"This Place Has Changed" August 12, 2022

[joequavis]

I'd be interested to learn which city was the first that folks "saw." For me it was Durban.

Naples, unfortunately.

+1...and ANN ARBOR

[Bill Bovard]

Welp

I was on the right path but was not familiar with most of those places to reach the answer

The one rabbit hole I was down all weekend was to move and change one letter to create a place:

e.g. - DURBIN - the R moved and became an L to make DUBLIN

worked for a few but not all

congrats to all who got this one

Thinking that DURBIN looked like DUBLIN was as close as I got to solving this!

[Bob cruise director]

As I was filling in the grid, I started seeing names of cities and they were all in Africa

Logos/Lagos - in a bunch of crossword puzzles
Pez (haven't seen a dispenser in 60 years) but Fez because of the hats of the Shriners
Oman/Oran - I have seen Casablanca too many times and Oran shows up at the beginning
Tunis - read too many WW 2 books on Africa - plus by that time I already had AFR?C
Acura/Accra - like Lagos it is in a bunch of crossword puzzles

By then I had AFRIC and now for A

Durbin - I had to use Bing maps because I did not know if it was Darbin or Durban - neither of which I had ever heard of but knew it had to be one or the other.

[Deb F]

Oh, still on the ship. Finished grid Friday night and didn't see anything. Spent yesterday prepping, packing, driving, and unpacking at the shore for my wife's family's annual beach vacation week. Then socializing, etc. So I haven't really had much time or inclination to work on the puzzle.

Maybe that's what I was procrastinating about with the previous post...?

Which “shore” are you visiting? My Philadelphia years ( elementary school) we went to Cape May , Stone Harbor, or Avalon NJ depending on which family friend we were visiting! As a teen , it was Rehoboth Beach, De at an aunts house, then In adult life, we owned a place at Bethany Beach DE! Love the shore but now in retirement, I’m happily living on a lake in SC!!

Ocean City, NJ. Not my particular favorite. (Prefer Cape May, which has architecture and restaurants with alcohol.) But I was raised with the Poconos as the standard vacation location. And I already live in a crowded city. So I prefer getting away to the solitude of the woods. But hey, a vacation is a vacation (even when you're retired). I'll always make the best of it.

There's always Circle Liquors--They deliver!!! Kind of like having Isaac make a house call

[Deb F]

I'd be interested to learn which city was the first that folks "saw." For me it was Durban.

When I finally gave up on Argentina in Acura Integra, it was Aspen! Then the first of the real answers was Fez. Last was Oran.

[Flying_Burrito]

I'd be interested to learn which city was the first that folks "saw." For me it was Durban.

Lagos and then Durban which I remembered from childhood memories and vacations is South Africa. Once I saw Accra my original answer (Arabia) changed to Africa. My initial incline however was for a geo place in the US as the middle of the crossword had 2 answers ("Any" and "USA") that I thought screamed to Anywhere USA (and the EriePA or Eerie answers seemed to indicate that). Another small detour I took was Siesta + Leon for Sierra Leon in terms of mechanism (but it's spelled Leone). I take an easy MG anytime and this to me was an easy one (but easy is always a relative term...)

[DBMiller]

[ship4u]

I'd be interested to learn which city was the first that folks "saw." For me it was Durban.

At first, I suspected that Mr. Gaffney was going to have us combine letters across 2 words in the long answers. FLINT popped out at me from BLUE FIN TUNA. Thanks to a muggle friend, I climbed out of that rabbit hole. The first correct city that I saw was TUNIS.

[HunterX]

I'd be interested to learn which city was the first that folks "saw." For me it was Durban.

TULSA unfortunately.

[HunterX]

Ocean City, NJ. Not my particular favorite. (Prefer Cape May, which has architecture and restaurants with alcohol.)

There's always Circle Liquors--They deliver!!! Kind of like having Isaac make a house call

We took the back roads to come across the Roosevelt Blvd bridge. So on the way in we made a right turn into Right Turn Liquors, which happens to be on the... you know.

But I was mostly thinking about how there's one fewer reason to go to the restaurants in Ocean City when they don't have any alcohol. And there's no reason for a restaurant in Ocean City to be upscale when they can't serve alcohol. So the market skews towards pizza and fried seafood.

When I was a kid, my father told us that his uncle used to say, "Ocean City must be the healthiest place in the country. You have to walk so far to get to a drink!"

Maybe that's why my grandfather bought a place in the Poconos...?

[haydendog]

I'd be interested to learn which city was the first that folks "saw." For me it was Durban.

For me it was Lagos but I only knew that because of the jewelry line. I vaguely knew it was a city!

[Franklin.Bluth]

I'd be interested to learn which city was the first that folks "saw." For me it was Durban.

"Fez" hit me first, followed immediately by "Lagos". I saw "Durban" as a possibility early on but dismissed it because I thought for some reason it was a minor city in Australia, not the major South African town.

[michaelm]

I'd be interested to learn which city was the first that folks "saw." For me it was Durban.

LAGOS first.

I had solved Thursday at work. 100%er.
But when I got home later, my son was looking at the puzzle and started listing HILO, ASPEN et cet.
Slight panic attack, but turned out even the GREAT Matt Gaffney couldn't be in two places at once!

[hoover]

I'd be interested to learn which city was the first that folks "saw." For me it was Durban.

LAGOS
DURBAN
TUNIS
ACCRA
FEZ
ORAN

Oran was the only one I had to Google, thanks to Sporcle geography quizzes.

[Thurman8er]

There are no words for how much I despise Geography Metas.

No. Words.

But two in the same week???

[LadyBird]

I'd be interested to learn which city was the first that folks "saw." For me it was Durban.

Lagos was the first one for me--thanks to the Goodreads Read Around the World Challenge, I read "Welcome to Lagos" a few years ago. Then I saw Durban, thanks to researching South Africa a few years ago for a trip there. And then Tunis, just because.

So, now I had 3 vowels A--I--A and was worrying about their ability to make a word. So I also wrote down their countries, thinking it might be the first letter of that. Which it wasn't, but did point me to the extra level of elegance in the puzzle.

When my husband was looking at the puzzle, he finally noticed the Lagos--but his mind went to Portugal, since we've been researching for a trip there and there is a town of that town in the Algarve region.

[clonefitz]

Some of my rabbit holes:
I noticed that the letters for PEPSI appeared in 23A PEZDISPENSER and the letters for SULTAN appeared in 40A BLUEFINTUNAS, but there was nothing similar for the last pair of long entries. And there was nothing I could think of to do with that information to lead to a letter per entry.

1D ERIEPA and 65 EERIE had me looking for anything similar. (Or other city, state words... like could 46 STERNAL be Stern, AL? Ok, there's no such city... is it a letter off from an actual city in Alabama? Apparently not. But I kept looking just the same.

I noticed that a single-letter change on 2D MAPLES could give NAPLES. With a bit more effort, 7D TEPEE could become TEMPE. And 33D ANT and 54D ARBOR with a single-letter change could be ANN ARBOR all nice in a column there. I looked for cities that could be found with similar changes to one letter in a grid entry. I really wanted 49D AGEONE to morph into something - probably in Greece. (Edited to add: noticed that 70A LEON could be LYON... but of course it could also just be LÉON.)

I found 4 5-letter words that contained all the letters of 4 4-letter words (such as 60A OREOS containing the letters of 12D ORSO), thinking that if I could find 6 such instances I might have a word. I did find some similar relations between 3 and 4-letter words, but those were more problematic as 41D ERA was contained by both 58D ACRE and 13A RARE, while both 32D TAN and 33D ANT are contained in 67A ANTI.

I found 1 pair of antonyms (9D PRO and 67A ANTI) and wasted a bit of time looking for others. Similarly there was a pair of synonyms (69A GRAB and 63D NAB).

Also noted a couple of pairs of entries that were only a letter or two off from each other. 20D DIEU and 57D DIET; 15D ELSEIF and 51D EASEIN. It seemed really curious that they were so close. With the U->T from the first pair and the L->A and F->N from the second pair, all I could do was FLAUNT.

These are the rabbit holes that took up most of my time, but so many words caught my eye as being close to geographical names.

I also briefly followed the PEPSI/SULTAN path and the ERIE path you mention. The other momentary distraction was all the down answers ending in "U".

[clonefitz]

I'd be interested to learn which city was the first that folks "saw." For me it was Durban.

Mine was Durban, quickly followed by Lagos. But I mistakenly thought Durban was in Australia (I was thinking Darwin). So I started pursuing cities from each continent. My aha moment was when I saw Fez and rechecked Durban.

[michaelm]

There are no words for how much I despise Geography Metas.

No. Words.

But two in the same week???

Two math last week (WSJCC + MMM) and now two geography.
Must be Back to School time!

[Prozach]

I'd be interested to learn which city was the first that folks "saw." For me it was Durban.

Fez for me