"Chit Chat" Sept. 26, 2022

[LadyBird]

Never did figure this out--but having a marvelous time with my college girlfriends (friends for 40+ years).

I tried the SPATE/SPITE, AMP/IMP route.

The rabbit hole I was really enamored with was the 5 different endings: IC, ANT, FUL. ING. ENT. Which led me to SATANIC, DEV(I)ANT, ABHORRENT. But, of course, nothing totally fit.

Good luck to a Muggle winning the mug!

[Bird Lives]

Arrrgh. (That's in honor of today.) I think I could have gotten it with a nudge that unlike a lot of Mike Shenk puzzles, this one wasn't about the letters -- switching them around, reading them backwards, or every other one, or in circles, etc. It was actually about the meaning of words.

[hoover]

Yeah, didn't see it at all. Tried the vowel thing like a bunch of other people. Also found body parts. I know the word chit but didn't connect it with IOUS at the bottom. Here's my two rabbit holes:

17A APOPLECTIC TIC TAC
22A FLIPPANT FLIP FLOP / LIP
35A HARMFUL ARM
51A SCHEMING CHIN
55A FRAUDULENT

[HunterX]

Guess I picked a good weekend to go to a music festival. 1) The weather was gorgeous. 2) Hanging with good friends listening to many great bands is a blast. 3) It was more fun than chit-chatting with Isaac (fun though he is) which is where I probably would have been otherwise.

[mheberlingx100]

The f, n, d, and s came pretty quickly. Then I had to find the vowel. For some reason Unser-ious didn’t pop. Resorted to brute strength, going through every grid entry adding -ious until I hit paydirt.

You could have heard the forehead slap across town.

[Jacksull]

This one came to me early. NOX seemed like an odd entry, and IOUS fit in with Chit in the title. After that, the rest fell into place (although unserious took a while).

In most cases, completing the grid is not very challenging and I had a tendency to speed solve to get right to the meta. Now I start at the bottom right and solve bottom to top or along a diagonal. As a result, I read all the clues and oddball entries like NOX tend to stick out. Letter patterns and hidden words are easier to spot. I solve on paper. I don’t know how effective this would be for online solvers.

[EVJ]

Ashore! Love the mechanism. Very clever. But not getting the “aha!” from the five-letter word. Maybe the connection to the title will eventually dawn on me.
In the meantime I’m heading to day 2 of the Polish Harvest Festival (Dozynki) in Yorba Linda, CA. While there I’ll celebrate with a Zywiec while nibbling on golabki, pierogi, nalesniki, and paczki.

What, no Chruściki?

Hahaha! Oh yea, brought some home with us

[VanVeen]

I would have never solved this if I hadn't remembered the use of the alternate definition of 'trips' in the Power Trips puzzle a few weeks ago.

[Cindy N]

I looked at the title CHIT CHAT - inconsequential conversation - and went down the rabbit hole of smaller/shorter/inconsequential versions of the long fills. I started by looking at the clues and finding words that matched, then using those answers in the grid.

APOPLECTIC Request that may result in swearing (PROMISE ME
FLIPPANT Amusingly clumsy APISH
HARMFUL Uncultured louts OAFS
SCHEMING ???
FRAUDULENT Deception PUT ON

Using the clues I have RAU?D, (I discarded the idea of using the letters of the new entries PAO?P.) That's where I reached out for help and discovered that although I was missing only 1 letter for FRAUD, my answer was a complete and total fraud. A simple suggestion to focus on just the first word of the title was all I needed. Saw IOUS and the SPUR in the top right and I was done in just a few minutes.

[Jace54]

The f, n, d, and s came pretty quickly. Then I had to find the vowel. For some reason Unser-ious didn’t pop. Resorted to brute strength, going through every grid entry adding -ious until I hit paydirt.

You could have heard the forehead slap across town.

Same here with f_nds. I realized it had to be a “u” to tie it to “chits” but kept trying to validate “uberious” as a word for flippant. Then laughed when I saw Unser and realized how it fit — the proper name threw me off.

[DebbieC]

I just happened to see 34A DEV at the same time as 66A IOUS and ran off with it.

Without that brief moment of "aha-ism" I never would have got this.

Super sneaky Shenk meta!

I had the same experience with NOX, and would venture to guess that many of us have similar experiences in general with METAs.

[ReB]

Here's the rabbit hole I got trapped in until a nudge request to Wendy released me.

Based on the title, which has a progression CHIT to CHAT, the mechanism I came up with was to find an alternate grid entry that fits the definitions to the five theme words by substituting one letter - and these new letters should spell out the answer.

So we get a rather good entry for "HARDLY SOLEMN": AMP to IMP [7D], and excellent entries for "lIKELY TO BE DAMAGING": TEAK to LEAK [30A] as well as for "CRAFTY": SPY to SLY [31A].

This spells out _ILL_, which suggests SILLY - which does connect with the title, though not the best. I remained open that I could be missing a better word.

But this mechanism dead-ended when I just couldn't find reasonable transitions for for "FIT TO BE TIED" and "COUNTERFEIT". The best I could come up with were CHOCK to SHOCK [21A], and (5) DENS to DENY [59A] but they just didn't satisfy.

So then I sent out for a nudge and was told that I was completely on the wrong track.

[DrTom]

The f, n, d, and s came pretty quickly. Then I had to find the vowel. For some reason Unser-ious didn’t pop. Resorted to brute strength, going through every grid entry adding -ious until I hit paydirt.

You could have heard the forehead slap across town.

I "cheated" because it was obvious I needed a vowel so I looked only at words that started with a vowel.

[DBMiller]

Yeah, didn't see it at all. Tried the vowel thing like a bunch of other people. Also found body parts. I know the word chit but didn't connect it with IOUS at the bottom. Here's my two rabbit holes:

17A APOPLECTIC TIC TAC
22A FLIPPANT FLIP FLOP / LIP
35A HARMFUL ARM
51A SCHEMING CHIN
55A FRAUDULENT

Close to my only rabbit hole.

TIC TAC
FLIP FLOP
HAR ?
MIN MAX? MAN?
FRA FRO?

[DrTom]

Ashore! Love the mechanism. Very clever. But not getting the “aha!” from the five-letter word. Maybe the connection to the title will eventually dawn on me.
In the meantime I’m heading to day 2 of the Polish Harvest Festival (Dozynki) in Yorba Linda, CA. While there I’ll celebrate with a Zywiec while nibbling on golabki, pierogi, nalesniki, and paczki.

What, no Chruściki?

Hahaha! Oh yea, brought some home with us

I probably still have clothes with powdered sugar marks!

[DrTom]

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

You no doubt had the better week-end.

[Homer Buckle]

I wasn't sure about my answer because only three involved adding on to people's names (as suggested by 66A). Glad I got there, but I really wasn't sure...

[BarbaraK]

Hope all WSJ solvers will also check out this week's MMM:

viewtopic.php?t=1845

Conceived at one of the Tuesday evening Muggle Zoom chats, and created by the folks who were there that night - including me! (OK, my part was very small:)

[Andrew Bradburn]

Glad I won my mug years ago, as my aging brain is not doing so well on most of the Friday puzzles these days. Kudos to those who got this one!

[MikeMillerwsj]

The contest answer is FUNDS. Each of the starred answers has a synonym that’s another grid answer plus IOUS: APOPLECTIC/FURIOUS, FLIPPANT/ UNSERIOUS, HARMFUL/NOXIOUS, SCHEMING/ DEVIOUS, FRAUDULENT/SPURIOUS. The first letters of those words spell the contest answer.

Such a clever (devious) contest! And a challenging one--we had 722 entries, somewhat fewer than usual, but of those an above-average 80% got it right. Incorrect answers included RUMOR (13), PRATE (11), TRUMP (7), LIBEL (3), and a bunch of others.

Congrats to this week's winner: Liz Manashil of Los Angeles!