![[The 5] Whooping cough, Topgun flight school, Syrian Assad and more](https://www.rubiconline.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/The-5.jpg)
![[UNEXPECTED FRIENDSHIP] Ep. 1 Online friendship goes IRL](https://www.rubiconline.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Your-paragraph-text-2-1200x800.png)
![[RUNNING ON EMPTY] Ep. 1 The importance of good sleep](https://www.rubiconline.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/6-by-4-logo-1-1200x800.png){kind=logo}
![[STORY BEHIND THE STORY] How does CVE Georgia Ross design The Rubicon?](https://www.rubiconline.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Georgia-podcast-photo-1200x800.png)
![[MIC'D UP] Adele Gjerde glides through the season](https://www.rubiconline.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Copy-of-Adele-thumbnail-1200x800.png)
Quiz Bowl team wins ACRONYM meet
Photo submitted by Jack Indritz
The Quiz Bowl teams mimic the images on their trophies. (Top from left) Patrick Commers, Jack Indritz, Cole Staples. (Bottom from left) Ewan Lang, Peter Schavee.
March 2, 2016
The ACRONYM IX Meet, in a humorously meta way, is an acronym: Armstrong’s Conceivably Regular or Nearly Yearly Meet. The meet was held at Armstrong High School in Plymouth, MN on Feb. 27 and typically features a slew of pop culture questions with answers ranging from the band, The Police, to 15 yards on a football field.
This year, one of St. Paul Academy and Summit School’s Quiz Bowl teams – senior Patrick Commers and juniors Peter Schavee, Jack Indritz, Cole Staples and Ewan Lang – placed first at the ACRONYM meet.
Junior Ewan Lang also placed third individually.
“Everyone in Quiz Bowl always has one answer that they’re waiting for. For me, with pop culture, it’s always Demi Lovato or Selena Gomez,” Lang said.
The team’s next meet will be the 2016 National Academic Quiz Tournament Minnesota State Championship (no fun acronym there), hosted at Eden Prairie High School on Mar. 12.
UPDATE 3/8/2016: Ewan Lang’s quote was shortened to protect question security by request of the question set’s author, Erik Nelson. Nelson’s Letter to the Editor may be read in the comments.
If you are interested in Quiz Bowl and would like to read last year’s questions on pop culture, visit the Quizbowl Online Resource Center.
Diane Huang • Mar 8, 2016 at 8:07 pm
Letter to the Editor from Erik Nelson, writer and editor of the ACRONYM IX Tournament:
Good afternoon,
My name is Erik Nelson, and I am writing concerning the article from March 2nd about SPA’s victory at the ACRONYM quiz bowl tournament. I am the writer and editor of this tournament, and it was great to see some publicity!
However, I am concerned because this article divulges specific information about the questions used in the tournament. These questions are still being used around the country, and will be for several months. It’s entirely possible that future players of these questions could come across this article and have an unfair advantage. Players are told at tournaments not to discuss questions specifically for this reason, and it appears that in this case they messed up.
Because of that, the article poses a significant risk to the integrity of future tournaments, which could impact my question-writing business financially. As a result, I have to insist that any references to specific questions be redacted from the article. In general, non-specific descriptions (such as “questions about football”) are fine for things like this.
I fully understand that, when writing the article, this was not something the writer could not have known. Nonetheless, it is critical to future ACRONYM tournaments that this information not be publicly available. Please make these adjustments as soon as you’re able. Thanks!