"Take Five" - October 15, 2021

A place to discuss the weekly Wall Street Journal Crossword Puzzle Contest, starting every Thursday around 4:00 p.m. Eastern time. Please do not post any answers or hints before the contest deadline which is midnight Sunday Eastern time.
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Laura M
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#321

Post by Laura M »

mntlblok wrote: Tue Oct 19, 2021 8:07 pm Glad I spent no more time on this than I did. Left a bad taste in my mouth. The hints did the opposite of helping. Intentional??
I mean I've been there and I totally get this, and I don't think that unhelpful hints are ever by design, it's just that sometimes you aren't on the same wavelength as the constructor, and I feel bad for you that you had a such a negative experience. That said: I'm sorry but I can't help being amused at your username in the context of the meta mechanism :-)
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joequavis
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#322

Post by joequavis »

ZooAnimalsOnWheels wrote: Wed Oct 20, 2021 4:34 pm As we wait for Thursday, I'll share my dreamland solution to this week's puzzle for those that might find it amusing: Before I went to bed, I was looking for places that vowels could have been removed without yet homing in on the four long answers. That night, I dreamed I was cribbing in Greek letters into the grid in spaces between normal letters. This isn't entirely original thinking, because I know there has been at least one New York Times puzzle that used Greek letters in some boxes, intending the Roman spelling to complete words. My sleeping mind said, "Oh, that's the trick! Vowels have been removed, but they are Greek vowels, not English vowels." That little not-actual-A-Ha-moment stirred me enough that I started thinking more coherently, "I'm pretty sure there was a BET in the grid." (Narrator v.o. "There wasn't") "If you add Alpha to that, you get ALPHABET!" "What about eta? If there's a SPILL in the grid, you could rearrange the letters to get SPLIT PEA!" (Narrator v.o.: "You can't") "Hmm. The answer is a four-letter word. It must be SOUP!"

By this point I was awake and I knew I wouldn't get back to sleep until I checked the grid and looked up the rest of the Greek vowels, because the only other ones I could think of were Epsilon and Omicron, which weren't going to make any new words, much less soup words. I quickly realized this was all silly when I looked at the puzzle again, and it really had nothing to do with TAKE FIVE, but I had to laugh at the idea of my unconscious mind jumping through weird hoops to come up with SOUP as the answer!
Hilarious and thank you for sharing. May be even more humorous as I envision the voiceover being done by the Arrested Development narrator, with the AD theme music in the background.
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mntlblok
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#323

Post by mntlblok »

Laura M wrote: Wed Oct 20, 2021 7:35 pm
mntlblok wrote: Tue Oct 19, 2021 8:07 pm Glad I spent no more time on this than I did. Left a bad taste in my mouth. The hints did the opposite of helping. Intentional??
I mean I've been there and I totally get this, and I don't think that unhelpful hints are ever by design, it's just that sometimes you aren't on the same wavelength as the constructor, and I feel bad for you that you had a such a negative experience. That said: I'm sorry but I can't help being amused at your username in the context of the meta mechanism :-)
Mental blocks I can handle. Have grown right comfortable with them. And, I'm sure that folks who have seen this kind of thing enough - and the sorts who have found ways to have cryptics make sense to them - find this kind of obfuscation acceptable. I'll bet these same folks can make sense of Shakespeare without a translator. :-) Just not for me.
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mntlblok
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#324

Post by mntlblok »

BethA wrote: Tue Oct 19, 2021 10:49 pm
mntlblok wrote: Tue Oct 19, 2021 8:07 pm Glad I spent no more time on this than I did. Left a bad taste in my mouth. The hints did the opposite of helping. Intentional??
“What’s been taken from this puzzle’s fives” — at first I had the same feeling as from several others, best expressed I think by @Wendy Walker (on a different puzzle awhile back) this is a koan, I keep reading over and over, yet not able to understand. I found it extremely difficult to home in on what “the fives” could be. Finally something clicked.

I don’t know what exactly I want to say, except, don’t feel bad. A lot of us had the same feeling!
Had to look up "koan". Koans should come with warnings - that Spock types should not even try. :-) *Very* happy to see "home" in rather than "hone", though. :-)
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mntlblok
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#325

Post by mntlblok »

Did remind me of longish words with only one vowel (without using a "y") such as "strength" and "twelfths". Guess I could have taken notice of the long grouping of consonants, but I wrote them down as separate words on my Word document, separating them. "Taken from" implied to me that something already existed from which to take. Would seem to then open up all kinds of possibilities. Might one go to another room and check for words lying around? :-)
Franklin.Bluth
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Joined: Thu Oct 15, 2020 10:22 pm

#326

Post by Franklin.Bluth »

hoover wrote: Tue Oct 19, 2021 12:30 am
Franklin.Bluth wrote: Tue Oct 19, 2021 12:18 am
hoover wrote: Mon Oct 18, 2021 9:47 pm

I've heard it's an app that thinks it knows what you want to listen to, but I've never used it because I don't have a smartphone. (Also I like to choose my own music.)
You're thinking of Pandora, which builds a virtual "radio station" based on your likes and dislikes. Spotify is a huge library of music and podcasts, but also lets you build your own playlists. At $15 monthly for the ad free version, it's worth every penny and is the only service we subscribe to.
Hmm, my understanding is that Spotify also has an AI recommendation engine. But, as I said, I don't use it, so YMMV.
I'm sure it has that too, but it's not the primary function in the way that such AI is for Pandora.
Susan Goldberg
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#327

Post by Susan Goldberg »

tiagomeunome wrote: Sat Oct 16, 2021 5:49 pm
Susan Goldberg wrote: Sat Oct 16, 2021 1:24 pm Finally on shore! (After studying old Patrick Berry puzzles in this forum! So helpful. Thanks!!)


hello how do i study his old puzzles, i am lost at sea and would love some extra study material for this meta thank you
Hi! On this forum if you go to index and then to the Come Aboard tab, it has many solving resources including old puzzles. Sorry I didn’t get back to you in time for this one; but will help in the future! Good luck!
mindle
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#328

Post by mindle »

[deleted] posted to the wrong thread!
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