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.
I don't know if this is a good thing, or not, because it will take a lot of the fun out of this contest, but I've discovered a fool-proof method of solving every one of the these contest crosswords.
It works on all past meta puzzles offered to date, at least, and it will be interesting to see how Mike, Matt, Peter, Pete, our Meta Monday muggles, and others get around this sublime engineering:
[Edit1: Change in method of posting image to credit its creator.]
Last edited by Joe Ross on Mon Jun 15, 2020 8:42 am, edited 1 time in total.
oldjudge wrote: ↑Mon Jun 15, 2020 1:28 am
Also, PGW did a meta about six months ago also titled Head Count.
PGW did a puzzle just 5-6 weeks ago where the answer was French Kiss. Had I not done that puzzle I would not have solved this one. But because I did and knew how to count to 10 in several languages I knew mid way through the grid that this was the method and then when I saw 61D it confirmed it. I too thought it was going to be the SUM of the numbers which equaled FORTY but after checking my answer w/ someone who was already onshore I went back and immediately saw TALLY.
On the FORTY/TALLY thing - I actually think FORTY is a better answer than RONALD REAGAN was last week because FORTY at least uses the proper methodology - where last week with RR you had to sorta adlib a method to justify using RR here you can use the proper method and find a five letter word that is tangentially related to the title. IMHO FORTY is a great answer TALLY just happens to be the perfect answer.
Joe Ross wrote: ↑Mon Jun 15, 2020 8:02 am
I don't know if this is a good thing, or not, because it will take a lot of the fun out of this contest, but I've discovered a fool-proof method of solving everyone of the these contest crosswords.
It works on all past meta puzzles offered to date, at least, and it will be interesting to see how Mike, Matt, Peter, Pete, our Meta Monday muggles, and others get around this sublime engineering:
circuit_diagram[1].png
Once again, quite literally laughing out loud (and since I snuck on this at the hospital people are sure I have lost whatever remained of my mind!)
TB
NUDGES!I am always willing to give nudges where needed; metas should be about fun, not frustration. Send me what you have done so far because often you are closer than you think!
damefox wrote: ↑Mon Jun 15, 2020 7:19 am
I don't know how people who didn't see 61D did this. If I hadn't noticed that clue, I would've assumed I was wrong about the mechanism because there was no way the WSJ contest would require a Google search not just to translate a number but also to determine what language it was in the first place. (I guess you did have to figure our which of the five numbers went with which of the five languages, if you didn't already know, but that is a much more reasonable sample set than, say, all the languages in the world.)
The languages in 61D were in the same order as the theme answers.
But I was one of those who totally missed that at first. I knew how to count in Spanish, German, and French so saw those. Also had the 6, but from German since that’s sechs. Thought it inelegant to use pronunciation instead of spelling for that one and to use German twice, so I wondered if another Germanic language used the sex spelling. But that gave me T_LLY, so it was pretty clear that GO must be either 5 or maybe 7 (if that one was out of order) in some language, and google got me Japanese. Thought this was unreasonably difficult for those who didn’t happen to know at least a couple of them but took another look through and saw the languages all listed out, and then it seemed perfect.
DOS jumped out at me from jump street but when I got SEXTAPE I knew I was on the right path because SEX is six in several languages but I was concerned I might know the other numbers or even what to google to get them but when I got to 61D I was happily surprised because it confirmed the method for me plus told me the languages to look at.
I thought that, perhaps, Mike was offering up a tutorial. The "Do's and Don'ts" of using a "Sex Tape": you want to "Go Steady" or you may end up with a "Elf Child" or a "STD".
PeterLeea1a wrote: ↑Mon Jun 15, 2020 8:33 am
I guessed the mechanism and even consulted Mr. G, but the only number I saw was dos so I abandoned it. D'oh.
Same - - tried this method, but beyond dos, didn't see anything familiar.
SewYoung wrote: ↑Mon Jun 15, 2020 12:34 am
Definitely a KAS 5. Never in a million years. Kudos to the really smart Muggles that got this one.
Same. I took Spanish for 6 years in JHS+HS and saw "DOS" but with only one "data point" I immediately rejected it as "There were no other Spanish words in the puzzle".
Joe Ross wrote: ↑Mon Jun 15, 2020 8:02 am
I don't know if this is a good thing, or not, because it will take a lot of the fun out of this contest, but I've discovered a fool-proof method of solving every one of the these contest crosswords.
It works on all past meta puzzles offered to date, at least, and it will be interesting to see how Mike, Matt, Peter, Pete, our Meta Monday muggles, and others get around this sublime engineering:
[Edit1: Change in method of posting image to credit its creator.]
Brilliant. A little nerdy but that applies to most of us engineers/scientists
RobM wrote: ↑Mon Jun 15, 2020 12:36 am
How many spent time on the red herring at 70A ONEdge, before disallowing it because the list of languages in the 61D didn't include English.
I briefly considered that (along with 34D ATE as a homonym for EIGHT) but quickly discarded these because these weren't the key words, which I was certain had to be the source of numbers. 61D popped into my mind right after and that totally eliminated that red herring.
damefox wrote: ↑Mon Jun 15, 2020 7:19 am
I don't know how people who didn't see 61D did this. If I hadn't noticed that clue, I would've assumed I was wrong about the mechanism because there was no way the WSJ contest would require a Google search not just to translate a number but also to determine what language it was in the first place. (I guess you did have to figure our which of the five numbers went with which of the five languages, if you didn't already know, but that is a much more reasonable sample set than, say, all the languages in the world.)
Mike was kind enough to order the foreign languages in 61D to match the key words - as well as have the answer letters in ascending numerical order that matched the ascending order to the key word numbers.
Wow. I was busy this entire weekend and never got a chance to look at this one. Just looked at the answer. That's the hardest puzzle of all time, right? "Sex" was supposed to set off alarm bells for...Swedish numbers? Completely insane. Kudos to anyone who could do this one.
I guess it's both encouraging and frustrating that I had the right idea. I figured the languages had something to do with finding the meta but I just couldn't put all the pieces together. For whatever reason I thought the "count" clue meant the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 so those were the only numbers I looked up in each language. [Insert Charlie Brown Arggghh]
