"Position Statement" August 19, 2022

[MajordomoTom]

Grabbed a red solo cup from Isaac and abandoned the ship.

Wow, what's in this thing?

nope, Isaac gave me the wrong solo cup, I should have stayed on the ship.

maybe next week, I'm on a serious slump here.

[escapeartist]

Nope, not this week

Congrats to all that got it

[Jace54]

The primary hurdle for me was that the prompt for a six-letter word indicated there were 6 theme entries, which led me to initially focus on the six longest across answers and then the four longest across answers with the two long down answers. I noticed the trend of “over” and “on” in some of the clues but it did not work for every one. Then I focused on whether the middle entry “abusers” gave some hint, and the “over you” in the clue evoked memories of the five Ws puzzle from many weeks ago, where the “W” really meant double U. That led me to “over U” and the rest fell in line quickly with a very satisfying solve!

[JeanneC]

I just never get these metas based on letter sounds.
Congrats to those who solved!

[ZooAnimalsOnWheels]

I was fortunate to see the right thing right away. The "Landmark over eau" clue called attention to itself. Other crosswords might use "Structure sur l'eau" to indicate a French answer, but this one necessarily had to use all English except for "eau/O", and it just read weird to me. All the other theme clues were very elegant and I probably would have breezed right by them on their own.

[Mister Squawk]

I got completely hung up with the PRO/CON concept. There were six triplets in the grid that could be converted to PRO and CON. This was based on the puzzle title and 58D both suggesting debate positions.

Then I started working on OP/ED, OPINION (there were six grid rows or columns that lacked one letter each to form the word OPINION), and LETTER and EDITOR.

My observation is that the puzzle title is usually best interpreted in the most literal sense possible at the beginning, with more figurative interpretations serving to confirm the answer.

[eagle1279]

Wow, I had the 6 letter homophones and circled them in the grid, but failed to look at the letters above or under them. Was pretty sure the answer wasn’t IIOUPC. Great solve by those who saw it.

Of the many rabbit holes I pursued, I keep coming back to three words whose mirror image appeared: RATS-STAR, OMEN-NEMO, AERO-L(OREA)L. Also thrown off by so many French references, the frequency of ORE throughout the grid, and of course possible debate references to make a PROposition of POSITION STATEMENT.

The cruise line is offering me a lifetime discount based on the time spent on the ship this year.

[Bird Lives]

At first, I had the "over eau" letter in PONT NEUF as the F, which is over the O in AWHO. I kept wondering what REFARK meant. Maybe I should submit some definitions as an entry for the Rabbit Cup.

[eagle1279]

I got completely hung up with the PRO/CON concept. There were six triplets in the grid that could be converted to PRO and CON.

What were the six you found? I traveled that path but only got CON MEN and PROLOFT

[CPJohnson]

I was in three rabbit holes:
(1) The rabbit hole of words-that-cross-and-are-1-letter-different. RATS/RANT, ROTH/MOTH/, OMIT/EMIT/, MOREL/MORES. I searched in vain for 2 more pairs that would yield the answer.
(2) The rabbit hole of hidden French words. There were French references in the clues, right? So, using Mr. G, I found ICEL, EOFF, PONT, PRIN, APTA, INNE, and another few, but, alas, no meta answer emerged. (I know NO French.)
(3) The rabbit hole of mis-identified theme answers. How was I to know that PONTNEUF and PRINCESS were themers, but not TAKEOFFS and SPREADEM? They all have 8 letters. I guess you had to identify the mechanism from the long themers, then look for others with similar clues.

I’d have never solved without a nudge.

[Dplass]

I was in three rabbit holes:
(1) The rabbit hole of words-that-cross-and-are-1-letter-different. RATS/RANT, ROTH/MOTH/, OMIT/EMIT/, MOREL/MORES. I searched in vain for 2 more pairs that would yield the answer.
(2) The rabbit hole of hidden French words. There were French references in the clues, right? So, using Mr. G, I found ICEL, EOFF, PONT, PRIN, APTA, INNE, and another few, but, alas, not meta answer emerged. (I know NO French.)
(3) The rabbit hole of mis-identified theme answers. How was I to know that PONTNEUF and PRINCESS were themers, but not TAKEOFFS and SPREADEM? They all have 8 letters. I guess you had to identify the mechanism from the long themers, then look for others with similar clues.

I’d have never solved without a nudge.

We were in almost the same boat. Ah well maybe next week.

[Colin]

Neau weigh could I seaulve,
Me: N, S, E, Doubleyou.
Hats off to you preaus!

[Onaquest]

Too clever for me. Again. I saw the prepositions but couldn’t turn them into anything. I always get a dark feeling when my husband’s only contribution is - “there are a lot of double letters in the grid”. There always are. Well done to all of you who got it, I envy you your aha moments.

[Georgeall]

Went down the rabbit holes of PRO, double letters, and French words, then saw the prepositions, and went down an inviting rabbit hole with the first letter of the answers to the clues with prepositions. Came up with CATNAPP, but it had too many letters. After a lot of mental gymnastics finally connected the prepositions to the clue answers.

[Ergcat]

The primary hurdle for me was that the prompt for a six-letter word indicated there were 6 theme entries, which led me to initially focus on the six longest across answers and then the four longest across answers with the two long down answers. I noticed the trend of “over” and “on” in some of the clues but it did not work for every one. Then I focused on whether the middle entry “abusers” gave some hint, and the “over you” in the clue evoked memories of the five Ws puzzle from many weeks ago, where the “W” really meant double U. That led me to “over U” and the rest fell in line quickly with a very satisfying solve!

After some initial rabbit holes like looking at STATE abbreviations ( from the title Position STATEment) in the long themers, and looking at PLACES/POSITIONS ( like “in a rut”), I finally decided to go back to trying to think like Mike Shenk. He likes to put a hint in the center spot. “ABUSERS” . Hmmmm, “they’ll walk all over you”. OVER U! That’s it!! AND There WERE exactly SIX U’s in the grid! I got it… I took the letters over the u’s but just got garbage! Now what?
I eventually needed a gentle nudge to take that SAME mechanism to the other themers.

[pjc]

As I posted earlier, I did finally get this one yesterday afternoon, but I went down rabbit holes over the weekend, some of which have already been stated by others and some that haven't:

- I did go down the PRO/CON hole (probably because I had done a cryptic recently with this mechanism)
- I explored the usual 'hidden words in the long answers' technique
- I took 'position' as possibly indicating 'direction' and tried unsuccessfully to use E, W, N, S (and U, D) as indicators to go one letter in those directions; that went nowhere. (Was there already a puzzle that used that once? I have this fuzzy memory that there was...)
- My initial cheesy solve was finding words where removing one letter from their 'positions' gave me a new word (example: WILDE becomes WILD) and using the removed letters to solve the meta. Amazingly, that actually came up with an answer - EUROPE - but there was no way that was going to be correct. (And examining later, I found several other words that fit the technique, so that was obviously hogwash.)

Happy to finally figure this out yesterday; there's a different satisfaction about getting one of these after a long struggle as opposed to getting it very quickly.

And my new streak starts at 1!

[clonefitz]

The primary hurdle for me was that the prompt for a six-letter word indicated there were 6 theme entries, which led me to initially focus on the six longest across answers and then the four longest across answers with the two long down answers. I noticed the trend of “over” and “on” in some of the clues but it did not work for every one. Then I focused on whether the middle entry “abusers” gave some hint, and the “over you” in the clue evoked memories of the five Ws puzzle from many weeks ago, where the “W” really meant double U. That led me to “over U” and the rest fell in line quickly with a very satisfying solve!

After some initial rabbit holes like looking at STATE abbreviations ( from the title Position STATEment) in the long themers, and looking at PLACES/POSITIONS ( like “in a rut”), I finally decided to go back to trying to think like Mike Shenk. He likes to put a hint in the center spot. “ABUSERS” . Hmmmm, “they’ll walk all over you”. OVER U! That’s it!! AND There WERE exactly SIX U’s in the grid! I got it… I took the letters over the u’s but just got garbage! Now what?
I eventually needed a gentle nudge to take that SAME mechanism to the other themers.

I went down the same path for STATEment. 25 states have their postal code included in the grid, that seemed like a lot, but I have to say I've never counted before . And as you mentioned, a couple of the long answers (INFLiCTINg and CAptaINNEMO) included four postal codes.

[CPJohnson]

I just never get these metas based on letter sounds.
Congrats to those who solved!

The "sounds like" puzzles are always hard for me, too.

[RDaleHall]

REMARK is definitely the correct and elegant solution here. Strong kudos go out to anyone who may have gone down my first path.... noting that the "position" of the six letters in the key words (...such as the I's are in position 2 and 9 in NICELOOKING) and then using them to refer to the answers for their corresponding position: ARIA (2), ELGORT (9), ARIA (2), TUCK (3), RANT (1), and RANT (1). The starting letters anagram to ERRATA, a legal document used in court proceedings to change a witness position statement. But that's a little bit of a stretch...

[DrTom]

Well I had all the right ideas but a nudge got me overthinking it and I used ALL the positions:
On, UNDER, OVER PLUS IN, OUT, FRONT, SIDE, EDGE and of course that did not help except to confuse the heck out of me. Actually if you took all of those you could work out AIEOU (A rut, Easy, ) with some gymnastics and therefore maybe the words was VOWELS (6 letters but no tie in at all). Then when I finally did see that there were 5 positions with homophonic letters I went through and selected ever one of those. I can tell you that
TWRLOELGN etc, is not a word unless it is in High Valyrian (can you guess who watched House of the Dragon last night?).

I caanot be the only one who tried to use those other positions - or was I?