"Playing Dress-Up" June 23, 2023

[billkatz]

I was on team GARB - first miss since pageant...

[mkmf]

Well, I managed to make believe that this was a week 0.5 puzzle (if the WSJ were rated like the MGWCC).

I was so excited to finally get the mascot aha and laugh at how nice the title fit with it that I jumped into pageant land with both feet. I found that there was only one four letter MLB mascot on the current roster and boom: submitted! Team PAWS anyone? ...Anyone?

It certainly was a disservice to Mike Shenk's fantastic construction to leap so early. Very nice!

[Omnibus]

I got the answer and appreciated the clever mechanism, but like some others, was troubled by the uncommon word CLEW. Changing it to CLAW would not work, obviously because the Guardians are not in Claveland. Perhaps the clue could have been something like “Modern prosthetic limb (hyph)” for which the answer is C-LEG and rendering the the meta answer as GEAR, not WEAR, which seems more fitting in a sports context.

[Plymouthrock]

A thing of beauty.

[Streroto]

I came to GA4B during my back-and-forth with the kind muggle providing me nudges and was urged to go on. I understand that anagramming is inelegant, however there are absolutely metas in which anagramming is required and it’s one thing to anagram and force a square peg into a round hole that does not fit the prompt, but GARB absolutely fits the prompt. I have no idea how one would know to make yet another step beyond that. Kudos to solvers.

Stay well

[Wendy Walker]

This puzzle is a perfect example of how ignorance can actually help you solve a meta puzzle. Sports is a well-known Achilles heel of mine, but I did know that "slider" and "ace" were baseball terms. Might "dinger" be as well? I Googled and -- yes, yes, it was indeed: a synonym for "home run." Googling "orbit baseball" came up with the mascot and bingo! -- there was the connection. Simply from doing crosswords I knew that three-letter scoreboard abbreviations were "a thing," and there they were right next to the mascot names.
The I-95 bridge in Northeast Philly reopened on Friday and all the Philly mascots were there to celebrate! Photo by Inquirer photographer Alejandro Alvarez.

[mattythewsjpuzzler]

For me this puzzle was definitely fair and solvable and as Conrad said very Shenkian. It was soundly constructed and had a reasonable to high degree of difficulty. But I would also say it wasn't Mike's finest. I got the baseball theme fairly quickly (though I saw RBI and not the full Orbit as relevant) and spent time:
1. Looking for clues (not CLEWs which though I saw I didn't ascribe enough import to like other solver/constructors) that met the definition. I saw SLID and thought BOLTED DOWNWARD or RACED LIKE THE WIND; I saw DINGER and thought GO THE DISTANCE etc.
2. Thought each key word had the additional UP applied: slider could be CHANGE UP and FLY could be POP UP. STIll nothing
3. Then abandoneed baseball and looked up DRESSAGE terms - wrong googling!
4. FInally gave up after thinking it may have to do with Plays (like Shakespeare)
I even looked for the very-Shenkian trick of placing a relevant co-clue on the same line as the themers but hadn't made the city connection.
I even said to myself that Shenk is a big baseball fan. Well in the eternal battle of constructor vs. solver, today the constructor won! Will I be back? Oh definitely.

Also new term? Getting MASCOTED?

[mbryant]

I never saw the baseball theme. I went down the cosplay rabbit hole because of the first clue “comic character…”. Lance and Epees also influenced me. There were also exactly four characters: Borat, Alma, Carla, and Scrooge. Nothing. My only suggestion would have been to include a clue/answer in 1a or last clue pointing to baseball. The very first puzzle I solved, Line of Work, from April 2020 had two answers that pointed you in the right direction and I have always expected that as a helpful prompt. (Apple and Between Jobs). I’ve had my best steak since January with solo solves. Needed a nudge to get this one.

[Colin]

Way out of left field for me!

[TMart]

Had no idea on mascots, but I noticed that the last letters of the four words adjacent to the themers spelled "WEAR". Hail Mary for the win!

[eagle1279]

Not even close. As Mike often starts metanisms in the clues, I focused on four clues with styles of dressing-up: tacky, formal, casual and refined. Tacky could relate to ADHERES but there the rabbit hole ended. Also some clothing terms to ponder, such as thread, bolt, weaver, pants. I figured CLEW was important but never got there.

[Tom Wilson]

Oh, my. I wasn't even in the ballpark. After days and days and days of wandering, I tried a Hail Mary of synonyms for the longer entries: recidivist, aviator, gem and satellite ... which gave me "rags," the polar opposite of dressing up. Talk about a minor-league effort!

[LadyBird]

The very first puzzle I solved, Line of Work, from April 2020 had two answers that pointed you in the right direction and I have always expected that as a helpful prompt. (Apple and Between Jobs).

That was my very first solve as well!

[OliviaL]

I know nothing about baseball, but decided to Google every word within the long answers as a Hail Mary an hour before the deadline. Seeing slider and dinger were baseball terms, I started googling everything with baseball as a search term. When Orbit popped up as a mascot, I knew I was on to something! Glad to continue my streak!

[jenirvin]

Well, no wonder I never got to shore. I was on the wrong boat. In fact, I was looking to boating for inspiration, what with CLEW and then the phrase BAIL WATER popping out (the only two clues with a question mark - surely significant!). So, I tried bailing water - from OYSTER (Bay), TIDE (Pool), (Sea of) SERENITY... no joy, just gibberish. Serenity, though? Isn't that a Sailor Moon character? Sailor... more boat stuff. Yeah, I was lost at sea on the cosplay boat. Briefly went down a rabbit hole based on the clue "stiffly formal," but not even a rabbit down there, no balls of thread being sewn into a GOWN.

Ah, well... Congrats to those who were in the ballpark! Go Orioles!

[boharr]

For many, maybe the mascot for this puzzle is a sour grape.

[Yoda66]

I thought Mike threw a good pitch on this one. There were enough baseball terms to lead us to the solution which was in plain sight

[MikeyG]

I figured that 19A “clew” had to be part of the answer, because a typical crossword would use “claw” crossing with 12D “tman”. I noticed the potential baseball theme from “slider”, “ace”, and “dinger” but abandoned it for awhile because “orbit” did not seem to fit.

Eventually I Googled “orbit baseball” and discovered the mascot theme, which revealed why “clew” was necessary.

A bonus from this meta is that I now know that Clark is the Cubs mascot. I have been a Cubs fan since 1982 but could not have named the mascot.

First off, hello, fellow Cubs fan! I love Clark, though my all-time favorite mascot in any sport is the Phillie Phanatic:



Pretty sure I was the model for that.

And you (and many others, it looks like) caught what I couldn't shake for the life of me: why was CLEW not CLAW? A 4-by-4 corner of letters should be easy enough to fill, so that was a huge red flag.

Immediately, I leaped to then thinking (in retrospect, correctly) that the four 4-letter words "paired" with the themers must be relevant. (Also, note the "cheater squares" for the two 9-letter themers - probably a way around that, right? TARTU seems pretty forced also).

CLEW
TORE
COLA
HOUR

Probably wrote that down a half-dozen times but never saw WEAR, which would have circumvented an elegance.

My initial three thoughts, all from the title:

1. Types of dresses and garments are involved, likely four letters (GOWN, MAXI, ROBE, SARI, SLIP, VEST). (Apparently, at least one person created a "polar orbit dress," per one of my searches.)
2. Play titles are involved, likely four letters (AIDA, CATS, GIGI, HAIR, MAME, RENT).
3. Certain things need to be spelled out going up in the grid.

Aaaand, it was none of these things, haha.

Googling the first halves of the themers did nothing, but googling the second half (SLIDER, ACE, DINGER, ORBIT) did bring me a hit on baseball mascots (now it brings the blog entry on this puzzle, haha). I was actually worried WEAR was the pageant a lot of you were referencing and didn't even see GARB, which I guess was a blessing.

Perhaps this could've used a subtle reference to a mascot elsewhere, maybe across the center? But a pesky curveball can always get us now and again. I kept striking out until I finally hit a home run on this one and was able to round the bases. (Insert a bunch of other baseball references here.)

At least I know the Cubs won't lose today! (They don't play.)

Mikey G

[KayW]

I sympathize with the non-US muggles on this one. But let me assure you not all Americans had any idea where to go with this either. I was in the camp of those playing bottom-up word search with the grid. Until several of the posts here reminded me of the meta 101 tip to google the likely across themers and their components. Eventually, I got some images of baseball mascots and was off to the races. Lucky for me I saw CLEw and HOUr and so was not distracted by GARB.

I am also in the camp of those who thought there coulda shoulda been a pointer toward baseball somewhere in the puzzle. I'm curious how many solvers heard of ANY of those mascots beforehand - or even recognized that the first three were baseball terms/slang. (After the fact, I kinda sorta did. But not beforehand.) I suppose the fact that even I solved it without one proves it was not necessary. But it sure would have made it less painful.

[flyingMoose]

A bonus from this meta is that I now know that Clark is the Cubs mascot.

I know a family whose two children are Addison and Clark. Well of course he is.