XWord Muggles Forum

Janet P wrote: ↑Mon Jul 15, 2019 2:22 pm

Bob cruise director wrote: ↑Mon Jul 15, 2019 11:47 am

Wendy Walker wrote: ↑Mon Jul 15, 2019 11:22 am
Janet, I followed almost exactly the same path you did, but my first inkling was PINE SAP, followed closely by POWER NAP. And I, too, originally had TAP BACK for rebound!

Wendy and Janet
You need to watch more basketball - a tap back (or tap in) is what you do with a rebound

Bob, I never said it was a correct basketball term... I gave up on the NBA when they gave up the short shorts

That is a reason to watch college basketball

In the NBA, there is no traveling, there is no palming and if there is no blood, there is no foul.

Eric Porter wrote: ↑Mon Jul 15, 2019 12:51 am I see I'm not the only one who didn't find all of the elements. I really think this puzzle needed to have starred answers or tell us the number of letters in the answer.

I think starred clues can be the difference between an MGWCC week 2 and a week 4! Sometimes they might be overkill, but in this case I definitely wouldn't have objected. I was initially satisfied with finding 4 on the left side and 4 on the right (and on the left side, the extra AP-word is first, and on the right side it's last!). (CAP PISTOL actually took me the longest, but I knew there had to be something there.) But when I couldn't make the letters spell anything I started trying to force more and thought I could add "gap" to 6D TRADE. Of course there isn't a G element, but maybe the G was supposed to indicate something else? Obviously that was a waste of time.

By the way, highlighting the letters didn't help me to realize that I should be reading them left to right! It was something that I've never thought of doing; metas are always top-to-bottom (and left to right within a row if necessary). Thanks for challenging our preconceptions, Pete and Milo!

Did anyone notice that there were interesting word pairs like TOYCOMPANY & TONKA, POMODORO & RAGU and then others like SKATERATS & SHRED, ISAACHAYES & POPDUO?

As noted, this was quite a clever multi-step contest. A tip of the hat to new contest creators Pete Muller and Milo Beckman.

We had 1023 entries and only about 55% were correct. We also had a rare and robust example of a PAGEANT (regulars can explain the reference): 326 (nearly one-third) submissions that got part-way along the trail and entered PERIODIC TABLE (plus another 34 who entered ELEMENTS). Plus BUNSEN BURNER (14), BEAKERS (8), and a few others.

Congrats to this week's winner: Sally Freeland of The Woodlands, Tex.!

Cindy wrote: ↑Fri Jul 12, 2019 7:36 am Solved. This might be a pageant week!

Sounds like your prediction was right!

Laura M wrote: ↑Mon Jul 15, 2019 2:44 pm

Eric Porter wrote: ↑Mon Jul 15, 2019 12:51 am I see I'm not the only one who didn't find all of the elements. I really think this puzzle needed to have starred answers or tell us the number of letters in the answer.

I think starred clues can be the difference between an MGWCC week 2 and a week 4! Sometimes they might be overkill, but in this case I definitely wouldn't have objected. I was initially satisfied with finding 4 on the left side and 4 on the right (and on the left side, the extra AP-word is first, and on the right side it's last!). (CAP PISTOL actually took me the longest, but I knew there had to be something there.) But when I couldn't make the letters spell anything I started trying to force more and thought I could add "gap" to 6D TRADE. Of course there isn't a G element, but maybe the G was supposed to indicate something else? Obviously that was a waste of time.

By the way, highlighting the letters didn't help me to realize that I should be reading them left to right! It was something that I've never thought of doing; metas are always top-to-bottom (and left to right within a row if necessary). Thanks for challenging our preconceptions, Pete and Milo!

My toughest "AP" search was the word that went with TRASH. Eventually found "HEAP" via a grep dictionary search. Probably a more difficult step because this was the only "AP" word that didn't rhyme with "app". And, I was another one who never saw the "left to right" until it was pointed out here.

A "fapulous" puzzle, for sure!

Trash Heap came quickly to me. It reminded me of a TV show my kids used to watch growing up—Fraggle Rock. On that animated production the wise character was the Trash Heap.

Inca wrote: ↑Mon Jul 15, 2019 2:53 pm Did anyone notice that there were interesting word pairs like TOYCOMPANY & TONKA, POMODORO & RAGU and then others like SKATERATS & SHRED, ISAACHAYES & POPDUO?

I spent some time trying to make a new element out of “SURINAM” (SARIUM?, NARIUM?, SNARIUM?)

None of the rabbit holes I went down were right! I even tried circling the couple of pairings of ap, but never thought to add it to the words.
I tried shifting things around, thinking that advanced placement meant there was a shift of letters, etc.

My dad was a chemist. At the dinner table, it wasn’t too unusual to hear, “Please pass the sodium chloride.”

Apparently my brain was taking a gap year on this one- I never visited the rabbit hole containing the ap words. This week I was maxed out in the garden ( real and imaginary) so never properly got my head in the game.
Right at the start, with “toit” being a younger generation term, when I came to power without out the “nap”, I was like “Whatever”....that must what the kids take for a rest. They really are throwing a lot of internet terms into the crosswords these days. Same with shoot (for the moon). I know nothing about a cap pistol, but I spent a lot of time there after finding the analogy words “is to” inside pistol. Same with rns nurses at the end of Mr. Burns. Oh well. It was such fun seeing the solution- no gap year going on in those brains.

Tom Shea wrote: ↑Mon Jul 15, 2019 7:32 am

Bob cruise director wrote: ↑Mon Jul 15, 2019 6:53 am

Al Sisti wrote: ↑Mon Jul 15, 2019 12:24 am I always had a weird affinity for the Periodic Table. One thing I noticed early in my science classes was that I could spell out my name in monotonically non-decreasing atomic numbers -- 13, 14, 16, 22 (Aluminum, Silicon, Sulfur, Titanium, or Al Si-s-ti). I spent most of every class after that trying to make up nonsense sentences using just the symbols of elements, while everyone else was...um...stud-y-ing? Did I pronounce that correctly?

I think you were in some of the same yawner classes I was

Final exam for inorganic chemistry included (50% of grade) producing the periodic table by building the orbitals. Freehand, they didn't even give you graph paper. You had to name and produce atomic wt. for each. Fortunately, it did not include the rare earth elements, but you did have to show where they would fit in in the sequence. I hated that class. It was a big factor in switching to Engineering.

In an almost completely unrelated note, our Allman Brothers tribute band opened up for Rare Earth a couple weeks ago.

Al Sisti wrote: ↑Tue Jul 16, 2019 6:55 am

Tom Shea wrote: ↑Mon Jul 15, 2019 7:32 am

Bob cruise director wrote: ↑Mon Jul 15, 2019 6:53 am
I think you were in some of the same yawner classes I was

Final exam for inorganic chemistry included (50% of grade) producing the periodic table by building the orbitals. Freehand, they didn't even give you graph paper. You had to name and produce atomic wt. for each. Fortunately, it did not include the rare earth elements, but you did have to show where they would fit in in the sequence. I hated that class. It was a big factor in switching to Engineering.

In an almost completely unrelated note, our Allman Brothers tribute band opened up for Rare Earth a couple weeks ago.

Rare Earth still exists??? I saw them in about 1970. They were pretty good, too!

Curses foiled again said Snidley...I was extremely close but no cigar as the old saw goes. My first time through I got gibberish but since all the letters were elements, and since I have been in enough chemistry classes to know there is ALWAYS a table of the elements, I went with that (halfheartedly I admit, not nearly elegant enough). Then I went back in and thought, "IDIOT" it obviously has to do with the element number but I went with the alphabet, getting pulled up short by Tin with its darn 50!! I did for a millisecond think about using the square numbers, but scooted off down a different rabbit hole. I had a bit of a quandary since I got SN twice. I was certain that good idea was "Ohh SNAP" and that made it even harder. I have to say this was a KAS 4 because I am not sure I would have gotten there but I was sniffing around the edges. I'll have to use one of the answers and say "Ah CRAPSHOOT", but still applaud the puzzle maker on an excellent mind-bender. If they worked for MI6 they would introduce themselves as "Bond, Carbon Bond".