#652 - "Solved in Full"

[Bird Lives]

My answer is BORAT. The graphic below explains the impeccable logic that leads to this solution. Oh, I know that answer wanted by this Gaffney fellow conforms to the pattern of the key words in the grid, and I know that the letters come in order top to bottom.

But when you get the solution, does K-MART bring a smile to your face? Does it give you a warm feeling? Or does it summon up a rather depressing image? Now instead imagine that your puzzle-solving leads you to BORAT.

I rest my case.

[ky-mike]

Quit putting ideas in Matt's head

[DrTom]

In response to Bird Lives classic explanation (only slightly less convoluted than the real mechanism):

KMART - I think we all know from listening to a famous line by a famous actor in a famous movie...K-MART SUCKS!

If only he owned two teams (10 each) of pack animals used to move good on early American highways, then he could be 20 mule team Borat...yeah like you expected any different!

[mpmanning]

In reply to BirdLives above, my answer is ATHOL, the well known town of Massachusetts founded in 1753 and probably named after the earldom of British forebears.

The solution route is as above except after removing the first letter use the next letter of the remainder as follows:

A from ASKET
T from TOMIC
H from HUNDER
O from OREA
L from LECTRONIC

ATHOL, the desirable Proper noun and evidently wrong answer!

[DrTom]

In reply to BirdLives above, my answer is ATHOL, the well known town of Massachusetts founded in 1753 and probably named after the earldom of British forebears.

The solution route is as above except after removing the first letter use the next letter of the remainder as follows:

A from ASKET
T from TOMIC
H from HUNDER
O from OREA
L from LECTRONIC

ATHOL, the desirable Proper noun and evidently wrong answer!

Hmm, I think I've heard of that town, or at least someone from it. I was at a meeting once and there was someone from there but I understood he had not been born there but moved there later. A friend disenchanted me of that and said, "No he's a real Athol!"

[Bird Lives]

In reply to BirdLives above, my answer is ATHOL, the well known town of Massachusetts founded in 1753 and probably named after the earldom of British forebears.

The solution route is as above except after removing the first letter use the next letter of the remainder as follows:

A from ASKET
T from TOMIC
H from HUNDER
O from OREA
L from LECTRONIC

ATHOL, the desirable Proper noun and evidently wrong answer!

Hmm, I think I've heard of that town, or at least someone from it. I was at a meeting once and there was someone from there but I understood he had not been born there but moved there later. A friend disenchanted me of that and said, "No he's a real Athol!"

I figured that's what you'd do with ATHOL. So I hesitate to remind you of the prize-winning playwright ATHOL FUGARD.

[ricky]

Did MG post the answer/explanation somewhere besides his website? I thought he only posted the answers in his Friday blog posts with the links to the new puzzles.

In any case, now that I know the answer is KMART, I have a few minor bones to pick.

If you're going to have entries that are in the grid because they're one or more letters short of another word, couldn't you be sure to exclude words from the grid that have the same relationship?

For instance, AHOY crosses YAHOO (AHOY + o) *and* SUCRE crosses ACCUSERS (SUCRE + ACS). And both of those letter sets are contiguous within the longer word. Both of those are ordinarily huge clues. And yet here they're apparently meaningless red herrings.

Also, the grid's littered with double letters - 13 pairs of them. I guess the other double letter pairs are there to disguise the presence of the shortened terms, which all start with double letters? But in most other circumstances, again, that quantity of double letters would not be a red herring.

After working through these and other possibilities, I wound up with

BBALL - ALL = BB
ADDAMS - ADDS = AM
YAHOO - AHOY = O

Result: ABOMB, which is the central down entry. I didn't think ABOMB was a proper noun, but maybe MG does, if it's used to refer to the first one developed by the US? I wound up entering OBAMA knowing it almost certainly wasn't right, but it was at least composed out of the 4 individual letters I'd found...

[Joe Ross]

ATHOL FUGARD.

He said "ATHOL FUGARD."

[mpmanning]

Athol Harold Lannigan Fugard, FRSL OIS (born June 11, 1932, Middelburg, South Africa), South African dramatist, actor, and director who became internationally known for his penetrating and pessimistic analyses of South African society during the apartheid period.

Who knew? How Proper!

[DrTom]

In reply to BirdLives above, my answer is ATHOL, the well known town of Massachusetts founded in 1753 and probably named after the earldom of British forebears.

The solution route is as above except after removing the first letter use the next letter of the remainder as follows:

A from ASKET
T from TOMIC
H from HUNDER
O from OREA
L from LECTRONIC

ATHOL, the desirable Proper noun and evidently wrong answer!

Hmm, I think I've heard of that town, or at least someone from it. I was at a meeting once and there was someone from there but I understood he had not been born there but moved there later. A friend disenchanted me of that and said, "No he's a real Athol!"

I figured that's what you'd do with ATHOL. So I hesitate to remind you of the prize-winning playwright ATHOL FUGARD.

Of COURSE you did, why wouldn't you. Hit me a lob and I've got to try to hit it back. That one was just too tempting to let go, and everyone would have been disappointed.

Oh, and my other favorite convention:

Watched a play by Athol Fugard
Safely distanced out in the yard
Twas a sad tale of strife
Imposed on a life
And how the path to redemption is marred

Though his name caused young boys to titter
He certainly wasn’t a quitter
He plotted a story
From squalor to glory
Grabbing salvation out of the bitter

Now limericks all tend to be horrid
With endings that lean towards the torrid
But this one is meant
To honor the gent
Without causing your face to be florid

T