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Re: "Alternatives" - May 31, 2019
Posted: Mon Jun 03, 2019 6:34 am
by Bird Lives
Nackod. A native of Nackodia, a territory in the northern Carparthian mountains that at different times has been claimed by Romania, Ukraine, Austria-Hungary, and Panama (as the foreign minister at the time said, “Porque no?”). The Nackods (also known as Nackodians) made their living largely through smuggling across the disputed borders. Hence the proverb, “When a Turk argues with a Finn, the Nackod chuckles.”
Re: "Alternatives" - May 31, 2019
Posted: Mon Jun 03, 2019 6:47 am
by lusophile
Missed this one by taking a wrong turn at the beginning by having Livingstone as a BRIT. Saw FIND/FINN and DONE/DANE at beginning and end of the grid but no country D????O or N????A - DominO as a native of Dominica, perhaps was possible but NamibO, no way. So I was clearly on the wrong road, fully lost. Never submitted anything because EUROPEAN clearly was wrong--I knew from school geography class that Turkey was in Asia Minor!!
But there's always next week.
Re: "Alternatives" - May 31, 2019
Posted: Mon Jun 03, 2019 7:03 am
by Meg
I did not see the title as ALTER NATIVES. Nice. I feel like this change/find one letter in a set of grid entries has been done a lot lately.
Re: "Alternatives" - May 31, 2019
Posted: Mon Jun 03, 2019 8:01 am
by Graham
I went into a rabbit warren of alternative nationalities. I noticed that:
- Pulaski was born in the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth
Sibelius was born in Finland when it was a Grand Duchy within Russia
Kierkegaard was born in the Denmark-Norway realm.
Hmm. That all seems suggestive. Then stretching the point a little:
- Ertegun was Turkish-American
Livingstone was a Scot but also a Brit
Socrates was an Athenian but also a Greek
An interesting warren, but I couldn't find the exit!
I eventually went back to the beginning to find first NACKOD and then KOREAN.
Re: "Alternatives" - May 31, 2019
Posted: Mon Jun 03, 2019 8:10 am
by jenirvin
Dang it. I was on the right trail and just lost time over the weekend (how is it Monday already!?), so here I am stuck at Isaac's until next week.
Re: "Alternatives" - May 31, 2019
Posted: Mon Jun 03, 2019 8:21 am
by BethA
I sped right past all those “theme answer” proper names — they just didn’t look like theme answers at first glance. But I thought the title was giving me a clear directive - Alter Natives, and there was FIND/FINN right at the top. I went on to find the others included in the answer, plus one additional - HULU/ZULU.
I had a strong case going for awhile for the meta answer to be OZARKEN! Seriously! Then reading through the comments, thought maybe the odd word people mentioned was ZORKEAN - sci fi for someone from ZORK. But saw if I discarded the Z, I could get Korean. But why discard it? And how to know if I had found all of the demonyms?
Finally a day later, looked at the proper names, and got my DOH + 100% certainty. I had been disturbed also, that the letters didn’t follow grid order. But if you order them according to the order of the people’s names, they are in perfect order.
So I felt like I solved it kind of backwards, did the second step first finding the nationalities, then looked at the people. Thank goodness SHAKA ZULU wasn’t in the grid!
Re: "Alternatives" - May 31, 2019
Posted: Mon Jun 03, 2019 8:24 am
by Bird Lives
Meg wrote: ↑Thu May 30, 2019 4:34 pm
I waved at Isaac as I swam to shore. I’m hoping tomorrow's week 5 MGWCC will not be too painful.
I'm not a MGWCC subscriber, but just out of curiosity, I got a bootleg copy of this. The fill was easy enough, but as for the meta, I have absolutely no idea. Not a rabbit hole in sight. Does MG come up with difficult and different tricks for these that are never used in the WSJ puzzles? In any case, hats off to anyone who figures it out.
Re: "Alternatives" - May 31, 2019
Posted: Mon Jun 03, 2019 8:27 am
by Tom Shea
Stuck in the rabbit hole of Turkish, Finnish, Scottish, Danish, Polish and tried to find the reason for the oddball "Greek".
On to yardwork...
Re: "Alternatives" - May 31, 2019
Posted: Mon Jun 03, 2019 9:24 am
by BarbaraK
Wow! Bonus points for getting this the hard way.
BethA wrote: ↑Mon Jun 03, 2019 8:21 am
I sped right past all those “theme answer” proper names — they just didn’t look like theme answers at first glance. But I thought the title was giving me a clear directive - Alter Natives, and there was FIND/FINN right at the top. I went on to find the others included in the answer, plus one additional - HULU/ZULU.
I had a strong case going for awhile for the meta answer to be OZARKEN! Seriously! Then reading through the comments, thought maybe the odd word people mentioned was ZORKEAN - sci fi for someone from ZORK. But saw if I discarded the Z, I could get Korean. But why discard it? And how to know if I had found all of the demonyms?
Finally a day later, looked at the proper names, and got my DOH + 100% certainty. I had been disturbed also, that the letters didn’t follow grid order. But if you order them according to the order of the people’s names, they are in perfect order.
So I felt like I solved it kind of backwards, did the second step first finding the nationalities, then looked at the people. Thank goodness SHAKA ZULU wasn’t in the grid!
Re: "Alternatives" - May 31, 2019
Posted: Mon Jun 03, 2019 9:44 am
by Commodore
Brilliant. As we creep towards summer, I've been enjoying Isaac's icy cocktails too much. Must. Get. Out. Of. Slump.
Finding grids pretty straightforward, as was this. Had the Greek, Scot, Turk, Pole, Dane, Finn thing straightaway. But baffled by the 5-letter "Greek". Why not 4-letters? Somehow different? Off to rabbit-land. Then embarked on a misbegotten odyssey of all the ERTE, ERTE, ESTE, ERKE, ARTE stuff throughout the grid. Surely the TE in AlTErnatives has something to do with it? Is "FIND FAST STEP-KIDS" an instruction? Lotta K's...connection to IGLOO with ESKIMO somehow? Is GAARDE an alternative to GARDE? Wait! SITSPAT? Hmmm, something to do with Ex-Pat? On and on. Brain on overdrive... Finally, my answer.... 2-Down.
Oddly, doing a Liberty jigsaw simultaneously. After many 10 minute searches through several hundred pieces scattered widely across the table, it always seemed the correct puzzle piece was adjacent to where its solution lay. Lesson of meta step #2?
Re: "Alternatives" - May 31, 2019
Posted: Mon Jun 03, 2019 10:36 am
by Eric Porter
I didn't see FIND TYPOS, though I did think that TYPOS might have something to do with the solution. If TYPOS had been in the middle, I would have been more sure it was a hint. I'm not even sure that it was a hint.
I got a little stuck because the center of the grid has ARE written A & D. Then there's Kierkegaard & avant garde, erte & ertegun. I thought you maybe you had to find a grid entry which sounds like part of a person, then look for the nationality from that one.
I then saw alter-natives, wrote down the nationality, not their country as I did at first, and got it.
Re: "Alternatives" - May 31, 2019
Posted: Mon Jun 03, 2019 10:46 am
by TMart
Bird Lives wrote: ↑Mon Jun 03, 2019 8:24 am
Meg wrote: ↑Thu May 30, 2019 4:34 pm
I waved at Isaac as I swam to shore. I’m hoping tomorrow's week 5 MGWCC will not be too painful.
I'm not a MGWCC subscriber, but just out of curiosity, I got a bootleg copy of this. The fill was easy enough, but as for the meta, I have absolutely no idea. Not a rabbit hole in sight. Does MG come up with difficult and different tricks for these that are never used in the WSJ puzzles? In any case, hats off to anyone who figures it out.
Matt's weekly MGWCC metas generally get harder as the weeks go on - usually, Week 1 is ridiculously easy (600+ solvers), Weeks 2 and 3 are more WSJ-level, (300-400 solvers) Week 4 is tough (200ish solvers), and Week 5, when there is one, is almost impossible. You picked a very atypical week to try - a true Week 5 with only 50 solvers so far - hardest I've seen yet (though I've only been a subscriber since February). The harder ones usually have some of the same tricks from the WSJ, but a lot more steps and outside information needed. At only $26 per year, its well worth the subscription price if you are as addicted to metas as most of us are!
Re: "Alternatives" - May 31, 2019
Posted: Mon Jun 03, 2019 11:05 am
by 31 Down
I got hung up on NACKOD way too long before the epiphany. The "letter out of place" mechanism is common as others have pointed out but this one had a slight twist since it relied on the "correct" letters rather than the substituted ones. To paraphrase some sage muggles from last week, the first rule of metas is there ain't no rules. Lost sight of that.
Relied on Mr. B (Bing) to get some nationalities. And Mr. B provided long lists of porn sites when I searched "NACKOD", further delaying my shore shuttle. Mr. B apparently thinks I don't know how to spell "nekid"...
Another fun weekend with the best forum on the internet!
Re: "Alternatives" - May 31, 2019
Posted: Mon Jun 03, 2019 11:31 am
by Tony S
lusophile wrote: ↑Mon Jun 03, 2019 6:47 am
Missed this one by taking a wrong turn at the beginning by having Livingstone as a BRIT. Saw FIND/FINN and DONE/DANE at beginning and end of the grid but no country D????O or N????A - DominO as a native of Dominica, perhaps was possible but NamibO, no way. So I was clearly on the wrong road, fully lost. Never submitted anything because EUROPEAN clearly was wrong--I knew from school geography class that Turkey was in Asia Minor!!
But there's always next week.
I don't know how much time you spend and/or waste on these metas but using the internet helps -- I would have guessed Livingstone was English but I checked his bio and learned he was a Scot. I then checked all the others just to be certain. I knew I was in the right rabbit hole so I wanted to eliminate potential mistakes.
Re: "Alternatives" - May 31, 2019
Posted: Mon Jun 03, 2019 12:28 pm
by Andrew Bradburn
Sometimes a wrong path is very hard to get out of one's head. The first long answer I got was LIVINGSTONE, the next was ERTEGUN, and then PULASKI.
Taking the first syllable of each, I saw
LIV ingstone
ER tegun
PU laski
and I was well on my way to LIVERPUDLIAN. That 47 across featured a Beatles lyric (the most famous Liverpudlians ever) seemed to be evidence I was on the right track. Of course, this solution doesn't pan out, and it ignore SOCRATES at the top of the grid. It didn't help that the lower right corner of the grid looked like this:
D_|M A E
E L I U S
_S C A T
_D O N E
to spell out the rest of the word at an angle. Obviously this is not an elegant solution, but once something like this is seen it is hard to not see it. After a day I was able to start fresh and solve it, but I wonder if Mike was aware of this coincidence.
Re: "Alternatives" - May 31, 2019
Posted: Mon Jun 03, 2019 2:10 pm
by Joedbee
I had all the elements of the meta answer in hand, but my mental magnet didn't pull them together in the correct order. On to this week's challenge!
Re: "Alternatives" - May 31, 2019
Posted: Mon Jun 03, 2019 2:55 pm
by Nino
I see the solution explained with the Monday puzzle, but I don't see the report announcing the results anywhere. Was it posted? If so, where?
Re: "Alternatives" - May 31, 2019
Posted: Mon Jun 03, 2019 3:30 pm
by hcbirker
Nino wrote: ↑Mon Jun 03, 2019 2:55 pm
I see the solution explained with the Monday puzzle, but I don't see the report announcing the results anywhere. Was it posted? If so, where?
Mike Miller usually posts both here and on the WSJ site. He must be busy today. (Heidi)
Re: "Alternatives" - May 31, 2019
Posted: Mon Jun 03, 2019 3:37 pm
by KayW
I nearly submitted ERIE. My first rabbit hole was when I noticed ERTE/ESTE/ARTE in the grid. I then started thinking of an "altered" Native American ERIE. Then I spotted ALIE at 13A. If you swap the first two letters of 13A and 12D you end up with ERIE and ALTE(rnatives...?). I tried way too long to burrow my way through to the end of that rabbit hole.
After setting the puzzle aside for several hours, I came back to the grid and finally noticed all the people of different nationalities in the typical theme answer spots. I needed to google most of the nationalities, but once I did I noticed FIND/FINN and DONE/DANE pretty quickly. Smooth sailing to the KOREAN shore the rest of the way.
Re: "Alternatives" - May 31, 2019
Posted: Mon Jun 03, 2019 4:51 pm
by MikeMillerwsj
I sound like a broken record in these weekly reports, but I know I am echoing many of your comments here: hats off to a truly ingenious and innovative puzzle this week. We had 936 entries, about 83% correct. A grab bag of incorrect answers led by EUROPEAN (45) plus ATHENIAN (5), POLE (5), SCOT (2) and sundry others.
Congrats to this week's winner: Teresa Hall Gavin of Pleasant Prairie, Wisc.!