XWord Muggles Forum

I also went down that airport code rabbit hole for awhile.
ORD and PHL screamed at me!

mattythewsjpuzzler wrote: ↑Mon Oct 04, 2021 9:15 am

DrTom wrote: ↑Mon Oct 04, 2021 12:20 am By the way, how many people struggled with ORDain and PHLevel looking for Airport codes? I KNEW PHLEVEL had to be important because it was such an odd crossword word. I was right, but for the wrong reason....like that has never happened before.

Totally agree. Was obsessed with airport codes. In fact never realized how many there are! Virtually every word in grid (other than deSade and two) starts with a valid airport code.

Yep, ORD and PHL got me early and it was hard to let go! I also got hung up on State postal codes and then looked to their respective state capitals ! Also started to think of Greek letters since there was “eta” in the grid with an oddly worded clue ( “letter six after alpha”) and thought of capital as in “tops of columns “ leading to Greek architecture….. oh so many bunnies

Was hoping for some birthday magic to strike (today is my 55th), but alas, it was not to be. Never even thought of capital letters, and I don't think I would've gotten it even if I had (like, why is only the "O" in TYPEO considered a capital, and why only the "H" in PHLEVEL)? Congrats to all who got it! On to next week.

I am quite thankful I was busy this weekend and did not even complete the grid as I never would have solved this one.

Commodore wrote: ↑Mon Oct 04, 2021 9:08 am

Dplass wrote: ↑Mon Oct 04, 2021 6:54 am

joequavis wrote: ↑Mon Oct 04, 2021 12:31 am

I submitted SOCHI because in metas there are no rules!

26.2 on Sunday. And took the old geezer division. Don't show me any stairs today.

Wow! Congrats!!

Dplass wrote: ↑Mon Oct 04, 2021 6:54 am

joequavis wrote: ↑Mon Oct 04, 2021 12:31 am At first, I had thought it was the capital letters found not at the beginning of words. I had S-O-C-H and thought for sure it would be SOCHI but iMac didn't fit. Stared for a few more minutes and found the rest. Glad I didn't jump the gun in submitting.

I submitted SOCHI because in metas there are no rules!

I did the same thing. I found all the oddly capitalized letters in de Sade, type O, middle C and pH level and then jumped the gun on "I"Mac. It never occurred to me to look for capitals in the proper names of Taft, Korea, Ops and Laver. No mug for me!

mntlblok wrote: ↑Mon Oct 04, 2021 8:59 am Oh, and now "camelCase".

Yes, I never knew my screen name was an example of camelCase. For me, the format came from days of yore in the computer programming world.

Who ever thought piano lessons and chemistry class would combine to solve a crossword puzzle! Also history, physiology, tennis and technology, and of course, geography! Got led a bit astray by 47A, thinking of the sound of letters: eg: D-Sade, Tee. Then wrote the proper name starts next to the grid, and remembered that only the H is capital in pH, and the proper French spelling the Marquis, and it all fell into place. Capital, CAPITAL!
And now I want to watch or read Pride and Prejudice again!

Only made it as far as noticing "letters" standing out in answers - c from middlec, p and h from phlevel, o from typeo. Couldn't make Copenhagen work, so got desperate for more "letters" d de sade, t from tee, i from imac and various combinations of some and all. Even started grabbing at goofy letter possibilities, and that's when the wifey laughed me out of the room.

mntlblok wrote: ↑Mon Oct 04, 2021 8:59 am Oh, and now "camelCase". Knowing about the negative log of the hydrogen ion concentration was of no value.

Well not to you perhaps, but it really can be important. It makes the basic difference between 6.9 and 7.1 (sorry chemistry joke).

I saw the question about "why is it pH and not PH or type O and not TYPE O.

The pH thing is easy; by definition pH is the "power of hydrogen" if you will and H is Hydrogen. If you put PH then you would be talking Phosphorus. Elemental my Dear Watson...

With type O we may have to give Mike a little editorial license. In the hospital we do put down Type O or Type A, BUT in truth it should be written blood type O (or A or B or AB). So, I assume he needed it to make the puzzle work.

Middle C - well I'll leave that to the musically inclined, only thing I can play is the radio.

For some dumb reason I first started with DeSade Taft and said DST can not be right.

After too many rabbit holes looked up de Sade and the rest was easy.

eagle1279 wrote: ↑Mon Oct 04, 2021 8:44 am

DrTom wrote: ↑Mon Oct 04, 2021 12:20 am

(and to realize that it’s de Sade, not DeSade). Sheer torture?

so to speak

Commodore wrote: ↑Mon Oct 04, 2021 9:08 am

Dplass wrote: ↑Mon Oct 04, 2021 6:54 am

joequavis wrote: ↑Mon Oct 04, 2021 12:31 am At first, I had thought it was the capital letters found not at the beginning of words. I had S-O-C-H and thought for sure it would be SOCHI but iMac didn't fit. Stared for a few more minutes and found the rest. Glad I didn't jump the gun in submitting.

I submitted SOCHI because in metas there are no rules!

Same. SOCHI on Thursday. But... 26.2 on Sunday. And took the old geezer division. Don't show me any stairs today.

Didn't think to include proper nouns. Thought there was no way that they would make a mistake for iMac, but couldn't get passed the answer. Should have known better to think they would make a mistake.. Also, took the Capital clue similarly to the title name, so just went for capital letters which led to Sochi. Darn.

Finished the grid on Thursday, but I struggled with the meta. A lot of that had to do with the fact that I capitalized the "D" instead of the "S" in "deSade". Went the nudge route, and thanks to a perfect one, I was able to come up with the city. Ergo, no submission.

I was certain that "Accra" and "Sucre" were incorrect answers (see 25A). No other cities that I could find would work with that clue. Ditto for Prague, the capital of the only country that works with that clue.

Count me in as another rider on the "ORD" "PHL" train (plane?).


Banana cream. Saw on the 'net that this was popular in the 1900s. Don't think I've ever had it.

TFTXWD

femullen wrote: ↑Mon Oct 04, 2021 7:44 am Doh! Wrong shore.

Which was?

flyingMoose wrote: ↑Mon Oct 04, 2021 10:13 am

mntlblok wrote: ↑Mon Oct 04, 2021 8:59 am Oh, and now "camelCase".

Yes, I never knew my screen name was an example of camelCase. For me, the format came from days of yore in the computer programming world.

camelCase does come from there. Then you've got PascalCase or UpperCamelCase (popularized by Pascal programmers), snake_case (named because the words look like swallowed animals inside a snake's body, apparently), and then kebab-case (because the words are skewered...)

Programmers do come up with some pretty inventive names for variable name formatting...

Years ago when Objective-C was more popular the traditional way to differentiate, say, your crossword puzzle code from someone else's was by using 2 or 3 capital letters at the beginning. So you'd have a certain NSNumber of WSJCrosswordPuzzles and maybe you could show the puzzle in a UIView and play some background music with an AVAudioPlayer. Alphabet soup!

Ugh. I was thinking SHIFT as in ROT13. Also I got distracted by KOREA CAPITAL and tried to make SEOUL fit somehow. It didn't help that diagonally down from NE to SW there was a sequence spelling SEOU, and the letters S E O U L seemed to be everywhere, and there were multiple rhymes such as TOLL.

hoover wrote: ↑Mon Oct 04, 2021 11:49 am Ugh. I was thinking SHIFT as in ROT13. Also I got distracted by KOREA CAPITAL and tried to make SEOUL fit somehow. It didn't help that diagonally down from NE to SW there was a sequence spelling SEOU, and the letters S E O U L seemed to be everywhere, and there were multiple rhymes such as TOLL.

All my posts on here are encoded in ROT26 for security.

I went down two or three paths that did not lead to the answer for this one, but they did give me ideas for future puzzles. I won't bother with specifics since I may actually follow up and construct them.

sharkicicles wrote: ↑Mon Oct 04, 2021 12:10 pm

hoover wrote: ↑Mon Oct 04, 2021 11:49 am Ugh. I was thinking SHIFT as in ROT13. Also I got distracted by KOREA CAPITAL and tried to make SEOUL fit somehow. It didn't help that diagonally down from NE to SW there was a sequence spelling SEOU, and the letters S E O U L seemed to be everywhere, and there were multiple rhymes such as TOLL.

All my posts on here are encoded in ROT26 for security.

Gotta upgrade to ROT52 these days with all those meta hackers out there