"Fresh Start" - November 6, 2020

[escapeartist]

Y'all gonna kick yourselves when you see the solution.

Luckily I stumbled on it this time, but without the stumble I would have been asea as well.

This one was "pure gaffney"

*shakes fist at gaffney*

[Joe Ross]

[Joe Ross]

[JordanianTomlinson]

Love a good Phil Hartman reference!

[escapeartist]

I got the answer, but the middle word with (4) is Fill - Phil

a 1990's SNL castmate of Chris, David and Rob (Phil Hartman & Adam Sandler)

ALFA was the clue, because it's ALPHA

[Jace54]

After seeing the mechanism I got FR.YS, which obviously would become “frays” and then “phrase” for the answer. However, I did not understand the “a” until I realized that “Phil” (from “fill”) referred to Phil Hartman and the “Adam” answer for SNL.

[steveb]

Very clever puzzle, but Kas 5 for me. I was too busy this weekend to spend much time on it, and that's probably a good thing since I don't think I would have ever gotten it.

[pamster]

I got the answer, but the middle word with (4) is Fill - Phil

a 1990's SNL castmate of Chris, David and Rob (Phil Hartman & Adam Sandler)

ALFA was the clue, because it's ALPHA

I didn't even notice the ALFA. I just did a quick online search and it is apparently spelled both ways.

[Gman]

Only an evil genius with a laser and a white fluffy cat could have devised this puzzle. Congratulations to the solvers.
On a side note, thank you to my fellow veterans. Grateful for our republic.

[TPS]

Aha - another of Matt’s stupid homophone puzzles - Puzzles like this affirm my new approach. I also have no clue of how Adam & Phil are a pair.

I made a comment about a previous MG puzzle that it was like something John Nash on acid would come up with - well this puzzle makes that puzzle seem straightforward by comparison.

Edit: Ok Phil Hartman - Add that to the plethora of reason I never would have solved this one.

[Abide]

Nice one, just a bit on the tricky side. Looking at my sheet, I did scribble a reference to FAZE/PHASE being part of a STAGE or new "start". But I never noticed the F in the other four entries. Having two as the first word, and three as the last, made those hard to see. Another defeat at the hands of letter frequency.

I did learn that you can change three letters in RONANFARROW and create hunting equipment. And that NEWTON ONE sounds like a delicious fiber cereal.

[burak]

One thing that helped me was the realization that there were 5 theme answers but we were looking for a 6-letter word. That strongly indicated that we'd have to add a letter to whatever we got from the midway answers, and that is usually done by a sound-related wordplay. Then I saw Faze/Stage and everything fell in its right place.

[lacangah]

For your entertainment:

I took a 'fresh start' with the clues, and found responses of the lengths in the parentheses:

* Approximately Zero - Not many
* Noted Pulitzer... - Kanter and Twohey (the other co-awardees)
* What entrepreneurs... - Hawk
* They're woolly... - Socks
* Failed to fluster - Aided

An anagram of the first letters yields THANKS. One (minor) flaw; this response had nothing to do with the filled out grid

One other thing - I've been getting many ads this weekend for 'woolly socks' - this must be one of those weeks where my meta-musing torqued someone's ad matching algorithms - lol.

Congratulations to everyone who solved it! See you all later in the week

[escapeartist]

What helped me was my original answer (misspelled by yours truly) for 49A was Pharoh

No spell check on a printed crossword

[DrTom]

Aha - another of Matt’s stupid homophone puzzles - Puzzles like this affirm my new approach. I also have no clue of how Adam & Phil are a pair.

I made a comment about a previous MG puzzle that it was like something John Nash on acid would come up with - well this puzzle makes that puzzle seem straightforward by comparison.

Edit: Ok Phil Hartman - Add that to the plethora of reason I never would have solved this one.

Gosh, how do you really feel?

Everybody has their Achilles heel but if you never try the ones you don't think you like you are going to miss a lot of fun! It's the ones that make me stretch that really help me grow.

I think there are more than few of us that do not find this "stupid", "stupid good" maybe, but not stupid.

[Joe Ross]

In lieu of PHIL/ADAM, I (incorrectly) used PHI/ALFA, both Greek(ish) letters. It still brought me home.

Oh, well I'm phi alpha born...

[EVJ]

I saw the Fs in the theme answers.
I pondered the spelling of alfa/alpha.
I got a nudge that helped me get
PHEW PHARAOH PHIL PHLOX PHASE
And had not a clue what to do with any of this.
Like TPS I never would have made the ADAM/PHIL connection.
Definitely KAS 5 for me. Way to convoluted for me.
I am stunned that so many got this one. Congrats.

[DrTom]

I got the answer, but the middle word with (4) is Fill - Phil

a 1990's SNL castmate of Chris, David and Rob (Phil Hartman & Adam Sandler)

ALFA was the clue, because it's ALPHA

I didn't even notice the ALFA. I just did a quick online search and it is apparently spelled both ways.

Yes, but I think ALFA refers to the NATO phonetic alphabet word for A, while ALPHA refers to the Greek letter. The fact that they could be spelled either way I thought was a kind of "Matt Nudge" in that it was in a typical Gaffney place for those things (four corners or middle).

[Geezer Weezer]

Nope.

[whimsy]

I did learn that you can change three letters in RONANFARROW and create hunting equipment.

My brain kept fixating on his mom, Mia, portraying "fresh as a Daisy" Buchanan!