Bits of San Diego Business #1: Roommate and trivia wanted

Bits of San Diego Business 1.1 comes from Tom Galloway, organizer and contestant in the annual Pro/Fan Trivia-Off:

This year's San Diego Pro/Fan Trivia will have Len Wein, Kurt Busiek, Mark Waid, and Robert Skir going up against Tom Galloway, Terence Chua, David Oakes, and John Sardegna, with the questions being asked by Peter David. We're looking for people to write questions for it, with this year's theme being "Young Heroes". Specifically, we're looking for questions about characters college aged or below, from stories published from 1956-1986 (essentially the Silver Age and Pre-Crisis). For example, Superboy, Supergirl, the Legion of Super-Heroes, Robin, Teen Titans, Spider-Man, Human Torch, the original X-Men and Kitty Pryde, etc.. If you send in a Legion question, we request that you also send in at least one non-Legion question for each Legion question, as we don't want an excessively Legion dominated set of questions.

There are two types of questions in the match, toss-ups and bonuses. You should mark your questions with what type you think they are. Toss-ups can only be answered by individuals, while the full team can consult on the latter. The latter can thus (and should) be both harder and perhaps a bit more complex in terms of a correct answer. In general, questions requiring more than one answer ("Name seven of the villains who appeared in the story about Reed and Sue's wedding") should be bonuses, not toss-ups. Ideally, I think 90% of toss-ups should be answered correctly, while around 50-70% of bonuses should.

Questions should not ask for issue numbers (they can be included in the question, but try for more descriptive set-ups than just "Who was the villain in Forbush-Man #3?") or creators. We're interested in story content. Also, unless it was fairly memorable, please don't write questions on the order of "In Superboy #158, Lex Luthor revealed a particular fondness for what Martian dessert?" where this was never mentioned again outside of that one panel.

As an example, take a look at 2003's match, including all questions and whether and who answered them correctly, in this post.

I'll just note that ones I think were probably too easy were Tossup #10, Bonus #11, and Bonus #13. Ones I think were probably too hard were Tossups 2, 8, and 20.

Finally, if possible, try to add a bit of style to the questions, sothey're not of very basic forms like "What's the Top's real name?" "Who fought Forbush-Man in Forbush-Man #1?", etc. I like Tossups 3 and 14 from the 2003 match in this regard.

Questions should be sent to hal_sdcc@yahoo.com

The match'll be Sunday the 27th, 2:30, in Room 4.

Full disclosure: I was a member of the fans team, the Black Ink Irregulars, in 2001. We barely lost (by 10 points, one question). I have a better record than Paul Levitz, who went 0-2 in his years on the quiz. Note to question writers: Len Wein has historically had a tough time answering questions on stories that he wrote.

Bit #1.2 comes from Sheryl Roberts, who will be there with the Collector Times:

Most of my writers are staying at your hotel (the Holiday Inn on the Bay). One of mine can't come and I am left with a spare bed in a double. Do you know of anyone who doesn't have a room and wants to split the cost of a room? I hate to give that room up and shuffle my writer off to a room with 2 other guys without checking around and seeing if I can find him a room mate. I know you reach a ton of people with your blog and you probably talk to some of them. Considering the sheer weight of people descending this year to San Diego, I'm hoping that you might know someone who is looking for a room and room mate. Let me know if you know someone.

Please contact Sheryl directly if you are or know of someone who's looking for a room. Or, if you know of a message board or other location for matching roommates, please post that here in the comments.