"Color Code" - July 24, 2020

[Gman]

As an ex Navy guy, I'm embarrassed to admit I never made the connection. Oh well, Thursday is coming soon. Congratulations to all the solvers.

[Abide]

Eagle Scout here. I had to Google the W and R.

Morse invented the single wire telegraph.

Maybe this was the reason for Vail at 1-A?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Vail

[Joe Ross]

Why is WIRES the answer? I mean, is it the only word that would fit, or is there some other way that it relates to the theme?

Fair question. It is equally fair to see that MORSE CODE was first sent by WIRES and that nearly every wire behind walls or connecting to digital equipment is COLOR CODEd. It's fair to see how WIRES works & ties in to the puzzle title. There could be worse answers.

[burak]

Soooo.... what's worse than not figuring out the mechanism? How about figuring out the mechanism but reading dot-dash-dot as L instead of R? Yep, I sent in WILES as my answer. To me, it's apropos: ˈwī(-ə): a trick or stratagem intended to ensnare or deceive.

Oof. When the code spelled out WIRES I thought "wait, that's wrong?" only to realize soon after how it made sense.

I'm also glad that my grandpa bought me a digital watch as a gift when I was a little kid, and it had a morse code mode, and I immediately learned how to spell my name and last name. It paid dividends after 20+ years as I only had to look up the first letter to solve the puzzle after I realized what was going on.

[EVJ]

I didn’t get this one and never would have.
KAS 5 for me. Last week was KAS 5 also.
If the answer isn’t in the grid I check the clues. If it’s not in either of those places that ads another level of difficulty. If you need sheet music or Morse Code it’s a KAS 5 in my opinion. I’m hoping for an easier meta next week to rebuild my confidence.

[burak]

Why is WIRES the answer? I mean, is it the only word that would fit, or is there some other way that it relates to the theme?

Telegraph.

[TPS]

Eagle Scout here. I had to Google the W and R.

Morse invented the single wire telegraph.

I’m an Eagle Scout also but had to google the W - although I already sorta knew it was “W” from context because I got “IRES”. But I wondered if anyone got the whole thing with no Google.

[steveb]

I'm speculating that age correlates with someone's likelihood of solving this one. I'm old enough to have been a Boy Scout in the mid-'60s, when learning Morse code was part of the program. Does anyone do that now? This guy thinks it's a manly thing: https://www.artofmanliness.com/articles/morse-code/

[TPS]

If the answer isn’t in the grid I check the clues. If it’s not in either of those places that ads another level of difficulty.

I am the same - I’m not smart enough to see through to the second level - in finance we called it second derivative level thinking - seeing the trend behind the trend...not just measuring velocity but looking at acceleration. I probably wouldn’t have solved this one on my own even if I spent all weekend looking at it AND had the theme answers and method mapped out AND was even looking for Morse Code AND even know a little Morse Code.

That said I like this puzzle - it was probably my second favorite one this year.

[steveb]

I’m curious if anyone solved it without having to Google Morse Code - are there any Boy Scouts, Navy Men, or former Western Union telegraph operators among us?

I was a Boy Scout and recognized it as Morse code early on, but I had to Google the code to get the right letters (I remembered E and S, but not the others).

[Laura M]

Soooo.... what's worse than not figuring out the mechanism? How about figuring out the mechanism but reading dot-dash-dot as L instead of R? Yep, I sent in WILES as my answer. To me, it's apropos: ˈwī(-ə): a trick or stratagem intended to ensnare or deceive.

I can do you one better (worse?)... I sent in MIRES. I double- and triple-checked the Morse code, because that answer didn't make sense, but I never went back to the original letters to notice that I missed the first dot (E) that would have turned my M into a W. If WIRES had been a more obvious (to me) answer I might have figured it out. At least WILES makes some degree of sense!

[lacangah]

... --- ...

Have a good week

[MajordomoTom]

I'm a non-Eagle scout and also the current holder of a Novice-class Ham Radio license (they don't even grant those anymore, mine's grandfathered, I keep it renewed) and I had no idea how to find this.

Morse code or not.

I threw a long-bomb that landed in a different end zone in a different stadium on a different island - just based on ROTOSCAN, I figured it had something to do with printing and threw out LASER.

Oh well, you can't win them all.

[LaceyK]

I did correctly have Step 1 with colored-in CODES. I do not have much knowledge of Morse Codes, so I understand why I didn't make that next step. Very clever. Meanwhile some of the fun things I found while chasing rabbits:
Black, Brown, & Muslin would be in the color palette of Manet.
Roark (my son's name) is penned by author AYN RAND (found in 46/47 A and 17D).
If you tint a color, you add white to it to lighten it. You can add white to Red (possibly clued for Slaveants, red ants) and get Pink. [Remove R from RINK, add P]. Add white to Green (SaintPat) and get Mint (Remove P from PINT and add M). I didn't get much further with the pastels, but PR got me excited about PRISM as the answer.
The religious answers in 16A and 34A made me think of the Golden Rule. And there are quite a few AUs in the grid (with limited use of O & E!!) And SIG TAU crosses. And an ANKH.

[Gpiggies]

Wow, I never would have gotten this. I went down many rabbit holes, had "code" in theme answers highlighted, but Morse code never occurred to me. All of my other rabbit holes seemed so promising though!

[JeanneC]

I bow to Mr. Shenk. I shall take my and head off to sleep.

[DrTom]

I only got here with a nudge; well that's a lie, more of a full fledged shove! I was convinced for the longest time that the answer would be BLUES. Each of the theme answers had a three letter abbreviation (?code) for Color:
HES - HESSIAN BLUE
OCE - OCEAN BLUE
LAC - LACQUER BLUE
LAV - LAVENDER
TUR - TURQUOISE

These are all tints or shades of blue. Seemed to make a lot of sense except that there just wasn't that 'click'. I could make it fit in logic, I could make it fit the title but there was a mention of elegance and tightness by Joe Ross and I know by now that in Joespeak that means the solve should feel indisputable. WIRES and COLORING the C O D E so that a code gives the answer, well that fits the bill.

[Tony S]

I didn’t get this one and never would have.
KAS 5 for me. Last week was KAS 5 also.
If the answer isn’t in the grid I check the clues. If it’s not in either of those places that ads another level of difficulty. If you need sheet music or Morse Code it’s a KAS 5 in my opinion. I’m hoping for an easier meta next week to rebuild my confidence.

I'm with you. If this is your only game in town, go ahead and treat this puzzle like a take-home final. I'll always complete the grid and make an attempt to crack the meta --- if it doesn't happen on Thursday evening or Friday morning (at the latest) I move on. I have too many other crosswords to solve --- Saturday gives me the NY Times, the Guardian Prize Puzzle, and the Financial Times Prize Crossword --- they're all quite satisfying. By the way, the FT this weekend was especially rewarding; it was a remarkable feat of construction and certainly quenched my thirst for a challenge. Congratulations to those who solve this one.

[Flamel616]

I had the coloring and I even noticed sets of one and three, but Morse was not coming to mind. I was thinking about other codes, like binary or ciphers, but, eh, it just didn't happen to come to mind. I don't feel as bad about this one.

[Streroto]

After seeing ASCII in 56A and and LAVA in 42A I was convinced Mike meant computer code. Whoa what a rabbit hole-so many computer codes! I had thought of Morse way early on but even as an ex Boy Scout was unable to see the answer even after I colored the code as directed

Cool puzzle and meta. Well done Mike.