"Horseplay" - October 18, 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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Jeremy Smith
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#221

Post by Jeremy Smith »

Tony S wrote: Mon Oct 21, 2019 6:16 pm
BarbaraK wrote: Mon Oct 21, 2019 11:37 am My first interpretation of 65A was indeed the right one. So I knew the first letter was K, and the second had to be I (because S made no sense).

Then the third could be T, N or another N. But probably not I, other I, or K because those would be moving backward and we should go around the grid.

Now after T could be A or G, after N could be S, G, another S, O, D; or A, another A, H, or M.

And about then, I decided that this was ridiculous. There are up to 8 possible directions to go after every letter. After 23 moves, there'd be way way too many possibilities to sift through looking for one that makes sense.

So there must be some system! Like always go up then right til you hit an edge or alternate up/right with right/up or something. Maybe those knight-move shaped groups of black squares are pointing the way? No, no way to make that work. Reread all the clues looking for a hint? Nope. Maybe knowing there are 23 moves total I can find a logical system to move around and end up back at the T? No, nothing worked. But it can't just be arbitrary, right.

My next insight was that with two characters, there was probably an AND somewhere along the way, so I went looking for that and thought maybe I could infer the pattern from it. Found 5 of them - all in the upper right corner, which seemed promising since using the whole grid, that's where the middle should be. But extrapolating either direction from any of the 5 didn't help spell anything either.

A day or so later, reading the comments here, I saw several mentions of guessing the answer and then finding how to make it work and also noted that no one questioned the well-knownness of the characters (so Equus or the musical Chess were probably out.) So I went back to the various possibilities for those early letters and around K-I-N-G-A I thought about King Arthur, found that could take me right to one of my ANDs, and then SIR and then L/B/U---T must be Lancelot, yup that works. But it doesn't feel like a very elegant way to solve a meta.
Yes, 8 possible moves x 23 times does seem ridiculous which is why I didn't bother to solve the meta. This must be the 1st time I knew how to get an answer but had better things to do.
My feelings exactly. I intentionally broke a streak to keep from having to try myriad possibilities. I quickly lost interest. Although the construction was amazing, this type of meta is just not my cup of tea.
juliet
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#222

Post by juliet »

BarbaraK wrote: Tue Oct 22, 2019 11:55 am
Bird Lives wrote: Mon Oct 21, 2019 12:36 pm Maybe Mike S could let us know whether it was "diabolically challenging to construct." It's a knight's tour of only 24 required letters with some flexibility as to where they are placed. And none of them are together in a single word. I also wonder whether the knight-move shape of four of the black-square clusters was deliberate.
I'm curious about this too. I'm not a constructor, so I really have no idea what I'm talking about. Some things that seem almost magic to me are apparently all in a days work, and others that seem like they should be no problem are really almost impossible.

But for this puzzle, coming up with the idea, I can see that that would take some doing, but the actual implementation I wouldn't think would be too challenging.
In addition to the knight's tour, there are also "knight-graphable" words described by Mike Keith and Tristan Miller in Word Ways: The Journal of Recreational Linguistics.
GlennG
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Joined: Thu Aug 08, 2019 12:48 am

#223

Post by GlennG »

BarbaraK wrote: Tue Oct 22, 2019 11:55 am I'm curious about this too. I'm not a constructor, so I really have no idea what I'm talking about. Some things that seem almost magic to me are apparently all in a days work, and others that seem like they should be no problem are really almost impossible.

But for this puzzle, coming up with the idea, I can see that that would take some doing, but the actual implementation I wouldn't think would be too challenging.

I believe there are several muggles who have written crosswords. Any of you care to comment?
I haven't written crosswords, but I'm versed enough to. More or less, you start with your theme material in the grid, then make the fill around it. So on this puzzle, Mike started with KNIGHT and the meta path, and then worked the rest of the grid in around those points. Pretty much all in a day's work if you're a crossword constructor (and Mike is an exceedingly gifted one).
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Joe Ross
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#224

Post by Joe Ross »

Ignore this, SVP.
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