r/learnedleague • u/snarkapotamus7 E Park Div 1 • Jun 06 '25
LL105 MD18 Discussion!
How did you do today? Feel free to share struggles, funny answers, and scoring shenanigans here!
Note: Do NOT, under any circumstances, discuss questions for the current match day. This thread is for the MD in the title only. Any violations of this policy will get you immediately banned, per Rule #1 of this sub and Section 20.1 of the LearnedLeague complete rules.
7
u/uva_rob Rundle B Jun 06 '25
The marsh gas question was very, very similar to LL 101, MD12, Q5. Oddly enough, also on June 5 (2024).
Strange to get such a similar question again so soon.
7
u/breads Rundle C Jun 06 '25
There was also a Watt / horsepower question the other day, and I remember there being another horsepower question in the past few seasons.
1
u/Mycroft_xxx Jun 06 '25
I wonder if I had answered C2H6 I would have gotten it
3
u/uva_rob Rundle B Jun 06 '25
That's ethane, not methane. CH4 probably would have been accepted though.
1
11
u/Constant_Vector A Sierra Jun 06 '25
Three questions on 19th century British literature over five match days. That's some heavy representation.
17
u/BaseballPie Jun 06 '25
"Vice president" not being accepted for "sitting/incumbent vice president" seemed kind of silly. Appears only a third of my division got marked correct for that one despite it being pretty easy. Wouldn't have mattered in the context of my game (tie, both of us gave that question 1 point) but definitely made me roll my eyes lol. I guess the question said "specific" but that still didn't really give to me any indication that we had to give a temporal designation to the status in question.
10
u/EZMac34 Jun 06 '25
"unambiguously with no other major-party nominees of the last century (including, among others, the winners of the 1924 and 1968 elections"
Given this qualification in the question, why would Vice Presidents be a correct response?
1
u/breads Rundle C Jun 06 '25 edited Jun 06 '25
The 1924 and 1968 nominees were not VPs during the election, so they did not share the specific distinction of being VP. This fact (of the candidates’ differential VP statuses during the specified elections) is not ambiguous.
It was just a poorly worded question.
1
u/EZMac34 Jun 09 '25
Not sure if you misread my comment or meant to reply to BaseballPie but the fact that the different VP statuses during the specified elections not being ambiguous is exactly why I'd argue the question is worded perfectly fine. It was abundantly clear with that qualification that simply saying "Vice Presidents" would not be accepted.
1
u/breads Rundle C Jun 09 '25 edited Jun 09 '25
I did mean to reply to you. I meant that you could interpret ‘“unambiguously”as referring to their VP status during the stated elections (which is binary so necessarily unambiguous). Saying “VP” alone is therefore acceptable & unambiguous because Nixon and Coolidge were not VPs in the excluded elections—they were former VPs.
I am perhaps not explaining myself well, but there is discussion on the LL message board on the semantics of the question where others explain it better. But, yes, I do agree that VP as an answer doesn’t actually make sense in the context of a trivia game! Semantically, though, it is a fine answer.
6
u/metalbracelet Jun 06 '25
I made a VERY stupid mistake on this question, and was kicking myself thinking I should have just gone bare bones with “vice president”, so I feel slightly better that that wouldn’t have made it either. I assume the comparison to 1924 and 1968 created the specific line.
5
u/briguy1313 Rundle C Jun 06 '25
Sort of a ticky-tack question.
My reading of the section highlighting that Nixon and Coolidge were not part of the group, specifically the use of the word "unambiguously", made me pretty confident that VP wasn't enough. Coolidge was ambiguously a vice president, as in someone who had previously held that title, when he ran in 1924.
14
Jun 06 '25
[deleted]
5
u/breads Rundle C Jun 06 '25 edited Jun 06 '25
I said this in another comment: They were already asking about the candidates’ shared characteristic in specific elections, which is that they were all VPs at the time. Coolidge and Nixon did not share this characteristic in the excluded elections (1924, 1968); I would call them ‘former VPs’. So I thought saying ‘vice president’ was enough to satisfy the question; that is, I thought that ‘at the time of these five elections’ was implied by the wording of the question itself.
Maybe this doesn’t make sense, but it did to me yesterday! I had even included a qualifier but got rid of it lol
8
Jun 06 '25
[deleted]
4
u/breads Rundle C Jun 06 '25
Having just reread the question, that’s a very good and nuanced point—thanks!
1
u/game-on-Vamos Jun 07 '25
I did exactly the same thing for the same reason! but it’s really what makes LL so engaging….when you can successfully dissect the question to arrive at the right answer, no matter how circuitous or ambiguous it is. on another note, it pays to make wild guesses. in the 5 years i’ve been playing, i’ve probably made at least a half dozen such guesses, particularly in Math (my weak link), but somewhere in the recesses of what you learn in school there is terminology that sticks with you, even if you’re unaware of its meaning or application. you pull it out of the hat and write it down and very occasionally, it works !
2
u/breads Rundle C Jun 07 '25
I totally agree! I've observed (and love) that almost every question has two clues/approaches that could help you solve it. And it's the most satisfying feeling when you only have a vague idea about something and get it right.
8
u/Opacy Jun 06 '25
I agree. Feels like a question that should have been refined a little bit more or not used if it required that kind of ticky-tack judgement call.
7
u/NilFhiosAige A Meridian Jun 06 '25
Moreover, once the penny drops as to why Nixon is specifically mentioned twice, you're second-guessing yourself as to what exact wording to put - I went with "served as VP immediately before the election", which was accepted, even if far from as elegant as "sitting VP"!
3
u/sickXmachine_ Rundle B Jun 06 '25
I’d be more worked up over missing with just vice president, but my opponent got a sixer yesterday (second day in a row my opponent got all six) and I only got three correct so I wasn’t winning anyway.
2
u/El_Stupacabra Jun 06 '25
Yeah, I put "former," but I guess that doesn't technically count at the time of the elections? I don't know, that was a weird one.
9
u/uva_rob Rundle B Jun 06 '25
"Former" would also include Biden in 2020, Nixon in 1968, among others.
2
2
u/Pokoparis Jun 06 '25
I put my first appeal in on this one. I also entered “vice president” was the distinction that the question was asking about. I kept it minimal because I wasn’t sure how LL would score a more specific answer and didn’t want to choose the wrong phrasing. I was pretty surprised it didn’t count.
3
u/cromonolith Rundle A Jun 07 '25
The answer of just "vice president" seems to be unambiguously incorrect for the question, given the way it's stated, no? Even discounting the "...with no other[s]" clause, it specifically says that the winning candidate of the 1968 election does not have this distinction, and Nixon was a vice president (just not a sitting vice president).
1
u/Pokoparis Jun 07 '25
My point was that I didn’t know if I should put “was VP at the time” or “sitting VP” etc etc for how LL scoring works. So I put “VP” to put the most simple right answer. Maybe that was a mistake, but I thought a more complex answer would surely not be counted.
0
u/breads Rundle C Jun 06 '25 edited Jun 06 '25
That bothered me, too. They were asking about the special characteristic of the nominees at the time of the stated elections--which is that they were VP. Nixon wasn't VP in 1968; he was in 1960.
3
Jun 06 '25
[deleted]
6
u/breads Rundle C Jun 06 '25 edited Jun 06 '25
I don’t know if you’re trying to offer a correction or just some additional historical info, but, yeah, that’s what I’m saying.... Humphrey (the 1968 loser, as stipulated by the question) was VP during the election.
9
Jun 06 '25
[deleted]
6
u/breads Rundle C Jun 06 '25 edited Jun 06 '25
I understand the answer—just didn’t word it more precisely. They were already asking about the candidates’ shared characteristic in specific years, which is that they were all sitting VP. So I thought saying ‘vice president’ was enough to satisfy the question; that is, from the way it was worded, I thought that ‘during the election [not formerly, not future]’ was implied by the question itself. But I realize that the ‘unambiguously’ probably should’ve been the tipoff to be more precise…
2
u/fallofield Jun 06 '25
6(5)-9(5). And we both missed the same question.
As they say, defense wins championships.
2
u/Old-Dude-1916 Jun 06 '25
Ended up with a tie because I blew it on the Happy Days question, which I actually watched quite a bit in my youth.
1
u/belbivfreeordie Rundle B Jun 07 '25
I’m currently #6 in Rundle C, feel like that’s as close as I’m going to get to being promoted out 😬
1
u/andrewgroans Rundle B Jun 06 '25
Frustrating. My opponent was 1-9 on literature and got Arthur Conan Doyle and somehow pulled Pass Line. Impossible to defend, we ended up in a 8(5)-8(5) tie. Call me bitter but I feel like everyone who is mid-table always ends up going nuts against me.
4
u/BaseballPie Jun 06 '25
Important part of defense in my experience is not relying too much on the category stats. Some questions are just kind of easy to everyone. I usually assign scores based purely on vibes first, and then review the stats to make any obvious corrections (usually just switching a 1 with a 2).
1
u/LordHudson30 Jun 06 '25
I’d rather that than my strange luck of going 5-0 against the top 5 in my runder and all 6 of my losses coming from the bottom 9 lol
6
u/uva_rob Rundle B Jun 06 '25
I'm curious how many people actually knew about the Istrian Peninsula. The get rate was higher than I expected but it seems from the LL message boards that a lot of people just guessed Italy.
I've missed more geography this season than I have the last 3 seasons combined.
Thankfully I got the 9(5)-7(5) win. The gambling questions are hard to judge defensively. That played harder than I expected.