XWord Muggles Forum

Did anybody else consider "stevedore"? Not a common occupation, but still....

tigerfly222 wrote: ↑Mon Apr 20, 2020 8:02 am

Bob cruise director wrote: ↑Mon Apr 20, 2020 7:49 am Interesting to note that last week and this week we had multi word answers where you could leave out words and get an answer which fit the title and contest requirement e.g. Grilled Cheese or Developer. I wonder if this will become a trend

That's the fate that befell me last weekend. I congratulated myself once I found HAM AND CHEESE and went no further. Alas.

That is similar to what Al Sisti did to break his streak so you are with the elite

SewYoung wrote: ↑Mon Apr 20, 2020 12:06 am It was so hard not to mention how this week's path to the answer was to last week's. Especially the central across answer being the vital clue.

And multiple words

And not missing a word

Maybe we have a new term - A Sisti would mean missing one or more words in a multiple word answer

A couple of things got my attention
1) Using Tevere for the Tiber river - I had not seen that before
2) Using Eaux (thank you Mrs. Enders) rather than Eaus - I spent an hour trying to figure out what 45D was as SASONS - some sort of strange branch of the British army?
3) then we had variations of tennis players with or without extra letters - Evert in the aforementioned TEVERE and Ashe in cHAStE but then I figured not enough people would know any other tennis players and that was reinforced by 38D athlete and 8D sports
4) I did see Apple and Jobs early on but did not look for the Steve part for a while

Couldn’t get out of my head that “Between Jobs” was referring to the Bible as Job and Psalm are right next to each other in the Bible and nearby in this puzzle. Funny enough the Bible Job made it into the Saturday WSJ crossword.

Bob cruise director wrote: ↑Mon Apr 20, 2020 9:08 am

SewYoung wrote: ↑Mon Apr 20, 2020 12:06 am It was so hard not to mention how this week's path to the answer was to last week's. Especially the central across answer being the vital clue.

And multiple words

And not missing a word

Maybe we have a new term - A Sisti would mean missing one or more words in a multiple word answer

While I'm honored to be considered for eponymy, it's already taken. On my road rally team (Brews Cruise), we once got a cemetery question asking "How old was Mrs. Johnson when she died?" I quickly found the cemetery, quickly rushed in, quickly found her gravestone, quickly noted down her date of death (1857), and quickly filled in the blank on the answer sheet with "1857." No, you dolt, Mrs. Johnson was *not* 1,857 years old when she died. So ever since then, whenever someone does something too quickly and rashly, my team calls it "Pulling a Sisti." So yeah, it's not new... but it certainly is fitting.

Al Sisti wrote: ↑Mon Apr 20, 2020 9:26 am

Bob cruise director wrote: ↑Mon Apr 20, 2020 9:08 am

SewYoung wrote: ↑Mon Apr 20, 2020 12:06 am It was so hard not to mention how this week's path to the answer was to last week's. Especially the central across answer being the vital clue.

And multiple words

And not missing a word

Maybe we have a new term - A Sisti would mean missing one or more words in a multiple word answer

While I'm honored to be considered for eponymy, it's already taken. On my road rally team (Brews Cruise), we once got a cemetery question asking "How old was Mrs. Johnson when she died?" I quickly found the cemetery, quickly rushed in, quickly found her gravestone, quickly noted down her date of death (1857), and quickly filled in the blank on the answer sheet with "1857." No, you dolt, Mrs. Johnson was *not* 1,857 years old when she died. So ever since then, whenever someone does something too quickly and rashly, my team calls it "Pulling a Sisti." So yeah, it's not new... but it certainly is fitting.

At RPI we had the term RTFP

YOU GUYS.

Guess what I do for a living.

And I didn’t get this one.

(I’ve been writing iPhone apps for ten years...)

Well the middle clue told me to look for a sandwich between jobs, and thus for a short time I was looking for occupations. But with the first clue being Apple with the clue reference to the founders, I had "Steve Jobs" on my mind when I suddenly spotted several broken STEVEs, and when I saw that in-between-letters for the first one were APP I knew that was the key. (Which also tied in with "Line" in the puzzle title.) Then it was just confirmation with ELO and PER.

A minor distraction occurred because I had solved 8D as SPOOKS, so the K didn't fit, but since DEV had to be correct because of content and pattern, I concluded that K was wrong. Of course, I hadn't hear of TEVERE before, but I knew that the answer wasn't an English word (because of "Roma" in the clue), so I just let that pass.

Lots of puzzle hints from the author, but no more so than last week's puzzle - but that one I never found the AHA! moment. Just more evidence as to how oddly our brains work.

One lesson I draw is what they say about looking at Impressionist art - stepping back and trying to view the whole picture can be helpful if I find myself getting too analytical and dissecting. Not to mention stopping and doing something else for a while before going back.

I followed some of the rabbit trails mentioned already, though the most interesting distraction was the use of the word "work" in the cluing to 44 down, convincing me for quite a while that the key to the meta had something to do with Dafoe's novel. I'd been thinking of his Journal of the Plague Year anyway, so it didn't take much encouragement to revisit the story of Alexander Selkirk (the "real life" basis for Robinson Crusoe), which lead to the use of wartime privateers (pirates to everyone else), and on and on. . .

Eventually I returned to the grid and found the meta answer, but it took CallMeShane's #291 post to see that the answer's three letter components are in a vertical line, and tigerfly222 #289 post to be reminded that Steve Jobs was associated with Apple, the first grid entry and a hint I totally missed.

3 out of the last 4 weeks, 1 across was involved somehow in the meta. Looking closely at 1 across seems like a good tool to add to the kit

Meg wrote: ↑Mon Apr 20, 2020 8:58 am Did anybody else consider "stevedore"? Not a common occupation, but still....

I did!

Some weeks I fortunately see the meta solution very quickly. Other weeks I don’t see it at all, often giving up and abandoning it early on, and when the answer is revealed, accepting that the way my brain functions I never could have solved it. This week, seeing all the “ashore” posts persuaded me that it was one of those times when Barbara would be saying “Keep at it - you can get this one,” so every time I hit a brick wall I turned my attention to something else, committed to coming back for try after try until I either solved it or the clock ran out. The Aha! moment came late Sunday, making this one of the most gratifying weeks for me.

Nycerjohnnie wrote: ↑Mon Apr 20, 2020 11:04 am 3 out of the last 4 weeks, 1 across was involved somehow in the meta. Looking closely at 1 across seems like a good tool to add to the kit

And sometimes it may be the last clue/answer instead.

A large wave of solvers this week, a sign that the contest is growing more and more popular. We had 1886 submissions, with about 83% correct. Another 63 close but no cigar with DEVELOPER (plus 5 with various other types of developer, eg SOFTWARE, WEB...). Also, 17 in the right neighborhood with PROGRAMMER plus another 6 for CODER. And then 12 for PRIEST (why?), 5 for PRUNER (an Apple reference?), plus many many others including STEEPLEJACK, ANIMATOR, PRIEST, ELEVATOR INSPECTOR, PASTOR, and CAR DEALER.

Congrats to this week's winner, Art Cimento of Incline Village, Nev. Stay safe and sane, muggles!

Bob cruise director wrote: ↑Mon Apr 20, 2020 10:19 am
At RPI we had the term RTFP

Fellow RPI alum here - EE '84 (Pep Band, W2SZ, Players)
I was at the Boston Garden for the '84 ECAC championship win and even though I was living in California, I was in Detroit for the '85 NCAA championship.

On shore Saturday evening.

Colin wrote: ↑Mon Apr 20, 2020 7:45 am Did not see the STEVES in the grid. No surprise, I usually look straight at the thing I can’t find without seeing it! Also, spent too much time researching the execs at Apple between Jobs leaving and his return. But the true crux of my downfall was the many hours I spent as a PRUNER tackling a row of out of control shrubs this weekend. Subliminally, this must have focused me in the wrong rabbit hole.
Excuses, excuses...

At quick first take I thought the answer would be "COOK" as Tim Cook played this role, and COOK is definitely an occupation.

Hey folks, what do you think of this? Suggestions are MORE THAN WELCOME.

Dear Editor,
On behalf of those who participate in the Journal’s weekly Crossword Contest, I am writing to thank you for continuing to run this competition during the pandemic.
The challenging crossword had gained a loyal and wonderfully eclectic following even before the health crisis. Now, it helps to structure our otherwise amorphous weeks: like clockwork, the puzzle shows up online each Thursday afternoon (aka “Puzzle Day” in my household). Solving the puzzle reminds us of not only normalcy but the joy of simple pleasures, if “simple” can be used to describe the intricate meta-puzzles set by Matt Gaffney, Mike Shenk and the other genius constructors.
Special kudos to the Journal’s Mike Miller, who despite all the chaos still takes the time to contact each week’s winner and to report the number of entries and the percentage correct.
All of us “Muggles” (so called because each week’s winner receives a highly coveted prize mug) are deeply grateful to everyone involved in the puzzle competition for improving our lives.
A caveat: We are not so grateful the weeks when we can’t solve the puzzle.

I would like to send a big yummy Apple to the creators of these fantastic puzzles. I can't imagine how you can do such a great Job (s) every week! How do you become a developer of such creative puzzles every week, each one so different from the last! Congratulations on a great Job(s). You are definitely an essential service for all of us! Thank you!