Art

Today’s LL Study Guide ranges from Pablo Picasso’s tongue-twisting baptismal name and his unprecedented 90th‑birthday honor at the Louvre, to the tiny club of G‑rated Best Picture nominees standing in contrast to the X‑rated winner Midnight Cowboy. We also visit Leverkusen on the Rhine, where works team Bayer 04 Leverkusen finally shed their “Neverkusen” curse under Xabi Alonso while backed by pharmaceutical giant Bayer, and dig into the rise of fast‑fashion juggernaut Shein from its ZZKKO and SheInside days. Rounding things out: the conservation rescue of Texas Longhorn cattle by the U.S. Forest Service, the University of Texas mascot Bevo, and how Frank Sinatra’s “doo-be-doo-be-doo” scat on “Strangers in the Night” gave Scooby‑Doo his name and a half‑century of pop‑culture life. ...

Podcast Script Welcome back to the LL Study Guide daily review. I’m glad you’re here. We’re walking through another six-pack of questions, and today’s set really hops around: modern art, movie ratings, German soccer, fast fashion, Texas cattle, and a cartoon Great Dane named by Frank Sinatra. So if you felt a little whiplash playing this match day, that’s totally fair. As always, if you want the full write-up, extra examples, and links, you can check the study notes on our website at L L Study Guide dot com. I’ll just hit the key stories and connections here so you can listen on the go. ...

This match day moves quickly across domains: from cutting-edge nanomaterials (Vantablack) and the shifting brand names of HBO’s streaming services, to YA vampire fiction, the global art market, culinary spices, and a classic English word-oddity. Vantablack, developed by Surrey NanoSystems as a forest of vertically aligned carbon nanotubes that absorbs about 99.965% of visible light, sits at one scientific extreme. At the other end are humanistic and cultural topics: Stephenie Meyer’s four-book Twilight Saga (Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse, Breaking Dawn), a 280‑year‑old auction house, and a 19th‑century opera aria. ...

Podcast Script Welcome back to the LL Study Guide podcast for Match Day twenty. I’m glad you’re here. We’re going to walk through all six questions from today, talk about the right answers, and, more importantly, what you can learn from them for future matches. Remember, if you want the full write‑ups, extra examples, and links, you can always check the study notes on our website at llstudyguide dot com. I’ll just call them the study notes or the show notes as we go. ...

This match day pulled together a wide range of knowledge: the structure of the Hawaiian alphabet, a live unfolding constitutional crisis in Venezuela, early‑2000s diet culture, classic TV history, camera technology, and contemporary film casting. The ʻokina question pushes you into phonetics and indigenous language preservation—Hawaiian officially treats the glottal stop as a full consonant and one of 13 letters in its modern alphabet, which is why you see it in spellings like Hawaiʻi and Oʻahu. ...

Podcast Script Welcome back to the LL Study Guide daily review. I’m glad you’re here. Today we’re walking through Match Day 17 from season 107. We’ve got a really nice mix: Hawaiian language, breaking political news, early‑2000s diet culture, classic TV, camera history, and a very busy Guatemalan movie star. As always, if you want the full write‑ups, timelines, and links, you can check the study notes on our website at llstudyguide.com. What we’ll do here is hit the key facts, then give you a couple of patterns so you can recognize similar clues next time. ...

This match day pulls together a wide spectrum of cultural and technical knowledge: contemporary musical theatre (Avenue Q), decolonization-era world history (Điện Biên Phủ), mechanical engineering (the Wankel rotary engine), 2010s EDM (Avicii), fin‑de‑siècle Russian opera via “Flight of the Bumblebee,” and the Chicago School of architecture through Louis Sullivan. Two of the questions highlight turning points in modern history and technology: the French defeat at Điện Biên Phủ in 1954, which pushed France out of Indochina and led to the Geneva Accords and the temporary division of Vietnam at the 17th parallel, and Felix Wankel’s rotary engine, an elegant but commercially niche alternative to piston engines because of fuel‑economy and emissions challenges. The arts questions similarly focus on outsized influence: Avenue Q’s tiny cast beating blockbuster Wicked for Best Musical, a brief orchestral interlude from The Tale of Tsar Saltan becoming one of the most famous classical showpieces, and Sullivan’s Chicago skyscrapers giving architectural form to the maxim “form follows function.” ...

Podcast Script Welcome back to the LL Study Guide podcast, your quick audio companion for staying sharp between matches. I’m glad you’re here. Today we’re walking through Match Day 14 from Season 107. This set leans pretty hard into arts and culture, with some history and science mixed in. As always, if you want links, deeper dives, or to see everything written out, you can check the full study notes on our website at llstudyguide.com. ...

This match day mixed betting terms, modern art, classical and popular music, European historical geography, 18th-century literature, and space-age tech history—exactly the kind of spread that can feel random at first glance but is perfect for building broad cultural fluency. Several questions relied less on deep niche knowledge and more on catching subtle clues (like a misleading number in a gambling term or a portmanteau hinting at telecommunications and stars). ...

Podcast Script Welcome back to the LearnedLeague Study Guide podcast, your quick post-match companion to turning close misses into solid future gets. I’m glad you’re here. In this episode, we’re walking through Match Day 9 from season 107. As always, we’ll keep things tight and focused so you can listen on a commute, a walk, or while you’re making dinner. If you want to go deeper on anything we mention, all the detailed study notes, links, and extra resources are waiting for you at llstudyguide.com. Just look for the notes for this match day in the show notes on the website. ...