"Dirty Pool" - May 27, 2022

[dk letter]

I truly appreciate the genius of this construction! A wonderful “aha” moment on this one.

With such a brilliant construction, why spoil it with a red herring guaranteed to waste countless hours? I simply don’t understand how that makes for a better puzzle.

I’m even more confused because Mike has said he doesn’t deliberately put red herrings in, but there have been several lately like masse shot that certainly aren’t coincidences.

[HunterX]

Ugh! We came up with the H for HATE and HERRING pretty quickly, though we didn't realize this was the mechanism. After snickering at the HERRING, and thinking it was the red herring, we continued down other rabbit holes. I got too fixated on MASSE SHOT and "Slanted" = ASKEW and all those diagonal lines of letters. The word SIDE (type of pocket) is on the diagonal started near the center left, for instance.

Then the weekend got really busy. Meeting, errands, cookout/pre-wedding & post-retirement celebration, simultaneous work on MGWCC...

[HunterX]

Also, while I thought of the word HUSTLE, I didn't equate it to "Dirty Pool." I thought that "Dirty Pool" was an expression meaning "cheating." While to "hustle" someone, whether at pool or otherwise, was to intentionally play worse than you can in order to lull your opponent into a sense of confidence such that you can raise the betting stakes so that you can take them for a huge win.

But I assume that's where the expression "Dirty Pool" comes from, and I can't really think of a way to "cheat" at pool, so perhaps I need to expand my definition.

Interesting that another form of billiards, Snooker, gives us a different, though similar, expression. "Snookered" means being in a difficult situation, and comes from when the cue ball is in a position where you can't hit the required object ball.

Okay, I need to re-watch The Hustler and The Color Of Money. Any other good billiards-centered movies?

[mikeB]

This meta was a first for me. Worked the grid. “Happened to see” that the four corner squares were black, then ditto the center side squares. Lower-case aha. What if a letter is inserted into each of those six squares? Aha! New words created by each. What do they spell? Hustle. AHA! Put a post on Muggles Forum, send email to WSJ. First the exhilaration. Then the inexplicable: Going down the rabbit hole of trying to tie the new words together semantically, phonetically, visually, any possible way, because I’m conditioned to look for those types of connections in a mechanism. A rabbit hole after submitting with 100% confidence? What was I doing, besides just looking for trouble? This was a first for me. Do I need counseling . . . ?

[Bird Lives]

Interesting that another form of billiards, Snooker, gives us a different, though similar, expression. "Snookered" means being in a difficult situation, and comes from when the cue ball is in a position where you can't hit the required object ball.

Okay, I need to re-watch The Hustler and The Color Of Money. Any other good billiards-centered movies?

I always thought snooker meant to trick or to entrap. "He was snookered into buying worthless stock."
One online dictionary classifies this as the US meaning. The "difficult position" meaning if British.

By all means watch The Hustler -- for Jackie Gleason and Paul Newman and especially George C. Scott, also for what can be done in black and white that can't be done with color. The film cold-opens with Newman and his companion/backer Myron McCormick enacting a hustle, this one in a bar in a small town they're passing through on their way to NYC. They run the hustle, take the money, get back in their car, and leave. Then come the credits and the music with the great Phil Woods on alto sax. I love this film.

[minimuggle]

I spent a lot of time on the "masse shot" red herring including watching a video on how to hit a masse shot (impressive shot). But in trying to draw that curve within the grid I came to nothing. So I kept coming back to the six pockets. When I first tried to find letters which would form words in the pockets I got stymied by "tut". When I finally saw "tutu" the light went on. What a clever construction.

[ship4u]

With ASKEW being dead center and the MASSE SHOT being one of 2 pool clues, I spent a lot of time in that rabbit hole. Finally, it was clear that the other pool clue, POCKETS was the clue to pursue. H and L came quickly, then the U and S. I knew the answer had to be HUSTLE.

[iggystan]

Ugh, I’ve seen constructors use this technique in some “regular” crosswords that I’ve done and didn’t see it in this one. I, too, went down the pocket of same letters hole, but the letters didn’t make a word. Oh well, not like I would win the mug anyway.

[MikeM000]

I had a totally different take on MASSESHOT. I've never seen one nor know the details of it, but what I do know is that MASSE is an extreme crossword-ism, like Fonda role ULEE or golfer ISAOAOKI. My presumption on seeing it in the grid is that it was a bit of ha-ha fun self-referentialism, like if you had to "sew something up" in order to solve a meta and ETUI was harmlessly placed in the grid.

What puzzled me about the meta is why exactly the 8 words formed on the edges with the 6 extra letters were those words - I didn't run through every letter imaginable but surely some alternate words could have been formed in some spots? Was there, for example, any reference to a TREELINE anywhere in the clues or elsewhere in the grid?

[femullen]

Palm-to-forehead week, especially as I had two thirds of it with the four corners. Fell for a well designed trap. That solitary blank in the southwest quadrant, when given an E, produces real words at right angles, just as in the corners. But the corresponding blank in the northeast produced nada. I stared and stared, sure I was missing something. I sure was!

And why, you ask, was I looking at those oddly placed blanks rather than the obvious blanks where the side pockets should be? Well, now, those would be the "pockets askew" you read about inthe center of the grid.

And so, "Bon voyage" to my four in a row.
A good Muggle's mind must be quick, but mine's slow.
I fell, like a fool,
For some fell dirty pool,
So, palm to the forehead, I cry again, "Doh!"

[Ergcat]

I spent a lot of time on the "masse shot" red herring including watching a video on how to hit a masse shot (impressive shot). But in trying to draw that curve within the grid I came to nothing. So I kept coming back to the six pockets. When I first tried to find letters which would form words in the pockets I got stymied by "tut". When I finally saw "tutu" the light went on. What a clever construction.

Same for me! I tried placing a letter in the pockets but couldn’t think of something for “tut”/“surer”… and “tree line” too. So I naturally moved onto to greener rabbit holes! took a nudge to look some more and then use my “Wordle” skills!

[Limerick Savant]

This meta was a first for me. Worked the grid. “Happened to see” that the four corner squares were black, then ditto the center side squares. Lower-case aha. What if a letter is inserted into each of those six squares? Aha! New words created by each. What do they spell? Hustle. AHA! Put a post on Muggles Forum, send email to WSJ. First the exhilaration. Then the inexplicable: Going down the rabbit hole of trying to tie the new words together semantically, phonetically, visually, any possible way, because I’m conditioned to look for those types of connections in a mechanism. A rabbit hole after submitting with 100% confidence? What was I doing, besides just looking for trouble? This was a first for me. Do I need counseling . . . ?

Much the same happened for me, second guessing the solution because I have become conditioned to look for additional connections or meaning in those extra words. Finally all I could do was create the connection in the form of a limerick; my sort of massé shot around the impediment.

[Joe Ross]

[Guy]

I worked out the pockets, could not make the next step. The rabbit holes are fun, call it weird, but I enjoy them, win, lose or draw the creative thought. Kumbaya is the vibe I have from our group, but don’t get in the way chasing the mug.

[mikeB]

It is difficult distinguishing between a plain old rabbit hole and a deliberately deployed trap in a meta crossword. Rabbit holes are a feature of metas and part of the fun. Constructors and solvers alike expect us to get lost in them from time to time. And every trip down a rabbit hole is triggered by something we see in the grid geometry, grid entries, clues, or title – all of which are provided by the constructor. Does that mean every rabbit hole entry is a red herring? Hmmm. It is a question for the ages . . .

Speaking of today's topic, the words of Professor Harold Hill in The Music Man are relevant today. I’m going by memory, but I think it went something like:

Oh, we got Rabbit Holes,
Right here in Meta City!
With a capital R
And a capital H
And that stands for Red Herring!

[MikeM000]

Oh, and was I the only person who thought that tilting the grid 45 degrees almost made it an 8 ball?

Or is that post-gaffney syndrome from a few weeks back?

[RDaleHall]

Submitted HUSTLE... but was definitely putting more thought into the meta construction that just "create six new words..." in the pockets.

HERRINGS definitely fit the 48A clue (Reef residents), HATE was 26A (Outrage), TUTU was 28A (Prelate's address, as in Desmond Tutu), TREELINE was (potentially) 42A (They're struck at the end of a run).. as in a ski run, etc. I thought perhaps the LESS and MORE words might be something to do with the 60A clue (Ever's partner).

I may be reading WAY too much into my imagined metanism here, but thought that the path I was on was going to be part of a more clever meta.

[ReB]

Well, I thought right off that HUSTLE was an six-letter answer that fit the title.

When I realized fairly early on that the central down clue (24D) was the key clue that suggested that I needed to fill the six black "pocket" squares each with a letter, I immediately tested HUSTLE and it worked like a charm. Spent a bit of time trying to find a mechanism from the puzzle that yielded those letters, but finally decided that it wasn't worth spending any more time. (Particularly after I worked out that at H and U and S was the only combination shot that worked with the upper left half black squares.)

That was Friday, I think - and then I almost forgot to submit my answer...

[Lee-Ann]

Like others, I submitted HUSTLE early on. I saw the 6 pockets and tried to find letters to make them words. It fit with the theme. Even after submitting, I tried to find a metanism to yield those letters, but did not find one. Because of that, I was unsure of my solution.

[jrdad]

^Exactly my experience!