10 Years of LearnedLeague

I was invited to join LearnedLeague in 2015, and it's become a significant part of my life. Before I get too far, LearnedLeague is the trivia league of all trivia leagues and features countless Jeopardy! contestants and champions. There are six divisions or rundles: A, B, C, D, E, and R for rookies. It's invitation-only, and you're obviously in R for the first season. R is the most difficult season. You face players of all skill levels, and without knowing their question history, you're somewhat guessing how to play defense. Plus, you're still trying to understand how all of this works.

My rookie season was LL66. Due to my terrible performance that year, I was naturally placed in an E rundle where I have pretty much stayed for the next 40 seasons. Every once in a while, I earned promotion to D only to get relegated back to E the following season. I've actually been very successful (for me) recently as I got promoted to D for LL season 104 and stayed up for 105, 106, and now the upcoming 107 season. Yes, we're now up to season #107. 

I know that I'm not explaining LearnedLeague very well and skipping a lot. You can get basic information as a non-member on the LearnedLeague website. There's also an LL Wikipedia page and articles about LL by places like The Ringer, The New Yorker, and Milwaukee Magazine.

In my now 41 seasons of playing, I've learned a lot about my knowledge base. My best categories are pop music, television, games/sports, current events, and American history in that order. Meanwhile, my five worst categories are language, art, science, classical music, and math. I've only got 5 of 133 math questions correct, which is like 0.004%. (Math joke. It's actually significantly better at.038%!) I really should try to find a way to improve these scores. Anyway, it's really easy to play defense against me. If there's a question about one of my best categories, assign me the lowest possible points. Conversely, assign me lots of points for the latter categories since there's an excellent chance I'm going to get it wrong.

The primary mantra of LearnedLeague is don't forfeit, don't cheat. I'm proud that I have never forfeited in 1025 matches. What's funny is that I should have forfeited my 5th ever match. I drove to Pittsburgh that day and stayed at a hotel with my two young kids at the time. I was busy and exhausted and didn't answer the questions. However, the LL website ended up being down for part of that day, so they extended the deadline by a day. Over the next ten years, there have been plenty of times when I fell asleep on the couch, woke up right around the 1:00 AM Eastern time deadline and got credit for completing the answers.

One of my favorite parts of LL is the offseason mini leagues. While there are plenty of mini leagues that aren't for me, there are others particularly focused on sports and music which are perfect. In mini leagues, you are placed in completely random groups. It's fun defeating A-rundle players who would crush me in general knowledge but not in genre-specific games. I actually had a close loss in a mini-league several years ago against Jeopardy! champion Brad Rutter!

LearnedLeague is not for everyone, but I do have referrals available if you want to check it out. Just let me know The first season is free, and then there's an annual fee. It's fun and you might learn something. Not trying to sell anyone on this. Just sharing my experience.

Notes From Home: Volume 4

It’s time for another update of my life at home!

* The Moose (9) needed a haircut, so we attempted to give him one with some clippers we bought recently. It went poorly.

Fortunately, a neighbor was able to salvage his hair. It’s better but still not great.

I actually think the hairstyle is perfect if he was a member of Color Me Badd or EMF (you're unbelievable!) or some other musical group from the early 90s. While it will grow back, I have no idea what we're going to do with his hair in 4-6 weeks when it does grow back!

* We don’t have any type of a sleep schedule for the kids. In normal times during the school year, the two year old (Luigi) would go to sleep between 8:00 and 8:30 and we would wake him up around 6:30. He did not like waking up this early. He also got a 90-minute to 2-hour nap in the afternoon. Now, he goes to bed after 9:00 PM and wakes up around 9:00 AM. We don’t even try to give him a nap. Overall, he probably gets the same amount of sleep, but I’d rather that he went to sleep and wake up a little earlier. Meanwhile, I’m typing this at 10:38 PM on a Tuesday evening, and The Moose is still awake creating some kind of bank or something.

* Pedro Tulo (age 6) has started to notice the expiration dates on milk and other products. When seeing me wear a 2017 Penguins Stanley Cup Champions T-shirt recently, we had the following exchange.

Pedro Tulo: Your shirt is going to expire.
Me: I have shirts that are 20 years old. It will be fine.

* Since we’ve been home 24/7, I’ve noticed that Ziggy sleeps a lot. A lot a lot. He’ll be 12 this summer, so I know he’s getting older, but it just seems like he sleeps all the time.

(Apparently, this picture of Ziggy is brought to you by Intel.)

* The Moose is learning about Ancient Greece. While it seems like he’s interested in the portion about Olympics, he only seems moderately interested in any of the other parts. However, The Moose really enjoys trivia. He regularly asks me to ask him questions and wants to know how my team does when I play trivia with my friends. So I mentioned to him that there always seems to be questions about Ancient Greece and Greek gods. Sure enough, there was a category on Jeopardy! last week about Greek gods. Thank you Jeopardy!

* I mentioned this on a previous blog post, but the last time that I bought gas continues to be March 15th.

* Finally, sadly, a significant number of restaurants aren't going to recover from COVID-19 and being closed. Restaurants are a tough business even in good times, so it's not like the majority of them have huge amounts of cash reserves in case of an emergency. With that written, Chick-fil-a isn't going anywhere. The kids really like their food, so we went through the drive through for lunch as a treat for them. The line of cars was at least 30 deep. And it moved effectively and efficiently. Chick-fil-a is going to outlive us all!

For more of my "Notes From Home" during the COVID-19 crisis, please click here.

My DVR

Back in the early days of Sean's Ramblings, I wrote several posts complaining about good television shows or sporting events featuring Pittsburgh teams airing at the same time. Each time I wrote one of these posts, I received comments that I should get a DVR. They were right. Besides electricity, the DVR may be the greatest invention of all time. These days, with the exception of sports, it's rare that I ever watch live television. Unfortunately, I'm way behind in my DVR-viewing, and it shows that the DVR is only 14% free. I need to remedy this quickly, although the pending arrival of a new child will make this difficult. Challenge accepted! Let's take a look at what's filling up my DVR.

- Season 2 (12 episodes) of Homeland

I recorded this during a free preview of Showtime. I haven't seen season 1 yet, so these episodes just sit on the DVR until I get Netflix or hope that there's another Showtime preview that airs the entire first season of Homeland.

- 24 episodes of The Middle

I saved all these episodes since this is a show that my wife and I used to watch together. She is no longer interested in watching this show. I'm so far behind, that a recent episode I watched showed commercials for future ABC shows Zero Hour and How to Live With Your Parents for the Rest of Your Life. Both of these shows have been cancelled for nearly a year!

- 8 episodes of Modern Family
- 5 episodes of Archer

- Season 1 of Game of Thrones

I had a recent conversation with a friend where he said that he watched the first season thanks to a free preview of HBO. I replied that I missed out on recording the shows. Guess what? I didn't miss out. I just completely forgot they were there.

- Nancy & Tonya

I wonder if in this version of the retelling of the figure skating drama, Nancy Kerrigan arranges to have someone attack Tonya Harding.

- The Bro Mitzvah episode of How I Met Your Mother and a Curb Your Enthusiasm episode with Bill Buckner. Two excellent episodes that I didn't want to delete.

- A Jeopardy! episode featuring a good friend of mine. I should probably delete this, but how often do I get to see Alex Trebek giving my friend a nickname?

- Multiple episodes of Little Einsteins, Thomas & Friends and Dinosaur Train.

Best used during snow days. Plus, I'm so happy that there are now shows other than Little Einsteins that my son will watch.

During every free preview of HBO, Cinemax, Showtime, etc., I record movies. For example, I recorded the Academy Award-winning The King's Speech...in January 2012! Maybe it's time to watch it.

Other movies on the to-see list include:

Zero Dark Thirty
Looper
Wreck-It Ralph
Life of Pi

I've got work to do!

Jeopardy Contestant Search 2013

I have three friends that appeared on Jeopardy! over the past few years including Nichole (you may know her from regularly answering Trivia Tuesday questions correctly) who was a one-day champion just last month. Could you be the next person I know to be a Jeopardy! Contestant?

Jeopardy's online test is set for next week (January 8-10), but you should register now to participate. Good luck, and if you're able to advance and go the next round of the contestant search, please keep us posted.


On a completely different topic, while I have slowed down on the number of posts recently, make sure to stop by regularly next week as I have some good posts planned.

Trivia Tuesday: Name That Tune Edition (Plus Jeopardy Info)

Before we get to Trivia Tuesday, I’d first like to congratulate LaCochran’s Evil Twin for winning last week’s giveaway. She was comment #7 as selected by random.org. Thanks again to everyone who entered and to CSNStores.com for providing the prize.



Your challenge this week is to identify the song title and/or artist based on the lyrics below. These are the top 10 songs from Billboard’s 2010 year-end Hot 100 singles chart.

1. There’s no point trying to hide it/no point trying to evade it

2. You gave my life direction/a game show love connection we can’t deny

3. If she ever tries to leave again, Im ‘a tie her to the bed/and set this house on fire

4. Picture perfect memories/scattered all around the floor

5. I want your horror, I want your design/’cause you’re a criminal as long as you’re mine

6. I’m talking about everybody getting crunk, crunk/boys tryin’ to touch my junk, junk

7. Yeah I could use a dream or a genie or a wish/To go back to a place much simpler that this

8. You could travel the world/But nothing comes close to the Golden Coast

9. Honey got a booty like pow, pow, pow/honey got some boobies like wow, oh, wow

10. I came to move, move, move, move/Get out the way of me and my crew, crew, crew, crew

As always please leave your answers in the comments section below and do not use the internet for assistance. Good luck!

This quiz is courtesy of the fine folks at Stump Trivia.


Finally, I hope that the Trivia Tuesday regulars (and non-regulars) sign-up for the Jeopardy! online test. The adult tests are this week (see below), but make sure to register before the test begins.

Eastern time zone: Tuesday, February 8th at 8pm ET
Central/Mountain time zone: Wednesday, February 9th at 8pm CT / 7pm MT
Pacific time zone: Thursday, February 10th at 8pm PT / 7pm Alaska / 6pm Hawaii

The teen and college tests are in March. Visit the Jeopardy! website for more information. If you make it all the way to being on the show with Alex Trebek, please make sure that you mentioned that you learned of the test through Sean’s Ramblings!

Trivia Tuesday and Jeopardy Test

I’m outsourcing this week’s Trivia Tuesday, but to make it up to you, I have included information about the annual Jeopardy contestant search below. This week’s challenge is courtesy of two Sporcle quizzes.

1. You have six minutes to name the 24 Pro Sports Teams ending in -ERS?

2. You have five minutes to name the 25 music artists pictured.

In case you’re wondering, I answered 18 correctly on both quizzes. Please feel free to share how you did in the comments section.

Now on to the Jeopardy online test. You have a chance to be a Jeopardy contestant by completing this quiz tonight, Wednesday or Thursday. Jeopardy encourages you to take the test on the scheduled date for your time zone; however, you may take the test on another night if you have a scheduling conflict. You may only take the test once.

East Coast: Tuesday, January 26 at 8:00pm ET
Central/Mountain: Wednesday, January 27 at 8:00pm CT / 7:00pm MT
Pacific Coast (including Alaska & Hawaii):Thursday, January 28 at 8:00pm PT

You can access the Jeopardy contest by clicking here. If it is the same as in past years, you have about 10-15 minutes to answer 50 questions. One question appears, you have about 10-15 seconds to type an answer, and then it goes to the next question. It is difficult, and what makes it worse is that you’ll never know the answers to the questions.

Good luck!

Jeopardy Online Contestant Test

The online test for Jeopardy! is back. Here are the specific test dates and times:

EAST COAST
Tuesday, January 29th at 8PM EST

CENTRAL/MOUNTAIN
Wednesday, January 30th at 8PM CST/7PM MST

PACIFIC COAST (Including Alaska and Hawaii)
Thursday, January 31st at 8PM PST

These tests are for adults 18 and over only to qualify for the regional auditions. Eligible adults must register before taking the test by going to the Sony/Jeopardy! website.

Good luck!

Update 1/29 8:13 PM EST Well, you won't see me on Jeopardy anytime soon unless I'm in the audience and decide to run on stage to give Alex Trebek a high-five. I bombed the online quiz. Of course, having the George Mason-VCU college basketball game on television in the background probably did not help.