"Knowledge Base" February 16, 2024

[Nlobb]

I don’t know… I go to Canada often and have never seen milk in a bag anywhere I have been…

[MajordomoTom]

it was in bags at my high school in Texas, but that may be a "bulk ordering" thing

the coordinates thing really didn't work if you treated the bottom left corner (SW) as the "origin", which any math/science/engineer/nerd likely would have done.

[woozy]

I don’t know… I go to Canada often and have never seen milk in a bag anywhere I have been…

Very common in Nova Scotia in the 70s and 80s.

(I think they have phased it out since then.)

When I was in college there was a "For Better for Worse" cartoon I had to explain to my roommates. Michael is sent out to buy a bag of milk and walking home swings it around as boys are wont to do and the dog chomps it and it spills out. "What the heck is a bag of milk? They asked".

Oh, and they had this plastic pitchers. You put the bag in the picture and cut a triangular snip of the corner and pour from there. You could not seal it.

[KayW]

I don’t know… I go to Canada often and have never seen milk in a bag anywhere I have been…

Very common in Nova Scotia in the 70s and 80s.

(I think they have phased it out since then.)

When I was in college there was a "For Better for Worse" cartoon I had to explain to my roommates. Michael is sent out to buy a bag of milk and walking home swings it around as boys are wont to do and the dog chomps it and it spills out. "What the heck is a bag of milk? They asked".

Oh, and they had this plastic pitchers. You put the bag in the picture and cut a triangular snip of the corner and pour from there. You could not seal it.

Yep - that’s exactly what my aunt did. The pitcher, not the swinging around/dog chomp.

[Joe Ross]

There are no absolutes in metas.

Numbering the grid from top left versus bottom left follows crossword numbering more closely & is another logical choice for the creator & solvers. Either works, as demonstrated in this contest.

[Ergcat]

I don’t know… I go to Canada often and have never seen milk in a bag anywhere I have been…

I lived in Toronto for 2 years (1991-1993) and with 3 young kids we went through a lot of milk… and, yes, it was in bags! We also had a plastic “frame”/pitcher which held the bag so you could store & pour!

[woozy]

The fact you could not seal the bag always bothered my mother and me. We'd close it with a clothespin.

[Beleaguered Castle]

Hey, back in the day, we had to hand assemble our test code and punch it into the processor in OCTAL!

Am I the only one who made one of these?

Template

[ajk]

An asterisk was an option, or they could've clued HEX with a reference to hexadecimal code. The clue for ROW was very instructive and actually removed what would've been an irritating guessing game (is it row then column or column then row?) from one of the meta steps, but then the clue for HEX is just [Spell]??? Are you just supposed to know it should be relevant because it's symmetric to ROW?

+1000 This is exactly what I've been saying since about 2:30pm [Mountain] on Thursday.

[MajordomoTom]

Hey, back in the day, we had to hand assemble our test code and punch it into the processor in OCTAL!

Am I the only one who made one of these?

20240218_223905.jpg

where's the Hollerith card(s)?

I used those in a statistics class, programming SAS, in spring 1982

programmed in machine language in either 82 or 83.

ahh, the good old days. We're not getting older, but those kids are sure getting younger.

[MikeMillerwsj]

The contest answer is NERDS. Each of the five theme answers ends with a two-letter word (BE, FE, AD, CD, ED), both letters of which represent numbers in hexadecimal (as hinted at by HEX at 65-Down). As suggested by the clue for ROW at 1-Down, find the letter in the corresponding column and row of the grid for each pair (for example, B=11 and E=14 in hexadecimal, and the letter in column 11/row 14 is N). Those letters spell the contest answer.

If you thought this was an extremely tough contest, you were not alone! Many of us, including your correspondent, had honestly never heard of the hexadecimal system. We have been running these contests weekly for more than 8 years, and I think this week's has a fair claim to be the most difficult one yet. For all that, we got a weekly reminder of just how clever our top solvers are: we had 537 entries and 73% were correct, which in this case was quite impressive.

Incorrect entries included MENSA (33), TRIO (4), CODERS (2) and GEEKS (2).

Congratulations to this week's (nerdy) winner: Jane Scelzi of Richmond, Va.!

[ship4u]

If I can't win with 400 to one odds, that's pretty bad......

[Joepickett]

If I can't win with 400 to one odds, that's pretty bad......

To.continue with the nerd theme, you have to enter 5.3 years once a week at 400 to 1 odds to get to 50% chance of winning. So yeah our chances are low.

[robertyseward]

it was in bags at my high school in Texas, but that may be a "bulk ordering" thing

the coordinates thing really didn't work if you treated the bottom left corner (SW) as the "origin", which any math/science/engineer/nerd likely would have done.

Absolutely correct!

Actually, in graphics software and semiconductor design software (both of which I have done), the origin is in the upper left.

I would like to point out that software types start counting rows and columns with zero, not one. Knowing that not everyone does this , I looked for an answer counting from zero and counting from one (and origins in different places). I was relieved to find that only one of them gave a reasonable answer .

[ship4u]

If I can't win with 400 to one odds, that's pretty bad......

To.continue with the nerd theme, you have to enter 5.3 years once a week at 400 to 1 odds to get to 50% chance of winning. So yeah our chances are low.

I don't understand how the odds would change over time. What would change to give you a 50% chance of winning?

[BethA]

When there aren’t any starred clues or obvious theme answers, I often have a sense of uncertainty about whether or not there are any theme answers. So my starting point on this one was noticing so many clues containing words that could refer to a group of people:

Answer Clue

WETBAR 17A party
INABAG 20A many or Canadians
HORDE 36A throng
RAT 39A mob
WESSEX 71A crowd
ARBITER 4D party
SING 19D choir
|
Anagram 1st letters — WISH WAR —> HAWKS !!!

No, it was a little too iffy to decide which ones could be groups, and I should not have to anagram, and then further leap to another synonym.

So once I went back and forced myself to consider possible theme answers, seeing the symmetry, pulling them out of the grid and seeing the consistent 2-letter second parts,
this definitely seemed like the right track.

For some reason, the wording of the 1D clue had me focusing on just the first letter of the 2-letter parts, also because they noticeably included ABCEF, no D! That made me look hard at HORDE because it would supply the missing D, but it shouldn’t be there in plain sight in the grid, unless the wording of the hint were “to find a grid entry that would make a good sixth theme answer.” And it was also inadequate in that sense because the DE was a part of the main word, not separate.

I had tried several ways of using the HEX to count different ways in the grid, but still using just ONE, the first letter of the two-letter parts. But just as I was giving up, getting ready for bed, light dawned! Why ignore the second letter when they can be treated as HEX also?? Had to take the iPad to bed and then got it!!

Really enjoyed all the comments about wheelhouses! This was definitely in mine, having a degree in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Cincinnati, and working in the semiconductor industry for about 20 years! But it reminded me of one of the few jokes I can remember — there are 10 kinds of people, those who understand binary and those who don’t!

(NOTE TO CONSTRUCTORS!!) —
I really appreciate meta puzzles that include an additional subject beyond wordplay! Whether they are or aren’t in my wheelhouse! It just seems to add an extra dimension to the puzzle, and has me studying world maps, Morse code, postal abbreviations, the periodic table of elements, music, art, literature, cartoons, so much more. Keep ‘em coming!!! Please.

I mentioned in my submission email — Solving this meta is a good test to prove that you are a member of the group! So, along those lines, here is a Tron cake that I made awhile back —

[DBMiller]

If I can't win with 400 to one odds, that's pretty bad......

To.continue with the nerd theme, you have to enter 5.3 years once a week at 400 to 1 odds to get to 50% chance of winning. So yeah our chances are low.

I don't understand how the odds would change over time. What would change to give you a 50% chance of winning?

@Joepickett is saying that if the odds of winning the mug each week was 1 in 400, then...

The chance of not winning the mug each week is 399/400, or 99.75%

The chance of not winning a mug at that consistent chance for N weeks is 99.75% to the Nth power.

So in order to have a 50% chance of winning the mug, you would need to submit a correct answer for 277 straight weeks.

99.75% ^ 277 = approximately 49.99%, so you'd have a 50.01% chance of winning at some point during that period.

277 / 52 = 5.33 years.

Unfortunately, the odds are usually not that good, so it would take even longer than that to have had a 50% chance.

[Scooby]

Question: would "IT nerds" count? 'IT' being two-letter congruent, plus IT/information technology that goes well with 'knowledge.' I was debated between the two answers and both look perfectly ok...

[mheberlingx100]

I saw the two letter answers, but tried to make them into points on a decimal grid (A=1, B=2, etc.). Wouldn’t have thought of hexadecimal if I worked on this for a decade (or 16 years, either).

I’m somehow reminded of the first personal computer I ever saw, built in the late 70’s by an electrical engineering friend in college. He demonstrated it with some simple math, but the answers seemed wrong … as both input and output were in hexadecimal.

[Homer Buckle]

Question: would "IT nerds" count? 'IT' being two-letter congruent, plus IT/information technology that goes well with 'knowledge.' I was debated between the two answers and both look perfectly ok...


I totally agree - and that's what I answered.