Should half-credit count when a finals answer has the right person but wrong title?

Last night a team answered "Harriet Tubman, Secretary of the Underground Railroad." Obviously the office is wrong, but the person is clearly right. Our house rule says finals answers must be "substantially complete." I gave half-credit and now two teams are appealing.

If the category was historical titles, I would mark it wrong. If the category was famous abolitionists, I would allow the identification and ignore the invented title. Context matters more than the stray wording.

TFA Appeal Note 4.2 usually asks whether the wrong detail creates a new false claim that changes the answer's meaning. In this case it does, so I would have gone with zero unless your league handbook explicitly allows split scoring.

I never award half on finals unless the written rules say I can. Once you start improvising partials, every losing team starts arguing for fractional mercy points.

For what it is worth, our league tracked appeals for two seasons. Half-credit rulings generated more rematch requests than fully right or fully wrong calls combined.

I get why you tried to split the baby, but the fake title changes the answer from "correct with extra words" to "correct person attached to an invented fact." That crosses my line.

The fairest remedy might be less about this one answer and more about consistency. If you have given half-credit in similar finals before, changing course retroactively will create a second dispute on top of the first one.

Question wording matters too. Did the prompt demand a name only, or did it ask for a name and role? If it asked only for the person, you may have more room to defend the ruling.

As a player, I would rather lose a point on a strict standard than find out later that finals are graded with vibes. A hard rule is easier to accept than a clever explanation after the fact.

Older TFA circulars treated invented offices and invented dates the same way: they were considered disqualifying additions unless the prompt explicitly invited descriptive detail.

Could you post the exact written response sheet? Sometimes punctuation or crossed-out wording tells you whether the team meant to offer one answer or was still revising under time.

There is also a sportsmanship angle. If everyone in the room immediately laughed because the title was obviously made up, the team probably knew they were gambling for leniency.

I would uphold whatever your posted rules support tonight, then amend the handbook before next week. Trying to solve both the immediate appeal and the future policy in one ruling usually makes both worse.

My chaotic answer is give them a ceremonial quarter-point and confuse everyone equally. My serious answer is no credit, because imaginary government titles are how trivia boards become folklore boards.

Helpful thread. I pulled the prompt and it asked only for the historical figure, not the role, but our finals policy also says incorrect elaboration can void an otherwise correct answer. I am leaning toward reversing my half-credit and rewriting the policy so this is cleaner next month.