LL69: for the LLama Drama

[alietr]

Was I the only one who found yesterday's questions harder than average?

Yes.

[plasticene]

9(6)-9(6) tie for me yesterday. I figured that would happen, but at least now I have a point this season!

There was so much beer drunk in A Cont yesterday that AA should probably hold a meeting there. 88% overall get rate may be highest I've yet seen in LL. It helped me maintain my perfect DE for one more day, though.

A Central came out on top with a 95% overall get rate. Out of 28 players, 19 went 9(6), 6 were at 7(5), and 3 were at 6(5). As it turned out, every single player who missed a question lost their match!

[patkav]

Was I the only one who found yesterday's questions harder than average?

Age worked against you and for us yesterday, I think. Geraldo, Reba, and shawarma are all things I've experienced that you may not have.

[Bamaman]

Was I the only one who found yesterday's questions harder than average?

Yes.

I had my best day of the season, missing only the food question and got the win.

[RichmondJ]

Age worked against you and for us yesterday, I think. Geraldo, Reba, and shawarma are all things I've experienced that you may not have.

I'd bet that avoirdupois/troy skewed toward the oldies as well. It was already some combination of esoteric and archaic when I learned it. Schools probably don't bother with it at all anymore.

[dhkendall]

I think the standings are pretty meaningless until at least halfway through the season.

Thanks for bursting my bubble of being #1 in my rundle and only one of two to have no losses so far.

[Bamaman]

Age worked against you and for us yesterday, I think. Geraldo, Reba, and shawarma are all things I've experienced that you may not have.

I'd bet that avoirdupois/troy skewed toward the oldies as well. It was already some combination of esoteric and archaic when I learned it. Schools probably don't bother with it at all anymore.

I'm 48 and I don't recall it being taught but I do remember seeing it in the back of textbooks with all the other conversion tables. Only real dorks bothered looking at stuff like that, which is how I knew it.

[barandall800]

Aside from a 0(0)-9(5) blowout on MD2, I've been having an inordinate amount of really close games so far this season: 1(2)-0(1) as my only win, then 3(3)-4(4) and 5(3)-7(4). That last one's particularly frustrating, because I could have won with some sharper defense.

"The Mystery of Al Capone's Vaults" is one of the entries in one of my favorite pop culture-related books, What Were They Thinking?: The 100 Dumbest Moments in Television History, so there was no way I was missing that. Plus Geraldo made ample reference to it during his (horrible) first dance on this last season of "Dancing With The Stars." (And this was before he did a Donald You-Know-Who themed salsa the next week. )

I've long been a Reba fan, so that was no sweat. She's not completely before the time of us younguns...her show, mentioned in the clue, ended in 2007, and she had another one on ABC a few years ago. Plus, she's still recording music, and she's still got red hair and an Oklahoma accent.

[Linear Gnome]

Way to go cmp146 (and Vermonter and Alietr) at the top of A Mag!

My opponent yesterday came back after two forfeits to tie my 9(6). Grrrrr.

(I want a shawarma. The most amazing post-bar-closing food)

And PatKav is leading in TCA, but somehow finds herself in 9th place ...

I know the feeling. Looks like it's going to be another one of those seasons. I have a higher TCA than everyone in the Top 10 except for 2, 3, and 5, but my rundle-leading 18 CAA means I'm 0-2-2 in 17th.

I noticed that the luck has been running against you, but didn't want to draw attention to it unless you did.

I'm having an unusual (for me season): low CAA and below average TCA so far, 2-1-1. The first four days had no questions in my best two categories, so perhaps my CAA will improve.

I had what may have been my first O'Doul's yesterday, missing shawarma. I knew falafel was wrong but I couldn't think of the word; shawarma sounds familiar but I never would have thought of it.

I had no idea that Geraldo Rivera was still so well-known.

[Cat Hammarskjold]

My B rundle has been playing better than some of the A rundles so far, and 11 of us got a 9(6)-9(6) tie yesterday, including both my opponent and I, who are both still in the relegation zone because of it. This season is the first time I've spent three consecutive MD's in the relegation zone, and I'm starting to get a little worried.

[BigDaddyMatty]

"The Mystery of Al Capone's Vaults" is one of the entries in one of my favorite pop culture-related books, What Were They Thinking?: The 100 Dumbest Moments in Television History, so there was no way I was missing that. Plus Geraldo made ample reference to it during his (horrible) first dance on this last season of "Dancing With The Stars." (And this was before he did a Donald You-Know-Who themed salsa the next week. )

Aria (and any of the rest of you who've never seen it), you really should watch The Mystery of Al Capone's Vaults. The full video is available here. I don't know that it's quite worth 90 minutes of your life, but you should at least watch the first half hour or so and then the last few minutes. So much buildup. So little payoff. It's amazing.

[dnbguy]

Hey, I'm in first! Won a close one yesterday, 8(5)-7(5). I am proud of myself for pulling troy somewhere from the depths of my memory banks.

Were you my opponent? I lost by that score and I'm rather annoyed with myself for not coming up with shawarma. I had no idea and put halal, which I knew was wrong.

It appears so. I knew that the answer to Q1 was something that sounded like The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, but I couldn't quite pull it.

[schoe]

My B rundle has been playing better than some of the A rundles so far, and 11 of us got a 9(6)-9(6) tie yesterday, including both my opponent and I, who are both still in the relegation zone because of it. This season is the first time I've spent three consecutive MD's in the relegation zone, and I'm starting to get a little worried.

How is it that 11 of you got a 9(6)-9(6) tie?

[alietr]

My B rundle has been playing better than some of the A rundles so far, and 11 of us got a 9(6)-9(6) tie yesterday, including both my opponent and I, who are both still in the relegation zone because of it. This season is the first time I've spent three consecutive MD's in the relegation zone, and I'm starting to get a little worried.

How is it that 11 of you got a 9(6)-9(6) tie?

Inter-league play.

[mpahu]

I knew my opponent was really good at classical music, but I also knew that MD5Q1 was insanely difficult. I went for the gutsy move to give him a 0 for it anyway. It paid off, turning what could have been a loss into a 5(4)-5(4) tie.

For MD6, I face RautY, who should have been in an A Rundle by now, but sat out a few seasons and is now sitting just a point off the Metro Maso lead. I haven't looked at the questions yet, but I'm assuming that if I'm drinking any beer today, so is he.

[Cat Hammarskjold]

My B rundle has been playing better than some of the A rundles so far, and 11 of us got a 9(6)-9(6) tie yesterday, including both my opponent and I, who are both still in the relegation zone because of it. This season is the first time I've spent three consecutive MD's in the relegation zone, and I'm starting to get a little worried.

How is it that 11 of you got a 9(6)-9(6) tie?

I guess my mind skipped stuff and I meant that 11 of us got a 9(6), and I happened to tie the last place person in my rundle with that score. I'm only 31, and as I said on LL, I knew the Troy weight system from building things as a Cub Scout and that packages of nails (and maybe screws also, but I'm not sure about those) mentioned what fraction of a Troy ounce they were.

[SBurrus]

My three-match non-losing streak came to an end on MD5, losing 3(3)-1(1). After spending a couple of days within striking distance of the promotion zone, I fell out of the top 10 in my division and will have to start building again.

I have been a college math instructor for 8 years but in LL, I am now 0-4 on math questions. For lemniscate, I stared at that clue and stared at it and kept thinking "I know what it is...I just can't picture it" but no amount of sitting there would help me recall what it was. Then, when I saw the answer, I really felt stupid; in college algebra, when writing domains and ranges of functions in interval notation, the infinities are commonly the endpoints of these intervals; I write lemniscates all the time! I don't think I was misled by the inclusion of the geometry reference; I simply did not associate the technical name for the infinity symbol.

[Rusty's in the club]

I got MD5Q2 by closely reading the question. It read: " In geometry, a curve known as a lemniscate takes a shape resembling what?" Note, it didn't say that it took a specific shape or that it WAS a special shape. It said "resembling". So I started to eliminate the specific shapes that don't "resemble". A circle is a circle - not that it resembles one. Ditto with oval, ellipse, parabola, hyperbola and the rest. Now came the jump to a resemble - meaning that the shape was "defined" by something other than the formula. Took a clue from question 6 and remembered "once you have eliminated the impossible, what remains is the possible." Had a thought or two but the idea of a figure 8 lept to mind as something that could easily be "resembled" as opposed to defined.

Maybe I was reading too much into the specific wording, but it lead me to the right answer. Now, if only there had been a wording to tell me the composer.

[Ultraman]

I almost immediately thought of Forrest Gump (knew it was a 1994 popular movie) and Bubba Gump Shrimp, but dismissed it as not really a *theme* restaurant (if that's themed, then so is Long John Silver's and, hey, maybe even Burger King--there are crowns there.). So I toyed with Medieval Times from possibly Cable Guy (yes, it's 1996) and Jurassic Park (1993) for maybe Rain Forest Café or something. I could see Chris as a knight or a rain forest guide (run Forest!), although it did say waiter.

Mea culpa. I need to keep it simple. And get the years right.

[nightreign]

I'm not gonna lie, the start of this season has been insanely frustrating for me. Coming off a season like LL69, where I got a personal best TCA, I thought I could average out to at least two right a day again, but the questions so far have not been kind to me. I just gotta hope that Thorsten is frontloading it with stuff I don't like and stuff I do like will come up later in the season, where I can claw myself out of 16th place.

I studied a lot of classical music and even did that minileague in the offseason, so I had been hoping for a classical music question. Admittedly, I was disappointed with what came up. I had no idea there was a notable Finnish composer that wasn't Sibelius.

This summer I'm going to take the time to actually study things. Food and drink is high on my list, and so is geography. I feel like if I can bring up two of my absolute worst categories (and two of the ones that come up the most), I'll start doing a lot better.