"Chit Chat" Sept. 26, 2022

[woozy]

This was one of those... "hmm, well, it cant be <perfectly correct answer> obviously, so maybe it is....".

I saw it was call chit chat so I thought it was about other names for iou chits, markers, call backs, and .... well, I can't think of any more terms for those. And I saw IOUS and thought "Well, that looks think the -ious suffix, but it obviously can't be that..."

[Abide]

This puzzle had vivacity

@Bird Lives

[mheberlingx100]

Chits are IOUS, I guess

That’s how I came upon the meta mechanism.

[Richard]

I thought it had something to do with IOUS and then get confirmation that it had something to do with IOUS.

But still did not get it!

Congrats to the solvers.

[ZooAnimalsOnWheels]

I had to be pointed to shore in Isaac's Last Call. I noted the IOUs as being a type of chit at one time, but ended up distracted by other things in the grid and never saw the true way forward. I think if it had been in the very bottom right, I would have paid it more attention. Instead, I thought of "Chit Chat" being a synonym for "Small Talk", which wounds like a great Meta-puzzle title for something involving short words.

But the thing that really distracted me was that "Chit Chat" also seemed to be pointing towards two words sharing the same first two letters. For each of the starred answers, there is a clue with the same starting pair of letters: "AP competitor", "Fleshy fruits", "Hate with a passion", "Scholastic stereotype" and "French coins..." The only place that this breaks down is that one of starred clues also starts with 'HA', so I should have stopped chasing my tail with it, but I really wanted it to work. I got UPANE when I looked at the first letter of all the answers those sets of clues referred to, and I could almost see "Up An E" being some arcane instruction on what to do next. I even spent some time walking letters 8 places back in the alphabet, as you would have to do to change "Chit" to "Chat", but it was all nonsense.

[Omnibus]

Here’s my rabbit hole: I figured it had to do with finding other words in the grid that fit the starred clues, possibly with modification. So for “Fit to be tied” I had SOUR from SPUR, “Hardly solemn” FUN from FUR, “Likely to be damaging” WEAK from TEAK, and “Crafty” SLY from SPY, when I noticed the NOX and IOUS in the thesaurus list for “harmful”. Tossed out the napkin I was using for a scratchpad at breakfast and got new one.

[Barney]

This puzzle had vivacity

@Bird Lives

Well played.

What a great puzzle (even if I didn’t get it).

[Mister Squawk]

Finally on shore. Like so many things, invisible at first, then once seen impossible to miss.

Originally, this was going to say "Like so many things, invisible at first, then once seen impossible to unsee."

But then I thought that might be a bit of a spoiler. Like others, I didn't find FUNDS to be a very reassuring answer (where is my PAGEANT?). I also noted fairly early an oddness about the five starred answers. The word INANE (which fits well with the puzzle title) can be formed from letters in the answers.

APOPLECTIC
FLIPPANT
HARMFUL
SCHEMING
FRAUDULENT

Even after discovering the mechanism, I spent time trying to make use of some numerological aspect of the answer (e.g. the number of letters) to get back to my preferred anwer.

[Joe Ross]

66A Slips from people who are short - IOUS was missed before solving, but gave a nice 'a-ha' if not an 'A-HA!'. Instead, I listed as many adjectives as I could for the Theme Entries & had 3 ending in "IOUS" which was enough to find the metanism.

"... a five-letter word" stopped me from overthinking the Gaffneyesque reverse-the-metanism answer to be penurious or impecunious.

[OliviaL]

So strange. I didn’t solve this week. I fell asleep looking at the puzzle yesterday. I woke up from my nap and told my husband that I had a dream that IOUS was central to the metanism. I never took it any further!!

Edit: I am unfamiliar with the word chit. That’s new for me. I spent a lot of time looking at words that could swap out the I and A, as in chit chat… THANK/THINK, AMP/IMP, SPATE/SPITE, FAST/FIST, SATAN/SIT IN. I was hoping to find clues that relate back to the new word, but no such luck.

[pjc]

It took me until Saturday to get this - the key for me was seeing that CHIT led to IOUS.

Before that, I was wasting a lot of time substituting I's for A's and A's for I's (because CHIT CHAT encouraged that substitution). So, for example, substituting I for A in FLIPPANT yields SATIN as the crossword. One thing I haven't learned yet is letting go of things that don't yield immediate results!

Winning streak is at 5.

[Dplass]

I had to be pointed to shore in Isaac's Last Call. I noted the IOUs as being a type of chit at one time, but ended up distracted by other things in the grid and never saw the true way forward. I think if it had been in the very bottom right, I would have paid it more attention. Instead, I thought of "Chit Chat" being a synonym for "Small Talk", which wounds like a great Meta-puzzle title for something involving short words.

But the thing that really distracted me was that "Chit Chat" also seemed to be pointing towards two words sharing the same first two letters. For each of the starred answers, there is a clue with the same starting pair of letters: "AP competitor", "Fleshy fruits", "Hate with a passion", "Scholastic stereotype" and "French coins..." The only place that this breaks down is that one of starred clues also starts with 'HA', so I should have stopped chasing my tail with it, but I really wanted it to work. I got UPANE when I looked at the first letter of all the answers those sets of clues referred to, and I could almost see "Up An E" being some arcane instruction on what to do next. I even spent some time walking letters 8 places back in the alphabet, as you would have to do to change "Chit" to "Chat", but it was all nonsense.

This.

[FirstMax]

I had an inkling that these were synonyms. Unfortunately, Thesaurus.com shows apoplectic as meaning motionless and has no words meaning furious. Next I thought all these words might have two word synonyms like if “Magic” was in the grid the synonym would be “Hocus Pocus.” This fortunately still kept me on track to look at a list of synonyms and I stumbled on Noxious. I didn’t understand the title until I was fully done (and was like wow) and I guessed at furious and finally went to Merriam-Webster just to see it. Also, I kept clicking on the microphone to hear the correct pronunciation: a puh pleck tick.

[Abide]

I am unfamiliar with the word chit. That’s new for me.

Most people under 50 are probably in the same boat. I thought IOUS should have been clued more like "Chits in a pot" or some other signal of relevance.

[linsocalm]

Impressed by all you clever solvers! Didn’t have time this week to do much more than the grid. I started down one rabbit hole: changing one letter in the starred words to form new words e.g. flip to flap, schemi to schema. I could have spent hours at it but It would have been the boat for me!

[Flying_Burrito]

Took a break this week as I went back home to Northern Italy. No WSJ paper copy or printer at my parents' house (a last standing bastion or museum of 80s life with working rotary phones and VCRs....) so I had no desire of trying to solve the meta via Android. Just absorbed what I used to see and take for granted (and not fully appreciate) the first 18 years of my life like the view of the Monte Rosa, the second highest mountain in the Alps

[Onaquest]

Even knowing the word ‘chit’ didn’t point me in the right direction on this one. Feels like I’ve been in a dry spell for a while. Congratulations to all the solvers again, impressive work!

[Dplass]

I had an inkling that these were synonyms. Unfortunately, Thesaurus.com shows apoplectic as meaning motionless and has no words meaning furious. Next I thought all these words might have two word synonyms like if “Magic” was in the grid the synonym would be “Hocus Pocus.” This fortunately still kept me on track to look at a list of synonyms and I stumbled on Noxious. I didn’t understand the title until I was fully done (and was like wow) and I guessed at furious and finally went to Merriam-Webster just to see it. Also, I kept clicking on the microphone to hear the correct pronunciation: a puh pleck tick.

The Google says "overcome with anger; extremely indignant." for apoplectic.

[Joepickett]

I realized that IOUS was relevant fairly quickly and then stared at synonyms and saw noxious for harmful and that was my Aha! NOX was a new answer for me so that stuck out as well.

[MajordomoTom]

<sm mail'd packg>IOUS