"Parting The Waters" - January 31, 2020

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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Colin
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#181

Post by Colin »

Wendy Walker wrote: Sun Feb 02, 2020 8:38 pm
Bob cruise director wrote: Sun Feb 02, 2020 8:08 pm

And my wife and I don't have a clue who most of the people on the Super Bowl commercials are and in some cases what they are advertising - to no surprise to our daughter. Bring back the Bud Bowl or the Clydesdales
Sigh. We are no longer a target demographic!
Yes! Bring back the Clydesdales! Commercials awful this year. We boomers should be a target demographic... aren’t there more of us than millennials?
Anyway, Isaac says membership of the shove halfpenny league is growing. In the queue for my turn.
One world. One planet. One future.
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MarkL
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#182

Post by MarkL »

Wendy Walker wrote: Sun Feb 02, 2020 8:38 pm
Bob cruise director wrote: Sun Feb 02, 2020 8:08 pm

And my wife and I don't have a clue who most of the people on the Super Bowl commercials are and in some cases what they are advertising - to no surprise to our daughter. Bring back the Bud Bowl or the Clydesdales
Sigh. We are no longer a target demographic!
Noticed that the other day when 30-somethings starred in a Botox commercial! Or, it's just really (wicked) bad marketing!
'tis... A lovely day for a Guinness!
Jeff S
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#183

Post by Jeff S »

One minute to go and I still have nothing. Oh, well.
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MajordomoTom
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#184

Post by MajordomoTom »

Now, the good news - if you threw a Hail Mary and guessed SPRING ROLL, congrats.  If you'd dropped "POPULAR APPETIZER" and a length of 10 into a crossword search website, you'd have that as result #1.  So ... I'm sure that quite a few guessed that answer.

Here's the method to that answer:

1. the theme answers are BAY SCALLOP, OCEAN PERCH, SEA BASS, LAKE SALMON and RIVER PRAWN.

2. yes, there are numerous red herrings in the grid - there are names of bays (MCKAY), other bodies of water (KEOGH, KERRY), but no obvious SEA and no OCEAN.  So that dog don't hunt.

3. there are other things which are parts of the types of body of water - BAY can be deconstructed into BA, and there's BARE, etc.  But ... then what do you do with things like (4,6) or (3,4)?  Those words don't have enough letters to play with to get a 4th or a 6th letter, much less a 7th letter?

4. there are some very strange words in this grid, and some of them are very forced "alternatives" to actual bodies of water:

24D + 51D = CHESS APEAK = CHESAPEAKE (BAY)
62D + 22A = ARK TICK = ARCTIC (OCEAN)
65A + 21A = BARE RING = BERING (SEA)
(skipping this one, it's a groaner and the last one I got)
54A + 42A = YELL OWE = YELLOW (RIVER)

the LAKE? 

well, if you have 45A = EERIER, you need some 6A SOUP to go with that?

Yes, LAKE SUPERIOR

(4,6) of CHESAPEAKE = SP 
(2,5) of ARCTIC = RI
(5,6) of BERING = NG
(5,7) of SUPERIOR = RO
(3,4) of YELLOW = LL

YELL IT WITH ME: "put them together and what's it spell?"

SPRING ROLL

(and now back to your regularly scheduled broadcast)
"Lots of planets have a North", the Ninth Doctor.
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Joe Ross
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#185

Post by Joe Ross »

20200131 WSJCC Parting the Waters.gif
Whole blood, platelets, or plasma: Donate 4 in 2024

PLATELET 𝗱𝗼𝗻𝗼𝗿𝘀 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗿𝗮𝗿𝗲.
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𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗰𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲𝗿 & 𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘂𝗺𝗮. 𝗣𝗟𝗘𝗔𝗦𝗘 𝗦𝗛𝗔𝗥𝗘!
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pddigi
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#186

Post by pddigi »

Nope. Never came close to solving it, and grateful I didn’t spend much time trying.
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oldjudge
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#187

Post by oldjudge »

One thing that got me looking for names of the bodies of water was what turned out to be a red herring. If you look to the top center of the grid, 6A is SOUP and 15A is EINE. Using the displaced S it spells Seine. It didn’t take long to go from that to the correct path.
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hcbirker
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#188

Post by hcbirker »

Chess Apeak was my inroad to solving. Any one else?
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Laura M
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#189

Post by Laura M »

I'm geographically challenged so I'm not sure I would have gotten this one without seeing CHESS and APEAK practically adjacent in the grid, which was a nice touch. The first time through I had YELLOW SEA instead of YELLOW RIVER, and I finally had to guess and backsolve to get the actual sea and lake. Seemed like there was a lot of potential for ambiguity (a lot of of oceans end in TICK, did I get the right one?) but it did all work out.
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Hector
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#190

Post by Hector »

I got there with ARK TICK. There are fewer oceans than the other things, and I figured that if somehow an ocean is in the grid, the most likely one would be Arctic, and then ARK jumped out... Fun one, even after catching onto one of the pieces.

Before that I was hung up on these names of (shell)fish indicating that they are variants that inhabit unusual places, but it turns out that that's because we don't mention the habitat when it's the standard one ("ocean salmon," "lake bass").
Last edited by Hector on Mon Feb 03, 2020 12:37 am, edited 1 time in total.
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DrTom
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#191

Post by DrTom »

Well I hit all around iut, I figured that the names were "parted" but saw EERIER and thought LAKE ERIE, and Chesapeake Chesapeake for BAY but never clicked to putting CHESS along with APEAK (even though APEAK is an odd word and probably should have alerted me) or saw any of the others. Very impressive Matt, but I'm afraid I would not have thought of similar sounding names and then taken the actual names to get the letters. Besides, when I saw that Al Sisti took days to answer it I knew I had not a chance in heck of getting there. I congratulate all the clever solvers and will sit quietly home alone with my homophone.

So far 2020 is not going that well for my ego. Ah well, this Thursday brings another chance to humiliate myself.

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NUDGES!I am always willing to give nudges where needed; metas should be about fun, not frustration. Send me what you have done so far because often you are closer than you think!
LaceyK
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#192

Post by LaceyK »

Thank you MajordomoTom for posting the answer in steps. From the first pair, then I was able to look thru the grid to find the others myself. I spent a lot of time looking at EERIER thinking it would be Lake Erie. I wish I had said the word aloud more, and realized how it also sounded like Superior!
I had noticed Yell could be made into Yellow when I was going down the color path--Green Bay, Blue Ocean, Red Sea.
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Joe Ross
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#193

Post by Joe Ross »

Bleh!
Joe Ross wrote: Mon Feb 03, 2020 1:23 am A lesson in how to spend days in Rabbit Holes:

RH#1:
--Saw 50A LAKE SALMON & 45A EERIER, which solidly put LAKE ERIE in this Ohio mind
--This gave this stubborn Ohioan the idea to lose the first and last letters of grid words to find the proper names for the other bodies of water.
--With the help of Wikipedia, soon found 59A RIVER PRAWN & 29D POISED for OISE RIVER (France)
--With the help of Wikipedia, soon found 17A BAY SCALLOP & 4D PUSHKIN for USHKI BAY (Russia)
--Stubborn mind is mumbling, "Game, set, & ...!"
--Stubborn mind sees 24D CHESS & 51D APEAK, but they don't fit the pattern...
--Stubborn mind sees 62D ARK & 22A TICK, but they don't fit the pattern...
--With the help of Wikipedia, ibuprofen for the alphabet hangover, and a night's sleep, found 40A SEA BASS & 31D PESTOS for SETO INLAND SEA (Japan), anagram be damned
--Stubborn mind is slightly assuaged, but starting to head for the sideline tent to submit to concussion protocol
--Stubborn mind is mumbling, "What's with these number pairs? I cannot make any SENSE out of them!"
--Wikipedia knocks on the front door, abandoning its typical online reminders & begging for needed cash, now demanding it in person for the severe abuse it's been given
--Stubborn mind finally admits that there are only 5 Earth oceans and a limited number of named oceans in our solar system, none of which fit "the pattern"
--Stubborn mind reluctantly throws in the towel on RH#1, despite its being "So PRETTY!"

RH#2:
--Too many hours spent trying to beat square number pair pegs into round holes
--What you won't see, (in the original post), are the digital crumbles of the equivalent of 3 elementary school-sized erasers at the bottom edge of the screen and strewn about the keyboard

RH#3, SUCCESS!:
--24D CHESS & 51D APEAK mean something
--62D ARK & 22A TICK mean something
--Stubborn mind finds 65A BARE & 25A RING
--Stubborn mind finds 62D YELL & 42A OWE
--Relieved mind makes sense of the number pairs, "FINALLY!"
--Relieved mind sees that the meta answer will be SPRING (ro)LL
--Stubborn mind needs to find the (proper name) LAKE combination, in that order, since the others follow that new pattern
--Stubborn mind considers ONTARIO, but LAKE ONTARIO doesn't fit the new pattern, nor is ON TERRIO, or some such, on the grid
--Stubborn mind finally sees 6A SOUP & combines it with the original 45A "EERIER", and drops the "new pattern"
--Stubborn mind sees that the number pairs only apply to the proper names, not to the homophones on the grid

--Sheepish mind admits that if it had seen SOUP EERIER first, this meta may have been solved by 6 PM, Thursday
--Humbled mind crawls off to lick its wounds
Whole blood, platelets, or plasma: Donate 4 in 2024

PLATELET 𝗱𝗼𝗻𝗼𝗿𝘀 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗿𝗮𝗿𝗲.
𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗱 𝗶𝘀 ENORMOUS 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗰𝗮𝗿𝗲:
𝟰𝟬% 𝗽𝗲𝗱𝗶𝗮𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗰,
𝟯𝟬% 𝗲𝗮𝗰𝗵, 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘁𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗰,
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Tom Shea
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#194

Post by Tom Shea »

This was never gonna happen for me.

Isaac, check your tip jar. There's an extra hundred in it from me. Appreciation for the multitude of Friday and Saturday nights we've spent together.

Super Bowl commercials (tm) haven't been all that good since the Clinton administration. Almost glad I missed them. Aussie commercials were on here. Pretty funny, even though they don't spend as much money on them.

And I was rooting for both teams to lose. The best part was the game was over by lunchtime.
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Colin
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#195

Post by Colin »

Well done solvers! Didn’t see the light. Clever puzzle!
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MarkL
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#196

Post by MarkL »

Grooooan. Homonyms and parantheses - what a combination. Ought to be a PSA about mixing them together!

Hats off to the beachcombers. Well played!
'tis... A lovely day for a Guinness!
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Commodore
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#197

Post by Commodore »

Ouch. :(
higgysue
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#198

Post by higgysue »

Despite Lake Superior right outside my window, I didn’t have a clue! Bummer.
Tom Wilson
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#199

Post by Tom Wilson »

I'll say this about me: When I fail, I fail spectacularly. Fell into Lake Erie early and never paddled my way out ... which makes Buffalo wings a logical answer, right? Yeah, no. Congrats to all who persevered and thanks to those who kept me company while my mind was as hazy as Isaac's IPAs.
Last edited by Tom Wilson on Wed Feb 05, 2020 8:54 am, edited 1 time in total.
MaineMarge
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#200

Post by MaineMarge »

Another reel grate meta. Ewe can take a bough now, Mat! Well dun.
And thanks for putting the chess and apeak close to each other, which first caught my eye and
tuned me in to the method. Gotta luv this language which gives us all these homophones to have fun with.
Others have said here that when the themers have something in common, the meta answer will have that similarity. Spring roll came to mind right away.
And Muggles, do not panic when you see those dreaded pairs of numbers with the themer clues- just ignore them at first. They are there only to help you once you have figured out the method by other means, as in this case. 🙋‍♀️
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