Learned League 73 - Official Thread

[mennoknight]

Who is making borscht with anything other than a hambone and some beets!

[Woof]

Who is making borscht with anything other than a hambone and some beets!

Those wacky Ukranians, clearly

[alietr]

I was sure that I'd lose after biffing on Abu Dhabi (said Dubai), but ended up with a 6(4)-5(4) squeaker of a win.

That one was curious. 44% got it right with Abu Dhabi and 30% went with Dubai. What did the other 26% come up with? Another Emirate? Or they couldn't name Abu Dhabi or Dubai as part of the UAE? I used to know all 7 from having worked there and can rattle off 5 nowadays, but it was pretty clearly Abu Dhabi or Dubai.

[This Is Kirk!]

I was sure that I'd lose after biffing on Abu Dhabi (said Dubai), but ended up with a 6(4)-5(4) squeaker of a win.

That one was curious. 44% got it right with Abu Dhabi and 30% went with Dubai. What did the other 26% come up with? Another Emirate? Or they couldn't name Abu Dhabi or Dubai as part of the UAE?

That's what I would assume. Probably a few percent for other countries in the region such as Qatar and Bahrain.

[cmp146]

I was sure that I'd lose after biffing on Abu Dhabi (said Dubai), but ended up with a 6(4)-5(4) squeaker of a win.

That one was curious. 44% got it right with Abu Dhabi and 30% went with Dubai. What did the other 26% come up with? Another Emirate? Or they couldn't name Abu Dhabi or Dubai as part of the UAE?

That's what I would assume. Probably a few percent for other countries in the region such as Qatar and Bahrain.

I was debating between the correct answer and Dubai, but got this earworm in my head, and went with it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3br0tDqW3r8 I have been having a good streak of lucky guesses this week.

[Linear Gnome]

I tend to get Dubai and Abu Dhabi confused. If I thought about it some more, I probably could have avoided that costly error.

I am still in the promotion zone, but the last three MD's have been frustrating: 4(4)-4(3) tie (against econgator), 4(4)-4(2) tie, and 4(4)-5(4) loss that could have been a win if I had said Abu Dhabi instead of Dubai. Mistakes and bad defense--watching too many Cardinals games, apparently.

[alietr]

I won't get credit even if Castro was accepted since I said Oswald, but I'm not sure what part of my position you're disagreeing with. How can you say the photo including Castro has not been "duplicated?"

duplicate: make or be an exact copy of.
"a unique scent, impossible to duplicate or forget"
synonyms: copy, photocopy, xerox, reproduce, replicate, reprint, run off; More

Glad you came around to my way of thinking.

[SBurrus]

Wow...I am living a charmed life in LL73. I won my 11th match in the last 14 Match Days on MD18, 1(1)-0(1); the only question I got correct was Alaska Airlines, and that was a guess. I'm now 11-3-4 on the season...and my streak without a loss reached 11 days...and I am still in the #3 position in our division.

This was a tough set of questions for our division; 70% got Alaska Airlines but the percentages on the other 5 questions were 4, 0, 57, 0 and 22.

[boson]

Argh... The other former Yugoslav republic who's name starts with M. I knew the fact that Greece was disputing the name, I just forgot the name.

Despite my weak pop music score, my opponent only gave me a point for the Sean Puff Daddy P Diddy Combs question. That good defense beat me. He probably figured Sean's name changed so often that almost anything was right.

[econgator]

Argh... The other former Yugoslav republic who's name starts with M. I knew the fact that Greece was disputing the name, I just forgot the name.

I was the same way. I pondered the questions for about a half-hour and then when I started answering, I realized I had started typing "Mace". I didn't even realize I had come up with the correct response.

For mo, those first 4 were brutally hard. I literally could not come up with a single possibility. Spanish for "rogue"? Nope. Australian male author? Nope. Hip-hop? Yeah, right. And why in the world would I have any reason to know who the president of the DRC is/was?

[alietr]

And why in the world would I have any reason to know who the president of the DRC is/was?

Did you hack into Econ's account, TPH?

[econgator]

And why in the world would I have any reason to know who the president of the DRC is/was?

Did you hack into Econ's account, TPH?

It does seems that 91% of the people agree with me, though.

[Woof]

And why in the world would I have any reason to know who the president of the DRC is/was?

Did you hack into Econ's account, TPH?

It does seems that 91% of the people agree with me, though.

Let me see. Laurent Kabila was the controversial President of the DRC who overthrew their longtime strongman Mobuto Sese Seko. After he was assassinated by his own bodyguard, his son Joseph took over and has been President for the last 17 years. Every time DRC is in the news (as it is from time to time being one of Africa's biggest and most important countries) his name is mentioned. I was surprised that it played so hard.

[alietr]

And why in the world would I have any reason to know who the president of the DRC is/was?

Did you hack into Econ's account, TPH?

It does seems that 91% of the people agree with me, though.

Let me see. Laurent Kabila was the controversial President of the DRC who overthrew their longtime strongman Mobuto Sese Seko. After he was assassinated by his own bodyguard, his son Joseph took over and has been President for the last 17 years. Every time DRC is in the news (as it is from time to time being one of Africa's biggest and most important countries) his name is mentioned. I was surprised that it played so hard.

Apparently you did have a reason to know it, Econ. It would have helped you yesterday. That fact that 86% of the people didn't know it (the 9% was for the Robert Hughes question) doesn't mean they would have no reason to know it.

The Congo question was a partial RTFQ for me. Once I saw "full name", I immediately went to Seko figuring he wanted all three names, and paid no attention to his father's name or the time period. Generally horrible day for me anyway.

[RandyG]

And why in the world would I have any reason to know who the president of the DRC is/was?

Did you hack into Econ's account, TPH?

It does seems that 91% of the people agree with me, though.

Let me see. Laurent Kabila was the controversial President of the DRC who overthrew their longtime strongman Mobuto Sese Seko. After he was assassinated by his own bodyguard, his son Joseph took over and has been President for the last 17 years. Every time DRC is in the news (as it is from time to time being one of Africa's biggest and most important countries) his name is mentioned. I was surprised that it played so hard.

I knew Kabila, but that's all. I suppose I could have taken a wild guess...... Mark Kabila?

[morbeedo]

I knew Alaska Airlines but was really thrown by the wording of the question so switched it to Cathay Pacific

I've read 2 books on the history of the Congo but still couldn't pull out Joseph Kabila

[mcsheffrey]

Let me see. Laurent Kabila was the controversial President of the DRC who overthrew their longtime strongman Mobuto Sese Seko. After he was assassinated by his own bodyguard, his son Joseph took over and has been President for the last 17 years. Every time DRC is in the news (as it is from time to time being one of Africa's biggest and most important countries) his name is mentioned. I was surprised that it played so hard.

I scrounged my memory for the African leader named "Laurent" until I finally came up with Gbagbo. I was so happy to have pulled it out and was shocked that I couldn't use that to remember his son's name. It likely would have been easier if I hadn't come up with the former president of Côte d'Ivoire instead of DRC.

If you had asked me this same question 15 years ago I would have had the answer instantly but with the political situation remaining relatively stable it just has not come to my attention often enough to stick around. I'm sure this question will keep it around for a couple more years before it fades away again.

On 'picaresque' I couldn't decide if it was a real word or if I'd just invented that as a plausible sounding description of a book about a picaroon. I opted to go with picaroon hoping that even if the answer were picaresque it would be deemed close enough...nope. "Luckily" my opponent picked up all 9 points so I didn't have to rue any single missed answer. My week long streak atop the standings has come to an end but I still have a little breathing room before I need to worry about being dropped from the promotion tier.

[econgator]

Let me see. Laurent Kabila was the controversial President of the DRC who overthrew their longtime strongman Mobuto Sese Seko. After he was assassinated by his own bodyguard, his son Joseph took over and has been President for the last 17 years. Every time DRC is in the news (as it is from time to time being one of Africa's biggest and most important countries) his name is mentioned. I was surprised that it played so hard.

I'll further show my ignorance and say I've never heard of the Seko guy either, so that wasn't gonna help.

[mcsheffrey]

I've never heard of the Seko guy either, so that wasn't gonna help.

The most important thing to know about him is that he was a strong proponent of leopard print:

[ElendilPickle]

I had my worst day of the season yesterday, but I noticed David Kendall picked up a six-pack win. Congrats David! I thought that was a tough set of questions.

I was sure that I'd lose after biffing on Abu Dhabi (said Dubai), but ended up with a 6(4)-5(4) squeaker of a win. My other missed question I have a quibble with: RU486 is not a generic name in the sense that its typically used in talking about pharmaceuticals. Typically, generic names of drugs are their INN (International Nonproprietary Names), which in this case was given in the question (mifepristone). Sure, Roussel-Uclaf should have been Pavlovian for RU486, but RU486 is actually a shortened version of the compound number used by Roussel-Uclaf. This is clearly an instance of getting a question wrong by knowing too much, but it did bother me.

Today I'm up against the formidable ElendilPickle, so my unbeaten streak may well come to an end today.

Or it might not.