Members Emeritus


Andrew Yaphe | adyaphe@gmail.com
Stanford University | Law Student
ex-Cabal head
Andrew Yaphe is widely acknowledged to be the best quizbowl player of all time. Andrew is one of the few players (the others being Alice Chou, Matt Lafer, Mike Davidson, and Adam Kemezis) to have won the trifecta of CBI (in 1996, back when people still played that), NAQT (1999, 2001), and ACF (1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2004). He has won titles with both the University of Virginia (his undergraduate alma mater) and the University of Chicago, where he was a graduate student until 2007. Beginning with the fall of 2007, Andrew will be a student at Stanford University Law School. 

Subash Maddipoti | suby10@yahoo.com
Private Industry
The richest man in ACF

Hard as steel and cold as ice, Subash Maddipoti jumped out of a plane and refused to shake the hands of his befuddled flight instructor upon landing. Quoth Subash: “That guy was an amateur. Yelling in my ear every five seconds and interrupting the tournament I was trying to write on my way down to earth.” Known for his unreasonable ability to compose complete quality question sets in a week, Subash is also an active member of the ASPCA and heads a local chapter of the Jane Austen Reading Society where he engages various older women with his sympathetic readings of "dreamy" characters like Mr. D’Arcy and serves the meanest cucumber sandwiches in town.

A true winner, Subash excels at all forms of competition from poker and chess to ping-pong and dwarf tossing. In fact, Nike considered using his image as a way to begin marketing quiz bowl apparel next fall. Perhaps he will return to acting sometime, as his first appearance in the Hindi film "Hi, My Rich Uncle Made this Movie and I’m In It" flopped. But much like dandruff, Subash will return and if I know him, and I do, he will become the greatest thespian of his generation making James Lipton ask him all about quizbowl.

An editor of the highly successful and well regarded ACF Regionals 2001: Don’t Call it a Comeback, a role he will reprise this school year, Subash also led the University of Illinois team to their greatest victory winning the 2000 NAQT D1 Title. He also has numerous invitational victories to his credit and has been a coeditor of ACF Nationals (2001) as well as countless summer tourneys bearing his family crest: an angry Indian man with a toaster.

His self stated life goals:

"My goal in life is to be a Jedi Master and write the definitive Jedi novel of manners, perhaps a tragic tale concerning Han Solo's wooing of Princess Leah. His courtship would, of course, be doomed because of his "new mercenary" money. The old guard Jedi family of Leah wouldn't stand for this; As soon as a respectable, if romantically lacking in promise, distant cousin comes to court, then Han's prospects would be dashed. It's kind of like Henry James meets sci-fi, except its exactly like that, but not really. Actually I really don't like Star Wars that much, but I do like sushi and I did like Sweet Valley High."

This poem, taken from Kalidasa's lost "Book of Songs," recounts the great Subash Maddipoti's attempts to edit a National tournament and vanquish the demons who invaded his village. Some interpretations have noted that he had more than one Rolex worthy of display.

He Works in Beauty (all through the night)
 
He works in beauty, all through the night
Of endless packets, and constant sighs;
And all that's best of clues so bright
Meet in his questions and his cries
That he declaims, to R.'s delight,
But which Ismail to gaudy Bruce denies.
One clue the more, one clue the less
Had half impaired the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o'er his face;
Where tired thoughts turn to cups of sweet espress
And the merits of a Rolex in the display case.

And on his cheek, o'er that brow
He registers the truth of fraudulence
The power marks that win, the answers that blow,
Obscuring days before, "You must condense,"
Before, the sets bereft o' Galusha Grow,
The noble editor struggling with NAQT pretense.


 

"Seven packets down, only four to go!"

 

"I can fly!" - dwarf just after Subash's world championship toss

 

Ezequiel Berdichevsky | eberdich@umich.edu
University of Michigan | Graduate Student in English
The Michael Jordan of ACF

Ezequiel Berdichevsky, known as Shahrukh Khan to his millions of non-Western admirers, is a man of many layers.  On the surface he appears to be an English graduate student, who has led his Michigan team to three ACF Nationals titles and two NAQT ICT titles.  However, there is much more to this man.  As previously mentioned he is a world famous Hindi film actor with some thirty plus movies and some thirty plus leading ladies to his credit.  Some call him Cyrano for his uncanny ability to identify any perfume or cologne at a distance of thirty metres, while others call him the True Traveler from Alturia for his desire to overthrow the United States government and force the William Dean Howells canon on an unsuspecting American public. 

Of primary import though are Ezequiel’s buzzer skills. The tale is told of how he once buzzed off of the words “Your need” with Sir Philip Sidney.  Even greater was the uproar created by his buzz off of the title of Gideon Planish with the answer of Sinclair Lewis, eliciting one audience member to proclaim, “I’m straight but I still want to suck your d**k.”   Zeke replied, “whatever dude,” before recalling 63 separate Beaumont and Fletcher collaborations upon demand.

New and old challengers seek to encroach upon Zeke’s ACF prowess as evidenced by Roger Bhan and Subash Maddipoti’s dual response of “Kali shakti ma,” when asked to comment on Zeke’s place in the game.  What is known though is Ezequiel Berdichevsky has left his mark on the game after winning his ACF titles and editing ACF Regionals, daring to ask for a title in the Cairo Trilogy and about the movie Bloodsport in the same tournament.  What mortal would dare!

 

"Haha Kelly McKenzie, your puny necklace of teeth cannot compare to mine!"

Don't piss off Shahrukh Khan.

 
Paul Litvak | plitvak@andrew.cmu.edu
Carnegie Mellon University | Graduate Student in Computer Science
The pretty boy of ACF

Paul Litvak is a fine man and a great player.  Please enjoy the following poem about his prowess:
 

paul litvak i love you

                 paul litvak i love you
              because you would rather black the boots of
              alfred kroeber than enquire whose soul dangles from his
              watch-chain which would be embarrassing for both

              parties and because you
              unflinchingly applaud all
              tossups containing the words quine maslow and
                farnham when answered at acf nationals

              paul litvak i love you because
                when you're hard up you pawn your
              intelligence to buy a tossup and when
                you're flush pride keeps

              you from negging and
              because you are continually committing
              nuisances but more
              especially on your own subjects

              paul litvak i love you because you
              are perpetually putting the secret of
              acf in your pants and forgetting
              it's there and sitting down

              on it
              and because you are
              forever answering tossups in the lap
              of death paul litvak

              i hate you
 

 

FACTOID:

Women consider his image to be the ultimate aphrodisiac.

Wesley Matthews | castrioti@yahoo.com
Indiana University | Graduate Student in Geology
The yeoman of ACF

Wesley’s obscure answer selection tactics date from a desire to impress his mentor King Zog, who stung his ego by accepting the Canon of Lek Dukagjin over his own law code, a theme packet on pegmatites. He once started a blood feud by suggesting the Kyrgyz epic, the Manas, was a better topic for a tossup than the Albanian version of the Almagest, and during the year-long truce before blood-vengeance was wrought upon him by angry Athens State players, he roamed Siberia trying to collect enough Chukchi and Yakutian folk tunes to compose a symphony while searching for King Solomon’s Rare Earth Mines. Though he failed in both endeavors, he did come across the lost link between Bowen’s Reaction Series and Norse cosmology after meditating for forty days and forty nights and eating a scroll that turned out to be Victor Hugo’s novel Hans of Iceland. For this, Brokk and Sindri forged for him glaptrnir, the magic pen of canon expansion, but Loki cursed him with the inability to use it correctly after he impaled and slow-roasted every packet from the Antonin Artaud Tournament of Cruelty that lacked an earth science question. All shall be well despite this setback, however, since Wesley is coming ever closer to winning over his true love, the Maid of Pohjola, by weaving a perfect ACF packet out of the splinters of her spindle, and you can bet he’ll be at it until he succeeds.
 

Thirteen Ways of Looking at Wesley Matthews
 
 I
Among twenty snowy tossups,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of Wesley Mathews.

 II
I was of three minds,
Like a tournament set
In which there are three Wesley Mathewses.

 III
Wesley Mathews whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.

 IV
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and Wesley Mathews
Are one.

 V
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
Wesley Mathews buzzing
Or just after.

 VI
Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of Wesley Mathews
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.

 VII
O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how Wesley Mathews
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?

 		  VIII
I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That Wesley Mathews is involved
In what I know.

 IX
When Wesley Mathews flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.

 X
At the sight of Wesley Mathews
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.

 XI
He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For Wesley Mathews.

 XII
The river is moving.
Wesley Mathews must be negging.

 XIII
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
Wesley Mathews sat
In the cedar-limbs.

 

 

  
Jeff Hoppes | jthoppes@berkeley.edu
University of California - Berkeley | Graduate Student in History
The only bird lover in ACF (and all of quizbowl)
With a surface area of nearly 268,000 square kilometers, Jeff Hoppes is the political and cultural center of his region, which is often identified as the opossum-ridden homeland of the Proto-Muskogeans. His birth, prefigured in the middle Cornish mystery plays, simultaneously caused and cast doubt upon the existence of the general crisis of the seventeenth century. In his quest to eliminate superfluous references to the Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis from his tournament sets, he has battled his longtime nemesis the red-naped sapsucker across five continents and eight dimensions.  While Jeff is well known for his defeat of the marauding Estonian giant Kalapuisis, he has not yet acheived his highest ambition, to serve as Thomas Osborne, Earl of Danby to the ACF cabal.
 
On first looking into Audubon's Birds (of America)
 
Much have I watched the finches, colored gold,
And many goodly jayhawks and orioles seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Containing Great American Cocks twofold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That Birds of America took as its demesne:
Yet did I never encounter avians so serene
Till I heard Audubon speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a Blue-throated Green Warbler soars into his ken;
Or like stout Farris, who with his nested hair
Had buzzed so early at a Tournament—at Penn
Look'd at his teammates as he negged Voltaire—
Insistent, with a voice loud as a wren.

 

The aforementioned Great
American Cock.

 

Jason Paik | quizbowlronin@gmail.com
University of Alabama - Birmingham | Medical / Graduate Student
Internet Manager
Well known in his previous position as overseer of the internet Quizbowl Tournament Center, Jason Paik first arose in quizbowl prominence forcing the works of Gyorgi Ligeti into the canon (indirectly). Since then, Josè, as he is called by his closest friends, has since been involved in the researching a method to create an artificial Fountain of Youth, all whilst repelling massive waves of carnivorous kangaroos in heat bent on either his destruction or his salvation (he hoped it was the former). Taunting them, he was reported to have said "Thou art utter bullsh*tters!" before erupting in a massive flash, from which a giant Protoss Archon appeared and went on to roast all of the said kangaroos. His rampage was stopped only by the mention of the word "Korea", which like kryptonite to Superman, was his only weakness. This has been demonstrated time and time again in quizbowl tournaments, where, not once, Josè has ever gotten a question on "Korea".

Of more importance is his fanatical attention to ridding the quizbowl canon of the so-called "Colvin science", to which he was attributed the apocryphal curse "May the nameless devil be crushed in a black hole singularity and may his flesh be eaten by Caenorhabditis elegans and Drosophila melanogaster (Morgan be praised!), forever and ever, Amen." While not pontificating on the sins of Nameless One, he managed to connive his way into editing ACF tournaments on the basis of bribing tournament directors to put his name up on the top scorers list. For now, he roams the boundless 'net as the Quizbowl Ronin, waiting for when the time is right to unsheath the sword that shall bring justice to the adherents of Colvin science.
 

#303
 
Jason Paik selects his own Format -
Then – shuts the Door -
To its divine Pyramidality -
Present no more -

Unmoved - he notes R. Hentzel - pausing
To dole out powers -
Unmoved – though Hillemann be awarding
Undergrad titles -

I've known him - from an ample field -
Choose A Team -
Then - close the Valves of his attention -
Like Stone -

 

Jason preparing to administer holy retribution on the Colvinites.

 

"All shields, no hitpoints" was a common derogatory phrase in reference to Jason's lack of quizbowl depth.