MGWCC #828 — "Know Your Place"

[HunterX]

Finally got it with a nudge. Submitted for transporting (transportering? transportage?) aboard.

[Joe Ross]

Not a clue.

Somebody please post a reveal at noon and THANK YOU!

[BarbaraK]

Not a clue.

Somebody please post a reveal at noon and THANK YOU!

I will post the answer, a story, and maybe even some song lyrics:)

[BarbaraK]

The second word of each theme entry comes after an ordinal number in a common phrase.
Fifth column
Sixth sense
Seventh heaven
Eleventh hour
Twelfth night
The letters in the corresponding squares spell CLASS; add an ordinal again to get FIRST-CLASS, which I would indeed apply to this crossword.


This one jumped out at me pretty quickly because seventh heaven was the key to an answer of another meta that I remember fondly.

Back in January, 2017, I was a baby muggle, had been solving for under a year, and was totally hooked. I was on vacation in Australia and, lacking access to printers (and having not yet thought of carrying blank grids with me) was hand drawing grids every Friday and then going back and forth with my cell phone.

On January 20th, the meta was "That's an Order!" by Matt Gaffney. And I stared and stared for ages seeing nothing. This was back in the old days, when we walked uphill both ways barefoot to get to the metas and didn't have PMs or Zoom or Discord or any other way I knew about to communicate privately with other solvers. It was so far back, I don't think we were even called muggles yet. So there was nothing to do but stare and noodle and ponder and dig around in empty rabbit holes. And on the last night, as I was lying in bed thinking about the theme answers, it suddenly clicked that, like this week, they all had a word that worked with an ordinal number, in that case 1-6 and we were looking for the 7th, which of course would be seventh heaven, which led to the answer, "a Bee Gees hit" "Too Much Heaven". I jumped up and quickly submitted the answer, lest I fall asleep and forget by morning. And I walked around on cloud nine for days. A perfect Kas 3 (though that also may not have been invented yet.)

It's interesting, as I look back at my list of those early puzzles, that most of them I couldn't tell you a thing about. But the ones I remember vividly are the really hard ones. This one made such an impression it was featured in the song lyrics I wrote commemorating my first year of metas.

--------------------
To All the Metas I’ve Loved Before



based on:




To all the metas I've loved before

Including those I’ve struggled o’er

I'm glad they came along

I dedicate this song

To all the metas I've loved before



To all constructors who baffled me

Matt, Patrick, Peter, Todd, and “Marie”

For helping me to grow

I owe a lot, I know

To all constructors who baffled me



New meta will be out on Thursday

What kind of feeling will it bring

The ecstasy of TOO MUCH HEAVEN

Or the agony of sTINg



To all the nice folks on this blog

Participating in this dialog

Those at sea on the cruise

Those sharing their good news

Hope to see you on the blog mug log



It’s a year since my first meta, I see

So happy meta-anniversary

Looking forward to many more

Puzzles and puzzles galore

Joining all the metas I've loved before

---------------------

Seven years later, I've clearly gotten my wish for puzzles and puzzles galore. There are more now than I can even keep up with, and the list of constructors whose puzzles I've enjoyed is far too long to even try write.

So, to quote one more song, "Thanks for the Memories"!

[ajk]

Never heard of Fifth COLUMN before this, which probably would have stopped me getting it solo (not saying it should have, just that I suspect it would have). Fortunately group solve to the rescue. Took me a couple of beats after observing that the letters spelled CLASS, which caused everyone else to get it instantly.

[schmidzy]

Raise your hand if you also couldn't see past 10 letters / 5 themers = 2 letters per themer!

My WAG was "World-Class," which tied in nicely with my recurring conviction that "Place" would mean, well, places. As it turns out, I was pretty close. Kinda surprised it wasn't an accepted alternative actually, considering it would have made a nice sixth themer. Although given I took a total shot in the dark, I definitely don't deserve credit. Kudos to all who managed to solo this one!

[MMe]

My WAG was "World-Class," which tied in nicely with my recurring conviction that "Place" would mean, well, places. As it turns out, I was pretty close. Kinda surprised it wasn't an accepted alternative actually, considering it would have made a nice sixth themer.

It would be just as good a themer as HOGHEAVEN. Maybe Matt would have accepted it had it been accompanied by a note explaining why you didn't stop with the very plausible answer "first-class" (the lack of such a note is a tip-off that you didn't get there).

Nothing from @joon on Fiend?

[HoldThatThought]

Given that the metanism was based on

5th column
6th sense
7th heaven
11th hour and
12th night

I can't see how "World" + class could arguably have been an acceptable alternative answer.

5th, 6th, 7th 11th, 12th and 1st.

[Andrew Bradburn]

My WAG was "World-Class," which tied in nicely with my recurring conviction that "Place" would mean, well, places. As it turns out, I was pretty close. Kinda surprised it wasn't an accepted alternative actually, considering it would have made a nice sixth themer.

It would be just as good a themer as HOGHEAVEN. Maybe Matt would have accepted it had it been accompanied by a note explaining why you didn't stop with the very plausible answer "first-class" (the lack of such a note is a tip-off that you didn't get there).

Nothing from @joon on Fiend?

Joon was at ACPT this past weekend (where he finished 7th!). Wonder if he even had time to do the puzzle.

[Streroto]

KAS 5 for me on a purported week 2.

[ZooAnimalsOnWheels]

I was also working as if ten words would give me ten letters, so I needed a nudge to focus on the final words only, but got there pretty quick after that. Especially with an odd word like IONIC, it was hard not to focus on those.

Looking at the word pairs, I was drawn to the fact that one of each pair had a distinct opposite:
COLUMN : ROW
COMMON: RARE
HEAVEN : HELL
AMATEUR : PRO
NIGHT : DAY
And if you allow for the shortened PRO, they are all 3- or 4-letter words perfect for hiding in a crossword. I could never make that go anywhere, but I think it kept me from looking for other language things.

I also thought about "place" from the title as being a reference to ordinals, but I went looking for those words instead of adding them. The oddness of 57A (+4 in Ancient Rome) made me consider that other clue numbers might be involved and we had '33 %, briefly' and '24 H'. 24 H looked like "24 hours" to me, but I translated 33 % to "one third", or just "third" briefly. Of course I couldn't find anything else from there, but 34A (Howard and Livingston, for two) kept drawing my eye. The names are arbitrary so the clue could be initialized as "HALF two", or "one", so I just kept wandering farther afield.

Another oddity was that the three-letter words running down the right side of the puzzle spell "west" with their first letters, even though the right side of the grid would be east, and SSW was in the NE corner. That seemed to fit with the title, but again had no traction after that observation.

[BarbaraK]

…
Nothing from @joon on Fiend?

Joon was at ACPT this past weekend (where he finished 7th!). Wonder if he even had time to do the puzzle.

That was the previous weekend, the ACPT themed puzzle with former winner Eric Agard as the answer. Maybe he’s still celebrating.

Anyway, it looks like @benchen71 stepped up and did a Fiend write-up. (With a lovely graphic, if I do say so myself )

[Andrew Bradburn]

So it was, thanks for the correction! I just watched Ben Bass's wrapup of the event on Twitch, so it was in my mind that it just happened.