"Connect Four" May 5, 2023

[Cindy N]

I did make it in time, thanks to some helpful nudges. I had all of the info, just had trouble taking that last step. I finally sat there and traced the words on my keyboard, The only "Connect 4" that was left was FRED. And since we needed an alliterative cartoon character, FRED FLINTSTONE really seemed to be the only option. After submitting, I actually tried to find another FRED F cartoon character without success.

[mheberlingx100]

Whoa whoa whoa… why would Mighty Mouse count? GHTY are right next to each other too!

The H isn't connected to T. The theme entry letters are adjacent, and in order.

And the connected letters are four letters long.

As for Fred Flintstone - yabba dabba doo!

[JAQT]

I saw four J's, some of which seemed forced (like OJAI) and submitted JANE JETSON. Hail Mary's are funny like that.

[DaveKennison]

I thought of “Mi(ghty) Mouse” and “Pink Pan(ther)” before “(Fred) Flintstone” and finally settled on the “correct” answer for the reasons Conrad (and others) have stated, together with the fact that “Fred” is an included word, rather than a portion of a word. Nevertheless, I would say that the hint “Connect Four” provided by the puzzle title does not clearly state that those constraints are to be considered.

[Richard]

I had a busy few days and little time for the meta. Which is good because I doubt if I ever would have gotten it. Congrats to the solvers.

[Franklin.Bluth]

I thought of “Mi(ghty) Mouse” and “Pink Pan(ther)” before “(Fred) Flintstone” and finally settled on the “correct” answer for the reasons Conrad (and others) have stated, together with the fact that “Fred” is an included word, rather than a portion of a word. Nevertheless, I would say that the hint “Connect Four” provided by the puzzle title does not clearly state that those constraints are to be considered.

It would have to fit the theme, and the themers all had four-letter words whose letters connected on a keyboard. So even before the keyboard solve, we knew it had to be a character with a four letter name (thus eliminating PANTHER and MIGHTY):

BUGS BUNNY
BABS BUNNY
JANE JETSON
DONALD DUCK
DAISY DUCK
FRED FLINTSTONE

That's the list I came up with after the first pass. Once I figured out the QWERTY keyboard connection only FRED remained.

PANTHER and MIGHTY are further eliminated because their "connect 4" letters aren't all in a line. They're in a group of four, but you can't draw one line connecting them in order the way you can with the theme answers.

[DCBilly]

It's always interesting to see how Mike Shenk explains a complex solution in his tiny word box.

[Deb F]

I applaud all of you who got this. Even being led there
, I didn't see it.

Have a great week, Muggles.

[Colin]

After a million games of Connect Four with our granddaughters, I was on a single-minded, determined mission to find four letters connected horizontally, vertically or diagonally somehow in the grid. Took the five four-letter theme components and arranged them in various orders to form new grids… gobbledygook! Looked for four ‘red disk’ letters in the grid adjacent to each of the asterisked answers… balderdash! Small diversion looking for four-letter theme components repeated elsewhere (eg, AMES)… claptrap! My granddaughters-inspired “One more game Pops!” determination to succeed kept me going down the game hole for way too long, but all I got was… bunk and bull! Never have been much of a typist.

[ship4u]

Whilst the metanism was clever as usual for Mr. Gaffney, it nevertheless left me a bit flat and unconnected.

Here's my rabbit hole:

I saw the 4 letter words in each of the themers. As Joe Ross taught me, "write them down and make a list." It has become engrained in me as the first step to solving.

DREW
TRES
POLK
LOKI
YEAR (DXCV seemed to be gibberish)

The clue 69A instructed to "Look Down." How? Then I noticed that the second letter of each was an alliteration going DOWN!

d R ew
t R es
p O lk
l O ki
y E ar

R-R O-O E-?

This suggested that the answer was an alliterative E-E! ELMER ELEPHANT! Certainly you all remember him!

[Ergcat]

Whoa whoa whoa… why would Mighty Mouse count? GHTY are right next to each other too!

The H isn't connected to T. The theme entry letters are adjacent, and in order.

Also, the four-letter part of the themers were “connected” on the QWERTY keyboard. POLK and LOKI , DREW and DXCV. So that left the 5th themer (TRES) without a “connected” partner word BUT we were told to look for an “appropriate 6th themer” so that told me where on the keyboard to look for this 4-letter word i.e. had to be “connected” to TRES. The only thing that fit all the conditions was FRED .
So, to me, that’s where the “CONNECT 4” title gave me a click to the answer.

[BarbaraK]

I was pretty sure that Fred was the only name that would work, because if any other name did, Matt would have used that instead of DXCV.

So looking for an alternative, I found Fred Fredburger, a minor character on "The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy". Wonder how many submissions he got. Not mine as I didn’t find this until after I’d submitted.

[pjc]

Happy to have gotten this; still didn't find it to be a satisfying CLICK, but there certainly have been other examples of solutions like this one where the answer isn't actually part of the grid or clues.

And I had to absolutely resist saying in my initial post: "I think I got it! Yabba-dabba-doo!!!!"

[Flying_Burrito]

Not a chance on this one. MG's metas often evoke in my brain the "You are killing me Smalls" (Matt)" quote from the Sandlot.

I am a paper solver and the thought of looking down at the keyboard never crossed my mind, despite Matt's hint. Happy that my rabbit holes were fairly shallow and did not prevent me from doing yard work during the weekend. Need to start a new streak.

[Bob cruise director]

We had this discussion at the end of the Last Call zoom session yesterday.

The definition of alliteration is "the occurrence of the same letter or sound at the beginning of adjacent or closely connected words".

That does not mean that the two names of the answer have to begin with the same letter but they can also begin with the same sound.

Nor does it mean that the answer has to be the four adjacent keyboard letters to start the alliteration.

Although having the two names start with the same letter and having the four letters starting the word was what was intended it does not preclude other answers. However, doing the metas for several years, it would also make sense that whatever answer you came up with would have to be known by the average solver.

As @DaveKennison pointed out there are other answers like Mighty Mouse and Pink Panther would fit the criteria given and should be considered valid responses. So now we get down to "the best" answer as opposed to other answers which could be made to fit the criterion.

My guess is that the WSJ staff, as they have on other occasions, hope that the first name the pick out is Fred Flintstone and everything else is just statistics.

p.s. this kind of detailed but not desired logical analysis of the problem got me in trouble in grade school more than once. Sometimes you can be technically correct but not desired at the same time.

[CPJohnson]

I eventually solved, @Bob cruise director, but it was with a lot of help.

[Bird Lives]

ARCHIE ANDREWS. Showing my age, but that was the first name that came to mind. Who is this Fred person that everyone keeps talking about anyway?

I knew Archie wasn't what the WJS powers-that-be had in mind; it repeats the same connected four as one of the theme entries. But it does meet the criterion.

When I saw all the posts about multiple right answers, I thought: They can't all be thinking of Archie. And I guessed that there would be a lot of wrong submissions this week. We'll soon see.

[iggystan]

Mighty isn’t a 4-letter word like the other themers have (I’ll excuse DXCV), and Pink isn’t “connected” on the keyboard. So how can those be considered valid?

[Franklin.Bluth]

I was pretty sure that Fred was the only name that would work, because if any other name did, Matt would have used that instead of DXCV.

So looking for an alternative, I found Fred Fredburger, a minor character on "The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy". Wonder how many submissions he got. Not mine as I didn’t find this until after I’d submitted.

They'll probably count Fredburger as an alternative correct answer, but it's definitely not the alliterative Fred that leaps out when thinking of cartoons!

[Trish]

We justified our answer, Fred Flintstone, because of the alternating placement of the four letter words:

Nancy DREW
TRES bon
James POLK
LOKI costume
The year DXCV
FRED flintstone