Sunday, September 2, 2012

Day 9: You lose some






















Gary Sherman said...

Hi Ben,

ShermanG here, your opponent on Day 9. Thought I'd add to the commentary.

1. Looked at this one for a few seconds before figuring out that it was a crossroads and that this must be referring to Robert Johnson. The use of the word "legend" in the question cemented it for me. Like many other LLamas my first exposure to this legend was the movie Crossroads. The one about a musician selling their soul to the devil in exchange for musical talent (the Ralph Macchio version not the Britney Spears remake.....Wait, Britney's version wasn't a remake? Well, it should have been). Thought you might know this so I was reluctant to score it 2.

2. Flemish was pretty easy. I've been to the area as well. In Bruges. It took me a while to figure out why they weren't appreciative of my attempts to communicate in French. Score of 1.

3. Even if I didn't know you were into tennis (which I did) I still would have scored this a 0 since only Steffi Graf was dominant enough to be in that many consecutive Grand Slam finals. I was surprised so many people got this wrong and I assume it's because they fell into the trap of thinking it was a guy.

4. Here I fell into the trap of thinking that it was someone's name I was looking for and as a result I never even thought of Oxford although I did consider Roget, Bartlett, Merriam (and Webster). I felt pretty stupid when I saw Oxford.

5. My first thought, based on no actual information was Sacramento. I knew the Donner Party was headed for California and that seemed like a decent guess. Unfortunately, the more I thought about it the more I convinced myself that it was the wrong answer. I ended up thinking that perhaps the Survovors never actually made it to California and went with Reno instead. I was kind of annoyed with myself after missing that one.

6. I was able to get away from my initial thought of John the Baptist (his head's not on a plate and who's the kid with the sword anyway?). Fortunately I remembered from my Jewish Bible Stories that when David showed Goliath's head to the assembled Philistine army they all scattered and ran. Thought you might have remembered this story as well so I only scored it a 1. On an unrelated note, overconfidence on Jewish trivia would eventually lead to my loss on Day 11.
Good luck for the rest of the Season.


Joon said...

on Q6 i definitely expected the answer to be holofernes before clicking through, but i did click through. having learned my lesson from the paris question on MD1, i noticed that the person holding the sword and severed head was a dude, i.e. not judith, meaning this had to be goliath. i don't recognize the specific painting but i'm guessing it's caravaggio based on its tenebrism.

Ben said...

I totally know what Holofernes and tenebrism are.

(read totally=don't)

Joon said...

don't google holofernes if you are squeamish about severed heads.

Ben said...

p.s. There was a time, admittedly a short time, when I knew what tenebrism was.