XWord Muggles Forum

Bob cruise director wrote: ↑Mon Nov 09, 2020 10:08 am

Nlobb wrote: ↑Mon Nov 09, 2020 9:55 am I got this one right but almost didn't submit it because I can't see any connection between phrase and fresh start. Clarification??
BTW I must be one of the few people who likes doing homophones too as a retired reading teacher!!

Fresh start told me to change the letter F at the beginning of the theme words to something that sounded the same.

As an engineer, I was wondering if the homophone came out just before the cell phone?

On no Bob, we had a home phone (I'm sure you spelled it incorrectly) for ages, even when there was a party line(and no that is not "So what's you sign?")

EVJ wrote: ↑Mon Nov 09, 2020 10:29 am

DrTom wrote: ↑Mon Nov 09, 2020 9:35 am For those of you who are wondering just how badly I burnt the ribs I mentioned....

Ribcoal.jpg

I may not get a "Good Job!" but I should get a "Well Done!"

That’s bad!
I’m glad you were just watching ribs and not children!!

Well, that would not have been a problem, I do children at a much lower temperature....(PLEASE - just kidding!)

ky-mike wrote: ↑Mon Nov 09, 2020 11:09 am I've been mugged!

With 1 of only about 520 or so correct entries this week, I won the mug lottery!

I guess the time is coming for a new avatar. Maybe the mug with Rabbit Hole bourbon in it

WHOO-HOO!! Well done, you!

After seeing the dreaded parentheses (which immediately lower my IQ by 50+ points), I noticed one other across clue (23A) also had parentheses. Since it made reference to a mint brand, I threw in a guess of a curiously strong six letter mint ... ALTOID. At least it had something to do with FRESH START. There's always next week.

pddigi wrote: ↑Sat Nov 07, 2020 10:40 am I have noticed strange behaviors on both my iPhone and MacBook that are new (and irritating). I don't want to waste others' time here, but "disappearing grid" is the easiest way to characterize it. Has this been addressed on this forum? Has anyone found a work-around?

I received this reply from WSJ:

So sorry you're having trouble--forwarding you to our support team who can help.

If they offer something useful, I will pass it along.

mpmanning wrote: ↑Mon Nov 09, 2020 11:39 am

DrTom wrote: ↑Mon Nov 09, 2020 9:32 am

mpmanning wrote: ↑Mon Nov 09, 2020 9:14 am First things first, Happy Marine Corps Birthday to all the Leathernecks aboard!

But, now, Arrgh! Where did I get this headache? Where did that solution come from? That was not the beach I saw as I said I believed I was ashore! Where is the medical dispensary?

I'll be back after I relieve myself at the rail.

So, what ship is that sitting in the harbor? Looks vaguely familiar?

That is my former cruise ship - a Navy guided missile light cruiser, the USS Little Rock (CLG4) moored on a buoy in her homeport of Gaeta Italy. The photo is a navy file photo. She is currently decommissioned and serving an emeritus role as a museum ship on Lake Erie in the Buffalo NY Naval and Military Heritage Park. Her namesake, the current USS Little Rock (LCS9), is a lighter, faster, more stealthy, more high tech deadly cruise ship homeported in Mayport, not far from you.

Well I said vaguely familiar because I recognized the Talos battery aft. I was on the Columbus (CG-12 - converted Baltimore class) but know of the Little Rock because it replaced the Springfield which replaced the Des Moines (my Dad's ship when we were stationed in Villefranche-Sur-Mer) as flagship.

USS Columbus CG-12 (which we all said meant constantly gone 12 months of the year)

I saw Farrow and Pharaoh Ramses right away. I first thought the numbers referred to the number of letters in the first word ie Farrow rather t than Farrow. Once got everything straighten out sill had trouble Meds for Pill Wheat for Phlox then needed help to see Phil Hartman.

Difficult meta.

And I even started the grid thinking YUCCA was a strange answer ..... when will she ever learn?
So I didn't get very far with this one but did have some fun.
Giving fresh starts to the next to the last theme entry especially -- CHEEPCLOCKS, CHEAPFROCKS? = a bunch of fluffy little yellow balls in tawdry tiny house dresses peeping like all get-out to wake me up? (What can I say? it's a gift.)
I did the cookies like JennyByrd and the veggies like BethA --
Surely a NUN ION is some new organic black and white onion hybrid.

As I said in my first post a few days ago, I am a novice here. I have lurked as a guest and followed WSJCC since “Less and Less” about mid August. I thought I was getting the hang of this meta-inductive logic type of puzzle solving. I had even gotten a number of correct solutions along the trek.
Two weeks ago in “Just A Step More” where I saw in the forum my first experience with the “dreaded parentheses”. I made the inductive assumption that the numbers in parentheses were the postion of the letter in the theme answers that would spell out the desired solution. I solved as best I could and sent in my answer, SEINE, before the deadline. It was only later that I learned on the forum post from MikeMillerwsj that there were 241 CORRECT correct answers, SMELL, to the meta out of the 604 submitted, and sadly found out that my solution, SEINE, was one of the top 5 WRONG correct answers with 14 submissions. It seems the numbers in parentheses were the numbers of objects in the certain set – my bad! There were more than 40 submissions of TASTE and some muggles on this forum argued that it was an appropriate solution to the meta. (Sounded to me like a mutiny was brewing.)

In LauraB’s review of the puzzle online at crosswardfiend.com and cited on the Muggles forum, Matt Gaffney defended his correct answer to the potential mutineers by saying:

Matt Gaffney says:
October 26, 2020 at 10:35 am
I meant the title as a confirmation of SMELL being the correct answer, since you take TASTE from the title and MILLES minus one letter to get it, as in the theme entries. But it sounds like it was more confusing than helpful, so I should probably have titled it something else and removed MILLES from the grid. SMELL alone is enough of a click.

(That almost sounds like Captain Queeg of The Caine Mutiny talking! If that doesn’t start a mutiny, nothing will.)

Now flash ahead to this week. So, this week I was listening for the “click”.
I inductively thought the numbers in parentheses were the number of letters of the meta answers in the grid …AHA
I could see the (F)resh Start F
I had the 5 theme answers:
(F)ew to none (7) Amended
Ronan (F)arrow (6) Ramses
(F)ill a void (4) IPOS
Sheep (F)locks (5) Nasal
Didn’t (F)aze (5) Agile

That’s it – the answer is FARINA; and look, 1 Across is WHEAT! Confirmation abounds! I could SMELL the click! I could TASTE the breakfast cereal of my childhood.

But now, I’ve seen the CORRECT correct answer and so I have scheduled an appointment with my doctor. I could SMELL and TASTE the answer, so I don’t have Covid-19, but I didn’t HEAR the “click”, so I need an ear exam.

Oh well, there is always next week! That’s the way we novices learn.

Mister Squawk wrote: ↑Mon Nov 09, 2020 5:43 am
First, the FILL -> PHIL -> ADAM connection was bogus, as Phil Hartman and Adam Sandler did not overlap as SNL cast members.

They did, from 1990-1994.

Wendy Walker wrote: ↑Mon Nov 09, 2020 7:59 am My first "correct" F-word find was the Phew/Finally connection.

Mine was when I read the ‘how to defuse (dephuse?) an atomic bomb’ instructions to the solution this morning!

ky-mike wrote: ↑Mon Nov 09, 2020 11:09 am I've been mugged!

With 1 of only about 520 or so correct entries this week, I won the mug lottery!

I guess the time is coming for a new avatar. Maybe the mug with Rabbit Hole bourbon in it

Yay - a muggle and a Bourbon drinker! I had to chuckle, I did not tumble to the Bourbon you had pictured until today.

However, with you being from Louisville I am surprised that this is not your Avatar:

As far as the Phil/Adam connection - I had pretty much stopped watching SNL by probably the early 80s, so the 1990s cast wasn't anything I knew. To get ADAM, I already had a crossing or two, so I hadn't need to look it up. I initially got hung up with PHIL/SONY, thinking about PHILIPS. Of course, that S didn't work, so looked at ADAM and decided just to Google "SNL 1990 cast" and there it was.

DrTom wrote: ↑Mon Nov 09, 2020 11:48 am

EVJ wrote: ↑Mon Nov 09, 2020 10:29 am

DrTom wrote: ↑Mon Nov 09, 2020 9:35 am For those of you who are wondering just how badly I burnt the ribs I mentioned....

Ribcoal.jpg

I may not get a "Good Job!" but I should get a "Well Done!"

That’s bad!
I’m glad you were just watching ribs and not children!!

Well, that would not have been a problem, I do children at a much lower temperature....(PLEASE - just kidding!)

DrTom,
You crack me up!

This was a really tough contest! One of the hardest we've had in a while, in the view of this (stumped) solver. We had 523 entries, about 78% correct which is right around our typical percentage. A grab-bag of incorrrect submissions included PHASES (close, 2 guess), ERASER (2), SPRING (2) plus an odd assortment of one-offs including SPRUCE, FRUITS, AFFIRM, REBORN, SHRIMP...

Congrats to this week's winner, Mike Chinberg of Simpsonville, KY!

MattGaffney wrote: ↑Mon Nov 09, 2020 1:37 pm

Mister Squawk wrote: ↑Mon Nov 09, 2020 5:43 am
First, the FILL -> PHIL -> ADAM connection was bogus, as Phil Hartman and Adam Sandler did not overlap as SNL cast members.

They did, from 1990-1994.

Matt Gaffney speaks!
Hooray! Hi Matt!!

The more I think about this debate I think even if you had no clue about SNL you would pair up PHIL/ADAM on the same basis as PHLOX/YUCCA if you understood the mechanism.
PHIL and ADAM are men’s names.
PHLOX and YUCCA are plant names. I believe they are not related any closer than that. I could find no evidence that they are related. But perhaps MaineMarge or some others know more.
As for me, I did not get this one, even with a nudge.
The WYE and YUCCA had me making my fresh starts with Ys:
FEW/YEW
FARROW/YARROW
Then somehow I had FILL/DILL and FAZE/DAZE.
Oh dear. I’ve learn d so much that I can hardly wait until Thursday.

BethA wrote: ↑Mon Nov 09, 2020 9:05 am I might have gotten it if the title were PHRESH START.

“My mind is going. I can feel it.”

Your lost mind is reading my lost mind! I had a streak of 8 solves--which has now been followed by 3 misses (either clueless or needing a nudge). I thought crosswords were supposed to ward off Alzheimers, but now I'm worried that it is nipping at my heels.

I noticed the F words in each long answer right away. I even noticed the FARROW/PHARAOH/RAMSES connection but didn't take it any further. Because I was too busy chasing that darn rabbit (or is it that F rabbit?) in and out of the wrong holes! I went through some of the same ones mentioned already. And I learned that 76455 is the zip code for Gustine, TX. So there's that.

And how can there not be significance to ALFA and then also the last two letters WYE/ZEE?

EVJ wrote: ↑Mon Nov 09, 2020 2:38 pm
The more I think about this debate I think even if you had no clue about SNL you would pair up PHIL/ADAM on the same basis as PHLOX/YUCCA if you understood the mechanism.
PHIL and ADAM are men’s names.
PHLOX and YUCCA are plant names. I believe they are not related any closer than that. I could find no evidence that they are related. But perhaps MaineMarge or some others know more.
...

Both PHIL and ADAM are a "1990s “SNL” castmate of Chris, David and Rob"

Both YUCCA and PHLOX are a "Popular perennial"

They're not necessarily related to each other, but they both answer the clue.

Bob cruise director wrote: ↑Mon Nov 09, 2020 10:08 am

Nlobb wrote: ↑Mon Nov 09, 2020 9:55 am I got this one right but almost didn't submit it because I can't see any connection between phrase and fresh start. Clarification??
BTW I must be one of the few people who likes doing homophones too as a retired reading teacher!!

Fresh start told me to change the letter F at the beginning of the theme words to something that sounded the same.

As an engineer, I was wondering if the homophone came out just before the cell phone?

"words to something that sounded the same" - what made you think of that?

I didn't get this one! I started on the right track but chased the wrong rabbit. Once again, I was fooled by what was in the grid vs. what was in the clues.