"Take A Number" - October 25, 2019

[howardl]

There are so many brilliant people posting here, I'm reluctant to chime in. I got to the final step and saw "Own It" but "the answer is how the theme answers are divided," and "Own It" didn't seem to make any sense. I rearranged "Own It" to get the right answer. I never saw "To Win" (though I should have). But it is a stretch to say "theme answers are divided to win." Of these three (own it, to win, in two) the phrase that works best is "the theme answers are divided "in two" -- one part being a word that is an answer elsewhere in the puzzle (Bush, Chapter, etc) and the second part being a number (43, 11, etc).

[DBMiller]

Am I the only one who was sure origination was larvae? Figured there was too much ambiguity with chapter (7, 11, or 13?) for the correct path to be the right one. Sigh...

Actually, I tied origination to onset. But I hadn't made the number connection yet. I then noticed chapter, and I always hear about businesses filing for chapter-11, so that's when things clicked for the first step. Catch-22 and Square one, came next. I knew Bush was referred to by president #, so Bush-43 it is. Took a bit to find three-sixty, which pronunciation wise, was correct, but did give me a little bit of the the jitters.

Had the five themed clues not included parenthetical comments, I would have included Super-8 among my numbers.

[FrankH]

I had some good origami going with the paper grid before I actually took scissors and cut it IN TWO down the middle. Turn one half bottom up, lay it face up on the other, and Voila! Your mind’s eye can see it, but this was more fun.
I had the easiest 60% correct theme answer relevant matchups, but had wrongly chosen 40% as larvae and whirr. That whirr(360) was an excellent red herring, wasn’t it? And right below the Three... I was stuck there until a kind friend helped me put two and two together properly.
Another great meta, Mike! Keep’em coming!

After realizing I need to find an alternative answer in the clue, I also settled on whirr for a while. But there is no number that can be associated with the word whirr, so I started looking elsewhere.

[DrTom]

I thought about 360, Bush 43 and Chapter 11 for the numbers, and once I decided to look for Bush in the grid, that and Chapter came quickly, and it didn't take long to find and figure out Square and Catch would be another two alternate theme entries. But the toughest for me was to figure what word in the grid for Full Spin. It took a while for me to realize it was the word Three in the grid, leaving 60 as the other half; it is probably because the word Three itself is a number and I thought of 360 as one number didn't consider separating it into two, making Three hiding in plain sight.

I too agitated over three sixty when I was so lost and thought of IN TWO as the answer based on having most of the letters and using the theme. I abandoned it many times until about 5 minutes before the deadline when it was toss up an answer or fail. So I did a Flutie and turned out OK. Still think it is not two words but will gladly accept a cup if offered because I’m willing to do a one eighty on my stubbornness.

One of the greatest thrills in my life was to be there for that game!!

Have watched it many times and I swear each time I think it’s not going to be caught! Amazing throw and forever in the football hall of fame along with the Stanford band.

[DrTom]

So many rabbit holes this week. A pretty diabolical puzzle in my view. (I was in the camp that came up with BUSH-2 and got stuck at INNTO.) We had 760 entrants, about 86% correct. As noted here, wrong answers included OWN IT as well as TO WIN. Plus DIAGONALLY, THIRTEEN, and several other one-offs.

Congrats to this week's winner: Critt Hughes of Lauderdale-by-the-Sea, Fla.!

Ah, Lauderdale-by-the-sea, so close yet so far. Are you SURE it wasn’t Jacksonville??

Congratulations Critt! If you are ever driving up 95 with the mug hold it out as you drive through the First Coast.

[GlennG]

Can you tell me how I can do a recording like this?

There's all kinds of software that will capture the desktop. There's a pretty good one available for free called OBS, which I've been using the last month in recording a great number of my crossword solves off of Across Lite and then uploading them all to Youtube (thinking of stopping though because there's not a lot of sustained interest - I need to finish the biggest thing I wanted to do it for, namely get some beginner how-to crossword stuff done). You can capture just about anything (the gaming end stinks though), and overdub it with audio, and even use it to broadcast live on a site like Twitch.

Of course, you need an editor to clean up your videos, add subtitles and the like if you want to do that, which is out there for free too.

[Joe Ross]

Can you tell me how I can do a recording like this?

There's all kinds of software that will capture the desktop. There's a pretty good one available for free called OBS...

Thank you, Glenn. Would you recommend OBS? Which editing software would you recommend?

Outside of recording Skype & GoToMeeting sessions, my experience and time spent researching, choosing, downloading, and learning the ApowerREC app was fewer than 30 minutes. I wanted a graphic way to show the simplicity of the PDF/Excel process. A few more minutes of planning would create a better demo, but post-editing could cure a lot of ills.

[CPJohnson]

I was so far away on this meta I hate to even confess. I kept looking for a 5-letter string or a 4-letter string, etc., within the theme answers instead of looking for other grid entries containing that number of letters. And I'm pretty sure I got the previous puzzle that had a similar mechanism! Live and learn, and hope to remember the technique the next time it's needed.

[GlennG]

Thank you, Glenn. Would you recommend OBS? Which editing software would you recommend?

I've been using OBS for capture and Shotcut for editing. Both free. There's a learning curve on using both. Like with OBS you have to set up your "scene" of capture sources (you can have a webcam in frame with your software and an image, and a lot of other stuff) before you can capture. Of course, there's a ton of sources you can select to put onto your video, like webcam, desktop, specific windows, microphone or other audio source, and so forth. If you see a live webcast from a blogger, you get the idea. If you watch my crossword videos, you'll see I use a window fill of the video area of the Across Lite Solver, and then a window positioned at the top of the timer. Of course, you set elsewhere the specs of the video you want. Once I set this up in OBS, recording all the other videos is an afterthought (maybe 15seconds of additional time). When I get ready to solve, bring up OBS, bring up the PUZ I want to work on in Across Lite, switch back to OBS and start the video (verifying the source is okay), then back to Across Lite and I'm solving. When I finish, I pop back over to OBS and stop the recording.

As far as Shotcut goes, it works pretty much like any video editor. There's a learning curve there in figuring out how to do what you want to do. Most of it involves sectioning out video (or your still images, think intro titles and such) onto the timeline to cut and arrange, and add filters. Editing on my crossword videos is very simple, as all I do is cut out the parts where I'm not actually solving. The Howtos are a little more complex as I put a watermark on those. Of course, you can do a lot more complex stuff - like I have for another video I did elsewhere (off-topic to crosswords) where I pieced together a number of videos into one and had captions denoting what each of the individual videos are. Then I did a vlog post where I talked on a grid solve background with a fade filter applied to it. Crossword how-to isn't really something that requires a lot of editing/transition like you see in a lot of youtube videos. Of course, you can save in about any "moving picture" format that's out there, but the default (H.264 MP4) works okay for just about everything.

As for recommendations, I haven't had any problems with either piece of software to do what I want to do, and really can't see anything you can't do with either one if you have the learning curve tackled. I'll include some links below for reference.

My Video Page: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCITmAH ... _VA/videos
OBS Download: https://obsproject.com/
Shotcut Download: https://shotcut.org/

[Inca]

Did I miss who the winner announcement?

[FrankH]

Did I miss who the winner announcement?

Yes, post #177.

http://xword-muggles.com/forums/viewtop ... =160#p8625

[JJD]

I tried to make those number connections, but instead I found a DEEP rabbit hole
Where I bounced to alternate definitions re-using the clues:
Revolution > (Thomas) Paine > Webber’s partner > Cooper
Origination > Onset > Start > React
Predicament > Catch > ?? > I hear
Dubya > Bush > hedge part > limit
Bankruptcy > Chapter > textbook section > ? Three?

KAS5 for the THREE-60 for me.

[Joe Ross]

Thank you, Glenn. Would you recommend OBS? Which editing software would you recommend?

As for recommendations, I haven't had any problems with either piece of software to do what I want to do, and really can't see anything you can't do with either one if you have the learning curve tackled. I'll include some links below for reference.

My Video Page: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCITmAH ... _VA/videos
OBS Download: https://obsproject.com/
Shotcut Download: https://shotcut.org/

Thank you, Glenn, for your recommendations! I will research them, further. The purpose is not to fill these boards with video links nor YouTube with my boring efforts, but to create short instructional videos for friends & colleagues. Online meetings are powerful for the visuals, but can be time-consuming when repeatedly demonstrating relatively simple tasks.

[GlennG]

Thank you, Glenn, for your recommendations! I will research them, further. The purpose is not to fill these boards with video links nor YouTube with my boring efforts, but to create short instructional videos for friends & colleagues. Online meetings are powerful for the visuals, but can be time-consuming when repeatedly demonstrating relatively simple tasks.

You're welcome. I really don't fill boards or anything with links either, but mainly just mentioned it to illustrate exactly what I was doing with the software.

[Joe Ross]

That "filling the boards" comment was an attempt to reassure muggledom that I will try to rein myself in.