"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.
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MajordomoTom
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#181

Post by MajordomoTom »

better a mubble than a meeple.
"Lots of planets have a North", the Ninth Doctor.
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Jeremy Smith
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#182

Post by Jeremy Smith »

I figured out step 1 within an hour of starting the puzzle on Thursday. Gonna make the late trip to the shore party with an educated guess, even though I’m literally at sea on a ship in the Atlantic right now.
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MajordomoTom
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#183

Post by MajordomoTom »

Jeremy - did you get "DASH"? Hope so, that's what I got and what I think is the right answer.

For this puzzle, you might want to have a computer (or typewriter - remember those?) keyboard handy.

The four theme answers are:

19A - SCARETACTICS
26A - SUPERCENTIPEDE
45A - HEATSIGNATURE
50A - SALESTARGETS

Embedded in these are the names of symbols on a typical keyboard, on the row of numbers, but as alternatives to those numbers:

CARET (on the 6 key)
PERCENT (on the 5 key)
ATSIGN (on the 2 key)
STAR (on the 8 key)

Ok, now you have the digits 6, 5, 2 and 8.  What can you do with those?  

Well, let's look at these down answers in the grid:

6D - DISC
5D - ARIA
2D - SPEC
8D - HITSUPON

the first letters of each of these spell "DASH" which is also a key on the row of numbers keys, and is a four-letter singular noun.

And was my submission for this meta puzzle.

EDIT: confirmed correct on the WSJ website.
"Lots of planets have a North", the Ninth Doctor.
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Joe Ross
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#184

Post by Joe Ross »

20200123 WSJCC Just My Type.gif
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Richard
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#185

Post by Richard »

For some reason when my weekend is open I get the meta on Thursday and when I have lots going on am stuck.

I did enjoy this one.
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Jim and Anita
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#186

Post by Jim and Anita »

Well this obviously was not my type. We were singularly wrong but enjoyed learning about the dozen plus font names scattered around the grid. We've told Flopsy, Topsy and Mopsy that they will always have a rabbit home with us. We saw many words in the four horizontals but missed some of the clues. Congrats to all who found the symbolic answer.
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tim1217
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#187

Post by tim1217 »

Early on someone posted thoughts on why Mike specified ‘singular’ in the hint. My guess is that he wanted to eliminate the possibility of someone anagramming the letters and submitting SHAD, which is both singular and plural.
Tony S
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#188

Post by Tony S »

This meta required the standard keyboard on my desktop. I first tried it on my phone and got nowhere. Not exactly googling but an "outside reference" was needed to complete this puzzle. I predict many correct answers.
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FrankieHeck
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#189

Post by FrankieHeck »

tim1217 wrote: Mon Jan 27, 2020 8:27 am Early on someone posted thoughts on why Mike specified ‘singular’ in the hint. My guess is that he wanted to eliminate the possibility of someone anagramming the letters and submitting SHAD, which is both singular and plural.
I suspected he wanted to avoid confusion with CAPS, if you take the first letter of each symbol.
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KayW
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#190

Post by KayW »

FrankieHeck wrote: Mon Jan 27, 2020 8:32 am
tim1217 wrote: Mon Jan 27, 2020 8:27 am Early on someone posted thoughts on why Mike specified ‘singular’ in the hint. My guess is that he wanted to eliminate the possibility of someone anagramming the letters and submitting SHAD, which is both singular and plural.
I suspected he wanted to avoid confusion with CAPS, if you take the first letter of each symbol.
Similarly, the first "word" I got was CPAS, a common initialism for Certified Public Accountant. And since my husband was a CPA - just my type! :)
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MaineMarge
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#191

Post by MaineMarge »

Those who missed this one are probably saying *#!!*#! about now. I got this one eventually with help from a friend who is a better typist than I am. I had found the 4 punctuation symbols- the first letters of which anagrammed to CAPS. (Or maybe SPCA if you’re the type to feel the pain of the terrified rabbits we chase down). I was led astray by all the comments saying it was super easy, so was thinking it was not a 2-stepper. And my iPhone doesn’t display that important keyboard setup. When I went to my iMac, there it was.
Great method and meta to me this week.
Inca
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#192

Post by Inca »

MaineMarge wrote: Mon Jan 27, 2020 9:20 am Those who missed this one are probably saying *#!!*#! about now. I got this one eventually with help from a friend who is a better typist than I am. I had found the 4 punctuation symbols- the first letters of which anagrammed to CAPS. (Or maybe SPCA if you’re the type to feel the pain of the terrified rabbits we chase down). I was led astray by all the comments saying it was super easy, so was thinking it was not a 2-stepper. And my iPhone doesn’t display that important keyboard setup. When I went to my iMac, there it was.
Great method and meta to me this week.
I didn't think this was as easy as many of the remarks indicated. Yes, it did come to me quite quickly but that was because this was my 'type' of meta and also I have done so many metas by now that all of the methods were familiar to me. But, I always look at these in terms of how I would have felt about it as a less experienced meta-ist and I would have been mighty proud had I made all the way through to the final DASH.
Martin
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#193

Post by Martin »

FrankieHeck wrote: Mon Jan 27, 2020 8:32 am
tim1217 wrote: Mon Jan 27, 2020 8:27 am Early on someone posted thoughts on why Mike specified ‘singular’ in the hint. My guess is that he wanted to eliminate the possibility of someone anagramming the letters and submitting SHAD, which is both singular and plural.
I suspected he wanted to avoid confusion with CAPS, if you take the first letter of each symbol.
That makes more sense than SHAD (sorry, tim1217). I never saw that possibility because the title telegraphed that you needed to look at the keys. So for me, the meta took one minute but trying to figure out "singular" took hours.
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Kris Zacharias
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#194

Post by Kris Zacharias »

After seeing the words hidden in the long grid answers, I first searched my iPhone to see what letters appeared in the same positions. UYKI was the result. Only then did I check the standard computer keyboard to work out the correct answer.
Alan H
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#195

Post by Alan H »

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.
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DBMiller
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#196

Post by DBMiller »

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.
That was my nit about this puzzle. You had to know the keyboard layout of a standard, US keyboard. UK, French, and several others do not share the same shift-number combinations. Fortunately, a DVORAK keyboard and QWERTY keyboard share the same symbols, so I let this nit be.

And I was the commentator that mentions the "non-plural" description was necessary. Caret, Percent, At-Sign, and Star led me first to CPAs, which would be considered plural, at which point I noticed the shift-number location and found DASH.

Thank goodness the symbols weren't $#!+ as that would lead to some interesting submissions :)
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Hidden in 3D
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#197

Post by Hidden in 3D »

I most assuredly missed this one and a few expletives definitely ran through my mind this morning. I was stuck so very far down a rabbit hole that I barely made it out before falling into bed last night and never even got around to posting my status. But I want to give a few details about my twisting underground journey so that others might learn from my ridiculous escapade...I couldn't get past the references to video games. (And believe me, I know next to nothing about video games, which is why too much consultation with Mr. G can be a dangerous thing.) It started off with Super Centipede and Atari, of course. But apparently HEAT SIGNATURE is a video game as is PHARAONIC, clue 1D, which is one of Mike's favorite "hint" spots, as is the last across clue. Hmmm, 67A - some video games are definitely GORY. And they also have TARGETS and you must employ TACTICS to succeed. Then there are video games based on the movies ELF (10D) and RIO (59D). And apparently there is even a video game called ASTA (41D). I could go on, but you get the picture. I knew I was tunneling but once I started downward I never came up for air, even though I was well aware that I was totally ignoring the puzzle title. Finally, I overlooked my first instinct (a downfall that often leads to disaster): I saw CARET, PERCENT, SIGN and STAR, but just kept digging. SIGH!
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BethA
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#198

Post by BethA »

Wasn’t it terribly conspicuous having “Em Dash” as the title of yesterday’s LA Times crossword?! I wanted to shush them! 😀

I know that nobody who hadn’t solved the meta would think twice, but I’m amazed at how often the WSJ meta answer pops up in other puzzles about the same time!

I like these multi-step metas. I even tried a little to get another step or two, like seeing if the key with DASH on it had another 4-letter number or character. Nope!
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Don S.
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#199

Post by Don S. »

I thought that some people might have gone for the red herring that the first letters anagrammed to CAPS, and since the theme answers all represented keyboard keys, they might be tempted to go for LOCK, technically a singular 4-letter noun, from the "CAPS LOCK" key... I've worked enough of these to know to go straight to the key-numbered-squares (I think this same mechanism was used on a Fireball contest a few years back?), but it's not intuitive for first-timers...
Last edited by Don S. on Mon Jan 27, 2020 1:14 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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#200

Post by BarbaraK »

While solvers are checking their email to see if they won the real mug this week, remember you can see how many virtual micro-mugs you've earned with xivxav's clever calculator at

forums/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=279
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