XWord Muggles Forum

I have lost count of how many weeks I've been on the ship now. I was feeling pretty bad about this one since so many people thought it was easy and I had absolutely nothing. Now that I see the solution, I don't think I ever would have gotten it. My hail mary was going to be desserts (stressed spelled backwards) but I didn't make it on time and would have been wrong anyway. I studied Accounting in college and was not happy I was required to take Art History. I did end up getting an A++ because it was just memorization, but I think I immediately deleted that info from my brain as soon as the class was over. The closest I got on this was thinking about Salvador Dali, based on the "Dali Llama." I hope to one day see the beach again, but this summer has been rough. Congrats to all the solvers!

Early on, I had 4 artists-- R (ene) A (ndy) G (eorgia) and E (dgar). ORANGE seemed like the answer until i couldn't find an artist with a first name O. Then I saw Picasso. Which I should have seen sooner... but Magritte just jumped off the page at me....like Brombones. I think similar placement. My first mechanism attempt was change 1 letter, until I saw names SPLIT (51D). DALI appears 2 different ways.
Magritte had me thinking apple, then I moved to Orange. It wasn't until I solved the puzzle that I realized it said food, not fruit.

Very nice. Once I saw PIC ASSO, the rest of the first step fell into place, assuming six theme answers, six artists. First letters of six themed answers almost spelled APPLES (except for Y for YODA instead of the A) and figured that had to be the answer somehow. Then stepped back and considered artist first names. Nicely constructed meta.

(I haven’t checked to see if anyone else did this, but ...) initially, I missed Georgia O’KEEFFE and anagrammed RAPES into PEARS. It was only as I was writing up my answer for submission (in which I always describe the logic of my solution) that I noticed a certain inelegance, took another look, and corrected my error.

Aanndd ... (later) ... now that I’ve read some earlier posts, I see that I was not alone ... .

I’ve been swamped the last few weeks and only gotten the first step on recent puzzles but got this one. After the deadline but still a win in my book!

hcbirker wrote: ↑Mon Aug 03, 2020 12:17 am

BrianMac wrote: ↑Mon Aug 03, 2020 12:13 am I stopped at PEAR, not noticing the other two artists. Dumb mistake and I should have know better!!

Pulled a Sisti?

Yes, stopped at Ham and Cheese, didn't notice Grilled.

I saw the six artists and then spent an extra hour seeing if I could find more of them in the remaining letters of the theme answers, just in case. Sisti-inspired thoroughness. Pored over a top-100 artists list, searching for two letter combinations from the remaining letters. None came, so I wrote out the artist first names. Whew! What a relief to see a 100%er after missing morse code and needing triple nudges on the last two Monday Muggle Metas (outstanding challenges by Peter and Brian). Beautiful work, Matt Gaffney!!

Given the Puzzle Title and 68A, I just knew Edvard Munch and The Scream had to be part of the solution. Alas.

So, what does Tormented have to do with anything?

Tormented = torn, or split (51D)

Good to have applicable references on hand! This inadvertently helped me find O'Keeffe/meta "G" and kept me from making the "partial" PEARS conclusion.

That tricky "g/G" choice in the grid (where to split Degas and Magritte) held me up a bit, even though I knew exactly what I was searching for.

Cheers!

This is why I like the .puz format cpied into Paint.

Got to PEAR quite quickly, but knew it was two brushstrokes short of a masterpiece. Persisted and saw the other two artists for GRAPES. Inspiring meta! May go for my fourth watercolor before the summer is out.

cbarbee002 wrote: ↑Mon Aug 03, 2020 12:05 am Ouch. Kinda thought GRAPES would be the answer, but couldn't land it. Got 4 of the 6 artists (didn't get O'Keeffee or Magritte), but got RITTER (an American painter) and a blank. Obviously can't squeeze grape juice from beets! This is my world - - kinda around the answer, but . . . .

You’re not the only one who found RITTER, cbarbee002. I eventually discarded him as too obscure, and found all six artists. But couldn’t make the jump to the second step. At least I got closer than the last two weeks.

Loved this puzzle. Saw Magritte early, then Dali. Hmm, Tormented Artists. AHA! This means the Surrealists. Magritte's "Le Fils de l'Homme" really described me. A large green apple blocked my face and brain all weekend. Had to be Apples! Had to be! Found Picasso and Warhol. Not pure Surrealists, but certainly adjunct to the group. Oh the torment! Led me to force-find Kahlo, Ernst, Ray, Miro and Arp. None of it made sense, but hey... Surrealists!

Turns out I beached on Lop Lop Island.

I saw Magritte right away and then knew I was on the right track with the unusual spelling of O'Keeffe (two f's). I found the other four artists pretty quickly but then kept scouring the grid, sure that more letters in the theme entries would be used and the remaining ones would spell out the meta answer. Little did I know that by doing so I was avoiding a PEAR PAGEANT! Didn't find any more artists so I set to work on the artists' names to fruitful effect.

I went with BANANA. Doh!

I saw Picasso while finishing the grid but because of the way it was laid out and the close proximity of the theme clues - I first thought they would all be laid out similar to Picasso and that the letters I would be looking for would be the connecting letters between the two parts.

When that failed I noticed Goya could be found in another spot in the puzzle and then I thought this might be like the MONOTONOUS puzzle. But that wasn’t working so I put the puzzle down while I ate dinner.

Then I came here and posted I couldn’t find anything and once I did that I immediately saw Gritte and figured that had to be Magritte. Then Warhol and Okeffee jumped off the pages at me. Base on the final Across Answer - NAME- I figured it was probably first letters in the first name and within P, R, A, G - I figured it had to be GRAPES - but I wasn’t seeing DALI right away so I doubled checked with someone that it was 6 letters to match the theme clues and while emailing them back I saw Dali.

I will say one thing that did help was following Joe Ross’s guide. By doing that I found and highlighted the theme clues and I looked at the last across answer which is what made me think first names would be the second step.

I thought this one was a KAS2 - I didn’t get it immediately but I got it without any real help and within about 2 hours of first looking at the puzzle.

I found WARHOL first, which showed me step 1, then found MAGRITTE which confirmed it - that YODA GRITTED when it should have been YODA GROUND (to my mind, grinding one’s teeth is making a sound, while gritting them is a more metaphorical thing) stuck out and was a help. That got me looking for and finding the others fairly quickly. As I said earlier, the mechanism was up my alley, so a quick solve from that after two weeks on ship.

I do feel for the PEAR(S) people. OKEEFFE was the last artist I found, so I can see how you might miss her. I wonder if anyone submitted RAPE, which is the plant from which we get canola oil, and although it probably would never have made it past the editor due to its homonymity with the crime, it is a food of sorts and probably has some depictions in art.

Artist ignorance helped me. “Dagritte, isn’t there an artist named Dagritte?” Mr. G said no, but asked me if I meant to search for Magritte? Thanks Mr. G! Then I saw the mechanism and found the others in short order. But still needed help with a couple of the first names.

Clever construction.

Higgeldy piggeldy
Giorgio de Chirico
Showed Cézanne and Renoir
His angular shapes.

“Thanks but no thanks,” they said
Impressionistically.
“We’ll just keep on painting
Apples . . . and grapes.”

(In my earlier effort (#77), I skipped the souble dactyl rule that one line has to be a person's name. It's amazing how hard it is to fine a double-dactyl artist.)