XWord Muggles Forum

D
O
O
WOOD

Corner of a wood PICTURE FRAME encasing the answer.

joequavis wrote: ↑Mon Apr 05, 2021 12:22 am

camandsampowercouple wrote: ↑Mon Apr 05, 2021 12:17 am I was nowhere near that! I did notice a lot of movie related clues and that was my last realization before throwing in the towel.





These were my notes lol.

I gave up solving online / electronically specifically due to puzzles like this one where the clues are so important. I really should try Joe's spreadsheet one of these weeks, perhaps when I'm stuck...
Kudos for sticking with it!

I don't have a printer


I was scanning through the PDF file with the clue list. Still didn't spot it.

But...but...what about Blue Suede Shoes?

Here's my reasoning, albeit it completely wrong. The first "two" letters of "show" are SH. There are 3 clues that start with SH. The 3rd letters of those clues are E-A-R. It's a severed EAR so the answer must be Vincent Van Gogh.

BTW

There is a house in New Orleans
Devoted to Degas
His mother’s family came from there
But sadly not his pa.

So, as I said, while trying to figure out the meta and getting nowhere, I started to type up my rabbit holes, when in the middle of typing the seventh one, it turned out to be the answer. Here was my thought process:

Heeding the title "Two for the Show," I noticed that there are a lot of words with doubled letters. But the letters are OTESOOSSE, which I don't think anagrams to any painter names.

Next I noticed that there are three words that contain EAR (7A, 15A, 28A) and a lot of other words that contain EAR in some order. That makes me think of Van Gogh, but I can't find anything that confirms that.

While I was looking at the doubled letters, I noticed that 7D and 19A cross and contain the same word WOOD going north and east starting from the same W. That makes me think of GRANT WOOD, but I don't see anything to clue American Gothic, pitchforks, or Iowa.

Then I see WEDTO next to JADA, which clues WILL, but I need a last name and can't think of a Will painter (Turner?).

36A starts with PIC and 65A ends in ASS, so all I need is an O to make PICASSO. Lame.

"Two for the Show"... the line before that is "One for the Money" but I don't see any currencies.

Wait. Now I see clue TRON hiding in answer PATRONS. And RAN hiding in DERANGE. OK, this looks promising. ARGO hiding in DEARGOD. WOO hiding in SHERWOOD. ALI hiding in REGALIA.

Code: Select all

7A DEARGOD - ARGO 18A = DED
14A REGALIA - ALI 25A = REGA
19A SHERWOOD - WOO 45A = SHERD
63A DERANGE - RAN 53A = DEGE
64A PATRONS - TRON 29A = PAS

7A DEARGOD - ARGO 18A = DED
64A PATRONS - TRON 29A = PAS
14A REGALIA - ALI 25A = REGA
19A SHERWOOD - WOO 45A = SHERD
63A DERANGE - RAN 53A = DEGE

D   E ARGO D
RE  G ALI  A
SHE R WOO  D
D   E RAN  G E
P   A TRON S

EDGARDEGAS

Ha ha... Now that I'm looking at this again, I see that the second ordering of the correct terms, which was supposed to be in order by the clues that gave the movie names, was actually not in that order; PATRONS/REGALIA should have been switched. Oh well, that set wasn't required anyway.

Lots of good rabbit holes in this one!

I kept trying to find something that looked like a frame in the puzzle grid, using the black squares as indicators. I saw "DEGAS", starting at the end of SHERWOOD, almost as soon as I finished the grid, and spent a lot of time trying to find something more confirming. This DEGAS, sprawled across two lines like a signature in the "framed" upper-right-hand block of answers, was really feeble. But then I saw DE in the start of 6 across -- two DEGASses in the same little framed block of answers. Still feeble. But I could not unsee this stuff.

Much later on I hit on "picture" euqals "movie" and the movie titles, and then found DE in front of ARGO, G in front of ALI, A behind Ali, nothing at all around WOO, and then DE in front of RAN and G behind it and A and S surrounding TRON. Sort of two DEGASes, again, sort of confirmation, but even more sloppy,

Finally I read the forum (all of the above done before because I want to see what I can get without hints), and saw posts in the forum that indicated the answer was not sloppy. I knew this would be the case, as the answer is never sloppy (USHER excepted). So I googled and looked up Degas to discover what his first name was (in the USA education is lacking). A quick glance back at the grid found EDGAR DEGAS.

Lots of rabbit holes I explored for this one, just about to give up hope,

until I saw "ARGO" in DEARGOD at the tenth hour

yadda yadda

solved the meta!

The weird thing was having "DEGAS" stuck in my head the whole time

7A & 63A perhaps, along with 17A & 65A

I don't know, funny how that works...

I saw "ear tear" (7A, 15A) and thought I would find Vincent Van Gogh to be the answer...lol!

It didn’t take long to see the letters in EDGAR DEGAS scattered throughout the top of the puzzle. I then spent the next three days searching for the mechanism that justified the answer.

Is there a slot on the KAS scale for “sent in the correct answer but didn’t get the meta”?

joequavis wrote: ↑Mon Apr 05, 2021 12:16 am Joe Ross seems to be indisposed, so pasting in the solution here

Who? Me?
Thank you, Matt!



shoulda - woulda - coulda

After figuring out the meta, I Googled his famous paintings to see if perhaps one or more were hinted at in the grid. “The Dance Class” is listed as one of his prominent paintings, which drew my attention to “In Class” in the southwest corner. That corner seemed like an unusual fill with “Shaolin”, so I wondered if “In Class” was an intentional reference to Degas.

DrTom wrote: ↑Mon Apr 05, 2021 12:16 am OK, so the trick was as the center grid answer intimated, a PICTURE FRAME, but when everyone was looking for a picture frame (and a lot of us got sidetracked by the two WOODS), the "pictures" were motion pictures. So, as mentioned in the clues ARGO, ALI, WOO, RAN and TRON. Each of those were also in the GRID slightly disguised, with a letter on each side of them (TWO for the show) that when taken in order spelled EDGAR DEGAS!

I tried my darndest to flub this one. Until I got my STOP THAT admonition I was CERTAIN that I was going to find ONE in several places hidden in plain sight. I was then going to take this (these) ONE(s) and add it to the most logical artist name I could MONET because, and come on now somebody besides me thought it,
ONE FOR THE MONET TWO FOR THE SHOW?

Thankfully the answer was a lot cleaner and logically arrived at, but you have to know that part of me wanted it so badly to be MONET. I guess it really paid to slow down and take my foot of DE GAS.

I sent in MONET as my Hail Mary.

My "justification" was seeing OWT in OWLET and WTO in WEDTO. I thought that only OUTEARN contained O, N and E. And MONET contains ONE. So, ONE for the MONET. A bit convoluted in retrospect.

I did not declare myself on shore or on the ship. Clearly I was lost as sea!

escapeartist wrote: ↑Mon Apr 05, 2021 12:49 am The weird thing was having "DEGAS" stuck in my head the whole time

7A & 63A perhaps, along with 17A & 65A

I don't know, funny how that works...

Me too!

Bird Lives wrote: ↑Sun Apr 04, 2021 11:34 pm I got the answer, but I needed a reminder of something that I should have reminded myself of because I always forget it. So I'm on shore, but not enough so that I'm raising my tankard of ale.

Did the thing that you should have reminded yourself of have anything to do with the fact that Mike Shenk puzzles have a distinct propensity to involve words in the clues involved in the solving of the meta? I think you know what I mean, but that’s what I think of when I think of a “typical Marie” puzzle.

Did the grid on Friday, but never had time to look at the meta until yesterday. I was really baffled. I finally just sent my answer last night and was shocked to see this morning that it was correct! I never found the mechanism for solving. I just noticed you could spell Edgar or Degas in some of the entries and since I couldn't find anything else, I guessed at it. I'm sure it will never happen again that one of my guesses is correct!!

I submitted MUNCH as this puzzle made me want to scream.

This was a never for me...I’ve never even heard of a movie called Woo. Even when Gman told me the mechanism I didn’t see any films in the grid. My best chance was probably seeing Argo and after that I might had seen Tron but I never would have noticed Ran, Woo, or Ali.

bhamren wrote: ↑Mon Apr 05, 2021 6:44 am

Bird Lives wrote: ↑Sun Apr 04, 2021 11:34 pm I got the answer, but I needed a reminder of something that I should have reminded myself of because I always forget it. So I'm on shore, but not enough so that I'm raising my tankard of ale.

Did the thing that you should have reminded yourself of have anything to do with the fact that Mike Shenk puzzles have a distinct propensity to involve words in the clues involved in the solving of the meta? I think you know what I mean, but that’s what I think of when I think of a “typical Marie” puzzle.

The answer is yes. I should have a sign on my computer screen that says, "Look at the clues, dummy." But Matt's puzzles also often require searching through the clues. What strikes me as different is that Mike's puzzles are more likely to involve ingenious letter-work. I think there was one where eight-letter automobile names circled the letters that were needed for the meta. Another where the theme entries had only one letter that was not duplicated within the word. That sort of thing. Matt's puzzles sometimes have theme entries that are, on their face, silly or nearly so. Mike is less likely to do silly.