#626 - "Three-Quarter Time"

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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KayW
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#61

Post by KayW »

Wow. Brilliant meta. And a KAS4 when all said and done. I think I COULD have/SHOULD have seen this.

Dr Tom you were closer than you knew! ARRR(GH)indeed.
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DrTom
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#62

Post by DrTom »

Well now, that was truly a NEVER GONNA HAPPEN. The closest I got was by accident and, as I was told, my "not a spoiler" actually was a bit of a spoiler. I wondered why AHOYMATEYS was the "Talk like a Pirate" phrase since almost everyone uses the ARRRGGHH. I thought about that but did nothing, nor would I ever have thought to because none of the theme answers is really in my wheelhouse (except ARRRGGHH). I suppose I will add that little trick to my solving armory when I have NOTHING else and can see no path.

Congratulations to those who solved. The mechanism was pretty obtuse and the Title as well, but of course they become quite elegant once revealed, the one letter is three-quarters of the name.

Oh, and it was pure evil to have EVERY letter EXCEPT QU in a grid where the answer depended on a word with QU in it. If that was not intentional it was an amazing coincidence, and if it was intentional, please refer tot he beginning of the this paragraph.
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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#63

Post by DrTom »

KayW wrote: โ†‘Tue Jun 02, 2020 12:17 pm Wow. Brilliant meta. And a KAS4 when all said and done. I think I COULD have/SHOULD have seen this.

Dr Tom you were closer than you knew! ARRR(GH)indeed.
I have a great deal of comfort knowing I would NEVER have gotten this, ARRRGGHH or not. It will help me sleep tonight (something that the META did not help me do last night!)
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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#64

Post by Big Mac »

I am not on the level of solving where I am ever going to think of answers completely outside the grid or clues. Bravo to you if you possess that creativity.
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spotter
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#65

Post by spotter »

Yep, wasn't going to get that one. The only way I might have stumbled on it would've been by researching NAFTA more and that seemed too boring. On to MMMM!
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Thurman8er
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#66

Post by Thurman8er »

A definite KAS 5 and not a great puzzle, IMO. Too many rabbit holes, too much Googling, and an ARRR? Tough way to end the streak, but it helps knowing it was never gonna happen.
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KayW
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#67

Post by KayW »

...and of course - kudos to all who did solve, and many thanks to LookOut Bear who tried to steer me out of my dead ends!

Hmmm perhaps closer to a Kas5 after all.
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#68

Post by Lookout Bear »

A tough one for sure, but ultimately "fair" for a Week 5. This will fall into the "simple but tough" category since there was really only one step, but what a big step it was! Also tough that the title doesn't really point you into the right direction, but only serves to validate once you're on the right path. And you probably had no chance knowing all the trivia, so it relied on a hefty dose of google!
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#69

Post by damefox »

"Find the word not in the puzzle that fits this clue" is definitely a step up in difficulty from Matt's usual mechanism of "find the other entry in the grid that is somehow related to this clue." Without the two senator-related clues, I never would've seen this one. My first guess that actually led somewhere was that the alternative answer we needed was hidden inside the real answer (e.g., BASEBALL is in BASKETBALL, and it is also an Olympic sport), which is what led me to look up the senators in the first place, which then dropped me on the right path.
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#70

Post by TMart »

This was definitely a week 5. But the NAFTA clues stuck out like a sore thumb. I originally filled them in from the crossings, but when nothing else seemed to work, I googled the NAFTA vote, and given the title, as soon as I saw Nunn I knew I had the mechanism, and Dodd was also on the list to confirm it.

It took me longer than it should have to figure out epee (my daughter is a fencer, so I should have seen it sooner, but in my defense she is a saber fencer, so I don't see too many epees.)

Joseph Papp was pretty obscure. I had to backsolve for the P after initially looking for a W there. And while having to make pirate noises to finish up was lots of fun, my only quibble is that ARRR doesnโ€™t follow the same pattern as the others, but maybe some pirates say RARR?

Great meta, and not *too* unfair. I think a Google of the NAFTA vote was clearly the path to solving it.
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#71

Post by Bird Lives »

I never would have gotten it. And if it requires that much Googling, I don't feel so bad, though of course I'd feel much better if I had actually gotten it.

The one rabbit hole I could find was that each long entry would have an associated four-letter word, and each of those words would be in the grid but with one letter missing, hence three-quarter time. Joe Lieberman is from Conn. So if CNN had been in the grid, the missing O would be part of the solution. Not a bad idea, but I was looking for meta in all the wrong places -- the grid rather than the Internet.
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DrTom
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#72

Post by DrTom »

Wow, my congratulations to damefeox and TMart for finding the way through free trade! This would have been a KAS5 for me no matter what. I mean I also pulled up the voting list and looked at those voting, looked at BOTH voting from the State and STILL saw nothing. I was looking to see if the voting order was listed and they voted 3/4 of the way through or they were either perhaps the 34th and/or 75th (three quarters) voters. I looked at A QUARTER HORSE, BASKETBALL QUARTER and QUARTERDECK (on a pirate ship) but ABQ seemed an incomplete answer. I tried to find another 25 percent to team with AHALF, but nothing went very far. I'll take this method under advisement, add it to the "have you tried this yet" and hope the next time it comes up I'll remember.

I guess I should have been suspicious when all of the theme answers seemed pretty out there, but for a grid that started with the word HAJJ - anything was possible (by the way after the mechanism was published I tried looking up famous directors named Joseph, oddly enough there is one Joseph HAJ - so glad I did not tumble to the right path or that would have definitely led me astray)
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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#73

Post by Laura M »

The QU thing was insidious, I was in that rabbit hole for a long time. The lack of QU in the grid when every other letter was represented, plus Quarter in the title and a gratuitous Quinnipiac University (QU) in the clues had me convinced this had to be the path. Eventually I started thinking about clues that could have alternate answers, but I was still thinking in terms of the alternates containing Q or U or preferably both. I looked up novels published in 1847 and saw both Jane Eyre and Omoo, both more likely crossword fodder than Vanity Fair, but nothing with Q. But there were lots of novels, I'd try something more definite. The NAFTA senators: Nunn--well, there was a U--and Dodd. Just a second... At that point I knew, but was still very surprised that QU didn't play into it.
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#74

Post by camandsampowercouple »

I was very positive that this was another music puzzle. Three-Quarter Time was screaming at me, there are three quarter notes per measure. SCORING right in the middle of the puzzle (making music for) 123, 123, 123, 123...hmmm. I tried to count by 3's across all the theme answers, that didn't lead me anywhere. At some point I noticed that a lot of the theme answers had THREE notes in them.

m A n k i E w i C z,
v A n i t y F A i r,
A h o y m A t E y s,
but then B A s k E t B A l l has 5, C o v E r D E l l and l i E B E r m A n have 4, that's the end of that idea.

All the theme clues share a row with a 4 letter word.

MANKIEWICS - TEND
VANITY FAIR - ALES
COVERDELL - NINE
LIEBERMAN - RIVE
BASKETBALL - POLL
AHOY MATEYS - RYAN

TENd and NINE show off the character count for MANKIEWICZ (10) and COVERDELL (9). RIVE sounds a lot like FIVE.

I've never seen LIESL before and had to google the sound of music cast to figure it out. LIESL is a part of a handful of 5 letter words in the grid that can also be read as a 4 letter word + 1 letter.

LIES L
WHAT D
LOCK E
BELL Y
LOOT S (bleh)

LIESL was also suspiciously near ELIZA and LEI, and I kept getting tripped up with LIEBERMAN, trying to find other instances of theme clues being represented like that led me nowhere.

LIE BER MAN split into 3 parts can be found elswhere in the puzzle. LIEsl roBERto and MANkiewicz. Didn't have any success finding other themers like this.


My last attempt at solving was to backwards engineer an answer by picking out a phrase in the theme clues. You can pull the word MAKE out of MANKIEWICZ. I thought the answer might be something like MAKE A NICE something... make a nice diagram, make a nice chart... idk, but that didn't lead me anywhere.

Congrats to those that solved this one. This puzzle drove me mad.
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#75

Post by Joe Ross »

My last minute efforts banked on phonetics & MAN KI E WICZ -- MAIN KEY OF WHICH, etc. Obviously, not the correct path.

It looked almost promising for 3 minutes...

Great learning lesson & fantastic puzzle.
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#76

Post by camandsampowercouple »

How does EPEE mean an event at the olympics? I know that fencing is a sport but, is the event ever referred to as EPEE?
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#77

Post by camandsampowercouple »

Sincerely I had the worst night of sleep I've had in recent memory and I think this puzzle was to blame.
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DrTom
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#78

Post by DrTom »

camandsampowercouple wrote: โ†‘Tue Jun 02, 2020 7:02 pm How does EPEE mean an event at the olympics? I know that fencing is a sport but, is the event ever referred to as EPEE?
Like you I thought this odd, but I checked and the event is called Epee. From Wikipedia: "While modern sport fencing has three weaponsโ€”foil, รฉpรฉe, and sabre, each a separate eventโ€”รฉpรฉe is the only one in which the entire body is the valid target area ..."
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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FrankieHeck
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#79

Post by FrankieHeck »

Welp, that's why I don't like to take hints. I totally earned this loss. I had a gentle breeze of the idea of looking for alternate answers, and briefly thought of ARRR, but let them just pass right through me, as I continued to start at the information right in front of me.

It used to drive me absolutely bonkers when my kids needed help finding things, because their strategy was to basically stand in a room and look around. I would lose my patience and try to explain to them "You have to MOVE around! You have to pick things up and MOVE them! Look BEHIND things and UNDER things. Your [whatever] isn't going to just walk out to you!" And here I was, staring at the same information like my kids. Shame on me. :lol:
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DrTom
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#80

Post by DrTom »

FrankieHeck wrote: โ†‘Tue Jun 02, 2020 9:31 pm Welp, that's why I don't like to take hints. I totally earned this loss. I had a gentle breeze of the idea of looking for alternate answers, and briefly thought of ARRR, but let them just pass right through me, as I continued to start at the information right in front of me.

It used to drive me absolutely bonkers when my kids needed help finding things, because their strategy was to basically stand in a room and look around. I would lose my patience and try to explain to them "You have to MOVE around! You have to pick things up and MOVE them! Look BEHIND things and UNDER things. Your [whatever] isn't going to just walk out to you!" And here I was, staring at the same information like my kids. Shame on me. :lol:
Yes BUT - if they did not find the thing after moving, and looking and picking things up, did you just let hem go without the "thing" and say OK, well obviously you don't need your shoes, lunch, pants, ID card, etc. or did you say "have you looked under the bed", "where was the last place you had it", or "do you think it might be in your bookbag?". To me these are the type of hints that let me find something and teach me how to look for things in the future.

I will take a "LOSE" if I have NO idea and am just never going to find it because it is not in "my house", but if it is I will take (and give) nudges to help advance up the chain of "finders" and perhaps get competent enough to find things by myself. Not judging understand, just making the case for help.

If anyone thinks that reduced their chance for a mug let me know and I'll buy one and send it to you. Granted it probably won't be a WSJCC mug unless they are black-marketed, but I'll try to get close. (Oh, and if they are black-marketed I'll probably get one for myself since that is the only way that is ever going to happen)
Last edited by DrTom on Tue Jun 02, 2020 11:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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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