Learned League 85 - Official Thread

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ouachiouat
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Re: Learned League 85 - Official Thread

Post by ouachiouat »

https://learnedleague.com/hist/awards/85.php

Here are the top 5 BWAs. The winner would've been much better, in my eyes, had it been only a single word (since that's what the question asked for). Thought the one that got 2nd was really creative, and was my favorite out of the top 5.
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triviawayne
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Re: Learned League 85 - Official Thread

Post by triviawayne »

alietr wrote: Mon Jun 29, 2020 2:46 pm
Volante wrote: Mon Jun 29, 2020 11:59 am
econgator wrote: Mon Jun 29, 2020 11:57 am
Volante wrote: Mon Jun 29, 2020 11:00 am Didn't the BWA duty get crowdsourced this time?
Yes. They still picked one of the lamest ones to win, though.
They can't all be winners, but still a better ratio this time.
I voted (well, would have; I was too late to do so) for the ones that came in 3rd and 4th, so they weren't all bad. My first choice was New York City Apartment for Barn.
are the results of the voting up yet?
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Re: Learned League 85 - Official Thread

Post by econgator »

triviawayne wrote: Mon Jun 29, 2020 3:12 pm are the results of the voting up yet?
Speaking of up -- look up. ;)
ouachiouat wrote: Mon Jun 29, 2020 2:47 pm https://learnedleague.com/hist/awards/85.php

Here are the top 5 BWAs. The winner would've been much better, in my eyes, had it been only a single word (since that's what the question asked for). Thought the one that got 2nd was really creative, and was my favorite out of the top 5.
Agreed. At least "Floridaman" would have fit the question better. That said, I'm with you that Vth/IIIrd was far more clever and I also thought that the better choice than OOPS was MDET (Maybe don't eat that) as it gave both a 4-letter abbreviation and what it stood for.
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Re: Learned League 85 - Official Thread

Post by triviawayne »

econgator wrote: Mon Jun 29, 2020 3:16 pm
triviawayne wrote: Mon Jun 29, 2020 3:12 pm are the results of the voting up yet?
Speaking of up -- look up. ;)
ouachiouat wrote: Mon Jun 29, 2020 2:47 pm https://learnedleague.com/hist/awards/85.php

Here are the top 5 BWAs. The winner would've been much better, in my eyes, had it been only a single word (since that's what the question asked for). Thought the one that got 2nd was really creative, and was my favorite out of the top 5.
Agreed. At least "Floridaman" would have fit the question better. That said, I'm with you that Vth/IIIrd was far more clever and I also thought that the better choice than OOPS was MDET (Maybe don't eat that) as it gave both a 4-letter abbreviation and what it stood for.
I do try and look up every season , but can never find these
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Re: Learned League 85 - Official Thread

Post by Woof »

econgator wrote: Mon Jun 29, 2020 3:16 pm
triviawayne wrote: Mon Jun 29, 2020 3:12 pm are the results of the voting up yet?
Speaking of up -- look up. ;)
ouachiouat wrote: Mon Jun 29, 2020 2:47 pm https://learnedleague.com/hist/awards/85.php

Here are the top 5 BWAs. The winner would've been much better, in my eyes, had it been only a single word (since that's what the question asked for). Thought the one that got 2nd was really creative, and was my favorite out of the top 5.
Agreed. At least "Floridaman" would have fit the question better. That said, I'm with you that Vth/IIIrd was far more clever and I also thought that the better choice than OOPS was MDET (Maybe don't eat that) as it gave both a 4-letter abbreviation and what it stood for.
Agree with you on all points. MDET had me guffawing, a rare thing for a BWA.
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Re: Learned League 85 - Official Thread

Post by classicroadster »

Woof wrote: Tue Jun 30, 2020 1:13 am
econgator wrote: Mon Jun 29, 2020 3:16 pm
triviawayne wrote: Mon Jun 29, 2020 3:12 pm are the results of the voting up yet?
Speaking of up -- look up. ;)
ouachiouat wrote: Mon Jun 29, 2020 2:47 pm https://learnedleague.com/hist/awards/85.php

Here are the top 5 BWAs. The winner would've been much better, in my eyes, had it been only a single word (since that's what the question asked for). Thought the one that got 2nd was really creative, and was my favorite out of the top 5.
Agreed. At least "Floridaman" would have fit the question better. That said, I'm with you that Vth/IIIrd was far more clever and I also thought that the better choice than OOPS was MDET (Maybe don't eat that) as it gave both a 4-letter abbreviation and what it stood for.
Agree with you on all points. MDET had me guffawing, a rare thing for a BWA.
I loved the 1985 Delorean for being unearthed in 1873...

Also congrats to the 12FootBoy for being the 77th unluckiest Llama in Season 85!
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Re: Learned League 85 - Official Thread

Post by This Is Kirk! »

econgator wrote: Mon Jun 29, 2020 3:16 pm
triviawayne wrote: Mon Jun 29, 2020 3:12 pm are the results of the voting up yet?
Speaking of up -- look up. ;)
ouachiouat wrote: Mon Jun 29, 2020 2:47 pm https://learnedleague.com/hist/awards/85.php

Here are the top 5 BWAs. The winner would've been much better, in my eyes, had it been only a single word (since that's what the question asked for). Thought the one that got 2nd was really creative, and was my favorite out of the top 5.
Agreed. At least "Floridaman" would have fit the question better. That said, I'm with you that Vth/IIIrd was far more clever and I also thought that the better choice than OOPS was MDET (Maybe don't eat that) as it gave both a 4-letter abbreviation and what it stood for.
Another vote for Vth/IIIrd. That one was very clever!
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Re: Learned League 85 - Official Thread

Post by twelvefootboy »

classicroadster wrote: Tue Jun 30, 2020 12:29 pm
Also congrats to the 12FootBoy for being the 77th unluckiest Llama in Season 85!
I only got 77th? Is this a real thing? I noticed how my Correct Answers Allowed (this should be "against" as noted earlier) was an outlier in my lowly D rundle. I even did the math and it was about 2.5 standard deviations up (or down?) the bell curve, so that isn't improbable, just rare. Ironically, two of my sibs in the rookie rundle went 2nd and 3rd as well. I guess players get their game mojo against us poor 1-room schoolhouse rural hicks. We just need more questions about possums and gunny sacks I guess :lol:.

I will be creating the JVBoard private rundle soon, and anybody is welcome to hop in if you don't mind 3 more twelvefootsibs as cannon fodder. It's all about the questions for us, and the point assignment and results are just a little sauce on the edges.

My fave BWA was the barn as a NYC apartment :D
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Re: Learned League 85 - Official Thread

Post by classicroadster »

twelvefootboy wrote: Thu Jul 02, 2020 12:42 am
classicroadster wrote: Tue Jun 30, 2020 12:29 pm
Also congrats to the 12FootBoy for being the 77th unluckiest Llama in Season 85!
I only got 77th? Is this a real thing? I noticed how my Correct Answers Allowed (this should be "against" as noted earlier) was an outlier in my lowly D rundle. I even did the math and it was about 2.5 standard deviations up (or down?) the bell curve, so that isn't improbable, just rare.
Yes it is: https://learnedleague.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=11980. Interesting statistics, personally I was pretty much right in the middle. Anyone who listens to the learned lag podcast, StankowG was 21st unluckiest which makes sense given his TCA and CAA.
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Re: Learned League 85 - Official Thread

Post by twelvefootboy »

classicroadster wrote: Thu Jul 02, 2020 8:59 am
twelvefootboy wrote: Thu Jul 02, 2020 12:42 am
classicroadster wrote: Tue Jun 30, 2020 12:29 pm
Also congrats to the 12FootBoy for being the 77th unluckiest Llama in Season 85!
I only got 77th? Is this a real thing? I noticed how my Correct Answers Allowed (this should be "against" as noted earlier) was an outlier in my lowly D rundle. I even did the math and it was about 2.5 standard deviations up (or down?) the bell curve, so that isn't improbable, just rare.
Yes it is: https://learnedleague.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=11980. Interesting statistics, personally I was pretty much right in the middle. Anyone who listens to the learned lag podcast, StankowG was 21st unluckiest which makes sense given his TCA and CAA.
Wow, thanks for sharing this. I am in the 99.6th percentile in unlucky bastardness. That with my 17th percentile in defense makes me a day off for my opponents. Just have your cat walk on the keyboard when MearesK shows up on the schedule :lol: . All your coin flips will go your way :).

It is genetic, my sister had the worst luck in the R Taiga at 8th percentile. FWIW, I was about 80th percentile (in a good way) in LL84, so it is just random. My bottom fifth in defense is something I have to work on.
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Re: Learned League 85 - Official Thread

Post by seaborgium »

I went 12/12 in the Cryptic Clues 2 1DS, earned 20 points off the maximum, and finished at #16. I moneyed improperly just once, and it was a classic 1DS dilemma of "I have an answer for this, and if it's right I should probably money it, but I really can't be sure that it's right." I was quite uncertain I had even heard of the answer I had, and I just had to hope that enough people would do as I did, discerning the wordplay instructions despite not knowing the answer. They didn't. It tied for #2 most incorrectly answered, and I moneyed #1, #2 (the other one), #4, #5, and #8. (But if I had moneyed it, chances are quite good that I wouldn't have moneyed the other #2, so maybe 20 points off perfection was my destiny.)

The clues are in the spoiler, and I'll include nested spoilers with answers and explanations.
Spoiler
1. With D. Vader's frightful chomp, he drew a scream (6,5)
answer
Edvard Munch
explanation
"He drew a scream" coupled with the letter counts made the answer pretty straightforward, and then it was just a matter of reverse engineering: Munch = "chomp," and Edvard = "D. Vader's frightful" (i.e., an anagram of D. Vader)
2. No sex-play for one pursuing sly, twisted layers (10)
answer
Lysistrata
explanation
On this one, "twisted layers" made me imagine warped sedimentary rock, and then the word "strata" popped into my mind and I immediately jumped to Lysistrata, which led me to repunctuate the first part of the clue as "no-sex play." Then I realized that "twisted" applied not to "layers," but to "sly," indicating it was to be rearranged: "lys"; and "one pursuing" meant "i" came after that.
3. By her very nature, a receiver of dead souls (10)
answer
Persephone
explanation
I think now is a good time to mention that the blurb about the 1DS gave a set of categories that the answers would fall into. Mythology was one of the categories, and I think that helped me determine that I was looking for a name of a female receiver of dead souls here. I think I turned "by" into "per" and realized Persephone fit the bill. Then "by her very nature" became clear as "per se," and then "receiver" revealed itself as doing double duty in the clue by cluing the person and the "phone" part of her name.
4. Will I suffer upset eating screwy food? (7)
answer
fusilli
explanation
I was stuck on this for a little while, wondering if "will I" was cluing "ill" as the first part of the answer, or if there was a seven-letter word for "eating" that I could anagram ("eating screwy," even though it's apparently a law of cryptic crosswords not to require solvers to anagram words not in the clue). Once I considered that "screwy food?" could be the non-wordplay clue (more or less) I started thinking of pasta shapes. Rotini, rotelle... I was led by this to zero in on the "illi" of "Will I," and I realized "Will I suffer" contained "fusilli" backwards. ("Will I suffer" upset, or reversed, eating, or containing, screwy food.)
5. Getting closer and closer to having no sign of illness, mother goes out (10)
answer
asymptotic
explanation
I was able to pick this one apart without having an answer: there was probably a 12-letter word that meant "having no sign of illness," which contained "ma," and when those two letters were removed, the remaining word would mean "getting closer and closer." I thought the words could end with -amating and -ating, but then when I looked at the categories in the blurb again after getting and categorizing a few other answers, I realized Math was still unused and immediately thought of asymptotic/asymptomatic.
6. Puppet meant to be headless taken in with captive, an arrogant woman who lost her head (5,10)
answer
Marie Antoinette
explanation
Between the letter count and "an arrogant woman who lost her head," this was pretty easy to get. Which is good, because I can't quite work out the wordplay here. "Puppet" = marionette, "meant to be headless" = eant ("meant" headless, i.e., without its first letter), "taken in" indicates insertion. So that gives us "Mari-eant-onette," but I can't figure out how "with captive" means to add an i separate from "eant."
7. Rock is pleasant-sounding (6)
answer
gneiss
explanation
Probably the simplest wordplay in the quiz, at least for me. "Sounding" indicates a homophone. A rock homophonous with a pleasant word? Must be gneiss/nice.
8. Court behaves inappropriately in voting for a harsh sentence (13)
answer
electrocution
explanation
I couldn't think of a long enough word to indicate a harsh sentence (in either sense of the word "sentence") until I looked at "court behaves inappropriately," started anagramming "court," got "truco," then immediately swapped vowels and got elecTROCUtion. And the court anagram is "in voting," which is to say, inserted within "election." (Because of the two T's in the answer, one would have been equally successful with "rocut.")
9. With no failing grade, clever nitwit is an example (8)
answer
oxymoron
explanation
Another one where you can get away with not picking up on the cryptic-style wordplay: "clever nitwit" is indeed an example (and, in fact, a literal translation) of "oxymoron." The wordplay here is that a word for clever, minus an F ("with no failing grade") can be attached to a word meaning "nitwit" for the correct answer. Clever = foxy -> oxy; nitwit = moron.
10. For his life's meaning, arrests, odds-on, are needed (7)
answer
Maigret
explanation
This is the one I agonized over. Eventually I was left with only the category Fictional Character, and none of the seven-letter characters I could think of would fit any part of the clue, descriptive or wordplay. I thought "odds-on" probably meant I'd be taking every odd letter in a sequence; eventually I did it to the preceding 14 letters in "meaning, arrests" and got "Maigret." It was pronounceable, but utterly unfamiliar to me. If it was right, Maigret must be some law-enforcement type or a detective or some such. As it turns out, this was all correct, but it was a case of me giving up when I submitted this.
11. Mark, starting crazy row, was performer of crazy song (5,5)
answer
Patsy Cline
explanation
She was the only (5,5) "performer of crazy song" I could think of (Aerosmith and Seal didn't fit the letter count). Then I worked backwards: "mark" and "patsy" can be synonyms, "row" and "line" can be synonyms, and "starting crazy" just means "the first letter of 'crazy.'" I guess.
12. Ill-mannered uncle was naughty, with rear end out in view of the whole world (14)
answer
Weltanschauung
explanation
I got this in trying to think of a 14-letter word meaning "view of the whole world." (Plus, the last cryptic quiz's final answer was "Thorsten A. Integrity," and since the LL homepage contains that German monstrosity, I think it was intended as another tribute to the site.) The word is an anagram ("ill-mannered") of "uncle was naughty" when you drop the y ("with rear end out").
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Re: Learned League 85 - Official Thread

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Self promotion zone:

LL One-Day Special: Doomed Voyages, smithed by CavaliereM
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Re: Learned League 85 - Official Thread

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morbeedo wrote: Wed Jul 08, 2020 8:35 am Self promotion zone:

LL One-Day Special: Doomed Voyages, smithed by CavaliereM
Nicely done! Very entertaining.
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Re: Learned League 85 - Official Thread

Post by twelvefootboy »

ETA: this should have appended morbeedo's post about his 1DS on Doomed Voyages.

well done maestro! I especially enjoyed the pithy blurb :lol:
Spoiler
They should have stayed home.
I hope to do better than my 20 point Alice in Wonderland performance :!:
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Re: Learned League 85 - Official Thread

Post by StevenH »

morbeedo wrote: Wed Jul 08, 2020 8:35 am Self promotion zone:

LL One-Day Special: Doomed Voyages, smithed by CavaliereM
I also really enjoyed this 1DS. Thank you for running it!
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Re: Learned League 85 - Official Thread

Post by alietr »

morbeedo wrote: Wed Jul 08, 2020 8:35 am Self promotion zone:

LL One-Day Special: Doomed Voyages, smithed by CavaliereM
Fun fact: The S.S. Minnow was named that because the executive producer of Gilligan's Island, Sherwood Schwarz, wanted to get back at then-Chairman of the FCC Newton Minow (just one 'n'), who had denigrated what was on television at that time (Minow had famously made the "vast wasteland" speech).
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Re: Learned League 85 - Official Thread

Post by This Is Kirk! »

alietr wrote: Thu Jul 09, 2020 5:00 pm
morbeedo wrote: Wed Jul 08, 2020 8:35 am Self promotion zone:

LL One-Day Special: Doomed Voyages, smithed by CavaliereM
Fun fact: The S.S. Minnow was named that because the executive producer of Gilligan's Island, Sherwood Schwarz, wanted to get back at then-Chairman of the FCC Newton Minow (just one 'n'), who had denigrated what was on television at that time (Minow had famously made the "vast wasteland" speech).
Loved this One-Day and did well on it. I couldn't believe 60% missed Honolulu for the Gilligan question. Guess that shows not everyone has seen every episode of Gilligan's Island like most people in my age demographic have!

I just read The Terror a few months ago and that helped on a couple questions.
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Re: Learned League 85 - Official Thread

Post by morbeedo »

This Is Kirk! wrote: Thu Jul 09, 2020 5:17 pm
alietr wrote: Thu Jul 09, 2020 5:00 pm
morbeedo wrote: Wed Jul 08, 2020 8:35 am Self promotion zone:

LL One-Day Special: Doomed Voyages, smithed by CavaliereM
Fun fact: The S.S. Minnow was named that because the executive producer of Gilligan's Island, Sherwood Schwarz, wanted to get back at then-Chairman of the FCC Newton Minow (just one 'n'), who had denigrated what was on television at that time (Minow had famously made the "vast wasteland" speech).
Loved this One-Day and did well on it. I couldn't believe 60% missed Honolulu for the Gilligan question. Guess that shows not everyone has seen every episode of Gilligan's Island like most people in my age demographic have!

I just read The Terror a few months ago and that helped on a couple questions.
Glad to hear it!
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Re: Learned League 85 - Official Thread

Post by triviawayne »

This Is Kirk! wrote: Thu Jul 09, 2020 5:17 pm
alietr wrote: Thu Jul 09, 2020 5:00 pm
morbeedo wrote: Wed Jul 08, 2020 8:35 am Self promotion zone:

LL One-Day Special: Doomed Voyages, smithed by CavaliereM
Fun fact: The S.S. Minnow was named that because the executive producer of Gilligan's Island, Sherwood Schwarz, wanted to get back at then-Chairman of the FCC Newton Minow (just one 'n'), who had denigrated what was on television at that time (Minow had famously made the "vast wasteland" speech).
Loved this One-Day and did well on it. I couldn't believe 60% missed Honolulu for the Gilligan question. Guess that shows not everyone has seen every episode of Gilligan's Island like most people in my age demographic have!
The theme lyrics only say “this tropic port”, I would think there’s more than one in Hawaii.
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Re: Learned League 85 - Official Thread

Post by triviawayne »

alietr wrote: Thu Jul 09, 2020 5:00 pm
morbeedo wrote: Wed Jul 08, 2020 8:35 am Self promotion zone:

LL One-Day Special: Doomed Voyages, smithed by CavaliereM
Fun fact: The S.S. Minnow was named that because the executive producer of Gilligan's Island, Sherwood Schwarz, wanted to get back at then-Chairman of the FCC Newton Minow (just one 'n'), who had denigrated what was on television at that time (Minow had famously made the "vast wasteland" speech).
Funner fact: that fact is on one of my business cards.
Total game show career losings = $171,522
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