"Consider the Alternative" October 6, 2022

[Berto]

@Bird Lives, I was swimming right along with you and those 6 ORcas, hoping we were swimming toward shore. But they were headed to a deserted 🏝

Yep - swam off with the ORfish too, although there were some vertical ORs (up and down) that didn’t feel right. Plus there were “OR”s in some associated clues… “hORrific humanoids” > ORcs
“hazy histORy” > lORe
“Paris airpORt” > ORly

I also clung on way too long to the RIO de Janeiro > January red herring…

..Until I was set back on the right path resulting in a 20A moment!

[Joe Ross]

I was fortunate to solve this using the spreadsheet form where I always list things associated to the meta in the column to the right of the grid. Since WASHINGTON-EISENHOWER & CONNECTICUT-RHODE ISLAND were long, I decided to stack them in the column, leaving a space/empty row between the 2nd alternative of one pair & the first alternative of the next.

My first foray was into
THURSDAY
SATURDAY
in which I marveled that only one letter in each differed. Then I tried similar / dissimilar speeling within the other pairs.

When that didn't work, I made the grid & the right column fill my screen. In that view, the initials of the pairs popped to my eye, then brain.

WASHINGTON
EISENHOWER

became

Washington
EIsenhower
T

and 21A WET.

The rest fell easily, and I felt extremely lucky to have solved this puzzle quickly.

[Powers2020]

Please enter me in the "oops- I was so sure I had the right answer, but no....!" Group, and then enter my rabbit hole submission into the best "consider the alternate" contest.
E/W, S/T, O/J, O/M, R/C, H/C
I figured you pick from each pair.
I picked C, H, O, O, S, E.

And submitted "choose"

Same Here. I "chose" the C for Conn instead of the R for RI and got CHOOSE. Didn't submit however as others let me know there was a better answer (which I finally got with multiple nudges from Higgy Sue!)

[CalRhody]

Ah, nice puzzle. I wish I had gotten there, but not smart enough to get that second step. Nice work, those who did.

I thought maybe the answer was "CHOOSE", because Rhode Island is two words, and therefore, the alternative gets rejected, keeping the "C" from Connecticut. I'm very glad that this is not what happened.

Now, I'm missing the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations a little more than normal. (I don't observe the name shortening, because the State is certainly more than just Aquidneck Island, and I identify as a Boomer .)

-CalRHODY

[Dplass]

Egad! Not even close. I gave the other items of the same length that fit a try but all I could see was nonsense.

My very deep rabbit hole:

I tried to find logical next items in a series.
Washington—> Adams
Thursday—> Friday
January—> February
Macbeth—> Othello (next most recent tragedy)
Connecticut—> Rhode Island (next smallest state)
Cornell—> Dartmouth (next youngest Ivy)

Result was *afford* Admittedly, no relationship to the title, but at least it was a real word. And ESOORH wasn’t.

I thought about doing this too! But got stuck on Connecticut...

[MarkWoychick]

I tried the numbers methods people have described, but where I really got stuck was thinking the answer might have to do with the "native" in alternative and finding substitute clues/answers in the puzzle. For example:

Washington(ian) --> DC figure --> SEN
Macbeth (Scotsman/clan) --> MCFLY
Cornell (Ithacan) --> MONACAN

I also found the matching-letter-count alternatives pretty quickly, but then I doubled down: "Maybe I need an alternative to the alternatives." A New England alternative to RI: Anna Kendrick is a Maine native, alternative to Harvard: Sylvia Plath is from Boston, Othello could be a Hajji (or another alternative could be Hamlet/Danish).

I got Gaffneyed but was able to get the answer with a nudge from @Wendy Walker. Congrats to all the intrepid solo solvers who got this one....maybe next time for me.

[Bob cruise director]

My first answer took the first letters of the alternative answers HSOEOR. And they spell SHOOER - which is a real word. But it did not fit the title and the anagram was not Matt's style. But it gave a good laugh until a very slight nudge in the right direction

[JeanneC]

“Wet” and “mop” drove me crazy all weekend. At the last minute I threw in “Jon” and “Cro” and HM’ed “option”. Definitely not a pretty one. Congrats to those who saw the full solution.

[HunterX]

My kids and I ended our traditional Friday evening Zoom call with OTHERS as our fall back if we couldn't find something to do with the alternatives including Othello, and without anagramming. Said we'd sleep on it. I got to be the one to text first that I found the correct second step.

Normally I'd say something like "Dad wins!" but given they are in more western time zones, and I wake up earlier than they do anyway, I had a head start.

[PHOFER]

I am one of the OTHERS. I noted that the route to OTHERS was completely unsatisfactory, and the reason was that all theme answers had a single clear alternative of the same word length EXCEPT MACBETH if you assumed Tempest (and not “The Tempest”) was an alternative. I did not think Matt would have such a glaring inconsistency in his solution, and he did not. I could not make it work with Othello, so went with my unsatisfactory answer. But I would never have paired the first letters of answer and alternative anyway. Kas 5.

[DebbieC]

My first thought was to find alternates in the grid with one letter switched:
TRIAL - APRIL
ABLY - YALE
ASYET - HAYES
THURSDAY - SATURDAY

...

Me too!. But I had LAYSTO = TAYLOR.
And, of course, I so wanted to fudge ERODE ISLAM for Rhode Island!

I went this rabbithole route too. I had trial/ably/asyet/Saturday + LORE-LEAR. Couldn't find the sixth, then Friday Zoom call set me straight.

[EVJ]

KAS 5 for me. But here is the rabbit warren (not just hole) that I thoroughly enjoyed exploring--although I am now worried about the integrity of the stern garden!

Here is what I found in my search for "alternatives":
** Alternative president = Hoover; as an alternative to 13D Floor cleaner/MOP; giving an M
** " day of week = Sunday; " to 57D List closing/ETC; giving an E
** " month = March; " to 19A Walk with a hitch (in the Army)/LIMP; giving an L
** " play = Tempest; " to 54A Rage (raging storm)/IRE; giving an I
** " NE state = Vermont; " to 46A Cheese go-with/MAC; giving an M
** " Ivy school = Brown; " to 22A "Back to the Future surname/MCFLY; giving an M

No matter how I order these letters, I get gibberish (although MELIM is a Brazilian trio). So, I had some tiny "aha" moments coming up with the alternatives, but not the big "aha".

My meta solving buddy, Acarl, went this route. I could hardly follow but was proud to have such a smart and insightful partner. We had two deviations to the above.

I was proud to come up with the alternative to Macbeth in As You Like It for
29D “I guess that works” YEAH OK, yielding a Y, I guess.

The other deviation to the above was the alternative to Connecticut.
21D “Amazing Grace” word
Change wretch to ME which is the abbreviation for MAINE!

We were sure we were on the right path but just couldn’t see what the next step could be. *sigh*

The Sunday zoom made us realize that one of our first hunches, alternatives with same letter count, was the correct path. We totally over complicated this one!

[M and M]

As Joe said the play is The Tempest, not Tempest, so it doesn't work. Secondly, as a tip for solving Matt's puzzles, Matt is too polished to give solvers a random group of letters to anagram for a solution. Almost always the letters composing the answer will be found in grid order. If you have to anagram to get your answer be very skeptical of what you have.

Agreed that Matt would not normally require that kind of anagram. However, the full name of Macbeth is "The Tragedie of Macbeth" and the full name of Othello is "Othello, the Moor of Venice" so using Tempest makes as much sense as using Othello. I think both answers should be accepted.

[EVJ]

So the repeats of Hey/Yet are unrelated to the meta? I’ve never known these puzzles to break the standard rules of crosswords unless it’s in service to the meta. Am I missing something? (BTW I thought it was a guide on how to solve, the Hey “turns” into Yet. AlTURNative)

I had a hard time shaking those, too. And there was another HEY in aretHEY coming off HEYHO. But with so many other rabbit holes I couldn’t fixate on those too much.

The repeats that really got me were in the clues.
45A and 46A CHANT CHANT
41D and 57D CLOSING CLOSING
16A and 64D CITY CITY
And they all start with C! A clear sign. Certainly these were in service to the meta but I just couldn’t imagine how. I thought this was very devious of Monsieur Gaffney.

[ZooAnimalsOnWheels]

@Bird Lives, I was swimming right along with you and those 6 ORcas, hoping we were swimming toward shore. But they were headed to a deserted 🏝

Yep - swam off with the ORfish too, although there were some vertical ORs (up and down) that didn’t feel right. Plus there were “OR”s in some associated clues… “hORrific humanoids” > ORcs
“hazy histORy” > lORe
“Paris airpORt” > ORly

The ORS eventually got me on the right track, because I spent some time thinking it would be nice to see WORE for Washington OR Eisenhower and then SORT (or TORS) for Saturday OR Thursday. That got me thinking about the initials which helped me see it.

[Limerick Savant]

Friday night I got as far as solving the grid and finding the 6 alternative answers that would fit the grid, including Othello, but I just could not figure out what to do with E-R-S-O-O-H since the only meaningful word to be made of that combination is SHOOER. (one who shoos away?) And unfortunately I was shooed away from the puzzle by other demands until last night. In a last minute effort to come up with a suitable meta and not be left alone at the bar with Isaac, I revisited the choices and lit on TEMPEST as a so-so alternative that yielded the "T" for "OTHERS" which actually could fit as a meta.

I knew in my heart that it was likely not the right solution for all the reasons already mentioned. Considering the Alternative, I decided that it was better to be washed ashore on Prospero's island with a few other fellow Muggles than to be left floundering at sea.

The Scots King and the Moor: like twin brothers
I'd have plied them if I had my druthers
But a next step eluded
And so I concluded
That a Tempest would leave me with others

[Joepickett]

Please enter me in the "oops- I was so sure I had the right answer, but no....!" Group, and then enter my rabbit hole submission into the best "consider the alternate" contest.
E/W, S/T, O/J, O/M, R/C, H/C
I figured you pick from each pair.
I picked C, H, O, O, S, E.

And submitted "choose"

Same. I thought I was so clever for about 12 hours.

[femullen]

This would have been my usual Gaffney swing-and-miss, except that the Smarter Half figured out Step 2 on her flight down.

Still wasn't obvious except that I noticed T and S in Thursday-Saturday also appeared in Tso. And the only reason that stood out was because I'd been trying to make something from Washington, Eisenhower, and Tso all being generals.

That was certainly a rabbit hole, but without it I don't think we'd have found the third step.

[oldjudge]

As Joe said the play is The Tempest, not Tempest, so it doesn't work. Secondly, as a tip for solving Matt's puzzles, Matt is too polished to give solvers a random group of letters to anagram for a solution. Almost always the letters composing the answer will be found in grid order. If you have to anagram to get your answer be very skeptical of what you have.

Agreed that Matt would not normally require that kind of anagram. However, the full name of Macbeth is "The Tragedie of Macbeth" and the full name of Othello is "Othello, the Moor of Venice" so using Tempest makes as much sense as using Othello. I think both answers should be accepted.

LOL, Othello is referred to as Othello; no one refer to The Tempest as Tempest.

[Cruciverbalisticexpi]

After getting the first step on the first three answers, I thought for sure the meta answer was going to be ERSATZ. A word that describes substitutes. Disappointed when that turned into ERSOOH. Lol