"Play With Matches" November 10, 2023

[CromsFury]

I’m sorry but there were not 100+ people in here who solved this.

I believe it was at least 112(ish) people. (you would have to ask the Cruise Director)

[BisbeeTam]

I was maybe 1/2 step towards the solution when the rabbit holes were just too much to take, so I threw a Hail Mary. I can’t even believe it….I guessed it!! If I win the mug, I will donate it to someone more worthy.

[Mister Squawk]

I got stuck, for a long time, with the idea that it was the four answers with three doubled letters, not the six longest answers.

That gave me SLUM, OATH, HOME, and WALK. Applying the 'strike the doubles' rule left the SIX letters SUWETK. Much time spent trying to find words that could be anagrammed with those letters, words that could be formed with pairs of those letters (try to find words with two Ws!) etc.

I actually noticed URN and WIN but dismissed them. Finally something clicked (probably the pesky W).

As noted by others, an amazing construction.

[Lee-Ann]

Wow! two really difficult puzzles in a row! Lucky for me, STRIKE was my hail Mary!

[Bird Lives]

I went down the rabbit hole with the sign “Theater this way.”

1. The title of the puzzle is “PLAY with Matches.”
2. The very first Down entry is PROOF, which is a play.
3. The next-to-last Across entry is RENT, also a play (OK, technically a musical).
4. The fourth line down has two entries: OPERAS (plays, but entirely sung) and LULU. I’m sure we all recognized “Lulu” as the opera by Alban Berg. Maybe some of us joined in the sing-along
5. HELL (9D) could be clued in a hell of a lot of ways, but the actual clue references the title of a play by Sartre, “No Exit.” Lest we think this a mere coincidence, its relevance is reinforced by NAUSEA (47A), which is the title of a novel by Sartre.
6. AVON (68A) is clued not as a product line for ding-dongs but with yet another “play” reference, the Royal Shakespeare Theatre.

7. Clearly the answer was going to be a six-letter play title (“No Exit” is six letters), perhaps one by the Bard of AVON. Hmmm, anyone for “Hamlet”?

[LittleGood]

Wow.

[Joe Ross]

Brief but hopefully insistent rabbit hole:

1:15 PM ET. Just realized the mistake in my write up: I found 6 pairs of FIVE-letter words with FOUR matching letters.

[Beth C]

Unfortunately you forgot to merge strike with every other word in the puzzle that had a double letter and then merge it with the synonyms of certain answers that also had double letters (WOOS, BOOZE, etc) and then run a de-dup Excel.

I’m sorry but there were not 100+ people in here who solved this.

I about died laughing at this response! So funny, Bob, and I agree that very few solved this on their own. I'm glad not to have spent too much time on this one.

[mattythewsjpuzzler]

Never got it. Normally I would add metanisms that I have not seen/gotten to a running list for future reference. But pretty sure we will never see this one again! Plus even the WSj description in 3 sentences took me a double take. I love Patrick Berry but this one was beyond me.

[Onaquest]

I got way too hung up on the 18 occurrences of double letters in the grid. Took me way too long to get off that track.

My husband wants to take this approach almost every week, so I’ve banned him It left us with nothing this week but at least we didn’t spend too much time over it.

[ship4u]

During our Friday Zoom, whilst helping the large group of muggle friends unravel the mysteries of Mr. Berry's masterpiece of a metanism, and with step one beginning to germinate amongst the group, someone asked, "Okay, now what?"

Then, in the fog of the crowd of 89 furrowed brow, note scribbling, intently concentrating participants, someone suggested, "Second Verse same as the First."

That simple comment has hopelessly implanted the dreadfully silly song by Herman's Hermits in the 1960's, "I'm Henery VIII I am", in my head all weekend!!!

Drat, why couldn't the comment simply have be left with, "What's on the reverse of your shampoo bottle?" That would have been enough!

[chart]

Never got it. Normally I would add metanisms that I have not seen/gotten to a running list for future reference. But pretty sure we will never see this one again! Plus even the WSj description in 3 sentences took me a double take. I love Patrick Berry but this one was beyond me.

I agree this was a doozy. Another way to word it:

Strike the matching letters from each of the long acrosses, and then do the same with what's left.

[Flying_Burrito]

Similar to Mister Squawk, after wasting some time on the 18 double letters, I then honed in on Slum, Oath, Walk and Home. That's where I spent some hrs. Why does the completed grid include 8 Us and 7 Hs? What's this 1D fifth # true meaning? And what's the true purpose of 45 D (Cue)? The Shakespearian reference and OATH potentially changing to Othello consumed some time. Once I figured out that Bourbon and Widened had to be used as well, then the rinse and repeat use of the mechanism was quick.

[JRS51]

My consolation on this tough one is that I found the six words of step 1 right away, but I was stuck at that point. Mad at myself for not thinking to repeat the process for step 2.

[Toby]

I won the mug!! In my 7 decades I have collected any number of mugs as travel souvenirs and gifts from grandkids (I'm the world's best grandmother many times over say my mugs) but this one is truly special. I feel like I should give an oscar-like acceptance speech acknowledging Cindy, Adam, Barbara K., Meg and others who have helped me with so many metas over the years.

[Joe Ross]

I won the mug!!

[Twilly57]

I got way too hung up on the 18 occurrences of double letters in the grid. Took me way too long to get off that track.

I did the same. And then the answer for 59A was ‘rose up’, I thought it might be a homonym for ‘rows up’ meaning the down clues. Unscrambling the double letters for just the down clue gave me ‘floors’….. and I was officially lost.

[mheberlingx100]

I looked for all kinds of matches of the words (both repeated letters and the unique letters in the theme clues) in the grid and in the clues, synonyms, combination of repeating letters plus unique to make words, etc. At one point I thought I was onto something with “-Alf home” being Melmac ( repeated letter m as part of solution). At another point combining Bo and home with a y gives you homeboy, an alternative to friend from way back.

Finally, after a good night’s sleep I hit upon the correct mechanism. I struck out totally last week, so it’s nice to be back on dry land again after a week at sea.

[ZooAnimalsOnWheels]

I went down the rabbit hole with the sign “Theater this way.”

I spent some time looking at theater related clues, thinking that if "matches" was the key to the first step, then "play" might be the key to the second. And when all of the theater references were making me queasy, I had to reach for the Drama-mine at 47A.

[Bob cruise director]

I won the mug!! In my 7 decades I have collected any number of mugs as travel souvenirs and gifts from grandkids (I'm the world's best grandmother many times over say my mugs) but this one is truly special. I feel like I should give an oscar-like acceptance speech acknowledging Cindy, Adam, Barbara K., Meg and others who have helped me with so many metas over the years.

@Toby CONGRATULATIONS

Great to see a long time muggle win the coveted mug. Well deserved