> NOSB = National Oceanographic Science Bowl. It's where a bunch of marine science nerds get
> together and answer questions about... you got it... marine science.There's a whole bunch of
> different levels until they get to go to DC for State. My school's team should have gone, but the
> state competition added in a report section, which is in no way included in the national
> competition, so, although we got first in the Q&A, which is the *only* thing at Nationals, they
> placed third because of their report. Sigh.

I can relate to that.

There's a competition here in Australia called the Tournament of Minds, where school teams have to develop answers to problems given out a month or two in advance and (to prove that they're well-rounded) present the answer as a play. Each team also has to do an on-the-spot puzzle on the day they perform.

Anyway, the last year I was in the competition, my team did really well in the state competition. We got good marks on most of the problem, and bonus points for creativity in presentation. The judges said that ours was possibly the best presentation they'd seen.

And we didn't get a place. At all. We got beaten out by three teams whose performance in the on-the-spot puzzle made up for their performance in the prepared problem.
I might not have minded so much, only that year they introduced a new prize category for the teams that did the best in the on-the-spot puzzle. It didn't seem fair that there should be an on-the-spot-puzzle-only award and not a prepared-problem-only award.

Of course, I may only be grumping because I missed out.

Pa"grumpy"ul