Today’s Learned League mini-quiz: Game Shows 2

[SuperSweeper]

Playing in the final challenge with several hundred other people, I always approach the assigning of "moneyball" questions a bit randomly, but I surely did not expect so many people to have a row of zeroes for their answer sheets, given that they too were in the championship.

There were a LOT of very, very weak groups. I figured any of us who qualified for the Finals were going to be curbstomping most of the others without even breaking a sweat.

Unfortunately, there was at least one person I know who got absolutely hosed and didn't qualify despite getting nearly every question right.

[Jeremy Nelson]

I do not have any fore-knowledge of any of the material. I am friendly with one of the Smiths but was not invited to playtest.

The Thursday set (the last one of the week) had several questions that I was worried the entire quiz would have.  Namely, questions about other elements of pop culture (books and movies) that happen to have references to game shows in them.  If you've not read that particular book or seen that particular movie, it won't matter how much you know about game shows, you'll come up empty.  I'm hoping when the event continues tomorrow that those will be at a minimum.

I hesitate to call it an argument because we're just so danged civil and friendly to each other, but I have been having this conversation with Kevin Prather.

I have a lot to say today.

While I thought there were some decent questions in the bunch, my breaking point was when someone had to point out to me that Match Day 9 was Price is Right themed. When the source material is buried so deep in the questions that I can't tell you're doing a theme day, that's a problem. There are ways to write challenging game show trivia in a way where the average person may be able to answer correctly on secondary clues. You can ask about the host of Strike it Rich and tie a secondary clue to his baseball and broadcast career to help the masses.

While I think there should be some tangential questions in there to whet the appetite of the general community, I would have preferred more straight-up GS questions. This is a mini-League, and as such, you're consenting to specialized subject matter. Don't like it? There are enough One-Days and Mini Leagues each offseason where a couple of your interests is bound to come up elsewhere. Conversely, non-community people did poorly on the GS stuff, while we wholly complained about the wild tangents. So maybe that was the balance the smith tried to strike.

The one big issue, and I'm sure this comes up in Mini Leagues a bit, is that there are people in our community who missed a "count on one hand" number of questions throughout, and in a ML with 300 groups, ended up paired with two elite players who qualified. While there's no perfect way to group people, maybe people should get automaitc entry to the final if they're in the Top 5% of Total Correct Answers and didn't end up in the top 2 in their group. Just a thought.

[tvwxman]

Sooooo. I totally missed there being a sign up for this . Are they doing it again? Regularly? Can someone link please?

[trainman]

Sooooo. I totally missed there being a sign up for this . Are they doing it again? Regularly? Can someone link please?

No, it wouldn't be on a regular basis -- the mini-leagues run in between the regular LearnedLeague seasons, and they're dependent on a member of the site committing to get a group together to write the questions for it, and getting the concept approved by the commissioner (who tries to make the subjects of the mini-leagues relatively diverse). I wouldn't expect a "Game Shows 3" until 2026, if then.

That said, there have been occasional game show-related questions during a regular LearnedLeague season, and there are occasional one-day quizzes on specific game show topics (there was just recently one called "Jeopardy! in Pop Culture").

[Jeremy Nelson]

Sooooo. I totally missed there being a sign up for this . Are they doing it again? Regularly? Can someone link please?

Previous responder already said what needed to be said, but for those of you interested in how you would have done in previous game show themed one-days, links below. Also, check out the Smith's recap at the top for question rationale, get rate, and bonus questions that didn't make the official one-day:

Game Shows (2012)
British Quiz Shows (2021)
Game Show Merchandise (2022)
Press Your Luck (2023)
Game Show Hosts (2023)
Jeopardy (2023)
Wheel of Fortune (2023)
Jeopardy In Pop Culture (2024)

[TLEberle]

I have a lot to say today.

The phrase that pays is "I have some thoughts.”

I know we can't bar people from playing, and you can post a ModKos rating and a blurb that goes through what is to be expected but I look at all of those players at the bottom of the championship spreadsheet and recall a bit of dialogue from that great work of sci-fi The Long Walk

"What did you think you were doing [redacted]? Playing gin rummy?"

I think game shows each as their own are great fodder for a one-day and several of them have been quite fun  I think this needed a narrowing of the material space, either fictional game shows, big winners, Personnel...who knows. There are too many questions where you can just rely on chestnuts, but there were more than a few questions where I thought "that is very tenuous."

Part of what I loathe about one-days (yet I'm still a glutton for punishment) is that I may as well roll a d12 to choose my moneys.  There's no way that I can reasonably guess what will play well, and certainly cannot peg everything to "it's easy if I know it."

Matt S: if you do sign up I believe you can review previous questions in either match days, one days or leagues and at least see how well you would play.

[jjman920]

Yeah, this was a tough mini-league for me this time around. I don't do many and maybe I should try more, but I was placed in a group with two very strong opponents, including a J! ToC champ, and in the end I ended up with four ties, three of them against other perfect scores, and no losses, which left outside looking in on the championship (which I still played, it just wasn't for final placing).

I didn't mind the tangential questions. I looked at the mini-league as a introspective on game shows rather than just a straight up quiz all about them. Which meant, I didn't mind some focus on game shows effect on pop culture as a whole. That said, I did feel some questions lost the plot and there were definitely some better, more focused questions that could've been asked. Echoing what many of you have said.

[nowhammies10]

I went 12-0-0 during the main Match Days and then ended up in 86th for the Championship, despite beering* that day too. Apparently, I'm as hopeless at moneying as EberleT.

*beer (v.): to get every question right on a Match Day -- since there are usually six questions, getting them all can be described as a "six-pack". Extends to One-Day format as a "12-pack".

[Kevin Prather]

I finished first in my group with 9-2-0, and came in 194th in the Championship, tying Jeopardy champ Jason Zuffranieri among others.

[TLEberle]

I went 12-0-0 during the main Match Days and then ended up in 86th for the Championship, despite beering* that day too. Apparently, I'm as hopeless at moneying as EberleT.

I put the TLE in teetoTaLEr so I call it an A&W, but mazel tov! It's always a good feeling.

For a one day, my thought is I need to get eleven out of twelve or I'm just not going to bother. I know other people do lots more, and that's fine. As to how to assign your moneyballs, [shrug]. When assigning defense I usually look at just the batting average for each category and maybe where the victim lives.

I don't think there's a great answer about the pairings and groups when there were in excess of 250, and the unsatisfying one is stick to the regular season, mid-classic and one days.

[BrandonFG]

This was by far my best showing: five or six perfect scores, 1st place in my group at 9-1-1 (kinda ominous-looking record but whatever), 133rd overall in the championship. I’ll admit my last couple LL finishes were a bit discouraging so I was happy to just be there in the final.

I’m not so sure a different money strategy would’ve helped me much. There wasn’t too significant of a difference in the questions I moneyed vs. the optimal choices.

[Kevin Prather]

One thing that made moneying this one particularly difficult was that only one of the twelve questions had less than a 40% get rate.

[Matt Ottinger]

9-0-2 overall, and 81st in the championship.  If I had gone with my first instinct on GSN Emmy nominees, I would have been eighth.

[vtown7]

8-1-2 on my end, and was pleased as punch to have finished 23rd in the championships (first time I’ve made it that far). Had I chosen a different question to money I would have come joint second (read: technically sixth).
Good fun even if some of the questions felt super esoteric… and commiserations to people like jjman who got a super hard draw… I can only imagine how frustrating that might have been.
Side note: I’ve never agonized over my defensive choices that much before in my LL career!