I’ve been competing in the Diamond league for weeks now hoping to earn the ”Legendary” achievement by the time we leave for Mexico next month. — No easy task, I’m finding out.
Each Sunday night, my current league of randomized competitors has been completely annihilated by one multilingual superboss, thus crushing my tiny bilingual dream.
It’s time for a better plan. My new strategy is this: “Let the overachievers all join up Sunday night and Monday morning. I’ll wait until Tuesday to jump in and join the casual Duolingoers.” Which seems at first like a good idea. These people are only earning a few dozen experience points the first day, this will be cake.
…then along comes Scott.
From Tuesday to Thursday, Scott and I have this unspoken game of leapfrog. He gets ahead. I get close enough to make him nervous. (Okay, maybe leapfrog was the wrong metaphor. Creepfrog, maybe?) Anyway it’s now just the two of us at the top, leaving the rest in the dust.
Like every other profile on Duolingo, I know next to nothing about him. Which is this:
- His name is Scott.
- He is a middle aged cartoon man. See?:
But while perusing his Duolingo progress, I find out the most alarming news of all:
…we are both here for the same goal.
This means war. By Thursday night, I finally pull ahead of Scott and I extend the challenge in the only way Duolingo (unofficially) allows – by changing my profile name:
By the next morning, he accepts by changing his profile name:
And so it begins…
He gets ahead again.
I realize I can also change my profile photo to aid in taunting him.
He is not fazed and retaliates, a full 323 points ahead.
I counter.
He starts up some smack talk, while I wait for him to catch up.
Now he’s testing my fable knowledge.
Oh ho ho! So that’s how we’re gonna play, eh? Time to pull out my illustrator skills and create my own Duolingo character.
He needs a character too, so I thank him for supporting me in my future win.
He fires back quickly with some tortoise humor.
It’s Sunday morning now. The final day. Time for a little ROAST!
There are no more updates for hours. No comeback to the burning dish I just served him.
It’s time for church now. I turn my phone on “Do not Disturb”. Unbeknownst to him, Scott has a full two hours where I’ll be defenseless. Perhaps I can put a Duolingo twist in the Joseph of Egypt lesson for the five-year-olds today?
“Let’s all earn some gems before the 7 years of famine, kids.”
Probably not.
After church, he defeats my roast with a compliment. I chuckle. It’s obvious his whole family is just as invested in this as mine. I text my sisters the update.
It’s Sunday evening. 3 hours to go. Time for a new profile pic. I take the swords copied from the (nearly) unattainable Conqueror Achievement and give us some diamond shields.
I change my name to warn him to brace himself.
An hour later, I get this update. He is “stuck”.
Stuck?! What does that mean? I tell my husband, “I checked his profile. He has Plus, so he’s not stuck in that way. He’s probably in traffic. Or a school-aged child is telling him a thousand stories. Or he’s halfway in a pond of quicksand where it’s hard to learn French.”
To be honest, I’m a little disheartened. I want to win, but not like this. I am sure Scott is in some (admittedly more important) social situation, but what glory is there in a victory when the rival forfeits the battle due to a prior engagement with his buddies?
“He’s probably at an epic Nacho party…” I think. “There’s gotta be at least 6 toppings and 3 good friends there to justify missing an encounter such as this.”
Feeling dejected, I start doing some physical therapy stretches. “I guess I’ll spend my evening trying to heal my stupid knee.” (This is related, I promise.)
42 minutes after his “status update”, his 400 XP jump tells me that he’s not stuck anymore. He is right on my tail! My heart rate jumps to 112 bpm at this discovery. (I’d forgotten to turn off my stretching workout, so these stats were pulled later for evidence.)
The next 82 minutes are sheer mayhem.
He overtakes me at least twice. I don’t screenshot them all, because no second can be wasted.
Around this time, my son and husband return home from a visit to Grandma’s, which I’d skipped today. (She didn’t have enough nacho toppings.)
Without a word, deeply engulfed in my lesson, I march right past them and confine myself to the basement. They know.
I am stress-pacing so hard. Hunching over my phone. Mechanically spouting off Spanish phrases like I’m interrogating a latin robot.
“¿Cuando es tu concierto?” “¿Que dia es el partido de fútbol?” “Nuestros hijos siempre nos escuchan.” (Good one, Duo.)
I’m sure I look like a madman. I am sweating. My hands are cramping. We are neck and neck, AND I KEEP FAILING legendary levels, wasting the XP Boosts I’d built up. Instead of 90 points, I am earning only 20, over and over again.
Scott must be stressing too. As seen below, he must be so ingrained in his French course by now that he forgets his native tongue.
I spend zero seconds looking up that French phrase. I’ve already run out of XP Boosts and I am panicking. My only Skill close enough to earn another boost is an entirely new concept for me that I’m not very good at yet, but I’ve got to try.
BUT IT ONLY GETS WORSE! I’m on lesson 2 of 4 before I earn another Double XP Boost, when a pop-up appears: “You’re acing this level. Skip ahead to Level 3?” AND LIKE AN IDIOT, I PUSH YES. Aaaaaaaa!!!! Now instead of two lessons to go, I have four again.
At this point, I have solid armpit tacos seeping through three layers of clothing. My hand is seizing up. I’ve probably paced the equivalent of the Saharan Desert, and I am going to lose because I’m acing the Skill I struggle with the most.
The thought hits me, “I’ve used up every easy legendary level today. If I lose this time, I’m in the hole for weeks! I’ll never reach my goal before next month.”
Finally, I get the boost and start to knock out my few remaining solid legendary levels. I am jumping up the scoreboard in 80+ intervals. But I can’t stop often to check the league.
Finally, 8:52pm. He gives in.
There are still seven minutes to go. Is Scott trying to pull a fast one? But nah, that’s not Scott. From the dozen or so tiny sentences we’ve exchanged since we “met” five days ago, I’ve deduced that he isn’t the trickster type.
We get to say our goodbyes before Duolingo breaks up our league forever.
Victory at last.
I had won. I achieved my goal with 6072 points.
In related news, my husband won 1st place in his diamond league with a measly 1200 points.
…But he didn’t have near as much fun.
P.S. YOU MUST see the comments section for Scott’s version of the story.
Well that was a ton of fun, Katie. Thanks for the challenge and the fun week. I think I scored more points this week than ever. Thanks to you. And you’re right: Legendary was my goal also.
Here’s what’s really funny. My son gave me the idea (same idea you had) of holding off until Tuesday to let all those overachievers shuffle out and let me finally get a chance at my Legendary. Same as you!
So the first thing I did was I looked at everyone’s history to see if I had any rock stars in the group. I went all the way down the list and there were only a couple that I saw that *might* be some competition.
One of them was Katie.
But I thought well, “I’ll burst up to the top and she won’t know what hit her. Along with everyone else in the group. Then I’ll just slide into home on Sunday.”
I guess I had another thing coming.
When I saw your name change… Oh boy. This just might get interesting.
We loved it! My whole family followed the adventure and they asked me several times a day what the latest was. They were all amazed at your artistic skills. They kept using the word “amazing” to describe you.
Our whole family has taken up Duolingo recently and we are all hooked and even compete with each other a bit. It’s been fun.
So Sunday hit. I was invited to join my son at an air soft outing for the afternoon, and then to accompany my daughters to a bowling adventure for the 4th graders at our church. So I knew I was going to have only a few minutes to compete at the last hour of the day. That was the “I’m stuck” because I was occupied ALL day long.
But we got home with 58 minutes left in the day. Ok. Game on Katie.
I pulled out all the tricks I had and, well you were there doing the same thing. I think I was actually ahead at 9pm central. Then I saw that there was an extra hour! What? I had not anticipated that.
So I just did the best I could with what I had. It was neck and neck there for another hour. Then you must have found a doubler there at the end, and I didn’t. BAM. Katie drops a bomb. I did the best I could, but just couldn’t catch up.
It was well fought and a ton of fun. Thanks for making this week such a joy for me and my family.
I hope you have an awesome trip to Mexico and you find yourself surprisingly fluent.
That is SO great, Scott! What a funny story. Maybe I’ll submit this to Duolingo and they’ll give us a cool sticker or whatever. Ha! I’ll finish up this story of our battle later when I have two brain cells to rub together again. You have to read about the stress level over here during that last hour, so check back within the next few days. Thanks again, Scott!
So I’ve been thinking… I think Duolingo could somehow facilitate these head to head duels and even include them as a feature. From a revenue standpoint, they could even make it an add-on for some nominal amount. I mean, it had you and me at it all week and investing time into our education. And they’re sticky—people are coming back often to see how much ground they need to gain on their opponent.
That kind of stickiness is what app owners want. People engaged at higher and higher levels.
So yes, I think they would be interested in this story and it could lead to a possible new product for them.
And I look forward to hearing about that last hour. I kept thinking… I bet she’s going through exactly the same thing I am right now!
I like how we’re both still thinking about that battle even now that we’ve joined a couple new boring leagues where no one is constantly taunting us. Ha!
That idea is brilliant. My husband was saying something similar, “You know how you can compete with a specific person in Apple Fitness? That would be so fun to do with Duolingo.”
You may be onto something there.
I think I’ve finished up my story now. You can see what went down on my end.
It’d be hilarious to write this story out as side-by-side storytelling from both our points of view from all along the way, but I haven’t figured out the best way to do that.
Now all that is left is to figure out how to submit this to Duolingo and create the Duolingo avatars I promised my sisters in our “Duo Battle Update” text thread from last week.
This is so awesome. You are such an entertaining writer. What a fun week it was! My whole family was caught up in the drama. In fact my 12 year old daughter is trying to “pick a fight” in her league this week. It’s not working yet.
You must have had a bunch of doubles saved up. At least one more than I did. Oh well. When you go to Mexico, think of how our battle gave you just a bit of an extra edge in communicating!
It was fun. Thanks so much for documenting this.
Scott
Thank you for such an entertaining story. This sounds like so much fun!
I know someone who works at Duolingo and I’ll definitely share this with them.
Also, make sure you follow each other! Hopefully, some fun activities may be enabled for followers soon.
Thank you Nick. I sent it in to their “Partnership” email address thinking that that address might have the highest likelihood of getting seen but I haven’t heard anything yet. I think it would be fun for them to hear the story even if they never do anything with it.
Hey Katie. Write to me at my email address. I heard from Duolingo and they want to share the story. Of course they want our permission and they want to run the copy by us as well. Cool huh!
Thinking about making a movie out of this! 😀
Kudos!
Congratulations, it has been super cool
That was a lot of hard work! How many languages are you both learning?
Hey Joe! I’m just learning Spanish. Scott is learning French and looks like he’s done some Spanish too.
Hilarious!
Thanks for sharing this exciting competition. I think this competition would definitely inspire me to work harder on my lessons that is when i find a formidable opponent
That was a highly entertaining read, and I was feeling the stress towards the end. What a great writer you are too.
This was the best!!