"Short Stories" - August 30, 2019

A place to discuss the weekly Wall Street Journal Crossword Puzzle Contest, starting every Thursday around 4:00 p.m. Eastern time. Please do not post any answers or hints before the contest deadline which is midnight Sunday Eastern time.
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GlennG
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#181

Post by GlennG »

BarbaraK wrote: Mon Sep 02, 2019 8:55 pm I believe this may be the one referred to:

https://blogs.wsj.com/puzzle/crossword/ ... cle_inline
That would be the one.
GlennG
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#182

Post by GlennG »

CPJohnson wrote: Mon Sep 02, 2019 7:31 pm I remember that puzzle; the "red" things could've been red.
That is the logical fallacy going the other way, as pointed out by two of them I straw polled. About everything could've been assigned the attribute "red" in the mind of anyone that sees a word. E.g. TEXT can be printed in red, an ETUI can be red, DYES can be red, and a TURNIP can be red (all answers in the puzzle bt dubs). They do not participate in the meta. Why not? And the ones Matt designed to participate in the meta aren't all equivocally "red". UTAH (as an example) was the hugest stretch, but there's logical stretches in others too. For the meta to have worked, all the entries would have to be unequivocally, universally and undeniably associated with "red". And they weren't.
WBYonder
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#183

Post by WBYonder »

Newby here. Been getting the WSJ for many years but just started doing this puzzle contest a couple of weeks ago.

For this puzzle, I got to URBY, then thought it was an anagram for RUBY, which is a programming language that has been used by Twitter, which was my answer (where people get “short” with one another, lol). Perhaps a bit simplistic, but I still have a bit to learn about correctly answering the contest. Looking forward to the process!
SewYoung
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#184

Post by SewYoung »

GlennG wrote: Mon Sep 02, 2019 10:11 pm
CPJohnson wrote: Mon Sep 02, 2019 7:31 pm I remember that puzzle; the "red" things could've been red.
That is the logical fallacy going the other way, as pointed out by two of them I straw polled. About everything could've been assigned the attribute "red" in the mind of anyone that sees a word. E.g. TEXT can be printed in red, an ETUI can be red, DYES can be red, and a TURNIP can be red (all answers in the puzzle bt dubs). They do not participate in the meta. Why not? And the ones Matt designed to participate in the meta aren't all equivocally "red". UTAH (as an example) was the hugest stretch, but there's logical stretches in others too. For the meta to have worked, all the entries would have to be unequivocally, universally and undeniably associated with "red". And they weren't.
I must be thinking about a different puzzle. The one I remember had "strawberry, ladybug, poinsettia, and others crossing at the "A" with otherred things and those were the only "A"s in the grid. The meta answer was "The Scarlett Letter" I don't remember the one you are referring to, but I probably didn't get it either.
GlennG
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#185

Post by GlennG »

SewYoung wrote: Mon Sep 02, 2019 10:48 pm I must be thinking about a different puzzle. The one I remember had "strawberry, ladybug, poinsettia, and others crossing at the "A" with otherred things and those were the only "A"s in the grid. The meta answer was "The Scarlett Letter"
That's the one.
Emmaa
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#186

Post by Emmaa »

WBYonder wrote: Mon Sep 02, 2019 10:30 pm Newby here. Been getting the WSJ for many years but just started doing this puzzle contest a couple of weeks ago.

For this puzzle, I got to URBY, then thought it was an anagram for RUBY, which is a programming language that has been used by Twitter, which was my answer (where people get “short” with one another, lol). Perhaps a bit simplistic, but I still have a bit to learn about correctly answering the contest. Looking forward to the process!
The bitter taste of humble pie, a persistent staple in my diet, is generally short lived, but it’s always baked in, as revealed, often cleverly in this forum. If you have come for a feast, you’ve come to the right place. Savor the blissful moments, but dive in for Brazilian-style fare, where you sometimes have to flip over the disc and brake to feed the soul. Often sleep, nourishment, or just chewing on the cud, provide the neuro-humoral juices to reveal new insight to the gray matter. And if that doesn’t work, there is alway Isaac, sometimes a BINGO party, but always another meta. Welcome!
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Julie O
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#187

Post by Julie O »

Wendy Walker wrote: Mon Sep 02, 2019 8:43 am On a more general note: As eager as I am to get started on the puzzle each Thursday afternoon, when it appears online, before even downloading the PDF, I take a time-out (like a surgical team, or co-pilots) and ponder the title. It helps focus me on the sometimes amorphous solving process. For instance, whenever a number is mentioned in the title, you know it's going to be important in some way. (Yeah. I know. "In some way" is pretty vague, isn't it.) I usually come up with a couple of possibilities, and occasionally my initial guess actually turns out to be correct.
Yes, I try to do this to, and if I'm stuck on the meta, I keep going back to the title and try to think of a new way to apply it to the crossword. This didn't work for me this week, and I'm still not clear on how 'stories' fits.
MaineMarge
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#188

Post by MaineMarge »

Jim and Anita wrote: Mon Sep 02, 2019 9:02 am Our weird connection was that people get short with one another when they sell shares short on a stock exchange. And since the letters NYSE are neatly arranged around the P at the center of the puzzle we took the answer to be The New York Stock Exchange. But this answer obviously comes up short.
Not a weird connection, Jim and Anita. This was my first thought, though I couldn’t see any stories there. Also the previews at the movies- or the short films, called the Shorts at the Oscars. Not long into it I looked for the missing letters in the shorts we were given. The “wh” in whom was my first find. Having texted a lot helped, tho I have never been in a chat room. All of us short people probably had our own ideas. Lilliput was one of mine.
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BarbaraK
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#189

Post by BarbaraK »

Julie O wrote: Tue Sep 03, 2019 7:50 am
Wendy Walker wrote: Mon Sep 02, 2019 8:43 am On a more general note: As eager as I am to get started on the puzzle each Thursday afternoon, when it appears online, before even downloading the PDF, I take a time-out (like a surgical team, or co-pilots) and ponder the title. It helps focus me on the sometimes amorphous solving process. For instance, whenever a number is mentioned in the title, you know it's going to be important in some way. (Yeah. I know. "In some way" is pretty vague, isn't it.) I usually come up with a couple of possibilities, and occasionally my initial guess actually turns out to be correct.
Yes, I try to do this to, and if I'm stuck on the meta, I keep going back to the title and try to think of a new way to apply it to the crossword. This didn't work for me this week, and I'm still not clear on how 'stories' fits.
Since the MGWCC title is often posted on the website 5-10 (occasionally more) minutes before the puzzle actually arrives in my inbox, if I’m online then, I use that time to start thinking about what the title could mean.
Alan H
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#190

Post by Alan H »

As a point of clarification, UTAH was "red" because the clue was for a state "that has voted Republican in 13 straight presidential elections". so it is Red, not Blue which made sense. crossed with Fire Hydrant which are generally red.
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Hector
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#191

Post by Hector »

But UTAH is not one of the five hints, and neither is ETUI or any of the other entries people are complaining about. The five hints (and "five" is specified in the instructions) are the long and symmetrical BLOODSTAINS, POINSETTIA, FIREHYDRANT, LADYBUG, and STRAWBERRY. Yes, UTAH is a red state, and a university whose color is University Red. Also BARN suggests red. But those are not part of the mechanism. Scarlett Letter, though, seems a stretch to me. Why Letter? There's a novel called "Something Red," which seems a better fit, though I guess it's not "famous."

Edit: oh, now I see, sorry! You get Letter (and the scarlett letter A) because those five entries are crossed at the A by BARN, HEART, UTAH, STEAK, and TOMATO.
Last edited by Hector on Tue Sep 03, 2019 12:59 pm, edited 1 time in total.
31 Down
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#192

Post by 31 Down »

Julie O wrote: Tue Sep 03, 2019 7:50 am ...I keep going back to the title and try to think of a new way to apply it to the crossword. This didn't work for me this week, and I'm still not clear on how 'stories' fits.
Good point. Either by luck or skill, I quickly wrote down the omitted letters and noticed WHOM which made me want to say hmmmm. Oh, whom am I kidding - it was luck. I never thought too hard about the title but this week's was less cleverly apropos than usual. Perhaps a better title would have been Short Hand or Shortening.

As for somewhat illogical or nonsensical crossword construction and clues, that's something I don't dwell on so it doesn't bother me. I appreciate and enjoy the creative and humorous clues - really reinforces mental flexibility. That's why I do crosswords. Yes, there are some groaners but they fall under poetic license to me. Much, much more enjoyable than the encyclopedically rote school of crossword construction riddled with obscure factoids.

Just want to add - now onto making a batch of Cincinnati chili. To those Bearcat Muggles, my brother went to UC and I've been making his roommate's chili recipe ever since. Great chili!
Last edited by 31 Down on Tue Sep 03, 2019 3:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Thomas W (since there's already a Tom W)
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Wendy Walker
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#193

Post by Wendy Walker »

Bird Lives wrote: Mon Sep 02, 2019 8:48 am Like a night watchman, I look for signs of forced entries. YOCH leaped off the grid because KOCH (crossed with SAKS) would be better. And WISHY isn't a word. It could, without too much trouble become WISER, and PROP become PREP. So it was clear that YO, and maybe CH were crucial to the solution. Add that to the fact that YO are the missing letters in YOU, and CHATROOM isn't far.

Or it could have been KINDERGARTEN. After all, URBY is anagram of BURY, and a burial is an UNDERTAKING, which is nearly an anagram of KINDERGARTEN, which is a place with stories and people that are short.
"Like a night watchman" -- Best simile I've heard in months! PERFECT!
Good luck, fellow Muggles!
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jenirvin
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#194

Post by jenirvin »

I knew I'd be kicking myself. I was right there, with all the right words ID'd and just couldn't make the leap off the ship to shore. Aargh.
~ Jennifer/jenirvin
Andrew Bradburn
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#195

Post by Andrew Bradburn »

While I accept that CHATROOM is the intended answer, which I did not get, I think my solution was a pretty good alternate answer. The first thing I thought of when considering "a place where people might get short with each other" was a line, as in "I was here first", "no cutting in line!" "the back of the line is way over there, mister!" and my favorite, which I once heard while standing in line at the Department of Immigration and Naturalization: "I've been waiting in line for 5 hours just to ask ONE question! So do tell me what to do!" Who hasn't heard things like that while standing in line? And there is of course the dreaded line at the DMV.

What do the four theme answers have in common? They all feature words where one letter in the word is a homophone for the entire word (YOU/U, BE/B, ARE/R, WHY/Y. Of all the other letters in the alphabet where this is a possibility (GEE/G, JAY/J, ELL/L etc.) the one that fits the requirements of the solution is QUEUE/Q. So that was my answer. Since QUEUE is what the English call a line, perhaps those in a queue are by nature more genteel, and would never be short with each other, but in today's world, I doubt it.
SewYoung
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#196

Post by SewYoung »

Andrew Bradburn wrote: Tue Sep 03, 2019 12:59 pm While I accept that CHATROOM is the intended answer, which I did not get, I think my solution was a pretty good alternate answer. The first thing I thought of when considering "a place where people might get short with each other" was a line, as in "I was here first", "no cutting in line!" "the back of the line is way over there, mister!" and my favorite, which I once heard while standing in line at the Department of Immigration and Naturalization: "I've been waiting in line for 5 hours just to ask ONE question! So do tell me what to do!" Who hasn't heard things like that while standing in line? And there is of course the dreaded line at the DMV.

What do the four theme answers have in common? They all feature words where one letter in the word is a homophone for the entire word (YOU/U, BE/B, ARE/R, WHY/Y. Of all the other letters in the alphabet where this is a possibility (GEE/G, JAY/J, ELL/L etc.) the one that fits the requirements of the solution is QUEUE/Q. So that was my answer. Since QUEUE is what the English call a line, perhaps those in a queue are by nature more genteel, and would never be short with each other, but in today's world, I doubt it.
I think that your reasoning is sound and that QUEUE is a very plausible answer. If I had thought of it, I would not have had any hesitation in submitting it.
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FrankieHeck
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#197

Post by FrankieHeck »

Andrew Bradburn wrote: Tue Sep 03, 2019 12:59 pm While I accept that CHATROOM is the intended answer, which I did not get, I think my solution was a pretty good alternate answer. The first thing I thought of when considering "a place where people might get short with each other" was a line, as in "I was here first", "no cutting in line!" "the back of the line is way over there, mister!" and my favorite, which I once heard while standing in line at the Department of Immigration and Naturalization: "I've been waiting in line for 5 hours just to ask ONE question! So do tell me what to do!" Who hasn't heard things like that while standing in line? And there is of course the dreaded line at the DMV.

What do the four theme answers have in common? They all feature words where one letter in the word is a homophone for the entire word (YOU/U, BE/B, ARE/R, WHY/Y. Of all the other letters in the alphabet where this is a possibility (GEE/G, JAY/J, ELL/L etc.) the one that fits the requirements of the solution is QUEUE/Q. So that was my answer. Since QUEUE is what the English call a line, perhaps those in a queue are by nature more genteel, and would never be short with each other, but in today's world, I doubt it.
I entered CHATROOM, but I do like your reasoning and your answer!
MikeMillerwsj
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#198

Post by MikeMillerwsj »

Well, this was definitely a tricky puzzle. We had 945 entries, about 75% of whom correctly followed Matt's devious path. As some solvers have noted, the obscure Florence Yoch was a useful clue: What was she doing there if she didn't have something to do with the answer? Wrong answers included TWITTER (45) and TEXT (36 with variants such as TEXT MESSAGE) as wekk as LIBRARY (9) and NYSE (7).

Congrats to this week's winner: Emily Kozy of Hudson, Ohio!
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BrianMac
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#199

Post by BrianMac »

Thanks, Mike, as always!
juliet
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#200

Post by juliet »

BarbaraK wrote: Mon Sep 02, 2019 8:55 pm
FrankieHeck wrote: Mon Sep 02, 2019 8:26 pm
I would love to see this puzzle! Is there a link anywhere?
I believe this may be the one referred to:

https://blogs.wsj.com/puzzle/crossword/ ... cle_inline
I loved that meta, and how the "reds" unfolded slowly (for me).
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