"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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DrTom
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#161

Post by DrTom »

Well this was a crazy week! I first tried “backsolving” and looking for FLICKA, MR. ED, FURY, NATIONAL VELVET and of course that did not pan out. I tried MARTIN DYSART and ALAN STRANG (I mean really, Horse Play!) but they too were not in there. I finally realized that the long clue was WAY too specific and that the puzzle had to do with a KNIGHT and, luckily, knowing how they moved I figured would put me on the right track. But I got too complicated in deciphering the clue – Start at the first letter and finish at the last. Almost a Knight’s move away were 60 and 62A one starting with A the other with Z so I started the Camelot three step and got NOWHERE except, well nowhere. I thought, well maybe it is Kasparov or Fisher or Magnus Carlsen but those letters were also not there AND it seemed a real stretch to call them “well known”. I also tried starting at another A (the first one I found) and moving to the Z and going from Square 1 to the ends of the NYT – still nothing. Finally it hit me – do what Mike asks Tom - and I started at the first letter K and went for a knightly META do-si-do to land on I, one more move and I get N ….LIGHTBULB…..quickly I look at the last letter and it’s a T; a capital L away is an O and another L of a thing arrives at L. At that point I was pretty positive I had it, but went through the grid and, sure enough, 23 moves later I had KING ARTHUR and SIR LANCELOT. Now here is the question I have for all the other solvers, did anyone else think that connecting the squares yielded a rather suspiciously KNIGHT looking figure or was I just brainwashed at that point?

Anyway, I got I backwards but I got it and I’ll take it. The construction was amazing but I have to tell you were it not for that lucky first step to I and then to N I’d have been looking for a famous KSOHE and wondering what in the world that had to do with chess, knights or famous. Was ther anyone who tried all of the possible paths or figured out a more logical way to "frontsolve" it?
NUDGES!I am always willing to give nudges where needed; metas should be about fun, not frustration. Send me what you have done so far because often you are closer than you think!
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BethA
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#162

Post by BethA »

tim1217 wrote: Mon Oct 21, 2019 12:16 am This is so wrong...I don't even know where to start!
Knight ... moves ???

C’mon! 😀

Later addition - if you want to complain, you’ll need to change your signature. Sorry, I confess to being a smart aleck.
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tim1217
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#163

Post by tim1217 »

BethA wrote: Mon Oct 21, 2019 12:20 am
tim1217 wrote: Mon Oct 21, 2019 12:16 am This is so wrong...I don't even know where to start!
Knight ... moves ???

C’mon! 😀

Later addition - if you want to complain, you’ll need to change your signature. Sorry, I confess to being a smart aleck.
I mean moving across the black squares to get the answer...very crossword-no no.
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joequavis
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#164

Post by joequavis »

I got hung up for a long time on 1st letter being A and last letter being Z...there's exactly one Z, and a clue that results in A TO Z. I would have gotten this long ago had it not been for that, but took another look with 15 minutes to go and found it.

Actually, after not finding anything promising in the A-to-Z path, I considered the upper left and lower right squares as the first and last letters, respectively. I couldn't really come up with anything at the start, but you can get T-O-L going backwards from the T in NYT...I thought of Lancelot immediately then started scouring the puzzle for ARTHUR, specifically the U and then traced it back to KNIGHT as the start and endpoint. Phew, not sure if I officially submitted before the deadline, but satisfied in the solve nonetheless.
Last edited by joequavis on Mon Oct 21, 2019 1:45 am, edited 1 time in total.
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joequavis
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#165

Post by joequavis »

tim1217 wrote: Mon Oct 21, 2019 12:30 am
BethA wrote: Mon Oct 21, 2019 12:20 am
tim1217 wrote: Mon Oct 21, 2019 12:16 am This is so wrong...I don't even know where to start!
Knight ... moves ???

C’mon! 😀

Later addition - if you want to complain, you’ll need to change your signature. Sorry, I confess to being a smart aleck.
I mean moving across the black squares to get the answer...very crossword-no no.
But a knight can move to a free square even if it is surrounded...
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oldjudge
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#166

Post by oldjudge »

There were all kinds of clues that the puzzle referred to Spamalot, a play with King Arthur and Sir Lancelot as characters. First, if you start at square 1 a horse move spells “Spam” and if you go to square 5 a horse move spells “alot”. Second, the title “horseplay” could refer to the start of Spamalot where King Arthur travels the country with his servant Patsy. Patsy bangs coconut shells together to simulate the sound of horse’s hooves—as in he was playing a horse (horseplay).
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Colin
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#167

Post by Colin »

Brilliant! Quite brilliant! ... unlike me. Another knight (oops) at the bar onboard this week. But my son got engaged, England got through to the semi-finals in Rugby World Cup, the Astros beat the Yankees, and Manchester United drew with Liverpool, breaking their almost-history-making winning streak (neither are my team btw)... so not all is doom and gloom.
PS - I also lost time trying to work out what Apple did with ‘tap for cursor’ in iOS 13.1.3. Anyone other luddites out there hating the new ‘tap and drag down’ shenanigans?
One world. One planet. One future.
Laura M
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#168

Post by Laura M »

24 letters starting with K and ending with T seemed to be the parameters (though I did try other start/end points when those didn't seem to be working). The path started K-I-N, and KING seemed promising given the chess theme, but I couldn't get to a G. Finally I thought, I must have something really wrong in the grid, maybe I'll have better luck going the other way? Many wrong guesses later, I got most of the way backwards through LANCELOT before getting stuck again--and the penny finally dropped that I had been assuming that I couldn't move through the black parts of the grid. Of course, in chess you move on both black and white squares!

In conclusion, please enjoy (if this works) a picture of my daughter as an unnamed Knight of the Round Table in her high school Spamalot production a couple of years ago:

Edit: Didn't seem to work, but here's a link if you're interested:

http://www.amazon.com/photos/shared/Zt3 ... Y-K9-_0s_C
Last edited by Laura M on Mon Oct 21, 2019 12:43 am, edited 1 time in total.
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FrankH
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#169

Post by FrankH »

I made three mistakes on my way to solve it. The first one stalled me for nearly a day, while the other two probably delayed me for a few minutes at most. It was evident that 65A clue and answer are the key to solving it, but my first mistake, the major one, is assuming that I should start from the first letter of the grid (top left corner) and end at the last letter of the grid (bottom right corner). I think there must be a number of us that did this. Of course it went nowhere, but one good thing that occurred was that when I worked backwards, it just so happened that there was L-O-T for the last three letters, which made me think about Sir Lancelot, but the only vowel I could find in front of the L is an A not an E. So there I was stuck for a long time, until one of the re-reads of the 65A clue made me realize I should probably start on first letter of 65A and end at the last letter of 65A.

Once I see K-I-N-G, I know to look for ARTHUR. But then I am stuck, going nowhere, as I run into my other two errors. One is a subtraction error, where I thought there were only 12 characters remaining, and since SIR LANCELOT has 11 letters, that then cannot be the right answer and I didn't pursue it. The other is that for the last R of ARTHUR, I took the R from 30A (SSW of the letter U). It was only after I realized that there is a second possible R NNE of the letter U in 16A that I started to look for possibilities there. And after I find A-N, it dawned on me that I miscalculated and that I should have 14 remaining letters, and so I was off to the races to get the rest of the answer.

I am thinking it is slightly inelegant to find two possible R's after the letter U.
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tim1217
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#170

Post by tim1217 »

joequavis wrote: Mon Oct 21, 2019 12:36 am
tim1217 wrote: Mon Oct 21, 2019 12:30 am
BethA wrote: Mon Oct 21, 2019 12:20 am

Knight ... moves ???

C’mon! 😀

Later addition - if you want to complain, you’ll need to change your signature. Sorry, I confess to being a smart aleck.
I mean moving across the black squares to get the answer...very crossword-no no.
But a knight can move to a free square even if it is surrounded...
Yes, Yes...I know. I had the KIN, but couldn't find my way to the G. I'm just ARGGGHHH that I didn't think you could go across the black squares!!!
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BrianMac
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#171

Post by BrianMac »

The 4 shapes in the middle of the grid were also a hint.
31 Down
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#172

Post by 31 Down »

This was extremely difficult to crack without back-solving. Did anyone manage that? Even back-solving was tricky due to the black squares. But not the first time black squares have "counted" and won't be the last so file that in our meta-physics handbook.

65A clue clearly pointed the way but was fiendishly vague - "first letter" of what? I originally thought it would begin at square 1 and end in the lower right corner. Anyway, a very nice, challenging meta.
Thomas W (since there's already a Tom W)
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DrTom
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#173

Post by DrTom »

Down past the first row where the words got heavy
Sat in my desk seat with pencils ready
Workin' out those knight moves
Trying' to make some blog page contest news
Workin' out those knight moves in the autumn time
In the sweet autumn time
NUDGES!I am always willing to give nudges where needed; metas should be about fun, not frustration. Send me what you have done so far because often you are closer than you think!
GlennG
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#174

Post by GlennG »

Had the logic/idea on this one. Just saw that it would be too damned tedious to figure out (kind of like Mike's word search puzzle from about a month ago) the proper path and didn't have the time, soooo...
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oldjudge
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#175

Post by oldjudge »

DrTom wrote: Mon Oct 21, 2019 1:57 am Down past the first row where the words got heavy
Sat in my desk seat with pencils ready
Workin' out those knight moves
Trying' to make some blog page contest news
Workin' out those knight moves in the autumn time
In the sweet autumn time
LOL, if Bob Seger had been in the chess club he might have written this.
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Commodore
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#176

Post by Commodore »

OMG. That is brilliant.
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Janet P
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#177

Post by Janet P »

Weird Monday morning here. No WSJ puzzle/solution posted online and my newspaper carrier brought me the NYT instead of my WSJ. (Thank goodness for Crossword Fiend!)

P.S. KAS 5 on this past week. A new streak will begin this weekend ;)
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Meg
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#178

Post by Meg »

Like more than a few, I made the initial mistake of NOT moving across black squares. That made for a fruitless Thursday afternoon. Those sub-conscious assumptions are a pain! The MGWCC used this same technique some years ago, so it was, at least, a familiar rabbit hole. Lancelot came first. Then the rest.
Check out and support http://CrosswordsForCancer.com.
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MarkL
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#179

Post by MarkL »

As a once-upon-a-time player in chess tournaments and a Python fan, this one didn't happen for me because of the crossing the black squares. Should have turned over that rock but didn't. Need to think over the box as well as outside it, I guess.
'tis... A lovely day for a Guinness!
MaineMarge
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#180

Post by MaineMarge »

Like most others, I started with the upper left S , then tried the A-Z red herring, all the while forgetting that the knight can leap across any color squares on the board to get where he’s going. Finally I raised the white flag and got a nudge that sent me to the correct starting point. Quickly saw that the blacks had to be in play.
Did anyone else spend time looking for characters from Through the Looking Glass?
All chess, all the time for Alice there.
Great great meta. Way to go, Mike.
I did not submit the answer, to keep the mug odds fair for solo solvers.
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