Learned League

Opened with a 9(6) and in first place, only one way to go from here.

Up, up and away?

James, I dismissed that as a bit of cheek at the time and yet after the first week I'm still undefeated! It's been an incredible run of luck with both the questions (my QvH is currently 129, which is pretty unsustainable) and opponents (lowest CAA).

nice work, Leee!

Well, I'm in the midst of my regression back to the mean!

Also, my OQL team played Greg's last week, but I wasn't in the lineup. Sorry to miss you!

good job jaymc getting #1 in the "just audio produced by" one-day. i surprisingly got #11 despite missing a question.

!!!

I forgot to check yesterday, but I had a good feeling about my chances.

Meanwhile, I came in 93rd %ile in Butts.

(I forgot to submit the producers one!)

Finished first on the Comedy Bang Bang 1DS, this time shared with 22 (!) others.

Feel like that quiz could've been much harder than it was. A question about a Red Hot Chili Peppers parody song included an audio clip and asked what band the song was parodying. A question about the character of Dabney Coleperson included a photo of Dabney Coleman and said the character's name was "very similar...but with a gender neutral surname." Both questions very gettable without any familiarity with the podcast/TV show, which was slightly annoying because I would've gotten those right even without the extra hints.

i think one of my answers was misscored for that, it says i got andrew lloyd webber wrong but i'm pretty sure i would have gotten it. i'm not going to worry about it for a one-day though, i got another question wrong so i wouldn't have been at the top anyways.

is there a way i can see my answers? i wonder if i had some kind of mental blip

oh i found it. i put "webber" and it was marked wrong. was "lloyd webber" the required answer?

i also found it pretty easy - i haven't listened to the podcast regularly in years, aside from the end-of-year best-ofs, so i expected it to be harder

was "lloyd webber" the required answer?

I assume so. It's a double-barreled surname.

So yesterday's literature question...

Use your words, please?

Yeah, what about it?

I know it's technically frowned upon to ask about low get rates but I thought more people might know that

WECIB?

Literature is already a sub-0.500 topic among the entire player base, and then add in French AND poetry, and yeah, that's going to tank CA%. Like I said on the boards there, I have a hard time with French writers (if I'd remembered Baudelaire, I would've gotten it wrong), and my undergrad was in literature (albeit English), and really the only reason I got it was because of Dum Dum Girls.

I think I probably first learned about Verlaine and Rimbaud as a teenager interested in the Beat Generation writers (and their influences). I don't know very much about either of them, but the reference to one triggered the other. I was a little surprised at the get rate, too, but yeah, it makes sense that French poets would be a blind spot for a lot of folks.

Okay, y'all's responses are very reasonable, thanks.

iirc, Leee smithed a 1DS about one of the most famous books ever and maybe 125 people played.

TBH, I had a split second at the very beginning where my brane was telling me to put Paul Valéry but I quickly recovered.

one of those kinds of questions where a little bit of knowledge is more useful than a lot

bad season for me so far!

iirc, Leee smithed a 1DS about one of the most famous books ever and maybe 125 people played.

Snob-famous, and 236 players.

Oh, okay, sorry for low-balling you!

And sorry for unnecessary hyphen in “lowball.”

Yesterday’s literature question played much easier, because of the film, I presume.

Apocalypse Now? I don't know how many know about the connection to HOD, and I think it's more because it gets taught in HS.

I forgot that the real point I was making able my Ulysses 1D was that it did get more players than the John Grisham one, but a little fewer than Gabriel Garcia Marquez, so I think that novelists aren't the main thing that players care about. (Surprisingly, Faulkner got nearly double, but the point still kind of stands. )

I think 1DS participation is probably influenced by things like the day of the week, the other 1DSes on that day, etc. Personally, I tend not to look at the site during the off-season as regularly as I do during the main season, so I miss some 1DSes I might otherwise have been interested in.

As for Ulysses specifically, I'm sure a lot of people skipped the quiz because they've never read the book and assumed they wouldn't do well. (Yes, it is famous, but its fame is in part due to its reputation for being challenging. It's a book many people know about but few have read.) I might've done the same, but I think Lee mentioned it on here, so I decided to give it a go. FWIW, the general James Joyce 1DS from 2018 had 417 players, maybe because that one didn't require as much knowledge of a specific work.

Apocalypse Now? I don't know how many know about the connection to HOD, and I think it's more because it gets taught in HS.

Yeah, I was thinking more about the Rimbaud question and how Americans aren't very likely to come across him in a standard school curriculum, in which most literature taught is work originally written in English (except for ancient Greek lit, perhaps).

Whereas I did read (at least part of) Heart of Darkness in high school -- in 12th grade, iirc, which is when we focused on British literature. The fact that it's short and packed with symbolism lends itself to the classroom.

i got the verlaine/rimbaud question from reading about television/tom verlaine/richard hell

^this

Speaking of 1DSes, for various reasons I didn't complete my recaps within a reasonable amount of time for two of my last three (my friend was the main smith on the third one) so they never happened. I usually really enjoy doing the recap, maybe as much as or more so than the actual quiz. People seem to like and want the recaps but they don't often actually post much on those threads and once it's a few days late there doesn't seem to be any point at all, the thrill is gone.

Nov. 21, 2022: LL95 Match Day 11 Question 6

Tom Verlaine, Richard Lloyd, Billy Ficca, and Richard Hell were founding members in 1973 of what cult-favorite punk rock band and CBGB regular that was named after a technology invented a few decades prior?

TELEVISION

Leaguewide Correct %
31%

Oh I know where I got that number from. It was for P.G. Wodehouse.

But that was 2016, so maybe less players

I mean overall of course

I'm doing pretty well this season overall, except for a rare 1(1) on MD14. Pop music and film are among my best categories, but I've never seen The Incredibles and wasn't familiar with "Sandstorm" at all. (Having listened to it just now, I'm guessing I've probably heard it at some point, but neither the artist nor title rang a bell. The "dust devil or haboob" clue only got me so close; I guessed "Windstorm.") Virginia Woolf saved me from a ignominious 0(0).

I'm doing remarkably well, too -- managed to reach second place yesterday after the previous #2 forfeited. That said, luck has been a HUGE part of my season, as I have the lowest CAA in my rundle, and my remaining opponents have an average of 73 TCA (compared to my middling 68), so I'm not that confident at securing promotion. (I also have an outside chance at getting to my long-time goal of reaching 100 TCA.)

With that in mind, I kind of think that league expansion has made things easier in the last couple seasons. I was a perennial sub-0.500 B player, but now I've won more in consecutive seasons (small sample size, of course).