"Head Count" - June 12, 2020

A place to discuss the weekly Wall Street Journal Crossword Puzzle Contest, starting every Thursday around 4:00 p.m. Eastern time. Please do not post any answers or hints before the contest deadline which is midnight Sunday Eastern time.
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SewYoung
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#241

Post by SewYoung »

Definitely a KAS 5. Never in a million years. Kudos to the really smart Muggles that got this one.
RobM
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#242

Post by RobM »

How many spent time on the red herring at 70A ONEdge, before disallowing it because the list of languages in the 61D didn't include English.
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Joe Ross
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#243

Post by Joe Ross »

oldjudge wrote: Mon Jun 15, 2020 12:26 am Joe-I agree that head count is a type of tally which are summations. Forty is the summation of the five numbers specific to this puzzle. We can agree to disagree. Like I said, I submitted tally as my answer as that was what I thought Mike would want, but I still believe that forty should be accepted also. Mike could have made the puzzle more elegant if he had made the sum of the numbers not be a five letter word so there was no question. I would also have eliminated that “One” answer which apparently was just there to confuse.
Jay,

I love alternate answers, this one included, and am often the muggle burnt by attempting to blaze my own path. Your and others' reasoning makes sense and, had I come to it first, I may have stopped looking for Mike Shenk's intended solution.

What tickles me more is the second step, here:
RobM wrote: Mon Jun 15, 2020 12:21 am Okay, it turns out I was on a distant shore. My answer was FORTY, which was both the sum of the numbers in the theme answers (2+5+6+11+16), AND the combined number of times that the letters corresponding to those numbers appear in the completed grid (6 Bs, 26Es, 2Fs, 2 Ks, and 4 Ps).
Whether I agree that FORTY should be an accepted second answer, or not, RobM deserves a gold shield for this impressive feat of detecting.
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oldjudge
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#244

Post by oldjudge »

We agree on that completely. If this were a PGW meta you would have needed that. If it was my choice I would give Rob the mug just for figuring that out.
JRS51
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#245

Post by JRS51 »

Well, my answer was also FORTY, the sum of the numbers in the theme answers. Oh well, new meta in 4 days...
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spotter
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#246

Post by spotter »

I managed to solve this one and didn't even realize 61D played into it. My only gripe was that ONEDGE at the bottom starts with 1. It's a very small gripe.
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yourpalsal
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#247

Post by yourpalsal »

I have been on the ship on Sunday nights, groaning when the answer comes in, so frustrated that a solution which came so easily to so many utterly eluded me. Tonight I’m on the other side. (Oh, did I fist-pump when I got it! :-) Happened about 30 minutes after finishing a grid that took about 30 minutes longer than usual.) I’m checking in because it’s fun being part of this community. I like you folks. In fact, you’ve inspired a grand opening! Let’s raise a glass and share some of our puzzling tales...

YourPalSal’s Beach & Ship Zoom Cafe
Jun 15, 2020 05:00 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)
Join Zoom Meeting:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86538717219

Beach bums and shipmates! Who’s in?
Last edited by yourpalsal on Mon Jun 15, 2020 1:22 am, edited 2 times in total.
Homer Buckle
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#248

Post by Homer Buckle »

A nice puzzle, but I hope Mike Shenk can answer a question for me. This puzzle, the WSJ Cryptic puzzle this week (by Emily Cox and Henry Rathvon) and this month's UK Daily Guardian Genius Crossword 204 (https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/ ... ssword-204) all involved the spelling of numbers in the answers, and 2 of the 3 included numbers in a foreign language. Did this just happen by chance? Or did all of you consult on these?
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oldjudge
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#249

Post by oldjudge »

Also, PGW did a meta about six months ago also titled Head Count.
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C=64
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#250

Post by C=64 »

I have a habit of ignoring the clues (ahem, 61D), so I assumed that SEX was Latin even though I took a conversational Swedish class earlier this year. Then after consulting Google for GO and ELF, I thought "Boy, won't the Muggles be excited when I tell them the cognate words for eleven in three Nordic languages!"
Icelandic: ellefu (pronounced ET-leh-vuh)
Swedish: elva (pronounced the way it looks)
Danish: elleve (I forget how to pronounce this; Danish is weird)
PHOFER
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#251

Post by PHOFER »

yourpalsal wrote: Mon Jun 15, 2020 1:12 am I have been on the ship on Sunday nights, groaning when the answer comes in, so frustrated that a solution which came so easily to so many utterly eluded me. Tonight I’m on the other side. (Oh, did I fist-pump when I got it! :-) Happened about 30 minutes after finishing a grid that took about 30 minutes longer than usual.) I’m checking in because it’s fun being part of this community. I like you folks. In fact, you’ve inspired a grand opening! Let’s raise a glass and share some of our puzzling tales...

YourPalSal’s Beach & Ship Zoom Cafe
Jun 15, 2020 05:00 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)
Join Zoom Meeting:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86538717219

Beach bums and shipmates! Who’s in?
Great idea, but if you publish a Zoom invitation like this, you will get Zoom-bombed, which can be quite unpleasant. I suggest you find a way to vet who is admitted with a password after you confirm Muggle-identity. (P.S.: I did a bit of fist-pumping myself.)
MaineMarge
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#252

Post by MaineMarge »

Tally was the first 5 letter word to pop into my head when I mulled over possible meanings of the title. ( Sorry WC) I always spend a lot of time with the clues looking for the big hint Mike usually drops there for us. Hey! 61D looks interesting. Maybe we’re counting in foreign languages...
I can count only in Spanish (dos ) and French (seize).....Hmmm.. looks like a long weekend ahead Googling 3 more words for numbers in all the languages of the known world. 🤷‍♀️
A crossword pal helped me see Mike had taken pity on us by showing us exactly which languages to Google in 61D.
Nice one Mike. I loved it.
Raise your hand for recognition if you are one of the Mensas who knew these 5 number words by sight.🏆
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Joepickett
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#253

Post by Joepickett »

I found this page to be useful.
All the answers in one place.

https://sites.google.com/site/largenumb ... eign_names

I saw Dos and Seize right away which got me started down the right path.
damefox
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#254

Post by damefox »

I don't know how people who didn't see 61D did this. If I hadn't noticed that clue, I would've assumed I was wrong about the mechanism because there was no way the WSJ contest would require a Google search not just to translate a number but also to determine what language it was in the first place. (I guess you did have to figure our which of the five numbers went with which of the five languages, if you didn't already know, but that is a much more reasonable sample set than, say, all the languages in the world.)
Last edited by damefox on Mon Jun 15, 2020 7:21 am, edited 2 times in total.
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DrTom
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#255

Post by DrTom »

oldjudge wrote: Mon Jun 15, 2020 12:32 am On a more positive note, who would have guessed that you could learn new things about SEX in a crossword puzzle.
It all becomes painfully clear!
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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#256

Post by DrTom »

Not even close, whiffed on recognizing the numbers (even though I looked for words in the "forced" clues), whiffed on noticing the BILLBOARD clue, guess I need to regroup. Congratulations to the TALLY solvers and a hearty "darn close" to the FORTY solvers; I'd have been happy to get even that!
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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Bird Lives
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#257

Post by Bird Lives »

Experience helps. I got this one very quickly, but I think that was because I remembered a puzzle -- probably a Gaffney -- where the numbers in Spanish (but anagrammed, IIRC) appeared at the end of the theme words. I didn't solve that one at all. So DOS was pretty much all I needed. I didn't even take note of the clue at 61D till after I'd gotten the meta.
Last edited by Bird Lives on Mon Jun 15, 2020 7:48 am, edited 1 time in total.
Jay
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ChrisKochmanski
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#258

Post by ChrisKochmanski »

I wouldn't say this one was easy -- not at all -- but DOS quickly got me thinking numbers, and I vaguely remembered SEIZE being a number, from high school French, so the puzzle flowed fairly smoothly, and very satisfyingly, from there.
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Bob cruise director
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#259

Post by Bob cruise director »

I got hung up on "head" meaning bathroom for the longest time. I found LOOp 57A and WC in 49A and was convinced that there must be three others.

And the process of using the numbers to find the first letters from other answers/clues is classic Mike Shank. What is more Gaffneyesque is having to have or easily look up the knowledge of the numbers in foreign languages - however he gave you what to look for in the clumbsily worded clue for 61D

While I was buried looking for more "heads", C=64 posted in his intro that he was studying Icelandic, Swedish and Danish for fun. I had this picture of a sign in Icelandic so I thought it would be funny to show everyone how crazy the language was. Little did I know that language was a key to the meta. When it was pointed out, I took down the post and found something else. After someone comments or likes a post, you can not take it down so I deleted the picture and replaced the text with an "a"

I will let C=64 translate

Robert Stevens Littleton MA2012_06_22EOS 50D5529.JPG
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FrankieHeck
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#260

Post by FrankieHeck »

I also first went down the WC/LOO path. Then a lettuce path. Then a heads/tails (HHH in the clues and Hs in the puzzle) path. Then a FOREhead, EGGhead, BEDhead path. I did submit TALLY in the end.
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