"Just My Type" - January 24, 2020

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.
Locked
User avatar
Wendy Walker
Posts: 1701
Joined: Thu Apr 11, 2019 7:44 pm
Location: Unionville, PA

#201

Post by Wendy Walker »

The false lead I followed at first was aisle/isle and ashe/ash -- spent a lot of time looking for other homonyms in the grid before I investigated "percent."
Good luck, fellow Muggles!
User avatar
sharkicicles
Posts: 798
Joined: Fri May 10, 2019 12:03 pm
Location: Chicago

#202

Post by sharkicicles »

This puzzle reminded me that my first computers actually had the quote mark symbol above the 2. No idea why.
User avatar
mheberlingx100
Posts: 517
Joined: Sun Jul 14, 2019 11:39 am

#203

Post by mheberlingx100 »

This is one of the few puzzles when it is an advantage to solve on a laptop. That’s how I usually solve, and it made the connection to keyboard keys much easier.
juliet
Posts: 119
Joined: Sun Jul 14, 2019 11:11 pm

#204

Post by juliet »

I looked for words in the long across entries, but the partly because I was "sure" the title was pointing to type-faces or fonts, and partly because there were lots of words to be found, not just the four key symbols, initially, I overlooked the correct path. After that, I chased another rabbit looking for zodiac signs/symbols (including Chinese).

Overall a fun, fun puzzle.
User avatar
asechres
Posts: 13
Joined: Sun Jul 21, 2019 8:50 pm

#205

Post by asechres »

Tom Shea wrote: Sun Jan 26, 2020 10:24 pm
Bob cruise director wrote: Sun Jan 26, 2020 9:07 pm Our final count is 4 on the ship and 120 on the shore.

jhcogan just went to the bar and Dennis and DaveWa just made it to the shore

Good luck to all winning the mub
Being a frequent,unreformed practitioner, I don't normally point out typo's. But I couldn't help thinking of this scene:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VdMdboymT8
Please accept with its intended gentle good humor, I found it funny your comment actually has a typo! Plural of typo is "typos". :)
User avatar
rexthree
Posts: 148
Joined: Sun Nov 10, 2019 6:49 pm

#206

Post by rexthree »

asechres wrote: Mon Jan 27, 2020 2:16 pm
Tom Shea wrote: Sun Jan 26, 2020 10:24 pm
Bob cruise director wrote: Sun Jan 26, 2020 9:07 pm Our final count is 4 on the ship and 120 on the shore.

jhcogan just went to the bar and Dennis and DaveWa just made it to the shore

Good luck to all winning the mub
Being a frequent,unreformed practitioner, I don't normally point out typo's. But I couldn't help thinking of this scene:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VdMdboymT8
Please accept with its intended gentle good humor, I found it funny your comment actually has a typo! Plural of typo is "typos". :)

Maybe the meta title this week should have been "Just My Typo"

;-)
MikeMillerwsj
Posts: 286
Joined: Tue Apr 09, 2019 2:46 pm

#207

Post by MikeMillerwsj »

An extremely creative and popular contest this week. We had 1518 responses, about 85% correct. 36 guesses for FONT, 23 for CAPS (partial credit for using the initials of all four hidden entries), 11 for PICA (another random guess?), 9 for FEST (can someone explain that?), 8 for SIGN, and several others.

Congratulations to this week's winner: Kelly Melita of Richmond, Va.!

PS I see a comment above that fonts were scattered around the grid--I hadn't noticed that! Is that so?
Nlobb
Posts: 296
Joined: Sat Nov 16, 2019 6:46 pm

#208

Post by Nlobb »

I didn't get the right answer, but I sure found a lot of rabbit holes to explore... Did not know the term caret before this. Fun puzzle anyway. Nlobb
User avatar
Jim and Anita
Posts: 215
Joined: Fri Apr 12, 2019 2:56 pm
Location: State College, PA

#209

Post by Jim and Anita »

MikeMillerwsj wrote: Mon Jan 27, 2020 2:53 pm An extremely creative and popular contest this week. We had 1518 responses, about 85% correct. 36 guesses for FONT, 23 for CAPS (partial credit for using the initials of all four hidden entries), 11 for PICA (another random guess?), 9 for FEST (can someone explain that?), 8 for SIGN, and several others.

Congratulations to this week's winner: Kelly Melita of Richmond, Va.!

PS I see a comment above that fonts were scattered around the grid--I hadn't noticed that! Is that so?
When we saw there is a "singular font" we checked the grid for others. Among those we found as font names were ashe, adm, aisle, hen, fodor (who knew?) hen, ursa, nana (what's not to like about a nana font) siena (which was the first we recognized without googling) sales, gory, hula, aria, asta, ash and rio. With the way our internet searches are being tracked, we can hardly wait to see advertisements now pop up for new printers and publishing apps.
User avatar
OGuyDave
Posts: 169
Joined: Thu Apr 11, 2019 9:03 am
Location: Naples

#210

Post by OGuyDave »

MikeMillerwsj wrote: Mon Jan 27, 2020 2:53 pm An extremely creative and popular contest this week. We had 1518 responses, about 85% correct. 36 guesses for FONT, 23 for CAPS (partial credit for using the initials of all four hidden entries), 11 for PICA (another random guess?), 9 for FEST (can someone explain that?), 8 for SIGN, and several others.

Congratulations to this week's winner: Kelly Melita of Richmond, Va.!

PS I see a comment above that fonts were scattered around the grid--I hadn't noticed that! Is that so?
FEST can be obtained by taking the first letters of the numbers (six, five, two, eight) and rearranging them. One of my rabbit holes. Just didn't think this would work well as an answer.
User avatar
Tom Shea
Posts: 598
Joined: Thu Apr 11, 2019 6:37 am
Location: Freedonia, NH/VT/HI/Earth

#211

Post by Tom Shea »

asechres wrote: Mon Jan 27, 2020 2:16 pm
Tom Shea wrote: Sun Jan 26, 2020 10:24 pm
Bob cruise director wrote: Sun Jan 26, 2020 9:07 pm Our final count is 4 on the ship and 120 on the shore.

jhcogan just went to the bar and Dennis and DaveWa just made it to the shore

Good luck to all winning the mub
Being a frequent,unreformed practitioner, I don't normally point out typo's. But I couldn't help thinking of this scene:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VdMdboymT8
Please accept with its intended gentle good humor, I found it funny your comment actually has a typo! Plural of typo is "typos". :)
EYe nevvre maik mysteaks!
Rufus T. Firefly
User avatar
Bob cruise director
Cruise Director
Posts: 4512
Joined: Thu Apr 11, 2019 2:38 pm
Location: Any golf course within 500 miles of Littleton MA

#212

Post by Bob cruise director »

Jim and Anita wrote: Mon Jan 27, 2020 3:36 pm
MikeMillerwsj wrote: Mon Jan 27, 2020 2:53 pm An extremely creative and popular contest this week. We had 1518 responses, about 85% correct. 36 guesses for FONT, 23 for CAPS (partial credit for using the initials of all four hidden entries), 11 for PICA (another random guess?), 9 for FEST (can someone explain that?), 8 for SIGN, and several others.

Congratulations to this week's winner: Kelly Melita of Richmond, Va.!

PS I see a comment above that fonts were scattered around the grid--I hadn't noticed that! Is that so?
When we saw there is a "singular font" we checked the grid for others. Among those we found as font names were ashe, adm, aisle, hen, fodor (who knew?) hen, ursa, nana (what's not to like about a nana font) siena (which was the first we recognized without googling) sales, gory, hula, aria, asta, ash and rio. With the way our internet searches are being tracked, we can hardly wait to see advertisements now pop up for new printers and publishing apps.
Jim and Anita
I went down the font route also. I opened a word document and did a dropdown on the fonts. There are literally hundreds of them. When I did not see the common ones like Ariel, I concluded that I was going down the wrong rabbit hole.
Bob Stevens
Cruise Director
User avatar
Bob cruise director
Cruise Director
Posts: 4512
Joined: Thu Apr 11, 2019 2:38 pm
Location: Any golf course within 500 miles of Littleton MA

#213

Post by Bob cruise director »

A funny story related to keypads and such. About 20 years ago right after we got used to ATM's, my wife and a friend went to Italy. In Rome, she went to use the ATM and found that the keypad had only numbers and not letters. She had only remembered her PIN by name and not the numbers. And she needed money. In a panic, she scrambled around trying to fine someone who 1) spoke English and 2) had a mobile phone so she could convert her letter based PIN to a number sequence. Fortunately someone had a phone (which were not as common back then).
Bob Stevens
Cruise Director
User avatar
BarbaraK
Posts: 2592
Joined: Tue Apr 09, 2019 2:37 pm
Location: Virginia

#214

Post by BarbaraK »

Bob cruise director wrote: Mon Jan 27, 2020 4:40 pm A funny story related to keypads and such. About 20 years ago right after we got used to ATM's, my wife and a friend went to Italy. In Rome, she went to use the ATM and found that the keypad had only numbers and not letters. She had only remembered her PIN by name and not the numbers. And she needed money. In a panic, she scrambled around trying to fine someone who 1) spoke English and 2) had a mobile phone so she could convert her letter based PIN to a number sequence. Fortunately someone had a phone (which were not as common back then).
The phone number pilots dial to get a briefing on the weather for their upcoming flight is 1-800-WX-BRIEF. In the pre-internet days, I called this quite often. Then one day I was at an airport with no letters on the phone buttons. I found that if I tried to think about what letters went where, I couldn't do it - I'd have had to find a piece of paper and write it down. But by not thinking about it, just letting habit/muscle memory do its thing, I got it right.
User avatar
MajordomoTom
Posts: 1401
Joined: Sat Nov 02, 2019 12:09 am
Location: St. Louis, MO

#215

Post by MajordomoTom »

and phone keypads and those on computers aren't the same

123
456
789

and

789
456
123
"Lots of planets have a North", the Ninth Doctor.
User avatar
elan
Posts: 35
Joined: Sat Nov 02, 2019 9:54 pm

#216

Post by elan »

Alan H wrote: Mon Jan 27, 2020 9:54 am it seems like anytime the answer is specifically a noun, that the actual answer is a verb too. Which always makes me pause. Also, i know this site was tracking muggles by state a few weeks back. i was thinking that this meta wouldn't work for people from abroad where the @ sign is near the enter key on keyboards. I wonder if that messed anyone up.
but "dash" as a noun is something you type from a keyboard. "Dash" as a verb is just another verb.
User avatar
BarbaraK
Posts: 2592
Joined: Tue Apr 09, 2019 2:37 pm
Location: Virginia

#217

Post by BarbaraK »

Alan H wrote: Mon Jan 27, 2020 9:54 am it seems like anytime the answer is specifically a noun, that the actual answer is a verb too. Which always makes me pause. Also, i know this site was tracking muggles by state a few weeks back. i was thinking that this meta wouldn't work for people from abroad where the @ sign is near the enter key on keyboards. I wonder if that messed anyone up.
Since one of the eligibility rules is that you must be a resident of the US, maybe that was an intentional test :)
User avatar
MajordomoTom
Posts: 1401
Joined: Sat Nov 02, 2019 12:09 am
Location: St. Louis, MO

#218

Post by MajordomoTom »

DASH is also a symbol on the same row on the keyboard as ^, %, @ and *.

That's why it's the answer.
"Lots of planets have a North", the Ninth Doctor.
Martin
Posts: 48
Joined: Thu Jan 23, 2020 6:20 pm

#219

Post by Martin »

MajordomoTom wrote: Mon Jan 27, 2020 9:43 pm DASH is also a symbol on the same row on the keyboard as ^, %, @ and *.

That's why it's the answer.
That's a hyphen. There's no dash, neither emdash nor endash, on the keyboard.
juliet
Posts: 119
Joined: Sun Jul 14, 2019 11:11 pm

#220

Post by juliet »

Bob cruise director wrote: Mon Jan 27, 2020 4:36 pm
Jim and Anita wrote: Mon Jan 27, 2020 3:36 pm
MikeMillerwsj wrote: Mon Jan 27, 2020 2:53 pm
PS I see a comment above that fonts were scattered around the grid--I hadn't noticed that! Is that so?
When we saw there is a "singular font" we checked the grid for others. Among those we found as font names were ashe, adm, aisle, hen, fodor (who knew?) hen, ursa, nana (what's not to like about a nana font) siena (which was the first we recognized without googling) sales, gory, hula, aria, asta, ash and rio. With the way our internet searches are being tracked, we can hardly wait to see advertisements now pop up for new printers and publishing apps.
Jim and Anita
I went down the font route also. I opened a word document and did a dropdown on the fonts. There are literally hundreds of them. When I did not see the common ones like Ariel, I concluded that I was going down the wrong rabbit hole.
Starting with 5 and moving down, we have ARIA(C)L--the "C" in the middle led me to look for names of other fonts with mis-placed letters that would, hopefully, spell a four letter noun, or at least move closer to it. . . the "T" shaped ARI-A(I)L at the bottom of the grid tantalized as well.
Locked