The Learned League off-season is filled with member-created events. There are One-Day Specials devoted to specific (sometimes very specific) topics, like Talmud, The Science in Science Fiction, or IATA Airport Code Combos Forming 6 Letter Words (not my strongest result!). There are also Mini-Leagues on various, usually broader, areas like “World Literature”, “Advice”, or “Gen X Culture 2 the Max” (a real learning experience for me).
One of the current Mini-Leagues is called “Stuff…or ELSE”. Each day’s six questions are about a single subject (like “Women in Science”); each question has an audio or video clue (for Women in Science, it was always a picture of the person in question) and a rebus-style alternative way to get the answer. For example, the first question in Women in Science had a photo of a woman standing near a computer tape drive holding a book labeled “Cobol”, and the rebus was “it’s a theological word in the title of a 1990 Sean Penn movie and a 2012 Taylor Swift song + the film villain who met his end being torn apart by the young of a predator (fortunately largely offscreen, given the target audience of the 1998 film).” The answer, of course, was Grace Hopper.
Yesterday’s topic was “The Muppets”; I was surprised and pleased to get all six questions right. Unfortunately, so did my opponent. Of the twelve people in my group, nine of us had a perfect day – not a result I’m used to seeing.
It could have been more frustrating, though; in one group, eleven players got them all right – and the one person who missed a question got lucky because their opponent assigned zero points to that question.
One of tomorrow’s One-Days looks like it should be interesting: “Your Body Is Trying To Kill You 4”. Time to channel my inner House!
