"Missing Links" - July 10, 2020

[SusieG]

I also got hung up on CROATOAN after my son doodled on my crossword and my family named the creature “CROATOAN”. I couldn’t unsee it. Finally had to fold the paper in half so I wouldn’t be distracted! Still took me a while to find the APEs. MAN jumped out quickly after TACOMAN (which also sent me down a rabbit hole).

[Richard]

Definitely a KAS 5 for me this week.
Saw parapet/papaeete (never noticing APEs) and linked para-K-eet. Spent too much time trying to devise one-letter links between first and last syllables (stressed or not!) of emanate, rosssea, germane, etc.
Also got really hung up after "linking" taco-bell-man and acted-up-on looking for more like that.
Oh, well. There's always Thursday

I did the same thing. There are some that I think are just not my style like last weeks and I would probably never get. This is one I think I should have gotten. Oh well, another one coming up. In my opinion this one was excellent.

[Hector]

Yay for Southern Cross. I enjoy the Kinks' Ape Man except for the ugly use of "voodoo" as part of living like an "ape man".

[LadyBird]

I went with golf first--the words in the left-most column started with PGA and 7D was tee. There were 5 places (Papeete. Oman, Ross sea, Itasca, Epsom) but nothing developed there. Tried to backsolve for BRATS--nope. I also went down the numbers hole.Then I tried to link together the separate groupings of black spaces.

I noticed the 5 instances of MAN fairly early and tried to make new words with them. 14A ICE was right above MAN--although I would have preferred caveman. Then lit was right before man. But that could be a stethoscope. So I abandoned man. Finally, I noticed ape and then it fell into place. Although I googled the definition of nexus just to be sure.

[BethA]

Flailed about for awhile, saw golf, but got nowhere. Then shocked at how long it took me to see all of the APEs and all of the MANs. Still wasn’t getting it, now I have 10 things instead of 5! I always like to scribble on a separate blank sheet of paper so I don’t mess up the grid. But decided to take a look back in case positions of things were important. Aha! Click. Very important! It all came together. But on mine, I drew lines from the APE to the MAN - A to M, P to A, E to N, then the middle letters jumped out at me. NEXUS.

I’m not so familiar with the Kinks Apeman video. All I could think of after solving was the Star Trek movie Generations! I think it would have been #7, but they stopped numbering at that point.

I think this puzzle was a work of art - a masterpiece! There are only a few I remember so vividly and am so impressed by. One was a [Edit: Patrick Merrell], a maze of lab RATs in the NYT Sunday. Another was a NYT week-long contest, by the end, I had to cut the puzzle apart and turn it into a die - the answer was “Alea iacta est“, the die is cast! [Edit - I was thinking that was Patrick Berry, just looked it up, and it was.]

[TPS]

All I could think of after solving was the Star Trek movie Generations!

Yep - that would be 7 where Picard and Kirk get stuck in the Nexus by Soran.

[Joe Ross]

my son doodled on my crossword

I nominate this for your xword-muggles avatar. Looks like Master Peanut.

[BarbaraK]

I don't remember whether I saw the MANs or the APEs first; they were pretty much the same time.

I'm curious about how different people saw them linked though. On my sheet, it's a diagonal line between the P in APE and the A in MAN. In the newspaper, it looks like a stairstep from the the end of one to the beginning of the other.

[Joe Ross]

I don't remember whether I saw the MANs or the APEs first; they were pretty much the same time.

I'm curious about how different people saw them linked though. On my sheet, it's a diagonal line between the P in APE and the A in MAN. In the newspaper, it looks like a stairstep from the the end of one to the beginning of the other.

I saw them as the only two letters in each that aligned vertically.

[Jacksull]

I don't remember whether I saw the MANs or the APEs first; they were pretty much the same time.

I'm curious about how different people saw them linked though. On my sheet, it's a diagonal line between the P in APE and the A in MAN. In the newspaper, it looks like a stairstep from the the end of one to the beginning of the other.

I saw MAN first. But then I saw that the letters MANE appeared as Tetris-like pieces in five places. MANE, MEAN, NAME, AMEN. It took four more looks at the grid before I was able to connect MAN and APE. I saw the letters that linked APE and MAN but I didn’t see the diagonal.

[MaineMarge]

I saw them as the only two letters in each that aligned vertically.

Exactly, Joe. I was blown away when I saw this.
Pretty lucky for him things worked out this way, huh? If I could get my hands on Mike Shenk, I’d award him a very big HUG this week.

[Hidden in 3D]

I must have just gotten lucky to spot it so quickly!

Well, after all, you are THE SPOTTER!

[DrTom]

I don't remember whether I saw the MANs or the APEs first; they were pretty much the same time.

I'm curious about how different people saw them linked though. On my sheet, it's a diagonal line between the P in APE and the A in MAN. In the newspaper, it looks like a stairstep from the the end of one to the beginning of the other.

I saw them as the only two letters in each that aligned vertically.

Same here - I actually had to look a bit to see the diagonal thing and that it works each time. I guess because it was supposed to be the link of one to the other (end of one beginning of other) I did Ape - > Man. Thankfully either way worked. Incredible that the two M's are able to get these things to work, I cannot imagine the mental acuity combined with a vocabulary list that would probably stun most of us.

[Bob cruise director]

Because we have had so much discussion, it was several pages back that Sal published the link to the zoom discussion so here it is again. The show starts at 7:30pm EST. All are welcome.

Also several years ago, we had the opportunity to visit Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania on our way to the Serengeti. They had moldings of the footprints of some of our ancestors. It is still active but I give the Leakey's credit for digging in the wilderness for 30 years.

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89184367093

[FrankieHeck]

I saw all the MANs before I saw any of the APEs

[boharr]

I saw all the MANs before I saw any of the APEs

Ditto

[Hidden in 3D]

I don't remember whether I saw the MANs or the APEs first; they were pretty much the same time.

I'm curious about how different people saw them linked though. On my sheet, it's a diagonal line between the P in APE and the A in MAN. In the newspaper, it looks like a stairstep from the the end of one to the beginning of the other.

I saw the MANs long before I saw the APEs. And I never even thought about the other possible meanings of "links" (even though my golf-obsessed husband would be ashamed of me). I saw 26D as a hint from Mike. Like you, Barbara, I also saw the diagonal lines or "stairsteps" and interpreted these as the steps in the evolutionary chain between ape and man. Somewhere in the back of my mind I remembered a drawing that showed life forms evolving from amoeba (top left corner) to human (bottom right corner). When I googled "missing links evolution" this drawing (Ernst Haeckel's Chain of The Animal Ancestors of Man) was staring me in the face! I noted the similar format in Mr. Shenk's construction and considered it brilliant.

I saw them as the only two letters in each that aligned vertically.

This makes the "stairsteps" even more obvious. Thanks, Joe!

[Meg]

I saw all the MANs before I saw any of the APEs

Ditto

Me too

[Joe Ross]

Like you, Barbara, I also saw the diagonal lines or "stairsteps" and interpreted these as the steps in the evolutionary chain between ape and man. Somewhere in the back of my mind I remembered a drawing that showed life forms evolving from amoeba (top left corner) to human (bottom right corner). When I googled "missing links evolution" this drawing (Ernst Haeckel's Chain of The Animal Ancestors of Man) was staring me in the face! I noted the similar format in Mr. Shenk's construction and considered it brilliant.

[cbarbee002]

KAS 5?