That’s all, folks! Congrats to Eric Suess for taking top honors in the Champions Division!
1. Baseball manager Connie Mack retired in 1950 at age 87 with a total of 3,731 wins, having managed the first 50 seasons of what franchise’s existence? His longevity is due in large part to his role as the team’s sole owner for the final 13 seasons (team nickname required).
For some reason, I associated Connie Mack as having a part in the Jackie Robinson story, so I went with the Dodgers. But it turns out that my brain was generating pleasant fictions that had nothing to do with reality. Mack toed the line when it came to Major League Baseball’s color barrier, and he spent the bulk of his career with the Philadelphia Athletics, a team I had no idea ever existed.
2. The ‘lowest’ set of numbers that fits the definition of a primitive Pythagorean triple is (3, 4, 5). Which set of three numbers is next lowest?
I spent quite a lot of time fooling around with numbers, looking for three that would properly fill out the classic formula a-squared + b-squared = c-squared. When I came across 6, 8, and 10, I stopped looking. Alas, I skipped one: I hadn’t noticed 5, 12, and 13. My answer has a lower average!
3. In this photograph, a single word, the name of the game being played, is obscured (in two different places). What is the word?
My joy at seeing this question was short-lived: It lasted just as long as it took me to click on the photograph. I thought I knew games, and particularly parlor games, but here was something I had never set eyes on in my life. Well, I had to come up with something, and eventually I came up with “skittles.” And amazingly, if you look up skittles in Wikipedia, it directs you to the actual answer to this question: Carrom. So I was close, anyway, and that’s good enough for me even if I didn’t score any points.
4. Otto I was the first, in 962, and Francis II was the last, in 1806, to hold what title (which could be argued actually began with Charlemagne in 800)?
Well… Charlemagne was a Roman Emperor, wasn’t he? But did the Roman Empire last until the early 19th century? I sure didn’t think so, but what do I know? So I went with Roman Emperor — not with any great confidence, but because it would have been a fool’s game to try to come up with some other answer. And thus do I beef up my World History stats on my final day in Learned League.
…Except no. I didn’t get credit for my answer. Because I left out “Holy?” Well, I would have lost even if this question had counted, so I’m not going to make a fuss about it.
5. This term, from Latin for blood relation, is used to describe words which have a common etymological origin (such as the English drink and the German trinken, or the French lait and Spanish leche).
I knew that when I saw the answer that I would exclaim, “Right! Shoulda had that!” And indeed, I have had multiple exposures to the word cognate. It just wouldn’t come to me when I needed it.
6. This is a screenshot from what film?
Now what is this bushwa? This is a photograph of John Wayne as Rooster Cogburn. Wayne portrayed the character in two movies — True Grit and Rooster Cogburn. Are we supposed to know from the photograph which movie this is? Did he drink a particular whiskey in the first movie but not the second? Did his patch change eyes?
Well, time to flip a coin, then. I went with True Grit, which was correct. Anybody get tripped up on this one? Or were both answers accepted?
Thanks all for being such a great bunch of kibbitzers. I wonder what this blog will become next?
1: I figured “team longevity” + “give us the nickname because the city would be ambiguous” = the Braves. Oops.
2: Ohhhh. I was prepared to argue about what “lowest” meant, but the key word here is apparently “primitive”. Oops. (I said 6,8,10.) My opponent and I both gave this the 0–no harm, no foul, except to my pride.
3: Glory be, we had this game board sitting in a corner of our middle school gymnasium for some reason. It was missing instructions and some of the pieces, but that didn’t stop me from noticing the game’s name. (I left out one of the Rs in my answer, to no ill effect. Don’t want to infringe anyone’s trademark, you know.) My opponent and I both wisely gave this the 3, and we both got it right.
4: There is a notable difference between the Roman Emperors and the Holy Roman Emperors, actually. I got this from Charlemagne, although I didn’t know that his status as the first HRE was in dispute.
5: I immediately thought of “cognate”, and rejected it because I thought that it meant similar-seeming words that weren’t etymologically related. Turns out I was thinking of false cognates. Aaaaaagh. I put down “familials”, which I pulled out of thin air.
6: I remembered he played Rooster Cogburn in two films, True Grit and another one whose title I couldn’t remember. Lucky me!
I pulled out a 6(3)-5(4) victory against Todd “NPL’s Navin” Etter, jumping up to a solid final ranking of 11th in Rundle C Metro. My thanks to him, and all my worthy competitors in Learned League, for a fun season.
And thank you so much for the daily recaps, Eric! I will miss them in the future, although I will keep visiting your blog as always.
(Wisely considering how many LLers ended up knowing about Carrom, that is. Didn’t want to sound too immodest there.)
Oh, and I totally failed to congratulate SuessE on his Championship … championship! You are knowledgable, sir.
Last day and I almost got to be #1 in Coastal D! I did everything I could, and despite a bad performance, I still won 2(2) – 1(1), but the #1 OsherR won his match, assuring himself the top spot two leagues in a row! Anyways, I’m lucky to be at 2nd considering I’m 11th in my Rundle for TCA. My CAA score is the lowest in the group by 7 or 8 points, so clearly I got very lucky. It probably won’t happen again.
1) I couldn’t be sure and I went with the Braves because his great grandson Connie Mack IV is a congressman in Florida (Currently running for Senate) and there’s no old school Florida teams, so tried the next southernmost thing. Neither of us got it for 2 and 3 points.
2) I got to 6,8,10 pretty quickly and settled into the logic of that’s the next lowest triple. And if I don’t know what “primitive” means in this context, it’s not important, right? Wrong! It means that all three elements of the triple only share 1 as a factor, 6, 8 and 10 are all divisible by 2. I gave my opponent the zero since Math was her best category and she still didn’t come up with it either. She thought it was easy enough that I missed just 1 point for it.
3) I guessed GO here with no real knowledge. She didn’t come up with it either.
4) Knew this from History classes. That was good for two points and my opponent missed it.
5) Went with familiar, similar to Robert. Wouldn’t have known Cognate
6) Knew this right away and figured Thorsten was looking for True Grit. I think if he’d wanted Rooster Cognburn he would have known about True Grit, that he was in two films and asked the question instead as: “This is a screenshot of the title character from what film?”
Thanks for providing your dailty comments with a place to vent, Eric. You will be missed in LL, and I’m glad we got to play.
Thanks for providing this fun blog-space, Eric. I’ll miss the interaction!
Well, somehow I managed to win this thing. I feel for InglebritsonC who was in first place in LL52 until the last day when the #2 player’s opponent forfeited, sending him past her. She’s been at #1 in Champ for half of this season, and just missed it on the final day. She was up by 2 MPD going into it, but decent defense on my part paved the way. I won 9(6)-4(4) and she won 9(6)-8(5). InglebritsonC only missed one question all season. I’m glad forfeits played no role in this – neither of us got a forfeit win this season.
I’m looking forward to the minileagues and one-days. I play them all, even if I expect to get squashed – witness that I actually played the Hip-Hop ML. Britcoms is Friday – I will not do well :)
Thanks for the kind congrats!
1. I also decided that it had to be a team that was ambiguous by city and whiffed with New York Yankees.
2. I also fretted between 6, 8, 10 and 5, 12, 13 (so beloved by trigonometry teachers everywhere because it makes marking answers so much easier) until I noticed “primitive” in the question. That’s primitive as in prime, as in co-prime, as in “can’t be reduced in the same way that a fraction can”. That eliminates 6, 8, 10.
3. I had the same emotional reaction as Eric had. I said crokinole, a game much beloved by the folks on Board Game Geek, despite knowing that board’s octagonal and has pegs hammered into it, but hoped this was some kind of inferior variant.
4. I seem to recall exactly the Charlemagne/(Holy) Roman Emperor/Empire issue came up on “Jeopardy!” recently, but falling the other way. After a quick look-up you-know-where, Charlemagne was Roman Emperor, full stop, from 800 – 814, as well as being the king of the Franks and the Lombards. If the Pope declared you such, then you were a Holy Roman Emperor, but at the time there was no “Holy Roman Empire”. That empire didn’t exist until Otto I came along, was centred more around Germany than it was around Rome, and in the beginning it still didn’t have that name. Until 1157 it was apparently still referred to as the “Roman Empire”, then the “Holy Empire”, and the full name only came into use in 1254. (Also, Saturday Night Live appaerntly stole “The HRE is neither holy, Roman, nor an empire” from Voltaire. They get full credit for, “Discuss.”) No wonder I never picked this stuff up by osmosis.
5. I spent way too long trying to solve backwards and figure out how to fit sang- and famil- into the same word and started thinking back to my German classes for the real term, and finally pulled it up.
6. The last question of the season has been pitifully easy the last couple of times out (though I only know this from Eric’s blog, which will be missed), so I guessed the obvious answer was the right one.
To nudge my way into the C’s, I needed to win and my opponent needed to lose, but neither happened. It seems appropriate that the season ended with a tie for me, so all other things being equal, I’d be a shark in D next time rather than a guppy in C.
Congratulations to Eric Suess!
1. Guessed the Cardinals as a team that (I believe) has been around for a while. Would never have thought of the A’s.
2. Easy. I have a bunch of Pythagorean triples in my head for no good reason. Easy 0 on defense, unfortunately (I’m 100% on math if you ignore the “sagitta” question).
3. No clue.
4. I think this came up recently in Quiz Bowl- I’d always thought Charlemagne was an official HRE, but apparently it wasn’t until Otto I.
5. Tried “consanguinous” or something similar. Blanked on cognate; probably would have dismissed it from the etymology anyway.
6. I got to John Wayne and guessed Rio Lobo. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a John Wayne movie.
Lost to 3-time Jeopardy winner WeissS 1(2)-4(4), unshockingly. Ended up 6th in my rundle. Not sure yet if I am coming back next season.
First off, major congratulations to Eric Seuss. I know you don’t get a trophy or a pewter bowl or anything, and it’s a little hard to explain what you just achieved to people who aren’t playing LL, but from where I sit, you pulled off something significant and I salute you.
I went into the last day of the season in 19th place in the B Pacific rundle, just one step above relegation, the cumulative result of a season with a lot of near-misses and half-steps. My opponent was BoghenM, holding down the 3rd-place spot, and presumably fighting hard for promotion to Rundle A, so if I wanted to stick around in B, I had a battle on my hands.
1. Knew it was Philadelphia, had to think for a moment to be sure of the A’s. (Also: 50 years! Yow! I remember some rain-delay interview with a player who had played under Mack, being asked, “Well, I heard Mack used to take naps in the dugout during games, but that’s an exaggeration, right?” “Uh, no, actually that’s true.”)
2. Had never heard the term, so went looking for the next set of numbers and ended up with 6, 8, 10. In retrospect, what was being asked for seems more obvious.
3. I’m something of a boardgame nut, and I had never even heard of/seen this. I assigned it the 3.
4. There was a question about Charlemagne’s status as Holy Roman Emperor during my Jeopardy! match (back in 2000), so I’m not likely to forget that soon.
5. I had an obnoxious, unorganized Latin teacher my senior year in high school (a great sadness after the excellent Latin lifer retired). About the only thing I remember from that class is him braying “Avoid the cognate” when people would define Latin vocabulary. So I guess this question was the payoff.
6. Thought it was a gimme; had no idea about the other Rooster Cogburn movie.
BoghenM and I both missed the Carrom question, and both gave it a value of 3. But he assigned 0 to the math question, which I missed, and I assigned 2 to the cognate question, which he missed. So somehow I pulled out a 6(4)-4(4) victory, which was good for a final record of 10-14-1 and 17th place. I feel bad for knocking BoghenM out of promotion, but at least I had the decency to also beat GrayI, who took the third-place spot. I’ll see if I can step up my game next season; if not, Rundle C might still be in the cards.
Eric Berlin, thanks again for hosting these conversations (and for turning me on to LL in the first place). They’ve added a lot of fun to the whole experience.
Sorry about possibly keeping you from promotion, Avram. I hope we get a rematch in a later season.
I’m a little embarrassed about missing the Carrom question, as it turns out I actually have a Carrom board in my basement! In my slim defense, it was my wife’s, it’s hiding behind a pair of speakers, and it’s got nets in the corners. Between that and missing the cribbage question, I feel I should forfeit my game collection or something.
Anyway, congratulations to Eric S on an amazing victory, and much thanks to Eric B for providing this as a forum for discussion.
Thanks again Eric. Your blog has been a fun place for daily discussions. I look forward to keeping up with what you’re doing.
Congrats to Eric Suess on the win. It’s been fun reading your comments as the season progressed. Congrats to all those that are moving up (Steve, Joon etc.)
After 2 ties and 4 losses over the last six days it’s been a particularly dispiriting slog. I barely survived Rundle B Coastal finishing in 18th place. One point less and I would have dropped down to C.
This last day was a total disaster.
1. I had no idea the Philadelphia A’s existed. Thought the singular ownership might have been a reason the team was later sold to LA and went with the Dodgers.
2. On the math question I recognized that I would have to choose between (6,8,10) and (5,12,13) and decided that area was a good basis to make that decision. I don’t know what made me think that. I’d even noticed the doubling pattern that would allow (12,16,20) to also work but discounted that as relevant. I even decided to score this a 0 since it seemed easy which was stupid since my opponent had poor math scores (and ended up missing this one).
3. Neven seen the game before but the title may have something to do with the action of the game. Looks like there will be a lot of ricochets involved. That sounds like a good action title. Any other words that would work here? other synonyms for ricochet or carom? Nothing I can think of. D’oh.
4. Gimme. I wasn’t aware of the uncertainty of Charlemagne as HRE but I was aware that the title continued into the 19th century.
5. No idea. Went with Consanguinants which is not a terrible answer since I think consanguinuity may be a synonym for cognation. Still wrong for these purposes.
6. Waffled between True Grit and Rooster Cogburn but ended up settling on True Grit. I’m pretty sure that both answers were accepted.
Ended up losing 1(2)-6(4). Bad answers and bad defence. Another season of this and I’ll be looking forward to moving back to C.
Hope all my NPL friends have a great time this year in Portland (I’m Eddy when I’m there). This will be the first one I’ve missed in 6 years but I hope to make it to Austin next year.
Thanks for the write-ups, Eric! Always entertaining and a good way to celebrate/vent after each Match Day. Also congrats to SuessE for his come-from-behind championship victory. If anyone here is in C Coastal, thanks also for a fun and competitive season. I feel fortunate to have finished in second and earned a promotion to Rundle B (though I assume the rundles will change after this season).
Full disclosure: I’ve decided to pay $20 for the upcoming LL year. I understand why some people are griping about Pay What You Want, but this comes out to only $5 per LL season, which is about the price of a beer at my local watering hole on trivia nights. Since LL questions are almost always more diverse and in-depth than the ones at the bar trivias I frequent, I consider what I’m paying to be a bargain. My price doesn’t even include the many MLs and 1-Days we can choose to participate in.
Eric S — Congrats on the impressive finish!
Eric B — Thanks for providing the forum and entertainment this and last season. We’ll miss this spot, but maybe another will open up. (I’d volunteer except that no, I won’t.)
1 — No clue.
2 — Immediately wrote “5, 12, 13 — check” on my worksheet. After dutifully checking, I was pleased to see that my memory was intact.
3 — Don’t really know why I know this as carrom, but evidently I did. Perhaps spillover from BGG discussions of Crokinole. Flirted a moment with skittles, but I was not about to be talked out of my first instinct. No, not me. (See discussion of Qs 4 and 5, below.)
4 — Thought of Pippin and wrote down on my worksheet “Holy Roman Emperor?” Then a funny thing happened on the way to the forum. The question seemed to ask what the people were called *at the time* (“Otto I was the first, in 962,… to hold what title “). I convinced myself that the title Holy Roman Emperor was not in use at the time, as I thought the empire was not called the Holy Roman Empire until later. (After the fact, I’m not sure, but this seems to be right according to Wikipedia, which says that “Holy Roman Emperor” is “a term used by historians to denote a medieval ruler who had also received the title of “Emperor of the Romans” from the Pope”.) So, shoot — had the question asked who these people were “later known as,” I would have gotten it right, but since it asked for what title they held at the time, I talked myself out of the intended answer. (Anyone know — *did* they have the title Holy Roman Emperor at the time? And if not, isn’t the question a bit poorly worded, since it asks about the title they held at the time?) But, the fault is distinctly my own for violating the Pizzeria Uno rule — Holy Roman Emperor was a viable answer, so no reason to take a complete flyer at “Magnus” (Charlemagne was called Carolus Magnus, which I knew from the boardgame world, so I took a shot, but silly to take a guessy shot in the dark when I had a decent answer in front of me. When will I learn?)
5 — Easy — wrote down “cognate” in about 10 seconds. But then … (oh no!). The question asks for a word that comes from “Latin for blood relation.” Well, COGNATE comes from NAT- which means born, not SANGUIS which means blood. So even though COGNATE *means* a blood relation, I did not think it qualified as “Latin for blood relation.” (I still don’t — I think “a Latin word meaning blood relation” is different from “the Latin for blood relation,” though I realize that is close to, or perhaps beyond, splitting hairs.) In any event, confident that the root SANG needed to be in there, I instead went with CONSANGUINEOUS, which *can* describe related words (or related anything), but is not specific to words. Byah. Had the preamble said it was from Latin for “relation” or from a Latin word “meaning blood relation,” I would have had this right, but the extra information provided proved to be my downfall here.
6 — My John Wayne knowledge is not extensive, but after scrounging around a few wrong titles I eventually hit on the correct one. None of the earlier ones felt good enough to be considered a “first instinct,” so my going with about my fourth choice did not feel like I was violating any principles here.
So, 3 right, which could easily have been 5. I won the match, and ended up nondescriptly 12th.
The far more important match was between Mark Halpin and me. With 3 days left, I was up by 2 games. Mark won the next 2 to tie going into day 25. And the final day? We *both* said CONSANGUINEOUS on Q4 for the same reason (eschewing COGNATE, which we both considered). We both had 3 other Qs correct, and on those he beat me 4-2. On Q4, I assigned him 0 and he assigned me 2 — so, would the Commish accept CONSANGUINEOUS as a valid alternative to the Q as asked, thus resulting in an overall tie (neither of us lobbied for it, but it was possible that others would)? Upon checking the next day — nope, Q4 wrong for both of us, and Mark wins our side game in a photo finish, 11-10-4, leaving me to say coulda-woulda-shoulda-didna. Congrats and *handshake* to Mark on the side game (and a powerful 3-game sweep at the end), and I look forward to a redemptive rematch.
Thanks again to Eric, and congrats to other Eric!
A 0(0) showing by my opponent left my own efforts pretty irrelevant, but the win was enough to keep me in C rundle by a hair.
1) For some reason (I think associated with Intercoastal Altercations 5), I was sure Mack was part of Philadelphia. I said Phillies, knowing it was wrong; I couldn’t come up with Athletics.
2) I had the same exact reasoning as Dart, except for all that “prime” mumbo-jumbo. 5, 12, 13 looked lower to me ;)
3) No idea, but great minds etc.: I said “skittles” also.
4) I was pretty confident of HRE here, and also did not know Charlemagne was controversial in that regard.
5) I call foul on this question, and contend that because of the way it was phrased “consanguineous” is a BETTER answer than “cognate”. It certainly fits the criteria, and at least should have been an acceptable answer. Mostly this irks me because it dings my heretofore perfect Language record, leaving only Theater intact.
6) Easy, if only because “Rooster Cogburn” as an independent movie didn’t occur to me. That would’ve been mean.
Congrats all around. I should note that because I’m convinced that “consanguineous” is valid, I consider my match with Dave above a moral tie (appropriate, since it’d been very close all season).
5)
Whoops — in my post #12, above, the final-paragraph references to Q4 should have been to Q5 (clear enough in context). And I perhaps should have clarified that the Latin word at issue was COGNATUS, from which COGNATE descends, but the point is the same.
Unfortunately, my first comment here will be on Eric’s last day of LL! Still, in radio parlance, I’m a long time listener, first time caller, and I’ve greatly enjoyed these write-ups, especially since Eric’s knowledge and mine are so disparate. His gimme’s are my “oh ****” questions, his “no chance in hell” questions are my gimme’s.
So, for today’s questions:
1. Gimme. Baseball is my only usable LL hyper-specialty. Video Games have come up exactly once, and Anime has never (and will never, IMO) come up. Baseball, though, comes up quite a bit, and I’ve yet to miss a baseball question. Mack’s teams were either dynasty-level good (1910-1914, 1927-1931) or absolutely horrendous, often finishing in dead last for stretches of 7 or 8 seasons in a row. He was a penny-pinching owner, but unlike Comiskey, he was willing to deal his stars once he could no longer pay them, sending Home Run Baker to the Yankees, Eddie Collins to the White Sox, Lefty Grove and Jimmie Foxx to the Red Sox, and so forth.
The Mack family has a long and storied history, but they’ve largely shifted from baseball to that *other* great American past-time, Politics. Connie Mack III was a Florida Senator and Representative, and his son Connie Mack IV is the incumbent Representative from Florida’s 14th district.
2. I’m not a math whiz, but I was able to work out 5, 12, 13 in my head after about a half hour of inner calculation. I stopped there, or else 6, 8, 10 might have tripped me up.
3. No clue. Me and my friends play a lot of board games, but I’ve never seen this one before. It looked like a tabletop version of Shuffleboard or Curling, so I just went with “Mini-Curling.” Gave this one a 3.
4. Completely ignored the Charlemagne part of the clue, recognized Otto 1, and went with HRE.
5. Spent about half an hour trying to fit “sanguis/sanguinis” into a word, gave up on it, went to bed (yeah, I’m one of THOSE people, I stay up late enough to get the daily LL questions and ruminate over them for about an hour before bedtime), went to my summer class, then just started writing random words in my notebook. I settled on the correct answer only because cognate looked like cognatus, and I knew cognatus meant, well, *something* in Latin.
6. I would call this a gimme, but I was apparently assisted by a lack of deep knowledge. Immediately recognized the character of John Wayne as Rooster Cogburn, but was utterly ignorant of the existence of a 2nd movie starring that character, so I went with True Grit.
Felt a bit jaded with my win of 6(5) to 0(0), since it was against MarquardtM2, the player with the most TCA in my rundle, but a player who finished in 8th place due to an extremely tough schedule and below-average defense. I have a feeling it was a protest submission on his part, since he had 115 TCA out of the previous 144 questions.
Still, I’m happy with winning Rundle C Central, and I improved my TCA% quite a bit over my Rookie season. I still stink at Classical Music, though. If the Rundles stay the same (doesn’t seem likely, but who knows), I’ll be in the extremely competitive B Central Rundle.
Again, congrats to Eric S for his insane performance in Champ Rundle, and much thanks to Eric B for writing these entertaining wrap-ups for the past two seasons. Hopefully, we can find a new place to congregate and talk LL.
Much like Tinhorn, I would volunteer, except, well, I won’t volunteer.
Actually, thinking about it, Video Games came up twice. There was the Playstation controller question in my Rookie season, and the Adventure screenshot from this season.
And I wouldn’t completely discount the possibility of a Miyazaki/Studio Ghibli movie showing up as a Film question in a future LL Season.
Still, I’ll stick with the statement that my deep knowledge of baseball is by far the most applicable to the general LL season. And it’s my lack of deep knowledge in just about every academic category that will keep me from ever advancing out of the B Rundle. Ah, well.
Late to the party, but still showing up to say Thanks to Eric for the time and effort running this blog.
The biggest benefit for me in my Rookie season was the instructions about defense: balancing opponent stats versus relative toughness of a question.
The biggest benefit in this season was analyzing other people’s reasoning for questions I missed. Facepalms were worth the risk while re-filing certain information into different brain drawers for future recall.
Hope someone else starts a new blog next season! Or maybe Eric will reconsider!??!
1. I knew Connie Mack was associated with Philadelphia, thought of Athletics and still went with
Phillies.
5. Thought of consanguinary but luckily also thought of the more language-related cognate.
6. Put Rooster Cogburn and got credit.
Congrats to Eric S.; that’s quite a feat.
I also hope you (Eric B.) will reconsider.
Do y’all experts think having COGnate and COGburn in the same set was an accident?
Eric,
I’m happy to have furnished your win on the occasion of your most recent 6-pack on June 14 (me being WrighteB), so congrats on that achievement – one that eluded me the whole season. My downfall and only error that day was thinking the battles sounded more like the Second World War than the First.
Unfortunately your blog only became known to me at the very end of the Season, and given you’re not returning, I missed out! But glancing back through some of your recaps, it sounds like we had remarkably similar thoughts and answers to a lot of questions. Meaning, our place in the standings could easily have switched. As I said to the members of our LL discussion group here in Toronto, Lady Luck rode shotgun with me throughout this Season.
All the best!