LearnedLeague 78 - Official Thread

[alietr]

For Hercules, I batted around Venice Beach/Muscle Beach, and then came up with the MCWA of Mt. Olympus.

[boson]

I was proud to figure out the connection of grand prix race tracks for md5q5, but remembering the names of tracks in italy/japan was a step too much for me. I think I only got as far as I did due to various racing video games. Fun question.

[teapot37]

I was proud to figure out the connection of grand prix race tracks for md5q5, but remembering the names of tracks in italy/japan was a step too much for me. I think I only got as far as I did due to various racing video games. Fun question.

Yeah, I got as far as "oh yeah, Silverstone is a racing course, right? And isn't there a big track in Austin?" but could go no further. I recognize Monza as a thing associated with auto racing but would never have gotten from A to B.

[classicroadster]

Sports is my best category, and even though I got both the rugby and F1 questions right, I think they are two of the hardest sports questions. And if he'd asked to name both the F1 tracks, I wouldn't have been able to pull out Suzaka.
I also was shocked to see my total, complete WAG of Tiffany be correct. I'm not even sure what prompted me to put it down, other that I couldn't figure out why an artist would need to patent a process to make their art. I finally just thought, well what is a turn of the century artsy-type product? Tiffany lamps/vases/glassware come up a lot on Antiques Roadshow...that's as good a guess as anything.

[seaborgium]

It took me an embarrassingly long time for me to come up with "isotope." I had "iso" for "same" right away thanks to not being a total slouch at Greek roots, and then came up blank. I guess the description was just phrased in a way I had never thought of before. I kept trying to think of Greek-derived references to place or places, and I thought of the troposphere and the tropics. I thought that "trop" referred to change or some such, but I couldn't shake the idea that "isotropic" or "isotrope" somehow sounded plausible, and then I realized the obvious word I'd somehow avoided.

[morbeedo]

Scored a 0(1) yesterday with isotope as the only correct answer. Of course, I wrote down William and Mary and golf, but somehow keyed in other letters. Would've lost anyway. Moving on...

[classicroadster]

Scored a 0(1) yesterday with isotope as the only correct answer. Of course, I wrote down William and Mary and golf, but somehow keyed in other letters. Would've lost anyway. Moving on...

Funny, I spelled WIlliam and Mary "Y-A-L-E".... despite that I got the win 5(3) - 3(3) due to my WAG of dogs (worth 3 points) and my opponent inexplicably giving me 2 points for golf with my near 100% actual sports knowledge (I miss nearly every video game question, and am about 50/50 on board games). Both of us got isotope.

[Bamaman]

Scored a 0(1) yesterday with isotope as the only correct answer. Of course, I wrote down William and Mary and golf, but somehow keyed in other letters. Would've lost anyway. Moving on...

Funny, I spelled WIlliam and Mary "Y-A-L-E".... despite that I got the win 5(3) - 3(3) due to my WAG of dogs (worth 3 points) and my opponent inexplicably giving me 2 points for golf with my near 100% actual sports knowledge (I miss nearly every video game question, and am about 50/50 on board games). Both of us got isotope.

I always check question history on sports questions to see if they are a gamer or follow real sports. It also helps to see how well they have done on other questions about a specific sport.

[Blue Lion]

Funny, I spelled WIlliam and Mary "Y-A-L-E".... despite that I got the win 5(3) - 3(3) due to my WAG of dogs (worth 3 points) and my opponent inexplicably giving me 2 points for golf with my near 100% actual sports knowledge (I miss nearly every video game question, and am about 50/50 on board games). Both of us got isotope.

While my wife and I were at Colonial Williamsburg a few years ago (they ran a great deal on passes for people 55 and older), we visited the William & Mary campus. And there it was: The Sir Christopher Wren Building. Had I not seen it, I would have answered Yale and lost rather than tied.

[Blue Lion]

Yeah, I got as far as "oh yeah, Silverstone is a racing course, right? And isn't there a big track in Austin?" but could go no further. I recognize Monza as a thing associated with auto racing but would never have gotten from A to B.

I hear you. Couldn't get past "Torino" on that question.

[MarkBarrett]

Just call me "feast or famine" as I won with a 9(6) for Match 6 and was the only player in my rundle with the perfecto. For Match 7 my only get was Howdy Doody and yet I got a 1(1) tie being fortunate to play the only other person in the group with just one right.

[Lefty]

Though the Howdy Doody Show was well before my time (ok, I guess I saw a bit in reruns or could there have been a reboot?), I do remember from childhood the gag response of "it's Howdy Doody time with Uncle Frankenstein. You pay me half a dime, I'll make your heinie shine" to the question "what time is it?". So though it seems to me that John Podhoretz got this question in a more challenging form in Season Three (something like "the only words ever spoken by this TV character were "Goodbye kids!" on some date in 1960), we are now more than thirty years further removed from the show.

Anyway, getting that one has helped me to climb to to 2-4-1, which feels pretty good after a 1-4 opening week where my only win was by forfeit when I would almost surely have lost had my opponent shown up.

Though I won last night's match by one blocking point, it featured higher drama than appears on the page. I had been warned about my home internet being down, and feared that my local Dunkin' Donuts might use the same provider (it does!) but on my way to a nearby shopping mall I happened first upon a carwash that offered password-free WiFi, so they are now my favorite carwash. Had I not been so lucky, it was a question of which of my friends on my cellphone to honor with an after-midnight phone call to ask a bizarre favor. I had already faced another tough decision; whether to send my answers from McDonald's (an earlier stop on my trip home), but I had not yet thought of a decent guess to the Helen Mirren question. Somewhere between McDonald's and the Dunkin' Donuts parking lot, I thought of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, which was good enough for me.

I always have mixed feelings after a win on blocking. My opponent bet on me to know something I didn't know, and as a result I win and he loses.

But I do feel better than on Friday. I didn't post my usual weekly report then because I didn't feel I could put my heart into it.

[seaborgium]

The first film with four title characters I could think of was Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, and I was starting to put it in when I realized that didn't exactly line up with the actors named (mainly because there was only one woman among them). Luckily I had an internet friend who was pretty big on Peter Greenaway in the early 2000s, and I either gleaned something from him or had the scaffolding in place for TCTTHW&HL to attach itself to when I found out he'd directed that, so it came to mind pretty easily.

I missed Cyprus (guessed Taiwan off "island republic") and had no clue for vesting (guessed "debenture" because it was a financial term whose meaning I had no clue about).

[dinghammer]

I missed Cyprus

Don't tell DHKendall!

Spoiler

It's on the flag.

[SBurrus]

I am having an odd LL season. Tied for fourth in TCA in my rundle...sixth in TMP...but yet, stuck in 14th place with a 1-2-4 record, and having three consecutive ties after a 2(3)-2(3) tie on MD7. I've had ties in 4 of my last 5 matches.

[Wpwells]

I missed Cyprus

Don't tell DHKendall!

Spoiler

It's on the flag.

I cursed at myself for missing this. I didn't even think that Thorsten wouldn't just expect us to know the outline of every country...

[SenseiCAY]

Lost a Koin flip on Dogs vs. Horses yesterday (figured that people would take their dogs to Westminster, but nooooo...), but thankfully, got "Chuck," as that is my own nickname...

[econgator]

Lost a Koin flip

To be fair, you can't win a Koin flip.

[morbeedo]

Thought I had a perfect day until I saw Howdy Doody pop-up. I was relieved to eke out my first win 7(5)-6(5), but it's never a sure thing in the big leagues. Too bad I missed that one, because I wrote a clown trivia question last year about Clara Bell

[ElendilPickle]

Lost a Koin flip on Dogs vs. Horses yesterday (figured that people would take their dogs to Westminster, but nooooo...), but thankfully, got "Chuck," as that is my own nickname...

I was really confident that "beefcake" was the right answer.