"Location, Location, Location" - May 24, 2019

[Jeff S]

I didn't get anywhere with the meta this week, but submitted a wild stab based on nothing.

[Al Sisti]

This took me longer than it should have, since I live an hour and a half away from the answer.

[Inca]

Congrats to all who came up with the correct answer.
Gaffneyesque scares me away and I'm just glad that I didn't spend too much time with it because I doubt I ever would have seen that.

[Richard]

• I did not get it. What is the answer?

[Jacksull]

Kas4 for me. Albany was on my mind, though, since I believe it is the only capital that ends in its two letter state abbreviation.

Gaffneyesque. To me, it means that you have to look elsewhere (in the grid, among the clues, on a map, etc.) for words that are related to the theme answers. In this case, it was 3 letter entries. It could be anagrams, partials, opposites. Then you have to take those entries another step to find the answer.

I am just amazed that MG can do this week after week.

[Jaye]

The MAP in the very center of the top row of the grid led me to waste much too much time locating the five cities (and later, the capitals of their five states) on a map, drawing lines to connect them, and vainly trying to come up with an answer that felt like it had to be correct.

Eventually, the clue and answer to 12D led me to think about 3-letter initials, and that put me on the right road to the solution.
.

[Eric Porter]

When I started working on the meta, the first thing I thought of was going from city -> state, then looking for a third letter matching the state abbreviation. I've seen similar puzzles. It only worked for [A]NC & [P]RI. For NE, there was NEE & NES.
Then I noticed that PRI & ANC start with the same letter as the city and it was all downhill from there. I thought it was a little inelegant that 2 use the state abbreviation and 3 only use the first letter of the state after the initials of the city, but it's fine.
Albany, NY -> ANY and is the only capital that fits.
Lastly, I think Matt should have said that the answer is a US state capital that COULD be in the grid, not SHOULD. All cities have their abbreviation in the grid, but not all 3 letter grid answers have a state capital.

[BethA]

I thought I had the answer after writing down all the 3-letter words in the grid, and the only possible answer I could think of that fit the pattern was Albany New York - ANY.

I was sure I had the answer when I saw that it was placed perfectly symmetrically with the other theme answer abbreviations.

I was super sure when telling my husband about the symmetry and he blurted out, “and there are THREE letters/words in each”!

Title, title, title! Enjoyed it!

[BethA]

• I did not get it. What is the answer?

I don’t see the WSJMonday puzzle PDF, might not be one since it’s a holiday. But you can check out the write up at Crossword Fiend for details.

https://crosswordfiend.com/2019/05/26/w ... y-24-2019/

[BarbaraK]

Just over an hour to go. Still LAS.

So you got the MGWCC week 4 right away but never saw this one? Not sure if that should make me optimistic about my prospects for MGWCC or just marvel at how differently all our brains work.

I kind of lucked into this one. Pondering the theme answers and the grid,I thought, isn’t a gin collins some kind of drink. No, it’s not, but that kept gin in mind a moment later as I saw the initials.

I thought it was going to be a slog to find the missing one and was deciding whether to look at a list of capitals or at all the three letter entries when I noticed that the three letter abbreviations were all symmetric and there matching GIN was ANY. That bit of elegance made the last step easy. And that’s why the instructions say not just that it could be in the grid but that it should be there.

[KayW]

Doh. Doh. Doh.

KAS 5 for me - well maybe 4ish, but I was nowhere close. It amazes me how clever Matt and Mike and the other constructors are in continually devising new meta mechanisms.

I had written out all five cities and their states, but despite 12D (!!!) never looked at the three initials of each.

My lame approaches were to find a city that would fit all or multiple clue definitions in the grid. Cheyenne, Denver are also in the Front Range Urban Corridor. Atlanta could possibly be Black Panther setting since part of it was filmed there. I ended up picking Denver. I knew that could not possibly be the entire solution mechanism but hoped it might be an extra nudge.

Kudos to Matt for a brilliant puzzle, and to all here who solved it.

[RST]

I think that Matt messed this one up. Eric's comment re "could" vs "should" is on point. "Should" all New York cities beginning with "A" be in the grid?

Another approach would be to look for the state capitals of the five theme cities in the grid. Providence is clear; Raleigh in anagram is in the first row; Denver anagrams several rows down; Lincoln would require using the "n" in Fort Collins twice. And that leaves Austin as the state capital that "should" be in the grid but isn't.

[Bird Lives]

It seemed less elegant than most Gaffneys, to me at least, in that some states became their postal code (RI, NC) while others became only their first letter (N, C, T). Defensible because these still stick to the "initials" principle, but in some cases the two initials are those of the city, in others of the state. So less elegant.

[CandyB]

Agreed. Although, I thought the answer was Raleigh because 1) it’s the only capital you can’t spell using letters in and around the clue cities, 2) Bali rhymes with Raleigh and is directly above Asheville, and 3) It Is, with clue “correct” is below Asheville.

[Tom Shea]

This was not going to happen for me. Maybe if I printed it more clearly and sat in front of it all weekend, but then still probably not.

[ALS]

The first answer I found but knew wasn't right was Oahu. Each of the five cities in the grid responded to a clue that led to a place. The clue for 34A (vacation spot with black sand beaches) was the only other across clue that called for a place. The grid answer Bali had four letters but wasn't a US city. Was there a US city that could have been named instead?

So my false alarm wrong answer was Oahu, thinking of it at first as the capital of Hawaii (as opposed to the island on which Honolulu, the actual capital of Hawaii is located). But a quick bit of Google research established that there are no black sand beaches on Oahu. So my initial wrong answer was doubly wrong.

ALS

[Meg]

It’s so interesting to read all the crazy rabbit tunnels we went down. Mine was the U.S. map for awhile. Sometimes metas are content-related, in which knowing information about a theme answer is key. All the cities are on rivers, for example. I even considered connecting them with a line to see if I there was a picture hiding.....
The answer showed up when I (no surprise) made a list. Fort Collins Colorado. FCC. Sounds familiar. It was only later that I noticed Location 3 times for 3 letters.
Oh and symmetry is a giant Gaffney feature.

[Abide]

Bird, it remains elegant because with the symmetric Albany there are three with (1 2, 3) and three with (1, 2 3).

[MaineMarge]

I had posted earlier this morning, but it never showed up here-? But many have now spelled it out better than I had. So just the important point: When I had located GIN as the 5th 3 letter city/state initials, I could see that her mirror image dance partner had to be LOCATED at the second row northeast. And there she was- ANY. By that point I was more concerned that there wasn’t ANY more GIN in my G&T ( true!) than in looking for that pesky Waldo Albany, which wasn’t in the grid but should have been to complete all of Matt’s clever symmetries.

[Tony S]

Never would have seen this one ---- I got stuck trying to figure out why one city in the grid was a state capital and the other four were not. (This inconsistency bothered me.) I played with the two letter state abbreviations for awhile (there were many) but that went nowhere. Next week, new puzzle .....