The inaugural Vancouver Estival Trivia Open (VETO), the first-ever quiz bowl tournament in western Canada, was held on Saturday, July 17, at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, B.C. We are grateful to: - Boston University College Bowl, for providing questions from its Terrier Tussle at no charge; - Princeton University College Bowl, for providing a buzzer system; - the staff of the Language Learning Centre at SFU, for working out local arrangements. The tournament was held on the roof of SFU's Classroom Complex, under a mostly sunny sky. Tables were arranged in such a way that the players could see the snow-capped peaks of the Coast Mountains behind the moderator. Four teams with a total of eight players participated in a double round-robin: FARSIDE - Peter Waterloo - Joel, Zhan SFU (SFU alumni) - Jason, Tara, Chris Reach (Schoolreach / Reach for the Top alumni) - Brock, Bruce There was also to be a team from the University of Washington, but it withdrew three days before the tournament. It was replaced by the Reach team. The idea for VETO came about as follows. Our experience may be useful to others who are attempting to establish quiz bowl in a similarly underserved community. In April I learned that: (a) Joel and Zhan, the two leading organizers of the quiz bowl program at the University of Waterloo, would be spending the summer in Vancouver; and (b) Jason, the leader of the new quiz bowl program at the University of Washington in Seattle (3-hour drive from Vancouver) is a Canadian Studies major. I figured it would be easier to introduce the locals to quiz bowl if they could play with others who had some experience on the circuit. Moreover, the experienced players could write some Canadian questions to add to the packets from an American tournament set that we planned to buy for this event. We chose the Terrier Tussle for its reputation for questions that are of high quality, fun, not too long, and not too difficult. Boston University very generously gave us the 16 rounds for free, in order to give a boost to the nonexistent program here. So we had four teams -- me, Waterloo, Washington, and some local trivia buffs with no quiz bowl experience -- and the first three of these teams were to edit Terrier Tussle packets to include Canadian tossups and bonuses, and also moderate these rounds. Nobody else responded to my post to the mailing lists before the June 1 deadline. Later I got e-mail from Brock, whose high school team had just won the provincial Schoolreach championship. I turned him away as a player because I thought there would be too many byes if there were five teams playing, with only three of them contributing questions. A few days before VETO, Bruce told us that he'd be coming in from Princeton, and then Washington cancelled. So Bruce and Brock formed the Reach team to replace Washington. Washington did not write any Canadian questions, but Jason edited the Terrier Tussle packets a bit by removing some of the U.S.-centric questions. Washington was going to bring a buzzer system, but Bruce borrowed Princeton's instead. Twelve games were played, only one at a time. Results of the first six games: TT round written by FARSIDE 270 - 10 Reach 6 University of Pennsylvania + Waterloo Waterloo 115 - 70 SFU 9 MIT + FARSIDE FARSIDE 245 - 40 Waterloo 12 University of Wisconsin Reach 165 - 145 SFU 4 University of Minnesota + Waterloo FARSIDE 180 - 95 SFU 14 Carleton College Reach 260 - 70 Waterloo 13 University of Michigan + FARSIDE Standings after first round-robin: 1. FARSIDE 3 - 0 2. Reach 2 - 1 3. Waterloo 1 - 2 4. SFU 0 - 3 At this point the schedule was set for the second round-robin, with the games between the top teams scheduled last. Results: TT round written by FARSIDE 235 - 135 SFU 17 Matt Bruce, Swiatek, Remy + Waterloo SFU 170 - 60 Waterloo 7 University of Chicago Waterloo 90 - 55 Reach 11 Boston University + FARSIDE SFU 175 - 80 Reach 2 Harvard's End & Stern + FARSIDE FARSIDE 300 - 65 Waterloo 1 Bryce Avery FARSIDE 215 - 85 Reach 3 Dartmouth College + Waterloo Final standings: Total Bonus Bonus Points Diff W - L points +10 -5 points avg against avg 1. FARSIDE 6 - 0 1445 63 4 835 13.3 430 +169 2. SFU 2 - 4 790 36 5 455 12.6 835 -8 3. Reach 2 - 4 655 36 10 345 9.6 965 -52 4. Waterloo 2 - 4 440 32 5 145 4.5 1100 -110 Individual results: Games +10 -5 Pts/Game 1. Peter FARSIDE 6 63 4 101.7 2. Bruce Reach 5 22 5 39.0 3. Joel Waterloo 6 21 3 32.5 4. Jason SFU 6 17 1 27.5 5. Zhan(*) Waterloo 7 13 2 17.1 6. Tara SFU 6 11 2 16.7 7. Brock Reach 6 12 5 15.8 8. Chris SFU 6 8 2 11.7 (*) Zhan played one round for Reach (in its second game against SFU). For leading the individual scoring, Peter earned the title of West Coast Dominatrix of Relevant Knowledge (WC-DORK). Some players received prizes. Since the Canadian questions added by FARSIDE and Waterloo may be used later at tournaments in Ontario, I won't mention specifics of these questions if there was a prize associated with them. -> Best buzz on a tossup (a Power Bar (TM) awarded by Peter): Joel, for identifying an object from some obscure technical specifications. (It turned out that Joel had written essentially the same question.) -> Most energetic buzz (a box of Kellogg's Vector (TM) meal replacement awarded by Zhan): Bruce, for several enthusiastic instances. -> Best multimedia question (sage, rosemary and thyme awarded by Peter): Zhan, for a bonus that asked to identify him among a group of people in a photograph taken at a distance. -> Best Canadian question (a box of Smarties (TM) awarded by Peter): Joel, for a bonus combining Canadian currency and current Canadiana. -> Best teamwork on a bonus (a THINK Interactive Bar (TM) awarded by Peter): the SFU team, for several bonuses. -> Cheesiest question (a box of Kraft Dinner (TM) awarded by Zhan): the University of Chicago team, for some of the questions at the beginning of their pack. -> Longest trip to VETO (a Malaysian 2-ringgit note awarded by Peter): Bruce, who traveled through four time zones to get there. Zhan also gave a cookie to any player who buzzed in before the power point on a Terrier Tussle tossup. There was no prize for best sunburn, but there were a few good contenders... In summary, the format worked pretty well. With only four teams, we didn't need more than one playing area. Players moderated or kept score in some rounds, and also had other rounds when they could leave to get food or whatever. The number of rounds was about right, too. Play began at about 12:30 p.m. and ended at 7. Terrier Tussle questions were also well received. There were no interminable bonuses (or tossups) or "Who wrote _Paradise Lost_?", and there were few questions that were beyond anybody's comprehension. We used NAQT rules, with untimed 20-tossup rounds. The new players had not been briefed on all details of the rules, such as the created works rule. We probably should have done a better job of this. Some of the new players expressed resentment over not having been given the opportunity to write questions. I take this as a good sign. Expect to see an SFU team on the circuit in the coming year!