"Mark My Words" December 15, 2023

[vandono]

Floated ashore Thursday but have been busy with birthday things for one of my sweet daughters, a graduation and a major implementation at work.

After all of that, I'll have a nice single malt. Maybe a Tomintoul.

[Penny_Keatley]

I spent a good amount of time staring at this one before it hit me! Nice to make it to shore before time ran out.

[kimbo.k]

Solved the grid Friday evening and got nowhere with the meta. Looked at it last night and immediately saw what I was looking for. Went through another step that couldn’t have come together by accident, but didn’t have that 100% feeling enough to say I’m ashore. I’ll turn in my guess and find out tomorrow, but sounds like I may be in a “boat” with others.

[kgiano]

On the beach

[JoeFlanders]

Ashore. Was basically what I thought the construct of the meta was, but not exactly. Clever as always

[hcbirker]

[Ergcat]

SMILE can be expressed by an emoticon ! And I think that clue 1d CMU was A confirmation!

From Britannica.com:
“Emoticons are punctuation marks, letters, and numbers used to create pictorial icons that generally display an emotion or sentiment.

The emoticon came into being after a joke went wrong at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in 1982. A gag about a fake mercury spill posted to an online message board sent the university into a tizzy, and because of this confusion, Dr. Scott E. Fahlman suggested that jokes and nonjokes be marked by two sets of characters we now recognize as standard emoticons: the smiley face :-) and the frowning face :-(. After this, emoticons were a big hit among Internet users.”

[mheberlingx100]

How is a smile something you can write? My answer was emoticon, which is the representation of a word like smile through punctuation. All the punctuation hidden in the long answers are used in emoticons, and the smile is the classic emoticon.

[altosax]

I still think “punctuation “ is a better answer. I don’t care for the other answer.

[JeanneC]

FWIW Department:
“Miles” can also be expressed in numbers as well as letters. The numbers appear on mile MARKers.
Congrats to those who solved.

[Gman]

I submitted EMOTICON

[Bonnibel]

SMILE can be expressed by an emoticon ! And I think that clue 1d CMU was A confirmation!

From Britannia.com:
“Emoticons are punctuation marks, letters, and numbers used to create pictorial icons that generally display an emotion or sentiment.

The emoticon came into being after a joke went wrong at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in 1982. A gag about a fake mercury spill posted to an online message board sent the university into a tizzy, and because of this confusion, Dr. Scott E. Fahlman suggested that jokes and nonjokes be marked by two sets of characters we now recognize as standard emoticons: the smiley face :) and the frowning face :-(. After this, emoticons were a big hit among Internet users.”

WOW this is why I love this forum! Thank you for this very interesting factoid! I did solve the meta but I did not know this CMU backstory. LOVE IT! :) ;)

[SHIWUTONG]

I almost had the right answer

[Tom Shea]

I submitted smile, but was torn about submitting smiley face -- from the prompt.

Couldn't find a mechanism to get smiley face so went with smile. I guess that means I'll get the mug

[Damaged]

Also, the letter "I" where the emoticon's "eyes" would be - happy coincidence or not, mind blown.

2 for 2 since discovering this new obsession.

[femullen]

SMILE, MILES, LIMES, SLIME. I still don't get it.

8^(

[Miki]

TGWWNP!

Thank God we were not pageanted

[femullen]

I was going to guess "music," but step 1 was clear on what the available letters were. A typed glyph never occurred to me. Alas, another week at sea.

But while we're on this subject, here are some other "typos" I sometimes use.

Happy

8^)

Joyous

8^D

Giddy

<|^D

Sad

8^(

Angry

>8^(

Irate

>8^<

And, my favourite, asleep

|^o

[Wendy Walker]

A bakery we walked past on Saturday! We don't normally walk past bakeries but we were on our way to Mimi's Tea Cottage for a sumptuous tea (sandwiches, scones, mini-desserts) after a performance of "The Nutcracker." Mark is a VERY good sport -- who, by the way, really wanted the meta answer to be either SIMILE or EMAILS (because the latter are written without postal letters).

[heroine.chic]

I must say, I was extremely relieved to have confirmed that I submitted the correct answer.

In my mind one can draw or type a SMILE, but I've never in my life mentioned writing one, so I was unsure about my answer.

PHEW!