Learned League

Also knew it was Alaska, took "formally" to mean I was supposed to say something else, got hosed

I thought yesterday's was gonna be hard and my 5/6 was a sure win, but no! How did all those people know Olivia Newton-John and semaphore? I was lucky to escape with a tie, lots of eggroll in my rundle.

i slightly misread the question and put "alaska purchase" but they gave it to me

I guessed Dolly for the ONJ question, but semaphore was the first visual communication system that popped into my head, and the word looked appropriately Greek.

props to monty python for teaching me about semaphore

5/6 for me too. for some reason i confused diebold and dominion.

the "(and appropriately so)" on semaphore was more confusing than helpful

i got ONJ based solely on her being in the biggest movie musical in 1978. once i remembered her, the country music stuff sounded familiar, like i had heard she was originally a country artist at some point, but i never would've gotten it based just on that info.

itt: many people who have never been mellow

NA that was my ON-J experience exactly.

I still don't get what work "and appropriately so" was doing for semaphore.

flagbearer and signal flag i guess

i interpreted that as just being that someone doing semaphore is literally bearing (holding) the signal (flags)

Knowing a couple of hundred Greek roots yields an inordinate amount of points over a few years of quizzing. Sem- = sign, as in semiotics (the study of signs) or semantics (signification); phero/phor = carry/carrier, as in phosphor (light-carrier), metaphor (over-carrier), pheromone (carrier-hormone), Christopher (Christ-carrier).

"and appropriately so" I took to indicate that practitioners of semaphore need to quite literally carry their signs with them.

xpost exactly

props to monty python for teaching me about semaphore

otm

only really thought of ON-J because i'd just posted a photo of her with joe torre and phil niekro on the baseball board

let's throw knuckleball, knuckleball
we're gonna throw knuckleball, knuckleball

Knowing a couple of hundred Greek roots yields an inordinate amount of points over a few years of quizzing. Sem- = sign, as in semiotics (the study of signs) or semantics (signification); phero/phor = carry/carrier, as in phosphor (light-carrier), metaphor (over-carrier), pheromone (carrier-hormone), Christopher (Christ-carrier).

Good shout -- I don't think I gave much thought to it, but if I had, I would've "translated" sem- as "meaning," as in "polysemous." Off to see if there are any Anki decks that have Greek roots.

Yeah, the "meaning" interpretation of sem- is also reasonable for most derived compounds I can think of, I didn't mean to imply the path from "sign" was obvious or anything.

Oh and consider doing some Latin roots as well; often very close to either ancient Greek or modern English (phero=fero, sem-=sign-); not free lunch, but lunch at massive discount.

Sometimes it feels like a cheat code really; another very boring cheat code is to actually, once and for all, cram the mapping from atomic numbers to names of chemical elements. For some reason, setters all over the world seem loath to write a question on an element without including the atomic number. I feel this is bad question setting, but it's not like I'm gonna refuse the points. (You probably kinda knew this already, but unless you've actually done the job, I'm not sure you realize how free-lunch this bit feels.)

re: atomic numbers and elements, not so much in LL though? (I've tried studying those a couple times but gave up pretty quickly.)

never heard of anki, is it free/safe as a download?

well i see it is. anybody wanna give me a primer on using it?

You can either download decks you find that you like or create your own.

A lot of them are hit or miss but they have star ratings, if that helps.

The Ultimate Geography deck is entirely responsible for me getting at least three Africa questions right, so if recommend that if geography is something you want to bolster.

Also, you use it like this:

Once you've imported a deck, you study a small set of cards each day (or as often as you can), and press the button that corresponds with how easy that flash card was. (You don't generally need to actually enter the answer into the app, because the idea is to work your memory, and topping in the answer would take up too much time.) The easier the question, the longer it'll be before the app shows you that card again, while harder questions will show up more often. And that's it.

Making a deck of your own is much less straightforward.

One think I can't remember how to do in Anki is how to reset the deck when loaded so it offers up the appropriate number of cards to review.

I made a deck of my own once, and it was inded a little tedious. I think one can make simple decks pretty easily though, using CSV files for example.

copy, will try it out!

6/6 yesterday, was rather pleased with myself for figuring out the hockey mask.

My experience in A tends to be losing when I get 4 or fewer, tying when I get 5, and winning when I get 6. The talent pool is diluted enough to avoid relegation from A most of the time, tho I’m only just now back in after 3 seasons in the wilderness.

I'm happy to be in C for precisely that reason

Heh, no comment

Okay, just downloaded that Ultimate Geography deck, really nice, thanks! Any other decks you recommend?

This off-season I created my own deck that complements UG, featuring the largest cities and head of government (I got burned on the AMLO question) for every country, enough I could share. I should note a couple caveats: it hasn't paid off yet, and the volatility of politics means that it needs frequent updating (which fortunately isn't hard).

So Q6 was a gimme for me, just popped right into my head, seems like it was a popular culture reference for a long time, wonder if there is an age cutoff.

Like I can hear his name being said in my head, by Bugs Bunny, by my favorite WBGO DJ. Not 100% those two ever actually referred to him but still.

Lash Larue had at least one Dell comic, so that was my reference point.

I got it right, but it didn't come to me right away. My first thought was "Lasso" (which was the MCW), and then when I came back to the questions later, "Lash" came to mind and sounded better.

i thought lasso then changed it to colt. "lash larue" did seem slightly familiar once i saw it but not enough that i felt bad for getting it wrong.

Lash Larue sounded slightly familiar to me too - I think probably from crossword puzzles. But I had no shot at getting it right.

I'm on a bit of a lucky tear this week! 5 wins in a row, 26 of 30 correct, jumped to first in my rundle. Must be a fluke.

OK it's hilarious that the "deadlift" question is the only one I've ever seen where the correct % is basically independent of rundle and in fact the very highest percentage correct among the non-rookie rundles was E!

Ha, yeah, I just saw that on the message board. As I posted there, I got it wrong, while my wife, who has no interest in trivia but has spent more time at the gym than I have, knew it right away when I asked her.

I've noticed over several years (not specifically in LL) that anything on body, health and fitness are great equalizers.

that was a lucky 3pt gift for me, surprised at how few Llamas even lift bro
annoyed at myself for not being able to dig up the twinkie defense

I think video game questions also tend to be more consistent across rundles.

surprised at how few Llamas even lift bro

no you're not

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yK-0UbQxZTA

I know I need to get better at keeping LL in perspective, but I'm kinda steamed that I lost 7(5) to 8(5) because I gave my opponent 3 for Gorilla Glue (which she, a European, got right), but missed the Bedlam question which I have 1 point to.

I hear you