"The Play's The Thing" - April 9, 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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C=64
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#381

Post by C=64 »

Franklin.Bluth wrote: Mon Apr 12, 2021 11:51 am
C=64 wrote: Mon Apr 12, 2021 10:50 am
Franklin.Bluth wrote: Mon Apr 12, 2021 10:27 am
Too bad Gaffney couldn't have used someone from Lear to make the L, but we'd have all quibbled that it would lead to a K.
That wouldn't be a quibble; that would be a broken mechanism spelling MORTAK.
I'm not sure that's correct. These plays all have much longer titles than what we typically refer to them as...like The Tragedy of Macbeth, The Tragedy of Hamlet. The answer wasn't TTRTAL...

I thought a more important play should've been chosen, but LLL is the only one begining with an L. I thought it'd have been nice to shoehorn Lear in there.
Sure, and my text calls them The Tragedy of King Lear, The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, The Tragedy of King Richard the Third...

IMHO, "Lear" is slangy and not typically what we call the play; for example, Jeopardy! always refers to the play as "King Lear", in contrast to, say, "Richard III".
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#382

Post by PJM »

HunterX wrote: Mon Apr 12, 2021 4:12 pm

Also, I'm a PA native, yet I don't buy PA maple syrup. That would be like buying PA wine!
I think that's what Hamlet meant by a Quietus. :D

Once upon a time a made a mistake of buying from the Chadd's Ford shop at the time in Olde City. Eccch!
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Limerick Savant
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#383

Post by Limerick Savant »

Limerick Savant wrote: Sat Apr 10, 2021 12:18 pm Sat with pen and WSJ over breakfast and quickly spied the meta mechanism and was positive that I solved it even before finishing the grid. Then the curse of the Scottish play must have caught me. The three witches cast an unexpected spell that threw off my final confirmation. It took some unplanned (see my previous post) research online to find the alternative.

Google, Google, horn of Flügel.
Limerick likes to be more frugal
My usual Shakespeare source lists the character in LLL as Biron hence my reference to Scottish witches’ spell or should I say misspell.
https://www.opensourceshakespeare.org/ ... veslabours

Fortunately the Bard only wrote one play beginning with the letter L the obvious finish to the meta but my OCD (obsessive crossword deciphering) would not allow me to submit my solution until I tracked down the alternate spelling with Google. I wonder if anyone else was misled in a similar way?
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HunterX
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#384

Post by HunterX »

PJM wrote: Mon Apr 12, 2021 7:43 pm
HunterX wrote: Mon Apr 12, 2021 4:12 pm
Also, I'm a PA native, yet I don't buy PA maple syrup. That would be like buying PA wine!
I think that's what Hamlet meant by a Quietus. :D

Once upon a time a made a mistake of buying from the Chadd's Ford shop at the time in Olde City. Eccch!
Oh, yeah, don't do that. Never liked their wine. There are actually some decent-to-good PA wines. A couple have won national awards, I believe. But I can't for the life of me recall which. Too many bad experiences in years past made me just generally avoid them. Still, for PA, I'd stick with craft beers, or spirits.

Or, when in the Philly area, you can have beer from America's oldest brewery, Yuengling. You don't even have to know how to pronounce it here. Just ask for a lager.
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mpmanning
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#385

Post by mpmanning »

Limerick Savant wrote: Mon Apr 12, 2021 8:08 pm
Limerick Savant wrote: Sat Apr 10, 2021 12:18 pm Sat with pen and WSJ over breakfast and quickly spied the meta mechanism and was positive that I solved it even before finishing the grid. Then the curse of the Scottish play must have caught me. The three witches cast an unexpected spell that threw off my final confirmation. It took some unplanned (see my previous post) research online to find the alternative.

Google, Google, horn of Flügel.
Limerick likes to be more frugal
My usual Shakespeare source lists the character in LLL as Biron hence my reference to Scottish witches’ spell or should I say misspell.
https://www.opensourceshakespeare.org/ ... veslabours

Fortunately the Bard only wrote one play beginning with the letter L the obvious finish to the meta but my OCD (obsessive crossword deciphering) would not allow me to submit my solution until I tracked down the alternate spelling with Google. I wonder if anyone else was misled in a similar way?
The correct spelling can be located here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_S ... E2%80%93K)
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Annabelle
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#386

Post by Annabelle »

I had the same alternate spelling of Biron in the old fashioned paper book of the Bard's plays that I used as a reference. But, seeing that this is the only play that begins with L, I too did some online research to confirm the answer. And of course, Puck comes from A Midsummer Night's Dream; no shortening by leaving off the article! The only M in the answer is the the Scottish play.

Note: Goodreads has a list of almost 50 books featuring William Shakespeare as a fictional character! And I know there are more since I've read some good ones that aren't on the list!
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Limerick Savant
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#387

Post by Limerick Savant »

mpmanning wrote: Tue Apr 13, 2021 8:30 am
Limerick Savant wrote: Mon Apr 12, 2021 8:08 pm
Limerick Savant wrote: Sat Apr 10, 2021 12:18 pm Sat with pen and WSJ over breakfast and quickly spied the meta mechanism and was positive that I solved it even before finishing the grid. Then the curse of the Scottish play must have caught me. The three witches cast an unexpected spell that threw off my final confirmation. It took some unplanned (see my previous post) research online to find the alternative.

Google, Google, horn of Flügel.
Limerick likes to be more frugal
My usual Shakespeare source lists the character in LLL as Biron hence my reference to Scottish witches’ spell or should I say misspell.
https://www.opensourceshakespeare.org/ ... veslabours

Fortunately the Bard only wrote one play beginning with the letter L the obvious finish to the meta but my OCD (obsessive crossword deciphering) would not allow me to submit my solution until I tracked down the alternate spelling with Google. I wonder if anyone else was misled in a similar way?
The correct spelling can be located here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_S ... E2%80%93K)
Not to be argumentative, but there are a number of alternate spellings for Shakespearean characters and to call one the “correct” spelling just because it appears in Wikipedia seems presumptive. My sense is that Biron seems a more likely appellation for a character living in an area divided between France and Spain. On the other hand Berowne seems an Anglicized version. Any Shakespeare scholars out there want to weigh in? 🤔
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mpmanning
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#388

Post by mpmanning »

Limerick Savant wrote: Tue Apr 13, 2021 2:56 pm
mpmanning wrote: Tue Apr 13, 2021 8:30 am
Limerick Savant wrote: Mon Apr 12, 2021 8:08 pm
My usual Shakespeare source lists the character in LLL as Biron hence my reference to Scottish witches’ spell or should I say misspell.
https://www.opensourceshakespeare.org/ ... veslabours

Fortunately the Bard only wrote one play beginning with the letter L the obvious finish to the meta but my OCD (obsessive crossword deciphering) would not allow me to submit my solution until I tracked down the alternate spelling with Google. I wonder if anyone else was misled in a similar way?
The correct spelling can be located here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_S ... E2%80%93K)
Not to be argumentative, but there are a number of alternate spellings for Shakespearean characters and to call one the “correct” spelling just because it appears in Wikipedia seems presumptive. My sense is that Biron seems a more likely appellation for a character living in an area divided between France and Spain. On the other hand Berowne seems an Anglicized version. Any Shakespeare scholars out there want to weigh in? 🤔
Perhaps the Bard would have preferred the Bard's spelling?
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mpmanning
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#389

Post by mpmanning »

And perhaps I simply refer to a different usual Shakespeare source:

Harrison, G.B., Shakespeare: The Complete Works (New York, 1948). For the severest strictures on the artistry, characters, ethics of the play, see Tannenbaum, p. vii, p.582.
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boharr
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#390

Post by boharr »

I knew it would lead to bibliographies.
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mbryant
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#391

Post by mbryant »

Struggled with this one but finally on shore. Part of it came to me lying in bed this morning and another during a long run in beautiful Louisville today.
2021-04-16_13-38-36_666.jpeg
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