"Interior Design" January 13, 2023

[whimsy]

Didn't get it. Spent a lot of time in this rabbit hole:

• Three people won an Academy Award for "It Happened One Night." Clark Gable, Frank Capra, and Claudette Colbert. FRANK CAPRA same number of letters as CLARK GABLE.
  Three prime ministers died in office in 1964: Jawaharlal Nehru (India), Jigme Palden Dorji (Bhutan), Milton Margai( Sierra Leone). If you squint, JAWAHARLAL NEHRU and JIGME PALDEN DORJI have the same number of letters.
  Among the other fitting answers to Game of Pool? is EIGHT BALL (same number of letters as MARCO POLO)
  Pickles are frequently held by TOOTH PICKS

And so on...

And BILLIARDS fits too.

[Dplass]

As usual, I went googly-eyed for the first shiny object I saw, which was that Jawaharlal Nehru contains the "interior" sequence HARLAL, which becomes 24D HALAL on removal of the R. Voila, the 5th letter. That was the only letter I got, and it was wrong. On seeing the mechanism this morning, it was clear that this was a never-gonna-happen anyway. (Stu who?)

So far in 2023, perfect record.

Same! I thought for sure that was the mechanism.

Or possibly the two word clues with matching initials (CG, MP and one other).

Or...

[EVJ]

STU SUTCLIFFE certainly is a recognizable name to those who care about such things.

My main complaint would be that a mechanism finding a string of letters between initial letters isn't really accurately described as "interior". At least it doesn't really sit well with me. To try such an arbitrary thing should require another type of hint-- I'm just not sure what it would be.

I didn't submit.

It might have helped to see “ABC” for 1D but I doubt even that would have gotten me there. Looking forward to Thursday.

In retrospect the upper left corner may have been a big hint. How many crosswords have initials as the answers to the first three Down clues?
BBC AOL TWA
Now if BBC had actually been ABC that might have helped some people. Including me!

[jrdad]

I saw the name 'Clara' in Clark Gable, right above which was BOWe. Now we're cooking. I could then make first names out of the interior letters of the other theme answers: Clara, Lars, Jane, Marlo, Rita. And there's Rita in the grid, and there's Marlo, Thomas maybe....so there's Thomas HARDlY...and so then......oh, well.

[ColinM]

A solver's post-mortem that will guarantee he will not solve any meta puzzles for at least a month:

As I was filling out the grid the letter providing clue/answer combinations stuck out a bit to me as not being great answers.
3D KLM is a better answer than TWA as it's been a few "decades" since that was an airline
16A Everyone says HI, few people say AHOY. Likewise with 28A NO vs HARDLY
56A RINGO's actual first name is Richard, so George, Paul, or John would have been better. (STU isn't perfect either of course)
71A Most dictionaries don't have ETYMology, but all have DEFinitions.

There is certainly some hindsight bias at play for me, but it's fairly common these multiple answer type puzzles.

Also, I think Beatles clues will continue to be fair game for awhile, Even people in their 20s are more likely to know Beatles trivia than any other popular act before they were born.

[LizD]

Never in a million years! Kaz 5 all the way.

I got deeply stuck in the mire after seeing "ELS" in the center of the grid, sure that it was a hint. "Look at the Ls!" it seemed to scream.

I tried all manner of manipulating the Ls - letters above and below and beside, boggle-style L shapes, other instances of EL in the grid, replacing Ls, and on and on. All to no avail.

Ah wELl.

[MarkWoychick]

Our rabbit hole

5 words close to the grid answers, just one letter off from other entries

Marco - a room
Gable - angel
Jars - rasp
Rift - Rita
Nehru - Heron

Put the changed letters in order and you get “onpao”, a meaningless word. We were hoping there was a Onpao School of Design out there…

The coincidence of all 5 having another word one letter off made for a very deep rabbit hole.

There goes our perfect year. Congrats to the solvers.

I was stuck here for a while, too - even knowing anagrams are the last refuge of a scoundrel, I kept thinking it could not be a coincidence. I even doubled down, thinking "Rita was a first name in a Beatles song" and started looking for alternatives to the alternatives! Luckily I was able to back away from this cliff and solve, but I spent some time on team "onpao."

[emerisle]

I was not even close...

[Sleepy]

What’s the one bit of info that you would’ve needed to help solve this Meta? For me, if I had just known that STU Sutcliffe was also a Beatle, then the solution would have been much clearer, and sooner. By the way, I’m 59 years old, so should’ve known more about Beatles trivia. Tough puzzle all around! Hats off to Gaffney, we need a challenge every now and then.

[Nlobb]

I first saw the Beatles in 1964 on the Ed Sullivan show.
Of course Stu Sutcliffe was no longer a Beatle then, having died 2 years earlier.
I knew there had been a fifth Beatle but would never have remembered his name…
Of course I was smitten with the Beatles right away but I really remember my parents being critical of their “long” hair.

[ship4u]

Being Anglophiles as well as Beatles fans, I should have remembered Sutcliffe straight away. Alas, I backsolved for the "R" and struggled to find Stu........

[rliebert]

Did anyone else get stuck for a while on the cross of 22D. (Sean) ASTIN and 21A. (Never) SAY DIE ? No way that was a coincidence, even if it turned out to be a red herring.

[Susan Goldberg]

This was never going to happen.

[Gman]

After seeing TWA and KLM, I proceeded to STU and could not find a clue so I gave up on that rabbit. Only after a nudge did I go back and Google Beatles named STUART that I got there. Oof.

[woozy]

Question in the woozy household:

"Hon, would you say a lark has a long neck?"
"No, definitely not"
"Do you think it's a mistake a crossword constructor might make?"
"Is this the one who thought a magpie was a small songbird?"
"Yeah, would he think a lark has a long neck?"
"No."

[Flying_Burrito]

This was a classic MG meta. Got me stumped for a while until I took the time during a couple of work calls on Friday to go through past metas. The light went off when I saw a similar mechanism by Patrick Berry in Apr. 2019.
So many rabbit holes driven by the title. The answer to 14A (ARoom) was the first one for me as I started going through all different possible rooms in a house embedded in the 5 clues. Next hole was hen I added 14A and 20A (A Room, A Tone) to focus on different paint colors for rooms since there were so many colors embedded in one way or the other in the answers: In(d)igo, Orang(e), (C)yan, Ma(uve), E(c)ru, etc. Had to take a break to pull myself out of that one.

[Hidden in 3D]

From my notes, I think you'll agree
"Sequenced letters" meant something to me.
I just chose the wrong letters;
I should have known better.
Interiors it had to be!

Why did I not find M to P,
C to G, G to J, R to V?
I was stuck in a warren;
Dirt-filled eyes made all foreign.
J to N I just could not see!

I don't like being stuck out at sea!
So I have to remember this key:
I must try every sequence
When my method makes nonsense
If I'm to solve metas by Gaffney!

[mikeB]

I've seen a few times the use of alternative entries for harvesting letters for the answer. Hpowever, I feel I may have underappreciated the challenges of this construct and the perspicacity involved in using it. For example, in the present situation, you need five clues that can have at least a primary entry and an alternate answer. Oh, and the primary entries must begin with letters that spell a word related to the meta’s title, which in this instance also nudges the solver to the “interior” of each theme entry. But that's not all: Each alternate answer must consist of consecutive letters of the alphabet. In each case, those consecutive letters must occur within the alphabet between the two initials of a two-word theme entry – each of which must fit into the grid geometry and couple properly with many Down entries.

I have often used the term “clever” here, but upon reflection, I don’t think the word does justice to the genius that goes into these constructions. Congrats to Matt and Mike and others who undertake to create these works of art and succeed so impressively.

[BigPear]

Our rabbit hole

5 words close to the grid answers, just one letter off from other entries

Marco - a room
Gable - angel
Jars - rasp
Rift - Rita
Nehru - Heron

Put the changed letters in order and you get “onpao”, a meaningless word. We were hoping there was a Onpao School of Design out there…

The coincidence of all 5 having another word one letter off made for a very deep rabbit hole.

There goes our perfect year. Congrats to the solvers.

That was my rabbit hole, too! I got dragged out of it before the buzzer, but you definitely had company. That was a very convincing diversion as “anagrams with a letter swap” has been a true metanism in the past (like the Find Us Online puzzle last year). Next time!

[Colin]

Never in a million years! Kaz 5 all the way.

I got deeply stuck in the mire after seeing "ELS" in the center of the grid, sure that it was a hint. "Look at the Ls!" it seemed to scream.

I tried all manner of manipulating the Ls - letters above and below and beside, boggle-style L shapes, other instances of EL in the grid, replacing Ls, and on and on. All to no avail.

Ah wELl.

Is your middle name Elle?