Learned League

xp Ha, I always get the regular-season questions about video games wrong.

the regular season video games questions are usually pretty damn hard!! i think it's because they're written by someone who's like "uhhh i need a video game question" and asks about, like, the most popular free app in the apple store in 2018 or something lol

wow, i remembered that pretty precisely

i feel like there is/was a way to check what your wrong answer was on questions you blew. is that still hidden somewhere on the site?

https://learnedleague.com/thorsten/pastanswers.php

Yes, that’s always good for the current/past season. Keep meaning to train myself to review it but don’t quite care enough.

best i've done in a one-day was a clean sheet and 6th place overall in "rock 'n roll oddities"
best i've done in a minileage was 11 wins 0 losses, 1st place in my division, and 23rd place in the championship for "rock 'n roll." though i lost one day of the "indie rock" minileague but ended up in 7th place in the championship, so maybe that's better.
i also have a niche

at least when i get 9-6'd i don't have to worry about my defense

I got 9-6'd yesterday. :( Could've been a tie, but I second-guessed myself on "tomato" and went with "eggplant."

haha! i went with tomato in a total "there's no way it's right but whatever" kinda guess. haven't they been eating tomatoes in like italy for hundreds of years?

also was stunned to see vaudeville with a higher average defense/lower get rate than lyme. i for sure was guessing when i wrote lyme, but what other than vaudeville could q3 have been?!

i guessed "burlesque" :( i was so sure i had gotten it right and then i saw the answer and felt pretty dumb

on the other hand i was sure about lyme disease because it's crazy to me that it's only been around basically in my lifetime

"Vaudeville" was an almost perfect LL question in that once you think of it you say "aha, "ville," that's why they told us it was named after his hometown, I know I'm right" -- (or for that matter "massif," where the strange phrase "mountain MASS demarcated by FISSIONS and FRACTURES" was right there in the question.

I've noticed that a lot of LL questions are variations on "How did this thing get its name?" (often backwards: "This is the origin story for what thing?") They are satisfying because even if you don't know the answer, you feel like you've learned something. And they can often be puzzled out.

ohhhhhh i didn't even think of burlesque, if i had, that would've fucked me up!

and yes as someone who does a lot of trivia things (badly) and writes his own quiz weekly (not too badly) i am always VVVVV impressed by thorsten's writing. real good questions, multiple points of entry, feels like learning. top tier stuff

Also went with burlesque. I was pleased I remembered that Kwanzaa was a recent invention. 6-0! Though I think my reign of terror is about to end.

jaymc, did you send the invite? I don't see it yet. Might have to email me directly at leeeee at gmail.

i don't think the emails are actually sent out until april, although you can enter them now

Yeah, I sent you a message via ILX mail, but the message was just to confirm that that was still your email address! I'll go ahead and submit the referral, and then you should receive an official invite "no sooner than April 28." (The next season doesn't start until May 20.)

per the referral page

First rookie invitations sent:April 28, 2020
LL85 registration deadline:May 13, 2020
LL85 Opening Day:May 20, 2020

oops xp lol

jeez yesterday was TOUGH

Welcome to my world

1 of 6, only the gimme "lemon" question right... but i tied 1(0)!

IIRC, Thorsten has said that he aims for an average 50% correct rate across all questions on any given day. I'm consistently impressed that he actually achieves it most of the time. Looking at last season, the toughest day had 35% correct and the easiest had 59% correct, working out to 48% for the whole season.

When I have a particularly bad LL day, it makes me feel better to remember that it's actively designed to be difficult.

fucking musicals

yeah. and i feel like i knew that one somewhere!

I'm not participating this season, since we had to unexpectedly replace our furnace for more than $5,000, but a friend is fronting my registration for next season.

I had never even heard of that musical. Luckily, I have a weirdly high Theatre score, so my opponent assigned me a 0.

get morrisp in here stat
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFSoSZTPIO4

oh hey, didn't notice this thread

having my usual run of good results and terrible luck = middle of the pack in my A rundle so far, but i've already qualified for the championship next summer, so it's kinda playing out the string. i like the format change to top three qualify in terms of discouraging blatant cheating (somebody i won't name in my rundle got kicked out for having a bad habit of leading the entire season and mysteriously forfeiting MD24/MD25), but it removes a little bit of the drama of the last couple days of the season if you're usually in contention

anybody going to chicago for geek bowl next weekend? i'm not gonna be at the thursday night thing but i'll be at the friday trivia triathlon/j! alum mixer/geek bowl proper

I live in Chicago but don't know anything about Geek Bowl.

Is the J! alum mixer open to any J! alum? Where is it?

beat the guy who won our rundle the last two times (and whom our branch is named after)

thank u oklahoma drill

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOCxplCFYCE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erIxsjOAKc4

Is the J! alum mixer open to any J! alum? Where is it?

i'll DM you the details

my defense is 25th out of 26 : /

I'm 5th in DE, somewhat acceptably middling in UfPA, and currently 24th of 26, in the relegation zone. Bad season for me. (Not that I've ever done better than "middling" in A rundle)

After winning the first six matches in a row, I promptly ran up a 1-3-1 record over the next five. Went from #1 to #9.
I'm currently 30 right and 36 wrong with 13 most correct wrong answers. I have common thoughts.

i'm putting up middling correct answers numbers in my d rundle but miserable defense + the highest caa in the rundle = guess who's knocking on E rundle's door :(

I’ve been sinking like a stone this season, but I managed to drink the beer last night for the first time in a while which was nice.

5 of 6 yesterday, which is my best yet! You know which one i missed.

was not expecting the mitfords to be so poorly known

Nor I.

Was wondering how well Irving Berlin was known.

this is why my defense sucks, i guess

Defense is overrated.

had no idea on the mitford but no worries with irving berlin

I knew Mitfords would play hard. (Honestly, I'm not sure I would've known it if I hadn't recently learned that both of them wrote for my former employer.) Unfortunately, my opponent was British, which I figured gave him an advantage on both that question and the Fleabag one. He drank the beer; I missed Cootie.

I feel like you could write a much harder Irving Berlin question by not mentioning "God Bless America" and "White Christmas." Like if those were replaced with "Puttin' on the Ritz" and "There's No Business Like Show Business," which are still fairly widely known songs but not (I don't think) as closely associated with Berlin.