"Sounds Delicious" - July 29, 2022

[Jace54]

Savvy Goalie was where I found the way to the solution. I kept saying it out loud repeatedly and “ravioli” finally popped in my head. It was fun to figure out the rest, with a backsolve needed for agnolotti after some Google searching.

[Flying_Burrito]

It was obviously food and phonetics. That was crystal clear. I got stuck for a while in the wrong country since I thought that shore dough was a phonetic for hors d'oeuvre. Zing a meanie for linguine is what did it for me and the rest was easy, but I spent more time than I should have.
I did not like this meta because it felt that it was rushly assembled without attention to detail. How in the world does orzo rhyme w/ shore dough?

[Dplass]

I'm sorry to admit I think this is one of the weakest metas I've seen. I am disappointed that the answer is nothing more than a loose rhyming scheme and not tied to anything in the grid, pattern, or clues. And of course I got stuck in the rabbit hole of deli foods... starting with DREAD LOCKS (LOX).

I would never have gotten this, not in a million years. Congrats to all who solved.

And to think I actually lived in Italy for 6 months!

See you next week.

I'll have to respectfully disagree and say this is one of the easiest metas, and could have part of the Meta-101 series if it had been constructed before then. But easy is often in the eye of the beholder.

• You are told to look for a 6-letter word.
• No clues have asterisks, so you should probably look at the long (Theme) answers. In this case, a bunch of silly phrases. And there are six of them.
• Title, title, title. Sound -> Phonetics -> Rhymes. And delicious implies foods. This was all I needed to solve this one.
• Numbers in parentheses aren't always an index, they could also indicate length, as they did here. This was not strictly needed in this case, but supplied confirmation that you found the right rhymes.
• A Meta answer doesn't always tie back to the title, but if it does, all the better,

I didn't even notice the numbers, I found FL_VOR, with the rhymes, all pastas. My daughter supplied agnolotti which confirmed my already known answer of FLAVOR. And something that sounds delicious would no doubt be flavorful.

Are the rhymes a bit on the impure side? Perhaps. Rhymes often are. You say orange, I say door hinge.

I have to agree with the OP. There was nothing indicating it was Italian food.

[Jackie88]

The meta would have been perfection if the “o”pasta had been orecchiette (little ears).

[Ben B]

We were fortunate to get this one right away. I think it helped that we had such a major fail with the pig Latin one. So we have a habit now of repeating the theme answers aloud before digging in too deep.

[Flying_Burrito]

We were fortunate to get this one right away. I think it helped that we had such a major fail with the pig Latin one. So we have a habit now of repeating the theme answers aloud before digging in too deep.

This one being more macaronic latin...

[Berto]

Just spent a week on vacay with my in-laws over from…. Italy!!! Didn’t have the means to print out until late last night, gave myself an hour to solve, and fell asleep with an F and an L.
I wasn't sure I was on the right track, as I had no idea how I was going to get a vowel out of Tonya!
Shore Dough was bugging me (and hadn’t seen the parentheses, which would have helped) and Flavor didn’t jump out as I would be thinking FlavoUr!
Agree with last post - saying aloud certainly helped and was all I could really do with no printed version!

[KayW]

AGNOLOTTI was new to me. I had to back-solve that one after first getting to FLMVOR using MANICOTTI.

[Mister Squawk]

I assumed the numbers were indices as well. I spent a fair amount of time wondering about the coincidence that each index was the last letter of the pasta's name. D'oh!

[pjc]

Seven-week streak came to a crashing halt. Ah, well - there's always next week.

[kawaja]

You’re telling me the answer is not PASTAS?! Darn.

That was my WSJ submission as well, but the muggles call steered me off of that lee shore.

[zacmoretz]

This reminds me why I quit doing these….

[HunterX]

Given the title, I knew this was a phonetic metanism. And I have historically done very poorly with those. So I was dreading (pun sort of intended) this one. And I was quite proud of myself when I realized DREAD A MEANIE was Fettuccini. As with others, had to backsolve for agnolotti, though I have had agnolotti many times. My backsolving method was calling out to my wife, "What's a pasta that starts with A?" Without the "(4)" orzo might have been another one lost on me, at least at first.

I vote with those saying "Not one of my favorites." It's a perfectly fine metanism, just one I don't care for, as it isn't as tight, logical, or clever as others. De gustibus non disputandum est!

[HunterX]

Edit: I need coffee...

[CPJohnson]

Are the rhymes a bit on the impure side? Perhaps. Rhymes often are. You say orange, I say door hinge.

I was taught in elementary school that nothing rhymes with orange. A close failure is porridge.

[Bird Lives]

I am not sure how you are catching the bats but a very effective way is to have a tennis racket, and open the door to the room where the bat is. The bat will fly toward the door but will not see the strings on the tennis racket and you can gently whack him on the head. He drops to the floor and you can escort him out. He will have a headache but will recover.

That's why the Swiss German word for "bat" is "Federermaus."

[Bird Lives]

After filling the grid, I inadvertently ignored the numbers because my .puz screen doesn't show the ends of long clues unless I scroll right. So I had DREAD A MEANIE as FEDELINI, which is a better rhyme than FETTUCINE, especially if you're at all a purist about Italian pronunciation.

[TeaJenny]

Are the rhymes a bit on the impure side? Perhaps. Rhymes often are. You say orange, I say door hinge.

I was taught in elementary school that nothing rhymes with orange. A close failure is porridge.

I was taught that, too, but I've since learned otherwise:

"What rhymes with orange?

Orange rhymes with Blorenge (a mountain in Wales) and sporange (a technical word for a sac where spores are made)."

https://www.dictionary.com/e/rhyme-with-orange/

[SewYoung]

After filling the grid, I inadvertently ignored the numbers because my .puz screen doesn't show the ends of long clues unless I scroll right. So I had DREAD A MEANIE as FEDELINI, which is a better rhyme than FETTUCINE, especially if you're at all a purist about Italian pronunciation.

Just as well since you got the letter you needed. The numbers threw me off as I tried using them and came up with the final letter of each word which got me nowhere. Without the numbers, I think I would have gotten it by backsolving for the "A". ( I had a really hard time typing that as it auto corrected to "backsliding")

[Georgeall]

Thought "PASTAS" was the answer at first, then got the "FLMVOR" that several others did. Google helped find Agnolotti.