#625 - "Sit Down For This"

An excellent puzzle written by one of the innovators of the meta crossword format. It comes out every Friday at noon and increases in difficulty throughout the month. Available for modest subscription (worth every cent) here: www.xwordcontest.com
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camandsampowercouple
Posts: 140
Joined: Fri Apr 24, 2020 2:58 am

#81

Post by camandsampowercouple »

THE BLACK KEYS being in the middle of the puzzle SCREAMED music puzzle at me. I noticed all the theme entries were 11 letters long. C C# D D# E F F# G G# A A# B C, oh well that's 13 letters, 12 if you don't count the last C (both of them being just too long to index the them entries into). I thought it must be something else then, oh well. I had a couple of stray ideas until I found something that really struck me.

There seemed to be a clue in the puzzle that matched each theme entry in structure very very well. For instance, LYNX OF UTICA sounds a lot like "Anderson" of Home Improvement. And ANNIES TESLA is a lot like Paul's Pal. PRAY FOR GUAM = Stat for Stottlemyre. I was making weird excited noises as I picked these clues out and I told Sam "I think I solved it." I ended up pairing each entry with a clue (some were harder to find and it was making me feel like it wasn't the answer) and then I took the first letter of the entries from those new clues and they spelled out....nothing. I was heartbroken lol.
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BarbaraK
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Joined: Tue Apr 09, 2019 2:37 pm
Location: Virginia

#82

Post by BarbaraK »

I so thoroughly think of crosswords as grids that it didn't occur to me to put the theme answers in one big line. Even after I found the answer, I was still looking at it as a grid:
theme grid.jpg
And trying to figure out what kind of weird checkerboard pattern this could be.

When I turned it sideways
theme grid rotated.jpg
I thought 'that looks like the pattern of black and white keys.' But why start on the D - that seems weird. (Like others I'd long given up on the black/white keys in each answer separately that because an octave needs 12 or 13, not 11, and if I tried starting on C anyway it's gibberish).

Still took quite a while for the 88 to click.
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Al Sisti
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Joined: Thu Apr 11, 2019 1:28 pm
Location: Whitesboro NY

#83

Post by Al Sisti »

My initial problem -- that I shelved -- was to treat each 11-letter word from scratch; i.e., pulling letters from positions 2-5-7-10, for every themed entry. I eventually got a nudge that essentially said "you may want to revisit an approach you probably already took." My problem now is how to clean 88 magic marker letters off my piano.
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TMart
Posts: 816
Joined: Thu Apr 11, 2019 7:13 am
Location: Malvern, PA

#84

Post by TMart »

My first rabbit hole was seeing FOX and VINE backwards in the first and third themers, and then I spent days anagramming. Then I went down the “black” hole - I saw ONYX and SLATE and thought I was onto something.

In the end, I sussed out the answer using a 1 and 2 gap pattern to find YOU CAN SEARCH in the first three themers and googled for the rest of the lyric. It was only after I had the whole thing that I counted the letters and realized there were 88 and the pattern was the black keys. This one shouldn’t have been that hard, but it was (said every meta solver, ever).
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DrTom
Posts: 3765
Joined: Sat Apr 20, 2019 6:46 pm
Location: Jacksonville, FL

#85

Post by DrTom »

OK, you know me by now, this is going to be long and detailed, but this was my path to enlightenment on this one:

I actually very early on entertained that the sit down was at a piano and black keys meant not just the group I had NEVER heard of. So, if the black keys are actually the black squares and the letters are under those… Well you can see below that unless the answer was “A town in Wales”, I was getting nowhere.
Path step A.jpg

OK, then what if the keys are implied and they are supposed to be above the theme answers? There are 7 black keys above the 11 white keys – YEAH, that has to be it! Choosing which were the right 7 was a toss-up but either way I was getting neighboring towns to the Welsh Village previously named.
Path Step B.jpg

So, I went through a lot of the hoops so many went through:

Sit down : Futon, Siesta (you sit down for a siesta right), Rock (you can sit on a rock) – sorry, thanks for playing

Sit down to eat: LOX, SNAILS, BRIE, COKE, GUM (well ok), HENS (yuk) – Oh, I’ve got you now Mr. Rabbit…the lyric is LOSN BRCO GUHE, or the greeting one gets in one of those Welsh towns.

This all took some time of course and there were countless other forays into oblivion (is BLACk referring to something dark in the clue, ONYX, SLATE, EVIL) and I was exhausted and depressed in the way that ONLY those in this forum will understand when I “phoned a friend” and included my steps so far. The friend simply said, “Do you think the Black Keys are really Matt’s favorite group” and about my comment that I would just sit this one out he said “Sitting down is good”. So that really gave me what I thought was nothing, but what he was saying I realize now was don’t give up because he could see that I had actually grasped a small part of the rabbit, just by the wrong foot. So I went back and looked at the elusive and nettling puzzle and then something I had seen but not noticed leapt out at me. All of the theme answers were the exact same length, 11 letters – odd! There were 8 theme answers …hey wait a minute 8 x 11 = 88 and though I am absolutely no musician even I know how many keys there are on a piano.

That is when it came to me to lay the answers end to end and treat them as if they were on a piano, kind of like I had before but this time in a more systematic way. That is when I constructed this little beauty (which by the way took me longer to do that it took Jangler to solve BOTH the grid and the Meta!!!)
Path Step C.png

I am almost as pleased as I could be (though it is tempered a bit by the fact that someone had to give me a boot in the butt to actually make my mind work – so it was not really a solo solve) but this level of puzzle would have been a KAS 48 (only solvable with a dictionary, Google, three friends, some alcohol, and a month of leap years). Solving these little gems, and listening to the methods, successes and failures of my Muggle and Penguin (which I assume must be the group hoping to score a pen) brothers has made me a much better META person and I believe has changed me even physically – yeah you had to see this coming, it’s a metaphysical change!
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!
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DrTom
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Joined: Sat Apr 20, 2019 6:46 pm
Location: Jacksonville, FL

#86

Post by DrTom »

KayW wrote: Tue May 26, 2020 4:44 pm What a brilliant construction!

It took me way too long to solve this one, but luckily I still have an old spinet gathering dust in a corner and when I finally "Sat down for this" the answer popped right out.

Unfortunately, the meta answer also describes my recent forays to the baking aisle of the grocery store. For a few weeks now I have been searching in vain for instant yeast and wheat bran (for two separate recipes). Apparently baking has become very popular during the pandemic and there is none of either to be found in near north Chicago. The good news is, it's just about past my baking season anyway, so now I have until autumn to locate those ingredients.

On another note... I should probably post the following link under the "Questionable Humor" topic. Our local paper today carried an article on a Chicagoan who posts Dad Jokes in his apartment window each day. I love Dad Jokes and there are a few doozies here:

https://www.chicagotribune.com/coronavi ... story.html
LOVE the Dad jokes, always have. Some of my favorite are science based:
"Are you sure that is what it costs", the electron asked the proton? "I'm positive" he answered, "but for your friend neutron, no charge".

"Know any good sodium jokes?" "Na".

A photon checks into a hotel and the desk clerk asks him "Do you have any luggage", "Nope", he says, "I'm travelling light".

Or word plays:
If Iron Man and Silver Surfer team up are they considered alloys?

Why did Tom Clancy hate math? Fear of all sums (ouch).
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!
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