LearnedLeague 88 Final Recap
Wrapping up another thrilling season of LearnedLeague, and looking ahead to the offseason.
With LL88 now officially in the books, I figured I’d go ahead and recap how this season went overall.
There were over 23,700 LLamas in LL88. That’s remarkable, especially since during my first season in LL, which was LL52 nine years ago, there were exactly 906 LLamas. As I’ve mentioned before, the league’s growth since 2012 is remarkable, and a testament to the good content Thorsten (as well as ML and One-Day smiths) keep pumping out.
The league started on a Monday back in February (due to delays because of Texas power outages), and went for 5 weeks straight, without any holidays to catch our breath. Nonetheless, it seemed like people were as engaged and invested in LL as ever. The leaguewide forfeit rate was under 3%, meaning that people not only are into LL, but they’re also keeping up with it for all 25 days of the season. The highest average forfeit rates came on Fridays, at 3.24%, whereas Mondays were under 2.5% and midweek averaged around 2.75%.
The easiest question was the one about General Tso’s Chicken — apparently 95% of LLamas have experienced the comfort of this filling Chinese food dish on a rainy day. The hardest question of the season was about Mezzogiorno, the region of southern Italy. Only 11% of LLamas got this one right.
The best day was Match Day 13, which saw 18% of LLamas — including myself — get a 9(6), or drink the beer. Match Day 2, however, only had 0.4% of LLamas drink the beer, with a correct answer percentage of only 29% throughout the league. But at the end of the season, the total get rate for all 150 questions remained at just over 50% leaguewide. As someone who’s written a fair amount of trivia questions in the past, this is some very impressive balancing by Thorsten. However, at 51.78%, this was the highest total get rate for a season since Thorsten started tracking this publicly in LL60. I’m not too concerned about the questions potentially being easier though — the season get rate in the past has never been lower than 47%, so overall I’d say it’s right in line with what he is aiming for difficulty-wise.
One other thing I found interesting was which subjects were easier or harder in LL88 than in seasons past. Though there were only 4 math questions, they were easier on average than in previous seasons. The average percent correct this season on math questions was almost 67%. This is over 20% higher than the entire average get rate for math questions throughout the history of LL. (This tracks for me as well — I went 4 for 4 on math this season, and have a 68.5% get rate in my 37 LL seasons.)
I mentioned throughout the season that geography questions felt hard, and they were harder than average for the league by about 5 percentage points (42.6% correct answer rate this season vs. 47.8% correct answer rate in all seasons). But it was film, not geography, that had the largest discrepancy this season compared to others (41.4% correct answer rate this season vs. 50.9% correct answer rate in all seasons). And there were some tough film questions this season — both Lash LaRue and Flora and Ulysses come to mind right away.
Finally, there are the Best Wrong Answers. A few years ago, Thorsten assembled a Best Wrong Answer committee to track the most creative and funniest wrong answers of each season. My top choice for BWA was “Washington Moderate Republicans” for Match Day 17 Question 4: “Of all the teams in the "Big Four" North American pro sports leagues (MLB, NBA, NFL, NHL) whose team names include an animal, only one was named after an animal that is extinct. What is that team name (both location and animal required)?” However, the Very Best Wrong Answer of the season, as voted on by Premier and Commissioner’s Circle LLamas, was “HGNGNRHHRRNGHHHH” for the Match Day 14 Question 1: “The bar must be laid horizontally in front of the lifter's feet, gripped with an optional grip in both hands and lifted upward until the lifter is standing erect and with knees locked. This is an excerpt from the International Powerlifting Federation's Rules of Performance for which of the "Big Three" powerlifts?
What were your favorite parts of LL88? Are you happy with how you did overall? Did you have a favorite Best Wrong Answer? Let me know or sound off in the comments!
MiniLeague Update
I signed up for all four MLs this offseason. The first is on The American Revolution — I’m not as strong at war history as I am at political history, but I should remember enough from AP U.S. History class in high school to do alright. The next is called General Knowledge Puzzle League. I love MLs that have a bit of a high-concept twist or theme to them, so I’m looking forward to this one. Next up is LGBT 2, and the first LGBT ML was very good so I’m excited to participate in its sequel. Finally, 21st Century Literature should be tough for me, but at the very least I’ll get some good reading suggestions out of it.
One-Day Special Update
I did two One-Days this week, both of which have been completed and scored. The first, on baseball music, I got 8/12 and finished in the 69th percentile. I would’ve done better if I’d moneyed the question about Scott Stapp writing a Marlins song, but I wasn’t sure if the team in question was the Marlins or the Rays, and missing a money question in a One-Day can totally mess with your score.
The other one I did was Massachusetts in Film and TV. I got 9/12 right and finished in the 75 percentile, which is pretty solid, but as a Massachusetts resident (I’ll have been here for 5 years in May), I think I could’ve done better. For example, I thought the town in The Fighter was Boston suburb Everett as opposed to Lowell, and I haven’t seen enough Cheers episodes recently to know what the restaurant above the bar was. I also had no clue about Spenser for Hire. A few of my friends in the Boston area got 11 or 12 right on this this quiz though — I guess my Masshole status is not quite etched in stone yet.
Next week LearnedLeague takes a break before the MiniLeagues start up, so I may be writing about some non-LL trivia topics if I have a chance. In the meantime, I hope everyone is enjoying the Spring and the beginning of April, and Happy Easter and Passover to those who celebrate!
Nice recap. I just missed out by one spot getting my first promotion to A. I'll be remaining in B for the fifth straight season. I'm looking forward to the American Revolution ML.