XWord Muggles Forum

I made this more complicated by assuming that I was looking for five animated movies. Of course I saw BOURNE and COMING TO but stubbornly stayed on the animated train until Sunday afternoon. After giving up for a few hours I saw all the others and realized the years aligned.

mikeh wrote: ↑Mon Jan 18, 2021 12:02 am BTW, did anyone else see BATHEMAGGOT and think BABE MAGNET and get lost going down that road?

I initially saw BATHMAT after removing an EGGO.

We old Upper West Siders thought there might be an animated biopic "Abzug's Life."

The reason web submitting didn't work this week is the presence of an apostrophe in the answer. Messes up the form submission.

It wasn't until after I submitted that I noticed we used the ENDING of each word in the theme answers.:

welCOMING grotTO
raMEN domaIN
cloTHE melBOURNE
batHE magGOT
tiffANY forGIVEN

A nice touch.

This puzzle had so many rabbit hole possibilities. I would never have made it to shore without some nudges...(thanks Wendy)... I made so many incorrect assumptions like thinking the animated film would have 5 letters due to the 5 long clues. And I also looked for animated films to match the 5 long clues. I also looked at Elaine De Koonig's Red Grotto painting of 1988 but alas...... Once I got a helpful hint that I shouldn't be looking for animated films in the 5 clues, I had fun looking up movies in those years which appeared to match. Who knew there was a film called Anal Domain. Knew it was wrong and when I got the right film I kicked myself. Great meta! Wish I could have solved it on my own, but it was still fun.

HunterX wrote: ↑Sat Jan 16, 2021 10:19 am

ron wrote: ↑Fri Jan 15, 2021 10:47 pm

Omnibus wrote: ↑Thu Jan 14, 2021 8:09 pm 86C51DE6-85F4-4C5E-9DF5-0B592B13B546.jpeg

I got the same message. I am thinking (I will try to be careful here not to spoil anything) it is because I included something in my answer, which, when I did not include it, allowed it to be accepted.

Entirely possible I'm far out to sea on my answer.

Hmmm... Having solved, I think I know to what you are referring. Which makes me wonder about that detail in my submission, which was sent by email. Always wondered about exactly how they filter out all the various submissions, given the volume. Could that explain why I haven't won a mug yet? As others have written, it would be great if on Monday you could get a "Your answer was correct, but..." email. Just so you know it went through.

For now I'll just believe there is a vast conspiracy, plotting to keep me from my coveted mug. My precious...

Since the cat is out of the bag, I'm sure we're both talking about the apostrophe. I would have to think they will accept either A BUG'S LIFE or A BUGS LIFE as correct answers.

But I guess it kind of makes sense to me to not accept punctuation in the online submission, since, there's no punctuation in crossword answers either.

Guess who got the mug???!? Another, fairly new, muggle!

I joined here in September and have had a blast with these puzzles. Thanks to everyone who helped me over these months.

Prozach wrote: ↑Mon Jan 18, 2021 9:50 am Guess who got the mug???!? Another, fairly new, muggle!

I joined here in September and have had a blast with these puzzles. Thanks to everyone who helped me over these months.

Wow - congratulations!!!


...hmmm. Perhaps I should quit and rejoin under a new name

I'm curious if anyone else had this problem - I wasted some time because initially GOT in BATHEMAGGOT jumped out at me, and You've GOT Mail was a major hit in the year they listed. But that led to ABUMS with the first letter mechanism, which didn't look like anything, so I assumed that not to be the direction to go. After much more staring, I realized that two words of a title were in all the other clues. OK, so then BAT GOT, THE GOT, HEM GOT? Took a while to try something with HE just because it seems too insignificant of a word.

I would have put the "careful!" on that one, not on the Bourne one.

To further elaborate on Bob's question about needing kids/grandkids to get this, I don't really think it was necessary, in fact this might be a case where too much knowledge hinders rather than helps. (See the comments from people who knew lots of movies and tried to make one of the 5 letter named ones fit.)

I had heard of A Bug's Life, but if I hadn't I'm confident a google search for 'animated movie a bugs' would have pulled it up.

Of the theme answer movies, I've seen Coming to America and Men in Black, but I'd heard of the other three. Needed google to find out which of the many Bourne movies was from 2007.

I'd guess that being familiar with one or two of them would be enough for someone get the idea and google the rest. But if you've never heard of any of them (Inca, is that you?) it would be very hard to figure out.

SusieG wrote: ↑Mon Jan 18, 2021 8:57 am I made this more complicated by assuming that I was looking for five animated movies. Of course I saw BOURNE and COMING TO but stubbornly stayed on the animated train until Sunday afternoon. After giving up for a few hours I saw all the others and realized the years aligned.

Exactly what I did! And my other getting off on the wrong foot was thinking we were supposed to do something to the ending. Never could recover from either misstep.
When I came up with TOPSOIL for the entries I had linked with "Land Before Time" (dinos, cave, grotto) and "A Bug's Life" (maggot, bug) I really thought I was on to something. But then the ends of the entries .....MELBOURNE and .....FORGIVEN gave me EPSILON. (And the 1997 date had led me to "Hercules" as a possibility!) But, wait! Earlier I had tried a method base on the appearance of the same word used in clues (i.e. "Super") and gotten OMEGA for .....GROTTO. I was sure one of those routes would get me there eventually even though I realized I was mixing oranges and apples at the moment. And not just any apple but the SPOILED, ROTTEN, TOXIC, DEFACED, WRECKED, RUINED, POISONED one!!
Here's the mug I won this week!

ron wrote: ↑Mon Jan 18, 2021 9:48 am

HunterX wrote: ↑Sat Jan 16, 2021 10:19 am

ron wrote: ↑Fri Jan 15, 2021 10:47 pm

I got the same message. I am thinking (I will try to be careful here not to spoil anything) it is because I included something in my answer, which, when I did not include it, allowed it to be accepted.

Entirely possible I'm far out to sea on my answer.

Hmmm... Having solved, I think I know to what you are referring. Which makes me wonder about that detail in my submission, which was sent by email. Always wondered about exactly how they filter out all the various submissions, given the volume. Could that explain why I haven't won a mug yet? As others have written, it would be great if on Monday you could get a "Your answer was correct, but..." email. Just so you know it went through.

For now I'll just believe there is a vast conspiracy, plotting to keep me from my coveted mug. My precious...

Since the cat is out of the bag, I'm sure we're both talking about the apostrophe. I would have to think they will accept either A BUG'S LIFE or A BUGS LIFE as correct answers.

But I guess it kind of makes sense to me to not accept punctuation in the online submission, since, there's no punctuation in crossword answers either.

Yes, that was what I guessed. I still wonder about whether someone looks at all the email subject lines and manually moves them to the "correct" folder, or whether they have an automatic filter (e.g. "rule" in Outlook) that pulls them out. If the latter, there is a possibility they don't take into account a variety of potential variations, such as accidental double-spaces or the like. My kids and I even wondered about whether we should send in our email with the answer/subject in ALL CAPS.

Ah, if only these were the biggest dilemmas life had in store for us.... ("First World Problems"?)

Prozach wrote: ↑Mon Jan 18, 2021 9:50 am Guess who got the mug???!? Another, fairly new, muggle!

I joined here in September and have had a blast with these puzzles. Thanks to everyone who helped me over these months.

So excited for you! Wonderful news! Huge congratulations.

COMING TO AMERICA jumped out at me almost immediately, and a quick Google search confirmed the year. The admonition to be careful also prompted a quick Google check to see which Bourne film came out in 2007. But then BATHEMAGGOT stumped me and I circled the drain for hours and hours and hours.

Finally I remembered my solving basics and looked at the title again. I also thought I needed to "spoil" the ending of the theme answers, but then I looked at the two movies I was certain were right and realized that "don't spoil the ending" means you're not supposed to mention how a movie ends, quickly jumping to not giving away the end of the movie title. I had to do a deep dive on movies released the same year as HE GOT GAME to finally get that one, but as soon as I saw the third word in each title spelled A B U G S, I knew I had a winner.

Now if I could only remember to start with the title when I've finished the grid and am ready to dive into the meta, I could probably save myself about a day's worth of aggravation!

Prozach wrote: ↑Mon Jan 18, 2021 9:50 am Guess who got the mug???!? Another, fairly new, muggle!

I joined here in September and have had a blast with these puzzles. Thanks to everyone who helped me over these months.

Congratulations! Since you have only been a Muggle since September, you probably don't know that the tradition is for newbies who win mugs within their first year have to send them to a specific member whose name is an anagram of a synonym of a homophone of a word constructed by taking the last 3 letters of three 15-letter words that are held in a password-protected spreadsheet kept by Joe Ross.

That member would be me. I'll PM you my address.

HunterX wrote: ↑Mon Jan 18, 2021 10:09 am Yes, that was what I guessed. I still wonder about whether someone looks at all the email subject lines and manually moves them to the "correct" folder, or whether they have an automatic filter (e.g. "rule" in Outlook) that pulls them out. If the latter, there is a possibility they don't take into account a variety of potential variations, such as accidental double-spaces or the like. My kids and I even wondered about whether we should send in our email with the answer/subject in ALL CAPS.

Ah, if only these were the biggest dilemmas life had in store for us.... ("First World Problems"?)

From previous comments by Mike Miller, the basic process is that all submissions go into one big list and a random number generator is used to select one of them. Then a human looks at that particular entry and determines whether it is correct. If so, it's the winner; if not another is selected. So formatting variations won't affect your chances of winning. (In fact, I think he even said once that they'll actually look at the body of the selected email if someone ignores the instructions to put the answer in the subject line.)

As for the stats on the number of correct entries, since that's generally phrased as an approximation, I'd guess that's manual/human too. If I were doing it, I'd just sort the list by submission, so in this case "A Bugs Life" and "A Bug's Life" would be adjacent and easy to combine in counting.

Joe Ross wrote: ↑Sun Jan 17, 2021 6:13 pm A possible caveat on submitting using using the WSJ online form: As of January 1st, Adobe stopped supporting Adobe Flash. Some browsers now flag Flash as a security risk. WSJ's online form uses Flash, which, IMUnqualifiedO, might have been leading to issues the last couple of months. If you can use the form, then your submission should go through. However, it might be safest to email your entry to crosswordcontest@wsj.com.

So is this true? Is WSJ really still using Flash? Or did you just suggest this to draw attention away from the idea that this week's answer included punctuation?

Any Given Sunday jumped out at me right away. I think this is because the local news here in Kansas City kept mentioning Henne Given Sunday for the last regular season Chief's game since our backup QB Chad Henne was playing. I got the meta pretty quickly after seeing that, which I was glad to knock out early this weekend because I was lucky enough to go to the playoff game yesterday, where Chad Henne saved the day once again!

EmilyW wrote: ↑Mon Jan 18, 2021 10:52 am Any Given Sunday jumped out at me right away. I think this is because the local news here in Kansas City kept mentioning Henne Given Sunday for the last regular season Chief's game since our backup QB Chad Henne was playing. I got the meta pretty quickly after seeing that, which I was glad to knock out early this weekend because I was lucky enough to go to the playoff game yesterday, where Chad Henne saved the day once again!

Wow! The odds of seeing a live game are almost lower than winning a mug! Henne was excellent too, as was Lamar Jackson's backup when he went down. BTW, did I ever ask you if you'd heard of the Irish band from Kansas City, The Elders?

I was just too focused on only animated films. I saw "bourne" of course, and saw "men in", but didn't make the connection. I also overly focused on anagrams. Thought if I drop the "r" in "ramen" would turn the clue into "domain name" which fit the clue, and "welcoming grotto" into "grotto comingle", but that's where I gave up. Grotto made me think of Little Mermaid, and "ramen domain" could anagram into "mermaid". I could go on and on and on with my overdoing things to the point of ridiculousness!