"Let's Move Beyond It" - August 7, 2020

[Diana]

I’m still at the bar. But shout out to the long suffering significant others who don’t understand. My husband becomes very concerned every weekend as to how long I will be absented from family life. And as hard as I try to explain he still doesn’t even understand the meta concept. C’est la vie.

I just read this, when I was reviewing my song post from the other day. I wanted to read all my accolades. I saw this under my post and I thought," Did I accidentally post that when I PWI?" Because it sounded exactly like my life right now. Then I saw your name instead of mine. I thought, "Phew." Anyway, I never figured out the meta. Which is going to be revealed in about 15 minutes.

[yungchap]

I was able to solve thanks to too many nudges - not a fan of this one for some reason. Luckily, there's always next week!

[Joe Ross]

[TPS]

Here was how I solved the puzzle following “the Basics” Joe Ross has laid out many times before.

I quickly identified the 6 theme answers

Luxury Liner
Park City
Reading List
Short Answer
Free Time
Electric Eel

Then I looked at the Last Across and Down Clues (From what I can tell Matt likes Across and Mike likes Down). I saw LOP and figured maybe that meant to LOP off the last word or letter of the theme clues. I didn’t see much by LOPPING off letters but when LOPPED off the last words and just looked at the first words I saw the first words in Monopoly locations.

Luxury (Tax)
Park (Place)
Reading (Railroad)
Short (Line Railroad)
Free (Parking)
Electric (Company)

Then I was a little stuck as what to do next – So then I though ok move beyond it so maybe take the first letters of the second part of the Monopoly Location and that didn’t work. Then I got out the Monopoly board and added up the values of the properties or tried to but that led nowhere (Not sure what I was expecting there). Then it finally hit me that the title meant to go one past the square of each theme answer and use the first letter and I got BLOCKS.

Tax $75 B
Place $350 L
Railroad $200 O
Line $200 C
Parking $0 K
Company $75 S


I didn’t love BLOCKS but it did come out in order – so no anagramming and I could justify it as Move Beyond a MENTAL BLOCKS or ROAD BLOCKS (Monopoly properties are named after roads after all) and you could call Monopoly squares – BLOCKS I suppose.

Didn’t feel like a 100%er to me and not as elegant as ADOBE or RUSSIAN DOLL – but I enjoyed this puzzle and it was my fastest solve.

[Hector]

If you think about the constraints that this mechanism places on the grid, BLOCKS is if anything amazing rather than iffy.

[C=64]

Tax $75 B
Place $350 L
Railroad $200 O
Line $200 C
Parking $0 K
Company $75 S

Great write-up! I'll clarify where BLOCKS came from.

Tax $75 B[oardwalk]
Place $350 L[uxury Tax]
Railroad $200 O[riental Avenue]
Line $200 C[hance]
Parking $0 K[entucky Avenue]
Company $75 S[tates Avenue]

[Diana]

That's really nice explanation. Thank you. I can't remember the last time I stayed up until 9:00 (I'm in Cal), to see the solution. It's been years. It paid off. I liked this explanation. I'm not sure if I'm tagging it right or how that works. But I'm talking to TPS. Thank you TPS.

[Flamel616]

Didn’t feel like a 100%er to me and not as elegant as ADOBE or RUSSIAN DOLL – but I enjoyed this puzzle and it was my fastest solve.

I mostly agree on this, though I did see a couple other clues to get you to games and blocks. The PIPS of 1A refer to the dots on a die, and the "roll the dice" clue also points to dice, so the blocks could be referring to dice.

Aside from being blind to what was in front of my face, one thing that sent me down a rabbit hole was 1A's reference to knights. I starting thinking of chess, and how a knight can "move beyond" other pieces. I looked for knights' moves around the grid, trying to connect theme answers, looking across black bars, looking for connection between letters from the the answers. But, even after I gave up on that, noticing the potential for Reading Railroad AND Electric Company ony own without hints didn't trigger anything in my brain that made me chase after it more, and I couldn't get to Monopoly on my own.

[rexthree]

lost power this past week due to the hurricane so i didn't get started on the puzzle until today - got the grid done but i fear that time is not on my side for the meta!

okay, so during said power outage mentioned above, i spent two (seemingly) endless nights in a marathon monopoly game with my three children. given how long i stared at that board, i don't know how on earth the monopoly connection did not jump out at me.

to add insult to injury, i just read the six theme answers to my teenage son and asked if he could discern any commonality, and he said, "sounds like monopoly words. c'mon, mom, we just played it a few nights ago. how could you not get that?" haha. how indeed!!!

[JRS51]

My process was similar to TPS.
As I was doing the grid, I didn't notice any pattern to the theme answers.
However, as soon as I wrote them down and read them over, I could see that the first words related to monopoly squares. I think Reading and Short stood out the most. Obviously the first letters didn't make a word, and the first letters of the second words of the theme answers didn't make a word.
Then I looked for a pattern in the location of the squares that would lead to another square. I counted the spaces between these squares and looked at the letters with these numbers in the grid.
Just a moment later I realized that the title of the puzzle was important; I looked at the squares after the named squares, and BLOCKS was right there.
I didn't see any way there could be another mechanism or another answer.

[TPS]

Aside from being blind to what was in front of my face, one thing that sent me down a rabbit hole was 1A's reference to knights. I starting thinking of chess, and how a knight can "move beyond" other pieces.

Mike has actually done a puzzle like that before - so that wasn't a bad way to think. Mike seems to like using Board Games as he has used Chess, Checkers, and Monopoly that I know of.

[hcbirker]

For those that had a problem with the title, it was crucial to solving it. I got my old Monopoly board out to solve it. It also refers to city blocks, and ways to get around them.

[Bob Cobb]

Bad week to be a professional board game hater. Did anyone get it who hasn’t played Monopoly in 25+ years / remembers next to nothing of it? If so, how?

[JRS51]

Bad week to be a professional board game hater. Did anyone get it who hasn’t played Monopoly in 25+ years / remembers next to nothing of it? If so, how?

Yes and no. Haven’t played in many years but the board is imprinted in memory, and for some reason the railroad names Reading and Short (line) jumped out at me when I looked at the theme answers. The title gave the mechanism and the answer BLOCKS made sense as related to a Monopoly board

[yourpalsal]

Bad week to be a professional board game hater. Did anyone get it who hasn’t played Monopoly in 25+ years / remembers next to nothing of it? If so, how?

I like but don’t love Monopoly because it takes too long. I’ve played it enough with my kids, however, that this popped right out at me. If Monopoly is unfamiliar to a person, then I agree - I don’t see how you get the meta. Maybe if you google the six words together, but it doesn’t seem very promising.

[Tony S]

Tax $75 B
Place $350 L
Railroad $200 O
Line $200 C
Parking $0 K
Company $75 S

Great write-up! I'll clarify where BLOCKS came from.

Tax $75 B[oardwalk]
Place $350 L[uxury Tax]
Railroad $200 O[riental Avenue]
Line $200 C[hance]
Parking $0 K[entucky Avenue]
Company $75 S[tates Avenue]

How convoluted and far-fetched can you get? Not only do we need to print out sheet music and know Morse code but we also have to dig out ancient board games to solve a meta ? No thanks, I'll pass.

[Joe Ross]

Moving "one space past" the MONOPOLY spaces suggested by the first words of the Theme Entries is a guess, probably noticed due to their proximity to the TE properties. Good on those who found the spaces speeling BLOCKS, but there is nothing to point the solver to "one space past".

In fact, 13D - Roll the dice, say - PLAY can be considered an Indicator Clue. It makes sense & points the solver in the direction of a game that uses dice, such as MONOPOLY. 1A - PIPS may be considered another dice game clue. Fair.

So why is "one space past" the correct number? How is the solver to divine that? In MONOPOLY, two six-sided dice are used, so the given range of possible moves in a turn is 2 through 12. This is why I say that "one space past" is iffy & inelegant.

Sure, there are no rules in metas, but I'd wager that if a puzzle constructor offered that puzzle to an editor for publication, the editor would reject it and insist on changes.


[EDIT1: speeling correction]
[EDIT2: "1A - PIPS..." added]

[burak]

I may have played Monopoly once in my life. I know the names of some game pieces from doing crosswords and trivia, but yeah this was not gonna happen. KAS 5, or if I kept on Googling the theme answers I could have hit something so KAS 4.5?

I wish that there was more of a push towards board games/Monopoly in the grid for those who aren't familiar with the game at all.

[TPS]

Bad week to be a professional board game hater. Did anyone get it who hasn’t played Monopoly in 25+ years / remembers next to nothing of it? If so, how?

If you didn't know Monopoly - I think the only way someone might have gotten it without help would be by Googling the right combination of the first words of the theme answers - That was my plan. I was about to do that when I realized what they had in common on my own. I was going to do that because Joe Ross told me that is how he figured out what the words in the TTLS puzzle had in common. So googling parts of theme answers is now sorta #4 in my process.

[lacangah]

I replaced the ‘outboard word’ in the 6 word pairs with a word one letter longer and choosing the letter ‘beyond' the grid:

luxuryliner -> Plasticliner
parkcity -> parkplacE (oh so close to Monopoly!)
readinglist -> Shoppinglist
shortanswer -> shortcircuiT
freetime -> Lunchtime
electricell -> electricbikE

PESTLE - for when you need to move your spices or drugs below (beyond?) a certain size

Clever meta – looking forward to next Thursday – you all have a great week,