Ben Bass and Beyond

Day 1: Let's do this

2012-02-25T12:00:00.015-06:00

The new LearnedLeague trivia season is underway. Here's how it started.

1. Of the 46 women who have held the position of First Lady of the United States, how many of them are still living?

OK, you’ve got Marie Antoinette, i.e. the Mrs. Bush who said Hurricane Katrina refugees being housed in the Superdome were “underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them” and didn’t want to waste her “beautiful mind” thinking about “body bags and deaths” in a war her son provoked; the Mrs. Bush who killed a guy when she drove through a stop sign; Michelle Obama; Hillary Clinton; Nancy Reagan; Rosalynn Carter. Anyone else?

I knew Lady Bird Johnson had lived to a very old age because I once heard Bill Clinton speak at a dinner where I was seated at a table of mostly Secret Service agents. This was shortly after 9/11 but Clinton still enjoyed federal protection, and our dinner conversation touched on the theme of shielding former Presidents and their families. Some of the agents present had been assigned to guard Mrs. Johnson into her 80s or 90s before she passed away. In her final years she was confined to a bed on the family’s enormous Texas ranch, hardly a target for anyone. The agents chucklingly referred to that waste of taxpayer money as the “Weekend at Bernie’s detail,” and explained that it was examples like this that eventually shortened the Secret Service protection of the families of former presidents. By the way, Clinton spoke about terrorism, Al Qaeda, etc. for over an hour without notes. He knew the subject cold and held 2800 people in rapt attention, many of whom surely shared my regret that he was now a mere ex-president.

So I knew Lady Bird Johnson was gone. Same with Jackie Kennedy, whose May 1994 death was a major news story, but one I remember extra clearly because I happened to walk through a pack of news reporters on the sidewalk outside her apartment building at around 80th and Fifth Avenue as she lay on her deathbed upstairs. I was headed to the Metropolitan Museum of Art across the street. I also knew Betty Ford had died in the last few years.

This question, then, for me at least, boiled down to a referendum on the issue of whether Pat Nixon is still alive. I wasn’t 100 percent sure but felt like she was already gone when her husband died, and even if not, I felt like it was fairly unlikely she was still around. So I guessed six and I was correct.

2. The character from Shakespeare (and from earlier English folklore) named Robin Goodfellow is nowadays better known as what?

Total gimme for this English lit major. Puck from A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

3. In 1862, an American company named Chase & Sanborn became the first to pack and ship a now common form of what food commodity?

The only things I know about Chase or Sanborn didn’t help. I know Salmon P. Chase was a Chief Justice of the United States. I once read The Wolves of Willoughby Chase. I know Sanborn Western Camp is or at least was an overnight camp based in Florissant, Colorado. And I know David Sanborn used to play sax every Friday night on NBC’s Late Night with David Letterman. I think the Letterman show used to air new episodes Monday through Thursday, with Friday Night Videos in that time slot on Friday. Then Dave was given all five nights, with a rerun Mondays and new shows Tuesday thru Friday, with Sanborn on Fridays, and Friday Night Videos was I believe pushed back an hour before it was eventually canceled. Wait, there’s a trivia game going on?

No clue on this question. I considered guessing either sugar or table salt before I eventually guessed ground beef (the worst of these three guesses, so poor strategy). The correct answer was coffee.

4. Tahoma is the name of a computer font developed in 1994 for Microsoft Windows, and also an original Native American name for what mountain?

To me, Tahoma said Tacoma, as in Washington State. It was easily plausible that these were variations on the same Native American word. Not having anything else to go on, I just went with the best-known mountain in the Sea-Tac area, Mount Rainier (which I think is in the Cascades, maybe?). Its name was strongly reinforced in my mind at the 2010 National Puzzlers’ League convention in Seattle, where a number of people independently wrote puzzles involving wordplay on how Seattle and Washington were “Rainier” than other places. Mount Rainier proved to be the correct answer. Other people later pointed out the local Microsoft angle to this question that I’d overlooked.

5. Identify the actress in this photograph.

Whenever LearnedLeague asks about a recently famous celebrity, I seem to drop the ball. In my rookie campaign last season, I mistook Danica Patrick for an actress since she wasn’t wearing a racing jumpsuit in the given photo. I also guessed Lady Gaga as the singer of an audio snippet of Adele’s “Someone Like You” even though I knew Adele was on to the next single after “Rolling In the Deep.” I'd even heard of it. I just hadn’t heard it enough yet.

I didn’t know who this person was so I guessed Zooey Deschanel with little confidence. Maybe if I’d thought about the Oscar nominations, or if the photo had shown jet-black hair and piercings, I would have known it was Rooney Mara.

6. While most steel is manufactured using carbon as the alloying material, stainless steel is formed by alloying iron with what other element (at a minumum 11% content by mass)?

I wasn’t sure but I felt like the answer was chromium. I took AP Chem in high school so maybe I remembered it from there. It made sense since chrome is generally shiny and doesn’t rust as far as I know. And I felt like if it was the only other silvery element I could think of, silver, I would have known that. (I now realize mercury is silver-colored too, but I didn't think of it, and even if I had, it's toxic so it's probably not the answer.) Lacking a better guess, I guessed chromium and it was correct.

"I've got no time for trivialities"

2012-02-24T06:06:00.004-06:00

My trivia league, LearnedLeague, kicked off its new season yesterday. This would be a perfect time to write about Match Day 1, but I have to get a suit on and drive through a six-inch overnight snowfall to a 9am court appearance about 25 miles outside of the city. For whoever's interested (both of you), I'll write about Thursday and Friday LL action in this space over the weekend.

Until then, here's a trivia question to keep you occupied. Who is the only major league baseball player to hit All-Star Game home runs for three different teams? (Real teams, not National or American, smart guy.)

Sentence of the week

2012-02-21T08:00:00.003-06:00

The hourlong half-season finale of "Talking Dead" in November boasted more than one million viewers, a drop-off compared with the 6.6 million who watched the preceding episode of "The Walking Dead," but a huge number for a midnight cable talk show centered on zombies.

The New Water Cooler Is a TV Show
[WSJ]

Theater watch

2012-02-16T20:00:00.003-06:00

Looking for some fun this weekend around the city? I've previewed a handful of the best shows in town for Flavorpill Chicago. (Not in Chicago? Get on a plane!) The first two close on Sunday, so don't wait around.

Click the show titles for theater information, ticket links and more.

American Idiot

Broadway In Chicago

Ford Center for the Performing Arts, Oriental Theatre

through Sunday

“American Idiot is the latest in a hard-rocking string of hit Broadway musicals. But while Rent and Spring Awakening boast trendy 19th Century literary pedigrees, they can only envy its secret weapon: Billie Joe Armstrong. The poet laureate of the 1990s pop-punk explosion brings more hooks than Kevin Van Dam, and his catchy songwriting translates well to the theatrical idiom. This portrait of three struggling nihilists from the suburbs is somewhat thinly drawn, but the familiar score from Green Day's chart-topping American Idiot and 21st Century Breakdown LPs provides vivid color.”

Mr. Rickey Calls a Meeting
Lookingglass Theatre
through Sunday

“This entertaining piece of historical fiction posits a secret 1947 summit meeting in which Brooklyn Dodgers general manager Branch Rickey seeks the blessings of Paul Robeson, Joe Louis, and Bill "Bojangles" Robinson before calling up Jackie Robinson to play in the major leagues and thereby break their color barrier. To its credit, Ed Schmidt's lively script is more nuanced than the antiracist sermon he might have delivered, exploring the conflict even among those with the shared goal of an integrated America. It's a spiritual companion to Jonathan Eig's Opening Day, the bestselling chronicle of Robinson's first big-league season that, although published after this play was written, nonetheless informed Lookingglass Theatre's current production.”

The Foreigner
Provision Theater
through March 18

“Before his tragic death in a plane crash at age 39, playwright Larry Shue penned two hilarious farces that have grown into American classics, The Nerd and The Foreigner. In the latter, a painfully shy British traveler is mistaken for a visitor from an exotic faraway land during his weekend stay at a backwoods Georgia fishing lodge. Since he's presumed to speak no English, he overhears the secrets of the local cast of characters and finds his own inner extrovert as he sets out to right some wrongs. Provision Theater Company's winning production serves up Shue's life-affirming crowd pleaser with a sure hand and a light touch.”

Motion

Signal Ensemble Theatre

through March 3

“In the finest Law & Order tradition, Ronan Marra's Motion draws inspiration from recent sports headlines. A hotshot NFL agent named Drew (read: Drew Rosenhaus) struggles to help his star client remain the projected top NFL draft pick after the blue-chip quarterback prospect runs afoul of the law, while a labor dispute threatens to shut down the entire league. It all rings familiar, yet to its credit the Signal Ensemble Theatre throws it downfield in this snappy new drama. Adding verisimilitude: Glenn Stanton, who plays a college football defensive back, also did so in real life, and Tim Martin, as the wayward QB, looks a great deal like one Jay Cutler.”

The Mary Kay Letourneau Players Present...

at IO Theatre

Sundays 10:30pm through March 11

“As you might infer from their choice of infamous eponym, the Mary Kay Letourneau Players are not particularly concerned about offending people; if anything, they'd be disappointed if they didn't. With in-your-face material exploring such cultural sideshows as monkey attacks and HIV-positive puppets, Second City veterans Katie Rich and Kate Duffy grab the audience's lapels with four hands and shake vigorously. It's a risky path they travel, but with a heady mix of clever jokes, uncomfortable moments, and zaniness for its own sake, their knowing late-night crowd gets what it came for.”

Thanks babe

2012-02-15T08:00:00.002-06:00

Happy Valentine's Day

2012-02-14T08:00:00.002-06:00

And speaking of football...

2012-02-08T08:00:00.001-06:00

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If you're already going through pigskin withdrawal, you don't have to wait until the NFL draft in April. Check out Signal Ensemble Theatre's production of Motion, a less mawkish Jerry Maguire on a sandlot budget.

My Flavorpill Chicago preview is here.

Super Bowl tickets for sale!

2012-02-02T08:00:00.002-06:00

Read all about them here.

[Jockular; h/t Cazique]
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Apt pupil

2012-01-31T08:00:00.004-06:00

notice on his shelf a copy of Fortune magazine, with Meredith Whitney on the cover. And as he talked about the bankrupting of Vallejo, I realized that I had heard this story before, or a private-sector version of it. The people who had power in the society, and were charged with saving it from itself, had instead bled the society to death. The problem with police officers and firefighters isn’t a public-sector problem; it isn’t a problem with government; it’s a problem with the entire society. It’s what happened on Wall Street in the run-up to the subprime crisis. It’s a problem of people taking what they can, just because they can, without regard to the larger social consequences. It’s not just a coincidence that the debts of cities and states spun out of control at the same time as the debts of individual Americans. Alone in a dark room with a pile of money, Americans knew exactly what they wanted to do, from the top of the society to the bottom. They’d been conditioned to grab as much as they could, without thinking about the long-term consequences. Afterward, the people on Wall Street would privately bemoan the low morals of the American people who walked away from their subprime loans, and the American people would express outrage at the Wall Street people who paid themselves a fortune to design the bad loans.

—Michael Lewis, "California and Bust"

Vanity Fair, November 2011
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Alert the media

2012-01-30T20:00:00.015-06:00

I felt like listening to a Beatles classic so I called it up on YouTube, where I learned to my surprise that the band is playing this weekend in Chicago!

Mr. Rickey Calls a Meeting

2012-01-25T18:00:00.005-06:00

I quite enjoyed Lookingglass Theatre's Mr. Rickey Calls a Meeting, a lively piece of historical fiction in which Brooklyn Dodgers boss Branch Rickey seeks the approval of Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, Joe Louis and Paul Robeson before calling up Jackie Robinson to break the major leagues' color line.

To its credit, Mr. Rickey doesn't sermonize, exploring the tensions even among those with a shared vision of an integrated postwar America. The show is attracting a lot of positive attention and its Michigan Avenue engagement only runs through February 19, so grab your tickets now. It's a perfect evening's entertainment for hot stove season.

My Flavorpill preview is here.
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Anatomy of a snowstorm

2012-01-22T10:00:00.006-06:00

That's gotta hurt.

My car has a snowhawk.

Hello

2012-01-18T08:00:00.001-06:00

Puzzlemaster, solve thyself

2012-01-14T08:00:00.017-06:00

Although best known as a friend of this blog, Will Shortz is also the puzzle editor of the New York Times and the puzzlemaster of NPR Weekend Edition Sunday.

But he's not the only FOBB&B working as a public radio quiz show host in the American Northeast. Mike Nothnagel, math professor extraordinaire and constructor of some of the most elegant crosswords in the NYT, hosts his own puzzle segment entitled "Any Questions?" on station WAMC.

It was probably inevitable that Mike would put Will in the hot seat, as he did a few weeks ago. Just as inevitably, Will passed the puzzle test with flying colors.

You can listen to Will and Mike on "Any Questions?" here.

Predictive text

2012-01-11T00:30:00.000-06:00

As the great Jordan Rubin points out, this "predictive text" nonsense has gone too far.

Beware Ben Bass

2011-12-31T16:00:00.065-06:00

Texas A&M led the nation this year with 44 sacks thanks in part to my favorite Aggie, the 6'5", 295 lb. senior defensive end Ben Bass. At approximately the same height and weight give or take a hundred pounds, we're basically identical twins. The guy even has the right middle initial, J.

True to form, the blue-chip pass rusher out of Plano West High School sacked my law school alma mater Northwestern's elite quarterback Dan Persa in the first quarter of today's Meineke Car Care Bowl of Texas in Houston. Good old #90 and his crew were up in Persa's grille all day.

Although I support all Ben Basses on principle, I wasn't too excited about the fierce game he played. Neither were my hundreds of fellow purple-clad Northwestern fans in a jammed North Side bar, a boisterous crowd including former quarterback C.J. Bacher (still protected by his teammates on the O-line) and former university president and basketball junkie Henry Bienen.

Above is a screenshot of my namesake in today's game, complete with not just Bass but "B. Bass" on the jersey because his brother Justin Bass is a freshman on the team (not to be confused with my brother Justin Bass). I'd have liked to get the "and Beyond" on there but I couldn't reach the Aggies' equipment manager before game time to offer a generous bribe.

With today's loss, Northwestern ran its unfortunate streak to 9 straight bowl game losses since beating Cal in the Rose Bowl after the 1948 season. On the plus side, NU has made it to postseason play 9 times in the past 17 seasons, including the past 4 in a row.

Strictly personal

2011-12-30T11:00:00.001-06:00

Happy 70th birthday, Mom!

Elsewhere in badass geopolitical hip-hop...

2011-12-23T08:00:00.002-06:00

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North Korea Warns South to Show 'Respect' for Kim Jong-il
[NYT]

'Tis the season

2011-12-21T19:00:00.000-06:00

The Allegro Handbell Ensemble plays a noontime concert of holiday favorites in the lobby of 131 S. Dearborn, Chicago.

Day 7: One that got away

2011-12-21T08:00:00.006-06:00

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On Match Day 7, for the first time, I let one slip away.

1. Homer's Iliad ends with the burial of what Trojan prince and warrior?

I've read The Odyssey but not The Iliad. Knew Odysseus was a Greek hero and strained to think of his counterpart Trojan warriors; the best I could do was to think of various USC (Trojan) Heisman Trophy winners. Finally I went with Ajax, who might have been a good guess had he not been a Greek warrior himself. I should have guessed his archrival and Trojan counterpart, Hector.

2. Identify the two largest businesses -- both London-based -- of the type that also includes Dorotheum, Bonhams, Phillips de Pury, Lyon & Turnbull, and MacDougall's.

None of the given business names meant a thing to me; they could have been clothing stores, casinos, gas (I mean petrol) stations, fast food places, department stores, insurance companies or china shops. But the names said upscale to me, so I figured they weren’t, for example, fast food places. My first thought was insurance companies, as Lloyd’s of London was obviously a London-based business, but I couldn’t think of another one, and although Lloyd's was old I didn't know it to be one of the two largest insurers.

All I could do was try to think of a classy, high-end industry whose two leading players were British. Rather than make a bad knee-jerk guess, as I had repeatedly over the previous Match Days (Blake Edwards, The Clapper, Olivetti, Robben Island, West Bank), I mulled it over for a while. Before long I thought of the auction world, where Sotheby’s and Christie’s were the two major names, and felt reasonably confident they were both British. The other given names seemed British or otherwise European, which made sense to me since those countries are so much older than ours; they’ve probably been auctioning art, antiquities and rarities for centuries. And try as I might I couldn’t come up with anything else. So I said Sotheby’s and Christie’s and it was correct.

3. What is the common name for the scalinata that connects the Piazza di Spagna with the Piazza Trinità dei Monti in Rome?

Another one I had to grind out. I’ve been to Rome but I didn’t know the two Piazzas and none of the given Italian words meant much to me. What might connect two piazzas (plazas, town squares) in Rome? My first thought was a road or a bridge, but I couldn’t think of anything, so I thought further. They were asking for a common name of a functional part of the physical plant of the city, one well enough to be known around the world and have its own nickname. And it had to be in modern-day Rome, not what remains of ancient Rome. I kept thinking of the Trevi Fountain, which is in a piazza, but I needed something more connective and less destinational. The Roman Road was more likely a road into and out of the city than within its borders, if it even still existed.

Suddenly it occurred to me: the Spanish Steps, one of the famous landmarks in the city, might connect two piazzas. I didn’t think of them as doing so, but who knew? I'd visited the Spanish Steps 14 years ago and remembered the steps themselves better than whatever was around them. I seemed to recall the bottom of the staircase was a major pedestrian artery, not a piazza, but it could have been both, i.e. a piazza along a roadway.

Rereading the question confirmed that my guess was solid. I don’t speak Italian but I speak French, and scalinata worked as a staircase since escalier means staircase in French (and both were something you scale). That was good enough for me. I guessed the Spanish Steps and it was correct. I didn’t even notice a second clue hiding in the question: the Piazza di Spagna was named for Spain.

4. What were the first names of the co-hosts of the 1960s/70s sketch comedy television series Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In?

I suffered a brain freeze on this question that cost me a tie in the match.

Knowledge is complicated; there are shades of gray. In this league, for example, there’s knowing the answer and confidently providing it; not knowing the answer and scoring with a well-reasoned educated guess; not knowing the answer and making a lucky random guess; and not knowing the answer and proving it with a wrong guess, an unfilled answer blank, or the capitulation of not even answering the question but instead trying to be funny.

The ugliest shade of gray is knowing the answer but not being able to say it, and that was my lot on this question. I’ve said it before, and it sounds like an excuse, but if you had shown me a list of 20 possible answers I’d have easily selected the correct one. It was on the tip of my tongue and I just couldn’t spit it out.

I think the “same first letter” thing screwed me up. I kept thinking “Dick Rowan and who, Dick Rowan and who,” when the answer was in fact Dan Rowan and Dick Martin. The crazy thing was I had just been thinking about these two guys’ names in the previous month or so, maybe in reference to Goldie Hawn or something. In any event, the harder I thought about it, the more I didn’t come up with the answer. Eventually I gave up and guessed Dick and Allen in frustration knowing it was wrong, and it was.

5. Of the chemical elements known as the noble gases, which is the only one that has only radioactive isotopes (and is in fact responsible for the majority of public exposure to radiation)?

This felt like the gimme of the day. I knew from both my career in real estate and as a casual follower of the news that radon gas was an ongoing issue in home inspections and buildings around the country. I also knew from having taken chemistry and AP Chem in high school that radon was a noble gas. Another element I knew offhand was a noble gas, neon, was also in widespread proximity to the public, but I’d never heard of a health threat due to leaky or aging neon signs. I thought xenon might be a noble gas but I couldn’t think of its general application other than maybe in high-end auto headlights, nor did I think of it as a threat. So I guessed radon and it was correct.

6. Named after a character from an obscure 1953 film, this stock sound effect has appeared in hundreds of instances across various media (including all Star Wars and Quentin Tarantino films). What is the effect known as?

You either knew this or you didn’t, and I didn’t. I guessed Screamy Joe. The answer was the Wilhelm Scream.

Defense: I gave my opponent 1 2 1 2 0 3 and he gave me 2 2 1 3 0 1 (boldface are correct answers), so I lost 6(4)-3(3).

This one should have been a tie. We both knew, played identical defense on, and canceled each other out on three of the easier (to us at least) questions. He knew the one I thought was hardest, the Wilhelm Scream, and earned a 3; I knew the one he thought was hardest, Rowan and Martin, but I couldn't manage to spit out the correct answer to earn a 3.

So what would have been a tie was instead a painful loss. But it was still early in the season, and I was surely not the only player with a hard-luck anecdote.

Day 6: Playing like a player

2011-12-19T06:00:00.017-06:00

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Another pretty good day at the office:

1. This is the work of what contemporary American artist?

I got past the momentary distraction of the word Red, which made me think of Mark Rothko due to John Logan’s Broadway hit that recently played the Goodman Theatre here in Chicago. The contemporary timeframe worked but the painting itself didn’t much resemble Rothko’s work. I wasn’t familiar with the canvas in question but the splotchy motif reminded me of Jasper Johns’ flag and target paintings. I used to have a print of his Green Target in my office, for example, and the weathered look was reminiscent; his American Flag could also plausibly share a creator with the mystery painting. And words painted in colors different from the colors the words themselves represented, shared a playful quality with targets consisting of identically colored concentric circles and alternate takes on the American flag. So although I knew little about his other work I guessed Jasper Johns and it was correct.

2. The West Indian (but not Caribbean) Lucayan Archipelago consists of the Turks and Caicos Islands, along with what nation?

On this question I made the best educated guess of my LearnedLeague career to date. I had never heard the word Lucayan in my life, so all I could go on was the other given information. The two keys, pun unintentional, were “(but not Caribbean)” and the fact that the answer was one of two nations in an archipelago. So I was looking for, possibly an island nation, but more likely a nation that was itself an archipelago, since I was hard-pressed to think of an island nation adjacent to a nation that was a group of islands, like Australia just south of Indonesia (or for that matter the Philippines), but somewhere near the Caribbean.

My knowledge of geography in general is pretty shaky. About all I could confidently say about the island geography of the greater Caribbean region was that Haiti and the Dominican Republic are the two modern nations that share the island that was once called Hispaniola. So I started thinking about what “(but not Caribbean)” could mean. To me that meant somewhere that was generally thought of as Caribbean, but technically wasn’t.

I vaguely remembered that the Bahamas and maybe Jamaica were southeasterlyish from Miami, close enough to visit by a short flight or boat ride. Maybe they weren’t exactly in the Caribbean since they were on the Atlantic side. Lacking a better guess, I decided to go with one of those. I wasn’t sure whether Jamaica had more than one island to its name, but the Bahamas clearly did. So I went with the Bahamas and it was correct.

3. The television station S4C, based out of Cardiff, was the first television channel to be aimed specifically at a Welsh-speaking audience, and now broadcasts exclusively in that language. The S stands for Sianel (Welsh for channel); what does the C stand for?

No clue. I would have been fine if they were asking how to refer to Finland in its native dialect (Suomi), but they weren’t. I don’t know the first thing about the Welsh tongue; had you told me the Welsh traditionally spoke Old English, I’d have believed you. I guessed Cardiff on the thin hope that it was a trick question with the answer in the given information, even though I knew that was not the league’s style. The answer was Cymru, a word apparently familiar to viewers of BBC programming such as Doctor Who that originates in Wales.

4. The derivative of the equation 3x³ + 4x² + 6x + 2, when plotted, is what geometric figure?

Mike Markovich and I sat in the last row of calculus our senior year of high school and quietly cracked jokes back and forth the entire school year, so I might have learned more about “The Calculus of a Single Variable something something,” as our textbook's title put it, had we not found each other and ourselves so hilarious. But I did know that the given math term was not an equation, it was an expression; that with the implied y= it would indeed be an equation; and that the answer was a parabola.

5. While the kilogram is the International System of Units (SI) base unit for mass, what is the SI derived unit for weight?

Probably should have gotten this one. I also took physics in high school and had I thought about this in physics terms I might have remembered the newton, a shockingly common standard unit in physics circles considering how it pretty much never comes up anywhere else. Looking for a non-metric equivalent to the kg I said the pound, ignoring the SI (which should have implied physics to me) at my peril.

6. What is the name of the meadow, along side the River Thames in the Royal County of Berkshire, where King John of England sealed the Magna Carta in 1215?

Like Cymru, you either knew this one or you didn’t, and I didn’t. Inspired by Hogsmeade, the town nearest Hogwarts Castle, I tried to picture a bucolic meadow along the banks of a river. I guessed Sheepsmeade, not a bad guess in light of the answer: Runnymede.

So I went 3 for 6 thanks to two good guesses. Playing defense, I gave my opponent 2 2 1 1 0 3 and he gave me a very similar 2 1 2 1 0 3. Unfortunately for him he went 0 for 6, so I won 4(3)-0(0). The victory gave me a 4-2 record and lifted me to 13th place of 44 on our still tightly packed division ladder.

Sign of the times

2011-12-18T08:00:00.000-06:00

Day 5: Keeping it going

2011-12-16T06:00:00.062-06:00

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Filled with newfound confidence, I had another decent trip around the bases on Match Day 5.

1. The term dog days (as in dog days of summer) originated in ancient Greece, and came from the belief that the hot weather was associated with, and caused by, what star (please provide proper name)?

Like so many LearnedLeague questions, this one was replete with ways to get the answer. Put more simply, the question here was “Which star is nicknamed the Dog Star?” Careful readers of the Harry Potter books might recall that Sirius Black can transform into a dog (summer 1999 spoiler alert!). And the logo of Sirius satellite radio is a dog with a star for an eye. As I knew, and was reassured by those supporting facts, the answer was Sirius.

2. Moon River, the Johnny Mercer/Henry Mancini-penned Academy Award winner for Best Original Song for 1961, was first sung in what film?

Have never seen the movie, but I'm familiar with its basic facts. Audrey Hepburn as Holly Golightly, George Peppard, Truman Capote wrote the book, Moon River, Henry Mancini, regrettable performance by Mickey Rooney. And the movie is: Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

3. The individual depicted in this painting is named Dora Maar, but the painting itself is better known by what accurately descriptive name?

No clue. It was pretty obvious who painted it, and I assumed (correctly, as it turned out) that she was one of his mistresses, but I certainly couldn’t name the painting. I said “Woman with a Veil,” but the correct answer makes sense if you’re looking at the image properly: “Weeping Woman.”

4. Provide the two words that fill in the blank from Section 1 of the 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified on December 6, 1865: Neither slavery nor _____ _______, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Having studied the Constitution, though not particularly the Reconstruction Amendments, in law school, I should probably have gotten this one. My problem was the numeration of spaces in the answer blanks: 5, 7. This fit perfectly with the phrase “human bondage,” which worked as a synonym to slavery. Maybe I was led astray by Somerset Maugham (yet again!). The correct answer was involuntary servitude.

5. In the NATO Phonetic Alphabet, the letter B is assigned the codeword Bravo, and the letter Y is Yankee. Using the codewords of the NATO Phonetic Alphabet, spell the word cat.

Argh. I couldn’t think of the C word. I guess that’s because I am such a PG-rated kind of guy. I guessed Conga Alpha Tango, but the correct answer was Charlie Alpha Tango.

6. Who is the father of the child in this picture?

Perhaps due to the intimation of extramarital intrigue, I thought the woman looked kind of tabloidy-mistressy, so I guessed John Edwards. And I was right!

Defense: I gave my opponent 0 1 3 1 2 2; he gave me 2 3 2 1 1 0 (boldface are correct answers).

Interestingly, I thought Sirius was a 0 (the easiest question), and John Edwards was a 2; my opponent, vice versa. We each got both of them right. Thanks to his feeling that Breakfast at Tiffany's was the hardest question, I won by the narrowest of margins, 5(3)-4(3).

The victory gave me a 3-2 record and moved me up to 20th place in my 44-player rookie division, or "Rundle." I was one of 10 players tied with 6 points in the standings (like NHL hockey, you get 2 for a win and 1 for a tie; unlike the NHL, you also get -1 for a forfeit). But I was 9th of those 10 due to my poor performance in the tiebreaker, with only 1 more match point than my collective opposition.

Still, after two pretty good days in a row I was on my first winning streak. The best part was, win or lose, I was enjoying the experience.

Day 4: Finding my mojo

2011-12-15T06:00:00.048-06:00

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On my fourth day in LearnedLeague trivia, I finally got it going.

1. What was the stage name of Dutch exotic dancer Margaretha Geertruida Zelle, who died of a gunshot wound at age 41 on October 15, 1917?

A wartime femme fatale who wasn’t Tokyo Rose? Had to be Mata Hari. And it was.

2. Journalists Chuck Todd, Jake Tapper, Norah O'Donnell, Jessica Yellin, Peter Baker, Carol Lee, and Don Gonyea all serve in what specific position for their respective news organizations?

A gimme thanks to Jake Tapper’s ongoing tenure as White House correspondent for ABC News. I'm not much of a TV news watcher but I'm also dimly aware of Norah O’Donnell. Even though I haven’t heard of several of these people, and even though Brit Hume’s no longer covering the White House (also for ABC News), the familiar names on the list made this question pretty straightforward.

3. Name the man, one of the earliest and most influential professional rock critics, who served from 1974 to 2006 as music editor for The Village Voice.

Not too many people in the league knew this one but I did: Robert Christgau. I’ve always appreciated the analysis of insightful critics and observers. I’d just as soon read Posnanski or watch Costas interview Feller as actually watch a baseball game. In the world of rock journalism, Christgau’s one of the key figures. You’ve got your gonzo genius Lester Bangs, who died too young; Robert Hilburn, late of the L.A. Times; Cameron Crowe, boy wonder of Rolling Stone; Richard Meltzer, whose A Whore Like All The Rest I’ve given as a gift; the professorial Greil Marcus. More recently, Nick Tosches, Michael Azerrad, Bill Wyman (not that Bill Wyman), Neil Strauss. The pioneering, prolific Christgau made the most of his bully pulpit during his long tenure at the Voice.

4. Tiny Robben Island, notorious today for its legacy as an island prison, lies 4.3 miles (7 km) off the coast of what nation?

On the flip side of Christgau, most of the people in the league got this one but I didn’t. Had I thought about a legendary spiritual leader who was imprisoned offshore for decades on specious political charges, only to be freed to universal acclaim, I might have guessed South Africa. I guessed Ireland, perhaps thinking instead of self-important rock stars who hied to kiss his ring and bask in his halo.

5. It is commonly held that deep-dish Chicago-style pizza was invented in 1943 by Ike Sewell at what restaurant, where he was a co-founder?

Knew this one in my soul. I’ve lived in and around Chicago pretty much my entire life, and Pizzeria Uno is iconic. I used to stop by there on the way home from Bears games when I was in high school to pick up deep-dish pies. Had they asked for the intersection, I would have said Wabash and Ohio.

6. An April 15, 1985, middleweight championship boxing match, known today simply as the The War, is considered one of the most thrilling matches in history, pitting the incumbent undisputed champion against a challenger who was junior middleweight champion at the time. Identify either of the two combatants in this historic bout.

No clue. To me, “1980s middleweight” says “Sugar Ray Leonard,” so that was my guess. The actual boxers were Marvin Hagler and Thomas Hearns.

Defense: I gave my opponent 1 0 3 2 1 2; he gave me 1 2 1 0 2 3 (boldface are correct answers). So I won 6(4)-3(3).

For the first time I felt like I acquitted myself fairly well on a full set of questions. Probably should have sussed out Mandela, but made a respectable guess on the boxing question.

Winning with four correct answers was a much-needed shot of confidence as I improved to a .500 record and got back up to the middle of my division in 23rd place of 44. Life was good.

Day 3: Sliding into oblivion

2011-12-14T06:00:00.180-06:00

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As I entered Match Day 3 of my rookie season in the LearnedLeague trivia contest, my confidence was low after two shaky efforts. Unfortunately my third go-round did little to right the ship.

1. What is the specific common name for the government of France that existed from 1870, upon the collapse of the Second French Empire, until 1940, and the Nazi invasion and subsequent Vichy regime?

This was one of those topics I faintly remembered from a long-ago world history class in high school. Unfortunately we studied the French Revolution at great length and pretty much glossed over the post-Napoleonic era; it was all Robespierre, all the time. I speak French and spent the summer in La Rochelle, France when I was 16, but those weren't doing much for me either. I guessed “parlement” with little confidence, and sure enough, the correct answer was the French Third Republic. It sounded vaguely familiar.

2. During the third verse of the R.E.M. song It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine), the instruments stop abruptly and briefly while the band shouts the name of what man?

The good news was that I knew the answer. The bad news was that so does everyone else: Mstislav Rostropovich. There are few questions about R.E.M. they could have reasonably asked that I wouldn’t have known in my sleep, but they flattened it out so much they erased any Stipe-based advantage I might have enjoyed. As you know, the answer is actually “Leonard Bernstein! (Leonid Brezhnev, Lenny Bruce and Lester Bangs, birthday party cheesecake jellybean boom.)” At least my knowledge of Lester Bangs and his fellow grandees of rock criticism would soon pay dividends.

3. Identify the tabloid-style German newspaper whose name translates to English as Picture, and which is -- by far -- the largest circulation newspaper in Europe (and in fact the largest outside Japan). Its policy of showcasing a topless woman on every front page may have some effect.

I didn't know there were topless women in any European tabloids outside of England; maybe that's not why the U.K. sat out of the whole euro thing. I knew that the German word Spiegel means mirror, not picture, and I knew Der Spiegel was a German magazine, not a tabloid newspaper. But I didn’t know the word for picture or the names of any other German periodicals, nor did I have a plausible guess, so I guessed Der Spiegel in honor of my buddy Matt Spiegel. The answer was Bild, which seems like a somewhat prosaic name (“Picture”) for a publication that features words and pictures.

4. There are two generally established classifications in French cuisine for clear soups: bouillon (simple broth), and what other, which is essentially clarified bouillon?

Continuing the French theme, much like the French Third Republic, I knew the correct answer would sound familiar when I heard it, but I also couldn’t think of it. I guessed bouillabaisse, a thick fish soup so far from bouillon I might as well have guessed the Beastie Boys. The correct answer was consommé.

5. The short films What's a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This? (1963), It's Not Just You, Murray! (1964), and The Big Shave (1967) are among the very early works of what Oscar-winning film director?

This one I regret because I could have made a much better educated guess. A few years ago I attended a screening of the first full-length feature by this filmmaker, Who’s That Knocking At My Door?, his senior film project at NYU film school from the mid-1960s. That would have been consistent with short films made in the previous few years, and also with a predilection for the use of questions as somewhat lengthy film titles. And, for that matter, with a director who burst into prominence in the ensuing decade. But I rushed through this one a little, not giving sufficient thought to any of those things. I focused only on the era in question and the fact that the shorts sounded more or less comedic, and guessed Blake Edwards pretty much knowing it was wrong. Sure enough, the answer was Martin Scorsese.

6. What was the eventual name of the product which was first marketed in the UK as the Stowaway and in the US as the Soundabout?

I made a terrible guess here, not really thinking about the ramifications of the word Stowaway and instead trying to think of what a Soundabout might do. I guessed The Clapper, but the correct answer (which 65% of players leaguewide got, fully as many as Leonard Bernstein) was the Sony Walkman. In hindsight, this looks fairly guessable.

Another brutal 1 for 6 day. I was starting to dread being sent down to A ball, where I would be asked to name any two of the four Beatles.

As for defense, I gave my opponent 1 0 2 1 3 2 and he gave me 2 0 1 1 2 3. We both knew Leonard Bernstein and received 0 points for it. My opponent, living up to his Gallic-sounding surname, also knew the French Third Republic and consommé. So once again I played perfect defense, giving away the minimum number of points, but so did my opponent, and good defense can absolve ignorance only so far. In LL terminology, I lost 2(3)-0(1).

Now I was 1-2 and plummeting fast. In three days I'd dropped from the traditional Opening Day tie for first, to 32nd place in my 44-player division. It wasn't even clear yet who our better players were, but I wasn't looking like one of them.

What was clear was that I had little room for error. With just six questions per match, even one mistake or giveaway could be ruinous, and the LL seemed to go for the jugular every day with just one or two easy questions in the mix. Hell, even Jeopardy! starts with the simple stuff and only gradually turns up the heat. Few of their questions are this hard.

They were not asking things I felt confident about, and I'd squandered several chances to guess some crooked numbers onto the scoreboard. This was not going well. But as Robespierre said, it's always darkest before the dawn...