Podcast Script

Welcome back to the LL Study Guide podcast, your quick, friendly review after a day of LearnedLeague matches.

I’m here to walk you through Match Day 11. We’ll hit all six questions, talk about the answers, and pull out a few patterns you can bank for future trivia. Think of this as the audio companion to your post‑match learning routine.

If you ever want to go deeper, with full study notes, links, and extra examples, you can always check the study notes on our website at llstudyguide.com. I’ll mention the site a few times, but I won’t read any URLs out loud, so just remember: llstudyguide.com for all the details.

Let’s jump into Question 1.

Question 1 asked: THEATRE - Derived from the Latin for “speaking alone”, what theatrical term refers to a device in which a character voices their inner thoughts aloud, unheard by other characters, so the audience can understand their true feelings and motivations?

The answer is: soliloquy.

A soliloquy is that classic stage moment where a character is alone, or effectively alone, and speaks their private thoughts out loud. Other characters on stage don’t “hear” it, but the audience does. It’s a direct window into what they really think and feel.

The word itself comes straight from Latin: solus, meaning “alone,” and loqui, meaning “to speak.” So when the question highlighted “speaking alone,” that was basically a translation of the word’s roots.

The easiest mental anchor here is Shakespeare. Hamlet’s “To be, or not to be” is probably the most famous soliloquy in English drama. Any time you see a clue about a character being alone on stage, revealing inner thoughts to the audience, and other characters not hearing them, you should be thinking “soliloquy.”

In trivia, this also pairs nicely with a couple of nearby ideas. One is the difference between a soliloquy and a monologue. A monologue can be addressed to other characters. A soliloquy is specifically private thoughts to the audience. Another adjacent topic is Latin roots in English words: solus for alone, loqui for speak, and related words like loquacious or colloquy. Questions that say “derived from the Latin for…” are often begging you to break the word into those pieces.

If you want more examples of soliloquies, and a clearer comparison with monologues and asides, you can check the study notes on the website.

All right, let’s move from the stage to the world of math history.

Question 2 asked: MATH - What former Prussian city had, in Leonhard Euler’s time, seven bridges that crossed the Pregel (Pregolya) River, connecting the city’s northern and southern portions with the Kneiphof (Immanuel Kant) and Lomse (Oktyabrsky) islands?

The answer is: Königsberg.

This is the famous Seven Bridges of Königsberg problem. In the 18th century, the city of Königsberg, in Prussia, had the Pregel River running through it and seven different bridges connecting the riverbanks and two islands. The citizens wondered: could you take a walk that crossed each bridge exactly once?

Leonhard Euler proved that it was impossible, and in the process, he basically launched graph theory, a huge branch of modern mathematics. Today, the city is known as Kaliningrad, in Russia, but “Seven Bridges of Königsberg” is the phrase that really matters for trivia.

For reasoning, as soon as you see Euler plus bridges, you should lock in on Königsberg. That’s one of those classic “math history pairings” that comes up over and over. Another layer of confirmation in the question is all the geography: former Prussian city, Pregel or Pregolya River, and the island names Kneiphof and Lomse. Those details are there to push you away from guessing something generic and toward this very specific city.

Adjacent patterns that are worth memorizing: one, the famous math problem pairs—like Euler with the bridges of Königsberg, Fermat with Fermat’s Last Theorem, or Gauss with the story of summing numbers 1 to 100 as a child. Two, city renamings after World War Two. Königsberg becoming Kaliningrad is a favorite bit of crossover between history, geography, and math.

If you want to see the classic bridge diagram and how Euler turned it into an abstract graph, check the study notes on the website.

Now we’ll head over to sports, specifically women’s soccer.

Question 3 asked: GAMES/SPORT - What is the team name of Portland’s National Women’s Soccer League franchise, a pointed nod to the city’s nickname dating back to the late 19th century?

The answer is: Thorns, or Portland Thorns FC.

Portland’s National Women’s Soccer League team is called Portland Thorns FC. The name “Thorns” is a clever nod to Portland’s long‑standing nickname, the “City of Roses” or “Rose City,” which goes back to the late 1800s. The club’s crest features a rose and a ring of thorns, tying in directly to that local identity.

Portland has a whole rose culture—rose gardens, rose shows, and the Portland Rose Festival, which helped cement the nickname. When the women’s pro team was launched, branding it as the Thorns was a way to keep the rose imagery but give it a tougher, more competitive feel.

For trivia purposes, it helps to know the basic map of NWSL teams: Portland Thorns, OL Reign, North Carolina Courage, and so on. Here, the clue about “a pointed nod” was a little wordplay hint toward “thorns,” and the reference to a late‑19th‑century city nickname should steer you to “Rose City” and then to Thorns.

Another useful pattern is city nicknames feeding into team names. Think of New Orleans and the Pelicans, a nod to the state bird, or Pittsburgh and the Steelers, tied to the steel industry. In this case, Rose City points to Thorns. Also keep in mind the pairing with the men’s MLS team: Portland Timbers. It’s one city, two teams, and both names show up a lot in sports questions.

For more on the Thorns’ crest, the origin story of the name, and a quick rundown of NWSL franchise names, you can check the show notes on the website.

Next up, let’s talk country music.

Question 4 asked: POP MUSIC - Name the country music legend and “Okie from Muskogee”, the “Lefty” to Willie Nelson’s “Pancho”, whose “Mama Tried” but was unable to keep her son from spending nearly three years in San Quentin in the late 1950s?

The answer is: Merle Haggard.

Merle Haggard is one of the giants of country music. The question packs in a bunch of his trademark associations. “Okie from Muskogee” is one of his best‑known songs, from 1969. “Mama Tried” is another signature hit, and it draws on his real life—he did time in San Quentin State Prison after a failed robbery in the late 1950s.

The clue about being “the ‘Lefty’ to Willie Nelson’s ‘Pancho’” refers to their duet version of “Pancho and Lefty,” originally by Townes Van Zandt. In their hit recording and music video, Willie Nelson takes the part of Pancho, and Merle Haggard is Lefty. So the question is stitching together song titles, a duet partner, and a biographical detail to lead you squarely to Haggard.

When you see multiple strong identifiers like that in a pop music question—two or three song titles plus a collaborator plus a life story—you should think, “this is probably one very specific person.” Here, “Okie from Muskogee” and “Mama Tried” alone almost scream Merle Haggard to country fans. Adding San Quentin and Willie Nelson just nails it down.

Adjacent learning topics to park in your brain: one, the so‑called Bakersfield sound in country music, where Haggard and Buck Owens are key names. Two, canonical Willie Nelson collaborations—like “Pancho and Lefty” with Haggard, or “Always on My Mind,” and other duets that show up in trivia. And more broadly, it’s worth memorizing a handful of “biography plus song” combos: Johnny Cash with Folsom Prison, Haggard with San Quentin, George Jones with “He Stopped Loving Her Today,” that kind of thing.

If you want a short listening list of key Haggard tracks and some background on the Bakersfield sound, you’ll find that in the study notes on our website.

Let’s shift gears into literature.

Question 5 asked: LITERATURE - F. Scott Fitzgerald’s character Monroe Stahr, said to be based on “boy wonder” producer Irving Thalberg, is described by the author as “The Last” what, in the title of his unfinished novel from 1941?

The answer is: tycoon.

The character Monroe Stahr is the central figure in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s unfinished novel The Last Tycoon. The book was published posthumously in 1941, after Fitzgerald’s death, and it’s widely seen as a thinly fictionalized look at Hollywood studio life in the 1930s. Stahr is modeled on Irving Thalberg, the legendary MGM producer often called the “boy wonder” of Hollywood.

The key here is to connect the clue pieces: Hollywood studio boss, based on Thalberg, an unfinished Fitzgerald novel from around 1941. Once you’ve got that, the title piece “The Last ___” almost begs for the word “tycoon,” a common term for a powerful business magnate.

From a study pattern standpoint, it helps a lot to have Fitzgerald’s core works in your head as a small set: This Side of Paradise, The Beautiful and Damned, The Great Gatsby, Tender Is the Night, and The Last Tycoon as the unfinished Hollywood novel. If you can match each title with a short phrase—college novel, Jazz Age social climbing, Gatsby, expat breakdown, Hollywood tycoon—it becomes much easier to land literature questions like this.

Another adjacent topic is the idea of “roman à clef,” a novel that’s a thinly veiled portrait of real people. The Last Tycoon is often treated that way for Irving Thalberg and the studio system. You’ll see similar questions where authors create characters based on Hearst, on Fitzgerald himself, or on other real figures.

If you’d like a quick comparison of Fitzgerald’s major works and how they show up in trivia, or a bit more on Irving Thalberg’s role in old Hollywood, check the study notes on the site.

Finally, we’ll wrap up with some modern diplomatic history.

Question 6 asked: WORLD HIST - What country, despite being home to various UN and UN-aligned organizations including the World Health Organization, International Labour Organization, and Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees, did not join the United Nations as a member until 2002?

The answer is: Switzerland.

This one can feel counterintuitive at first. Switzerland hosts a huge number of international organizations, especially in Geneva—like the World Health Organization, the International Labour Organization, and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. Geneva is one of the main hubs for UN activity outside New York.

But for decades, Switzerland stayed outside the UN as a full member. The country has a long tradition of armed neutrality, and political leaders worried that joining the UN might undermine that stance. So Switzerland remained an observer state and hosted UN offices, but didn’t actually become a member until after a national referendum in 2002. The vote passed narrowly, and later that year Switzerland was admitted as the UN’s 190th member state.

From a trivia perspective, the pattern is: country famous for neutrality, hosts lots of UN agencies, didn’t join the UN until 2002—that’s almost always Switzerland. It’s a high‑yield fact to memorize.

One subtle trap here is the Holy See, or Vatican City, which also has observer status and is associated with neutrality, but has never become a full UN member. The question specifically mentions that the country finally joined as a member in 2002, which rules out the Holy See and points you squarely toward Switzerland.

Adjacent topics to explore include: one, the structure of the UN and the difference between member states and observer entities. Two, other late joiners to major international organizations, like countries that came into the European Union in waves. Recognizing “late joiner” stories can give you another angle when a question feels strange.

If you want a quick rundown of key UN agencies based in Geneva, and a simple timeline of Switzerland’s referendum and admission, take a look at the show notes on the website.

So that’s Match Day 11 in the books: we started with soliloquies on stage, walked Euler’s impossible bridges in Königsberg, visited the Rose City and its Thorns, did a Bakersfield detour with Merle Haggard, peeked into Hollywood’s golden age with The Last Tycoon, and finished in Geneva with Switzerland’s late arrival at the United Nations.

If any of these felt shaky during the match, don’t worry—that’s exactly what this study guide is for. The full notes for each question, plus links to articles, videos, and summaries, are all waiting for you at llstudyguide.com. You can skim them in a few minutes and lock in these facts for next time.

Thanks for listening, and for making space in your day to learn a little bit more. Come back for the next match day review, and we’ll keep building that trivia toolkit, one set of questions at a time.

Until then, good luck in your next match, and happy studying.