LearnedLeague 97 Midseason Classic (10 Jun 2023) Recap

I’ve competed in four midseason classics after LL91, my rookie season. (The sole season I missed was LL92. I was too dispirited by how badly my first season in an A rundle was going and forgot to participate.) I have yet to match the incredible success I had in that first midseason classic, where I was the highest scoring LLama in Maelstrom. (Of course, all those points were meaningless since I was a rookie and rookies don’t get counted in the midseason classic. I”m clearly not bitter about this…)

The Questions

Note: Parentheticals within my commentary that add additional information and context were looked up, in the interest of greater accuracy or informative quality, after I submitted my answers.

1. Millard Fillmore was the first US president born in the 1800s. Who was the first US president born in the 1900s?

It’s pretty well known that John Kennedy was the first person born in the 20th century to become president of the United States. Of course, there’s a one year gap between “the 1900s” and “the 20th century”, but I’m certain none of Kennedy’s predecessors were born in 1900. I put down “John Kennedy” down as my answer.

(I should probably point out that, after the midseason classic ended, a controversy erupted on the LearnedLeague message boards about whether Lyndon Johnson should have been an acceptable answer since he was born in 1908, which is obviously earlier than Kennedy’s birth year of 1917. Since Johnson has the earliest birth year in the 1900s, that suggests he could be considered “the first US president born in the 1900s”. I’m sympathetic to this argument that the question’s wording is ambiguous, but I struggle to think of any presidential trivia I’ve heard which involves “the first president” or “the last president” to do X or be X where the chronology in question is anything other than term in office. Some 74% of LLamas interpreted the question the way I did, and it had the 3rd highest get rate in the midseason classic. I’m just not convinced the ambiguity is as egregious as the criticism argues.)

2. Stan Marsh, Kyle Broflovski, Eric Cartman, and Kenny McCormick are main characters on what television series that debuted in August 1997?

Another easy one for me. This is South Park, which I watched occasionally while I was in college. I write the show’s title down and move on.

3. A special edition of the Ford Mustang GT introduced in 2001 and a retro-style motorcycle helmet produced by Bell Sports are among the items named after what 1968 Steve McQueen movie?

Hmm… Well, I’ve got two likely McQueen movies to choose between: The Great Escape and Bullitt. Of the two, I’ve only seen The Great Escape. I don’t remember when either movie was made, but I’m pretty sure The Great Escape was released in the ’60s and that it came out before Bullitt. The mention of a car in the question makes me want to go with Bullitt, but there’s an iconic scene involving McQueen’s character riding a motorcycle in The Great Escape, so perhaps the motorcycle helmet is in honor of that (despite his character not wearing a helmet in the scene). In the end, it comes down to me thinking that Bullitt was released in the ’70s, and I ultimately put down “The Great Escape” as my guess.

4. Name either of the bands that recorded the albums Maggot Brain (1971), Cosmic Slop (1973), Up for the Down Stroke (1974), Chocolate City (1975), and Mothership Connection (1975).

I don’t really have any good guesses for this one. The fact that the last title contains the word “mothership” makes me think of Jefferson Starship and its predecessor Jefferson Airplane. With no better alternatives coming to mind, I put down “Jefferson Starship” as my guess.

5. What term for a temple dedicated to all gods is often used to refer specifically to one such structure in Rome, which was begun in 27 BCE and finally erected by Hadrian in the early 2nd century?

My family and I took a trip to Rome in 2018,  and I’ve been to the specific temple mentioned in this question and it was one of my favorite places we visited. It’s the Pantheon. Easy peasy. I write it down and move on.

The Pantheon. The Latin dedication reads: “Marcus Agrippa, son of Lucius, made [this building] when consul for the third time.”

6. What was the name given to the spinning frame, invented by Samuel Crompton in 1779, that introduced complete mechanization into the (formerly) hand spinning process via a hybrid of two previous inventions (hence its animal name)?

A mechanized replacement for hand spinning that has an animal name? Well, I immediately think of the spinning jenny. I’m pretty sure, however, that I’ve heard the (apparently apocryphal) story that the spinning jenny was named for a daughter of the inventor, and not in reference to an animal. Nothing else is coming to mind, however, so I put “Spinning Jenny” down as my answer.

7. What were the first names of the parents of Princess Caroline Louise Marguerite (born 1957), Prince Albert Alexander Louis Pierre (born 1958), and Princess Stephanie Marie Elisabeth (born 1965)?

Back to an easier one. These are the children of Prince Rainier and Princess Grace of Monaco (a.k.a. Grace Kelly). I type “Grace, Rainier” into the answer box and move on.

8. Identify the character from Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland whose conversation is composed mostly of puns and plays on words, who is always weeping, and who teaches Alice how to dance the Lobster Quadrille.

I’ve read Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland once and that was a long time ago. It’s also been a long time since I’ve seen any of the film adaptations of the book. In other words, I don’t remember which character this is, so I’ll have to guess.

Using “the Lobster Quadrille” as a launching pad, I decide I should guess an aquatic character. The Walrus is ruled out immediately since that character only appears in a poem recited by Tweedledee and Tweedledum, and those characters aren’t even in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland; they’re in the sequel, Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There.

The Mock Turtle, however… Yes. I’m pretty sure the Mock Turtle is in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. The character isn’t in the animated Disney adaptation, but I vaguely remember him in the (1999) TV movie starring Tina Majorino (where he was played by Gene Wilder), and I think I remember him crying a lot. Seems like a good guess to me. I write “Mock Turtle” down as my answer.

9. Hells Canyon, one of the deepest gorges in the world, is located in the Western United States on what river?

The Snake River flows through Hells Canyon. I believe Evel Knievel attempted a motorcycle jump across the canyon. (This second sentence is quite wrong. Knievel attempted a jump of the Snake River Canyon in 1974, and it was with a rocket, not a motorcycle.) I put down “Snake” and move on.

10. What word was used in Italian commedia dell’arte for a brief outline of the drama that indicated the entrances of the characters and the general course of action? In English, the term has evolved to describe future actions or events more broadly.

Oof… I don’t know. I don’t even have any good places to start trying to think of guesses other than “words that describe future actions”. After giving myself the rest of Saturday and half of Sunday to think of possible answers, I finally decide to put down “Schedule” as my guess.

11. The “Clown Prince” of the Harlem Globetrotters from 1954 to 1978 was, of course, a member of the taxonomic genus Homo, but his name could also be evoked by organisms of the taxonomical genuses Sturnella and Citrus. What was his name (first and last)?

Hey, it’s an easy GAMES/SPORT question for me! In his trivia almanac, Ken Jennings asks about this player in the context of a cover of “Sweet Georgia Brown”, which is best known as the theme song for the Globetrotters. The answer is “Meadowlark Lemon”. As required by the question, I make sure to write down both his first and last name before moving on.

12. Portuguese-style grilled chicken covered in a spicy chili called peri-peri (also known as African bird’s eye chili) is a trademark of what international restaurant chain, which originated in South Africa in 1987, has over 900 locations worldwide (over 75 in North America), and is named after its Portuguese–Mozambican founder’s first son?

I’ve been to Nando’s (or, as the sign at that particular location read, “Nando’s Peri-Peri Chicken”) once or twice. The first time was with my father (and probably my brother), who asked what country’s cuisine they serve. I did a cursory search and answered Portuguese, which isn’t technically correct, but Portuguese cuisine is definitely an influence on the restaurant’s menu.

Scoring

The midseason classic is a One-Day game, which means scoring is different than in regular season play. I’m not competing head-to-head with another LLama. Instead, I’m essentially competing against every participant. Each correct answer will net me 15 points, but I can also designate up to five questions to be “Money Questions”. With those questions, as long as I correctly answer them, I will get bonus points equal to the percentage of LLamas who answered those questions incorrectly. (I.e., if I correctly answer a question I designate as a Money Question and 80% of LLamas get it wrong, I get 95 points, the base 15 points plus 80 extra points.) The rub is to pick as Money Questions five questions I’m confident I answered correctly, but I think are difficult enough that a large percentage of players didn’t.

I toss South Park out as a possible money question right away. Far too many people are going to get that correct for it to be worth it. The question about John Kennedy also is very likely to have a very low miss rate, so I toss that as well. I then do the same with questions about the Pantheon and Samuel Crompton’s invention. If my guess of “Spinning Jenny” is correct, a lot of people will get that correct, and if I’m wrong, well, that would be a waste of a money question.

I’m essentially flipping a coin on the Steve McQueen question, so I’m not going to money that. I’m also not all that confident that my guesses of “Jefferson Spaceship” and “Mock Turtle” are correct, so I’ll take them out of the running as well.

I’ve now ruled out 7 out of 12 questions, and I have to pick 5 as money questions. That means I’m going to money “Grace, Rainier”, “Snake”, “Meadowlark Lemon” (which I wholeheartedly agree with since a fair number of LLamas have GAMES/SPORT as a blind spot–I include myself among them), and “Nando’s”. I’m less confident about moneying “Schedule” and consider changing my mind on one of the questions I’ve previously ruled out, but I decide to heed the old Latin proverb “fortune favors the bold” and money it despite my concerns.

Results

I press “submit” at 1:00 PM ET on Sunday. I’m immediately disappointed to see that I missed 4 out of the 12 questions. It’s my worst showing since I missed 5 in the LL95 Midseason Classic.

“Bullitt” was the correct answer for the Steve McQueen question. (I was correct about The Great Escape being made before Bullitt, but the former came out in 1963.) “Parliament” and “Funkadelic” were the correct answers for the POP MUSIC question. “Mule” was the name of Samuel Crompton’s invention and I feel like an idiot, since a jenny is a female donkey not a female mule. (As for the spinning jenny, it appears that the most likely explaination for the name is that “jenny” is derived from “engine”.) Finally, I wiffed badly by moneying “Schedule”. The correct answer for that question was “scenario”. I guess I was channeling Crypto.com when I embraced “fortune favors the bold”… On the plus side, my guess of “Mock Turtle” was correct.

When I check the official results Monday evening, I see that I earned 354 points. That’s 120 points from getting 8 questions correct and 234 bonus points for moneying questions. I got the most points from the Snake River question; 66% of participating LLamas got that wrong. The rest of the bonuses were, in descending order: “Grace, Rainier” (62%), “Meadowlark Lemon” (60%), and “Nando’s” (46%).

My 354 points were enough for me to be ranked 1,591st out of 9,309 participants. More importantly, I ranked 5th in Rundle A Maelstrom, so my score contributed to Maelstrom’s league score in the classic for the fourth time in four consecutive midseason classics. (When taking all the contributing Rundles from Maelstrom into account, I placed 11th.) Maelstrom placed 89th out of 132 leagues. If I had not participated, the highest non-contributing score in Rundle A Maelstorm (318 points) would have filled out the Rundle A Maelstrom qualifiers and our reduced score would have likely dropped us down to 94th. (The math is a little uncertain since it’s possible my non-participation might have affected the percentage of incorrect answers, which would snowball into affecting bonus points.)

Still, I’m rather disappointed at my decision to money “Schedule”. If I had moneyed “Mock Turtle” instead, which had an 81% miss rate, I would have finished with 435 points, enough to catapult me to 445th place overall. That score would have put me second in Rundle A Maelstrom and 3rd among non-rookie Maelstrom participants. The additional 81 points also would have been enough to bump Maelstrom to 83rd in the league standings. Oh well.

LearnedLeague 97, Match Day 14 (09 June 2023) Recap

It’s the last match day before the Midseason Classic, and I’m in 7th place. Will I head into the weekend with another win?

The Questions

Note: Parentheticals within my commentary that add additional information and context were looked up, in the interest of greater accuracy or informative quality, after I submitted my answers.

Q1. What is the name of the administrative division, essentially an equivalent to the United States’ District of Columbia, that was created in 1911 from the Limestone Plains region of New South Wales?

This is easy for me, even though my only first-hand experience of Australia is a few hours spent in Sydney during a layover. Canberra, Australia’s capital city, was built expressly for that purpose in a territory separate from any other Australian state or territory. Its name is the Australian Capital Territory. I put “Australian Capital Territory” down as my answer and move on.

Q2. What is the common name of Antonín Dvořák’s ninth symphony, composed in 1893 during his residence in the United States (and thusly influenced, and thusly named)?

Another easy one for me, which means I’ll finally have answered a CLASS MUSIC question correctly this season after bungling the question about guitar bridges. The cello teacher I had as a child wanted her students to listen to classical music, so every month during an ensemble “cello class” we would report something we had listened to. (On these occasions we would also share facts about an assigned classical composer.) I am all but certain that at least once my selection had been Dvořák’s symphony “From the New World”, which is quite beautiful. I phrase my answer differently, however, and write down “New World Symphony”, since the question asks for the “common name” and I’m pretty sure “New World Symphony” is more common than “From the New World”. Odds are both are acceptable though.

Q3. What was the last name of the German-born British physiologist who won the 1953 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work on the cyclical nature of metabolic processes?

Well, I don’t know for certain I know this, but I can make a heck of a guess based on previous trivia experience. I’ve looked over Hans Krebs briefly at one point since he has come up in both Jeopardy! and Ken Jennings’s Trivia Almanac. From what I remember, he 1) was born in Germany, 2) received a British knighthood, becoming Sir Hans Adolf Krebs, 3) won a Nobel Prize, and 4) has a namesake “cycle”. I don’t recall exactly what the Krebs Cycle involves, but I believe it has something to do with citric acid. (This is correct. To put it very simply, it’s basically how lifeforms that utilize cellular respiration use citric acid to release energy from carbohydrates, fats, and proteins. It’s also called the citric acid cycle.) I’m not exactly 100% confident on this guess, but being something like 99% isn’t bad. I put down “Krebs” as my answer.

Q4. A Wind in the Door (1973), A Swiftly Tilting Planet (1978), and Many Waters (1986) continue the story first told by author Madeleine L’Engle in what 1962 novel?

This is pretty easy for me. I read A Wrinkle in Time in 2018 with the expectation that I would eventually get around to seeing the film adaptation released that year. I still haven’t seen the movie, but I did enjoy the book. It also makes an appearance in the first season of Ted Lasso, which I rewatched recently. I put down “A Wrinkle in Time” and move on.

Q5. The imperial period of ancient Roman history began when Octavian became emperor (as Augustus) and ended when Romulus Augustus was deposed by the German king Odoacer. Given these boundaries, for how many years did the Roman Empire exist, rounded to the nearest 100 years (i.e., the correct answer will end in two zeroes)?

Oh no. I should know this. I’ve read so much about medieval history, and, the traditional dating of the medieval period’s beginning is the forced retirement of Romulus Augustus (or “Romulus Augustulus”, to use the diminutive name I’m more familiar with–after all, he was a child emperor). I’ve also listened to the entirety of Mike Duncan’s The History of Rome podcasts, but it’s been years since I finished it. Unfortunately, I’m one of those hippies who thinks specific dates are less important than general historical trends and overall context. Wanting to come back to this question and give it more thought, I put down “500” as a placeholder before moving onto the final question.

Technically speaking, the emperors and denizens of the Eastern Roman Empire believed that the Roman Empire itself did not end when Romulus Augustus was deposed; after all, their half of the empire continued chugging along for centuries afterward. If the question used the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans as the later bound, I could answer the question easily: 1500. Constantinople fell in 1453, which I know because it’s the traditional ending point of the medieval period and also the last playable year of Crusader Kings II, one of my favorite computer games. Tack on a few more decades for the period of the Roman Empire’s existence in the first century BC (I know it’s well less than an entire century), and it rounds to 1500.

Likewise, if this were about the dating of the beginning and the end of the Holy Roman Empire, I could again give the answer easily: 1000. Charlemagne was crowned Emperor of the Romans on Christmas Day, 800. (I know this date specifically ’cause whenever I play as Charlemagne in Crusader Kings II, I always aim to beat the historic Charlemagne to the title.) Napoléon Bonaparte abolished the Holy Roman Empire in the early 1800s. (1806, to be precise.)

Unfortunately, neither of those are what the question wants, so I have to try to figure this out. Unfortunately, the only Ancient Roman event I can pin with exactitude off the top of my head is the eruption of Vesuvius that destroyed Pompeii and Herculaneum (and Oplontis). That was in AD 79. It also doesn’t help me much.

I know Gaius Julius Caesar was assassinated in the first century BC in a year that ended with 4 (don’t ask me how I managed to remember that), but I can’t remember if it was 34 or 44. (It was 44.) After Caesar’s death, Marcus Antonius (or Mark Antony) and Caesar’s great-nephew/adopted son Octavianus (or Octavian) formed the Second Triumvirate with (Marcus Aemilius) Lepidus. When the triumvirate broke down, Octavianus defeated Antonius in a civil war, but I don’t remember the year (the war ended in 30 BC), and Lepidus, at some point (36 BC), had been forced to retire, leaving Octavianus as the most powerful person in Rome. Even then, I know it was still some time before the Senate conferred the title “Augustus” to him, which is traditionally when the “Roman Empire” is considered to begin. (It was 27 BC.) At the very least, I’ve narrowed the first year of the empire to somewhere in the 20s or 30s BC.

The end of the Western Roman Empire is the thornier issue. I’m almost certain the final major battle of Attila the Hun’s campaign against the empire was in the 5th century. (This is correct. The Battle of the Catalaunian Plains was in 451.) I know the western empire hobbled along for a while after that, but not how long. Was it a few decades or a few generations? Not knowing the year of the battle doesn’t help. There’s quite a difference between adding, say, 50 years to the date of a battle that might have occurred in the 410s and adding those 50 years to the 470s. Ugh.

By this point, I’m getting tired of thinking about this. For some reason, the number 576 pops into my head and I think it might be the year Romulus Augustus was deposed. Perhaps Attila’s defeat was in the 490s and the western empire managed to last another 86 years? That would be somewhere around 606 years, which rounds to 600. I shrug and replace “500” with “600”.

Q6. Caman is the Gaelic word for a broad-bladed, curved stick that is the primary implement of a stick-and-ball game that has been played for over 3,000 years. What is the name of this sport, or the more commonly used name for the stick used in it?

It’s been a long time since I’ve seen the movie Bandits, but I distinctly remember Troy Garity’s character saying “Did you know you can bet on Irish hurling?” or something like that. At some point, I looked into “Irish hurling” and learned that it’s a sport played with sticks and a ball. This question is asking for a stick-and-ball game that involves a piece of equipment with a Gaelic name. Seems like “Irish hurling” is a pretty good guess to me. I do give myself a great deal of time to think of alternative answers, but never come up with anything.

Scoring

My opponent today is male, is from West Chester, Pennsylvania, and is affiliated with Grinnell College. He’s currently in 12th place with a 6-6-1 record this season. My record against him is 2-1-0.

With a record of .531, GAMES/SPORT is my opponent’s weakest category in play today. Even if I’m not correct in guessing “Irish hurling”, the sport being asked about seems quite niche. I put the 3 on it.

On the opposite side of the spectrum, GEOGRAPHY is my opponent’s strongest category in play. He has a .841 there, so I put the 0 on the question about the Australian Capital Territory.

I’ve now got two 1s and two 2s to parcel out among the questions about the New World Symphony, a Nobel Prize winner, A Wrinkle in Time, and the Western Roman Empire. My opponent’s record in CLASS MUSIC is .675, so I decide the New World Symphony is a likely get for him and put a 1 on it. Despite his record in LITERATURE (.590) being the lowest of the remaining categories (he has an .812 in SCIENCE and a .596 in WORLD HIST), I decide A Wrinkle in Time is easier overall than the other two questions, so it gets the last 1. That leaves the 2s for the Nobel Prize winner and the duration of the Western Roman Empire.

Results

I press “submit” at 10:35 pm EDT. I’m happy to see that my guess of “Krebs” is correct. The acceptable answers for Q6 are “hurling”, “camogie” (what hurling is called when played by women), “shinty” (a variation of the game played in Scotland) or “hurley” (another name for the stick, which the question explicitly said was acceptable in lieu of the sport’s name). “Irish hurling” wasn’t in the list, but I’m pretty sure it’ll be accepted.

I’m much more flustered by seeing the correct answer for the Western Roman Empire question was 500. Romulus Augustus was deposed in 476, not 576. Add to 476 the 27 years in the BC calendar era after Octavianus received the title Augustus and you have a total of 503, which rounds to 500. This was sheer stupidity on my part and it cost me a beer. I can only hope it won’t cost me a win.

I check the official results the next morning and fortunately the damage was limited. I won MD14, 7(5)-4(4). As I expected, my opponent missed the question about hurling (and my answer of “Irish hurling” was accepted) which cost him 3 points. He also missed the Roman history question which cost him the other 2. I’ve managed to play perfect defense.

As a result of the win, I’ve moved up to 5th, the highest rank I’ve had all season. I’m also currently tied in leading Rundle A Maelstrom in total correct answers (70), and hold the lead in total match points by myself (100). Additionally, I am currently 2nd on the leaderboard for Maelstrom’s Maso Trophy, just 7 TMP behind the LLama in first.

I just need to keep this going for the final 11 match days of the season…

LearnedLeague 97, Match Day 13 (08 June 2023) Recap

I’m coming off my first tie of the season. Can I get a better result on Match Day 13?

The Questions

Note: Parentheticals within my commentary that add additional information and context were looked up, in the interest of greater accuracy or informative quality, after I submitted my answers.

Q1. What round, grapelike fruit, which is not as readily available in the United States as it is in Europe (likely an effect of a federal ban implemented in early 1900s), is famous for its use in its namesake pie, but (despite its name) is unrelated to any species of the avian Anatidae family?

Huh. Well, off the top of my head, I can only think of two fruits with bird names: the cranberry (crane + berry) and the gooseberry. I’d be surprised as hell to learn about a U.S. federal ban on cranberries since they’re a native plant, so I guess that leaves the gooseberry. I worry about whether I’ve had a jam made from gooseberries at some point during a trip to another state, but I eventually decide it must have been a different fruit. I do give myself some time to think of other possibilities, but, by the time I’m ready to submit, “Gooseberry” is all I’ve got for an answer.

Q2. What name is missing from the following chronological list? Joe Fulks (1946–52), George Mikan (1952–57), Dolph Schayes (1957–64), Bob Pettit (1964–66), [BLANK] (1966-1984), Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (1984–2023), LeBron James (2023–).

Oh man… I know this is in reference to the NBA record for career points, which LeBron James broke earlier this year. I could easily name Kareem Abdul-Jabbar as the previous record holder, but it didn’t occur to me to learn whose record he broke.

Well, the player in question had broken the previous record in 1966. Presumably, that’s well into this player’s career, so it rules out most historic NBA players I could name offhand, who played in the ’80s or ’90s. I basically have two potential guesses: Wilt Chamberlain and Bill Russell. Chamberlain, of course, was known for scoring (in more ways than one), and I know he holds the record for most points scored in a single game. It makes sense that this could translate into holding the record for career points. Bill Russell was, of course, also one of the greats, but I’m not entirely sure when he played (it turns out he played in the NBA from 1956-1969), so I decide to go with Wilt Chamberlain.

Q3. A room at the end of the Louvre’s Grande Galerie was, beginning in 1725, the site of public exhibitions of works by members of the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture, and the room’s name has become the source of a general term for an art show. What is that term?

I know this one cold from previous trivia encounters. The Académie’s exhibitions were called the Salon. (The Salon still exists today, but is now organized by the Société des Artistes Français.) I put down “Salon” as my answer and move on.

Q4. The 1990 film Henry & June, which starred Fred Ward and Uma Thurman as Henry and June Miller and Maria de Medeiros as Anaïs Nin, was the first film with what distinction (most notably)?

Hmm… This one is tricky. I haven’t seen Henry & June, but, knowing the general contours of Henry Miller and Anaïs Nin’s relationship, I instinctively want to guess full-frontal nudity. I quickly rule it out since the question does nothing to exclude pornographic films from comparison, and those have been around since well before Henry & June. After giving it a bit more thought, I decide it must be the first movie to receive an NC-17 rating. I know Showgirls, another ’90s movie I haven’t seen, received an NC-17 rating, so the timing is pretty good. I put down “NC-17 rating” as my answer.

Q5. Give the stage name of the entertainer and writer whose show-business career, along with her sister’s, started in vaudeville at age four before—among other appearances and reveals—she starred in films (first credited under her real name, Louise Hovick) and wrote two mysteries as well as an autobiography that was the basis of a successful musical.

This is pretty easy for me. Though I can’t name any offhand, I know Gypsy Rose Lee, who was known for her striptease act (the question notes “other appearances and reveals”), wrote mystery novels later in her career. (The G-String Murders is the one I’ve heard of.) I also know she’s the inspiration for the musical Gypsy, though I haven’t seen it or listened to any cast recordings of it. I write “Gypsy Rose Lee” down and move on.

Q6. In February 1862, US Army Brigadier General Ulysses Grant earned what nickname, a play on his first two initials and a reference to the terms under which he accepted the Confederacy’s capitulation of Fort Donelson in Tennessee that month?

Another easy one for me. During my childhood, I visited Fort Donelson National Battlefield with my mother, my brother, and my maternal grandparents. I remember reading an informational sign mentioning that Grant received the nickname “Unconditional Surrender” after the battle ended. I put that down as my answer.

Scoring

My opponent today is male, is from Brooklyn, New York, and is affiliated with Stanford. He’s currently in 14th place with a 5-6-1 record this season. My record against him is 2-1-1.

With a record of .913, AMER HIST is his best category overall. Putting the 0 on the Grant question is a no-brainer. FILM and GAMES/SPORT are his second and third best categories (.849 and .840, respectively), so I put the two 1s on the questions about Henry & June and the NBA career points record.

That leaves the 2s and the 3. THEATRE is his worst category in play (.556), but I’m pretty sure there’s a film adaptation of Gypsy (this is correct), so I hold onto the 3 and instead put a 2 on the Gypsy Rose Lee question. His record in FOOD/DRINK (.754) is distinctly better than his record in ART (.627), so I put the remaining 2 on the question about the avian-named berry and the 3 on question about the Salon.

Results

After giving myself several hours to come up with an alternative to “Gooseberry”, which turned out to be a fruitless (heh) endeavor, I press “submit” at 11:16 pm EDT. I quickly realize that I’ve just downed my fifth beer of LearnedLeague 97. That matches the post-rookie personal record I set last season. (In LL91, my rookie season, I collected 9 beers. Oh how I miss those heady (heh) days…) I’m feeling pretty good about my chances of racking up another win, but I need my opponent to miss a question other than the Grant one.

I check the results the next morning and I did it. I pulled off a 9(6)-4(3) win. I did make a mistake putting the 3 on the Salon question, which my opponent got correct, but he did miss the 2s on the gooseberry and Gypsy Rose Lee questions. His other miss was the Henry & June question. At least I didn’t put the 0 on that.

With this win, I move up the rankings to 7th. I’m so close to matching (or even surpassing) my high-water mark this season of 6th place. Perhaps if I manage to pull of another win tomorrow…

LearnedLeague 97, Match Day 12 (07 June 2023) Recap

Yet another two-day winning streak has been followed by a loss. Can I avoid my second two-day losing streak of the season?

The Questions

Note: Parentheticals within my commentary that add additional information and context were looked up, in the interest of greater accuracy or informative quality, after I submitted my answers.

Q1. What East African seaport was settled by the Arabs in the eighth century, was visited by Vasco da Gama in 1498 and sacked by the Portuguese in 1500, was captured by the Sultanate of Oman in 1698, was passed to the control of Zanzibar in 1837, was brought within Britain’s East African Protectorate around 1890, and is today Kenya’s second-largest city and principal port?

It’s a good thing I read through the entirety of this question, ’cause I all set to put down Zanzibar as my answer until Zanzibar was namedropped. Since the question states that this is “Kenya’s second-largest city”, I rule out Nairobi, which I believe is the country’s largest city (this is correct) and I’m pretty sure it isn’t a port (this is also correct). I’m not sure how many other Kenyan cities I could name, but I do know of Mombasa. I don’t know how big it is, but it is obviously large enough for me to have heard of it, and, from what I can remember of how Kenya appears on the map, I’m pretty sure Mombasa is situated on the Indian Ocean. With no other Kenya cities forthcoming, I put “Mombasa” down as my answer.

Q2. Per the FCC, the lowest frequency for an FM broadcast radio station in the United States in 88.1 MHz (such as Baltimore’s 88.1 WYPR). As all FM radio frequencies in the US end in an odd decimal, what is the number of the highest possible frequency (used, for example, by “Philly’s Classic R&B” WPPZ)?

Do people still listen to AM/FM radio? (This is a joke.) Well, it’s been a long time since I have. I now generally listen to podcasts when in the car, unless I’m with family, in which case I sometimes stream music from a personally curated playlist or two. In other words, I don’t know the answer to this, so I’ll have to just take a shot in the dark.

Back when I did listen to FM radio, I would alternate between a small number of stations, mostly classic rock. Some of them were definitely over 100.1, but I don’t remember there ever being a station in the 110s. So, the upper bound must be somewhere in the upper 100s. I decide to make 109.7 my mostly blind guess.

Q3. The poor performance of the Mexican economy and ascension of a democratic movement under Francisco Madero were factors in the forced resignation and exile in 1911 of what president of Mexico, who led a military coup in 1876 and whose second term ran from 1884 until his resignation?

Oh no. I know this. I know I know this, but I can’t think of his name right now. Oh, c’mon…

I’ve mentioned before that I’ve listened to Mike Duncan’s superlative Revolutions podcast, which had a season covering the Mexican Revolution. After the guy in question about was forced out of power, Madero became president, only to be murdered after a coup launched with the support of the U.S. ambassador. Mexico would then be wracked by factionalism for several more years.

None of what I can remember right now helps me recall this guy’s name. I even remember that the era that this man was in power has a specific single-word name derived from his own name, but I don’t remember what it is. I decide to move on to the other questions for now, but, once I’m done with them, I still don’t remember the answer. Rather frustrated, I step away from my laptop and tell myself I can let it rest for a while. Not even two minutes later, the name Porfirio Díaz pops into my head. I know it’s correct because I also remember that the period of his rule over Mexico is called the “Porfiriato”. I dash back to my laptop and type “Diaz” down as my answer.

Q4. What term, derived from the Greek for “solid” and “impression”, originally referred to a method of duplicate printing, but was given its current (and often pejorative) meaning in social psychology by Walter Lippmann’s 1922 book Public Opinion?

I don’t know the answer to this. I haven’t read Public Opinion, but I know I’ve come across Walter Lippman somewhere, probably while reading about American political history.

I decide my first approach to this question is to think of words and terms for duplicate printing methods. I come up with mimeograph, Xerox, facsimile, and carbon copy, none of which seem to quite fit the second part of the question. I then try to think of words in social psychology that have some sort of negative connotation, generally along the lines of either being easily swayed or stubbornly sticking to beliefs despite contradictory evidence. Nothing seems to fit the first part of the question.

I end up giving myself several honors to mull the question over. With no good guesses, I put down “Facsimile” down as a guess, on the off-chance that “simile” might mean “impression”.

Q5. What is the name of the cake, similar in concept to a French tarte Tatin or Brazilian bolo de ananás, whose popularity is widely attributed to a 1925 recipe contest held by a fruit producer and distributor founded by James Dole?

Between both “ananás” (which is similar to the Spanish “ananá”) and “Dole”, I know this is about pineapples. One of my great-grandmothers was known for her pineapple upside-down cake. I vaguely remember having some and it was delicious. Not seeing how it could be anything else, I put down “Pineapple upside-down cake”. And now I’m really craving a piece…

Q6. In the hierarchy of the nine types of winning hands in 52-card poker games, with “high card” at the bottom and “straight flush” at the top (“royal flush” being the optimal straight flush), what hand is third from the bottom (i.e., the third-weakest)?

I could probably count the number of times I’ve played poker on one hand. I don’t know this outright, but I think I can figure it out. I know one pair is the next lowest after high card, so I can rule that out. I think of three of a kind and go so far as to put it down in the box, but I realize two pair is also pretty low. After some time considering the two, it occurs to me that I can do a couple rough calculations to get an idea of how difficult it is to get each hand. Whichever is more difficult to achieve should have the higher rank.

So, if you’ve been dealt a card of a specific value, there are 3 cards of that same value in the remaining 51 cards. If you get dealt a second card of the same value, there are 2 cards of the same value in the remaining 50 cards, and so on. Basically, I calculate that there is a roughly 1 in 375 chance of getting dealt two cards of the same value as the first, which would complete the three of a kind.

I do the same thing with two pair, and come up with a roughly 1 in 256 chance of completing that hand after being dealt two cards of different values. I doubt the math is great, but I’m trying to estimate the comparative difficulty of the two hands, not the actual probability of getting them, so, as long as I’m consistent in the math, the results should bear out. What the results tell me is that two pair is distinctly easier to accomplish than three of a kind, so I put down “Two pair” as my answer.

Scoring

My opponent today is male, is from Mission Viejo, California, and is affiliated with C-Berkeley and Truman State. He’s currently in 21st place with a 4-7-0 record this season. My record against him is 1-0-0.

Well, GAMES/SPORT is his worst category in play today. He has a .464 record in that category. A perusal of his question history shows he missed a different question about ranking poker hands several seasons ago. It’s possible he might have reacted to that miss by learning more about poker hands, but I decide to assume he didn’t think the subject would come back up. I put my 3 on the poker question.

POP MUSIC (.833) and SCIENCE (.807) are both strong subjects for him, so I don’t want to put a lot of points on the FM radio question, but I also don’t want to put the 0 on it. There’s a possibility he doesn’t know the correct answer, and I just don’t see how someone who doesn’t know it can reason their way to it. Either he knows it (or luckily guesses it) or he doesn’t, and if he does know it, I won’t begrudge him a 1.

The question about the social psychology term is probably categorized as SCIENCE or LANGUAGE. (It was the former.) My opponent’s record in the latter category is .710, so both categories are good for him. Despite that, I decide the question is rather hard and put one of my 2s on it.

So, I have a 2, a 1, and the 0 left to distribute between the questions about Kenya, Mexico, and pineapple upside-down cake. My opponent’s record in GEOGRAPHY, WORLD HIST, and FOOD/DRINK are .567, .724, and .587, respectively. Despite the middling record for FOOD/DRINK, I decide the pineapple upside-down cake question is probably the easiest of the three, so I put the 0 on it. After all, how many people haven’t heard of pineapple upside-down cake? Then I decide that it’s probably easier to name the second-largest city in Kenya than a Mexican president from over a hundred years ago, so the Kenya question gets the 1 and Porfirio Diaz gets the 2.

Results

After giving myself as much time as I can to think of a better answer to Q4 and not being able to do so, I press “submit” at 11:52 pm EDT. With a rueful smile, I see that the correct answer for Q2 is “107.9.” If I had just switched the last two digits in my answer, I would have gotten it correct. Oh well, it was a mostly blind guess.

I’m a bit less equanimous about seeing the answer to Q4: Stereotype. On the plus side, I’m pretty sure whenever I had come across Walter Lippmann, it was not in the context of him coining the usage of the word in a social context, but I vaguely remember coming across the term in the context of printing while reading about the publication history of The Lord of the Rings and/or The Hobbit several months ago. It’s quite frustrating to have forgotten that ’cause I definitely would have guessed it if I had thought of it. (For the record, “facsimile” is derived from derived from Latin for “make like”.)

A bit nervous about missing two questions, I check the official results the next morning and, fortunately enough, I didn’t lose. Instead, the match ended in a 5(4)-5(3) tie. It’s my first tie since LL96, MD22, and I greatly prefer a tie to a loss.

That being said, I’m annoyed at my shoddy defense. My opponent did, in fact, miss “pineapple upside-down cake”, which, in addition to being a crime against desserts, means I wasted my 0. Additionally, he got the question about FM radio frequencies wrong as well, which was a waste of a 1. (To my surprise, a whopping 69% of LLamas in Rundle A Maelstrom got this question correct. This makes me wonder how the age demographic of the rundle breaks down… This is a joke. Mostly.) The only bright side to my defense is my correct placing of the 3 on the poker question, which was his third miss.

Well, better defense would have gotten me a win, but a non-loss is a non-loss is a non-loss. I haven’t moved in the rankings and remain in 10th. Here’s to hoping I do better than a tie on MD13…

LearnedLeague 97, Match Day 11 (06 June 2023) Recap

I’ve just chugged two beers in a row. Can I shotgun a third?

The Questions

Note: Parentheticals within my commentary that add additional information and context were looked up, in the interest of greater accuracy or informative quality, after I submitted my answers.

Q1. What is the word, taken from Greek, that can be defined in a geometric sense as a polyhedron formed by connecting the corners of any polygon (regular or otherwise) to a single point on a different plane (that is, to its “apex”)?

Ugh. Another MATH question. I swear I was actually good at math in school. I just don’t think about most of this stuff unless it comes up in trivia…

The description of this shape, specifically “connecting the corners… to a single point on a different plane” makes me think of a pyramid. To double-check my thinking, I take a piece of paper and pen and crudely draw different polyhedrons (e.g., squares, triangles, pentagons) and connect each shape’s corners as described. They all seem pyramidal to me, and the specific (and arguably redundant) use of the word “apex” in the question lines up with my thinking. Still, I’m worried I’m jumping the gun, so I give myself a whole lot of time to consider other terms. Ultimately, I don’t think of anything better, so I put “Pyramid” down as my answer and hope for the best.

Q2. Identify the fruit, a hybrid between a mandarin and a sweet orange, that is named after a French missionary (last name Rodier) in whose Northern Algerian garden the hybrid originated in the late 19th century.

So, an orange-like citrus fruit with an eponymous name? I don’t see how this could be anything but the clementine. I put down “Clementine” as my answer and move on.

Q3. Kinder- und Hausmärchen was published in two volumes from 1812 to 1815 as a collection of works assembled by whom?

My rudimentary German is good enough to roughly translate most of the title to “Children and House” something. From the context, “Stories” is most likely. So, a book of children’s stories in German that were “assembled”, not written? I don’t see how the answer could be anyone but the Brothers Grimm, who published a collection of folk tales. I am worried though, because the early 19th century seems too late for the Grimms. Perhaps my perceptions are being influenced by the fact that some of the stories they gathered, such as Sleeping Beauty and Rapunzel, seem to be set earlier. Ultimately, I don’t come up with a better alternative, so I stick with my initial guess of “Brothers Grimm”.

Q4. What is the two-word Latin term of art that essentially conveys the message “don’t forget, you’re going to die” and refers to symbols of mortality (e.g., a skull, flowers, candle, hourglass) that are especially prevalent in still lifes?

That’s “Memento Mori”. Easy peasy. I write that down and move on.

Q5. The Mini was famously designed by Sir Alec Issigonis in 1959, and Harley Earl was the father of the Corvette. To what German automotive icon (and automotive namesake in his own right) has the design of Volkswagen Beetle in 1937 been credited?

A German involved in the automobile industry who is also an automobile namesake? Carl Benz comes to mind almost immediately, though I worry 1937 is too late for him.

I try to think of other German automobiles named for people. I am pretty sure Daimler was dead by that point. (I’m only partially correct on that. Gottlieb Daimler died in 1900, and one of his sons, Adolf, died in 1913. Another son, Paul, lived until 1945. All were automobile designers.) Porsche comes to mind, but I don’t know for certain that it’s named for someone. I know Mercedes is named for a woman or a girl. (She was the daughter of Emil Jellinek, who commissioned the model.) That’s about all I manage to come up with, so I stick with Benz, though I’m not happy about it.

Q6. Zürich, Bern, Luzern, Schaffhausen, Appenzell Innerrhoden, and Neuchâtel are among the 26 federated states of Switzerland known as what?

I probably learned this after my parents went to Switzerland in 2001, but studying political science in college with an unofficial focus on international politics doesn’t hurt my ability to remember it. Switzerland is a federation of cantons. I put down “Cantons” in the box.

Scoring

My opponent today is male, is from Astoria, New York, and is affiliated with Ithaca College. He’s currently in 3rd place with a 6-3-1 record this season. My record against him is 0-2-2. We also follow each other on Twitter. (I did not realize this until looking into his LearnedLeague profile while scoring this match day.)

Scoring today’s questions is agony for me. My opponent is above .500 in every category and above .700 in all but two, MATH (.541) and GAMES/SPORT (.578), the latter of which is not in play today.

I decide Switzerland being made up of cantons is a pretty well-known fact for the trivially minded, so I put the 0 on that question. (My opponent is .836 in GEOGRAPHY.) I then decide to put a 1 on the citrus hybrid. (He’s got a .907 in FOOD/DRINK, his best category.) I put the other 1 on Memento Mori. (My opponent’s record in LANGUAGE is .831 and in ART it’s .886.)

That just leaves the three highest value scores: two 2s and the 3. I initially put the 3 on the MATH question (it is his worst category after all), but I decide that, if my guess of pyramid is correct, my opponent is also likely to guess it. I put a 2 on it instead. Perhaps the Brothers Grimm has the same issue of being an obvious guess? I put the other 2 on that. (My opponent has a .763 in LITERATURE.) That leaves the 3 for the car question. (My opponent has a .792 in BUS/ECON, which is my best guess for the question’s category.)

But MATH is his worst category, I tell myself. So, I switch things up. I take the 3 and put it on the MATH question and put the second 2 on the car question. After all, if Benz is right, it seems a likely guess to me. But isn’t “pyramid” even more likely? I spend several minutes moving around the 3 and the 2s between the math, car, and German questions. Ultimately, I decide pyramid is just too obvious a guess to put the 3 on. I can’t really decide whether Benz or the Brothers Grimm is the more obvious guess, so I decide to rely on my opponent’s marginally worse record in LITERATURE (and also the fact that he chose to participate in a One-Day Special about supercars) to put the 3 on the latter and the 2 on the former. Maybe he’ll end up thinking the early 19th century is too late for the Grimms…

Results

After spending way too much time spent vacillating over the scoring, I press “submit” at 11:36 pm EDT. “Pyramid” is, in fact, correct, which means I’ve now gotten two MATH questions correct this season! It only slightly alleviates my distress at seeing that there was, in fact, a person named Ferdinand Porsche and he’s credited with designing the Volkswagen Beetle. (Carl Benz died in 1929. Also, for the record, the Brothers Grimm lived from the mid-1780s to 1859/1863, and Kinder- und Hausmärchen is typically translated as Children’s and Household Tales.) This isn’t looking good.

I check the official results the next morning and I see that all my worry about defense was pointless. My opponent got all six questions correct. I’ve lost 7(5)-9(6). For the third time this season, a two-game winning streak has been smothered in the crib. Sigh…

LearnedLeague 97, Match Day 10 (05 June 2023) Recap

I finished last week with my fifth win. Can I start this week with my sixth win?

The Questions

Note: Parentheticals within my commentary that add additional information and context were looked up, in the interest of greater accuracy or informative quality, after I submitted my answers.

Q1. In 1836, a Unitarian discussion group in Boston gave its name to what philosophical and literary movement, which was prominent in that part of the country from that time until the dawn of the Civil War?

This is easy for me. Transcendentalism was very prominent in antebellum New England. Among its proponents were Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and members of the Alcott family. I put down “Transcendentalism” and move on.

Q2. The colorless, corrosive liquid known as formic acid gets that name from the Latin for what highly social and ubiquitous animal, some species of which secrete the acid as a defense?

Ha! This came up in Jeopardy! Masters. I’ve been meaning to finish the season, especially since there have been at least two clues touching upon recent LearnedLeague questions, but haven’t gotten around to it yet. (I did see the episode where the show asked for the first editor of The Paris Review, George Plimpton, which unfortunately didn’t stick; the second clue was apparently about Mujib.) I did, however, see the game where Sam “Bring It” Buttrey correctly respond “What is formic acid?” to a Daily Double asking for the substance some birds encourage ants to spray upon their plumage. I put down “Ant” as my answer.

Q3. Mike Damone (played by Patrick Dempsey), Mark Ratner (Wally Ward, now known as Wallace Langham), Stacey Hamilton (Courtney Thorne-Smith), and Jeff Spicoli (Dean Cameron) were students at what high school in a CBS sitcom broadcast in March and April 1986?

Well, I instantly recognize Jeff Spicoli, which is the name of Sean Penn’s character in the movie Fast Times at Ridgemont High, which is also from the 1980s (1982 to be specific). I’m a little surprised to see the question, however, since I remember there being a LearnedLeague question touching upon Fast Times not too long ago. (It was in LL95. Fast Times was mentioned in the question, but the question itself wanted the name of another movie directed by Fast Times‘s director, Amy Heckerling.) I’m not concerned though, since I don’t see how this could be anything else. I type “Ridgemont High” down into the box.

Q4. Name the country music legend, a member of the so-called Outlaws coterie in the mid-1970s and the supergroup The Highwaymen in the mid-1980s, who began his career as a member of Buddy Holly’s post-Crickets band and later became an outspoken advocate of high school education and antidrug initiatives (having overcome addiction himself), before his death in 2002.

I believe The Highwaymen consisted of Johnny Cash, Kris Kristofferson, Willie Nelson, and Weylon Jennings. (This is correct.) It’s pretty easy to narrow it down from those four. For one thing, Kristofferson and Nelson are still alive, and I know it’s not Johnny Cash because I’ve seen Walk the Line. At no point was Cash part of Buddy Holly’s band.

Even if I didn’t know all that, I am also aware of the story that Waylon Jennings was on tour with Buddy Holly and would have been on the ill-fated plane flight immortalized as”the Day the Music Died”, but his seat was taken by either the Big Bopper (J. P. Richardson) or Ritchie Valens, one of whom was sick. (It was Richardson.) Jennings jokingly told Holly (in response to Holly joking that he hoped the bus Jennings would be taking would freeze up) that he hoped the plane would crash, which, of course, it did.

(At the time of my reading the question, I was under the impression Jennings had made the joke after losing a coin toss for the seat, but, reportedly, it was Tommy Allsup who lost a coin toss with Valens for a seat on the plane. Dion DiMucci, who was on the tour as well, has apparently provided a different version of events where Valens was the one who was sick and neither Jennings nor Allsup were originally going to fly. Dion claims he won the coin toss with Valens, but decided the airfare was too expensive and gave up the seat.)

I put down “Jennings” as my answer and move on.

Q5. What is the name of the fully developed urban center that existed in present-day Western Illinois in the 12th century CE and was built around a central mound that reached a height of over 100 feet?`

This came up in the Midwest MiniLeague I competed in during the previous off-season and I got it correct there as well. The answer is Cahokia. I write that down and move on to the next question.

Q6. A sudden migration of tens of thousands of individuals (mostly men) to Northwestern Canada in the late 19th century is the source (or at least one possible source) of the name of a popular solo card game. What is that name?

Uh oh. Well, I don’t know this one outright, but, but after a great deal of thought, I have a couple guesses. For one thing, it has to be a type of solitaire. The “sudden migration” of men “to Northwestern Canada in the late 19th century” must be referring to the Klondike Gold Rush. (To narrow things down, the gold rush happened between 1896-1899.) If this is, in fact, the case, then I’ve got two possible guesses: Klondike solitaire or Yukon solitaire. I don’t believe I’ve heard either name being used so I hem and haw a lot between them. Ultimately, I like the sound of Klondike better and write “Klondike Solitaire” down as my guess.

Scoring

My opponent today is cisgender male, is from Brooklyn, New York, and is affiliated with both NYU and Columbia. He’s currently in 26th place with a 2-7-0 record this season. My record against him is 1-1-0.

His records in FILM and TELEVISION are, respectively, .853 and .762. He also got the Amy Heckerling question from a couple seasons back correct, so putting the 0 on the Ridgemont High question seems a no-brainer.

POP MUSIC (.844) and LITERATURE (.755) are his next best categories in play, so I decide to put my 1s on the questions about Waylon Jennings and Transcendentalism. That leaves the the two 2s and the 3 for the questions about ant acid, Cahokia, and a type of solitaire.

SCIENCE (.431) is my opponent’s weakest category, both in play today and over all, but the question about ants seems very gettable since it describes the animal as “highly social and ubiquitous”. Also, if my opponent knows French, it shouldn’t be hard to connect formic acid to “fourmi”, the French word for ant. I decide to save my 3 for a different question and give this one of the 2s.

My opponent’s record in AMER HIST (.714) is distinctly better than in GAMES/SPORT (.574) and WORLD HIST (.480), so I decide to put the other 2 on the question about Cahokia, which leaves the 3 for the solitaire question. I’m not especially thrilled about that placement of the 3, since I don’t have a good read on how hard the solitaire question actually is. If it is essentially a 50-50 coin flip between Klondike and Yukon, then I’m almost certainly overvaluing it.

Results

Feeling incredible insecure in my scoring today, I finally rip the metaphorical Band-Aid off and press “submit” at 7:50 pm EDT. I’m ecstatic to see that I got all six questions correct, earning my fourth beer of the season. (It turns out Klondike solitaire is the version that is typically played on computers, though usually using only the name “Solitaire”. Also, another LLama reported on the message boards the next day that Yukon solitaire also exists and was accepted. I had all that angst about making the correct choice for nothing…)

I check the official results the next day and see that my opponent missed two questions, making the tie impossible. I’ve won MD10, 9(6)-6(4).

Though I won, I was right to question my defensive play. My opponent got the solitaire question correct (along with 88% of Rundle A Maelstrom) and even offered me a 1 on it despite my comparative weakness in GAMES/SPORT. He missed the Cahokia question (along with 50% of Rundle A Maelstrom, making it the most-missed question of the day) and gave me his 3 for it. His other miss was Transcendentalism, which I found surprising given his strength in LITERATURE. I won’t blame myself for undervaluing that.

But still, I’ve won, and for the second time this season, I move up to 6th place. Crazily enough, looking through this season’s stats for Rundle A Maelstrom so far, I’m actually tied for 2nd in Total Correct Answers (50 out of 60) and hold 2nd place on my own in Total Match Points (72 out of a possible 90–good enough to currently hold the 3rd place spot on the leaderboard for the Maelstrom Maso Trophy). I’m just being incredibly unlucky when I miss. Better defense would help, but also not making stupid decisions every three or so match days would help more.

Here’s to hoping I don’t make any stupid decisions on MD11…

Weekly Roundup – 28 May-03 June 2023

Between the back end of Memorial Day weekend and then coming down with a cold. I got a bit less done than I would have liked last week.

What I’ve been watching

My brother, who was visiting over the holiday weekend, is an Everton supporter. (He went to school in Liverpool and I guess Liverpool F.C. was too good for him.) This means Everton’s decisive match with AFC Bournemouth, where relegation was looming, was on TV last Sunday. I missed most of the first half, but saw pretty much all of the second, including the absolutely beautiful Everton goal by Abdoulaye Doucouré at the 57′ mark. It turned out to be the only goal of the match, which meant Everton avoided what would have been their first-ever relegation from the Premier League. So, my brother was happy for a good chunk of the day.

For some time, I’ve tried to get both my brother and my mother to try out Ted Lasso, so, taking advantage of both their presences over the weekend and my current AppleTV+ trial, I played the first episode for them. It turns out my brother has, in fact, already seen the first few episodes of the show and just hasn’t had the opportunity to continue it. (He’s also very defensive against spoilers. Good thing he wasn’t around a week or two ago when my father went into great detail explaining how the episode he had just watched–the penultimate episode of Season 3, I believe–was deeply affecting to him.) My mother said she liked it, so we’ll see if she gets around to watching more of it.

Of course, I then, over the rest of the week, rewatched the rest of Season 1, which I had seen twice before. It was a bit of a pick-me-up as I was holed up on the couch with a cold. I had forgotten that the final episode of Season 1 uses “You’ll Never Walk Alone” (as covered by Marcus Mumford). The song was originally from Rogers & Hammerstein’s musical Carousel, but I, of course, associate the song with Liverpool F.C., which uses a cover by Gerry and the Pacemakers as its anthem. Anyway, now I just need to get through the next two seasons before I cancel AppleTV+.

I also watched Pokémon Detective Pikachu this week. I probably would have enjoyed it more if I were a child, but, as an adult, I found it quite mediocre. The plot is pretty by the numbers, and most, if not all, of the reveals are rather predictable. I almost gave it a joke review on Letterboxd about there being “Torterra all the way down”, but decided it was neither funny nor relevant enough on its own.

What I’ve been reading

Not much happened in Dracula Daily this week. On May 28th, Jonathan Harker tried to secretly send postcards to Mina and his employer about his plight, only for them to be handed over to the count. And, on May 31st, he discovered that all his papers had been removed from his bag, as had his clothes for traveling.

I’ve reached the section of The Great Political Theories (Volume 1) covering Roman political philosophy, and have gotten through the excerpts of Polybius discussing the Roman Republic’s mixed constitution. Cicero is up next. I hope to make quicker progress through the book this week.

What I’ve been listening to

I listened to the third volume of the soundtrack of the Willow TV show. Like I said last week about the second volume, it’s a perfectly serviceable fantasy soundtrack. I should see if they work as background music while writing.

Inspired by Hayley Williams’s recent rather pointed comments towards fans of hers thinking about voting for Ron Desantis, I decided to check out Paramore’s most recent album This Is Why. (I had liked “Misery Business” back when I was in college, but got burned out by its overuse in commercials for AMC, of all things.) It’s a pretty good album, though I just don’t like Paramore as much as I like groups like CHVRCHES or Florence + the Machine.

On the podcast side of things, after falling behind on most of my subscriptions over the winter, I finally got caught up on Stay Tuned with Preet with the exception of a few rerun episodes and the episode interviewing Maggie Haberman. I’ve got better things to do than listen to that. Now, I just need to keep myself from falling behind again while catching up on other podcasts. This endeavor will probably not be helped by also starting This is Jeopardy! last week. That podcast presents the history of Jeopardy!, so of course I have to listen to it.

What I’ve been playing

During my brother’s visit, he suggested I would like Pentiment. He hadn’t played it yet, but he thought it would appeal to me. I had only heard of the title and didn’t really know what it was about. Using my subscription to Game Pass, I put it on my Xbox and tried it out. Reader, he was right.

In the game, you play a German Renaissance artist drawn (pun intended?) into multiple murder investigations in a small town and its nearby abbey. It reminded me a lot of The Name of the Rose, a mystery novel by Umberto Eco set in a medieval abbey, which I received as a Christmas gift in 2021 and promptly fell in love with. (I was less smitten with the 1986 film adaptation I watched later.) Perhaps unsurprisingly, there’s an Easter egg in Pentiment that refers to The Name of the Rose: a map of the novel’s unnamed abbey and its labyrinthine library. I was quite amused to find it.

Anyway, I find the game quite fun, though its time management system is rather brutal. It’s all too easy to burn through large chunks of time if you don’t know what you’re doing. I ended up having to point the finger, successfully, at a suspect I believed was not the murderer (but likely guilty of other misdeeds) because I ran out of time to collect persuasive evidence on a more likely culprit. (Navigating the autosave system of the game is not intuitive, at least on Xbox, so, for a long time, I thought I had to just live with bad choices and sub-optimal outcomes.)

A final note about the game’s unusual title: “Pentiment” is derived from the Italian word “pentimento” (“pentimenti”, when pluralized). The word technically means “repentance”, but, in art, a pentimento is an artifact in a painting, e.g., a brushstroke, an image, etc., that reveals something that has been painted over. It’s a rather fitting title for a game where the underlying truth seems to be tantalizingly obscured. (Of course, I haven’t finished the game yet, so perhaps there may be clarity later.) Also, it’s probably just a good term to know for trivia purposes.

What I’ve been collecting

I don’t remember how I came across the Marvel Insider rewards program back in 2020, but, when I did, I signed up hoping to save up enough points to get myself drawn into a comic. (Ideally, it would be a Star Wars comic and, with luck, the setting would be such that I could plausibly argue it’s the same character as my Kessel miner extra in Solo.) Collecting points isn’t hard (just click on a few articles, enter some bonus codes, play a licensed mobile game or two, etc.). I surpassed the required 750,000 points a while ago, but the option to redeem the points to be drawn into a comic has been “sold out” for as long as I can remember. (If it isn’t ever going to be available again, Marvel should just take it down.) So, I’ve got a whole lot of points and not much I’m interested in spending them for. Fortunately, from time to time, Marvel Insider offers physical merchandise as redeemable rewards. They tend to go quick, but I try to keep an eye on the site on Tuesdays, the day most rewards get posted. Two recent items arrived this week: a pair of pins featuring Spider-Man and Captain America and the payoff poster for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3.

How my writing has been going

Writing did not progress much last week, though I did have a number of good ideas, which I promptly recorded. Perhaps the best involves my use of epigraphs. Each novel in the fantasy story I’m working on is divided into parts, and some time ago, I had the idea to include a fictional epigraph at the start of each part to add context and additional flavor to the worldbuilding. This was probably inspired by Frank Herbert doing the same thing for each chapter of Dune, though I only remembered he had done that when I reread the book in 2021.

Anyway, I had decided a while ago that I didn’t like the drafted epigraph for Part II of the first book and was trying to figure out what I wanted the epigraph at that point to accomplish. I didn’t want to just reuse the same “source” as the epigraph from Part I, but I wanted it to touch upon the same ideas and point the reader in a certain direction. Then it came to me: How about a scholar presenting an interpretation of a different part of that first source’s text? It nicely ticks off the boxes of what I want the epigraph to do. It provides a bit of background for the character who “wrote” the epigraph; it presents a historical text that shows how the history of the kingdom led to the current point; and it provides an interpretation against which readers can juxtapose what they are seeing unfold in the “present day”. I was quite happy when I thought of it.

Of course, I now have to write the darn thing…

LearnedLeague 97, Match Day 9 (02 June 2023) Recap

I’m in 11th place and have a .500 record. Can I turn this season around any time soon?

The Questions

Note: Parentheticals within my commentary that add additional information and context were looked up, in the interest of greater accuracy or informative quality, after I submitted my answers.

Q1. What is the term used in tennis for when the ball is returned over the net before it bounces? The word is used in the name of another sport in which this action is a primary function of gameplay.

It takes me a moment, but I know I know this… Volley. That’s it. And volleyball is the sport where players are always supposed to return the ball over the net before it bounces off the floor or ground. I put down “Volley” and move on.

Q2. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, often referred to as Mujib, served as prime minister (1972–75) and president (1971–72, 1975) of what country, whose constitution’s fifteenth amendment formally acknowledged Mujib in 2011 as “Father of the Nation”?

I don’t know this offhand, but I think I can make a very educated guess. Because of A. R. Rahman, who won two Oscars for Slumdog Millionaire, the name “Rahman” strongly suggests the Indian subcontinent to me. (It turns out it’s actually an Arabic name.) I know it’s not India or Pakistan, both of which became independent in 1947; I don’t see how someone from the 1970s could become “father” of either of those nations. Also, I know Mohammad Ali Jinnah is considered the father of Pakistan, and I assume Mohandas Gandhi or Jawaharlal Nehru might be considered the father of India. (It appears Gandhi is, but unofficially.)

Bangladesh, however, gained its independence from Pakistan after a war in the 1970s, though I don’t remember the exact time frame. (The war began in March 1971 and ended the following December.) I like it as an educated guess and, after trying and failing to think of viable alternatives, I put “Bangladesh” down as my answer.

Q3. What word, from the Latin for “juice”, is used for any of various plants that have fleshy leaves or stems for storing water?

I don’t see how this could be any word other than “succulent”. I’ve known about succulent plants for about as long as I can remember because my dad likes gardening and used to have some indoor succulents. I write “Succulent” into the box and move on.

Q4. Identify the playwright who starred as “Eddie” in the Robert Altman–directed 1985 film adaptation of the playwright’s bleak and claustrophobic 1983 play Fool for Love.

I haven’t seen this movie or read the play, so I’ll have to think this over. Between the play and film being from the 1980s and the play being described as “bleak”, I think I have a guess: Sam Shepard, whom I best know for playing Chuck Yeager in the 1983 movie The Right Stuff. Because my brother is an actor, I know Shepard was also a critically acclaimed playwright. I haven’t read any of his plays yet, but I have the distinct impression “bleak” is a good adjective for many of them. After giving myself time to think of other possible actor-playwrights (I decide, correctly, that 1983 is too early for Tracy Letts–it seems his first play, Killer Joe, dates back to 1993.), I go ahead and put “Shepard” down as my guess.

Q5. A goat’s horn filled with fruit and flowers, denoting wealth and abundance, is a decorative motif from Greek antiquity known by what word?

Well, I don’t see how this could be anything but a cornucopia, but I don’t think I’ve ever known that this was specifically a goat’s horn. (According to one tradition, an infant Zeus pulled it from the head of a she-goat fostering him, but apparently there’s another myth where it came from Archelous, a river god, who took the form of a bull to fight Herakles. Apparently, the fight didn’t go well for him…) I put “Cornucopia” down without hesitation.

Q6. What band recorded the 1979 song “Don’t Stop Me Now”, one of only two songs released in the 1970s that is among Spotify’s 100 most-streamed songs of all time? Incidentally, a 1975 epic from this band is the other 1970s song on the list.

I watch a bunch of horror and horror-adjacent movies every October. One of the mainstays is Shaun of the Dead, which I’ve seen every October for at least six years running. In one iconic scene of the movie, the band of survivors fight off a zombie while “Don’t Stop Me Now” plays on a jukebox.

Even if the lead singer’s voice wasn’t the instantly recognizable Freddie Mercury, the movie conveniently names the band. (“David, kill the Queen.” “What?!” “The jukebox!”) I also have a fond memory of singing along with the song on the radio while driving home from work one day.

Scoring

My opponent today is female and is from Los Angeles, California. No college affiliation is given. She’s currently in 21st place with a 3-5-0 record this season. My record against her is 1-1-0.

Her record in THEATRE is .353, the lowest out of all the categories. FILM is better, at .538, but a perusal of her question history suggests she’s likely to miss the Fool for Love question. (Unless it happens to be a musical. She seems to be distinctly better at THEATRE questions about musicals.) I put the 3 on that question.

WORLD HIST is her third worst category. She has a record of .500 there. Add to that the related category of GEOGRAPHY, her second worst, where she’s at .460, and I feel pretty comfortable putting a 2 on the Mujib question.

I’m not sure what category the cornucopia question would be in (LANGUAGE? My opponent is .520 in that category.), but I decide it’s got to be the easiest question overall and give it the 0. Likewise, the tennis question is also quite easy (My opponent is .539 in GAMES/SPORT.), so I give it one of the 1s.

That just leaves a 1 and a 2 for the questions about “succulent” and Queen. My opponent is .631 in SCIENCE and .600 in POP MUSIC, but I decide to score counter to my opponent’s record. I put the 2 on the former question and the 1 on the latter.

Results

Feeling fairly confident in my answers, I press “submit” comparatively early today, at 4:28 pm EDT. I’m delighted to see that I did get all six questions correct, earning my third beer of the season. At the very worst, I’ve secured a tie.

When I check the official results the following morning, I learn I did better than a tie. I’ve won, 9(6)-4(4). My opponent’s two misses were the questions about Sam Shepard and Bangladesh. I’ve played perfect defense.

I tick back up to 8th place. I just need to see if I can get a winning streak going on Monday.

LearnedLeague 97, Match Day 8 (01 June 2023) Recap

We’re almost through the second week of LL97, and I’m only one game above a .500 winning record. Will MD8 see me break free from this quagmire of mediocrity?

The Questions

Note: Parentheticals within my commentary that add additional information and context were looked up, in the interest of greater accuracy or informative quality, after I submitted my answers.

Q1. Italian engineer Pier Luigi Nervi’s Palazzetto dello Sport, built in Rome for the 1960 Olympics, has been cited as an inspiration for what somewhat similar (but much larger) iconic building in the United States that was completed in 1965 and still stands today, though it is now mostly unused?

I spent several days in Rome with my family in 2018, but I don’t remember ever seeing this. (Its location is well north of the areas of the city we visited.) Judging from both its name, which I would guess translates as “small palace of sport”, and its being built for the Olympics, I assume this is a sports venue. It’s likely that the American building is a sports venue as well, but that’s not a certainty.

There are a number of current and former sports venues I would think of as “iconic” (e.g., Oriole Park at Camden Yards, Yankee Stadium, Fenway Park, Wrigley Field, Ebbets Field, Memorial Stadium, Shea Stadium, Lambeau Field, Soldier Field, Ohio Stadium, Michigan Stadium, the Rose Bowl, Madison Square Garden, etc.) but none of them fits the question for one reason or another. One particularly alluring venue (probably because its name evokes Rome) is the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, but I know that was a venue for the first time Los Angeles hosted the Olympics, and that was in the 1930s. (The summer of 1932 to be specific.) I also think it’s still in use. (This is correct. The USC Trojans regularly use the stadium for home football games.)

My mind goes from the L.A. Coliseum to another Coliseum in California: the Oakland Coliseum. I have significant doubts about how “iconic” the latter is, and I’m not sure if it is “now mostly unused”. I know the Raiders used to play there before they moved to Las Vegas. I also know the Raiders used to shared the stadium with the Athletics, but I can’t remember if the A’s ever moved to their own stadium. Of course, even if they haven’t moved on to a different stadium, there’s a slim possibility “mostly unused” is a snarky dig at the poor attendance at A’s games.

I don’t really like it all that much (especially since nothing in the question requires differentiation between the L.A. and Oakland Coliseums), but after giving myself several hours to think of a better option, even considering non-sports buildings, I can’t think of anything better. I put down “Oakland Coliseum”.

Q2. Journalist, editor, and sportswriter George Plimpton is widely known for his journalistic exploits (QB for the Detroit Lions, Playboy-centerfold photographer, etc.), and for his best-selling books (Out of My League, Paper Lion, The Bogey Man, etc.), but in literary circles he is perhaps most highly regarded for cofounding a showcase for literary fiction and poetry—a Review—established in 1953 in what city?

Well, I best know George Plimpton from his being interviewed in the documentary When We Were Kings. I also know of him as being related to Martha Plimpton (apparently eighth cousins, once removed), whose come-on to River Phoenix in The Mosquito Coast (“I think about you when I go to the bathroom.”) left quite the impression on teenaged me.

I’m not at all surprised to learn that George Plimpton helped start a literary review. I just need to guess which one. Obviously, since the word “review” is italicized in the question, that word is part of the title. It’s been several years, but, on occasion, I used to read digital copies of The New York Review of Books I got through my local library. I don’t remember ever seeing any reference to George Plimpton, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. I consider a few other U.S. cities, but, since I know The New York Review of Books exists, guessing that another city has a “review” is unappealing. I put down “New York” as a guess.

Q3. Provide the full title or the subtitle of the 1982 film whose titular character was portrayed richly by Mexican actor Ricardo Montalbááááán.

My mother is a big fan of the original Star Trek and most of the movies featuring the original crew, which means I grew up to also be a fan of Star Trek. (Unlike her, I’ve progressed through The Next Generation, which she dislikes, and am now making my way through Deep Space Nine and Voyager.) It’s hardly a unique opinion, but I consider Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan the best of the Star Trek movies. Ricardo Montalbán portrays Khan Noonien Singh, a genetically enhanced warlord from the late 20th century. Khan originally appeared in an episode of the television series before resurfacing in the 1982 movie, where he pursues a vendetta against Starfleet Admiral James T. Kirk. (The repeated “á”s in the question’s rendering of Montalbán is a funny reference/hint to Kirk yelling “KHAAAAAN!” as a feigned emotional outburst to convince Khan he’s successfully outmaneuvered him. The abhorrent Star Trek Into Darkness completely misreads this and gives Spock(?!) the same line as a genuine emotional outburst.)

I am a little confused by the italicization of “full title or the subtitle” in the question, but I decide it’s just to make clear that “Star Trek” and “Star Trek II” aren’t sufficient as answers. I type out the full title “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan” into the box.

Q4. Come as You Are is the title of a 1993 biography, written by music journalist and Rolling Stone contributing editor Michael Azerrad, about what band?

I haven’t heard of this book, but “Come as You Are” is probably my favorite song by Nirvana, which is arguably the quintessential band from the early 1990s. I don’t see how the book could be about any other band, so I put down “Nirvana”

Q5. Identify the river that runs in a giant arc for more than 1,700 miles beginning in the Guiana Highlands and discharges from an easterly flow into the Atlantic Ocean not far from the island of Trinidad.

Knowing that Trinidad is just north of Venezuela, I instantly recognize that this river must be the Orinoco, the major river of Venezuela and Colombia. I type “Orinoco” into the box and move on.

Q6. Name any one of the US states that were formally admitted to the union in the 20th century and are neither Alaska nor Hawaii.

Well, since only one state is needed, this is pretty easy. I know the last two states to be admitted to the union before Alaska and Hawaii were New Mexico and Arizona. I think Oklahoma might also have been admitted in the 20th century, but I don’t have to wonder if I’m right about that since I can just put down “Arizona”, which is exactly what I do.

Scoring

My opponent today is female and is from Ridgewood, New York. No college affiliation is given. She’s currently in 16th place with a 3-4-0 record this season. My record against her is 2-1-1.

My opponent’s record in GAMES/SPORT is .481, her lowest in any category. I decide to put the 3 on the question about the building inspired by Palazetto dello Sport. Conversely, her record in FILM is an incredible .908, her second highest overall, so I put the 0 on The Wrath of Khan.

None of the other categories in play today seem particularly bad for her. Her record in POP MUSIC is .857, so I put a 1 on the Nirvana question. The question about 20th century U.S. states seems relatively easy, given multiple answers are acceptable. That, plus her .787 record in AMER HIST, causes me to place the other 1 on that question. That leaves the 2s for the George Plimpton question (her record in LITERATURE is .774) and the Orinoco question (she has a .711 in GEOGRAPHY)

Results

After giving myself a whole lot of time to think about iconic U.S. buildings, I press “submit” at 12:16 am EDT on Friday morning. Not surprisingly, I got Q1 wrong. The correct answer was the Astrodome. (The Oakland Coliseum opened in 1966, so I was only one year off, but the Athletics do still play there… for now.)

I also was wrong about Q2. The city George Plimpton co-founded the review in was Paris. I’m pretty sure I have heard of The Paris Review, but it didn’t even occur to me to think outside the United States since I knew Plimpton was an American. Sigh.

My other four answers are correct. (Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Arizona are all acceptable answers for Q6. Oklahoma was admitted to the union in 1906. Both New Mexico and Arizona were admitted in 1912, in that order.) Missing two questions isn’t ideal, but one of them is in a category (LITERATURE) that my opponent should give a low score. I just need my opponent to miss a couple higher valued questions herself.

I check the official results later in the morning and, while my opponent did put her 0 on Paris, I’m disappointed to see that she only missed the Orinoco question. I’ve lost, 6(4)-7(5). It’s my first consecutive loss of the season.

I don’t really see much to take away from this loss. I’m pretty sure I didn’t think of the Astrodome at any point, and since there were no points available on the Paris question, getting the Astrodome was the only way for me to pick up a win. Technically, I could have placed my 3 on Orinoco and gotten the tie, but, given my opponent’s record in GAMES/SPORT compared to GEOGRAPHY, I can’t imagine swapping the two scores without the benefit of hindsight. (Speaking of hindsight, the question about the Astrodome is, for some reason, categorized as ART, which was my opponent’s best category. Her record was .932 in that.)

Anyway, I’m again back in 11th place. Sigh…

LearnedLeague 97, Match Day 7 (31 May 2023) Recap

I’ve pulled off my second beer of the season and I’m quickly recovering from my cold. Can I get a winning streak started?

The Questions

Note: Parentheticals within my commentary that add additional information and context were looked up, in the interest of greater accuracy or informative quality, after I submitted my answers.

Q1. The simplest and most common pastry—made in a quick process using flour, fat (e.g., butter), water, and salt and sometimes known as “medium flake pastry” or simply “pie dough”—has a name derived from a word once used to describe foods that are crumbly. What is that name?

Well, this is bad. I have no idea what the answer is to this. I consider a whole slew of pastries. I even consider non-pastries, like cake. (Cake is very common after all. But no, it’s not a pastry.) I decide to give myself as much time as possible for this question, and have it in the back of my mind for several hours. Toward the end of the day, I don’t really have a better guess than strudel. There is a crumbly dessert topping called streusel. It’s possible the two words are related, though I doubt it. I put “Strudel” down as a guess ’cause it’s better than leaving the box blank.

Q2. Dua Lipa’s 2018 hit single “Electricity” was released by the artist as a collaboration with a musical duo who are highly successful DJs and producers in their own right. Identify either of these two producers or the name they use for this duo.

Dua Lipa is not on my regular music rotation. I have listened to a couple of her albums, Dua Lipa and Future Nostalgia, but that was a few years ago. Since I’m not familiar with this song, I have no choice but to make as educated a guess as I can. A musical duo who are DJs? Daft Punk? I don’t know for certain that they’re producers, but I would imagine they are. But the question does say just naming one of the producers is acceptable. I don’t know how many people could individually name either member of Daft Punk. Mark Ronson also comes to mind since I know he’s a producer and has done many collaborations, but I don’t know that he’s ever been part of a duo with its own name. I decided to go with Daft Punk.

Q3. What was the name of the arcade video game published in 1980 (or its 1982 sequel) in which players shoot at segments of a flattened, wormlike arthropod of the class Chilopoda (Diplopoda in the sequel) that winds down the playing screen?

The early 1980s are a bit before my time, but I don’t see how a “flattened, wormlike arthropod of the class Chilopoda” could be anything but a centipede. Presumably, “Diplopoda” would be millipedes, but I only need one of them, so I write “Centipede” down as my answer.

Q4. The island group known as the Caicos Islands forms a British Overseas Territory with what other island group?

I’ve known the Turks and Caicos are a thing for about as long as I’ve known about Antigua and Barbuda, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Vincent and the Grenadines… You get the idea. I write “Turks” down.

Q5. What is the Spanish word used for a group of political or military leaders who form an administrative council (often after a coup or revolution), such as the one headed by the Argentinian general Galtieri in the 1980s, the one that followed the Chilean president Salvador Allende’s overthrow in 1973, and the one led by the future Salvadoran president José Napoleón Duarte until 1982?

I remember knowing the word “junta” from some point in my childhood. I might have overheard it being said on the news. Also, though I don’t really remember the details, a girlfriend I had in college told me a member of her family had been a military officer in one of the Argentine juntas. I write “Junta” and move on to the last question.

Q6. What word, coined in English in 1949, identified the novel area of applied science where the characteristics of human anatomy and physiology met with engineering and physics, with reference to tools, machines, and equipment humans use?

Hmm. I don’t know this offhand, so I consider some possibilities. I decide “prosthetics” was probably around before 1949. (It turns out it was first recorded in the 1890s.) For a long time, I was leaning toward just guessing “cybernetics” though I didn’t think it quite fit with the description in the question. (Though I was right about it not fitting the question–cybernetics is about the interplay of feedback mechanisms and control–the term was introduced in 1948.) I continued mulling the question over, especially the significance of human physiology until ergonomics came to mind. Of course! Ergonomics takes knowledge about the human form and uses it to design equipment that is comfortable and efficient for human use. I don’t see how it could be anything else, so I put “Ergonomics” down as my answer.

Scoring

My opponent today is male and is from Washington, DC, and is affiliated with Georgetown. He’s currently in 3rd place with a 4-1-1 record this season. My record against him is 1-2-0.

I decide straight off the bat that the question about the Turks and Caicos Islands is the easiest of the questions, and, since my opponent has a very respectable .777 in GEOGRAPHY, I think it’s best to put the 0 on that question. The question about “junta” also seems very easy (my opponent has a .731 in WORLD HIST), so I put one of the 1s on it.

I don’t know enough to gauge how hard the Dua Lipa question is, but there are three acceptable correct answers to the question, and my opponent has a .780 in POP MUSIC. All it would take is a little more familiarity with Dua Lipa’s discography, and my opponent should get this right. I decide to put the remaining 1 on it.

So, that leaves the two 2s and the 3 for the questions about the pastry, the arcade game, and the applied science involving physiology. My opponent’s record in the corresponding categories (FOOD/DRINK, GAMES/SPORT, and SCIENCE) are .696, .848, and .615, respectively. Between the apparent obviousness of Centipede and the fact that this pastry is apparently the “most common”, I worry that I’m already overvaluing them. That fear, combined with my opponent’s worse record in SCIENCE, makes it clear to me that I should put the 2s on those questions and the 3 on Q6, so that’s what I do.

Results

I press “submit” at 11:51 pm EDT and am confronted with grim tidings. I’ve missed the first two questions. The pastry in question is shortcrust, which I’m pretty sure I haven’t heard of before, and the acceptable correct answers for the producers question are Diplo, Mark Ronson (cue facepalming), and Silk City. I got the other four questions correct, but it likely won’t matter. FOOD/DRINK and POP MUSIC are obviously my worst categories in play, so if my opponent knows what he’s doing, he’s going to put his 3 and a 2 on those questions. If he does that, I’ll need him to miss 5 points himself to walk away with a tie.

When I look at the official results the next morning, I see that my opponent didn’t play optimal defense, but I lost anyway, 5(4)-8(5). My opponent’s sole miss was, in fact, the Dua Lipa question, which he placed his 3 on. If I had guessed Mark Ronson, I would have tied the match. My opponent put a 1 on the pastry question, which turned out to be the most-missed question of the day across LearnedLeague. Only 19% of LLamas got it correct, which I think might call into question some assumptions that might have been made in the writing of it. (In Rundle A Maelstrom, 40% of us got it correct, which was still the lowest get-rate, but that was tied with the Dua Lipa question.)

I also could have tied the match if I had played optimal defense myself by putting my 3 on the Dua Lipa question. (And if I had done that and guessed Mark Ronson, I would have won.) I don’t think I can beat myself up too much about that specific scoring, however, given my opponent’s good record in the category.

Anyway, I drop back down to 8th and my defensive efficiency slips to .585. It could be worse, but, sooner or later, I’m going to need to start stringing multiple wins together.