XWord Muggles Forum

I did that! I'm new to this and didn't know that wasn't done. But it fits the pattern in that it's a 4 letter followed by a 6 letter word and the letters for grid are also in daring. This gives you 10 leftover letters which anagram to Nerf arenas which do sound very entertaining... So that submission was not actually a guess but was still wrong. I don't understand the title though... happy Tuesday!!

MajordomoTom wrote: ↑Tue Feb 18, 2020 10:23 am my wife thought it was the OREO at the NW corner of the grid. If forced to choose, I was going with the ERIE in the SE corner.

and wanted to do something with CAAN (loved that clue/answer), but to no avail.

when you're looking for a rabbit, there are a lot of rabbit shadows in the underbrush.

Be vewy quiet, I'm hunting wabbits.

But PEAR also uses four letters of OPERAS

Okay, I might be the only idiot who did this, but 4 other solvers submitted “literature” too, so maybe I’m not alone...

I got all the extra pairs of letters, plus two more from the puzzle’s title, then anagrammed them to make ANNE FRANK’S.

I assumed this this was a reference to Anne Frank’s diary, which is a work of literature.

Hope you got a laugh from this, fellow solvers! I thought I reached the shore, but it was just a mirage.

MaryCC wrote: ↑Tue Feb 18, 2020 5:08 pm

MajordomoTom wrote: ↑Tue Feb 18, 2020 10:23 am my wife thought it was the OREO at the NW corner of the grid. If forced to choose, I was going with the ERIE in the SE corner.

and wanted to do something with CAAN (loved that clue/answer), but to no avail.

when you're looking for a rabbit, there are a lot of rabbit shadows in the underbrush.

Be vewy quiet, I'm hunting wabbits.

But PEAR also uses four letters of OPERAS

had not noticed that ... veddy interestink

Joe Ross wrote: ↑Tue Feb 18, 2020 12:55 am Not with a bang, but a whimper.

. . . which reminds me of one of my favorite quotes attributed to the late alto saxophonist, Paul Desmond who, when commenting on the fact that fashion models who often pair up with with very interesting guys struggling to make ends meet always seem to end up marrying wealthy men, concluded that this shows us how the world will end —— not with a whim but a banker.

MaryCC wrote: ↑Tue Feb 18, 2020 10:04 am Late adding this, but in regard to the missing "ER", I thought the PEAR in the middle of the puzzle was MGs Easter egg confirming OPERAS.

After finding SOAP and guessing that OPERAS would follow, I kept staring at that big juicy PEAR right in the middle and searching in vain for the OS clue that would complete the anagram. I was similarly drawn to POSE, since it contained four letters from OPERAS and also sort of flowed from the title (as in a DARING POSE), but couldn't find a likely RA to complete it. I did submit the correct solution, but didn't feel 100% about it.

On the topic of the probability to win the mug/holy grail (still chasing one myself), something is not adding up. Say, 1/817th chance to win/week. If I submitted 817 times correctly, my chance is 100% , if submit more, better than 100%?

Can someone check on the math, my gut's saying my chance per week is still 1/817th, since my not-winning-last-week-or-many-weeks-prior will not improve my current odd.

Scooby wrote: ↑Tue Feb 18, 2020 9:41 pm On the topic of the probability to win the mug/holy grail (still chasing one myself), something is not adding up. Say, 1/817th chance to win/week. If I submitted 817 times correctly, my chance is 100% , if submit more, better than 100%?

Can someone check on the math, my gut's saying my chance per week is still 1/817th, since my not-winning-last-week-or-many-weeks-prior will not improve my current odd.

Your second paragraph is correct. Each week is 1/xxx, and is independent of previous results. It’s the same principle as flipping a coin. If you just threw tails 3 times in a row, it doesn’t make heads more likely on the next flip. That flip is still 50-50; the coin has no memory.

No matter how many times you submit puzzle entries, you never have a 100% chance of winning one.

MajordomoTom wrote: ↑Mon Feb 17, 2020 11:13 am on that, I spent a TON of time staring at 40A, the presence of the K and R made me crazy to try to unpack something from the rest of the letters. Plus it's so unusual a grid entry that ... IT HAD TO MEAN SOMETHING.

Or not.

Thankfully BOY BANDS did not fit the puzzle constraints because KSTREET had me looking for BAC and BOYS to come up with an entertainment type.

Bird Lives wrote: ↑Mon Feb 17, 2020 11:10 am What's general sentiment here on clues that are deceptive at first-- e.g., 48D, 43A, 46A? I see them as providing the pleasure of mini AHA moments.

I LOVE those misdirection clues and now try to read something into every clue waiting for the "GOTCHA". For example in 27A I first thought RIZZI because he sure played Sonny right into an ambush, but there were too many letters. Even 40D was a misdirection because I was thinking too literally and envisioning VISOR or something similar, not an actual shade of color, luckily I got 40A and the K gave it away.

Al Sisti wrote: ↑Mon Feb 17, 2020 2:21 pm

howardl wrote: ↑Mon Feb 17, 2020 1:24 pm Replying to Eagle who spent time "trying to anagram FERKNSNAAN". I have a rule in solving these (attempting to solve): if there is an anagram necessary to the answer it is very short and obvious, so looking for anagrams to a 10 letter sequence means you are barking up the wrong rabbit hole.

I caught FERKNSNAAN at Lollapalooza a couple years back... they rocked!

Huh, and I thought FERKNSNAAN was another central Asian country.

Omnibus wrote: ↑Tue Feb 18, 2020 5:44 pm Okay, I might be the only idiot who did this, but 4 other solvers submitted “literature” too, so maybe I’m not alone...

I got all the extra pairs of letters, plus two more from the puzzle’s title, then anagrammed them to make ANNE FRANK’S.

I assumed this this was a reference to Anne Frank’s diary, which is a work of literature.

Hope you got a laugh from this, fellow solvers! I thought I reached the shore, but it was just a mirage.

I am SOOOO glad I did not get my anagram to turn out. Interestingly enough I just plugged the letters into an Anagram solver and it gave me franks but not anne. That is curious, though I applaud it for its incompleteness or I would have been chasing that rabbit for sure.

steveb wrote: ↑Tue Feb 18, 2020 10:04 pm Your second paragraph is correct. Each week is 1/xxx, and is independent of previous results. It’s the same principle as flipping a coin. If you just threw tails 3 times in a row, it doesn’t make heads more likely on the next flip. That flip is still 50-50; the coin has no memory.

I had many a college bar drunken argument trying to convince my friends that if we each went and bought a Lotto ticket, and they picked whatever numbers they wanted, and I picked the winning numbers from last week, our odds of winning would be the same. I never convinced them.

No matter how many times you submit puzzle entries, you never have a 100% chance of winning one.

Unless you're the only one who gets it right!

BrianMac wrote: ↑Wed Feb 19, 2020 7:18 am I had many a college bar drunken argument trying to convince my friends that if we each went and bought a Lotto ticket, and they picked whatever numbers they wanted, and I picked the winning numbers from last week, our odds of winning would be the same. I never convinced them.

I wish that I could blame the following on being drunk. Dad was an engineer's engineer (chief engineer of a machine tool maker). When the lottery was established, it became his one bit of fun, but he'd limit his purchase each week to $2. As the years wore on, he'd track and graph every drawing on reams of quadrille paper, using his pocket slide rule, eschewing calculators, for his slopes, trigonometry, gozintas, & take-aways.

Home from college on a weekend to do laundry & visit, I finally asked him about his massive efforts. The taps turned full on. I'd never seen him so animated. First, he admitted he'd never win, but he wondered, early on, if the ping pong balls used to draw would tend to favor some numbers more than others. This idea brought out the pencil & ruler originally.

After over a decade of analysis & his 20 minutes of excited explanations, his conclusion was that he could discern no bias, but he still played his favorites.. Then, this smart-mouthed college boy said, "So, you could just as easily play 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, & 6, every week, and have the same chance of winning." My heart sank & I blushed with shame when I saw his face fall and heard him mutter, "Well... Yeah, but..."