#587 - "Reverse Engineering" - August 30, 2019

[BarbaraK]

Does anyone have the breakdown of how many correct answers Matt shoots for each week? I think I remember that he shoots for 400-500 for a Week 2 puzzle for a Week 2, but not sure about the whole set of ranges, and thought maybe one of you data-keepers would have that information.

I also stumbled across this on Wikipedia: "Gaffney has stated the MGWCC will run for exactly 1,000 weeks, meaning the last one will be published on Friday, Aug. 6, 2027." And while that eases my worry that he'll stop making them right as I'm getting started, it also makes me sad to see an end date! I really wish I had discovered metas sooner.

I'd also love to know the target ranges. I've seen comments about a given week being high or low for a week X, so apparently there really are targets, but I've never seen them defined. I've only been doing them for three years, so maybe someone longer-term than that knows. Lately I've been making notes on the comments and can add to your week 2 range that:

• For a week 3 of 5, 350 is the middle of the target range

• In a 5 Friday month, there should be 100 fewer solvers each week

For puzzle number 500, the answer was "Halfway there". This made me kind of sad. Yeah, 500 more, almost 10 years worth, is still a lot to look forward to, but I'm bummed that I missed out on the first 430 and am envious of those who were there from the beginning. (Yeah, I could/should go back and do the early ones. Maybe some day I will, but I have a hard time getting things done without a deadline.)

[Beth Tyrpin]

Last week I got the meta in about ten minutes which may have messed up my meta mojo. This week even though I was on the right track I abandoned it too soon. I needed a nudge to get there. Still need to find the balance of when to let go and when to push a little further.

[Toby]

There's a very deep rabbit hole in this one, where I spent quite a while of the weekend, before crawling out and following advice to try something else. I'm glad we don't have any six week months.

[ky-mike]

Done. Working on this part time while traveling let me set the puzzle down enough to get several fresh looks before finally solving.

[joequavis]

It doesn't look like I'm going to get this one. I felt pretty confident after last week's, but alas I'm throwing in the meta towel. I found something that seems like it should be related to the puzzle's theme, but try as I might I've gotten nowhere with it. Congrats to all those who solved it! My Toolbox of Failure has expanded a bit.

[Jacksull]

Congrats to those who solved this one.

I’m a big fan of cryptics, which should have helped me here. I tend to spend too much time in the grid and not enough time with the wordplay in the clues.

[sharkicicles]

I just ran out of time on this one. Great puzzle though!

[joequavis]

There's a very deep rabbit hole in this one, where I spent quite a while of the weekend, before crawling out and following advice to try something else. I'm glad we don't have any six week months.

Did it have anything to do with commas?

[BarbaraK]

I actually got onto the right path the wrong way. I noticed that 1A could be parsed as “big O’s” which would be a reasonable answer for the 6A clue “Rounds” (and maybe also related to the Cheerios thing at 18A).

So I looked for more like that and next saw “Make discontinued” and Oldsmobile, which seemed reasonable enough. Kept going and eventually realized that the clues had to be reversed so Rounds wasn’t part of it at all.

[LesY]

I actually got onto the right path the wrong way. I noticed that 1A could be parsed as “big O’s” which would be a reasonable answer for the 6A clue “Rounds” (and maybe also related to the Cheerios thing at 18A).

So I looked for more like that and next saw “Make discontinued” and Oldsmobile, which seemed reasonable enough. Kept going and eventually realized that the clues had to be reversed so Rounds wasn’t part of it at all.

Oh that’s too funny! Here’s why - I also saw 1A as a possible “Big O’s.” But at a different point in the journey. I had the mechanism and had gotten A-S-O-V. The attempted “Big O’s” parsing led me to think what if B was the first letter. Then “backsolve” popped into my head for what may have been my most ironic solve ever.

“Make discontinued” was my entry point, as it probably was for others. To me it cried out “why not just say Discontinue?” The Morse code one was my favorite.

Also spent some time considering “Cheerios, like more” as a reversed clue for the “dish polish.”

This one was so good!

[TMart]

This was a good one. First thing I noticed was the large 17x17 grid, which usually means lots of theme fill. Looking for a 9 letter word, so probably 18 paired theme answers in the grid. Next thing I noticed was, when I Googled “Oliver! director” (because who knows that off the top of their head?), Oliver Stone came up, and a few clues later STONE showed up in the grid. Ding ding ding!! (Meta bells). “Oliver! director” reverses to “director Oliver”, and it was off to the races to find 8 more reversible clues. I only found 6, but that gave me enough to, yes, BACKSOLVE for the meta answer. (I went back and found the others after the fact, but they weren’t obvious to me at first, so I thought maybe having to backsolve was part of the meta itself).

[Toby]

There's a very deep rabbit hole in this one, where I spent quite a while of the weekend, before crawling out and following advice to try something else. I'm glad we don't have any six week months.

Did it have anything to do with commas?

No, it was seeing the words in the grid that could be read backwards. I found nine of them and actually using one letter of each I found the 9 letter word "rearrange" but no plausible path to get to the word. I then wrote to someone who already solved that I was trying to "backsolve" this one. The solver had to bite her tongue.

[joequavis]

There's a very deep rabbit hole in this one, where I spent quite a while of the weekend, before crawling out and following advice to try something else. I'm glad we don't have any six week months.

Did it have anything to do with commas?

No, it was seeing the words in the grid that could be read backwards. I found nine of them and actually using one letter of each I found the 9 letter word "rearrange" but no plausible path to get to the word. I then wrote to someone who already solved that I was trying to "backsolve" this one. The solver had to bite her tongue.

That's definitely a deeper rabbit hole than the one I explored! COMMAS is spelled out backwards along the center of the top row. With Punctuation Rock fresh in my mind, I just couldn't look away from that.

[Laura M]

Just discovered today that I "backsolved" incorrectly! I had "giant networking computer" = ETNA instead of the Morse code one = EGO. I should have realized. (Per Google, there does seem to be an Etna associated with GitHub, but it was unclear to me whether it was actually a giant networking computer.) I even mentioned Etna in my submission comment, oops.

My biggest rabbit hole was with opposites, i.e. reversing the meaning. I got into it with ONE WAY TRIP crossed with COME AGAIN, where "return" seems to be an antonym of one and a synonym of the other, and also it started with "re" which seemed like it might be a thing. Unfortunately the rest of the grid didn't yield anything that fit that well, but there were enough possibilities that *almost* worked that I kept trying to force it for a really long time.

[FrankieHeck]

Just discovered today that I "backsolved" incorrectly! I had "giant networking computer" = ETNA instead of the Morse code one = EGO. I should have realized. (Per Google, there does seem to be an Etna associated with GitHub, but it was unclear to me whether it was actually a giant networking computer.) I even mentioned Etna in my submission comment, oops.

I was still missing a couple after I backsolved, and I convinced myself that Etna was a giant networking computer, too! Great minds, right?