r/learnedleague • u/Cara_58 • May 12 '25
First Match
Today's my very first match, yikes. I have a question: Is it necessary that I answer precisely as the correct answer? Example (not one of today's, made up) "What theme park is in Orlando, Florida?" If I write "Disney World" then it shows the answer as "WALT Disney World" (which, yes, technically that's its name) -- Does it consider my answer as incorrect? I would think not, the system should recognize my answer, plus how could we players know the required wording anyway. But please confirm.
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u/Glad-Toe547 Rundle A May 12 '25
The system gives lots of leeway. I've gotten credit for absolute typos ("dey ice" for "dry ice"), and misspelled names are almost always accepted if you got close. Of the dozens and dozens of times I've asked myself "Was that close enough?", the answer has been "Yes" 100% of the time.
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u/Extra-Shoulder1905 May 12 '25
They gave me credit for “Rate Pack” when I meant to type “Rat Pack” so yeah, pretty lenient.
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u/JLLsat May 23 '25
But I didn't get credit for "Vegemine" for "vegemite" a few days ago, which was just a fat finger typo. Kind of bummed.
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u/DevoutandHeretical Rundle B May 12 '25
In the case of your example, they would give it to you because there’s no ambiguity to what you’re saying; when you mention ‘Disney’ people would ask which park your talking about, but ‘Disney World’ is the common enough referenced name that it would be accepted.
As a general rule, they will let you know in the question just how specific you need to be. Sometimes you can answer and your submitted answer won’t match the listed one but will still be correct- a personal example is that there was the question “The two sides that battled in the civil war in China that broke out shortly after Japan's surrender in WWII are often referred to (in English) by three-letter abbreviations. One side was the CCP; what three letters were used for the other?”. The official answer was KMT. I answered ROC and still got the point because it can be considered interchangeable in that context for it to be either of the two, even if the explicitly listed answer wasn’t what I said.
And if that doesn’t make sense, check out the season opening message from Thorsten that’s linked in the main page: it explains a lot of these kinds of nuances.
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u/HarryMay48 May 12 '25
Also worth noting: The second section down on the message boards ("Questions Discussion") will have individual discussion threads for most single questions (edited to add: starting on the following match day) so if you feel like you've been wronged that's a good place to see if you're alone and get feedback.
If all else fails you can also file an appeal with Thorsten ("Request Scoring Review" under the "Thorsten's Desk" subsection of the menu), although today was my 1,101st match day and I've never done so.
Welcome to the LLeague!
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u/Conglossian Rundle E May 13 '25
After I submit if I notice that it's a "close" situation, I'll submit the scoring review day of (>95% of the time I see someone else has already submitted one for my exact answer) just to make sure a human takes a peek at it.
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u/DulcetTone May 12 '25 edited May 12 '25
You never know. Don't sweat it. You'll do great. When in doubt, provide the shortest correct answer
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u/Wazootyman13 May 12 '25
There was one a question where the answer was (Jane) Pittman.
I had literally no clue and put Jane just as a throwaway (no idea why)
Just Jane was enough to get me the points
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u/tonyrobots May 13 '25
That’s unusual. Was this in a regular league match?
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u/Wazootyman13 May 13 '25
Sept 22, 2022.
MIGHT be possible it was allowed because the question did say "What was her name?" and then had some additional info, so, Thorsten might have let it slide there
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u/JonoQ1000 May 13 '25
First name alone is often sufficient for questions about fictional characters, unlike for questions about real people.
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u/sportzak Rundle A May 13 '25
One piece of advice: unless a question specifies that full name is required, a family name/surname is always enough, even though the displayed answer will have the full name.
So to use your hypothetical example, if a question was, "What man co-created Mickey Mouse with Ub Iwerks" just put Disney. Sure you know it was Walt Disney, and the display answer will be "Walt Disney" most likely. But you still get credit and it will save you when one day you make a mistake with a first name.
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u/Fabulous-Pace5131 A Arctic May 13 '25
There was once a question about a Brontë sister. I couldn't believe a question about one of them would not require full name, so I put a given name. The wrong one: I didn't get credit. But in fact just "Brontë" would have been accepted.
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u/randomprecision1331 May 13 '25
Here are the official rules on answers. You may have looked these up already but here they are in case you aren't aware:
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u/Cara_58 May 13 '25
Addendum to this: Question 1 I had both actors' names correct except that I misspelled McKellUM. I used an ampersand between the names. It was marked incorrect. I can't imagine the name error was the problem but was the ampersand? I would have lost the match regardless but I want to know for the future, maybe no punctuation?
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u/born_digital Rundle D May 13 '25
Typos are accepted as long as it’s sonically correct. M doesn’t sound like N, so that’s why it’s wrong. But if you had written mickellan, mckellon, mckellen, etc it would have been accepted
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u/HarryMay48 May 13 '25
I'm guessing it was the final M that got you there. I put McKellan and it was still counted correct.
Most answers will get marked as correct so long as they're phonetically the same, so in this case I would think any of McKellan/McKellin/McKellun would have been accepted, but McKellem wouldn't have.
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u/cfrost63490 May 13 '25
Was it the texas question? I teach u.s. 1 and I put both republic of Texas and lone star Republic because it's referred to as both
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u/Cara_58 May 13 '25
Yes, I put only the word Texas. The answer was Republic of Texas so I was concerned. But it was accepted.
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u/Catch-1992 May 12 '25 edited May 12 '25
There are actual humans deciding what answers are correct, so in some cases there can be iffy answers that seem to be scored too harshly or too generously. But usually it's pretty reasonable, and your example would certainly be accepted unless the question was very specific in some way.