#617 - "Game Time"

[Geoduck]

OK, now I see it.

I think this one would be been MUCH easier to solve if I had printed out the puzzle and started outlining those four clusters of letters.

[damefox]

I think I might be the only crossword enthusiast who never had any interest in Scrabble. Still, a Scrabble-related mechanism did occur to me, although it took many hints to get me unstuck. I like to think if I had a printer I would've noticed the B, C, M, and P clusters on my own. Apparently Jangler submitted ROCK? At least one person submitted Tom Brady, thinking the arrangement of letters said 2302. This is my big gripe with this kind of puzzle; there shouldn't be any ambiguity in the final answer, and visual puzzles like this sometimes leave too much room for interpretation. (Also they are much easier to solve when printed out, and I'm without printer access indefinitely at this point.)

[FrankieHeck]

My favorite wrong turn was looking for three of the Pointer Sisters in there. Only got as far as ILSA being one letter away from ISSA. One of about 32 wrong paths I followed.

[BarbaraK]

I noticed all the Bs in that top corner and saw there were no others anywhere in the puzzle, so I looked for and found the other clusters.

I never got anywhere near the scrabble connection. I thought it might be significant that the pairs of letters BC and PM both had a connection to time and that the three pointers could be the hour, minute, and second hands of a clock. Now I know why I never got anywhere with that.

[sharkicicles]

This was one of those “never in a million years” ones for me. I don’t think I’ve played Scrabble in at least a decade.

[DrTom]

I think I might be the only crossword enthusiast who never had any interest in Scrabble. Still, a Scrabble-related mechanism did occur to me, although it took many hints to get me unstuck. I like to think if I had a printer I would've noticed the B, C, M, and P clusters on my own. Apparently Jangler submitted ROCK? At least one person submitted Tom Brady, thinking the arrangement of letters said 2302. This is my big gripe with this kind of puzzle; there shouldn't be any ambiguity in the final answer, and visual puzzles like this sometimes leave too much room for interpretation. (Also they are much easier to solve when printed out, and I'm without printer access indefinitely at this point.)

Nope, I was hopelessly lost because of the same basic defect. You at least had the smarts to get to Scrabble. Even though finally someone hit me with enough nudges to finally take pity and say "Try Scrabble" I STILL would not have gotten this had I had several "Shelter-in-Place" weeks/months to solve it. I'm sure none of these will ever be perfect (and as an aside I can see the R instead of the K and maybe even the C which could even be an O but the K means you ignore an obvious "M" dot) but good heavens this was elegant.

[joequavis]

My favorite wrong turn was looking for three of the Pointer Sisters in there. Only got as far as ILSA being one letter away from ISSA. One of about 32 wrong paths I followed.

Nice. My favorite was waking up in the middle of the night last night thinking "pointers" and "time" would combine to be hands on the face of a clock and maybe the little arrows at the end would spell or clue something. Nope.

Like some others, I never would have made the leap to scrabble, especially given the sports-themed hinting. I may have noticed subliminally some clusters, but saw them more as groups of doubles and just dismissed it.

[FrankieHeck]

My favorite wrong turn was looking for three of the Pointer Sisters in there. Only got as far as ILSA being one letter away from ISSA. One of about 32 wrong paths I followed.

Nice. My favorite was waking up in the middle of the night last night thinking "pointers" and "time" would combine to be hands on the face of a clock and maybe the little arrows at the end would spell or clue something. Nope.

Like some others, I never would have made the leap to scrabble, especially given the sports-themed hinting. I may have noticed subliminally some clusters, but saw them more as groups of doubles and just dismissed it.

I looked for clock hands, too! Then one night I went to sleep absolutely convinced that "Game Time" and "Three pointers" referred to hunting, and the points on a buck. Thought for sure I'd be able to use buck or stag or find wild animals in there haha. Noooooo dice.

[joequavis]

I noticed all the Bs in that top corner and saw there were no others anywhere in the puzzle, so I looked for and found the other clusters.

I never got anywhere near the scrabble connection. I thought it might be significant that the pairs of letters BC and PM both had a connection to time and that the three pointers could be the hour, minute, and second hands of a clock. Now I know why I never got anywhere with that.

I thought of the clock thing and even thought that would be a cool meta-chanism, if combined with some HMS clues...

[KayW]

I eventually got this - with a LOT of help. I never saw the scrabble connection until after it was pointed out to me explicitly after I got on the leaderboard. Which is embarrassing considering how many hours my family spent playing that game ...in the previous century anyway. I mean if it was a sports thing I could easily claim ignorance.

The dead-end rut I was stuck in was looking at THREEPOINTERS and trying to do something with STAKES and AWL (and possibly RAY) as the THREE POINTERs in the grid. But that went nowhere fast.

A marvel of construction.

[DrTom]

So, very early with some bizarre strategy I got 4 letters by thinking "Three Pointers" TLAs - hmmm. So I took the first letters of BRB, OMG, ETA and what I thought was a hidden Keep In Touch (KIT) and said WOW KOBE, a famous athlete and recent traumatic demise. I was going to submit it but obviously I had to overlook other obvious TLAs and use some inside the grid, some outside the grid and some that I inferred. Truthfully I am so glad I did NOT submit that because the elegance of this puzzle demands it be solved not guessed or slopped into.

I have yet to solve a MGWCC and I would not have solved this with a SELF-QUARANTINE of months and months, but even if I NEVER get one it is worth the price of admission just to see what he comes up with. I am in awe, and also in awe of the incredible group of smart sleuths that got this - you are my META heroes.

[Al Sisti]

So back to my earlier post when I wondered if my first guess was what Jangler submitted. It wasn't -- he submitted ROCK (and there is a small movement afoot to get the panel to take another look at his answer). My original guess was "ALI." I looked for three pointers -- three pointed things -- and saw "AWL," and (forcing the L and I, in order) thought it might be "LIKES" (although the pointer is a thumb) and "ITEM" (even more a tenuous connection to "point" than LIKES was). Way too far from getting a click, so I dropped the idea.

[Hector]

ROCK is . . . not horrible.

[Geoduck]

Not being a sports person, I have no idea why ROCK would be a good answer or how one would get there from this grid. Any help?

Also, how do you know how this Jangler person submitted. I don't see anything on the Gaffney page yet.

Halp!

[Al Sisti]

Not being a sports person, I have no idea why ROCK would be a good answer or how one would get there from this grid. Any help?

Also, how do you know how this Jangler person submitted. I don't see anything on the Gaffney page yet.

Halp!

He showed up --early -- on the overall (lifetime) scoresheet; rightmost tab. It was also mentioned here, and on Fiend, and on Facebook. He's still the king.

[Geoduck]

Not being a sports person, I have no idea why ROCK would be a good answer or how one would get there from this grid. Any help?

Also, how do you know how this Jangler person submitted. I don't see anything on the Gaffney page yet.

Halp!

He showed up --early -- on the overall (lifetime) scoresheet; rightmost tab. It was also mentioned here, and on Fiend, and on Facebook. He's still the king.

I know about the scoresheet, but that doesn't (obviously) give the answer the person submitted or how they derived their answer. I don't see anything here other than that he submitted ROCK but not how he derived that or who ROCK might be.

I suppose I could go to (((shudder))) Facebook and see if I can find something.

[Geoduck]

I give up. the Facebook link on his page is broken. I can find his personal page on Facebook, but nothing else.

Such is life.

[Al Sisti]

Not being a sports person, I have no idea why ROCK would be a good answer or how one would get there from this grid. Any help?

Also, how do you know how this Jangler person submitted. I don't see anything on the Gaffney page yet.

Halp!

He showed up --early -- on the overall (lifetime) scoresheet; rightmost tab. It was also mentioned here, and on Fiend, and on Facebook. He's still the king.

I know about the scoresheet, but that doesn't (obviously) give the answer the person submitted or how they derived their answer. I don't see anything here other than that he submitted ROCK but not how he derived that or who ROCK might be.

I suppose I could go to (((shudder))) Facebook and see if I can find something.

Oh God, don't do that!! You're right, Matt doesn't note the wrong answer... that probably shot through the ether by fellow cruciverbalists. I didn't know what he submitted until I read it on Crossword Fiend (https://crosswordfiend.com/). The Rock is Duane Johnson, and as a past wrestler, he is (if you squint your eyes) a "famous athlete." The question the panel is probably looking at is could the connect the dots M, P, C and B be read as ROCK...

[TMart]

I started out looking for triangles (“three-pointers”) of letters but that went nowhere. Then I woke up with the Scrabble angle. I read SELECTRIC as “select RIC”, then added B,C,M and P for three-pointers, and added STILL (keep STILL) and pretty much came up with more garbage. After that, I noticed the three-pointers were clustered, and I struggled for a while to get letters by connecting them, but finally got to Kobe. I can see where these “connect the dots” puzzles are confusing. I’m never sure how to connect - K could easily be R, and E could be K or B depending on how you connect them.

[oldjudge]

I can’t see ROCK being accepted. Now ROSE is another story as the third letter can definitely be an S. However, there is no way that the fourth letter is a K. The second M in EDAMAME kills that.