XWord Muggles Forum

I liked this one a lot. When I got to WON/WIN, I thought Wonder. Wonder-win made this GenXer immediately go to Wonder Twins. Thanks Matt - our relativity smaller generation had fun with this one!

For muggles who are baby boomers who solved this by googling something, could you tell me what you googled that stumbled on Wonder Twins. I spent half the weekend googling and came up with nothing of value.

Bob cruise director wrote: ↑Mon Dec 09, 2019 8:44 am For muggles who are baby boomers who solved this by googling something, could you tell me what you googled that stumbled on Wonder Twins. I spent half the weekend googling and came up with nothing of value.

cartoon duos

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Animated_duos

Last item in the list.

Bob cruise director wrote: ↑Mon Dec 09, 2019 8:44 am For muggles who are baby boomers who solved this by googling something, could you tell me what you googled that stumbled on Wonder Twins. I spent half the weekend googling and came up with nothing of value.

I started out searching lists of cartoon duos for "won" and "win," but most of the pages were broken up into a zillion smaller lists, and that was going to be tedious. Pretty sure I decided on "cartoon duo wonder," thinking maybe Wonder Woman had a partner, or that "wonder" would be in there somewhere.

For a grid that featured such amazing construction including the words hidden in the name Frank Bruni, we WONder if Mr. Gaffney could have made a “Gaffe” in suggesting a meta answer that required finding just the right Google list. It only adds to our WINter gloom. Because all the other (d) mechanisms were found in the grid, we tried to “Prevail” somehow, finding the India nickelodeon show “Reva” within “prevail” or the cross words “Phil” and “Lil” . For a moment we thought we’d seen a snowy white beach but then it drifted. We felt like we were in the TV series Lost: Season 5. On this rainy Monday in PA, our local TV weatherman has just posted that he’s lost his voice so he won’t be on TV today (true story.) So it’s one of those weeks.

A great tool for metas like this (where you're searching for letter patterns instead of actual words, which Google is terrible at) is https://www.onelook.com/
I used the "*" wildcard to search "*WON*WIN*" and the answer came up very quickly as 3 of about 35 results, even though I've never heard of them.

Bob cruise director wrote: ↑Mon Dec 09, 2019 8:41 am And then there is the NFL referees week in and week out.

I guess if you have to resort to 11 proper nouns in your grid construction (including CHACHI...UGH) and two foreign words, I guess you also have to resort to a meta answer that is 'implied'. I think they are actually running out of ideas.

Anchors Away!
1. The old Commodore currently keel-hauling himself. Grump, grump, grump.
2. Boolean Schmoolean, I need a masterclass from Mr. G.
3. Gave up on Won & Win. And One & Win. Juan & Win. And…etc.
4. Snip & Snails was my Hail Mary. Nip? Nail? Rhyme with Prevail? Uggh.
5. Will our 80% be graded on a curve?
6. My Wonder Twins are Jim Beam & Bud Wiser.
7. “Gotta play better. Coach better. All 3 phases. We’re on to Cincinnati.” Congratulations to all solvers. You X rascals, tho' - Get off my lawn!

I think the idea behind this meta was great but the googling was hit or miss even if you had the won/win combo. I got lucky by figuring duo suggested twins and googled comedy twins (because I mis-read the contest clue) and after a lot of searching found the wonder twins. I think anyone who got up to the point where they realized the answer was going to have won/win in it was a winner this week....mug or no mug.

As a late boomer (1963), had never heard of these two.

but I saw "duo" and "WON/WIN" and thought ... hmmm "TWINS"? And that drove my successful online quest. Yes, after spending most of the weekend banging my head, I got lucky.

I guess this was a GenX thing, as I've noticed others say. I got there fairly quickly, and with no Google required, once I realized I wasn't looking for something in the grid, but the missing entry. Wonder Twin powers activate! (I have only one other coworker who knows how to reply to that, sadly.)

I think I need a tutor! I had such a cute answer with Otto, the knowall, and Larry, the bot. This duo is in Time Squad. I had to Google this too but thought sure I had it!!

I’m the father of boy/girl twins born in 1992 (of which Dom is one), and I had never heard of The Wonder Twins. Dom and Emmy (his twin sister) had never heard of The Wonder Twins. I think that speaks to how obscure they are - leaving such a minuscule footprint on the culture that living analogs don’t have knowledge of them.

Thankfully, Dom’s Google fu is strong, so as I worked through the steps and got to paired present/past verbs that fit, he encouraged me to stick with won/win over some others I had texted him. I think I put in “Wonderful” and eventually found it. Dom confirmed it. As he often complains that cultural references in crosswords are geared to my generation, I thought he’d be happy, but this wasn’t his generation either. Oh well.

We did have a humorous exchange while discussing generations. He asked me if his mom and I are Boomers or Gen X. I told him that we are on the cusp, both born in 1964, making us bicuspids.

I got this with the help of Mr. G, but I do barely remember the Wonder Twins. As I recall they were super lame. They would never sit at the cool kid table at lunch, with Batman and Superman.

Inca wrote: ↑Mon Dec 09, 2019 9:28 am I think the idea behind this meta was great but the googling was hit or miss even if you had the won/win combo. I got lucky by figuring duo suggested twins and googled comedy twins (because I mis-read the contest clue) and after a lot of searching found the wonder twins. I think anyone who got up to the point where they realized the answer was going to have won/win in it was a winner this week....mug or no mug.

I thrashed around with won/win and found nothing on line or in the grid so I started trying to make something of synonyms of win, e.g. beat, rout, defeat, etc. and that went nowhere.

Only a few of us remember Wonder Twins (I don't), so apart from the neat construction, this was a test of Google fu, as pddigi put it, which is neither unusual nor objectionable in metas. Both "wonder" and "twins" are words that it's (IMHO) fair to challenge solvers to hit upon in googling for a cartoon duo containing "...won...win...", and googling either gives you the answer right away. "Twin" was the first thing I tried, and bingo.

BrianDavidson wrote: ↑Mon Dec 09, 2019 8:48 am

Bob cruise director wrote: ↑Mon Dec 09, 2019 8:44 am For muggles who are baby boomers who solved this by googling something, could you tell me what you googled that stumbled on Wonder Twins. I spent half the weekend googling and came up with nothing of value.

cartoon duos

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Animated_duos

Last item in the list.

Exactly what I did, Brian.

I didn't get this because I thought WON was included in KNOWALL, one of the 2 word answers and just two rows below PREVAIL. So when I went to the wikipedia page we all went to, I rejected WONDER TWINS. I should've seen it as a better fit than KNOWALL.

Congrats to all who got it. I'm a gen--Xer and never heard of them.

Hector wrote: ↑Mon Dec 09, 2019 11:25 am Only a few of us remember Wonder Twins (I don't), so apart from the neat construction, this was a test of Google fu, as pddigi put it, which is neither unusual nor objectionable in metas. Both "wonder" and "twins" are words that it's (IMHO) fair to challenge solvers to hit upon in googling for a cartoon duo containing "...won...win...", and googling either gives you the answer right away. "Twin" was the first thing I tried, and bingo.

Actually, google works in mysterious ways....and depending on what other searches you did before trying that, you may or may not get what someone else got on their initial search with the same parameters. Clear as mud....yeah about as clear as the crazy, very secretive google algorithms