あっけなく vs ものたりなく


I have been going over the JLPT test from 1999 and came across this problem
that stumped me. For those planning to take the previous tests as practice you
may want to avoid this question.

> 優勝戦{ゆうしょうせん}は、意外{いがい}に＿＿＿＿＿勝負{しょうぶ}が決まった。
>
> **A** あっけなく **B** そっけなく **C** はかなく **D** ものたりなく

The correct answer is **A** , あっけなく, but I'm not 100 percent sure why this is
a better choice than ものたりなく. Even the other two look like acceptable choices
to me.

In the end, after looking up all the definitions, I picked **A** because of
the 意外{いがい}に, which suggests that the 優勝戦{ゆうしょうせん} was expected to not be so
simply decided. But when I thought about it more, D also seems like a suitable
answer because I would expect the championship game to be interesting as much
as non-trivial.

I concluded that D was not correct only because I could find many examples of
it being used, but I'm afraid I'm still missing some of the nuance behind the
correct answer.

For any interested further in my logic, I did this problem on my stream where
I go over all the answers and look up examples, recorded at
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnmEiRkck3s&feature=channel_video_title](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnmEiRkck3s&feature=channel_video_title)
from 6'30" and continued at:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShOpaZ9iOmw&feature=channel_video_title](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShOpaZ9iOmw&feature=channel_video_title)




`ものたりない` means "unsatisfying" or "lacking something". `あっけない` means almost the
same thing but seems to contain the nuance of "disappointingly brief/short".
In fact, my dictionary says `ものたりないほど短【みじか】い`.

As you mentioned, **A** is the correct answer because of the `意外に`. It's
(objectively) expected that the championship match would be exciting and
drawn-out. However, it was "unexpectedly, disappointingly short". `ものたりない`
seems to be more subjective to the speaker, so "unexpectedly" isn't really
applicable. I.e., matches are not usually played to in a certain way with the
intent of giving specific emotions to the spectators; they are played to
determine which team/player is better. The enjoyment of the spectators is just
a side-effect.




`ものたりない` means "unsatisfying" or "lacking something". `あっけない` means almost the
same thing but seems to contain the nuance of "disappointingly brief/short".
In fact, my dictionary says `ものたりないほど短【みじか】い`.

As you mentioned, **A** is the correct answer because of the `意外に`. It's
(objectively) expected that the championship match would be exciting and
drawn-out. However, it was "unexpectedly, disappointingly short". `ものたりない`
seems to be more subjective to the speaker, so "unexpectedly" isn't really
applicable. I.e., matches are not usually played to in a certain way with the
intent of giving specific emotions to the spectators; they are played to
determine which team/player is better. The enjoyment of the spectators is just
a side-effect.

