors Asghar Farhadi (“far-haw-DEE”) and Abbas Kiarostami.
ANSWER: Iran [or Islamic Republic of Iran; or Jomhuri-ye Eslami-ye Iran] (The first line refers to A Separation. The docufiction film is Close-Up.)
[after 100% of the tossup] Two of these functional groups are substituted onto a molecule of naphthalene to create a proton sponge. They’re not epoxides, but reaction of this functional group with mCPBA gives syn alkenes due to the cyclic 5-membered transition state in the Cope elimination. Reaction of this functional group with benzenesulfonyl chloride followed by acidification in the Hinsberg test allows distinction of the degree of substitution. Primary examples of this functional group are formed from alkyl halides in the Gabriel synthesis. Carbonyls can be converted into this functional group in one-pot reductive reactions. For 10 points, name this functional group consisting of a nitrogen atom single bonded to at least one carbon atom.
ANSWER: amines [or amino group]
[after 100% of the tossup] Russell Belk included possessions in an “extended” version of this concept. A version of this concept is influenced by partners in the Michelangelo phenomenon, which is similar to Charles Horton Cooley’s perception-based “looking-glass” form of this concept. This concept’s shaping by social experience is explored in the middle chapters of a book that pioneered symbolic interactionism. That book by George Herbert Meade is titled for “mind,” this concept, and “society.” Carl Rogers strove for the alignment of one’s “real” and “ideal” versions of this concept. The mirror test has demonstrated “awareness” of this concept in magpies and dolphins. For 10 points, a measure of one’s own worth is known as what concept’s “esteem?”
ANSWER: the self [accept self-esteem; accept self-awareness; accept real self or ideal self; accept Mind, Self, and Society; accept extended self]
[after 100% of the tossup] The metals found in Fischer-type and Schrock-type carbenes have low and high values for this quantity respectively. The 18-electron rule is applicable for low values of this quantity for metals in organometallic complexes. For a given pH, this quantity is found on the x-axis of Frost–Ebsworth diagrams. Relativistic effects affecting the 6s orbital allows gold to assume a negative value of this quantity. Due to the inert-pair effect, larger Group 14 elements tend to reduce the value of this quantity by 2. Fluorine is the only halogen to exclusively have a value of negative one for this quantity. For 10 points, name this quantity that gives the number of electrons lost from an atom during bonding.
ANSWER: oxidation state [accept oxidation number or valence]
[after 100% of the tossup] Lugaro cells found in this structure were discovered following Marr and Albus’s theory of learning in this structure. The fusion of rhombic lips leads to the formation of this structure that lies dorsal to the fourth ventricle. Along with the pons, this structure develops from the metencephalon of the hindbrain. This structure is affected by Joubert syndrome, which leads to impaired development of this structure’s vermis. Climbing fibers terminate in large dendritic tree-forming Purkinje cells in this structure located to the rear and below the cerebrum. For 10 points, name this motor control center of the brain that connects to the spinal cord, also called the “little brain.”
ANSWER: cerebellum

Rahul Jogadhenu ↩

[after 24% of the tossup] At the end of this play, one character sings “I want you to help me” eighteen times, only stopping the repetition to invoke the names of her family members. In one scene in this play, a group of men sing a song that claims “When you marry, marry a railroad man” after an estranged family member returns. In this play, Wining Boy sells another character a silk suit by convincing him it will attract women. After their truck breaks down twice in West Virginia, a character in this play and his friend Lymon arrive with a truck full of watermelons and claim that a man was pushed down a well by the Ghosts of the Yellow Dog. For 10 points, name this play in which Boy Willie and Berniece exorcise Sutter’s ghost from the title instrument, written by August Wilson.
ANSWER: The Piano Lesson
[after 32% of the tossup] In a novel by this author, a couple play a game in which they fill in blank speech bubbles in each other’s drawings called “the bubble game.” In another work by this author, arts and crafts are included in a “Gallery” by a mysterious figure named “Madame.” The protagonist of a novel by this author destroys a polluting “Cootings Machine” to cure Josie’s illness. In a different novel by this author, two characters travel to Norfolk where Kathy finds a cassette tape by Judy Bridgewater. Characters in that novel by this author attend school at Hailsham and are divided into “carers” and “donors.” In a novel by this author, after receiving a letter from Miss Kenton at Darlington Hall, Mr. Faraday gives the butler Stevens permission to leave. For 10 points, name this Nobel-winning author of Never Let Me Go and The Remains of the Day.
ANSWER: Kazuo Ishiguro (The novel in the first and third clues is Klara and the Sun.)
[after 33% of the tossup] Characters who later appear in this story cause Leila to yearn for siblings while in a cab to the title event in the story “Her First Ball.” A girl in this story bites a piece of bread and butter while pondering “absurd class distinctions” after seeing a workman stop to smell lavender. A character described as “the butterfly” tests a piano in this story by practicing the song “This Life is Weary” before the maid Sadie interrupts to ask about sandwich flags. After hearing of a man thrown off his horse from Godber’s man during his cream puff delivery, a character in this story attempts to cancel the title event. That character takes leftover food to the widow of Scott and embraces her brother while stammering “Isn’t life.” For 10 points, Laura Sheridan plans the title event of what Katherine Mansfield story?
ANSWER: “The Garden Party”
[after 38% of the tossup] In 1995, the oldest recorded evidence of this practice was excavated at a site whose name means “beloved’s pass.” 47 depictions of this practice are found at a site for it called Dainzú (“dah-een-SOO”). A man participating in this practice is depicted on a stone panel with snakes sprouting from his neck. Depictions of people engaging in this practice generally depict them covering their chest with a palma and wearing heavy “yokes” on a belt. Ulama is a modern descendant of this practice, which took place in purpose-built venues shaped like a capital I from above. The Popol Vuh describes the practice of sacrificing people who participated in this activity. For 10 points, participants had to use their hips to push a rubber object through stone hoops in what pre-Colombian activity?
ANSWER: Mesoamerican ball game [or ōllamaliztli; or tlachtli; or pitz; or juego de pelota; or pok-ta-pok; or pok-a-tok; or pokolpok; accept ulama until read; prompt on games or sports]
[after 43% of the tossup] This ethnicity’s newspaper Hunchak named a party that revolted in the Sasun Rebellions. A politician of this ethnicity was killed in parliament by an ex-journalist whom Alexander Litvinenko alleged the Russian GRU colluded with. After the Tehcir (“teh-JEER”) Law led to mass deportations, these people sought revenge in Operation Nemesis. Hrant Dink, a member of this ethnicity, was assassinated while on trial for violating Article 301, which affirms the denial of genocide against these people. Massacres of these people were organized by the Three Pashas, who forced people of this ethnicity on death marches through the Syrian Desert. For 10 points, the Ottoman Empire organized a genocide of what people whose country’s capital is Yerevan?
ANSWER: Armenians [or Hayer] (The politician in the second line is Vazgen Sargsyan.)
[after 44% of the tossup] Dynamic dispatch for methods in C++ is typically implemented with a table of these constructs called a “vtable” (“V-table”). During serialization, these constructs are converted to a position-independent persistent version during “swizzling.” Addition to these constructs is scaled by the size of an underlying data type in an example of these constructs’ namesake “arithmetic.” Garbage collection prevents certain types of segmentation faults by cleaning up “dangling” instances of these constructs. Each node in a linked list contains both data and one of these constructs associated with the next node. In C, an asterisk can be used to access data at the location described by one of these constructs. For 10 points, name this data type that stores addresses in memory.
ANSWER: pointers [accept dangling pointers; accept pointer arithmetic; accept function pointers or method pointers; accept references; accept addresses until read]
[after 45% of the tossup] A woman in this text sleeps for the entirety of her brother-in-law’s exile so that her husband could be awake the entire time instead. This text’s author was legendarily inspired to write it after the sage Narada had him chant the name of its dedicatee to turn away from his sinful life as the bandit Ratnakar. The king of the bears, Jambavan, reminds a figure in this text who was divinely fathered by a wind god that he has the strength to reach an enemy kingdom by jumping over an ocean. The title figure of this older of the two itihasas slays a ten-headed demon before returning home and inheriting his title as king of Ayodhya. For 10 points, name this Hindu epic in which Sita, the wife of the title blue-skinned deity, is kidnapped by Ravana.
ANSWER: Ramayana (The first line refers to Urmila, the wife of Lakshmana and sister-in-law of Rama.)
[after 46% of the tossup] A deity has his toes cut off for using one of these objects after rejecting a first offer of gruel and accepting a second offer of a gold ring. A deity uses one of these objects called Mesektet or Mandjet after embodying his ram-headed form. The Book of Gates describes 12 minor deities who observe one of these objects passing by. Nemty is often depicted as a falcon standing on one of these objects due to his role in using them. Khepri protects one of these objects by standing in front of it and helping to battle off Apophis. By painting a wooden one of these vehicles to resemble stone, Horus wins a race against Set and becomes the king of Egypt. For 10 points, Ra rides through the underworld in a “solar” one of what seafaring vehicles?
ANSWER: boats [or ships; or barques; or ferries; or ferry; accept ferrymen; accept Ra’s solar barque]
[after 49% of the tossup] This musician’s band repeats a chant beginning “freedom for your daddy” on a bonus track of an album that also includes a song written to show that a band can swing in 6/8 time. An album by this musician recorded with Eric Dolphy at Cornell includes a song with censored lyrics like “don’t let them tar and feather us” and called an Arkansas politician “sick and ridiculous.” Lyrics like “You know someone great has gone” were added by Joni Mitchell to a song by this musician dedicated to a man nicknamed “Prez.” That song by this composer of “Better Git It in Your Soul” was re-titled “Theme for Lester Young” on an album whose title repeats his last name five times. For 10 points, name this jazz bassist who wrote “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat.”
ANSWER: Charles Mingus [or Charles Mingus Jr.]
[after 51% of the tossup] Social media users gave the name “Jelly” to one of these characters repeatedly shown crying colorful tears. Simon Baek revealed that a Sunlight Sister had a child with one of these characters before being killed by Celine. One of these beings rues how he left his family in poverty “while I slept on silk sheets in the palace with my belly full every night” to become one of these beings with the aid of Gwi-Ma. A song that claims one of these beings “with no feelings don’t deserve to live, it’s so obvious” is performed to expose Rumi as being part-[one of these beings], something revealed when patterns on her arm are exposed while fighting Jinu in a bathhouse. For 10 points, the Honmoon protects humanity from what beings exemplified by the Saja Boys, who are fought in a 2025 Netflix film by the K-pop group HUNTR/X (“huntrix”)?
ANSWER: demons [or dokkaebi or jeoseung saja; prompt on Saja Boys until read by asking “what general class of beings are they?”]
[after 52% of the tossup] This character suggests that God should recreate the world after positing the “principle of perpetual disappointment” as a “fundamental law of the Universe.” This character almost leaves behind a stack of comic books after going on a tirade in which he smashes a bottle of brandy and tears up an unfinished essay on global politics. This character claims that a copy of On the Origin of Species is safe because he put it in the library’s theology section. This author of “A World Without Collisions” declares himself an atheist after an older interlocutor suggests Jesus Christ as a “man of magnitude.” This character lets out his frustration about his alcoholic father returning from the hospital on Sam and Willie. For 10 points, an Athol Fugard play is titled for what character “…and the Boys”?
ANSWER: Master Harold [or Hally; accept “Master Harold” …and the Boys]
[after 55% of the tossup] This author is described as an “odoriferous poet” by a sentient chair before meeting the composer Benjamin Britten in Alan Bennett’s play The Habit of Art. A poem by this author advises “Let not Time deceive you, / You cannot conquer time” and promises “I’ll love you / Till Africa and China meet, / And the river jumps over the mountain.” This author considered five of his poems to be “trash” and later changed the word “or” in his most famous poem to “and.” Another poem by this author of “As I Walked Out One Evening” bemoans a man who was “my North, my South, my East and West.” One poem by this author begins with the speaker sitting in “one of the dives / On Fifty-second street” and later declares “We must love one another or die.” For 10 points, name this poet of “Funeral Blues” and “September 1, 1939.”
ANSWER: W. H. Auden [or Wystan Hugh Auden]
[after 56% of the tossup] This artist placed images of 19th-century women on the floor of an exhibition entrance for the work Horizontal Memory. Eadweard Muybridge inspired a video work by this artist consisting of close-up shots of 15 different people’s buttocks. An early work by this artist consists of the single instruction to leave a canvas “on the floor or in the snow.” In one performance, this artist sat onstage while audience members cut out pieces of her clothing until she was almost nude. This Fluxus artist was photographed by Annie Leibovitz lying clothed in bed as her naked husband kisses her, shortly before his murder. For 10 points, name this Japanese artist whose works include collaborations with her husband John Lennon.
ANSWER: Yoko Ono [or Ono Yoko]
[after 60% of the tossup] This book posits that geometricians determine properties from the construction of figures in a section on “What Philosophy Is.” The Foole’s claim that “there is no such thing as Justice” is rebutted by the claim that broken covenants lead to injustice in this book after the third of its 19 laws of nature is posed. According to this book, misinterpretation of scripture can drive a state to become a “Confederacy of Deceivers.” The fear of violent death is called summum malum in this book and cited as the reason humans form states in its first section, “Of Man.” This book characterizes the “state of nature” as a “war of all against all” that is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” For 10 points, name this 1651 book that advocates for rule by an absolute sovereign, written by Thomas Hobbes.
ANSWER: Leviathan [accept Leviathan or The Matter, Forme and Power of a Commonwealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil]
[after 60% of the tossup] An eight-foot-tall sculpture of a person with this surname sits atop a pedestal engraved with the phrase “The Holiest Thing Alive” in Ashland, Pennsylvania. That person with this surname may have substituted for Maggie Graham in a painting that gained popularity after being acquired by the Musée de Luxembourg. The composition of a portrait of Thomas Carlyle was modeled after a portrait of a person with this surname that contains a butterfly monogram beside a print of the Thames hanging on a wall. Because she could not stand for long periods of time, a woman with this surname sat for a portrait in which she wears a white lace headscarf while facing to the left. For 10 points, give the surname of the model for Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1 by her son, James McNeill.
ANSWER: Whistler [accept James Abbott McNeill Whistler or Anna McNeill Whistler; accept Whistler’s mother]
[after 61% of the tossup] The first of 36 chapters in a text in this language outlines a sage’s development of the “graceful” style of drama to accompany the original “verbal,” “grand,” and “energetic” styles. The stage manager for plays in this language has a name meaning “holder of threads.” In a mad scene in a play in this language, a royal speaks to a series of animals and a river after his wife is turned into a vine for entering a forest forbidden to women. In a play in this language, a king who spares a deer in its opening encounters his son playing with a lion cub in a hermitage. That king is cursed by a sage to forget his wife until a fisherman recovers a signet ring in a play in this language. For 10 points, name this ancient language used to write Urvashi Won by Valor and The Recognition of Shakuntala by Kālidāsa.
ANSWER: Sanskrit [or saṃskṛtam] (The first line refers to Bharata’s Nātyaśāstra.)
[after 62% of the tossup] Composer and genre required. The slow introduction of the first of these pieces opens with a cadence into the subdominant and only reaches the tonic in bar 4. A 3/4 fast movement in one of these pieces uses an oboe theme of [read slowly] seven B-flat quarter notes followed by an eighth-note descent from C to F. The recapitulation in one of these pieces is anticipated by a horn call that creates dissonance with the strings. A flute, oboe, and two clarinets imitate bird calls in a movement of one of these pieces titled “Scene by the brook.” The composer had to be turned to face the audience’s applause at the performance of the last of these pieces, which includes a setting of “Ode to Joy.” For 10 points, name these orchestral works that include ones nicknamed “Eroica” and “Choral.”
ANSWER: symphonies by Ludwig van Beethoven [prompt on symphonies by asking “by who?”; prompt on works by Ludwig van Beethoven by asking “in what genre?”]
[after 63% of the tossup] In the writings of Wallace Fard, one of these places is identified with the city of Allah’s residence and the origin of the “Mother Plane,” which he claimed to be the Biblical merkāvā, God’s chariot. After being kidnapped under the pretext of tax audits, thetans were sent to one of these locations called Teegeeack (“TEE-jee-ack”). According to the Book of Abraham, Methuselah helped to discover one of these places called Kolob which is “closest to the throne of God.” The LDS church strenuously denies the popular belief that these places will be each Mormon’s heavenly reward for following the “straight and narrow” way to the Celestial Kingdom. For 10 points, name these celestial bodies from which extraterrestrials are often claimed to come as ambassadors to humanity.
ANSWER: planets [accept exoplanets; accept Earths until “Abraham” is read; prompt on Unidentified Flying Objects or UFOs until “Abraham” is read; prompt on volcanoes until “Abraham” is read by asking “on what larger type of place could the volcanoes be found?”]
[after 63% of the tossup] In a scene set in one of these places, a character mentions outsourcing at Clemmons Technologies due to NAFTA, which Tracey thinks is a laxative. Later in that play, the owner of one of these places, Stan, is disabled when Jason hits him with a baseball bat. In another play set in one of these places, a character admits that he’d face the electric chair if he had to “kill someone and they have to go on living!” In one of these places owned by an agoraphobe who vows to walk around the block on his birthday, a traveling salesman admits to murdering his wife Evelyn. Don Parritt commits suicide by jumping off a fire escape in one of these places after Hickey attempts to convince its patrons to abandon their “pipe dreams.” For 10 points, name these places, one of which is run by Harry Hope in Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh.
ANSWER: bars [or saloons; or public houses; accept Harry Hope’s Saloon; accept Alibi Club; prompt on restaurant; prompt on club; prompt on hotel] (The first and second lines refer to Sweat by Lynn Nottage.)
[after 64% of the tossup] The “crux” of this concept is lacking “means by which to render our lives believable” according to a speech that opens by describing Antonio Pigafetta as a precursor to modern novelists. In a novel whose title ends with this word, a woman sends her daughter to a convent for having a baby with a mechanic. William Faulkner is called “my master” in a Nobel acceptance speech titled for this concept “of Latin America.” This word ends the title of a novel in which 17 brothers with Ash Wednesday crosses are shot in the head. A novel whose title ends with this word opens with the protagonist remembering how his father took him to see ice and chronicles generations of the Buendía family. For 10 points, Gabriel García Márquez wrote a novel titled “One Hundred Years of” what concept?
ANSWER: solitude [or soledad; accept One Hundred Years of Solitude or Cien Años de Soledad; accept “The Solitude of Latin America” or “La Soledad de América Latina”]
[after 64% of the tossup] Making workers independently seek this concept, known as decommodification, distinguishes Gøsta Esping-Andersen’s three “worlds” titled for this concept and “capitalism.” Charles Murray’s book Losing Ground controversially claims that programs providing this concept harm American society. This concept names a restriction within the taxing and spending clause in Article I of the US Constitution, which follows from a goal in the preamble to “promote the general” type of this concept. The Beveridge Report is credited with starting social reforms to provide this concept “cradle-to-grave” through services like universal health care. For 10 points, governments provide relief to their people in what concept’s namesake “state,” exemplified by Sweden?
ANSWER: welfare [or well-being; accept social welfare; accept welfare state; accept general welfare clause; accept welfare capitalism; prompt on quality of life; prompt on social safety net or social security or entitlement]
[after 68% of the tossup] Anicia Juliana commissioned a copy of a work for people in this profession that is named for Vienna. Jakob Böhme revived a practice that these people used called the doctrine of signatures. A bench with a lever-based traction system is often named for a member of this profession. Dioscorides’ teachings in this profession were kept in the House of Wisdom, where they would later influence Rhazes. Jacques Dubois (“doo-BWAH”) publicly challenged his former student, Andreas Vesalius, to disprove theories used by people in this profession that were originally developed by Galen. Ancient members of this profession may have attempted to balance out the Four Humors. For 10 points, a modern-day oath is named after members of what ancient profession that included Hippocrates?
ANSWER: doctors [accept surgeons; accept healers; accept equivalents like medical professionals]
[after 69% of the tossup] An author from this country intertwined scenes of Robert Browning in Venice with the lives of the main characters in the novel The Whirlpool. In one of 11 interviews conducted by Graeme Gibson with novelists from this country, Timothy Findley coined the name for one region in this country’s “Southern Gothic” literature. “Boy” Staunton causes a pregnant woman to go into premature labor in Fifth Business, a novel in this country’s Deptford Trilogy. An author from this country featured symposiums led by Professor Pieixoto as metafictional epilogues for two novels. While meeting outside of the “Ceremony” in a novel from this country, Offred plays Scrabble with the Commander. For 10 points, name this home country of the author of The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood.
ANSWER: Canada (The Whirlpool is by Jane Urquhart. The second line refers to “Southern Ontario Gothic.” The Deptford Trilogy is by Robertson Davies.)
[after 70% of the tossup] A character in a play by this author miraculously turns into a beautiful maid after her brother, the Fat Gentleman, shoots at her. This author’s play Frenzy for Two, Or More is often paired with a play in which a character created by this author shows off his ability to fly. A logician uses a syllogism to prove that a dog is a cat in a play by this author of A Stroll in the Air. In an “anti-play” by this author, which is set in an “English interior, with English armchairs,” the Smiths and the Martins engage in surreal conversation after the Fire Chief mentions the title character. In a play by this author of The Lesson, the typist Daisy leaves Bérenger after every character except for him turns into the title animal. For 10 points, name this absurdist Romanian-French playwright of The Bald Soprano and Rhinoceros.
ANSWER: Eugène Ionesco [or Eugen Ionescu] (The play in the first line is The Picture.)
[after 71% of the tossup] A satirical 1978 essay describes a hypothetical in which these people claim superiority due to an exclusive connection to lunar phases. Kate Manne coined a portmanteau about how sympathy prioritizes the “bright future” of these people over others’ suffering. The “adventurer” is contrasted with the “sub-[these people]” in a section on approaches to personal freedom from The Ethics of Ambiguity. In an essay inspired by John Berger’s Ways of Seeing entitled “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” Laura Mulvey describes these people’s objectifying “gaze.” These people are defined as “the Subject” and contrasted with “the Other” in Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex. For 10 points, feminist philosophers often critique “the patriarchy” for prioritizing what people?
ANSWER: men [or males; or boys; accept male gaze; accept sub-men; accept “If Men Could Menstruate”] (The essay in the first line is “If Men Could Menstruate” by Gloria Steinem. The portmanteau is “himpathy.”)
[after 73% of the tossup] A photograph of this person looking down and wearing a denim jacket is framed by the hills of the Nevada desert. Cecil Beaton took a series of photographs of this person at the Ambassador Hotel, including a “Japanese photo” in which she holds a flower against her torso. Eve Arnold took many photographs of this person, including one in which she wears a bathing suit and reads Ulysses. Red marker pen was used to draw “crucifixes” on photographs of this woman taken by Bert Stern for her “Last Sitting.” Andy Warhol created a “Diptych” of this actress, whom Sam Shaw and George Barris photographed in a billowing white dress above a subway grate. For 10 points, name this “blonde bombshell” actress who starred in The Seven Year Itch.
ANSWER: Marilyn Monroe [or Norma Jean Mortenson]
[after 73% of the tossup] This poet, who exhorted the earth for teaching “the lesson of poverty, / having nothing and wanting nothing,” wrote that the “tongue has one customer, the ear” in a poem whose speaker asserts “Anyone apart from someone he loves / understands what I say.” The speaker laments that “the keeping away is pulling me in” in a poem by this author that opens by asking a “dissolver of sugar” to “dissolve me, / if this is the time.” The disappearance of this poet’s teacher inspired the dedication of many of the 90 ghazals in one of his collections. This poet has been cited as the “best-selling poet in the US” due to Coleman Barks’s translations, one of which renders an opening line as “Listen to the story told by the reed.” For 10 points, name this Sufi poet of the Masnavi, or Spiritual Couplets.
ANSWER: Rumi [or Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī] (Rumi’s teacher, Shams of Tabriz, is the dedicatee of many poems in the Divan-i Kabir.)
[after 76% of the tossup] In one of these people’s stories, a man accidentally kills his nephew by burning his house down in an attempt to get him away from his two wives. Two lizard-men in these people’s mythology castrate Kidili for attempting to assault the women who eventually become the Pleiades and are chased across the sky by Jukurra-Jukurra. To describe the transcendence of time in these people’s stories, W. E. H. Stanner coined the term “everywhen.” In one of these people’s stories, the menstrual blood of one of the Wawalag sisters attracts a waterhole-dwelling creature to swallow them. These people tell stories of songlines formed during the Dreamtime by traveling creator spirits such as the Rainbow Serpent. For 10 points, name these native people of Australia.
ANSWER: Aboriginal Australians [or Aborigines; accept specific subgroups like Kukatja or Yolngu; prompt on indigenous Australians or native Australians]
[after 76% of the tossup] Joseph Cundall’s photographs of this artwork were referenced by Elizabeth Wardle to create a replica now held in the Reading Museum. In this artwork, a naked man squats underneath a woman in a red gateway who is being touched by a priest. This artwork’s 58 tituli describe the construction of a motte and a man who “gives strength to the boys.” The appearance of figures such as Wadard in this artwork suggests that it was commissioned by the Bishop of Odo. A man in this artwork with an arrow in his eye is often identified as Harold Godwinson, whose coronation is depicted below Halley’s Comet in this artwork. For 10 points, name this embroidered depiction of the Norman conquest of England held in a namesake French cathedral.
ANSWER: Bayeux Tapestry [or Tapisserie de Bayeux]
[after 77% of the tossup] 111 workers who built this structure recounted their experiences in a series of letters discussed by a Julie Greene book and the documentary Box 25. The existence of a secret plan to destroy this structure was confirmed by the autobiography America’s Prisoner. People who died in 1964 riots that tore down the “Fence of Shame” around this structure were commemorated on Martyrs Day. It’s not a tower, but Gustave Eiffel was prosecuted in a bribery scandal during an unsuccessful attempt to build this structure. Walter Reed’s medical advancements controlling yellow fever enabled the construction of this structure, which the Torrijos–Carter treaties transferred from US control in 1999. For 10 points, what man-made waterway connects the Caribbean to the Pacific through a namesake Central American country?
ANSWER: Panama Canal (America’s Prisoner is by Manuel Noriega.)
[after 78% of the tossup] In a poem by this author, the title creature “says the highway dust is over all” and predicts “that other fall we name the fall.” In another poem by this author, “part of a moon” falls “down the west” and drags “the whole sky with it to the hills.” This author of “The Oven Bird” wrote a poem that defines “home” as “the place where… they have to take you in” and begins with Mary waiting for her husband who says, “Silas is back.” In another poem by this author, a “little horse” “gives his harness bells a shake” to ask the speaker “if there is some mistake.” That poem by this author ends, “I have promises to keep, / And miles to go before I sleep.” For 10 points, name this author of monologues like “The Death of the Hired Man” who also wrote “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening.”
ANSWER: Robert Frost
[after 78% of the tossup] In a paper on these institutions “in the Middle Ages,” George Makdisi warns against analogizing them to their European counterparts. A possibly apocryphal tradition holds that a building occupied by one of these institutions was founded by Fatima al-Fihri. That institution was named after the people of Kairouan, or al-Qarawiyyin (“al-kah-rah-wee-YEEN”). Al-Sahili was credited with building a complex that housed one of these institutions together with nearby Sidi Yahya called Djinguereber (“jin-guh-ray-BAIR”). Saladin ended Shi’a influence in one of these institutions at Cairo called Al-Azhar (“all-UZZ-har”). Another one of these institutions was housed at Sankoré (“sahn-ko-RAY”) Mosque in Timbuktu. For 10 points, the Qur’an and Islamic law were studied at what institutions often analogized to those created in Bologna and Oxford?
ANSWER: universities [or university; accept madrasas; accept schools; accept jāmi‘ah or jāmi‘at; accept University of al-Qarawiyyin or University of Timbuktu or Al-Azhar University; prompt on libraries or library; prompt on mosques or masjids until “Mosque” is read by asking “what additional function did it serve?”]
[after 79% of the tossup] A position separating this concept from reason is defined by a “basic reliance” on it according to Alvin Plantinga, who co-founded a journal titled for this concept “and Philosophy” with other reformed epistemologists. The dictum “subjectivity is truth” appears in a work defending this “absurd” concept under the pseudonym Johannes Climacus entitled Concluding Unscientific Postscript. A man who still expects he will receive a princess’s seemingly unobtainable love goes beyond “infinite resignation” in his embodiment of this concept. That “knight of” this concept is described in Søren Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling, which also describes it as a qualitative “leap.” For 10 points, name this religious concept of believing without seeing.
ANSWER: faith [accept qualitative leap of faith or knight of faith; accept Faith and Philosophy; accept fideism]
[after 79% of the tossup] A thinker from this country traced how its people sequentially obtained civil, political, and social rights in the essay “Citizenship and Social Class.” A feminist abolitionist thinker from this country wrote Society in America and popularized the works of Auguste Comte through her translations. The “mother of sociology” Harriet Martineau is from this country, where the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies was founded by Jamaica-born Marxist thinker Stuart Hall. An 1845 book compares the illness and death rates of this country’s rural and industrialized populations to document capitalist exploitation, inspiring Marx to collaborate with its author. For 10 points, Friedrich Engels wrote a book on the “Condition of the Working Class in” what country home to the University of Birmingham?
ANSWER: England [or United Kingdom; or UK; or Great Britain; accept Condition of the Working Class in England; reject “Scotland” or “Wales” or “Northern Ireland”] (The first sentence refers to T. H. Marshall.)
[after 80% of the tossup] This process names a phenomenon in which the momentum of stellar material causes it to be carried through the tachocline, known as this process’s namesake “overshoot.” High-resolution images of the Sun’s surface appear granulated because of entities named for this process in the photosphere. This process occurs when the magnitude of the actual temperature gradient exceeds that of the adiabatic temperature gradient, according to the Schwarzschild criterion. For main sequence stars under around 0.35 solar masses, this process is the dominant form of energy transport. In a zone named for this process just below the Sun’s atmosphere, plasma circulates heat via this process’s namesake “currents.” For 10 points, name this thermal process exemplified by movement of warmer fluid upwards and cold fluid downwards.
ANSWER: convection [accept convection currents; accept convective cells; accept convective overshoot; accept convective zone]
[after 80% of the tossup] During a storm, this character’s love interest organizes a party game in which guests count successive numbers quickly and get boxed in the ear for making a mistake. In a different novel, this character reintegrates into society after another character thwarts his plan by placing chicken blood in his guns. This character is the subject of a parody by Friedrich Nicolai, and a novel about him inspired a novel subtitled The Beloved Returns by Thomas Mann. This character reads his translation of Ossian to a character who mentions the poet Klopstock while looking at the sky. This character is buried under two linden trees after committing suicide due to his unrequited love for Charlotte. For 10 points, name this character whose “Sorrows” title an epistolary novel by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
ANSWER: Young Werther [accept The Sorrows of Young Werther or The Joys of Young Werther] (The Mann novel is Lotte in Weimar: The Beloved Returns and the Nicolai parody is The Joys of Young Werther.)
[after 80% of the tossup] Saidiya Hartman’s “Venus in Two Acts” argues that these institutions limit stories that can be told about slavery, but can be transcended by critical fabulation. The principle of respect des fonds (“ruh-SPAY day FON”) is discussed in the “Dutch Manual” for the appraisal of these institutions. The use of these institutions in research was pioneered by Leopold von Ranke. In 2023, the Hachette group sued one of these institutions founded by Brewster Kahle that pioneered controlled digital lending. Cornell University operates a website named for these institutions that hosts scientific preprints. A massive book digitization effort is run by an online one of these institutions that also hosts a digital library and the Wayback Machine. For 10 points, name these collections of historical records or materials.
ANSWER: archives [accept Internet Archive; accept arXiv.org; prompt on sources; prompt on Open Library until “library” is read by asking “what type of larger institution is that a part of?”; prompt on libraries until “library” is read]
[after 81% of the tossup] Pilgrimages to this location venerate the spots where four shards of a jar of ambrosia landed on Earth. After a failed horse sacrifice, this location “descended from heaven” when a cosmic serpent was slain by Indra. After Agni is not capable of bearing Shiva’s child, Kārtikeya is born in this location. A city near this location that houses genealogical records of pilgrims dating to the 17th century is a popular site for cremation, as its holiness is believed to grant salvation. At times specified by the orbit of Jupiter, adherents at the Kumbh Mēlā festival immerse themselves in ghats adjacent to this body of water. For 10 points, name this holiest river in Hinduism, which is also India’s longest.
ANSWER: River Ganges [or Ganga; prompt on Prayāgrāja or Allahabad or Varanasi or Haridwāra or Ujjain or Nashik]
[after 83% of the tossup] A character who opposes two of these people quarrels with his son over the girl Emma in an opera that was left with unfinished orchestration. In an opera, one of these people chooses Marfa as his bride, but she goes insane after being poisoned at their engagement party. The orchestra imitates the sound of bells at the start of a scene in which a crowd chants “Glory!” in an opera about one of these people who hallucinates a murdered child. An 1836 opera titled for one of these people features a scene in which the Polish army is led into a blizzard and was followed by its composer’s opera Ruslan and Lyudmila. That opera by Mikhail Glinka is titled A Life for [one of these people]. For 10 points, what kind of person is the main character of Modest Mussorgsky’s opera Boris Godunov?
ANSWER: tsars [accept A Life for the Tsar or Zhizn’ za tsarya; accept The Tsar’s Bride or Tsarskaya Nevesta; prompt on Russian king or Russian emperor] (The first line refers to Khovanshchina.)
[after 83% of the tossup] It’s not cannibalism, but an essay on this practice notes that “the certainties postulated by philosophers hardly ever exist” when analogizing it to the case of shipwrecked sailors Dudley and Stephens. Kitty Genovese’s murder is used to make a distinction between “Good,” “Splendid,” and “Minimally Decent” Samaritans in an essay on this practice. An essay titled for this practice describes an analogy of seeds floating through windows and taking root in houses. This practice is paired with “the Doctrine of Double Effect” in the title of an essay by Philippa Foot that proposed the trolley problem. An essay on this practice proposes a thought experiment involving keeping a dying violinist alive. For 10 points, Judith Jarvis Thomson wrote a “Defense” of what practice opposed by pro-life activists?
ANSWER: abortion [accept equivalents such as ending or terminating a pregnancy; accept “A Defense of Abortion”; accept “The Problem of Abortion and the Doctrine of Double Effect”]
[after 83% of the tossup] In a poem in this language, a poet asks the protagonist if he wrote the line “Ladies who have intelligence of love.” That line appears in a poem in this language in which Love tells a poet in Latin, “ego dominus tuus,” or “I am your lord.” T. S. Eliot quoted a poet who wrote in this language with the line “Because I do not hope to turn again.” That poet, who wrote a song whose title is translated as “A lady asks me,” founded a literary school that influenced a prosimetrum on courtly love in this language. Works in the sweet new style movement in this language include the love poem The New Life. In a long narrative poem in this language, Beatrice and Virgil act as guides to a poet traveling through hell, purgatory, and heaven. For 10 points, name this language used by Dante to write The Divine Comedy.
ANSWER: Italian [or italiano; or lingua italiana; accept Tuscan or dialetto toscano or Florentine or dialetto fiorentino or vernacolo fiorentino] (Guido Cavalcanti’s “Donna mi prega” translates to “A lady asks me.”)
[after 83% of the tossup] A novel about a character with this occupation includes a set of “Commendatory Verses” by fictional characters, including Urganda the Unknown. A character with this occupation changes his nickname to be “of the Lions” instead of one about having a “Sorrowful Face.” A man with this occupation is described with the epithet Innamorato in the title of a poem by Matteo Boiardo. In a novel about a character with this occupation, the romance Amadis of Gaul is among the books taken out of a library to be burned by a barber and priest. That novel contains references to an epic poem about a man with this occupation titled Orlando Furioso. A character who names his horse Rocinante aspires to hold this occupation and recruits the laborer Sancho Panza. For 10 points, name this chivalric profession held by Don Quixote.
ANSWER: knight [or knight-errant; or caballero; or caballero andante; accept “Knight of the Lions” or “Knight of the Sorrowful Face”]
[after 84% of the tossup] This concept was the domain of Erua, an aspect of Marduk’s consort Ṣarpanītū. Rodnovery (“rod-NOV-ery”) revived a Slavic folk practice in which people with this condition keep faceless Pelenashka dolls secret. Egyptian pottery depicting a deity of this concept was found on Crete in a cave named for Eileithyia (“ill-ih-THIGH-uh”), another deity of this concept. In Egypt, people with this condition used ankh-like tjeti knots, while in Mesopotamia, apotropaic talismans of Pazuzu protected people with this condition from a chimeric deity. That deity, Lamashtu, was believed to cause cot deaths by tapping people with this condition seven times on the stomach. For 10 points, people pray to fertility goddesses hoping to obtain what condition leading to childbirth?
ANSWER: pregnancy [or word forms like pregnant; accept labor or childbirth until “childbirth” is read; prompt on fertility until read]
[after 84% of the tossup] Methods of displaying certain types of these objects are named after having one, two, or three colors. A lady rushes towards a bear in one of twelve narrative scenes from one of these objects titled after a court teacher’s “admonitions.” Three of these non-title objects hang from the ceiling in an installation originally named after a “Mirror to Analyze the World.” A ship’s crew attempts to lower their mast to avoid crashing into the Rainbow Bridge in one of these objects that was animated for the 2010 World Expo. “Hand” types of these objects include Zhāng Zéduān’s (“jahng dzuh-dwen’s”) panoramic painting Along the River During the Qīngmíng Festival. For 10 points, Chinese calligraphy is often displayed on what objects that can be rolled up?
ANSWER: scrolls [or juàn; accept handscrolls or hanging scrolls; accept Admonitions Scroll; prompt on paper or silk; prompt on ink drawings; prompt on calligraphy until read] (The third line refers to Xú Bīng’s A Book From the Sky.)
[after 84% of the tossup] Four deputies titled for these structures represented the Maḥdī during the Minor Occultation. One figure named for this structure began his religious career after seeing seven drops of blood on another’s throat, and is buried on Mount Carmel. Salman the Persian is the final person to fill a role named for these structures in Alawism, which comprises a trinity along with the Manifestation and the Name. In the first of a collection of Zen kōans titled for one of these structures lacking itself, a dog replies “mu” when asked if it has Buddha-nature. Vermillion examples of these structures mark places where kami enter into the human realm in Shintō shrines. For 10 points, bāb and torii are words for what structures, through which Jesus entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday?
ANSWER: gates [or doors; or portals; accept Gateless Gate; accept mén or guān or mon or kan; accept kahyō; accept Báb or bāb or ’abwāb until “bāb” is read; accept wakīl or safīr or na‘īb until “shrine” is read; prompt on barrier] (Báb is Arabic for gate.)
[after 85% of the tossup] John Wilson’s 2023 recording of this musical was the first complete recording of the original orchestration by Robert Russell Bennett. Miles Davis’s album Steamin’ opens with a cover of a song from this musical in which a character describes “the slickest gig you’ll ever see.” A character in this musical imagines “long tangled hair” which “falls across my face” in a song in which he vows to win a bride, “Lonely Room.” One of the female lead’s love interests sings “chicks and ducks and geese better scurry” before the imagined “surrey with the fringe on top.” Agnes de Mille choreographed this musical’s “dream ballet” in which Laurey “makes up her mind” about Jud and Curly. For 10 points, name this Rodgers and Hammerstein musical titled after a US state.
ANSWER: Oklahoma!
[after 86% of the tossup] A golden one of these objects named for Victory features a depiction of Vishnu riding Garuda. A lake was renamed after being the site where one of these objects was retrieved by the golden-shelled Kim Quy to return to the Dragon King. A deity attains one of these objects after getting an enemy drunk on eight barrels of sake placed near eight gates. The legendary king Lê Lợi owns one of these objects called Heaven’s Will. The tail of Yamata no Orochi contained one of these objects discovered by Susano’o named Kusanagi. For 10 points, name these weapons that include Muramasa’s legendarily cursed katanas.
ANSWER: swords [accept katanas until read]
[after 87% of the tossup] A prologue by this author recounts the development of a joke in which passengers on a steamboat to Alexandria shout “Hans” after two Lebanese men humiliate the title “Tramp from Piraeus.” In a story by this author, a Zulu man spits in the face of a gay public official named Bobby who attempts to pick him up in a bar before being beaten at a checkpoint. Back-to-back stories in a collection by this author follow the insane Man-Man and the poet B. Wordsworth. The linked stories “One out of Many” and “Tell Me Who to Kill” appear in this author’s book In a Free State. The six-fingered title character of a novel by this author lives at the Hanuman House with the Tulsi family. For 10 points, name this Trinidadian author of Miguel Street and A House for Mr. Biswas.
ANSWER: V. S. Naipaul [or Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul]
[after 89% of the tossup] An actor portraying this character has a heart attack after reciting this character’s line “a wren goes to ’t” in the opening scene of Station Eleven. After this character dies, one character remarks that “I have a journey, sir; shortly to go. [This character] calls me. I must not say no,” implying that he will kill himself. This character mourns another character, crying, “Why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life / And thou no breath at all?” This character claims that he is a “man more sinned against than sinning” during a scene that begins with him saying “blow, winds, and crack your cheeks!” during a storm where he is followed by his fool and a bastard son disguised as Tom O’Bedlam. For 10 points, name this titular king of a Shakespeare play who disinherits Cordelia after she refuses to flatter him.
ANSWER: King Lear
[after 90% of the tossup] A piece by this composer begins quietly with oboes and low strings playing continuous eighth notes as the violins play arpeggios, which crescendoes into a loud D major chord by the chorus and three trumpets. This composer wrote an anthem for the Foundling Hospital, the venue of charity concerts that originated the “Scratch” form of one of his works. This composer was inspired by shepherd-bagpipers to include a pastoral Pifa in a work whose libretto is by Charles Jennens. A widely excerpted sinfonia scored for two oboes and strings appears in this composer’s Solomon. This composer was commissioned to write four anthems for the coronation of George II, including Zadok the Priest. For 10 points, name this Baroque composer who included a Hallelujah chorus in his Messiah.
ANSWER: George Frideric Handel
[after 90% of the tossup] This city employed the slave-trading Suteans, who inhabited nearby Subum, as couriers. MUL.APIN (“mool-ah-peen”), a series of two texts from this city, contains several stellar calendars and is one of the earliest compendia of astronomical knowledge. It’s not Greek, but the Metonic calendar likely originated in this city during the rule of Samsu-iluna. Claiming that no Egyptian was allowed to die outside of Egypt, Amunhotep III refused to send a princess to marry this city’s ruler Burna-Buriash II, from its Kassite Dynasty. A stele from this city that depicts a ruler thinking as he receives guidance from Shamash is the origin of the phrase “an eye for an eye.” For 10 points, name this Mesopotamian city ruled by Hammurabi.
ANSWER: Babylon [or Bābilim]
[after 90% of the tossup] A speaker in one of these title places notes that “The others have gone; they were tired… But I would rather be standing here” in a poem that declares “There is something terrible about a child.” Charlotte Mew wrote a poem set at one of these places “In Nunhead.” A “school” of poetry named for these places included Thomas Parnell and Robert Blair. In a poem set in one of these places, the speaker imagines “a heart once pregnant with celestial fire” and “hands” that “wak’d to ecstasy the living lyre.” The speaker of a poem reflects that “the paths of glory led but to” one of these places in a poem that includes an epitaph to “A youth to Fortune and to Fame unknown” and begins “The curfew tolls the knell of parting day.” For 10 points, an elegy by Thomas Gray is set in a “Country” type of what location?
ANSWER: graveyards [or cemeteries; or graves; or churchyards; accept “In Nunhead Cemetery”; accept “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”; prompt on churches by asking “in what part of the church is that poem set?”]
[after 96% of the tossup] This author maligned social classes like the aristocratic “Barbarians” and middle-class “Philistines” for embracing sentimental “bathos.” This author was inspired by a fable contrasting the spider with the bee in Jonathan Swift’s The Battle of the Books to write that a concept which partially titles one book should be defined by “sweetness and light.” This author defined the first title concept as “the best which has been thought and said” in Culture and Anarchy. This author included the poem “To Marguerite – Continued” with the dramatic poem Empedocles on Etna. A poem by this author begins, “The sea is calm tonight” and declares “Ah, love, let us be true / To one another!” For 10 points, name this critic and poet who wrote about a “darkling plain… where ignorant armies clash by night” in “Dover Beach.”
ANSWER: Matthew Arnold
[after 98% of the tossup] This author depicted Octave, a widower who expands his wife’s silk shop into a department store named The Ladies’ Paradise, in a sequel to a novel whose title has been translated by Henry Vizetelly as Piping Hot. In a novel by this author, a woman who has a stroke is unable to report the murder of a character who bites a man on the neck before drowning. A character created by this author meets the anarchist Souvarine in a novel set in “Le Voreux.” This author, who wrote a novel in which a character kills Catherine’s abusive lover Chaval while trapped in a pit, created the murderer Thérèse Raquin (“tay-REZZ ra-CAN”). Étienne Lantier leads a strike at the Montsou mines in this author’s novel Germinal. For 10 points, name this author of the Rougon-Macquart (“roo-GON-mah-CAR”) series, who defended Alfred Dreyfus in the letter “J’Accuse…!”
ANSWER: Émile Zola [or Émile Édouard Charles Antoine Zola]
[after 98% of the tossup] Timothy Jackson asserted that the outline of this symphony’s slow woodwind opening, which rises from E to G, then F-sharp to A, represents a cruciform. The last movement of this symphony uses a composite melody in the violins of [read slowly] long F-sharp, E, D, dotted C-sharp, B, C-sharp, while the third movement is simultaneously in 4/4 and 12/8. Traditionally, the audience claps between the third and fourth movements of this symphony. This B minor symphony was conducted by its composer less than a month before his death, possibly from cholera. This symphony’s allegro con grazia second movement is a 5/4 “limping waltz.” For 10 points, name this final symphony by the composer of the 1812 Overture.
ANSWER: Pathétique Symphony [or Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6]
[after 98% of the tossup] In a story from this region, a king discovers two hundred soldiers hiding in bags of flour in his giant house. A character from this region invents the game of “badger-in-the-bag” to win a princess’s hand in marriage. After drinking three drops from a cauldron, a figure from this region is swallowed by a sorceress upon transforming into a grain of wheat. A queen from this region is forced to carry travelers on her back after six negligent maids frame her for eating her infant child. The golden-haired Pryderi appears in all “Four Branches” of a text from this region. A bard whose name means “shining brow” names this region’s Book of Taliesin. For 10 points, name this constituent country of the United Kingdom whose myths are contained in the Mabinogion.
ANSWER: Wales [or Cymru; prompt on Great Britain; prompt on UK or United Kingdom until read]
[after 99% of the tossup] This concept titles a posthumous work by Anthony A. Hoekema (“HOO-kuh-mah”). The Second Council of Orange confirmed one type of this concept developed by Augustine that is supported by Arminians. This theological concept is not referenced in the King James Version of the Gospels outside of the Prologue of John, where Jesus is described as “[this concept] from [this concept].” According to Ephesians, salvation occurs through faith and by this concept, forming three Lutheran Solae along with sola scriptura. The angel Gabriel’s address to Mary in Luke 1:28 was adapted into a prayer describing her as “full of” this concept. For 10 points, name this Christian concept of unmerited divine favor described in a spiritual by John Newton as “Amazing.”
ANSWER: grace [accept sola gratia; accept “Amazing Grace”]
[after 99% of the tossup] A paper titled for this concept argues that “functional explanations” can account for phenomena like reportability, but not this concept. Reportability defines the “access” type of this concept, which Ned Block distinguished from its “phenomenal” type. Joseph Levine argued that theories of this concept struggle to explain subjectivity due to the explanatory gap. The phi phenomenon is evidence for the theory that this concept arises from many sources of input and systems of interpretation, called the multiple drafts model. David Chalmers argued that science cannot even attempt to explain why this concept exists, which is its “hard problem.” Philosophical zombies lack this concept. For 10 points, a book by Daniel Dennett “explains” what concept, which is the mental awareness of one’s experience?
ANSWER: consciousness [accept hard problem of consciousness; accept phenomenal consciousness or access consciousness; accept Consciousness Explained; accept “Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness”]
[after 99% of the tossup] This thinker describes common purpose as an outcome of “instinctive liking” or a shared “instinctive aversion” in Why Men Fight. With Jean-Paul Sartre, this thinker led a conference finding the US guilty of war crimes in Vietnam. This thinker advocated for a four-hour workday in the essay “In Praise of Idleness.” P. F. Strawson criticized an essay by this thinker that argues against Alexius Meinong (“MY-nong”) with examples of “the author of Waverley” and the “present” kings of England and France to contrast types of definite descriptions. This author of “On Denoting” formulated an argument against defaulting to belief in God that involves a floating teapot. For 10 points, name this English philosopher who collaborated with Alfred North Whitehead on Principia Mathematica.
ANSWER: Bertrand Russell [or Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell; accept Russell’s teapot]
[after 99% of the tossup] Isaac Bickerstaffe replaced this character with Doctor Cantwell in an adaptation of another author’s play about this character, The Non-Juror by Colley Cibber (“SIB-er”). The non-speaking maid Flipote is slapped at the end of the first scene of a play titled for this character, which Richard Wilbur translated into English verse. In that play, a grandmother who views this character as perfect is proven wrong when this character’s actions lead to the bailiff Loyal serving eviction papers. The maid Dorine prevents Mariane from marrying this character, who is arrested by order of a king in a deus ex machina ending. This character, who is exposed while trying to seduce Elmire, pretends to be religious to gain Orgon’s trust. For 10 points, name this character, a “Hypocrite” created by Molière.
ANSWER: Tartuffe (The Isaac Bickerstaffe play is The Hypocrite.)
[after 100% of the tossup] By his second wife, this god fathered four mountain-dwelling dwarves who tend maize fields in an illustration from the Codex Borgia. This god is believed to live in a mountain where a group of owl-men anointed Nezahualcoyotl after his near death. Ehecatl and his brothers dwell in a realm ruled over by this god. This god’s name is sometimes given to the four large trees in his realm that hold up the vertical universe. This god unleashed fire on the earth after his first wife, Xochiquetzal, was stolen from him by Tezcatlipoca during this god’s role as the third sun. This god, to whom many crying children were sacrificed, rules a land of eternal springtime that houses those who die by lightning or drowning. For 10 points, name this Aztec rain god.
ANSWER: Tlaloc [accept Tlālōcān; accept Four Tlálocs]
[after 100% of the tossup] Description acceptable. Henry Alford’s New Yorker article “Ink” documented dictionary words used for this purpose like “esquivalience.” The discovery of phone listings used for this purpose led to the 1991 case Feist v. Rural, which rejected the “sweat of the brow” doctrine for facts. A rural mailbox photographer in the Columbia Encyclopedia created for this purpose named Lillian Mountweazel now names entities created for this purpose. The title of a John Green novel was inspired by a place created for this purpose supposedly in upstate New York, which Rand McNally insisted became real upon the opening of a general store in Agloe. For 10 points, “trap streets” and “paper towns” are fake entries used by reference works for what purpose of detecting intellectual property violations?
ANSWER: detecting copyright infringement [accept descriptions of detecting plagiarism or copying; accept copyright traps or copyright enforcement; accept intellectual property trap or intellectual property theft or IP trap or IP theft until “intellectual property” is read; prompt on fictitious entries until “fake entries” is read; prompt on paper towns or trap streets or Mountweazels until read by asking “what purpose do those things serve?”]
[after 100% of the tossup] Coefficients named for this person decay according to a power law whose degree is two plus the smoothness of the underlying function. This person’s namesake “extension” and “restriction” operators are the subject of the disproven Mizohata–Takeuchi conjecture. An overshoot of around 9 percent results from truncating constructs named for this person due to the Gibbs phenomenon. Constant functions become Dirac delta functions under an operation named for this person defined by integrating a function times “e to the minus i k x.” Periodic functions are decomposed into sums of trigonometric functions in this person’s namesake “series.” For 10 points, what mathematician names a transform that, like the Laplace transform, translates from the time domain to the frequency domain?
ANSWER: Joseph Fourier [accept Fourier series; accept Fourier transform; accept Fourier coefficients; accept Fourier restriction operator or Fourier extension operator]

Winston Zuo ↩

[after 34% of the tossup] Footage of this city is combined with the filmmaker reading out letters sent from her mother in Chantal Akerman’s film News from Home. A shot pans away from a man talking to a woman on a pay-phone to an empty corridor in a film set in this city for which Bernard Herrmann wrote his last completed film score. A film set in this city contains a chase scene in which a narcotics detective tries to catch a criminal on a speeding elevated train and which includes accidental collisions. A man in this city who wants to “wash all this scum off the streets” upsets a woman by taking her on a date to a porn theater, and later prepares for an attempted assassination by giving the “you talkin’ to me” speech. For 10 points, name this city, the setting of The French Connection and Taxi Driver.
ANSWER: New York City [or NYC]
[after 39% of the tossup] This food names a “Curtain” dividing the affluent Hampshire County from Hampden County in western Massachusetts. A 1975 book by William Shurtleff and Akiko Aoyagi popularized this food in the West. Newly-released prisoners eat this food in a South Korean custom. Low-quality building projects are derisively called “dregs” of this food in China. British Home Secretary Suella Braverman decried Just Stop Oil protesters as “wokerati” who read the Guardian and eat this food. This food, which titles a parody of Super Meat Boy by PETA, is used in “pock-marked old woman” and “stinky” dishes. Coagulation in making this food results in varieties called “firm” or “silken.” For 10 points, name this block-shaped food made from fermented soybeans.
ANSWER: tofu [or bean curd; or dòufu; or dubu; or tubu; accept Super Tofu Boy; accept tofu-dreg projects, dòufuzhā gōngchéng, tofu projects, or tofu buildings; accept Tofu Curtain; accept mápó tofu; accept stinky tofu or chòu dòufu; prompt on soy or soybeans]
[after 43% of the tossup] In this state, Tina Bell fronted Bam Bam, the first band to record at Reciprocal Recording. The all-female opening night of a music festival in this state saw the live debut of Heavens to Betsy, whose split led Corin Tucker to form Sleater-Kinney. A band from this state spent over 5 years on Billboard with their album Ten, which contains a song claiming “thoughts arrive like butterflies.” This state’s “riot grrl” movement included acts like Bikini Kill, whose frontwoman Kathleen Hanna inspired a hit by another band from this state by claiming its lead singer smelled like a deodorant brand. Krist Novoselic was the bassist of a band from this state who included songs like “Lithium” and “Come As You Are” on their album Nevermind. For 10 points, grunge bands like Pearl Jam and Nirvana formed in what US state’s city of Seattle?
ANSWER: Washington [or State of Washington; or WA]
[after 52% of the tossup] The biography Camera Girl recounts how this woman worked at Vogue for one day and covered Elizabeth II’s coronation as a reporter for the Times-Herald newspaper. Conflicting testimonies exist over whether this woman was proposed to at a booth in Martin’s Tavern in D.C. or the Omni Parker House in Boston. This woman’s successor renamed the East Garden in her honor, since she redesigned it along with the Rose Garden. This woman prematurely birthed her youngest son Patrick on the 20th anniversary of her husband’s rescue in the PT-109 incident. This First Lady compared her household to Camelot and later remarried the Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis. For 10 points, name this person who served as First Lady before her husband’s 1963 assassination.
ANSWER: Jacqueline Kennedy [or Jackie Kennedy; or Jacqueline Bouvier; or Jackie Bouvier; or Jacqueline Onassis; or Jackie Onassis; prompt on Kennedy or J. Kennedy; prompt on Onassis until read]
[after 54% of the tossup] A leader of this country names an index alternative to GDP based on electricity consumption, rail cargo, and bank lending. The New Development Bank is headquartered in this country, which was the last in the [emphasize] original acronym of rising economic powers coined by Jim O’Neill. A namesake “shock” on manufacturing jobs resulted from this country joining the WTO in 2001. To attract foreign direct investment, this country opened four southern ports in 1979 as economic “experiments.” This country has been accused of “debt trap diplomacy” through loans to African countries as a part of its Belt and Road Initiative. For 10 points, what country’s Special Economic Zones include Shēnzhèn?
ANSWER: China [or People’s Republic of China; or Zhōngguó; or Zhōnghuá Rénmín Gònghéguó; accept China shock; reject “Republic of China”] (The acronym BRIC referred to Brazil, Russia, India, and China. The index is the Lǐ Kèqiáng index.)
[after 56% of the tossup] Insertion of a XA21 pattern recognition receptor into this organism prevents disease by Xoo. R. solani is a fungal pathogen of this plant that causes sheath blight. Increased lodging resistance conferred by the sd1 gene was a characteristic of the IR8 strain of this plant. Low amylose content characterizes some varieties of this plant, resulting in strong molecular adhesion between starch molecules. A variety of this plant that can synthesize vitamin A precursors is notable for its golden colour. This crop that contains no gluten can be divided into short and long grain varieties. For 10 points, what staple crop with varieties like basmati is grown in paddies?
ANSWER: rice [or Oryza]
[after 61% of the tossup] One model of this material that features a “critical state line” is called its “Modified Cam” model. An equation developed by Karl von Terzaghi computes this material’s “bearing capacity.” This material’s swelling potential increases with its plasticity index, which can be calculated from its Atterberg limits. Increases in pressure cause this prototypical three-phase material to contract during “consolidation.” Compaction of this material can cause a structure’s foundation to move during “settlement.” Applied stresses can cause excess pore water pressure to build in this material, causing its “liquefaction” during earthquakes. Based on its particle size distribution, this material can be classified into subtypes such as sand and clay. For 10 points, what organic material do plant roots typically anchor themselves in?
ANSWER: soil [or earth; or dirt; accept sand until read; accept clay until read; accept Modified Cam-Clay model]
[after 61% of the tossup] Making workers independently seek this concept, known as decommodification, distinguishes Gøsta Esping-Andersen’s three “worlds” titled for this concept and “capitalism.” Charles Murray’s book Losing Ground controversially claims that programs providing this concept harm American society. This concept names a restriction within the taxing and spending clause in Article I of the US Constitution, which follows from a goal in the preamble to “promote the general” type of this concept. The Beveridge Report is credited with starting social reforms to provide this concept “cradle-to-grave” through services like universal health care. For 10 points, governments provide relief to their people in what concept’s namesake “state,” exemplified by Sweden?
ANSWER: welfare [or well-being; accept social welfare; accept welfare state; accept general welfare clause; accept welfare capitalism; prompt on quality of life; prompt on social safety net or social security or entitlement]
[after 63% of the tossup] A Joy Harjo poem that quotes this poem begins, “We were running out of breath, as we ran out to meet ourselves.” A bell hooks book titled for this poem is subtitled “Black Men and Masculinity.” The setting of this poem titles a poetic form in which the last word of each line makes a quote and was pioneered by Terrence Hayes. This poem’s author said she was inspired to write this poem after walking past a pool hall in Chicago and thinking “I wonder how they feel about themselves?” This poem from the collection The Bean Eaters is narrated by “pool players” at the “Golden Shovel.” The characters in this poem “Strike straight,” “Jazz June,” and “Die soon.” For 10 points, name this eight-line poem where every line except for the last ends with the word “We,” by Gwendolyn Brooks.
ANSWER: “We Real Cool”
[after 68% of the tossup] These phenomena express “conceptions” of things like the world according to Calvin Hall’s continuity theory. In the AIM (“A-I-M”) model, these phenomena are caused by interactions between aminergic and cholinergic neurons that generate PGO waves; that model of these phenomena is based on Hobson and McCarley’s activation-synthesis model. Echidnas’ large frontal cortex inspired Crick and Mitchison to theorize that these phenomena cause “reverse learning.” Antti Revonsuo theorized that these phenomena simulate probable threats. These phenomena act as “wish fulfillment” according to an 1899 book that described a precursor to the Oedipus complex. For 10 points, Sigmund Freud wrote about the “interpretation” of what phenomena that occur during REM sleep?
ANSWER: dreams [or dreaming; accept The Interpretation of Dreams or Die Traumdeutung; prompt on sleep or REM sleep until “REM” is read]
[after 69% of the tossup] A text in this language features a little-known god named Lur, whose name is also found on many votive candelabra. A bronze statue of a man raising his right arm, commonly known as The Orator, features an inscription written primarily in this language. This language, used to write a guide for mummification on a linen book named for Zagreb, was grouped with Rhaetic and Lemnian by Helmut Rix. The Tyrrhenika was a history of the people who spoke this language, whose last speakers included the Emperor Claudius. People who spoke this non-Indo-European language were the [emphasize] first inhabitants of cities like Veii and Alba Longa. For 10 points, Latin was influenced by what language that was spoken by the predecessors to the Romans in Italy?
ANSWER: Etruscan [accept Etruscans]
[after 71% of the tossup] At the end of this play, one character sings “I want you to help me” eighteen times, only stopping the repetition to invoke the names of her family members. In one scene in this play, a group of men sing a song that claims “When you marry, marry a railroad man” after an estranged family member returns. In this play, Wining Boy sells another character a silk suit by convincing him it will attract women. After their truck breaks down twice in West Virginia, a character in this play and his friend Lymon arrive with a truck full of watermelons and claim that a man was pushed down a well by the Ghosts of the Yellow Dog. For 10 points, name this play in which Boy Willie and Berniece exorcise Sutter’s ghost from the title instrument, written by August Wilson.
ANSWER: The Piano Lesson
[after 71% of the tossup] This activity provides an alternate name for Cindy Sherman’s Untitled Film Still #48, in which a woman in a plaid skirt stands facing away from the viewer next to her suitcase. John Maynard Smith referenced this activity for the name of a genetic effect in which an allele increases in frequency due to a linked beneficial allele. Dutch liftplaats signs mark places for this activity, which is similar to the D.C. area’s “slug lines.” In 2013, a Canadian robot that did this activity across Canada was destroyed in Philadelphia. In a book titled partly for this activity, Vogons destroy Earth right after the protagonist is saved by the towel-carrying Ford Prefect. For 10 points, extending one’s thumb towards the road is a gesture for what activity that inspired a series of “Guides” by Douglas Adams?
ANSWER: hitchhiking [or hitching; or hitchhike; accept thumbing until “thumb” is read; accept The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy; accept HitchBot; accept genetic hitchhiking; prompt on driving, riding in a car, traveling, waiting for a rideshare, passengers, carpooling, commuting, or equivalents of any]
[after 71% of the tossup] A satirical 1978 essay describes a hypothetical in which these people claim superiority due to an exclusive connection to lunar phases. Kate Manne coined a portmanteau about how sympathy prioritizes the “bright future” of these people over others’ suffering. The “adventurer” is contrasted with the “sub-[these people]” in a section on approaches to personal freedom from The Ethics of Ambiguity. In an essay inspired by John Berger’s Ways of Seeing entitled “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” Laura Mulvey describes these people’s objectifying “gaze.” These people are defined as “the Subject” and contrasted with “the Other” in Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex. For 10 points, feminist philosophers often critique “the patriarchy” for prioritizing what people?
ANSWER: men [or males; or boys; accept male gaze; accept sub-men; accept “If Men Could Menstruate”] (The essay in the first line is “If Men Could Menstruate” by Gloria Steinem. The portmanteau is “himpathy.”)
[after 72% of the tossup] This operation’s output is estimated by simulating trajectories in the REINFORCE algorithm, one of a class of methods named for “policy” and this operation. Pseudo-residuals are fit using “weak learners” such as decision trees in a method contrasted with random forests named for this operation’s “boosting.” Since the sigmoid activation function saturates at extreme values, it is susceptible to a problem in which this operation “vanishes.” The negative learning rate scales the result of this operation applied to the loss associated with a single data point in the update step of a stochastic algorithm named for this operation. An optimization algorithm that takes steps in the opposite direction to this operation is named for this operation’s “descent.” For 10 points, name this operation that outputs a vector of partial derivatives.
ANSWER: gradient [accept policy gradient; accept gradient boosting or gradient-boosted trees; accept vanishing gradient; accept gradient descent or stochastic gradient descent; prompt on del or nabla; prompt on partial derivative until read]
[after 73% of the tossup] In Turkic folklore, these places are inhabited by tickling spirits known as Shurale and spirits called Äbädä, who are turned away by inverting one’s clothing. Slavic tutelary deities called Leshy are said to inhabit these locations. A sun god binds an inhabitant of one of these places by sending either seven or 13 winds. While journeying toward one of these locations, a hero has five dreams including one of a falling mountain and one of wrestling a bull. Nemetons were often created by sectioning off sacred areas of these locations by Celtic druids. Enkidu helps destroy one of these locations after the beheading of its inhabitant, Humbaba. For 10 points, name these locations that include one in the Epic of Gilgamesh made up of cedars.
ANSWER: forests [accept cedar forests; accept sacred groves; prompt on cedar trees or oak trees]
[after 75% of the tossup] This book posits that geometricians determine properties from the construction of figures in a section on “What Philosophy Is.” The Foole’s claim that “there is no such thing as Justice” is rebutted by the claim that broken covenants lead to injustice in this book after the third of its 19 laws of nature is posed. According to this book, misinterpretation of scripture can drive a state to become a “Confederacy of Deceivers.” The fear of violent death is called summum malum in this book and cited as the reason humans form states in its first section, “Of Man.” This book characterizes the “state of nature” as a “war of all against all” that is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” For 10 points, name this 1651 book that advocates for rule by an absolute sovereign, written by Thomas Hobbes.
ANSWER: Leviathan [accept Leviathan or The Matter, Forme and Power of a Commonwealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil]
[after 77% of the tossup] Chinese practitioners of this tradition construct gǒngběi memorials on the graves of ménhuàn lineage founders. This tradition was introduced to Australia by Friedrich von Frankenberg, whose student Francis Brabazon built the “Avatar’s Abode” to house the leader of “[this tradition] Reoriented.” The Yan Taru movement was created to further women’s education by a West African follower of this tradition, Nana Asma’u. The concept of fanā’ is followed by baqā’, or “perpetual existence,” in this tradition whose practices often revolve around dhikr (“thicker”), or remembrance of God. Ascetics from this tradition’s Mevlevi ṭarīqa called “dervishes” perform a namesake “whirling” dance. For 10 points, what mystic Islamic tradition inspired Rumi’s Masnavī?
ANSWER: Sufism [or Taṣawwuf; or Ṣufiyyah; accept sūfēi zhǔyí; prompt on Naqshbandi or Chishti or Mevlevi until read by asking “which are part of what larger tradition?”]
[after 81% of the tossup] One sect in this tradition uses an “A” inside a circle to represent the “rainbow body,” a concept likely borrowed from an indigenous religion which the Rimé movement attempts to harmonize with this tradition. Adherents to this tradition make votive torma sculptures out of dyed butter and use meteoric iron to produce ritual phurba (“POOR-bah”) daggers. The youngest of four schools in this tradition is named for their distinctive yellow headwear, while the oldest, Nyingma (“nuh-YING-muh”), produced this tradition’s “Book of the Dead.” Dharamsala is the location of a theocratic government-in-exile from this religious tradition which formerly ruled from Lhasa’s Potala Palace. For 10 points, what tradition’s 14th Dalai Lama is Tenzin Gyatso?
ANSWER: Tibetan Buddhism [prompt on Buddhism; prompt on Mahayana Buddhism or Vajrayana Buddhism; prompt on Dzogchen or Gelug or Nyingma until “Nyingma” is read by asking “which forms part of what broader tradition?”]
[after 83% of the tossup] This thinker coined the name of a mystical “fourth force” in popularizing Stanislav Grof’s “transpersonal” subfield of their discipline. This thinker included notes on synergy and salesmen in a loosely structured book titled for this person “on Management.” Existence is the most basic of three categories in Clayton Alderfer’s simplification of a model by this thinker. This thinker distinguished fundamental deficiency-cognition from being-cognition, which occurs during euphoric “peak experiences.” This psychologist studied figures like Albert Einstein to create a theory of human motivation. For 10 points, name this psychologist who placed self-actualization atop of a “hierarchy of needs.”
ANSWER: Abraham Maslow [or Abraham Harold Maslow; accept Maslow on Management]
[after 83% of the tossup] A novel about a character with this occupation includes a set of “Commendatory Verses” by fictional characters, including Urganda the Unknown. A character with this occupation changes his nickname to be “of the Lions” instead of one about having a “Sorrowful Face.” A man with this occupation is described with the epithet Innamorato in the title of a poem by Matteo Boiardo. In a novel about a character with this occupation, the romance Amadis of Gaul is among the books taken out of a library to be burned by a barber and priest. That novel contains references to an epic poem about a man with this occupation titled Orlando Furioso. A character who names his horse Rocinante aspires to hold this occupation and recruits the laborer Sancho Panza. For 10 points, name this chivalric profession held by Don Quixote.
ANSWER: knight [or knight-errant; or caballero; or caballero andante; accept “Knight of the Lions” or “Knight of the Sorrowful Face”]
[after 88% of the tossup] In a 2018 novel, this character is reimagined into two teenage boys who fall in love and kiss as its narrator claims that “history is enough to make a future.” This character is charged by a bull while stuck in a tree in a novel that ends with him claiming to have “had an accident… so may you all.” This character learns about the world from The Shaper and an omniscient dragon in a novel by John Gardner. A man is discouraged from fighting this character by Unferth, who believes this character will win. A giant’s sword melts from the hilt after it is used to cut this character’s head from his corpse, which is taken as a trophy after the killing of his “monstrous hell-bride” of a mother. For 10 points, Beowulf first defends Heorot by fighting what monster, a “descendant of Cain” who dies after his arm is ripped off?
ANSWER: Grendel (The first clue refers to Maria Dehvana Headley’s The Mere Wife. The John Gardner novel is Grendel.)
[after 89% of the tossup] This concept was the domain of Erua, an aspect of Marduk’s consort Ṣarpanītū. Rodnovery (“rod-NOV-ery”) revived a Slavic folk practice in which people with this condition keep faceless Pelenashka dolls secret. Egyptian pottery depicting a deity of this concept was found on Crete in a cave named for Eileithyia (“ill-ih-THIGH-uh”), another deity of this concept. In Egypt, people with this condition used ankh-like tjeti knots, while in Mesopotamia, apotropaic talismans of Pazuzu protected people with this condition from a chimeric deity. That deity, Lamashtu, was believed to cause cot deaths by tapping people with this condition seven times on the stomach. For 10 points, people pray to fertility goddesses hoping to obtain what condition leading to childbirth?
ANSWER: pregnancy [or word forms like pregnant; accept labor or childbirth until “childbirth” is read; prompt on fertility until read]
[after 89% of the tossup] It’s not cannibalism, but an essay on this practice notes that “the certainties postulated by philosophers hardly ever exist” when analogizing it to the case of shipwrecked sailors Dudley and Stephens. Kitty Genovese’s murder is used to make a distinction between “Good,” “Splendid,” and “Minimally Decent” Samaritans in an essay on this practice. An essay titled for this practice describes an analogy of seeds floating through windows and taking root in houses. This practice is paired with “the Doctrine of Double Effect” in the title of an essay by Philippa Foot that proposed the trolley problem. An essay on this practice proposes a thought experiment involving keeping a dying violinist alive. For 10 points, Judith Jarvis Thomson wrote a “Defense” of what practice opposed by pro-life activists?
ANSWER: abortion [accept equivalents such as ending or terminating a pregnancy; accept “A Defense of Abortion”; accept “The Problem of Abortion and the Doctrine of Double Effect”]
[after 90% of the tossup] The causative agent of this disease contains a pE88 plasmid encoding several ABC transporters. This disease may cause Risus sardonicus and more general opisthotonus (“opp-is-THOT-uh-nuss”) also seen in cerebral palsy or strychnine poisoning. Exotoxins present in this disease include a cholesterol-dependent hemolysin and a ganglioside-binding protein that cleaves synaptobrevin. Renshaw cells are inactivated by this disease, which prevents the release of inhibitory neurotransmitters. It’s not botulism, but this disease is caused by a Clostridium bacterium and has symptoms that can be alleviated by benzodiazepines. A toxoid from this disease is included alongside diphtheria and pertussis in the Tdap vaccine. For 10 points, name this disease that causes muscle spasms associated with exposure to rusty nails.
ANSWER: tetanus [or lockjaw]
[after 91% of the tossup] This architect designed the scenery for a 1968 Billy Al Bengston exhibition at LACMA. This architect fixed a full-scale F-104 jet fighter to the entrance of the California Aerospace Museum. This architect’s use of a fish motif appears in his design of a restaurant in Kobe. This architect’s “open-ended” approach can be seen in the use of corrugated steel and mesh fencing of his Santa Monica residence. A building designed by this architect described as a “metaphoric city” has an atrium he nicknamed “the flower.” This architect associated with Deconstructivism used concave wave-like exteriors for a Los Angeles concert hall. For 10 points, name this Canadian-American architect of the Walt Disney Concert Hall and Guggenheim Bilbao.
ANSWER: Frank Gehry [or Frank Owen Gehry; or Frank Owen Goldberg]
[after 92% of the tossup] A position separating this concept from reason is defined by a “basic reliance” on it according to Alvin Plantinga, who co-founded a journal titled for this concept “and Philosophy” with other reformed epistemologists. The dictum “subjectivity is truth” appears in a work defending this “absurd” concept under the pseudonym Johannes Climacus entitled Concluding Unscientific Postscript. A man who still expects he will receive a princess’s seemingly unobtainable love goes beyond “infinite resignation” in his embodiment of this concept. That “knight of” this concept is described in Søren Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling, which also describes it as a qualitative “leap.” For 10 points, name this religious concept of believing without seeing.
ANSWER: faith [accept qualitative leap of faith or knight of faith; accept Faith and Philosophy; accept fideism]
[after 94% of the tossup] In a story from this region, a king discovers two hundred soldiers hiding in bags of flour in his giant house. A character from this region invents the game of “badger-in-the-bag” to win a princess’s hand in marriage. After drinking three drops from a cauldron, a figure from this region is swallowed by a sorceress upon transforming into a grain of wheat. A queen from this region is forced to carry travelers on her back after six negligent maids frame her for eating her infant child. The golden-haired Pryderi appears in all “Four Branches” of a text from this region. A bard whose name means “shining brow” names this region’s Book of Taliesin. For 10 points, name this constituent country of the United Kingdom whose myths are contained in the Mabinogion.
ANSWER: Wales [or Cymru; prompt on Great Britain; prompt on UK or United Kingdom until read]
[after 94% of the tossup] An actor portraying this character has a heart attack after reciting this character’s line “a wren goes to ’t” in the opening scene of Station Eleven. After this character dies, one character remarks that “I have a journey, sir; shortly to go. [This character] calls me. I must not say no,” implying that he will kill himself. This character mourns another character, crying, “Why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life / And thou no breath at all?” This character claims that he is a “man more sinned against than sinning” during a scene that begins with him saying “blow, winds, and crack your cheeks!” during a storm where he is followed by his fool and a bastard son disguised as Tom O’Bedlam. For 10 points, name this titular king of a Shakespeare play who disinherits Cordelia after she refuses to flatter him.
ANSWER: King Lear
[after 95% of the tossup] This class of reactions produces a family of toxic compounds that have two benzene rings connected by two oxygen atoms at the para positions, the dioxin family. The Zeldovich mechanism explains the formation of a type of nitrogen-containing molecule during these reactions. Preventing the backflow of one of these reactions in stacks can be accomplished with sweep gas. Gaseous products of these reactions react with nitrogen oxides and light to generate ozone. In these reactions, gases pass over platinum and rhodium to limit the release of VOCs. Those catalytic converters following these reactions reduce the formation of photochemical smog in cities. For 10 points, name these reactions in which a chemical reacts with an oxidant like oxygen to release heat and light.
ANSWER: combustion [or burning]
[after 98% of the tossup] In this region, thatched houses called umjip would regularly be used by semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers. A crown from this region has three antler-like structures on top, a replica of which was gifted to President Donald Trump in 2025. The word for “ridge” is the only remaining word from a language that was spoken by this region’s Gaya Confederacy. Six eggs descended from a golden bowl with a message that princes would hatch and become kings of this region according to the Samguk yusa. Dangun (“DAHN-goon”) was the legendary founder of a kingdom in this region that, during its non-Chinese Three Kingdoms Period, fragmented into states like Baekje (“BECK-jeh”) and Goguryeo. For 10 points, Silla unified what peninsula that was later ruled by the Joseon Dynasty?
ANSWER: Korea [accept Korean peninsula or Hanguk]
[after 100% of the tossup] Coins from a kingdom on this body of water were found on Marchinbar island. An “accidental crusade” targeted a kingdom on the coast of this body of water later invaded by Butua. A ruler of another state on this body of water built the Husuni Kubwa and added a coral dome to a Great Mosque in its capital. That state’s “chronicle” describes its founding by the son of a ruler of Shiraz. Gold mined from the interior highlands were brought to this body of water at the port city of Sofala, which paid tribute to the Mutapa Empire while controlled by the Kilwa Sultanate. The Portuguese stronghold at Fort Jesus was besieged by Omani forces near Mombasa on this body of water. For 10 points, the Swahili coast in East Africa formed the western boundary of what ocean?
ANSWER: Indian Ocean [prompt on Swahili coast until read]
[after 100% of the tossup] In hollow rectangular waveguides, waves named for this quantity have the lowest non-zero cutoff frequency in the one-zero mode. For a point charge moving at a uniform relativistic velocity, this quantity becomes “pancake-shaped” by bunching up in the transverse direction. The density of energy stored by this quantity is given by permittivity over 2 times this quantity squared. The component of this quantity parallel to the surface is constant across a boundary. That derivation uses that the flux of this quantity through a surface is proportional only to enclosed charge density according to Gauss’s law. The negative line integral of this quantity gives the scalar potential. For 10 points, what vector quantity is measured in newtons per coulomb and created by electric charges?
ANSWER: electric field [or E-field; prompt on E]
[after 100% of the tossup] This deity’s wife stands over him in an artistic motif from the Gosforth Cross. Alternate versions of a story detail a different one of this deity’s two sons turning into a wolf and killing the other. This deity is referred to by the kenning “brother of Býleistr” in the Völuspá when the völva explains that his escape will signal the start of Ragnarök, at which point this deity will kill and be killed by Heimdallr. This deity attacks Njörd for being incestuous and claims to have cuckolded Týr in a text sometimes named for his flyting. This son of Fárbauti and Laufey turns into a salmon to escape his punishment of having venom dripped on him for eternity after he causes the death of Baldr. For 10 points, name this Norse trickster god.
ANSWER: Loki [or Loki Laufeyson; accept Lokasenna or The Flyting of Loki or Loki’s Verbal Duel]
[after 100% of the tossup] 111 workers who built this structure recounted their experiences in a series of letters discussed by a Julie Greene book and the documentary Box 25. The existence of a secret plan to destroy this structure was confirmed by the autobiography America’s Prisoner. People who died in 1964 riots that tore down the “Fence of Shame” around this structure were commemorated on Martyrs Day. It’s not a tower, but Gustave Eiffel was prosecuted in a bribery scandal during an unsuccessful attempt to build this structure. Walter Reed’s medical advancements controlling yellow fever enabled the construction of this structure, which the Torrijos–Carter treaties transferred from US control in 1999. For 10 points, what man-made waterway connects the Caribbean to the Pacific through a namesake Central American country?
ANSWER: Panama Canal (America’s Prisoner is by Manuel Noriega.)
[after 100% of the tossup] These groups name a class of theorems that includes “conditional” and “competence-sensitive” subtypes and a non-paradox statement put forth by the Marquis de Condorcet. A relaxed requirement for these groups in Louisiana and Oregon was made unconstitutional in the Ramos case. Potential members of these groups with “conscientious scruples” are excluded from “death qualification” in a process nicknamed “Witherspooning.” These groups are selected from a pool of potential candidates called a venire or struck for cause during the process of voir dire. The Sixth Amendment guarantees the right to these groups’ impartial nature. For 10 points, what groups composed of one’s “peers” determine a verdict in court?
ANSWER: juries [or jury; accept petit jury; accept Condorcet’s jury theorem; reject “grand juries”; reject “voters”] (Ramos v. Louisiana abolished non-unanimous jury verdicts.)
[after 100% of the tossup] One model of these substances consists of two independent phases, one condensed state and one normal state, and was formulated by Tizsa. The mixing of a working liquid and one of these substances allows cooling down to 2 millikelvins in a dilution refrigerator. One of these substances can be created using isentropic compression in a Pomeranchuk cell. These substances display quantized vortices called rotons that can form in these substances as predicted by Landau. These substances have high thermal conductivity due to propagating temperature waves called second sound. Below the lambda point, helium-4 transitions to one of these substances. These substances can form Rollin films that enable them to creep up walls. For 10 points, name these substances that have zero viscosity and flow without friction.
ANSWER: superfluids [accept superfluidity; accept superfluid liquid helium]

Katherine Mack ↩

[after 36% of the tossup] An essay describes how one of the author’s classmates used this belief to justify his failure to study for an exam, showing that proponents of this belief have abandoned reason. Proponents of this belief “delight in acting in bad faith” according to that essay by Jean-Paul Sartre. The deconstructionist Paul de Man wrote hundreds of articles defending this position for the newspaper Le Soir (“luh swar”). This belief and imperialism are analyzed in the first two sections of The Origins of Totalitarianism. During the Farías and Faye controversies, a philosopher was accused of this belief, which explains his failure to protect his mentor Edmund Husserl. The Black Notebooks of Martin Heidegger contain many expressions of this prejudice. For 10 points, name this prejudice defended in Mein Kampf.
ANSWER: antisemitism [or anti-Jewish prejudice; or Jew-hatred; or Judeophobia; accept “Anti-Semite and Jew”; prompt on Nazism or racism or prejudice or bigotry until “prejudice” is read]
[after 43% of the tossup] Social media users gave the name “Jelly” to one of these characters repeatedly shown crying colorful tears. Simon Baek revealed that a Sunlight Sister had a child with one of these characters before being killed by Celine. One of these beings rues how he left his family in poverty “while I slept on silk sheets in the palace with my belly full every night” to become one of these beings with the aid of Gwi-Ma. A song that claims one of these beings “with no feelings don’t deserve to live, it’s so obvious” is performed to expose Rumi as being part-[one of these beings], something revealed when patterns on her arm are exposed while fighting Jinu in a bathhouse. For 10 points, the Honmoon protects humanity from what beings exemplified by the Saja Boys, who are fought in a 2025 Netflix film by the K-pop group HUNTR/X (“huntrix”)?
ANSWER: demons [or dokkaebi or jeoseung saja; prompt on Saja Boys until read by asking “what general class of beings are they?”]
[after 63% of the tossup] This activity provides an alternate name for Cindy Sherman’s Untitled Film Still #48, in which a woman in a plaid skirt stands facing away from the viewer next to her suitcase. John Maynard Smith referenced this activity for the name of a genetic effect in which an allele increases in frequency due to a linked beneficial allele. Dutch liftplaats signs mark places for this activity, which is similar to the D.C. area’s “slug lines.” In 2013, a Canadian robot that did this activity across Canada was destroyed in Philadelphia. In a book titled partly for this activity, Vogons destroy Earth right after the protagonist is saved by the towel-carrying Ford Prefect. For 10 points, extending one’s thumb towards the road is a gesture for what activity that inspired a series of “Guides” by Douglas Adams?
ANSWER: hitchhiking [or hitching; or hitchhike; accept thumbing until “thumb” is read; accept The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy; accept HitchBot; accept genetic hitchhiking; prompt on driving, riding in a car, traveling, waiting for a rideshare, passengers, carpooling, commuting, or equivalents of any]
[after 64% of the tossup] These groups name a class of theorems that includes “conditional” and “competence-sensitive” subtypes and a non-paradox statement put forth by the Marquis de Condorcet. A relaxed requirement for these groups in Louisiana and Oregon was made unconstitutional in the Ramos case. Potential members of these groups with “conscientious scruples” are excluded from “death qualification” in a process nicknamed “Witherspooning.” These groups are selected from a pool of potential candidates called a venire or struck for cause during the process of voir dire. The Sixth Amendment guarantees the right to these groups’ impartial nature. For 10 points, what groups composed of one’s “peers” determine a verdict in court?
ANSWER: juries [or jury; accept petit jury; accept Condorcet’s jury theorem; reject “grand juries”; reject “voters”] (Ramos v. Louisiana abolished non-unanimous jury verdicts.)
[after 65% of the tossup] A character in this book opens a box to find coals instead of a feather dropped by Gabriel during the Annunciation. In this book, a character marries Neerbal after being taught how to “put the devil back in Hell” by the monk Rustico. A poem by John Keats adapts a story in this book in which a woman cries every day over a pot of basil containing her lover’s severed head. In a different story in this collection, a man wins a woman’s affections after cooking his pet falcon for her as a meal. A nobleman pretends to murder his children to test the loyalties of his wife Griselda in this collection’s final story, one of several told by Dioneo over 10 days. For 10 points, Florentines fleeing the Black Death tell stories to each other in what collection by Giovanni Boccaccio?
ANSWER: The Decameron [or Decamerone]
[after 72% of the tossup] This author’s death inspired an author to state “a light was gone” in an interview featured in a New Yorker article partially titled for an “Infinite Footnote to” this author. In a story by this author that inspired a work of hypertext fiction featuring postal clerk Emily Runbird, a man who has just arrived in Ashgrove takes a child’s advice to bear left at every crossroad. In a story by this author, the poet Carlos Daneri attempts to save a cellar containing a point in space that contains all other points. The title construct of a story by this author is analogized to a guessing game where the answer is chess by the Sinologist Dr. Albert before Richard Madden arrests Yu Tsun. For 10 points, name this Argentinian author of “The Aleph” and “The Garden of Forking Paths.”
ANSWER: Jorge Luis Borges [or Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges] (The first line refers to “César Aira’s Infinite Footnote to Borges.” The second line refers to Stuart Moulthrop’s Victory Garden.)
[after 72% of the tossup] A character with this profession asks another character why he thinks the Welsh will want a “multi-culti bot-verse” since they voted for Brexit. After breaking down a door, it is discovered that a character with this profession in a different work annotated “a pious work” with “startling blasphemies” and laid heaps of “white salt” on saucers. A character with this profession writes that “my life, my honour, my reason, are all at your mercy” to his friend Lanyon, who later dies of shock. A man with this profession reveals that he created a new signature by “sloping my own hand backward” in his “Full Statement of the Case.” After the murder of Sir Danvers Carew, Gabriel Utterson investigates a person with this profession. For 10 points, name this profession of Henry Jekyll, the alter-ego of Mr. Hyde.
ANSWER: medical doctor [or MD; accept Dr. Henry Jekyll; accept Dr. Ry Shelley; accept medical professional; prompt on scientist, researcher, chemist, professor, or grave robber] (The first clue is from Frankissstein by Jeanette Winterson.)
[after 75% of the tossup] In a novel by this author, Terry is exiled for trying to rape his wife Alima. In that novel by this author, the sociology student Vandyck Jennings and two of his friends investigate an unknown region whose inhabitants reproduce through parthenogenesis. This author wrote a short story in which one character consumes cod-liver oil instead of ale, wine, and red meat. The protagonist of that story by this author requests to remove its title object, describing it as “a debased Romanesque with delirium tremens.” This author wrote a story in which the protagonist exclaims “I’ve got out at last… in spite of you and Jane” after she is prescribed a rest cure by her husband John. For 10 points, name this author who described a woman imprisoned by the pattern of the title decoration in The Yellow Wallpaper.
ANSWER: Charlotte Perkins Gilman [or Charlotte Anna Perkins Gilman; or Charlotte Perkins Stetson] (The novel is Herland.)
[after 76% of the tossup] A medieval travel journal from this country was written by an anonymous “Lady” whose aunt, known only as a noble’s “mother,” authored The Gossamer Years. A book from this country opens “In spring it is the dawn that is most beautiful” and features the section “Embarrassing Things.” Ivan Morris translated that book and one retitled after the same “Bridge of Dreams” that titles a chapter of a novel from this country. A possibly autobiographical character in a novel from this country is kidnapped by the protagonist after the daughter of the Minister of the Left dies. The blank chapter “Vanished into the Clouds” appears in that novel from this country, often considered the first modern novel. For 10 points, name this country home to the authors of The Pillow Book and The Tale of Genji.
ANSWER: Japan [or Nippon; or Nihon] (The first line is the Sarashina Diary.)
[after 76% of the tossup] In one of these places in a 1935 novella, a man with the “eyes of a schoolboy surprised in the act of breaking one of the rules” is noticed by William Bradshaw. Christopher Isherwood’s Berlin Stories begins with a novella titled for the communist spy Mr. Norris and these places. In one of these places, Cyrus B. Hardman complains that he cannot find a “small, dark man with a womanish voice.” In one of these places, a man finds a handkerchief embroidered with the letter “H” belonging to Princess Dragomiroff and searches for a “scarlet kimono.” In one of these places, the disguised baby kidnapper Cassetti is stabbed by all twelve suspects. For 10 points, name this type of place where Ratchett’s death is investigated by Hercule Poirot (“air-COOL pwah-ROH”) in Murder on the Orient Express.
ANSWER: trains [or passenger cars; or passenger coaches; accept train compartment; accept Mr. Norris Changes Trains; accept Murder in the Calais Coach; accept Murder on the Orient Express until read]
[after 88% of the tossup] This author depicted Octave, a widower who expands his wife’s silk shop into a department store named The Ladies’ Paradise, in a sequel to a novel whose title has been translated by Henry Vizetelly as Piping Hot. In a novel by this author, a woman who has a stroke is unable to report the murder of a character who bites a man on the neck before drowning. A character created by this author meets the anarchist Souvarine in a novel set in “Le Voreux.” This author, who wrote a novel in which a character kills Catherine’s abusive lover Chaval while trapped in a pit, created the murderer Thérèse Raquin (“tay-REZZ ra-CAN”). Étienne Lantier leads a strike at the Montsou mines in this author’s novel Germinal. For 10 points, name this author of the Rougon-Macquart (“roo-GON-mah-CAR”) series, who defended Alfred Dreyfus in the letter “J’Accuse…!”
ANSWER: Émile Zola [or Émile Édouard Charles Antoine Zola]
[after 90% of the tossup] In a story by this author, which is narrated to Miss K.I.T., Burmin falls to his knees in front of Maria after realizing she is the woman he jokingly married four years prior during the title event. While translating a work by this author, an author whose essays are collected in Strong Opinions wrote a set of “Notes on Prosody.” This author of “The Blizzard” wrote a collection framed as the stories of the mysterious landowner Ivan Belkin. Vladimir Nabokov feuded with Edmund Wilson over a translation of a work by this author composed of sonnets ending with masculine and feminine rhymes. This author wrote a poem in which Lensky challenges the title dandy to a duel after Tatyana’s name-day celebration. For 10 points, name this Russian author of Eugene Onegin.
ANSWER: Alexander Pushkin [or Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin] (Vladimir Nabokov’s essays are collected in Strong Opinions.)
[after 92% of the tossup] Isaac Bickerstaffe replaced this character with Doctor Cantwell in an adaptation of another author’s play about this character, The Non-Juror by Colley Cibber (“SIB-er”). The non-speaking maid Flipote is slapped at the end of the first scene of a play titled for this character, which Richard Wilbur translated into English verse. In that play, a grandmother who views this character as perfect is proven wrong when this character’s actions lead to the bailiff Loyal serving eviction papers. The maid Dorine prevents Mariane from marrying this character, who is arrested by order of a king in a deus ex machina ending. This character, who is exposed while trying to seduce Elmire, pretends to be religious to gain Orgon’s trust. For 10 points, name this character, a “Hypocrite” created by Molière.
ANSWER: Tartuffe (The Isaac Bickerstaffe play is The Hypocrite.)
[after 94% of the tossup] This thinker coined the name of a mystical “fourth force” in popularizing Stanislav Grof’s “transpersonal” subfield of their discipline. This thinker included notes on synergy and salesmen in a loosely structured book titled for this person “on Management.” Existence is the most basic of three categories in Clayton Alderfer’s simplification of a model by this thinker. This thinker distinguished fundamental deficiency-cognition from being-cognition, which occurs during euphoric “peak experiences.” This psychologist studied figures like Albert Einstein to create a theory of human motivation. For 10 points, name this psychologist who placed self-actualization atop of a “hierarchy of needs.”
ANSWER: Abraham Maslow [or Abraham Harold Maslow; accept Maslow on Management]
[after 98% of the tossup] This concept was the domain of Erua, an aspect of Marduk’s consort Ṣarpanītū. Rodnovery (“rod-NOV-ery”) revived a Slavic folk practice in which people with this condition keep faceless Pelenashka dolls secret. Egyptian pottery depicting a deity of this concept was found on Crete in a cave named for Eileithyia (“ill-ih-THIGH-uh”), another deity of this concept. In Egypt, people with this condition used ankh-like tjeti knots, while in Mesopotamia, apotropaic talismans of Pazuzu protected people with this condition from a chimeric deity. That deity, Lamashtu, was believed to cause cot deaths by tapping people with this condition seven times on the stomach. For 10 points, people pray to fertility goddesses hoping to obtain what condition leading to childbirth?
ANSWER: pregnancy [or word forms like pregnant; accept labor or childbirth until “childbirth” is read; prompt on fertility until read]
[after 99% of the tossup] Note to moderator: Read the answerline carefully. This technology is depicted creating a blue Greek letter omega in the painting If All the World Were Paper and All the Water Sink by Jess. This technology led an artist to begin depicting his “favorite food for thought” in paintings such as Living Still Life. This technology inspired a bronze sculpture in the shape of a skull at the University of Chicago’s Mansueto Library by Henry Moore. Catholicism and this technology influenced Salvador Dalí’s “disintegration” of an earlier painting, exemplifying a form of “mysticism” named after this technology. In a 2023 blockbuster film, events caused by this technology are portrayed with slow-motion thermite reactions. For 10 points, name this technology used in weapons that are depicted in Christopher Nolan’s film Oppenheimer.
ANSWER: nuclear energy [or nuclear power; or nuclear reactions; or atomic energy; or atomic power; or atomic reactions; accept nuclear weapons or nuclear bombs or atomic weapons or atomic bombs or A-bombs; accept Nuclear Mysticism; accept nuclear reactors or nuclear power plants; accept nuclear fission or nuclear fusion or atom splitting; prompt on bombs or weapons or explosives; prompt on reactors or power plants; reject “thermonuclear weapons” or “hydrogen bombs”] (The third sentence refers to Moore’s Nuclear Energy. The fourth sentence refers to Dalí’s Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory.)
[after 99% of the tossup] In a play by this author, a character remarks, “I hate brandy… it stinks of modern literature” while at an Italian restaurant. In that play by this author, that character reminisces about taking a speedboat to Torcello to read Yeats alone. At the end of a different play by this author, a character who had left to get a drink of water returns stripped of some of his clothing and his gun. A character in that play by this author yells “Kaw!” after reading about a “child of eight” killing a cat and a “man of eighty-seven” crawling under a lorry. Two characters in a play by this author argue about the difference between the phrases “light the kettle” and “put on the kettle” and send items like a stale Eccles (“ECK-ulls”) cake up the title device. For 10 points, what playwright of Betrayal wrote about the hitmen Gus and Ben in The Dumb Waiter?
ANSWER: Harold Pinter
[after 100% of the tossup] In a play by this author, after recalling the papaya cream scrubs given to her, one character is mistakenly called Carl by an aging actress using the name “Princess Kosmonopolis.” The opening stage directions of a play by this author describe a bed with giant wicker cornucopias on the headboard that used to belong to Jack Straw and Peter Ochello. In a play by this author, one character claims that his leg injury from hurtling causes him to drink until he hears a “click” in his head. That character rants about “mendacity” to Big Daddy when he suggests that he had a romantic relationship with his teammate Skipper. For 10 points, name this author of Sweet Bird of Youth who wrote about Brick and Maggie Pollitt’s failing marriage in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.
ANSWER: Tennessee Williams [or Thomas Lainer Williams III]
[after 100% of the tossup] In 1939, a ship named for this city carrying Jewish refugees from Germany was denied from landing in the US in the so-called “Voyage of the Damned.” Cases arising from Detroit and this city resulted in racially restrictive covenants being struck down under the Equal Protection Clause. Harold Bixby, a businessman from this city, sponsored an object built in San Diego but named for this city that was later used to win the Orteig Prize. Shelley v. Kraemer originated in this city, which preserved the Old Courthouse where the Dred Scott trial was first heard as part of an “expansion memorial.” Charles Lindbergh named his Atlantic-crossing aircraft for the “Spirit of” this city. For 10 points, name this Midwestern city home to the Gateway Arch.
ANSWER: St. Louis [accept The Spirit of St. Louis; accept MS St. Louis]
[after 100% of the tossup] A satirical 1978 essay describes a hypothetical in which these people claim superiority due to an exclusive connection to lunar phases. Kate Manne coined a portmanteau about how sympathy prioritizes the “bright future” of these people over others’ suffering. The “adventurer” is contrasted with the “sub-[these people]” in a section on approaches to personal freedom from The Ethics of Ambiguity. In an essay inspired by John Berger’s Ways of Seeing entitled “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” Laura Mulvey describes these people’s objectifying “gaze.” These people are defined as “the Subject” and contrasted with “the Other” in Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex. For 10 points, feminist philosophers often critique “the patriarchy” for prioritizing what people?
ANSWER: men [or males; or boys; accept male gaze; accept sub-men; accept “If Men Could Menstruate”] (The essay in the first line is “If Men Could Menstruate” by Gloria Steinem. The portmanteau is “himpathy.”)
[after 100% of the tossup] An actor portraying this character has a heart attack after reciting this character’s line “a wren goes to ’t” in the opening scene of Station Eleven. After this character dies, one character remarks that “I have a journey, sir; shortly to go. [This character] calls me. I must not say no,” implying that he will kill himself. This character mourns another character, crying, “Why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life / And thou no breath at all?” This character claims that he is a “man more sinned against than sinning” during a scene that begins with him saying “blow, winds, and crack your cheeks!” during a storm where he is followed by his fool and a bastard son disguised as Tom O’Bedlam. For 10 points, name this titular king of a Shakespeare play who disinherits Cordelia after she refuses to flatter him.
ANSWER: King Lear

Advai Srinivasan ↩

[after 46% of the tossup] This process names a phenomenon in which the momentum of stellar material causes it to be carried through the tachocline, known as this process’s namesake “overshoot.” High-resolution images of the Sun’s surface appear granulated because of entities named for this process in the photosphere. This process occurs when the magnitude of the actual temperature gradient exceeds that of the adiabatic temperature gradient, according to the Schwarzschild criterion. For main sequence stars under around 0.35 solar masses, this process is the dominant form of energy transport. In a zone named for this process just below the Sun’s atmosphere, plasma circulates heat via this process’s namesake “currents.” For 10 points, name this thermal process exemplified by movement of warmer fluid upwards and cold fluid downwards.
ANSWER: convection [accept convection currents; accept convective cells; accept convective overshoot; accept convective zone]
[after 51% of the tossup] The Kadomtsev model explains rapid temperature drops in these devices called sawtooth relaxations. One type of these devices are protected from kink instabilities when the safety factor is greater than one. Another type of these devices heats a hohlraum using laser pulses in a technique called ICF. The first one of these devices to achieve a Q greater than one is the National Ignition Facility, which uses internal confinement. Magnetic fields confine plasma in a toroid in the stellarator and tokamak types of these machines, and these devices often use deuterium and tritium for fuel. For 10 points, name these devices that seek to produce power by combining atomic nuclei.
ANSWER: fusion reactors [accept tokamaks until “tokamak” is read; accept inertial confinement fusion reactors; prompt on reactors; prompt on nuclear reactors; reject “fission reactors”]
[after 51% of the tossup] Eliminating this substance is the goal of the DGP braneworld model. So-called “phantom” forms of this substance are an extreme case of hypothetical quintessence models. An equation of state of pressure equal to negative density characterizes this substance, whose density remains constant as space expands. An era dominated by this substance began roughly 4 billion years ago, when the expansion of the universe began to accelerate. This substance is represented by a quantity that Einstein called his “biggest blunder” when adding it to his field equations, known as the cosmological constant. For 10 points, name this mysterious substance that accounts for over 70 percent of the universe, along with matter and dark matter.
ANSWER: dark energy [prompt on lambda or cosmological constant until read by asking “what substance does that quantity represent?”]
[after 52% of the tossup] One model of these substances consists of two independent phases, one condensed state and one normal state, and was formulated by Tizsa. The mixing of a working liquid and one of these substances allows cooling down to 2 millikelvins in a dilution refrigerator. One of these substances can be created using isentropic compression in a Pomeranchuk cell. These substances display quantized vortices called rotons that can form in these substances as predicted by Landau. These substances have high thermal conductivity due to propagating temperature waves called second sound. Below the lambda point, helium-4 transitions to one of these substances. These substances can form Rollin films that enable them to creep up walls. For 10 points, name these substances that have zero viscosity and flow without friction.
ANSWER: superfluids [accept superfluidity; accept superfluid liquid helium]
[after 55% of the tossup] This material is classified under letters G to J of the Unified Numbering System. Maraging (“MAR-aging”) forms of this material contain hard precipitate particles over an artificially elongated aging period. Modern manufacturing of this material uses a supersonic oxygen jet and burnt lime to generate a basic slag. Case-hardening of this material can be accomplished using carburization. Rapidly quenching one form of this material produces crystalline martensite. Hot-dip and electrogalvanization are methods for plating this material to prevent corrosion, which can also be accomplished by adding chromium. For 10 points, name this alloy of iron and carbon that includes a stainless variety.
ANSWER: steel [accept stainless steel]
[after 55% of the tossup] Gladys del Estal was killed protesting a facility of this type that ETA bombed several times in Lemóniz, Spain. Pierre Messemer’s namesake plan provided for the production of 170 facilities of this type. Rebecca Harms commissioned the TORCH Report to investigate a facility of this type. A facility of this type in Isar was shut down in April 2023, following a decades-long phase-out by the German government that received widespread criticism after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Anatoly Dyatlov was imprisoned for his actions at a site of this type during an event that formed the Red Forest. After that event, a massive concrete sarcophagus was built to surround that facility in Pripyat. For 10 points, European facilities of what type include Chernobyl?
ANSWER: nuclear power plants [or nuclear power stations; accept nuclear reactors; prompt on power plants or power stations]
[after 57% of the tossup] These structures are central to the GOLT hypothesis, which describes changes in the morphology of WBEs due to global warming. Cymothoa exigua is a parasite that enters hosts through these structures. These structures form the exit point in streamlined organisms that utilize ramjet ventilation. Rakers in these structures filter food particles and these structures are supported by either bony or cartilaginous arches. Unlike most salamanders, external examples of these structures on stalks are present on adult axolotls. In some organisms, these structures require a constant flow of water over them to prevent drowning. For 10 points, name these respiratory structures that enable fish to breathe underwater.
ANSWER: gills
[after 59% of the tossup] One model of this material that features a “critical state line” is called its “Modified Cam” model. An equation developed by Karl von Terzaghi computes this material’s “bearing capacity.” This material’s swelling potential increases with its plasticity index, which can be calculated from its Atterberg limits. Increases in pressure cause this prototypical three-phase material to contract during “consolidation.” Compaction of this material can cause a structure’s foundation to move during “settlement.” Applied stresses can cause excess pore water pressure to build in this material, causing its “liquefaction” during earthquakes. Based on its particle size distribution, this material can be classified into subtypes such as sand and clay. For 10 points, what organic material do plant roots typically anchor themselves in?
ANSWER: soil [or earth; or dirt; accept sand until read; accept clay until read; accept Modified Cam-Clay model]
[after 63% of the tossup] Materials called NIMs with an unusual value for this quantity were first realized using split-ring resonators. An empirical formula for this quantity is expanded in negative even powers of wavelength and becomes inaccurate in regions of anomalous dispersion. The imaginary part of complex values for this quantity models attenuation. Since most materials have negligible magnetic susceptibility, this value is approximately given by the square root of relative permittivity. A decrease of this quantity across an interface enables rays to undergo total internal reflection. The ratio of the sines of the angles of incidence and refraction equals the ratio of two values of this quantity according to Snell’s law. For 10 points, name this quantity that is the ratio of speed of light in vacuum to its speed in a material.
ANSWER: index of refraction [or refractive index or refraction index; accept IOR; prompt on n]
[after 63% of the tossup] One disease affecting these structures is X-chromosome linked to mutations in the DKC1 gene and may require bone marrow transplants. Dyskerin helps to stabilize a catalytic complex that acts on this structure. Deficiencies in maintaining these structures, which are measured by the Q-FISH technique, are a major risk factor for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. Cajal bodies may serve to recruit RNA structures that act on these structures. The Hayflick limit is based on the length of these structures that can be extended by TERT. Shortened examples of these structures that lose their shelterin cap can trigger senescence, and these structures consist of repeating TTAGGG motifs. For 10 points, what DNA sequences protect the ends of chromosomes?
ANSWER: telomeres
[after 64% of the tossup] The “kinetic” form of this quantity names a type of detector that can count photons and derives from the motion of Cooper pairs in superconductors. This quantity times angular frequency equals a form of reactance. Voltage equals this quantity times the time derivative of current in an alternate form of Faraday’s law, since this quantity is defined as the derivative of magnetic flux with respect to current. Since this quantity is linearly proportional to permeability, it can be increased by a conducting core. One over the square root of this quantity times capacitance equals the resonant frequency of an oscillating circuit. This quantity measures the strength of coiled circuit components that store energy in magnetic fields. For 10 points, name this quantity symbolized L and measured in henries.
ANSWER: inductance [accept kinetic inductance detector; prompt on L until read]
[after 72% of the tossup] A questionnaire that screens for a disorder partly named for this process assesses BMI and neck size and is known by the acronym STOP-BANG. Disorders involving this process can be indicated by a high score on a scale named for Epworth Hospital, including one that can be treated by supplementing orexin and often presents with cataplexy. The “central” form of a condition can be differentiated from its “obstructive” form based on whether it is more prevalent during “quiescent” or “paradoxical” stages of this process, though both can be managed with CPAP machines. High levels of somatotropin are released after the onset of the “slow wave” form of this process, during which memory consolidation also occurs. For 10 points, circadian rhythms regulate what process promoted by melatonin?
ANSWER: sleeping [or being asleep; accept obstructive sleep apnea or central sleep apnea; accept REM sleep or paradoxical sleep or non-REM sleep or NREM sleep or quiescent sleep; prompt on terms like snoozing or dozing off]
[after 72% of the tossup] Insertion of a XA21 pattern recognition receptor into this organism prevents disease by Xoo. R. solani is a fungal pathogen of this plant that causes sheath blight. Increased lodging resistance conferred by the sd1 gene was a characteristic of the IR8 strain of this plant. Low amylose content characterizes some varieties of this plant, resulting in strong molecular adhesion between starch molecules. A variety of this plant that can synthesize vitamin A precursors is notable for its golden colour. This crop that contains no gluten can be divided into short and long grain varieties. For 10 points, what staple crop with varieties like basmati is grown in paddies?
ANSWER: rice [or Oryza]
[after 74% of the tossup] The Anderson–Newns–Grimley model allows the energy of this process to be calculated in a self-consistent manner by introducing another term to the Hamiltonian. It’s not distillation, but azeotropy in this process can be described using a DSL model. Reaction kinetic models for heterogeneous catalysis contain constants for this process in the denominator, which use an isothermal mechanism for this process named for Langmuir. BET isotherms for this process account for multilayer interactions. Activated carbon and zeolites are two examples of surfaces where this process commonly occurs. For 10 points, name this process in which atoms bond to a surface, such as when gas molecules attach to solid substrates.
ANSWER: adsorption [or adsorbing; or chemisorption; reject “absorption” or “absorbing”]
[after 75% of the tossup] One type of these hormones was first discovered in a species of rice-plant pathogen named fujikuroi. Uniconazole (“uni-CON-uh-zole”) inhibits the production of this hormone through blockage of kaurene oxidase. The absence of these hormones can increase biomass growth in the roots and cause shortened internodes. The binding of these hormones causes the degradation of DELLA proteins like GAI. The presence of water activates these hormones that stimulate the production of hydrolytic enzymes in germinating seeds. In elongating stems, these hormones’ concentration is regulated by auxins. For 10 points, name this class of plant hormone that mediates developmental processes like stem elongation.
ANSWER: gibberellins [or GAs; accept gibberellic acid]
[after 82% of the tossup] Russell Belk included possessions in an “extended” version of this concept. A version of this concept is influenced by partners in the Michelangelo phenomenon, which is similar to Charles Horton Cooley’s perception-based “looking-glass” form of this concept. This concept’s shaping by social experience is explored in the middle chapters of a book that pioneered symbolic interactionism. That book by George Herbert Meade is titled for “mind,” this concept, and “society.” Carl Rogers strove for the alignment of one’s “real” and “ideal” versions of this concept. The mirror test has demonstrated “awareness” of this concept in magpies and dolphins. For 10 points, a measure of one’s own worth is known as what concept’s “esteem?”
ANSWER: the self [accept self-esteem; accept self-awareness; accept real self or ideal self; accept Mind, Self, and Society; accept extended self]
[after 84% of the tossup] A HiGee form of this technique uses centrifugal acceleration to force horizontal flow, while another uses a dividing wall. Molecular sieves remove water and carbon dioxide upstream of a cryogenic form of this technique. The Kirkbride equation can be used to calculate the inlet location in this technique whose shortcut form uses the FUG method. The Q-line on a McCabe–Thiele diagram represents the feed in this technique. This technique may employ a Dean–Stark apparatus to remove water. Purity of products from this technique can be enhanced by increasing the reflux ratio. Adding a component to mixtures in this technique to break azeotropes can separate water and ethanol. For 10 points, what physical process separates components of a liquid mixture by their boiling points?
ANSWER: distillation [accept specific forms like fractional distillation or azeotropic distillation or HiGee distillation]
[after 88% of the tossup] A composer from this country achieved success with an orchestral work inspired by a witch trial and wrote the concerto Veni, Veni, Emmanuel for a deaf percussionist from this country. A composer who travelled to this country with Carl Klingemann was inspired by it to write a cyclic symphony beginning with the slow rising theme E, A, B, C. A piece inspired by this country uses the repeated motif [read slowly] F-sharp, D, C-sharp, D, B, down to F-sharp. This country’s folk melodies inspired a fantasy for violin and orchestra by Max Bruch, as well as a work by a different composer that makes use of its namesake “snap” rhythm. For 10 points, name this country that inspired Mendelssohn’s third symphony and his Hebrides Overture.
ANSWER: Scotland [prompt on United Kingdom or UK; prompt on Great Britain] (The composer and percussionist in the first line are James MacMillan and Evelyn Glennie respectively.)
[after 90% of the tossup] Dissociation of disclinations are used to model these phenomena in KTHNY theory. Above the upper critical dimension, these phenomena belong to the same universality class predicted by mean-field theory. An argument using the favorability of spontaneously forming domain walls was used by Rudolph Peierls (“PIE-erls”) to prove one of these phenomena exists in two dimensions or higher for a certain lattice model. Landau theory classifies these phenomena into first- or second-order based on whether the change in their order parameter is discontinuous. These phenomena include the shift between paramagnetic and ferromagnetic ordering at the Curie point. On pressure–temperature diagrams, these events are represented by crossing a coexistence curve. For 10 points, name these phenomena in which a material changes between different states of matter.
ANSWER: phase transitions [or phase changes; accept first-order phase transitions or second-order phase transitions; accept continuous phase transitions; prompt on transitions]
[after 95% of the tossup] This class of reactions produces a family of toxic compounds that have two benzene rings connected by two oxygen atoms at the para positions, the dioxin family. The Zeldovich mechanism explains the formation of a type of nitrogen-containing molecule during these reactions. Preventing the backflow of one of these reactions in stacks can be accomplished with sweep gas. Gaseous products of these reactions react with nitrogen oxides and light to generate ozone. In these reactions, gases pass over platinum and rhodium to limit the release of VOCs. Those catalytic converters following these reactions reduce the formation of photochemical smog in cities. For 10 points, name these reactions in which a chemical reacts with an oxidant like oxygen to release heat and light.
ANSWER: combustion [or burning]
[after 100% of the tossup] The GP-A experiment directly measured this phenomenon in space and on Earth. Relativistic aberration and this phenomenon are responsible for apparent increases in luminosity via relativistic beaming. If an angle theta is slowly varying, the strength of this phenomenon equals one minus cosine theta times v over c. In relativity, the strength of this phenomenon equals the square root of the fraction “one plus beta over one minus beta.” Canal rays underwent this phenomenon in the Ives–Stilwell experiment supporting special relativity, while the Pound–Rebka experiment measured a form of this effect caused by gravitational time dilation. Hubble’s law is based on observations of this effect. For 10 points, what effect changes the frequency of waves emitted by moving sources?
ANSWER: Doppler effect [accept redshift or blueshift; prompt on time dilation or gravitational time dilation until read by asking “what phenomenon does that cause?”; prompt on gravity]

Ashlee Bacconi ↩

[after 49% of the tossup] A photograph of this person looking down and wearing a denim jacket is framed by the hills of the Nevada desert. Cecil Beaton took a series of photographs of this person at the Ambassador Hotel, including a “Japanese photo” in which she holds a flower against her torso. Eve Arnold took many photographs of this person, including one in which she wears a bathing suit and reads Ulysses. Red marker pen was used to draw “crucifixes” on photographs of this woman taken by Bert Stern for her “Last Sitting.” Andy Warhol created a “Diptych” of this actress, whom Sam Shaw and George Barris photographed in a billowing white dress above a subway grate. For 10 points, name this “blonde bombshell” actress who starred in The Seven Year Itch.
ANSWER: Marilyn Monroe [or Norma Jean Mortenson]
[after 57% of the tossup] A 1978 group of people in this profession called “Thirty-Five New Guys” included six pioneering female members like Shannon Lucid. An actress diversified this profession through a national outreach campaign with the company Woman in Motion. A person best known for this profession publicly came out via her obituary and was once asked if 100 tampons was appropriate for one week in this profession. Actress Nichelle Nichols inspired people in this profession like Mae Jemison. In a televised accident investigated by the Rogers Commission, members of this profession including Judith Resnik perished alongside a teacher trained for this profession named Christa McAuliffe. For 10 points, name this profession of Sally Ride.
ANSWER: astronauts [prompt on scientists; prompt on engineers; prompt on aviators or pilots; prompt on geologists; prompt on schoolteachers until “teacher” is read] (Nichelle Nichols was the original portrayer of Uhura in Star Trek.)
[after 62% of the tossup] Social media users gave the name “Jelly” to one of these characters repeatedly shown crying colorful tears. Simon Baek revealed that a Sunlight Sister had a child with one of these characters before being killed by Celine. One of these beings rues how he left his family in poverty “while I slept on silk sheets in the palace with my belly full every night” to become one of these beings with the aid of Gwi-Ma. A song that claims one of these beings “with no feelings don’t deserve to live, it’s so obvious” is performed to expose Rumi as being part-[one of these beings], something revealed when patterns on her arm are exposed while fighting Jinu in a bathhouse. For 10 points, the Honmoon protects humanity from what beings exemplified by the Saja Boys, who are fought in a 2025 Netflix film by the K-pop group HUNTR/X (“huntrix”)?
ANSWER: demons [or dokkaebi or jeoseung saja; prompt on Saja Boys until read by asking “what general class of beings are they?”]
[after 75% of the tossup] In the writings of Wallace Fard, one of these places is identified with the city of Allah’s residence and the origin of the “Mother Plane,” which he claimed to be the Biblical merkāvā, God’s chariot. After being kidnapped under the pretext of tax audits, thetans were sent to one of these locations called Teegeeack (“TEE-jee-ack”). According to the Book of Abraham, Methuselah helped to discover one of these places called Kolob which is “closest to the throne of God.” The LDS church strenuously denies the popular belief that these places will be each Mormon’s heavenly reward for following the “straight and narrow” way to the Celestial Kingdom. For 10 points, name these celestial bodies from which extraterrestrials are often claimed to come as ambassadors to humanity.
ANSWER: planets [accept exoplanets; accept Earths until “Abraham” is read; prompt on Unidentified Flying Objects or UFOs until “Abraham” is read; prompt on volcanoes until “Abraham” is read by asking “on what larger type of place could the volcanoes be found?”]
[after 79% of the tossup] Lugaro cells found in this structure were discovered following Marr and Albus’s theory of learning in this structure. The fusion of rhombic lips leads to the formation of this structure that lies dorsal to the fourth ventricle. Along with the pons, this structure develops from the metencephalon of the hindbrain. This structure is affected by Joubert syndrome, which leads to impaired development of this structure’s vermis. Climbing fibers terminate in large dendritic tree-forming Purkinje cells in this structure located to the rear and below the cerebrum. For 10 points, name this motor control center of the brain that connects to the spinal cord, also called the “little brain.”
ANSWER: cerebellum
[after 84% of the tossup] The metals found in Fischer-type and Schrock-type carbenes have low and high values for this quantity respectively. The 18-electron rule is applicable for low values of this quantity for metals in organometallic complexes. For a given pH, this quantity is found on the x-axis of Frost–Ebsworth diagrams. Relativistic effects affecting the 6s orbital allows gold to assume a negative value of this quantity. Due to the inert-pair effect, larger Group 14 elements tend to reduce the value of this quantity by 2. Fluorine is the only halogen to exclusively have a value of negative one for this quantity. For 10 points, name this quantity that gives the number of electrons lost from an atom during bonding.
ANSWER: oxidation state [accept oxidation number or valence]
[after 88% of the tossup] This artist placed images of 19th-century women on the floor of an exhibition entrance for the work Horizontal Memory. Eadweard Muybridge inspired a video work by this artist consisting of close-up shots of 15 different people’s buttocks. An early work by this artist consists of the single instruction to leave a canvas “on the floor or in the snow.” In one performance, this artist sat onstage while audience members cut out pieces of her clothing until she was almost nude. This Fluxus artist was photographed by Annie Leibovitz lying clothed in bed as her naked husband kisses her, shortly before his murder. For 10 points, name this Japanese artist whose works include collaborations with her husband John Lennon.
ANSWER: Yoko Ono [or Ono Yoko]
[after 92% of the tossup] Two of these functional groups are substituted onto a molecule of naphthalene to create a proton sponge. They’re not epoxides, but reaction of this functional group with mCPBA gives syn alkenes due to the cyclic 5-membered transition state in the Cope elimination. Reaction of this functional group with benzenesulfonyl chloride followed by acidification in the Hinsberg test allows distinction of the degree of substitution. Primary examples of this functional group are formed from alkyl halides in the Gabriel synthesis. Carbonyls can be converted into this functional group in one-pot reductive reactions. For 10 points, name this functional group consisting of a nitrogen atom single bonded to at least one carbon atom.
ANSWER: amines [or amino group]
[after 97% of the tossup] Cellulose nanocrystals can enhance nucleation activity in materials made from these molecules. Examples of these molecules that can conduct electricity include P3HT. The Kuhn length of these molecules is a function of dihedral bond angle. Distribution of components in these molecules can be analyzed with the Mayo–Lewis equation. These molecules, which can follow the Flory–Schulz distribution, have a step-growth mechanism characterized by the Carothers (“ker-OTHERS”) equation. One way to characterize these molecules is by calculating the ratio of the number-average molecular weight to that of M0 (“M-naught”). For 10 points, name these molecules that consist of long repeating chains.
ANSWER: polymers [accept copolymers or polymerization or degree of polymerization; prompt on plastics]
[after 99% of the tossup] This material is classified under letters G to J of the Unified Numbering System. Maraging (“MAR-aging”) forms of this material contain hard precipitate particles over an artificially elongated aging period. Modern manufacturing of this material uses a supersonic oxygen jet and burnt lime to generate a basic slag. Case-hardening of this material can be accomplished using carburization. Rapidly quenching one form of this material produces crystalline martensite. Hot-dip and electrogalvanization are methods for plating this material to prevent corrosion, which can also be accomplished by adding chromium. For 10 points, name this alloy of iron and carbon that includes a stainless variety.
ANSWER: steel [accept stainless steel]
[after 99% of the tossup] Description acceptable. Massirah is controversially used to perform this action in Sudan. Surah al-Nisā’ warns that this practice, which is likened to belomancy and polytheism in Surah al-Mā’idah, can invalidate daily prayer. Along with apostasy, this action can require ḥadd punishment based on sunnah rather than on the text of the Qur’an. Khalid ibn Walid is credited with increasing punishment for this practice from 40 to 80 lashes. Although an al-Tirmidhī hadith equates this action with the consumption of khamr (“KHAH-mur”), some jurists of the Ḥanafī school only prohibit performing this action with date or grape products. For 10 points, identify this practice of intoxication which is forbidden in Islam.
ANSWER: drinking alcohol [accept sukr or muskar; accept intoxication or word forms until read; accept drunkenness or word forms; accept drinking wine or beer or liquor; accept consuming khamr until read; prompt on drinking by asking “drinking what?”]
[after 100% of the tossup] Karl Taube, who wrote an essay on this substance’s symbolism partially titled for its “fetishes,” studied a god of this substance who appears in the San Bartolo murals. A foliated god of this substance is contrasted with the “first father,” a tonsured god of this substance, whose emergence from a turtle carapace is often equated with the resurrection of Hun Hunahpu. A passage into the side of a mountain that reveals the source of this substance is opened by the Hero Twins, who use it to replace the teeth of Seven Macaw. After attempts using mud and wood failed, humanity was created out of this foodstuff by Tepeu and Qucumatz. For 10 points, the Three Sisters included squash, beans, and what staple grain that features in many Mesoamerican stories?
ANSWER: maize [or corn; accept Maya maize god or tonsured maize god or foliated maize god; accept “Lighting Celts and Corn Fetishes”]
[after 100% of the tossup] Gladys del Estal was killed protesting a facility of this type that ETA bombed several times in Lemóniz, Spain. Pierre Messemer’s namesake plan provided for the production of 170 facilities of this type. Rebecca Harms commissioned the TORCH Report to investigate a facility of this type. A facility of this type in Isar was shut down in April 2023, following a decades-long phase-out by the German government that received widespread criticism after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Anatoly Dyatlov was imprisoned for his actions at a site of this type during an event that formed the Red Forest. After that event, a massive concrete sarcophagus was built to surround that facility in Pripyat. For 10 points, European facilities of what type include Chernobyl?
ANSWER: nuclear power plants [or nuclear power stations; accept nuclear reactors; prompt on power plants or power stations]

Adam Zhang ↩

[after 61% of the tossup] Anthropologist Alan Klein’s books about this activity as a source of national pride include one partly named for “sugar” and one subtitled “A Tale of Two Laredos.” A site for this activity named Latinoamericano in Havana is the second largest of its kind in the world, while another site in San Juan’s Hato Rey district is named for a pioneer in this activity, Hiram Bithorn. Bottle caps are used in a variant of this activity called vitilla. Young boys are recruited by buscones for this activity’s academies in the Dominican Republic. This activity is less popular in the Commonwealth Caribbean than a similar sport from Britain that [emphasize] instead has bowlers and wickets. For 10 points, name this American sport whose foreign-born players have given credence to the title of “World Series.”
ANSWER: baseball [or béisbol; or juego de pelota; prompt on sports until read] (Alan Klein wrote Sugarball: The American Game, the Dominican Dream and Baseball on the Border: A Tale of Two Laredos. The British sport is cricket.)
[after 62% of the tossup] After he received the deposed Peter Orseolo in his court, a king of this name invaded Hungary to remove Samuel Aba and reinstate him as king. After a failed rescue mission by Robert I of Capua, Pope Paschal II was forced to crown a king of this name. Rudolf of Rheinfelden attempted to claim the throne of a king of this name during an event where he sought peace at the castle of Matilda of Tuscany. The Concordat of Worms was agreed to by a king of this name after the Investiture Controversy reached a peak during the reign of his father of the same name. A king of this name fasted for three days in public penance after he was excommunicated by Pope Gregory VII. For 10 points, a Holy Roman Emperor of what name publicly repented during the Walk to Canossa?
ANSWER: Henry [accept Henry III Salian or Henry IV Salian or Henry V Salian; accept Heinrich in place of “Henry”]
[after 63% of the tossup] Pilgrimages to this location venerate the spots where four shards of a jar of ambrosia landed on Earth. After a failed horse sacrifice, this location “descended from heaven” when a cosmic serpent was slain by Indra. After Agni is not capable of bearing Shiva’s child, Kārtikeya is born in this location. A city near this location that houses genealogical records of pilgrims dating to the 17th century is a popular site for cremation, as its holiness is believed to grant salvation. At times specified by the orbit of Jupiter, adherents at the Kumbh Mēlā festival immerse themselves in ghats adjacent to this body of water. For 10 points, name this holiest river in Hinduism, which is also India’s longest.
ANSWER: River Ganges [or Ganga; prompt on Prayāgrāja or Allahabad or Varanasi or Haridwāra or Ujjain or Nashik]
[after 65% of the tossup] The 17th-century Sinckan (“seen-kahn”) manuscripts from this island contain contracts with indigenous peoples such as the Siraya. That group was often referred to as “cooked” due to their extended contact with newer settlers, in contrast to “raw” groups such as the Atayal (“ah-TAH-yal”), Amis (“AH-meese”), and Seediq (“SAY-dick”), who lived in this island’s mountainous interior. The Spanish Fort Santo Domingo in the north of this island was captured by a Dutch expedition from Fort Zeelandia in 1642. The Kingdom of Tungning was established after the Dutch East India Company presence on this island was removed by Koxinga. Austronesian-speaking indigenous peoples were pushed into this island’s Central Mountain Range by waves of Hakka and Hokkien settlers crossing a narrow strait from China. For 10 points, name this island once called Formosa.
ANSWER: Taiwan [accept Formosa until read]
[after 70% of the tossup] A Pulitzer-Prize-winning photograph shows this person dancing at a rock concert during his “vote or lose” campaign. The chair of Sibneft was recognized as one of the “Seven Bankers” who supported this person after this person implemented the loans-for-shares scheme. Robert Solow and Franco Modigliani were two of several economists who wrote an open letter to this person about reforms that were championed by Anatoly Chubais (“choo-BICE”). This non-Polish politician’s visit to a Randalls grocery store in Houston may have inspired him to implement “shock therapy” in his country. This person helped diffuse the August Coup by giving a speech atop a tank. For 10 points, what politician served as the first President of Russia?
ANSWER: Boris Yeltsin [or Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin]
[after 72% of the tossup] This medium was used by artists in London’s Bow district to depict figures such as Kitty Clive and General James Wolfe. Ehrenfried von Tschirnhaus (“CHURN-house”) spurred the creation of works in this medium at Meissen (“MICE-in”), which often drew inspiration from the Kakiemon (“ka-kee-EH-moan”) style. After moving from Vincennes, Jean-Claude Duplessis became the artistic director of a factory that produced works in this medium at Sèvres (“SEV-ruh”). A variety of faience (“fie-ONSE”) produced in Delft emulated “export” works in this medium, which were often created in Jǐngdézhèn (“jing-duh-jun”). Early European attempts to recreate this medium lacked the kaolin (“KAY-uh-lin”) needed for its “hard-paste” type, which is less prone to chipping. For 10 points, name this medium used to produce blue-and-white Míng dynasty vases.
ANSWER: porcelain [or china; accept hard-paste porcelain or soft-paste porcelain or Chinese export porcelain; accept bone china; prompt on pottery or ceramics; prompt on clay or kaolin until “kaolin” is read; reject “earthenware” or “stoneware”]
[after 77% of the tossup] 111 workers who built this structure recounted their experiences in a series of letters discussed by a Julie Greene book and the documentary Box 25. The existence of a secret plan to destroy this structure was confirmed by the autobiography America’s Prisoner. People who died in 1964 riots that tore down the “Fence of Shame” around this structure were commemorated on Martyrs Day. It’s not a tower, but Gustave Eiffel was prosecuted in a bribery scandal during an unsuccessful attempt to build this structure. Walter Reed’s medical advancements controlling yellow fever enabled the construction of this structure, which the Torrijos–Carter treaties transferred from US control in 1999. For 10 points, what man-made waterway connects the Caribbean to the Pacific through a namesake Central American country?
ANSWER: Panama Canal (America’s Prisoner is by Manuel Noriega.)
[after 92% of the tossup] The wife of a ruler with this regnal name legendarily hung herself with her girdle after she was offered hemlock, a sword, and a rope to commit suicide. Adea Eurydice was married to a ruler of this name, who was possibly rendered mentally disabled following a poisoning attempt by his father’s wife. Onomachos was killed at the Battle of Crocus Field by an army under a king with this name during the Third Sacred War. A king of this name, who was victorious at the Battle of Chaeronea, was assassinated by Pausanias of Orestis in a conspiracy that ancient sources speculated to be orchestrated by his wife, Olympias. For 10 points, Macedonian expansion began during the reign of a king with what name, the father of Alexander the Great?
ANSWER: Philip [accept Philip II of Macedon or Philip III of Macedon]
[after 96% of the tossup] After he refused to allow any lapsi back into the church, a bishop from this state accused antipope Novatian of inducing his wife’s abortion. After the early Christians Perpetua and Felicity were martyred in this city, Perpetua’s narrative of her “passion” became a widely used devotional text. Much commerce from this city shipped from its harbor, the Cothon. A road marker ten miles away from this city names the Battle of Ad Decimum, where Belisarius defeated a state led by King Gelimer. Following the Decian Persecutions, a plague bearing the name of this city’s Bishop Cyprian was described by its namesake as divine punishment. Hippo Regius was selected to replace this city by the Vandal Kingdom after their invasion of Africa. For 10 points, name this city that sent an army to invade Italy under Hannibal during the Second Punic War.
ANSWER: Carthage
[after 99% of the tossup] After an 1886 rebellion, many members of this ethnicity’s Ghiljī (“GILL-jee”) tribe were forcibly resettled. A ruler of this ethnicity briefly lost control of his state during a conflict in which Alexander Burnes was killed. A governor of this ethnicity was defeated at Nowshera by a ruler who united twelve misls into a single state. William Brydon was the only European who survived a retreat from the capital of a ruler of this ethnicity. A ruler of this ethnicity lost Peshawar to Ranjit Singh. Another ruler of this ethnicity overthrew Shah Shuja, ending the rule of the Sadozai branch of its Durrani clan. After a defeat by Britain at Kandahar, the Durand Line became the eastern border between British India and a state ruled by people of this ethnicity. For 10 points, name this ethnicity of the Barakzai rulers of Afghanistan.
ANSWER: Pashtuns [or Pakhtuns; or Pathans; or Paṣtūns; prompt on Afghans until “Afghanistan” is read]
[after 100% of the tossup] A thinker from this country traced how its people sequentially obtained civil, political, and social rights in the essay “Citizenship and Social Class.” A feminist abolitionist thinker from this country wrote Society in America and popularized the works of Auguste Comte through her translations. The “mother of sociology” Harriet Martineau is from this country, where the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies was founded by Jamaica-born Marxist thinker Stuart Hall. An 1845 book compares the illness and death rates of this country’s rural and industrialized populations to document capitalist exploitation, inspiring Marx to collaborate with its author. For 10 points, Friedrich Engels wrote a book on the “Condition of the Working Class in” what country home to the University of Birmingham?
ANSWER: England [or United Kingdom; or UK; or Great Britain; accept Condition of the Working Class in England; reject “Scotland” or “Wales” or “Northern Ireland”] (The first sentence refers to T. H. Marshall.)
[after 100% of the tossup] A photograph taken during this war depicts an opera singer in silhouette raising her arms during an aria from Madame Butterfly. A photograph from this war shows a woman taking a bath with her muddy boots on the bathmat, and was taken by David Scherman. A large crowd walks down a street in a photograph from this war centered around a shaved woman holding a baby. A darkroom accident destroyed most of the photographs Robert Capa took during one battle in this war, which became the series The Magnificent Eleven. Lee Miller took photographs for Vogue during this war. In a photograph from this war, a group of six soldiers on Mount Suribachi hold onto a flagpole. For 10 points, name this war in which Joe Rosenthal took Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima.
ANSWER: World War II [or WWII; or Second World War]

Dmitri Anh-Minh Tran ↩

[after 18% of the tossup] A medieval travel journal from this country was written by an anonymous “Lady” whose aunt, known only as a noble’s “mother,” authored The Gossamer Years. A book from this country opens “In spring it is the dawn that is most beautiful” and features the section “Embarrassing Things.” Ivan Morris translated that book and one retitled after the same “Bridge of Dreams” that titles a chapter of a novel from this country. A possibly autobiographical character in a novel from this country is kidnapped by the protagonist after the daughter of the Minister of the Left dies. The blank chapter “Vanished into the Clouds” appears in that novel from this country, often considered the first modern novel. For 10 points, name this country home to the authors of The Pillow Book and The Tale of Genji.
ANSWER: Japan [or Nippon; or Nihon] (The first line is the Sarashina Diary.)
[after 23% of the tossup] In 2025, Karolína Muchová (“MOO-ho-vah”) beat this tournament’s oldest competitor since the trans woman Renee Richards 44 years earlier. In 2017, Sloane Stephens became the first winner of this tournament with a protected ranking. A player who won this tournament without dropping a set served a 109-mile-per-hour ace to defeat Leylah Fernandez in its 2021 final, becoming the only qualifier to win a Grand Slam. In her last Grand Slam match, Serena Williams lost to Ajla Tomljanović (“EYE-luh tum-LYAH-no-vitch”) in this tournament, where she called official Carlos Ramos a “thief” during her 2018 finals defeat to Naomi Osaka. This is the later of two Grand Slams whose final Amanda Anisimova lost in 2025, being beaten by its defending champion Aryna Sabalenka. For 10 points, name this chronologically last tennis Grand Slam that is held at the Arthur Ashe Stadium in Queens.
ANSWER: US Open Tennis Championships (Muchová beat Venus Williams. Emma Raducanu won in 2021.)
[after 28% of the tossup] This author’s first novel, which follows a widow who engages in an affair with her brother-in-law, was retitled Land of Sin. A character created by this author works at the “Central Registry of Births, Marriages and Deaths.” In a novel by this author, whose sequel was translated by this author’s widow Pilar del Río, a character uses a stiletto heel to kick a car thief who is shot after developing an infection. In the sequel to a novel by this author of All the Names, a “dog of tears” reappears as the only named character and an election occurs in which the majority of ballots are blank. In a novel by this author, characters like the girl with the dark glasses are quarantined in a ward and the doctor’s wife is the only one not affected by the title “white sickness.” For 10 points, name this Portuguese author of Blindness.
ANSWER: José Saramago [or José de Sousa Saramago] (The sequel to Blindness is Seeing.)
[after 34% of the tossup] Ruzsa (“ROO-zhah”) names a distance function between these objects that can be used to prove a bound on sums of these objects called Plünnecke’s inequality. Functors from a locally small category into the category of these objects are the subject of the Yoneda lemma. A class is called “proper” if it is “too big” to be expressed as one of these objects. If X is one of these objects, then X has size strictly smaller than that of “two to the X” by Cantor’s theorem. Problems with constructing these objects via unrestricted comprehension were resolved with a theory of these objects named for Zermelo and Fraenkel that was later extended to include the axiom of choice. Countably infinite instances of these objects have cardinality equal to that of the natural numbers. For 10 points, name these unordered collections of elements.
ANSWER: sets [accept subsets; accept set theory]
[after 34% of the tossup] Raiders in this state fought both Union and Confederate forces during the Cortina Wars. During the Battle of Gaines’ Mill, every officer in a “Brigade” named for this state was injured or killed except for its leader, John Bell Hood. A month after Appomattox, men in this state fought the last battle of the Civil War, the Battle of Palmito Hill. The Nueces (“new-AY-siss”) Massacre targeted antislavery Unionist Germans in this state. Benjamin Franklin Tarry led a regiment nicknamed for a law enforcement group in this state that fought against the Comanche. Gordon Granger’s announcement of the Emancipation Proclamation in a coastal city in this state is commemorated on Juneteenth. For 10 points, name this state whose police force includes its namesake “Rangers.”
ANSWER: Texas [accept Texas Rangers; accept Texas Germans; accept Texas Brigade]
[after 38% of the tossup] A ruler of these people commissioned the “Great proclamation upon the pacification of Wú” to affirm their independence. A dynasty of these people that sustained repeated naval attacks by Po Binasuor was usurped by another dynasty that only ruled for seven years. These people defeated invading armies at Bạch Đằng (“bike dong”) River three times. Literature in a native writing system called chữ Nôm flourished during a dynasty of these people that repulsed three Mongol invasions. These people had a centuries-long feud with the Kingdom of Champa to their south. These people’s Fourth Era of Northern Domination was ended by the Lam Sơn rebellion. That rebellion of these people against the Míng Dynasty was lead by Lê Lợi. For 10 points, name these people whose Trần, Hồ, and Later Lê Dynasties had their capital at modern-day Hànội.
ANSWER: Vietnamese people [or Viet; or người Việt; or Kinh]
[after 39% of the tossup] A golden one of these objects named for Victory features a depiction of Vishnu riding Garuda. A lake was renamed after being the site where one of these objects was retrieved by the golden-shelled Kim Quy to return to the Dragon King. A deity attains one of these objects after getting an enemy drunk on eight barrels of sake placed near eight gates. The legendary king Lê Lợi owns one of these objects called Heaven’s Will. The tail of Yamata no Orochi contained one of these objects discovered by Susano’o named Kusanagi. For 10 points, name these weapons that include Muramasa’s legendarily cursed katanas.
ANSWER: swords [accept katanas until read]
[after 43% of the tossup] Algebraic varieties named for this shape are subject to the orbit–cone correspondence and can be constructed from fans. For knots named for this shape, “x-to-the-p equals y-to-the-q” is a relation of the knot group. “R-squared” quotient “Z-squared” is isomorphic to this surface, which has “Z-cross-Z” as its fundamental group. This surface can be obtained by gluing each pair of opposite edges of the unit square in the same direction. This orientable surface with Euler characteristic zero is the Cartesian product of two circles. Depending on orientation, either a Klein bottle or this genus-one surface is formed by joining the circular ends of a cylinder. For 10 points, the surface of a coffee cup is topologically equivalent to what single-holed surface shaped like a doughnut?
ANSWER: torus [or 2-torus; accept toric varieties; accept torus knots]
[after 43% of the tossup] A coordinate-free definition of this operation relies on the top exterior power defining a one-dimensional space. SL(n) (“S-L-N”) is the kernel of a homomorphism defined by this operation from GL(n) (“G-L-N”) to the non-zero reals under multiplication. Unusually, this operation is only introduced towards the end of a textbook by Sheldon Axler called Linear Algebra Done Right, which defines this operation as the unique alternating multilinear form up to scaling. The output of this operation equals the constant term of the characteristic polynomial. The general linear group excludes matrices which output zero under this operation since they are non-invertible. For 10 points, name this operation that, for a two-by-two matrix, equals “a d minus b c.”
ANSWER: determinant [or det]
[after 49% of the tossup] Coefficients named for this person decay according to a power law whose degree is two plus the smoothness of the underlying function. This person’s namesake “extension” and “restriction” operators are the subject of the disproven Mizohata–Takeuchi conjecture. An overshoot of around 9 percent results from truncating constructs named for this person due to the Gibbs phenomenon. Constant functions become Dirac delta functions under an operation named for this person defined by integrating a function times “e to the minus i k x.” Periodic functions are decomposed into sums of trigonometric functions in this person’s namesake “series.” For 10 points, what mathematician names a transform that, like the Laplace transform, translates from the time domain to the frequency domain?
ANSWER: Joseph Fourier [accept Fourier series; accept Fourier transform; accept Fourier coefficients; accept Fourier restriction operator or Fourier extension operator]
[after 50% of the tossup] During this battle, a defeated rear admiral said “let us enjoy the beauty of the moon” while going down with his ship. The Chicago Tribune was almost prosecuted under the Espionage Act for Stanley Johnston’s report on this battle, where the Thach Weave debuted with prior help of “Butch” O’Hare. This battle’s location was deciphered from “AF” through breaking the JN-25 code. The losing side of this battle had also attacked the Aleutian Islands as a diversion. In this battle, bombers attacked the Akagi and Kaga as they rearmed planes for a second strike. All four Japanese carriers in this battle were sunk in exchange for the loss of the USS Yorktown. For 10 points, what battle considered a turning point in the Pacific Theater was a June 1942 victory for US forces?
ANSWER: Battle of Midway
[after 51% of the tossup] A photograph taken during this war depicts an opera singer in silhouette raising her arms during an aria from Madame Butterfly. A photograph from this war shows a woman taking a bath with her muddy boots on the bathmat, and was taken by David Scherman. A large crowd walks down a street in a photograph from this war centered around a shaved woman holding a baby. A darkroom accident destroyed most of the photographs Robert Capa took during one battle in this war, which became the series The Magnificent Eleven. Lee Miller took photographs for Vogue during this war. In a photograph from this war, a group of six soldiers on Mount Suribachi hold onto a flagpole. For 10 points, name this war in which Joe Rosenthal took Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima.
ANSWER: World War II [or WWII; or Second World War]
[after 52% of the tossup] The concept of “architecture parlante” was developed in this century by an architect who designed an ambitious ideal town centred on a salt factory. A church designed in this century depicts the Ten Commandments on bronze doors and the Last Judgement on its pediment and is called La Madeleine. In this century, architects like Robert Adam were influenced by Giovanni Battista Piranesi’s vedute drawings depicting Roman landmarks. A building from this century that uses a Greek cross plan with domes on each ambulatory and Corinthian orders in its portico was designed by Jacques-Germain Sufflot. That building from this century became a mausoleum for national heroes and was modelled on a Roman temple. For 10 points, name this century during which Neoclassicism developed with buildings such as the Panthéon in Paris.
ANSWER: 18th century [or 1700s] (The architect in the first line is Claude Nicolas Ledoux.)
[after 53% of the tossup] A dark horse candidate for this office won after defeating airline executive Al Checchi (“CHECK-ee”) in this office’s only ever “blanket primary.” A holder of this office staked a successful 1994 reelection campaign on a ballot initiative to bar undocumented immigrants from public education and healthcare. A holder of this office lost support after ending the implementation of the “Save our State” initiative and facing an electricity crisis in 2001. That holder of this office was recalled in a 2003 election and was Gray Davis. This office’s most recent Republican holder was a former actor and bodybuilder. Another former actor held this office in between the tenures of Pat and Jerry Brown. For 10 points, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Ronald Reagan held what office that leads a state from Sacramento?
ANSWER: governor of California [prompt on governor by asking “of where?”] (The first and third sentences refer to Gray Davis. The second sentence refers to Pete Wilson.)
[after 53% of the tossup] An essay describes how one of the author’s classmates used this belief to justify his failure to study for an exam, showing that proponents of this belief have abandoned reason. Proponents of this belief “delight in acting in bad faith” according to that essay by Jean-Paul Sartre. The deconstructionist Paul de Man wrote hundreds of articles defending this position for the newspaper Le Soir (“luh swar”). This belief and imperialism are analyzed in the first two sections of The Origins of Totalitarianism. During the Farías and Faye controversies, a philosopher was accused of this belief, which explains his failure to protect his mentor Edmund Husserl. The Black Notebooks of Martin Heidegger contain many expressions of this prejudice. For 10 points, name this prejudice defended in Mein Kampf.
ANSWER: antisemitism [or anti-Jewish prejudice; or Jew-hatred; or Judeophobia; accept “Anti-Semite and Jew”; prompt on Nazism or racism or prejudice or bigotry until “prejudice” is read]
[after 56% of the tossup] A polynomial-time algorithm for a promise problem that takes one of these constructs as input would imply “NP equals RP,” according to the Valiant–Vazirani theorem. The DPLL algorithm takes one of these constructs as input. In 1972, Richard Karp exhibited chains of polynomial-time reductions stemming from a problem taking one of these constructs as input, which was shown by the Cook–Levin theorem to be NP-complete. These constructs can be placed in conjunctive normal form by applying De Morgan’s laws. These constructs’ clauses are restricted to contain at most three literals in a problem abbreviated 3SAT (“THREE-sat”), which asks if there is an input for which these constructs output “true.” For 10 points, name these constructs built by using operators like “AND” and “OR” to link variables that take the value true or false.
ANSWER: Boolean formulas [or Boolean expressions; accept Boolean formulas in conjunctive normal form; accept Boolean functions; accept Boolean sentences; accept Boolean statements; accept Boolean clauses until “clauses” is read; accept Boolean well-formed formulas or Boolean wffs; accept propositional formulas or propositional expressions or propositional sentences; accept logical formulas or logical expressions; prompt on formulas or expressions or functions or sentences or statements or well-formed formulas or wffs; prompt on clauses until read; prompt on booleans or bools; reject “Boolean circuits” or “Boolean variables”]
[after 58% of the tossup] Anthropologist Alan Klein’s books about this activity as a source of national pride include one partly named for “sugar” and one subtitled “A Tale of Two Laredos.” A site for this activity named Latinoamericano in Havana is the second largest of its kind in the world, while another site in San Juan’s Hato Rey district is named for a pioneer in this activity, Hiram Bithorn. Bottle caps are used in a variant of this activity called vitilla. Young boys are recruited by buscones for this activity’s academies in the Dominican Republic. This activity is less popular in the Commonwealth Caribbean than a similar sport from Britain that [emphasize] instead has bowlers and wickets. For 10 points, name this American sport whose foreign-born players have given credence to the title of “World Series.”
ANSWER: baseball [or béisbol; or juego de pelota; prompt on sports until read] (Alan Klein wrote Sugarball: The American Game, the Dominican Dream and Baseball on the Border: A Tale of Two Laredos. The British sport is cricket.)
[after 62% of the tossup] The first English translation of a concept posited by this thinker was made by Alexander Tille 13 years before a controversial rendering by Thomas Common. A work lambasted for its existentialist portrayal of this thinker that dubs him “Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist” was written by Walter Kaufmann. This thinker borrowed the term “Tschandala” from a translation of the Laws of Manu to contrast focuses on “breeding” and “taming” in religious moralities. His sister Elizabeth Förster posthumously published the works of this philosopher, who wrote that embracing amor fati would allow humans to accept “eternal recurrence.” For 10 points, name this German philosopher who developed the Übermensch in his book Thus Spake Zarathustra.
ANSWER: Friedrich Nietzsche [or Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche] (The first line refers to the Übermensch, which Alexander Tille rendered as “Beyond-man” and Thomas Common translated as “Superman.”)
[after 65% of the tossup] Timothy Jackson asserted that the outline of this symphony’s slow woodwind opening, which rises from E to G, then F-sharp to A, represents a cruciform. The last movement of this symphony uses a composite melody in the violins of [read slowly] long F-sharp, E, D, dotted C-sharp, B, C-sharp, while the third movement is simultaneously in 4/4 and 12/8. Traditionally, the audience claps between the third and fourth movements of this symphony. This B minor symphony was conducted by its composer less than a month before his death, possibly from cholera. This symphony’s allegro con grazia second movement is a 5/4 “limping waltz.” For 10 points, name this final symphony by the composer of the 1812 Overture.
ANSWER: Pathétique Symphony [or Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6]
[after 65% of the tossup] René Leibowitz cited a piece by this composer that begins with the spoken line “I cannot remember everything. I must have been unconscious” as an example of music that meets the requirements of “committed art.” This composer’s early use of quartal harmony can be heard in an ascending theme first played by the horn in his first Chamber Symphony. This composer began using an athematic style in his Opus 11 Drei Klavierstücke (“DRY klah-vee-AIR-shtuck-uh”), and he also wrote A Survivor from Warsaw. The title character is called “drunk” in the opening section of a song cycle by this composer that is accompanied by a namesake ensemble and pioneered the technique of Sprechstimme. For 10 points, name this Austrian composer of Pierrot Lunaire who developed 12-tone serialism.
ANSWER: Arnold Schoenberg
[after 66% of the tossup] In a film from this country, a woman caring for a man with Alzheimer’s suffers a miscarriage after being pushed down a flight of stairs. A director from this country made a film set in Tuscany in which a character played by Juliette Binoche (“bee-NUSH”) debates with a man over his theory that copies are worth as much as originals. A director from this country was accused of plagiarism shortly after the release of his film A Hero. A 1990 docufiction film reenacts events in which a man impersonated a film director from this country. A director from this country, who frequently shot in cars, also made a film in which a suicidal man looks for someone to bury him after death, Taste of Cherry. For 10 points, name this home country of directors Asghar Farhadi (“far-haw-DEE”) and Abbas Kiarostami.
ANSWER: Iran [or Islamic Republic of Iran; or Jomhuri-ye Eslami-ye Iran] (The first line refers to A Separation. The docufiction film is Close-Up.)
[after 74% of the tossup] In one novel, a character with this profession crushes baby birds under a stone to save them from the sadistic Tom Bloomfield. That character with this profession is reunited with the dog Snap while walking along the beach at the end of a novel published under the pen name Acton Bell. In another novel, the employer of a character with this profession asks “does my forehead not please you?” and “do you think me handsome?” to which that character with this profession replies bluntly, “No, sir.” That character with this profession travels to Ferndean, and helps a man blinded in a fire at Thornfield Hall started by his wife. After refusing a proposal from the clergyman St. John (“SIN-jin”) Rivers, that title character with this profession states in the final chapter, “Reader, I married him.” For 10 points, name this profession of Jane Eyre.
ANSWER: governess [prompt on teacher; prompt on tutor; prompt on servant; prompt on nanny; prompt on au pair]
[after 74% of the tossup] Russell Belk included possessions in an “extended” version of this concept. A version of this concept is influenced by partners in the Michelangelo phenomenon, which is similar to Charles Horton Cooley’s perception-based “looking-glass” form of this concept. This concept’s shaping by social experience is explored in the middle chapters of a book that pioneered symbolic interactionism. That book by George Herbert Meade is titled for “mind,” this concept, and “society.” Carl Rogers strove for the alignment of one’s “real” and “ideal” versions of this concept. The mirror test has demonstrated “awareness” of this concept in magpies and dolphins. For 10 points, a measure of one’s own worth is known as what concept’s “esteem?”
ANSWER: the self [accept self-esteem; accept self-awareness; accept real self or ideal self; accept Mind, Self, and Society; accept extended self]
[after 82% of the tossup] Pilgrimages to this location venerate the spots where four shards of a jar of ambrosia landed on Earth. After a failed horse sacrifice, this location “descended from heaven” when a cosmic serpent was slain by Indra. After Agni is not capable of bearing Shiva’s child, Kārtikeya is born in this location. A city near this location that houses genealogical records of pilgrims dating to the 17th century is a popular site for cremation, as its holiness is believed to grant salvation. At times specified by the orbit of Jupiter, adherents at the Kumbh Mēlā festival immerse themselves in ghats adjacent to this body of water. For 10 points, name this holiest river in Hinduism, which is also India’s longest.
ANSWER: River Ganges [or Ganga; prompt on Prayāgrāja or Allahabad or Varanasi or Haridwāra or Ujjain or Nashik]
[after 83% of the tossup] A traditional song from this country compares a ruler’s concubines with flowers, and was recorded by Robert E. Brown for the Voyager Golden Record. Colin McPhee studied the music of a region in this country whose styles include kebyar and uses nested rhythmic structures called colotomy. Performers in one of this country’s art forms sit behind a stage made of banana trunks and can instruct musicians by striking a box with a cempala (“chem-PAH-la”). Tuning systems from this country include the pentatonic slendro and the heptatonic pélog. This country is the home of wayang puppetry, which is accompanied by an ensemble which primarily consists of metallic percussion such as the gong ageng. For 10 points, name this country, the origin of gamelan.
ANSWER: Indonesia [or Republic of Indonesia; or Republik Indonesia]
[after 89% of the tossup] Some of the last authentic srbulja (“sir-BOOL-ya”) were produced in this polity by the Vuković family. A tradition from this polity that may originate from Empress Helena was recreated by Józef Haller (“YOO-zef HAL-lair”) after the capture of Kołobrzeg (“KOH-wob-zheg”). A coin minted by Vespasian lent the symbol of a dolphin wrapping around an anchor to a businessman from this polity. This polity, home to Aldus Manutius, was partly governed by the Council of Ten. The League of Cambrai (“com-BRAY”) was formed to counterbalance the influence of this polity. The Bucentaur was central to an annual ceremony in this polity where a ring would be thrown into the sea. For 10 points, Saint Mark was the patron saint of what polity led by doges and named for an Adriatic city with many canals?
ANSWER: Venice [or Venezia; or Most Serene Republic of Venice]
[after 91% of the tossup] In the beginning of this text, a floating air spirit’s knees are home to a nest containing duck eggs that hatch to create heaven and earth. Scholars suggest that the virgin birth depicted in this text after Marjatta eats a berry is a result of Christianization. A woman in this text uses honey to revive her son, pieces of whose body she finds with a copper rake and sews together after seeing the omen of his bleeding hairbrush. The Mistress of the North who rules over Pohjola in this text promises her daughter to its protagonist if he can successfully forge the Sampo. After the witch Louhi steals the sun, the moon, and fire in this text, the smith Ilmarinen and the kantele-playing first man, Väinämöinen, work to restore them. For 10 points, name this national epic of Finland.
ANSWER: Kalevala
[after 92% of the tossup] Nicholas Owen gained notoriety for his skill in building these people’s “holes.” Richard Topcliffe gained fame for his ability to hunt down people of this type, such as his victim Richard Southwell. After John Day was liberated from prison, he published a propaganda piece directed [emphasize] against these people called Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. The death of Edmund Godfrey inflamed fears of these people, following a fabricated conspiracy theory promulgated by Titus Oates. These people were the largest demographic targeted in the Test Act. An attempt to reduce discrimination against this religious group led to the near-destruction of the newly built Newgate Prison during the Gordon Riots. For 10 points, Elizabeth I led large persecutions of what religious group that was accused of leading the Popish Plot?
ANSWER: Catholics [or papists; prompt on priests by asking “of what religion?”]
[after 93% of the tossup] A piece by this composer repeatedly begins phrases with the descending notes [read slowly] pickup F, E, D, A, F. The left hand plays a loud octave G to open the rondo finale of a piano sonata by this composer whose first movement’s first subject is interrupted by an ominous low G-flat trill. This composer wrote a work with a notoriously difficult piano part whose right hand plays repeated octave G’s while the left hand ascends in octaves up a G minor scale to E-flat. This composer used a repeated open fifth in the accompaniment of one work to represent a hurdy-gurdy player. A song by this composer sets a poem by Goethe in which a supernatural creature terrorizes a boy on horseback. For 10 points, name this Austrian composer of Winterreise and Der Erlkönig.
ANSWER: Franz Schubert [or Franz Peter Schubert]
[after 98% of the tossup] Tom Turpin’s Rosebud Bar was a center for players of this style, an early example of which is “The Bully Song.” Pieces in this style typically use 16-measure themes divided into four parts, and its “classic” school was centered on St. Louis. Interest in this style was revived following a 1970 album by Joshua Rifkin which included a piece that begins with the notes [read slowly] D, E, C, A, [pause] B, G played by both hands. Some pieces in this style were published as “two-steps.” Stride piano was a successor to this style, which is characterized by alternating bass notes and chords underneath syncopated melodies. For 10 points, name this music style exemplified by Scott Joplin pieces like The Entertainer.
ANSWER: ragtime [accept two-step until read]
[after 98% of the tossup] A composer from this country achieved success with an orchestral work inspired by a witch trial and wrote the concerto Veni, Veni, Emmanuel for a deaf percussionist from this country. A composer who travelled to this country with Carl Klingemann was inspired by it to write a cyclic symphony beginning with the slow rising theme E, A, B, C. A piece inspired by this country uses the repeated motif [read slowly] F-sharp, D, C-sharp, D, B, down to F-sharp. This country’s folk melodies inspired a fantasy for violin and orchestra by Max Bruch, as well as a work by a different composer that makes use of its namesake “snap” rhythm. For 10 points, name this country that inspired Mendelssohn’s third symphony and his Hebrides Overture.
ANSWER: Scotland [prompt on United Kingdom or UK; prompt on Great Britain] (The composer and percussionist in the first line are James MacMillan and Evelyn Glennie respectively.)
[after 99% of the tossup] Composer and genre required. The slow introduction of the first of these pieces opens with a cadence into the subdominant and only reaches the tonic in bar 4. A 3/4 fast movement in one of these pieces uses an oboe theme of [read slowly] seven B-flat quarter notes followed by an eighth-note descent from C to F. The recapitulation in one of these pieces is anticipated by a horn call that creates dissonance with the strings. A flute, oboe, and two clarinets imitate bird calls in a movement of one of these pieces titled “Scene by the brook.” The composer had to be turned to face the audience’s applause at the performance of the last of these pieces, which includes a setting of “Ode to Joy.” For 10 points, name these orchestral works that include ones nicknamed “Eroica” and “Choral.”
ANSWER: symphonies by Ludwig van Beethoven [prompt on symphonies by asking “by who?”; prompt on works by Ludwig van Beethoven by asking “in what genre?”]
[after 99% of the tossup] This concept titles a posthumous work by Anthony A. Hoekema (“HOO-kuh-mah”). The Second Council of Orange confirmed one type of this concept developed by Augustine that is supported by Arminians. This theological concept is not referenced in the King James Version of the Gospels outside of the Prologue of John, where Jesus is described as “[this concept] from [this concept].” According to Ephesians, salvation occurs through faith and by this concept, forming three Lutheran Solae along with sola scriptura. The angel Gabriel’s address to Mary in Luke 1:28 was adapted into a prayer describing her as “full of” this concept. For 10 points, name this Christian concept of unmerited divine favor described in a spiritual by John Newton as “Amazing.”
ANSWER: grace [accept sola gratia; accept “Amazing Grace”]
[after 100% of the tossup] Pompeian-style mosaics are found in this non-Italian region at the House of the Griffins, in the city of Complutum. Arganthonios, the possible namesake of silver, ruled this region’s Turdetani people. Legendarily, a rebel leader in this territory picked the hairs off of a horse’s tail one by one to demonstrate a strategy against the Roman army. According to legend, Corocotta came forth to claim a ransom for himself during the revolt of the Cantabrians in this region. Quintus Sertorius led a revolt in this region, the birthplace of the emperors Trajan and Hadrian. After victories at Baecula and Ilipa, the Romans conquered this territory from the armies of Hamilcar Barca. For 10 points, name this region of the Roman Empire whose province of Lusitania became Portugal.
ANSWER: Hispania [accept Hispania Tarraconensis or Hispania Baetica or Hispania Lusitania; accept Iberia or Iberian Revolt; accept Lusitania until read; accept Baetica; prompt on Spain or Roman Spain; prompt on Portugal or Roman Portugal until read]
[after 100% of the tossup] Tom Shadbolt coined the acronym KEEPOOS after Norman Kirk barred a group of members of this profession who would later be opposed by John Minto’s Group HART. Raed Ahmed, a member of this profession, defected to the United States in response to the persistent torture of people in this profession by Uday Hussein. Avery Brundage was criticized for insensitivity after an attack on people in this profession that led to the hijacking of Lufthansa Flight 615. The murder of a Moroccan waiter in Lillehammer was retribution for the murder of people in this profession who were restricted by the Gleneagles Agreement. Operation Wrath of God sought vengeance for people in this profession who were taken hostage by the group Black September. For 10 points, the Munich Massacre targeted what people who compete at the Olympics?
ANSWER: athletes [or sportsmen; or coaches; accept specific athletes like weightlifters, runners, soccer players, or rugby players]

Scott Sibley ↩

[after 35% of the tossup] A drug awareness campaign led by this person was called “Meth. We’re on it.” After claiming Native American leaders colluded with drug cartels, this politician was banned from all of her state’s Indian reservations. When trying to ask this politician a question, California Senator Alex Padilla was forced to the ground and handcuffed. To avoid violating the Hatch Act, airports have refused to play a video featuring this politician blaming Democrats for a government shutdown. One of this woman’s first acts of office was to rescind the temporary protected status for Venezuelan refugees. In her autobiography No Going Back, this politician recounted how she shot her “untrainable” dog Cricket. For 10 points, what former governor of South Dakota nicknamed “ICE Barbie” is the current Secretary of Homeland Security?
ANSWER: Kristi Noem [or Kristi Lynn Arnold Noem; or Kristi Lynn Arnold]
[after 45% of the tossup] During this battle, a defeated rear admiral said “let us enjoy the beauty of the moon” while going down with his ship. The Chicago Tribune was almost prosecuted under the Espionage Act for Stanley Johnston’s report on this battle, where the Thach Weave debuted with prior help of “Butch” O’Hare. This battle’s location was deciphered from “AF” through breaking the JN-25 code. The losing side of this battle had also attacked the Aleutian Islands as a diversion. In this battle, bombers attacked the Akagi and Kaga as they rearmed planes for a second strike. All four Japanese carriers in this battle were sunk in exchange for the loss of the USS Yorktown. For 10 points, what battle considered a turning point in the Pacific Theater was a June 1942 victory for US forces?
ANSWER: Battle of Midway
[after 64% of the tossup] A leader of this country names an index alternative to GDP based on electricity consumption, rail cargo, and bank lending. The New Development Bank is headquartered in this country, which was the last in the [emphasize] original acronym of rising economic powers coined by Jim O’Neill. A namesake “shock” on manufacturing jobs resulted from this country joining the WTO in 2001. To attract foreign direct investment, this country opened four southern ports in 1979 as economic “experiments.” This country has been accused of “debt trap diplomacy” through loans to African countries as a part of its Belt and Road Initiative. For 10 points, what country’s Special Economic Zones include Shēnzhèn?
ANSWER: China [or People’s Republic of China; or Zhōngguó; or Zhōnghuá Rénmín Gònghéguó; accept China shock; reject “Republic of China”] (The acronym BRIC referred to Brazil, Russia, India, and China. The index is the Lǐ Kèqiáng index.)
[after 66% of the tossup] Ruzsa (“ROO-zhah”) names a distance function between these objects that can be used to prove a bound on sums of these objects called Plünnecke’s inequality. Functors from a locally small category into the category of these objects are the subject of the Yoneda lemma. A class is called “proper” if it is “too big” to be expressed as one of these objects. If X is one of these objects, then X has size strictly smaller than that of “two to the X” by Cantor’s theorem. Problems with constructing these objects via unrestricted comprehension were resolved with a theory of these objects named for Zermelo and Fraenkel that was later extended to include the axiom of choice. Countably infinite instances of these objects have cardinality equal to that of the natural numbers. For 10 points, name these unordered collections of elements.
ANSWER: sets [accept subsets; accept set theory]
[after 72% of the tossup] A former leader of this country earned the nickname “Teflon” for serving four consecutive terms in government despite scandals like one where parents were falsely accused of childcare benefit fraud. A political party formed after protests against this county’s nitrogen pollution policy, called BBB, became the largest party in this country’s Senate after its 2023 elections. A politician in this country was fined for hate speech after leading a chant of “fewer, fewer Moroccans.” Before becoming Secretary-General of NATO, Mark Rutte served as this county’s prime minister. This country’s October 2025 general elections were narrowly won by the centrist D66 party and saw Geert Wilders’s PVV lose ground. For 10 points, name this northern European nation whose capital is Amsterdam.
ANSWER: Netherlands [or Nederland; or Kingdom of the Netherlands; prompt on Holland]
[after 83% of the tossup] Algebraic varieties named for this shape are subject to the orbit–cone correspondence and can be constructed from fans. For knots named for this shape, “x-to-the-p equals y-to-the-q” is a relation of the knot group. “R-squared” quotient “Z-squared” is isomorphic to this surface, which has “Z-cross-Z” as its fundamental group. This surface can be obtained by gluing each pair of opposite edges of the unit square in the same direction. This orientable surface with Euler characteristic zero is the Cartesian product of two circles. Depending on orientation, either a Klein bottle or this genus-one surface is formed by joining the circular ends of a cylinder. For 10 points, the surface of a coffee cup is topologically equivalent to what single-holed surface shaped like a doughnut?
ANSWER: torus [or 2-torus; accept toric varieties; accept torus knots]
[after 98% of the tossup] Saidiya Hartman’s “Venus in Two Acts” argues that these institutions limit stories that can be told about slavery, but can be transcended by critical fabulation. The principle of respect des fonds (“ruh-SPAY day FON”) is discussed in the “Dutch Manual” for the appraisal of these institutions. The use of these institutions in research was pioneered by Leopold von Ranke. In 2023, the Hachette group sued one of these institutions founded by Brewster Kahle that pioneered controlled digital lending. Cornell University operates a website named for these institutions that hosts scientific preprints. A massive book digitization effort is run by an online one of these institutions that also hosts a digital library and the Wayback Machine. For 10 points, name these collections of historical records or materials.
ANSWER: archives [accept Internet Archive; accept arXiv.org; prompt on sources; prompt on Open Library until “library” is read by asking “what type of larger institution is that a part of?”; prompt on libraries until “library” is read]
[after 98% of the tossup] One sect in this tradition uses an “A” inside a circle to represent the “rainbow body,” a concept likely borrowed from an indigenous religion which the Rimé movement attempts to harmonize with this tradition. Adherents to this tradition make votive torma sculptures out of dyed butter and use meteoric iron to produce ritual phurba (“POOR-bah”) daggers. The youngest of four schools in this tradition is named for their distinctive yellow headwear, while the oldest, Nyingma (“nuh-YING-muh”), produced this tradition’s “Book of the Dead.” Dharamsala is the location of a theocratic government-in-exile from this religious tradition which formerly ruled from Lhasa’s Potala Palace. For 10 points, what tradition’s 14th Dalai Lama is Tenzin Gyatso?
ANSWER: Tibetan Buddhism [prompt on Buddhism; prompt on Mahayana Buddhism or Vajrayana Buddhism; prompt on Dzogchen or Gelug or Nyingma until “Nyingma” is read by asking “which forms part of what broader tradition?”]
[after 99% of the tossup] A traditional song from this country compares a ruler’s concubines with flowers, and was recorded by Robert E. Brown for the Voyager Golden Record. Colin McPhee studied the music of a region in this country whose styles include kebyar and uses nested rhythmic structures called colotomy. Performers in one of this country’s art forms sit behind a stage made of banana trunks and can instruct musicians by striking a box with a cempala (“chem-PAH-la”). Tuning systems from this country include the pentatonic slendro and the heptatonic pélog. This country is the home of wayang puppetry, which is accompanied by an ensemble which primarily consists of metallic percussion such as the gong ageng. For 10 points, name this country, the origin of gamelan.
ANSWER: Indonesia [or Republic of Indonesia; or Republik Indonesia]
[after 100% of the tossup] One of these things partly named for Lancaster was designed by John Loudon McAdam and was unusually built by a private company due to Pennsylvania being broke. These things are the first suggestions in the title of a 1808 report calling for 20 million dollars of funding, written by Albert Gallatin. The Jeffersonian belief that the Postal Clause only gave Congress power to designate, not build, these things informed Madison’s veto of the Bonus Bill and Andrew Jackson’s veto of one of these things for Maysville. Some modern ones of these projects lay over older “traces” like one named for the Natchez. A “National” one of these projects began at Cumberland, Maryland. For 10 points, name these projects that allowed for travel between cities via wagons.
ANSWER: roads [or highways; accept National Road or Maysville Road; accept toll roads or post roads or turnpikes; accept traces until read; reject “railroads”]
[after 100% of the tossup] The concept of “architecture parlante” was developed in this century by an architect who designed an ambitious ideal town centred on a salt factory. A church designed in this century depicts the Ten Commandments on bronze doors and the Last Judgement on its pediment and is called La Madeleine. In this century, architects like Robert Adam were influenced by Giovanni Battista Piranesi’s vedute drawings depicting Roman landmarks. A building from this century that uses a Greek cross plan with domes on each ambulatory and Corinthian orders in its portico was designed by Jacques-Germain Sufflot. That building from this century became a mausoleum for national heroes and was modelled on a Roman temple. For 10 points, name this century during which Neoclassicism developed with buildings such as the Panthéon in Paris.
ANSWER: 18th century [or 1700s] (The architect in the first line is Claude Nicolas Ledoux.)

Fish Tsai ↩

[after 18% of the tossup] In a novel by this author, a couple play a game in which they fill in blank speech bubbles in each other’s drawings called “the bubble game.” In another work by this author, arts and crafts are included in a “Gallery” by a mysterious figure named “Madame.” The protagonist of a novel by this author destroys a polluting “Cootings Machine” to cure Josie’s illness. In a different novel by this author, two characters travel to Norfolk where Kathy finds a cassette tape by Judy Bridgewater. Characters in that novel by this author attend school at Hailsham and are divided into “carers” and “donors.” In a novel by this author, after receiving a letter from Miss Kenton at Darlington Hall, Mr. Faraday gives the butler Stevens permission to leave. For 10 points, name this Nobel-winning author of Never Let Me Go and The Remains of the Day.
ANSWER: Kazuo Ishiguro (The novel in the first and third clues is Klara and the Sun.)
[after 28% of the tossup] In Turkic folklore, these places are inhabited by tickling spirits known as Shurale and spirits called Äbädä, who are turned away by inverting one’s clothing. Slavic tutelary deities called Leshy are said to inhabit these locations. A sun god binds an inhabitant of one of these places by sending either seven or 13 winds. While journeying toward one of these locations, a hero has five dreams including one of a falling mountain and one of wrestling a bull. Nemetons were often created by sectioning off sacred areas of these locations by Celtic druids. Enkidu helps destroy one of these locations after the beheading of its inhabitant, Humbaba. For 10 points, name these locations that include one in the Epic of Gilgamesh made up of cedars.
ANSWER: forests [accept cedar forests; accept sacred groves; prompt on cedar trees or oak trees]
[after 28% of the tossup] The final name in this game’s credits is Seth Goldman, who designed a secret boss who blocks the path to Nyleth’s shrine. In this game, the disgraced Lugoli attacks the player by flinging green balls of muckmaggots with a ladle. The Extricator is used to remove the “Twisted Bud” that parasitizes this game’s protagonist, who must seek out Dr. Yarnaby in Greymoor to remove it. In this game’s true ending, the player character uses the Everbloom to descend into the Abyss to free Lost Lace from the hold of the Void with the aid of her half-sibling, the protagonist of a 2017 Metroidvania set in Hallownest. For 10 points, Hornet is the protagonist of what long-awaited Team Cherry game, which was unexpectedly released in September 2025 as the sequel to Hollow Knight?
ANSWER: Hollow Knight: Silksong [reject “Hollow Knight”]
[after 35% of the tossup] Materials called NIMs with an unusual value for this quantity were first realized using split-ring resonators. An empirical formula for this quantity is expanded in negative even powers of wavelength and becomes inaccurate in regions of anomalous dispersion. The imaginary part of complex values for this quantity models attenuation. Since most materials have negligible magnetic susceptibility, this value is approximately given by the square root of relative permittivity. A decrease of this quantity across an interface enables rays to undergo total internal reflection. The ratio of the sines of the angles of incidence and refraction equals the ratio of two values of this quantity according to Snell’s law. For 10 points, name this quantity that is the ratio of speed of light in vacuum to its speed in a material.
ANSWER: index of refraction [or refractive index or refraction index; accept IOR; prompt on n]
[after 41% of the tossup] In hollow rectangular waveguides, waves named for this quantity have the lowest non-zero cutoff frequency in the one-zero mode. For a point charge moving at a uniform relativistic velocity, this quantity becomes “pancake-shaped” by bunching up in the transverse direction. The density of energy stored by this quantity is given by permittivity over 2 times this quantity squared. The component of this quantity parallel to the surface is constant across a boundary. That derivation uses that the flux of this quantity through a surface is proportional only to enclosed charge density according to Gauss’s law. The negative line integral of this quantity gives the scalar potential. For 10 points, what vector quantity is measured in newtons per coulomb and created by electric charges?
ANSWER: electric field [or E-field; prompt on E]
[after 42% of the tossup] This activity provides an alternate name for Cindy Sherman’s Untitled Film Still #48, in which a woman in a plaid skirt stands facing away from the viewer next to her suitcase. John Maynard Smith referenced this activity for the name of a genetic effect in which an allele increases in frequency due to a linked beneficial allele. Dutch liftplaats signs mark places for this activity, which is similar to the D.C. area’s “slug lines.” In 2013, a Canadian robot that did this activity across Canada was destroyed in Philadelphia. In a book titled partly for this activity, Vogons destroy Earth right after the protagonist is saved by the towel-carrying Ford Prefect. For 10 points, extending one’s thumb towards the road is a gesture for what activity that inspired a series of “Guides” by Douglas Adams?
ANSWER: hitchhiking [or hitching; or hitchhike; accept thumbing until “thumb” is read; accept The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy; accept HitchBot; accept genetic hitchhiking; prompt on driving, riding in a car, traveling, waiting for a rideshare, passengers, carpooling, commuting, or equivalents of any]
[after 44% of the tossup] These structures are central to the GOLT hypothesis, which describes changes in the morphology of WBEs due to global warming. Cymothoa exigua is a parasite that enters hosts through these structures. These structures form the exit point in streamlined organisms that utilize ramjet ventilation. Rakers in these structures filter food particles and these structures are supported by either bony or cartilaginous arches. Unlike most salamanders, external examples of these structures on stalks are present on adult axolotls. In some organisms, these structures require a constant flow of water over them to prevent drowning. For 10 points, name these respiratory structures that enable fish to breathe underwater.
ANSWER: gills
[after 50% of the tossup] One technique for the purification of RNA-protein complexes makes use of these organisms in MS2 tagging. Another technique using these organisms uses pIII and takes advantage of an M13 vector. One form of these organisms, in which the Cro and cl repressors are found, was first isolated by Esther Lederberg. These organisms were used to prove that DNA is genetic material by radiolabeling with phosphorus-32 and sulfur-35 in the Hershey–Chase experiment. One variety of these organisms that can undergo a lytic life cycle but not a lysogenic life cycle has a hollow tail and an icosahedral head. Examples of these organisms include T4 and lambda. For 10 points, name these viruses that infect bacteria.
ANSWER: bacteriophages [accept lambda phage or T4 phage until read; prompt on viruses]
[after 57% of the tossup] The GP-A experiment directly measured this phenomenon in space and on Earth. Relativistic aberration and this phenomenon are responsible for apparent increases in luminosity via relativistic beaming. If an angle theta is slowly varying, the strength of this phenomenon equals one minus cosine theta times v over c. In relativity, the strength of this phenomenon equals the square root of the fraction “one plus beta over one minus beta.” Canal rays underwent this phenomenon in the Ives–Stilwell experiment supporting special relativity, while the Pound–Rebka experiment measured a form of this effect caused by gravitational time dilation. Hubble’s law is based on observations of this effect. For 10 points, what effect changes the frequency of waves emitted by moving sources?
ANSWER: Doppler effect [accept redshift or blueshift; prompt on time dilation or gravitational time dilation until read by asking “what phenomenon does that cause?”; prompt on gravity]
[after 60% of the tossup] Possible sources of this phenomenon are identified by intersections on a Campbell diagram. “Tongues” of this phenomenon may be found with the Mathieu equation when considering its “parametric” form. A “universal” curve for this phenomenon is quantified by the half bandwidth of a Lorentzian function. Injection locking may cause the “sympathetic” form of this phenomenon. This phenomenon occurs more intensely but in a more narrow region when the Q-factor is high, corresponding to underdamped systems with little energy loss. This phenomenon is typically distinguished from the self-exciting aeroelastic flutter that caused the collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. For 10 points, name this phenomenon in which an oscillator driven at its natural frequency grows in amplitude.
ANSWER: resonance [or word forms like resonating or resonators; accept parametric resonance; prompt on oscillation or word forms until read; prompt on vibration; prompt on instability]
[after 61% of the tossup] Cellulose nanocrystals can enhance nucleation activity in materials made from these molecules. Examples of these molecules that can conduct electricity include P3HT. The Kuhn length of these molecules is a function of dihedral bond angle. Distribution of components in these molecules can be analyzed with the Mayo–Lewis equation. These molecules, which can follow the Flory–Schulz distribution, have a step-growth mechanism characterized by the Carothers (“ker-OTHERS”) equation. One way to characterize these molecules is by calculating the ratio of the number-average molecular weight to that of M0 (“M-naught”). For 10 points, name these molecules that consist of long repeating chains.
ANSWER: polymers [accept copolymers or polymerization or degree of polymerization; prompt on plastics]
[after 61% of the tossup] One disease affecting these structures is X-chromosome linked to mutations in the DKC1 gene and may require bone marrow transplants. Dyskerin helps to stabilize a catalytic complex that acts on this structure. Deficiencies in maintaining these structures, which are measured by the Q-FISH technique, are a major risk factor for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. Cajal bodies may serve to recruit RNA structures that act on these structures. The Hayflick limit is based on the length of these structures that can be extended by TERT. Shortened examples of these structures that lose their shelterin cap can trigger senescence, and these structures consist of repeating TTAGGG motifs. For 10 points, what DNA sequences protect the ends of chromosomes?
ANSWER: telomeres
[after 62% of the tossup] Fragmentation of molecules undergoing this technique is observed in the McLafferty rearrangement. In one form of this technique, selected reaction monitoring is used to select ions for the next stage of processing. Michael Barber invented a technique used during this process where a beam of high energy atoms strike a surface in a technique called fast atom bombardment. Multiple rounds of this technique are performed in its “tandem” variety. Molecules may be prepared for this technique by undergoing electrospray ionization or MALDI. Plots in this technique often coupled with gas chromatography plot intensity against m-over-z. For 10 points, name this technique that separates molecules based on their mass-to-charge ratio.
ANSWER: mass spectrometry [or MS]
[after 63% of the tossup] The causative agent of this disease contains a pE88 plasmid encoding several ABC transporters. This disease may cause Risus sardonicus and more general opisthotonus (“opp-is-THOT-uh-nuss”) also seen in cerebral palsy or strychnine poisoning. Exotoxins present in this disease include a cholesterol-dependent hemolysin and a ganglioside-binding protein that cleaves synaptobrevin. Renshaw cells are inactivated by this disease, which prevents the release of inhibitory neurotransmitters. It’s not botulism, but this disease is caused by a Clostridium bacterium and has symptoms that can be alleviated by benzodiazepines. A toxoid from this disease is included alongside diphtheria and pertussis in the Tdap vaccine. For 10 points, name this disease that causes muscle spasms associated with exposure to rusty nails.
ANSWER: tetanus [or lockjaw]
[after 64% of the tossup] For non-adhesive materials in contact, this quantity can be calculated using Hertzian theory. Averaging the Navier–Stokes equations gives a term representing one type of this quantity that is proportional to the averaged fluctuating velocity correlation and named for Reynolds. A cylinder plotted in the space of principal coordinates of this quantity gives the maximum allowed value for the deviatoric type of this quantity before yielding according to the von Mises criterion. Off-diagonal elements of a tensor for this quantity named for Cauchy represent this quantity’s “shear” form. In uniaxial cases, this quantity is given by force over cross-sectional area. For 10 points, name this quantity that measures the forces causing deformation and is often plotted against strain.
ANSWER: stress [accept shear stress or deviatoric stress; accept principal stress; accept Cauchy stress tensor; accept Reynolds stress or Reynolds stress tensor]
[after 68% of the tossup] This process names a phenomenon in which the momentum of stellar material causes it to be carried through the tachocline, known as this process’s namesake “overshoot.” High-resolution images of the Sun’s surface appear granulated because of entities named for this process in the photosphere. This process occurs when the magnitude of the actual temperature gradient exceeds that of the adiabatic temperature gradient, according to the Schwarzschild criterion. For main sequence stars under around 0.35 solar masses, this process is the dominant form of energy transport. In a zone named for this process just below the Sun’s atmosphere, plasma circulates heat via this process’s namesake “currents.” For 10 points, name this thermal process exemplified by movement of warmer fluid upwards and cold fluid downwards.
ANSWER: convection [accept convection currents; accept convective cells; accept convective overshoot; accept convective zone]
[after 69% of the tossup] One model of these substances consists of two independent phases, one condensed state and one normal state, and was formulated by Tizsa. The mixing of a working liquid and one of these substances allows cooling down to 2 millikelvins in a dilution refrigerator. One of these substances can be created using isentropic compression in a Pomeranchuk cell. These substances display quantized vortices called rotons that can form in these substances as predicted by Landau. These substances have high thermal conductivity due to propagating temperature waves called second sound. Below the lambda point, helium-4 transitions to one of these substances. These substances can form Rollin films that enable them to creep up walls. For 10 points, name these substances that have zero viscosity and flow without friction.
ANSWER: superfluids [accept superfluidity; accept superfluid liquid helium]
[after 72% of the tossup] A photograph of this person looking down and wearing a denim jacket is framed by the hills of the Nevada desert. Cecil Beaton took a series of photographs of this person at the Ambassador Hotel, including a “Japanese photo” in which she holds a flower against her torso. Eve Arnold took many photographs of this person, including one in which she wears a bathing suit and reads Ulysses. Red marker pen was used to draw “crucifixes” on photographs of this woman taken by Bert Stern for her “Last Sitting.” Andy Warhol created a “Diptych” of this actress, whom Sam Shaw and George Barris photographed in a billowing white dress above a subway grate. For 10 points, name this “blonde bombshell” actress who starred in The Seven Year Itch.
ANSWER: Marilyn Monroe [or Norma Jean Mortenson]
[after 72% of the tossup] The thermal form of this process subject to the Soret effect was investigated by Clusius and Dickel using an insulated column. The force of a “self” form of this process is given by the derivative of chemical potential with respect to distance. The Schmidt number relates the kinematic viscosity of a fluid to this process. The Wilke–Chang correlation can be used to estimate this process and uses a solute–solvent interaction factor. Random walks were related to a parabolic equation named for this process by Einstein. The letter D represents a coefficient of this process in two laws of it named for Fick. Solvent undergoes a specific form of this process across membranes in osmosis. For 10 points, name this general process where particles travel down concentration gradients.
ANSWER: diffusion [prompt on osmosis until read; prompt on Brownian motion; prompt on isotope separation by asking “what general process is used?”]
[after 73% of the tossup] In one of these people’s stories, a man accidentally kills his nephew by burning his house down in an attempt to get him away from his two wives. Two lizard-men in these people’s mythology castrate Kidili for attempting to assault the women who eventually become the Pleiades and are chased across the sky by Jukurra-Jukurra. To describe the transcendence of time in these people’s stories, W. E. H. Stanner coined the term “everywhen.” In one of these people’s stories, the menstrual blood of one of the Wawalag sisters attracts a waterhole-dwelling creature to swallow them. These people tell stories of songlines formed during the Dreamtime by traveling creator spirits such as the Rainbow Serpent. For 10 points, name these native people of Australia.
ANSWER: Aboriginal Australians [or Aborigines; accept specific subgroups like Kukatja or Yolngu; prompt on indigenous Australians or native Australians]
[after 74% of the tossup] Most languages fulfill Optimality Theory’s HNuc (“H-nuke”) constraint by making these constructs obligatory, unlike Czech and Tashelhiyt (“ta-shill-HEET”) Berber. Back mutation in Old English is an example of the “breaking” of these constructs. In one Salishan language, the phrase “then he had in his possession a bunchberry plant” entirely lacks these constructs. Unlike standard Italian’s seven, Sardinian only distinguishes five of these constructs’ qualities. The transition from Middle to Early Modern English brought about a “Great” shift of these constructs. Two of these constructs are undergoing the “cot–caught” merger in American English. For 10 points, name these linguistic sounds contrasted with consonants.
ANSWER: vowels [accept vocoids; accept vowel breaking; prompt on phonemes]
[after 74% of the tossup] The “kinetic” form of this quantity names a type of detector that can count photons and derives from the motion of Cooper pairs in superconductors. This quantity times angular frequency equals a form of reactance. Voltage equals this quantity times the time derivative of current in an alternate form of Faraday’s law, since this quantity is defined as the derivative of magnetic flux with respect to current. Since this quantity is linearly proportional to permeability, it can be increased by a conducting core. One over the square root of this quantity times capacitance equals the resonant frequency of an oscillating circuit. This quantity measures the strength of coiled circuit components that store energy in magnetic fields. For 10 points, name this quantity symbolized L and measured in henries.
ANSWER: inductance [accept kinetic inductance detector; prompt on L until read]
[after 76% of the tossup] This artist drew from an earlier depiction of pine trees in Calvi for a woodcut of tire tracks and footprints crossing over a reflective puddle. A statue of a simurgh gifted to this artist inspired the “bird-humans” that are depicted three times along the central vertical axis in the mezzotint Another World. Piranesi’s Imaginary Prisons inspired this artist’s lithograph of faceless people in a space with multiple sources of gravity. After studying Islamic tile art at the Alhambra, this artist began depicting figures such as knights and reptiles in tessellated patterns. This artist’s print Relativity depicts several staircases in a shape similar to a Penrose triangle. For 10 points, name this Dutch artist whose prints often depict impossible objects.
ANSWER: M. C. Escher [or Maurits Cornelis Escher]
[after 83% of the tossup] Four deputies titled for these structures represented the Maḥdī during the Minor Occultation. One figure named for this structure began his religious career after seeing seven drops of blood on another’s throat, and is buried on Mount Carmel. Salman the Persian is the final person to fill a role named for these structures in Alawism, which comprises a trinity along with the Manifestation and the Name. In the first of a collection of Zen kōans titled for one of these structures lacking itself, a dog replies “mu” when asked if it has Buddha-nature. Vermillion examples of these structures mark places where kami enter into the human realm in Shintō shrines. For 10 points, bāb and torii are words for what structures, through which Jesus entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday?
ANSWER: gates [or doors; or portals; accept Gateless Gate; accept mén or guān or mon or kan; accept kahyō; accept Báb or bāb or ’abwāb until “bāb” is read; accept wakīl or safīr or na‘īb until “shrine” is read; prompt on barrier] (Báb is Arabic for gate.)
[after 86% of the tossup] A HiGee form of this technique uses centrifugal acceleration to force horizontal flow, while another uses a dividing wall. Molecular sieves remove water and carbon dioxide upstream of a cryogenic form of this technique. The Kirkbride equation can be used to calculate the inlet location in this technique whose shortcut form uses the FUG method. The Q-line on a McCabe–Thiele diagram represents the feed in this technique. This technique may employ a Dean–Stark apparatus to remove water. Purity of products from this technique can be enhanced by increasing the reflux ratio. Adding a component to mixtures in this technique to break azeotropes can separate water and ethanol. For 10 points, what physical process separates components of a liquid mixture by their boiling points?
ANSWER: distillation [accept specific forms like fractional distillation or azeotropic distillation or HiGee distillation]
[after 88% of the tossup] A golden one of these objects named for Victory features a depiction of Vishnu riding Garuda. A lake was renamed after being the site where one of these objects was retrieved by the golden-shelled Kim Quy to return to the Dragon King. A deity attains one of these objects after getting an enemy drunk on eight barrels of sake placed near eight gates. The legendary king Lê Lợi owns one of these objects called Heaven’s Will. The tail of Yamata no Orochi contained one of these objects discovered by Susano’o named Kusanagi. For 10 points, name these weapons that include Muramasa’s legendarily cursed katanas.
ANSWER: swords [accept katanas until read]
[after 91% of the tossup] This operation’s output is estimated by simulating trajectories in the REINFORCE algorithm, one of a class of methods named for “policy” and this operation. Pseudo-residuals are fit using “weak learners” such as decision trees in a method contrasted with random forests named for this operation’s “boosting.” Since the sigmoid activation function saturates at extreme values, it is susceptible to a problem in which this operation “vanishes.” The negative learning rate scales the result of this operation applied to the loss associated with a single data point in the update step of a stochastic algorithm named for this operation. An optimization algorithm that takes steps in the opposite direction to this operation is named for this operation’s “descent.” For 10 points, name this operation that outputs a vector of partial derivatives.
ANSWER: gradient [accept policy gradient; accept gradient boosting or gradient-boosted trees; accept vanishing gradient; accept gradient descent or stochastic gradient descent; prompt on del or nabla; prompt on partial derivative until read]
[after 95% of the tossup] One type of these hormones was first discovered in a species of rice-plant pathogen named fujikuroi. Uniconazole (“uni-CON-uh-zole”) inhibits the production of this hormone through blockage of kaurene oxidase. The absence of these hormones can increase biomass growth in the roots and cause shortened internodes. The binding of these hormones causes the degradation of DELLA proteins like GAI. The presence of water activates these hormones that stimulate the production of hydrolytic enzymes in germinating seeds. In elongating stems, these hormones’ concentration is regulated by auxins. For 10 points, name this class of plant hormone that mediates developmental processes like stem elongation.
ANSWER: gibberellins [or GAs; accept gibberellic acid]
[after 98% of the tossup] This substance lies underneath so-called false bottoms, which form through double diffusion. This substance may become trapped in pockets following its namesake rejection. It’s not related to thermodynamics, but the potential density of this substance is displayed on T-S diagrams. Deviations from this substance’s VSMOW standard are used to identify periods during which it becomes enriched with oxygen-18 due to low temperatures. This dense substance lies below Ghyben–Herzberg lenses, which share their name with an equation used to model its “intrusion.” The SMOC (“S-mock”) and AMOC (“A-mock”) drive the thermohaline circulation of this substance. Reverse osmosis is often used to purify, for 10 points, what substance that mixes with a fresh counterpart in estuaries?
ANSWER: seawater [or ocean water; accept brine or saline or saltwater; accept brine pockets or brine rejection or saltwater intrusion or brine pools; accept brackish water or brack; prompt on water; reject “freshwater” or “salt” or “ice”]
[after 98% of the tossup] In the multiple parameter case, this distribution is the limit of a statistic that sandwiches an “I inverse” term between two “theta-hat minus theta-zero” terms called the Wald statistic. In a theorem about convergence to this distribution, one parameter equals the difference in dimension between the full parameter space and the space associated with the null hypothesis. Twice the log-likelihood ratio converges to this distribution by Wilks’ theorem. The formula “rows minus one times columns minus one” gives the value of a parameter when computing a test statistic converging to this distribution, which sums values of “observed minus expected squared, all over expected” for each entry in a contingency table. For 10 points, what distribution names a large-sample hypothesis test for goodness-of-fit or independence?
ANSWER: chi-squared (“kye-squared”) distribution [reject “chi”]
[after 100% of the tossup] In a 2018 novel, this character is reimagined into two teenage boys who fall in love and kiss as its narrator claims that “history is enough to make a future.” This character is charged by a bull while stuck in a tree in a novel that ends with him claiming to have “had an accident… so may you all.” This character learns about the world from The Shaper and an omniscient dragon in a novel by John Gardner. A man is discouraged from fighting this character by Unferth, who believes this character will win. A giant’s sword melts from the hilt after it is used to cut this character’s head from his corpse, which is taken as a trophy after the killing of his “monstrous hell-bride” of a mother. For 10 points, Beowulf first defends Heorot by fighting what monster, a “descendant of Cain” who dies after his arm is ripped off?
ANSWER: Grendel (The first clue refers to Maria Dehvana Headley’s The Mere Wife. The John Gardner novel is Grendel.)

Kerry Xu ↩

[after 7% of the tossup] The concept of “architecture parlante” was developed in this century by an architect who designed an ambitious ideal town centred on a salt factory. A church designed in this century depicts the Ten Commandments on bronze doors and the Last Judgement on its pediment and is called La Madeleine. In this century, architects like Robert Adam were influenced by Giovanni Battista Piranesi’s vedute drawings depicting Roman landmarks. A building from this century that uses a Greek cross plan with domes on each ambulatory and Corinthian orders in its portico was designed by Jacques-Germain Sufflot. That building from this century became a mausoleum for national heroes and was modelled on a Roman temple. For 10 points, name this century during which Neoclassicism developed with buildings such as the Panthéon in Paris.
ANSWER: 18th century [or 1700s] (The architect in the first line is Claude Nicolas Ledoux.)
[after 42% of the tossup] During this country’s Hujum campaign, body-length robes called paranjas were banned and women were forced to unveil. This country’s arrest and execution of intellectuals like Choʻlpon marked the end of its reformist Jadid movement. In the 1930s, this country’s official ethnogenesis narratives canonized national heroes such as Alisher Nava’i and Manas. This country’s fishing industry in towns like Moynaq was destroyed due to excessive cotton cultivation. Newcomers outnumbered the original population in a nomadic region of this country after mass resettlement during its Virgin Lands campaign. This country’s irrigation projects, like the Karakum Canal, diverted enough water to shrink the nearby Aral Sea. For 10 points, name this country from which Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan seceded in 1991.
ANSWER: Soviet Union [or USSR; or Union of Soviet Socialist Republics; prompt on Russia; prompt on Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic or Uzbekistan until “Uzbekistan” is read; prompt on Kirghiz Soviet Socialist Republic or Kirghizia or Kyrgyzstan until “Kyrgyzstan” is read; prompt on Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic or Kazakhstan until “Kazakhstan” is read; prompt on Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic or Turkmenia or Turkmenistan]
[after 45% of the tossup] During this battle, a defeated rear admiral said “let us enjoy the beauty of the moon” while going down with his ship. The Chicago Tribune was almost prosecuted under the Espionage Act for Stanley Johnston’s report on this battle, where the Thach Weave debuted with prior help of “Butch” O’Hare. This battle’s location was deciphered from “AF” through breaking the JN-25 code. The losing side of this battle had also attacked the Aleutian Islands as a diversion. In this battle, bombers attacked the Akagi and Kaga as they rearmed planes for a second strike. All four Japanese carriers in this battle were sunk in exchange for the loss of the USS Yorktown. For 10 points, what battle considered a turning point in the Pacific Theater was a June 1942 victory for US forces?
ANSWER: Battle of Midway
[after 47% of the tossup] A composer from this country who expressed a desire to “blow the opera houses up” clashed with his teacher over a ten-movement symphony that contains “love” and “statue” themes. Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho became influenced by spectralism while studying in this country’s IRCAM (“eer-cam”) institute. The clarinet plays solo in the “Abyss of the Birds” movement of a chamber piece that a composer from this country wrote in a prisoner of war camp. A whip-crack opens a jazz-inspired piano concerto by a composer from this country who also wrote an orchestral piece that uses a repetitive snare drum ostinato, his Boléro. For 10 points, name this home country of Olivier Messiaen and Maurice Ravel.
ANSWER: France [or French Republic; or République française] (The first line refers to Pierre Boulez, who hated Messiaen’s Turangalîla-Symphonie.)
[after 54% of the tossup] The 17th-century Sinckan (“seen-kahn”) manuscripts from this island contain contracts with indigenous peoples such as the Siraya. That group was often referred to as “cooked” due to their extended contact with newer settlers, in contrast to “raw” groups such as the Atayal (“ah-TAH-yal”), Amis (“AH-meese”), and Seediq (“SAY-dick”), who lived in this island’s mountainous interior. The Spanish Fort Santo Domingo in the north of this island was captured by a Dutch expedition from Fort Zeelandia in 1642. The Kingdom of Tungning was established after the Dutch East India Company presence on this island was removed by Koxinga. Austronesian-speaking indigenous peoples were pushed into this island’s Central Mountain Range by waves of Hakka and Hokkien settlers crossing a narrow strait from China. For 10 points, name this island once called Formosa.
ANSWER: Taiwan [accept Formosa until read]
[after 59% of the tossup] This architect designed the scenery for a 1968 Billy Al Bengston exhibition at LACMA. This architect fixed a full-scale F-104 jet fighter to the entrance of the California Aerospace Museum. This architect’s use of a fish motif appears in his design of a restaurant in Kobe. This architect’s “open-ended” approach can be seen in the use of corrugated steel and mesh fencing of his Santa Monica residence. A building designed by this architect described as a “metaphoric city” has an atrium he nicknamed “the flower.” This architect associated with Deconstructivism used concave wave-like exteriors for a Los Angeles concert hall. For 10 points, name this Canadian-American architect of the Walt Disney Concert Hall and Guggenheim Bilbao.
ANSWER: Frank Gehry [or Frank Owen Gehry; or Frank Owen Goldberg]
[after 60% of the tossup] This medium was used by artists in London’s Bow district to depict figures such as Kitty Clive and General James Wolfe. Ehrenfried von Tschirnhaus (“CHURN-house”) spurred the creation of works in this medium at Meissen (“MICE-in”), which often drew inspiration from the Kakiemon (“ka-kee-EH-moan”) style. After moving from Vincennes, Jean-Claude Duplessis became the artistic director of a factory that produced works in this medium at Sèvres (“SEV-ruh”). A variety of faience (“fie-ONSE”) produced in Delft emulated “export” works in this medium, which were often created in Jǐngdézhèn (“jing-duh-jun”). Early European attempts to recreate this medium lacked the kaolin (“KAY-uh-lin”) needed for its “hard-paste” type, which is less prone to chipping. For 10 points, name this medium used to produce blue-and-white Míng dynasty vases.
ANSWER: porcelain [or china; accept hard-paste porcelain or soft-paste porcelain or Chinese export porcelain; accept bone china; prompt on pottery or ceramics; prompt on clay or kaolin until “kaolin” is read; reject “earthenware” or “stoneware”]
[after 60% of the tossup] Tom Turpin’s Rosebud Bar was a center for players of this style, an early example of which is “The Bully Song.” Pieces in this style typically use 16-measure themes divided into four parts, and its “classic” school was centered on St. Louis. Interest in this style was revived following a 1970 album by Joshua Rifkin which included a piece that begins with the notes [read slowly] D, E, C, A, [pause] B, G played by both hands. Some pieces in this style were published as “two-steps.” Stride piano was a successor to this style, which is characterized by alternating bass notes and chords underneath syncopated melodies. For 10 points, name this music style exemplified by Scott Joplin pieces like The Entertainer.
ANSWER: ragtime [accept two-step until read]
[after 61% of the tossup] A piece by this composer repeatedly begins phrases with the descending notes [read slowly] pickup F, E, D, A, F. The left hand plays a loud octave G to open the rondo finale of a piano sonata by this composer whose first movement’s first subject is interrupted by an ominous low G-flat trill. This composer wrote a work with a notoriously difficult piano part whose right hand plays repeated octave G’s while the left hand ascends in octaves up a G minor scale to E-flat. This composer used a repeated open fifth in the accompaniment of one work to represent a hurdy-gurdy player. A song by this composer sets a poem by Goethe in which a supernatural creature terrorizes a boy on horseback. For 10 points, name this Austrian composer of Winterreise and Der Erlkönig.
ANSWER: Franz Schubert [or Franz Peter Schubert]
[after 61% of the tossup] In the 1980s, “reflectivist” thinkers in this discipline took part in one of several Great Debates over this discipline. Cynthia Enloe strove to make “feminist sense” of this discipline in a book partly titled for bananas and beaches. He’s not Nozick, but a thinker in this discipline who described a theoretically impossible “night watchman” in a work arguing for an “offensive” subschool of this discipline is John Mearsheimer. The non-coercive “soft” form of one concept central to this discipline was coined by Joseph Nye. In this discipline, balance of power is favored by realists over liberalists’ democratic peace theory. For 10 points, name this discipline that studies interactions between states.
ANSWER: international relations [or IR; accept international affairs or international political economy or global affairs or foreign affairs or foreign policy or diplomacy or geopolitics; prompt on political science or political economy or policy studies or politics or government; prompt on offensive realism until “realist” is read by asking “what discipline does that school study?”]
[after 64% of the tossup] In this city, the “Fast Form Manifest” style was used by Thierry Noir to create cartoonish heads that can be seen at the East Side Gallery. The film Night Crossing opens with footage of an event in this city that was also captured by Peter Leibing. Blue rope was used to fasten over 100,000 square meters of fabric in a “wrapping” of a building in this city by Christo and Jeanne-Claude. A Dmitri Vrubel mural in this city depicts a 1979 meeting in which Leonid Brezhnev shared a fraternal kiss. A watch was removed from a soldier’s wrist in a photograph taken atop this city’s parliament building after its capture by the Soviets. For 10 points, name this city where graffiti was broken into chunks after the 1989 fall of its namesake wall.
ANSWER: Berlin [accept East Berlin or Ost-Berlin; accept West Berlin; accept Berlin Wall] (The second line refers to Leibing’s Leap into Freedom. The third line refers to Wrapped Reichstag. The fifth line refers to Raising a Flag over the Reichstag.)
[after 65% of the tossup] A composer from this country achieved success with an orchestral work inspired by a witch trial and wrote the concerto Veni, Veni, Emmanuel for a deaf percussionist from this country. A composer who travelled to this country with Carl Klingemann was inspired by it to write a cyclic symphony beginning with the slow rising theme E, A, B, C. A piece inspired by this country uses the repeated motif [read slowly] F-sharp, D, C-sharp, D, B, down to F-sharp. This country’s folk melodies inspired a fantasy for violin and orchestra by Max Bruch, as well as a work by a different composer that makes use of its namesake “snap” rhythm. For 10 points, name this country that inspired Mendelssohn’s third symphony and his Hebrides Overture.
ANSWER: Scotland [prompt on United Kingdom or UK; prompt on Great Britain] (The composer and percussionist in the first line are James MacMillan and Evelyn Glennie respectively.)
[after 66% of the tossup] A traditional song from this country compares a ruler’s concubines with flowers, and was recorded by Robert E. Brown for the Voyager Golden Record. Colin McPhee studied the music of a region in this country whose styles include kebyar and uses nested rhythmic structures called colotomy. Performers in one of this country’s art forms sit behind a stage made of banana trunks and can instruct musicians by striking a box with a cempala (“chem-PAH-la”). Tuning systems from this country include the pentatonic slendro and the heptatonic pélog. This country is the home of wayang puppetry, which is accompanied by an ensemble which primarily consists of metallic percussion such as the gong ageng. For 10 points, name this country, the origin of gamelan.
ANSWER: Indonesia [or Republic of Indonesia; or Republik Indonesia]
[after 67% of the tossup] Karl Taube, who wrote an essay on this substance’s symbolism partially titled for its “fetishes,” studied a god of this substance who appears in the San Bartolo murals. A foliated god of this substance is contrasted with the “first father,” a tonsured god of this substance, whose emergence from a turtle carapace is often equated with the resurrection of Hun Hunahpu. A passage into the side of a mountain that reveals the source of this substance is opened by the Hero Twins, who use it to replace the teeth of Seven Macaw. After attempts using mud and wood failed, humanity was created out of this foodstuff by Tepeu and Qucumatz. For 10 points, the Three Sisters included squash, beans, and what staple grain that features in many Mesoamerican stories?
ANSWER: maize [or corn; accept Maya maize god or tonsured maize god or foliated maize god; accept “Lighting Celts and Corn Fetishes”]
[after 67% of the tossup] The “crux” of this concept is lacking “means by which to render our lives believable” according to a speech that opens by describing Antonio Pigafetta as a precursor to modern novelists. In a novel whose title ends with this word, a woman sends her daughter to a convent for having a baby with a mechanic. William Faulkner is called “my master” in a Nobel acceptance speech titled for this concept “of Latin America.” This word ends the title of a novel in which 17 brothers with Ash Wednesday crosses are shot in the head. A novel whose title ends with this word opens with the protagonist remembering how his father took him to see ice and chronicles generations of the Buendía family. For 10 points, Gabriel García Márquez wrote a novel titled “One Hundred Years of” what concept?
ANSWER: solitude [or soledad; accept One Hundred Years of Solitude or Cien Años de Soledad; accept “The Solitude of Latin America” or “La Soledad de América Latina”]
[after 68% of the tossup] A former leader of this country earned the nickname “Teflon” for serving four consecutive terms in government despite scandals like one where parents were falsely accused of childcare benefit fraud. A political party formed after protests against this county’s nitrogen pollution policy, called BBB, became the largest party in this country’s Senate after its 2023 elections. A politician in this country was fined for hate speech after leading a chant of “fewer, fewer Moroccans.” Before becoming Secretary-General of NATO, Mark Rutte served as this county’s prime minister. This country’s October 2025 general elections were narrowly won by the centrist D66 party and saw Geert Wilders’s PVV lose ground. For 10 points, name this northern European nation whose capital is Amsterdam.
ANSWER: Netherlands [or Nederland; or Kingdom of the Netherlands; prompt on Holland]
[after 68% of the tossup] In a paper on these institutions “in the Middle Ages,” George Makdisi warns against analogizing them to their European counterparts. A possibly apocryphal tradition holds that a building occupied by one of these institutions was founded by Fatima al-Fihri. That institution was named after the people of Kairouan, or al-Qarawiyyin (“al-kah-rah-wee-YEEN”). Al-Sahili was credited with building a complex that housed one of these institutions together with nearby Sidi Yahya called Djinguereber (“jin-guh-ray-BAIR”). Saladin ended Shi’a influence in one of these institutions at Cairo called Al-Azhar (“all-UZZ-har”). Another one of these institutions was housed at Sankoré (“sahn-ko-RAY”) Mosque in Timbuktu. For 10 points, the Qur’an and Islamic law were studied at what institutions often analogized to those created in Bologna and Oxford?
ANSWER: universities [or university; accept madrasas; accept schools; accept jāmi‘ah or jāmi‘at; accept University of al-Qarawiyyin or University of Timbuktu or Al-Azhar University; prompt on libraries or library; prompt on mosques or masjids until “Mosque” is read by asking “what additional function did it serve?”]
[after 70% of the tossup] A Pulitzer-Prize-winning photograph shows this person dancing at a rock concert during his “vote or lose” campaign. The chair of Sibneft was recognized as one of the “Seven Bankers” who supported this person after this person implemented the loans-for-shares scheme. Robert Solow and Franco Modigliani were two of several economists who wrote an open letter to this person about reforms that were championed by Anatoly Chubais (“choo-BICE”). This non-Polish politician’s visit to a Randalls grocery store in Houston may have inspired him to implement “shock therapy” in his country. This person helped diffuse the August Coup by giving a speech atop a tank. For 10 points, what politician served as the first President of Russia?
ANSWER: Boris Yeltsin [or Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin]
[after 71% of the tossup] A dark horse candidate for this office won after defeating airline executive Al Checchi (“CHECK-ee”) in this office’s only ever “blanket primary.” A holder of this office staked a successful 1994 reelection campaign on a ballot initiative to bar undocumented immigrants from public education and healthcare. A holder of this office lost support after ending the implementation of the “Save our State” initiative and facing an electricity crisis in 2001. That holder of this office was recalled in a 2003 election and was Gray Davis. This office’s most recent Republican holder was a former actor and bodybuilder. Another former actor held this office in between the tenures of Pat and Jerry Brown. For 10 points, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Ronald Reagan held what office that leads a state from Sacramento?
ANSWER: governor of California [prompt on governor by asking “of where?”] (The first and third sentences refer to Gray Davis. The second sentence refers to Pete Wilson.)
[after 74% of the tossup] As exposed by Francis Fletcher-Vane, an activist known as “Skeffy” was summarily executed during this event in the Portobello Barracks. The phrase that one country “unfree shall never be at peace” was coined prior to this event during the funeral of Jeremiah Rossa. Rumors of imminent arrests were described in the forged “Castle Document” by Joseph Plunkett prior to this event. The SS Aud failed to supply arms to this event, despite negotiations by Roger Casement. During this event, a document proclaiming a republic was read on the steps of the General Post Office by Patrick Pearse. Éamon de Valera (“EH-min day vuh-LAY-ruh”) was elected to lead Sinn Féin (“shin fayn”) following this event. For 10 points, what 1916 Irish rebellion against British rule is named for a Christian holiday?
ANSWER: Easter Rising [or Easter Rebellion]
[after 75% of the tossup] A piece by this composer emphasizes the word “dominum” through homorhythmic repetition before a triple-time Alleluja section. Since 2012, The Sixteen have released nine albums dedicated to this composer’s music. The head-motif of an ascending fourth followed by a stepwise descent down appears in a piece by this composer that adds a seventh voice in its second Agnus Dei movement. In a description of this composer’s style, leaps are countered by stepwise movement in the other direction and dissonances fall on weak beats, as taught in Joseph Fux’s (“FOOKS’s”) Gradus ad Parnassum. This composer’s most famous missa sine nomine apocryphally “saved polyphony” at the Council of Trent. For 10 points, name this Italian Renaissance composer of the Pope Marcellus Mass.
ANSWER: Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (The first line refers to his O Magnum Mysterium.)
[after 75% of the tossup] A text in this language features a little-known god named Lur, whose name is also found on many votive candelabra. A bronze statue of a man raising his right arm, commonly known as The Orator, features an inscription written primarily in this language. This language, used to write a guide for mummification on a linen book named for Zagreb, was grouped with Rhaetic and Lemnian by Helmut Rix. The Tyrrhenika was a history of the people who spoke this language, whose last speakers included the Emperor Claudius. People who spoke this non-Indo-European language were the [emphasize] first inhabitants of cities like Veii and Alba Longa. For 10 points, Latin was influenced by what language that was spoken by the predecessors to the Romans in Italy?
ANSWER: Etruscan [accept Etruscans]
[after 75% of the tossup] For unknown reasons, the stele erected at this ruler’s Qiánlíng mausoleum was left wordless. Potentially for political purposes, this ruler promoted Buddhism, constructing a Dàyún Temple in each prefecture in the two capitals region. The Buddhist monk Huáiyì promulgated the Great Cloud Sutra to legitimize this ruler before being put to death for setting fire to some palace buildings. This ruler elevated Luòyáng to the primary capital, and might have modeled for the face of the largest Buddha statue at the Lóngmén Grottoes. This ruler oversaw the rebuilding of the Giant Wild Goose Pagoda. Following the death of Emperor Tàizōng of Táng, this founder of a Zhōu (“joe”) dynasty was sent to be a nun at Gānyè (“gahn-yeh”) Temple as a former concubine. For 10 points, name this only empress regnant of Imperial China.
ANSWER: Empress Wǔ [or Wǔ Zétiān; or Wǔ Zhào; or Wǔ Mèiniáng; or Wǔ Hòu]
[after 76% of the tossup] René Leibowitz cited a piece by this composer that begins with the spoken line “I cannot remember everything. I must have been unconscious” as an example of music that meets the requirements of “committed art.” This composer’s early use of quartal harmony can be heard in an ascending theme first played by the horn in his first Chamber Symphony. This composer began using an athematic style in his Opus 11 Drei Klavierstücke (“DRY klah-vee-AIR-shtuck-uh”), and he also wrote A Survivor from Warsaw. The title character is called “drunk” in the opening section of a song cycle by this composer that is accompanied by a namesake ensemble and pioneered the technique of Sprechstimme. For 10 points, name this Austrian composer of Pierrot Lunaire who developed 12-tone serialism.
ANSWER: Arnold Schoenberg
[after 79% of the tossup] This musician’s band repeats a chant beginning “freedom for your daddy” on a bonus track of an album that also includes a song written to show that a band can swing in 6/8 time. An album by this musician recorded with Eric Dolphy at Cornell includes a song with censored lyrics like “don’t let them tar and feather us” and called an Arkansas politician “sick and ridiculous.” Lyrics like “You know someone great has gone” were added by Joni Mitchell to a song by this musician dedicated to a man nicknamed “Prez.” That song by this composer of “Better Git It in Your Soul” was re-titled “Theme for Lester Young” on an album whose title repeats his last name five times. For 10 points, name this jazz bassist who wrote “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat.”
ANSWER: Charles Mingus [or Charles Mingus Jr.]
[after 79% of the tossup] This book posits that geometricians determine properties from the construction of figures in a section on “What Philosophy Is.” The Foole’s claim that “there is no such thing as Justice” is rebutted by the claim that broken covenants lead to injustice in this book after the third of its 19 laws of nature is posed. According to this book, misinterpretation of scripture can drive a state to become a “Confederacy of Deceivers.” The fear of violent death is called summum malum in this book and cited as the reason humans form states in its first section, “Of Man.” This book characterizes the “state of nature” as a “war of all against all” that is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” For 10 points, name this 1651 book that advocates for rule by an absolute sovereign, written by Thomas Hobbes.
ANSWER: Leviathan [accept Leviathan or The Matter, Forme and Power of a Commonwealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil]
[after 80% of the tossup] It’s not in Canada, but the first wave of settlers at this place spent two months mining over a thousand tons of what turned out to be fool’s gold. In a proto-strike, Polish artisans in this place refused to work until they gained the right to vote. Soldiers en route to this place to stop a revolt hallucinated after eating a poisonous salad containing a plant now commonly named for this place. The shipwreck of Christopher Newport’s Sea Venture in the Bahamas led to the death of eighty percent of this place’s population during the Starving Time. A Pamunkey chief captured and brought a leader of this colony to his brother, Powhatan. For 10 points, what first permanent English settlement in the Americas was led by John Smith?
ANSWER: Jamestown (The name jimsonweed comes from Jamestown.)
[after 80% of the tossup] In a paper titled for this century, the phrase “Christian Dior… looks a more attractive proposition than Montagu Burton” is used to illustrate an economic slump caused by shortsightedness in capitalism. That essay was partly inspired by widespread currency debasement during this century’s Kipper und Wipper period. Susan Strange portmanteaued “failure” with a system named for an agreement in this century that was based on the teachings of Jean Bodin (“bo-DAN”). It’s not the 19th century, but economic stagnation during this century led Eric Hobsbawm to coin the term “general crisis” to refer to the majority of it. Demographic upheavals during this century included the Khmelnytsky (“k’mell-NITS-kee”) Uprising and the Polish Deluge. For 10 points, widespread economic instability roiled Europe during what century of the Thirty Years’ War?
ANSWER: 17th century [or 1600s]
[after 81% of the tossup] This figure is depicted in several “Palagi heads,” one of which was reattached to its original body by Adolf Furtwängler. A 1990 sculpture of this figure used a cantilever to support the right arm in lieu of a column and is housed in a William Crawford Smith building. A frieze depicting the birth of Pandora was omitted from a “Varvakeion” copy of a sculpture of this figure. Alan LeQuire created a plaster replica of that sculpture of this larger figure for the naos (“NAY-oss”) of a building in Nashville. The artist’s patron Pericles appears on a round shield next to a coiled snake in a large chryselephantine sculpture of this figure by Phidias. For 10 points, the ancient Greek Parthenon once held a sculpture of what goddess of war?
ANSWER: Athena [accept Athena Parthenos or Varvakeion Athena or Athena Lemnia] (LeQuire’s reproduction of the Athena Parthenos was created for the Nashville Parthenon.)
[after 81% of the tossup] This city employed the slave-trading Suteans, who inhabited nearby Subum, as couriers. MUL.APIN (“mool-ah-peen”), a series of two texts from this city, contains several stellar calendars and is one of the earliest compendia of astronomical knowledge. It’s not Greek, but the Metonic calendar likely originated in this city during the rule of Samsu-iluna. Claiming that no Egyptian was allowed to die outside of Egypt, Amunhotep III refused to send a princess to marry this city’s ruler Burna-Buriash II, from its Kassite Dynasty. A stele from this city that depicts a ruler thinking as he receives guidance from Shamash is the origin of the phrase “an eye for an eye.” For 10 points, name this Mesopotamian city ruled by Hammurabi.
ANSWER: Babylon [or Bābilim]
[after 81% of the tossup] Methods of displaying certain types of these objects are named after having one, two, or three colors. A lady rushes towards a bear in one of twelve narrative scenes from one of these objects titled after a court teacher’s “admonitions.” Three of these non-title objects hang from the ceiling in an installation originally named after a “Mirror to Analyze the World.” A ship’s crew attempts to lower their mast to avoid crashing into the Rainbow Bridge in one of these objects that was animated for the 2010 World Expo. “Hand” types of these objects include Zhāng Zéduān’s (“jahng dzuh-dwen’s”) panoramic painting Along the River During the Qīngmíng Festival. For 10 points, Chinese calligraphy is often displayed on what objects that can be rolled up?
ANSWER: scrolls [or juàn; accept handscrolls or hanging scrolls; accept Admonitions Scroll; prompt on paper or silk; prompt on ink drawings; prompt on calligraphy until read] (The third line refers to Xú Bīng’s A Book From the Sky.)
[after 83% of the tossup] A man with this first name sent false eviction notices that were unsuccessfully fought by Lillian Edelstein and the group ETNA. A writer and an editor both with this first name are subjects of Lizzie Gottlieb’s documentary Turn Every Page. A man with this first name wrote the Pulitzer-winning book Master of the Senate, part of the ongoing biography The Years of Lyndon Johnson. That writer with this first name detailed “one mile” built by another man with this first name across the poor East Tremont neighborhood in The Power Broker. Fiorello La Guardia appointed a man with this first name as the inaugural New York City Parks Commissioner, where he feuded with Jane Jacobs. For 10 points, what first name is shared by biographer Caro and urban planner Moses?
ANSWER: Robert [accept Robert Moses; accept Robert Caro; accept Robert Gottlieb] (ETNA was the East Tremont Neighborhood Association.)
[after 84% of the tossup] A photograph taken during this war depicts an opera singer in silhouette raising her arms during an aria from Madame Butterfly. A photograph from this war shows a woman taking a bath with her muddy boots on the bathmat, and was taken by David Scherman. A large crowd walks down a street in a photograph from this war centered around a shaved woman holding a baby. A darkroom accident destroyed most of the photographs Robert Capa took during one battle in this war, which became the series The Magnificent Eleven. Lee Miller took photographs for Vogue during this war. In a photograph from this war, a group of six soldiers on Mount Suribachi hold onto a flagpole. For 10 points, name this war in which Joe Rosenthal took Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima.
ANSWER: World War II [or WWII; or Second World War]
[after 85% of the tossup] A piece by this composer begins quietly with oboes and low strings playing continuous eighth notes as the violins play arpeggios, which crescendoes into a loud D major chord by the chorus and three trumpets. This composer wrote an anthem for the Foundling Hospital, the venue of charity concerts that originated the “Scratch” form of one of his works. This composer was inspired by shepherd-bagpipers to include a pastoral Pifa in a work whose libretto is by Charles Jennens. A widely excerpted sinfonia scored for two oboes and strings appears in this composer’s Solomon. This composer was commissioned to write four anthems for the coronation of George II, including Zadok the Priest. For 10 points, name this Baroque composer who included a Hallelujah chorus in his Messiah.
ANSWER: George Frideric Handel
[after 89% of the tossup] Chinese practitioners of this tradition construct gǒngběi memorials on the graves of ménhuàn lineage founders. This tradition was introduced to Australia by Friedrich von Frankenberg, whose student Francis Brabazon built the “Avatar’s Abode” to house the leader of “[this tradition] Reoriented.” The Yan Taru movement was created to further women’s education by a West African follower of this tradition, Nana Asma’u. The concept of fanā’ is followed by baqā’, or “perpetual existence,” in this tradition whose practices often revolve around dhikr (“thicker”), or remembrance of God. Ascetics from this tradition’s Mevlevi ṭarīqa called “dervishes” perform a namesake “whirling” dance. For 10 points, what mystic Islamic tradition inspired Rumi’s Masnavī?
ANSWER: Sufism [or Taṣawwuf; or Ṣufiyyah; accept sūfēi zhǔyí; prompt on Naqshbandi or Chishti or Mevlevi until read by asking “which are part of what larger tradition?”]
[after 90% of the tossup] Susan Ridyard dismissed apocryphal claims that the half-sister of a monarch of this name foresaw his death after she dreamt she lost her right eye and was subsequently offered his throne; that half-sister was canonized as Saint Edith. A monarch of this name, who dissolved many monasteries in the “anti-monastic reaction,” may have been murdered by his mother-in-law, Ælfthryth (“ELF-thrith”). A future monarch of this name, who was exiled by Harold Harefoot, inherited the throne from Harthacnut after he returned with his mother Emma of Normandy. In addition to a monarch known as the “Martyr,” a monarch with this name commissioned the modern Westminster Abbey and ignited a succession crisis between Harold Godwinson and the future William the Conqueror after his death. For 10 points, a king of England of what name had the epithet “Confessor?”
ANSWER: Edward [accept Edward the Confessor or Edward the Martyr]
[after 92% of the tossup] Nicholas Owen gained notoriety for his skill in building these people’s “holes.” Richard Topcliffe gained fame for his ability to hunt down people of this type, such as his victim Richard Southwell. After John Day was liberated from prison, he published a propaganda piece directed [emphasize] against these people called Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. The death of Edmund Godfrey inflamed fears of these people, following a fabricated conspiracy theory promulgated by Titus Oates. These people were the largest demographic targeted in the Test Act. An attempt to reduce discrimination against this religious group led to the near-destruction of the newly built Newgate Prison during the Gordon Riots. For 10 points, Elizabeth I led large persecutions of what religious group that was accused of leading the Popish Plot?
ANSWER: Catholics [or papists; prompt on priests by asking “of what religion?”]
[after 92% of the tossup] An essay describes how one of the author’s classmates used this belief to justify his failure to study for an exam, showing that proponents of this belief have abandoned reason. Proponents of this belief “delight in acting in bad faith” according to that essay by Jean-Paul Sartre. The deconstructionist Paul de Man wrote hundreds of articles defending this position for the newspaper Le Soir (“luh swar”). This belief and imperialism are analyzed in the first two sections of The Origins of Totalitarianism. During the Farías and Faye controversies, a philosopher was accused of this belief, which explains his failure to protect his mentor Edmund Husserl. The Black Notebooks of Martin Heidegger contain many expressions of this prejudice. For 10 points, name this prejudice defended in Mein Kampf.
ANSWER: antisemitism [or anti-Jewish prejudice; or Jew-hatred; or Judeophobia; accept “Anti-Semite and Jew”; prompt on Nazism or racism or prejudice or bigotry until “prejudice” is read]
[after 95% of the tossup] The southern shore of this body of water is home to the large Granot Loma log cabin mansion. The remnants of a floating hopper on this body of water is nicknamed “Uncle Harvey’s Mausoleum.” Birdwatchers flock to Whitefish Point on this body of water, which is part of an aquatic “Graveyard” where a shipwreck museum houses a salvaged bell. The cartoon-inspired Pickle Barrel House is in one of two towns on this lake named Grand Marais. This lake is connected to others to its south via a lock between two cities named Sault Ste. Marie (“SOO saint muh-REE”). This lake is home to the furthest inland oceangoing port in the world and the wreck of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald. For 10 points, Duluth, Minnesota, is on what largest North American Great Lake?
ANSWER: Lake Superior [or Gichi-Gami; or Kitchi-Gami]
[after 98% of the tossup] In 2025, Karolína Muchová (“MOO-ho-vah”) beat this tournament’s oldest competitor since the trans woman Renee Richards 44 years earlier. In 2017, Sloane Stephens became the first winner of this tournament with a protected ranking. A player who won this tournament without dropping a set served a 109-mile-per-hour ace to defeat Leylah Fernandez in its 2021 final, becoming the only qualifier to win a Grand Slam. In her last Grand Slam match, Serena Williams lost to Ajla Tomljanović (“EYE-luh tum-LYAH-no-vitch”) in this tournament, where she called official Carlos Ramos a “thief” during her 2018 finals defeat to Naomi Osaka. This is the later of two Grand Slams whose final Amanda Anisimova lost in 2025, being beaten by its defending champion Aryna Sabalenka. For 10 points, name this chronologically last tennis Grand Slam that is held at the Arthur Ashe Stadium in Queens.
ANSWER: US Open Tennis Championships (Muchová beat Venus Williams. Emma Raducanu won in 2021.)
[after 99% of the tossup] Raiders in this state fought both Union and Confederate forces during the Cortina Wars. During the Battle of Gaines’ Mill, every officer in a “Brigade” named for this state was injured or killed except for its leader, John Bell Hood. A month after Appomattox, men in this state fought the last battle of the Civil War, the Battle of Palmito Hill. The Nueces (“new-AY-siss”) Massacre targeted antislavery Unionist Germans in this state. Benjamin Franklin Tarry led a regiment nicknamed for a law enforcement group in this state that fought against the Comanche. Gordon Granger’s announcement of the Emancipation Proclamation in a coastal city in this state is commemorated on Juneteenth. For 10 points, name this state whose police force includes its namesake “Rangers.”
ANSWER: Texas [accept Texas Rangers; accept Texas Germans; accept Texas Brigade]

Sarah Silverman ↩

[after 20% of the tossup] This material is classified under letters G to J of the Unified Numbering System. Maraging (“MAR-aging”) forms of this material contain hard precipitate particles over an artificially elongated aging period. Modern manufacturing of this material uses a supersonic oxygen jet and burnt lime to generate a basic slag. Case-hardening of this material can be accomplished using carburization. Rapidly quenching one form of this material produces crystalline martensite. Hot-dip and electrogalvanization are methods for plating this material to prevent corrosion, which can also be accomplished by adding chromium. For 10 points, name this alloy of iron and carbon that includes a stainless variety.
ANSWER: steel [accept stainless steel]
[after 45% of the tossup] The GP-A experiment directly measured this phenomenon in space and on Earth. Relativistic aberration and this phenomenon are responsible for apparent increases in luminosity via relativistic beaming. If an angle theta is slowly varying, the strength of this phenomenon equals one minus cosine theta times v over c. In relativity, the strength of this phenomenon equals the square root of the fraction “one plus beta over one minus beta.” Canal rays underwent this phenomenon in the Ives–Stilwell experiment supporting special relativity, while the Pound–Rebka experiment measured a form of this effect caused by gravitational time dilation. Hubble’s law is based on observations of this effect. For 10 points, what effect changes the frequency of waves emitted by moving sources?
ANSWER: Doppler effect [accept redshift or blueshift; prompt on time dilation or gravitational time dilation until read by asking “what phenomenon does that cause?”; prompt on gravity]
[after 48% of the tossup] A bourrée anglaise concludes J. S. Bach’s solo partita for this instrument, for which his son C. P. E. Bach also wrote a solo sonata in A minor. In the Berlin Philharmonic, Emmanuel Pahud plays this instrument. Mozart wrote four quartets for this instrument accompanied by strings, and a concerto for this instrument and harp. Francis Poulenc’s (“fron-SEESE poo-LANK’s”) sonata for this instrument begins with it playing a descending E minor broken chord. Edgar Varèse wrote Density 21.5 for a player of this instrument. A solo for this instrument marked très modéré descends chromatically from C-sharp to G to open Debussy’s Prélude à l’apres-midi d’un faune. For 10 points, name this reedless woodwind instrument.
ANSWER: flute [or flauto traverso; or transverse flute; reject “flauto dolce”]
[after 53% of the tossup] A 1978 group of people in this profession called “Thirty-Five New Guys” included six pioneering female members like Shannon Lucid. An actress diversified this profession through a national outreach campaign with the company Woman in Motion. A person best known for this profession publicly came out via her obituary and was once asked if 100 tampons was appropriate for one week in this profession. Actress Nichelle Nichols inspired people in this profession like Mae Jemison. In a televised accident investigated by the Rogers Commission, members of this profession including Judith Resnik perished alongside a teacher trained for this profession named Christa McAuliffe. For 10 points, name this profession of Sally Ride.
ANSWER: astronauts [prompt on scientists; prompt on engineers; prompt on aviators or pilots; prompt on geologists; prompt on schoolteachers until “teacher” is read] (Nichelle Nichols was the original portrayer of Uhura in Star Trek.)
[after 58% of the tossup] In a novel by this author, a couple play a game in which they fill in blank speech bubbles in each other’s drawings called “the bubble game.” In another work by this author, arts and crafts are included in a “Gallery” by a mysterious figure named “Madame.” The protagonist of a novel by this author destroys a polluting “Cootings Machine” to cure Josie’s illness. In a different novel by this author, two characters travel to Norfolk where Kathy finds a cassette tape by Judy Bridgewater. Characters in that novel by this author attend school at Hailsham and are divided into “carers” and “donors.” In a novel by this author, after receiving a letter from Miss Kenton at Darlington Hall, Mr. Faraday gives the butler Stevens permission to leave. For 10 points, name this Nobel-winning author of Never Let Me Go and The Remains of the Day.
ANSWER: Kazuo Ishiguro (The novel in the first and third clues is Klara and the Sun.)
[after 64% of the tossup] In a story set after this war, Henry jumps into a river and tells his brother Lyman “my boots are filling” before he drowns. In a story set after this war, Norman Bowker walks fully clothed into his hometown lake after driving around it twelve times, only stopping to get a hamburger. After being shot twice, the protagonist of a story set during this war vows to scare the inexperienced medic Bobby Jorgenson using flares and sandbags. This war is the subject of a collection that contains “How to Tell a True War Story” and another story in which Kiowa drowns in a sewage field. Lieutenant Jimmy Cross lists “can openers, pocket knives, heattabs, wristwatches” in a story set during this war in which Ted Lavender is shot in the head. For 10 points, name this war, the backdrop of the stories in Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried.
ANSWER: Vietnam War [or Second Indochina War; or Chiến tranh Việt Nam; or Kháng chiến chống Mỹ] (The first story is “The Red Convertible” by Louise Erdrich.)
[after 67% of the tossup] In a poem by this author, the title creature “says the highway dust is over all” and predicts “that other fall we name the fall.” In another poem by this author, “part of a moon” falls “down the west” and drags “the whole sky with it to the hills.” This author of “The Oven Bird” wrote a poem that defines “home” as “the place where… they have to take you in” and begins with Mary waiting for her husband who says, “Silas is back.” In another poem by this author, a “little horse” “gives his harness bells a shake” to ask the speaker “if there is some mistake.” That poem by this author ends, “I have promises to keep, / And miles to go before I sleep.” For 10 points, name this author of monologues like “The Death of the Hired Man” who also wrote “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening.”
ANSWER: Robert Frost
[after 82% of the tossup] This artist drew from an earlier depiction of pine trees in Calvi for a woodcut of tire tracks and footprints crossing over a reflective puddle. A statue of a simurgh gifted to this artist inspired the “bird-humans” that are depicted three times along the central vertical axis in the mezzotint Another World. Piranesi’s Imaginary Prisons inspired this artist’s lithograph of faceless people in a space with multiple sources of gravity. After studying Islamic tile art at the Alhambra, this artist began depicting figures such as knights and reptiles in tessellated patterns. This artist’s print Relativity depicts several staircases in a shape similar to a Penrose triangle. For 10 points, name this Dutch artist whose prints often depict impossible objects.
ANSWER: M. C. Escher [or Maurits Cornelis Escher]
[after 82% of the tossup] An enzyme that primarily degrades this protein forces substrates to refold into beta-sheets in a triangular prism-shaped active site. Two disulfide bonds stabilize the two chains of this protein, which originate from cleavage of a single precursor that assembles into hexameric complexes that coordinate to zinc. This protein propagates signals after binding a receptor tyrosine kinase that triggers the PI3K and ERK pathways. Intracellular vesicles sensitive to this protein express the protein GLUT4. Amylin and this hormone are produced in the islets of Langerhans in beta cells of the pancreas. This hormone promotes the formation of glycogen. For 10 points, name this peptide hormone that promotes absorption of glucose that is deficient in diabetes.
ANSWER: insulin
[after 83% of the tossup] These phenomena express “conceptions” of things like the world according to Calvin Hall’s continuity theory. In the AIM (“A-I-M”) model, these phenomena are caused by interactions between aminergic and cholinergic neurons that generate PGO waves; that model of these phenomena is based on Hobson and McCarley’s activation-synthesis model. Echidnas’ large frontal cortex inspired Crick and Mitchison to theorize that these phenomena cause “reverse learning.” Antti Revonsuo theorized that these phenomena simulate probable threats. These phenomena act as “wish fulfillment” according to an 1899 book that described a precursor to the Oedipus complex. For 10 points, Sigmund Freud wrote about the “interpretation” of what phenomena that occur during REM sleep?
ANSWER: dreams [or dreaming; accept The Interpretation of Dreams or Die Traumdeutung; prompt on sleep or REM sleep until “REM” is read]
[after 86% of the tossup] In this ballet, one statement of a unison string theme beginning with a descending and ascending octave is followed by four dancers clapping nine eighth notes. Mnemonics were used by Peter Sparling to learn the steps of a hat-wearing character in this ballet who directs four characters to successively sit on a church bench cued by flutes. Merce Cunningham first performed that role in this ballet, which used a simple set that included a rocking chair and the outline of a house. This ballet, which revolves around the marriage of the Husbandman and the Bride, includes variations on the Shaker hymn “Simple Gifts.” For 10 points, name this ballet choreographed by Martha Graham with music by Aaron Copland.
ANSWER: Appalachian Spring
[after 86% of the tossup] Description acceptable. After he demonstrated this practice for her, Dowager Empress Maria of Russia gave the foundling Anton Petrov a new name referencing it. Biographer John Baron may have originated a myth about Sarah Nelmes’s role in the origin of this practice. To promote this practice in Vienna, Maria Theresa hosted 65 commoners for a royal banquet at the Schönbrunn palace. Caroline of Ansbach helped popularize this practice after being shown it by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who introduced it to Europe after witnessing it in the Ottoman Empire. Catherine the Great gave Thomas Dimsdale a title for performing this practice on her by grating pustules into an open wound. For 10 points, the development of what medical practice in 18th-century Europe is often credited to Edward Jenner?
ANSWER: smallpox inoculation [accept equivalents like smallpox vaccination or smallpox variolation; prompt on inoculation, vaccination, or variolation by asking “against what disease?”; reject answers like “treatment of smallpox”] (Sarah Nelmes is the milkmaid Jenner is supposed to have seen without any smallpox lesions. Anton Petrov was renamed Anton Vaccinoff – and given a house and an income – after he received the vaccine to demonstrate its safety.)
[after 90% of the tossup] In 1939, a ship named for this city carrying Jewish refugees from Germany was denied from landing in the US in the so-called “Voyage of the Damned.” Cases arising from Detroit and this city resulted in racially restrictive covenants being struck down under the Equal Protection Clause. Harold Bixby, a businessman from this city, sponsored an object built in San Diego but named for this city that was later used to win the Orteig Prize. Shelley v. Kraemer originated in this city, which preserved the Old Courthouse where the Dred Scott trial was first heard as part of an “expansion memorial.” Charles Lindbergh named his Atlantic-crossing aircraft for the “Spirit of” this city. For 10 points, name this Midwestern city home to the Gateway Arch.
ANSWER: St. Louis [accept The Spirit of St. Louis; accept MS St. Louis]
[after 91% of the tossup] This concept titles a posthumous work by Anthony A. Hoekema (“HOO-kuh-mah”). The Second Council of Orange confirmed one type of this concept developed by Augustine that is supported by Arminians. This theological concept is not referenced in the King James Version of the Gospels outside of the Prologue of John, where Jesus is described as “[this concept] from [this concept].” According to Ephesians, salvation occurs through faith and by this concept, forming three Lutheran Solae along with sola scriptura. The angel Gabriel’s address to Mary in Luke 1:28 was adapted into a prayer describing her as “full of” this concept. For 10 points, name this Christian concept of unmerited divine favor described in a spiritual by John Newton as “Amazing.”
ANSWER: grace [accept sola gratia; accept “Amazing Grace”]
[after 93% of the tossup] This artist placed images of 19th-century women on the floor of an exhibition entrance for the work Horizontal Memory. Eadweard Muybridge inspired a video work by this artist consisting of close-up shots of 15 different people’s buttocks. An early work by this artist consists of the single instruction to leave a canvas “on the floor or in the snow.” In one performance, this artist sat onstage while audience members cut out pieces of her clothing until she was almost nude. This Fluxus artist was photographed by Annie Leibovitz lying clothed in bed as her naked husband kisses her, shortly before his murder. For 10 points, name this Japanese artist whose works include collaborations with her husband John Lennon.
ANSWER: Yoko Ono [or Ono Yoko]
[after 95% of the tossup] In 2025, Karolína Muchová (“MOO-ho-vah”) beat this tournament’s oldest competitor since the trans woman Renee Richards 44 years earlier. In 2017, Sloane Stephens became the first winner of this tournament with a protected ranking. A player who won this tournament without dropping a set served a 109-mile-per-hour ace to defeat Leylah Fernandez in its 2021 final, becoming the only qualifier to win a Grand Slam. In her last Grand Slam match, Serena Williams lost to Ajla Tomljanović (“EYE-luh tum-LYAH-no-vitch”) in this tournament, where she called official Carlos Ramos a “thief” during her 2018 finals defeat to Naomi Osaka. This is the later of two Grand Slams whose final Amanda Anisimova lost in 2025, being beaten by its defending champion Aryna Sabalenka. For 10 points, name this chronologically last tennis Grand Slam that is held at the Arthur Ashe Stadium in Queens.
ANSWER: US Open Tennis Championships (Muchová beat Venus Williams. Emma Raducanu won in 2021.)
[after 95% of the tossup] Algebraic varieties named for this shape are subject to the orbit–cone correspondence and can be constructed from fans. For knots named for this shape, “x-to-the-p equals y-to-the-q” is a relation of the knot group. “R-squared” quotient “Z-squared” is isomorphic to this surface, which has “Z-cross-Z” as its fundamental group. This surface can be obtained by gluing each pair of opposite edges of the unit square in the same direction. This orientable surface with Euler characteristic zero is the Cartesian product of two circles. Depending on orientation, either a Klein bottle or this genus-one surface is formed by joining the circular ends of a cylinder. For 10 points, the surface of a coffee cup is topologically equivalent to what single-holed surface shaped like a doughnut?
ANSWER: torus [or 2-torus; accept toric varieties; accept torus knots]
[after 98% of the tossup] The “crux” of this concept is lacking “means by which to render our lives believable” according to a speech that opens by describing Antonio Pigafetta as a precursor to modern novelists. In a novel whose title ends with this word, a woman sends her daughter to a convent for having a baby with a mechanic. William Faulkner is called “my master” in a Nobel acceptance speech titled for this concept “of Latin America.” This word ends the title of a novel in which 17 brothers with Ash Wednesday crosses are shot in the head. A novel whose title ends with this word opens with the protagonist remembering how his father took him to see ice and chronicles generations of the Buendía family. For 10 points, Gabriel García Márquez wrote a novel titled “One Hundred Years of” what concept?
ANSWER: solitude [or soledad; accept One Hundred Years of Solitude or Cien Años de Soledad; accept “The Solitude of Latin America” or “La Soledad de América Latina”]
[after 98% of the tossup] Fragmentation of molecules undergoing this technique is observed in the McLafferty rearrangement. In one form of this technique, selected reaction monitoring is used to select ions for the next stage of processing. Michael Barber invented a technique used during this process where a beam of high energy atoms strike a surface in a technique called fast atom bombardment. Multiple rounds of this technique are performed in its “tandem” variety. Molecules may be prepared for this technique by undergoing electrospray ionization or MALDI. Plots in this technique often coupled with gas chromatography plot intensity against m-over-z. For 10 points, name this technique that separates molecules based on their mass-to-charge ratio.
ANSWER: mass spectrometry [or MS]
[after 98% of the tossup] One of these animals is often depicted supporting Kui Xing. A table-carrying child of the Dragon King is one of these animals named Bixi. A snake is often depicted winding around one of these animals that represents the north. The name of that one of the Four Symbols is typically translated as “Black [this animal].” After holes are patched with multicolored stones, one of these animals named Ao has his legs cut off by Nüwa to create four pillars for holding up the heavens. In the comparative mythology section of Primitive Culture, Edward Burnett Tylor discusses the tropes of both elephants and these animals as world-bearing creatures. For 10 points, ancient Chinese divination sometimes made use of the shells of what reptiles?
ANSWER: turtles [or tortoises; or wū gūi (“ooh gway”); accept Black Tortoise or Black Turtle-Snake or xuánwǔ; accept World-Bearing Turtles or World-Bearing Tortoises]
[after 99% of the tossup] Dynamic dispatch for methods in C++ is typically implemented with a table of these constructs called a “vtable” (“V-table”). During serialization, these constructs are converted to a position-independent persistent version during “swizzling.” Addition to these constructs is scaled by the size of an underlying data type in an example of these constructs’ namesake “arithmetic.” Garbage collection prevents certain types of segmentation faults by cleaning up “dangling” instances of these constructs. Each node in a linked list contains both data and one of these constructs associated with the next node. In C, an asterisk can be used to access data at the location described by one of these constructs. For 10 points, name this data type that stores addresses in memory.
ANSWER: pointers [accept dangling pointers; accept pointer arithmetic; accept function pointers or method pointers; accept references; accept addresses until read]
[after 100% of the tossup] Coins from a kingdom on this body of water were found on Marchinbar island. An “accidental crusade” targeted a kingdom on the coast of this body of water later invaded by Butua. A ruler of another state on this body of water built the Husuni Kubwa and added a coral dome to a Great Mosque in its capital. That state’s “chronicle” describes its founding by the son of a ruler of Shiraz. Gold mined from the interior highlands were brought to this body of water at the port city of Sofala, which paid tribute to the Mutapa Empire while controlled by the Kilwa Sultanate. The Portuguese stronghold at Fort Jesus was besieged by Omani forces near Mombasa on this body of water. For 10 points, the Swahili coast in East Africa formed the western boundary of what ocean?
ANSWER: Indian Ocean [prompt on Swahili coast until read]
[after 100% of the tossup] An eight-year “Great Unrest” of these events in Sweden culminated in an unusually large one in Torsåker led by Lars Hornæus. A Carlo Ginzburg book details how the Italian Benandanti were impacted by these events. Several of these events began after Anne of Denmark travelled to Scotland. Johannes Junius, the mayor of Bamberg, wrote a letter to his daughter detailing the impact of these events, which Wolfgang Behringer’s research proposes arose as a result of the “Little Ice Age.” Heinrich Kramer received a papal bull authorizing him to instigate these events after publishing a treatise on them, the Malleus Maleficarum, which details methods of torturing people to induce confessions. For 10 points, Early Modern Europe saw a “craze” of what events that sought to prove people guilty of using magic?
ANSWER: witch trials [or witch hunts; accept the Early Modern witch craze; prompt on inquisitions by asking “targeting what people?”]
[after 100% of the tossup] A questionnaire that screens for a disorder partly named for this process assesses BMI and neck size and is known by the acronym STOP-BANG. Disorders involving this process can be indicated by a high score on a scale named for Epworth Hospital, including one that can be treated by supplementing orexin and often presents with cataplexy. The “central” form of a condition can be differentiated from its “obstructive” form based on whether it is more prevalent during “quiescent” or “paradoxical” stages of this process, though both can be managed with CPAP machines. High levels of somatotropin are released after the onset of the “slow wave” form of this process, during which memory consolidation also occurs. For 10 points, circadian rhythms regulate what process promoted by melatonin?
ANSWER: sleeping [or being asleep; accept obstructive sleep apnea or central sleep apnea; accept REM sleep or paradoxical sleep or non-REM sleep or NREM sleep or quiescent sleep; prompt on terms like snoozing or dozing off]
[after 100% of the tossup] Footage of this city is combined with the filmmaker reading out letters sent from her mother in Chantal Akerman’s film News from Home. A shot pans away from a man talking to a woman on a pay-phone to an empty corridor in a film set in this city for which Bernard Herrmann wrote his last completed film score. A film set in this city contains a chase scene in which a narcotics detective tries to catch a criminal on a speeding elevated train and which includes accidental collisions. A man in this city who wants to “wash all this scum off the streets” upsets a woman by taking her on a date to a porn theater, and later prepares for an attempted assassination by giving the “you talkin’ to me” speech. For 10 points, name this city, the setting of The French Connection and Taxi Driver.
ANSWER: New York City [or NYC]
[after 100% of the tossup] Eliminating this substance is the goal of the DGP braneworld model. So-called “phantom” forms of this substance are an extreme case of hypothetical quintessence models. An equation of state of pressure equal to negative density characterizes this substance, whose density remains constant as space expands. An era dominated by this substance began roughly 4 billion years ago, when the expansion of the universe began to accelerate. This substance is represented by a quantity that Einstein called his “biggest blunder” when adding it to his field equations, known as the cosmological constant. For 10 points, name this mysterious substance that accounts for over 70 percent of the universe, along with matter and dark matter.
ANSWER: dark energy [prompt on lambda or cosmological constant until read by asking “what substance does that quantity represent?”]
[after 100% of the tossup] The metals found in Fischer-type and Schrock-type carbenes have low and high values for this quantity respectively. The 18-electron rule is applicable for low values of this quantity for metals in organometallic complexes. For a given pH, this quantity is found on the x-axis of Frost–Ebsworth diagrams. Relativistic effects affecting the 6s orbital allows gold to assume a negative value of this quantity. Due to the inert-pair effect, larger Group 14 elements tend to reduce the value of this quantity by 2. Fluorine is the only halogen to exclusively have a value of negative one for this quantity. For 10 points, name this quantity that gives the number of electrons lost from an atom during bonding.
ANSWER: oxidation state [accept oxidation number or valence]
[after 100% of the tossup] After he refused to allow any lapsi back into the church, a bishop from this state accused antipope Novatian of inducing his wife’s abortion. After the early Christians Perpetua and Felicity were martyred in this city, Perpetua’s narrative of her “passion” became a widely used devotional text. Much commerce from this city shipped from its harbor, the Cothon. A road marker ten miles away from this city names the Battle of Ad Decimum, where Belisarius defeated a state led by King Gelimer. Following the Decian Persecutions, a plague bearing the name of this city’s Bishop Cyprian was described by its namesake as divine punishment. Hippo Regius was selected to replace this city by the Vandal Kingdom after their invasion of Africa. For 10 points, name this city that sent an army to invade Italy under Hannibal during the Second Punic War.
ANSWER: Carthage
[after 100% of the tossup] It’s not cannibalism, but an essay on this practice notes that “the certainties postulated by philosophers hardly ever exist” when analogizing it to the case of shipwrecked sailors Dudley and Stephens. Kitty Genovese’s murder is used to make a distinction between “Good,” “Splendid,” and “Minimally Decent” Samaritans in an essay on this practice. An essay titled for this practice describes an analogy of seeds floating through windows and taking root in houses. This practice is paired with “the Doctrine of Double Effect” in the title of an essay by Philippa Foot that proposed the trolley problem. An essay on this practice proposes a thought experiment involving keeping a dying violinist alive. For 10 points, Judith Jarvis Thomson wrote a “Defense” of what practice opposed by pro-life activists?
ANSWER: abortion [accept equivalents such as ending or terminating a pregnancy; accept “A Defense of Abortion”; accept “The Problem of Abortion and the Doctrine of Double Effect”]

March Delfin ↩

[after 39% of the tossup] A character with this profession becomes upset when another character refuses to say “a man outgrows his wife every seven years.” At the beginning of another play, a character with this profession says, “the morning star always gets wonderful bright the minute before it has to go.” Mr. Fitzpatrick holds this job during a mass food poisoning in a play about the Antrobus family. A character with this profession remarks that “this is the way things were” before a choir directed by the alcoholic organist Simon Stimson sings. That character with this profession replies, “the saints and poets, maybe” when a dead woman asks him if human beings “realize life while they live it” after she revisits her twelfth birthday. For 10 points, Thornton Wilder included characters with what profession in his plays The Skin of Our Teeth and Our Town?
ANSWER: stage manager [accept stage director; prompt on narrator; prompt on manager]
[after 39% of the tossup] A Joy Harjo poem that quotes this poem begins, “We were running out of breath, as we ran out to meet ourselves.” A bell hooks book titled for this poem is subtitled “Black Men and Masculinity.” The setting of this poem titles a poetic form in which the last word of each line makes a quote and was pioneered by Terrence Hayes. This poem’s author said she was inspired to write this poem after walking past a pool hall in Chicago and thinking “I wonder how they feel about themselves?” This poem from the collection The Bean Eaters is narrated by “pool players” at the “Golden Shovel.” The characters in this poem “Strike straight,” “Jazz June,” and “Die soon.” For 10 points, name this eight-line poem where every line except for the last ends with the word “We,” by Gwendolyn Brooks.
ANSWER: “We Real Cool”
[after 41% of the tossup] This food names a “Curtain” dividing the affluent Hampshire County from Hampden County in western Massachusetts. A 1975 book by William Shurtleff and Akiko Aoyagi popularized this food in the West. Newly-released prisoners eat this food in a South Korean custom. Low-quality building projects are derisively called “dregs” of this food in China. British Home Secretary Suella Braverman decried Just Stop Oil protesters as “wokerati” who read the Guardian and eat this food. This food, which titles a parody of Super Meat Boy by PETA, is used in “pock-marked old woman” and “stinky” dishes. Coagulation in making this food results in varieties called “firm” or “silken.” For 10 points, name this block-shaped food made from fermented soybeans.
ANSWER: tofu [or bean curd; or dòufu; or dubu; or tubu; accept Super Tofu Boy; accept tofu-dreg projects, dòufuzhā gōngchéng, tofu projects, or tofu buildings; accept Tofu Curtain; accept mápó tofu; accept stinky tofu or chòu dòufu; prompt on soy or soybeans]
[after 44% of the tossup] Annealing of this material is accomplished in lehrs. An industrial method to produce a type of this material lays liquid raw materials over tin to form a float. Diffusion of interfering ions described by the Nikolsky–Eisenman equation across this material is seen in electrodes, which can be used to measure pH. Sintering particles of this material into hollow disks creates fritted examples of these materials that are used as filters. Addition of boron trioxide lowers the coefficient of thermal expansion of these materials. Silica, soda ash, and limestone produce the molten form of this material, which is then solidified by blowing. For 10 points, what amorphous material is often used to make lab materials and window panes?
ANSWER: glass
[after 44% of the tossup] An author from this country wrote of paintings drawing back a curtain on the writing of a poet from here who claims “’Tis dead, ’tis dust, ’tis shadow, yea, ’tis nought” at the end of the poem “To Her Portrait.” That poet from this modern-day country charges the title subjects with patent arrogance “that fights with many weapons” in the poem “You Foolish Men.” This is the home country of both the author and subject of the biography The Traps of Faith. In a poem from this country, a woman whose breasts are “two churches of blood” is told “I travel your body, like the world.” A 584-line poem from this country opens “a willow of crystal, a poplar of water” and borrows a circular calendar for its title, “Sun Stone.” For 10 points, name this home country of Sor Juana and Octavio Paz.
ANSWER: Mexico [or United Mexican States; or UMS; or Estados Unidos Mexicanos; or EUM]
[after 52% of the tossup] Description acceptable. Henry Alford’s New Yorker article “Ink” documented dictionary words used for this purpose like “esquivalience.” The discovery of phone listings used for this purpose led to the 1991 case Feist v. Rural, which rejected the “sweat of the brow” doctrine for facts. A rural mailbox photographer in the Columbia Encyclopedia created for this purpose named Lillian Mountweazel now names entities created for this purpose. The title of a John Green novel was inspired by a place created for this purpose supposedly in upstate New York, which Rand McNally insisted became real upon the opening of a general store in Agloe. For 10 points, “trap streets” and “paper towns” are fake entries used by reference works for what purpose of detecting intellectual property violations?
ANSWER: detecting copyright infringement [accept descriptions of detecting plagiarism or copying; accept copyright traps or copyright enforcement; accept intellectual property trap or intellectual property theft or IP trap or IP theft until “intellectual property” is read; prompt on fictitious entries until “fake entries” is read; prompt on paper towns or trap streets or Mountweazels until read by asking “what purpose do those things serve?”]
[after 52% of the tossup] These groups name a class of theorems that includes “conditional” and “competence-sensitive” subtypes and a non-paradox statement put forth by the Marquis de Condorcet. A relaxed requirement for these groups in Louisiana and Oregon was made unconstitutional in the Ramos case. Potential members of these groups with “conscientious scruples” are excluded from “death qualification” in a process nicknamed “Witherspooning.” These groups are selected from a pool of potential candidates called a venire or struck for cause during the process of voir dire. The Sixth Amendment guarantees the right to these groups’ impartial nature. For 10 points, what groups composed of one’s “peers” determine a verdict in court?
ANSWER: juries [or jury; accept petit jury; accept Condorcet’s jury theorem; reject “grand juries”; reject “voters”] (Ramos v. Louisiana abolished non-unanimous jury verdicts.)
[after 54% of the tossup] This author’s death inspired an author to state “a light was gone” in an interview featured in a New Yorker article partially titled for an “Infinite Footnote to” this author. In a story by this author that inspired a work of hypertext fiction featuring postal clerk Emily Runbird, a man who has just arrived in Ashgrove takes a child’s advice to bear left at every crossroad. In a story by this author, the poet Carlos Daneri attempts to save a cellar containing a point in space that contains all other points. The title construct of a story by this author is analogized to a guessing game where the answer is chess by the Sinologist Dr. Albert before Richard Madden arrests Yu Tsun. For 10 points, name this Argentinian author of “The Aleph” and “The Garden of Forking Paths.”
ANSWER: Jorge Luis Borges [or Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges] (The first line refers to “César Aira’s Infinite Footnote to Borges.” The second line refers to Stuart Moulthrop’s Victory Garden.)
[after 62% of the tossup] A group of hymns in this text begin with a mahala symbol, which may either mean “woman” or “place of alighting.” Three repetitions of a hymn whose name means “that door” occur in this text, including one which provides the only vocatives in its Japujī section. Over 100 hymns in this text were written by the 13th-century mystic sheikh Bābā Farīd (“fuh-REED”). A rumalla cloth covers this text when closed; while it is read, this text is fanned with a yak-hair chauri. This text’s opening line, called the Mūl Mantar (“MOOL MUN-ter”), contains the monotheistic statement “Ik Onkar.” After a 1708 declaration at Naded, this text took on an eternal spiritual role, succeeding Gobind Singh. For 10 points, name this holy book that serves as Sikhism’s eternal Guru.
ANSWER: Gurū Granth Sāhib [accept Śrī Gurū Granth Sāhib Jī; accept Ādī Granth or Ādī Śrī Granth Sāhib Jī]
[after 64% of the tossup] An enzyme that primarily degrades this protein forces substrates to refold into beta-sheets in a triangular prism-shaped active site. Two disulfide bonds stabilize the two chains of this protein, which originate from cleavage of a single precursor that assembles into hexameric complexes that coordinate to zinc. This protein propagates signals after binding a receptor tyrosine kinase that triggers the PI3K and ERK pathways. Intracellular vesicles sensitive to this protein express the protein GLUT4. Amylin and this hormone are produced in the islets of Langerhans in beta cells of the pancreas. This hormone promotes the formation of glycogen. For 10 points, name this peptide hormone that promotes absorption of glucose that is deficient in diabetes.
ANSWER: insulin
[after 67% of the tossup] An author from this country intertwined scenes of Robert Browning in Venice with the lives of the main characters in the novel The Whirlpool. In one of 11 interviews conducted by Graeme Gibson with novelists from this country, Timothy Findley coined the name for one region in this country’s “Southern Gothic” literature. “Boy” Staunton causes a pregnant woman to go into premature labor in Fifth Business, a novel in this country’s Deptford Trilogy. An author from this country featured symposiums led by Professor Pieixoto as metafictional epilogues for two novels. While meeting outside of the “Ceremony” in a novel from this country, Offred plays Scrabble with the Commander. For 10 points, name this home country of the author of The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood.
ANSWER: Canada (The Whirlpool is by Jane Urquhart. The second line refers to “Southern Ontario Gothic.” The Deptford Trilogy is by Robertson Davies.)
[after 67% of the tossup] In a story set after this war, Henry jumps into a river and tells his brother Lyman “my boots are filling” before he drowns. In a story set after this war, Norman Bowker walks fully clothed into his hometown lake after driving around it twelve times, only stopping to get a hamburger. After being shot twice, the protagonist of a story set during this war vows to scare the inexperienced medic Bobby Jorgenson using flares and sandbags. This war is the subject of a collection that contains “How to Tell a True War Story” and another story in which Kiowa drowns in a sewage field. Lieutenant Jimmy Cross lists “can openers, pocket knives, heattabs, wristwatches” in a story set during this war in which Ted Lavender is shot in the head. For 10 points, name this war, the backdrop of the stories in Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried.
ANSWER: Vietnam War [or Second Indochina War; or Chiến tranh Việt Nam; or Kháng chiến chống Mỹ] (The first story is “The Red Convertible” by Louise Erdrich.)
[after 68% of the tossup] In a scene set in one of these places, a character mentions outsourcing at Clemmons Technologies due to NAFTA, which Tracey thinks is a laxative. Later in that play, the owner of one of these places, Stan, is disabled when Jason hits him with a baseball bat. In another play set in one of these places, a character admits that he’d face the electric chair if he had to “kill someone and they have to go on living!” In one of these places owned by an agoraphobe who vows to walk around the block on his birthday, a traveling salesman admits to murdering his wife Evelyn. Don Parritt commits suicide by jumping off a fire escape in one of these places after Hickey attempts to convince its patrons to abandon their “pipe dreams.” For 10 points, name these places, one of which is run by Harry Hope in Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh.
ANSWER: bars [or saloons; or public houses; accept Harry Hope’s Saloon; accept Alibi Club; prompt on restaurant; prompt on club; prompt on hotel] (The first and second lines refer to Sweat by Lynn Nottage.)
[after 68% of the tossup] In a novel set in this state, a character is beat up after asking two boys to return candy stolen from Mr. Marconi’s Tobacco and Cigars. The highly abusive real-life Dozier School was fictionalized in a novel set in this state by Colson Whitehead. In a different novel set in this state, the protagonist remarks that “the business of the head rag irked her endlessly” after her husband forbids her from showing her hair in public. The protagonist of a novel set in this state has a vision of her future husband desecrating a pear tree after she is caught kissing Johnny Taylor. In a novel set in this state, Tea Cake is shot after being bitten by a rabid dog during the Okeechobee hurricane. For 10 points, name this state where Janie Crawford tells her story in its town of Eatonville, the setting of Their Eyes Were Watching God.
ANSWER: Florida [or FL] (The Whitehead novel is The Nickel Boys.)
[after 73% of the tossup] A character in a play by this author miraculously turns into a beautiful maid after her brother, the Fat Gentleman, shoots at her. This author’s play Frenzy for Two, Or More is often paired with a play in which a character created by this author shows off his ability to fly. A logician uses a syllogism to prove that a dog is a cat in a play by this author of A Stroll in the Air. In an “anti-play” by this author, which is set in an “English interior, with English armchairs,” the Smiths and the Martins engage in surreal conversation after the Fire Chief mentions the title character. In a play by this author of The Lesson, the typist Daisy leaves Bérenger after every character except for him turns into the title animal. For 10 points, name this absurdist Romanian-French playwright of The Bald Soprano and Rhinoceros.
ANSWER: Eugène Ionesco [or Eugen Ionescu] (The play in the first line is The Picture.)
[after 73% of the tossup] Louis Nelson used sandblasting to depict these people in an artwork surrounded by a group of 19 stainless steel sculptures titled The Column. James E. Connell III was the model for a depiction of one of these people in a sculpture that was deliberately placed across a “sea of sacrifice.” In response to controversy over a 21-year-old student winning a 1981 contest, Frederick Hart created a bronze sculpture of three of these people that included the first depiction of an African American on the National Mall. Two large black granite slabs arranged in a V-shape make up a monument dedicated to these people by Maya Lin. For 10 points, name these people whose names are etched onto the walls of the Vietnam Memorial.
ANSWER: war veterans [or soldiers; accept equivalents like servicepeople or troops; accept Army people or Navy people or Air Force people; accept Vietnam Veterans Memorial; accept Korean War Veterans Memorial; accept Three Soldiers or Three Servicemen; prompt on fighters or combatants; prompt on dead people]
[after 76% of the tossup] Ruzsa (“ROO-zhah”) names a distance function between these objects that can be used to prove a bound on sums of these objects called Plünnecke’s inequality. Functors from a locally small category into the category of these objects are the subject of the Yoneda lemma. A class is called “proper” if it is “too big” to be expressed as one of these objects. If X is one of these objects, then X has size strictly smaller than that of “two to the X” by Cantor’s theorem. Problems with constructing these objects via unrestricted comprehension were resolved with a theory of these objects named for Zermelo and Fraenkel that was later extended to include the axiom of choice. Countably infinite instances of these objects have cardinality equal to that of the natural numbers. For 10 points, name these unordered collections of elements.
ANSWER: sets [accept subsets; accept set theory]
[after 77% of the tossup] Insertion of a XA21 pattern recognition receptor into this organism prevents disease by Xoo. R. solani is a fungal pathogen of this plant that causes sheath blight. Increased lodging resistance conferred by the sd1 gene was a characteristic of the IR8 strain of this plant. Low amylose content characterizes some varieties of this plant, resulting in strong molecular adhesion between starch molecules. A variety of this plant that can synthesize vitamin A precursors is notable for its golden colour. This crop that contains no gluten can be divided into short and long grain varieties. For 10 points, what staple crop with varieties like basmati is grown in paddies?
ANSWER: rice [or Oryza]
[after 78% of the tossup] In a play by this author, a character remarks, “I hate brandy… it stinks of modern literature” while at an Italian restaurant. In that play by this author, that character reminisces about taking a speedboat to Torcello to read Yeats alone. At the end of a different play by this author, a character who had left to get a drink of water returns stripped of some of his clothing and his gun. A character in that play by this author yells “Kaw!” after reading about a “child of eight” killing a cat and a “man of eighty-seven” crawling under a lorry. Two characters in a play by this author argue about the difference between the phrases “light the kettle” and “put on the kettle” and send items like a stale Eccles (“ECK-ulls”) cake up the title device. For 10 points, what playwright of Betrayal wrote about the hitmen Gus and Ben in The Dumb Waiter?
ANSWER: Harold Pinter
[after 79% of the tossup] The first of 36 chapters in a text in this language outlines a sage’s development of the “graceful” style of drama to accompany the original “verbal,” “grand,” and “energetic” styles. The stage manager for plays in this language has a name meaning “holder of threads.” In a mad scene in a play in this language, a royal speaks to a series of animals and a river after his wife is turned into a vine for entering a forest forbidden to women. In a play in this language, a king who spares a deer in its opening encounters his son playing with a lion cub in a hermitage. That king is cursed by a sage to forget his wife until a fisherman recovers a signet ring in a play in this language. For 10 points, name this ancient language used to write Urvashi Won by Valor and The Recognition of Shakuntala by Kālidāsa.
ANSWER: Sanskrit [or saṃskṛtam] (The first line refers to Bharata’s Nātyaśāstra.)
[after 80% of the tossup] In a play from this period, Angela uses a secret panel behind a glass cupboard door to manipulate her lover into believing she is the title character. An author from this period wrote a play in which a woman complains about men before her lover saves her by grabbing her attacker’s crossbow. The Phantom Lady was a “cloak-and-sword play” from this period, which was also known for the auto sacramental. In another play from this period, the murder of the Commander goes unpunished after the title village refuses to give up his killer. In a play from this period, King Basilio tries to avoid a prophecy by locking Segismundo, the prince of Poland, in a tower. For 10 points, Lope de Vega’s Fuenteovejuna and Pedro Calderón de la Barca’s Life is a Dream were published during what Spanish literary period?
ANSWER: Spanish Golden Age [or Spanish Golden Century; or Siglo de Oro]
[after 83% of the tossup] This author is described as an “odoriferous poet” by a sentient chair before meeting the composer Benjamin Britten in Alan Bennett’s play The Habit of Art. A poem by this author advises “Let not Time deceive you, / You cannot conquer time” and promises “I’ll love you / Till Africa and China meet, / And the river jumps over the mountain.” This author considered five of his poems to be “trash” and later changed the word “or” in his most famous poem to “and.” Another poem by this author of “As I Walked Out One Evening” bemoans a man who was “my North, my South, my East and West.” One poem by this author begins with the speaker sitting in “one of the dives / On Fifty-second street” and later declares “We must love one another or die.” For 10 points, name this poet of “Funeral Blues” and “September 1, 1939.”
ANSWER: W. H. Auden [or Wystan Hugh Auden]
[after 85% of the tossup] Lugaro cells found in this structure were discovered following Marr and Albus’s theory of learning in this structure. The fusion of rhombic lips leads to the formation of this structure that lies dorsal to the fourth ventricle. Along with the pons, this structure develops from the metencephalon of the hindbrain. This structure is affected by Joubert syndrome, which leads to impaired development of this structure’s vermis. Climbing fibers terminate in large dendritic tree-forming Purkinje cells in this structure located to the rear and below the cerebrum. For 10 points, name this motor control center of the brain that connects to the spinal cord, also called the “little brain.”
ANSWER: cerebellum
[after 85% of the tossup] This author depicted Octave, a widower who expands his wife’s silk shop into a department store named The Ladies’ Paradise, in a sequel to a novel whose title has been translated by Henry Vizetelly as Piping Hot. In a novel by this author, a woman who has a stroke is unable to report the murder of a character who bites a man on the neck before drowning. A character created by this author meets the anarchist Souvarine in a novel set in “Le Voreux.” This author, who wrote a novel in which a character kills Catherine’s abusive lover Chaval while trapped in a pit, created the murderer Thérèse Raquin (“tay-REZZ ra-CAN”). Étienne Lantier leads a strike at the Montsou mines in this author’s novel Germinal. For 10 points, name this author of the Rougon-Macquart (“roo-GON-mah-CAR”) series, who defended Alfred Dreyfus in the letter “J’Accuse…!”
ANSWER: Émile Zola [or Émile Édouard Charles Antoine Zola]
[after 88% of the tossup] Russell Belk included possessions in an “extended” version of this concept. A version of this concept is influenced by partners in the Michelangelo phenomenon, which is similar to Charles Horton Cooley’s perception-based “looking-glass” form of this concept. This concept’s shaping by social experience is explored in the middle chapters of a book that pioneered symbolic interactionism. That book by George Herbert Meade is titled for “mind,” this concept, and “society.” Carl Rogers strove for the alignment of one’s “real” and “ideal” versions of this concept. The mirror test has demonstrated “awareness” of this concept in magpies and dolphins. For 10 points, a measure of one’s own worth is known as what concept’s “esteem?”
ANSWER: the self [accept self-esteem; accept self-awareness; accept real self or ideal self; accept Mind, Self, and Society; accept extended self]
[after 91% of the tossup] In quinoa, class-1 HKT proteins load this element into bladder cells. Variations in hydrogen concentration in the brain cause acid-sensing pH sensor proteins to mainly transport this element. Paralytic shellfish poisoning occurs when alkaloids like saxitoxin block the transport of this element. A symporter of glucose and this element called SGLT2 is found in proximal tubules. Subunits of proteins that conduct this element contain six transmembrane passes and are voltage-gated. An ion of this element enters neurons during action potential firing. Blockers for this element’s channels can be used to treat arrhythmia. Hydrolysis of ATP pumps three atoms of this element out of cells against potassium. For 10 points, name this element found alongside chloride in table salt.
ANSWER: sodium [or Na]
[after 91% of the tossup] A polynomial-time algorithm for a promise problem that takes one of these constructs as input would imply “NP equals RP,” according to the Valiant–Vazirani theorem. The DPLL algorithm takes one of these constructs as input. In 1972, Richard Karp exhibited chains of polynomial-time reductions stemming from a problem taking one of these constructs as input, which was shown by the Cook–Levin theorem to be NP-complete. These constructs can be placed in conjunctive normal form by applying De Morgan’s laws. These constructs’ clauses are restricted to contain at most three literals in a problem abbreviated 3SAT (“THREE-sat”), which asks if there is an input for which these constructs output “true.” For 10 points, name these constructs built by using operators like “AND” and “OR” to link variables that take the value true or false.
ANSWER: Boolean formulas [or Boolean expressions; accept Boolean formulas in conjunctive normal form; accept Boolean functions; accept Boolean sentences; accept Boolean statements; accept Boolean clauses until “clauses” is read; accept Boolean well-formed formulas or Boolean wffs; accept propositional formulas or propositional expressions or propositional sentences; accept logical formulas or logical expressions; prompt on formulas or expressions or functions or sentences or statements or well-formed formulas or wffs; prompt on clauses until read; prompt on booleans or bools; reject “Boolean circuits” or “Boolean variables”]
[after 93% of the tossup] During a storm, this character’s love interest organizes a party game in which guests count successive numbers quickly and get boxed in the ear for making a mistake. In a different novel, this character reintegrates into society after another character thwarts his plan by placing chicken blood in his guns. This character is the subject of a parody by Friedrich Nicolai, and a novel about him inspired a novel subtitled The Beloved Returns by Thomas Mann. This character reads his translation of Ossian to a character who mentions the poet Klopstock while looking at the sky. This character is buried under two linden trees after committing suicide due to his unrequited love for Charlotte. For 10 points, name this character whose “Sorrows” title an epistolary novel by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
ANSWER: Young Werther [accept The Sorrows of Young Werther or The Joys of Young Werther] (The Mann novel is Lotte in Weimar: The Beloved Returns and the Nicolai parody is The Joys of Young Werther.)
[after 97% of the tossup] A character with this profession asks another character why he thinks the Welsh will want a “multi-culti bot-verse” since they voted for Brexit. After breaking down a door, it is discovered that a character with this profession in a different work annotated “a pious work” with “startling blasphemies” and laid heaps of “white salt” on saucers. A character with this profession writes that “my life, my honour, my reason, are all at your mercy” to his friend Lanyon, who later dies of shock. A man with this profession reveals that he created a new signature by “sloping my own hand backward” in his “Full Statement of the Case.” After the murder of Sir Danvers Carew, Gabriel Utterson investigates a person with this profession. For 10 points, name this profession of Henry Jekyll, the alter-ego of Mr. Hyde.
ANSWER: medical doctor [or MD; accept Dr. Henry Jekyll; accept Dr. Ry Shelley; accept medical professional; prompt on scientist, researcher, chemist, professor, or grave robber] (The first clue is from Frankissstein by Jeanette Winterson.)
[after 99% of the tossup] John Wilson’s 2023 recording of this musical was the first complete recording of the original orchestration by Robert Russell Bennett. Miles Davis’s album Steamin’ opens with a cover of a song from this musical in which a character describes “the slickest gig you’ll ever see.” A character in this musical imagines “long tangled hair” which “falls across my face” in a song in which he vows to win a bride, “Lonely Room.” One of the female lead’s love interests sings “chicks and ducks and geese better scurry” before the imagined “surrey with the fringe on top.” Agnes de Mille choreographed this musical’s “dream ballet” in which Laurey “makes up her mind” about Jud and Curly. For 10 points, name this Rodgers and Hammerstein musical titled after a US state.
ANSWER: Oklahoma!
[after 99% of the tossup] In a play by this author, after recalling the papaya cream scrubs given to her, one character is mistakenly called Carl by an aging actress using the name “Princess Kosmonopolis.” The opening stage directions of a play by this author describe a bed with giant wicker cornucopias on the headboard that used to belong to Jack Straw and Peter Ochello. In a play by this author, one character claims that his leg injury from hurtling causes him to drink until he hears a “click” in his head. That character rants about “mendacity” to Big Daddy when he suggests that he had a romantic relationship with his teammate Skipper. For 10 points, name this author of Sweet Bird of Youth who wrote about Brick and Maggie Pollitt’s failing marriage in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.
ANSWER: Tennessee Williams [or Thomas Lainer Williams III]

Jackson Crickard ↩

[after 39% of the tossup] Generalized BEP relations can be used to predict this quantity on metallic surfaces calculated via Marcus theory. Frustrated Lewis pairs have higher values of this quantity due to steric hindrance. This quantity is divided by R in a plot of one-over-T against the natural logarithm of k. The high value of this quantity in the Haber process is due to the nitrogen triple bond. This quantity is divided by RT in the exponential of the Arrhenius equation. This quantity is determined from the difference between the transition state and reactants on a reaction coordinate diagram and can be lowered by catalysts. For 10 points, identify this quantity denoted E-sub-a, the minimum energy required for a reaction to occur.
ANSWER: activation energy [accept E-sub-a until read; prompt on energy until read; prompt on E until read]
[after 40% of the tossup] The “kinetic” form of this quantity names a type of detector that can count photons and derives from the motion of Cooper pairs in superconductors. This quantity times angular frequency equals a form of reactance. Voltage equals this quantity times the time derivative of current in an alternate form of Faraday’s law, since this quantity is defined as the derivative of magnetic flux with respect to current. Since this quantity is linearly proportional to permeability, it can be increased by a conducting core. One over the square root of this quantity times capacitance equals the resonant frequency of an oscillating circuit. This quantity measures the strength of coiled circuit components that store energy in magnetic fields. For 10 points, name this quantity symbolized L and measured in henries.
ANSWER: inductance [accept kinetic inductance detector; prompt on L until read]
[after 54% of the tossup] Gladys del Estal was killed protesting a facility of this type that ETA bombed several times in Lemóniz, Spain. Pierre Messemer’s namesake plan provided for the production of 170 facilities of this type. Rebecca Harms commissioned the TORCH Report to investigate a facility of this type. A facility of this type in Isar was shut down in April 2023, following a decades-long phase-out by the German government that received widespread criticism after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Anatoly Dyatlov was imprisoned for his actions at a site of this type during an event that formed the Red Forest. After that event, a massive concrete sarcophagus was built to surround that facility in Pripyat. For 10 points, European facilities of what type include Chernobyl?
ANSWER: nuclear power plants [or nuclear power stations; accept nuclear reactors; prompt on power plants or power stations]
[after 61% of the tossup] One technique for the purification of RNA-protein complexes makes use of these organisms in MS2 tagging. Another technique using these organisms uses pIII and takes advantage of an M13 vector. One form of these organisms, in which the Cro and cl repressors are found, was first isolated by Esther Lederberg. These organisms were used to prove that DNA is genetic material by radiolabeling with phosphorus-32 and sulfur-35 in the Hershey–Chase experiment. One variety of these organisms that can undergo a lytic life cycle but not a lysogenic life cycle has a hollow tail and an icosahedral head. Examples of these organisms include T4 and lambda. For 10 points, name these viruses that infect bacteria.
ANSWER: bacteriophages [accept lambda phage or T4 phage until read; prompt on viruses]
[after 61% of the tossup] A dark horse candidate for this office won after defeating airline executive Al Checchi (“CHECK-ee”) in this office’s only ever “blanket primary.” A holder of this office staked a successful 1994 reelection campaign on a ballot initiative to bar undocumented immigrants from public education and healthcare. A holder of this office lost support after ending the implementation of the “Save our State” initiative and facing an electricity crisis in 2001. That holder of this office was recalled in a 2003 election and was Gray Davis. This office’s most recent Republican holder was a former actor and bodybuilder. Another former actor held this office in between the tenures of Pat and Jerry Brown. For 10 points, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Ronald Reagan held what office that leads a state from Sacramento?
ANSWER: governor of California [prompt on governor by asking “of where?”] (The first and third sentences refer to Gray Davis. The second sentence refers to Pete Wilson.)
[after 63% of the tossup] A piece by this composer begins quietly with oboes and low strings playing continuous eighth notes as the violins play arpeggios, which crescendoes into a loud D major chord by the chorus and three trumpets. This composer wrote an anthem for the Foundling Hospital, the venue of charity concerts that originated the “Scratch” form of one of his works. This composer was inspired by shepherd-bagpipers to include a pastoral Pifa in a work whose libretto is by Charles Jennens. A widely excerpted sinfonia scored for two oboes and strings appears in this composer’s Solomon. This composer was commissioned to write four anthems for the coronation of George II, including Zadok the Priest. For 10 points, name this Baroque composer who included a Hallelujah chorus in his Messiah.
ANSWER: George Frideric Handel
[after 64% of the tossup] A deity has his toes cut off for using one of these objects after rejecting a first offer of gruel and accepting a second offer of a gold ring. A deity uses one of these objects called Mesektet or Mandjet after embodying his ram-headed form. The Book of Gates describes 12 minor deities who observe one of these objects passing by. Nemty is often depicted as a falcon standing on one of these objects due to his role in using them. Khepri protects one of these objects by standing in front of it and helping to battle off Apophis. By painting a wooden one of these vehicles to resemble stone, Horus wins a race against Set and becomes the king of Egypt. For 10 points, Ra rides through the underworld in a “solar” one of what seafaring vehicles?
ANSWER: boats [or ships; or barques; or ferries; or ferry; accept ferrymen; accept Ra’s solar barque]
[after 66% of the tossup] In the beginning of this text, a floating air spirit’s knees are home to a nest containing duck eggs that hatch to create heaven and earth. Scholars suggest that the virgin birth depicted in this text after Marjatta eats a berry is a result of Christianization. A woman in this text uses honey to revive her son, pieces of whose body she finds with a copper rake and sews together after seeing the omen of his bleeding hairbrush. The Mistress of the North who rules over Pohjola in this text promises her daughter to its protagonist if he can successfully forge the Sampo. After the witch Louhi steals the sun, the moon, and fire in this text, the smith Ilmarinen and the kantele-playing first man, Väinämöinen, work to restore them. For 10 points, name this national epic of Finland.
ANSWER: Kalevala
[after 66% of the tossup] During a conflict with this tribe, a military court at Fort St. Marks controversially found two British merchants guilty of arms dealing. This tribe’s twenty-year agreement with territorial governor William Pope Duval was broken in less than ten years by another leader, who executed Arbuthnot and Ambrister for spying for these people. A group of this tribe settled in Coahuila, Mexico, under John Horse and Wild Cat, and Andros Island in the Bahamas was settled by this tribe’s “Black” descendants. The Treaty of Moultrie Creek signed by this tribe was superseded by the Treaty of Payne’s Landing. A false white flag operation captured this tribe’s Chief Osceola. For 10 points, name this Florida-based tribe that fought several 19th-century wars against the US.
ANSWER: Seminoles [or Yat’siminoli]
[after 70% of the tossup] A woman in this text sleeps for the entirety of her brother-in-law’s exile so that her husband could be awake the entire time instead. This text’s author was legendarily inspired to write it after the sage Narada had him chant the name of its dedicatee to turn away from his sinful life as the bandit Ratnakar. The king of the bears, Jambavan, reminds a figure in this text who was divinely fathered by a wind god that he has the strength to reach an enemy kingdom by jumping over an ocean. The title figure of this older of the two itihasas slays a ten-headed demon before returning home and inheriting his title as king of Ayodhya. For 10 points, name this Hindu epic in which Sita, the wife of the title blue-skinned deity, is kidnapped by Ravana.
ANSWER: Ramayana (The first line refers to Urmila, the wife of Lakshmana and sister-in-law of Rama.)
[after 70% of the tossup] The southern shore of this body of water is home to the large Granot Loma log cabin mansion. The remnants of a floating hopper on this body of water is nicknamed “Uncle Harvey’s Mausoleum.” Birdwatchers flock to Whitefish Point on this body of water, which is part of an aquatic “Graveyard” where a shipwreck museum houses a salvaged bell. The cartoon-inspired Pickle Barrel House is in one of two towns on this lake named Grand Marais. This lake is connected to others to its south via a lock between two cities named Sault Ste. Marie (“SOO saint muh-REE”). This lake is home to the furthest inland oceangoing port in the world and the wreck of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald. For 10 points, Duluth, Minnesota, is on what largest North American Great Lake?
ANSWER: Lake Superior [or Gichi-Gami; or Kitchi-Gami]
[after 73% of the tossup] In one of these places in a 1935 novella, a man with the “eyes of a schoolboy surprised in the act of breaking one of the rules” is noticed by William Bradshaw. Christopher Isherwood’s Berlin Stories begins with a novella titled for the communist spy Mr. Norris and these places. In one of these places, Cyrus B. Hardman complains that he cannot find a “small, dark man with a womanish voice.” In one of these places, a man finds a handkerchief embroidered with the letter “H” belonging to Princess Dragomiroff and searches for a “scarlet kimono.” In one of these places, the disguised baby kidnapper Cassetti is stabbed by all twelve suspects. For 10 points, name this type of place where Ratchett’s death is investigated by Hercule Poirot (“air-COOL pwah-ROH”) in Murder on the Orient Express.
ANSWER: trains [or passenger cars; or passenger coaches; accept train compartment; accept Mr. Norris Changes Trains; accept Murder in the Calais Coach; accept Murder on the Orient Express until read]
[after 73% of the tossup] Anicia Juliana commissioned a copy of a work for people in this profession that is named for Vienna. Jakob Böhme revived a practice that these people used called the doctrine of signatures. A bench with a lever-based traction system is often named for a member of this profession. Dioscorides’ teachings in this profession were kept in the House of Wisdom, where they would later influence Rhazes. Jacques Dubois (“doo-BWAH”) publicly challenged his former student, Andreas Vesalius, to disprove theories used by people in this profession that were originally developed by Galen. Ancient members of this profession may have attempted to balance out the Four Humors. For 10 points, a modern-day oath is named after members of what ancient profession that included Hippocrates?
ANSWER: doctors [accept surgeons; accept healers; accept equivalents like medical professionals]
[after 73% of the tossup] In the multiple parameter case, this distribution is the limit of a statistic that sandwiches an “I inverse” term between two “theta-hat minus theta-zero” terms called the Wald statistic. In a theorem about convergence to this distribution, one parameter equals the difference in dimension between the full parameter space and the space associated with the null hypothesis. Twice the log-likelihood ratio converges to this distribution by Wilks’ theorem. The formula “rows minus one times columns minus one” gives the value of a parameter when computing a test statistic converging to this distribution, which sums values of “observed minus expected squared, all over expected” for each entry in a contingency table. For 10 points, what distribution names a large-sample hypothesis test for goodness-of-fit or independence?
ANSWER: chi-squared (“kye-squared”) distribution [reject “chi”]
[after 74% of the tossup] This author maligned social classes like the aristocratic “Barbarians” and middle-class “Philistines” for embracing sentimental “bathos.” This author was inspired by a fable contrasting the spider with the bee in Jonathan Swift’s The Battle of the Books to write that a concept which partially titles one book should be defined by “sweetness and light.” This author defined the first title concept as “the best which has been thought and said” in Culture and Anarchy. This author included the poem “To Marguerite – Continued” with the dramatic poem Empedocles on Etna. A poem by this author begins, “The sea is calm tonight” and declares “Ah, love, let us be true / To one another!” For 10 points, name this critic and poet who wrote about a “darkling plain… where ignorant armies clash by night” in “Dover Beach.”
ANSWER: Matthew Arnold
[after 75% of the tossup] These structures are central to the GOLT hypothesis, which describes changes in the morphology of WBEs due to global warming. Cymothoa exigua is a parasite that enters hosts through these structures. These structures form the exit point in streamlined organisms that utilize ramjet ventilation. Rakers in these structures filter food particles and these structures are supported by either bony or cartilaginous arches. Unlike most salamanders, external examples of these structures on stalks are present on adult axolotls. In some organisms, these structures require a constant flow of water over them to prevent drowning. For 10 points, name these respiratory structures that enable fish to breathe underwater.
ANSWER: gills
[after 77% of the tossup] The final name in this game’s credits is Seth Goldman, who designed a secret boss who blocks the path to Nyleth’s shrine. In this game, the disgraced Lugoli attacks the player by flinging green balls of muckmaggots with a ladle. The Extricator is used to remove the “Twisted Bud” that parasitizes this game’s protagonist, who must seek out Dr. Yarnaby in Greymoor to remove it. In this game’s true ending, the player character uses the Everbloom to descend into the Abyss to free Lost Lace from the hold of the Void with the aid of her half-sibling, the protagonist of a 2017 Metroidvania set in Hallownest. For 10 points, Hornet is the protagonist of what long-awaited Team Cherry game, which was unexpectedly released in September 2025 as the sequel to Hollow Knight?
ANSWER: Hollow Knight: Silksong [reject “Hollow Knight”]
[after 78% of the tossup] An author from this country wrote of paintings drawing back a curtain on the writing of a poet from here who claims “’Tis dead, ’tis dust, ’tis shadow, yea, ’tis nought” at the end of the poem “To Her Portrait.” That poet from this modern-day country charges the title subjects with patent arrogance “that fights with many weapons” in the poem “You Foolish Men.” This is the home country of both the author and subject of the biography The Traps of Faith. In a poem from this country, a woman whose breasts are “two churches of blood” is told “I travel your body, like the world.” A 584-line poem from this country opens “a willow of crystal, a poplar of water” and borrows a circular calendar for its title, “Sun Stone.” For 10 points, name this home country of Sor Juana and Octavio Paz.
ANSWER: Mexico [or United Mexican States; or UMS; or Estados Unidos Mexicanos; or EUM]
[after 78% of the tossup] In a novel set in this state, a character is beat up after asking two boys to return candy stolen from Mr. Marconi’s Tobacco and Cigars. The highly abusive real-life Dozier School was fictionalized in a novel set in this state by Colson Whitehead. In a different novel set in this state, the protagonist remarks that “the business of the head rag irked her endlessly” after her husband forbids her from showing her hair in public. The protagonist of a novel set in this state has a vision of her future husband desecrating a pear tree after she is caught kissing Johnny Taylor. In a novel set in this state, Tea Cake is shot after being bitten by a rabid dog during the Okeechobee hurricane. For 10 points, name this state where Janie Crawford tells her story in its town of Eatonville, the setting of Their Eyes Were Watching God.
ANSWER: Florida [or FL] (The Whitehead novel is The Nickel Boys.)
[after 78% of the tossup] It’s not in Canada, but the first wave of settlers at this place spent two months mining over a thousand tons of what turned out to be fool’s gold. In a proto-strike, Polish artisans in this place refused to work until they gained the right to vote. Soldiers en route to this place to stop a revolt hallucinated after eating a poisonous salad containing a plant now commonly named for this place. The shipwreck of Christopher Newport’s Sea Venture in the Bahamas led to the death of eighty percent of this place’s population during the Starving Time. A Pamunkey chief captured and brought a leader of this colony to his brother, Powhatan. For 10 points, what first permanent English settlement in the Americas was led by John Smith?
ANSWER: Jamestown (The name jimsonweed comes from Jamestown.)
[after 79% of the tossup] This painting was reimagined for a 2015 Greenpeace campaign by the collective Kennardphillipps, which depicts its setting in the aftermath of an oil spill. This painting depicts an “extraordinary conquest of a life which most people would consider hopeless” according to its artist, who was buried in this painting’s real-life setting. Despite being 30 years older than the intended subject, the artist’s wife Betsy James modeled the upper body of this painting’s central figure, who may have suffered from Charcot–Marie–Tooth disease. In this painting set in Cushing, Maine, the title person looks towards the Olson House, which sits atop a hill in the distance. For 10 points, name this painting of a woman in a pink dress crawling in a field by Andrew Wyeth.
ANSWER: Christina’s World
[after 80% of the tossup] The thermal form of this process subject to the Soret effect was investigated by Clusius and Dickel using an insulated column. The force of a “self” form of this process is given by the derivative of chemical potential with respect to distance. The Schmidt number relates the kinematic viscosity of a fluid to this process. The Wilke–Chang correlation can be used to estimate this process and uses a solute–solvent interaction factor. Random walks were related to a parabolic equation named for this process by Einstein. The letter D represents a coefficient of this process in two laws of it named for Fick. Solvent undergoes a specific form of this process across membranes in osmosis. For 10 points, name this general process where particles travel down concentration gradients.
ANSWER: diffusion [prompt on osmosis until read; prompt on Brownian motion; prompt on isotope separation by asking “what general process is used?”]
[after 81% of the tossup] Karl Taube, who wrote an essay on this substance’s symbolism partially titled for its “fetishes,” studied a god of this substance who appears in the San Bartolo murals. A foliated god of this substance is contrasted with the “first father,” a tonsured god of this substance, whose emergence from a turtle carapace is often equated with the resurrection of Hun Hunahpu. A passage into the side of a mountain that reveals the source of this substance is opened by the Hero Twins, who use it to replace the teeth of Seven Macaw. After attempts using mud and wood failed, humanity was created out of this foodstuff by Tepeu and Qucumatz. For 10 points, the Three Sisters included squash, beans, and what staple grain that features in many Mesoamerican stories?
ANSWER: maize [or corn; accept Maya maize god or tonsured maize god or foliated maize god; accept “Lighting Celts and Corn Fetishes”]
[after 85% of the tossup] Cellulose nanocrystals can enhance nucleation activity in materials made from these molecules. Examples of these molecules that can conduct electricity include P3HT. The Kuhn length of these molecules is a function of dihedral bond angle. Distribution of components in these molecules can be analyzed with the Mayo–Lewis equation. These molecules, which can follow the Flory–Schulz distribution, have a step-growth mechanism characterized by the Carothers (“ker-OTHERS”) equation. One way to characterize these molecules is by calculating the ratio of the number-average molecular weight to that of M0 (“M-naught”). For 10 points, name these molecules that consist of long repeating chains.
ANSWER: polymers [accept copolymers or polymerization or degree of polymerization; prompt on plastics]
[after 85% of the tossup] Louis Nelson used sandblasting to depict these people in an artwork surrounded by a group of 19 stainless steel sculptures titled The Column. James E. Connell III was the model for a depiction of one of these people in a sculpture that was deliberately placed across a “sea of sacrifice.” In response to controversy over a 21-year-old student winning a 1981 contest, Frederick Hart created a bronze sculpture of three of these people that included the first depiction of an African American on the National Mall. Two large black granite slabs arranged in a V-shape make up a monument dedicated to these people by Maya Lin. For 10 points, name these people whose names are etched onto the walls of the Vietnam Memorial.
ANSWER: war veterans [or soldiers; accept equivalents like servicepeople or troops; accept Army people or Navy people or Air Force people; accept Vietnam Veterans Memorial; accept Korean War Veterans Memorial; accept Three Soldiers or Three Servicemen; prompt on fighters or combatants; prompt on dead people]
[after 86% of the tossup] A composer from this country who expressed a desire to “blow the opera houses up” clashed with his teacher over a ten-movement symphony that contains “love” and “statue” themes. Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho became influenced by spectralism while studying in this country’s IRCAM (“eer-cam”) institute. The clarinet plays solo in the “Abyss of the Birds” movement of a chamber piece that a composer from this country wrote in a prisoner of war camp. A whip-crack opens a jazz-inspired piano concerto by a composer from this country who also wrote an orchestral piece that uses a repetitive snare drum ostinato, his Boléro. For 10 points, name this home country of Olivier Messiaen and Maurice Ravel.
ANSWER: France [or French Republic; or République française] (The first line refers to Pierre Boulez, who hated Messiaen’s Turangalîla-Symphonie.)
[after 86% of the tossup] Possible sources of this phenomenon are identified by intersections on a Campbell diagram. “Tongues” of this phenomenon may be found with the Mathieu equation when considering its “parametric” form. A “universal” curve for this phenomenon is quantified by the half bandwidth of a Lorentzian function. Injection locking may cause the “sympathetic” form of this phenomenon. This phenomenon occurs more intensely but in a more narrow region when the Q-factor is high, corresponding to underdamped systems with little energy loss. This phenomenon is typically distinguished from the self-exciting aeroelastic flutter that caused the collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. For 10 points, name this phenomenon in which an oscillator driven at its natural frequency grows in amplitude.
ANSWER: resonance [or word forms like resonating or resonators; accept parametric resonance; prompt on oscillation or word forms until read; prompt on vibration; prompt on instability]
[after 86% of the tossup] During this country’s Hujum campaign, body-length robes called paranjas were banned and women were forced to unveil. This country’s arrest and execution of intellectuals like Choʻlpon marked the end of its reformist Jadid movement. In the 1930s, this country’s official ethnogenesis narratives canonized national heroes such as Alisher Nava’i and Manas. This country’s fishing industry in towns like Moynaq was destroyed due to excessive cotton cultivation. Newcomers outnumbered the original population in a nomadic region of this country after mass resettlement during its Virgin Lands campaign. This country’s irrigation projects, like the Karakum Canal, diverted enough water to shrink the nearby Aral Sea. For 10 points, name this country from which Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan seceded in 1991.
ANSWER: Soviet Union [or USSR; or Union of Soviet Socialist Republics; prompt on Russia; prompt on Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic or Uzbekistan until “Uzbekistan” is read; prompt on Kirghiz Soviet Socialist Republic or Kirghizia or Kyrgyzstan until “Kyrgyzstan” is read; prompt on Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic or Kazakhstan until “Kazakhstan” is read; prompt on Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic or Turkmenia or Turkmenistan]
[after 88% of the tossup] In a story by this author, which is narrated to Miss K.I.T., Burmin falls to his knees in front of Maria after realizing she is the woman he jokingly married four years prior during the title event. While translating a work by this author, an author whose essays are collected in Strong Opinions wrote a set of “Notes on Prosody.” This author of “The Blizzard” wrote a collection framed as the stories of the mysterious landowner Ivan Belkin. Vladimir Nabokov feuded with Edmund Wilson over a translation of a work by this author composed of sonnets ending with masculine and feminine rhymes. This author wrote a poem in which Lensky challenges the title dandy to a duel after Tatyana’s name-day celebration. For 10 points, name this Russian author of Eugene Onegin.
ANSWER: Alexander Pushkin [or Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin] (Vladimir Nabokov’s essays are collected in Strong Opinions.)
[after 91% of the tossup] Timothy Jackson asserted that the outline of this symphony’s slow woodwind opening, which rises from E to G, then F-sharp to A, represents a cruciform. The last movement of this symphony uses a composite melody in the violins of [read slowly] long F-sharp, E, D, dotted C-sharp, B, C-sharp, while the third movement is simultaneously in 4/4 and 12/8. Traditionally, the audience claps between the third and fourth movements of this symphony. This B minor symphony was conducted by its composer less than a month before his death, possibly from cholera. This symphony’s allegro con grazia second movement is a 5/4 “limping waltz.” For 10 points, name this final symphony by the composer of the 1812 Overture.
ANSWER: Pathétique Symphony [or Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6]
[after 94% of the tossup] In quinoa, class-1 HKT proteins load this element into bladder cells. Variations in hydrogen concentration in the brain cause acid-sensing pH sensor proteins to mainly transport this element. Paralytic shellfish poisoning occurs when alkaloids like saxitoxin block the transport of this element. A symporter of glucose and this element called SGLT2 is found in proximal tubules. Subunits of proteins that conduct this element contain six transmembrane passes and are voltage-gated. An ion of this element enters neurons during action potential firing. Blockers for this element’s channels can be used to treat arrhythmia. Hydrolysis of ATP pumps three atoms of this element out of cells against potassium. For 10 points, name this element found alongside chloride in table salt.
ANSWER: sodium [or Na]
[after 94% of the tossup] Tom Shadbolt coined the acronym KEEPOOS after Norman Kirk barred a group of members of this profession who would later be opposed by John Minto’s Group HART. Raed Ahmed, a member of this profession, defected to the United States in response to the persistent torture of people in this profession by Uday Hussein. Avery Brundage was criticized for insensitivity after an attack on people in this profession that led to the hijacking of Lufthansa Flight 615. The murder of a Moroccan waiter in Lillehammer was retribution for the murder of people in this profession who were restricted by the Gleneagles Agreement. Operation Wrath of God sought vengeance for people in this profession who were taken hostage by the group Black September. For 10 points, the Munich Massacre targeted what people who compete at the Olympics?
ANSWER: athletes [or sportsmen; or coaches; accept specific athletes like weightlifters, runners, soccer players, or rugby players]
[after 95% of the tossup] This figure is depicted in several “Palagi heads,” one of which was reattached to its original body by Adolf Furtwängler. A 1990 sculpture of this figure used a cantilever to support the right arm in lieu of a column and is housed in a William Crawford Smith building. A frieze depicting the birth of Pandora was omitted from a “Varvakeion” copy of a sculpture of this figure. Alan LeQuire created a plaster replica of that sculpture of this larger figure for the naos (“NAY-oss”) of a building in Nashville. The artist’s patron Pericles appears on a round shield next to a coiled snake in a large chryselephantine sculpture of this figure by Phidias. For 10 points, the ancient Greek Parthenon once held a sculpture of what goddess of war?
ANSWER: Athena [accept Athena Parthenos or Varvakeion Athena or Athena Lemnia] (LeQuire’s reproduction of the Athena Parthenos was created for the Nashville Parthenon.)
[after 96% of the tossup] An eight-foot-tall sculpture of a person with this surname sits atop a pedestal engraved with the phrase “The Holiest Thing Alive” in Ashland, Pennsylvania. That person with this surname may have substituted for Maggie Graham in a painting that gained popularity after being acquired by the Musée de Luxembourg. The composition of a portrait of Thomas Carlyle was modeled after a portrait of a person with this surname that contains a butterfly monogram beside a print of the Thames hanging on a wall. Because she could not stand for long periods of time, a woman with this surname sat for a portrait in which she wears a white lace headscarf while facing to the left. For 10 points, give the surname of the model for Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1 by her son, James McNeill.
ANSWER: Whistler [accept James Abbott McNeill Whistler or Anna McNeill Whistler; accept Whistler’s mother]
[after 98% of the tossup] During a storm, this character’s love interest organizes a party game in which guests count successive numbers quickly and get boxed in the ear for making a mistake. In a different novel, this character reintegrates into society after another character thwarts his plan by placing chicken blood in his guns. This character is the subject of a parody by Friedrich Nicolai, and a novel about him inspired a novel subtitled The Beloved Returns by Thomas Mann. This character reads his translation of Ossian to a character who mentions the poet Klopstock while looking at the sky. This character is buried under two linden trees after committing suicide due to his unrequited love for Charlotte. For 10 points, name this character whose “Sorrows” title an epistolary novel by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
ANSWER: Young Werther [accept The Sorrows of Young Werther or The Joys of Young Werther] (The Mann novel is Lotte in Weimar: The Beloved Returns and the Nicolai parody is The Joys of Young Werther.)
[after 98% of the tossup] An essay describes how one of the author’s classmates used this belief to justify his failure to study for an exam, showing that proponents of this belief have abandoned reason. Proponents of this belief “delight in acting in bad faith” according to that essay by Jean-Paul Sartre. The deconstructionist Paul de Man wrote hundreds of articles defending this position for the newspaper Le Soir (“luh swar”). This belief and imperialism are analyzed in the first two sections of The Origins of Totalitarianism. During the Farías and Faye controversies, a philosopher was accused of this belief, which explains his failure to protect his mentor Edmund Husserl. The Black Notebooks of Martin Heidegger contain many expressions of this prejudice. For 10 points, name this prejudice defended in Mein Kampf.
ANSWER: antisemitism [or anti-Jewish prejudice; or Jew-hatred; or Judeophobia; accept “Anti-Semite and Jew”; prompt on Nazism or racism or prejudice or bigotry until “prejudice” is read]
[after 98% of the tossup] In a paper titled for this century, the phrase “Christian Dior… looks a more attractive proposition than Montagu Burton” is used to illustrate an economic slump caused by shortsightedness in capitalism. That essay was partly inspired by widespread currency debasement during this century’s Kipper und Wipper period. Susan Strange portmanteaued “failure” with a system named for an agreement in this century that was based on the teachings of Jean Bodin (“bo-DAN”). It’s not the 19th century, but economic stagnation during this century led Eric Hobsbawm to coin the term “general crisis” to refer to the majority of it. Demographic upheavals during this century included the Khmelnytsky (“k’mell-NITS-kee”) Uprising and the Polish Deluge. For 10 points, widespread economic instability roiled Europe during what century of the Thirty Years’ War?
ANSWER: 17th century [or 1600s]
[after 99% of the tossup] After being asked about art, a character in this novel says, “People are like trees in a forest; no botanist would think of studying each individual birch tree.” While standing by a window, a character in this novel confesses his love to a woman who marries a 46-year-old hypochondriac and inherits the estate Nikolskoe (“nee-KOL-sko-yeh”). At the beginning of this novel, a character who is compared to a jackdaw returns to a man whose brother settles in Dresden after pursuing Princess R. One of this novel’s protagonists mends an opponent’s leg immediately after a duel over the servant Fenichka. After a faulty autopsy, a character in this novel dies from an infected cut. At the beginning of this novel, Nikolai waits at his estate, Marino, for Arkady. For 10 points, Yevgeny Bazarov is a proponent of nihilism in what Ivan Turgenev novel?
ANSWER: Fathers and Sons [or Otcy i deti; or Fathers and Children]
[after 99% of the tossup] This painting provoked the comment “tribulations for later” from Pablo Picasso, who made 140 drawings inspired by its subject. Frédéric Bazille was depicted four times in a response to this painting that was cut into three pieces due to mold damage. This painting was praised for depicting “figures of natural grandeur” by Émile Zola, who asserted “no one goes to the Louvre to be scandalized.” The poses of this painting’s figures drew from an engraving of The Judgement of Paris by Marcantonio Raimondi. This painting, which was exhibited at the 1863 Salon des Refusés, depicts Victorine Meurent (“murr-ON”) beside a basket of fruit atop a pile of clothes. For 10 points, name this painting of a nude woman sitting with two clothed men by Édouard Manet.
ANSWER: Luncheon on the Grass [or Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe] (The second sentence refers to Claude Monet’s version of Luncheon on the Grass.)
[after 100% of the tossup] A drug awareness campaign led by this person was called “Meth. We’re on it.” After claiming Native American leaders colluded with drug cartels, this politician was banned from all of her state’s Indian reservations. When trying to ask this politician a question, California Senator Alex Padilla was forced to the ground and handcuffed. To avoid violating the Hatch Act, airports have refused to play a video featuring this politician blaming Democrats for a government shutdown. One of this woman’s first acts of office was to rescind the temporary protected status for Venezuelan refugees. In her autobiography No Going Back, this politician recounted how she shot her “untrainable” dog Cricket. For 10 points, what former governor of South Dakota nicknamed “ICE Barbie” is the current Secretary of Homeland Security?
ANSWER: Kristi Noem [or Kristi Lynn Arnold Noem; or Kristi Lynn Arnold]
[after 100% of the tossup] A prologue by this author recounts the development of a joke in which passengers on a steamboat to Alexandria shout “Hans” after two Lebanese men humiliate the title “Tramp from Piraeus.” In a story by this author, a Zulu man spits in the face of a gay public official named Bobby who attempts to pick him up in a bar before being beaten at a checkpoint. Back-to-back stories in a collection by this author follow the insane Man-Man and the poet B. Wordsworth. The linked stories “One out of Many” and “Tell Me Who to Kill” appear in this author’s book In a Free State. The six-fingered title character of a novel by this author lives at the Hanuman House with the Tulsi family. For 10 points, name this Trinidadian author of Miguel Street and A House for Mr. Biswas.
ANSWER: V. S. Naipaul [or Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul]
[after 100% of the tossup] The wife of a ruler with this regnal name legendarily hung herself with her girdle after she was offered hemlock, a sword, and a rope to commit suicide. Adea Eurydice was married to a ruler of this name, who was possibly rendered mentally disabled following a poisoning attempt by his father’s wife. Onomachos was killed at the Battle of Crocus Field by an army under a king with this name during the Third Sacred War. A king of this name, who was victorious at the Battle of Chaeronea, was assassinated by Pausanias of Orestis in a conspiracy that ancient sources speculated to be orchestrated by his wife, Olympias. For 10 points, Macedonian expansion began during the reign of a king with what name, the father of Alexander the Great?
ANSWER: Philip [accept Philip II of Macedon or Philip III of Macedon]
[after 100% of the tossup] In a story from this region, a king discovers two hundred soldiers hiding in bags of flour in his giant house. A character from this region invents the game of “badger-in-the-bag” to win a princess’s hand in marriage. After drinking three drops from a cauldron, a figure from this region is swallowed by a sorceress upon transforming into a grain of wheat. A queen from this region is forced to carry travelers on her back after six negligent maids frame her for eating her infant child. The golden-haired Pryderi appears in all “Four Branches” of a text from this region. A bard whose name means “shining brow” names this region’s Book of Taliesin. For 10 points, name this constituent country of the United Kingdom whose myths are contained in the Mabinogion.
ANSWER: Wales [or Cymru; prompt on Great Britain; prompt on UK or United Kingdom until read]

Tianyi Zheng ↩

[after 47% of the tossup] A ruler of these people commissioned the “Great proclamation upon the pacification of Wú” to affirm their independence. A dynasty of these people that sustained repeated naval attacks by Po Binasuor was usurped by another dynasty that only ruled for seven years. These people defeated invading armies at Bạch Đằng (“bike dong”) River three times. Literature in a native writing system called chữ Nôm flourished during a dynasty of these people that repulsed three Mongol invasions. These people had a centuries-long feud with the Kingdom of Champa to their south. These people’s Fourth Era of Northern Domination was ended by the Lam Sơn rebellion. That rebellion of these people against the Míng Dynasty was lead by Lê Lợi. For 10 points, name these people whose Trần, Hồ, and Later Lê Dynasties had their capital at modern-day Hànội.
ANSWER: Vietnamese people [or Viet; or người Việt; or Kinh]
[after 68% of the tossup] This operation’s output is estimated by simulating trajectories in the REINFORCE algorithm, one of a class of methods named for “policy” and this operation. Pseudo-residuals are fit using “weak learners” such as decision trees in a method contrasted with random forests named for this operation’s “boosting.” Since the sigmoid activation function saturates at extreme values, it is susceptible to a problem in which this operation “vanishes.” The negative learning rate scales the result of this operation applied to the loss associated with a single data point in the update step of a stochastic algorithm named for this operation. An optimization algorithm that takes steps in the opposite direction to this operation is named for this operation’s “descent.” For 10 points, name this operation that outputs a vector of partial derivatives.
ANSWER: gradient [accept policy gradient; accept gradient boosting or gradient-boosted trees; accept vanishing gradient; accept gradient descent or stochastic gradient descent; prompt on del or nabla; prompt on partial derivative until read]
[after 74% of the tossup] John Wilson’s 2023 recording of this musical was the first complete recording of the original orchestration by Robert Russell Bennett. Miles Davis’s album Steamin’ opens with a cover of a song from this musical in which a character describes “the slickest gig you’ll ever see.” A character in this musical imagines “long tangled hair” which “falls across my face” in a song in which he vows to win a bride, “Lonely Room.” One of the female lead’s love interests sings “chicks and ducks and geese better scurry” before the imagined “surrey with the fringe on top.” Agnes de Mille choreographed this musical’s “dream ballet” in which Laurey “makes up her mind” about Jud and Curly. For 10 points, name this Rodgers and Hammerstein musical titled after a US state.
ANSWER: Oklahoma!
[after 75% of the tossup] Most languages fulfill Optimality Theory’s HNuc (“H-nuke”) constraint by making these constructs obligatory, unlike Czech and Tashelhiyt (“ta-shill-HEET”) Berber. Back mutation in Old English is an example of the “breaking” of these constructs. In one Salishan language, the phrase “then he had in his possession a bunchberry plant” entirely lacks these constructs. Unlike standard Italian’s seven, Sardinian only distinguishes five of these constructs’ qualities. The transition from Middle to Early Modern English brought about a “Great” shift of these constructs. Two of these constructs are undergoing the “cot–caught” merger in American English. For 10 points, name these linguistic sounds contrasted with consonants.
ANSWER: vowels [accept vocoids; accept vowel breaking; prompt on phonemes]
[after 79% of the tossup] Coefficients named for this person decay according to a power law whose degree is two plus the smoothness of the underlying function. This person’s namesake “extension” and “restriction” operators are the subject of the disproven Mizohata–Takeuchi conjecture. An overshoot of around 9 percent results from truncating constructs named for this person due to the Gibbs phenomenon. Constant functions become Dirac delta functions under an operation named for this person defined by integrating a function times “e to the minus i k x.” Periodic functions are decomposed into sums of trigonometric functions in this person’s namesake “series.” For 10 points, what mathematician names a transform that, like the Laplace transform, translates from the time domain to the frequency domain?
ANSWER: Joseph Fourier [accept Fourier series; accept Fourier transform; accept Fourier coefficients; accept Fourier restriction operator or Fourier extension operator]
[after 80% of the tossup] In this region, thatched houses called umjip would regularly be used by semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers. A crown from this region has three antler-like structures on top, a replica of which was gifted to President Donald Trump in 2025. The word for “ridge” is the only remaining word from a language that was spoken by this region’s Gaya Confederacy. Six eggs descended from a golden bowl with a message that princes would hatch and become kings of this region according to the Samguk yusa. Dangun (“DAHN-goon”) was the legendary founder of a kingdom in this region that, during its non-Chinese Three Kingdoms Period, fragmented into states like Baekje (“BECK-jeh”) and Goguryeo. For 10 points, Silla unified what peninsula that was later ruled by the Joseon Dynasty?
ANSWER: Korea [accept Korean peninsula or Hanguk]
[after 83% of the tossup] A piece by this composer repeatedly begins phrases with the descending notes [read slowly] pickup F, E, D, A, F. The left hand plays a loud octave G to open the rondo finale of a piano sonata by this composer whose first movement’s first subject is interrupted by an ominous low G-flat trill. This composer wrote a work with a notoriously difficult piano part whose right hand plays repeated octave G’s while the left hand ascends in octaves up a G minor scale to E-flat. This composer used a repeated open fifth in the accompaniment of one work to represent a hurdy-gurdy player. A song by this composer sets a poem by Goethe in which a supernatural creature terrorizes a boy on horseback. For 10 points, name this Austrian composer of Winterreise and Der Erlkönig.
ANSWER: Franz Schubert [or Franz Peter Schubert]
[after 84% of the tossup] This process names a phenomenon in which the momentum of stellar material causes it to be carried through the tachocline, known as this process’s namesake “overshoot.” High-resolution images of the Sun’s surface appear granulated because of entities named for this process in the photosphere. This process occurs when the magnitude of the actual temperature gradient exceeds that of the adiabatic temperature gradient, according to the Schwarzschild criterion. For main sequence stars under around 0.35 solar masses, this process is the dominant form of energy transport. In a zone named for this process just below the Sun’s atmosphere, plasma circulates heat via this process’s namesake “currents.” For 10 points, name this thermal process exemplified by movement of warmer fluid upwards and cold fluid downwards.
ANSWER: convection [accept convection currents; accept convective cells; accept convective overshoot; accept convective zone]
[after 95% of the tossup] An eight-year “Great Unrest” of these events in Sweden culminated in an unusually large one in Torsåker led by Lars Hornæus. A Carlo Ginzburg book details how the Italian Benandanti were impacted by these events. Several of these events began after Anne of Denmark travelled to Scotland. Johannes Junius, the mayor of Bamberg, wrote a letter to his daughter detailing the impact of these events, which Wolfgang Behringer’s research proposes arose as a result of the “Little Ice Age.” Heinrich Kramer received a papal bull authorizing him to instigate these events after publishing a treatise on them, the Malleus Maleficarum, which details methods of torturing people to induce confessions. For 10 points, Early Modern Europe saw a “craze” of what events that sought to prove people guilty of using magic?
ANSWER: witch trials [or witch hunts; accept the Early Modern witch craze; prompt on inquisitions by asking “targeting what people?”]

Sumukh Murthy ↩

[after 15% of the tossup] This country’s Monte Pissis was first summited by Polish climbers whose expeditions also inspired the name of the Polish Glacier on the way to this country’s highest peak. This country’s far northern city of Formosa coincidentally lies near the antipode of Taiwan. In 2022, wildfires ravaged Iberá National Park in this country’s northeast, whose two rivers reminded settlers of Iraq and is thus called Mesopotamia. This country’s capital is home to the neighborhoods Palermo and the Italy-influenced La Boca. The use of pig’s blood in paint may explain the color of this country’s presidential palace, which is near the widest street in the world. For 10 points, La Casa Rosada is in what large South American country named for the Latin word for silver?
ANSWER: Argentina [or Argentine Republic; or República Argentina] (The Polish Glacier is used to ascend Aconcagua.)
[after 23% of the tossup] This ethnicity’s newspaper Hunchak named a party that revolted in the Sasun Rebellions. A politician of this ethnicity was killed in parliament by an ex-journalist whom Alexander Litvinenko alleged the Russian GRU colluded with. After the Tehcir (“teh-JEER”) Law led to mass deportations, these people sought revenge in Operation Nemesis. Hrant Dink, a member of this ethnicity, was assassinated while on trial for violating Article 301, which affirms the denial of genocide against these people. Massacres of these people were organized by the Three Pashas, who forced people of this ethnicity on death marches through the Syrian Desert. For 10 points, the Ottoman Empire organized a genocide of what people whose country’s capital is Yerevan?
ANSWER: Armenians [or Hayer] (The politician in the second line is Vazgen Sargsyan.)
[after 23% of the tossup] Dynamic dispatch for methods in C++ is typically implemented with a table of these constructs called a “vtable” (“V-table”). During serialization, these constructs are converted to a position-independent persistent version during “swizzling.” Addition to these constructs is scaled by the size of an underlying data type in an example of these constructs’ namesake “arithmetic.” Garbage collection prevents certain types of segmentation faults by cleaning up “dangling” instances of these constructs. Each node in a linked list contains both data and one of these constructs associated with the next node. In C, an asterisk can be used to access data at the location described by one of these constructs. For 10 points, name this data type that stores addresses in memory.
ANSWER: pointers [accept dangling pointers; accept pointer arithmetic; accept function pointers or method pointers; accept references; accept addresses until read]
[after 25% of the tossup] Coins from a kingdom on this body of water were found on Marchinbar island. An “accidental crusade” targeted a kingdom on the coast of this body of water later invaded by Butua. A ruler of another state on this body of water built the Husuni Kubwa and added a coral dome to a Great Mosque in its capital. That state’s “chronicle” describes its founding by the son of a ruler of Shiraz. Gold mined from the interior highlands were brought to this body of water at the port city of Sofala, which paid tribute to the Mutapa Empire while controlled by the Kilwa Sultanate. The Portuguese stronghold at Fort Jesus was besieged by Omani forces near Mombasa on this body of water. For 10 points, the Swahili coast in East Africa formed the western boundary of what ocean?
ANSWER: Indian Ocean [prompt on Swahili coast until read]
[after 28% of the tossup] This medium was used by artists in London’s Bow district to depict figures such as Kitty Clive and General James Wolfe. Ehrenfried von Tschirnhaus (“CHURN-house”) spurred the creation of works in this medium at Meissen (“MICE-in”), which often drew inspiration from the Kakiemon (“ka-kee-EH-moan”) style. After moving from Vincennes, Jean-Claude Duplessis became the artistic director of a factory that produced works in this medium at Sèvres (“SEV-ruh”). A variety of faience (“fie-ONSE”) produced in Delft emulated “export” works in this medium, which were often created in Jǐngdézhèn (“jing-duh-jun”). Early European attempts to recreate this medium lacked the kaolin (“KAY-uh-lin”) needed for its “hard-paste” type, which is less prone to chipping. For 10 points, name this medium used to produce blue-and-white Míng dynasty vases.
ANSWER: porcelain [or china; accept hard-paste porcelain or soft-paste porcelain or Chinese export porcelain; accept bone china; prompt on pottery or ceramics; prompt on clay or kaolin until “kaolin” is read; reject “earthenware” or “stoneware”]
[after 32% of the tossup] This modern-day country was the southernmost territory subject to an 1890 ordinance that banned secret societies such as the Ghee Hin. Race riots spilled over into this country from a larger neighbor on May 13, 1969, in response to a general election. This country’s CMIO model has been in use since its first census in 1824, assigning each resident to one of four racial categories. To discourage the use of a local creole whose name is a portmanteau of this country’s name and English, this country launched the Speak Good English Movement in 2000. Since this country’s 1819 founding as a trading post by Stamford Raffles, its indigenous population has become outnumbered by Tamil and Chinese migrants. For 10 points, name this island country that was briefly part of Malaysia.
ANSWER: Singapore [or Republic of Singapore; or Republik Singapura; or Xīnjiāpō Gònghéguó; or Ciṅkappūr Kuṭiyaracu] (The creole is Singlish.)
[after 40% of the tossup] A drug awareness campaign led by this person was called “Meth. We’re on it.” After claiming Native American leaders colluded with drug cartels, this politician was banned from all of her state’s Indian reservations. When trying to ask this politician a question, California Senator Alex Padilla was forced to the ground and handcuffed. To avoid violating the Hatch Act, airports have refused to play a video featuring this politician blaming Democrats for a government shutdown. One of this woman’s first acts of office was to rescind the temporary protected status for Venezuelan refugees. In her autobiography No Going Back, this politician recounted how she shot her “untrainable” dog Cricket. For 10 points, what former governor of South Dakota nicknamed “ICE Barbie” is the current Secretary of Homeland Security?
ANSWER: Kristi Noem [or Kristi Lynn Arnold Noem; or Kristi Lynn Arnold]
[after 40% of the tossup] Alfonso X of Castile established an organization for workers who produce this good, who used legally protected paths called cañadas (“kan-YAH-dahs”). During the reign of Philip V of France, a teenager’s vision inspired a conflict named for people who produce this good. This good was the primary product of a monopolistic guild called the Mesta. Due to the importance of this good in East Anglia, where it names several churches, this material names the seat for the Lord Speaker of the House of Lords. Workers who processed this good were led by Michele di Lando and seized the Palazzo Vecchio during the Revolt of the Ciompi (“CHOM-pee”). Industrial cities like Bruges were often the destination for this raw material from Wales. For 10 points, many textiles are produced from what product of sheep?
ANSWER: wool [prompt on sheep until read; prompt on clothes or textiles until “textiles” is read by asking “what raw material is that made from?”] (The second sentence refers to the shepherds’ crusade.)
[after 40% of the tossup] This ruler was a brother of a prince who wrote a treatise comparing two religions called The Mingling of the Two Oceans. It was not Timur, but following the Battle of Chamkaur, this ruler was the target of a Zafarnāma proclaiming spiritual victory. Farmans issued by this ruler banned syncretic customs such as Nowruz and jharokha darshan. After winning a civil war, this ruler accused his brother Dara Shikoh of heresy and executed him. For allegedly attempting to prevent the forced conversion of Hindus in Kashmir, this ruler executed Sikh Guru Tegh Bahadur. This ruler issued a compendium of Hanafi jurisprudence called Fatawa-e-Alamgiri and reinstated the jizya tax on non-Muslims. For 10 points, name this sixth Mughal emperor and successor of Shah Jahan, who undid most of Akbar’s policy of religious tolerance.
ANSWER: Aurangzeb [or Abul Muzaffar Muhy-ud-Din Muhammad Aurangzeb Alamgir; accept Alamgir I until “Fatawa-e-Alamgiri” is read]
[after 44% of the tossup] During this country’s Hujum campaign, body-length robes called paranjas were banned and women were forced to unveil. This country’s arrest and execution of intellectuals like Choʻlpon marked the end of its reformist Jadid movement. In the 1930s, this country’s official ethnogenesis narratives canonized national heroes such as Alisher Nava’i and Manas. This country’s fishing industry in towns like Moynaq was destroyed due to excessive cotton cultivation. Newcomers outnumbered the original population in a nomadic region of this country after mass resettlement during its Virgin Lands campaign. This country’s irrigation projects, like the Karakum Canal, diverted enough water to shrink the nearby Aral Sea. For 10 points, name this country from which Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan seceded in 1991.
ANSWER: Soviet Union [or USSR; or Union of Soviet Socialist Republics; prompt on Russia; prompt on Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic or Uzbekistan until “Uzbekistan” is read; prompt on Kirghiz Soviet Socialist Republic or Kirghizia or Kyrgyzstan until “Kyrgyzstan” is read; prompt on Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic or Kazakhstan until “Kazakhstan” is read; prompt on Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic or Turkmenia or Turkmenistan]
[after 45% of the tossup] A woman in this text sleeps for the entirety of her brother-in-law’s exile so that her husband could be awake the entire time instead. This text’s author was legendarily inspired to write it after the sage Narada had him chant the name of its dedicatee to turn away from his sinful life as the bandit Ratnakar. The king of the bears, Jambavan, reminds a figure in this text who was divinely fathered by a wind god that he has the strength to reach an enemy kingdom by jumping over an ocean. The title figure of this older of the two itihasas slays a ten-headed demon before returning home and inheriting his title as king of Ayodhya. For 10 points, name this Hindu epic in which Sita, the wife of the title blue-skinned deity, is kidnapped by Ravana.
ANSWER: Ramayana (The first line refers to Urmila, the wife of Lakshmana and sister-in-law of Rama.)
[after 52% of the tossup] In 2025, Karolína Muchová (“MOO-ho-vah”) beat this tournament’s oldest competitor since the trans woman Renee Richards 44 years earlier. In 2017, Sloane Stephens became the first winner of this tournament with a protected ranking. A player who won this tournament without dropping a set served a 109-mile-per-hour ace to defeat Leylah Fernandez in its 2021 final, becoming the only qualifier to win a Grand Slam. In her last Grand Slam match, Serena Williams lost to Ajla Tomljanović (“EYE-luh tum-LYAH-no-vitch”) in this tournament, where she called official Carlos Ramos a “thief” during her 2018 finals defeat to Naomi Osaka. This is the later of two Grand Slams whose final Amanda Anisimova lost in 2025, being beaten by its defending champion Aryna Sabalenka. For 10 points, name this chronologically last tennis Grand Slam that is held at the Arthur Ashe Stadium in Queens.
ANSWER: US Open Tennis Championships (Muchová beat Venus Williams. Emma Raducanu won in 2021.)
[after 53% of the tossup] A group of hymns in this text begin with a mahala symbol, which may either mean “woman” or “place of alighting.” Three repetitions of a hymn whose name means “that door” occur in this text, including one which provides the only vocatives in its Japujī section. Over 100 hymns in this text were written by the 13th-century mystic sheikh Bābā Farīd (“fuh-REED”). A rumalla cloth covers this text when closed; while it is read, this text is fanned with a yak-hair chauri. This text’s opening line, called the Mūl Mantar (“MOOL MUN-ter”), contains the monotheistic statement “Ik Onkar.” After a 1708 declaration at Naded, this text took on an eternal spiritual role, succeeding Gobind Singh. For 10 points, name this holy book that serves as Sikhism’s eternal Guru.
ANSWER: Gurū Granth Sāhib [accept Śrī Gurū Granth Sāhib Jī; accept Ādī Granth or Ādī Śrī Granth Sāhib Jī]
[after 53% of the tossup] After he refused to allow any lapsi back into the church, a bishop from this state accused antipope Novatian of inducing his wife’s abortion. After the early Christians Perpetua and Felicity were martyred in this city, Perpetua’s narrative of her “passion” became a widely used devotional text. Much commerce from this city shipped from its harbor, the Cothon. A road marker ten miles away from this city names the Battle of Ad Decimum, where Belisarius defeated a state led by King Gelimer. Following the Decian Persecutions, a plague bearing the name of this city’s Bishop Cyprian was described by its namesake as divine punishment. Hippo Regius was selected to replace this city by the Vandal Kingdom after their invasion of Africa. For 10 points, name this city that sent an army to invade Italy under Hannibal during the Second Punic War.
ANSWER: Carthage
[after 54% of the tossup] Gladys del Estal was killed protesting a facility of this type that ETA bombed several times in Lemóniz, Spain. Pierre Messemer’s namesake plan provided for the production of 170 facilities of this type. Rebecca Harms commissioned the TORCH Report to investigate a facility of this type. A facility of this type in Isar was shut down in April 2023, following a decades-long phase-out by the German government that received widespread criticism after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Anatoly Dyatlov was imprisoned for his actions at a site of this type during an event that formed the Red Forest. After that event, a massive concrete sarcophagus was built to surround that facility in Pripyat. For 10 points, European facilities of what type include Chernobyl?
ANSWER: nuclear power plants [or nuclear power stations; accept nuclear reactors; prompt on power plants or power stations]
[after 56% of the tossup] Nicholas Owen gained notoriety for his skill in building these people’s “holes.” Richard Topcliffe gained fame for his ability to hunt down people of this type, such as his victim Richard Southwell. After John Day was liberated from prison, he published a propaganda piece directed [emphasize] against these people called Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. The death of Edmund Godfrey inflamed fears of these people, following a fabricated conspiracy theory promulgated by Titus Oates. These people were the largest demographic targeted in the Test Act. An attempt to reduce discrimination against this religious group led to the near-destruction of the newly built Newgate Prison during the Gordon Riots. For 10 points, Elizabeth I led large persecutions of what religious group that was accused of leading the Popish Plot?
ANSWER: Catholics [or papists; prompt on priests by asking “of what religion?”]
[after 59% of the tossup] Some of the last authentic srbulja (“sir-BOOL-ya”) were produced in this polity by the Vuković family. A tradition from this polity that may originate from Empress Helena was recreated by Józef Haller (“YOO-zef HAL-lair”) after the capture of Kołobrzeg (“KOH-wob-zheg”). A coin minted by Vespasian lent the symbol of a dolphin wrapping around an anchor to a businessman from this polity. This polity, home to Aldus Manutius, was partly governed by the Council of Ten. The League of Cambrai (“com-BRAY”) was formed to counterbalance the influence of this polity. The Bucentaur was central to an annual ceremony in this polity where a ring would be thrown into the sea. For 10 points, Saint Mark was the patron saint of what polity led by doges and named for an Adriatic city with many canals?
ANSWER: Venice [or Venezia; or Most Serene Republic of Venice]
[after 60% of the tossup] The 17th-century Sinckan (“seen-kahn”) manuscripts from this island contain contracts with indigenous peoples such as the Siraya. That group was often referred to as “cooked” due to their extended contact with newer settlers, in contrast to “raw” groups such as the Atayal (“ah-TAH-yal”), Amis (“AH-meese”), and Seediq (“SAY-dick”), who lived in this island’s mountainous interior. The Spanish Fort Santo Domingo in the north of this island was captured by a Dutch expedition from Fort Zeelandia in 1642. The Kingdom of Tungning was established after the Dutch East India Company presence on this island was removed by Koxinga. Austronesian-speaking indigenous peoples were pushed into this island’s Central Mountain Range by waves of Hakka and Hokkien settlers crossing a narrow strait from China. For 10 points, name this island once called Formosa.
ANSWER: Taiwan [accept Formosa until read]
[after 61% of the tossup] One of these things partly named for Lancaster was designed by John Loudon McAdam and was unusually built by a private company due to Pennsylvania being broke. These things are the first suggestions in the title of a 1808 report calling for 20 million dollars of funding, written by Albert Gallatin. The Jeffersonian belief that the Postal Clause only gave Congress power to designate, not build, these things informed Madison’s veto of the Bonus Bill and Andrew Jackson’s veto of one of these things for Maysville. Some modern ones of these projects lay over older “traces” like one named for the Natchez. A “National” one of these projects began at Cumberland, Maryland. For 10 points, name these projects that allowed for travel between cities via wagons.
ANSWER: roads [or highways; accept National Road or Maysville Road; accept toll roads or post roads or turnpikes; accept traces until read; reject “railroads”]
[after 63% of the tossup] The first of 36 chapters in a text in this language outlines a sage’s development of the “graceful” style of drama to accompany the original “verbal,” “grand,” and “energetic” styles. The stage manager for plays in this language has a name meaning “holder of threads.” In a mad scene in a play in this language, a royal speaks to a series of animals and a river after his wife is turned into a vine for entering a forest forbidden to women. In a play in this language, a king who spares a deer in its opening encounters his son playing with a lion cub in a hermitage. That king is cursed by a sage to forget his wife until a fisherman recovers a signet ring in a play in this language. For 10 points, name this ancient language used to write Urvashi Won by Valor and The Recognition of Shakuntala by Kālidāsa.
ANSWER: Sanskrit [or saṃskṛtam] (The first line refers to Bharata’s Nātyaśāstra.)
[after 64% of the tossup] After he was photographed giving three protesters the middle finger, this politician’s gesture was mocked as the “Salmon Arm salute.” A partial nationalization of this politician’s country’s oil industry in the National Energy Program was strongly opposed by Peter Lougheed. During an event that resulted in the conviction of Paul Rose, this politician was urged to the military to intervene by Robert Bourassa. During that event that was moderated by Robert Lemieux (“lum-YUH”), this person said “just watch me,” when asked how far he would go to implement the War Measures Act in response to the kidnapping of James Cross and Pierre Laporte. For 10 points, the October Crisis occurred during the tenure of what Canadian Prime Minister of the 1970s?
ANSWER: Pierre Elliott Trudeau [prompt on Trudeau]
[after 64% of the tossup] In this city, the “Fast Form Manifest” style was used by Thierry Noir to create cartoonish heads that can be seen at the East Side Gallery. The film Night Crossing opens with footage of an event in this city that was also captured by Peter Leibing. Blue rope was used to fasten over 100,000 square meters of fabric in a “wrapping” of a building in this city by Christo and Jeanne-Claude. A Dmitri Vrubel mural in this city depicts a 1979 meeting in which Leonid Brezhnev shared a fraternal kiss. A watch was removed from a soldier’s wrist in a photograph taken atop this city’s parliament building after its capture by the Soviets. For 10 points, name this city where graffiti was broken into chunks after the 1989 fall of its namesake wall.
ANSWER: Berlin [accept East Berlin or Ost-Berlin; accept West Berlin; accept Berlin Wall] (The second line refers to Leibing’s Leap into Freedom. The third line refers to Wrapped Reichstag. The fifth line refers to Raising a Flag over the Reichstag.)
[after 65% of the tossup] After he received the deposed Peter Orseolo in his court, a king of this name invaded Hungary to remove Samuel Aba and reinstate him as king. After a failed rescue mission by Robert I of Capua, Pope Paschal II was forced to crown a king of this name. Rudolf of Rheinfelden attempted to claim the throne of a king of this name during an event where he sought peace at the castle of Matilda of Tuscany. The Concordat of Worms was agreed to by a king of this name after the Investiture Controversy reached a peak during the reign of his father of the same name. A king of this name fasted for three days in public penance after he was excommunicated by Pope Gregory VII. For 10 points, a Holy Roman Emperor of what name publicly repented during the Walk to Canossa?
ANSWER: Henry [accept Henry III Salian or Henry IV Salian or Henry V Salian; accept Heinrich in place of “Henry”]
[after 66% of the tossup] In the 1980s, “reflectivist” thinkers in this discipline took part in one of several Great Debates over this discipline. Cynthia Enloe strove to make “feminist sense” of this discipline in a book partly titled for bananas and beaches. He’s not Nozick, but a thinker in this discipline who described a theoretically impossible “night watchman” in a work arguing for an “offensive” subschool of this discipline is John Mearsheimer. The non-coercive “soft” form of one concept central to this discipline was coined by Joseph Nye. In this discipline, balance of power is favored by realists over liberalists’ democratic peace theory. For 10 points, name this discipline that studies interactions between states.
ANSWER: international relations [or IR; accept international affairs or international political economy or global affairs or foreign affairs or foreign policy or diplomacy or geopolitics; prompt on political science or political economy or policy studies or politics or government; prompt on offensive realism until “realist” is read by asking “what discipline does that school study?”]
[after 67% of the tossup] This figure is depicted in several “Palagi heads,” one of which was reattached to its original body by Adolf Furtwängler. A 1990 sculpture of this figure used a cantilever to support the right arm in lieu of a column and is housed in a William Crawford Smith building. A frieze depicting the birth of Pandora was omitted from a “Varvakeion” copy of a sculpture of this figure. Alan LeQuire created a plaster replica of that sculpture of this larger figure for the naos (“NAY-oss”) of a building in Nashville. The artist’s patron Pericles appears on a round shield next to a coiled snake in a large chryselephantine sculpture of this figure by Phidias. For 10 points, the ancient Greek Parthenon once held a sculpture of what goddess of war?
ANSWER: Athena [accept Athena Parthenos or Varvakeion Athena or Athena Lemnia] (LeQuire’s reproduction of the Athena Parthenos was created for the Nashville Parthenon.)
[after 70% of the tossup] In a paper titled for this century, the phrase “Christian Dior… looks a more attractive proposition than Montagu Burton” is used to illustrate an economic slump caused by shortsightedness in capitalism. That essay was partly inspired by widespread currency debasement during this century’s Kipper und Wipper period. Susan Strange portmanteaued “failure” with a system named for an agreement in this century that was based on the teachings of Jean Bodin (“bo-DAN”). It’s not the 19th century, but economic stagnation during this century led Eric Hobsbawm to coin the term “general crisis” to refer to the majority of it. Demographic upheavals during this century included the Khmelnytsky (“k’mell-NITS-kee”) Uprising and the Polish Deluge. For 10 points, widespread economic instability roiled Europe during what century of the Thirty Years’ War?
ANSWER: 17th century [or 1600s]
[after 71% of the tossup] Camelid bones and feline incense burners were left on this body of water by pilgrims to its Khoa Reef. Parallel canals and alternating plant beds were used in the Waru Waru irrigation technique on this body of water. A civilization centred on this body of water created the Akapana mud pyramid and Pumapunku mounds, as well as a monolithic “Gate” that depicted 32 humans and 16 condor-headed people surrounding a central figure. The Gate of the Sun was constructed near this body of water that contains the Island of the Sun and the Island of the Moon, which are pilgrimage sites for this lake’s Tiwanaku civilization. For 10 points, many Aymara live near what lake that is shared by Peru and Bolivia?
ANSWER: Lake Titicaca
[after 71% of the tossup] This thinker coined the name of a mystical “fourth force” in popularizing Stanislav Grof’s “transpersonal” subfield of their discipline. This thinker included notes on synergy and salesmen in a loosely structured book titled for this person “on Management.” Existence is the most basic of three categories in Clayton Alderfer’s simplification of a model by this thinker. This thinker distinguished fundamental deficiency-cognition from being-cognition, which occurs during euphoric “peak experiences.” This psychologist studied figures like Albert Einstein to create a theory of human motivation. For 10 points, name this psychologist who placed self-actualization atop of a “hierarchy of needs.”
ANSWER: Abraham Maslow [or Abraham Harold Maslow; accept Maslow on Management]
[after 74% of the tossup] Eric Peet and Leonard Woolley excavated a village commissioned by this ruler that is the most recently-established workmen’s village. After he pleaded with this ruler for assistance against Aziru, king of Amurru, Ili-Rapih overthrew his brother Rib-Hadda with this king’s blessing. Aidan Dodson argued that a “durbar” gathering in this ruler’s Year 12 spread a plague killing much of the royal family and led to the rise of Smenkhkare. The phrase “may the Lady of Gubla grant power” was used in a correspondence named for a city this pharaoh founded, Amarna. A bust featuring a blue khepresh crown and missing one quartz eye depicts this ruler’s wife and possible successor, Nefertiti. For 10 points, what pharaoh established worship of the sun-god Aten?
ANSWER: Akhenaten [or Nebkheperure Waenre; or Amunhotep IV; or Amenophis IV; prompt on Amunhotep or Amenophis]
[after 75% of the tossup] As exposed by Francis Fletcher-Vane, an activist known as “Skeffy” was summarily executed during this event in the Portobello Barracks. The phrase that one country “unfree shall never be at peace” was coined prior to this event during the funeral of Jeremiah Rossa. Rumors of imminent arrests were described in the forged “Castle Document” by Joseph Plunkett prior to this event. The SS Aud failed to supply arms to this event, despite negotiations by Roger Casement. During this event, a document proclaiming a republic was read on the steps of the General Post Office by Patrick Pearse. Éamon de Valera (“EH-min day vuh-LAY-ruh”) was elected to lead Sinn Féin (“shin fayn”) following this event. For 10 points, what 1916 Irish rebellion against British rule is named for a Christian holiday?
ANSWER: Easter Rising [or Easter Rebellion]
[after 75% of the tossup] It’s not in Canada, but the first wave of settlers at this place spent two months mining over a thousand tons of what turned out to be fool’s gold. In a proto-strike, Polish artisans in this place refused to work until they gained the right to vote. Soldiers en route to this place to stop a revolt hallucinated after eating a poisonous salad containing a plant now commonly named for this place. The shipwreck of Christopher Newport’s Sea Venture in the Bahamas led to the death of eighty percent of this place’s population during the Starving Time. A Pamunkey chief captured and brought a leader of this colony to his brother, Powhatan. For 10 points, what first permanent English settlement in the Americas was led by John Smith?
ANSWER: Jamestown (The name jimsonweed comes from Jamestown.)
[after 75% of the tossup] Most languages fulfill Optimality Theory’s HNuc (“H-nuke”) constraint by making these constructs obligatory, unlike Czech and Tashelhiyt (“ta-shill-HEET”) Berber. Back mutation in Old English is an example of the “breaking” of these constructs. In one Salishan language, the phrase “then he had in his possession a bunchberry plant” entirely lacks these constructs. Unlike standard Italian’s seven, Sardinian only distinguishes five of these constructs’ qualities. The transition from Middle to Early Modern English brought about a “Great” shift of these constructs. Two of these constructs are undergoing the “cot–caught” merger in American English. For 10 points, name these linguistic sounds contrasted with consonants.
ANSWER: vowels [accept vocoids; accept vowel breaking; prompt on phonemes]
[after 76% of the tossup] In this city, a judge tried to connect 13 fires and a burglary to fears of a slave uprising in the Conspiracy of 1741. Land in this modern-day city and nearby Pavonia were raided in the one-day Peach War. In this city, Edward Hart led a group of settlers who petitioned for religious tolerance in a “Remonstrance” named for part of this city. In retaliation for Kieft’s War, members of the Siwanoy tribe killed Anne Hutchinson in what is now this city. This was the largest city transferred to England in exchange for Suriname in the 1667 Treaty of Breda. The Lenape tribe traded an island in this city for 60 guilders of goods from Peter Minuit. For 10 points, Peter Stuyvesant ruled from what city that was once New Amsterdam?
ANSWER: New York [accept New Amsterdam until “Amsterdam” is read; prompt on Flushing Remonstrance or Manhattan Island or Pelham Bay by asking “what larger city is that part of?”]
[after 78% of the tossup] In 1995, the oldest recorded evidence of this practice was excavated at a site whose name means “beloved’s pass.” 47 depictions of this practice are found at a site for it called Dainzú (“dah-een-SOO”). A man participating in this practice is depicted on a stone panel with snakes sprouting from his neck. Depictions of people engaging in this practice generally depict them covering their chest with a palma and wearing heavy “yokes” on a belt. Ulama is a modern descendant of this practice, which took place in purpose-built venues shaped like a capital I from above. The Popol Vuh describes the practice of sacrificing people who participated in this activity. For 10 points, participants had to use their hips to push a rubber object through stone hoops in what pre-Colombian activity?
ANSWER: Mesoamerican ball game [or ōllamaliztli; or tlachtli; or pitz; or juego de pelota; or pok-ta-pok; or pok-a-tok; or pokolpok; accept ulama until read; prompt on games or sports]
[after 79% of the tossup] Tom Shadbolt coined the acronym KEEPOOS after Norman Kirk barred a group of members of this profession who would later be opposed by John Minto’s Group HART. Raed Ahmed, a member of this profession, defected to the United States in response to the persistent torture of people in this profession by Uday Hussein. Avery Brundage was criticized for insensitivity after an attack on people in this profession that led to the hijacking of Lufthansa Flight 615. The murder of a Moroccan waiter in Lillehammer was retribution for the murder of people in this profession who were restricted by the Gleneagles Agreement. Operation Wrath of God sought vengeance for people in this profession who were taken hostage by the group Black September. For 10 points, the Munich Massacre targeted what people who compete at the Olympics?
ANSWER: athletes [or sportsmen; or coaches; accept specific athletes like weightlifters, runners, soccer players, or rugby players]
[after 80% of the tossup] Coefficients named for this person decay according to a power law whose degree is two plus the smoothness of the underlying function. This person’s namesake “extension” and “restriction” operators are the subject of the disproven Mizohata–Takeuchi conjecture. An overshoot of around 9 percent results from truncating constructs named for this person due to the Gibbs phenomenon. Constant functions become Dirac delta functions under an operation named for this person defined by integrating a function times “e to the minus i k x.” Periodic functions are decomposed into sums of trigonometric functions in this person’s namesake “series.” For 10 points, what mathematician names a transform that, like the Laplace transform, translates from the time domain to the frequency domain?
ANSWER: Joseph Fourier [accept Fourier series; accept Fourier transform; accept Fourier coefficients; accept Fourier restriction operator or Fourier extension operator]
[after 83% of the tossup] Chinese practitioners of this tradition construct gǒngběi memorials on the graves of ménhuàn lineage founders. This tradition was introduced to Australia by Friedrich von Frankenberg, whose student Francis Brabazon built the “Avatar’s Abode” to house the leader of “[this tradition] Reoriented.” The Yan Taru movement was created to further women’s education by a West African follower of this tradition, Nana Asma’u. The concept of fanā’ is followed by baqā’, or “perpetual existence,” in this tradition whose practices often revolve around dhikr (“thicker”), or remembrance of God. Ascetics from this tradition’s Mevlevi ṭarīqa called “dervishes” perform a namesake “whirling” dance. For 10 points, what mystic Islamic tradition inspired Rumi’s Masnavī?
ANSWER: Sufism [or Taṣawwuf; or Ṣufiyyah; accept sūfēi zhǔyí; prompt on Naqshbandi or Chishti or Mevlevi until read by asking “which are part of what larger tradition?”]
[after 85% of the tossup] In this region, thatched houses called umjip would regularly be used by semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers. A crown from this region has three antler-like structures on top, a replica of which was gifted to President Donald Trump in 2025. The word for “ridge” is the only remaining word from a language that was spoken by this region’s Gaya Confederacy. Six eggs descended from a golden bowl with a message that princes would hatch and become kings of this region according to the Samguk yusa. Dangun (“DAHN-goon”) was the legendary founder of a kingdom in this region that, during its non-Chinese Three Kingdoms Period, fragmented into states like Baekje (“BECK-jeh”) and Goguryeo. For 10 points, Silla unified what peninsula that was later ruled by the Joseon Dynasty?
ANSWER: Korea [accept Korean peninsula or Hanguk]
[after 90% of the tossup] The first English translation of a concept posited by this thinker was made by Alexander Tille 13 years before a controversial rendering by Thomas Common. A work lambasted for its existentialist portrayal of this thinker that dubs him “Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist” was written by Walter Kaufmann. This thinker borrowed the term “Tschandala” from a translation of the Laws of Manu to contrast focuses on “breeding” and “taming” in religious moralities. His sister Elizabeth Förster posthumously published the works of this philosopher, who wrote that embracing amor fati would allow humans to accept “eternal recurrence.” For 10 points, name this German philosopher who developed the Übermensch in his book Thus Spake Zarathustra.
ANSWER: Friedrich Nietzsche [or Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche] (The first line refers to the Übermensch, which Alexander Tille rendered as “Beyond-man” and Thomas Common translated as “Superman.”)
[after 93% of the tossup] The causative agent of this disease contains a pE88 plasmid encoding several ABC transporters. This disease may cause Risus sardonicus and more general opisthotonus (“opp-is-THOT-uh-nuss”) also seen in cerebral palsy or strychnine poisoning. Exotoxins present in this disease include a cholesterol-dependent hemolysin and a ganglioside-binding protein that cleaves synaptobrevin. Renshaw cells are inactivated by this disease, which prevents the release of inhibitory neurotransmitters. It’s not botulism, but this disease is caused by a Clostridium bacterium and has symptoms that can be alleviated by benzodiazepines. A toxoid from this disease is included alongside diphtheria and pertussis in the Tdap vaccine. For 10 points, name this disease that causes muscle spasms associated with exposure to rusty nails.
ANSWER: tetanus [or lockjaw]
[after 94% of the tossup] This author added a character named Caroline who goes to milk a cow in a rewritten version of a scene that appears in an earlier work which lasts for “nearly two hours.” This author described ships “robed in purest white” that seemed like “shrouded ghosts” in a work in which Sandy gives the protagonist a root to keep on the right side of his body to ward off harm. The protagonist of a work by this author learns how to read from the Columbian Orator after being forbidden by Hugh Auld. William Lloyd Garrison wrote an introduction to this author’s memoir, which depicts his fight against Edward Covey. For 10 points, name this author who wrote about escaping his enslavement in three autobiographies including My Bondage and My Freedom and a Narrative in the Life of himself, An American Slave.
ANSWER: Frederick Douglass [or Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey; accept Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave]
[after 94% of the tossup] A coordinate-free definition of this operation relies on the top exterior power defining a one-dimensional space. SL(n) (“S-L-N”) is the kernel of a homomorphism defined by this operation from GL(n) (“G-L-N”) to the non-zero reals under multiplication. Unusually, this operation is only introduced towards the end of a textbook by Sheldon Axler called Linear Algebra Done Right, which defines this operation as the unique alternating multilinear form up to scaling. The output of this operation equals the constant term of the characteristic polynomial. The general linear group excludes matrices which output zero under this operation since they are non-invertible. For 10 points, name this operation that, for a two-by-two matrix, equals “a d minus b c.”
ANSWER: determinant [or det]
[after 96% of the tossup] This food names a “Curtain” dividing the affluent Hampshire County from Hampden County in western Massachusetts. A 1975 book by William Shurtleff and Akiko Aoyagi popularized this food in the West. Newly-released prisoners eat this food in a South Korean custom. Low-quality building projects are derisively called “dregs” of this food in China. British Home Secretary Suella Braverman decried Just Stop Oil protesters as “wokerati” who read the Guardian and eat this food. This food, which titles a parody of Super Meat Boy by PETA, is used in “pock-marked old woman” and “stinky” dishes. Coagulation in making this food results in varieties called “firm” or “silken.” For 10 points, name this block-shaped food made from fermented soybeans.
ANSWER: tofu [or bean curd; or dòufu; or dubu; or tubu; accept Super Tofu Boy; accept tofu-dreg projects, dòufuzhā gōngchéng, tofu projects, or tofu buildings; accept Tofu Curtain; accept mápó tofu; accept stinky tofu or chòu dòufu; prompt on soy or soybeans]
[after 98% of the tossup] This substance lies underneath so-called false bottoms, which form through double diffusion. This substance may become trapped in pockets following its namesake rejection. It’s not related to thermodynamics, but the potential density of this substance is displayed on T-S diagrams. Deviations from this substance’s VSMOW standard are used to identify periods during which it becomes enriched with oxygen-18 due to low temperatures. This dense substance lies below Ghyben–Herzberg lenses, which share their name with an equation used to model its “intrusion.” The SMOC (“S-mock”) and AMOC (“A-mock”) drive the thermohaline circulation of this substance. Reverse osmosis is often used to purify, for 10 points, what substance that mixes with a fresh counterpart in estuaries?
ANSWER: seawater [or ocean water; accept brine or saline or saltwater; accept brine pockets or brine rejection or saltwater intrusion or brine pools; accept brackish water or brack; prompt on water; reject “freshwater” or “salt” or “ice”]
[after 100% of the tossup] The “kinetic” form of this quantity names a type of detector that can count photons and derives from the motion of Cooper pairs in superconductors. This quantity times angular frequency equals a form of reactance. Voltage equals this quantity times the time derivative of current in an alternate form of Faraday’s law, since this quantity is defined as the derivative of magnetic flux with respect to current. Since this quantity is linearly proportional to permeability, it can be increased by a conducting core. One over the square root of this quantity times capacitance equals the resonant frequency of an oscillating circuit. This quantity measures the strength of coiled circuit components that store energy in magnetic fields. For 10 points, name this quantity symbolized L and measured in henries.
ANSWER: inductance [accept kinetic inductance detector; prompt on L until read]
[after 100% of the tossup] This class of reactions produces a family of toxic compounds that have two benzene rings connected by two oxygen atoms at the para positions, the dioxin family. The Zeldovich mechanism explains the formation of a type of nitrogen-containing molecule during these reactions. Preventing the backflow of one of these reactions in stacks can be accomplished with sweep gas. Gaseous products of these reactions react with nitrogen oxides and light to generate ozone. In these reactions, gases pass over platinum and rhodium to limit the release of VOCs. Those catalytic converters following these reactions reduce the formation of photochemical smog in cities. For 10 points, name these reactions in which a chemical reacts with an oxidant like oxygen to release heat and light.
ANSWER: combustion [or burning]

Nolan Dannels ↩

[after 36% of the tossup] This author is described as an “odoriferous poet” by a sentient chair before meeting the composer Benjamin Britten in Alan Bennett’s play The Habit of Art. A poem by this author advises “Let not Time deceive you, / You cannot conquer time” and promises “I’ll love you / Till Africa and China meet, / And the river jumps over the mountain.” This author considered five of his poems to be “trash” and later changed the word “or” in his most famous poem to “and.” Another poem by this author of “As I Walked Out One Evening” bemoans a man who was “my North, my South, my East and West.” One poem by this author begins with the speaker sitting in “one of the dives / On Fifty-second street” and later declares “We must love one another or die.” For 10 points, name this poet of “Funeral Blues” and “September 1, 1939.”
ANSWER: W. H. Auden [or Wystan Hugh Auden]
[after 48% of the tossup] A character in this book opens a box to find coals instead of a feather dropped by Gabriel during the Annunciation. In this book, a character marries Neerbal after being taught how to “put the devil back in Hell” by the monk Rustico. A poem by John Keats adapts a story in this book in which a woman cries every day over a pot of basil containing her lover’s severed head. In a different story in this collection, a man wins a woman’s affections after cooking his pet falcon for her as a meal. A nobleman pretends to murder his children to test the loyalties of his wife Griselda in this collection’s final story, one of several told by Dioneo over 10 days. For 10 points, Florentines fleeing the Black Death tell stories to each other in what collection by Giovanni Boccaccio?
ANSWER: The Decameron [or Decamerone]
[after 51% of the tossup] In a story by this author, which is narrated to Miss K.I.T., Burmin falls to his knees in front of Maria after realizing she is the woman he jokingly married four years prior during the title event. While translating a work by this author, an author whose essays are collected in Strong Opinions wrote a set of “Notes on Prosody.” This author of “The Blizzard” wrote a collection framed as the stories of the mysterious landowner Ivan Belkin. Vladimir Nabokov feuded with Edmund Wilson over a translation of a work by this author composed of sonnets ending with masculine and feminine rhymes. This author wrote a poem in which Lensky challenges the title dandy to a duel after Tatyana’s name-day celebration. For 10 points, name this Russian author of Eugene Onegin.
ANSWER: Alexander Pushkin [or Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin] (Vladimir Nabokov’s essays are collected in Strong Opinions.)
[after 59% of the tossup] In a 2018 novel, this character is reimagined into two teenage boys who fall in love and kiss as its narrator claims that “history is enough to make a future.” This character is charged by a bull while stuck in a tree in a novel that ends with him claiming to have “had an accident… so may you all.” This character learns about the world from The Shaper and an omniscient dragon in a novel by John Gardner. A man is discouraged from fighting this character by Unferth, who believes this character will win. A giant’s sword melts from the hilt after it is used to cut this character’s head from his corpse, which is taken as a trophy after the killing of his “monstrous hell-bride” of a mother. For 10 points, Beowulf first defends Heorot by fighting what monster, a “descendant of Cain” who dies after his arm is ripped off?
ANSWER: Grendel (The first clue refers to Maria Dehvana Headley’s The Mere Wife. The John Gardner novel is Grendel.)
[after 60% of the tossup] Louis Nelson used sandblasting to depict these people in an artwork surrounded by a group of 19 stainless steel sculptures titled The Column. James E. Connell III was the model for a depiction of one of these people in a sculpture that was deliberately placed across a “sea of sacrifice.” In response to controversy over a 21-year-old student winning a 1981 contest, Frederick Hart created a bronze sculpture of three of these people that included the first depiction of an African American on the National Mall. Two large black granite slabs arranged in a V-shape make up a monument dedicated to these people by Maya Lin. For 10 points, name these people whose names are etched onto the walls of the Vietnam Memorial.
ANSWER: war veterans [or soldiers; accept equivalents like servicepeople or troops; accept Army people or Navy people or Air Force people; accept Vietnam Veterans Memorial; accept Korean War Veterans Memorial; accept Three Soldiers or Three Servicemen; prompt on fighters or combatants; prompt on dead people]
[after 63% of the tossup] This author’s death inspired an author to state “a light was gone” in an interview featured in a New Yorker article partially titled for an “Infinite Footnote to” this author. In a story by this author that inspired a work of hypertext fiction featuring postal clerk Emily Runbird, a man who has just arrived in Ashgrove takes a child’s advice to bear left at every crossroad. In a story by this author, the poet Carlos Daneri attempts to save a cellar containing a point in space that contains all other points. The title construct of a story by this author is analogized to a guessing game where the answer is chess by the Sinologist Dr. Albert before Richard Madden arrests Yu Tsun. For 10 points, name this Argentinian author of “The Aleph” and “The Garden of Forking Paths.”
ANSWER: Jorge Luis Borges [or Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges] (The first line refers to “César Aira’s Infinite Footnote to Borges.” The second line refers to Stuart Moulthrop’s Victory Garden.)
[after 64% of the tossup] In a play by this author, after recalling the papaya cream scrubs given to her, one character is mistakenly called Carl by an aging actress using the name “Princess Kosmonopolis.” The opening stage directions of a play by this author describe a bed with giant wicker cornucopias on the headboard that used to belong to Jack Straw and Peter Ochello. In a play by this author, one character claims that his leg injury from hurtling causes him to drink until he hears a “click” in his head. That character rants about “mendacity” to Big Daddy when he suggests that he had a romantic relationship with his teammate Skipper. For 10 points, name this author of Sweet Bird of Youth who wrote about Brick and Maggie Pollitt’s failing marriage in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.
ANSWER: Tennessee Williams [or Thomas Lainer Williams III]
[after 66% of the tossup] A character in a play by this author miraculously turns into a beautiful maid after her brother, the Fat Gentleman, shoots at her. This author’s play Frenzy for Two, Or More is often paired with a play in which a character created by this author shows off his ability to fly. A logician uses a syllogism to prove that a dog is a cat in a play by this author of A Stroll in the Air. In an “anti-play” by this author, which is set in an “English interior, with English armchairs,” the Smiths and the Martins engage in surreal conversation after the Fire Chief mentions the title character. In a play by this author of The Lesson, the typist Daisy leaves Bérenger after every character except for him turns into the title animal. For 10 points, name this absurdist Romanian-French playwright of The Bald Soprano and Rhinoceros.
ANSWER: Eugène Ionesco [or Eugen Ionescu] (The play in the first line is The Picture.)
[after 69% of the tossup] In this state, Tina Bell fronted Bam Bam, the first band to record at Reciprocal Recording. The all-female opening night of a music festival in this state saw the live debut of Heavens to Betsy, whose split led Corin Tucker to form Sleater-Kinney. A band from this state spent over 5 years on Billboard with their album Ten, which contains a song claiming “thoughts arrive like butterflies.” This state’s “riot grrl” movement included acts like Bikini Kill, whose frontwoman Kathleen Hanna inspired a hit by another band from this state by claiming its lead singer smelled like a deodorant brand. Krist Novoselic was the bassist of a band from this state who included songs like “Lithium” and “Come As You Are” on their album Nevermind. For 10 points, grunge bands like Pearl Jam and Nirvana formed in what US state’s city of Seattle?
ANSWER: Washington [or State of Washington; or WA]
[after 69% of the tossup] A 1978 group of people in this profession called “Thirty-Five New Guys” included six pioneering female members like Shannon Lucid. An actress diversified this profession through a national outreach campaign with the company Woman in Motion. A person best known for this profession publicly came out via her obituary and was once asked if 100 tampons was appropriate for one week in this profession. Actress Nichelle Nichols inspired people in this profession like Mae Jemison. In a televised accident investigated by the Rogers Commission, members of this profession including Judith Resnik perished alongside a teacher trained for this profession named Christa McAuliffe. For 10 points, name this profession of Sally Ride.
ANSWER: astronauts [prompt on scientists; prompt on engineers; prompt on aviators or pilots; prompt on geologists; prompt on schoolteachers until “teacher” is read] (Nichelle Nichols was the original portrayer of Uhura in Star Trek.)
[after 70% of the tossup] A satirical 1978 essay describes a hypothetical in which these people claim superiority due to an exclusive connection to lunar phases. Kate Manne coined a portmanteau about how sympathy prioritizes the “bright future” of these people over others’ suffering. The “adventurer” is contrasted with the “sub-[these people]” in a section on approaches to personal freedom from The Ethics of Ambiguity. In an essay inspired by John Berger’s Ways of Seeing entitled “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” Laura Mulvey describes these people’s objectifying “gaze.” These people are defined as “the Subject” and contrasted with “the Other” in Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex. For 10 points, feminist philosophers often critique “the patriarchy” for prioritizing what people?
ANSWER: men [or males; or boys; accept male gaze; accept sub-men; accept “If Men Could Menstruate”] (The essay in the first line is “If Men Could Menstruate” by Gloria Steinem. The portmanteau is “himpathy.”)
[after 73% of the tossup] In a novel by this author, Terry is exiled for trying to rape his wife Alima. In that novel by this author, the sociology student Vandyck Jennings and two of his friends investigate an unknown region whose inhabitants reproduce through parthenogenesis. This author wrote a short story in which one character consumes cod-liver oil instead of ale, wine, and red meat. The protagonist of that story by this author requests to remove its title object, describing it as “a debased Romanesque with delirium tremens.” This author wrote a story in which the protagonist exclaims “I’ve got out at last… in spite of you and Jane” after she is prescribed a rest cure by her husband John. For 10 points, name this author who described a woman imprisoned by the pattern of the title decoration in The Yellow Wallpaper.
ANSWER: Charlotte Perkins Gilman [or Charlotte Anna Perkins Gilman; or Charlotte Perkins Stetson] (The novel is Herland.)
[after 73% of the tossup] In the beginning of this text, a floating air spirit’s knees are home to a nest containing duck eggs that hatch to create heaven and earth. Scholars suggest that the virgin birth depicted in this text after Marjatta eats a berry is a result of Christianization. A woman in this text uses honey to revive her son, pieces of whose body she finds with a copper rake and sews together after seeing the omen of his bleeding hairbrush. The Mistress of the North who rules over Pohjola in this text promises her daughter to its protagonist if he can successfully forge the Sampo. After the witch Louhi steals the sun, the moon, and fire in this text, the smith Ilmarinen and the kantele-playing first man, Väinämöinen, work to restore them. For 10 points, name this national epic of Finland.
ANSWER: Kalevala
[after 74% of the tossup] These phenomena express “conceptions” of things like the world according to Calvin Hall’s continuity theory. In the AIM (“A-I-M”) model, these phenomena are caused by interactions between aminergic and cholinergic neurons that generate PGO waves; that model of these phenomena is based on Hobson and McCarley’s activation-synthesis model. Echidnas’ large frontal cortex inspired Crick and Mitchison to theorize that these phenomena cause “reverse learning.” Antti Revonsuo theorized that these phenomena simulate probable threats. These phenomena act as “wish fulfillment” according to an 1899 book that described a precursor to the Oedipus complex. For 10 points, Sigmund Freud wrote about the “interpretation” of what phenomena that occur during REM sleep?
ANSWER: dreams [or dreaming; accept The Interpretation of Dreams or Die Traumdeutung; prompt on sleep or REM sleep until “REM” is read]
[after 74% of the tossup] A speaker in one of these title places notes that “The others have gone; they were tired… But I would rather be standing here” in a poem that declares “There is something terrible about a child.” Charlotte Mew wrote a poem set at one of these places “In Nunhead.” A “school” of poetry named for these places included Thomas Parnell and Robert Blair. In a poem set in one of these places, the speaker imagines “a heart once pregnant with celestial fire” and “hands” that “wak’d to ecstasy the living lyre.” The speaker of a poem reflects that “the paths of glory led but to” one of these places in a poem that includes an epitaph to “A youth to Fortune and to Fame unknown” and begins “The curfew tolls the knell of parting day.” For 10 points, an elegy by Thomas Gray is set in a “Country” type of what location?
ANSWER: graveyards [or cemeteries; or graves; or churchyards; accept “In Nunhead Cemetery”; accept “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”; prompt on churches by asking “in what part of the church is that poem set?”]
[after 76% of the tossup] This book posits that geometricians determine properties from the construction of figures in a section on “What Philosophy Is.” The Foole’s claim that “there is no such thing as Justice” is rebutted by the claim that broken covenants lead to injustice in this book after the third of its 19 laws of nature is posed. According to this book, misinterpretation of scripture can drive a state to become a “Confederacy of Deceivers.” The fear of violent death is called summum malum in this book and cited as the reason humans form states in its first section, “Of Man.” This book characterizes the “state of nature” as a “war of all against all” that is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” For 10 points, name this 1651 book that advocates for rule by an absolute sovereign, written by Thomas Hobbes.
ANSWER: Leviathan [accept Leviathan or The Matter, Forme and Power of a Commonwealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil]
[after 76% of the tossup] This poet, who exhorted the earth for teaching “the lesson of poverty, / having nothing and wanting nothing,” wrote that the “tongue has one customer, the ear” in a poem whose speaker asserts “Anyone apart from someone he loves / understands what I say.” The speaker laments that “the keeping away is pulling me in” in a poem by this author that opens by asking a “dissolver of sugar” to “dissolve me, / if this is the time.” The disappearance of this poet’s teacher inspired the dedication of many of the 90 ghazals in one of his collections. This poet has been cited as the “best-selling poet in the US” due to Coleman Barks’s translations, one of which renders an opening line as “Listen to the story told by the reed.” For 10 points, name this Sufi poet of the Masnavi, or Spiritual Couplets.
ANSWER: Rumi [or Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī] (Rumi’s teacher, Shams of Tabriz, is the dedicatee of many poems in the Divan-i Kabir.)
[after 77% of the tossup] This author wrote a story in which a son recounts how his classmate was spanked because the teacher made him color with red crayons instead of green. That story is referenced in this author’s memoir Life Among the Savages when a teacher says, “We don’t have any Charles in the kindergarten.” In a novel by this author, the protagonist wonders “why don’t they stop me?” before driving her car into a tree. In that novel by this author, John Montague investigates messages saying “Help Eleanor come home” in the title location. At the end of this author’s most famous story, Tessie Hutchinson screams “it isn’t fair, it isn’t right” before being stoned to death during the title event. For 10 points, name this author of The Haunting of Hill House and “The Lottery.”
ANSWER: Shirley Jackson
[after 79% of the tossup] A Joy Harjo poem that quotes this poem begins, “We were running out of breath, as we ran out to meet ourselves.” A bell hooks book titled for this poem is subtitled “Black Men and Masculinity.” The setting of this poem titles a poetic form in which the last word of each line makes a quote and was pioneered by Terrence Hayes. This poem’s author said she was inspired to write this poem after walking past a pool hall in Chicago and thinking “I wonder how they feel about themselves?” This poem from the collection The Bean Eaters is narrated by “pool players” at the “Golden Shovel.” The characters in this poem “Strike straight,” “Jazz June,” and “Die soon.” For 10 points, name this eight-line poem where every line except for the last ends with the word “We,” by Gwendolyn Brooks.
ANSWER: “We Real Cool”
[after 79% of the tossup] A thinker from this country traced how its people sequentially obtained civil, political, and social rights in the essay “Citizenship and Social Class.” A feminist abolitionist thinker from this country wrote Society in America and popularized the works of Auguste Comte through her translations. The “mother of sociology” Harriet Martineau is from this country, where the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies was founded by Jamaica-born Marxist thinker Stuart Hall. An 1845 book compares the illness and death rates of this country’s rural and industrialized populations to document capitalist exploitation, inspiring Marx to collaborate with its author. For 10 points, Friedrich Engels wrote a book on the “Condition of the Working Class in” what country home to the University of Birmingham?
ANSWER: England [or United Kingdom; or UK; or Great Britain; accept Condition of the Working Class in England; reject “Scotland” or “Wales” or “Northern Ireland”] (The first sentence refers to T. H. Marshall.)
[after 80% of the tossup] This text describes how killing a holy hedgehog results in extirpation of the soul for nine generations. This text was originally split into 21 sections called nasks, corresponding to the 21 words of one mantra. A repeated description of a god “who is all death” in one part of this text describes Winter as an “evil creation.” This text’s name is often coupled with its Zend commentaries, with which it is often conflated. The sin of burying corpses is described as “unforgivable” in one part of this text called the Vendidad. One of the only sections of this larger work credited to its central prophet are the Gathas, in which the daēvas are minor evil gods loyal to Angra Mainyu who work against Ahura Mazdā. For 10 points, name this central text of Zoroastrianism.
ANSWER: Avesta [accept Zend-Avesta; prompt on Vendidad or Gathas until read]
[after 82% of the tossup] The narrator of a poem by this author described breaking “the copious curls upon my head” because her aunt “liked smooth-order hair.” In a different poem by this author, the speaker encourages the addressee to “Gather the north flowers to complete the south / And catch the early love up in the late.” In a long poem by this author, Marian Erle has a child out of wedlock and refuses to marry Romney, who proposes to the title character instead. Virginia Woolf wrote about this author’s cocker spaniel getting kidnapped in the fictional biography Flush. This author wrote “call me by my pet name” in a collection in which a different poem begins, “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.” For 10 points, name this poet who wrote the nine-book “novel in verse” Aurora Leigh and Sonnets from the Portuguese.
ANSWER: Elizabeth Barrett Browning [or Elizabeth Barrett Browning; accept Elizabeth Barrett; prompt on Browning; reject “Robert Browning”]
[after 82% of the tossup] This artist placed images of 19th-century women on the floor of an exhibition entrance for the work Horizontal Memory. Eadweard Muybridge inspired a video work by this artist consisting of close-up shots of 15 different people’s buttocks. An early work by this artist consists of the single instruction to leave a canvas “on the floor or in the snow.” In one performance, this artist sat onstage while audience members cut out pieces of her clothing until she was almost nude. This Fluxus artist was photographed by Annie Leibovitz lying clothed in bed as her naked husband kisses her, shortly before his murder. For 10 points, name this Japanese artist whose works include collaborations with her husband John Lennon.
ANSWER: Yoko Ono [or Ono Yoko]
[after 85% of the tossup] In one of these people’s stories, a man accidentally kills his nephew by burning his house down in an attempt to get him away from his two wives. Two lizard-men in these people’s mythology castrate Kidili for attempting to assault the women who eventually become the Pleiades and are chased across the sky by Jukurra-Jukurra. To describe the transcendence of time in these people’s stories, W. E. H. Stanner coined the term “everywhen.” In one of these people’s stories, the menstrual blood of one of the Wawalag sisters attracts a waterhole-dwelling creature to swallow them. These people tell stories of songlines formed during the Dreamtime by traveling creator spirits such as the Rainbow Serpent. For 10 points, name these native people of Australia.
ANSWER: Aboriginal Australians [or Aborigines; accept specific subgroups like Kukatja or Yolngu; prompt on indigenous Australians or native Australians]
[after 85% of the tossup] In a story from this region, a king discovers two hundred soldiers hiding in bags of flour in his giant house. A character from this region invents the game of “badger-in-the-bag” to win a princess’s hand in marriage. After drinking three drops from a cauldron, a figure from this region is swallowed by a sorceress upon transforming into a grain of wheat. A queen from this region is forced to carry travelers on her back after six negligent maids frame her for eating her infant child. The golden-haired Pryderi appears in all “Four Branches” of a text from this region. A bard whose name means “shining brow” names this region’s Book of Taliesin. For 10 points, name this constituent country of the United Kingdom whose myths are contained in the Mabinogion.
ANSWER: Wales [or Cymru; prompt on Great Britain; prompt on UK or United Kingdom until read]
[after 86% of the tossup] This author depicted Octave, a widower who expands his wife’s silk shop into a department store named The Ladies’ Paradise, in a sequel to a novel whose title has been translated by Henry Vizetelly as Piping Hot. In a novel by this author, a woman who has a stroke is unable to report the murder of a character who bites a man on the neck before drowning. A character created by this author meets the anarchist Souvarine in a novel set in “Le Voreux.” This author, who wrote a novel in which a character kills Catherine’s abusive lover Chaval while trapped in a pit, created the murderer Thérèse Raquin (“tay-REZZ ra-CAN”). Étienne Lantier leads a strike at the Montsou mines in this author’s novel Germinal. For 10 points, name this author of the Rougon-Macquart (“roo-GON-mah-CAR”) series, who defended Alfred Dreyfus in the letter “J’Accuse…!”
ANSWER: Émile Zola [or Émile Édouard Charles Antoine Zola]
[after 86% of the tossup] In one work, this thinker used the example of Castor and Pollux sleeping in alternating shifts to demonstrate that the soul is not always thinking. A chapter in a work by this thinker contrasts certain knowledge with arguments that are likely to be true based on “probability,” or agreement between our own and others’ experiences. This thinker described a central concept being affected by sensory experiences of intrinsic “primary qualities” and subjective “secondary qualities.” This thinker argued that reflection or sensation informs all “objects of thinking” to refute “innate ideas” in favor of the human mind as a blank slate, or tabula rasa. For 10 points, name this Enlightenment philosopher who wrote An Essay Concerning Human Understanding.
ANSWER: John Locke
[after 87% of the tossup] A novel about a character with this occupation includes a set of “Commendatory Verses” by fictional characters, including Urganda the Unknown. A character with this occupation changes his nickname to be “of the Lions” instead of one about having a “Sorrowful Face.” A man with this occupation is described with the epithet Innamorato in the title of a poem by Matteo Boiardo. In a novel about a character with this occupation, the romance Amadis of Gaul is among the books taken out of a library to be burned by a barber and priest. That novel contains references to an epic poem about a man with this occupation titled Orlando Furioso. A character who names his horse Rocinante aspires to hold this occupation and recruits the laborer Sancho Panza. For 10 points, name this chivalric profession held by Don Quixote.
ANSWER: knight [or knight-errant; or caballero; or caballero andante; accept “Knight of the Lions” or “Knight of the Sorrowful Face”]
[after 89% of the tossup] One disease affecting these structures is X-chromosome linked to mutations in the DKC1 gene and may require bone marrow transplants. Dyskerin helps to stabilize a catalytic complex that acts on this structure. Deficiencies in maintaining these structures, which are measured by the Q-FISH technique, are a major risk factor for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. Cajal bodies may serve to recruit RNA structures that act on these structures. The Hayflick limit is based on the length of these structures that can be extended by TERT. Shortened examples of these structures that lose their shelterin cap can trigger senescence, and these structures consist of repeating TTAGGG motifs. For 10 points, what DNA sequences protect the ends of chromosomes?
ANSWER: telomeres
[after 89% of the tossup] In one novel, a character with this profession crushes baby birds under a stone to save them from the sadistic Tom Bloomfield. That character with this profession is reunited with the dog Snap while walking along the beach at the end of a novel published under the pen name Acton Bell. In another novel, the employer of a character with this profession asks “does my forehead not please you?” and “do you think me handsome?” to which that character with this profession replies bluntly, “No, sir.” That character with this profession travels to Ferndean, and helps a man blinded in a fire at Thornfield Hall started by his wife. After refusing a proposal from the clergyman St. John (“SIN-jin”) Rivers, that title character with this profession states in the final chapter, “Reader, I married him.” For 10 points, name this profession of Jane Eyre.
ANSWER: governess [prompt on teacher; prompt on tutor; prompt on servant; prompt on nanny; prompt on au pair]
[after 89% of the tossup] A character with this profession asks another character why he thinks the Welsh will want a “multi-culti bot-verse” since they voted for Brexit. After breaking down a door, it is discovered that a character with this profession in a different work annotated “a pious work” with “startling blasphemies” and laid heaps of “white salt” on saucers. A character with this profession writes that “my life, my honour, my reason, are all at your mercy” to his friend Lanyon, who later dies of shock. A man with this profession reveals that he created a new signature by “sloping my own hand backward” in his “Full Statement of the Case.” After the murder of Sir Danvers Carew, Gabriel Utterson investigates a person with this profession. For 10 points, name this profession of Henry Jekyll, the alter-ego of Mr. Hyde.
ANSWER: medical doctor [or MD; accept Dr. Henry Jekyll; accept Dr. Ry Shelley; accept medical professional; prompt on scientist, researcher, chemist, professor, or grave robber] (The first clue is from Frankissstein by Jeanette Winterson.)
[after 90% of the tossup] Joseph Cundall’s photographs of this artwork were referenced by Elizabeth Wardle to create a replica now held in the Reading Museum. In this artwork, a naked man squats underneath a woman in a red gateway who is being touched by a priest. This artwork’s 58 tituli describe the construction of a motte and a man who “gives strength to the boys.” The appearance of figures such as Wadard in this artwork suggests that it was commissioned by the Bishop of Odo. A man in this artwork with an arrow in his eye is often identified as Harold Godwinson, whose coronation is depicted below Halley’s Comet in this artwork. For 10 points, name this embroidered depiction of the Norman conquest of England held in a namesake French cathedral.
ANSWER: Bayeux Tapestry [or Tapisserie de Bayeux]
[after 90% of the tossup] Composer and genre required. The slow introduction of the first of these pieces opens with a cadence into the subdominant and only reaches the tonic in bar 4. A 3/4 fast movement in one of these pieces uses an oboe theme of [read slowly] seven B-flat quarter notes followed by an eighth-note descent from C to F. The recapitulation in one of these pieces is anticipated by a horn call that creates dissonance with the strings. A flute, oboe, and two clarinets imitate bird calls in a movement of one of these pieces titled “Scene by the brook.” The composer had to be turned to face the audience’s applause at the performance of the last of these pieces, which includes a setting of “Ode to Joy.” For 10 points, name these orchestral works that include ones nicknamed “Eroica” and “Choral.”
ANSWER: symphonies by Ludwig van Beethoven [prompt on symphonies by asking “by who?”; prompt on works by Ludwig van Beethoven by asking “in what genre?”]
[after 90% of the tossup] In a scene set in one of these places, a character mentions outsourcing at Clemmons Technologies due to NAFTA, which Tracey thinks is a laxative. Later in that play, the owner of one of these places, Stan, is disabled when Jason hits him with a baseball bat. In another play set in one of these places, a character admits that he’d face the electric chair if he had to “kill someone and they have to go on living!” In one of these places owned by an agoraphobe who vows to walk around the block on his birthday, a traveling salesman admits to murdering his wife Evelyn. Don Parritt commits suicide by jumping off a fire escape in one of these places after Hickey attempts to convince its patrons to abandon their “pipe dreams.” For 10 points, name these places, one of which is run by Harry Hope in Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh.
ANSWER: bars [or saloons; or public houses; accept Harry Hope’s Saloon; accept Alibi Club; prompt on restaurant; prompt on club; prompt on hotel] (The first and second lines refer to Sweat by Lynn Nottage.)
[after 91% of the tossup] This thinker connects the “joys of watching” to Baudelaire’s conception of the flâneur in the essay “Melancholy Objects.” This thinker claimed that collecting certain objects allows us to “collect the world” in an essay opening “Humankind lingers unregenerately in Plato’s cave.” The “pure” and “deliberate” types of the title concept are contrasted in an essay by this thinker with epigrams from Oscar Wilde. The framing of “freaks” is discussed by this thinker in a collection contrasting the Farm Security Administration with Diane Arbus. A list including Scopitone films and Tiffany lamps appears in an essay by this thinker that outlines conditions for the title sensibility, described as “good because it’s awful.” For 10 points, name this American author of On Photography and “Notes on ‘Camp.’”
ANSWER: Susan Sontag [or Susan Lee Sontag]
[after 92% of the tossup] In a play by this author, a character remarks, “I hate brandy… it stinks of modern literature” while at an Italian restaurant. In that play by this author, that character reminisces about taking a speedboat to Torcello to read Yeats alone. At the end of a different play by this author, a character who had left to get a drink of water returns stripped of some of his clothing and his gun. A character in that play by this author yells “Kaw!” after reading about a “child of eight” killing a cat and a “man of eighty-seven” crawling under a lorry. Two characters in a play by this author argue about the difference between the phrases “light the kettle” and “put on the kettle” and send items like a stale Eccles (“ECK-ulls”) cake up the title device. For 10 points, what playwright of Betrayal wrote about the hitmen Gus and Ben in The Dumb Waiter?
ANSWER: Harold Pinter
[after 92% of the tossup] Description acceptable. The earliest known medieval artwork of this type may depict one of the Three Wise Men and was created for Bamberg Cathedral. The Jacobins destroyed an artwork of this type in Pavia that included a small dog standing on its hind legs. Alessandro Leopardi lost a contest against Verrocchio to create an artwork of this type in honor of Bartolomeo Colleoni. Roman artworks of this type, such as the Regisole (“ray-jee-SOH-lay”) and a depiction of Marcus Aurelius raising his arm, influenced Renaissance artworks of this type depicting condottieri. The massive Thunder Stone was used in an Étienne Maurice Falconet artwork of this type titled after its use of bronze. For 10 points, name these types of sculptures such as Donatello’s Gattemelata that typically depict leaders on top of their steeds.
ANSWER: equestrian statues [accept descriptions like statues of people riding horses or on horseback; accept riders or horse riding; accept Bronze Horseman or Medny vsadnik; accept Bamberg Horseman or Der Bamberger Reiter; prompt on condottieri statues until read; prompt on statues or sculptures until “sculptures” is read; reject “equestrian paintings”]
[after 92% of the tossup] This painting provoked the comment “tribulations for later” from Pablo Picasso, who made 140 drawings inspired by its subject. Frédéric Bazille was depicted four times in a response to this painting that was cut into three pieces due to mold damage. This painting was praised for depicting “figures of natural grandeur” by Émile Zola, who asserted “no one goes to the Louvre to be scandalized.” The poses of this painting’s figures drew from an engraving of The Judgement of Paris by Marcantonio Raimondi. This painting, which was exhibited at the 1863 Salon des Refusés, depicts Victorine Meurent (“murr-ON”) beside a basket of fruit atop a pile of clothes. For 10 points, name this painting of a nude woman sitting with two clothed men by Édouard Manet.
ANSWER: Luncheon on the Grass [or Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe] (The second sentence refers to Claude Monet’s version of Luncheon on the Grass.)
[after 94% of the tossup] Eliminating this substance is the goal of the DGP braneworld model. So-called “phantom” forms of this substance are an extreme case of hypothetical quintessence models. An equation of state of pressure equal to negative density characterizes this substance, whose density remains constant as space expands. An era dominated by this substance began roughly 4 billion years ago, when the expansion of the universe began to accelerate. This substance is represented by a quantity that Einstein called his “biggest blunder” when adding it to his field equations, known as the cosmological constant. For 10 points, name this mysterious substance that accounts for over 70 percent of the universe, along with matter and dark matter.
ANSWER: dark energy [prompt on lambda or cosmological constant until read by asking “what substance does that quantity represent?”]
[after 97% of the tossup] 111 workers who built this structure recounted their experiences in a series of letters discussed by a Julie Greene book and the documentary Box 25. The existence of a secret plan to destroy this structure was confirmed by the autobiography America’s Prisoner. People who died in 1964 riots that tore down the “Fence of Shame” around this structure were commemorated on Martyrs Day. It’s not a tower, but Gustave Eiffel was prosecuted in a bribery scandal during an unsuccessful attempt to build this structure. Walter Reed’s medical advancements controlling yellow fever enabled the construction of this structure, which the Torrijos–Carter treaties transferred from US control in 1999. For 10 points, what man-made waterway connects the Caribbean to the Pacific through a namesake Central American country?
ANSWER: Panama Canal (America’s Prisoner is by Manuel Noriega.)
[after 99% of the tossup] This concept titles a posthumous work by Anthony A. Hoekema (“HOO-kuh-mah”). The Second Council of Orange confirmed one type of this concept developed by Augustine that is supported by Arminians. This theological concept is not referenced in the King James Version of the Gospels outside of the Prologue of John, where Jesus is described as “[this concept] from [this concept].” According to Ephesians, salvation occurs through faith and by this concept, forming three Lutheran Solae along with sola scriptura. The angel Gabriel’s address to Mary in Luke 1:28 was adapted into a prayer describing her as “full of” this concept. For 10 points, name this Christian concept of unmerited divine favor described in a spiritual by John Newton as “Amazing.”
ANSWER: grace [accept sola gratia; accept “Amazing Grace”]
[after 99% of the tossup] Isaac Bickerstaffe replaced this character with Doctor Cantwell in an adaptation of another author’s play about this character, The Non-Juror by Colley Cibber (“SIB-er”). The non-speaking maid Flipote is slapped at the end of the first scene of a play titled for this character, which Richard Wilbur translated into English verse. In that play, a grandmother who views this character as perfect is proven wrong when this character’s actions lead to the bailiff Loyal serving eviction papers. The maid Dorine prevents Mariane from marrying this character, who is arrested by order of a king in a deus ex machina ending. This character, who is exposed while trying to seduce Elmire, pretends to be religious to gain Orgon’s trust. For 10 points, name this character, a “Hypocrite” created by Molière.
ANSWER: Tartuffe (The Isaac Bickerstaffe play is The Hypocrite.)
[after 100% of the tossup] An eight-foot-tall sculpture of a person with this surname sits atop a pedestal engraved with the phrase “The Holiest Thing Alive” in Ashland, Pennsylvania. That person with this surname may have substituted for Maggie Graham in a painting that gained popularity after being acquired by the Musée de Luxembourg. The composition of a portrait of Thomas Carlyle was modeled after a portrait of a person with this surname that contains a butterfly monogram beside a print of the Thames hanging on a wall. Because she could not stand for long periods of time, a woman with this surname sat for a portrait in which she wears a white lace headscarf while facing to the left. For 10 points, give the surname of the model for Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1 by her son, James McNeill.
ANSWER: Whistler [accept James Abbott McNeill Whistler or Anna McNeill Whistler; accept Whistler’s mother]
[after 100% of the tossup] At the end of this play, one character sings “I want you to help me” eighteen times, only stopping the repetition to invoke the names of her family members. In one scene in this play, a group of men sing a song that claims “When you marry, marry a railroad man” after an estranged family member returns. In this play, Wining Boy sells another character a silk suit by convincing him it will attract women. After their truck breaks down twice in West Virginia, a character in this play and his friend Lymon arrive with a truck full of watermelons and claim that a man was pushed down a well by the Ghosts of the Yellow Dog. For 10 points, name this play in which Boy Willie and Berniece exorcise Sutter’s ghost from the title instrument, written by August Wilson.
ANSWER: The Piano Lesson
[after 100% of the tossup] Four deputies titled for these structures represented the Maḥdī during the Minor Occultation. One figure named for this structure began his religious career after seeing seven drops of blood on another’s throat, and is buried on Mount Carmel. Salman the Persian is the final person to fill a role named for these structures in Alawism, which comprises a trinity along with the Manifestation and the Name. In the first of a collection of Zen kōans titled for one of these structures lacking itself, a dog replies “mu” when asked if it has Buddha-nature. Vermillion examples of these structures mark places where kami enter into the human realm in Shintō shrines. For 10 points, bāb and torii are words for what structures, through which Jesus entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday?
ANSWER: gates [or doors; or portals; accept Gateless Gate; accept mén or guān or mon or kan; accept kahyō; accept Báb or bāb or ’abwāb until “bāb” is read; accept wakīl or safīr or na‘īb until “shrine” is read; prompt on barrier] (Báb is Arabic for gate.)
[after 100% of the tossup] In quinoa, class-1 HKT proteins load this element into bladder cells. Variations in hydrogen concentration in the brain cause acid-sensing pH sensor proteins to mainly transport this element. Paralytic shellfish poisoning occurs when alkaloids like saxitoxin block the transport of this element. A symporter of glucose and this element called SGLT2 is found in proximal tubules. Subunits of proteins that conduct this element contain six transmembrane passes and are voltage-gated. An ion of this element enters neurons during action potential firing. Blockers for this element’s channels can be used to treat arrhythmia. Hydrolysis of ATP pumps three atoms of this element out of cells against potassium. For 10 points, name this element found alongside chloride in table salt.
ANSWER: sodium [or Na]
[after 100% of the tossup] This essay’s author is compared to the boy from “The Emperor’s New Clothes” in a Cedric Watts essay countering it. F. R. Leavis’s description of an author’s “insistence upon inexpressible and incomprehensible mystery” is quoted in this essay’s description of a writer who induces “hypnotic stupor” in his readers. This essay references Marco Polo’s “spectacular” omission of the Great Wall of China in his travelogues and states the Congo River is portrayed as an antithesis to the Thames. The speaker of this essay recalls receiving a letter from a “young fellow from Yonkers” who was happy to learn about a tribe’s “customs and superstitions” after reading its author’s novel Things Fall Apart. For 10 points, “Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness” is the subject of what Chinua Achebe essay?
ANSWER: “An Image of Africa” [or “An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness”]
[after 100% of the tossup] The GP-A experiment directly measured this phenomenon in space and on Earth. Relativistic aberration and this phenomenon are responsible for apparent increases in luminosity via relativistic beaming. If an angle theta is slowly varying, the strength of this phenomenon equals one minus cosine theta times v over c. In relativity, the strength of this phenomenon equals the square root of the fraction “one plus beta over one minus beta.” Canal rays underwent this phenomenon in the Ives–Stilwell experiment supporting special relativity, while the Pound–Rebka experiment measured a form of this effect caused by gravitational time dilation. Hubble’s law is based on observations of this effect. For 10 points, what effect changes the frequency of waves emitted by moving sources?
ANSWER: Doppler effect [accept redshift or blueshift; prompt on time dilation or gravitational time dilation until read by asking “what phenomenon does that cause?”; prompt on gravity]
[after 100% of the tossup] It’s not cannibalism, but an essay on this practice notes that “the certainties postulated by philosophers hardly ever exist” when analogizing it to the case of shipwrecked sailors Dudley and Stephens. Kitty Genovese’s murder is used to make a distinction between “Good,” “Splendid,” and “Minimally Decent” Samaritans in an essay on this practice. An essay titled for this practice describes an analogy of seeds floating through windows and taking root in houses. This practice is paired with “the Doctrine of Double Effect” in the title of an essay by Philippa Foot that proposed the trolley problem. An essay on this practice proposes a thought experiment involving keeping a dying violinist alive. For 10 points, Judith Jarvis Thomson wrote a “Defense” of what practice opposed by pro-life activists?
ANSWER: abortion [accept equivalents such as ending or terminating a pregnancy; accept “A Defense of Abortion”; accept “The Problem of Abortion and the Doctrine of Double Effect”]

Gary Lin ↩

[after 23% of the tossup] This substance lies underneath so-called false bottoms, which form through double diffusion. This substance may become trapped in pockets following its namesake rejection. It’s not related to thermodynamics, but the potential density of this substance is displayed on T-S diagrams. Deviations from this substance’s VSMOW standard are used to identify periods during which it becomes enriched with oxygen-18 due to low temperatures. This dense substance lies below Ghyben–Herzberg lenses, which share their name with an equation used to model its “intrusion.” The SMOC (“S-mock”) and AMOC (“A-mock”) drive the thermohaline circulation of this substance. Reverse osmosis is often used to purify, for 10 points, what substance that mixes with a fresh counterpart in estuaries?
ANSWER: seawater [or ocean water; accept brine or saline or saltwater; accept brine pockets or brine rejection or saltwater intrusion or brine pools; accept brackish water or brack; prompt on water; reject “freshwater” or “salt” or “ice”]
[after 32% of the tossup] Raiders in this state fought both Union and Confederate forces during the Cortina Wars. During the Battle of Gaines’ Mill, every officer in a “Brigade” named for this state was injured or killed except for its leader, John Bell Hood. A month after Appomattox, men in this state fought the last battle of the Civil War, the Battle of Palmito Hill. The Nueces (“new-AY-siss”) Massacre targeted antislavery Unionist Germans in this state. Benjamin Franklin Tarry led a regiment nicknamed for a law enforcement group in this state that fought against the Comanche. Gordon Granger’s announcement of the Emancipation Proclamation in a coastal city in this state is commemorated on Juneteenth. For 10 points, name this state whose police force includes its namesake “Rangers.”
ANSWER: Texas [accept Texas Rangers; accept Texas Germans; accept Texas Brigade]
[after 37% of the tossup] This deity’s wife stands over him in an artistic motif from the Gosforth Cross. Alternate versions of a story detail a different one of this deity’s two sons turning into a wolf and killing the other. This deity is referred to by the kenning “brother of Býleistr” in the Völuspá when the völva explains that his escape will signal the start of Ragnarök, at which point this deity will kill and be killed by Heimdallr. This deity attacks Njörd for being incestuous and claims to have cuckolded Týr in a text sometimes named for his flyting. This son of Fárbauti and Laufey turns into a salmon to escape his punishment of having venom dripped on him for eternity after he causes the death of Baldr. For 10 points, name this Norse trickster god.
ANSWER: Loki [or Loki Laufeyson; accept Lokasenna or The Flyting of Loki or Loki’s Verbal Duel]
[after 48% of the tossup] As exposed by Francis Fletcher-Vane, an activist known as “Skeffy” was summarily executed during this event in the Portobello Barracks. The phrase that one country “unfree shall never be at peace” was coined prior to this event during the funeral of Jeremiah Rossa. Rumors of imminent arrests were described in the forged “Castle Document” by Joseph Plunkett prior to this event. The SS Aud failed to supply arms to this event, despite negotiations by Roger Casement. During this event, a document proclaiming a republic was read on the steps of the General Post Office by Patrick Pearse. Éamon de Valera (“EH-min day vuh-LAY-ruh”) was elected to lead Sinn Féin (“shin fayn”) following this event. For 10 points, what 1916 Irish rebellion against British rule is named for a Christian holiday?
ANSWER: Easter Rising [or Easter Rebellion]
[after 52% of the tossup] A dark horse candidate for this office won after defeating airline executive Al Checchi (“CHECK-ee”) in this office’s only ever “blanket primary.” A holder of this office staked a successful 1994 reelection campaign on a ballot initiative to bar undocumented immigrants from public education and healthcare. A holder of this office lost support after ending the implementation of the “Save our State” initiative and facing an electricity crisis in 2001. That holder of this office was recalled in a 2003 election and was Gray Davis. This office’s most recent Republican holder was a former actor and bodybuilder. Another former actor held this office in between the tenures of Pat and Jerry Brown. For 10 points, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Ronald Reagan held what office that leads a state from Sacramento?
ANSWER: governor of California [prompt on governor by asking “of where?”] (The first and third sentences refer to Gray Davis. The second sentence refers to Pete Wilson.)
[after 56% of the tossup] One technique for the purification of RNA-protein complexes makes use of these organisms in MS2 tagging. Another technique using these organisms uses pIII and takes advantage of an M13 vector. One form of these organisms, in which the Cro and cl repressors are found, was first isolated by Esther Lederberg. These organisms were used to prove that DNA is genetic material by radiolabeling with phosphorus-32 and sulfur-35 in the Hershey–Chase experiment. One variety of these organisms that can undergo a lytic life cycle but not a lysogenic life cycle has a hollow tail and an icosahedral head. Examples of these organisms include T4 and lambda. For 10 points, name these viruses that infect bacteria.
ANSWER: bacteriophages [accept lambda phage or T4 phage until read; prompt on viruses]
[after 61% of the tossup] This material is classified under letters G to J of the Unified Numbering System. Maraging (“MAR-aging”) forms of this material contain hard precipitate particles over an artificially elongated aging period. Modern manufacturing of this material uses a supersonic oxygen jet and burnt lime to generate a basic slag. Case-hardening of this material can be accomplished using carburization. Rapidly quenching one form of this material produces crystalline martensite. Hot-dip and electrogalvanization are methods for plating this material to prevent corrosion, which can also be accomplished by adding chromium. For 10 points, name this alloy of iron and carbon that includes a stainless variety.
ANSWER: steel [accept stainless steel]
[after 61% of the tossup] Description acceptable. After he demonstrated this practice for her, Dowager Empress Maria of Russia gave the foundling Anton Petrov a new name referencing it. Biographer John Baron may have originated a myth about Sarah Nelmes’s role in the origin of this practice. To promote this practice in Vienna, Maria Theresa hosted 65 commoners for a royal banquet at the Schönbrunn palace. Caroline of Ansbach helped popularize this practice after being shown it by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who introduced it to Europe after witnessing it in the Ottoman Empire. Catherine the Great gave Thomas Dimsdale a title for performing this practice on her by grating pustules into an open wound. For 10 points, the development of what medical practice in 18th-century Europe is often credited to Edward Jenner?
ANSWER: smallpox inoculation [accept equivalents like smallpox vaccination or smallpox variolation; prompt on inoculation, vaccination, or variolation by asking “against what disease?”; reject answers like “treatment of smallpox”] (Sarah Nelmes is the milkmaid Jenner is supposed to have seen without any smallpox lesions. Anton Petrov was renamed Anton Vaccinoff – and given a house and an income – after he received the vaccine to demonstrate its safety.)
[after 61% of the tossup] Generalized BEP relations can be used to predict this quantity on metallic surfaces calculated via Marcus theory. Frustrated Lewis pairs have higher values of this quantity due to steric hindrance. This quantity is divided by R in a plot of one-over-T against the natural logarithm of k. The high value of this quantity in the Haber process is due to the nitrogen triple bond. This quantity is divided by RT in the exponential of the Arrhenius equation. This quantity is determined from the difference between the transition state and reactants on a reaction coordinate diagram and can be lowered by catalysts. For 10 points, identify this quantity denoted E-sub-a, the minimum energy required for a reaction to occur.
ANSWER: activation energy [accept E-sub-a until read; prompt on energy until read; prompt on E until read]
[after 61% of the tossup] This activity provides an alternate name for Cindy Sherman’s Untitled Film Still #48, in which a woman in a plaid skirt stands facing away from the viewer next to her suitcase. John Maynard Smith referenced this activity for the name of a genetic effect in which an allele increases in frequency due to a linked beneficial allele. Dutch liftplaats signs mark places for this activity, which is similar to the D.C. area’s “slug lines.” In 2013, a Canadian robot that did this activity across Canada was destroyed in Philadelphia. In a book titled partly for this activity, Vogons destroy Earth right after the protagonist is saved by the towel-carrying Ford Prefect. For 10 points, extending one’s thumb towards the road is a gesture for what activity that inspired a series of “Guides” by Douglas Adams?
ANSWER: hitchhiking [or hitching; or hitchhike; accept thumbing until “thumb” is read; accept The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy; accept HitchBot; accept genetic hitchhiking; prompt on driving, riding in a car, traveling, waiting for a rideshare, passengers, carpooling, commuting, or equivalents of any]
[after 65% of the tossup] In a paper titled for this century, the phrase “Christian Dior… looks a more attractive proposition than Montagu Burton” is used to illustrate an economic slump caused by shortsightedness in capitalism. That essay was partly inspired by widespread currency debasement during this century’s Kipper und Wipper period. Susan Strange portmanteaued “failure” with a system named for an agreement in this century that was based on the teachings of Jean Bodin (“bo-DAN”). It’s not the 19th century, but economic stagnation during this century led Eric Hobsbawm to coin the term “general crisis” to refer to the majority of it. Demographic upheavals during this century included the Khmelnytsky (“k’mell-NITS-kee”) Uprising and the Polish Deluge. For 10 points, widespread economic instability roiled Europe during what century of the Thirty Years’ War?
ANSWER: 17th century [or 1600s]
[after 65% of the tossup] A bourrée anglaise concludes J. S. Bach’s solo partita for this instrument, for which his son C. P. E. Bach also wrote a solo sonata in A minor. In the Berlin Philharmonic, Emmanuel Pahud plays this instrument. Mozart wrote four quartets for this instrument accompanied by strings, and a concerto for this instrument and harp. Francis Poulenc’s (“fron-SEESE poo-LANK’s”) sonata for this instrument begins with it playing a descending E minor broken chord. Edgar Varèse wrote Density 21.5 for a player of this instrument. A solo for this instrument marked très modéré descends chromatically from C-sharp to G to open Debussy’s Prélude à l’apres-midi d’un faune. For 10 points, name this reedless woodwind instrument.
ANSWER: flute [or flauto traverso; or transverse flute; reject “flauto dolce”]
[after 65% of the tossup] These structures are central to the GOLT hypothesis, which describes changes in the morphology of WBEs due to global warming. Cymothoa exigua is a parasite that enters hosts through these structures. These structures form the exit point in streamlined organisms that utilize ramjet ventilation. Rakers in these structures filter food particles and these structures are supported by either bony or cartilaginous arches. Unlike most salamanders, external examples of these structures on stalks are present on adult axolotls. In some organisms, these structures require a constant flow of water over them to prevent drowning. For 10 points, name these respiratory structures that enable fish to breathe underwater.
ANSWER: gills
[after 66% of the tossup] A Pulitzer-Prize-winning photograph shows this person dancing at a rock concert during his “vote or lose” campaign. The chair of Sibneft was recognized as one of the “Seven Bankers” who supported this person after this person implemented the loans-for-shares scheme. Robert Solow and Franco Modigliani were two of several economists who wrote an open letter to this person about reforms that were championed by Anatoly Chubais (“choo-BICE”). This non-Polish politician’s visit to a Randalls grocery store in Houston may have inspired him to implement “shock therapy” in his country. This person helped diffuse the August Coup by giving a speech atop a tank. For 10 points, what politician served as the first President of Russia?
ANSWER: Boris Yeltsin [or Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin]
[after 67% of the tossup] Note to moderator: Read the answerline carefully. This technology is depicted creating a blue Greek letter omega in the painting If All the World Were Paper and All the Water Sink by Jess. This technology led an artist to begin depicting his “favorite food for thought” in paintings such as Living Still Life. This technology inspired a bronze sculpture in the shape of a skull at the University of Chicago’s Mansueto Library by Henry Moore. Catholicism and this technology influenced Salvador Dalí’s “disintegration” of an earlier painting, exemplifying a form of “mysticism” named after this technology. In a 2023 blockbuster film, events caused by this technology are portrayed with slow-motion thermite reactions. For 10 points, name this technology used in weapons that are depicted in Christopher Nolan’s film Oppenheimer.
ANSWER: nuclear energy [or nuclear power; or nuclear reactions; or atomic energy; or atomic power; or atomic reactions; accept nuclear weapons or nuclear bombs or atomic weapons or atomic bombs or A-bombs; accept Nuclear Mysticism; accept nuclear reactors or nuclear power plants; accept nuclear fission or nuclear fusion or atom splitting; prompt on bombs or weapons or explosives; prompt on reactors or power plants; reject “thermonuclear weapons” or “hydrogen bombs”] (The third sentence refers to Moore’s Nuclear Energy. The fourth sentence refers to Dalí’s Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory.)
[after 71% of the tossup] Damage to this organ may be categorized via the Ishak staging system. The ductus venosus allows this organ to be bypassed in fetal circulation. The AST/ALT ratio may be used in the diagnosis of diseases of this organ. Three quarters of this organ’s blood supply comes from the vessel that is formed from the union of the splenic (“SPLEN-ick”) and superior mesenteric veins; that vessel is the portal vein. This organ’s caudate (“CAW-date”) lobe is named for its resemblance to a tail. Damage to this organ can prevent the conjugation of bilirubin, resulting in jaundice. For 10 points, name this organ that can suffer cirrhosis from alcohol consumption.
ANSWER: liver
[after 74% of the tossup] In the writings of Wallace Fard, one of these places is identified with the city of Allah’s residence and the origin of the “Mother Plane,” which he claimed to be the Biblical merkāvā, God’s chariot. After being kidnapped under the pretext of tax audits, thetans were sent to one of these locations called Teegeeack (“TEE-jee-ack”). According to the Book of Abraham, Methuselah helped to discover one of these places called Kolob which is “closest to the throne of God.” The LDS church strenuously denies the popular belief that these places will be each Mormon’s heavenly reward for following the “straight and narrow” way to the Celestial Kingdom. For 10 points, name these celestial bodies from which extraterrestrials are often claimed to come as ambassadors to humanity.
ANSWER: planets [accept exoplanets; accept Earths until “Abraham” is read; prompt on Unidentified Flying Objects or UFOs until “Abraham” is read; prompt on volcanoes until “Abraham” is read by asking “on what larger type of place could the volcanoes be found?”]
[after 75% of the tossup] The editor of this country’s Marxist newspaper Don Quichotte (“don kee-SHOT”), Henri Curiel (“on-REE cure-YEL”), founded its Democratic Movement for National Liberation. A leader of this country pickpocketed a watch off Winston Churchill during a state visit and was the target of Project FF. An organization launched a coup as this country’s leader was surrounded at such residences as Montaza and Abdeen Palace. That organization established the Revolutionary Command Council and later formed the Liberation Rally party. This country’s second president initiated the Agrarian Reform Law and was a member of the Mohamed Naguib-led Free Officers Movement that overthrew its king in 1952. For 10 points, name this African country whose leaders during the Cold War included King Farouk and Gamal Abdel Nasser.
ANSWER: Egypt [or Kingdom of Egypt; or Arab Republic of Egypt]
[after 76% of the tossup] In this city, a judge tried to connect 13 fires and a burglary to fears of a slave uprising in the Conspiracy of 1741. Land in this modern-day city and nearby Pavonia were raided in the one-day Peach War. In this city, Edward Hart led a group of settlers who petitioned for religious tolerance in a “Remonstrance” named for part of this city. In retaliation for Kieft’s War, members of the Siwanoy tribe killed Anne Hutchinson in what is now this city. This was the largest city transferred to England in exchange for Suriname in the 1667 Treaty of Breda. The Lenape tribe traded an island in this city for 60 guilders of goods from Peter Minuit. For 10 points, Peter Stuyvesant ruled from what city that was once New Amsterdam?
ANSWER: New York [accept New Amsterdam until “Amsterdam” is read; prompt on Flushing Remonstrance or Manhattan Island or Pelham Bay by asking “what larger city is that part of?”]
[after 76% of the tossup] This painting was reimagined for a 2015 Greenpeace campaign by the collective Kennardphillipps, which depicts its setting in the aftermath of an oil spill. This painting depicts an “extraordinary conquest of a life which most people would consider hopeless” according to its artist, who was buried in this painting’s real-life setting. Despite being 30 years older than the intended subject, the artist’s wife Betsy James modeled the upper body of this painting’s central figure, who may have suffered from Charcot–Marie–Tooth disease. In this painting set in Cushing, Maine, the title person looks towards the Olson House, which sits atop a hill in the distance. For 10 points, name this painting of a woman in a pink dress crawling in a field by Andrew Wyeth.
ANSWER: Christina’s World
[after 79% of the tossup] Materials called NIMs with an unusual value for this quantity were first realized using split-ring resonators. An empirical formula for this quantity is expanded in negative even powers of wavelength and becomes inaccurate in regions of anomalous dispersion. The imaginary part of complex values for this quantity models attenuation. Since most materials have negligible magnetic susceptibility, this value is approximately given by the square root of relative permittivity. A decrease of this quantity across an interface enables rays to undergo total internal reflection. The ratio of the sines of the angles of incidence and refraction equals the ratio of two values of this quantity according to Snell’s law. For 10 points, name this quantity that is the ratio of speed of light in vacuum to its speed in a material.
ANSWER: index of refraction [or refractive index or refraction index; accept IOR; prompt on n]
[after 80% of the tossup] Characters who later appear in this story cause Leila to yearn for siblings while in a cab to the title event in the story “Her First Ball.” A girl in this story bites a piece of bread and butter while pondering “absurd class distinctions” after seeing a workman stop to smell lavender. A character described as “the butterfly” tests a piano in this story by practicing the song “This Life is Weary” before the maid Sadie interrupts to ask about sandwich flags. After hearing of a man thrown off his horse from Godber’s man during his cream puff delivery, a character in this story attempts to cancel the title event. That character takes leftover food to the widow of Scott and embraces her brother while stammering “Isn’t life.” For 10 points, Laura Sheridan plans the title event of what Katherine Mansfield story?
ANSWER: “The Garden Party”
[after 82% of the tossup] Susan Ridyard dismissed apocryphal claims that the half-sister of a monarch of this name foresaw his death after she dreamt she lost her right eye and was subsequently offered his throne; that half-sister was canonized as Saint Edith. A monarch of this name, who dissolved many monasteries in the “anti-monastic reaction,” may have been murdered by his mother-in-law, Ælfthryth (“ELF-thrith”). A future monarch of this name, who was exiled by Harold Harefoot, inherited the throne from Harthacnut after he returned with his mother Emma of Normandy. In addition to a monarch known as the “Martyr,” a monarch with this name commissioned the modern Westminster Abbey and ignited a succession crisis between Harold Godwinson and the future William the Conqueror after his death. For 10 points, a king of England of what name had the epithet “Confessor?”
ANSWER: Edward [accept Edward the Confessor or Edward the Martyr]
[after 83% of the tossup] A deity has his toes cut off for using one of these objects after rejecting a first offer of gruel and accepting a second offer of a gold ring. A deity uses one of these objects called Mesektet or Mandjet after embodying his ram-headed form. The Book of Gates describes 12 minor deities who observe one of these objects passing by. Nemty is often depicted as a falcon standing on one of these objects due to his role in using them. Khepri protects one of these objects by standing in front of it and helping to battle off Apophis. By painting a wooden one of these vehicles to resemble stone, Horus wins a race against Set and becomes the king of Egypt. For 10 points, Ra rides through the underworld in a “solar” one of what seafaring vehicles?
ANSWER: boats [or ships; or barques; or ferries; or ferry; accept ferrymen; accept Ra’s solar barque]
[after 84% of the tossup] In one of these places in a 1935 novella, a man with the “eyes of a schoolboy surprised in the act of breaking one of the rules” is noticed by William Bradshaw. Christopher Isherwood’s Berlin Stories begins with a novella titled for the communist spy Mr. Norris and these places. In one of these places, Cyrus B. Hardman complains that he cannot find a “small, dark man with a womanish voice.” In one of these places, a man finds a handkerchief embroidered with the letter “H” belonging to Princess Dragomiroff and searches for a “scarlet kimono.” In one of these places, the disguised baby kidnapper Cassetti is stabbed by all twelve suspects. For 10 points, name this type of place where Ratchett’s death is investigated by Hercule Poirot (“air-COOL pwah-ROH”) in Murder on the Orient Express.
ANSWER: trains [or passenger cars; or passenger coaches; accept train compartment; accept Mr. Norris Changes Trains; accept Murder in the Calais Coach; accept Murder on the Orient Express until read]
[after 85% of the tossup] The biography Camera Girl recounts how this woman worked at Vogue for one day and covered Elizabeth II’s coronation as a reporter for the Times-Herald newspaper. Conflicting testimonies exist over whether this woman was proposed to at a booth in Martin’s Tavern in D.C. or the Omni Parker House in Boston. This woman’s successor renamed the East Garden in her honor, since she redesigned it along with the Rose Garden. This woman prematurely birthed her youngest son Patrick on the 20th anniversary of her husband’s rescue in the PT-109 incident. This First Lady compared her household to Camelot and later remarried the Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis. For 10 points, name this person who served as First Lady before her husband’s 1963 assassination.
ANSWER: Jacqueline Kennedy [or Jackie Kennedy; or Jacqueline Bouvier; or Jackie Bouvier; or Jacqueline Onassis; or Jackie Onassis; prompt on Kennedy or J. Kennedy; prompt on Onassis until read]
[after 85% of the tossup] This architect designed the scenery for a 1968 Billy Al Bengston exhibition at LACMA. This architect fixed a full-scale F-104 jet fighter to the entrance of the California Aerospace Museum. This architect’s use of a fish motif appears in his design of a restaurant in Kobe. This architect’s “open-ended” approach can be seen in the use of corrugated steel and mesh fencing of his Santa Monica residence. A building designed by this architect described as a “metaphoric city” has an atrium he nicknamed “the flower.” This architect associated with Deconstructivism used concave wave-like exteriors for a Los Angeles concert hall. For 10 points, name this Canadian-American architect of the Walt Disney Concert Hall and Guggenheim Bilbao.
ANSWER: Frank Gehry [or Frank Owen Gehry; or Frank Owen Goldberg]
[after 87% of the tossup] This thinker describes common purpose as an outcome of “instinctive liking” or a shared “instinctive aversion” in Why Men Fight. With Jean-Paul Sartre, this thinker led a conference finding the US guilty of war crimes in Vietnam. This thinker advocated for a four-hour workday in the essay “In Praise of Idleness.” P. F. Strawson criticized an essay by this thinker that argues against Alexius Meinong (“MY-nong”) with examples of “the author of Waverley” and the “present” kings of England and France to contrast types of definite descriptions. This author of “On Denoting” formulated an argument against defaulting to belief in God that involves a floating teapot. For 10 points, name this English philosopher who collaborated with Alfred North Whitehead on Principia Mathematica.
ANSWER: Bertrand Russell [or Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell; accept Russell’s teapot]
[after 89% of the tossup] During a conflict with this tribe, a military court at Fort St. Marks controversially found two British merchants guilty of arms dealing. This tribe’s twenty-year agreement with territorial governor William Pope Duval was broken in less than ten years by another leader, who executed Arbuthnot and Ambrister for spying for these people. A group of this tribe settled in Coahuila, Mexico, under John Horse and Wild Cat, and Andros Island in the Bahamas was settled by this tribe’s “Black” descendants. The Treaty of Moultrie Creek signed by this tribe was superseded by the Treaty of Payne’s Landing. A false white flag operation captured this tribe’s Chief Osceola. For 10 points, name this Florida-based tribe that fought several 19th-century wars against the US.
ANSWER: Seminoles [or Yat’siminoli]
[after 90% of the tossup] A piece by this composer emphasizes the word “dominum” through homorhythmic repetition before a triple-time Alleluja section. Since 2012, The Sixteen have released nine albums dedicated to this composer’s music. The head-motif of an ascending fourth followed by a stepwise descent down appears in a piece by this composer that adds a seventh voice in its second Agnus Dei movement. In a description of this composer’s style, leaps are countered by stepwise movement in the other direction and dissonances fall on weak beats, as taught in Joseph Fux’s (“FOOKS’s”) Gradus ad Parnassum. This composer’s most famous missa sine nomine apocryphally “saved polyphony” at the Council of Trent. For 10 points, name this Italian Renaissance composer of the Pope Marcellus Mass.
ANSWER: Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (The first line refers to his O Magnum Mysterium.)
[after 91% of the tossup] These phenomena express “conceptions” of things like the world according to Calvin Hall’s continuity theory. In the AIM (“A-I-M”) model, these phenomena are caused by interactions between aminergic and cholinergic neurons that generate PGO waves; that model of these phenomena is based on Hobson and McCarley’s activation-synthesis model. Echidnas’ large frontal cortex inspired Crick and Mitchison to theorize that these phenomena cause “reverse learning.” Antti Revonsuo theorized that these phenomena simulate probable threats. These phenomena act as “wish fulfillment” according to an 1899 book that described a precursor to the Oedipus complex. For 10 points, Sigmund Freud wrote about the “interpretation” of what phenomena that occur during REM sleep?
ANSWER: dreams [or dreaming; accept The Interpretation of Dreams or Die Traumdeutung; prompt on sleep or REM sleep until “REM” is read]
[after 92% of the tossup] In one novel, a character with this profession crushes baby birds under a stone to save them from the sadistic Tom Bloomfield. That character with this profession is reunited with the dog Snap while walking along the beach at the end of a novel published under the pen name Acton Bell. In another novel, the employer of a character with this profession asks “does my forehead not please you?” and “do you think me handsome?” to which that character with this profession replies bluntly, “No, sir.” That character with this profession travels to Ferndean, and helps a man blinded in a fire at Thornfield Hall started by his wife. After refusing a proposal from the clergyman St. John (“SIN-jin”) Rivers, that title character with this profession states in the final chapter, “Reader, I married him.” For 10 points, name this profession of Jane Eyre.
ANSWER: governess [prompt on teacher; prompt on tutor; prompt on servant; prompt on nanny; prompt on au pair]
[after 94% of the tossup] Methods of displaying certain types of these objects are named after having one, two, or three colors. A lady rushes towards a bear in one of twelve narrative scenes from one of these objects titled after a court teacher’s “admonitions.” Three of these non-title objects hang from the ceiling in an installation originally named after a “Mirror to Analyze the World.” A ship’s crew attempts to lower their mast to avoid crashing into the Rainbow Bridge in one of these objects that was animated for the 2010 World Expo. “Hand” types of these objects include Zhāng Zéduān’s (“jahng dzuh-dwen’s”) panoramic painting Along the River During the Qīngmíng Festival. For 10 points, Chinese calligraphy is often displayed on what objects that can be rolled up?
ANSWER: scrolls [or juàn; accept handscrolls or hanging scrolls; accept Admonitions Scroll; prompt on paper or silk; prompt on ink drawings; prompt on calligraphy until read] (The third line refers to Xú Bīng’s A Book From the Sky.)
[after 94% of the tossup] In this state, Tina Bell fronted Bam Bam, the first band to record at Reciprocal Recording. The all-female opening night of a music festival in this state saw the live debut of Heavens to Betsy, whose split led Corin Tucker to form Sleater-Kinney. A band from this state spent over 5 years on Billboard with their album Ten, which contains a song claiming “thoughts arrive like butterflies.” This state’s “riot grrl” movement included acts like Bikini Kill, whose frontwoman Kathleen Hanna inspired a hit by another band from this state by claiming its lead singer smelled like a deodorant brand. Krist Novoselic was the bassist of a band from this state who included songs like “Lithium” and “Come As You Are” on their album Nevermind. For 10 points, grunge bands like Pearl Jam and Nirvana formed in what US state’s city of Seattle?
ANSWER: Washington [or State of Washington; or WA]
[after 97% of the tossup] A character with this profession asks another character why he thinks the Welsh will want a “multi-culti bot-verse” since they voted for Brexit. After breaking down a door, it is discovered that a character with this profession in a different work annotated “a pious work” with “startling blasphemies” and laid heaps of “white salt” on saucers. A character with this profession writes that “my life, my honour, my reason, are all at your mercy” to his friend Lanyon, who later dies of shock. A man with this profession reveals that he created a new signature by “sloping my own hand backward” in his “Full Statement of the Case.” After the murder of Sir Danvers Carew, Gabriel Utterson investigates a person with this profession. For 10 points, name this profession of Henry Jekyll, the alter-ego of Mr. Hyde.
ANSWER: medical doctor [or MD; accept Dr. Henry Jekyll; accept Dr. Ry Shelley; accept medical professional; prompt on scientist, researcher, chemist, professor, or grave robber] (The first clue is from Frankissstein by Jeanette Winterson.)
[after 98% of the tossup] For non-adhesive materials in contact, this quantity can be calculated using Hertzian theory. Averaging the Navier–Stokes equations gives a term representing one type of this quantity that is proportional to the averaged fluctuating velocity correlation and named for Reynolds. A cylinder plotted in the space of principal coordinates of this quantity gives the maximum allowed value for the deviatoric type of this quantity before yielding according to the von Mises criterion. Off-diagonal elements of a tensor for this quantity named for Cauchy represent this quantity’s “shear” form. In uniaxial cases, this quantity is given by force over cross-sectional area. For 10 points, name this quantity that measures the forces causing deformation and is often plotted against strain.
ANSWER: stress [accept shear stress or deviatoric stress; accept principal stress; accept Cauchy stress tensor; accept Reynolds stress or Reynolds stress tensor]
[after 99% of the tossup] This concept titles a posthumous work by Anthony A. Hoekema (“HOO-kuh-mah”). The Second Council of Orange confirmed one type of this concept developed by Augustine that is supported by Arminians. This theological concept is not referenced in the King James Version of the Gospels outside of the Prologue of John, where Jesus is described as “[this concept] from [this concept].” According to Ephesians, salvation occurs through faith and by this concept, forming three Lutheran Solae along with sola scriptura. The angel Gabriel’s address to Mary in Luke 1:28 was adapted into a prayer describing her as “full of” this concept. For 10 points, name this Christian concept of unmerited divine favor described in a spiritual by John Newton as “Amazing.”
ANSWER: grace [accept sola gratia; accept “Amazing Grace”]
[after 99% of the tossup] Dynamic dispatch for methods in C++ is typically implemented with a table of these constructs called a “vtable” (“V-table”). During serialization, these constructs are converted to a position-independent persistent version during “swizzling.” Addition to these constructs is scaled by the size of an underlying data type in an example of these constructs’ namesake “arithmetic.” Garbage collection prevents certain types of segmentation faults by cleaning up “dangling” instances of these constructs. Each node in a linked list contains both data and one of these constructs associated with the next node. In C, an asterisk can be used to access data at the location described by one of these constructs. For 10 points, name this data type that stores addresses in memory.
ANSWER: pointers [accept dangling pointers; accept pointer arithmetic; accept function pointers or method pointers; accept references; accept addresses until read]
[after 100% of the tossup] By his second wife, this god fathered four mountain-dwelling dwarves who tend maize fields in an illustration from the Codex Borgia. This god is believed to live in a mountain where a group of owl-men anointed Nezahualcoyotl after his near death. Ehecatl and his brothers dwell in a realm ruled over by this god. This god’s name is sometimes given to the four large trees in his realm that hold up the vertical universe. This god unleashed fire on the earth after his first wife, Xochiquetzal, was stolen from him by Tezcatlipoca during this god’s role as the third sun. This god, to whom many crying children were sacrificed, rules a land of eternal springtime that houses those who die by lightning or drowning. For 10 points, name this Aztec rain god.
ANSWER: Tlaloc [accept Tlālōcān; accept Four Tlálocs]
[after 100% of the tossup] Description acceptable. Henry Alford’s New Yorker article “Ink” documented dictionary words used for this purpose like “esquivalience.” The discovery of phone listings used for this purpose led to the 1991 case Feist v. Rural, which rejected the “sweat of the brow” doctrine for facts. A rural mailbox photographer in the Columbia Encyclopedia created for this purpose named Lillian Mountweazel now names entities created for this purpose. The title of a John Green novel was inspired by a place created for this purpose supposedly in upstate New York, which Rand McNally insisted became real upon the opening of a general store in Agloe. For 10 points, “trap streets” and “paper towns” are fake entries used by reference works for what purpose of detecting intellectual property violations?
ANSWER: detecting copyright infringement [accept descriptions of detecting plagiarism or copying; accept copyright traps or copyright enforcement; accept intellectual property trap or intellectual property theft or IP trap or IP theft until “intellectual property” is read; prompt on fictitious entries until “fake entries” is read; prompt on paper towns or trap streets or Mountweazels until read by asking “what purpose do those things serve?”]
[after 100% of the tossup] Camelid bones and feline incense burners were left on this body of water by pilgrims to its Khoa Reef. Parallel canals and alternating plant beds were used in the Waru Waru irrigation technique on this body of water. A civilization centred on this body of water created the Akapana mud pyramid and Pumapunku mounds, as well as a monolithic “Gate” that depicted 32 humans and 16 condor-headed people surrounding a central figure. The Gate of the Sun was constructed near this body of water that contains the Island of the Sun and the Island of the Moon, which are pilgrimage sites for this lake’s Tiwanaku civilization. For 10 points, many Aymara live near what lake that is shared by Peru and Bolivia?
ANSWER: Lake Titicaca
[after 100% of the tossup] This poet, who exhorted the earth for teaching “the lesson of poverty, / having nothing and wanting nothing,” wrote that the “tongue has one customer, the ear” in a poem whose speaker asserts “Anyone apart from someone he loves / understands what I say.” The speaker laments that “the keeping away is pulling me in” in a poem by this author that opens by asking a “dissolver of sugar” to “dissolve me, / if this is the time.” The disappearance of this poet’s teacher inspired the dedication of many of the 90 ghazals in one of his collections. This poet has been cited as the “best-selling poet in the US” due to Coleman Barks’s translations, one of which renders an opening line as “Listen to the story told by the reed.” For 10 points, name this Sufi poet of the Masnavi, or Spiritual Couplets.
ANSWER: Rumi [or Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī] (Rumi’s teacher, Shams of Tabriz, is the dedicatee of many poems in the Divan-i Kabir.)

Clio Selyuzhitsky ↩

[after 38% of the tossup] Ruzsa (“ROO-zhah”) names a distance function between these objects that can be used to prove a bound on sums of these objects called Plünnecke’s inequality. Functors from a locally small category into the category of these objects are the subject of the Yoneda lemma. A class is called “proper” if it is “too big” to be expressed as one of these objects. If X is one of these objects, then X has size strictly smaller than that of “two to the X” by Cantor’s theorem. Problems with constructing these objects via unrestricted comprehension were resolved with a theory of these objects named for Zermelo and Fraenkel that was later extended to include the axiom of choice. Countably infinite instances of these objects have cardinality equal to that of the natural numbers. For 10 points, name these unordered collections of elements.
ANSWER: sets [accept subsets; accept set theory]
[after 38% of the tossup] This food names a “Curtain” dividing the affluent Hampshire County from Hampden County in western Massachusetts. A 1975 book by William Shurtleff and Akiko Aoyagi popularized this food in the West. Newly-released prisoners eat this food in a South Korean custom. Low-quality building projects are derisively called “dregs” of this food in China. British Home Secretary Suella Braverman decried Just Stop Oil protesters as “wokerati” who read the Guardian and eat this food. This food, which titles a parody of Super Meat Boy by PETA, is used in “pock-marked old woman” and “stinky” dishes. Coagulation in making this food results in varieties called “firm” or “silken.” For 10 points, name this block-shaped food made from fermented soybeans.
ANSWER: tofu [or bean curd; or dòufu; or dubu; or tubu; accept Super Tofu Boy; accept tofu-dreg projects, dòufuzhā gōngchéng, tofu projects, or tofu buildings; accept Tofu Curtain; accept mápó tofu; accept stinky tofu or chòu dòufu; prompt on soy or soybeans]
[after 42% of the tossup] A coordinate-free definition of this operation relies on the top exterior power defining a one-dimensional space. SL(n) (“S-L-N”) is the kernel of a homomorphism defined by this operation from GL(n) (“G-L-N”) to the non-zero reals under multiplication. Unusually, this operation is only introduced towards the end of a textbook by Sheldon Axler called Linear Algebra Done Right, which defines this operation as the unique alternating multilinear form up to scaling. The output of this operation equals the constant term of the characteristic polynomial. The general linear group excludes matrices which output zero under this operation since they are non-invertible. For 10 points, name this operation that, for a two-by-two matrix, equals “a d minus b c.”
ANSWER: determinant [or det]
[after 52% of the tossup] Algebraic varieties named for this shape are subject to the orbit–cone correspondence and can be constructed from fans. For knots named for this shape, “x-to-the-p equals y-to-the-q” is a relation of the knot group. “R-squared” quotient “Z-squared” is isomorphic to this surface, which has “Z-cross-Z” as its fundamental group. This surface can be obtained by gluing each pair of opposite edges of the unit square in the same direction. This orientable surface with Euler characteristic zero is the Cartesian product of two circles. Depending on orientation, either a Klein bottle or this genus-one surface is formed by joining the circular ends of a cylinder. For 10 points, the surface of a coffee cup is topologically equivalent to what single-holed surface shaped like a doughnut?
ANSWER: torus [or 2-torus; accept toric varieties; accept torus knots]
[after 56% of the tossup] Some of the last authentic srbulja (“sir-BOOL-ya”) were produced in this polity by the Vuković family. A tradition from this polity that may originate from Empress Helena was recreated by Józef Haller (“YOO-zef HAL-lair”) after the capture of Kołobrzeg (“KOH-wob-zheg”). A coin minted by Vespasian lent the symbol of a dolphin wrapping around an anchor to a businessman from this polity. This polity, home to Aldus Manutius, was partly governed by the Council of Ten. The League of Cambrai (“com-BRAY”) was formed to counterbalance the influence of this polity. The Bucentaur was central to an annual ceremony in this polity where a ring would be thrown into the sea. For 10 points, Saint Mark was the patron saint of what polity led by doges and named for an Adriatic city with many canals?
ANSWER: Venice [or Venezia; or Most Serene Republic of Venice]
[after 62% of the tossup] Specific term required. Reuben Gronau distinguished home production and this concept in a paper built on Gary Becker’s “A Theory of the Allocation of Time.” This concept’s “gap” of two to three hours per week between American mothers and fathers was studied by Arlie Hochschild (“HOKE-shild”). A book partly titled for this concept calls gambling “barbarian” in the chapter “The Belief in Luck.” The opportunity cost of this activity increases with wages, but at high wages, this activity [emphasize] increases in labor’s backward-bending supply curve. Per an 1899 book, pecuniary emulation seeks to surpass a group named for this activity that engages in conspicuous consumption. For 10 points, name this activity of voluntarily abstaining from labor, whose “class” was theorized by Thorsten Veblen.
ANSWER: leisure [accept The Theory of the Leisure Class or leisure class; accept leisure gap; prompt on free time or time off or not working or relaxation or recreation; prompt on class until read by asking “what other concept characterizes the class in that work’s title?”; reject “unemployment”] (The first paper is “Leisure, Home Production, and Work—the Theory of the Allocation of Time Revisited.”)
[after 67% of the tossup] Pompeian-style mosaics are found in this non-Italian region at the House of the Griffins, in the city of Complutum. Arganthonios, the possible namesake of silver, ruled this region’s Turdetani people. Legendarily, a rebel leader in this territory picked the hairs off of a horse’s tail one by one to demonstrate a strategy against the Roman army. According to legend, Corocotta came forth to claim a ransom for himself during the revolt of the Cantabrians in this region. Quintus Sertorius led a revolt in this region, the birthplace of the emperors Trajan and Hadrian. After victories at Baecula and Ilipa, the Romans conquered this territory from the armies of Hamilcar Barca. For 10 points, name this region of the Roman Empire whose province of Lusitania became Portugal.
ANSWER: Hispania [accept Hispania Tarraconensis or Hispania Baetica or Hispania Lusitania; accept Iberia or Iberian Revolt; accept Lusitania until read; accept Baetica; prompt on Spain or Roman Spain; prompt on Portugal or Roman Portugal until read]
[after 67% of the tossup] The wife of a ruler with this regnal name legendarily hung herself with her girdle after she was offered hemlock, a sword, and a rope to commit suicide. Adea Eurydice was married to a ruler of this name, who was possibly rendered mentally disabled following a poisoning attempt by his father’s wife. Onomachos was killed at the Battle of Crocus Field by an army under a king with this name during the Third Sacred War. A king of this name, who was victorious at the Battle of Chaeronea, was assassinated by Pausanias of Orestis in a conspiracy that ancient sources speculated to be orchestrated by his wife, Olympias. For 10 points, Macedonian expansion began during the reign of a king with what name, the father of Alexander the Great?
ANSWER: Philip [accept Philip II of Macedon or Philip III of Macedon]
[after 68% of the tossup] In a paper on these institutions “in the Middle Ages,” George Makdisi warns against analogizing them to their European counterparts. A possibly apocryphal tradition holds that a building occupied by one of these institutions was founded by Fatima al-Fihri. That institution was named after the people of Kairouan, or al-Qarawiyyin (“al-kah-rah-wee-YEEN”). Al-Sahili was credited with building a complex that housed one of these institutions together with nearby Sidi Yahya called Djinguereber (“jin-guh-ray-BAIR”). Saladin ended Shi’a influence in one of these institutions at Cairo called Al-Azhar (“all-UZZ-har”). Another one of these institutions was housed at Sankoré (“sahn-ko-RAY”) Mosque in Timbuktu. For 10 points, the Qur’an and Islamic law were studied at what institutions often analogized to those created in Bologna and Oxford?
ANSWER: universities [or university; accept madrasas; accept schools; accept jāmi‘ah or jāmi‘at; accept University of al-Qarawiyyin or University of Timbuktu or Al-Azhar University; prompt on libraries or library; prompt on mosques or masjids until “Mosque” is read by asking “what additional function did it serve?”]
[after 71% of the tossup] This author’s first novel, which follows a widow who engages in an affair with her brother-in-law, was retitled Land of Sin. A character created by this author works at the “Central Registry of Births, Marriages and Deaths.” In a novel by this author, whose sequel was translated by this author’s widow Pilar del Río, a character uses a stiletto heel to kick a car thief who is shot after developing an infection. In the sequel to a novel by this author of All the Names, a “dog of tears” reappears as the only named character and an election occurs in which the majority of ballots are blank. In a novel by this author, characters like the girl with the dark glasses are quarantined in a ward and the doctor’s wife is the only one not affected by the title “white sickness.” For 10 points, name this Portuguese author of Blindness.
ANSWER: José Saramago [or José de Sousa Saramago] (The sequel to Blindness is Seeing.)
[after 72% of the tossup] Saidiya Hartman’s “Venus in Two Acts” argues that these institutions limit stories that can be told about slavery, but can be transcended by critical fabulation. The principle of respect des fonds (“ruh-SPAY day FON”) is discussed in the “Dutch Manual” for the appraisal of these institutions. The use of these institutions in research was pioneered by Leopold von Ranke. In 2023, the Hachette group sued one of these institutions founded by Brewster Kahle that pioneered controlled digital lending. Cornell University operates a website named for these institutions that hosts scientific preprints. A massive book digitization effort is run by an online one of these institutions that also hosts a digital library and the Wayback Machine. For 10 points, name these collections of historical records or materials.
ANSWER: archives [accept Internet Archive; accept arXiv.org; prompt on sources; prompt on Open Library until “library” is read by asking “what type of larger institution is that a part of?”; prompt on libraries until “library” is read]
[after 77% of the tossup] It’s not in Canada, but the first wave of settlers at this place spent two months mining over a thousand tons of what turned out to be fool’s gold. In a proto-strike, Polish artisans in this place refused to work until they gained the right to vote. Soldiers en route to this place to stop a revolt hallucinated after eating a poisonous salad containing a plant now commonly named for this place. The shipwreck of Christopher Newport’s Sea Venture in the Bahamas led to the death of eighty percent of this place’s population during the Starving Time. A Pamunkey chief captured and brought a leader of this colony to his brother, Powhatan. For 10 points, what first permanent English settlement in the Americas was led by John Smith?
ANSWER: Jamestown (The name jimsonweed comes from Jamestown.)
[after 86% of the tossup] It’s not cannibalism, but an essay on this practice notes that “the certainties postulated by philosophers hardly ever exist” when analogizing it to the case of shipwrecked sailors Dudley and Stephens. Kitty Genovese’s murder is used to make a distinction between “Good,” “Splendid,” and “Minimally Decent” Samaritans in an essay on this practice. An essay titled for this practice describes an analogy of seeds floating through windows and taking root in houses. This practice is paired with “the Doctrine of Double Effect” in the title of an essay by Philippa Foot that proposed the trolley problem. An essay on this practice proposes a thought experiment involving keeping a dying violinist alive. For 10 points, Judith Jarvis Thomson wrote a “Defense” of what practice opposed by pro-life activists?
ANSWER: abortion [accept equivalents such as ending or terminating a pregnancy; accept “A Defense of Abortion”; accept “The Problem of Abortion and the Doctrine of Double Effect”]
[after 86% of the tossup] A traditional song from this country compares a ruler’s concubines with flowers, and was recorded by Robert E. Brown for the Voyager Golden Record. Colin McPhee studied the music of a region in this country whose styles include kebyar and uses nested rhythmic structures called colotomy. Performers in one of this country’s art forms sit behind a stage made of banana trunks and can instruct musicians by striking a box with a cempala (“chem-PAH-la”). Tuning systems from this country include the pentatonic slendro and the heptatonic pélog. This country is the home of wayang puppetry, which is accompanied by an ensemble which primarily consists of metallic percussion such as the gong ageng. For 10 points, name this country, the origin of gamelan.
ANSWER: Indonesia [or Republic of Indonesia; or Republik Indonesia]
[after 88% of the tossup] Description acceptable. Massirah is controversially used to perform this action in Sudan. Surah al-Nisā’ warns that this practice, which is likened to belomancy and polytheism in Surah al-Mā’idah, can invalidate daily prayer. Along with apostasy, this action can require ḥadd punishment based on sunnah rather than on the text of the Qur’an. Khalid ibn Walid is credited with increasing punishment for this practice from 40 to 80 lashes. Although an al-Tirmidhī hadith equates this action with the consumption of khamr (“KHAH-mur”), some jurists of the Ḥanafī school only prohibit performing this action with date or grape products. For 10 points, identify this practice of intoxication which is forbidden in Islam.
ANSWER: drinking alcohol [accept sukr or muskar; accept intoxication or word forms until read; accept drunkenness or word forms; accept drinking wine or beer or liquor; accept consuming khamr until read; prompt on drinking by asking “drinking what?”]
[after 94% of the tossup] The first English translation of a concept posited by this thinker was made by Alexander Tille 13 years before a controversial rendering by Thomas Common. A work lambasted for its existentialist portrayal of this thinker that dubs him “Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist” was written by Walter Kaufmann. This thinker borrowed the term “Tschandala” from a translation of the Laws of Manu to contrast focuses on “breeding” and “taming” in religious moralities. His sister Elizabeth Förster posthumously published the works of this philosopher, who wrote that embracing amor fati would allow humans to accept “eternal recurrence.” For 10 points, name this German philosopher who developed the Übermensch in his book Thus Spake Zarathustra.
ANSWER: Friedrich Nietzsche [or Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche] (The first line refers to the Übermensch, which Alexander Tille rendered as “Beyond-man” and Thomas Common translated as “Superman.”)
[after 98% of the tossup] One sect in this tradition uses an “A” inside a circle to represent the “rainbow body,” a concept likely borrowed from an indigenous religion which the Rimé movement attempts to harmonize with this tradition. Adherents to this tradition make votive torma sculptures out of dyed butter and use meteoric iron to produce ritual phurba (“POOR-bah”) daggers. The youngest of four schools in this tradition is named for their distinctive yellow headwear, while the oldest, Nyingma (“nuh-YING-muh”), produced this tradition’s “Book of the Dead.” Dharamsala is the location of a theocratic government-in-exile from this religious tradition which formerly ruled from Lhasa’s Potala Palace. For 10 points, what tradition’s 14th Dalai Lama is Tenzin Gyatso?
ANSWER: Tibetan Buddhism [prompt on Buddhism; prompt on Mahayana Buddhism or Vajrayana Buddhism; prompt on Dzogchen or Gelug or Nyingma until “Nyingma” is read by asking “which forms part of what broader tradition?”]
[after 100% of the tossup] Karl Taube, who wrote an essay on this substance’s symbolism partially titled for its “fetishes,” studied a god of this substance who appears in the San Bartolo murals. A foliated god of this substance is contrasted with the “first father,” a tonsured god of this substance, whose emergence from a turtle carapace is often equated with the resurrection of Hun Hunahpu. A passage into the side of a mountain that reveals the source of this substance is opened by the Hero Twins, who use it to replace the teeth of Seven Macaw. After attempts using mud and wood failed, humanity was created out of this foodstuff by Tepeu and Qucumatz. For 10 points, the Three Sisters included squash, beans, and what staple grain that features in many Mesoamerican stories?
ANSWER: maize [or corn; accept Maya maize god or tonsured maize god or foliated maize god; accept “Lighting Celts and Corn Fetishes”]
[after 100% of the tossup] The Kadomtsev model explains rapid temperature drops in these devices called sawtooth relaxations. One type of these devices are protected from kink instabilities when the safety factor is greater than one. Another type of these devices heats a hohlraum using laser pulses in a technique called ICF. The first one of these devices to achieve a Q greater than one is the National Ignition Facility, which uses internal confinement. Magnetic fields confine plasma in a toroid in the stellarator and tokamak types of these machines, and these devices often use deuterium and tritium for fuel. For 10 points, name these devices that seek to produce power by combining atomic nuclei.
ANSWER: fusion reactors [accept tokamaks until “tokamak” is read; accept inertial confinement fusion reactors; prompt on reactors; prompt on nuclear reactors; reject “fission reactors”]
[after 100% of the tossup] In this ballet, one statement of a unison string theme beginning with a descending and ascending octave is followed by four dancers clapping nine eighth notes. Mnemonics were used by Peter Sparling to learn the steps of a hat-wearing character in this ballet who directs four characters to successively sit on a church bench cued by flutes. Merce Cunningham first performed that role in this ballet, which used a simple set that included a rocking chair and the outline of a house. This ballet, which revolves around the marriage of the Husbandman and the Bride, includes variations on the Shaker hymn “Simple Gifts.” For 10 points, name this ballet choreographed by Martha Graham with music by Aaron Copland.
ANSWER: Appalachian Spring
[after 100% of the tossup] The concept of “architecture parlante” was developed in this century by an architect who designed an ambitious ideal town centred on a salt factory. A church designed in this century depicts the Ten Commandments on bronze doors and the Last Judgement on its pediment and is called La Madeleine. In this century, architects like Robert Adam were influenced by Giovanni Battista Piranesi’s vedute drawings depicting Roman landmarks. A building from this century that uses a Greek cross plan with domes on each ambulatory and Corinthian orders in its portico was designed by Jacques-Germain Sufflot. That building from this century became a mausoleum for national heroes and was modelled on a Roman temple. For 10 points, name this century during which Neoclassicism developed with buildings such as the Panthéon in Paris.
ANSWER: 18th century [or 1700s] (The architect in the first line is Claude Nicolas Ledoux.)

Jaiden Li ↩

[after 81% of the tossup] Dissociation of disclinations are used to model these phenomena in KTHNY theory. Above the upper critical dimension, these phenomena belong to the same universality class predicted by mean-field theory. An argument using the favorability of spontaneously forming domain walls was used by Rudolph Peierls (“PIE-erls”) to prove one of these phenomena exists in two dimensions or higher for a certain lattice model. Landau theory classifies these phenomena into first- or second-order based on whether the change in their order parameter is discontinuous. These phenomena include the shift between paramagnetic and ferromagnetic ordering at the Curie point. On pressure–temperature diagrams, these events are represented by crossing a coexistence curve. For 10 points, name these phenomena in which a material changes between different states of matter.
ANSWER: phase transitions [or phase changes; accept first-order phase transitions or second-order phase transitions; accept continuous phase transitions; prompt on transitions]
[after 97% of the tossup] Possible sources of this phenomenon are identified by intersections on a Campbell diagram. “Tongues” of this phenomenon may be found with the Mathieu equation when considering its “parametric” form. A “universal” curve for this phenomenon is quantified by the half bandwidth of a Lorentzian function. Injection locking may cause the “sympathetic” form of this phenomenon. This phenomenon occurs more intensely but in a more narrow region when the Q-factor is high, corresponding to underdamped systems with little energy loss. This phenomenon is typically distinguished from the self-exciting aeroelastic flutter that caused the collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. For 10 points, name this phenomenon in which an oscillator driven at its natural frequency grows in amplitude.
ANSWER: resonance [or word forms like resonating or resonators; accept parametric resonance; prompt on oscillation or word forms until read; prompt on vibration; prompt on instability]
[after 100% of the tossup] Two of these functional groups are substituted onto a molecule of naphthalene to create a proton sponge. They’re not epoxides, but reaction of this functional group with mCPBA gives syn alkenes due to the cyclic 5-membered transition state in the Cope elimination. Reaction of this functional group with benzenesulfonyl chloride followed by acidification in the Hinsberg test allows distinction of the degree of substitution. Primary examples of this functional group are formed from alkyl halides in the Gabriel synthesis. Carbonyls can be converted into this functional group in one-pot reductive reactions. For 10 points, name this functional group consisting of a nitrogen atom single bonded to at least one carbon atom.
ANSWER: amines [or amino group]
[after 100% of the tossup] Russell Belk included possessions in an “extended” version of this concept. A version of this concept is influenced by partners in the Michelangelo phenomenon, which is similar to Charles Horton Cooley’s perception-based “looking-glass” form of this concept. This concept’s shaping by social experience is explored in the middle chapters of a book that pioneered symbolic interactionism. That book by George Herbert Meade is titled for “mind,” this concept, and “society.” Carl Rogers strove for the alignment of one’s “real” and “ideal” versions of this concept. The mirror test has demonstrated “awareness” of this concept in magpies and dolphins. For 10 points, a measure of one’s own worth is known as what concept’s “esteem?”
ANSWER: the self [accept self-esteem; accept self-awareness; accept real self or ideal self; accept Mind, Self, and Society; accept extended self]
[after 100% of the tossup] For non-adhesive materials in contact, this quantity can be calculated using Hertzian theory. Averaging the Navier–Stokes equations gives a term representing one type of this quantity that is proportional to the averaged fluctuating velocity correlation and named for Reynolds. A cylinder plotted in the space of principal coordinates of this quantity gives the maximum allowed value for the deviatoric type of this quantity before yielding according to the von Mises criterion. Off-diagonal elements of a tensor for this quantity named for Cauchy represent this quantity’s “shear” form. In uniaxial cases, this quantity is given by force over cross-sectional area. For 10 points, name this quantity that measures the forces causing deformation and is often plotted against strain.
ANSWER: stress [accept shear stress or deviatoric stress; accept principal stress; accept Cauchy stress tensor; accept Reynolds stress or Reynolds stress tensor]

Anvit Watwani ↩

[after 52% of the tossup] The “kinetic” form of this quantity names a type of detector that can count photons and derives from the motion of Cooper pairs in superconductors. This quantity times angular frequency equals a form of reactance. Voltage equals this quantity times the time derivative of current in an alternate form of Faraday’s law, since this quantity is defined as the derivative of magnetic flux with respect to current. Since this quantity is linearly proportional to permeability, it can be increased by a conducting core. One over the square root of this quantity times capacitance equals the resonant frequency of an oscillating circuit. This quantity measures the strength of coiled circuit components that store energy in magnetic fields. For 10 points, name this quantity symbolized L and measured in henries.
ANSWER: inductance [accept kinetic inductance detector; prompt on L until read]
[after 58% of the tossup] Camelid bones and feline incense burners were left on this body of water by pilgrims to its Khoa Reef. Parallel canals and alternating plant beds were used in the Waru Waru irrigation technique on this body of water. A civilization centred on this body of water created the Akapana mud pyramid and Pumapunku mounds, as well as a monolithic “Gate” that depicted 32 humans and 16 condor-headed people surrounding a central figure. The Gate of the Sun was constructed near this body of water that contains the Island of the Sun and the Island of the Moon, which are pilgrimage sites for this lake’s Tiwanaku civilization. For 10 points, many Aymara live near what lake that is shared by Peru and Bolivia?
ANSWER: Lake Titicaca
[after 66% of the tossup] In the multiple parameter case, this distribution is the limit of a statistic that sandwiches an “I inverse” term between two “theta-hat minus theta-zero” terms called the Wald statistic. In a theorem about convergence to this distribution, one parameter equals the difference in dimension between the full parameter space and the space associated with the null hypothesis. Twice the log-likelihood ratio converges to this distribution by Wilks’ theorem. The formula “rows minus one times columns minus one” gives the value of a parameter when computing a test statistic converging to this distribution, which sums values of “observed minus expected squared, all over expected” for each entry in a contingency table. For 10 points, what distribution names a large-sample hypothesis test for goodness-of-fit or independence?
ANSWER: chi-squared (“kye-squared”) distribution [reject “chi”]
[after 68% of the tossup] Anthropologist Alan Klein’s books about this activity as a source of national pride include one partly named for “sugar” and one subtitled “A Tale of Two Laredos.” A site for this activity named Latinoamericano in Havana is the second largest of its kind in the world, while another site in San Juan’s Hato Rey district is named for a pioneer in this activity, Hiram Bithorn. Bottle caps are used in a variant of this activity called vitilla. Young boys are recruited by buscones for this activity’s academies in the Dominican Republic. This activity is less popular in the Commonwealth Caribbean than a similar sport from Britain that [emphasize] instead has bowlers and wickets. For 10 points, name this American sport whose foreign-born players have given credence to the title of “World Series.”
ANSWER: baseball [or béisbol; or juego de pelota; prompt on sports until read] (Alan Klein wrote Sugarball: The American Game, the Dominican Dream and Baseball on the Border: A Tale of Two Laredos. The British sport is cricket.)
[after 85% of the tossup] A composer from this country who expressed a desire to “blow the opera houses up” clashed with his teacher over a ten-movement symphony that contains “love” and “statue” themes. Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho became influenced by spectralism while studying in this country’s IRCAM (“eer-cam”) institute. The clarinet plays solo in the “Abyss of the Birds” movement of a chamber piece that a composer from this country wrote in a prisoner of war camp. A whip-crack opens a jazz-inspired piano concerto by a composer from this country who also wrote an orchestral piece that uses a repetitive snare drum ostinato, his Boléro. For 10 points, name this home country of Olivier Messiaen and Maurice Ravel.
ANSWER: France [or French Republic; or République française] (The first line refers to Pierre Boulez, who hated Messiaen’s Turangalîla-Symphonie.)
[after 94% of the tossup] A composer from this country achieved success with an orchestral work inspired by a witch trial and wrote the concerto Veni, Veni, Emmanuel for a deaf percussionist from this country. A composer who travelled to this country with Carl Klingemann was inspired by it to write a cyclic symphony beginning with the slow rising theme E, A, B, C. A piece inspired by this country uses the repeated motif [read slowly] F-sharp, D, C-sharp, D, B, down to F-sharp. This country’s folk melodies inspired a fantasy for violin and orchestra by Max Bruch, as well as a work by a different composer that makes use of its namesake “snap” rhythm. For 10 points, name this country that inspired Mendelssohn’s third symphony and his Hebrides Overture.
ANSWER: Scotland [prompt on United Kingdom or UK; prompt on Great Britain] (The composer and percussionist in the first line are James MacMillan and Evelyn Glennie respectively.)
[after 97% of the tossup] René Leibowitz cited a piece by this composer that begins with the spoken line “I cannot remember everything. I must have been unconscious” as an example of music that meets the requirements of “committed art.” This composer’s early use of quartal harmony can be heard in an ascending theme first played by the horn in his first Chamber Symphony. This composer began using an athematic style in his Opus 11 Drei Klavierstücke (“DRY klah-vee-AIR-shtuck-uh”), and he also wrote A Survivor from Warsaw. The title character is called “drunk” in the opening section of a song cycle by this composer that is accompanied by a namesake ensemble and pioneered the technique of Sprechstimme. For 10 points, name this Austrian composer of Pierrot Lunaire who developed 12-tone serialism.
ANSWER: Arnold Schoenberg
[after 97% of the tossup] This author added a character named Caroline who goes to milk a cow in a rewritten version of a scene that appears in an earlier work which lasts for “nearly two hours.” This author described ships “robed in purest white” that seemed like “shrouded ghosts” in a work in which Sandy gives the protagonist a root to keep on the right side of his body to ward off harm. The protagonist of a work by this author learns how to read from the Columbian Orator after being forbidden by Hugh Auld. William Lloyd Garrison wrote an introduction to this author’s memoir, which depicts his fight against Edward Covey. For 10 points, name this author who wrote about escaping his enslavement in three autobiographies including My Bondage and My Freedom and a Narrative in the Life of himself, An American Slave.
ANSWER: Frederick Douglass [or Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey; accept Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave]
[after 98% of the tossup] The southern shore of this body of water is home to the large Granot Loma log cabin mansion. The remnants of a floating hopper on this body of water is nicknamed “Uncle Harvey’s Mausoleum.” Birdwatchers flock to Whitefish Point on this body of water, which is part of an aquatic “Graveyard” where a shipwreck museum houses a salvaged bell. The cartoon-inspired Pickle Barrel House is in one of two towns on this lake named Grand Marais. This lake is connected to others to its south via a lock between two cities named Sault Ste. Marie (“SOO saint muh-REE”). This lake is home to the furthest inland oceangoing port in the world and the wreck of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald. For 10 points, Duluth, Minnesota, is on what largest North American Great Lake?
ANSWER: Lake Superior [or Gichi-Gami; or Kitchi-Gami]
[after 99% of the tossup] Susan Ridyard dismissed apocryphal claims that the half-sister of a monarch of this name foresaw his death after she dreamt she lost her right eye and was subsequently offered his throne; that half-sister was canonized as Saint Edith. A monarch of this name, who dissolved many monasteries in the “anti-monastic reaction,” may have been murdered by his mother-in-law, Ælfthryth (“ELF-thrith”). A future monarch of this name, who was exiled by Harold Harefoot, inherited the throne from Harthacnut after he returned with his mother Emma of Normandy. In addition to a monarch known as the “Martyr,” a monarch with this name commissioned the modern Westminster Abbey and ignited a succession crisis between Harold Godwinson and the future William the Conqueror after his death. For 10 points, a king of England of what name had the epithet “Confessor?”
ANSWER: Edward [accept Edward the Confessor or Edward the Martyr]
[after 100% of the tossup] This text describes how killing a holy hedgehog results in extirpation of the soul for nine generations. This text was originally split into 21 sections called nasks, corresponding to the 21 words of one mantra. A repeated description of a god “who is all death” in one part of this text describes Winter as an “evil creation.” This text’s name is often coupled with its Zend commentaries, with which it is often conflated. The sin of burying corpses is described as “unforgivable” in one part of this text called the Vendidad. One of the only sections of this larger work credited to its central prophet are the Gathas, in which the daēvas are minor evil gods loyal to Angra Mainyu who work against Ahura Mazdā. For 10 points, name this central text of Zoroastrianism.
ANSWER: Avesta [accept Zend-Avesta; prompt on Vendidad or Gathas until read]

Jonathan Koehler ↩

[after 23% of the tossup] The final name in this game’s credits is Seth Goldman, who designed a secret boss who blocks the path to Nyleth’s shrine. In this game, the disgraced Lugoli attacks the player by flinging green balls of muckmaggots with a ladle. The Extricator is used to remove the “Twisted Bud” that parasitizes this game’s protagonist, who must seek out Dr. Yarnaby in Greymoor to remove it. In this game’s true ending, the player character uses the Everbloom to descend into the Abyss to free Lost Lace from the hold of the Void with the aid of her half-sibling, the protagonist of a 2017 Metroidvania set in Hallownest. For 10 points, Hornet is the protagonist of what long-awaited Team Cherry game, which was unexpectedly released in September 2025 as the sequel to Hollow Knight?
ANSWER: Hollow Knight: Silksong [reject “Hollow Knight”]
[after 29% of the tossup] In this region, thatched houses called umjip would regularly be used by semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers. A crown from this region has three antler-like structures on top, a replica of which was gifted to President Donald Trump in 2025. The word for “ridge” is the only remaining word from a language that was spoken by this region’s Gaya Confederacy. Six eggs descended from a golden bowl with a message that princes would hatch and become kings of this region according to the Samguk yusa. Dangun (“DAHN-goon”) was the legendary founder of a kingdom in this region that, during its non-Chinese Three Kingdoms Period, fragmented into states like Baekje (“BECK-jeh”) and Goguryeo. For 10 points, Silla unified what peninsula that was later ruled by the Joseon Dynasty?
ANSWER: Korea [accept Korean peninsula or Hanguk]
[after 43% of the tossup] A leader of this country names an index alternative to GDP based on electricity consumption, rail cargo, and bank lending. The New Development Bank is headquartered in this country, which was the last in the [emphasize] original acronym of rising economic powers coined by Jim O’Neill. A namesake “shock” on manufacturing jobs resulted from this country joining the WTO in 2001. To attract foreign direct investment, this country opened four southern ports in 1979 as economic “experiments.” This country has been accused of “debt trap diplomacy” through loans to African countries as a part of its Belt and Road Initiative. For 10 points, what country’s Special Economic Zones include Shēnzhèn?
ANSWER: China [or People’s Republic of China; or Zhōngguó; or Zhōnghuá Rénmín Gònghéguó; accept China shock; reject “Republic of China”] (The acronym BRIC referred to Brazil, Russia, India, and China. The index is the Lǐ Kèqiáng index.)
[after 57% of the tossup] Note to moderator: Read the answerline carefully. This technology is depicted creating a blue Greek letter omega in the painting If All the World Were Paper and All the Water Sink by Jess. This technology led an artist to begin depicting his “favorite food for thought” in paintings such as Living Still Life. This technology inspired a bronze sculpture in the shape of a skull at the University of Chicago’s Mansueto Library by Henry Moore. Catholicism and this technology influenced Salvador Dalí’s “disintegration” of an earlier painting, exemplifying a form of “mysticism” named after this technology. In a 2023 blockbuster film, events caused by this technology are portrayed with slow-motion thermite reactions. For 10 points, name this technology used in weapons that are depicted in Christopher Nolan’s film Oppenheimer.
ANSWER: nuclear energy [or nuclear power; or nuclear reactions; or atomic energy; or atomic power; or atomic reactions; accept nuclear weapons or nuclear bombs or atomic weapons or atomic bombs or A-bombs; accept Nuclear Mysticism; accept nuclear reactors or nuclear power plants; accept nuclear fission or nuclear fusion or atom splitting; prompt on bombs or weapons or explosives; prompt on reactors or power plants; reject “thermonuclear weapons” or “hydrogen bombs”] (The third sentence refers to Moore’s Nuclear Energy. The fourth sentence refers to Dalí’s Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory.)
[after 72% of the tossup] This modern-day country was the southernmost territory subject to an 1890 ordinance that banned secret societies such as the Ghee Hin. Race riots spilled over into this country from a larger neighbor on May 13, 1969, in response to a general election. This country’s CMIO model has been in use since its first census in 1824, assigning each resident to one of four racial categories. To discourage the use of a local creole whose name is a portmanteau of this country’s name and English, this country launched the Speak Good English Movement in 2000. Since this country’s 1819 founding as a trading post by Stamford Raffles, its indigenous population has become outnumbered by Tamil and Chinese migrants. For 10 points, name this island country that was briefly part of Malaysia.
ANSWER: Singapore [or Republic of Singapore; or Republik Singapura; or Xīnjiāpō Gònghéguó; or Ciṅkappūr Kuṭiyaracu] (The creole is Singlish.)
[after 86% of the tossup] Some of the last authentic srbulja (“sir-BOOL-ya”) were produced in this polity by the Vuković family. A tradition from this polity that may originate from Empress Helena was recreated by Józef Haller (“YOO-zef HAL-lair”) after the capture of Kołobrzeg (“KOH-wob-zheg”). A coin minted by Vespasian lent the symbol of a dolphin wrapping around an anchor to a businessman from this polity. This polity, home to Aldus Manutius, was partly governed by the Council of Ten. The League of Cambrai (“com-BRAY”) was formed to counterbalance the influence of this polity. The Bucentaur was central to an annual ceremony in this polity where a ring would be thrown into the sea. For 10 points, Saint Mark was the patron saint of what polity led by doges and named for an Adriatic city with many canals?
ANSWER: Venice [or Venezia; or Most Serene Republic of Venice]
[after 92% of the tossup] In this city, a judge tried to connect 13 fires and a burglary to fears of a slave uprising in the Conspiracy of 1741. Land in this modern-day city and nearby Pavonia were raided in the one-day Peach War. In this city, Edward Hart led a group of settlers who petitioned for religious tolerance in a “Remonstrance” named for part of this city. In retaliation for Kieft’s War, members of the Siwanoy tribe killed Anne Hutchinson in what is now this city. This was the largest city transferred to England in exchange for Suriname in the 1667 Treaty of Breda. The Lenape tribe traded an island in this city for 60 guilders of goods from Peter Minuit. For 10 points, Peter Stuyvesant ruled from what city that was once New Amsterdam?
ANSWER: New York [accept New Amsterdam until “Amsterdam” is read; prompt on Flushing Remonstrance or Manhattan Island or Pelham Bay by asking “what larger city is that part of?”]
[after 93% of the tossup] This material is classified under letters G to J of the Unified Numbering System. Maraging (“MAR-aging”) forms of this material contain hard precipitate particles over an artificially elongated aging period. Modern manufacturing of this material uses a supersonic oxygen jet and burnt lime to generate a basic slag. Case-hardening of this material can be accomplished using carburization. Rapidly quenching one form of this material produces crystalline martensite. Hot-dip and electrogalvanization are methods for plating this material to prevent corrosion, which can also be accomplished by adding chromium. For 10 points, name this alloy of iron and carbon that includes a stainless variety.
ANSWER: steel [accept stainless steel]
[after 99% of the tossup] A Pulitzer-Prize-winning photograph shows this person dancing at a rock concert during his “vote or lose” campaign. The chair of Sibneft was recognized as one of the “Seven Bankers” who supported this person after this person implemented the loans-for-shares scheme. Robert Solow and Franco Modigliani were two of several economists who wrote an open letter to this person about reforms that were championed by Anatoly Chubais (“choo-BICE”). This non-Polish politician’s visit to a Randalls grocery store in Houston may have inspired him to implement “shock therapy” in his country. This person helped diffuse the August Coup by giving a speech atop a tank. For 10 points, what politician served as the first President of Russia?
ANSWER: Boris Yeltsin [or Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin]
[after 99% of the tossup] After an 1886 rebellion, many members of this ethnicity’s Ghiljī (“GILL-jee”) tribe were forcibly resettled. A ruler of this ethnicity briefly lost control of his state during a conflict in which Alexander Burnes was killed. A governor of this ethnicity was defeated at Nowshera by a ruler who united twelve misls into a single state. William Brydon was the only European who survived a retreat from the capital of a ruler of this ethnicity. A ruler of this ethnicity lost Peshawar to Ranjit Singh. Another ruler of this ethnicity overthrew Shah Shuja, ending the rule of the Sadozai branch of its Durrani clan. After a defeat by Britain at Kandahar, the Durand Line became the eastern border between British India and a state ruled by people of this ethnicity. For 10 points, name this ethnicity of the Barakzai rulers of Afghanistan.
ANSWER: Pashtuns [or Pakhtuns; or Pathans; or Paṣtūns; prompt on Afghans until “Afghanistan” is read]

Vivienne Ruemmler ↩

[after 30% of the tossup] In a story set after this war, Henry jumps into a river and tells his brother Lyman “my boots are filling” before he drowns. In a story set after this war, Norman Bowker walks fully clothed into his hometown lake after driving around it twelve times, only stopping to get a hamburger. After being shot twice, the protagonist of a story set during this war vows to scare the inexperienced medic Bobby Jorgenson using flares and sandbags. This war is the subject of a collection that contains “How to Tell a True War Story” and another story in which Kiowa drowns in a sewage field. Lieutenant Jimmy Cross lists “can openers, pocket knives, heattabs, wristwatches” in a story set during this war in which Ted Lavender is shot in the head. For 10 points, name this war, the backdrop of the stories in Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried.
ANSWER: Vietnam War [or Second Indochina War; or Chiến tranh Việt Nam; or Kháng chiến chống Mỹ] (The first story is “The Red Convertible” by Louise Erdrich.)
[after 32% of the tossup] Making workers independently seek this concept, known as decommodification, distinguishes Gøsta Esping-Andersen’s three “worlds” titled for this concept and “capitalism.” Charles Murray’s book Losing Ground controversially claims that programs providing this concept harm American society. This concept names a restriction within the taxing and spending clause in Article I of the US Constitution, which follows from a goal in the preamble to “promote the general” type of this concept. The Beveridge Report is credited with starting social reforms to provide this concept “cradle-to-grave” through services like universal health care. For 10 points, governments provide relief to their people in what concept’s namesake “state,” exemplified by Sweden?
ANSWER: welfare [or well-being; accept social welfare; accept welfare state; accept general welfare clause; accept welfare capitalism; prompt on quality of life; prompt on social safety net or social security or entitlement]
[after 90% of the tossup] In one work, this thinker used the example of Castor and Pollux sleeping in alternating shifts to demonstrate that the soul is not always thinking. A chapter in a work by this thinker contrasts certain knowledge with arguments that are likely to be true based on “probability,” or agreement between our own and others’ experiences. This thinker described a central concept being affected by sensory experiences of intrinsic “primary qualities” and subjective “secondary qualities.” This thinker argued that reflection or sensation informs all “objects of thinking” to refute “innate ideas” in favor of the human mind as a blank slate, or tabula rasa. For 10 points, name this Enlightenment philosopher who wrote An Essay Concerning Human Understanding.
ANSWER: John Locke
[after 98% of the tossup] This concept was the domain of Erua, an aspect of Marduk’s consort Ṣarpanītū. Rodnovery (“rod-NOV-ery”) revived a Slavic folk practice in which people with this condition keep faceless Pelenashka dolls secret. Egyptian pottery depicting a deity of this concept was found on Crete in a cave named for Eileithyia (“ill-ih-THIGH-uh”), another deity of this concept. In Egypt, people with this condition used ankh-like tjeti knots, while in Mesopotamia, apotropaic talismans of Pazuzu protected people with this condition from a chimeric deity. That deity, Lamashtu, was believed to cause cot deaths by tapping people with this condition seven times on the stomach. For 10 points, people pray to fertility goddesses hoping to obtain what condition leading to childbirth?
ANSWER: pregnancy [or word forms like pregnant; accept labor or childbirth until “childbirth” is read; prompt on fertility until read]
[after 100% of the tossup] A thinker from this country traced how its people sequentially obtained civil, political, and social rights in the essay “Citizenship and Social Class.” A feminist abolitionist thinker from this country wrote Society in America and popularized the works of Auguste Comte through her translations. The “mother of sociology” Harriet Martineau is from this country, where the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies was founded by Jamaica-born Marxist thinker Stuart Hall. An 1845 book compares the illness and death rates of this country’s rural and industrialized populations to document capitalist exploitation, inspiring Marx to collaborate with its author. For 10 points, Friedrich Engels wrote a book on the “Condition of the Working Class in” what country home to the University of Birmingham?
ANSWER: England [or United Kingdom; or UK; or Great Britain; accept Condition of the Working Class in England; reject “Scotland” or “Wales” or “Northern Ireland”] (The first sentence refers to T. H. Marshall.)

Scarlet Rutter ↩

[after 23% of the tossup] Description acceptable. Henry Alford’s New Yorker article “Ink” documented dictionary words used for this purpose like “esquivalience.” The discovery of phone listings used for this purpose led to the 1991 case Feist v. Rural, which rejected the “sweat of the brow” doctrine for facts. A rural mailbox photographer in the Columbia Encyclopedia created for this purpose named Lillian Mountweazel now names entities created for this purpose. The title of a John Green novel was inspired by a place created for this purpose supposedly in upstate New York, which Rand McNally insisted became real upon the opening of a general store in Agloe. For 10 points, “trap streets” and “paper towns” are fake entries used by reference works for what purpose of detecting intellectual property violations?
ANSWER: detecting copyright infringement [accept descriptions of detecting plagiarism or copying; accept copyright traps or copyright enforcement; accept intellectual property trap or intellectual property theft or IP trap or IP theft until “intellectual property” is read; prompt on fictitious entries until “fake entries” is read; prompt on paper towns or trap streets or Mountweazels until read by asking “what purpose do those things serve?”]
[after 26% of the tossup] In the beginning of this text, a floating air spirit’s knees are home to a nest containing duck eggs that hatch to create heaven and earth. Scholars suggest that the virgin birth depicted in this text after Marjatta eats a berry is a result of Christianization. A woman in this text uses honey to revive her son, pieces of whose body she finds with a copper rake and sews together after seeing the omen of his bleeding hairbrush. The Mistress of the North who rules over Pohjola in this text promises her daughter to its protagonist if he can successfully forge the Sampo. After the witch Louhi steals the sun, the moon, and fire in this text, the smith Ilmarinen and the kantele-playing first man, Väinämöinen, work to restore them. For 10 points, name this national epic of Finland.
ANSWER: Kalevala
[after 45% of the tossup] Methods of displaying certain types of these objects are named after having one, two, or three colors. A lady rushes towards a bear in one of twelve narrative scenes from one of these objects titled after a court teacher’s “admonitions.” Three of these non-title objects hang from the ceiling in an installation originally named after a “Mirror to Analyze the World.” A ship’s crew attempts to lower their mast to avoid crashing into the Rainbow Bridge in one of these objects that was animated for the 2010 World Expo. “Hand” types of these objects include Zhāng Zéduān’s (“jahng dzuh-dwen’s”) panoramic painting Along the River During the Qīngmíng Festival. For 10 points, Chinese calligraphy is often displayed on what objects that can be rolled up?
ANSWER: scrolls [or juàn; accept handscrolls or hanging scrolls; accept Admonitions Scroll; prompt on paper or silk; prompt on ink drawings; prompt on calligraphy until read] (The third line refers to Xú Bīng’s A Book From the Sky.)
[after 50% of the tossup] In this city, the “Fast Form Manifest” style was used by Thierry Noir to create cartoonish heads that can be seen at the East Side Gallery. The film Night Crossing opens with footage of an event in this city that was also captured by Peter Leibing. Blue rope was used to fasten over 100,000 square meters of fabric in a “wrapping” of a building in this city by Christo and Jeanne-Claude. A Dmitri Vrubel mural in this city depicts a 1979 meeting in which Leonid Brezhnev shared a fraternal kiss. A watch was removed from a soldier’s wrist in a photograph taken atop this city’s parliament building after its capture by the Soviets. For 10 points, name this city where graffiti was broken into chunks after the 1989 fall of its namesake wall.
ANSWER: Berlin [accept East Berlin or Ost-Berlin; accept West Berlin; accept Berlin Wall] (The second line refers to Leibing’s Leap into Freedom. The third line refers to Wrapped Reichstag. The fifth line refers to Raising a Flag over the Reichstag.)
[after 59% of the tossup] Louis Nelson used sandblasting to depict these people in an artwork surrounded by a group of 19 stainless steel sculptures titled The Column. James E. Connell III was the model for a depiction of one of these people in a sculpture that was deliberately placed across a “sea of sacrifice.” In response to controversy over a 21-year-old student winning a 1981 contest, Frederick Hart created a bronze sculpture of three of these people that included the first depiction of an African American on the National Mall. Two large black granite slabs arranged in a V-shape make up a monument dedicated to these people by Maya Lin. For 10 points, name these people whose names are etched onto the walls of the Vietnam Memorial.
ANSWER: war veterans [or soldiers; accept equivalents like servicepeople or troops; accept Army people or Navy people or Air Force people; accept Vietnam Veterans Memorial; accept Korean War Veterans Memorial; accept Three Soldiers or Three Servicemen; prompt on fighters or combatants; prompt on dead people]
[after 62% of the tossup] During this country’s Hujum campaign, body-length robes called paranjas were banned and women were forced to unveil. This country’s arrest and execution of intellectuals like Choʻlpon marked the end of its reformist Jadid movement. In the 1930s, this country’s official ethnogenesis narratives canonized national heroes such as Alisher Nava’i and Manas. This country’s fishing industry in towns like Moynaq was destroyed due to excessive cotton cultivation. Newcomers outnumbered the original population in a nomadic region of this country after mass resettlement during its Virgin Lands campaign. This country’s irrigation projects, like the Karakum Canal, diverted enough water to shrink the nearby Aral Sea. For 10 points, name this country from which Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan seceded in 1991.
ANSWER: Soviet Union [or USSR; or Union of Soviet Socialist Republics; prompt on Russia; prompt on Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic or Uzbekistan until “Uzbekistan” is read; prompt on Kirghiz Soviet Socialist Republic or Kirghizia or Kyrgyzstan until “Kyrgyzstan” is read; prompt on Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic or Kazakhstan until “Kazakhstan” is read; prompt on Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic or Turkmenia or Turkmenistan]
[after 62% of the tossup] This artist drew from an earlier depiction of pine trees in Calvi for a woodcut of tire tracks and footprints crossing over a reflective puddle. A statue of a simurgh gifted to this artist inspired the “bird-humans” that are depicted three times along the central vertical axis in the mezzotint Another World. Piranesi’s Imaginary Prisons inspired this artist’s lithograph of faceless people in a space with multiple sources of gravity. After studying Islamic tile art at the Alhambra, this artist began depicting figures such as knights and reptiles in tessellated patterns. This artist’s print Relativity depicts several staircases in a shape similar to a Penrose triangle. For 10 points, name this Dutch artist whose prints often depict impossible objects.
ANSWER: M. C. Escher [or Maurits Cornelis Escher]
[after 71% of the tossup] This figure is depicted in several “Palagi heads,” one of which was reattached to its original body by Adolf Furtwängler. A 1990 sculpture of this figure used a cantilever to support the right arm in lieu of a column and is housed in a William Crawford Smith building. A frieze depicting the birth of Pandora was omitted from a “Varvakeion” copy of a sculpture of this figure. Alan LeQuire created a plaster replica of that sculpture of this larger figure for the naos (“NAY-oss”) of a building in Nashville. The artist’s patron Pericles appears on a round shield next to a coiled snake in a large chryselephantine sculpture of this figure by Phidias. For 10 points, the ancient Greek Parthenon once held a sculpture of what goddess of war?
ANSWER: Athena [accept Athena Parthenos or Varvakeion Athena or Athena Lemnia] (LeQuire’s reproduction of the Athena Parthenos was created for the Nashville Parthenon.)
[after 71% of the tossup] The 17th-century Sinckan (“seen-kahn”) manuscripts from this island contain contracts with indigenous peoples such as the Siraya. That group was often referred to as “cooked” due to their extended contact with newer settlers, in contrast to “raw” groups such as the Atayal (“ah-TAH-yal”), Amis (“AH-meese”), and Seediq (“SAY-dick”), who lived in this island’s mountainous interior. The Spanish Fort Santo Domingo in the north of this island was captured by a Dutch expedition from Fort Zeelandia in 1642. The Kingdom of Tungning was established after the Dutch East India Company presence on this island was removed by Koxinga. Austronesian-speaking indigenous peoples were pushed into this island’s Central Mountain Range by waves of Hakka and Hokkien settlers crossing a narrow strait from China. For 10 points, name this island once called Formosa.
ANSWER: Taiwan [accept Formosa until read]
[after 79% of the tossup] A composer from this country achieved success with an orchestral work inspired by a witch trial and wrote the concerto Veni, Veni, Emmanuel for a deaf percussionist from this country. A composer who travelled to this country with Carl Klingemann was inspired by it to write a cyclic symphony beginning with the slow rising theme E, A, B, C. A piece inspired by this country uses the repeated motif [read slowly] F-sharp, D, C-sharp, D, B, down to F-sharp. This country’s folk melodies inspired a fantasy for violin and orchestra by Max Bruch, as well as a work by a different composer that makes use of its namesake “snap” rhythm. For 10 points, name this country that inspired Mendelssohn’s third symphony and his Hebrides Overture.
ANSWER: Scotland [prompt on United Kingdom or UK; prompt on Great Britain] (The composer and percussionist in the first line are James MacMillan and Evelyn Glennie respectively.)
[after 91% of the tossup] People commemorate one of these beings on Candlemas by sending gifts for her on small boats out to sea. Stones representing these beings are held in porcelain vessels named soperas. All-white clothing is worn to invoke one of these figures referred to as the “Father of Creation.” Small cement heads are often erected outside homes to obtain the protection of one of these figures who wears a red and black hat named Elegua. Drums called bata are played to summon these figures in the hope that they will possess people who are attending a feast. In the practice of matanza, animals are sacrificed to these beings, who were sent to Earth by Olódùmarè. For 10 points, religions like Candomblé and Santeria syncretize Catholic saints with what spirits from Yoruba religion?
ANSWER: orishas [or orisas; or òrìṣàs; or orichas; or orichás; or orixas; or orixás]

Jas Wang ↩

[after 16% of the tossup] After he was photographed giving three protesters the middle finger, this politician’s gesture was mocked as the “Salmon Arm salute.” A partial nationalization of this politician’s country’s oil industry in the National Energy Program was strongly opposed by Peter Lougheed. During an event that resulted in the conviction of Paul Rose, this politician was urged to the military to intervene by Robert Bourassa. During that event that was moderated by Robert Lemieux (“lum-YUH”), this person said “just watch me,” when asked how far he would go to implement the War Measures Act in response to the kidnapping of James Cross and Pierre Laporte. For 10 points, the October Crisis occurred during the tenure of what Canadian Prime Minister of the 1970s?
ANSWER: Pierre Elliott Trudeau [prompt on Trudeau]
[after 37% of the tossup] Note to players: Two answers required. One of these two countries announced a megadam in Upper Siang to diffuse a potential “water bomb” from a dam project being built upstream in the other country. In June 2020, one of these counties banned 59 apps originating from the other country as a threat to sovereignty after a border skirmish. That clash saw dozens of troops from these two counties die in hand-to-hand combat in the Galwan Valley. The de facto border between these two counties is the Line of Actual Control in disputed regions like Aksai Chin. One of these two countries called the other’s continued sheltering of the Dalai Lama a “thorn” in relations shortly before one of these countries’ External Minister visited Tiānjīn. For 10 points, name these two Asian countries currently led by Xǐ Jìnpíng and Narendra Modi.
ANSWER: China AND India [accept answers in either order; accept People’s Republic of China or PRC or Zhōngguó or Zhōnghuá Rénmín Gònghéguó in place of “China”; accept Republic of India or Bhārat Gaṇarājya in place of “India”; reject “Republic of China”]
[after 61% of the tossup] The 17th-century Sinckan (“seen-kahn”) manuscripts from this island contain contracts with indigenous peoples such as the Siraya. That group was often referred to as “cooked” due to their extended contact with newer settlers, in contrast to “raw” groups such as the Atayal (“ah-TAH-yal”), Amis (“AH-meese”), and Seediq (“SAY-dick”), who lived in this island’s mountainous interior. The Spanish Fort Santo Domingo in the north of this island was captured by a Dutch expedition from Fort Zeelandia in 1642. The Kingdom of Tungning was established after the Dutch East India Company presence on this island was removed by Koxinga. Austronesian-speaking indigenous peoples were pushed into this island’s Central Mountain Range by waves of Hakka and Hokkien settlers crossing a narrow strait from China. For 10 points, name this island once called Formosa.
ANSWER: Taiwan [accept Formosa until read]
[after 64% of the tossup] A ruler of these people commissioned the “Great proclamation upon the pacification of Wú” to affirm their independence. A dynasty of these people that sustained repeated naval attacks by Po Binasuor was usurped by another dynasty that only ruled for seven years. These people defeated invading armies at Bạch Đằng (“bike dong”) River three times. Literature in a native writing system called chữ Nôm flourished during a dynasty of these people that repulsed three Mongol invasions. These people had a centuries-long feud with the Kingdom of Champa to their south. These people’s Fourth Era of Northern Domination was ended by the Lam Sơn rebellion. That rebellion of these people against the Míng Dynasty was lead by Lê Lợi. For 10 points, name these people whose Trần, Hồ, and Later Lê Dynasties had their capital at modern-day Hànội.
ANSWER: Vietnamese people [or Viet; or người Việt; or Kinh]
[after 72% of the tossup] The biography Camera Girl recounts how this woman worked at Vogue for one day and covered Elizabeth II’s coronation as a reporter for the Times-Herald newspaper. Conflicting testimonies exist over whether this woman was proposed to at a booth in Martin’s Tavern in D.C. or the Omni Parker House in Boston. This woman’s successor renamed the East Garden in her honor, since she redesigned it along with the Rose Garden. This woman prematurely birthed her youngest son Patrick on the 20th anniversary of her husband’s rescue in the PT-109 incident. This First Lady compared her household to Camelot and later remarried the Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis. For 10 points, name this person who served as First Lady before her husband’s 1963 assassination.
ANSWER: Jacqueline Kennedy [or Jackie Kennedy; or Jacqueline Bouvier; or Jackie Bouvier; or Jacqueline Onassis; or Jackie Onassis; prompt on Kennedy or J. Kennedy; prompt on Onassis until read]
[after 90% of the tossup] In a poem by this author, a bird taking flight is “rowed… softer Home– / Than Oars divide the Ocean.” This author described the “Sacrament of summer days!” and “last Communion in the Haze” in a different poem that describes birds’ “backward look” towards an end-of-summer sky as “A blue and gold mistake.” This author wrote about “the Chariots– pausing– / At her low Gate–” in a poem in which the title entity “selects her own society.” This author wrote a different poem in which the speaker hears the title entity “in the chillest land– / And on the strangest Sea.” This author wrote “sore must be the storm” that silences “the tune without the words… that kept so many warm” in a poem about a bird who “perches in the soul.” For 10 points, name this reclusive poet who wrote “‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers.”
ANSWER: Emily Dickinson (The first and second poems are “A Bird, Came Down the Walk” and “These Are the Days When Birds Come Back.”)
[after 100% of the tossup] Description acceptable. Henry Alford’s New Yorker article “Ink” documented dictionary words used for this purpose like “esquivalience.” The discovery of phone listings used for this purpose led to the 1991 case Feist v. Rural, which rejected the “sweat of the brow” doctrine for facts. A rural mailbox photographer in the Columbia Encyclopedia created for this purpose named Lillian Mountweazel now names entities created for this purpose. The title of a John Green novel was inspired by a place created for this purpose supposedly in upstate New York, which Rand McNally insisted became real upon the opening of a general store in Agloe. For 10 points, “trap streets” and “paper towns” are fake entries used by reference works for what purpose of detecting intellectual property violations?
ANSWER: detecting copyright infringement [accept descriptions of detecting plagiarism or copying; accept copyright traps or copyright enforcement; accept intellectual property trap or intellectual property theft or IP trap or IP theft until “intellectual property” is read; prompt on fictitious entries until “fake entries” is read; prompt on paper towns or trap streets or Mountweazels until read by asking “what purpose do those things serve?”]

Lily Citron ↩

[after 41% of the tossup] The southern shore of this body of water is home to the large Granot Loma log cabin mansion. The remnants of a floating hopper on this body of water is nicknamed “Uncle Harvey’s Mausoleum.” Birdwatchers flock to Whitefish Point on this body of water, which is part of an aquatic “Graveyard” where a shipwreck museum houses a salvaged bell. The cartoon-inspired Pickle Barrel House is in one of two towns on this lake named Grand Marais. This lake is connected to others to its south via a lock between two cities named Sault Ste. Marie (“SOO saint muh-REE”). This lake is home to the furthest inland oceangoing port in the world and the wreck of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald. For 10 points, Duluth, Minnesota, is on what largest North American Great Lake?
ANSWER: Lake Superior [or Gichi-Gami; or Kitchi-Gami]

generated by QBJtool on 11/16/2025