We actually haven’t received much feedback this season, with only one submission in the last 20 days. All feedback is very useful to us, whether it’s positive or negative, so please try and get something in before the season ends.
Contents (it’s a long post)
Quick Stats
Game Score
Seat Averages
Triples-Doubles and Triple-Triples
Toughies and Softies: Triad stats and “Triad of the Week”
Game Week 6
Game Week 5
Game Week 4
Quick Stats
Game Score
Game Weeks 5 and 6 have played very similarly to 2 and 3 in terms of game score distribution, with only small differences in scoring pattern.
Game Week 4 was notably tougher than anything before or after, with a spike in number of games scoring 13-24, and one game even scoring just 10 points in the whole quiz.
I’ve hidden GW2 and 3 because it made the chart messy and didn’t add much info. Left in GW1 cos it’s a useful contrast.
Seat Averages
This table shows seat averages for the last 3 weeks all together, and it looks alright. But it masks the significant imbalance that occurred in Week 4, when Seat 1 played significantly easier than the others. This is more apparent if we see a week-on-week chart of median owns.
Seat 1 players tended to score 2 more Owns than anyone else in Week 4.
Seat 3 experienced a smaller imbalance in Week 3, with a 1-point advantage. In Week 6, Seat 2 had a 0.5-point edge. This sounds like it’s being averaged out, but players are shuffling between seats too so there’s a chance of some players being particularly unlucky.
If you had Seat 2 in Week 3, Seat 3 in Week 4, and Seat 1 in Week 6… sorry friend.
Triple-Doubles and Triple-Triples
Quite a lot of overachievers to cover across 3 game weeks.
Game Week 4: A total of 54 musketeers, of whom Abid, Kinshuk Biswas, Saahil Sharma, Shayak Barman, Sumukh and Vishnu all aced 2 triads each. But the only triple-triple of the week was scored by Seoan Webb, who scored a 3/3 in Gory Deaths of Roman Emperors, Uncommon Body Parts in Common Idioms, and Historical References in British Sitcoms.
Game Week 5: No less than 63 musketeers, of whom Aabhaas, Calvin, Gaurav Sinha, Ishani, Raunaq, Shashwat Salgaocar, Shayak Barman, Sneha Goenka, Wrichik Basu all aced 2 triads. But the truly standout performances belonged to Dipto and Sreyashi Dastidar, both of whom scored triple-triples. Dipto aced Nicknamed 'The Emperor', Hasan Minhaj's Comedy Specials, and Pulitzer Prize Categories, while Sreyashi scored her triple-triple on Bharat Ek Khoj, IHCL Hotel Chains, and Pulitzer Prize Categories
Game Week 6: 57 musketeers, with Appu S, Ingit, Nandagopal, Pranjal Agrawal, and Pravar scoring 2 of them. Only one triple-triple this week, and that was taken by Siddhanth Rao1, who aced Navarasas in Indian Art Forms, Spotify Wrapped 2024's Music Evolution, and Coloured Nicknames of Newspapers.
Toughies and Softies
Game Week 6
*Triad
We received a bit of feedback saying that the Percentages triad was a low point for us, and I guess I see it? The 99% was quite obvious, the 7-per-cent solution was know-it-or-you-don’t, and Mr 5 Per Cent is a complete shot in the dark. Actually that combination of obvious (L1), trivia (L3) and guess (L2) kind of sounds like a perfect levelling strategy, but you get what I mean.
I read a few games this week and I was surprised at how many player don’t try to guess the length of a word from the size of the block that’s covering it. This is college quizzing stuff folks, you should try it out when you don’t have a better answer. Look, the size of the letters PER and CENT on the book cover kind of tell you that you’re looking for a 5- or 6-letter word on the Sherlock book, and a 4-letter word on the Conlin book. This narrows guesses down to 3/7/8 for the first one and 4/5/9 for the second.2 It isn’t much, but at least you have a guess.
Cioppino was answered only 10 times, you probably need to have lived there.
99% was unsurprisingly the most answered question, and could well have been its own Correct% Rate. Chopsuey was the only other question that was answered in every single game this week.
I really enjoyed the Christian Festivals in Art question for being a high-quality TIL even if you don’t know the answer.
An event in the Christian calendar is depicted in Bruegel’s ‘The Fight Between [BLANK] and Lent’, depicting the transition from Shrove Tuesday to Lent. Literally meaning ‘the putting away of flesh’, **which festival** is this, represented by the butcher, pig, poultry etc? It’s also a common noun in English, for similarly spectacular events.
Answer: Carnival
So the carn- in carnival actually means flesh!
Air Quality Index was a topical triad, and it forced people to flash back to school days to avoid confusion between Nitric Oxide and Nitrogen Dioxide.
Squabble Up by Kendrick Lamar was my hip-hop contribution for the season, and while I’m happy with the workability of the questions (rap lyrics make for great questions IMO), I think they ended up being a little too easy and consequently not that satisfying to answer. Sitting ducks, if you will. Horn played unexpectedly tough, and it might be because we asked for the [BLANK] section of a band. In the words of one player, “I dunno, BRASS just feels like a 4-letter word”.
The new Kendrick Lamar track 'Squabble Up' includes the following neat line: *I got hits, I got bucks, I got new [BLANK1 BLANK2]* (5,4)(plural)
'Hits' are hit singles, 'bucks' are dollar bills. **What goes in the blanks?** The phrase here seems to allude to the drawbacks of fame and wealth, but it usually refers to the small but painful injuries caused by [BLANK1], which is another slang term for money.
Answer: Paper Cuts
Spam and Eggs played hard, and that was surprising for me, because it was a popular funda in quizzes at least a couple of years ago, with the Monty Python-to-Python programming language connection frequently coming up, particularly that spam sketch. On the other hand, the placeholder funda is likely a dated one, and not really relevant in Python development anymore. The docs that once mentioned the sketch have now been updated and python devs today just use foo and bar like everybody else.
My Favourite Triad of the Week:Coloured Nicknames of Newspapers (Vikas Plakkot 🙏)
Three nice, workable questions on a creative topic. A great choice for you to try on your non-quizzing friends and family. Also a rare case where the questions are significantly improved by the addition of letter counts. The combined clues of colours+letter count gives the players a lot of info to work with.
**What color-related nickname (4, 4)** has been given to The New York Times since the 1950s due to the somber and dull style print it carries news in? The name, reminiscent of a ghost from Harry Potter and Ghostbusters, is also a reference to the seriousness in its journalism, free from colorful photographs and jazz.
Answer: **GREY LADY**
**What color-related nickname (3, 3)** is given to the British newspaper The Sun from the stand-out way in which the name appears on the newspaper, both in colour **and** position? The term is now used in general to refer to tabloids such as The Daily Star and The Daily Mirror which focus on sensationalism and gossip.
Answer: **RED TOP**
**What color-related nickname (4, '2 OR 4, 3)** is given to the Financial Times newspaper drawing from the color it began using to distinguish itself from their rival Financial News? Over the years, this color has become a go-to for other finance-based newspapers around the world.
Answer: **PINK 'UN** or **PINK ONE**
I’m surprised anyone could score a musket on this, the questions are too accessible to be predictably missed by your opponents.
Game Week 5
*Triad
I’m so bad at India questions myself that I find it shocking whenever an India triad plays the easiest in the whole week, but that’s probably just me.
The notorious Airline Chicken was not only the toughest question this week, it was also the most reviled. A food question with plenty of clues—an image, a type of transportation, and even a letter count—can frustrate players if the answer is still out of reach. People have complained that the dish in the image looks nothing like a plane, and I can’t really fault them for it.
Also known as Frenched Chicken or Chicken Supreme, _______ (7) chicken features a boneless breast with the drumette attached. It is named after a form of transportation, because the bone jutting out of the chicken makes it resemble a part of it. Fill in the blanks. 8- and 9-letter variants accepted too.
Gabriel Medina also played tough, and we knew it would, but we just wanted an excuse to share that totally unbelievable picture of him.
The easiest questions this week were Indigo Revolution and -Plasty, both answered in every one of the 78 games played in the week.
Thoroughly enjoyed the Pulitzer Prizes triad. It’s an unexpected area to pull questions out of, i.e. the names of the categories of the award. But with sufficient cluing, it can be done.
The Pulitzer Prize is given to various types of journalism, covering a total of 21 categories. The Pulitzer Prize for **what discipline** has been awarded to people like Roger Ebert (Cinema), Tim Page (Music) and Jerry Saltz (Art)? Just a one-word term will do.
Answer: **CRITICS/CRITICISM** [Prompt: Reviews]
The Beyonce “Cowboy Carter” triad was nice too. The worry with doing 3 questions on a single album is usually that you end up asking questions that are lateral to the album itself, and sometimes that means questions that are lateral to music as a category. That didn’t happen here, since Cowboy Carter contains enough covers and references to do 2 more questions that are strictly still music questions.
Beyoncé's 2024 album 'Cowboy Carter' features a cover of **which 1973 country song** by a legendary female artist who is one of the collaborators in this album? The original song is about the titular bank clerk who flirts with the singer's husband with the singer pleading not to take him away. Beyoncé's version doesn't quite take the pleading route to it.
Answer: Jolene by Dolly Parton
Here’s my favourite cover of it.
My Favourite Triad of the Week:Surgery Suffixes (Rajat Gururaj 🙏)
A perfect, honest technical topic with answers that will sound familiar to everyone. Lovely questions.
Differences in surgical procedure are often indicated by the suffixes. While '-otomy' (as in Lobotomy) refers to the act of making an incision, the related suffix ______ (6) refers to the act of completely removing or excising. **Which suffix** is this, part of a common operation of removing a vestigial organ?
Answer: **-ECTOMY** (as in appendectomy)
Generally, the suffix _____ (5) means pertaining to the mouth or the act of creating an artificial opening. This suffix is part of the word for a surgical procedure of the Large intestine which provides an alternative channel for feces to leave the body. **Which suffix?
Answer: **STOMY** (as in Colostomy)
**The suffix ______ (6) comes from the Greek for 'molded or formed' and is used in the world of surgery for the operation better known as the nose-job, among others. **Which suffix**, that may also be familiar from a heart surgery that unblocks arteries?
Answer: **PLASTY** (as in Rhinoplasty or Angioplasty)
Game Week 4
*Triad
I’ve been setting very few triads myself this season, and even when I do get one out they tend to be a little too easy. The Chocolate Ads triad is barely a test of anyone’s quizzing skills, it’s mostly just a “feel-good” addition to the set.
Slovenia was answered only 3 times in the whole week. There were simply too many viable candidate countries from that part of the world.
Which Central European country enjoys the peculiar coincidence of Christmas Day and Independence Day (dan samostojnosti en enotnosti) being celebrated on consecutive days? Christmas as a public holiday had been abolished in 1953 but was re-instituted in 1991, when it gained full independence.
Female Furies also played tough, answered only 9 times. This is unfortunate, since Furies alone would probably have played easier, but that redundant addition of ‘Female’ just made everything much harder.3
Ireland was the easiest question this week (the question straight-up mentioned St Patrick’s Day). It was answered in every quiz, making it ironic that both the easiest and toughest questions came from the same triad. The remaining question, Germany, also played quite easy, answered in 75 of 80 games.
I thought Sub-species of Giraffe was such an unexpected topic to get 3 enjoyable questions out of. Good fun.
My Favourite Triad of the Week:Song Parodies (Dhruv Mookerji 🙏)
I have trouble not favouriting every quad/triad Dhruv’s ever written, I’m a big fan. This triad actually played pretty tough. Wordplay makes for fun questions but answers are often hard to guess in 30 seconds.
Shirley Serban parodies a pop hit of the 1980s that was famously covered in the 2000s. She changes the middle word to go with the geriatric theme of the video. **Name the parody.**
Answer: It’s Aging Men
**Which word follows right where the video freezes**, and is the name of this Brian Coyne parody of a 1980’s rock anthem?
Answer: Trump!
**What is the name of this parody**, by DCLuigi, of a 2000s pop rock hit, tweaking one of the words to reference the establishments he’s hanging out in?
Also the winner of our Honorary Best Feedback award. Siddhanth regularly writes detailed and thoughtful feedback for us, and the Setter absolutely eat it up (even when it’s negative🙈). Thanks man, wish more people wrote like you.
This is assuming you know that salespeople probably don’t charge more than 10%, and to be fair some players did guess that Sherlock was dosing on a 50% solution of cocaine.
