Learned League

i ... did well? finished second in our group. i'm not sure exactly how. the questions did seem a little easier/more in my wheelhouse this go-round but i also know i got lucky with some guesses and defense, since i usually end up right in the middle of the pack in C. i'll be moving up to B next season where i expect to be slaughtered and relegated back down to my rightful place.

I am a firm believer that defense is mostly luck. I think some have done statistical analysis showing there is very little correlation year to year.

I am extra firm in that belief because this was the 2nd worse defensive efficiency I've had in my 18 season LL career.

Barely missed reaching 0.500, but ended up in 18th out of 36th, so dead average. This season's questions felt a lot harder to me than the last one, even though I only had one more correct answer in LL86 -- but then my CAA went from 83 to 90 for LL87.

Looks like a bunch of us are signed up for A Feast of Food and Drink.

I missed registering for it!! bah

I signed up for it but expect to do terrible.

Same.

yep

Some good 1DSs right now

I highly recommend today's Not-Quite-Infixes ODS to the crossword fans. I'm still working on it, but it's an appearlingly meaty challenge.

THanks!

*appealingly

Oof! 13th percentile!

Forks' and my ODS is tomorrow!

excited!

i dunno if there's some reason we shouldn't say which one is ours?

Only from an abundance of caution and I guess the conventions we're following in this thread, but for any registered LLers, it'd be pretty easy to figure out which one is ours.

i dunno, maybe we're into umbrellas now

There's only one that's got two smiths!

that's the kind of lateral thinking that shows why we're in learned league

So about The White Album 1DS.

Although maybe only anatol and na did it.

I playtested so didn’t compete. Thought it played pretty easy, although I missed Q6 and Q12, same as na, which turned out to be the hardest two. Seems like more than 70 people went 12/12.

The African American History & Culture ML was really great. I only got 5/12 in the Championship but moneyed all of them, so I didn't do too badly.

Quite enjoyed the White Album one, but it seems my calibration was way off regarding difficulty of Snoop Dogg juice drink vs sheep dogg song title.

Will belatedly check out the African American History & Culture thing as well, thanks for recommendation jaymc!

i scored 8 of 12 for Black American History but was one question right away from 5th. That's LL for you!

Oops I qualified for the AfAm history final but neglected to do it :(

FYI

ALERT! Due to widespread power outages in the US and threats of more issues this week, and in response to a massive number of requests from LLamas, we're postponing LL88 MD1 to Monday 2/22 to accommodate the many players unavailable this week. Sorry for any inconvenience.

— LearnedLeague (@LearnedLeague) February 17, 2021

Had another donut of a match day which is somewhat mitigated by the fact that it was tough for everybody.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7T2BzVzrxA

Losing 2(3) to 1 (3) or rough variants thereof breaks my widdle heart

Er 3 (1) rather

Wait, what? Okay

my first LL forfeit in 12.1 seasons :( and a series of incorrect coin flips for me to start the season too. terrible feeling

it is a little weird how losing a match can make my whole day feel dimmer

im a rookie this year, lost yesterday by playing the worst defense possible lol (my opponent answered only two questions right, the ones i'd assigned the highest value to)

defense is mostly a crapshoot

Yeah. Sometimes I have lucky seaons where it sort of works for me, but I try to not to spend too much time on it, ultimately it always seems to run cold again.

it is a little weird how losing a match can make my whole day feel dimmer

the worst is when you wake up in the night and realize you forfeited, that is true stare-at-the-ceiling darkness of the soul

i've been doing a good job of getting answers right, and already got a couple good guesses in, so that feels like the important part.

Sometimes I wake up around the time of the deadline and submit and get the message that my submission may not be accepted.

That's definitely happened to me a few times. One time I was driving home from somewhere at midnight, and I suddenly realized I hadn't submitted, so I pulled over on the side of the road and did it as fast as I could on my phone.

Rookie defense is especially random. It's not worth stressing out over.

I thought MEZZOGIORNO would play much easier than it did, just to name one recent example.

Heh, seems like a few people put SOLARI for that. Never knew what to call those things.

Have heard/seen that word, but it wasn't quite sufficiently active knowledge for me to dredge it up. Ended up putting MEZZOSOLE, without much hope.

On the luck of the draw and using demographic data for defence: Yesterday's first question was about an artist sharing her name with the Minneapolis art center where she was exhibited in 2007. A reasonably tough art question, and my opponent has modest Art stats... but lives in Minneapolis. No more than 1 point for you, buddy. (And yes, he got it right.)

lol, i was all "playa del sol?"

i happen to be on the Walker's mailing list so that was my gimme.

my fuckup was that i got gazprom but TYPED "gazpro" and hit send before i noticed, goddammit. still won, not too incensed

best week of my career